CHAPTER XIV. In the Sioux Camp
At a late hour in the evening, or rather at an early hour in the morning of the day that preceded the battle of Fort Phil Kearney, all was silent and still in Red Cloud's camp, which was located a few miles from the stockade. The Indians had kept up their dancing and shouting until almost ready to drop with fatigue, pluming themselves on victories won in bygone days, and panting for new scalps to be added to those already gained, by the utter annihilation of the soldiers of the Fort. At last they went into their tepees to dream of the triumph which Red Cloud promised them should be theirs before many suns had passed away. The wiping away of the Fort and the utter cleaning out of all the power of the whites, was looked upon as a certain thing by the Sioux, and all they waited for was an opportunity to use the power which they were thought to possess. And why should not the whites be cleaned out? They had come into that country without an invitation, were spreading themselves all through it, and now they proposed to build a road through their best hunting ground, which meant the thinning out of the buffalo—their only means of subsistence. All they asked of the whites was to go away and let them alone; but it seemed that the more land the whites had, the more they wanted. No place was safe for the Indian. His limits were growing smaller and smaller every day, and very soon he would find that he had no land he could call his own. Something must be done if they thought to lay their bones among their fathers', and the only way to do it was to declare battle and go upon the warpath. This was what the Sioux tribe and some of the Cheyennes had proposed to do.
When Indians are settled in their winter camp, and so far away from enemies of every description that there is no danger of being assaulted by them, it is the noisiest place that can be found on earth. Their days are passed in loitering around the fire, but the evenings are given over to pleasure. It is then that the dancers and story-tellers are in their element, and the noise of the tom-tom drowns all other sounds, except the whooping and yelling. It had been so in this camp until the day that the renegade chiefs, as Red Cloud called them, had signed a lease for that road; but the moment that happened, the winter camp had been changed into a war camp, and all the men in it were bent upon obtaining scalps and plunder. Then the social dancers and story-tellers were out of place, and no performance of any kind was indulged in except the scalp dance. The scalps were old, they had done duty over and over again, but that did not hinder them from being brought out whenever a warrior deemed it necessary. It happened so on this night, and the braves, having grown weary of telling what they meant to do when the soldiers came out to fight them, had passed into their lodges and gone to sleep.
The only two who did not care for slumber were a couple of youthful braves who sat on the ground outside of a tepee, talking over events which might occur at any moment; and what seemed strange, these Indians talked in whispers and in the English language and seemed to understand one another very readily. They had been so long unused to the Sioux language that they conversed in a foreign tongue as eagerly as white boys. It will be enough to say that one of them was Winged Arrow, and the other was a classmate of his, who had been to Carlisle with him. It was plain that, although they were Indians born and bred, they did not at all like the way that things were going. Obeying their fathers, they promptly left school and came home to join in the Indian outbreak, which they were assured was to be the final struggle to retain their lands and game as their fathers bequeathed it to them; and now that they were here to help "clean out" the whites and restore everything to the Indians as it was years ago, the only thing they saw toward accomplishing that object was the destruction of a little Fort, garrisoned by three hundred men, which alone stood in their way. Of course it was easy enough to capture the Fort, but what should be the next move on their part? Indians don't like to be killed any better than white men, and that something would happen before that Fort was taken was easy enough to be seen.
It will be observed too, that in their brief conversation which took place before they went to their tepees, the Indians did not address each other by the names that the tribes had given them. One was John Turner and the other was Reuben Robinson—the names by which they had been known at Carlisle. One was named after the janitor, as we have said, and the other was called after the gardener, a white man who thought the Indians were just about perfect. The boys called each other Jack and Rube, and to have heard them talk, any one who could not see them would have thought they were white boys sure enough.
"Say, Rube, you know that this thing don't look right to me," said John Turner (Winged Arrow), who sat with his elbows resting on his knees and his eyes fastened on the ground, "Here we have come all these miles to help the Indians in a hopeless war. I don't care a cent whether I come out of it or not."
"That is just the way I think, Jack," replied Rube. "We have lived among the white people for almost eight years, and yet we must turn around and kill them. I tell you I shall think of the old gardener every time I pull on them. That Lieutenant of yours is all right, because you gave him that letter. I wish I could find somebody to assist in the same way."
"I had to take my chances. I was roaming around just to see what the soldiers were doing, and I ran onto this fellow when I least expected it. He is a brave boy too, and I hope he will stay in the Fort."
So it seemed that Reuben had some "medicine" which he wanted to give to a soldier, under the impression that it would save the soldier's life should he chance to be wounded and fall into the hands of the Sioux. The boys had made this up between them while they were on the cars coming to their home. Each one had the letter their fathers had sent them, and they resolved that those letters should be their "medicine"—that if either of them were found upon a dead soldier he would be safe from mutilation; and if upon a wounded man, he should be taken and treated in their rude way until he was well, and then be released and free to return to his friends. It was as little as they could do to pay the white men for all the kindness they had received at their hands while attending school. This was proposed to John Turner's father, then a prominent Medicine Man in the tribe, and after some hesitation he agreed to it.
"You are bound to whip the whites anyway," said John, in arguing the case with him.
"Oh, yes, we are bound to whip them," said the Medicine Man.
"Well, then, what difference will it make by saving one or two lives? Let the letters save two lives, one a civilian and the other a soldier, and when that is done we will turn upon the whites and stay by you as long as one of them is left alive."
The Medicine Man finally agreed to this and it was so published in the village; and although some of the warriors looked daggers at them and said that any white man who fell into their hands should be punished to the full extent of Indian law, we have seen that Winged Arrow's letter once served its purpose.
"Those people must have wood pretty soon or they will freeze and starve to death," said Reuben. "Are you going out when the time comes?"
"I must. I must make the Indians believe that I am with them heart and soul. But there is one thing about it, Rube: I shall think that every soldier has some medicine about him, and not any of them will fall by my bullets."
"That is the way I shall do also. I really wish that this matter could be settled without a war. But every time we get a reservation fixed out to suit us, you will see some white man that wants some of it. Why can't they go away and let us alone?"
"That is not the white man's way of doing business. He wants to raise cattle, or he wants to dig for gold, or he wants some place to put his family, and the first thing we know he has the whole country. If Red Cloud should fail in his movement, and it looks to me now as though he were going to, it will be all up with us. You and I belong to a doomed race. The Indian will not survive the buffalo, and when he goes it is good-by to us."
"I am afraid that is so," said Reuben, getting upon his feet, "and I cannot find it in my heart to fight those white people either. All we have we owe to them. I remember what hard work I had to write a composition in English. Do you remember it?"
"I believe I do, and with what labor I tried to put my words in English, so that some one would not laugh at me. I shall always remember John Turner for that. He stood by me and helped me whenever I failed, and that is one thing that makes me as good an English scholar as I am to-day."
Reuben had evidently no more to say on the subject. Following an Indian's way, he turned and left John without uttering another word and went into his tepee, while John sat there on the ground occupied with his own thoughts. The hours flew by and yet he sat there without moving, and when at last the streaks of dawn appeared in the East he saw three Indians silently leave their lodges and take their way out over the prairie. These were the lookouts who had been appointed the night before to go and watch the soldiers and see that none of them left the Fort. On the summit of the nearest swell one of them sat down, drew his blanket over his head and the other two kept on out of sight.
"Those poor fellows do not know that every move they make is known here in camp," said Winged Arrow, slowly rising to an upright position. "As long as they stay there inside their stockade, they are all right; but the moment they organize a train to come out and get wood, that will be the last of some of them."
Winged Arrow, as we shall continue to call him, did not forget one practice he had learned among the whites, and that was to wash his hands and face. He always felt better for that, and he could not imagine why the Indians neglected it. This done, a pocket comb which he drew from some receptacle about him was brought into play, and before the Medicine Man appeared at his door, Winged Arrow was ready for anything that was to be done.
One who had seen the Medicine Man as he appeared before Winged Arrow at that moment would have wondered at his claiming that man for his father. Winged Arrow was an ideal Indian. His frank and open face, always destitute of paint, was one which could not be seen without a desire to take two looks at it, and he was tall and as athletic as if he had been to a training school all his life; but the man who opened the door of his tepee and stepped out was exactly his reverse in these respects. He was tall, as the majority of Indians were, but he was bent almost half over, as if he were suffering from that Indian complaint, rheumatism, and his face, that had been daubed with paint the night before, was fearful to look upon. But for all that, he seemed to think a good deal of Winged Arrow, and his commands went far and were studiously obeyed by all the members of the tribe. Giving Winged Arrow his letter as medicine was proof of his popularity with the tribe. A grunt by way of greeting was all that passed between them. The Medicine Man kept on his way, and Winged Arrow went into the tepee to get his breakfast.
The Indians are very different from white men in regard to their meals, each one breaking his fast whenever he feels the craving of his appetite. A pot, generally filled with meat and water, is placed on one side of the tepee, accompanied, if the man of the house be tolerably well off in the world, by a package of parfleche, which contains the Indian bread. If the bread is not there, the meat will do as well. A pile of ashes in the middle of the lodge tells where the meat is put to boil, and whenever an Indian is hungry he rakes together the buffalo chips, starts a blaze and puts on the pot; and when he gets too hungry to stand it any longer, he attacks the meat and eats until he is satisfied. Winged Arrow had all this to do himself, for it was too early for the women to be astir. As he sat waiting for his breakfast to be cooked, his thoughts wandered away to the school at Carlisle, and he wondered how many teachers there would have been willing to join him in his repast.
"There is not one," soliloquized the young savage. "Every one of them would turn up his nose at such a breakfast as this. And yet I am here to fight just for keeping my people in this position. Oh, why did not the whites stay in their own country?"
The smoke of the fire began to penetrate the tepee, until it was so thick as to be unbearable to any but an Indian. Winged Arrow waited until the meat was done and then, drawing his knife, proceeded to make as good a breakfast as he could out of boiled beef.