Chief Red Cloud, head chief of the Ogallallas, was without doubt the most
noted and famous chief at the time of his death, December, 1909, in the
United States. He became famous through his untiring efforts in
opposition to everything the Government attempted to do in the matter of
the pacification of the Sioux. One of the most lurid pages in the history
of Indian warfare records the massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, in December,
1866. Chief Red Cloud planned and executed this terrific onslaught. He
always remained a chief. He was always the head of the restless element,
always the fearless and undaunted leader. He was the Marshal Ney of the
Indian nations, until sickness and old age sapped his vitality and
ambition.
The holding of the last Great Indian Council occurred a little less than
two months before his death. Blind and bedridden he could not attend the
council. During the last few shattered years of his warrior life, he
relegated all the powers of chieftainship to his son, now fifty-four years
of age. The younger Chief Red Cloud attended the council. He is tall and
straight and lithe, and possesses a splendid military bearing. He is a
winsome speaker, and his words are weighted with the gold of Nature’s
eloquence. Every attitude of his body carries the charm of consummate
grace, and when he talks to you there is a byplay of changing lights in
his face that becomes fascinating. Like his father he was a born leader
and warrior. His story of the Custer fight and his participation in it
may be found in the chapter on that subject. Regarding his own life he
tells us:
“It has been a part of my life to go out on the warpath, ever since I was
fourteen years old. As you know it is a part of our history that the man
who goes on the warpath and kills the most enemies gets a coup stick, and
the coup stick is the stepping-stone to become a chief. I remember my
first war party was forty-one years ago. This battle was at Pryor Creek
against the Crows. I was in four great battles, with my father, Chief Red
Cloud. At the battle of Pryor Creek I captured many horses, and took
three scalps. Thirty-four years ago I killed four Crows and earned my
coup stick. I kept these scalps until my visit to Washington when some
white man wanted them.”
“I want to speak about the buffalo. There were plenty of buffalo and deer
when I was a young man, but the white man came and frightened all the game
away, and I blame the white man for it. By order of our Great Father in
Washington the buffalo were all killed. By this means they sought to get
the Sioux Indians back to their reservation.”
“The greatest event in my life I may explain in this way: Years ago I had
been trained to go on the warpath. I loved to fight; I was fighting the
Indians and fighting the soldiers. Then there came a time when the Great
Father said we must stop fighting and go to school, we must live in peace,
that we were Indian brothers, and must live in peace with the white man.
I believe that the greatest event in my life was when I stopped the old
Indian custom of fighting and adopted what the white man told me to
do—live in peace.”
The hoar frosts of autumn had touched into opal and orange the leaves of
the forest until great banners of colour lined the banks of the swiftly
flowing Little Big Horn; the camp of the last Great Indian Council lifted
cones of white on the edge of these radiant trees. Sombre winds uttered a
melancholy note through the dying reeds on the river bank, and all of it
seemed a prelude to an opening grave, and significant of the closing words
uttered to me by Chief Red Cloud:
“My father, old Chief Red Cloud, has been a great fighter against the
Indians, and against the white man, but he learned years ago to give up
his fighting. He is now an old man, ready to die, and I am sorry that he
could not come here. It is now over five years since he gave me his power
and I became chief, and he and I both are glad that we are friends to the
white man and want to live in peace.”
[Chief Two Moons]