The Indian has lived such a life of hazard for long centuries that he has
had trained into him a first great instinct to fight. They have a war
star in the sky, and when it moves the time to make war is heavy upon
them. There are many cogent reasons for the belief that before the coming
of the white man there were no general or long-continued wars among the
Indians. There was no motive for war. Quarrels ensued when predatory
tribes sought to filch women or horses. Strife was engendered on account
of the distribution of buffalo, but these disturbances could not be
dignified by the name of war. The country was large and the tribes were
widely separated. Their war implements were of the crudest sort. A shield
would stop a stone-headed arrow, and it necessitated a hand-to-hand
conflict for the use of a flint-headed lance and the ponderous war club.
The white man came, and for hundreds of years their contest has been waged
against a superior force. They have disputed every mile of territory
which has been acquired from them. During all that time they could not
make a knife, a rifle or a round of ammunition. Their method of
communication was confined to the smoke signal, signal fires and scouts.
They had no telegraph, no heliograph, no arsenal. Modern implements of
war they have been able to obtain only in late years and then in meagre
quantities, even then only by capture or at exorbitant rates. The Indian
has proved himself a redoubtable and masterful foe. For more than three
hundred years millions of civilized white people have fought a bitter
battle with three hundred thousand red men. During all these tragic years
the nations of the world have moved on to discovery, subjugation, and
conquest. Nation has taken up arms against nation. England, France, and
Spain have put a rim of colonies about the globe. Our own great civil
struggle has been written down on the pages of history with letters of
blood. England, France, Spain, and the United States have during this
period tried their prowess with these less than three hundred thousand
braves and only now has the decimation become complete. No such striking
example of endurance, power of resistance, and consummate generalship has
been recorded in the annals of time. Sitting-Bull, Red Cloud,
Looking-Glass, Chief Joseph, Two Moons, Grass, Rain-in-the-Face, American
Horse, Spotted Tail, and Chief Gall are names that would add lustre to any
military page in the world’s history. Had they been leaders in any one of
the great armies of the nation they would have ranked conspicuously as
master captains. The Indian, deprived of the effectiveness of supplies
and modern armament, found his strongest weapon in the oratory of the
council lodge. Here, without any written or established code of laws,
without the power of the press and the support of public sentiment,
absolutely exiled from all communication with civilized resources, unaided
and alone, their orators presented the affairs of the moment to the
assembled tribe, swaying the minds and wills of their fellows into
concerted and heroic action. The wonderful imagery of the Indian
orator—an imagery born of his baptism into the spirit of nature—his love
of his kind, and the deathless consciousness of the justice of his cause
made his oratory more resistless than the rattle of Gatling guns, and also
formed a model for civilized speech. It was an oratory that enabled a few
scattering tribes to withstand the aggressions of four great nations of
the world for a period of several centuries, and to successfully withstand
the tramping columns of civilization. The science and art of Indian
warfare would take volumes to compass. His strategy and statesmanship
compelled victory. He was almost always assured of victory before he
proceeded to battle. He knew no fear. A thousand lives would have been a
small gift had he the power to lay them on the altar of his cause. He
pitted the perfection of details against the wily strategy of his own
colour and the pompous superiority of the white man’s tactics. On the
trail care was taken to cover up or obliterate his footprints. When a
fire became necessary he burned fine dry twigs so that the burning of
green boughs would not lift to the wind an odour of fire, nor carry a
trail of smoke. He conceived and carried out a wonderful deception in
dress. In winter a band of warriors were painted white. They rode white
horses and their war dress was all of it made of the plainest white so
that a group of warriors, stationed on the brow of a hill, would appear in
the distance like a statuesque boulder clad in snow. This disguise also
enabled them to come with stealthy step upon wild game. In autumn their
horses were painted yellow and they wore a garb of yellow so that fringing
the edge of the forest they could not be distinguished from the leaves of
the dying year. The blue-green of the sagebrush, so conspicuously
omnipresent on the prairies, furnished the Indian with another helpful
form of disguise. He would almost completely disrobe and paint his face,
his arms, and his hair, as well as the body of his horse, exactly the
colour of the sagebrush; and when scouting, after their crouching fashion,
among the clusters of sagebrush, or riding in the distance along the
verdure-covered banks of a stream, the disguise would be so absolutely
complete that detection became a difficult task. It was an ingenious and
artistic display of war talent.
[Answering the Smoke Signal]