News – Sheridan Media
[[{“value”:”
Wyoming’s history is full of romantic stories. One is the story of Mini-Aku, also called Falling Leaf, was the daughter of the Sioux Chief Spotted Tail who played a role in negotiations between the Sioux and the U.S. government. He advocated for peace and cooperation.
Falling Leaf, some sources say, was between 16 and 18 years old when she died. Some stories say she was in love with a soldier stationed at Fort Laramie, and others say she was a frequent visitor to the fort and learned the whiteman’s language and culture there. Whichever the true story was, we will never know.
What we do know is that she was buried at Fort Laramie on March 8, 1866, and was given a Christian burial. Many settlers and Native American’s came together to mourn her passing. There are several stories in the old newspapers about her, and here are two of them.
This from the Laramie Daily Sentinel, July 19, 1870 – This story starts with this quote, which they credited to “An Eastern Newspaper,” “The daughter of Spotted Tail, when dying, placed her arms around the old chieftain’s neck, and extracted a promise from him never to kill another white man. He has religiously kept his vow.”
The story continues with an account of his daughter, Falling Leaf, and her burial at Fort Laramie.
On Sunday, June 24,1866,an emigrant train, thirty days out from Omaha, bound for Helena, Montana, came out of the arid sands and buffalo gnats of the woodless waste, and camped near Fort Laramie….The occasion offered opportunity to visit the Fort – a few house with outlying rifle pits, and an unfinished earth-work partially surrounding as light eminence, the enclosure of which was used as the post burial ground. In it the grass was rank and tall, almost concealing the few head-boards that marked the resting-place of the dead of the command. In the southern corner were two noticeable objects—the burial places of the daughter of Spotted Tail and infant Indian.
And this is the story. Spotted Tail is one of the principle chiefs of the Sioux. His daughter was gentle and beautiful, and was selected to be the mate of a distinguished young warrior. On one of Spotted Tail’s annual visits to the fort to procure powder and lead, a white-man became enamored of her, wooed her and taught her to love him. He asked her hand of the chief, but the enraged chieftain scorned their entreaties, and hastily leaving the fort started with his lodges on a long hunt; compelled her to accompany him, and despite her repeated entreaties and a vow that she would marry her white lover or die, he was inexorable.
She was as good as her word. She ate of a fatally poisonous berry—sickened and died. She had requested to be buried in the white-man’s burial ground. The chief came back, and craving that permission it was granted. The tribe was assembled; the finest fabrics they could procure enshrouded her remains, which were then placed in a large wooden box covered with bright colored blankets, and elevated on posts about ten feet high. Her favorite ponies were slaughtered, so that in the happy hunting grounds she might have good speed. The heads and tails of the ponies were then nailed to the supports of the coffin, and there they still remain in the wind and sun and storm, while the smooth flowing Laramie murmurs its ever-requiem to her who gave her life for love, and her last breath for peace.
Peace to your ashes, maid of the plains.—Your story given as it was told us at your grave, in the dim twilight, by one who came there at each setting sun. It is almost too good to be true; but, if it is, you deserve a good word, and will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Photo taken at Hot Springs County Museum
The Weekly Boomerang, August 16, 1900. It talks about old Fort Laramie, as well as the story of Falling Leaf. – Established a Fur Trading Station There Early In the Century—Romantic Story of Falling Leaf, the Beautiful Daughter of Spotted Tail, Famous Sioux Warrior—Fort a Lively Place In its Day. For half a century Fort Laramie was the most important military post on the northern frontier. The Hudson Bay company established a fur trading, station here early in the century for the convenience of the trappers and hunters of Wyoming and southern Dakota, and in1849 the government bought the property for $4,000, when it became necessary to protect the overland caravans against the Indians. It was always the most important station on the overland stage line, as it was the junction of the line that ran to Denver and Pike’s Peak. For forty years it was the fitting outpoint for military expeditions against the Indians. It was surrounded by hostile tribes. There were several agencies in either direction and a large garrison (was at the fort.)
Socially, Fort Laramie was a very gay place, and it has been the scene of many tragic; and romantic incidents which Gen. Charles E. King has used for the foundation of several of his military novels. After the Battle of Wounded Knee, in 1891, a military garrison was no longer necessary in this part of the country. The reservation, nine miles long and six miles wide, was opened to settlement and the buildings were bought at auction by Joe Wilde and John Hunton, familiar characters to army officers and veterans of the frontier, who occupy a portion and are tearing down the rest. “Old Bedlam,” which was used as quarters for bachelor officers, and is frequently mentioned in General King’s stories, is roofless. The big white hospital is half demolished, the doctor’s quarters is now the post office, the officers’ club is roofless and windowless, and the other buildings which were the scenes of stirring incidents in old times, when, there was a garrison of two or three regiments, are more or less destroyed.
The fence around the old cemetery still remains to protect the graves of several civilians that have been buried there, but the bones of the officers and soldiers were removed to the military to the military cemetery at Fort McPherson when the post was abandoned.
The tomb of Falling Leaf, the daughter of Spotted Tail, the famous Sioux chief of the Ogalalla tribe of Sioux, has also disappeared, and there is a difference of opinion as to what became of it. Some say that it was removed to the Red Cloud agency, others say that the scaffold blew down and that the soldiers gathered up the remains and buried them in the cemetery. (It has also been said that her remains were later returned to Fort Laramie.)
But, whatever its disposition may have been, it was a startling and an unusual landmark, and the favorite them of visitors to Fort Laramie.
Reconstructed Fort Laramie
The story has many versions, according to the accuracy and the idealism of the writers, but the facts are these: Spotted Tail had a daughter who bore the poetic name of Falling Leaf. Her beauty, from the Indian stand point, was unsurpassed by any of the maidens of the Dakota nation, and white people regarded her as the finest type of Indian girlhood. The women of the post made a great deal of her along in the early ’70s, when she spent considerable time here as their guest. They taught her the arts of the house hold and the English language, and the chaplain’s wife converted her to Christianity. It was very natural that Falling Leaf should attract the admiration of men, and a young Irish office of a cavalry regiment showed her a great deal of attention.
He was a charming fellow and of a reckless disposition. Fate ordered that Falling Leaf should receive his attention seriously, and when her father discovered the fact he showed great concern. Nobody knows what happened, but, according to the popular version of the story, he asked the intersession of the commander to ascertain whether the young dragoon intended to marry his daughter, If there was such an inquiry the result could not have been to his satisfaction. for the old chief took his daughter into the Big Horn Country, where, after a year or more, she pined away and died of a broken heart. It is said that during her living hours she made her father promise to bury her at Fort Laramie, which he did, erecting a high scaffold on a hill over-looking the fort.
(There is a photo of this scaffold taken about 1880, on display at Fort Laramie, and included in the small paper-bound book, Mini-Aku, Daughter of Spotted Tail, by Wilson O. Clough.)
How much of the story is true, we will probably never know. Still, it is an interesting story about the early days on the Wyoming frontier.
“}]]
More Like this
Last modified: March 9, 2026