ANNA MAE AQUASH 20/WESLEY BAD HEART BULL

All excerpts are in italics and from THE UNQUIET GRAVE by Steve Hendricks.

In January 1973 a white man named Darld Schmitz admitted to the killing of  Wesley Bad Heart Bull a Lakota. He was released from jail on a $5,000 bond.

…Wesley Bad Heart bull had gone to Bill’s Bar with friends, who were admitted entry while he was turned away. The barkeep knew something of Bad Heart Bull’s nineteen arrests for assault, drunkenness, and disturbing the peace. At the time, although the barman didn’t know it, Bad Heart Bull was being sought for rupturing a rival’s nose, cheek bone, and windpipe over a bottle of wine, while friends drank inside Bills, Bad Heart Bull stood in the gravel street….and may or may not have rattled a foot-long length of logging chain at a passerby.

At 2:00 a.m. Bill’s closed and a white patron, Jim Geary by birth, Mad Dog by nickname, came out and challenged Bad Heart Bull to a fight. Mad Dog had told friends earlier in the evening that he was “gonna get me an Indian, ” but his bark proved worse than his bite: one blow from Bad Heart Bull’s chain left him cold on the gravel. By some accounts Bad Heart Bull continued to beat Mad Dog even as he lay prone, By others Bad Heart Bull did nothing of the kind. In any case, soon after Mad Dog fell, several shots rang out. Apparently they came from some distance away and had nothing to do with the quarrel outside Bill’s. In the story told by Bad Heart Bull’s friends, as Bad Heart Bull turned to see where the shots came from, Darld Schmitz, till then a spectator, stuck a knife in his chest.

...Schmitz was known as a barroom tough himself. That night he was celebrating the birth of his third child by taking his mistress and friends out on the town as his postpartum wife lay in the hospital. In the story told by Schmitz’s camp, his mistress, a distant cousin of Bad Heart Bull,thought she could stop bad Heart Bull from savaging the unconscious Mad Dog. But as she tried to grab her cousin, he threatened her, and Schmitz sallied to her rescue. Bad Heart Bull supposedly swung his chain at Schmitz, who ducked and thrust a small pocketknife into Bad Heart Bull’s chest before fleeting into the night. Schmit’z camp did not mention the distracting gunshots.

On being stabbed, Bad Heart Bull fell but was soon back on his feet and may or may not have continued whipping Mad Dog until he weakened and was overpowered. After he finally collapsed, friends loaded the fallen men into separate cars and rushed them toward the hospital in Hot Springs, fifteen miles southwest, But Bad Heart Bull’s car was of Indian vintage,….it ground to a halt. Mad Dog’s handlers stopped and loaded the unconscious Bad Heart Bull next to his victim, but by the time they arrived at the hospital, Bad Heart Bull was dead. Schmitz’s cut had nicked his aorta, just enough for it to bleed out.

Sooooo….the white guy flees the scene after stabbing the Indian leaves the white guy he was defending to die. Then the  Indians take both the Indian and the white  to the hospital. Did they get a medal??? Also there is confusion about how many times Mad Dog was hit what did the hospital have to say? Of course I haven’t finished the story….

Later that morning Schmitz was arrested in the nearby town of Custer. He still had the knife, which he gave to the police, and he admitted having stabbed Bad Heart Bull but said he had done so with cause (then why did he run away?) He was charged with manslaughter and released almost immediately on light bond.

…prosecutor for Custer County, Hobart Gates, looked favorably on the claims coming from the camp of the white defendant and skeptically on those from the camp of the Indian victim. Prosecutor Gates defended his manslaughter charge by saying that n such tawdry circumstances, no jury would convict a man of murder.

He meant no jury of twelve white people would convict a white man of murdering an Indian in such circumstances. (I would agree at this point in the story if  Schmitz had stayed and helped and not run away.)

AIM replied that had the killer been Indian, the charge would have been murder. and indeed, two  years later, when a lesser leader of AIM named Dick Marshall killed a man in similar circumstance- shooting him without premeditation in a Black Hills barroom scuffle- he was charged not only with murder but with murder in the first degree. (Myrtle Poor Bear, who perjured herself after the FBI threatened her with photos of the dead Aquash, was also prevailed on by the FBI to perjure her-self to convict Dick Marshall.)

Oh no this guy has a different version!!!