Chapter XIV
CLOSE OF THE OUTBREAK—THE GHOST DANCE IN THE SOUTH
In the meantime overtures of peace had been made by General Miles to the hostiles, most of whose leaders he knew personally, having received their surrender on the Yellowstone ten years before, at the close of the Custer war. On the urgent representations of himself and others Congress had also appropriated the necessary funds for carrying out the terms of the late treaty, by the disregard of which most of the trouble had been caused, so that the commander was now able to assure the Indians that their rights and necessities would receive attention. They were urged to come in and surrender, with a guaranty that the general himself would represent their case with the government. At the same time they were informed that retreat was cut off and that further resistance would be unavailing. As an additional step toward regaining their confidence, the civilian agents were removed from the several disturbed agencies, which were then put in charge of military officers well known and respected by the Indians. Cheyenne River agency was assigned to Captain J. H. Hurst, and Rosebud agency to Captain J. M. Lee, while Royer, at Pine Ridge, was superseded on January 8 by Captain. F. E. Pierce. The last-named officer was afterward relieved by Captain Charles G. Penney, who is now in charge. ([War], 22; [Comr.], 38; [G. D.], 45.)
The friendly overtures made by General Miles, with evidences that the government desired to remedy their grievances, and that longer resistance was hopeless, had their effect on the hostiles. Little Wound, Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses (more properly, “Young-man-of-whose-horses-they-are-afraid”), Big Road, and other friendly chiefs, also used their persuasions with such good effect that by January 12 the whole body of nearly 4,000 Indians had moved in to within sight of the agency and expressed their desire for peace. The troops closed in around them, and on the 16th of January, 1891, the hostiles surrendered, and the outbreak was at an end. They complied with every order and direction given by the commander, and gave up nearly 200 rifles, which, with other arms already surrendered, made a total of between 600 and 700 guns, more than had ever before been surrendered by the Sioux at one time. As a further guaranty of good faith, the commander demanded the surrender of Kicking Bear and Short Bull, the principal leaders, with about twenty other prominent warriors, as hostages. The demand was readily complied with, and the men designated came forward voluntarily and gave themselves up as sureties for the good conduct of their people. They were sent to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, near Chicago, where they were kept until there was no further apprehension, and were then returned to their homes. ([War], 23; [Colby], 8.) After the surrender the late hostiles pitched their camp, numbering in all 742 tipis, in the bottom along White Clay creek, just west of the agency, where General Miles had supplies of beef, coffee, and sugar issued to them from the commissary department, and that night they enjoyed the first full meal they had known in several weeks.
Thus ended the so-called Sioux outbreak of 1890–91. It might be better designated, however, as a Sioux panic and stampede, for, to quote the expressive letter of McGillycuddy, writing under date of January 15, 1891, “Up to date there has been neither a Sioux outbreak or war. No citizen in Nebraska or Dakota has been killed, molested, or can show the scratch of a pin, and no property has been destroyed off the reservation.” ([Colby], 9.) Only a single noncombatant was killed by the Indians, and that was close to the agency. The entire time occupied by the campaign, from the killing of Sitting Bull to the surrender at Pine Ridge, was only thirty-two days. The late hostiles were returned to their homes as speedily as possible. The Brulé of Rosebud, regarded as the most turbulent of the hostiles, were taken back to the agency by Captain Lee, for whom they had respect, founded on an acquaintance of several years’ standing, without escort and during the most intense cold of winter, but without any trouble or dissatisfaction whatever. The military were returned to their usual stations, and within a few weeks after the surrender affairs at the various agencies were moving again in the usual channel.
An unfortunate event occurred just before the surrender in the killing of Lieutenant E. W. Casey of the Twenty-second infantry by Plenty Horses, a young Brulé, on January 7. Lieutenant Casey was in command of a troop of Cheyenne scouts, and was stationed at the mouth of White Clay creek, charged with the special duty of watching the hostile camp, which was located 8 miles farther up the creek at No Water’s place. On the day before his death several of the hostiles had visited him and held a friendly conference. The next morning, in company with two scouts, he went out avowedly for the purpose of observing the hostile camp more closely. He rode up to within a short distance of the camp, meeting and talking with several of the Indians on the way, and had stopped to talk with a half-blood relative of Red Cloud, when Plenty Horses, a short distance away, deliberately shot him through the head, and he fell from his horse dead. His body was not disturbed by the Indians, but was brought in by some of the Cheyenne scouts soon after. Plenty Horses was arraigned before a United States court, but was acquitted on the ground that as the Sioux were then at war and the officer was practically a spy upon the Indian camp, the act was not murder in the legal sense of the word. Lieutenant Casey had been for a year in charge of the Cheyenne scouts and had taken great interest in their welfare and proficiency, and his death was greatly deplored by the Indians as the insane act of a boy overcome by the excitement of the times. ([War], 24; [Comr.], 39; [Colby], 10; [G. D.], 46.)
On January 11 an unprovoked murder was committed on a small party of peaceable Indians on Belle Fourche, or North fork of Cheyenne river, by which the Indians who had come in to surrender were once more thrown into such alarm that for a time it seemed as if serious trouble might result. A party of Ogalala from Pine Ridge, consisting of Few Tails, a kindly, peaceable old man, with his wife, an old woman, and One Feather, with his wife and two children—one a girl about 13 years of age and the other an infant—had been hunting in the Black Hills under a pass from the agency. They had had a successful hunt, and were returning with their two wagons well loaded with meat, when they camped for the night at the mouth of Alkali creek. During the evening they were visited by some soldiers stopping at a ranch a few miles distant, who examined their pass and pronounced it all right. In the morning, after breakfast, the Indians started on again toward the agency, but had gone only a few hundred yards when they were fired upon by a party of white men concealed near the road. The leaders of the whites were three brothers named Culbertson, one of whom had but recently returned from the penitentiary. One of the murderers had visited the Indians in their camp the night before, and even that very morning. At the first fire Few Tails was killed, together with both ponies attached to the wagon. His wife jumped out and received two bullets, which brought her to the ground. The murderers rode past her, however, to get at the other Indian, who was coming up behind in the other wagon with his wife and two children. As soon as he saw his companion killed, One Feather turned his wagon in the other direction, and, telling his wife, who had also been shot, to drive on as fast as she could to save the children, he jumped upon one of the spare ponies and held off the murderers until his family had had time to make some distance. He then turned and joined his family and drove on for some 8 or 10 miles until the pursuers came up again, when he again turned and fought them off, while his wife went ahead with the wagon and the children. The wounded woman bravely drove on, while the two little children lay down in the wagon with their heads covered up in the blankets. As they drove they passed near a house, from which several other shots were fired at the flying mother, when her husband again rode up and kept off the whole party until the wagon could get ahead. Finally, as the ponies were tired out, this heroic man abandoned the wagon and put the two children on one of the spare ponies and his wounded wife and himself upon another and continued to retreat until the whites gave up the pursuit. He finally reached the agency with the wife and children.
The wife of Few Tails, after falling wounded by two bullets beside the wagon in which was her dead husband, lay helpless and probably unconscious upon the ground through all the long winter night until morning, when she revived, and finding one of the horses still alive, mounted it and managed by night to reach a settler’s house about 15 miles away. Instead of meeting help and sympathy, however, she was driven off by the two men there with loaded rifles, and leaving her horse in her fright, she hurried away as well as she could with a bullet in her leg and another in her breast, passing by the trail of One Feather’s wagon with the tracks of his pursuers fresh behind it, until she came near a trader’s store about 20 miles farther south. Afraid to go near it on account of her last experience, the poor woman circled around it, and continued, wounded, cold, and starving as she was, to travel by night and hide by day until she reached the Bad Lands. The rest may be told in her own words:
After that I traveled every night, resting daytime, until I got here at the beef corral. Then I was very tired, and was near the military camp, and early in the morning a soldier came out and he shouted something back, and in a few minutes fifty men were there, and they got a blanket and took me to a tent. I had no blanket and my feet were swelled, and I was about ready to die. After I got to the tent a doctor came in—a soldier doctor, because he had straps on his shoulders—and washed me and treated me well.
A few of the soldiers camped near the scene of the attack had joined in the pursuit at the beginning, on the representations of some of the murderers, but abandoned it as soon as they found their mistake. According to all the testimony, the killing was a wanton, unprovoked, and deliberate murder, yet the criminals were acquitted in the local courts. The apathy displayed by the authorities of Meade county, South Dakota, in which the murder was committed, called forth some vigorous protests. Colonel Shafter, in his statement of the case, concludes, referring to the recent killing of Lieutenant Casey: “So long as Indians are being arrested and held for killing armed men under conditions of war, it seems to me that the white murderers of a part of a band of peaceful Indians should not be permitted to escape punishment.” The Indians took the same view of the case, and when General Miles demanded of Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses the surrender of the slayers of Casey and the herder Miller, the old chief indignantly replied: “No; I will not surrender them, but if you will bring the white men who killed Few Tails, I will bring the Indians who killed the white soldier and the herder; and right out here in front of your tipi I will have my young men shoot the Indians and you have your soldiers shoot the white men, and then we will be done with the whole business.”
In regard to the heroic conduct of One Feather, the officer then in charge of the agency says: “The determination and genuine courage, as well as the generalship he manifested in keeping at a distance the six men who were pursuing him, and the devotion he showed toward his family, risking his life against great odds, designate him as entitled to a place on the list of heroes.” ([War], 25; [Comr.], 40; [G. D.], 47.)