Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance

Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance was the name Sylvester C. Long (1890-1932) used after he had taken a mantle of an American Indian.

Sylvester Clark Long was born in December 1, 1890 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His parents were ex-slaves who regarded themselves as half-white, half-Indian, though their neighbors considered them black.

In the racially segregated environment, Sylvester Long apparently decided to escape and joined a circus. He worked and lived with Cherokees working in a Wild West show and noticed that whites treated them at least marginally better than they treated blacks. So he decided to become an Indian.

In 1909, Long applied as a half-Cherokee into Carlisle Indian Residential School, and was accepted. He graduated in 1912 at the top of his class. He joined the St. John's and Manlius Military Academies and graduated in 1915. At that stage, he had begun to call himself Long Lance, and had earned a nickname "chief" as the only Indian in the class. He decided to try for the West Point, and appealed to Woodrow Wilson, who endorsed his application. However, he failed the entry exam.

In 1916, Long Lance enlisted to Canadian Expeditionary Force in Montreal, and was shipped to France to fight in the Great War. He was wounded twice and was eventually transferred to a desk job. He returned to Canada as an acting sergeant in 1919, and moved to Calgary, Alberta where he took a job as a journalist for the Calgary Herald. He presented himself as a Cherokee and a West Point graduate with Croix de Guerre.

For the next three years as a reporter, he visited Blackfoot, Blood and Sarcee (Tsuu T’ina) reservations, and wrote articles about them - and at the same time listened eagerly their tribal legends and traditions. He also began to criticize government treatment of Indians, especially re-education and attempts to stamp out tribal rituals.

In 1922, he threw a fake bomb into a city council meeting and was fired, but he continued as a freelance writer. At the same year Blood tribe adopted him as an honorary member and gave him a Blackfoot name Buffalo Child. He adopted the name and the identity as real. His fame as an Indian who had made it in the white world increased when his stories begun to appear in national newspapers in Canada and USA. In 1924, he became a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1927, Long Lance had moved to New York. He began to write his autobiography, Long Lance, that Cosmopolitan Book Corporation published in 1928. In it, he claimed that he had been born Blackfoot in Montana's Sweetgrass Hills, that he had been wounded eight times in the Great War and had been promoted to captain.

He became a celebrity, part of a New York party life, and received an average prize of $100 for his speeches. He also endorsed a running shoe for the B.F.Goodrich Company.

In 1929, Long Lance starred in the silent film The Silent Enemy. The movie attempted to depict Indian tribal life more realistically, and was released in 1930. On his return to New York, he became, for a short time, regular party guest.

However, Indian advisor to film crew, Chauncey Yellow Robe, became suspicious and alerted studio legal advisor. Long Lance could not explain his heritage, and rumors begun to leak. The fact that he was technically black was enough that many of his socialite acquaintances left. However, studio decided not to publicize that fact.

Long Lance begun to drink. When California socialite Anita Baldwin took him as a bodyguard in her trip in Europe, he misbehaved in such an extent that Baldwin abandoned him in New York. For a time, he fell in love with dancer Elisabeth Clapp, but refused to marry her. In 1931, he returned to Baldwin, but his drinking increased.

In 1932, Long Lance was found dead in Baldwin's home in Los Angeles, California with a bullet in his head. His death was ruled a suicide.

Books:

• Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Impersonator, Donald P. Smith