“I am sure it was very kind of him,” said Parker. “Are all the Sioux engaged in this Ghost Dance, sir?”
“No, there are probably twenty thousand of them in all, and more than half of them don’t take any stock in the Ghost Dance. They can no doubt raise six hundred or a thousand men, and we have three thousand to oppose them. We are all around them, too. I wish that old Sitting Bull was captured.”
During the ride to Fort Scott the captain, who talked plainly and explained many things about the Ghost Dance which the young officer had failed to understand, finally convinced him that his guide had told him nothing but the truth. As American Horse, a brave chieftain of the Sioux, once said while making a speech before the Peace Commissioners: “We were made many promises, but have never heard from them since.” Take, for instance, the issue of beef which was made at the Standing Rock Agency. In one year it amounted to eight million pounds; and in three years more, after the whites had got all the land the Indians wanted to sell, it was reduced to four million pounds, or just half of what they wanted. It was no wonder that the Indians complained of starvation; and when they asked permission to go off their reservation to hunt for the food that was to keep their families from giving way to the appeals of hunger, they were refused.
“I don’t blame the Indians so much, after all,” said Parker.
“And if you come right down to that, neither do I,” whispered the captain. “The Government will not give the Indians over to the War Department, as many thinking men advise them to do, and we have got to stand by and see them suffer. And another thing: you don’t know how those Indians behave themselves when they take the bit in their teeth and go off their reservation. I tell you, you would remember all the broken promises the whites have made you and go in strong for revenge. Of course we soldiers can’t stand by, with our hands in our pockets, and let innocent people suffer because of what the Department at Washington has done to them, and we have to stand between the settlers and Indian barbarities.”
“And the Sioux don’t think much of us any way, do they, sir?”
“Not now they don’t, for they are as well armed as we are. In olden times, when the trappers roamed through this country, the Indians were all armed with bows and arrows, and it was very seldom you heard of a company of men being annihilated. The trappers had so little to steal that the Sioux did not think it worth while to lose the lives of three or four men in the effort to get it. The trappers were dead shots, and they brought an Indian every time they pulled on him. The Indians would keep an eye on the trappers’ camps, and when there was no one there to protect them they would sneak up and steal everything they could lay their hands on. But now the case is different. The savages are armed with rifles and revolvers, and it has to be a pretty strong force that can march through their country.”
“You really think there is going to be a war, do you, sir?”
“I do, unless we can go to work and arrest that Sitting Bull, and that will take our whole force. Those Sioux are not going to stand by and see us capture their biggest medicine man without some resistance.”
Lieutenant Parker drew a long breath and told himself that his prospects of seeing an Indian fight were very good indeed.