The Indians are wedded to their superstitions, and their medicine men hold an influence over them far more powerful than the priests of a church in civilization would over their congregations.
A medicine man of tact, cunning, and courage can move a tribe to his liking, even the war chiefs fearing to go against his commands.
And these same medicine men are respected and feared, their slightest vagaries tolerated, and their every wish gratified, be it what it may.
Of late the influence of the war chiefs has been upon the wane, and it was, perhaps, that they realized this fact, and many of them sought, by an Indian war against the whites, to recover their waning prestige.
The power of the medicine men, however, has held firmly, and yet only those who could show their claims to be just by deeds, were acknowledged men of influence.
The contract of the Indians with the whites has caused evolution to work among the tepees of the red men as well as in the haunts of civilization.
I refer to this fact to show how it was possible for a medicine man to wield great power over the superstitious minds of the redskins, and it will be remembered that Sitting Bull, the greatest Roman of them all, was a medicine chief, that his call to be rescued was promptly answered, and that a medicine man, Red Hatchet, brought on the fight at Wounded Knee Creek.
Upon the night following the entrance of Red Hatchet and his captive into the hostiles' camp an Indian with bent form, carrying a red staff, and with his black, bushy hair overhanging his face, as though to shield it, was making his way into the Bad Lands.
He wore the costume of a Brule medicine chief, a robe of white beaver skins being thrown over his form, and his war-paint, where visible, was of the most gorgeous hues and disfiguring.
He had necklaces of grizzly bears' claws, others of the beaks of eagles and vultures, and beneath his white beaver robe was the ghost shirt, painted with red hieroglyphics and symbols intelligible only to the medicine chiefs.