The book of the American Indian

by Hamlin Garland

In order to claim a scalp, the warrior must give the dead man the coup. In the illustration the Indian is in the act of doing this. In olden times the coup was a stab with a weapon, but in later times the Indians were provided with coup sticks. Whoever first strikes the victim with the coup can rightfully claim the scalp.

I could see that he had no heart in his farming. The life was too hard and too bitter. He was indeed like a chained eagle who sits and dreams of the wide landscape over which he once floated in freedom. He had thrown his influence in the right scale, but he was critical and outspoken upon all debatable questions, and this had come to anger the agent, who was eager to push all the people into what he called “self-supporting ways.” This the chief did not oppose, though he could not live in the white man’s country. “It makes me both weary and sorrowful,” he said.

It did not take me more than a day to see that I was between two fires. My friends were all among those whom the agent called “The irreconcilables,” and my chief was relying upon me to help them defeat the treaty for their lands, at the same time that the agent expected me to be a leader of the progressive party. It was not easy to serve two masters, and I was forced to be in a sense double tongued, which I did not like.

The agent was outspoken against my chief. “The old man is spoiled by newspaper notoriety,” he said to me. “His power must be broken. He is a great and dangerous reactionary force and he and all the old-time chiefs must be stripped of their power and made of no account before the tribe can advance. He must be taught that I am the master here and that no redskin has any control.”

To this I made no reply, for I could not agree with him. A man who is a chief by virtue of his native ability cannot be degraded and made of no account. The Sitting Bull was a chief by force of character. As of old he worked for the good of his people. If he saw a wrong he went forthwith to the agent and asked to have it righted. This angered the agent, for he considered the chief officious. He was jealous of his position as “little father.” He was a good man, but he was opinionated and curt and irascible. He gave no credit to my chief. When the others made him spokesman of their council he would not listen to him. “He is a disturber,” he said.

Now there are certain record books in the office in which copies of all letters are kept, and when I found this out I took time to read all that the agent had written of the chief. My position as issue clerk permitted me the run of the office, and so when no one was near I read. I wished to know what had taken place during the five years of my absence.

At first the agent wrote well of the chief. In reply to inquiries he said: “Sitting Bull is living here quietly and is getting ahead nicely. He is quiet and inoffensive, though proud of his fame as a chief.” A year later he wrote of him, “His influence is nonprogressive, but believers in him are few, while many Indians are his enemies.”

This I found to be true. Chief Gall and John Grass were both honored at his expense. The Grass was a man of intelligence and virtue who had early allied himself with the white man. He was a leader of those who saw the hopelessness of remaining in the ways of the fathers, and naturally the agent treated him with marked courtesy. In answer to a letter asking the names of the chief men of the tribe he named John Grass first, Mad Bear second, The Gall third—and ignored the chief entirely.

The Gall, already jealous of the great fame of The Sitting Bull, was easily won over to the side of the agent. He was a vigorous, loud-voiced man, brave and manly, but not politic. He had not entirely broken with his old chief, but he accepted position under the agent and listened to dispraise of The Sitting Bull from the agent’s point of view.