On scraps of DNA of one of the most famous Indians, his living great-grandson was found

US citizen Ernie Lapointe turned out to be the great-grandson of Chief Sitting Bull - he became one of the most famous

Indians and was a key figure in historyresistance of the indigenous population to the US armed forces. He became one of the leaders of the tribal union in the early 1860s. The Sioux tribes won several battles against US regular and volunteer troops.

It is known that the funeral of the leader was held in secret,the ceremony was attended only by an undertaker and a military doctor, since he was killed by a lieutenant and a police sergeant. Relatives later exhumed the alleged remains and reburied the body closer to their homeland. As a result, the exact location of the grave could not be found.

To learn more about the personality of the leader and hisdescendants, scientists have launched a project to extract DNA from his scalp. As a result, paleogeneticists were able to restore only 0.8% of the genome, but this was enough to clarify its relationship with living people. 

We isolated a fairly large amount of DNA from hairSitting Bull and compared them with samples of the genomes of modern Sioux. The results show that Ernie Lapointe is indeed Sitting Bull's great-great-grandson and his closest living living relative.

Eske Willerslev, Professor at Cambridge University

As a result, it turned out that Lapointe and his four sisters -  Sitting Bull's closest modern descendants.

The authors hope that their work will help find the exact location of the Sitting Bull's grave and resolve the serious controversy that still persists in American history.

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