The whole camp was in a tumult before Bull Head could rush The Sitting Bull to the threshold.
One of the first of the old guard was The Bear Catcher, a man of fiery resolution, who cried out in a loud voice: “They are taking our chief. Let us prevent them.”
Bull Head replied: “The agent has ordered it. Keep away!”
Bear Catcher again cried: “Let us stop this thing,” and, flinging aside his blanket, leveled his rifle at Bull Head and fired. The renegade fell, but in falling shot the chief. At almost the same instant Shave Head, recreant dog, seized the opportunity to put a bullet into the great heart of my chief, who fell and died without speaking a word, while the battle went on above his prostrate body.
For a time nothing could be heard but the shouts of the warring ones and the crack of their guns. When it was ended eight of the “Silent Eaters” lay dead beside their chief, and with them fell four renegades who went to their tragic end under a mistaken call of duty—to be forever execrated for slaying their chief at the white man’s command.
Taking shelter in the house, the other traitors killed the mute son of the chief and were about to be burned out by the “Silent Eaters” when the sound of a cannon on the hill announced the coming of the soldiers. The renegades were saved by the bluecoats.
It is well that the body of my chief fell into the hands of his honorable enemies, for it was being mutilated when the colonel interfered. There were Sioux warriors so misbegotten that they were ready to crush the dead lion’s helpless head, but the white commander of the garrison took every precaution that the bones of the chief should lie undisturbed in death.
The post surgeon at Fort Yates received the body and prepared it for burial. In the afternoon of the following day it was sewn up in canvas and placed in a coffin and buried in the northeast corner of the military cemetery, without ceremony and with few to mourn, though far away my people were waiting in unappeasable grief over the passing of their great leader.
And so it is that in spite of vandal white men and traitorous reds the dust of my chieftain lies undisturbed in a neglected corner of a drear little military graveyard, near the Great Muddy River which was the eastern boundary of his lands. The sod is hot with untempered sun in summer, and piled with snow in winter, but in early spring the wild roses bloom on the primeval sod above his bones. No hand cares for the grave, no one visits it, and yet, nevertheless, the name written on that whitewashed board is secure on the walls of the red man’s pantheon, together with that of Red Jacket and Tecumseh, Osceola and Black Hawk. Civilization marches above his face, but the heel of the oppressor cannot wear from the record of his race the name of “Ta-tank-yo-tanka,” The Sitting Bull.