The treaty was not signed and The Sitting Bull was made to bear the blame of its defeat. As for me, I exulted in his firmness, his self-control, and his simple dignity. He was still the chief man of treaties.
But the white people did not give up. They never recede. The defeat of the Democrats made a different Congress and a new attempt was at once made to get a treaty. Profiting by the mistakes of the other commissions, they did not come to the Standing Rock first (they feared the opposition of The Sitting Bull); they went to the lower reservations and secured all the Santees, all the “breeds,” and members of other tribes, men whom my people did not recognize as belonging to us. The news of this made my chief very angry. “The white men have no sense of justice when they deal with us,” he said, bitterly. “They are mad for our lands. They will do anything to steal them away.”
When the commissioners appeared at the Standing Rock they were triumphant through General Crook. Rations were short and the people were hungry and General Crook took advantage of this. He was lavish of beef issues during the treaty. On the third day he said, gruffly: “You’d better take what we offer. Congress will open the reservation, anyhow.”
Each night, as before, The Sitting Bull stood opposed to the treaty. “It is all we have,” he said, despairingly. “Once we had a mighty tract; now it is little. You have bought peace from the whites by selling your lands; now when you have no more to sell what will you do? I have never entertained a treaty from the whites. I am opposed to this. I will not sign. Our lands are few and they are bad lands. The white men have shut us up in a desert where nothing lives, yet it is our last home. Will you break down the walls and let the white man sweep us away? You say we will have a great deal of money in return. How has it been in the past? How has the government fulfilled its obligations? Congress cuts down our rations at will; what they owe us does not matter. You have seen how difficult it is to raise food here. We need every blanket’s breadth of our land if we are to live. I am getting to be an old man; a few years and I will be with my fathers; but before I go I want to see my children provided for. Let the government pay us what they owe us in cattle and we will then be able to live. I will not sign.”
That night John Grass gave way. The commission convinced him that this treaty was the best that could be secured. A new council was hastily called in order to get The Grass to sign, and my chief was not informed of it till the hearing was nearly over.
As he came into the room he was both angry and despairing, and demanded a chance to speak. “I have kept in the background so far,” he said. “Now I wish to be heard——”
But they were afraid of him and refused to hear him. “We want no more speaking. John Grass come forward and sign!”
Grass went forward. The Sitting Bull cried out in a piercing voice: “Do not sign! Let everybody follow me.”
At his command all his old guard rose and went away, but John Grass took the pen and signed. He was the man of the hour; he represented a compromise policy. He was willing to be the white man’s tool. And I, sitting there as interpreter, powerless to aid my chief in his heroic fight for the remnant of the empire that was ours, could only bow my head in acknowledgment of the wisdom of the majority—for I knew the insatiable white man better than John Grass. To have rejected the treaty would have but delayed the end.