An elaborate piece of Native history that sat in a La Center family’s closet for years is now on display in a South Dakota museum for all to see.
La Center’s James Newell was ready to pass down a family heirloom — a Native headdress and clothing — to his son, Eric, but Eric decided it was time for the clothing to return home to South Dakota.
The keepsakes — a headdress adorned with eagle feathers down to the ground, a buckskin fringed shirt with beadwork, buckskin pants and a weathered pair of moccasins and more — were kept in a battered suitcase the Newells passed down for almost six generations.
James Newell is a fifth-generation descendant of Major Cicero Newell, an agent for the federal government’s Indian Affairs Office beginning in the late 1870s in present day South Dakota. Cicero Newell documented that he had received the articles of clothing from Lakota leader Chief Spotted Tail during Newell’s stint as an agent.
“It’s now almost 150 years old, and so my son and I were sitting at dinner and I said, ‘Eric, when do you want to inherit this suit in the suitcase,’ ” James Newell said. “And he just said, ‘Dad, isn’t it time we give it back?’ ”
Newell agreed with his son and began researching four years ago to whom the antiquities should be returned. In his research, James Newell came across a familiar name while looking on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s website: John Spotted Tail, chief of staff to the tribal president.
“And I called him and I said, ‘I think I have something we’d like to return to the Sioux Nation,’” Newell said. “And he thought I was nuts. He’d never heard of this, a suit like this. It’s just unheard of. He went home and said to his wife, ‘Do we have enough money in the bank that we can drive out to Washington?’ … The next day they drove out and pulled up, and I went out and met them and brought them in and they stayed with us for three days.”
After John Spotted Tail and his wife made the 1,400-mile trip to the Newells’ family home in La Center, he held on to the items for several years, favoring the idea of putting them in a museum for all to see.
James Newell said that John Spotted Tail and his wife contacted the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre. Curators wanted to feature the heirlooms prominently and assured that the suit would be well preserved.
The Chief Spotted Tail item officially was presented to the public eye on May 15 last year as a transfer ceremony was held at a Pierre, South Dakota, middle school. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem even made an executive proclamation declaring the week of May 13, 2024, as “Sinte Gleska (Spotted Tail) and Cicero Newell Friendship Week.”
“We have no regrets whatsoever,” James Newell said of gifting the item back. “By taking it out of the closet and putting it into public view in a scenario like it is, you know, it went back to South Dakota where it belonged.”
James Newell said anyone who may have a historical item they may want to return, no matter what it may be, should begin researching where it came from and making phone calls.
“I tried the Museum of Indian Affairs back in Washington D.C. before I got in touch with John Spotted Tail … I never heard a thing back from them so I just assumed they weren’t interested,” James Newell said. “And then I started in earnest searching the internet to find what now turned out to be the right choice, giving it back to the same family that had it and then they had the responsibility of getting it into the South Dakota Historical Museum.”
