An Irishman’s Diary

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Author: Frank McNally
• Published date: 19 December 2020

His life is worth recalling in the week US president-elect Joe Biden nominated a first-ever Native American as a cabinet secretary, because in the sorry history of relations between the white man and the indigenous populations of the US, Valentine Trant McGillycuddy seems to have been one of the good guys.

He was born in Wisconsin on February 14th, 1849, but he was from Co Kerry on both sides. His father was a Daniel McGillycuddy, late of Tralee, his mother Joana Trant from the end of the Iveragh Peninsula, at Portmagee.

The two met on the crossing to America. She was Catholic, he was Protestant. But subverting historical stereotypes, she was the one with some money and influence, including a letter of introduction from her relative, Daniel O'Connell, intended for the Catholic archbishop of New York.

In the event, they bypassed New York and headed west. He became a medical student and practised as a doctor for a time. Then, doubling as medic and topographer, he headed for the wilds, volunteering for an expedition of surveyors fixing the borders between the US and Canada.

In the 1870s he was a surgeon at several battles in the "Indian wars". In the process, he grew to sympathise with the plight of the indigenous tribes, and when posted to a fort near South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation, he became known as a "friend of Crazy Horse", the Lakota chief and victor of Little Bighorn, by then a prisoner there.

McGillycuddy was close by when Crazy Horse was killed, in still-disputed circumstances. He ministered to the dying man's wounds and later lobbied Washington for better treatment of the native minority. In 1879, he was appointed Indian agent - official liaison between government and tribes - at Pine Ridge, and had more strained relations with another Lakota leader, Red Cloud. His four years in the post were in general controversial, with newspaper allegations that he was part of the "Indian Ring", misappropriating federal funds.

But years later, Red Cloud at least recanted some his criticisms, recalling McGillycuddy as a "young man with an old man's head", who had been proved right in many things.

McGillycuddy merits two mentions in the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Dee Brown's elegiac...