The reference to the kindly treatment received by the surrendered prisoners would have been amusing if it had not been pitiful. At that moment there were Indians in the council who had left our reservations solely to escape starvation, and the Indian chiefs knew all about this.
The Indians must have been totally without sense of humor if they could have listened to the commissioners without laughing. Sitting Bull's reply, which we can only quote in part, is worthy of being put on record among the notable protests of Indian chiefs against the oppressions of their race. Said he "For sixty-four years you have kept me and my people and treated us bad. What have we done that you should want us to stop? We have done nothing. It is all the people on your side that have started us to do all these depredations. We could not go anywhere else and we took refuge in this country. . . . I would like to know why you came here? In the first place I did not give you the country; but you followed me from one place to another, so I had to leave and come over to this country. . . . You have got ears to hear, and eyes to see, and you see how I live with these people. You see me. Here I am. If you think I am a fool, you are a bigger fool than I am. This house is a medicine-house. You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. I don't wish any such language used to me that is to tell me lies in my Great Mother's (Queen Victoria's) house. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and to raise this country full of grown people. See these people here. We were raised with them [shaking hands with the British officers]. That is enough, so no more. . . . The part of the country you gave me you ran me out of. . . . I wish you to go back and take it easy going back."
After several others had spoken, and the Indians seemed about to leave the room, the interpreter was directed to ask the following questions: "Shall I say to the President that you refuse the offers that he has made to you? Are we to understand that you refuse those offers?" Sitting Bull answered: "I could tell you more, but that is all I have to tell. If we told you more, you would not pay any attention to it. This part of the country does not belong to your people. You belong to the other side, this side belongs to us."
Thus the conference closed. The Indians positively refused to give up all their weapons, to exchange their horses for cows and the priceless privilege of being shut up upon reservations, off which they could not go without being pursued, arrested and brought back by troops.
Sitting Bull did not believe the cows would materialize if his people gave up their horses. He had long since lost faith in the Government which, as he expressed it, "had made fifty-two treaties with the Sioux and kept none of them."
It was also in this connection that the great Indian leader made his famous reply: "Tell them at Washington if they have one man who speaks the truth to send him to me, and I will listen to what he has to say."
The country originally owned and occupied by the Sioux extended many miles beyond the Canadian boundary line. Hence they had claims to territory in both countries, but their lot at this period was indeed sad. Those bands on our side were for the most part confined to reservations where, by reason of crop failure and the other causes already given, they were threatened with starvation.
Those malcontent Indians under Sitting Bull, on the Canadian side, enjoyed liberty, but they had little else. The Canadian Government would give them protection but no supplies. And now the buffalo, on which they depended mainly for subsistence, was being gradually exterminated or driven off.
Besides the commission appointed by the Government at least two enterprising Chicago papers sent reporters all the way to Canada to interview the Indian sphinx of the Northwest. These interviews took place at Fort Walsh, in the presence of Major Walsh, who seems to have been a prime favorite with Sitting Bull and all his followers. In the first one, it is stated:
"At the appointed time, half-past eight, the lamps were lighted and the most mysterious Indian chieftain who ever flourished in North America was ushered in. There he stood, his blanket rolled back, his head upreared, his right moccasin put forward, his right hand thrown across his chest. I arose and approached him, holding out both hands. He grasped them cordially. 'How!' said he, 'How!' At this time he was clad in a black and white calico shirt, black cloth leggins and moccasins, magnificently embroidered with beads and porcupine quills. He held in his left hand a foxskin cap, its brush drooping to his feet; with the dignity and grace of a natural gentleman he had removed it from his head at the threshold. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. His visage, devoid of paint, was noble and commanding; nay, it was something more. Besides the Indian character given to it by high cheek-bones, a broad, retreating forehead, a prominent, aquiline nose and a jaw like a bull-dog's, there was about the mouth something of beauty, but more an expression of exquisite irony. Such a mouth and such eyes as this Indian's, if seen in the countenance of a white man would appear to denote qualities similar to those which animated the career of Mazarin. Yet there was something wondrously sweet in his smile as he extended to me his hands.