A grim artifact hidden away in the basement of the North Dakota State Museum preserves the brutal reality of one of the most infamous battles in American history. It is a strip of human skin, darkened and leather-like, measuring roughly 16 inches long and 2 inches wide, cut from the body of Isaiah Dorman, a Black scout and interpreter killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. The strip is part of the Berdick collection of Teton Lakota ethnological materials, gathered during the 1920s and 1930s. Its existence offers a stark reminder of the violence that followed the battle, where the dead were mutilated in ways that shocked even battle-hardened soldiers.
Dorman’s life before that day was remarkable. He was born a free man, the son of a mother who had already been emancipated from slavery. In 1853, he helped build Fort Ridgely in Minnesota and lived among the Lakota, trapping and trading with them. He later married a Dakota woman named Celeste Pierre.
During the Civil War, Dorman served as the personal attendant to General Alfred Sully at Fort Kearney, Nebraska, and accompanied him into combat in Virginia in 1864. When Sully was reassigned to Dakota Territory, Dorman went with him. After leaving Sully’s staff, he became a mail carrier covering a grueling 360-mile route between Forts Rice and Wadsworth. He later returned to Fort Rice, where the U.
S. Army hired him as an official interpreter. In 1871, he guided engineers surveying the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad. By 1876, Dorman and his wife had opened a wood-cutting business along the Missouri River, and he was employed by the Seventh Cavalry as an interpreter.
On June 25, 1876, Dorman rode with Major Reno’s battalion during the attack on the vast Lakota and Cheyenne village along the Little Bighorn River. Although his role did not require combat, he almost certainly fought when the soldiers came under heavy fire and warriors closed in. As Reno’s command retreated into the timber, Dorman and several civilian scouts, including Charlie Reynolds, were stranded when their horses were shot down. Private Roman Rutton recalled seeing Dorman still standing and firing at approaching warriors.
As Rutton rode past, Dorman called out, “Goodbye, Rutton. ” Those were his final words before his body was riddled with arrows, slashed, and beaten beyond recognition. The recovery of the battlefield dead revealed horrifying scenes of mutilation. Trooper William C.
Slaper later testified to what he witnessed. He recalled how Corporal Henry Scullan’s leg had been hacked off near the groin, while another soldier’s arms were severed clean at the shoulders. Henry Jim Turley had his own hunting knife thrust into his eye all the way to the hilt. Dorman’s remains showed appalling injuries.
He had been slashed repeatedly, battered with heavy pestle-like hammers by Lakota women, and pierced with numerous arrows. Beside him lay his coffee mug, an item he always carried, now filled with his blood. In accordance with tradition, a piece of Dorman’s skin was removed by Iron Antelope, the niece of his wife, so that his family could conduct proper death rites. The strip was later passed down to her son, Afraid of Lightning, who in 1932 sold it along with other relics to Usher L.
Burdick, a noted collector. Burdick was no ordinary collector. He was a lawyer, North Dakota’s lieutenant governor, and later a U. S.
representative. Having grown up near the Fort Totten Sioux reservation, he learned the Dakota dialect fluently along with several other Native American languages. Over his lifetime, he gathered an extraordinary collection of Native artifacts, including the strip of skin taken from Isaiah Dorman. The battle itself was not a tale of glory but a collision of broken promises, human ambition, and unimaginable violence.
It remains a deeply uncomfortable chapter in American history, one that raises difficult questions about how the dead are remembered and how their suffering is handled. Do these relics honor the dead or exploit their suffering? Are they sacred reminders of history’s cost, or trophies stripped of dignity, traded and displayed for curious eyes? The question of whether such artifacts should remain hidden in basements or be brought into the light, no matter how disturbing, remains open.
History will judge not just what happened on that battlefield, but how we choose to tell it today.