The book of the American Indian

by Hamlin Garland

THE SILENT EATERS

I
THE BEGINNINGS OF POWER

I was born a soldier.

I have lived thus long.

In despite of all, I have lived thus long.

——Sioux War Song.

One day in 1854, while the Uncapappas, a branch of my father’s people, were camped in pursuit of buffalo on a tributary of the Platte River, a half-breed scout came into the circle from the south, bearing a strange message. He said: “The great war chief of the whites is coming with beads and cloth and many good things. He desires all the red men to meet him in a council of peace. He is sorry that we are at war. Therefore, he is inviting all your chieftains to his lodge to receive presents and to smoke.”

Up to this time the Uncapappas had never made talk with the soldiers, and many, like myself, had never seen a white man. Our home lay to the east and north of the Black Hills, far away from contact with the settlers. Of them we had heard, but only remotely. Many of our own men had never seen a French trapper. Our lives still went on as they had been going since the earliest time.

We followed the buffalo wherever they went within the limits of the hunting grounds which we claimed. On the east were our cousins, the Yanktonaise and Minneconjous. To the north of the Cannonball lived the Rees and Mandans; to the northwest, across the Powder River lurked the Crows, our ever-ready enemies. On the headwaters of the Arkansaw the Utes, a powerful mountain people, dwelt. The Comanches and many other unknown folk held the country far, far to the south, while to the east lay a land more mysterious than any other, for it was said that both white men and red men claimed it and warred for the mastery of it. Of the rest of the world most of us knew nothing; all was dark as a cave inhabited by bats and serpents.

Therefore, when the messenger had made his plea the chiefs called a great council to ponder this new and important matter. At this time the four head men, the civic chiefs, of my people, were The Four Horns, The Red Horn, The Running Antelope and The Loud-Voiced Hawk. These men had full power to call a convention and all the people came together obediently and some of the boys, like myself, crept near to listen.

It was in early summer. The grass was new and sweet; the buffalo were fat, the horses swift, and each day was a feast, with much dancing, and we lads raced horses when the old men would permit. Not one of all our tribe had care as a bedfellow at this time. Even the aged smiled like children.

In those days the plains were black with buffalo and the valleys speckled with red deer and elk, and no lodge had fear of hunger or frost. In winter we occupied tepees of thick warm fur with the edges fully banked with snow and we were not often cold. We had plenty of buckskin to wear and no one went unsatisfied. You would look long to find a people as happy as we were, because we lived as the Great Spirit had taught us to do, with no thought of change.

Nevertheless, our wise men had a foreboding of coming trouble, and when The Hawk, who was a very old man, rose in the council to speak, his face was deeply troubled. Once he had been ready of speech, but his tongue now trembled with age and his shoulders weighed heavy upon his lungs, for he coughed twice before he could begin.

“My friends, listen to me. I am an old man. I shall not be able to meet in council again. The rime of many winters has stiffened my lips, but I am glad this matter has come up now. My heart is full of things to tell you. My children, I have had a dream. Last night I went forth on the hill to pray and as I prayed I grew weary and fell asleep, and I saw a great council such as that the Graybeard now asks us to attend. I beheld much food and many blankets given away, and then a great fight began. A cloud of thick smoke arose. There were angry confusion and slaying and wailing in the midst of the smoke, so that my limbs seemed rooted to the ground in my fear. Now I know this dream was intended for a warning. Beware of those who come bringing gifts. They seek to betray you.” With uplifted hand he faced all the people and called again, very loud, “Beware of those who bring presents, for they will work sorrow among you.”

Then he sank back exhausted and all the chiefs were silent, but The Hawk’s wife began to sing a sad song, and as she sang, one by one the other chiefs rose and said: “The Hawk is wise. We will not go to meet this man. We will not take his presents. He comes like a Comanche disguised as a wolf. We will be as cunning as he. Why should he offer presents unless he wishes to gain an advantage of us?”

At last a young warrior, a grave man of gentle and serious face, stood in his place and said: “My father, I am a young man. I have seen only twenty-two winters and perhaps you will not listen to me, but I intend to speak, nevertheless. I have always listened when my elders have spoken, and especially have I opened my ears when strangers from the East came to our lodges. Your decision is wise. It is well to have nothing to do with these deceitful ones. Listen now to my request. I desire to be the chief soldier in this matter. If you wish to oppose the givers of gifts and the policy which goes with their refusal, place the matter in my hands and I will see that your desires are carried out.”

The firm, courageous bearing of this youth pleased the elders, and after deliberation they said: “It is well. We will make you our executive in this matter. You shall be Chief Soldier of Treaties.”

In this way was my chief Ta-Tank-io-Tanka, The Sitting Bull, made what you would call “Secretary of War” over seven hundred lodges of my people. He had already attained rank as a valiant but not reckless warrior. The Rees knew him, and so did the Crows. He came of good family, though his father was only a minor chief. His uncle was Four Horns, and his grandfather, The Jumping Bull, was an active and powerful man whose influence undoubtedly was of use to the young chief. His name had never been borne by any other man of his tribe. At fourteen he had counted coup on a Crow. He had been wounded in the foot while dashing upon an enemy, and he still walked with a slight limp. He was active, unassuming, and capable of many things.

But his fame as a peacemaker had already far outrun his renown as a warrior. He had been made a chief by the Ogallallahs because of his firm sense of justice. Only a year before this time a band of the young warriors of his own tribe had stolen from their cousins a herd of horses while the two tribes were camped side by side, and The Sitting Bull, having heard of this, went to the young men and said:

“We do not make reprisals upon our friends. We only take from our enemies,” and thereupon had led the horses back to their owners.

In return for this good deed the Ogallallahs had made him a chief among them, though he took no part in their councils.

He was a natural leader and a persuasive orator. A chief among my people, you know, is a peacemaker, and The Sitting Bull was always gentle of voice. If he saw two men squabbling he parted them and said: “Do not make war among yourselves. What is the matter? Tell me your dispute.” Sometimes he would say: “Here is a horse for each of you. Go and wrangle no more.” When he was very successful in the hunt he always went about the camp, and wherever a sick man or an aged woman lived, there he left a haunch of venison or some buffalo meat. This made him many friends. He did not desire riches for himself, but for his tribe.

Therefore nearly all the tribesmen were glad when he was made treaty chief and given the charge of all such matters. He was at once what the white people would call Secretary of State and of War.

Immediately after his election he called the treaty messenger into his lodge and said: “Return to those that sent you and say this: ‘The Uncapappas have no need of your food or clothing. The hills are clouded with buffalo, the cherries are ripening in the thickets. When we desire any of the white man’s goods we will buy them. Go in peace.’”

In this way the white men first heard of The Sitting Bull.

Yes, in those wondrous days my people were many and powerful. The allied tribes of Sioux (as you white men call them) held all the land from Big Stone Lake westward to the Yellowstone River and south to the Platte—that is to say, all of what you call South Dakota, part of Wyoming, and half of Nebraska. We often went as far as the Rocky Mountains in our search for food, for the buffalo were always shifting ground. As the phantom lakes of the plain mysteriously appear and disappear, so they came and went.

Where the bison were, there plenty was; we had no fear. But they roamed widely. For these reasons my people required much territory, and, though the wild cattle were many, we were sometimes obliged to enter the lands of our enemies to make our killing, and these expeditions were the causes of our wars with the Crows on the west and with the Comanches on the south. However, these wars were not long or bloody. For the most part we lived quietly, peacefully, with only games to keep our sinews tense.

In the expeditions which followed The Sitting Bull’s promotion he became the executive head. He was chief of police by virtue of his office, and his was the hand which commanded tranquillity and order in the camp. Whenever a messenger entered the circle the sentinels brought him directly to the chief’s lodge and there waited orders. No one thought of stepping between The Sitting Bull and his duties, for, though so quiet, he could be very stern.

He laid aside all weapons—for this is the custom among the chiefs—and carried only his embroidered pipe-bag and his fan, nothing more. His face was always calm and his voice gentle. He seemed to have no thought of self, but spoke always of the welfare of his tribe. When a question came to him for decision he said: “This is good for my people. We will do it.” Or, “This is bad for my people. We will refuse.” He raised himself by building upon the welfare of his race.

It was for this reason he refused again to meet General Harney in 1855 at Fort Pierre. He knew something then of the floods of white men pouring into Iowa and Minnesota. He had his spies out and was aware of every boat that came up the Missouri. He already possessed a well-defined policy. To every trader he said: “Yes, I am glad to see you. My people have skins to sell and tobacco and ammunition to buy. This exchange is good. Come and trade.” But to the messenger of the white men’s government he said: “I do not want your presents. My young men earn their goods by hunting. We are not in need of treaty makers.”

So it was that his fame spread among the border men and he came to be called a fierce warrior, ever ready to kill, when the truth is he protected those who came to his camp; even the spies of Washington had reason to thank The Sitting Bull for his clemency.

The years passed pleasantly and my tribe had little foreboding of danger. Our game remained plentiful and, though the rumors of the white man’s coming thickened, the people paid little heed to them, though the chiefs counciled upon it gravely. Then one day came the news that the Dakotas, our cousins, were at war with the whites. Soon after this, word came that they had been driven out of their land into our territory. Then it was that the Uncapappas first began to know the power of the invaders. I was but a lad, but I remember well the incredulous words of my father and mother when the story of the battles first were told at our fireside. The head men were uneasy and The Sitting Bull seemed especially gloomy and troubled.

In council he said: “Our brothers have been wrong. They should not make war upon the white man. He has many things that we need—guns and cloth and knives. We should be friendly with him. I do not make war on him, though I fear his presents and stop my ears to his promises. I forecast that we shall be pushed out.”

The news came to us also at this time that the white men were fighting among themselves far to the south, but we never met anyone who had seen this with his own eyes. We had no clear conception of what lay to the east of us. We only knew that the Chippewas lived there and many whites who were friendly with them, but no one of all our wise old men could tell us more.

Once I heard the chief say: “I do not understand why the white man leaves his own land to invade ours. It must be a sad country with little game, and if he came here only to hunt or trade we would make him welcome—but I fear he comes to steal our hunting grounds away. If he is in need and comes peaceably, let him share our buffalo. There is enough to feed all the world.”

Meanwhile the four head chiefs were growing old and lethargic, and so, naturally, step by step, The Sitting Bull came to be the head of all our band. He drew toward him all those who believed in living the simple life of our ancestors far away from all enemies. With songs and dances and feasts we marked the seasons, living peacefully for the most part, except now and then when a small party was sent out against the Crows or the Mandans, till in the 110th mark of my father’s winter count—that is in 1869—the whites established a trading post at the Grand River and put some soldiers in it and sent out couriers to all the Sioux tribes to assemble there for a council. The time had come (as it afterward appeared) when the settlers wanted to inhabit our lands.

This, I think, was the first time the chief clearly understood the attitude of the government toward him. Another day marks the beginning of the decline of my people.

I remember well the coming of that messenger. I was awakened by the sound of a horse’s feet, and, looking out of the tepee, I saw a small man on a big horse—bigger than any I had ever seen before. Warriors were surrounding him, asking, “Who are you?”

“Take me to The Sitting Bull,” he said, and just then the chief looked from his lodge and said, “Bring him to me.”

He was brought and set before The Sitting Bull, and they looked at each other for a time in silence. I was peering in under the side of the lodge and could not see the chief’s face, but the stranger smiled and said: “Are The Sitting Bull’s eyes getting dim that he does not know his old playmate?”

“The Badger,” replied the chief. Then he smiled and they shook hands. “You are changed, my friend; you were but a boy when we played at hunting in The Cave Hills.”

“That is true,” replied the man, who was a French half-breed. “I do not blame you for looking at me with blind eyes. I would not have known you. I have a message for you.”

“Bring food for our brother,” commanded the chief, and after The Badger had eaten the chief said, “Now tell me whence you come and why are you here?”

“That is a long tale,” said The Badger. “It is a story you must think about.”

And so for three days The Badger sat before the chief and they talked. And each night the camp muttered gravely, discussing the same question. The chief’s face grew sterner each day. He smoked long and there were times when his eyes rested on the ground in a silence of deep thought while The Badger told of the mighty white man—of his wonderful deeds, of his armies, of his iron horses, of all these things which we afterward saw for ourselves. He went farther. He told us of the white man’s government which was lodged in a great village made of wood and stone. He said the white men were more numerous than the buffalo and that their horses were plenty as prairie dogs. “You do well, my friend, not to go to war against these people. They are all-conquering. What can you do against magicians who create guns and knives and powder?”

“I have no hate of them,” replied the chief. “All I ask is to be let alone.”

“Listen, my friend. This is what the white man is doing. A great chief, whose name is Sheridan, followed by many warriors, is killing or subduing all the red people to the south. He has broken the Comanches; the Kiowas and Pawnees—all bend the neck to him. Ferocious leaders have been sent out from Washington with orders to gather all your race into certain small lands and there teach them the white man’s way. Whether they wish to do so or not does not matter. They must go or be blown to pieces by his guns. My friend, that is what they mean to do with you. They want you to come to the mouth of Grand River and to the Standing Rock, there to give up your hunting and learn the white man’s way. The great war chief of the whites has said it.”

The chief’s eyes flamed. “And if I refuse?”

“Then he will send a long line of his horsemen to fetch you.”

The chief grimly smiled. “Hoh! Well, go back and tell them to come. The Sitting Bull has got along very well in the ways of his fathers thus far and in those ways he will continue. The land is wide to the west and game is plenty.”

But The Badger then said: “My brother, you know me well. We can speak plainly. The white chief sent me, I say that now. He asked me to come, and I did so. I came as a friend in order that you might not be deceived. I tell you the truth—the white man is moving westward, like a feeding herd of buffalo, slow but sure. His heart is bitter toward us and we must keep silence before him. He wants all the land east of the Missouri and south of the Black Hills. He demands that you give it up.”

My chief was sitting in his soldiers’ lodge; few were there. My father was looking in at the door and I, a lad, was beside him. I saw the veins swell out in the chief’s neck as he rose and spoke: “My friend, out there” (he swept his hand to the west) “is our land, a big open space covered with game. Go back to your friends, the white men, and say that The Sitting Bull is Uncapappa and free to do as he wills. He chooses to live as his fathers lived. As the Great Spirit made him, so he is, and shall remain.”

II
POLICY AND COUNCIL

Nevertheless The Badger’s talk had enlightened my chief. He pondered deeply over his words and came at last fairly to understand the white man’s demands. He lived by planting; the red man by hunting. The palefaces said: “The red man has too much land. We will take part of it for ourselves. In return we will teach him how to plant and make bread and clothing.” But they did not stop there. They said if the red man does not wish to be a planter and wear our clothing we will send out soldiers with guns and make him do our will.

The chief’s first duty was to reject these terms, and this he did; but a second messenger came bringing tobacco and round disks of bread. The chief ground the tobacco under his heel and his soldiers spun the bread down the hill into the river. The emissary stood by and saw this merry game and was wise enough to remain silent.

Once a courier who would not cease talking when commanded by the chief was whipped out of the village. So it came to be that this great camp on the Little Missouri was called “The Hostile Camp of Sitting Bull.”

You have heard those who now deride my chief and say that he was no warrior, that he was a coward, a man of no account; but they are ignorant fools who say this. Go read in the books of the agent at Standing Rock; there you will find records of the respect and fear in which the agents of Washington held my chief in those days. You may read there of seven messengers who were sent out to tell “Sitting Bull and his irreconcilables they must come in and disarm”—and if you read on you will learn how these spies came straggling back without daring to utter one word of the government’s commands to my chief.

They lied about him, the cowardly whelps, and said he threatened them. In truth, they sneaked into his presence and said nothing. In this way the agent got a false impression of the chief, and reported that he was at war with the whites, which was not true.

The Sitting Bull was now both Secretary of War and commander-in-chief of all those who believed in the ways of the fathers. He drew men to him by the boldness and gentleness of his words. His camp was the refuge of those who declined to obey the agents of the white man’s government. The circle of his followers each year widened and his fame spread far among the white men who hated him for the lands he held.

But while my chief was thus holding hard to the ancestral customs, like a rock in a rushing stream, our cousins, the Yanktonaise and the Ogallallahs, were slowly yielding to the power of Washington. Like the Wyandottes, the Miamis and the Illini, they were retiring before the wonder-working plowmen.

In the autumn of the year 1869 the agent again sent out a call for us to come and join another peace council. Washington wanted to buy some more of our land. Of course The Sitting Bull refused, and gave commands that no one leave his camp, except such messengers as he sent to check the vote for a treaty. “I have made a vow and I will never treat with you,” he said.

In spite of all this a minority of the Sioux nation, weak, cowardly souls, pieced out with half-breeds and rank outsiders, (like the Santees who had no claim to be counted), made a treaty wherein they basely ceded away, without our consent, a large strip of our land in Dakota, and fixed upon certain small tracts which were to be held perpetually as reservations for all the allied tribes of Sioux. The Uncapappas were both sad and furious, but what could they do?

The establishment of the agency at Grand River followed this, and many of the Yanktonaise moved in and began to accept the white man’s food and clothing in payment for their loss of freedom.

I do not blame these men now. They were afraid, they were overawed by the white men, but they had no power to make such a treaty binding on us, and my chief, being very sad and very angry, said: “Fools! They have sold us to our enemies in a day of fear.”

Our world began, at that moment, to fade away, for as the fort and agencies grew in power along the Missouri, as they put forth their will against my people, two great parties were formed. There were many who said: “The white man is the world conqueror; we must follow his trail,” but those who said, “We will die as we have lived—red men, free and without fear,” came naturally to the lodge of my chief and gladly submitted to his leadership. Go read in the records of the War Department, whether this is true or false. You do not need a red man’s accusation to prove the perfidy of Congress.

My chief’s policy remained as before. “Do not make war on the whites, but keep our territory clear of the Crows and Mandans.”

He had surrounded himself with a band of trusted warriors whom he used as a general uses the members of his staff. They were his far-reaching eyes and ears. They brought him news of distant expeditions. They kept order in the camp and protected him from the jealousy of subordinate chiefs—for you must know there had grown up in the hearts of lesser men a secret hate of our leader. This bodyguard of the chief was called “The Silent Eaters,” because they met in private feasts and talked quietly without songs or dancing, whereas all the others in the tribe danced and made merry. With these “Silent Eaters” the chief freely discussed all the great problems which arose.

My father was one of these and the chief loved him. To him The Sitting Bull spoke plainly. “Why should we go to a reservation and plow the hard ground,” he said, “when the buffalo are waiting for us in the wild lands? We owe the white man nothing. We can take care of ourselves. We buy our guns and ammunition; we pay well for them. We are on the earth which the Great Spirit gave to us in the beginning. Its fruit is ours, its wood and pasturage are ours. Let the white men keep to their own. Why do they trouble us? Do they think the Great Spirit a fool, that he creates people without reason?”

He knew all that went on at the agency. He heard that leaders in opposition to his ways, the ways of our fathers, were rising among the renegades who preferred to camp in idleness beside the white man’s storehouse. He knew that they were denouncing him, but he did not retaliate upon them. “I do not shed blood out of choice, but of necessity,” he said. “I ask only leave to live as my father lived. The white man is cunning in the making of weapons, but we are the better hunters. We will trade our skins for knives and powder. So far all is well.”

But you know how it is, the white men would not keep to their own. They came into our lands, and when our young warriors drove them out all white men cursed The Sitting Bull. This the chief did not seek; it was forced upon him.

I will tell you how this came about.

In 1873 the government, being moved by those who seek gold, sent a commission to meet with my chief, saying, “We desire to buy the Black Hills.”

“I do not care to sell,” he replied, and they went away chagrined. Soon after this our scouts came upon a regiment of cavalry spying round the hills. They came from the west, and Black Wolf, the leader of the scouts, asked, “What are you doing here?”

The captain laughed and mocked him and said, “We ride because our horses are fat and need exercise.”

These words, when repeated to my chief, disturbed him deeply. “We must watch these men. They are spies of those who wish to steal the Black Hills as the plowmen have already taken the land east of the Missouri. We can not afford to move again. It is necessary to make a stand.”

Then General Custer—“Long Hair”—was sent on an expedition into the hills and the whole tribe became very anxious; even those who had accepted the agent’s goods and lived slothfully at the Standing Rock began to take alarm. They plainly felt at last the white man pushing, pushing from the east.

Those who went away to see came back reporting that the settlers were thick beyond numbering on the prairies and that all the forests were being destroyed by them. They were plowing above the graves of our sires, whose bones were being flung to the wolves. Steamboats hooted along the rivers and iron horses ran athwart the most immemorial trails. Immigrants were already lining the great muddy river with forts and villages, and some were looking greedily at the Black Hills, in which the soldiers had reported gold.

My people considered Custer’s expedition an unlawful incursion on their lands, just as, far to the south, so our friends the Ogallallahs reported, other white men without treaty were moving westward, building railways and driving the buffalo before them. It was most alarming.

The Sitting Bull listened to these tales uneasily, hoping his messengers were misled. He feared and hated the more fiercely all messengers who came thereafter, bringing gifts, and the commission which entered his camp in 1875 found him very dark of face and very curt of speech. Never was he less free of tongue.

They said, “We come to buy the hills.”

He replied, “I do not care to sell.”

“We will pay well for the loan of the peaks—the high places where the gold is.”

“I cannot lend; the hills belong to my people,” he said.

“We are your friends. You had better sell, for if you don’t the white men will take the hills without pay. They are coming in a flood. Nothing can stop them; their eyes are fixed. You are fighting a losing battle.”

“I will not sell,” he answered, and turned on his heel, and they too went away without success.

To his “Silent Eaters” he said that night: “So long as the buffalo do not leave us we are safe. It cannot be that the Great Spirit will permit the white men to rob us of both our lands and our means of life. He made us what we are, and so long as we follow our ancient ways we are good in his sight.”

Nevertheless, his friends saw that he was greatly troubled. The white hunters were then slaughtering the buffalo for the robes. They were killing merely for the pleasure of killing. The herds were melting away like clouds in the sky, their bones covered the plain, and my chief began to fear that the commissioner had told the truth. He began to doubt the continuance of his race.

III
THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HORN

In the spring of 1876, as your count runs, news came to us that the troops were fighting our brethren, and soon afterward some Cheyennes came to our camp and warned the chief, “The soldiers of Washington are marching to fight you. They intend to force you to go to the reservation.”

The Sitting Bull was deeply moved by this news. “Why do they do this? I am not at war with them. They are not good to eat. I kill only game—the beasts that we need for food. I am always for peace. You who know me will bear witness that I take most joy in being peacemaker. I mediate gladly. Now I will make a sign. To show them that we do not care to fight I will move camp. Let us go deep into the West where the soil is too hard for the plow, far from the white man, and there live in peace. It is a land for hunters; those who plant the earth will never come to dispossess us.”

After a long discussion his plan was decided upon. It was a sorrowful day for us when we were commanded to leave our native hills and go into a strange land, far from the graves of our forefathers. Songs of piercing sadness rang through the lodges when the camp police went about ordering the departure, and some of the chieftains wished to stay and fight.

“We are surrendering our land to the enemy,” they said. “We are throwing part of our people to the wolf in order to preserve the rest.”

“The land is wide and empty to the west,” urged the chief. “Washington will now be satisfied. He has eaten hugely of our hunting ground; his greed will now be appeased. He will not follow us into the mysterious sunset, because his plow is useless there.”

Our camp at this time was in the Cave Hills between the Grand River and the headwaters of the Moreau, and in a great procession we set forth to the west, moving steadily till we reached the Powder River Valley. There we met three hundred lodges of the Cheyennes under the command of Crazy Horse, American Horse, and Two Moon.

To us American Horse said: “We are ready to fight. General Crook is at war upon us, but we have beaten him once and we can do it again. Now we will go with you and camp with you and battle when the time comes. Our fortunes shall be yours. Whatever happens, we will share it with you.”

“There will be no need to war,” said my chieftain, solemnly. “We have given up our land, we are going far into the west beyond even the Crow country where the buffalo are. Our enemy will not follow us there.”

Crazy Horse shook his head. “He will come, this white man. He trails us wherever we go. He has no more pity than the wolf. He has made a vow to sweep us from the earth.”

Cheyenne Scouts Patrolling the Big Timber of the North Canadian, Oklahoma
Illustration from
CHEYENNE SCOUTS IN OKLAHOMA
Originally published in
Harper’s Weekly, April 6, 1889

Indians Reconnoitering from a Mountain-top

The keen eye of the Indian is able to distinguish objects even in such an extensive view as this appears to be. To the white man, however, the Western landscape—red, yellow, blue, in a prismatic way, shaded by cloud forms and ending among them—appears as something unreal.

Our camp was very large and my chief was in the fullness of his command. Some of the Ogallallahs had joined us before and with the Cheyennes we were nearly fifteen hundred lodges. We made no effort at concealing our trail. We moved in a body, and where we went we left a broad and dusty road. We trailed leisurely up the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Rosebud and up the Rosebud to the head of a small creek which emptied into Greasy Grass Creek (a stream which the whites call the Little Big Horn) at a point where there was plenty of wood and good grazing.

The chief as he looked down upon this valley said: “It is good. We will camp here,” and to this they all agreed. It was indeed a beautiful place. I was but a lad, but I remember that beautiful scene, finer than anything in all our own lands. Hunting parties were at once sent out to find the buffalo, and some of the chief’s “Silent Eaters” mounted the hills to spy backward on our trail.

The hunters reported the country clear of foes and buffalo near, and as the spies brought no news of invaders the people threw off all care. With feasts and dances they began to celebrate their escape from the oppressor. We were beginning the world anew in this glorious country.

One day in midsummer—I remember it now with beating heart—just in the midst of our preparation for a dance, the cry arose: “The white soldiers—they are coming! Get your horses!”

I remember clearly the very instant. I was sitting in my father’s lodge, painting my face for the dance, when this sound arose. The shouting came from the camp of The Gall, whose lodges stood at the extreme south end of the circle. From where I stood I could see nothing, but as I ran up the west bank to find my horse I detected a long line of white soldiers riding swiftly down the valley from the south. They came like a moving wall and the sun glittered on their guns as they reloaded them. Before them the women and children were fleeing like willow leaves before a November wind.

My heart was beating so hard I could scarcely speak. I was but a boy and had never seen a white soldier, yet now I must fight. All around me were hundreds of other young men and boys roping, bridling, and mounting the plunging ponies.

As we came sweeping back my father passed us, leading the white horse of the chief, and as we came near the headquarters tent the chief came out wearing a war-bonnet and carrying his saddle. This he flung on his horse, and when he was mounted my father and his guard surrounded him and they rode away. My father took my horse and I saw neither him nor the chief till night. I heard that he tried to check the battle, but the young men of Chief Gall’s camp had routed the enemy’s column before he reached there and the soldiers were spurring their horses into the river and dashing up the hills in mad effort to get away.

The camp was a mighty whirlpool of confusion. The women were taking down the lodges, weeping and singing, the old men and boys were roping the horses together, and the ground was covered with a litter of blankets, saddles, pouches, and other things which escaped notice or seemed unimportant, and all the time we could hear the rapid cracking of the guns and it seemed as if we were all to be killed. No one knew how many soldiers there were. All seemed lost, our shining, peaceful world about to be shattered and destroyed.

I ran to catch another horse, and when I was mounted and once more in sight of the valley it was almost deserted. The women and children were all gathered in throngs on the west bank, straining their eyes toward the cloud of smoke which marked the retreat of soldiers to the southeast, singing songs of prayer and exaltation.

Suddenly a wild cry arose, and looking where an old woman pointed, I saw on the bare crest of the hill to the east a fluttering flag. A moment later four horsemen appeared, then four more, and so in column of fours they streamed into view, a long line of them.

“Go tell the warriors,” screamed my mother to me, and, lashing my pony, I started down the slope diagonally toward a body of our soldiers who were returning from pursuit of the other soldiers.

They were warned by some one nearer to them than I. I saw them turn and spur their horses in a wild race along the river bank. I had no weapon, but I kept on till I joined the rear rank. There were hundreds in this charge.

You have heard that my people ambushed Custer. This is a lie. The place where he stood to view our camp was a hill as bare as your hand. He saw us, knew how many we were, and rode to meet us. It was an open attack on our part. Chief Gall led his band up a steep ravine and swept round behind the troopers, each man clinging to the far side of his horse and shooting beneath his neck.

You have heard it said that we outnumbered Custer ten to one. This, too, is false. We had less than twelve hundred warriors, counting old and young. We had old-fashioned guns—many of our men had only clubs or arrows or lances. Many were boys like myself, with not even a club. We were taken unawares, not they. They had the new magazine rifles and six-shot revolvers. They were all experienced warriors, while we were not; indeed most of our men had never been in battle before and they had no notion of discipline. Each man fought alone, without direction. We were a disorderly mass of excited men. Everybody gave orders; no one was leader. That is the way of my people. We have no commander-in-chief. We fight in bands. Chief Gall led one charge, the daughter of Old Horse led another, American Horse led a third, and so it proceeded as a mob goes to war.

I could not see much of what followed, for a great cloud of dust and smoke covered the hill. Nobody had any clear idea of the battle. It was very hot and we took no notice of time, but it must have been about half past ten when the fight began. It did not last very long.

Once as I dashed near I caught a glimpse of the white soldiers, some kneeling, some standing, with their terrible guns ever ready, crack—crack—crack, while our warriors circled around them, dashing close in order to fire and retreating to reload. It seemed that some of the soldiers ran out of ammunition early, for they sat holding their guns without firing.

The fire was slackening as I rode down to the river to drink, and when I returned all was still and the smoke was slowly drifting away. Once or twice a band of young braves dashed in close to the last group of tangled bodies, and when no weapon flashed back they dismounted to peer about, looking for Long Hair.

We did not know then that General Custer had cut his hair short, and we all took the body of a man with long black hair to be the chief. I now see that we were mistaken. He was a scout. Some of the men stripped the bodies of the white men of their clothes, while others moved about, counting the dead. There were not many red men killed. Our manner of fighting saved us from heavy loss. You have heard that our soldiers mangled the dead. This is not true. Some crazy old women and a few renegades did so, but our chiefs did not countenance this. You call this a “massacre,” but to us it was a battle, honorable to us as to the bluecoats.

The chief’s “Silent Eaters” rode forth among the old men and women and commanded them to camp again. This they did, but in a different place, farther down the river, near where the Crow agency now stands.

The chief was very sorrowful, for he realized the weight of this battle. Foolish ones rode about exulting, but he rebuked them. “This is all bad. The Great Father at Washington will now be very angry, for we have killed his soldiers. The war chief will come against us with greater fury than ever. We cannot remain here.”

I was told that he did not visit the field of the dead. I do not know the truth of this, but he sat in his lodge, pondering, while Gall and his men held Reno prisoner on the hill. It was only a matter of wearing them out and then the whole army would be defeated, so the foolish ones said.

All the chiefs met in council at sunset, and The Sitting Bull said: “We cannot afford to make war on the white soldiers. They are too many and too brave. My heart is heavy with this day’s work. It is our first battle with the bluecoats and I now look to see all their war chiefs assemble against us. We must leave this place. There is no refuge for us here. We must go farther into the unknown world to the west. In ancient days our people migrated and now our turn has come.”

There was little sleep that night. All through the long hours the wail of the grief-stricken ones went on, and over the field of the dead the “war women” ran frenzied with grief, mutilating the bodies of their enemies. It was a night to make a boy grow old. My father said: “All hope of ever seeing our ancient home is gone. Henceforth we must dwell in the lands of our enemies.” And his face filled one with despair. I wept with my mother.

Early next day the mass of our warriors swept out against Reno, and he, too, would have perished like Custer but that the chief’s ever-watchful spies from a distant butte caught and flashed forward these terrifying signs.

“More soldiers are coming up the river—a mighty host in steamboats.”

Then the chief sent forth his camp soldiers among the lodges with this news and with orders to get ready to move instantly. Couriers rushed away to the hills to recall those who were besieging Reno. The women and old men again hurriedly packed the lodges, whilst we lads gathered up the ponies, and at last, following the old chiefs and The Sitting Bull, we streamed away up the river toward the mountains, leaving the field to our enemy’s scouts, but on every hill stood a “Silent Eater,” and through them we had knowledge of each movement of those who rescued Reno and buried the dead.

We camped that night in the hills far toward some great shining, snowy peaks, the like of which we had never seen.

The troops which were under command of General Terry did not stay long. They did not even look about very closely. They were afraid they might find us, I think. They hurriedly buried the dead and retreated quickly down the Big Horn to the Yellowstone, followed by our scouts, who reported every movement to The Sitting Bull.

This retreat of Terry made many of our leaders bold, and some of them, like The Gall, wished to pursue and strike again, but my chief opposed that. It is true he gave orders to return to the mouth of what is now Reno Creek, but he did this because in our haste we had left many ropes and saddles and other things lying scattered on the grass, and we needed them. This was the third day after the battle and no enemy was in sight.

On this night the chiefs counciled again and The Sitting Bull advised flight. “Let us set our breasts to the west wind and not look back,” he said. “The white man fills the East. Toward the setting sun are the buffalo. Let us make friends with all our red brethren and go among them, and live in peace.”

But the old men were timid. They said: “We do not know the land to the west; it is all very strange to us. It is said to be filled with evil creatures. The mountains reach to the sky. The people are strong as bears and will destroy us. Let us remain among the Crows whom we know. Let us make treaty with them.”

To this the chief at last agreed, and gave orders to be ready to march early the next morning. “When a man’s heart beats with fear it is a good thing to keep moving,” he said to my father.

Thus began a retreat which is strange to tell of, for we retraced our trail over the low divide back into the valley of the Rosebud, and so down the Yellowstone to the Missouri, ready to enter upon our exile. It was all new territory to most of us. Our food was gone, and when our hunters brought news of buffalo ahead we rushed forward joyously, keeping to the north, and so entered the land of the Crows.

Meanwhile the white soldiers had also retreated. They didn’t know where we were. Perhaps they were afraid we would suddenly strike them on the flank. Anyhow, they withdrew and filled the East (as I afterward learned) with lies about us and our chiefs. They said the chief had four thousand warriors, that he was accompanied by a white soldier, and many other foolish things.

Our people rejoiced now, and at The Sitting Bull’s advice our band broke up into small parties, the better to hunt and prepare meat for winter. It was easier to provide food when divided into small groups, and so my chief’s great “army,” as the white men called it, scattered, to meet again later.

It must have been in October that we came together, and in the great council which followed, the chief announced that the white soldiers were coming again and that it was necessary to push on to the north. This was on the Milk River, and there you may say the last stand of the Sioux took place—for it was in this council that the hearts of the Ogallallahs, our allies, weakened. One by one their orators rose and said: “We are tired of running and fighting. We do not like this cold northland. We do not care to go farther. The new white-soldier chief is building a fort at Tongue River. He has many soldiers and demands our surrender. He has offered to receive us kindly.”

My chief rose and with voice of scorn said: “Very well. If your hearts are water, if you desire to become white men, go!” And they rose and slipped away hastily and we saw them no more.

Then the Cheyennes said: “We, too, have decided to return to our own land. We dread the desolate north.”

Then my chief was very sad, for the Cheyennes are mighty warriors. “Very well, my brothers,” he replied. “You came of your own accord and we will not keep you. We desire your friendship. Go in peace.”

So they left us. We were now less than half of our former strength, but we faced the north winds with brave hearts—even the women sang to cheer our way.

We were near the Missouri when Miles, the white chief, suddenly threw himself in our way and demanded a council.

A battle would have been very unequal at this time, for our warriors were few and our women and children many; therefore, The Sitting Bull and five chiefs went forth to meet Miles and his aides.

Perhaps you have read the white man’s side of this. I will tell you of the red man’s part, for my father rode beside our chief at this time.

Colonel Miles had over four hundred men and a cannon. His men were all armed perfectly, while we had less than a thousand men and boys, and many of even the men had no guns at all. We were burdened with the women and children, too.

Six white men met The Sitting Bull and his five braves. My father was one of these men and he told me what took place.

The chief rode forward slowly, and as he neared the white chief he greeted him quietly, then lifted his hands to the sky in a prayer to the Great Spirit. “Pity me, teach me. Give me wise words,” he whispered.

“Which of you is The Sitting Bull?” asked Colonel Miles.

“I am,” replied the chief.

“I am glad to meet you. You are a good warrior and a great leader.”

To this my chief abruptly replied: “Why do you remain in my country? Why do you build a camp here?”

Thereupon Miles sternly answered: “We are under orders to bring you in. I do not wish to make war on you, but you must submit and come under the rule of the department at Washington.”

The Sitting Bull made reply quietly, but with emphasis: “This country belongs to the red man and not to the white man. I do not care to make war on you. My people are weary of fighting and fleeing.”

“Why do you not come in and live quietly on your reservation at the Standing Rock?”

“Because I am a red man and not an agency beggar. The bluecoats drove us west of the Missouri, they robbed us of the Black Hills, they have forced us to take this land from the Crows, but we wish to live at peace. You have no right to come here. You must withdraw all your troops and take all settlers with you. There never lived a paleface who loved a redskin, and no Lakota ever loves a paleface. Our interests are directly opposed. Only in trade can we meet in peace. I am Uncapappa and I desire to live the ways of my fathers in the valleys which the Great Spirit gave to my people. I have not declared war against Washington, but I will fight when you push me to the wall. I do not like to be at strife. It is not pleasant to be always fleeing before your guns. This western world is wide; it is lonely of human life. Why do you not leave it to us? All my days I have lived far from your people. All that I got of you I have paid for. My band owes you nothing. Go back to the sunrise and we will live as the Great Spirit ordained that we should do.”

General Miles was much moved, but said: “I want you to go with me to meet the Great Father’s representatives and talk with them.”

“No,” my chief replied. “I am afraid to do that, now that we have had a battle with your soldiers. We went far away and your warriors followed us. They fell upon us while we were unprepared. They shot our women and children and they burned our tepees. Then we fought, as all brave men should, and we killed many. I did not desire this, but so it came about. Do not blame me.”

The white chief was silent for a time, then he said: “If you do not give up your arms and come upon the reservation I will follow you and destroy you.”

At this my chief broke forth: “My friend, we had better quit talking while we are good-natured.” Then lifting his arm in a powerful gesture, he uttered a great vow: “So long as there is a prairie dog for my children, or a handful of grass for my horses, The Sitting Bull will remain Uncapappa and a freeman.” And he turned his horse about and returned to our lines.

During this time our spies had discovered the guns which Miles had pointed at the chief, and knew that the soldiers were ready to shoot our envoys down.

When the chief was told this he said: “No matter. We have held up our hands to the Great Spirit; we must not fire the first shot.”

He was anxious for peace, for, while he was still the leader of many men, he knew something of the power of the War Department and he feared it. All that night he sat in council with the chiefs, who were gloomy and disheartened. Next morning, hearing that General Miles was coming toward his camp, The Sitting Bull sent out a white flag and asked for another talk. This Colonel Miles granted and they met again. My chief said:

“We have counseled on the matter and we have decided on these terms. We ask the abandonment of this our country by your soldiers. We ask that all settlements be withdrawn from our land, except trading posts, and our country restored to us as it was before the white settlers came. My people say this through me.”

To this Miles harshly replied: “If you do not immediately surrender and come under the rule of the reservations, I will attack you and pursue you till you are utterly destroyed. I give you fifteen minutes to decide. At the end of that time I open fire.”

Then the heart of my chief took flame. Shaking his hand at the soldiers, he whirled his horse, and came rushing back, shouting: “Make ready! The white soldiers are about to shoot!”

Under his orders I and other lads rushed to the front and began to fire the grass, thus making a deep smoke between us and the enemy. While the women hurriedly packed the tepees the men caught their horses. All was confusion and outcry. But our warriors held the enemy in check so that we got our camp out of harm’s way. We were afraid of the big gun; we had little fear of the horsemen and their carbines.

For two days Miles pushed us and we gave way. The white historians are always ungenerous, if not utterly false. They do not give my people credit. Consider our disadvantages. Our women and children were with us and must be protected. It required many of the young men to take care of our ponies and the camp stuff. We were forced to live on game and game was scared away, while the white soldiers had rations and the best of horses. The country was not a good one for us. Hour by hour Miles pushed us, and in spite of all the skill of our chiefs, we lost most of our ponies and a great deal of our food and clothing, and our people became deeply disheartened. The rapid-fire gun of the white soldiers terrified us—and though the earth grew blacker and darker, we fled northward.

At last, on the third day, decisive council took place among the chiefs. The Sitting Bull and The Gall said, “We will not surrender!” But many of the lesser ones cried out: “What is the use? The white man is too strong. The country grows more barren, the game has fled. Let us make peace. Let us meet Miles again.”

But my chief indignantly refused. “Are we coyotes?” he said. “Shall we slink into a hole and whine? You Yanktonaise and Minneconjous have eaten too much white man’s bread. It has taken the heart out of you. Do you wish to be the sport of our enemies? Then go back to the agencies and grow fat on the scrap they will throw to you. As for me, I am Uncapappa, I will not submit. I owe the white race nothing but hatred. I do not seek war with Miles, but if he pursues me I will fight. My heart is hot that you are so cowardly. I will not take part in this peace talk. I have spoken.”

Once again he rose, and spoke with the most terrible intensity, struggling to maintain his supremacy over his sullen and disheartened allies, but all in vain. He saw at last that his union of forces had been a failure, and, drawing his “Silent Eaters” around him, he sent criers through the camp calling on all those who wished to follow him to break camp.

It was a solemn day for my race, a bitter moment for my chief. He saw his bond of union crumbling away, becoming sand where he thought it steel. When Crazy Horse and the Cheyennes fell behind he could not complain, for they were but friends who had formed a temporary alliance, but the desertion of the Yanktonaise was a different matter. They were of his blood and were leaving us, not to fight, but to surrender. They were deserting us and all that we stood for. And my chief’s heart was very sore as he saw them ride away. Less than two hundred lodges went with The Sitting Bull; the others surrendered.

It took heroic courage to set face to the north at that time of the year. The land was entirely unknown even to our guides, and the winter was upon us. It was treeless, barren, and hard as iron. As the snows fell our sufferings began. I have read the white historians’ account of this. I have read in Miles’s book his boasting words of the heroism of the white troops as they marched in pursuit of us in the cold and snow, but he does not draw attention to the fact that my chief and his people traversed the same road in the same weather, with scanty blankets and no rations at all. According to his own report his troops outnumbered us, man, woman, and child, and yet he did not reach, much less capture, a man of us.

Our side of all this warfare has never been told. You have all the newspapers, all the historians. Your officers dare not report the true number of the slain, and they always report the red men to be present in vast number. It would make the world smile to know the truth. You glorify yourselves at our cost, and we have thus far had no one to dispute you. I am only a poor “Injun,” after all, and no one will read what I write, but I say the white soldiers could never defeat an equal number of my people on the same terms.

The Brave Cheyennes Were Running Through the Frosted Hills

This is Dull Knife’s band of Northern Cheyennes, known as the Spartans of the plains. And deservedly were they called a Spartan band, for, relentlessly pursued by cavalry troops for over ten days, these gallant warriors fought to their last nerve, making their last stand only when nature itself was exhausted.

Campaigning in Winter

A body of United States cavalry in winter rig in pursuit of a band of Minneconjous Sioux, who had left their agency and were making for the camp of the hostiles in the Bad Lands.

Our moccasins grew thin with our hurrying. We were always cold and hungry. No wood could be found. We burned our lodge poles. Our horses weakened and died and we had no meat. The buffalo had fled, there were no antelope, and the wind always stung—yet we struggled on, cold, hungry, hearing the wails of our children and the cries of our women, pushing for a distant valley where our scouts had located game.

At last the enemy dropped behind and we went into camp near the mouth of the Milk River on the Big Muddy, and soon were warm and fed again, but our hearts were sore for the unburied dead that lay scattered behind us in the snow. Do you wonder that our hate of you was very great?

There we remained till spring. The soldiers had been relentless in pursuit until the winter shut down; after that they, too, went into camp and we lived in peace, recuperating from our appalling march. And day by day The Sitting Bull sat in council with his “Silent Eaters.”

Our immediate necessities were met, but the chief’s heart was burdened with thought of the future. All our allies had fallen away. The Cheyennes and Ogallallahs were bravely fighting for their land in the south, but the Yanktonaise and Minneconjous, our own blood, with small, cold hearts, were sitting, self-imprisoned, in the white man’s war camp.

You must not forget that we had no knowledge of geography such as you have. We knew only evil of the land that lay to the north and west of us. We were like people lost in the night. Every hill was strange, every river unexplored. On every hand the universe ended in obscurity, like the lighted circle of a campfire. A little of the earth we knew; all the rest was darkness and terror.

We could not understand the government’s motives. Your war chief’s persistency and his skill scared us. We were without ammunition, we could neither make powder nor caps for our rifles, and our numbers were few. Miles had the wealth of Washington at his back. This you must remember when you read of wars upon us. Where we went our women and children were obliged to go, and this hampered our movements. What would Miles have done with five hundred women and children to transport and guard?

All these things made further warfare a hopeless thing for us, for we were dependent upon our enemy for ammunition and guns, without which the feeding of our people was impossible. To crown all our troubles, the buffalo were growing very wild and were retreating to the south.

Up to this time we had only temporary scarcity of food, but now, when we could not follow the buffalo in their migrations, my chief began to see that they might fail us at the very time we most needed them. “Surely the Great Spirit has turned his face from us,” he said, as his scouts returned to say the buffalo were leaving the valley.

If you were to talk for a day, using your strongest words, you could not set forth the meaning of the buffalo to my people at this time. They were our bread and our meat. They furnished us roof and bed. They lent us clothing for our bodies. The chase kept us powerful, continent, and active. Our games, our dances, our songs of worship, and many of our legends had to do with these great cattle. They were as much a part of our world as the hills and the trees, and to our minds they were as persistent and ever-recurring as the grass.

To say “The buffalo will fail” was like saying “The sun will rise no more.” Our world was shaken to its base when a red man began even to dream of this. We spoke of it with whispered words.

“To go farther north is to say farewell to the buffalo,” the chief said to my father—and in this line you may read the despair of the greatest leader my tribe has produced. To go north was to face ever-deepening cold in a gameless, waterless, treeless land; to go south was to walk into the white chief’s snare.

One day as the old men sat in council a stranger, a friendly half-breed from the north, rose and said:

“My friends, I have listened to your stories of hard fighting and running, and it seems to me you are like a lot of foxes whose dens have been shut tight with stones. The hunters are abroad and you have no place of refuge. Now to the north, in my country, there is a mysterious line on the ground. It is so fine you cannot see it; it is finer than a spider’s web at dusk; but it is magical. On one side of it the soldiers wear red coats and have a woman chief. On the other they wear blue coats and obey Washington. Open your ears now—listen! No blue soldier dares to cross that line. This is strange, but it is true. My friends, why do you not cross this wonder-working mark? There are still buffalo up there and other game. There is a trader not three days’ ride from here, one who buys skins and meat. There you can fill your powder cans and purchase guns. Come with me. I will show the way.”

As he drew this alluring picture loud shouts of approval rang out. “Let us go!” they said one by one. “We are tired of being hunted like coyotes.”

The chief smoked in silence for a long time, and then he rose and his voice was very sad as he chanted: “I was born in the valley of the Big Muddy River. I love my native land, I dread to leave it, but the pale soldiers have pushed us out and we are wanderers. I have listened to our friend. I should like to believe him, but I cannot. White people are all alike. They are all forked and wear trousers. They will treat us the same no matter what color of coats they wear. If any of you wish to go I will not hinder. As for me, I am not yet weak in the knees, I can still run, and I can still fight when need comes. I have spoken.”

Part of the people took the advice of the Cree and went across the line, but The Sitting Bull remained in the valley of the Missouri till the spring sun took away the snow.

IV
DARK DAYS OF WINTER

I shall never forget that dreadful winter. It seems now like one continuous whirling storm of snow filled with wailing. We were cold and hungry all the time, and the white soldiers were ever on our trail. Many died and the cries of women never ceased. It was as if the Great Spirit had forgotten us.

The chief, satisfied at last that the Cree had told the truth and despairing of the future, turned his little band to the north, and in the early spring crossed the line near the head of Frenchman’s Creek and camped close to the hill they call Wood Mountain, where the redcoats had a station and a small store. No one would have known this small, ragged, sorrowful band as “the army of The Sitting Bull.”

My father was a great man—as great in his way as his chieftain—but he was what you call a philosopher. He spoke little, but he thought much, and one day soon after this he called me to him and said: “My son, you have seen how the white man puts words on bits of paper. It is now needful that some one of us do the same. We are far from our home and kindred. You must learn to put signs on paper like the white man in order that we may send word to those we have left behind. I have been talking with a black-robe (a priest) and to-morrow you go with him to learn the white man’s wonderful sign language.”

My heart froze within me to hear this, and had I dared I would have fled out upon the prairie; but I sat still, saying no word, and my father, seeing my tears, tried to comfort me. “Be not afraid, my son. I will visit you every day.”

“Why can’t I come home each night?” I asked.

“Because the black-robe says you will learn faster if you live with him. You must travel this road quickly, for we sorely need your help.”

He took me to Father Julian and I began to read.

We lived here peacefully for two years. The Cree had told us the truth. General Miles dared not cross the line, but he chased my people whenever they ventured over it. At Wolf Point, on the Missouri, was a trader who spoke our language (he had an Indian wife) and with him my chief often talked. He had spies also at Fort Peck, which was an agency for the Assiniboines, and so knew where the soldiers were at all times.

I had a friend, a Cree, who could read the papers, and from them I learned what the white people said of us. Through him I heard that many people sympathized with The Sitting Bull and declared that it was right to defend one’s native land.

These words pleased the chief, but it made two of his head men bitter. They grew jealous because their names were not spoken by the white man, and they would have overthrown my chief if they dared, but now the “Silent Eaters” came to his aid. With them to guard him, the chief could treat the jealous ones with contempt. Wherever he went my father and others of his bodyguard went with him, so that no traitor could kill him and sell his head to the white people.

The redcoats liked my chieftain well. He was always just and peaceful. If a reckless young man did a wrong thing against the settlers The Sitting Bull punished him and said: “A righteous man does not strike the hand which saves him from the wolf. No one can steal from these our friends and not be punished.”

Once when he went to visit the trader at Wolf Point I went with him, and was present at a long talk which they held. The trader gave us a tent and some food and at night when we had eaten he came and sat down to smoke.

“Sitting Bull,” he began, “I cannot understand you. I cannot see as you do. We white people look ahead, we ask ourselves what is going to happen in the future; but you seem to go on blindly. My friend, what do you intend to do?”

The chief considered this carefully, but said nothing.

The trader went on: “The buffalo will soon be gone—you can see that. The cold is killing them and the guns of the white hunters crack, crack all the time. What will you do when they are gone?”

The chief broke forth passionately: “I did not leave the Black Hills of my own will; the soldiers pushed me out. I loved my home, but the paleface came and with his coming all the old things began to change. I kept out of his way, I did not seek war with him, but he never slept till he drove me among the redcoats. The redcoats do not say much to us, but what they speak is fair and straight. So long as a gopher remains on the plains I will stay and I will fight. All my life I have been a man of peace, but now my back is to the rock; I shall run no more. I am not afraid to die and all my warriors are of my mind.”

The trader replied: “Your people are poor and suffering. The Canadian government cannot help you. Our Great Father is rich. He will take care of you and your people. Why don’t you do as the Yanktonaise did—go to a reservation and settle down.”

“Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor, but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die we will die defending our rights. In that we are all agreed. This you may say to the Great Father for me.”

The trader waited till the chief’s emotion passed away, and then he said: “Look you, my friend, all white men are not your enemies. There are many who are on your side.”

“I cannot trust them. A few months ago some men came professing friendship; they offered me land and a house, but I fear all those who come bearing gifts. I will trade; I will not take gifts. I do not make war; I only defend my women and children as you would do.”

The trader rose. “Very well. I have said all I care to say on that head, but I shall be glad to see you at any time and I wish to trade with you.”

“Will you trade guns?”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“If we kill game we must have guns.”

“I know that, but I fear the soldiers as well as you, chief. They tell me not to sell you guns, and I must obey.”

The Sitting Bull rose and took from his side his embroidered tobacco pouch.

“You are of good heart and I will trade with you.” He handed the pouch to the trader, for this is an emblem of respect among my people, and they shook hands and parted. If all men had been like this man, we would not now be an outcast race.

All that autumn while I studied the white man’s books my people camped not far away and traded at Wolf Point. It was well they did, for the winter set in hard. The cold became deadly and they had few robes. They were forced to sell all they had to buy food and ammunition. It is a terrible thing to be hungry in a land of iron. Do you wonder that we despaired?

Just when the winter was deep with snow a messenger came to warn us that a great military expedition was on its way to catch The Sitting Bull and his people. The chief immediately gave orders to pack, and with stern face again led the way to the north across the Great Divide. The white soldiers had plenty of blankets and food. They followed us hard. The storms were incessant. The snow, swept to and fro by the never-resting wind, blinded the eyes of the scouts and path finders.

Oh, that terrible march! In the gullies the horses floundered and fell to rise no more. There was no tree to shelter a tepee, no fuel for our fire. Women froze their arms and breasts, and little children died of cold and hunger. The camp grew each day more silent. The dogs were killed for food, and each night the lodge poles were cut down to make kindling, till each tepee became like a child’s toy. The guides lost their way in the storm and the whole camp wandered desperately in a great circle. My words cannot picture to you the despair and suffering of that march.

When at last they came into the old camp at Wood Mountain they were bleeding, ragged, and hollow eyed with hunger. The Sitting Bull looked like an old man. The commander hardly recognized him, so worn and broken was he, and I, who remembered him as the proud leader of two thousand lodges of people, was made sorrowful and bitter by the change in his face.

That winter was the coldest known to my people. They sat huddled over their camp fires in the storms, while hunters ranged desperately for game. The redcoats helped us as much as they could, and strangers far away, hearing of our need, sent a little food and some clothing, but, in spite of all, many of our old people died.

Hunting parties rode forth desperately to the south, and some of them never returned. The buffalo were few and very, very distant, and our scouts from the Yellowstone reported whole herds already frozen. Myriads were starving because of the deep snow. “By spring none will remain,” they said. “Surely the Great Spirit has turned his face away from his red sons.”

The sufferings of the children broke the proud hearts of the chiefs. One by one they began to complain. Some of them reproached The Sitting Bull and there were those who would have delivered his head to the white men, but were prevented by the “Silent Eaters,” who were ever watchful.

Many now said: “Let us go back. The buffalo are gone. We are helpless and our children starve while our brethren at the Standing Rock have plenty and are warm. We are tired of fighting and fleeing. The Great Spirit is angry with us. He has withdrawn his favor and we must do as Washington wishes. We must eat his food and do his work. He is all powerful. It is useless to hold out longer.”

To all this the chief made no reply, but brooded darkly, talking only in the soldier’s lodge. His mind was busy with the problems of life and death which the winter wind sang into his ears.

From my warm home with the priest, from the comfort and security which I was just beginning to comprehend and enjoy, I went now and again into the camp, and the pity of it was almost more than I could bear. No one talked, no one sang, no one smiled. It was like some dreadful dream of the night.

What could I do? I had nothing. I ate, but I could not carry food to my chief. I had warm clothing, but I could not lend it to my father. Though hardly more than a boy, my heart was big as that of a man. I began to understand a little of the mighty spread of the white man’s net, and yet I dared not tell the chief my secret thought.

How can I make you understand? Can you not see that we were facing the end of our world? My chief was confronting captivity and insult and punishment. His bright world of danger and freedom and boundless activity was narrowing to a grave, and only the instinctive love of life kept him and his “Silent Eaters” from self-destruction. In all the history of the world there has been no darker day for a race than this when midwinter fell upon us in that strange land of the north.

V
THE CHIEF SURRENDERS HIMSELF

The first days of spring were worse than the winter. Rain and sleet followed each other, and the few remaining buffalo seemed to sink into the ground, so swiftly they disappeared. White people read in papers of wars and elections and the price of wheat; our news came by brave runners, and their tales were ever of the same dole.

“What of the buffalo? Where are the buffalo? Are the buffalo starving?” The answers always were the same. “The buffalo are gone. We are lost!”

The report of our desperate condition went out over the world and sympathetic people came to urge us to surrender. One messenger, a priest, a friend of General Sherman, the great war chief, came, and The Sitting Bull called a council to sit with him, and some Canadian officers also were there.

After they had all finished speaking, The Sitting Bull replied: “I am ready to make a peace. But as for going to Standing Rock, that is a question I must consider a long time. I am no fool. I know that the man who kills me will be rewarded and I do not intend to be taken prisoner. I have long understood the power of the whites. I am like a fly in a mountain stream when compared with this wonderful and cruel race. I do not care to have my head sold to make some man-coyote rich. Now this is my answer: I will make a peace. I will keep my people in order but I will not go to the Standing Rock. My children can go if they think best.”

The council broke up at this point, but in private the chief said to a friend: “The Gall is going back, so is The Polar Bear and many others. I shall soon be alone. Black Moon, Running Crane, all are deserting me, but I shall remain; I will not return to die foolishly for the white man’s pleasure.”

All took place as he foresaw. Chief Gall went south and surrendered. So did Red Fish and The Crane. Only a few remained, among them my father and Slohan.

The chief was pleased to know I was getting skilled in the white man’s magic. “I need an interpreter, one I can trust,” he said to me. “Go on in the road you have taken.”

One day as he sat smoking in his tepee I heard him singing in a low voice the “Song of the Chieftains,” but he had changed it to a sad ending:

“I was born a soldier—

I have lived thus long.

Ah, I have lived to spend my days in poverty.”

It broke my heart to look upon him sitting there. I had seen him when he was the master spirit of the whole Sioux nation—a proud and confident chief. Now he hovered above his fire, singing a death song, surrounded by a little circle of ragged lodges. Yet I could not blame his followers. They surrendered, not to the white man, but to the great forces of hunger and cold.

If you ask what defeated The Sitting Bull, I will answer, “The passing of the buffalo.” If you ask what caused him to surrender his body to the whites, I will say his tender heart. You hear officers boast of conquering Sitting Bull, but the one who brought him to the post was his daughter. The love of the parent for the child is strong in my race; it is terrible. Sitting Bull was a chief, stern and resolved, but he was a father also.

One day a letter came to the British officer from a friend of my chieftain, who said, “Tell The Sitting Bull that the white men have put his daughter in irons.”

This daughter, his best-beloved child, had left the camp, lured away by her lover, and the chief did not know where she was. His heart was bleeding for her, and now when he heard this letter read his indignation was very great. “Is it so?” he cried out. “Do they make war on a poor weak girl? I will go to her. I will kill her captors. I will die beside her.”

That night he called the remnant of his band together and said, “My children, you know that the white men have tried often to get me to go south to act their pleasure, but I have always refused. Now they have taken my daughter, a weak girl with no power to defend herself. They have put irons on her feet and on her hands. At last I must go south. I must follow her. I wish to find her and to kill those who have abused her. I do not want you to go with me. I go alone to suffer whatsoever comes to me.”

Then his people all said, “No, we will go with you.”

He replied: “Friends, you have stayed too long with me. If you wish to go I cannot refuse, but the road is dark and dangerous; whereto it leads I cannot tell.”

We made ready at once to go with him, and though our hearts were filled with fear, we were also glad. “We’re going home,” the women sang. For the last time he gave orders to break camp in Canadian territory, and led the way across the invisible wonderful line into the land of the bluecoats.

His following was very small now. Only his wives and sons and a few of the more loyal of the “Silent Eaters” remained. Many of even this bodyguard had gone away, but those who remained were doubly faithful, and on them he relied to resent any indignity. “If we are assaulted let us die fighting, as becomes warriors,” he said, and all the men responded firmly, “Aye, that will we.”

Do you think it an easy thing to set your face toward the land of your deadly foes, with only a handful of warriors to stand between you and torture? Yet this is what my chieftain did. He knew the hate and the fear in which the white man held him, for I could now read to him and report to him what was said. He was aware of the price on his head and that many men were eager to put him in chains; yet he went.

“I shall go to the white soldiers,” he said. “They will know about my daughter. They are warriors, and warriors respect a chieftain.”

Small as his escort was, the commander at Fort Buford respected it. He received The Sitting Bull like a chief, and said, “I have orders to take you as military prisoner to Fort Yates.”

“I know the road home,” my chief haughtily replied. Then he handed his gun to me and added, in a milder tone: “I do not come in anger toward the white soldiers. I am very sad. My daughter went this road. Her I am seeking. I will fight no more. I do not love war. I never was the aggressor. I fought only to defend my women and children. Now all my people wish to return to their native land. Therefore I submit.” My heart ached to hear him say this, but it was true.

The colonel was very courteous. “You shall be treated as one soldier treats another,” he said. “In two days a boat will come to take you back to your people at Standing Rock. It is easy to ride on a boat and you will have plenty to eat and I will send a guard to see that you are not harmed by anyone.”

Thereupon he showed us where to camp and issued rations to us, and, as we were all hungry, his kindness touched our hearts.

On the second day he came to see the chief again: “The boat has come to carry you to Standing Rock. I hope you will go quietly and take your place among your people who are living on their ancient hunting grounds near the Grand River.”

“I do not wish to be shut up in a corral,” replied The Sitting Bull. “It is bad for the young men to be fed by the agent. It makes them lazy and drunken. All the agency Indians I have ever seen were worthless. They are neither red warriors nor white farmers. They are neither wolf nor dog. But my followers are weary of being hungry and cold. They wish to see their brothers and their old home on the Missouri, therefore I bow my head.”

Soon after this we went aboard the ship and began to move down the river.

Some of us hardly slept at all, so deeply excited were we by the wonder of the boat, but the chief sat in silence, smoking, speaking only to remark on some change in the landscape or to point out some settler’s cabin or a herd of cattle. “Our world—the Indian’s world—is almost gone,” he muttered. But no one knew as well as I how deeply we were penetrating the white man’s civilization.

We all became excited as the boat neared Bismarck, for there stood a large village of white people and men and women came rushing out to see us. They laughed and shouted insulting words to the chief, and some of them called out, “Kill ’em!” The soldiers who guarded us kept them back and we went on unharmed, but I could see that the sight of this throng of palefaces had again made my chief very bitter.

I shall never forget the strange pain at my heart as we neared the high bluff which hides Fort Yates. I did not know how near we were till the old men pointed out the landmarks and began to sing a sad song:

“We are returning, my brothers—

We are coming to see you,

But we come as captives.”

At last we came in sight of the fort, where a great crowd of people stood waiting to see us. It seemed as if all the Sioux tribes were there, all my chief’s friends and all his enemies. Some laughed, some sang, some shouted to us. All on board were crazy with joy, but the chief did not change countenance; only by a quiver of his lips could his feelings be read. We saw The Gall and The Running Antelope and The Crow’s Mane and many more of our friends. There were tears on the cheeks of these stern warriors and their hands were outstretched to greet us.

But the chief and my father were taken from the boat under military guard and no one was allowed to come near them. My mother and sister put up our tepee surrounded by the soldiers. Only a few were permitted to come in and see us.

The chief inquired anxiously for his daughter. One day she came, and when she passed into her father’s lodge her face was hidden in her hands, her form shook with weakness. I could not hear what the chief said to her, for his voice was low and gentle, but when I saw her next she was smiling. He had forgiven her and was made happy by her promise to stay with him.

He was greatly chagrined to find himself held a prisoner in the face of all his people, and yet this care of his person—this fear of him on the white man’s part—made some of his subordinates still more jealous of his eminence. They were forgotten, while many strangers came from afar and gave my chief many silver pieces for his photograph. His fame was greater than even I could realize, and chiefs who had no reason to hate him began to speak against him. “Why should the white people send him presents?” they asked, and began to belittle his position in the tribe.

Indians as Soldiers

To the Indian, it was the soldier—the man in blue uniform—not the civil agents sent out from Washington to dole out bad and insufficient rations to a conquered race, that represented courage, justice, and truth. Consequently the Indians took great pride in being soldiers, and experience has shown that they make not only the most efficient but also the most faithful of scouts and the best possible material for light, irregular cavalrymen.

An Indian Dream
Illustration from
HOW ORDER No. 6 WENT THROUGH
by Frederic Remington
Originally published in
Harper’s Magazine, May, 1898

I do not think my chief counseled evil during this time, but it could not be said that he was submissive. He merely waited in his tepee the action of his captors. The news that he got of the condition of the reservation was not such as to encourage him and the roar of his falling world was still in his ears. He was not yet in full understanding of the purpose of Washington. “I do not know whether I am to live or die,” he said to my father. “Whatsoever my fate, I am happier, now that I have seen my child.”

After some three weeks of this confinement we were startled by an order to break camp and get on board the boat again. “You are to go to Fort Randall as military prisoners,” the agent explained to me. “Tell them these are my orders.”

When I told the chief he was greatly troubled and, calling his “Silent Eaters” about him, he said: “This may mean that they are going to take us into the mysterious East to kill us in sport, or to starve us in prison, far from our kind. Now listen, be ready! Our reservation ends at Fort Randall. If they attempt to carry us beyond that point let each man snatch a soldier’s gun and fight. Let no one cease battle till the last man of us is killed. I am old and broken, but I am still a chief. I will not suffer insult and I will not be chained like a wolf for the white man’s sport.”

All agreed to this plan, and as the boat neared the fort the chief gave the word, and we were scattered, tense with resolution, ready to begin our death struggle should the vessel pass beyond the line. No one faltered. Nearer and nearer we floated, and all were expecting the signal when the boat signaled to the shore and stopped. The soldiers never knew how close they came to death on that day.

Again we went into camp under guard, well cared for by the soldiers. The officers all treated The Sitting Bull with marked respect and during the day the colonel himself came to sit and smoke and talk with us.

Of him the chief abruptly asked, “Am I to be kept here all my life?”

“No. After a while you are to be sent back north. As soon as you are prepared to sign a peace and after the anger of the whites dies out. I do not hate you. Come and talk to me whenever you feel lonesome, I will do all I can to make your stay pleasant.”

To this The Sitting Bull replied: “Your kindness makes my heart warm. It gives me courage to tread the new paths that lie before me. I am very sad and distrustful, for I am like a man who enters a land for the first time. It is not easy for me to sit down as a prisoner and dream out the future. It is all dark to me. You are my friend. You are wise and your words have helped me. If we could have the aid of men like you, the new road would be less fearsome to our feet.”

The young officers came and asked us many questions about our ways of camping, our methods of fighting, and so on, and the chief was always ready to talk. Sometimes I pretended not to understand English in order that I might the better know what was being said, and often I heard white people tell ridiculous things.

“Is that The Sitting Bull? Why, he looks like an old woman. He can’t be a warrior.” Others remarked, “What a sad face he has!” and this was true, for he had grown old swiftly. He brooded much and there were days when he spake no word to any one, not even to my father.

These were days of enlightenment to me, as well as to my chief, but they brought no sign of hope. My father was a kind man, naturally cheerful and buoyant, and his eyes were quick to see all that the white man did. He comprehended as well as my chief the overwhelming power of the white man, but he was less tenacious of the past. “It is gone,” he repeated to me privately. “The world of our fathers is swallowed up. Go you, my son, and learn of the white man the secret power that enables him to make carts and powder and rifles. How can we fight him when we must trade with him to win his wonder-working arms and ammunition?”

And so when one of the officers, Lieutenant Davies, saw me holding a scrap of paper and asked me if I could read, I told him I could. Thereafter he gave me books and helped me to understand them. We called him “Blackbird,” because his mustaches were dark and shaped like the wings of a bird. I came to love this man, for he was the best paleface I ever knew. He did not condemn us because we were red. He did not boast and he was a soldier. He talked much with The Sitting Bull, and his speech did more to change my chief’s mind than that of any other man.

“Submit to all that the White Father demands,” he advised, “for so it is ordered in the world. It is not a question of right, or of the will of the Great Spirit,” he went on; “it is merely a question of cannon and food.” There was something appalling in the way in which he said these things. He did not believe in any Great Spirit. I could not understand his religion, but his mind was large and his heart gracious.

“Knowledge is power,” he said to me. “Study, acquire wisdom, the white man’s wisdom, then you will be able to defend the rights of your people,” and his words sank deep into my heart.

For two years we lived here under his influence, until one day the order came for us to go back up the river, and with glad hearts we obeyed.

It was in the spring and there was joy in our blood, for these years of close captivity had made the promise of life on the reservation seem almost like freedom. We went back laughing for joy, and when we again came in sight of the hill above the Standing Rock my father lifted his hands in prayer and the women sang a song of joy. As soon as we were released my chief called his old guard about him, and said:

“My sons, my mind has changed. We are now entering upon a new life. The white man’s trail is broad and dusty before us. The buffalo are entirely gone and we must depend on the fruit of the earth. You observe that The Eagle Killer, The Fire Heart and many of our people have oxen and wagons. If they did not come into possession of these things by shooting them out of the sky, I think we shall be able to acquire similar goods for ourselves. The white people have promised that so long as grass grows and water runs we shall be unmolested here. Let us live in peace with our neighbors.”

The Sitting Bull was chief because he could do many things, and, though he was now a captive with his people, his power and influence remained. His “Silent Eaters” gathered round him and to them his words were law. The agent also, for a time, treated him with consideration, and was very friendly. They spoke often together.

We were at once given oxen and carts and located near the agency, where we lived for a year, but the chief longed to return to the Grand River, his native valley, and finally the agent gave his consent, and we moved to the river flat, just where the Rock Creek comes in. Here he built a little log cabin and settled down to live like a white man, but I could see that his heart was ever soaring to the hills of the West and his thoughts were busy with the past. Truly it was strange to see Gall and Crane and Slohan sitting in a small cabin, talking of the brave, free days of old.

VI
IN CAPTIVITY

Of what took place on the reservation during the next four years I know but little directly, for I went away to Washington to study with Lieutenant Davies, who was assigned to duty in the War Department, and I did not return to the Standing Rock for many years. I heard now and then from my father, who wrote through my friend Louie Primeau. He told me that the chief was living quietly at Rock Creek, but that he was opposing every attempt of the white man to buy our lands.

My father complained also of the decreasing rations and said: “The agent’s memory is short; he has forgotten that these rations are in payment for land. He calls them gifts.” My mother sent word that my little sister had died and that many were sick of lung diseases. “We are very cold and hungry in the winter,” she said, and my heart bled with remorse, for I was warm and well fed.

I would have returned at once had not my friend Davies told me to stay on and learn all I could. “Go to the top,” he said. “Do not halt in the middle of the trail. You will need to be very wise to help your people.”

He was a philosopher. He had no hate of any race. He looked upon each people as the product of its conditions, and he often said, “The plains Indian was a perfect adaptation of organism to environment till the whites disturbed him.”

His speech and his thought are in all that I write. He taught me to put down my words simply and without rhetoric. He gave me books to read that were both right and honest, and in all things he was truthful. “Your life can never be happy,” he said. “You will always be a red man in the clothing of the whites, but you will find a pleasure in defending your people. Your race needs both historian and defender. Your whole life should be one of teaching your people how to live and how to avoid pain. I am not educating you to be happy. There can be no shirking your duty. On the contrary, I believe your only way to secure a moment’s peace of mind after you return to your tribe is to help them bear their burdens.”

He warned me of the change which had come to me, as to them. “Your boyish imagination idealized your people and the life they led. You saw them under heroic conditions. They are now poor and despairing and you will be shocked at their appearance and position under the agent, but do not let this dismay you. The race is there beneath its rags and dirt, a wonderful race.”

I shall never forget those long talks we had in his study, high up in his little house, for he was not rich. Sometimes I could not sleep for the disturbing new thoughts which he gave me. Often he nullified all the teaching of the schools by some quiet remark.

“I counsel you to be a Sioux, my boy,” he repeated to me one night after I had been singing some of our songs for a group of his friends. “You can never be a Caucasian. There are dusky corners in your thought. The songs you sang to-night made your heart leap with memories of the chase. A race is the product of conditions, the result of a million years of struggle. I do not expect a red man to become a white man. Those who do, know nothing of the human organism. On the surface I can make some change; but deep down your emotions, your superstitions are red and always must be; that is not a thing to be ashamed of.”

I am giving this glimpse into my school days in order that my understanding of my chief and my race may appear plain. It is due to my good friend Davies, the noblest white I ever knew. I want everyone to know how much I owe to him.

It was strange to me and very irritating to find what false ideas of us and of our chief the Washington people held. When it became known that I was a Sioux and had been with The Sitting Bull, many were eager to question me about him, but I refused to do more than say: “We fought for our lands as Washington fought for his. Now you confine my chief as if he were a wolf. But he is a wise and gentle man, a philosopher, therefore he has laid his hands to the plow. His feet are in the white man’s road.”

This story is not of me, else I could tell you how beautiful some of the white women came to seem to me, and one small girl, fair as a spring flower, ensnared my heart and kept me like an eagle bound to my perch—only I did not struggle against the golden cord that bound me. It was all very strange to me, for I still loved a girl of my own race, who sent me presents of moccasins and who wrote through Louis to say she was waiting for me. It was strange, I say—for my heart clung to Anita, also, she was so fair and slender and sweet. She was associated with all the luxury and mystery of the white man’s life. She called to me in new ways—ways that scared me—while Oma spoke to something deeper in me—something akin to the wide skies, the brown hills, the west wind, and the smell of the lodge fire.

How it would have ended I don’t know, had not my friend Davies been sent again into the West. His going ended my stay in the East. Without him I was afraid to remain among the white people.

“The time has come for you to return, Iapi,” he said to me. “The white men are moving to force a treaty upon the Sioux, and now is your time to help them.”

It was very hard to say good-by to my friend, and harder yet to my Anita, who loved me, but who told me she could not go with me, though she wished to do so. “I cannot leave my poor mother, who is sick and poor,” she said.

I was not very wise, but I knew that I had no place, not even a lodge, in which to keep her, and so I said: “I will go on before you and prepare a place for you, and then sometime you will come and you will help me to teach my people how to live?”

To this she gave me promise and I went away very sad, for it seemed a long way from Standing Rock to Washington, and especially to a poor Sioux who knew of no way to earn money.

Some friends joined with my friend, the white soldier chief, to buy some clothes for me, and a few presents for my father and mother, and so, with a heart so big I thought it would burst within me, I took the cars for the West.

I sat without moving for hours—all night long—while the terrible engine of the white man’s fashioning sped into the darkness. At dawn I looked out anxiously to see if the land were familiar, but it was not. Only on the third day did it begin to awaken echoes in my brain. My command of English words will not permit me to express the wild thrill of my heart as I looked out of my window and saw again the wide-lying plains of Dakota, marked by the feet of the vanished buffalo. I was getting home!

Five years is a long time when it involves such mental changes as had come to me. It seemed that half a lifetime had passed since I sorrowfully took the steamer to go down the river to learn the white man’s language. I was a wild-eyed, long-haired lad then. Now I was returning, clipped and clothed like a white man, yet in my heart a Sioux.

There were changes in the country, but not so great as I had expected. Even the white man makes but little mark on these arid levels. The cabins were grayer, the fields a little larger, that was all. After dispossessing my people and destroying the buffalo, the white settlers had discovered that it was a grim country for their uses. Their towns seemed small and poor and sad.

My heart came into my throat as I crossed the Cannonball and entered upon Sioux land and saw the yellowed tepees of our cousins, the Yanktonaise, scattered irregularly along the river. This was still the land of my fathers; this much we had retained of all the bright world which had been ours in the olden, splendid days!

It was in June and the grass was still green. Herds of ponies were feeding on the swells, and one of the horses I drove lifted his head and neighed; he, too, remembered the old freedom. The sky blazed with light and the hills quivered as if in ecstasy of living. The region was at its best, delusively beautiful. I knew its moods. I knew how desolate and pitiless those swells could be in midwinter, how dry and hot of breath in July.

As we topped the hill I met a man driving a small team to a heavy wagon. He wore a wide hat which lay on his shoulders, and big smoked goggles hid his eyes. As he came opposite I perceived that he was a Sioux, and I called to him in my native tongue.

“Wait, my friend. Where are you going so fast?”

He turned his big glasses on me and said:

“First of all, who are you that speak Lakota so badly?”

“I am Iapi, the son of Shato.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, with a smile. “In that case you are getting back from school? I know you, for I am Red Thunder!”

Red Thunder! I was silent with astonishment. A picture of him as I saw him in 1876 rose in my mind. Tall and lithe he was then, with keen, fierce eyes, the leader of the war faction among the Yanktonaise, a wonderful horseman, reckless and graceful. Now here he sat in a white man’s wagon, bent in the shoulders and clad in badly fitting agency clothing. My heart was sick as I said:

“Friend, you are changed since the council on the Powder River. I did not know you.”

He took off his glasses and put aside his hat; his smile also passed away. He looked away to the west:

“My son, that is long ago and Red Thunder’s blood is no longer made from buffalo meat. His muscles are weak. He prefers to sit in his wagon and drive his ponies. The Great Spirit has forgotten his red children and the White Father is in command over us. I do the best I can. The old trails are closed; only one remains—the one made by Washington.”

I drove on, my exultation utterly gone. If Red Thunder was of this bitter mood, how would I find the Uncapappas who had been the conservatives of the tribe?

I passed close by some of the cabins and they disheartened me, they were so small and dirty. I was glad to see that some of them still retained the sweat lodge. Each home consisted of a shack and two or three tepees of canvas, and women were cooking beneath bowers made of cottonwood as of old. Their motions, and the smell of smoke, awoke such memories in me that I could hardly keep from both shouting and weeping.

The farther I went the more painful became the impression made upon me by these captives. They were like poor white farmers, ragged, dirty, and bent. The clothes they wore were shoddy gray and deeply repulsive to me. Their robes of buffalo, their leggins of buckskin, their beaded pouches—all the things I remembered with pride—had been worn out (or sold). Even the proud warriors of my tribe were reduced to the condition of those who are at once prisoners and beggars. My heart was like lead as I reached the agency.

It hurt me to do so, but I reported at once to the agent and asked leave to visit my father and mother.

“They are expecting you,” he said. “You’ll find them camped just beyond the graveyard.”

I am glad that I saw my father and mother first in their tepee. My mother was cooking beneath a little shed of canvas. I called to her, and when she looked at me, without knowing me, something moved deep down in my heart. How brown and old and wrinkled she looked! Then I said, “Don’t you know me, mother!”

Then her voice rose as she came hurrying to me, calling: “My son! My son has returned.”

She took my hand, not daring to put her arms around me, for I looked, she said, exactly like the white man, but I pressed her hands, and then, while she sang a little song of joy, my father came out of his lodge and came slowly toward me.

I will not dwell on this meeting. I inquired at once concerning our chief. “He is still living in the same place near Rock Creek, and wishes to see you at once,” said my father. “The white men are trying to get our land again and the chief wants to have a talk about it with you.”

“Let us go down and see him to-night,” I replied, and for this reason we broke camp and started away across the plains.

It was a strange thing to me to help my father harness a team to a wagon. He whom I had seen a hundred times riding foremost in the chase, whom I had watched at break of day leading a band of scouts up the steep side of a sculptured butte, or with gun in hand guarding The Sitting Bull as he slept, was now a teamster, and I, clothed in the white man’s garments, was sad and ashamed. I could not but perceive that we were both more admirable as red warriors than as imitation Saxon farmers. That is my red blood, you see.

But my father was proud of me and of my power to converse with the agent. “My son,” he said, “our hearts are big because you are back with us. Now this is your duty. You must listen to all that the commissioners say and tell us minutely so that we may not be deceived. We hear that a big council sent out the papers which Washington wishes us to put our mark on, but The Sitting Bull and most of our head men are agreed that we will never do so. Once before, three years ago, they tried to get us to sell, but when the white men grew angry and said, ‘If you don’t do this we will take your lands anyway!’ The Sitting Bull rose and said, ‘You are crazy,’ and with a motion of his hand broke up the council and we all went away. Now the traitorous whites are coming again and we need you to listen and tell us what they say.”

I knew of the council he spoke of—General Logan was the man who had threatened them—but I had not heard that the chief had dismissed the sitting. It showed me that The Sitting Bull was still chief. This I remarked.

“Yes,” said my father, “he is head man of all the Sioux even yet, but the agent has set his hand against him. He gives favor to The Grass and The Gall and The Gray Eagle, who are all jealous and anxious to be set above The Sitting Bull. The agent has become bitter toward our chief because he will not do as he says, and because our father works always for the good of his people. He does nothing for himself alone, like many others.”

As we came to the top of the hill and looked into the valley my father pointed at a small two-room log cabin and said, “There he lives, The Sitting Bull.”

The chief was in a big tepee which stood near the house, and as we entered we found him entertaining Slohan and Katolan. He was seated in the center, cutting tobacco, while his guests ate from a dish of bread and meat. As I stood in the presence of these my honored leaders my heart swelled with longing for the good old time. Here was the dignity and the courtesy of the days of the buffalo. The chief was partly in white man’s dress, but his hair was worn as of old and his gestures were those of a gentle host. His dignity, as well as the gravity of all the men, impressed me deeply.

He did not at first recognize me, but greeted my father, who, turning to me, said, “This is my son, returned from Washington.”

Then the chief smiled, and cried out: “Ho, my son! I am glad to see you. I have heard you were coming. You look so like a white man my eyes were blinded. You must tell me all you have done and all you have heard.”

I shook hands with each of the old men and took a seat near the chief, to whom I said: “Is all well with you? Does the agent treat you fairly?”

His face darkened, but he filled his pipe before he replied. “The agent is no longer my friend. He orders me about as if I were a dog. He refuses me permission to leave the reservation and checks me in every way. I think he means to break me, but he will never set his foot on my neck.”

I was eager to understand the situation, and I listened carefully while the others talked of the many injustices under which they suffered. The chief urged me to write to Washington to have things changed.

I agreed to do so, but promised nothing more, for I well knew such letters might work harm to those I loved. I foresaw also that my position in my tribe was to be most difficult.

“We are ready to live the new life,” declared the chief, “but we cannot farm the soil as the agent wishes. Go look at our fields. Each year they are burned white by the sun. The leaves of the corn are even now rolled together. The wheat is beginning to dry up. There is no hay and our rations are being cut down.”

Burning the Range

Taught by experience that burning the grass insures its better growth, we are here shown Indians in the act of burning their range. In a day or two after the fire sweet, succulent grasses spring up again, and then the hard-worked Indian ponies revel for a short season on the tender herbage.

An Old-Time Northern Plains Indian

In order to claim a scalp, the warrior must give the dead man the coup. In the illustration the Indian is in the act of doing this. In olden times the coup was a stab with a weapon, but in later times the Indians were provided with coup sticks. Whoever first strikes the victim with the coup can rightfully claim the scalp.

I could see that he had no heart in his farming. The life was too hard and too bitter. He was indeed like a chained eagle who sits and dreams of the wide landscape over which he once floated in freedom. He had thrown his influence in the right scale, but he was critical and outspoken upon all debatable questions, and this had come to anger the agent, who was eager to push all the people into what he called “self-supporting ways.” This the chief did not oppose, though he could not live in the white man’s country. “It makes me both weary and sorrowful,” he said.

It did not take me more than a day to see that I was between two fires. My friends were all among those whom the agent called “The irreconcilables,” and my chief was relying upon me to help them defeat the treaty for their lands, at the same time that the agent expected me to be a leader of the progressive party. It was not easy to serve two masters, and I was forced to be in a sense double tongued, which I did not like.

The agent was outspoken against my chief. “The old man is spoiled by newspaper notoriety,” he said to me. “His power must be broken. He is a great and dangerous reactionary force and he and all the old-time chiefs must be stripped of their power and made of no account before the tribe can advance. He must be taught that I am the master here and that no redskin has any control.”

To this I made no reply, for I could not agree with him. A man who is a chief by virtue of his native ability cannot be degraded and made of no account. The Sitting Bull was a chief by force of character. As of old he worked for the good of his people. If he saw a wrong he went forthwith to the agent and asked to have it righted. This angered the agent, for he considered the chief officious. He was jealous of his position as “little father.” He was a good man, but he was opinionated and curt and irascible. He gave no credit to my chief. When the others made him spokesman of their council he would not listen to him. “He is a disturber,” he said.

Now there are certain record books in the office in which copies of all letters are kept, and when I found this out I took time to read all that the agent had written of the chief. My position as issue clerk permitted me the run of the office, and so when no one was near I read. I wished to know what had taken place during the five years of my absence.

At first the agent wrote well of the chief. In reply to inquiries he said: “Sitting Bull is living here quietly and is getting ahead nicely. He is quiet and inoffensive, though proud of his fame as a chief.” A year later he wrote of him, “His influence is nonprogressive, but believers in him are few, while many Indians are his enemies.”

This I found to be true. Chief Gall and John Grass were both honored at his expense. The Grass was a man of intelligence and virtue who had early allied himself with the white man. He was a leader of those who saw the hopelessness of remaining in the ways of the fathers, and naturally the agent treated him with marked courtesy. In answer to a letter asking the names of the chief men of the tribe he named John Grass first, Mad Bear second, The Gall third—and ignored the chief entirely.

The Gall, already jealous of the great fame of The Sitting Bull, was easily won over to the side of the agent. He was a vigorous, loud-voiced man, brave and manly, but not politic. He had not entirely broken with his old chief, but he accepted position under the agent and listened to dispraise of The Sitting Bull from the agent’s point of view.

With all his gentleness of manner, the old fire was in The Sitting Bull, for he said to me, when speaking of the attack of Shell Fish on him: “I am here, old and beaten—a prisoner subject to the word of a white master, but no man shall insult me. I will kill the man who strikes me. What is death to me? I will die as I have lived, a chief.” For the most part he was so quiet and unassuming that he was overlooked. He never thrust himself forward; he dreamed in silence.

He had visited the white man’s world several times, but these visions had not helped him; they had, indeed, thrown him into profound despair. “What can we do in strife with these wonder-working spirits?” he asked. “It is as foolish as trying to fly with the eagles. The white man owns all the productive land. What can we do farming on this hard soil? What are we beside these swarming settlers? We are as grasshoppers before a rushing herd of buffalo.”

He did not care to look out of the car windows on these journeys. He and his warriors sat in silence or sang the songs of the chase and the victorious homecoming, trying to forget the world outside.

“Nothing astonished them and nothing interested them very much,” said Louis to me in speaking of his trip to Washington. “The chief was at a great disadvantage, but he seldom made a mistake. He was Lakota and made no effort to be anything else.”

The chief at last said, in answer to all similar requests, “I do not care to be on show.”

He was very subjective. He had always been a man of meditation and prayer, and had scrupulously observed the ceremonials of his tribe. Now when he saw no hope of regaining his old freedom he turned his eyes inward and pondered. He was both philosopher and child. Nature was mysterious, not in the ultimate as with the educated man, but close beside him as with a boy. The moon, the clouds, the wind in the grass, all these were to him things inexplicable, as, indeed, they are to the greatest white men; only to my chief they came nearer some way.

Often during these days I saw him sitting at sunset on his favorite outlook—a hill above his cabin—a minute speck against the sky, deeply meditating upon the will of the Great Spirit, and my heart was filled with pain. I, too, mourned the world that was passing so swiftly and surely.

VII
HE OPPOSED ALL TREATIES

During my absence the white settlers had swept across the ancient home of the Dakotas and were already clamoring for the land on which Sitting Bull dwelt, and he was deeply disturbed. He knew how rapacious these plowmen were and he was afraid of them. To his mind our home was pitifully small as it stood, and he urged me to look into this threatened invasion at once.

I did so, and reported to him that a commission was already on its way to see us and that they would soon issue a call for us.

Throwing off his lethargy, he became once more “the treaty chief.” Calling a council of all the head men he said to them:

“It will be necessary to choose speakers to represent us at this meeting. It is not wise that I should be one of these. Let us council upon what we are to do, name our speakers, and be ready for the commission when it comes.”

So they chose John Grass, Mad Bear, Chief Gall, and Big Head to speak, and went a few days later to meet the commissioners.

My people asked for their own interpreter, Louis Primeau, whom they trusted, and the council began with everybody in good humor. The commissioners rose one after the other and made talk and gave out many copies of the treaty. Then the council adjourned.

That night the head men all met at the lodge of the chief. I read the treaty to him, and so did Louie. Again The Sitting Bull said: “The pay is too small, and, besides, they have changed our boundaries. Do not sign.” And so when we assembled the next day our speakers declined to sign and the commissioners were much disappointed. They argued long and loud, to no effect.

It was explained to us again that the Government proposed to set aside five great reservations, one for the Ogallallahs, one for the Brulés, one for the Crow Creek people, one for the Cheyenne River people, and that the lines were fixed for the great Sioux nation at the Standing Rock. The north boundary was the Cannonball River; on the south, the Moreau; but to the west it extended only eighty miles.

Speaking to his head men, our chief said: “Who made that line on the west? Was it a white man or an Indian? They say the lines of the old treaties, whether fixed by the red man or the white man, must stand. But I do not grant that treaty. It was stolen from us. We have paid for all they have done for us, and more. They have never fulfilled a treaty. See the pitiful small land that is left us. Do not sign. If you sign we are lost.”

The commissioners, hitherto displeased, now became furious. They accused The Sitting Bull of intimidating the people. They raged and expostulated. They wheedled and threatened, but the chief shook his head and said: “Do not sign. This man is talking for the white man’s papers, and not for us. He uses many words, but he does not deceive me. Do not listen to him.” And they laughed at the false speaker.

At last Gall, who sat beside the chief, spoke. “We are through. We are entirely finished.”

Then The Sitting Bull rose and said: “We have spoken pleasantly and have reached this point in good humor. Now we are going home,” and made a sign and the council broke up in confusion.

The treaty was not signed and The Sitting Bull was made to bear the blame of its defeat. As for me, I exulted in his firmness, his self-control, and his simple dignity. He was still the chief man of treaties.

But the white people did not give up. They never recede. The defeat of the Democrats made a different Congress and a new attempt was at once made to get a treaty. Profiting by the mistakes of the other commissions, they did not come to the Standing Rock first (they feared the opposition of The Sitting Bull); they went to the lower reservations and secured all the Santees, all the “breeds,” and members of other tribes, men whom my people did not recognize as belonging to us. The news of this made my chief very angry. “The white men have no sense of justice when they deal with us,” he said, bitterly. “They are mad for our lands. They will do anything to steal them away.”

When the commissioners appeared at the Standing Rock they were triumphant through General Crook. Rations were short and the people were hungry and General Crook took advantage of this. He was lavish of beef issues during the treaty. On the third day he said, gruffly: “You’d better take what we offer. Congress will open the reservation, anyhow.”

Each night, as before, The Sitting Bull stood opposed to the treaty. “It is all we have,” he said, despairingly. “Once we had a mighty tract; now it is little. You have bought peace from the whites by selling your lands; now when you have no more to sell what will you do? I have never entertained a treaty from the whites. I am opposed to this. I will not sign. Our lands are few and they are bad lands. The white men have shut us up in a desert where nothing lives, yet it is our last home. Will you break down the walls and let the white man sweep us away? You say we will have a great deal of money in return. How has it been in the past? How has the government fulfilled its obligations? Congress cuts down our rations at will; what they owe us does not matter. You have seen how difficult it is to raise food here. We need every blanket’s breadth of our land if we are to live. I am getting to be an old man; a few years and I will be with my fathers; but before I go I want to see my children provided for. Let the government pay us what they owe us in cattle and we will then be able to live. I will not sign.”

That night John Grass gave way. The commission convinced him that this treaty was the best that could be secured. A new council was hastily called in order to get The Grass to sign, and my chief was not informed of it till the hearing was nearly over.

As he came into the room he was both angry and despairing, and demanded a chance to speak. “I have kept in the background so far,” he said. “Now I wish to be heard——”

But they were afraid of him and refused to hear him. “We want no more speaking. John Grass come forward and sign!”

Grass went forward. The Sitting Bull cried out in a piercing voice: “Do not sign! Let everybody follow me.”

At his command all his old guard rose and went away, but John Grass took the pen and signed. He was the man of the hour; he represented a compromise policy. He was willing to be the white man’s tool. And I, sitting there as interpreter, powerless to aid my chief in his heroic fight for the remnant of the empire that was ours, could only bow my head in acknowledgment of the wisdom of the majority—for I knew the insatiable white man better than John Grass. To have rejected the treaty would have but delayed the end.

My chief went to his lodge, still the Uncapappa, still unsubdued, representing all that was distinctive and admirable in the old life of the chase; but he knew now that the white man possessed the earth.

“This is now the end,” he said, sorrowfully, to my father. “Nothing remains to us but a home in the Land of the Spirits.”

VIII
THE RETURN OF THE SPIRITS

The year that followed the signing of this treaty was a dark one for The Sitting Bull. Even those who had been most clearly acquiescent in the white man’s way grew sad.

You must remember that my people, the Uncapappas, are the westernmost branch of the great Sioux nation and had known but little of the white man up to the time of their surrender in 1880. We knew nothing of tilling the soil. We were essentially buffalo hunters and had been for many generations. The Yanktonaise, the Minneconjous, had far greater knowledge of the white man’s ways. In the days when they occupied the whole of the upper Mississippi Valley we still kept our western position, always among the buffalo and the elk. Our tepees were still made of skins.

Can you not see that these horsemen of the plains—these wandering, fearless, proud hunters—even under the best conditions would have found it very hard to give up the roving life of the chase and settle down to the planting of corn and squashes?

It is easy to clip the wings of eagles, but it is not of much avail to beat them and give command that they instantly become geese. Under every fostering condition it would have been difficult for Slohan and Gall and Sitting Bull to become farm laborers.

I call upon you to be just to my great chief, for he honestly tried to take on this new life. I assert that no man of his spirit and training could have done more. He tried hard to be as good as his word; for witness I call the agent himself who in those early days said of him: “The Sitting Bull is living here peaceably and doing well.” Even up to the month of November in 1888, the year of the first commission, he praised him. It was afterward that the agent changed his mind and began to abuse him. I will tell presently why this was so.

You see the white people allowed us no time to change. We had been many centuries forming habits which they insisted should be broken instantly. They cut us off from our game. They ordered us to farm, and this without knowing the character of our reservation. The soil of this country is very hard and dry and the climate is severe. It is high, upland prairie cut by a few thin, slow streams which lie in deep gullies. The upland grows a short, dry grass, and there are many years when it is dry as hay in early June. It is good for pasture, but it makes very little hay for winter. It is a drought country; for the most part the crops burn up under the fierce sun and the still more savage wind. In winter it is a terrible place to live unless one is sheltered by the cottonwood and willow groves on the river. It was given us originally because they thought it useless to the plowmen.

On this stern land the white man set my people and said, in a terrible voice, “Farm or die!” We tried, but year by year the trial ended in failure. Wrong implements were given us, great plows which our ponies could not draw, and bad seeds, and this outlay exhausted our annuity and cut us off from cattle issues. Our friends among the white people early began to see the folly of trying to force us to till this iron soil, and urged the issue of cattle, but the giving of useless things was thereupon taken as an excuse for not issuing stock, and when at last they were sent—a few cows and sheep—too few to be of any use, they were used as warrant to cut down our rations, which (as the chief constantly asserted) were not a gratuity, but a just payment.

They had never been enough even when they were honestly and fully issued, and when the quality was bad or the issue cut down many of them were actually hungry for three days in the week. You may read in one of the great books of the government these words: “Suddenly and almost without warning they were called upon to give up all their ancient pursuits and without previous training settle down to agriculture in a land largely unfitted for such uses. The freedom of the chase was exchanged for the idleness of the camp. The boundless range abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of plenty supplanted by limited and decreasing subsistence and supplies. Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent.” So said the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

In spite of all these things I assert my people were patient. The Sitting Bull was careful to do nothing which would harm his people, and often he walked away in silence from the agent’s harsh accusation.

Hunger is hard to bear, but there were many other things to make life very barren and difficult. Around us to north and east and west the settlers were swarming. Our reservation seemed such a little thing in comparison with our old range—like a little island in great water. Every visit our head men made to the east or the west taught them the gospel of despair. The flood of white men which had been checked by the west bank of the Missouri now flowed by in great streams to the west and curled round to the north. Everywhere unfriendly ranchers set up their huts. They all wore guns, while we were forbidden to do the like. They hated us as we hated them, but they had all the law on their side.

Thus physically we were being submerged by the rising tide of an alien race. In the same way our old customs and habits were sinking beneath the white man’s civilization. One by one our songs were dying. One by one our dances were being cut off by the government, and our prayers and ceremonies, sweet and sacred to us, were already discountenanced or positively forbidden. Our beautiful moccasins were tabooed, our buckskin beaded shirts replaced by ragged coats. Our women were foolish in the dress of cheap white women. We became a tribe of ragamuffins like the poor men whom the newspapers make jokes about and call “hoboes.”

Let me tell you farther. You cannot understand my people if you consider the white man’s religion and the white man’s way of life the only ones sanctioned by the Great Spirit.

My friends in Washington, the men with whom I studied, gave me this thought. There is good in all religions and all races and I am trying to write of the wrongs of my people from that point of view. The Sitting Bull loved the old life, but he often said: “We were living the life the Great Spirit outlined for us. We knew no other. If you can show us that your manner of life is better, that it will make us happier, then we will come to your way,” and for a time he thought that perhaps the white man’s way of life was nearer to the Great Spirit’s will; but when he was cold and hungry he felt the injustice of this superior race, and doubted.

We all saw that as the years went on and the old joys slipped away no new ones came to take their places, while want, a familiar foe, remained close to every fireside. Our best thinkers perceived that fine large houses and nice warm clothing were unattainable to vast numbers of the white men, “how then can the simple red man hope to win them?” They began to say: “We have given our freedom, our world, our traditions, for a dark cabin, hard, cruel boots, the settler’s contempt, and the soldier’s diseases.” “Our race is passing away. The new conditions destroy us. If we cannot persist as Sioux, why persist at all? There are enough white beggars in the world, why add ourselves to the army of the poor?”

It was for this reason that the chief opposed the treaty subdividing the reservation. “Our strength is in being a people. As individuals the white man will spit on us.” When the treaty was about to be executed a white man said to him: “What do you Indians think of it?”

He drew himself up and the old-time fire flamed in his eyes as he said: “Indians! There are no Indians left but me.” But later he said, sadly: “It is impossible for me to change. I cannot sign, but my children may sign if they wish.”

Just at this time our cattle began to die of a strange disease and our children were seized by a mysterious malady which the white people call grippe, but for which we had no name. We were without medicine to counteract these fevers, and the agency doctor could not do much for us. Our children died in hundreds. This was terrible. It seemed that all were to be swept away.

Bishop Hare and General Miles both saw and reported upon these conditions, and I wrote to all my friends in agony of haste, but the government was slow to act in our need, though it was ever in haste to cut up our land and give it away. No one cared what became of us. We had no votes, we could not help any man to office. All promises were neglected, and to add to our misery it was said the new administration would still further reduce our payments and the rations which were our due. When this news came to us it seemed as if the very earth on which we stood was sinking beneath our feet. The old world of the buffalo, the free life of the past, became each day more beautiful as the world about us, the prison in which we lived, grew black with the clouds of despair.

In this moment of hopeless misery—this intolerable winter of tragic dejection—there came to my people the rumor of something very wonderful. A messenger to my chief said that far in the west, at the base of a vast white mountain, a wondrous medicine man had descended from a cloud to meet and save the red men. Just as Christ came long ago to the Jews, so now the Great Spirit had sent a messenger to the red people to bring back the old world of the buffalo and to repeople its shining vistas with those who had died. So they said, “By faith and purity we are to again prevail over that earth.”

It was a seed planted at the right time in the right soil. In the night of his despair my chief listened to the message as to a sweet story, not believing it, yet eager to hear more.

The herald of the new faith was a Brulé, who ended by saying: “The Kicking Bear, one of our chiefs, is gone to search into the beginning of this story. He it was who sent me to you. He wished me to acquaint you with what he had heard.”

“When he returns,” replied the chief, “tell him I wish to talk with him of this strange thing.”

A report of this man’s message spread among the people and many believed it. We began to hear obscurely about a new dance which some of the people at Rosebud and Pine Ridge had adopted—a ceremony to test the faith of those who believed—a medicine dance to bring back the past—and the people brooded upon the words of the Brulé, who said that the world of the buffalo was to be restored to them and all the old customs and joys brought back.

It was a magical thought. Their deep longing made it expand in their minds like a wonderful flower, and they waited impatiently the coming of the herald.

You must not forget that every little word my people knew of the Christian religion prepared them for this miraculous change. The white man’s religion was full of miracles like this. Did not Christ raise men from the dead? Was he not born of a Virgin and did he not change water into wine? The wise men of the Bible, we were told, were able to make the sun stand still, and once the walls of a great city crumbled before the magic blast of rams’ horns. Many times we had heard the preachers, the wise men of the white men, say: “By faith are mountains removed,” therefore our minds were prepared to believe in the restoration of the world of the buffalo. Was it not as easy for the Great Spirit as to make the water cover the highest mountains? My friend the Blackbird used to say “Every race despises the superstitions of others, but clings to its own.” I am Sioux, I could not help being thrilled by this story.

My brain responded to every story the old man told. I saw again the splendid reaches of the plain. I rode in the chase of the buffalo. I heard the songs of rejoicing as the women hung the red meat up to dry. I played again among the lodges. Yes, it was all very sweet to dream about, but I said to the chief: “I have been among the white people; I have studied their books. The world never turns backward. We must go on like the rivers, on into the mystery.”

“We will see,” he answered. “I have often reproved you for saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ to all that the white man says. This may be all a lie. The Kicking Bear has gone forth into the west to meet this wonder worker. When he returns we will council upon his report. Till then we will do nothing.”

But no power could prevent the spread of the story and its dream among my people. They were quick to seize and build upon this slender promise. Can you not understand our condition of mind? Imagine that a great and powerful race had appeared from over the sea and had driven your people from their ancestral lands, on and on, until at last only a handful of you remained. Imagine this handful corralled in a small, bleak valley cut off from all natural activities, its religions tabooed, its dances and ceremonies forbidden, hungry, cold, despairing. Could you then be logical and reasonable and completely sane?

If my race had been a servile race, ready to play the baboon, quick to imitate, then it would not have vanished, as it has, in war and famine. We are freemen. We had always been unhampered by any alien laws. We moved as we willed, led by the buffalo, directed by the winds, cowering only before the snows. Therefore, we resented the white man’s restrictions. We had the hearts of eagles in our cages, and yet, having the eyes of eagles and the brains of men, we came at last to see the utter futility of struggle. We lost all faith in physical warfare and sat down to die. As a race we were resigned to death, and in this night of our resignation the star of prophecy rose. We turned toward the mystic powers for aid.

IX
THE MESSAGE OF KICKING BEAR

One October day in 1890 a party of Brulé Sioux from the Cheyenne River agency came riding down into the valley of the Grand River, inquiring for The Sitting Bull. As they were passing my father’s lodge he came out and stopped them.

“What do you want of The Sitting Bull?” he asked, with the authority of one of the old-time “Silent Eaters.”

“We bring a message to him,” replied the head man. “I am Kicking Bear. Take us to him without delay.”

The chief at this time lived with his younger wife in a two-room log house (a cabin for his first wife stood near) and as the strangers came to the door they were accosted by an old woman who was at work about the fire under an open lodge. In answer to my father’s inquiry for the chief she pointed toward a large tepee standing behind the house, and, turning aside, my father lifted the door-flap and entered. The chief was alone, smoking his pipe in grave meditation.

“Father,” said my sire, “here are some men from the Cheyenne River to see you.”

“I am Kicking Bear,” said the visitor, “for whom you sent.”

An Indian Chief
Illustration from
A BUNCH OF BUCKSKINS
by Frederic Remington
Originally published by
R. H. Russell, 1901

The chief greeted his visitors with gentle courtesy and motioned them to their seats. “My friends, I am glad to see you. You are hungry. Rest and eat. When you are filled and refreshed we will talk.” Then calling to his wife to put food before the guests, he smoked quietly while they ate. When they were satisfied and all were composed and comfortable he said to Kicking Bear: “Now, my friend, my ears are open.”

The visitor’s voice was full of excitement, but well under control at first. He said:

“My friend, we all know you; your fame is wide. You are the head of all our people. We know it. You have always been true to the ways of the fathers. You fought long and well against the coming of the whites. Therefore I come to you. This is the story: The first people to know of the Messiah on earth were the Shoshones and the Arapahoes. A year ago Good Thunder, the Ogallallah, hearing of this wonderful story, took four of his friends and went to visit the place where the wonder-working Son of the Great Spirit was said to be. He was gone many days, but at last he sent word that he had found the Messiah, that he was among those who eat fish, far toward the high white mountains, and he asked that I come and bear witness. Thereupon I also went—with much fear. After many days I found the place. It was deep in a strange country—a desert country. Many people were camped there. All tongues were spoken, yet all were at peace. It was said that sixteen different tribes were present, and that they had all come, as I had done, to know the truth. No one thought of war. All strife was put away.”

The Sitting Bull listened with half-closed eyes, weighing every word. It was plain, my father told me, that Kicking Bear was struggling to control his emotion. One by one the chief’s family gathered around the tepee to listen. It was a momentous hour.

“They put up robes in a circle to make a dancing place,” resumed the messenger, “and we all gathered there about sundown. It was said that the Messiah was ready to appear and teach us a new religion. Just after dark some one said, ‘There is the Great Father.’ I looked and saw him sitting on one side of the circle. I did not see him come. I do not know how he got there. The light of the fire fell on him and I saw him plainly. He was not so dark as a red man, but he was not a white man. He was a good-looking person with a kind, wise face. He was dressed in white and had no beard or mustache. One by one all the chiefs drew near to greet him. I went with the others, but when I came near I bowed my head; his eyes were so keen they blinded me. Then he rose and began to sing, and those who had been there before, began to dance in the new ceremony.

“When we stopped dancing for a little while he spoke, saying, ‘My children, I am glad to have you here. I have a great deal to say to you. I am the Son of the Great Spirit, sent to save you from destruction.’ We were very still as he spoke; no one whispered; all listened. He spoke all languages, so that we could understand. ‘I am the Creator of this earth and everything you see about you. I am able to go to the world of the dead, and I have seen all those you have lost. I will teach you to visit the ghost world also; that is the meaning of the dance. Once long ago I came to the white people, but they misused me. They put nails in my feet. See the scars!’ And he held up his hands and we saw the scars.”

The Sitting Bull gave a startled exclamation: “Hoh! You saw the scars!”

“I saw them plainly,” the Kicking Bear solemnly replied, as words of wonder ran round the tepee, “and all my friends saw them as plainly as I. Then the Messiah said: ‘I found my white children bad and I returned to the Great Spirit, my Father. I told them that after many hundreds of years I would return. Now am I returned, but this time I come to the red people.’

“‘I come to teach you a new religion and to make you happy. I am to renew the earth, which is old and worn out. If you follow my teaching, if you do as I bid you, I will bring to pass marvelous things. This is the message of my Father the Creator. He has been displeased with his children. He has turned his face away from the red people for many years. If you had remained true to the ways of the fathers these misfortunes would not have come upon you. You would not now be shut up by the white man, you would be free and happy as of old. But the heart of the Great Spirit is again soft toward you and he bids me say, “If you will live according to the ways of the Saviour whom I have sent among you I will again smile upon you. I will cause the white man to disappear from the earth, together with all the marks he has made with the plow and the ax. I will cause the old world to come back. It will slide above the present earth as one hand slides above the other; the white man and all his works will be buried and the red man will be caught up in the air and put down on this old earth as it returns, and he will find the buffalo and the elk, the deer and the antelope, feeding as of ancient days on the rich grass. The rifle will be no longer necessary nor the white man’s food or clothing. All will be as it was in the days of our fathers. No one will grow old, no one will be sick, no one will die. All will be glad and happy once more.”’”

As he talked The Kicking Bear grew greatly excited. He rose and his voice rang loud and clear. The women began to moan, but the Chief sat still, very still; his time to speak had not yet come.

The Kicking Bear went on. “He commanded that we put all evil thoughts aside. We must not fight or take from one another any good thing. We must be friends with everyone—with the white man, too. Our hearts must be clean and good.

“He also taught us the dance and new methods of purification, and these he commanded me to carry to you.” In this way The Kicking Bear ended, addressing the chief: “This is the message, father, and this is the promise: If all the red people unite, casting away all that is of the white man, praying and purifying themselves, then will the old world come back—the old happy world of the buffalo, and all the dead ones of our race will return, a mighty host, driving the buffalo before them.”

The chief sat in silence for a long time, and when he spoke his voice was very quiet, with a sad cadence. “This would please me well. But how do I know that it is not a lie? What proof is there that all these good things will come to pass? The invader is strong. I have given up war because I know it is foolish to fight against him. I have seen his land to the east. I know that he has devoured forests and made corn to grow where deep waters once rolled. He is more numerous than the buffalo ever were. All the red men of all the plains and hills cannot defeat him. It is hopeless to talk of driving him back.”

“That is true,” replied The Kicking Bear, “but you have heard how the white man’s Bible speaks of these things. In the olden time, they say, when the people despaired of weapons and war they began to pray to their Great Spirit, and he sent unseen powers to help them. They tell of cities that fell at sound of a trumpet. We are to fight no more with weapons. It is of no avail to use the ax. We must please the Great Spirit; we must beseech him to turn his face upon us again and our enemies will melt away.”

“But what proof is there of this? It is all a tale. It is as the sound of a pleasant breeze in the trees.”

“The proof is in this,” earnestly replied The Kicking Bear. “In this dance, men are able to leave the body and fly far away and look upon the spirits of the dead, and to ride the old-time plains in pursuit of the buffalo. I have myself seen this old world waiting to be restored. Let us call a council. Let us dance and some of your own people—perhaps The Sitting Bull himself—will be able to leave the body and visit the wonderful world of the spirit and return to tell the people of it! Let us dance; the proof will come.”

To this the chief made cautious reply: “We will not be hasty. Remain with us and we will talk further of these things.”

To Slohan he said: “This man talks well. He claims to have been in the west and to have seen the Messiah; yet we must be careful. We will look minutely into the matter. We must not seem foolish.” Then he turned again to the Brulé. “When is this good change to come to us?”

“The Father said that if all his words are obeyed he will cause the new earth to come with the springing grass.”

“Do you believe this story?” asked the chief, pointedly.

“Yes.”

“What causes your belief?”

The Kicking Bear became deeply moved; his voice trembled as he replied: “Because since I touched his hand I have been out of the body many times. I too have visited the spirit world, and I too have seen the dead, and I have seen the buffalo and the shining new world, more beautiful than the old. Since my return I often see the Saviour in my sleep. I know that through him you and all your tribe can fly to the spirit world and see your friends. Therefore have I come that I may teach you the songs and the dances which bring the trance and the vision.”

“You speak of the destruction of the white people. How is that to be brought about?” asked the chief.

“All by great magic. War is useless. All who believe must wear an eagle plume, and when the new earth comes sliding over the old, those who wear the sacred feather will be caught up and saved, while the white man and all those who reject the Father’s message will be swept down and buried deep.” Then the messenger cried out with passion: “Father, they are all dancing—the Piutes, the Shoshones, the Ogallallahs, the Cheyennes—all the people. Hear me! I bring a true message! Listen, I implore!”

He began to sing, and his companions joined him. The song they sang was strange to my father, and very, very sad—as dolorous as the wind in the bare branches of the elm tree. It was not a war song; it was a mourning cry that made all hearts melt. As they sang, Kicking Bear began to tremble, and then his right arm began to whirl about wildly as if it were a club. Then he fell stiffly to the ground like a man in a fit.

The Sitting Bull rose up quickly. “Hah! What is the meaning of this?” he asked, looking about him warily.

“He has gone into a trance,” said one of the others. “He is even now in the spirit world. Do not touch him.”

For a long time the messenger lay as if dead and no one dared disturb him. My chief sat smoking, patiently waiting for Kicking Bear to speak. At last he came to life again and sat up. “I have seen the Father,” he said, with shining face, “and he has given me a sign. He has made my left hand stronger than the strongest man. Come and see!” He held out his hand and my father took it, but it scared him and he flung it away from him. It made his muscles contract and his flesh sting as if needles had been thrust into it. Then The Bear cried out: “See! I am telling the truth. I have seen the Messiah. He has given me an arm of power for a sign. He told me to return and teach The Sitting Bull the new religion.” He laid hold of a heavy white cup. “See the sign?” he cried, and ground the cup to pieces on his hand.

The Sitting Bull was deeply troubled. “We will talk of this to-morrow,” and he went away profoundly stirred by what he had seen.

The next morning he called a council of his close friends, and at last sent for Kicking Bear, and said: “Your story is sweet in our ears. It may be true. I do not think so, but we will try. We have come to the time when all weapons are useless. We are despairing and weak. Guns are of no avail. The Great Spirit has certainly turned his face away. It may be that prayer and song will cause him to smile upon us again. You may teach us the dance.”

X
THE DANCE BEGINS

So it was that in the prepared soil of my people’s minds this seed of mystery fell. It was not a new religion; it was indeed very old. Many other races had believed it; the time was come for the Sioux to take it to themselves. In their despair they greedily seized upon it. In their enforced idleness they welcomed it.

Swiftly the news flew, wildly exaggerated, of course. It was said that the Messiah had sent a message direct to the chief, and that a sign had been given to the courier which had convinced my father and many others—though The Sitting Bull yet doubted.

Uncapappas are like any other folk. There are excitable ones and doubting ones, those who believe easily and those who are disposed to prove all things. Many old women with sons and daughters lately passed to the spirit land laid hold upon this news with instant belief. Winter was coming again; food was scarce; the children were ailing; life was joyless and held no promise of happier things. So, as among the white people, the bereaved were quick to embrace any faith which promised reunion.

At last men of keener intelligence, like my father, considered it, saying: “It may be true. The white man had a Saviour. Why should not the Great Spirit send one to us? We can at least examine into this man’s story. We can go and see the dance.”

Others, who had outgrown the faith of their fathers, and who had also rejected the Christian religion, smiled and said, “It is foolish!” Nevertheless, curious to see what was done, they loitered near to look on and laugh.

Last of all were those who brooded bitterly upon the past—the chained lions who had never accepted the white man’s dominion, who feared nothing but captivity, and who sat ever in their tepees with their blankets around them smoking, ruminating, reliving the brave, ancient days. “We are prisoners,” they said. “We are not allowed to leave the narrow bounds of our bleak reservation. We can neither hunt nor visit our friends. What is the use of living? Why not die in battle? Is it not better to be slain and pass at once to the spirit land than to die of starvation and cold? We know the fate of the dead cannot be worse than our lot here.”

In the light of memory the country of their youth was a land of waving grass, resplendent skies, rippling streams, shining tepees, laughter, song, and heroic deeds. In dreams they were once more young scouts, selected for special duty. In dreams they rode again over the boundless swelling plain, hunting the great black cattle of the wild. They lay in wait for the beaver beside streams without a name. They sat deep in pits, hearing the roaring rush of the swooping eagle, and always when they woke to reality they found themselves ragged beggars under the control of a white man, betrayed and forgotten by their recreant allies.

What had they retained of all this mighty heritage? A minute patch of barren ground and the blessed privilege of working like a Chinaman or a negro. Of all the old-time adventurous, plentiful, and peaceful life the white settlers had bereft them. Mile by mile the invaders had eaten up the sod. The buffalo, the elk, the beaver had disappeared before their guns. Stream after stream they had bridged and in the valleys they had set their fences. The agent always talked as though every red man who wished could have a large house and fruit trees and pleasant things, but it was quite certain now that nothing remained for these proud hunters of the bison but a practical slavery to the settler; to clean the dung from the white man’s stables was their fate.

With this view the “Silent Eaters” had most sympathy. In the days immediately following their return from the north they had caught some of the enthusiasm of their teachers. They, too, had hoped for some of the good things of the white man’s civilization.

The Sitting Bull himself had been hopeful. He had spoken bravely to them advising them to set their feet in the white man’s road; but as the years passed one by one he had felt with ever-increasing bitterness the checks and constraints of his warden. He had seen sycophants and hypocrites exalted and his own wishes thwarted or treated with contempt and his face had grown ever sadder and sterner. When he looked into the future he saw the almost certain misery and final extinction of his race, so inevitably he, too, had turned his eyes inward to dream of the past. Having no hope of earthly things, he was now, in spite of himself, allured by the stories of this Saviour in the West. Certainly he could not forbid his people this comfort.

He had, too, the natural pride of the leader. He considered himself as he was, the head man of his tribe, and it hurt him to find himself completely shorn of command. The agent now deliberately humiliated him, ignoring his suggestions and misrepresenting him among the white men. “These old chiefs must give way,” he said. “If we are to civilize these Indians, all of the old tribal government must be torn up.” And in this he had the support of many friends of my race.

One of the most serious differences existing at this time lay in The Sitting Bull’s refusal to recognize the authority of the agent’s native police. “I am still the head of my tribe,” he proudly said. “I do not need your help in order to keep the peace.”

Then the agent very shrewdly appointed those who were jealous of the chief to be the heads of his police force, and so made sure of them in case of trouble. The chief was made to look and feel like a man living by sufferance, while renegades whom he despised and recreants whom he hated were put in power over him. Yet he was bearing all this quietly; he had even submitted to personal abuse, rather than prove a disturber.

This message from the Messiah came, therefore, just at a time when the chief and his “Silent Eaters” were suffering their final degradation at the hands of the agent. It was hard to die at this time like outcast dogs, with no hope for their people. They could not understand why they should be made the target of the agent’s malice. They had the pride of leadership. It was honorable to be a chief. The qualities which went to make a chieftain were not mean; they were noble. Why should other and lower men be placed in contemptuous authority over them?

And so these proud spirits shut their eyes to the future and longed, as no white man can ever know, for the glorious days of the buffalo.

For three days The Kicking Bear instructed the few who believed, preparing them for the dance. “You must cast aside everything that the white man has brought to you,” he said. “The Messiah commands that all metals be thrown away. Lay down all weapons, for this is a dance of peace. It is needful that you dress as in the olden time before the invader came. Let each one who dances and accepts the word of the Father wear a white eagle plume, for this will be a sign when the new earth comes. You will be caught up into the clouds by reason of your faith, while all others will perish. You must purify yourselves, also, by use of the sweat lodge, and after the dance you must bathe in clear, cold water. During this time you must put away all anger and harshness and speak kindly to all persons. Thus says the Father.”

There was something lofty in all this and it moved men very deeply and the chief listened intently to it all.

On the third night of his preaching I was present, for my father had sent for me to come. After drawing from me a promise to tell no white man, he described all that had happened. I was not at first impressed. “It is foolish,” I said.

“Nevertheless you must come and see this man. He is a wonderful magician. I do not understand him.”

The meeting took place in the chief’s tepee, which was large and strong. As I entered I saw many men and women sitting just outside the door in little groups, but only about fifteen people had been invited to join the circle which I soon found was formed to rehearse some of the ceremonial songs of the Messiah. A small, clear fire glowed in the center of the lodge, and the chief’s strong face was fixed in its place at the back of the lodge. On his right was The Kicking Bear. On his left was a vacant place; this my father took. At a sign from the chief I sat next my father.

A Fantasy from the Pony War Dance

Among the many interesting features of the pageant given on special occasions by the Blackfoot Indians on their reservation in Canada, the most spectacular is the Pony War Dance, or the Departure for Battle. In this scene about sixty young men take part, riding horses as wild as themselves. The acting is fierce—not like the conduct of a mimic battle on our stage—but performed with the desperate zest of men who hope for distinction in war.

Chis-Chis-Chash Scout On the Flanks

The Cheyenne, or—to use the name the Cheyennes apply to themselves—the Chis-Chis-Chash, scouts belonged to the corps from Pine Ridge organized on that reservation, and, with other Cheyennes from Tongue River, rendered valuable service to Uncle Sam during the Sioux outbreak of 1890 in South Dakota. In December of that year these brave Indians had many a skirmish with the savage Sioux, who, clothed in the ghost shirt, went on the warpath, taking refuge in the Bad Lands—a region that seemed made for stratagem and murder, with nothing to witness its mysteries but the cold blue winter sky.

Shortly after our entry the chief lit his pipe, and after offering it to the Earth Spirits and to the Spirits Above, handed it to his visitor. The Bear made the same offering, and after smoking passed it on. So it went round the circle. When the chief had it in his hands once more, The Kicking Bear and his five companions rose and, stretching their hands to the west, stood still while The Bear prayed:

“O great spirit in the west

Our Father,

Take pity on us. We are poor and weak.

Send us good tidings.

Help us to see the good land.

Help us to see our loved ones.”

Then he began singing a song—a song of promise—and these were the words:

“The Father says so,

He has promised surely

You shall see your dead once more.

They will come to life again.

You shall see your kindred

Of the spirit land.

This the Father saith

To his faithful ones.”

This song moved me, though I was a doubter. It was sung with great vigor and earnestness. It was the opening song of the dance, The Bear explained to us, and then all sat down, and one by one the visitors took up and sang the songs they had learned. There were many of them and they were based upon the same idea—that of a resurrection of the dead, the renewal of the worn-out old earth and the return of the buffalo.

As they sang my head was filled with many great but confused thoughts. In that light, with those surroundings, any magic seemed possible. It was thus that the disciples of Christ of Galilee came together and talked of his message. I had listened often to the white man’s religion, and yet the hymns of the martyrs could not move me as did these songs. The past and the present fused together strangely in my mind as the ancient shining winds blew and the old rejoicing days came back.

You shall reset the tepees.

You shall eat pemmican once more.

You shall hang up the buffalo meat.

And there shall be plenty everywhere.

You shall live and not die in the old world which returns anew.

You shall chase the buffalo.

You shall gayly race on the bright prairie.

These were the promises of the songs, and as the visitors sang my despairing people became like little children; their hearts melted, they laughed and wept and shouted in time to the music. Some strange power seemed to go with the motions of The Bear’s hands. We all seemed to be looking upon the very scenes of which he sang, and my throat closed with an emotion I could not control.

An old man, called Looking Eagle, suddenly rose and, stretching forth his hands, cried out in a thrilling voice:

“I see it—the new land! I can see the buffalo feeding in myriads. It is Spring and the grass is new. My father stands at the door of his lodge. He calls with his hand. My mother is there. Ho! I come, my father.”

Then he fell on the ground and The Kicking Bear and his friends joined hands and, breaking into a song which made my own heart leap, they began to dance in a circle about the fire:

“The whole world of the dead is returning.

Our nation is coming, is coming, is coming.

The eagle has brought us the message,

Bearing the word of the Father—

The word and the wish of the Father.

Over the glad new earth they are coming,

Our dead come driving the elk and the deer.

See them hurrying the herds of the bison.

This the Father has promised,

This the Father has given.”

One by one those sitting gave way and rose and joined the dance, till only the chief, Slohan, and I remained seated. My father joined them at the last, and outside the tepee the voices of women could be heard catching and trying the song. It was agonizing to hear. It strained every heart to bursting with longing and sadness.

Suddenly The Bear’s head began to rock violently from side to side; it seemed as if it would wrench itself from its place. His eyes set in a dreadful stare, his mouth fixed in a horrible gape. Then shaking himself free, he fell close to the fire, face downward.

The others danced for a little while longer, then took seats and waited for the return of the spirit of their priest. Looking Eagle still slept.

The Sitting Bull sat in silence, smoking gravely, slowly, but his hand trembled. It was plain that he, too, longed to believe in the dance, but he could not. My own nerves were quivering with the excitement and I waited with almost breathless eagerness for the waking of the sleepers.

It was a long time—it seemed that it was nearly morning—when The Bear began to stir again and to rub his eyes as if wakened from sleep. He was very quiet and his voice was gentle as he said: “I have been with the Father. He gave me another message to The Sitting Bull. This it is: ‘All the people to the South are dancing my dance. Will the chief of all the Sioux walk behind his nation?’”

Then the chief said, “When my son there,”—he touched my arm—“or one of my trusted warriors can go to the spirit world and return to tell me it is true, then I may believe. If this religion is true all other deeds are worthless. Bring me proof. My ears are open, my eyes are not yet dim. If these songs are true, then I shall weep no more. If they are not true, then I wish to die. Let us hold a dance to-morrow.” And with a sign he dismissed us, but he himself remained alone with Looking Eagle, who still lay motionless where he had fallen.

XI
THE BREAKING OF THE PEACE PIPE

A knowledge of the dance spread like flame throughout all the Grand River district, and young and old began to flock to The Sitting Bull’s camp, eager to hear more, eager to experiment. “We also wish to see our friends who have gone before us,” they said. “We wish to hear what they say. Teach us the way of the trance.”

I felt the influence of their thought very strongly what time I sat among them, but afterward, when I had returned to the agency, it appeared but the rankest folly, and when others asked me about it I always said: “It is but a foolish thing; do not value it.” But my words did not check the wave of belief in it.

While no special pains were taken to conceal the fact from the white people, it was several days before the agent had any knowledge of Kicking Bear or his mission. This agent, let me say, was a good man, but jealous of his authority, and when he learned that the chief had himself invited The Kicking Bear into the reservation he was angry and said, “I won’t have any of this nonsense here,” and calling Crow, lieutenant of the police, he said: “Crow, go down to The Sitting Bull’s house and tell him this Kicking Bear and Messiah business must stop. Put Kicking Bear off the reservation at once!”

I was very much alarmed by the order, and waited anxiously to learn what the chief would say. I feared his revolt.

The next day the Crow returned from Rock Creek like a man walking in his sleep. He could give the agent no intelligible account of himself or of what he had seen. “He is a wonder worker,” he repeated, “I couldn’t put him away. When he took my hand I was weak as a child. I saw the dance, and when he waved a feather I became dizzy, I fell to the ground, and my eyes were turned inward.”

The agent stared at him as if he were crazy; then he turned to me and said: “Iapi, I wish you’d go down and see what all this hocus-pocus means. Take a couple of policemen with you and make sure that they start this mischief maker on his way home. And tell The Sitting Bull that I want to see him. Say to him the agent expects him to fire Kicking Bear off the reservation.”

I did not tell him that I already knew what was being done. I felt that if some one must carry such a message to the chief it was well for me to do it, for he was in no mood to be reproved like a boy. I took no policemen, but rode away alone with many misgivings.

No sooner had I passed the fort than I regretted my acceptance of the mission. After all, I was Uncapappa and I honored my chief. Whenever I entered the shadow of a tepee I was no longer alien; I fused with my tribe. The gravity and order of my chieftain’s lodge were pleasant to me, and the sound of the women’s songs melted my bones. I was not white; I was red. Acquiring the language of the conquering race had not changed my heart.

For all these reasons I saw that I was set forth on a dishonorable mission. To speak the words of the agent were impossible to me. When I met Circling Thunder, an old playmate of mine, and learned that many were dancing, my face stiffened. I had hoped to be able to have a word with the chief in private.

“Do you believe in it?” I asked.

My friend shook his head. “I don’t know. Many claim to have visited the spirit world—and Looking Eagle brought back a handful of pemmican, so they say. The buffalo were thick over there and the people were very happy.”

“How do you know it was pemmican?”

“I tasted it.”

“Perhaps it was only beef.”

“It may be so,” he said, but his eyes were still dim with dream.

Many of those whom I met were in this state of doubt. They wished to be convinced. It was so sweet to dream of the old-time world, and yet they could not quite believe it. They stood too near the stern reality of hunger and cold, and yet my people are a race of seers. To them the dream has not yet lost its marvelous portent. In time of trouble they go upon the hills and wait for the vision which shall instruct and comfort them.

In my youth I had shared in these beliefs. I had had my days of fasting and prayer; yes, I too had entered the sleep which reveals. I had met and talked with birds and animals, and once I felt the hand of my dead mother move in my hair. I had fasted until I could walk among the painted tepees of the spirit world and I had gazed on the black herds of buffalo.

My training among scholars had given me a new understanding of these conditions, but I could not impart my knowledge to my people. My wisdom was accounted alien and therefore to be distrusted. Of what avail to argue with them when the frenzy was upon them?

It was brilliant October, very warm and hazy, and our cruel, treacherous land was indolently beautiful. The sky was without cloud—a whitish blue—and the plain, covered with tawny short grass on the uplands, and with purple and golden garments of blue-joint in the hollows, seemed to lift on every side like a gigantic bowl. My horse’s hoofs drummed on the dry sod as I hurried forward.

This is an inexorable land—a land in which man should be free to migrate like the larks or the buffalo. In the old days we never thought of living on these high, wind-swept spaces. They were merely our hunting grounds. Our winter camps were always beside the river, behind the deep banks, in the shelter of the oaks and cottonwoods. In those days the plain seemed less ferocious than now, when we are forced to cross it in all kinds of weather, poorly clothed. In the days of the buffalo we chose our time and place to migrate; now we were fastened to one spot like chained coyotes.

As I came to the hill which overlooked the wooded flat I saw a great many tepees set about the chief’s cabin, and I perceived also that the dance was going on. Occasionally a cry reached me, pulsing faintly through the hazy air. In some such way, perhaps, the white fisher folk of Galilee drew together to greet the coming of their Messiah. Was this Saviour of the west any more incredible than Christ?

So I mused as I rode slowly down the hill. What if it were all true? The white man who claims to know all things believes in his Bible and his Bible is full of miracles.

Soon I could hear the song. It was the sad song I had heard them sing in the chief’s tepee. It was in most violent opposition to the sunlit earth and the soft caressing wind, and reached my heart like the wail of a mourning woman. Soon I was near enough to hear the wistful words. It was all of entreaty:

“Our Father, we come.

We come to you weeping.

Take pity on us, O Father.

We are poor and weak,

Without you we can do nothing.

Help us, O Father.

Help us to see the old world,

The happy hunting ground of the buffalo,

The glorious land of our childhood.

Hear us, Great Spirit.”

They were dancing in a great circle, some sixty men and women, their hands interlacing, their eyes on the ground. Each dancer wore a plain buckskin shirt without ornament. No one carried a weapon of any kind. They had deliberately gone far back of the white man, discarding all things on which his desolating hand had been laid. On each head (even of the women) waved an eagle plume, the sacred feather, and all were painted with a red paint, which the Mato had brought with him—a sacred paint he called it. Around them were many others, watching, and here and there on the ground lay those who were entranced.

Just as I came up the song ended and Mato, who stood in the circle, lifted a peculiar wand in his hand and cried out like a priest: “Think hard only of that which you wish to see in your sleep, and it will be given to you. The old shall be young and the sick shall be made well. Put away all anger and hatred and turn your thoughts to the Messiah in the west who listens to all his children.”

Then some one started another song and they began again to dance. I looked for the chief, and saw him sitting in the shadow of a small tree close to the circle of dancers. My father, Slohan, Circling Hawk, and another whom I do not recall, sat with him. They were all very grave and very intent. They hardly saw me and my task grew heavy and hard.

I motioned to my father and he came out, and I said: “I am from the agency. I am hungry and so is my horse.”

He sent a boy with my pony and took me to his tepee near by, and there I ate some bread and meat in silence. When I had finished I began: “Father, I have come to stop the dance and to put the priest away.”

My father looked troubled. “Do you come from the agent?”

“Yes, he has heard of the dance and his orders are to stop it.”

“My son, all that is bad. It makes my heart sore. Do not speak to the chief now. Wait till evening, when he is weary. The agent is wrong. There is no harm in this dance. Has not the Messiah said, ‘Do not strike anyone; leave all punishment to the Great Spirit?’ Go back and tell the agent there is no harm in it.”

I did not listen well, for the song outside was wilder and sadder each moment. They were dancing very fast now, and the ground, bare and very dry, had been tramped into dust, fine as flour, and this rose from under their feet like smoke, half concealing those on the leeward side. All were singing a piteous song of entreaty. The women’s voices especially pierced me with their note of agonized appeal. It was a song to make me shudder—the voice of a dying people crying out for life and pleading for the return of the happy past. I could not understand how the white men could listen to it and not be made gentle.

The chief gazed intently at the circle. He seemed waiting in rigid expectancy, his face deeply lined and very sad. He looked like one threescore and ten sitting so. It was plain that he did not yet permit himself to believe in the message. He, too, felt the pain and weariness of the world, but still he could not join in the song. His mind was too clear and strong to be easily confused.

The interest was now very great. Waves of excitement seemed to run over the circle and those who watched. Shouts mingled with the singing. The principal song, which they repeated endlessly, was the Messiah’s promise of eternal life:

“There the Father comes,

There the Father comes,

Speaking as he flies.

Calling, as he comes, this joyous word,

‘You shall live again,’ he calls,

‘You shall live beyond the grave,’

He is calling as he comes.”

Many did not sing; they only cried out for help, entreating to be shown those who had died. “Oh, hear me! Great Spirit, let me see my little one—my boy; let me hear his voice,” pleaded one woman, and her voice shook me till my hair moved as if a spirit passed.

Some of the women’s faces were distorted with grief, and a kind of nervous action which they could not control seized upon them. One by one as they began to show this tension, Mato and his helpers confronted them, waving before their eyes a feather on a wand and uttering a hoarse chant, monotonous and rapid, “Ha—ha—ha—ha—ha—hah!” until the frenzied one, convulsed and dreaming, fell into the ring and lay stiff and stark in the dirt.

But the ring did not halt. The fall of each new convert seemed to add new vigor to the song, for each hoped to be the next one smitten. Suddenly Shato, dropping the hands of those dancing near him, flung his hands to the sky with a gesture as if he would tear the sun from its place. The hooked intensity of his fingers was terrible to see. He remained fixed in that way, rigid as iron, yet standing on his feet firm as an oak. No one touched him; on the contrary, all were careful not to disturb those who were in trance. Another man stood at bay, buffeting the dancers to keep them from trampling upon his wife, who, being sick of some wasting disease, had joined the circle, seeking health of the Great Spirit.

As I looked my heart contracted. It seemed that I was looking upon the actual dissolution—the death pangs—of my race. My learning was for the moment of no avail. I shook like a reed in the gust of this primeval passion. Was it insanity or was it some inexplicable divine force capable in very truth of uniting the quick and the dead in one convulsive, rapturous coalition?

A thrill of momentary belief swept over me. Was it not better to end it all, to die and go with all my people to the happy hunting grounds! The white man’s world, what was it but a world of care and grief?

The songs continued, but they grew quieter. Several of those who called loudest now lay silent in the dust. Those who circled and sang were keener of eye and calmer of feature. These were they who reasoned, and to them the trance could not come. I began to see that those who had taken on the dream were not the most intelligent but the most emotional men and women of my tribe, those who were weakened by the loss of dear ones.

The song was no longer a cry—it had beautiful words. It grew more joyous:

“Do you see the world a-coming?

A new serener world is near.

The eagle brings the message to our tribe.

Thus the Father sayeth.

Covering all the plain they come,

The Buffalo and elk and deer.

The crow has brought the message to the tribe.

Thus the Father sayeth,

Thus he gives us cheer.”

At the end of this song, four times repeated, the dancers unclasped hands and sat down on the earth. As they did this the chief arose and, stepping into the circle, took a seat near Mato, who arose and, lifting his hands to the west, again prayed silently for a moment, then said:

“My friends, you see the words of the Messiah are true words. Many are asleep. They will return soon and tell us of their good journey to the spirit world. Ever since the Messiah talked to me I have thought upon what he said and I see only good in it. It is a sweet religion. The white man’s religion is not for us. Its words are all strange. It deals with unknown animals and tells of far-off countries. The names of the chiefs we do not understand, but this new religion all can understand. It is filled with familiar words. It is for us. Our Messiah has told us that all our dead are to come back to the earth, and as the earth is too small for such a throng he must remove the white man. He will also bring heaven down to make the world wider, and then all the red men will be able to dwell together in friendship. There will be no more war, only hunting and feasting and games. This good world will come to us if we do as he commands.”

At this moment Chasing Hawk, who acted as usher, brought to the circle a woman who had just wakened out of a trance. Her face was shining with happiness, but her tongue was thick, she could barely make herself heard. As she spoke the chief listened intently.

“What did you see?” asked Mato.

“I saw my little one,” she replied.

“Where was he? What was he doing?”

“He was playing in the grass, in a beautiful country. My grandmother was near, cooking for him.”

Mato called her answers aloud to all who listened, and everyone crowded near to hear the glories of the land from which her spirit had returned. Cries of joy arose in swift echo of the priest’s shouting, but the chief’s face remained gravely meditative.

When this woman was led away Eagle Holder, another dreamer, came into the circle, one who needed no crier. He was a proud orator. Reaching out his hand in a gesture of exultation, he cried:

“In my sleep I saw a vast eagle coming toward me. He came rushing; the noise of his wings was like a storm, his eyes were red like the moon at dusk. As he came near I caught him by the neck, and with a rush he carried me away.” Cries of astonishment broke forth. “He swept away with me high up and toward the east; the wind cried about my ears and for a time I could see nothing; all was mist. At last he began to circle and I looked away and I saw the new land of the Messiah.” (“Hah! Hah!” called the people.) “It was a prairie country” (the women began to sing) “with countless buffalo feeding” (“Ah! Ah!”) “and lakes with great white birds sailing about. On the bank of the lake was a circle of tepees and they were made of skins whitened by clay, and they were very large and clean and new. A hunting party was just riding forth; they were very happy and sang as they went.”

He paused abruptly, while the women wailed in rapture. At last he continued: “Then the eagle entered a cloud and I saw no more. I woke and found myself here on the ground.”

This story, magnificently told though it was, affected the hearers less than the shining, ecstatic face of the mother who had seen her spirit child. Her slow, dreamy utterance was more eloquent than the vivid gestures and musical voice of Eagle Holder.

One by one others awoke and told of meeting friends and revisiting old scenes. Some told of people they had never met in life, and minutely described lodges they had never entered. These stories awoke wild cries of amazement and joy. It was plain that many believed. I had not seen my people so happy since I was a child, before the battle of the Big Horn.

At last when all had spoken they arose and joined hands and began singing once more; then the chief rose and left the circle, and I, intercepting him, said: “Chief, I bring a message to you.” He made a motion which means follow, and I accompanied him to his tepee, which he loved because of its associations with old days, and to which he went for meditation and council.

It would be wrong if I did not confess that I knew the chief distrusted me, for he did. After I had taken my position under the agent he was less free to speak his mind to me, and this was a grief to me. My father saw us go and joined us, and I was glad of his presence. His kind old face made it easier for me to begin.

The chief took his seat at the back of the lodge and said: “Speak. I listen.”

“Sire,” I said, “the agent has heard bad things of this dance on other reservations, and some days ago he sent policemen down here to forbid it. He now hears it is still going on and he has sent me to say that Mato, the messenger, must go away and the dance must stop.”

I could see the veins of his neck fill with hot blood as he listened, and when I had finished he said: “Are we dogs to be silenced by kicking! You say to the agent that the white men have beaten us and left us naked of every good thing, but they shall not take away our religion. I will not obey this command! I have said it!”

Here my father broke in, saying to me: “You yourself have told me that you saw among the white people dreams like this. Why do they seek to prevent us? You have read us the white man’s sacred Big Book, and you say it is full of medicine dreams. Why should we not dream also?”

I then replied: “I do not come commanding these things. It is the agent who says them. Do not blame me.”

The chief, who had regained his composure, interposed quietly: “My son, you are right. We should not blame you, but the one who sent you. Therefore I say take these words to the agent: ‘I will not give up the dance.’”

In the hope of persuading him, I asked: “Do you believe in the dance?”

“I do not know,” he replied. “I am watching, I am listening. It is like the white man’s religion—very wonderful and very difficult to believe. I wish to try it and see. The white men are very wise, yet their preachers say that the sun stood still for Joshua, and Christ, their great Medicine Man, healed the lame and raised the dead.”

“But that was long ago,” I hastened to say.

“If such wonders happened then they can happen now,” he answered. Then he passionately broke forth: “I desire this new earth. My people are in despair, their hearts are utterly gone. We need help. My warriors will soon be like the Chinaman at the fort, fit only to wash windowpanes. Our rations are being cut off. What is there to look forward to? Nothing. I saw in the east many poor people. They worked very hard and wore ragged clothes. All were not rich and happy. Among the white men my people would be only other poor people, ragged and hungry, creeping about, eating scraps of food like hungry curs. I fear for them, therefore my ears are open to the words of this new religion which assures me that the old world—the world of my fathers—is to return. You say the agent is displeased. Is there anything I can do which does not displease him? The white men have their religion—they pray and sing. Why should not we sing if we have heart to do so? Go ask him if he is afraid that the Messiah has come of a truth, and that the white man is to be swept away.”

“He thinks it is a war dance,” I said. “He is afraid it will stir up strife.”

“Go tell him what you have seen. Say to him that it is a peaceful dance. There are no weapons here; there is no talk of fighting. It is a magical prayer. Mato says those who lie out there are with the spirits. You heard them tell what they saw. If these tales are true and if we could all be as they, then would the white man’s world indeed vanish like smoke and the pasture of the buffalo come again. It is strange—that I know—but the white man’s religion is also very hard to believe. The priest will tell you stories just as wonderful, and the preacher, too. Their Messiah was born in a stable among cattle; ours appears among the mountains. Their Christ rose from the dead. So does ours. Their Christ came to the poor people, so they say. Are we so despised of God that we cannot have our Messiah, too? I do not say all this is true, I only wish to test it and see.”

I could see that his clear mind could not accept the new religion, yet his heart desired it deeply. Once he had said: “I do not understand your Christ and his teaching. I must have time to think; I will not be pushed into it,” and as he had often reproved his people for saying yes to everything the white man said, so now he was equally cautious, only he was older, with a deeper longing to be comforted.

My task was only half completed and I said: “Chief, the agent told me to say to you, ‘Put Mato away.’ I beg you to come with me and meet the agent and explain to him the meaning of the dance, and then maybe he will not insist on this inhospitable thing.”

The chief’s face grew very stern. “The agent is a dog! He insults me. I will not see him! If he wishes to talk with me let him come here. I am waiting.”

My father made me a sign to go, and I went away. I could hear them conversing in low voices, but I could not understand what they said. At last my father called, and I went in again.

The chief looked less grim of lip and said to me, “Very well, Mato will go to-night.”

“Good,” I said. “At ten o’clock to-night Bull Head and I will come to take them across the river.”

My father and I went out and left him sitting alone.

When I returned at ten o’clock with Bull Head the chief’s lodge was filled with people. The women were weeping and the men were sullen. As I entered the tepee Mato was speaking. The chief sat smoking, with his eyes fixed on the floor. The priest was saying:

“You see how it is! The red man can keep nothing from the white man, who is jealous even of our religion. Washington would deprive us of our dreams. The agent is a wolf. Nevertheless, I will go, for my mission here is fulfilled. I have spoken the words of the Father; I have taught you the ceremonials. Henceforth you can test for yourself the truth of the word.” Then standing erect and in line the six messengers of the Messiah lifted the palms of their hands toward the west and prayed silently. A little later they began to sing this song:

“My children take this road,

My children go this way,

Says our Saviour.

It is a goodly road,

Says the Father;

It leads to joyous lands,

Says the Father.”

As they sang the people began to cry out, “Stay and tell us more,” but Mato led the way out of the lodge.

As I stood at the door, ready to follow him, the chief stood upon his feet, with a look on his face which silenced every one who saw it; it was fierce, yet it was exalted. Holding his pipe in his outstretched hands, his beloved pipe which he had carried since his first chieftainship, he said: “Here break I my peace pipe. If this religion is true then there is no more war. If it is not true, then I wish to die as a warrior dies, fighting!” With a gesture he snapped the stem in pieces. All the people cried out, and with a heart cold with fear I went forth into the night.

My chief’s last war with the white invader had begun.

XII
THE CHIEF PROPOSES A TEST

Meanwhile the dance was going on not only among all the Sioux, but among the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Shoshone peoples, and the settlers of many states were greatly alarmed. They pretended to believe the ceremonial was warlike. They knew nothing of the songs or prayers. Cowboys, drunk and desiring a little amusement, raced into the border towns shouting, “The Sioux are on the warpath!” and whole settlements, frenzied with fear, fled to the east, crying loudly for the government to send troops. “Stop this outbreak,” became the demand.

All this pressure and excitement made our situation worse. Those who believed said, “You see how it is, the white people are afraid of our religion; they are seeking to prevent the coming of the new world”; and those reckless ones who were willing to fight cried out: “Make ready. Let us war!”

Letters and telegrams poured in upon the agent at the Standing Rock, asking for a true statement of affairs. To all these he replied, “There is no danger, these Indians are peaceful”; but he took occasion in his answers to defame my chief.

In this he overshot his mark, for in calling The Sitting Bull a man of no force, a liar, and a coward, he became unreasonable. To fear a man so small and mean was childish. He also misstated the religion of the dance. He sneered at my father and others as “Indians lately developed into medicine men,” and ended by saying, “The Sitting Bull is making rebellion among his people.” Forgetting all the favorable reports he had many times made of my chief, he falsely said, “The Sitting Bull has been a disturbing element ever since his return in 1883.”

What could such a man know of the despair into which my people had fallen? He was hard, unimaginative, and jealous of his authority. He was also a bigot and it is hard for anyone not a poet or philosopher to be just to a people holding a different view of the world. Race hatred and religious prejudices stand like walls between the red man and the white. The Sioux cannot comprehend the priest and the priest will not tolerate the Sioux. Our agent became angry, arrogant, and unreasonable. He felt that his government was in question. His pride was hurt.

For a few days after I reported the departure of Mato all was quiet and the agent believed that the frenzy was over so far as his wards were concerned. He was only anxious that The Sitting Bull and his followers should not know how deeply their dances had stirred the settlements. Nevertheless, the chief knew, and it helped him to retain some faith in the magic he was testing. He did not refer to the breaking of his peace pipe, but he declined to give up the dance.

To his friend, John Carignan, the teacher, he said: “The agent complains that I feed my cattle to those who come to dance. What does it matter? If the buffalo come back I will not need them. If the new religion is a lie then I do not care to raise cattle. The Great Spirit has sent me a message. He has said, ‘If you wish to live join the dance I have given.’ Whether this message is true or not I cannot yet tell. I am seeking proof.”

Against the bitter words of the agent I will put the words of John Carignan, who kept the school near The Sitting Bull’s home. This man speaks our language. “I knew the chief well,” he said, “and I saw no evil in him. He was an Indian, but I can’t blame him for that.”

During this troublesome period my chief went often to see the teacher of his children. Jack was the one white man with whom he could talk freely, and together they argued upon the new religion. Jack liked my chief and told me so one day as we were discussing the agent’s attitude toward the dance. “Often the chief came to eat with my family and he has always borne himself with dignity and honor. I have always found him considerate and unassuming.”

“Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me,” my chief said. “The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own? Why does the agent seek to take away our religion? My race is dying. Our God will soon die with us. If this new religion is not true, then what does it matter? I do not know what to believe. If I could dream like others and visit the spirit land myself, then it would be easy for me to believe, but the trance does not come to me. It passes me by. I help others to see their dead, but I am not aided.”

“That is it precisely,” replied the teacher. “See the kind of men who go into the trance. Your strong, clear-headed men do not believe.”

“That is true,” the chief admitted, “but I am hoping some of my head men may yet enter the trance. Perhaps we do not know how to prepare the way.”

By this he meant that they had not learned how to hypnotize, for that is what the dance became. It was like a meeting of spiritualists who sit for visions. It was like the revival meetings of the Free Methodists or the old-time Shakers or Quakers. My friend Davies wrote me a long letter wherein he said: “It is foolish, as you say, but no more absurd to my mind than scores of other forms of religious ecstasy. My advice is let it run; it will wear itself out. Movements of this kind grow by opposition.”

All that he said was true, but, like the chief, I could not help hoping something would happen, for when they sang their songs warmed my heart and made my learning of little weight. The painted arrows, the fluttering feathers, the symbolic figures—every little thing had its appeal to me. When they raised their quivering palms in the air and cried to the Messiah in the west, I could scarcely restrain myself from joining in their supplication. This may seem strange, but it is true and you will never comprehend this last despairing cry of my race if I do not tell you the truth.

We believed in what we were. We had the pride of race. We were fulfilling our destiny as hunters and freemen. Do you think that in ten years you can make my proud people bow the neck to the scourge of a white man’s daily hatred? Is the Great Spirit a bungler? Does he draw a figure on the earth, only to wipe it away as a child writes upon a slate?

“Why are we so thrust upon and degraded? It must be that we have angered the Great Spirit. We must go back to the point wherein our old trail is found,” so my father argued.

The line that divides the mysterious and the commonplace is very slender, in the minds of my people. You do not realize that. They take up a cartridge. How wonderful it is! How is it made? A knife—what gives the point its gleam and its spring? The grass blade, what causes it to thrust from the earth? The clouds, where do they go—what are they? To the west of us is the Crow country; beyond that, who knows? You must put yourself in the place of those who think in this way before you judge them harshly. Many of these things I now understand, but I do not know why men are born and why they die. I do not know why the sun brings forth the grass.

My chief comprehended more than most men of his tribe, but to him the world was just as mysterious as to me. It did him no good to study the white man’s religions. They were so many and so contradictory that he was confused. He had always been a prayerful man—and had kept the Sun Dance, and all the ceremonials of the Uncapappas carefully. He was a grave soul, doing nothing thoughtlessly. He always asked the Great Spirit for guidance, yet he was never a medicine man, as the white men say. He did not become so during this dance. He helped to hypnotize the dancers, but so did others; that did not mean that they were priests or medicine men—it only meant they had the power to induce these trances.

It was a time of great bewilderment, of question and of doubt. No one thought of the present; all were dreaming of the past, hoping to bring the past. The future was black chaos unless the Great Spirit should restore their world of the buffalo.

The dance went on with steadily growing excitement. The autumn remained very mild and favorable to the ceremony, and yet there were fewer people in it than the agent supposed. Those most active continued to be the mourners. Those who had lost children crowded to the dance, as white people go to spiritualistic seances, in the hope of touching the hands of their babes and hearing the voices of their daughters. They sincerely believed that they met their dead and they deeply resented the brutal order of the agent who would keep them from this sweet reunion.

It was deeply moving to look upon their happy faces as they stood and called in piercing voices: “I saw my child—my little son. He was playing with his small bow and arrows. I called him and he ran to me. He was very happy with his grandfather. The sun was shining on the flowers and no one was hungry. My boy clung to my hand. I did not wish to come back. Oh, teach me the way to go again!”

I think the number of those who believed that the new world of the buffalo was coming, that the white man would be swept away, were few, but hundreds considered it possible to go to the spirit land and see those who were dead, and they resented, as my chief, the interference of the government. There was nothing worth while left in the world but this, and they used bitter words when they were commanded to lay this comforting faith aside. “Why should our spirit meetings be taken from us?” they asked of me.

In spite of the wind, the dust, and the blazing October sun, a veil of mysterious passion lay over the camp. The children were withdrawn from school to participate in the worship. Nothing else was talked of. During the day, as the old chiefs counciled, the women gathered together and told their experiences. There were deceivers among those who took part in this, and many who were self-deceived, but for the most part they were in deadly earnestness; the exultation on their faces could not be simulated. They moved in a cloud of joyous memories, with no care, no thought of the Great Father’s commands. They were borne above all other considerations but this—“How may we bring back the vanished world of the fathers?”

Up at the agent’s office was an absolutely different world. There hate and cynical coarseness ruled. To go from the dance to the agent was a bitter experience for me. I was forced into deception. No one dared to speak of the dance, except in terms of laughter or disbelief. All the renegades in the pay of the government joined in the jests and told ribald stories of the chief and of the ceremonies. They could not understand what it meant. As for me, I said little, but I foresaw trouble for my people and sorrow for myself.

The chief clerk hated me and all Indians. He was a most capable man, but sour and sullen to everyone who did not appeal to him. He had no children, no wife, and no faith. His voice was a snarl, his face a chill wind. He never spoke to an Indian that he did not curse. The agent was not so, but he was a zealot impatient of the old, eager to make a record for himself and the post. Loyal to the white man’s ideal, he was unsympathetic and harsh and materialistic in dealing with the traditional prejudices of my race.

He sent for Jack, the teacher, and asked him to come up and talk with him. “Tell me all about it,” he said, “What is the meaning of it?”

In reply Jack said, soberly: “They are very much in earnest about this new religion of theirs, but they are peaceable. The Sitting Bull talked with me a long time yesterday, and I found it a hard matter to meet his arguments, which he bases on the miracles of the Bible. The dancers are told to lay aside all that the white man has made and fix their minds on what they wish to see most of all. They go into a trance and lie for hours. When they wake they are very happy. They come and tell me their dreams and some of them are very beautiful. My advice is to let them alone. It is a craze like the old-fashioned Methodist revival. It will die out as winter comes on.”

This testimony by a man who understood our language and was in daily contact with The Sitting Bull band led the agent to pursue a calmer course. He decided to wait the ebbing of the excitement.

Unfortunately, a long letter he had written to Washington about “the Messiah craze” was given to the reporters, and the daily papers were instantly filled with black headlines introducing foolish and false accounts of what was taking place. Writers hurried to the Standing Rock and wired alarming reports of what they heard, and all this reacted unfavorably upon the dancers.

The agent then laid the burden of the blame upon my chief. “He is a reactionary,” he said; “he is a disturber and has been from the first. He has opposed every treaty and has insisted at all times on being treated as a chief,” and in all his letters and talks he continued to speak ill of him.

He sent word by me and by Jack, saying to The Sitting Bull: “Come to the agency. I want to talk with you. Stop this foolish dance and come here and camp for a while where I can talk with you. The white people are alarmed and you must stop this dance.”

The chief, embittered by the agent’s attack upon him, refused to go to the Standing Rock. “I am not a dog to be whistled at. I will not go to the agent to be insulted and beaten,” and he called his old guard of “Silent Eaters” around him. “The agent threatens to imprison me and break up the dance. If he comes to fight he will find us ready.”

Day by day the feeling between the agency and its police on the one side, and the chief and the dancers on the other, got more alarming, and the agent was obliged to send many telegrams to Washington and the outside world to quiet the fears of the settlers, and at last he decided to go down to Rock Creek and see for himself what was going on. He should have done so before.

He asked me to go as interpreter, and this I did, but very reluctantly, for it put me too much on his side.

He planned to come upon the scene of the dance suddenly, and many were dancing as we rode up to the outer circle of lodges. The word went about that the agent was come, but no one stopped dancing on that account. They were too much in earnest to give heed to any authority. Some of those to whom he called replied with words of contempt, defying his command, and I, who knew the terrible power of the President’s army, trembled as I saw the face of the agent blacken.

“What foolery!” he said to me. “This has got to stop! Go tell The Sitting Bull to come to me.”

I made my way to where the chief sat, and told him what the agent had demanded.

I could see that he associated me with the renegades who fawned upon the agent, and he listened to what I said with cold, stern face. I pleaded with him to do as he was commanded. I informed him of the fury of fear which had fallen upon the settlers and I warned him that the soldiers would come to put a stop to the dance.

To all this he made no reply other than to say: “Since the agent has come to see me, tell him I will talk with him in the morning. I am busy now. I cannot leave the dance.”

The agent was furious when I told him this, and as we drove off down to the school muttered a threat, “I’ll make him suffer for this, the insolent old dog.” We found Carignan, the teacher, almost alone at the school. The Sitting Bull had said: “If this religion is true, then it is more important than your books,” and had told his people to withdraw their children from their studies. “If the white man’s world is coming to an end, of what use is it to learn his ways?” he argued.

To Carignan the agent talked freely of the chief. “He must be brought low,” he declared, wrathfully. “His power must be broken. I will see him in the morning and give him one more chance to quit peaceably. If he does not I will arrest him. He will find he can’t run this reservation.”

To this Carignan replied: “I don’t think he means to make trouble, but he is profoundly interested in this new religion. I think he will yield to reason.”

Scouts

These Indian scouts are on the trail of a Chiricahua Apache named Massai, famous in the ’nineties as the wildest and most cruel of the Apaches. So crooked was Massai’s trail that even the Indians themselves could not follow it.

On the Little Big Horn

When Cheschapah, son of the aged Crow chief, Pounded Meat, became a medicine man and aspired to leadership of the tribe, a party of Sioux came on a visit to the Crows. Fearing that the feasting and eloquence of Cheschapah might turn their thoughts to war, troops were sent to bring the visitors home. The Sioux started for home meekly enough, but Cheschapah, with a yelling swarm of his young friends, began to buzz about the column, threatening to attack the troopers who had so rudely broken up their dinner party, and did not desist even when the soldiers had forded the river. Whereupon the chief of the Crow police rode out to Cheschapah, commanding him to turn back, and received for an answer an insult that with Indians calls for blood. But for old chief Pounded Meat, who then rode out to his son and cowed him with a last flare of command, firing would have begun then and there.

There had already been a great deal of talk of the War Department sending someone to quiet the disturbance, and this the agent did not relish. He had been an Indian agent for many years and prided himself on knowing how to handle his people, and was especially anxious to keep the chief authority entirely in his own hands. Poor and despised as The Sitting Bull had become, even the agent considered it an honor to arrest and imprison him. Furthermore, I could see that he did not care to attempt this except as a last resort.

The following morning the agent, Carignan, and myself went up to see The Sitting Bull. He was in his tepee, smoking beside a small smoldering fire. He was very cold and quiet, and looked tired and weak. His hair parted in the middle and the sad look of his face made him resemble an old woman. To me he was only a tragic wraith of his former self. His eyes were dull and heavy. He was a type of my vanishing race as he sat there, and my heart went out to him.

He greeted us with a low word and shook hands. We all sat about in the lodge. Few people were stirring.

“Tell the chief I have come to talk with him about this dance,” began the agent.

I told the chief, and he said: “Speak on, my ears are open.”

“Tell him I hear he is dancing this foolish dance almost every day, making his people tired, so that they neglect their cattle and have taken their children from school. Tell him that all the people are getting excited. Therefore, Washington says the dance must stop!” continued the agent.

I told the chief this. His face did not change, but his eyes fired a little. “Are the white people afraid of this new religion? Why do they wish to stop it?” he scornfully asked, in answer.

“Say to him that I do not fear the dance—I consider it foolish—but I do not want him wasting the energies of the people. He must stop it at once!”

To this the chief replied: “I am a reasonable man and a peacemaker. I do not seek trouble, but my people take comfort in this dance. They have lost many dear ones and in this dance they see them again. Whether it is true or not I have not yet made up my mind, but my people believe in it and I see no harm in it.” Here he paused for a moment. “I have a proposition to make to you,” he said firmly. “This new religion came to me from the Brulé Reservation; they got it from the west. The Mato and Kios claim to have seen the Messiah. Let us two, you and I, set forth together with intent to trail down this story of the Messiah. If, when we reach the last tribe in the land where the story originated, they cannot show us the Messiah or give us satisfactory proof, then we will return and I will tell my people that they have been too credulous. This report will end the dance forever. It will not do to order my people to stop; that will make them sure the dance is true magic.”

The chief was very serious in this offer. He knew that he could not, by merely ordering it, stop the dance; but if he should go on this journey with the agent and make diligent inquiry, then he could on his return speak with authority. He made this offer as one reasonable man to another, and, had the agent met him halfway or even permitted him to send my father or Slohan, the final tragedy might have been averted, but the agent was too angry now to parley. His answer was contemptuous.

“Tell him I refuse to consider that. It is as crazy as the dance. It would only be a waste of time.”

I urged him to accept, for in the months to follow the excitement would die out, but he would not listen.

“I will not consider it. It would be like trying to catch up the wind that blew last year. I do not care to argue here. Tell him to come to my house to-morrow and I will give him a night and a day to prove to me that he is not a foolish old man, chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.”

To this the chief replied: “Are there miracles only in the white man’s religion? I hear you believe there was once a great flood and all the people were drowned but a man and a woman, who took all the animals, male and female, into a big steamboat. When did this happen? How do you know it? Is the ghost dance more foolish? Are my people to be without a religion because it does not please the white man?”

To this the agent answered, impatiently: “I refuse to debate. I have orders to stop the dance, and these orders must be carried out. Tell him to come to the agency to-morrow and we will talk it out there. I can’t do it now.”

To my surprise, the chief pacifically responded: “I will come. My people are few and feeble, I do not wish to make trouble. Let us speak wisely in this matter. You are angry now and my people are excited. I will come and we will talk quietly together.”

But the faces of the old guard were dark, and Black Bull, who stood near, cried out, saying: “Let us alone. We will not give up the dance. We are afraid. Send the coyote away! Is The Sitting Bull afraid?”

This touched the chief to the quick, and he said, “I am not, but I do not desire trouble.”

My father spoke and said: “Do not go. The white man will imprison you if you do.”

Black Bull again shouted: “The white man is a liar! His tongue is double. He has set a trap. Will you walk into it?”

The chief turned to me. “Is this true? Have they talked of putting me in prison?”

I could not deny this, and while I sat in silence, seeking words which would not inflame him, Catch the Bear said: “I have heard that they have planned to kill you. Do not go to the agency.”

The chief was now convinced that the agent and myself had come to entice him into a snare. He rose, and his face took on the warrior’s lionlike look as he said: “I will not go to the agency. I will not die in prison. If I am to die it will be here, as a soldier, on the spot where I was born.”

Even then the agent could have won him by pacific speech, but he too was angry, and he said: “I give you till to-morrow morning to decide. If you do not come to the agency I will send the police and take you.” He then went back to the school.

To Carignan he said, as he got into his wagon: “You had better send all your people up to the post. I am going to arrest The Sitting Bull to-night and it may make trouble,” and in this spirit he drove away.

XIII
THE CHIEF PLANS A JOURNEY

That was a dark night in The Sitting Bull’s camp. The women were weeping and the men, with faces sullen and fierce, gathered in solemn council. Black Wolf, Catch the Bear and The Two Strike loudly advocated resistance, their hot hearts aflame, but the chief kept on smoking his pipe, which is the sign of indecision. He was still the peacemaker and concerned over the welfare of his people.

When he spoke he said: “To fight now is to die. The white man will crush us like flies. I know that for I have seen his armies. The happy hunting grounds are as near to me as to any of you, but I am not ready to die. I have thought deeply over the matter, and I have resolved not to fight, for unless we intend to kill all our children and so leave no one to follow us, the white man will visit his hate on those who remain. If the agent comes with his renegades to arrest me I will resist to the death, but if the soldiers come for me I will go with them, for they have the hearts of warriors and know how to treat a chief. This is my decision; but whatever comes, let no one interfere in my behalf, for to do so would only mean bloodshed, and that will do no good. I am your head—they will visit their punishment on me. I will meet them alone.”

Thereupon he spoke to his “Silent Eaters” and said: “Put sentinels on the hills and keep watch on all that is done at the agency. Let no spy approach us.”

The dance went on after that in a sort of frenzy, as if desperate by need. The cries of those who prayed were heart-breaking to hear. “O Great Spirit, save us; bring the happy land quickly, ere the white man slays us,” this they wailed over and over again, for the days were fleet and the wolves of winter near.

When the chief did not appear as he had promised, then the agent drew a dead line between the agency and the camp, and brought into play the forces of hunger and cold. He sent word to all the Grand River people, commanding them to move up and go into permanent camp near the agency. “Those who do not come will be cut off from their rations.” And to his clerk he said: “That will show the old chief’s followers where they stand.”

The effect of this order cannot be overstated. The north wind was now keen, and the people had little meat and no meal. They were dependent on the agency issue for their daily food. They were forbidden to leave the reservation to hunt and there was very little game left anywhere. This order drew the line sharply between those who had faith in the dance and those who only pretended to sympathize with it. To remain was to starve and freeze; to go was to acknowledge the final supremacy of the white man and all he stood for. Such was the desolating decision thrust upon them.

When the order reached The Sitting Bull’s camp the dancers were thrown into confusion. A hurried council was called and the leaders were soon decided on the question of giving up the dance. Most of them at once said: “It is of no use. The Great Spirit has not heard us. There is but one thing to do. Let us obey the agent. To fight is foolish.”

There were others who said: “What does a few months of life in captivity matter? Let us dance, and if the white man comes to fight let us all die like braves.” And as they spoke the women began to sing old battle songs, urging resistance to the invaders. “We can starve and die, for when we die we go to the happy land. A little pain and all is over. Let us fight!”

As soon as the chief had thought the matter out he said: “So long as I have cattle or money you shall be fed,” but he had little left. He had already given all he had.

I do not know the mind of my chief at this point. I think that at times when his indignation mounted high he, too, said: “Let us fight to the death. The happy hunting grounds are near. They await us. Why do we continue in our hunger and despair?” And then, as some good man spoke to him, recalled to him the friends he had among the palefaces, he had a gleam of hope, and recalled his bitter words.

That he was not afraid I know. Death held nothing appalling. Life offered little. Why should he fear to die? He was fifty-six years old and his days were nearly done. Furthermore, he could not look into the future without pain, for he saw his people slaves or vagabonds among an alien race.

During these weeks fear and hate of him revived among the settlers in all the Western states and the papers were filled with demands for his death. The near-by white settlers called loudly for troops, and some of those to the north went so far as to patrol the borders of the reservation in order to meet the warriors of The Sitting Bull when they broke forth in war array. They were glad of an excuse to utter their charges against us as cumberers of the earth, which they desired. Feeling the millions of their fellows back of them and knowing that troops were near, they were very brave.

In spite of the agent’s cruel order, a large number of the sternest warriors of the Uncapappas remained at Rock Creek, and when he saw this he was afraid to carry out his plan for arresting the chief. With intent to league himself with cold and snow, he waited for winter to fall, keeping vigilant eye on the War Department, lest the Secretary should steal away the honor of arresting the chief. He was not anxious to invite interference on the part of the military. “I can take care of the reservation,” he repeated to the commander of the post.

The chief understood his feeling and said to my father: “I will obey the orders of the great war chief, but I will not be ordered about by this agent. He has used me like a dog. The Great Father at Washington said to me: ‘Sitting Bull, you are the head of the Sioux nation, and I hold you responsible for the conduct of your people. Keep the peace.’ I promised him that I would do this, but the agent has always turned his back to me or has thrown words at me that are like stones or mud. He has lied about me and his letters have made the settlers angry. He now wishes to shut me up merely that he can smile and say: ‘I am a great chief; I have conquered The Sitting Bull.’ This I will not permit him to do.”

Therefore, his armed sentries continued to ride the buttes surrounding the camp. No one could come within twenty miles of his camp without seeing shadowy horsemen appear and disappear on the high hills. Every blanket concealed a weapon, while the dance went on almost day and night, and one by one his cattle were killed and eaten, till at last all were gone.

My own position became each day more intolerable. Within my heart opposing passions warred. Here were my brothers about to fight their last battle—persisting in a defiance which was as insane as their religion. I could not deceive myself. The instant I returned to the white men and the sight of my books I acknowledged the tragic desperation of my people. The dance became merely another of the religious frenzies which wise men say have attacked the human race, at intervals, for ten thousand years. A letter from The Blackbird said: “Keep away, Philip. Don’t mix in that mess. You can do no good. Your letter makes it evident that a tragic end is inevitable. You have done all you can. Throw in your lot with the white man. On the whole, the white man has the organization for the new conditions. To die with your people would be superb, but it would be wasteful. Don’t do it, my boy. Use your best influence against violence, but avoid danger. There is work for you to do in helping your people bridge the chasm between their mode of life and ours.”

I told him that I was already denounced as a coward and a traitor to my race. He replied: “No matter; ten years from now those who are still alive will see you in the light of a wise leader.” And in the spirit of this letter I sent word to my chief, saying that it was best to accept the agent’s rule.

The department did not like to be called rash; it feared the influence of the Indians’ friends in the East and so it hesitated, and these days of waiting were days of torture to us all. I could not look any man in the face. I went about my duties as if I, too, were in a trance. I really could have been called a spy, for when one of the scouts of my father asked me what was going on at the agency I told him I was under suspicion by both races and knew not where to turn for comfort.

The agent required my presence in his office each day, and to see my father and my chief meant a night ride of nearly eighty miles. This I dared not attempt, for the chief now reasoned that I had surely gone over to the enemy and I was certain he would not let me come to him. I was despised and rejected of both white man and red man, and had no one to comfort me.

The weather continued mild. Each day I searched the sky for signs of a storm. If only a tempest of snow would sweep over us it would stop the dancing, it would cool the fury of anger, and yet when the hate and contempt of the white man broke forth in my presence I hoped that my chief would fight. Better to die like the lion than live like a trapped wolf.

Meanwhile the chief and his little band continued to test the new religion, but the Chief was not satisfied.

“Why do these visions come only to the women and weak men? Why do they not come to my ‘Silent Eaters?’ Why does it not happen that I can go and see these things and return?”

He was growing weary of his prison and longed for the bright world where the spirits were. At last he came to a great resolution. He determined to leave the reservation and visit The Kicking Bear in order to learn more of the Messiah. He wished to know whether any new revelation had been made to other tribes. He had exhausted the value of the phenomena in his own camp and remained unconvinced.

He said: “The agent is going to send for me soon. I may go to the agency and I may not. No matter. You must not get into trouble on my account.”

Can you imagine what it means to a chief, when his proud, free race sinks to the position of beggars and children, forbidden to trade, forbidden to hunt, forbidden to make presents, ordered into line like cattle, debarred from amusement like convicts, and condemned to wear the white man’s cast-off clothing?

“If this religion is true, then we may hope. If it is not, then all is over,” he said. “I will myself go seek those who saw the wonder worker. Perhaps I shall find him and he will take pity on us and save us from destruction. Wait patiently till I return, for then you will know the truth.”

He arranged to leave at daybreak, and his guard was to follow him later to see that he was not mistreated. There were not many of the “Silent Eaters” now, but they were ready to go where he went, and die with him if need rose.

I do not pretend to follow the turnings of his mind, but I think he had resolved to leave the reservation even at the risk of being arrested and brought back by the police, considering that the word and the promise he sought to verify were worth more than anything else on the earth.

It must have been in some such mood that he prepared for his long journey, while still the dance went on, and the white people accused him of leading a revolt.

XIV
THE DEATH OF THE CHIEF

The news of the chief’s intended departure, which was brought to the agent by a spy, decided him to act at once. In accordance with instructions from the department he went to Colonel Drum, the commander of the garrison, and arranged to seize the chief before he rose the next morning. The native police were to make the arrest, but the troops were to be within supporting distance and to share in the honor!

The leaders of the police were enemies of the chief. The Shave Head was especially malignant. The reason was this: When The Sitting Bull visited the Crows in 1884 Shave Head accompanied him. During a dance one night the Crows grossly insulted the visitors and Shave Head wished to kill them, but the chief counseled mild speaking. “We must not quarrel,” he said, and went away. Shave Head was very angry, and for his forbearance called The Sitting Bull a coward, when, as a matter of fact, a single gesture by this reckless fool might have involved the whole camp in an uproar. Thereafter he lost no opportunity for insulting and annoying the chief, who bore it patiently, knowing that a harsh word in reply would only make matters worse.

Big Head, the lieutenant of police, was also opposed to the chief; in truth the entire force was carefully chosen from those hangers-on at the agency or from the Yanktonaise, ready, under the white man’s pay, to act against the chief, whose contempt for such traitors and weaklings was well known. In the days of The Sitting Bull’s power these factions existed. The Gall and The Gray Bear were jealous of his great fame, although The Gall never became actually disloyal. The Gray Bear did and lost no chance of doing his old chief harm. It is a disgraceful thing to say of my people, but some of them, for a new uniform and twenty dollars, would kill their blood relatives. Witness the so-called “scouts” of the army in Arizona.

My father says that The Sitting Bull advised against all violence, but I must admit that his supporters were armed and that they had sworn to protect him against mistreatment. Perhaps he accepted their loyalty gratefully, and when he decided to go forth on his search for the Messiah they asked to go with him in a body.

It would not seem strange to me if he had decided never to be taken from his people alive.

He was growing old, and to suffer exile would be to die lingeringly. How much he knew of the agent’s plan to imprison him I do not know, but I have heard him assert his right (which the commissioner had orally given him) to come and go as any other citizen of the state. As chief man of his nation he considered it a gross injustice to be told, “You shall not cross this line.” “So long as I go peaceably and feed myself I do not see what right the agent has to object. Washington has said it and I go.”

On the night before his departure he addressed the “Silent Eaters.” “Be peaceful, do nothing harsh,” he said; “wait for my return. I go to visit Mato. Perhaps he has a new message for us. Perhaps he has again visited the Messiah. If he has not, then we will go together.”

He was at the dance till midnight and, being weary was still sleeping soundly when just before dawn Bull Head and seven other renegades gathered silently round his bed.

As Bull Head laid a hand on him the chief opened his eyes and quietly asked. “What do you want?”

“Be silent. The agent wants you to come to him,” Bull Head replied in a low voice. “Get up quickly.”

The chief lay for a time in thought. He saw the armed men and knew them to be enemies. Across the room his wife was sleeping with her children. Resistance would mean death. He did not wish to die in her presence.

“Very well,” he said, calmly, “I will go.” He partly rose. “But I must dress. It is cold, I wish to wear my new overcoat. Let me wake my wife to fetch it.”

Bull Head, less savage than Shave Head, said: “Good. We will wait,” but as the wife realized what these men had come to do she began to wail, “They will take him away,” and this wakened the children, who also began to cry.

Soon many feet were heard running rapidly. Catching up their blankets and concealing their rifles beneath their garments, the “Silent Eaters” came hurrying to the rescue, not knowing what was happening, but ready for battle.

The whole camp was in a tumult before Bull Head could rush The Sitting Bull to the threshold.

One of the first of the old guard was The Bear Catcher, a man of fiery resolution, who cried out in a loud voice: “They are taking our chief. Let us prevent them.”

Bull Head replied: “The agent has ordered it. Keep away!”

Bear Catcher again cried: “Let us stop this thing,” and, flinging aside his blanket, leveled his rifle at Bull Head and fired. The renegade fell, but in falling shot the chief. At almost the same instant Shave Head, recreant dog, seized the opportunity to put a bullet into the great heart of my chief, who fell and died without speaking a word, while the battle went on above his prostrate body.

For a time nothing could be heard but the shouts of the warring ones and the crack of their guns. When it was ended eight of the “Silent Eaters” lay dead beside their chief, and with them fell four renegades who went to their tragic end under a mistaken call of duty—to be forever execrated for slaying their chief at the white man’s command.

Taking shelter in the house, the other traitors killed the mute son of the chief and were about to be burned out by the “Silent Eaters” when the sound of a cannon on the hill announced the coming of the soldiers. The renegades were saved by the bluecoats.

---

It is well that the body of my chief fell into the hands of his honorable enemies, for it was being mutilated when the colonel interfered. There were Sioux warriors so misbegotten that they were ready to crush the dead lion’s helpless head, but the white commander of the garrison took every precaution that the bones of the chief should lie undisturbed in death.

The post surgeon at Fort Yates received the body and prepared it for burial. In the afternoon of the following day it was sewn up in canvas and placed in a coffin and buried in the northeast corner of the military cemetery, without ceremony and with few to mourn, though far away my people were waiting in unappeasable grief over the passing of their great leader.

And so it is that in spite of vandal white men and traitorous reds the dust of my chieftain lies undisturbed in a neglected corner of a drear little military graveyard, near the Great Muddy River which was the eastern boundary of his lands. The sod is hot with untempered sun in summer, and piled with snow in winter, but in early spring the wild roses bloom on the primeval sod above his bones. No hand cares for the grave, no one visits it, and yet, nevertheless, the name written on that whitewashed board is secure on the walls of the red man’s pantheon, together with that of Red Jacket and Tecumseh, Osceola and Black Hawk. Civilization marches above his face, but the heel of the oppressor cannot wear from the record of his race the name of “Ta-tank-yo-tanka,” The Sitting Bull.

He epitomized the epic, tragic story of my kind. His life spanned the gulf between the days of our freedom and the death of every custom native to us. He saw the invader come and he watched the buffalo disappear. Within the half century of his conscious life he witnessed greater changes and comprehended more of my tribe’s tragic history than any other red man.

These are the words of my father, the chief of the “Silent Eaters,” and his voice was tremulous as he spoke them: “Ta-tank-yo-tanka was a great chief and a good man. He had nothing bad about him. He was ever peacemaker, and just and honorable in his dealings. He cared only for the good of his people. He was unselfish and careful of others. He will grow bigger like a mountain as he recedes into the past. He was chief among red men and we shall never see his like again. If the Great Spirit does not hate his red children, our Father is happy in the home of the spirits—the land of the returning buffalo.”

THE END