Actor and tribal leader
Born: April 8, 1919;
Died: July 22, 2016
CHIEF Dave Bald Eagle, who has died aged 97, was the grandson of one of the Sioux leaders at the Battle of the Big Horn. He went into battle himself in the Second World War and was shot and left for dead parachuting into Normandy on D-Day. But he survived to work as a rodeo rider and film stuntman, advisor and actor.
He doubled for Errol Flynn, coached John Wayne on guns and horses, appeared uncredited in Dances with Wolves (1990) and in his mid-nineties he finally got a lead role in Neither Wolf Nor Dog, a low-budget road movie, which was directed by the Scots film-maker Steven Lewis Simpson and screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June.
Bald Eagle was also a tribal leader and appeared in promotional material for the state of South Dakota.
He was born in a tepee at Cherry Creek on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1919. Native Americans often have several names and he was known in English as David William Beautiful Bald Eagle, though he spoke only Lakota until he was 12.
He was related to Sitting Bull and was the grandson of White Bull, who reputedly fought General Custer in hand to hand combat and passed on many stories to his grandson. Bald Eagle represented a direct link between the modern world and the Old West.
“When I was a boy there weren’t even any fences,” he said. “no electricity lines or phone lines, no roads, nothing. You could just head out across country and you wouldn’t have to open any gates or anything like that. All just open prairie.”
In his teens he began competing in rodeos and joined the US Army. He was awarded the Silver Star medal for valour after taking part in the landings at Anzio in Italy and then parachuted into Normandy on D-Day.
His unit were dropped too close to the Germans. “We were just like clay pigeons coming down,” he said in an interview a few years ago. “Most of my outfit was wiped out.” He sustained four bullet wounds and the first medic who came across him thought he was dead.
After the war he played drums in a big band and was a champion ballroom and traditional dancer. He married fellow dancer Penny Rathburn, who was pregnant when she was killed in a car crash.
He worked on dozens of movies and recalled that while shooting the 1954 western River of No Return he would go dancing with its star Marilyn Monroe in his free time.
In Neither Wolf Nor Dog he plays a character who, along with his friend, lure an author into a road trip to show him contemporary Native American life. The director Steven Lewis Simpson said: “People loved his performance at Edinburgh. It’s got a 9.2 score on IMDB after the screening there. Much will have to do with Dave’s performance.”
He continued to live on the Cheyenne River reservation and is survived by his second wife Josee and by an extensive family that includes many children, some of whom were adopted, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
BRIAN PENDREIGH
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