My chief went to his lodge, still the Uncapappa, still unsubdued, representing all that was distinctive and admirable in the old life of the chase; but he knew now that the white man possessed the earth.
“This is now the end,” he said, sorrowfully, to my father. “Nothing remains to us but a home in the Land of the Spirits.”
VIII
THE RETURN OF THE SPIRITS
The year that followed the signing of this treaty was a dark one for The Sitting Bull. Even those who had been most clearly acquiescent in the white man’s way grew sad.
You must remember that my people, the Uncapappas, are the westernmost branch of the great Sioux nation and had known but little of the white man up to the time of their surrender in 1880. We knew nothing of tilling the soil. We were essentially buffalo hunters and had been for many generations. The Yanktonaise, the Minneconjous, had far greater knowledge of the white man’s ways. In the days when they occupied the whole of the upper Mississippi Valley we still kept our western position, always among the buffalo and the elk. Our tepees were still made of skins.
Can you not see that these horsemen of the plains—these wandering, fearless, proud hunters—even under the best conditions would have found it very hard to give up the roving life of the chase and settle down to the planting of corn and squashes?
It is easy to clip the wings of eagles, but it is not of much avail to beat them and give command that they instantly become geese. Under every fostering condition it would have been difficult for Slohan and Gall and Sitting Bull to become farm laborers.
I call upon you to be just to my great chief, for he honestly tried to take on this new life. I assert that no man of his spirit and training could have done more. He tried hard to be as good as his word; for witness I call the agent himself who in those early days said of him: “The Sitting Bull is living here peaceably and doing well.” Even up to the month of November in 1888, the year of the first commission, he praised him. It was afterward that the agent changed his mind and began to abuse him. I will tell presently why this was so.
You see the white people allowed us no time to change. We had been many centuries forming habits which they insisted should be broken instantly. They cut us off from our game. They ordered us to farm, and this without knowing the character of our reservation. The soil of this country is very hard and dry and the climate is severe. It is high, upland prairie cut by a few thin, slow streams which lie in deep gullies. The upland grows a short, dry grass, and there are many years when it is dry as hay in early June. It is good for pasture, but it makes very little hay for winter. It is a drought country; for the most part the crops burn up under the fierce sun and the still more savage wind. In winter it is a terrible place to live unless one is sheltered by the cottonwood and willow groves on the river. It was given us originally because they thought it useless to the plowmen.