Community Corner

Unity Riders Reached Danbury

Alfred Afraid of Hawk died in Danbury 113 years ago, and he may be closer to resting in peace Tuesday after his Lakota tribal members thanked Danbury for returning his body to South Dakota for burial. He road in Buffalo Bill's Wild West exhibition.

Members of the Lakota tribe visited Danbury Tuesday to thank the community for returning the body of Alfred Afraid of Hawk to South Dakota last year, about 112 years after he died while visiting town with the Buffalo Bill Wild West exhibition.

Afraid of Hawk, a rough rider with the Buffalo Bill Wild West exhibition, was an Oglala Sioux, today better known as a member of South Dakota’s Oglala Lakota tribe.  Back then, many Lakota traveled with the show, which returned each year to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to bring home tribal members, and to enlist new ones for the worldwide tour of Buffalo Bill Cody’s exhibition. 

The efforts to return Afraid of Hawk to South Dakota last year were reported this way by then Bethel Patch Editor Christine Rose.

"A handsome, tall, 20 year old, he fell victim to a bad can of corn and died in Danbury Hospital. The newspaper's sub-headline read, Corn More Deadly Than Bullets, referencing that others had also become quite ill.

The article in News Times read, “There was a strange scene at the hospital in this city last Thursday night, when two Indian chiefs, full blooded Sioux, arrayed in their native costumes, their faces still smeared with battle paint, stood over the corpse of their tribesman and pleaded with the Great Spirit to take his soul safely over the unknown river, upon the farther shores of which the happy hunting ground lies.”

Resting in anonymity for more than a century, Afraid of Hawk lay buried in an unmarked grave, paid for by Buffalo Bill.  It wasn’t until 2008, when Robert Young, who worked at the Wooster Cemetery, came upon a burial card with Afraid of Hawk’s name on it.  “I knew that Buffalo Bill had come through Danbury and that an Indian had died here.  When I came across Afraid of Hawk, and saw that Buffalo Bill had bought the grave, I had to delve deeper into it,” Young said.

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Young attended a brief ceremony Tuesday at Tarrywile Park, where members of the Lakota Nation thanked the community for its help with restoring Afraid of Hawk to his family. Young said the work took from 2008 to 2012.

"It took that long to be sure we were doing it correctly," Young said, "so the Lakota customs were observed."

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