Of all the Indians I encountered in my years on the Plains the most
resourceful and intelligent, as well as the most dangerous, were the
Sioux. They had the courage of dare-devils combined with real strategy.
They mastered the white man's tactics as soon as they had an
opportunity to observe them. Incidentally they supplied all thinking
and observing white commanders with a great deal that was well worth
learning in the art of warfare. The Sioux fought to win, and in a
desperate encounter were absolutely reckless of life.
But they also fought wisely, and up to the minute of closing in they
conserved their own lives with a vast amount of cleverness. The maxim
put into words by the old Confederate fox, Forrest: "Get there fastest
with the mostest," was always a fighting principle with the Sioux.
They were a strong race of men, the braves tall, with finely shaped
heads and handsome features. They had poise and dignity and a great
deal of pride, and they seldom forgot either a friend or an enemy.
The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that
matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life
will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his
due.
Sitting Bull it was who stirred the Indians to the uprising whose
climax was the massacre of the Little Big Horn and the destruction of
Custer's command.
For months before this uprising he had been going to and fro among the
Sioux and their allies urging a revolt against the encroaching white
man. It was easy at that time for the Indians to secure rifles. The
Canadian-French traders to the north were only too glad to trade them
these weapons for the splendid supplies of furs which the Indians had
gathered. Many of these rifles were of excellent construction, and on a
number of occasions we discovered to our cost that they outranged the
army carbines with which we were equipped.
After the Custer massacre the frontier became decidedly unsafe for
Sitting Bull and the chiefs who were associated with him, and he
quietly withdrew to Canada, where he was for the time being safe from
pursuit.
There he stayed till his followers began leaving him and returning to
their reservations in the United States. Soon he had only a remnant of
his followers and his immediate family to keep him company. Warily he
began negotiating for immunity, and when he was fully assured that if
he would use his influence to quiet his people and keep them from the
warpath his life would be spared, he consented to return.
He had been lonely and unhappy in Canada. An accomplished orator and a
man with a gift of leadership, he had pined for audiences to sway and
for men to do his bidding. He felt sure that these would be restored to
him once he came back among his people. As to his pledges, I have no
doubt that he fully intended to live up to them. He carried in his
head all the treaties that had been made between his people and the
white men, and could recite their minutest details, together with the
dates of their making and the names of the men who had signed for both
sides.
But he was a stickler for the rights of his race, and he devoted far
more thought to the trend of events than did most of his red brothers.
Here was his case, as he often presented it to me:
"The White Man has taken most of our land. He has paid us nothing for
it. He has destroyed or driven away the game that was our meat. In 1868
he arranged to build through the Indians' land a road on which ran iron
horses that ate wood and breathed fire and smoke. We agreed. This road
was only as wide as a man could stretch his arms. But the White Man had
taken from the Indians the land for twenty miles on both sides of it.
This land he had sold for money to people in the East. It was taken
from the Indians. But the Indians got nothing for it.
"The iron horse brought from the East men and women and children, who
took the land from the Indians and drove out the game. They built
fires, and the fires spread and burned the prairie grass on which the
buffalo fed. Also it destroyed the pasturage for the ponies of the
Indians. Soon the friends of the first White Men came and took more
land. Then cities arose and always the White Man's lands were extended
and the Indians pushed farther and farther away from the country that
the Great Father had given them and that had always been theirs.
"When treaties were broken and the Indians trespassed on the rights of
the White Man, my chiefs and I were always here to adjust the White
Man's wrongs.
"When treaties were broken and the Indians' rights were infringed, no
one could find the white chiefs. They were somewhere back toward the
rising sun. There was no one to give us justice. New chiefs of the
White Men came to supplant the old chiefs. They knew nothing of our
wrongs and laughed at us.
"When the Sioux left Minnesota and went beyond the Big Muddy the white
chiefs promised them they would never again be disturbed. Then they
followed us across the river, and when we asked for lands they gave us
each a prairie chicken's flight four ways (a hundred and sixty acres);
this they gave us, who once had all the land there was, and whose habit
is to roam as far as a horse can carry us and then continue our journey
till we have had our fill of wandering.
"We are not as many as the White Man. But we know that this land is our
land. And while we live and can fight, we will fight for it. If the
White Man does not want us to fight, why does he take our land? If we
come and build our lodges on the White Man's land, the White Man drives
us away or kills us. Have we not the same right as the White Man?"
The forfeiture of the Black Hills and unwise reduction of rations kept
alive the Indian discontent. When, in 1889, Congress passed a law
dividing the Sioux reservation into many smaller ones so as to isolate
the different tribes of the Dakota nation a treaty was offered them.
This provided payment for the ponies captured or destroyed in the war
of 1876 and certain other concessions, in return for which the Indians
were to cede about half their land, or eleven million acres, which was
to be opened up for settlement.
The treaty was submitted to the Indians for a vote. They came in from
the woods and the plains to vote on it, and it was carried by a very
narrow majority, many of the Indians insisting that they had been
coerced by their necessities into casting favorable ballots.
Congress delayed and postponed the fulfillment of the promised
conditions, and the Indian unrest increased as the months went by. Even
after the land had been taken over and settled up, Congress did not
pass the appropriation that was necessary before the Indians could get
their money.
Sitting Bull was appealed to for aid, and once more began employing his
powerful gift of oratory in the interest of armed resistance against
the white man.
Just at this time a legend whose origin was beyond all power to fathom
became current among the red men of the north.
From one tribe to another spread the tidings that a Messiah was to come
back to earth to use his miraculous power in the interest of the
Indian. The whites were to be driven from the land of the red man. The
old days of the West were to be restored. The ranges were to be
re-stocked with elk, antelope, deer, and buffalo.
Soon a fever of fanaticism had infected every tribe. Not alone were the
Sioux the victims of this amazing delusion, but every tribe on the
continent shared in it.
There was to be a universal brotherhood of red men. Old enmities were
forgotten. Former foes became fast friends. The Yaquis in Mexico sent
out word that they would be ready for the great Armageddon when it
came. As far north as Alaska there were ghost dances and barbaric
festivities to celebrate the coming restoration of the Indian to the
lands of his inheritance.
And as the Indians danced, they talked and sang and thought of war,
while their hatred of the white man broke violently forth.
Very much disquieted at the news of what was going on the War
Department sent out word to stop the dancing and singing. Stop it! You
could as easily have stopped the eruption of Mount Lassen! Among the
other beliefs that spread among the Indians was one that all the sick
would be healed and be able to go into battle, and that young and old,
squaws and braves alike, would be given shirts which would turn the
soldiers' bullets like armor-plate.
Every redskin believed that he could not be injured. None of them had
any fear of battle, or any suspicions that he could be injured in the
course of the great holy war that was to come.