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On an occasion when I had interrogated a Sioux chief, on the Upper Missouri, about their Government—their punishments and tortures of prisoners, for which I had freely condemned them for the cruelty of the practice, he took occasion when I had got through, to ask me some questions relative to modes in the civilized world, which, with his comments upon them, were nearly as follow; and struck me, as I think they must every one, with great force.
“Among white people, nobody ever take your wife—take your children—take your mother, cut off nose—cut eyes out—burn to death?” No! “Then you no cut off nose—you no cut out eyes—you no burn to death—very good.”
He also told me he had often heard that white people hung their criminals by the neck and choked them to death like dogs, and those their own people; to which I answered, “yes.” He then told me he had learned that they shut each other up in prisons, where they keep them a great part of their lives because they can’t pay money! I replied in the affirmative to this, which occasioned great surprise and excessive laughter, even amongst the women. He told me that he had been to our Fort, at Council Bluffs, where we had a great many warriors and braves, and he saw three of them taken out on the prairies and tied to a post and whipped almost to death, and he had been told that they submit to all this to get a little money, “yes.” He said he had been told, that when all the white people were born, their white medicine-men had to stand by and look on—that in the Indian country the women would not allow that—they would be ashamed—that he had been along the Frontier, and a good deal amongst the white people, and he had seen them whip their little children—a thing that is very cruel—he had heard also, from several white medicine-men, that the Great Spirit of the white people was the child of a white woman, and that he was at last put to death by the white people! This seemed to be a thing that he had not been able to comprehend, and he concluded by saying, “the Indians’ Great Spirit got no mother—the Indians no kill him, he never die.” He put me a chapter of other questions, as to the trespasses of the white people on their lands—their continual corruption of the morals of their women—and digging open the Indians’ graves to get their bones, &c. To all of which I was compelled to reply in the affirmative, and quite glad to close my note-book, and quietly to escape from the throng that had collected around me, and saying (though to myself and silently), that these and an hundred other vices belong to the civilized world, and are practiced upon (but certainly, in no instance, reciprocated by) the “cruel and relentless savage.”
Of their modes of war, of which, a great deal has been written by other travellers—I could say much, but in the present place, must be brief. All wars, offensive or defensive, are decided on by the chiefs and doctors in council, where majority decides all questions. After their resolve, the chief conducts and leads—his pipe with the reddened stem is sent through the tribe by his runners, and every man who consents to go to war, draws the smoke once through its stem; he is then a volunteer, like all of their soldiers in war, and bound by no compulsive power, except that of pride, and dread of the disgrace of turning back. After the soldiers are enlisted, the war-dance is performed in presence of the whole tribe; when each warrior in warrior’s dress, with weapons in hand, dances up separately, and striking the reddened post, thereby takes the solemn oath not to desert his party.