I am researching the Bedlion/Bedilion/Bedillion family of SW PA. Am trying to determine the ancestry of Susan's husband's family BELOW and tie them into the larger Petillion/Bedilion/Bedillion family of France/Germany/PA c1600's to date. I believe some of Isaac and Susan's family settled in Coos Co., OR; Washington and California. Clair John "Bill" Thompson, Sr. Lincoln Park, MI www.clairthompson.com <---Bedilion/Bedillion family outline Bettelyoun, Susan Bordeaux; Tripp County 1857 This woman was the daughter of James Bordeaux and Huntkalutawin, a full blooded Brule Indian woman. The history this woman writes is very short but the article filed with it is of historical value. - M.G.D. State Chairman Pioneer Daughters, S.D.F.W.C. Mrs. Susan Bettleyoun Gives an Interesting Interview The following is taken from the Rapid City Daily Journal and is of much interest in the Rosebud, where both Isaac Bettelyoung and his wife were well and favorably known by many whites as well as Indians. (The following article adds interesting color to some of the early day history of Bear Butte and vicinity, an area which is now hoped may soon become a national park. The article is in the exact words of Susan Bordeaux Bettleyoun, now living at the State Soldiers Home at Hot Springs, as told to Carol Case Goddard of that city. Mrs. Bettleyoun, whose mother was Huntkalutawin Bordeaux, a full blooded Brule Indian, heard the story from her father, who in 1836 had a narrow escape from death at the hands of a band of Ree Indians at Bear Butte. -- Editors Note.) By Susan Bordeaux Bettleyoun, as told to Carol Case Goddard. Paul and Felix Bordeaux came to the United States from France, in the early 19th century, bout 1814. The Bordeaux family belonged to the aristocrats and had owned land where the city of Bordeau now stands. Paul was my grandfather and Felix was his brother. The brothers landed in New Orleans, later going to St. Louis and Felix continued on up the Mississippi to its source. My grandfather returned to France and brought back his French wife, Margaret Louise. They settled in St. Louis, in that part of Louisiana territory which became in 1821, the state of Missouri. My father, James Bordeaux, was born in St. Louis in 1818, the eldest son of Paul and Margaret Louise Bordeaux. My father was very ambitious and started out for himself when only a boy. John Jacob Astor had opened a western branch office of the American Fur Co. at St. Louis in 1819 and although father was but fifteen years old, he got a position with them at one of their western posts. Father left St. Louis in 1833, "the years when the stars fell," headed for the American Fur Co. post, later called Ft. Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, where it empties into the Missouri River. According to the Indian winter count, and the Indian hieroglyphic calendar and record, it rained stars that year. His work at the post later called Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, consisted mainly of stretching beaver pelts on large rings to dry. The pelts were bought by weight and because the white trappers often rubbed the moist green pelts with white sand to make them heavy, the company purchased their supply chiefly from the Indians. To South Dakota. In 1836, my father left the post, still in the employ of the American Fur Co., accompanied by "Pete," his pardner, also in their employ, and started toward what is now Fort Laramie, but then known only as the American Fur company stockade. They carried a small bundle of letters, the United States mail, destined for the stockade, and probably that was the earliest mail carried across what is now the state of S. Dak. Father and "Pete" had to go afoot because they were afraid of the Indians. Father never mentioned "Petes" last name, as I recall. We knew him just as "Pete." They traveled at night and hid in the woods during the day time. They carried very little equipment, only a small pack containing food, a blanket and extra pair of shoes and some moccasins, a muzzleloader and a big pistol for each--and the packet of mail. When they got to Bear Butte, which, in those days was thickly timbered and inhabited by numerous black bears, a tribe of Ree Indians set upon them. It was early morning father said that the Rees trailed them like hounds, following them up the steep mountain sides until finally it became so rocky and steep the Rees had great difficulty pursuing them. "Pete" paused, reloaded his gun and fired at them. The Rees turned and fled in terror, but not before "Pete" had been shot with an arrow in the back, close to the spine. My father and "Pete" kept on climbing until they reached the top of the mountain where there was a cold spring. Father had seen the Indians make their poisoned arrows on other occasions and knew at once that it was a poisoned arrow that had struck his pardner, for his body began to swell up and he was in terrible agony. All day father kept putting cold water on "Petes" wound and feverish body, the skin continued to puff up all over and they both knew he was going to die. "Pete" lived until sundown and suffered horribly. Prepare for Death. Before "Pete" died he wrote a letter to the American Fur. Co. telling them to give his wages to my father, that he had been shot by the Rees and was going to die with a poisoned arrow. When "Pete" lay dying there on top of Bear Butte he also told my father to: "Take my shoes and moccasins, because I am afraid you will get lost or something will happen to you and you will need them." He also made my father promise before he died, to put his body in a cave along the ledge near the top of the mountain and to cover his body with big slabs of stone so no animals could come and get him. He also requested that father take the poisoned arrow and put it in his hand so that when his own father came to claim his body, as was the custom for the parents of wealthy Frenchmen slain in the west he would know what had killed his son. Father did as "Pete" had asked him, concealing the body in the cave which was near the springs on top of the mountain. While on Bear Butte with "Pete" that day father said a storm passed under them and they could see the lightening, but could not hear the thunder. Father went on alone after his pardner was killed and finally reached the American Fur Co.s stockade, at what is now known as Fort Laramie, with the packet of letters. "Petes" father couldnt come to his sons body until two years afterwards, in 1838. In spite of being seen by the Indians and attacked, they rode horseback this time. They left the horses at the base of the mountain and both climbed afoot. Father guided "Petes" father to cave where his sons body was hidden. They had no trouble finding the place. Everything was just as father had left it and "Petes" father was overjoyed to find nothing had been disturbed, though, of course, the clothes and flesh had fallen away from the bones. Still clutched in "Petes" hand was the poisoned arrow. They put "Petes" bones in a sack and carried them horseback to the American Fur company stockade. It is possible that "Pete" was buried in the old Jesuit Catholic cemetery in St. Louis, because they used to take the bodies of slain Frenchman back there and it was the earliest cemetery in St. Louis. Saw Butte in 1910. I first saw Bear Butte in 1910. I had wanted to see it as I had often heard my father tell about it. My husband, Isaac Bettelyoun, and I were on White Rocks in Deadwood and I said; "What butte is that?" "Why that is Bear Butte," my husband replied. I suddenly started to cry and he thought I was ill. It came to me so overwhelmingly all that my poor father had endured and gone through, and he so young, that I cried for him. My father told me that in the early days when he first saw Bear Butte it was heavily timbered. Also he recalled seeing a quartz lode there with a gold vein clearly visible to the naked eye. I suppose now it has all eroded away. It seemed almost unbelievable to me that the mountain could be the same mountain father had told me about for it looked so barren, but I am very sure it was, for father, in telling of his experience with "Pete" and the Rees, always called it Bear Butte, or the Indian name for it. Mato Paha, which he said had been given to it, by the Sioux. I recall distinctly that father told me it was a mountain by itself, way off from the rest of the Black Hills. Some people have the mistaken idea that the mountain was called Bear Butte because it was so barren, even though the spelling is "bear" not "bare." Father said it got its name from the prevalence of black bears which lived there, and which were quite common throughout the Black Hills during the greater part of 1800s. I talked with three Oglala Indians while in Deadwood in 1910 about Bear Butte. I told them that my father had said that it was heavily wooded when he visited it in 1838 and 1840. They said that lightening had struck the butte three times and burned off all the timber and after the third burning it never grew again. Crazy Hawk, one of the Rosebud Indians, told me that in 1873 he started from the Spotted Tail agency, below Chadron, Nebr. He left at the time that chokecherries were ripe, going north, so it must have been about the first part of the middle of August. Evidently he must have become sun struck, for he didnt know anything until he found himself on top of Bear Butte. His pony was almost dead with fatigue. He had used a buffalo hide for a saddle blanket. And when he took it off the hair on the ponys back fell away. That showed he must have traveled a very long time and been in terrific heat. I talked to him personally in 1906 when I was field matron on the Rosebud reservation and visited his house. He told me that the cold spring was still on top of the butte at that time, but the heavy timber had disappeared. Myself. I, Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun, was born March 15, 1857, the sixth of 11 children born to James Bordeauz and his wife Huntkalutawin, a full blooded Brule Indian woman. We children all received a fair education, far above the average for children in those early days. In 1891, I married Issac P. Bettelyoun, a scout and interpreter for the government. He was later in the battle of Wounded Knee and died in 1934 at the soldiers home in Hot Springs. My father was a very proud man and yet a most modest one. He never wanted to give his frontier life and experiences to any publishers or writers while he was living. No one has ever published this experience he had with "Pete" on Bear Butte, nor is it generally known. My father was a wonderful man and devoted to my mother and to us children. He was respected and well thought of by both whites and Indians. Father died in 1878 and is buried at Rosebud Spotted Tail Agency. My mother died six years later, at the age of 63 years, and is buried beside him. I will be 83 years old the 15th of March. The rest of my days I want to spend in writing my experiences, early day history of the Sioux Indians fighting the government for their country, and of the many Indian battles with the soldiers which I saw with my own eyes. Republished in the Tripp County Journal, Winner, S. Dak. March 7, 1940. _________________________ Web posted Sunday, September 5, 1999, "Amarillo Globe" Lakotas' story Title: WITH MY OWN EYES, A Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History Authors: Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner;edited and introduced by Emily Levine Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Price: $35 Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun (1857-1945), daughter of a French-American fur trader and a Brule Lakota woman, claims to have been "in a position to learn and see about all that went on, on both sides" in the troublous times when the Lakota adjusted to a new world. Susan's vantage spot was near Fort Laramie, where she spent her childhood. Her collaborator, Josephine Waggoner, was a Lakota historian some years younger than Susan. Waggoner recorded Susan's narrative in the 1930s when both women met at the Old Soldiers Home in Hot Springs. "One woman wanted to correct the accepted history of the times but couldn't write and the other wanted to record the stories of the old people." Despite Waggoner's acquaintance with such historians as Stanley Vestal and Addison E. Sheldon, director of the Nebraska State Historical Society, and the interest of Mari Sandoz, the collaborative effort of the two women hung in limbo for several years. Sandoz and Sheldon agreed that the book, while containing valuable information, was not publishable in its present form. "The only way it can secure a publisher is by having someone with literary ability and a thorough knowledge of the west (to) take the manuscript (and) rewrite it completely...," said Sheldon to Waggoner in a letter dated April 22, 1938. Staffers of the Federal Writers Project eventually edited the manuscript, rewriting much of it; historians used the work in their own books, often without crediting Susan as author; and no one published it. "...Eminent western historians used - and misused - it for their own books which have been published and have shaped our interpretation of Indian-white history." The difficulty has been that oral history - which the manuscript is - rests upon memory, and memory is sometimes unreliable. Waggoner recognizes this and wrote Sheldon that "some of the dates were not exactly right, I know, but the stories told were true." Fortunately, editorial policy has changed, and at present - and one hopes, for the future - oral histories are "allowing the voice of the Indian to be heard ... maintaining the oral quality of that voice." In this volume, the first publication of Susan's story, Levine has been a most unobtrusive editor, standardizing the spelling and punctuation when necessary, and arranging the narrative "as much as possible, chronologically." Biographical, first-person sketches of Susan and Waggoner are found at the beginning of the manuscript, and extensive notes on the text are found at the back of the book. Other than that, we hear Susan's voice recounting her memories of and experiences with the encroaching white society. Among the more interesting parts of Susan's history of the Lakotas is the section on the death of Crazy Horse. It is clear that she thought little of Spotted Tail and Red Cloud. "Many of Crazy Horse's friends and relatives swore vengeance on Spotted Tail, who they considered a traitor to their race in turning Crazy Horse over to the army..." Another vivid portion of the book is Susan's account of the effects of the cholera epidemic on the Sioux and other Plains Indians. "All up and down the Yellowstone and the Missouri there were thousands of Cheyenne and Assiniboine lying unburied. In all parts of the west there was no one spared; no matter what tribe they belonged to, they were being swept off the face of the earth. It was the most heart rending circumstance; very few overcame it. They were marked for life." Those interested in the cholera epidemics might read the "Covered Wagon Women" series as well as "With My Own Eyes." The two perspectives provide a vivid portrait of suffering and death among both the Indians and the emigrants. The book includes extensive end notes, genealogy charts, and organization charts of Lakota society, as well as a useful index. "With My Own Eyes" is a blend of personal memories, oral history, and personal experience. It is compelling reading, recommended for general reader and specialist alike. -Doris R. Meredith.