THE INDIAN POW-WOW.
The Indians of the various tribes of the Upper and Lower Sioux--the
Sissitons, the Tetons, the Yanktons and the Yanktonnais and other tribes
held a pow-wow to try and force a conclusion of the war, and some of
their ablest men, their statesmen, were present, and their views you
have here verbatim. More decorum prevailed among them, and they were
more deliberate than is observed in the average white man's convention.
Little Crow had his supporters present, and a very fluent Yanktonnais
Sioux traced on the ground a map of the country, showing the course of
the Missouri River and the locality of the different forts. He marked
out the mountains, seas and oceans, and stated that an army, great
in numbers, was coming from across the country to assist them. This
gave rise to the unfounded rumor referred to in another chapter, that
emissaries from the South were among them to incite them to war.
John Paul, or Little Paul, was friendly to the whites, and in a speech to
the Indians at this pow-wow said:
"I am friendly to the whites, and will deliver these women and children
at Fort Ridgely. I am opposed to the war on the whites. You say you are
brave men, and can whip the whites. That is a lie--persons who cut women
and children's throats are not brave. You are squaws and cowards. Fight
the whites if you want to, but do it like brave men. I am ashamed of the
way you have acted towards the captives; and, if any of you have the
feelings of men, you will give them up. You may look fierce at me, but I
am not afraid of you."
Red Iron, one of the chiefs of the Upper Indians, was not friendly.
He was one of the principal chiefs of the Sissitons, and at one time
was so outspoken against the whites that Governor Ramsey, who was then
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and was at the agency, had occasion to
rebuke him in a substantial way--he reduced him to the ranks. In other
words, he broke him of his chieftianship. This was in December, 1852.
Red Iron was a handsome Indian, an athlete, six feet in his moccasins,
with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin lips, but with
intelligence and resolution beaming all over his countenance.
[Illustration: RED IRON.]
When brought into the presence of Governor Ramsey he walked with a firm,
lordly tread, and was clad in half military and half Indian costume.
When he came in he seated himself in silence, which was not broken until
through an interpreter the Governor asked him what excuse he had to offer
for not coming to the council when sent for.
Red Iron, when he arose to his feet to reply, did so with a
Chesterfieldian grace, allowing his blanket to fall from his shoulders,
and, intentionally dropping his pipe of peace. He stood before the
Governor for a moment in silence, with his arms folded, his bearing
betraying perfect self-composure, a defiant smile playing upon his lips.
In a firm voice he said:
Red Iron--"I started to come, but your braves drove me back."
Governor--"What excuse have you for not coming the second time I sent for
you?"
Red Iron--"No other excuse than I have already given you."
When the Governor, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, informed this
proud chief that, by virtue of his office, he would break him of his
chieftianship it appealed to his pride, and he said:
"You break me? I was elected chief by my tribe. You can't break me."
The chief, while surrendering to the powers that be, never felt friendly
to the whites, and during this war of which we write he continued
stubborn and sullen to the end.
Standing Buffalo, hereditary chief of the Sissitons, was a different
type, and counselled living in peace, but desired fair treatment and
honest dealings with his people. He was a handsome Indian, and a man
of rare ability. General Sibley was anxious to know how he felt on
the important question agitating the Sioux Nation, and desired his
co-operation in liberating the captives and compassing the capture of
Little Crow and his followers. At this Indian convention this noted chief
said:
[Illustration: STANDING BUFFALO.]
"I am a young man, but I have always felt friendly toward the whites,
because they were kind to my father. You have brought me into great
danger without my knowledge of it beforehand. By killing the whites, it
is just as if you had waited for me in ambush and shot me down. You Lower
Indians feel bad because we have all got into this trouble; but I feel
worse, because I know that neither I nor my people have killed any of the
whites, and that yet we have to suffer with the guilty. I was out buffalo
hunting when I heard of the outbreak, and I felt as if I was dead, and I
feel so now. You all know that the Indians cannot live without the aid of
the white man, and, therefore, I have made up my mind that Paul is right,
and my Indians will stand by him. We claim this reservation. What are
you doing here? If you want to fight the whites, go back and fight them.
Leave my village at Big Stone Lake. You sent word to my young men to come
down, and that you had plenty of oxen, horses, goods, powder and lead,
and now we see nothing. We are going back to Big Stone Lake and leave you
to fight the whites. Those who make peace can say that Standing Buffalo
and his people will give themselves up in the spring."
They kept their word, and would have nothing to do with Little Crow.
Standing Buffalo was killed in 1863 by an accident.
Other Day, a civilized Indian, in addressing the council at this time,
said:
"You can, of course, easily kill a few unarmed whites, but it would be a
cowardly thing to do, because we have gained their confidence, and the
innocent will suffer with the guilty, and the great Father at Washington
will send his soldiers to punish you, and we will all suffer. I will not
join you in this, but will help defend these white people who have always
been our friends."
Other Day was a true friend of the whites; he looked it. He was a
full-blood Indian, it is true, and the Indians respected and feared him,
but his desire to forsake the barbarous teachings of his father inclined
him towards the unsuspecting settlers.
In 1863 he was General Sibley's most trusted and confidential scout. In
the early outbreak Other Day manifested his loyalty to his white friends
by risking his life in their defense, piloting sixty people through the
river bottoms during the nights to a place of safety. He traveled with
his charge in the night, and hid them in underbrush during the daytime.
He was a true-hearted, kind man, with a red skin, who has gone to his
reward in a land where there are no reds, no blacks, but where all are
white.
Little Crow, who is one of the principal characters in this narrative,
was an Indian of no mean ability. He was the commander-in-chief of the
hostile tribes, and wielded a powerful influence among all the tribes
of this great Sioux Nation. He was a powerful man, and felt his lordly
position; was confident of final success, and very defiant at the outset.
He had a penchant for notoriety in more ways than one. In dress he was
peculiar, and could nearly always be found with some parts of a white
man's clothing. He was particularly conspicuous in the style of collar he
wore; happy in the possession of one of the old-style standing collars,
such as Daniel Webster and other old-time gentlemen bedecked themselves
with. He also possessed a black silk neckerchief and a black frock coat,
and on grand occasions wore both.
He had strongly marked features, and in studying the lineaments of his
face one would not adjudge him a particularly bad Indian. As we had
hundreds of these men in our custody, a good opportunity was offered
while guarding them to try one's gift as a reader of character as stamped
in the face, but Little Crow proved an enigma. It was like a novice
trying to separate good money from bad, an unprofitable and unsuccessful
task. Little Crow said:
"It is impossible to make peace if we so desired. Did we ever do the most
trifling thing, the whites would hang us. Now, we have been killing them
by the hundreds in Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa, and I know if they get us
into their hands they will hang every one of us. As for me, I will kill
as many of them as I can, and fight them till I die. Do not think you
will escape. There is not a band of Indians from the Redwood Agency to
Big Stone Lake that has not had some of its members embroiled in this
war. I tell you we must fight and perish together. A man is a fool and
coward who thinks otherwise, and who will desert his nation at such a
time. Disgrace not yourselves by a surrender to those who will hang you
up like dogs; but die, if die you must, with arms in your hands, like
warriors and braves of the Dakotas."
In one of our battles we took some fine-looking bucks prisoners, and the
soldiers were for scalping them at once, but we had a little "pow-wow"
with them, and found them intelligent and well educated; they were
students home on a vacation from Bishop Whipple's school at Faribault,
Minnesota, and said they were forced, much against their will, to go on
the warpath; that they had not fired a bullet at the whites; that they
fired blank cartridges because they felt friendly to the whites, and
had no desire to kill them. There were three of them; we told them they
could take their choice--be shot or enlist; they chose the latter, and
went South with us, staying until the close of the Rebellion, and they
displayed the courage of the born soldier.
[Illustration: Brevet Major General H. H. Sibley,
Commander in the field in 1862 and 1863 against the Sioux Indians.]