Young kids at Christmas often have a Passing Party at school just before Christmas. Everyone brings a gift, jolly music plays, and children swap the presents around a circle. Passing Parties sometimes end with not joy but tears, as the child who brought the most expensive gift ends up with a cheap toy that quickly breaks.

Zintkala Nuni was the most treasured gift after the Massacre at Wounded Knee. What followed was a lifetime of breaking this present.

The Waif of the Battlefield was brought to the hospital at Wounded Knee. She stayed at several homes in her first few weeks - sometimes with her Indian tiyospaye (community), sometimes with White people. She was baptized three times in her life, once at the insistence of "Buffalo" Bill Cody, as he visited his mistress May Asay at a Pine Ridge trading post.

Enter Brigadier General Leonard Colby, from Beatrice, Nebraska. A successful and seedy lawyer, Colby called out a division of the Nebraska National Guard to follow him to the Massacre site. He sought glory from the horror. As soon as he heard of the infant, he decided to adopt her. His personal hero, Great Father Sharp Knife (Andrew Jackson), had adopted a Creek boy, and used that disastrous event to secure the presidency.

As Colby stated, Zintka would be become for him:

Colby wanted a human piece of history to put his names in the history books.

Colby bartered with John Yellow Bird and his wife, Annie, and took Zintka into his temporary home at Pine Ridge, on January 6, 1891. That night, Annie had a change of heart, and snuck the infant out of the White Man's tent, escaping to the Ghost Dance camp.

Colby, with the help of May Asay and her sister Elizabeth, dressed up as a half-breed Indian. He approached the Ghost Dance camp and demanded the child, claiming that he had a Seneca Grandmother. This was not the first or last time that Colby used his dark hair and skin tone to lie to the Indians.

A crowd gathered around the child. Several people stepped forward, stating that the infant was a relative. One woman called her Zintkala Nuni. Colby was a talented crook and lawyer, and convinced the gathering to give him the child. Later that night, Zintkala Nuni was translated as "Lost Bird." The citizens of Beatrice also called her Leonarda, since she was Leonard's adopted child. She was most often known by the nickname Zintka, which means absolutely nothing in English or Lakota.

A reception was held for Colby and his new "prize" before he even reached Beatrice again. Another party was held for him when he arrived home, where he dedicated the child to "Leonard Colby, the citizens of Nebraska, and the Nebraska National Guard."

It was several days later when Colby's wife, Clara, found out that she was a new mother. Clara Colby was in Washington, D.C., working with her good friend Susan B. Anthony to secure the vote for women.