LA Autry Blog

Part IX of a Series: To learn more about the Lummis Housebook Digitization Project, read the introductory post So Lummis Pretty Much Knew Everybody, Didn’t He?  For the other posts in the series, click here.

Drawing by Gerald Cassidy, Undated.
Charles Fletcher Lummis Papers, Braun Research Library Collection, Autry National Center; MS.1, Page 241.

After this article, the Harbach and the Housebook blog will go on hiatus until October. I hope you have enjoyed the series so far and look forward to sharing more interesting names with you when I return.

The first entry in today’s blog involves the most touching human interest story I have found in the housebook so far. It involves a four-month-old Sioux child who survived in her dead mother’s arms for three days following the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. I hope you are as touched by the story as I am.

1. Zintka Lanuni Colby—on May 11, 1902, a General L. W. Colby and his wife visited Charles Lummis. With them was their adopted twelve-year-old Sioux daughter, Zintka Lanuni Colby, who signed the housebook. According to the notes Lummis made on the page, Zintka was one of the survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890. Only about four months old, she was found in her dead mother’s arms about three days after the massacre. Lummis further noted that “she was half frozen and was the only one that lived of the several children found on the battlefield after days in a Dakota blizzard. The troops left the wounded—the Indian wounded—three days before even looking for them. The baby was adopted by General Colby, then commanding the Nebraska state troops; & came to see me with Mrs. Colby. . . . Her real name is unknown; but the Indian women in the camp named her, after this rescue, Zitkala Noni = Little Lost Bird and the name has been retained tho’ somewhat corrupted.” Almost ten years later, on March 26, 1912, Little Lost Bird returned to visit Lummis and made another entry at the bottom of the same page she signed when she was twelve years old: “Zintka Lanuni Colby, now Mrs. Chas. Davis, returned at above date grown to womanhood.”
2. John Philip Sousa—a composer and conductor best known for American military and patriotic marches. Among them are “Semper Fidelis,” the official march of the United States Marine Corps, and “Stars and Stripes Forever,” the national march of the United States of America.
3. Harry Barnhart—composer credited with launching the community chorus movement in the U.S. in 1912. He also introduced the idea of camp singing to the U.S. Army in 1917 during World War I. Among the songs he introduced to the troops at camp sing-alongs were “Mademoiselle From Armentieres,” “Tipperary,” and “Over There.”
4. Louis Prang—printer, lithographer, and publisher, sometimes referred to as the “Father  of the American Christmas Card.” He was also a partner in a successful firm that became known for war maps that were printed during the American Civil War and distributed by newspapers.
5. Reverend John W. Cavanaugh, C.S.C.—President of Notre Dame University from 1905 to 1919.
6. Garnet Holme— creator of the Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, which premiered in 1923. The pageant is the longest running outdoor play in the United States and the official state play of California.
7. A. Ernest McGaffey—a prominent poet whose works include Ballades and Idylls, published in 1931. He was a lawyer by profession who practiced in Chicago with famed attorney Clarence Darrow (who also visited Lummis and signed the housebook).
8. F. Pierpont Davis—architect who designed several buildings in Los Angeles, including the County General Hospital.
9. William Henry Crane—a silent film and stage actor who once costarred and shared equal billing with legendary comedian Buster Keaton in the movie The Saphead.
10. E. Alexander Powell— a well-known American war correspondent during World War I who later became an adventure and travel writer.
11. Gerald Cassidy—a New Mexico artist known for his portraits of Native Americans and lithography. In 1915, he was awarded the Grand Prize and Gold Medal at the Panama-California International Exposition held in San Diego, California, for his murals in the Santa Fe Indian Arts Building.
12. Alfred Dolge—a New York industrialist, inventor, and author who set up a felt manufacturing plant in the town of Brockett’s Bridge, New York, which was later renamed Dolgeville to honor him. Dolge’s legacy includes setting up the first social security system for his employees in 1876, almost sixty years before the Social Security Act became law.

I look forward to sharing more names with you in October. The first person whose name will appear is probably America’s most famous attorney. See you then.