Yellow Bear

YELLOW BEAR Matȟó Ǧí (ca. 1844–1913) was an Oglala Lakota leader.

The First Yellow Bear

The first Yellow Bear was a prominent headman among the Tapisleca Tiyospaye (translated as the Spleen or Melt Band), one of the major divisions of the southern Oglala Lakota. He accompanied the first Oglala delegation to Washington, D.C. in 1870. By the following year, Colonel John E. Smith rated the size of this leader’s village at about 40 lodges, one of the largest family groups within the Tapisleca Band. Yellow Bear was murdered in 1872 near Fort Laramie during a fight with the controversial white trader John Richard Jr.

As the Lakota reservations were being established following the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the majority of the Tapisleca gave up their buffalo hunting way of life and settled at the Red Cloud Agency. By 1874, leadership of Yellow Bear's band appears to have passed to his younger brother, Black Hawk. At about this same time, another Oglala named Yellow Bear began to emerge among the Tapisleca, perhaps another "brother" (in the widest Lakota sense).