Peeps at Many Lands: Canada

by J. T. Bealby

Again, after the killing of Custer, Sitting Bull became a more or less orderly tenant of Her Majesty the Queen. With 900 lodges he camped at Wood Mountain, just over the border from Montana. An arrow's flight from his tepees was the North-West Mounted Police post. One morning the police discovered six dead Saultaux Indians. They had been killed and scalped in the most approved Sioux fashion. Each tribe had a trademark of its own in the way of taking scalps; some are broad, some are long, some round, some elliptical, some more or less square. These six Indians had been scalped according to the Sioux design. Also a seventh Saultaux, a mere lad and still alive, had seen the thing done. The police buried the six dead warriors, and took the live one with them to the police post. Sitting Bull's reputation was not founded on his modesty, and with characteristic audacity he came, accompanied by four minor chiefs and a herd of "hoodlum" warriors, and made a demand for the seventh Saultaux—the boy.

There were twenty policemen backing Sergeant McDonald; with the chief there were at least 500 warriors, so what followed was really an affair of prestige more than of force. When Sitting Bull arrived at the little picket-gate of the post, he threw his squat figure from his pony, and in his usual generous, impetuous manner, rushed forward and thrust the muzzle of his gun into Sergeant McDonald's stomach, as though he would blow the whole British nation into smithereens with one pull of his finger. McDonald was of the sort that takes things coolly; he was typical of the force. He quietly pushed the gun to one side, and told the five chiefs to step inside, as he was receiving that afternoon. When they passed through the little gate he invited them to stack their arms in the yard and come inside the shack and pow-wow. They demurred, but the sergeant was firm; finally the arms were stacked and the chiefs went inside to discuss matters with the police.

Outside the little stockade it was play-day in Bedlam. The young bucks rode, and whooped, and fired their guns; they disturbed the harmony of the afternoon tea, as the sergeant explained to Sitting Bull. "Send your men away," he told him.

The Sioux chief demurred again.

"Send them away," repeated the sergeant, "if you have any authority over them."

At a sign Sitting Bull and the chiefs made towards the door, but there were interruptions—red-coated objections. And the rifles of the chiefs were stacked in the yard outside. Sitting Bull, like Piapot, had brains; likewise was he a good general. He nodded approvingly at this coup d'état, and told one of the chiefs to go out and send the boys away.

When the young bucks had withdrawn to their camp, the sergeant persuaded Sitting Bull and the others to remain a little longer, chiefly by force of the red-coated arguments he brought to bear upon them.

"Tarry here, brothers," he said, "until I send Constable Collins and two others of my men to arrest the murderers of the dead Indians. The Saultaux are subjects of the Queen, and we cannot allow them to be killed for the fun of the thing. Also the boy told us who the murderers are."

Then Constable Collins—big Jack Collins, wild Irishman, and all the rest of it—went over to the Sioux camp, accompanied by two fellow-policemen, and arrested three of the slayers of the dead Indians. It was like going through the Inquisition for the fun of the thing. The Indians jostled and shoved them, reviled them, and fired their pistols and guns about their ears, whirled their knives and tomahawks dangerously close, and indulged in every other species of torment their vengeful minds could devise. But big Jack and his comrades hung on to their prisoners, and steadily worked their way along to the post.