In his account of this episode, Roosevelt takes care to point out that there is another side to the Indian character, as indeed all America has found out since the gallantry of our Indian brothers in the world war. He illustrates this by telling how, while spending the night in a small cow ranch on the Beaver, he lay in his bunk listening to the conversation of two cowboys. They were speaking of Indians, and mentioned a jury that had acquitted a horse-thief of the charge of stealing stock from a neighboring tribe, though the thief himself had openly admitted its truth. One of these cowboys suddenly remarked that he had once met an Indian who was a pretty good fellow, and he proceeded to tell the story.
A small party of Indians had passed the winter near the ranch at which he was employed. The chief had two particularly fine horses. These so excited the cowboy’s cupidity that one night he drove them off and hid them in a safe place. The chief looked for them high and low, but without success. Soon afterward one of the cowboy’s own horses strayed. When spring came the Indians went away, but three days afterward the chief returned, bringing with him the strayed horse, which he had happened to run across. “I couldn’t stand that,” said the narrator, “so I just told him I reckoned I knew where his own lost horses were, and I saddled up my bronco and piloted him to them.”
Still another story is cited by Roosevelt in denial of the saying, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Once, on visiting a neighboring ranch, he found waiting there three well-behaved and self-respecting Sioux. The woman on the ranch told him that a white man had come along and tried to run off with their horses. Running out, they had caught him, retaken their horses, deprived him of his guns and released him.
“I don’t see why they let him go,” exclaimed Roosevelt’s hostess. “I don’t believe in stealing Indians’ horses any more than white folks’ so I told them they could go along and hang him—I’d never cheep.”
When, many years later, Roosevelt became President, his knowledge of the condition of the Indians led him to become their stanch champion. There was then an enormous amount of fraud practised by white men in obtaining possession of Indian lands. Roosevelt used his executive power to protect Indian rights and appointed as Indian Commissioner Francis E. Leupp, one of the best friends the Indians ever had.
POLICE WORK ON THE PLAINS
There was much horse-stealing and cattle-killing in this part of the country while Roosevelt was a resident of it. Under the direction of the big cattle-owners, vigilantes were organized to rid the territory of the “rustlers”—the cowboys’ name for horse and cattle-thieves.
Roosevelt admitted the need of these stringent methods, but his own way of fighting lawlessness was to accept the office of deputy sheriff for his locality.
It was while filling this office that Roosevelt first made the acquaintance of Seth Bullock, who later became one of his warmest friends and greatest admirers, and who served as marshal of South Dakota under Roosevelt when the latter became President.
Roosevelt first met Seth when the latter was sheriff in the Black Hills district. A horse-thief Seth wanted escaped into Roosevelt’s territory and was captured by him, a matter that led Seth to give some attention to the young cub of a deputy two or three hundred miles north of him.