Visual Exploration 2: Historic Influencers initial research

 Sir Francis Drake - English Explorer and pirate

• Admiral and explorer, known to be the greatest seaman of the Elizabethan Age.
• Born in ca. 1540 in Devon, England. Died in 1586 at sea, off Puerto Bello, Panama.
• His most famous achievement was travelling all around the earth in a single expedition. (1577-1580).
•  He is known for making several voyages as early as 1560 to the West Indies as a slave trader. He was one of the first British slave traders.
• He served as a privateer and naval officer for Queen Elizabeth I, charged with striking against Spain's possessions.
• Was the mayor of Plymouth, England.
• Drake was hated by the Spanish who called him 'El Draque' which translates to The Dragon. He earned this reputation because he took down so many Spanish ships that the country feared him and believed he was using witchcraft and working with the Devil. They thought he must have a magic mirror that allowed him to see all the locations of the ships in the sea.
• It was said that a canon ball flew straight through his legs yet he remained uninjured. This was apparently during a battle in the harbour at Palma on Drake's raid of the West Indies. 
• Drake evaded taxes on the booty he acquired by not making inventory. Only he and Queen Elizabeth I knew how much he had looted. 
• He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1581. The ceremony took place aboard Drake's ship, The Golden Hind, which was anchored at Deptford.
• Francis Drake's body was never recovered. in 1596 he caught dysentery and died in Portabello. His body was dressed in full armour, sealed inside a lead coffin and thrown overboard. Nobody to this day has found his body underwater.

 Sitting Bull - Lakota Leader

• Indian American, Hunkpapa, a Lakota Sioux tribe.
• Born in 1831 in South Dakota, United States. Died in 1890, Standing Rock Indian Reservation, United States.
• He was the son of Returns-Again, a Sioux warrior. 
• The name he was given at birth was Jumping Badger.
• He killed his first buffalo at age 10, and by age 14 he joined his father and uncle on a raid of a Crow camp. After this raid, his father renamed him Tatanka Yotanka or Sitting Bull for his bravery. 
• He collected several red feathers representing wounds he sustained in battle. 
• The most stunning display of courage came in 1872 when the Sioux clashed with the US army during a campaign to block the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad. To show his discard of the army the middle-aged chief strolled out into the open and took a seat in front of their lines, inviting others of his tribe to join him. He proceeded to have a long leisurely smoke from his tobacco pipe while ignoring the hail of bullets around his head. Still seemingly unphased by the gunfire around him, Sitting Bull then cleaned his pipe and walked off, his act of bravery somehow not leading to his death. Sitting Bull's nephew White Bull would later call this act of defiance "the bravest deed possible."
• Sitting Bull was also a Lakota "Wichasa Wakan", a holy man believed to have the gift of spiritual insight and the ability to predict the future. During a Sun Dance ceremony in 1876, he cut himself 50 times on each arm and then danced for hours before falling into a trance. When he awoke he claimed to have witnessed soldiers tumbling into his camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. Just like his vision claimed, the Sioux soon won a great victory three weeks later when Lieutenant Colonel George A Custer's Seventh calvary attacked the camp which would be later known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The camp was prepared thanks to Sitting Bull's vision, so they were able to outnumber the bluecoats and fight their way to victory. 
• In the year of his surrender, he considered Annie Oakley, a woman he met in Minnesota, his adopted daughter. After seeing Annie's performance he was impressed by her marksmanship and the two became fast friends. Sitting Bull nicknamed Annie "Little Sure Shot" and unofficially adopted her as his daughter. To seal the arrangement, he gifted her the pair of moccasins he had worn during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 
• Sitting Bull toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In June 1885, the former army scout and entertainer William "Buffalo Bill" Cody hired Sitting Bull for $50 a week to perform in his show. The chief wore full war attire and rode on horseback during the show's opening. He soon grew bored of this life and missed his family, so in October the 54-year-old chief left the tour after its final show, saying, "The wigwam is a better place for the red man."
• He was killed over his suspected involvement in the 'Ghost Dance' movement, a spiritual movement that spoke of a messiah who would bury the white man's world under a layer of soil and allow the Indians to return to their old ways. Sitting Bull loved his Lakota culture and because of this he was one of those accused he was shot by the policemen among a dozen others, and he was shot in the chest and the head. 
• It was Lakota tradition to have more than one wife. The Sioux believed it was wrong for a woman to not have food, shelter and clothes, so they would not allow a woman to not be cared for. Sitting Bull was said to have 5 wives over his lifetime, 2 of them being alive when he died in 1890.

Charcoal sketches of the historic figures from images of them.