soft thud of moccasined feet in the hall, and a timid knock. “Come!”
he shouted, and before he could turn, a Cheyenne woman ran swiftly
in. Her comely face was set in tragic lines of grief, and sobbing
convulsively, while the tears flooded her cheeks. She laid one hand
upon the agent’s shoulder, and with the other she signed: “Father, my
son is going to die. Your work and your lodge have killed him. Have
pity!” As she signed she wailed heart-brokenly, “He will die.”
“Dry your tears,” he replied, “He is not going to die. Two nights I
have watched with him. I have myself given him strong medicine. He is
better.”
She moaned as if all hope were gone. “No, no. He is very sick,
father. He does not know me. His eyes are like those of a dead boy.
Oh, have pity! Come with me. Come and aid him.”
To comfort her the weary man went back to the hospital, and as they
entered, the mother made a wild gesture of repulsion, and said to the
nurse: “Go away, dog woman! You are killing my son.”
In vain Williams tried to tell her how faithful the nurse had been.
She would not listen.
“Father, let me take my son to the lodge. Then he will get well.”
He shook his head. “No, that would not do. He would die on the way.
Let him stay here till he is better. You and I will watch over him
here. No harm will come then. See how nice and clean his bed is, how
sheltered his room is. It will be cold and windy in camp; he will be
made worse. Let him remain till he is able to stand. Then it will be
safe to take him away.”
By putting forth all his powers of persuasion he comforted and
reassured the distracted mother, and she sat down in the hospital;
but an understanding that she wanted to have Tah-You the medicine
man visit the boy and breathe upon him and sing to him ran round
the school and the agency, and the missionaries and the nurse were
furious.
“The idea of that nasty old heathen coming into the hospital!” said
the nurse to one of the teachers. “If he comes, I leave—that’s all!”
The doctor laughed. “The old cuss might do him good. Who knows?”
The Reverend Jones pleaded with Williams: “Don’t permit it. It will
corrupt the whole school. Deep in their hearts they all believe in
the old medicine man, and if you give in to them it will set them all
back ten years. Don’t let them take Robert to camp on any plea. All
they want to do is to smoke and make gibberish over him.”
To these impassioned appeals Williams could only say: “I can’t order
them not to do so. They are free citizens under our present law, and
I have no absolute control over them. If they insist on taking Robert
to camp, I can’t stop them.”
Mr. Jones went away with a bitter determination to make some kind of
complaint against somebody, to something—he couldn’t quite make up
his mind to whom.
Then old Tah-You came, very grave and very gentle, and said: “Father,
the Great Spirit in the beginning made both the white man and the
red man. Once I thought we could not be friends and live on the same
soil. I am old now and wise in things I once knew nothing of. I now
see that the white man knows many good things—and I know also that
the red man is mistaken about many other things. Therefore we should
lay our medicines side by side, and when we have chosen the better,
throw the worthless one away. I have come to put my curative charms
and my lotions beside those of the white medicine man. I will learn
of him, he will learn of me. This sick boy is my grandson. He is
very ill. I ask you to let me go in to him, and look upon him, and
smoke the sacred pipe, and breathe upon him, and heal him with strong
decoction of roots.”
To this Williams replied: “Tah-You, what you ask I cannot grant. This
medicine house was built for the white man’s doctor by people who do
not believe as you do. Those who gave the money would be very angry
at me if I let you enter the door.”
The old man’s face fell and his lips worked as he watched the signs
made by the white chief.
“So be it,” he replied as he rose. “The white man’s heart is hard.
His eyes are the eyes of a wolf. He gives only in his own way. He
makes all men walk in his own road. He will kill my son and laugh.”
Williams rose also. “Do not harden your heart to me, friend. I know
that much of your medicine is good. I do not say you shall not treat
the boy. To-morrow, if he is no better, you can take him to camp. I
cannot prevent that, but if you do and he dies I am not to blame.”
The old man’s face grew tender. “I see now that you are our friend. I
am content.”
The Reverend Mr. Jones came down upon the agent again, and the nurse
and the teachers (though they dared say nothing) looked bitter
displeasure. It seemed that the props on which their sky rested,
were tottering, but Williams calmly said: “To have the boy die in
hospital would do us a great deal more harm than to have him treated
by Tah-You. Were you ever young? Don’t you remember what it meant
to have your old grandmother come and give you boneset tea and sit
by your bed? Robert is like any other boy; he longs for his old
grandfather, and would be quieted and rested by a return to the
tepee. I will not sacrifice the boy for the sake of your mission. I
won’t take any such responsibility.”
“It will kill him to be moved,” said the nurse.
“I’m not so sure of that. Anyhow and finally, these people, under
the present ruling of the department, are citizens, and I have no
authority to make them do this or that. I have given my consent to
their plan—and that ends the matter.”
Early the next morning the father and mother, together with the
grandmother, tenderly folded Robert in a blanket and took him away
to camp, and all day the missionaries could hear the sound of the
medicine man’s rattle, and his low chant as he strove to drive out
the evil influences, and some of them were exceedingly bitter, and
the chief of the big medicine house was very sad, for it seemed that
his work was being undone.
Now it happened that Tah-You’s camp stood in the bend of the deep
little river, and the tepees were based in sweet-smelling grasses,
and when the sick boy opened his eyes after his swoon, he caught
the flicker of leaf shadows on the yellowed conical walls of his
mother’s lodge, and heard the mocking-bird’s song in the oaks. The
kind, wrinkled face of his grandfather, the medicine man, bent over
him, and the loving hands of his mother were on his neck. He was at
home again! His heart gave a throb of joy, and then his eyes closed,
a sweet langour crept over him, an utter content, and he fell asleep
with the humming song of Tah-You carrying him ever farther from the
world of the white man’s worry and unrest.
The following day, as Williams lifted the door-flap and entered,
Tah-You sat contentedly smoking. The mother, who was sewing on a
moccasin, looked up with a happy smile on her face and said, “He is
almost well, my son.”
“I am glad,” said Williams.
Tah-You blew a whiff from his pipe and said, with a spark of
deep-seated humor in his glance:
“The white men are very clever, but there are some things which they
do not know. You—you are half red man; that accounts for your good
heart. You see my medicine is very strong.”
Williams laughed and turned toward the boy who lay looking out at the
dear world with big, unwavering eyes. “Robert, how are you?”
Slowly the boys lips shaped the whispered word, “Better.”
“There is no place like home and mother when you’re sick, Robert.
Hurry up and get well. I need you.”
As Williams was going, the mother rose and took his hand and cried
out, poignantly: “You are good. You let me have my son. You have
saved him from the cruel-hearted medicine woman. Do not let her make
evil medicine upon us.”
“I will not let any one hurt him. Be at peace.”
Then the mother’s face shone with a wonderful smile. She stood in
silence with heaving breast as her white chieftain went out. “He is
good,” she said. “He is our brother.”
To this, serene old Tah-You nodded: “He knows my medicine is very
strong—for he is half red man.”
RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER
RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER
He sat in the shade of the lodge, smoking his pipe. His face was
thin, keen, and very expressive. The clear brown of his skin was
pleasant to see, and his hair, wavy from long confinement in braids,
was glossy as a blackbird’s wing. Around his neck he wore a yellow
kerchief—yellow was his “medicine” color—and he held a soiled white
robe about his loins. He was about fifty years of age, but seemed
less than forty.
He studied me quizzically as I communicated to him my wish to hear
the story of his life, and laughingly muttered some jocose remark to
his pretty young wife, who sat near him on a blanket, busy at some
needlework. The humorous look passed out of his face as he mused, the
shadows lengthened on the hot, dry grass, and on the smooth slopes of
the buttes the sun grew yellow.
After a long pause, he lifted his head and began to speak in a low
and pleasant voice. He used no gestures, and his glance was like that
of one who sees a small thing on a distant hill.
“I am well brought up,” were his first words. “My father was chief
medicine man[1] of his tribe, and one who knew all the stories of
his people. I was his best-loved son, and he put me into the dances
of the warriors when I was three years old. I carried one of his
war-bonnet feathers in my hand, and was painted like the big warriors.
“When my father wished to give a horse to the Cut Throat or Burnt
Thigh people who visited us and danced with us, he put into my hands
the little stick which counted for a horse, and I walked across the
circle by his side and handed the stick to our friend. Then my mother
was proud of me, and I was glad to see her smile.
“My father made me the best bows, and my mother made pretty
moccasins for me, covered with bright beads and the stained quills of
the porcupine. I had ponies to ride, and a little tepee of my own in
which to play I was chief.
“When I was a little older I loved well to sit near my father and the
old men and hear them tell stories of the days that were gone. My
father’s stories were to me the best of all, and the motions of his
hands the most beautiful. I could sit all day to listen. Best of all
I liked the stories of magic deeds.
“One day my father saw me holding my ear to the talk, and at night he
said to me, ‘My son, I see you are to be a medicine man. You are not
to be a warrior. When you are older, I will teach you the secrets of
my walk, and you shall follow in my path.’
“Thereafter I watched everything the medicine men did. I crept near,
and listened to their words. I followed them with my eyes when they
went aside to pray. Where magic was being done—there was I. At the
dance I saw my father fling live squirrels from his empty hand. I saw
him breathe smoke upon the body of a dead bird, and it awoke and ran
to a wounded man and tore out the rotting flesh and cured him. I saw
a mouse come to life in the same way. I saw the magic bladder move
when no one touched it; and I saw a man buried and covered with a big
stone too great for four men to lift, and I saw him come forth as if
the stone were a blanket.
“I saw there were many ways to become a medicine man. One man went
away on a high mountain, and there stood and cried all the day and
all the night, saying:
“‘O Great Spirit!
I am a poor man.
I want to be wise.
I want to be big medicine man.
Help me, Great Spirit!
I want to be honored among my people.
Help me get blankets, horses.
Help me raise my children.
Help me live long,
Honored of my people.’
“So he chanted many hours, without food or water, and it was cold
also. At last he fell down in a sleep and dreamed. When he came home,
he had medicine. A big bird had told him many secrets.
“Another went into a sweat house to purify himself. He stayed all
night inside, crying to the Great Spirit. He, too, dreamed, but he
did not tell his dreams.
“A third man went into his tepee on a hill near the camp, and there,
with nothing to eat or drink, sat crying like the other two, and at
last he slept, and in the night voices that were not of his mouth
came in the tepee, and I, who listened unobserved, was afraid, and
his women were afraid also. He soon became a great medicine man; and
I went to my father, and I said:
“‘Make me a medicine man like Spotted Elk.’
“He looked upon me and said:
“‘My son, you are too young.’
“Nevertheless I insisted, and he promised that, when I became sixteen
years of age, he would help me to become like Spotted Elk. This
pleased me.
“As I grew older I put away in my memory all the stories my father
knew of our people. I listened always when the old men talked. I
watched the medicine men as they smoked to the Great Spirits of the
world. I crept near, and heard them cry to the Great Spirit overhead
and to the Dark One who lives below the earth. I listened all the
time, and by listening I grew wise as an old man.
“I knew all the wonderful stories of the coyote and of the
rattlesnake. I knew what the eagle said to his mate, and I knew the
power of the great bear who sits erect like a man. I was a hunter,
but I followed the game to learn its ways. In those days we were
buffalo eaters. We did not eat fish, nor fowl, nor rabbits, nor the
meat of bear. Our women pounded wild cherries and made cakes of them,
and of that we ate sometimes, but always we lived upon buffalo meat,
and we were well and strong, not as we are now.
“I learned to make my own bows and also to make moccasins,
though that was women’s work, and I did not sew beads or paint
porcupine quills. I wanted to know all things—to tan hides, to draw
pictures—all things.
“By and by time came when I was to become a medicine man. My father
took me to Spotted Elk, the greatest of all medicine men, he that
could make birds from lumps of meat and mice from acorns.
“To him my father said: ‘My son wishes to be great medicine man.
Because you are old and wise I bring him to you. Help me to give him
wisdom.’
“Then they took me to a tepee on a hill far from the camp, and there
they sat down with me and sang the old, old songs of our tribe. They
took food, and offered it to the Great Spirits who lived in the six
directions, beginning at the southeast. Then they smoked, always
beginning at the southeast. This they taught me to do, and to chant a
prayer to each. Then they closed the tepee, and left me alone.
“All night I cried to the Great Spirits:
“‘Hear me—oh, hear me!
You are close beside me.
You are here in the tepee.
Hear me, for I am poor and weak.
I wish to be great medicine man.
I need horses, blankets. I am a boy.
I wish to be great and rich.
Hear me—oh, hear me!’
“All night, all next day I cried. I grew hungry and cold by and by.
I fell asleep; then came to me in my sleep a fox, and he opened
his mouth, and talked to me. He told me to put weasel skin full of
medicine, and wear fox skin on my head, and that would make me big
medicine. Then he went away, and I woke up.
[Illustration: The Medicine Man’s Signal
_Illustration from_
THE SIOUX OUTBREAK IN SOUTH DAKOTA
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _January 24, 1891_]
[Illustration: The Ghost Dance by the Ogallala Sioux at Pine Ridge
Agency, Dakota, December, 1890
_Illustration from_
THE NEW INDIAN MESSIAH
_by_ Lieutenant Marion P. Maus, U.S.A.
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _December 6, 1890_]
“I was very hungry, and I opened the tepee and came out, and it was
sunrise. My father was sleeping on the ground, and when I touched
him, he woke quickly and said:
“‘My son, I am glad to see you. I heard voices that were not yours
calling in the tepee, and I was afraid.’
“‘All is well,’ I said. ‘Give me food.’
“When I was fed, I took my bow and arrow and went forth to kill a
weasel. When I was alone, I sat down and prayed to the Great Spirits
of the six world directions, and smoked, beginning at the southeast,
and a voice came in my ear which said, ‘I will lead you.’ Soon I came
upon a large, sleeping weasel; he was white all over as snow, though
it was yet fall. Him I killed and skinned, and stretched the pelt on
a flat stick to make a pouch. Then I sought the medicine to go in it.
What that was I will not tell, but at last it was filled, and then I
slew a big red fox, and out of his fur I made my cap.
“Each night I went into my tepee alone to smoke and chant, and each
night strange birds and animals came to me and talked and taught me
much wisdom. Then came voices of my ancestors, and taught me how to
cure the sick and how to charm the buffalo and the elk. Then I began
to help my father to heal the sick people, and I became honored among
my companions; and when I caught a maid on her way to the spring,
she did not struggle; she was glad to talk with me, for I had a fine
tepee and six horses and many blankets.
“I grew skillful. I could do many things white people never see. I
could be buried deep in the ground, while a mighty stone which six
men alone could lift was rolled upon me. Then in the darkness, when I
cried to the Great Spirits, they came swiftly and put their hands to
the stone and threw it far away, and I rose and walked forth, and the
people wondered. I cured many people by the healing of my hands, and
by great magic like this: I had a dried mouse, and once when a man
came to be stiff and cold with a hole in his side, I said, ‘Put him
before me.’
“When they did as I bid, I took the mouse and put it before the
man who was dead, and I blew smoke upon the mouse and said: ‘Great
Spirits, help me to do this great magic.’ Then the mouse came to
life, and ran to the dead man and put his beak in the hole, and
pulled out the bad flesh, and the wound closed up and the man rose.
“These wonderful things I did, and I became rich. I had a fine,
large tepee and many horses and skins and blankets. People said:
‘See, there goes Rising Wolf. He is young, but he has many horses.’
Therefore, I came to be called ‘Many Horses’; but I had only one
wife, Sailing Hawk. I cared only for her.”
The chief’s handsome face had long since become grave and rapt. Now
it suddenly grew grim. His little wife moved uneasily in her seat by
his side, and he looked at her with a strange glance. Between them
had crept the shadow of Sailing Hawk’s death.
“One day while I sat with Sailing Hawk in my tepee, a big, black
cloud came flying from the west like an eagle, and out of it the red
fire stabbed and killed my wife and set my tepee on fire. My heart
was like ice when I rose and saw my Sailing Hawk dead. I seized my
gun. I fired many times into the cloud. I screamed at it in rage.
My eyes were hot. I was crazy.—At last I went away, but my wife was
dead, and my heart empty and like ashes. I did not eat for many days,
and I cared no more for the Great Spirits. I prayed no more. I could
not smoke, but I sat all night by the place where my Sailing Hawk
lay, and no man dared come to me. My heart was very angry toward
everybody and all things. I could not see the end of my trail. All
was black before me.
“My people at this time were living on their own lands. The big fight
with ‘Long Hair’ had passed away, and we were living at peace once
more; but the buffalo were passing also, and we feared and wondered.
“Then the white man came with his soldiers, and made a corral here
in the hot, dry country, and drove us therein, and said, ‘If you
go outside we will shoot you.’ Soon we became poor. We had then no
buffalo at all. We were fed poor beef, and had to wear white men’s
clothes which did not fit. We could not go to hunt in the mountains,
and the land was waterless and very hot in summer, and we froze in
winter. Then there were many sick, but the white men sent a doctor,
and he laughed at me, and ordered me not to go near the sick ones.
This made my heart black and sorrowful, for the white man gave
strange white powders that were very bitter in the mouth, and the
people died thereafter.
“But many times when he had gone I went in and made strong magic
and cured the sick, and he thought it was his white powders.
Nevertheless, more and more of my people came to believe in the white
man, and so I grew very poor, and was forced to get rations like the
rest. It was a black time for me.
“One night there came into our midst a Snake messenger with a big
tale. ‘Away in the west,’ he said to us in sign talk, ‘a wonderful
man has come. He speaks all languages, and he is the friend of all
red men. He is white, but not like other white men. He has been
nailed to a tree by the whites. I saw the holes in his hands. He
teaches a new dance, which is to gather all the Indians together in
council. He wants a few head men of all tribes to meet him where
the big mountains are, in the place where the lake is surrounded by
pictured rocks. There he will teach us how to make mighty magic and
drive away the white man and bring back the buffalo.’
“All that he told us we pondered long, and I said: ‘It is well, I
will go to see this man. I will learn his dance.’
“All this was unknown to the agent, and at last, when the time came,
four of us set forth at night on our long journey. On the third day
two Snake chiefs and four Burnt Thighs joined us, then four Cut
Throat people, and we all journeyed in peace. At last we came to the
lake by the pictured rocks where the three snow mountains are.
“There were many Indians there. The Big Bellies were there from
the north; and the Blackfeet, and the Magpies, and the Weavers,
and the People-of-the-south-who-run-round-the-rocks, and the
Black-people-of-the-mountains all were there. We had council, and
we talked in signs, and we all began to ask, ‘Where is the Great
Helper?’ A day passed, and he did not come; but one night when we sat
in council over his teachings, he suddenly stepped inside the circle.
He was a dark man, but not so dark as we were. He had long hair on
his chin, and long, brown head-hair, parted in the middle. I looked
for the wounds on his wrists; I could not see any. He moved like
a big chief, tall and swift. He could speak all tongues. He spoke
Dakota, and many understood. I could understand the language of the
Cut Throat people, and this is what he said:
“‘My people, before the white man came you were happy. You had many
buffalo to eat and tall grass for your ponies. You could come and go
like the wind. When it was cold, you could go into the valleys to
the south, where the healing springs are; and when it grew warm, you
could return to the mountains in the north. The white man came. He
dug the bones of our mother, the earth. He tore her bosom with steel.
He built big trails and put iron horses on them. He fought you and
beat you, and put you in barren places where a horned toad would die.
He said you must stay there; you must not hunt in the mountains.
“‘Then he breathed his poison upon the buffalo, and they disappeared.
They vanished into the earth. One day they covered the hills, the
next nothing but their bones remained. Would you remove the white
man? Would you have the buffalo come back? Listen, and I will tell
you how to make great magic. I will teach you a mystic dance, and
then let everybody go home and dance. When the grass is green, the
change will come. Let everybody dance four days in succession, and
on the fourth day the white man will disappear and the buffalo come
back; our dead will return with the buffalo.
“‘The earth is old. It will be renewed. The new and happy world will
slide above the old as the right hand covers the left.
“‘You have forgotten the ways of the fathers; therefore great
distress is upon you. You must throw away all that the white man
has brought you. Return to the dress of the fathers. You must use
the sacred colors, red and white, and the sacred grass, and in the
spring, when the willows are green, the change will come.
“‘Do no harm to any one. Do not fight each other. Live in peace. Do
not tell lies. When your loved ones die, do not weep, nor burn their
tepees, nor cut your arms, nor kill horses, for you will see the dead
again.’
“His words made my heart glad and warm in my breast. I thought of the
bright days when I was a boy and the white man was far away, when the
buffalo were like sagebrush on the plains—there were so many. I rose
up. I went toward him. I bowed my head, and I said:
“‘Oh, father, teach us the dance!’ and all the people sitting round
said, ‘Good! teach us the dance!’
“Then he taught us the song and the dance which white people call
‘the ghost dance,’ and we danced all together, and while we danced
near him he sat with bowed head. No one dared to speak to him. The
firelight shone on him. Suddenly he disappeared. No one saw him go.
Then we were sorrowful, for we wished him to remain with us. It came
into my heart to make a talk; so I rose, and said:
“‘Friends, let us now go home. Our father has given us the mighty
magic dance. Let us go home and teach all our people, and dance the
four days, so that the white man may go and the buffalo come back.
All our fathers will come back. The old men will be made young. The
blind will see again. We will all be happy once more.’