At last men of keener intelligence, like my father, considered it, saying: “It may be true. The white man had a Saviour. Why should not the Great Spirit send one to us? We can at least examine into this man’s story. We can go and see the dance.”
Others, who had outgrown the faith of their fathers, and who had also rejected the Christian religion, smiled and said, “It is foolish!” Nevertheless, curious to see what was done, they loitered near to look on and laugh.
Last of all were those who brooded bitterly upon the past—the chained lions who had never accepted the white man’s dominion, who feared nothing but captivity, and who sat ever in their tepees with their blankets around them smoking, ruminating, reliving the brave, ancient days. “We are prisoners,” they said. “We are not allowed to leave the narrow bounds of our bleak reservation. We can neither hunt nor visit our friends. What is the use of living? Why not die in battle? Is it not better to be slain and pass at once to the spirit land than to die of starvation and cold? We know the fate of the dead cannot be worse than our lot here.”
In the light of memory the country of their youth was a land of waving grass, resplendent skies, rippling streams, shining tepees, laughter, song, and heroic deeds. In dreams they were once more young scouts, selected for special duty. In dreams they rode again over the boundless swelling plain, hunting the great black cattle of the wild. They lay in wait for the beaver beside streams without a name. They sat deep in pits, hearing the roaring rush of the swooping eagle, and always when they woke to reality they found themselves ragged beggars under the control of a white man, betrayed and forgotten by their recreant allies.
What had they retained of all this mighty heritage? A minute patch of barren ground and the blessed privilege of working like a Chinaman or a negro. Of all the old-time adventurous, plentiful, and peaceful life the white settlers had bereft them. Mile by mile the invaders had eaten up the sod. The buffalo, the elk, the beaver had disappeared before their guns. Stream after stream they had bridged and in the valleys they had set their fences. The agent always talked as though every red man who wished could have a large house and fruit trees and pleasant things, but it was quite certain now that nothing remained for these proud hunters of the bison but a practical slavery to the settler; to clean the dung from the white man’s stables was their fate.
With this view the “Silent Eaters” had most sympathy. In the days immediately following their return from the north they had caught some of the enthusiasm of their teachers. They, too, had hoped for some of the good things of the white man’s civilization.
The Sitting Bull himself had been hopeful. He had spoken bravely to them advising them to set their feet in the white man’s road; but as the years passed one by one he had felt with ever-increasing bitterness the checks and constraints of his warden. He had seen sycophants and hypocrites exalted and his own wishes thwarted or treated with contempt and his face had grown ever sadder and sterner. When he looked into the future he saw the almost certain misery and final extinction of his race, so inevitably he, too, had turned his eyes inward to dream of the past. Having no hope of earthly things, he was now, in spite of himself, allured by the stories of this Saviour in the West. Certainly he could not forbid his people this comfort.
He had, too, the natural pride of the leader. He considered himself as he was, the head man of his tribe, and it hurt him to find himself completely shorn of command. The agent now deliberately humiliated him, ignoring his suggestions and misrepresenting him among the white men. “These old chiefs must give way,” he said. “If we are to civilize these Indians, all of the old tribal government must be torn up.” And in this he had the support of many friends of my race.
One of the most serious differences existing at this time lay in The Sitting Bull’s refusal to recognize the authority of the agent’s native police. “I am still the head of my tribe,” he proudly said. “I do not need your help in order to keep the peace.”
Then the agent very shrewdly appointed those who were jealous of the chief to be the heads of his police force, and so made sure of them in case of trouble. The chief was made to look and feel like a man living by sufferance, while renegades whom he despised and recreants whom he hated were put in power over him. Yet he was bearing all this quietly; he had even submitted to personal abuse, rather than prove a disturber.