Other Day was a true friend of the whites; he looked it. He was a full-blood Indian, it is true, and the Indians respected and feared him, but his desire to forsake the barbarous teachings of his father inclined him towards the unsuspecting settlers.
In 1863 he was General Sibley’s most trusted and confidential scout. In the early outbreak Other Day manifested his loyalty to his white friends by risking his life in their defense, piloting sixty people through the river bottoms during the nights to a place of safety. He traveled with his charge in the night, and hid them in underbrush during the daytime. He was a true-hearted, kind man, with a red skin, who has gone to his reward in a land where there are no reds, no blacks, but where all are white.
Little Crow, who is one of the principal characters in this narrative, was an Indian of no mean ability. He was the commander-in-chief of the hostile tribes, and wielded a powerful influence among all the tribes of this great Sioux Nation. He was a powerful man, and felt his lordly position; was confident of final success, and very defiant at the outset. He had a penchant for notoriety in more ways than one. In dress he was peculiar, and could nearly always be found with some parts of a white man’s clothing. He was particularly conspicuous in the style of collar he wore; happy in the possession of one of the old-style standing collars, such as Daniel Webster and other old-time gentlemen bedecked themselves with. He also possessed a black silk neckerchief and a black frock coat, and on grand occasions wore both.
He had strongly marked features, and in studying the lineaments of his face one would not adjudge him a particularly bad Indian. As we had hundreds of these men in our custody, a good opportunity was offered while guarding them to try one’s gift as a reader of character as stamped in the face, but Little Crow proved an enigma. It was like a novice trying to separate good money from bad, an unprofitable and unsuccessful task. Little Crow said:
“It is impossible to make peace if we so desired. Did we ever do the most trifling thing, the whites would hang us. Now, we have been killing them by the hundreds in Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa, and I know if they get us into their hands they will hang every one of us. As for me, I will kill as many of them as I can, and fight them till I die. Do not think you will escape. There is not a band of Indians from the Redwood Agency to Big Stone Lake that has not had some of its members embroiled in this war. I tell you we must fight and perish together. A man is a fool and coward who thinks otherwise, and who will desert his nation at such a time. Disgrace not yourselves by a surrender to those who will hang you up like dogs; but die, if die you must, with arms in your hands, like warriors and braves of the Dakotas.”
In one of our battles we took some fine-looking bucks prisoners, and the soldiers were for scalping them at once, but we had a little “pow-wow” with them, and found them intelligent and well educated; they were students home on a vacation from Bishop Whipple’s school at Faribault, Minnesota, and said they were forced, much against their will, to go on the warpath; that they had not fired a bullet at the whites; that they fired blank cartridges because they felt friendly to the whites, and had no desire to kill them. There were three of them; we told them they could take their choice—be shot or enlist; they chose the latter, and went South with us, staying until the close of the Rebellion, and they displayed the courage of the born soldier.
Brevet Major General H. H. Sibley,
Commander in the field in 1862 and 1863 against the Sioux Indians.