LaPointe was interested. But the hair was a problem.
The strand was only five or six centimeters long. It had been stored at room temperature for more than a century, in conditions that were not designed to preserve genetic material. DNA degrades over time — particularly under conditions of warmth and humidity — breaking apart into shorter and shorter fragments, losing the long continuous sequences that standard genetic analysis requires.
By the time Willerslev’s team began seriously working on the sample, the DNA was badly degraded. The fragments were short. The coverage — the density of usable genetic material across the genome — was extremely limited. Standard approaches to genetic genealogy, including Y-chromosome testing for paternal lineage and mitochondrial DNA testing for maternal lineage, were not workable for this case.
The Y-chromosome approach traces the direct paternal line. It would not apply here because LaPointe’s claimed relationship to Sitting Bull runs through his mother’s side — through daughters and mothers — not through sons and fathers. Y-chromosome testing would tell you about the direct male-to-male line, which is not the relevant line here.
Mitochondrial DNA traces the direct maternal line — from mother to child to child’s child, always through the mother. In principle, if Sitting Bull’s daughter had a daughter who had a daughter — and LaPointe descended from that chain — mitochondrial testing might have worked. But the specific lineage, as documented, does not trace directly enough through the all-female line to make this approach reliable. And the degraded state of the hair sample made even that limited option difficult.