All agreed to this plan, and as the boat neared the fort the chief gave the word, and we were scattered, tense with resolution, ready to begin our death struggle should the vessel pass beyond the line. No one faltered. Nearer and nearer we floated, and all were expecting the signal when the boat signaled to the shore and stopped. The soldiers never knew how close they came to death on that day.
Again we went into camp under guard, well cared for by the soldiers. The officers all treated The Sitting Bull with marked respect and during the day the colonel himself came to sit and smoke and talk with us.
Of him the chief abruptly asked, “Am I to be kept here all my life?”
“No. After a while you are to be sent back north. As soon as you are prepared to sign a peace and after the anger of the whites dies out. I do not hate you. Come and talk to me whenever you feel lonesome, I will do all I can to make your stay pleasant.”
To this The Sitting Bull replied: “Your kindness makes my heart warm. It gives me courage to tread the new paths that lie before me. I am very sad and distrustful, for I am like a man who enters a land for the first time. It is not easy for me to sit down as a prisoner and dream out the future. It is all dark to me. You are my friend. You are wise and your words have helped me. If we could have the aid of men like you, the new road would be less fearsome to our feet.”
The young officers came and asked us many questions about our ways of camping, our methods of fighting, and so on, and the chief was always ready to talk. Sometimes I pretended not to understand English in order that I might the better know what was being said, and often I heard white people tell ridiculous things.
“Is that The Sitting Bull? Why, he looks like an old woman. He can’t be a warrior.” Others remarked, “What a sad face he has!” and this was true, for he had grown old swiftly. He brooded much and there were days when he spake no word to any one, not even to my father.
These were days of enlightenment to me, as well as to my chief, but they brought no sign of hope. My father was a kind man, naturally cheerful and buoyant, and his eyes were quick to see all that the white man did. He comprehended as well as my chief the overwhelming power of the white man, but he was less tenacious of the past. “It is gone,” he repeated to me privately. “The world of our fathers is swallowed up. Go you, my son, and learn of the white man the secret power that enables him to make carts and powder and rifles. How can we fight him when we must trade with him to win his wonder-working arms and ammunition?”
And so when one of the officers, Lieutenant Davies, saw me holding a scrap of paper and asked me if I could read, I told him I could. Thereafter he gave me books and helped me to understand them. We called him “Blackbird,” because his mustaches were dark and shaped like the wings of a bird. I came to love this man, for he was the best paleface I ever knew. He did not condemn us because we were red. He did not boast and he was a soldier. He talked much with The Sitting Bull, and his speech did more to change my chief’s mind than that of any other man.