The book of the American Indian

by Hamlin Garland

Once a courier who would not cease talking when commanded by the chief was whipped out of the village. So it came to be that this great camp on the Little Missouri was called “The Hostile Camp of Sitting Bull.”

You have heard those who now deride my chief and say that he was no warrior, that he was a coward, a man of no account; but they are ignorant fools who say this. Go read in the books of the agent at Standing Rock; there you will find records of the respect and fear in which the agents of Washington held my chief in those days. You may read there of seven messengers who were sent out to tell “Sitting Bull and his irreconcilables they must come in and disarm”—and if you read on you will learn how these spies came straggling back without daring to utter one word of the government’s commands to my chief.

They lied about him, the cowardly whelps, and said he threatened them. In truth, they sneaked into his presence and said nothing. In this way the agent got a false impression of the chief, and reported that he was at war with the whites, which was not true.

The Sitting Bull was now both Secretary of War and commander-in-chief of all those who believed in the ways of the fathers. He drew men to him by the boldness and gentleness of his words. His camp was the refuge of those who declined to obey the agents of the white man’s government. The circle of his followers each year widened and his fame spread far among the white men who hated him for the lands he held.

But while my chief was thus holding hard to the ancestral customs, like a rock in a rushing stream, our cousins, the Yanktonaise and the Ogallallahs, were slowly yielding to the power of Washington. Like the Wyandottes, the Miamis and the Illini, they were retiring before the wonder-working plowmen.

In the autumn of the year 1869 the agent again sent out a call for us to come and join another peace council. Washington wanted to buy some more of our land. Of course The Sitting Bull refused, and gave commands that no one leave his camp, except such messengers as he sent to check the vote for a treaty. “I have made a vow and I will never treat with you,” he said.

In spite of all this a minority of the Sioux nation, weak, cowardly souls, pieced out with half-breeds and rank outsiders, (like the Santees who had no claim to be counted), made a treaty wherein they basely ceded away, without our consent, a large strip of our land in Dakota, and fixed upon certain small tracts which were to be held perpetually as reservations for all the allied tribes of Sioux. The Uncapappas were both sad and furious, but what could they do?

The establishment of the agency at Grand River followed this, and many of the Yanktonaise moved in and began to accept the white man’s food and clothing in payment for their loss of freedom.

I do not blame these men now. They were afraid, they were overawed by the white men, but they had no power to make such a treaty binding on us, and my chief, being very sad and very angry, said: “Fools! They have sold us to our enemies in a day of fear.”