DNA confirms man is Sitting Bull’s great-grandson
- The Native American leader famously led 1,500 Lakota warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, wiping out US General Custer and his troops
- The breakthrough is billed as the first time genetic evidence has corroborated a family relationship between a historic figure and a living descendant
A man’s claim to be the great-grandson of Sitting Bull has been confirmed using DNA taken from the Native American leader’s scalp lock – billed as the first time genetic evidence has corroborated a family relationship between a historic figure and a living descendant.
The breakthrough was made possible by a new technique that can yield useful genetic information from a tiny or fragmented sample of ancient DNA, developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge and the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre in Denmark.
Their findings were published in a paper in Science Advances on Wednesday. The same methods can now be deployed for investigating other historical figures, from outlaw Jesse James to the Russian tsar’s family, if old DNA is available.
Prior ancient genetic studies have looked for matches between specific DNA in the Y chromosome passed down the male line, or, if the long-dead person was female, specific DNA in the mitochondria passed down from mothers.
In this case neither could be used as the man, 73-year-old Ernie LaPointe, claimed to be related to Sitting Bull on his mother’s side, Willerslev said.