and to honor my chief. He told me the stories of our tribe. He taught
me to pray—and to shoot. He taught me to dance, to sing the ancient
songs, and when I was old enough he led me to battle. My skill with
the spear and the arrow I drew from him, he gave me courage and
taught me forbearance. When he died you made me leader in his place
and carefully have I followed his footsteps. I have kept the peace
among my people. I have given of my abundance to the poor. I have not
boasted or spoken enviously because my father would be ashamed of me
if I did so. Now the time has come to speak plainly. I hear that my
brother who sits beside me—Mattowan, the son of my mother’s sister—is
envious. I hear that he wishes to see me put aside as one no longer
fit to rule.”
He paused here and the tension was very great in all the assembly,
but Mattowan sullenly looked out over the heads of the women—his big
mouth close set.
The chief gently said: “This shall be as you say. If you, my
brothers, head men of the Lakotans, say I am old and foolish, then
Waumdisapa will put aside his chief’s robes and go forth to sit
outside the council circle.” His voice trembled as he uttered this
resolution—but drawing himself to proud height he concluded in a firm
voice: “Brothers, I have spoken.”
As he took his seat a low mournful sound passed among the women, and
the mother of Mattowan began to sing a bitter song of reproach—but
some one checked her, as old Mato rose. He was small, with the face
of a fox, keen, shrewd, humorous. After the usual orator’s preamble,
he said: “Brothers, this is very foolish. Who desires to have
Mattowan chief? Only a few boys and grumblers. What has he done to
be chief? Nothing that others have not done. He is a crazy man. His
heart is bad. Would he bring dissension among us? Let us rebuke this
braggart. For me I am old—I sit here only by courtesy of Waumdisapa,
but for me I want no change. I do not wish to make a wolf the war
chief of my people. I have spoken.”
As the pipe went round and one by one the head men rose to praise
and defend their chieftain, Mattowan became furious. He trembled
and his face grew ferocious with his almost ungovernable hate and
disappointment—plainly the day was going against him.
At last he sprang up, forgetting all form—all respect. “You are all
squaws,” he roared. “You are dogs licking the bones this whining
coward throws to you——”
He spoke no more. With the leap of a panther his chief fell upon him
and with one terrible blow sunk his knife to the hilt in his heart.
Smitten with instant palsy Mattowan staggered a moment amid the moans
of the women, and the hoarse shouts of the men, and fell forward,
face down in the very center of the council circle.
[Illustration: An Indian Brave
_Illustration from_
A BUNCH OF BUCKSKINS
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published by_
R. H. RUSSELL, _1901_]
For a minute Waumdisapa, tense and terrible in his anger, stood
looking down upon his fallen calumniator—rigid, menacing, ready
to strike again—then his vast muscles relaxed, his eyes misted with
tears and with a moan of remorse and anguish he lifted his blanket
till his quivering lips were covered—crying hoarsely, “I have killed
my brother. I am no longer fit to be your chief.”
Thereupon dropping his embroidered pipe-bag and his ceremonial fan
upon the ground he turned and walked slowly away with staggering,
shaking limbs, onward through the camp, out upon the plain and there,
throwing himself down upon the ground, began to chant a wild song of
uncontrollable grief.
All night long he lay thus, mourning like a wounded lion, and his
awed people dared not approach. Over and over, with anguished voice,
he cried: “Father pity me. My hand is red with my brother’s blood. I
have broken the bond of the council circle. My heart is black with
despair!—Pity me!—My brother!”
* * * * *
In the morning he returned to his tepee, moving like an old man, bent
and nerveless, avoiding all eyes, ignoring all greetings—and when
next the council met, Waumdisapa, clad in rags, with dust upon his
head, silently took his place outside the council circle—self-accused
and self-deposed.
The sight of their chief moving so humbly to a seat among the
obscure, deeply affected the women, and a wailing song ran among
them like an autumn wind—but Waumdisapa’s head was bowed to hide his
quivering lips.
A DECREE OF COUNCIL
A DECREE OF COUNCIL
Big Nose was an inveterate gambler. Like all the plains tribes the
Shi-an-nay are a social people. They love companionship and the
interchange of jest and story. At evening, when the day’s hunt is
over, they come together to tell stories and joke and discuss each
other’s affairs precisely as the peasants of a French village do. And
when amusement is desired they dance or play games.
It is this feeling on their part which makes it so difficult for the
Government to carry out its theories of allotment. It is difficult to
uproot a habit of life which has been thousands of years forming. It
is next to impossible to get one of these people to leave the village
group and go into his lonely little cabin a mile or two from a
neighbor. And the need of amusement is intensified by the sad changes
in the life of these people. Games of chance appeal to them precisely
as they do to the negro and to large classes of white people. They
play with the same abandon with which the negro enters into a game of
craps.
One evening Big Nose was in company with three or four others in the
midst of Charcoal’s camp playing The Hand game. He had been doing
some work for the Post and had brought with him to the camp a little
heap of silver dollars. He was therefore in excellent temper for
a brisk game. But luck was against him. His little store of money
melted away and then he began taking his ponies, his gun, and finally
his blankets and his tepee; all went into the yawning gulf of his bad
luck. Before midnight came he had staked everything but the clothing
on his back and had reached a condition of mind bordering on frenzy.
Nothing was too small for his opponents to accept and nothing was
too valuable for him to stake. He began putting his moccasins up on
the chance and ended by tearing off his Gee string which represented
his absolute impoverishment. A reasonable being would have ended the
game here but with a desperation hitherto unknown to the gamblers of
his tribe, he sat naked on the ground and gambled both his wives away.
When he realized what had happened to him, that he was absolutely
without home or substance in the world, naked to the cold and having
no claim upon a human being, his frenzy left him and he sank into
pitiful dejection. Walking naked through the camp, he began to cry
his need, “Take pity on me, my friends. I have nothing. The wind is
cold. I have no blanket. I am hungry. I have no tepee.”
For a long time no one paid any heed to him, for they were disgusted
with his foolishness and they would not allow his wives to clothe him
or give him shelter. However, at last, his brother came out and gave
him a blanket and took him into his tepee. “Let this be a lesson to
you,” he said. “You are a fool. Yet I pity you.”
Next day a council was called to consider his case, which was the
most remarkable that had ever happened in the tribe. There were many
who were in favor of letting him take care of himself, but in the end
it was decreed that he should be clothed and that he should have a
tepee and the absolute necessities of life.
The question of restoring him to his wives was a much more serious
one, the general opinion being that a man who would gamble his wives
away in this way had no further claim upon a woman.
[Illustration: In an Indian Camp
_The two men standing are in argument about the squaw seated
between them, for the possession of whom they had gambled, the
brave in the breech-clout, although the loser, refusing, in
Indian parlance, “to put the woman on the blanket.”_
_Illustration from_
SUN-DOWN LEFLARE’S WARM SPOT
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _September, 1898_]
[Illustration: Crow Indians Firing into the Agency
_This incident occurred in 1887 on the Crow Reservation in
Northern Montana. A score or so of young Crow braves having
captured sixty horses in a raid they made on a Piegan camp, were
wildly celebrating the victory when the agent sought to arrest
them with his force of Indian police. Upon this the raiders
assumed a hostile attitude and as a defiance they began firing
into the agency buildings._
_Illustration from_
THE TURBULENT CROWS
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _November 5, 1887_]
At last, old Charcoal arose to speak. He was a waggish old fellow
whose eye twinkled with humor as he said, “Big Nose has two wives
as you know. One of them is young. She is industrious. She is very
quiet, saying little and speaking in a gentle voice. The other is
old and has a sharp tongue. Her tongue is like a whip. It makes
her husband smart. Now let us restore him to his old wife. She will
be good discipline for him. She will not let him forget what he has
done.”
This suggestion made every one laugh and it was agreed with. And the
news was carried to Big Nose. “I don’t want my old wife,” he said. “I
want my young wife.”
“The council has decreed,” was the stern answer, “and there is no
appeal.”
Big Nose accepted the ruling of the tribe and resolutely turned his
face in the right direction. He gave up gambling and became one of
the most progressive men of the tribe. By hard work he acquired a
team and a wagon and worked well, freighting for the Agency and for
the Post traders.
His old wife, however, grew more and more unsatisfactory as the years
went by. For some inscrutable reason, she did not care to make a
home, but was always moving about from camp to camp, full of gossip
and unwelcome criticism. All this Big Nose patiently endured for four
years. But one day he came to Seger, the superintendent of the school
near him, and said:
“My friend, you know I am walking the white man’s road. You see that
I want to do right. I have a team. I work hard. I want a home where
I can live quietly. But my old wife is trifling. She is good for
nothing. She wants to gad about all the time and never stay home and
look after the chickens. I want to put her away and take another and
better wife.”
Seger was very cautious. “What do the old chiefs say about it?”
Big Nose looked a little discouraged, but he answered defiantly, “Oh,
I am walking the white man’s road these days. I don’t care what they
say. I am listening to what you say.”
“I’ll consider the matter,” he replied evasively, for he wished to
consult the head men. When he had stated the matter to White Shield,
he said, “Now, of course, whatever you think best in this matter will
be acceptable. I don’t know anything about the circumstances, but if
this old woman is as bad as Big Nose says, she is of no account.”
White Shield, very quietly, replied, “Big Nose can never marry again.”
“Why not?” inquired Seger, being interested in White Shield’s brevity
and decision of utterance.
White Shield replied, “Haven’t you heard how Big Nose gambled his
wives away? That thing he did. Gambled away his tepees, his clothing,
and walked naked through the camp. We gave him clothes. We gave back
one wife, but we marked out a road and he must walk in it. He cannot
marry again.”
And from this decree there was no appeal.
DRIFTING CRANE
DRIFTING CRANE
The people of Boomtown invariably spoke of Henry Wilson as the oldest
settler in the Jim Valley, as he was of Buster County, but the
Eastern man, with his ideas of an “old settler,” was surprised as he
met the short, silent, middle-aged man, who was very loath to tell
anything about himself, and about whom many strange and thrilling
stories were told.
Between his ranch and the settlements in Eastern Dakota there was the
wedge-shaped reservation known as the Sisseton Indian Reserve, on
which were stationed the customary agency and company of soldiers.
The valley was unsurveyed for the most part, and the Indians
naturally felt a sort of proprietorship in it, and when Wilson drove
his cattle down into the valley and squatted, the chief, Drifting
Crane, welcomed him, as a host might, to an abundant feast whose
hospitality was presumed upon, but who felt the need of sustaining
his reputation for generosity, and submitted graciously.
The Indians during the first summer got to know Wilson, and liked
him for his silence, his courage, his simplicity; but the older men
pondered upon the matter a great deal and watched with grave faces
to see him ploughing up the sod for his garden. There was something
strange in this solitary man thus deserting his kindred, coming
here to live alone with his cattle; they could not understand it.
What they said in those pathetic, dimly lighted lodges will never
be known; but when winter came, and the newcomer did not drive his
cattle back over the hills as they thought he would, then the old
chieftains took long counsel upon it. Night after night they smoked
upon it, and at last Drifting Crane said to two of his young men:
“Go ask this cattleman why he remains in the cold and snow with his
cattle. Ask him why he does not drive his cattle home.”
This was in March, and one evening a couple of days later, as Wilson
was about re-entering his shanty at the close of his day’s work, he
was confronted by two stalwart Indians, who greeted him pleasantly.
“How d’e do?” he said in reply. “Come in.”
The Indians entered and sat silently while he put some food on the
table. They hardly spoke till after they had eaten. The Indian is
always hungry, for the reason that his food supply is insufficient
and his clothing poor. When they sat on the cracker-boxes and
soap-boxes which served as seats, they spoke. They told him of the
chieftain’s message. They said they had come to assist him in driving
his cattle back across the hills; that he must go.
To all this talk in the Indian’s epigrammatic way, and in the dialect
which has never been written, the rancher replied almost as briefly:
“You go back and tell Drifting Crane that I like this place; that I’m
here to stay; that I don’t want any help to drive my cattle. I’m on
the lands of the Great Father at Washington, and Drifting Crane ain’t
got any say about it. Now that sizes the whole thing up. I ain’t got
anything against you nor against him, but I’m a settler; that’s my
constitution; and now I’m settled I’m going to stay.”
While the Indians discussed his words between themselves he made a
bed of blankets on the floor, and said: “I never turn anybody out. A
white man is just as good as an Indian as long as he behaves himself
as well. You can bunk here.”
In the morning he gave them as good a breakfast as he had,—bacon and
potatoes, with coffee and crackers. Then he shook hands, saying:
“Come again. I ain’t got anything against you; you’ve done y’r duty.
Now go back and tell your chief what I’ve said. I’m at home every
day. Good day.”
The Indians smiled kindly, and drawing their blankets over their
arms, went away toward the east.
During April and May two or three reconnoitering parties of
land-hunters drifted over the hills and found him out. He was glad
to see them, for, to tell the truth, the solitude of his life was
telling on him. The winter had been severe, and he had hardly caught
a glimpse of a white face during the three midwinter months, and his
provisions were scanty.
These parties brought great news. One of them was the advance
surveying party for a great Northern railroad, and they said a line
of road was to be surveyed during the summer if their report was
favorable.
“Well, what d’ye think of it?” Wilson asked, with a smile.
“Think! It’s immense!” said a small man in the party, whom the
rest called Judge Balser. “Why, they’ll be a town of four thousand
inhabitants in this valley before snow flies. We’ll send the
surveyors right over the divide next month.”
They sent some papers to Wilson a few weeks later, which he devoured
as a hungry dog might devour a plate of bacon. The papers were
full of the wonderful resources of the Jim Valley. It spoke of the
nutritious grasses for stock. It spoke of the successful venture of
the lonely settler Wilson, how his stock fattened upon the winter
grasses without shelter, what vegetables he grew, etc.
Wilson was reading this paper for the sixth time one evening in May.
He felt something touch him on the shoulder, and looked up to see a
tall Indian gazing down upon him with a look of strange pride and
gravity. Wilson sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
“Drifting Crane, how d’e do?”
The Indian bowed, but did not take the settler’s hand. Drifting Crane
would have been called old if he had been a white man, and there was
a look of age in the fixed lines of his powerful, strongly modeled
face, but no suspicion of weakness in the splendid poise of his
broad, muscular body. There was a smileless gravity about his lips
and eyes which was very impressive.
“I’m glad to see you. Come in and get something to eat,” said Wilson,
after a moment’s pause.
The chief entered the cabin and took a seat near the door. He took a
cup of milk and some meat and bread silently, and ate while listening
to the talk of the settler.
“I don’t brag on my biscuits, chief, but they _eat_, if a man is
hungry. An’ the milk’s all right. I suppose you’ve come to see why I
ain’t moseying back over the divide?”
The chief, after a long pause, began to speak in a low, slow voice,
as if choosing his words. He spoke in broken English, of course, but
his speech was very direct and plain and had none of these absurd
figures of rhetoric which romancers invariably put into the mouths of
Indians. His voice was almost lionlike in its depth, and yet was not
unpleasant.
“Cattleman, my young men brought me bad message from you. They
brought your words to me, saying, he will not go away.”
“That’s about the way the thing stands,” replied Wilson, in response
to the question that was in the old chief’s steady eyes. “I’m here
to stay. This ain’t your land; this is Uncle Sam’s land, and part of
it’ll be mine as soon as the surveyors come to measure it off.”
“Who gave it away?” asked the chief. “My people were cheated out of
it; they didn’t know what they were doing.”
“I can’t help that; that’s for Congress to say. That’s the business
of the Great Father at Washington.”
There was a look of deep sorrow in the old man’s face. At last he
spoke again: “The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because
whenever one white man goes and calls it good, the others come.
Drifting Crane has seen it far in the east twice. The white men come
thick as the grass. They tear up the sod. They build houses. They
scare the buffalo away. They spoil my young men with whisky. Already
they begin to climb the eastern hills. Soon they will fill the
valley, and Drifting Crane and his people will be surrounded. The sod
will all be black.”
“I hope you’re right,” was the rancher’s grim reply.
“But they will not come if the cattleman go back to say the water is
not good, there is no grass, and the Indians own the land.”
Wilson smiled at the childish faith of the chief. “Won’t do,
chief—won’t do. That won’t do any good. I might as well stay.”
The chief rose. He was touched by the settler’s laugh; his eyes
flashed; his voice took on a sterner note. “The white man _must_ go!”
Wilson rose also. He was not a large man, but he was a very resolute
one. “I shan’t go,” he said through his clenched teeth.
It was a thrilling, a significant scene. It was in absolute truth the
meeting of the modern vidette of civilization with one of the rear
guard of retreating barbarism. Each man was a type; each was wrong,
and each was right. The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric
point of view as the white man. He was a warrior and hunter; made so
by circumstances over which he had no control.
The settler represented the unflagging energy and fearless heart of
the American pioneer. Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor
and a lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that. As he looked
into the Indian’s face he seemed to grow in height. He felt behind
him all the weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers; he
stood the representative of an unborn state. He took down a rifle
from the wall, the magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the
stock, pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view.
“You know this thing, chief?”
The Indian nodded slightly.
“Well, I’ll go when—this—is—empty.”
“But my young men are many.”
“So are the white men—my brothers.”
The chief’s head dropped forward. Wilson, ashamed of his boasting,
put the rifle back on the wall.
“I’m not here to fight. You can kill me any time. You could ’a’
killed me to-night, but it wouldn’t do any good. It’ud only make it
worse for you. Why, they’ll be a town in here bigger’n all your tribe
before two grass from now. It ain’t no use, Drifting Crane; it’s
_got_ to be. You an’ I can’t help n’r hinder it.”
Drifting Crane turned his head and gazed out on the western sky,
still red with the light of the fallen sun. His face was rigid as
bronze, but there was a dreaming, prophetic look in his eyes. A lump
came into the settler’s throat; for the first time in his life he
got a glimpse of the infinite despair of the Indian. He forgot that
Drifting Crane was the representative of a “vagabond race”; he saw
in him, or rather _felt_ in him, something almost magnetic. He was a
_man_; and a man of sorrows. The settler’s voice was husky when he
spoke again, and his lips trembled.
“Chief, I’d go to-morrow if it’ud do any good, but it won’t—not a
particle. You know that when you stop to think a minute. What good
did it do to massa_cree_ all them settlers at New Ulm? What good will
it do to murder me and a hundred others? Not a bit. A thousand others
would take our places. So I might just as well stay, and we might
just as well keep good friends. Killin’ is out o’ fashion; don’t do
any good.”
There was a twitching about the stern mouth of the Indian chief. He
understood all too well the irresistible logic of the pioneer. He
kept his martial attitude, but his broad chest heaved painfully,
and his eyes grew dim. At last he said, “Good-by. Cattleman right;
Drifting Crane wrong. Shake hands. Good-by.” He turned and strode
away.
“This is all wrong,” muttered the settler. “There’s land enough for
us all, or ought to be. I don’t understand—Well, I’ll leave it to
Uncle Sam, anyway.” He ended with a sigh.
THE STORY OF HOWLING WOLF
THE STORY OF HOWLING WOLF
Within two weeks after Captain Cook took charge of the Snake River
Agency his native policemen reported that fifteen of his people had
crossed the reservation line on their way to the Wind River Country.
“Where have they gone?”
“They gone to see it—their Ghost Dance Saviour,” explained Claude,
the agency interpreter.
“Who have gone?”
Claude rapidly ran over the names, and ended with “Howling Wolf.”
“Howling Wolf? Who is he? He isn’t on the rolls. I don’t know
anything about him.”
“He head man of Lizard Creek Camp.”
“Why isn’t he on the rolls?”
“He don’t get it—no rations.”
“Why not?”
“He is angry.”
“Angry? What about?”
Out of a good deal of talk the agent secured this story. Seven years
before, a brother of Howling Wolf, a peaceful old man, was sitting
on a hilltop (near the road) wrapped in evening meditation. His back
was toward a white man’s cabin not far away and he was looking at the
sunset. His robe was drawn closely round him, and his heart was at
peace with all the world, for he was thinking that the way is short
between him and the Shadow Land.
A couple of cowboys came out of the door of the cabin and one pointed
at the meditating man with derisive gestures. The other drew his
revolver and said, “See me knock the hat off the old fool.”
As he fired the old man sprang to his feet with a convulsive leap,
the blood streaming over his face. Numbed by the shock and blinded
with his own blood, he ran frenziedly and without design toward the
miscreant who shot him, and so on over the hill toward Howling Wolf’s
camp.
Springing to their horses the two ruffians galloped away with
desperate haste.
It was well they did so, for an hour later nothing remained of the
ranch but a heap of smoking embers. A hundred angry red men had swept
back over the hill—swift to avenge the madness of old Medicine Crow.
The old man was not killed, he lived for more than a year after the
wound, but he was never quite himself and when he died Howling Wolf
made a solemn declaration of war against the white cattlemen and
could not be convinced that the cowboys meant merely to frighten and
not to kill his brother. He lived in the hope of some time meeting
those men. No one had seen them but David Big Nose, who had been to
the white settlement that day, had met the fugitives, and was able
to describe them very well and every word of his description burned
itself into Howling Wolf’s memory. Thereafter on all his excursions
among the whites his eyes were ever seeking, his ears ever listening.
He never for an instant lost hope of revenge.