CHAPTER XIII
INDIANS
In the year of 1886 Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux tribe got permission from the agent at Standing Rock Agency in North Dakota to make a visit to the Crow Agency in Montana to visit the Crow Indians.
So he collected about fifty Sioux warriors and made the trip, and went to the battle ground where General Custer and his army was massacred in the year 1876, which was a short distance from the Crow Agency. He asked the Crow agent for permission to have a war dance on the battle ground. He said he wanted to recall old times. The agent refused.
So sitting Bull collected a bunch of Crow warriors and had a party on the Little Horn River adjoining the battle ground. The party progressed very nicely until Sitting Bull got on his feet and declared he was the greatest warrior that ever lived, stating the fact that he had killed more white men and stolen more horses than any other chief living. That statement insulted the Crow chief and the party turned into a fight. Crazy Head, the Crow chief, pulled his knife, grabbed Sitting Bull by his long hair and throwed him down and made him smell his feet, which was the greatest insult one chief could offer another, as in the language of the Indian it made Sitting Bull a dog, which is the worst name an Indian can call anyone.
The party broke up, and the next night Sitting Bull, to get even, stole a bunch of Crow horses, and with his fifty warriors started back for the Sioux reservation.
But there was an old squaw man living with the Crows that was plenty smart in the line of stealing horses and he collected a bunch of Crows and followed Sitting Bull and overtook his party on the Little Horn River, and took the horses away from them and killed two Sioux bucks and scalped them. Sitting Bull and the rest of his party got away and beat it back to their reservation.
Now the Crows got very uneasy over this affair and were afraid the Sioux would go on the warpath and steal away from their reservation and come back and clean up on them. So the Crow chief, Crazy Head, called all the Crows together, which at that time was about 2,800, and made a blockade by putting all their lodges and tepees on a big fiat on the Little Horn River covering about 20 acres, and at night they put all their horses inside this enclosure, and put guards all around it at night. Also inside this enclosure about two hundred of these warriors had tom-toms and they beat them all night and sang war songs. I want to say here that all the noise they made was to keep their spirits up, as they were deathly afraid of the Siouxs.
The old squaw man was in this big gathering, all dressed up like the Indians with britch cloth and head-dress with all kinds of feathers in his bonnet. I recall a rather amusing incident about him. A few years prior to the time I am writing of, the railroad ended at Miles City, and the administration at Washington, D.C., had notified the Crow Indian agent to send several chiefs to Washington to try to make a peace treaty and give them certain portions of land if they would become civilized. The agent called this squaw man to the Agency to send him with the chiefs as an interpreter. Now the old man had never seen a train or railroad and thought he had to ride horseback all the way to Washington. He told the agent he thought he could make the trip all right, but would have to have a new saddle. When he returned from Washington, the Indians were very anxious to know what he had seen and some of them still thought they could beat the white men at war. So they asked the old man how many whites he saw. He picked up both hands full of sand and throwed it in the air. Said he, “The whites are just like that wherever I went.” It was said that this demonstration by the old man made it seem useless to most of the braves to carry the fight any farther.
They also had the scalps of those two Indians they had killed hung on a tripod and some of the young braves sure put on a real war dance around the scalps.
Another man and myself went there one night. It sure was some sight. We put blankets around us like the Indians wore. This man I was with could talk Indian and they told him they knew we were white men even in the dark from the way we walked. This man’s name was Herb Dana, and he lived on Tongue River in Wyoming. If he is alive yet he can verify what I have told about this incident.