sound of a horse’s feet, and, looking out of the tepee, I saw a small
man on a big horse—bigger than any I had ever seen before. Warriors
were surrounding him, asking, “Who are you?”
“Take me to The Sitting Bull,” he said, and just then the chief
looked from his lodge and said, “Bring him to me.”
He was brought and set before The Sitting Bull, and they looked at
each other for a time in silence. I was peering in under the side of
the lodge and could not see the chief’s face, but the stranger smiled
and said: “Are The Sitting Bull’s eyes getting dim that he does not
know his old playmate?”
“The Badger,” replied the chief. Then he smiled and they shook hands.
“You are changed, my friend; you were but a boy when we played at
hunting in The Cave Hills.”
“That is true,” replied the man, who was a French half-breed. “I do
not blame you for looking at me with blind eyes. I would not have
known you. I have a message for you.”
“Bring food for our brother,” commanded the chief, and after The
Badger had eaten the chief said, “Now tell me whence you come and why
are you here?”
“That is a long tale,” said The Badger. “It is a story you must think
about.”
And so for three days The Badger sat before the chief and they
talked. And each night the camp muttered gravely, discussing the same
question. The chief’s face grew sterner each day. He smoked long and
there were times when his eyes rested on the ground in a silence of
deep thought while The Badger told of the mighty white man—of his
wonderful deeds, of his armies, of his iron horses, of all these
things which we afterward saw for ourselves. He went farther. He told
us of the white man’s government which was lodged in a great village
made of wood and stone. He said the white men were more numerous than
the buffalo and that their horses were plenty as prairie dogs. “You
do well, my friend, not to go to war against these people. They are
all-conquering. What can you do against magicians who create guns and
knives and powder?”
“I have no hate of them,” replied the chief. “All I ask is to be let
alone.”
“Listen, my friend. This is what the white man is doing. A great
chief, whose name is Sheridan, followed by many warriors, is killing
or subduing all the red people to the south. He has broken the
Comanches; the Kiowas and Pawnees—all bend the neck to him. Ferocious
leaders have been sent out from Washington with orders to gather all
your race into certain small lands and there teach them the white
man’s way. Whether they wish to do so or not does not matter. They
must go or be blown to pieces by his guns. My friend, that is what
they mean to do with you. They want you to come to the mouth of Grand
River and to the Standing Rock, there to give up your hunting and
learn the white man’s way. The great war chief of the whites has said
it.”
The chief’s eyes flamed. “And if I refuse?”
“Then he will send a long line of his horsemen to fetch you.”
The chief grimly smiled. “Hoh! Well, go back and tell them to come.
The Sitting Bull has got along very well in the ways of his fathers
thus far and in those ways he will continue. The land is wide to the
west and game is plenty.”
But The Badger then said: “My brother, you know me well. We can speak
plainly. The white chief sent me, I say that now. He asked me to
come, and I did so. I came as a friend in order that you might not be
deceived. I tell you the truth—the white man is moving westward, like
a feeding herd of buffalo, slow but sure. His heart is bitter toward
us and we must keep silence before him. He wants all the land east of
the Missouri and south of the Black Hills. He demands that you give
it up.”
My chief was sitting in his soldiers’ lodge; few were there. My
father was looking in at the door and I, a lad, was beside him. I saw
the veins swell out in the chief’s neck as he rose and spoke: “My
friend, out there” (he swept his hand to the west) “is our land, a
big open space covered with game. Go back to your friends, the white
men, and say that The Sitting Bull is Uncapappa and free to do as he
wills. He chooses to live as his fathers lived. As the Great Spirit
made him, so he is, and shall remain.”
II
POLICY AND COUNCIL
Nevertheless The Badger’s talk had enlightened my chief. He pondered
deeply over his words and came at last fairly to understand the white
man’s demands. He lived by planting; the red man by hunting. The
palefaces said: “The red man has too much land. We will take part of
it for ourselves. In return we will teach him how to plant and make
bread and clothing.” But they did not stop there. They said if the
red man does not wish to be a planter and wear our clothing we will
send out soldiers with guns and make him do our will.
The chief’s first duty was to reject these terms, and this he did;
but a second messenger came bringing tobacco and round disks of
bread. The chief ground the tobacco under his heel and his soldiers
spun the bread down the hill into the river. The emissary stood by
and saw this merry game and was wise enough to remain silent.
Once a courier who would not cease talking when commanded by the
chief was whipped out of the village. So it came to be that this
great camp on the Little Missouri was called “The Hostile Camp of
Sitting Bull.”
You have heard those who now deride my chief and say that he was no
warrior, that he was a coward, a man of no account; but they are
ignorant fools who say this. Go read in the books of the agent at
Standing Rock; there you will find records of the respect and fear in
which the agents of Washington held my chief in those days. You may
read there of seven messengers who were sent out to tell “Sitting
Bull and his irreconcilables they must come in and disarm”—and if you
read on you will learn how these spies came straggling back without
daring to utter one word of the government’s commands to my chief.
They lied about him, the cowardly whelps, and said he threatened
them. In truth, they sneaked into his presence and said nothing. In
this way the agent got a false impression of the chief, and reported
that he was at war with the whites, which was not true.
The Sitting Bull was now both Secretary of War and commander-in-chief
of all those who believed in the ways of the fathers. He drew men to
him by the boldness and gentleness of his words. His camp was the
refuge of those who declined to obey the agents of the white man’s
government. The circle of his followers each year widened and his
fame spread far among the white men who hated him for the lands he
held.
But while my chief was thus holding hard to the ancestral customs,
like a rock in a rushing stream, our cousins, the Yanktonaise and the
Ogallallahs, were slowly yielding to the power of Washington. Like
the Wyandottes, the Miamis and the Illini, they were retiring before
the wonder-working plowmen.
In the autumn of the year 1869 the agent again sent out a call for
us to come and join another peace council. Washington wanted to buy
some more of our land. Of course The Sitting Bull refused, and gave
commands that no one leave his camp, except such messengers as he
sent to check the vote for a treaty. “I have made a vow and I will
never treat with you,” he said.
In spite of all this a minority of the Sioux nation, weak, cowardly
souls, pieced out with half-breeds and rank outsiders, (like the
Santees who had no claim to be counted), made a treaty wherein they
basely ceded away, without our consent, a large strip of our land in
Dakota, and fixed upon certain small tracts which were to be held
perpetually as reservations for all the allied tribes of Sioux. The
Uncapappas were both sad and furious, but what could they do?
The establishment of the agency at Grand River followed this, and
many of the Yanktonaise moved in and began to accept the white man’s
food and clothing in payment for their loss of freedom.
I do not blame these men now. They were afraid, they were overawed by
the white men, but they had no power to make such a treaty binding on
us, and my chief, being very sad and very angry, said: “Fools! They
have sold us to our enemies in a day of fear.”
Our world began, at that moment, to fade away, for as the fort and
agencies grew in power along the Missouri, as they put forth their
will against my people, two great parties were formed. There were
many who said: “The white man is the world conqueror; we must follow
his trail,” but those who said, “We will die as we have lived—red
men, free and without fear,” came naturally to the lodge of my chief
and gladly submitted to his leadership. Go read in the records of the
War Department, whether this is true or false. You do not need a red
man’s accusation to prove the perfidy of Congress.
My chief’s policy remained as before. “Do not make war on the whites,
but keep our territory clear of the Crows and Mandans.”
He had surrounded himself with a band of trusted warriors whom
he used as a general uses the members of his staff. They were
his far-reaching eyes and ears. They brought him news of distant
expeditions. They kept order in the camp and protected him from the
jealousy of subordinate chiefs—for you must know there had grown
up in the hearts of lesser men a secret hate of our leader. This
bodyguard of the chief was called “The Silent Eaters,” because they
met in private feasts and talked quietly without songs or dancing,
whereas all the others in the tribe danced and made merry. With these
“Silent Eaters” the chief freely discussed all the great problems
which arose.
My father was one of these and the chief loved him. To him The
Sitting Bull spoke plainly. “Why should we go to a reservation and
plow the hard ground,” he said, “when the buffalo are waiting for us
in the wild lands? We owe the white man nothing. We can take care of
ourselves. We buy our guns and ammunition; we pay well for them. We
are on the earth which the Great Spirit gave to us in the beginning.
Its fruit is ours, its wood and pasturage are ours. Let the white men
keep to their own. Why do they trouble us? Do they think the Great
Spirit a fool, that he creates people without reason?”
He knew all that went on at the agency. He heard that leaders in
opposition to his ways, the ways of our fathers, were rising among
the renegades who preferred to camp in idleness beside the white
man’s storehouse. He knew that they were denouncing him, but he did
not retaliate upon them. “I do not shed blood out of choice, but of
necessity,” he said. “I ask only leave to live as my father lived.
The white man is cunning in the making of weapons, but we are the
better hunters. We will trade our skins for knives and powder. So far
all is well.”
But you know how it is, the white men would not keep to their own.
They came into our lands, and when our young warriors drove them out
all white men cursed The Sitting Bull. This the chief did not seek;
it was forced upon him.
I will tell you how this came about.
In 1873 the government, being moved by those who seek gold, sent a
commission to meet with my chief, saying, “We desire to buy the Black
Hills.”
“I do not care to sell,” he replied, and they went away chagrined.
Soon after this our scouts came upon a regiment of cavalry spying
round the hills. They came from the west, and Black Wolf, the leader
of the scouts, asked, “What are you doing here?”
The captain laughed and mocked him and said, “We ride because our
horses are fat and need exercise.”
These words, when repeated to my chief, disturbed him deeply. “We
must watch these men. They are spies of those who wish to steal the
Black Hills as the plowmen have already taken the land east of the
Missouri. We can not afford to move again. It is necessary to make a
stand.”
Then General Custer—“Long Hair”—was sent on an expedition into the
hills and the whole tribe became very anxious; even those who had
accepted the agent’s goods and lived slothfully at the Standing Rock
began to take alarm. They plainly felt at last the white man pushing,
pushing from the east.
Those who went away to see came back reporting that the settlers were
thick beyond numbering on the prairies and that all the forests were
being destroyed by them. They were plowing above the graves of our
sires, whose bones were being flung to the wolves. Steamboats hooted
along the rivers and iron horses ran athwart the most immemorial
trails. Immigrants were already lining the great muddy river with
forts and villages, and some were looking greedily at the Black
Hills, in which the soldiers had reported gold.
My people considered Custer’s expedition an unlawful incursion
on their lands, just as, far to the south, so our friends the
Ogallallahs reported, other white men without treaty were moving
westward, building railways and driving the buffalo before them. It
was most alarming.
The Sitting Bull listened to these tales uneasily, hoping his
messengers were misled. He feared and hated the more fiercely all
messengers who came thereafter, bringing gifts, and the commission
which entered his camp in 1875 found him very dark of face and very
curt of speech. Never was he less free of tongue.
They said, “We come to buy the hills.”
He replied, “I do not care to sell.”
“We will pay well for the loan of the peaks—the high places where the
gold is.”
“I cannot lend; the hills belong to my people,” he said.
“We are your friends. You had better sell, for if you don’t the white
men will take the hills without pay. They are coming in a flood.
Nothing can stop them; their eyes are fixed. You are fighting a
losing battle.”
“I will not sell,” he answered, and turned on his heel, and they too
went away without success.
To his “Silent Eaters” he said that night: “So long as the buffalo
do not leave us we are safe. It cannot be that the Great Spirit will
permit the white men to rob us of both our lands and our means of
life. He made us what we are, and so long as we follow our ancient
ways we are good in his sight.”
Nevertheless, his friends saw that he was greatly troubled. The white
hunters were then slaughtering the buffalo for the robes. They were
killing merely for the pleasure of killing. The herds were melting
away like clouds in the sky, their bones covered the plain, and my
chief began to fear that the commissioner had told the truth. He
began to doubt the continuance of his race.
III
THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HORN
In the spring of 1876, as your count runs, news came to us that the
troops were fighting our brethren, and soon afterward some Cheyennes
came to our camp and warned the chief, “The soldiers of Washington
are marching to fight you. They intend to force you to go to the
reservation.”
The Sitting Bull was deeply moved by this news. “Why do they do this?
I am not at war with them. They are not good to eat. I kill only
game—the beasts that we need for food. I am always for peace. You who
know me will bear witness that I take most joy in being peacemaker. I
mediate gladly. Now I will make a sign. To show them that we do not
care to fight I will move camp. Let us go deep into the West where
the soil is too hard for the plow, far from the white man, and there
live in peace. It is a land for hunters; those who plant the earth
will never come to dispossess us.”
After a long discussion his plan was decided upon. It was a sorrowful
day for us when we were commanded to leave our native hills and go
into a strange land, far from the graves of our forefathers. Songs of
piercing sadness rang through the lodges when the camp police went
about ordering the departure, and some of the chieftains wished to
stay and fight.
“We are surrendering our land to the enemy,” they said. “We are
throwing part of our people to the wolf in order to preserve the
rest.”
“The land is wide and empty to the west,” urged the chief.
“Washington will now be satisfied. He has eaten hugely of our hunting
ground; his greed will now be appeased. He will not follow us into
the mysterious sunset, because his plow is useless there.”
Our camp at this time was in the Cave Hills between the Grand River
and the headwaters of the Moreau, and in a great procession we set
forth to the west, moving steadily till we reached the Powder River
Valley. There we met three hundred lodges of the Cheyennes under the
command of Crazy Horse, American Horse, and Two Moon.
To us American Horse said: “We are ready to fight. General Crook is
at war upon us, but we have beaten him once and we can do it again.
Now we will go with you and camp with you and battle when the time
comes. Our fortunes shall be yours. Whatever happens, we will share
it with you.”
“There will be no need to war,” said my chieftain, solemnly. “We
have given up our land, we are going far into the west beyond even
the Crow country where the buffalo are. Our enemy will not follow us
there.”
Crazy Horse shook his head. “He will come, this white man. He trails
us wherever we go. He has no more pity than the wolf. He has made a
vow to sweep us from the earth.”
[Illustration: Cheyenne Scouts Patrolling the Big Timber of the North
Canadian, Oklahoma
_Illustration from_
CHEYENNE SCOUTS IN OKLAHOMA
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _April 6, 1889_]
[Illustration: Indians Reconnoitering from a Mountain-top
_The keen eye of the Indian is able to distinguish objects
even in such an extensive view as this appears to be. To the
white man, however, the Western landscape—red, yellow, blue,
in a prismatic way, shaded by cloud forms and ending among
them—appears as something unreal._
_Illustration from_
SUN-DOWN’S HIGHER SELF
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _November, 1898_]
Our camp was very large and my chief was in the fullness of his
command. Some of the Ogallallahs had joined us before and with the
Cheyennes we were nearly fifteen hundred lodges. We made no effort at
concealing our trail. We moved in a body, and where we went we left a
broad and dusty road. We trailed leisurely up the Yellowstone to the
mouth of the Rosebud and up the Rosebud to the head of a small creek
which emptied into Greasy Grass Creek (a stream which the whites call
the Little Big Horn) at a point where there was plenty of wood and
good grazing.
The chief as he looked down upon this valley said: “It is good.
We will camp here,” and to this they all agreed. It was indeed a
beautiful place. I was but a lad, but I remember that beautiful
scene, finer than anything in all our own lands. Hunting parties were
at once sent out to find the buffalo, and some of the chief’s “Silent
Eaters” mounted the hills to spy backward on our trail.
The hunters reported the country clear of foes and buffalo near, and
as the spies brought no news of invaders the people threw off all
care. With feasts and dances they began to celebrate their escape
from the oppressor. We were beginning the world anew in this glorious
country.
One day in midsummer—I remember it now with beating heart—just in
the midst of our preparation for a dance, the cry arose: “_The white
soldiers—they are coming!_ Get your horses!”
I remember clearly the very instant. I was sitting in my father’s
lodge, painting my face for the dance, when this sound arose. The
shouting came from the camp of The Gall, whose lodges stood at the
extreme south end of the circle. From where I stood I could see
nothing, but as I ran up the west bank to find my horse I detected a
long line of white soldiers riding swiftly down the valley from the
south. They came like a moving wall and the sun glittered on their
guns as they reloaded them. Before them the women and children were
fleeing like willow leaves before a November wind.
My heart was beating so hard I could scarcely speak. I was but a boy
and had never seen a white soldier, yet now I must fight. All around
me were hundreds of other young men and boys roping, bridling, and
mounting the plunging ponies.
As we came sweeping back my father passed us, leading the white
horse of the chief, and as we came near the headquarters tent the
chief came out wearing a war-bonnet and carrying his saddle. This he
flung on his horse, and when he was mounted my father and his guard
surrounded him and they rode away. My father took my horse and I saw
neither him nor the chief till night. I heard that he tried to check
the battle, but the young men of Chief Gall’s camp had routed the
enemy’s column before he reached there and the soldiers were spurring
their horses into the river and dashing up the hills in mad effort to
get away.
The camp was a mighty whirlpool of confusion. The women were taking
down the lodges, weeping and singing, the old men and boys were
roping the horses together, and the ground was covered with a litter
of blankets, saddles, pouches, and other things which escaped notice
or seemed unimportant, and all the time we could hear the rapid
cracking of the guns and it seemed as if we were all to be killed. No
one knew how many soldiers there were. All seemed lost, our shining,
peaceful world about to be shattered and destroyed.
I ran to catch another horse, and when I was mounted and once more in
sight of the valley it was almost deserted. The women and children
were all gathered in throngs on the west bank, straining their eyes
toward the cloud of smoke which marked the retreat of soldiers to the
southeast, singing songs of prayer and exaltation.
Suddenly a wild cry arose, and looking where an old woman pointed, I
saw on the bare crest of the hill to the east a fluttering flag. A
moment later four horsemen appeared, then four more, and so in column
of fours they streamed into view, a long line of them.
“Go tell the warriors,” screamed my mother to me, and, lashing my
pony, I started down the slope diagonally toward a body of our
soldiers who were returning from pursuit of the other soldiers.
They were warned by some one nearer to them than I. I saw them turn
and spur their horses in a wild race along the river bank. I had
no weapon, but I kept on till I joined the rear rank. There were
hundreds in this charge.
You have heard that my people ambushed Custer. This is a lie. The
place where he stood to view our camp was a hill as bare as your
hand. He saw us, knew how many we were, and rode to meet us. It was
an open attack on our part. Chief Gall led his band up a steep ravine
and swept round behind the troopers, each man clinging to the far
side of his horse and shooting beneath his neck.
You have heard it said that we outnumbered Custer ten to one. This,
too, is false. We had less than twelve hundred warriors, counting
old and young. We had old-fashioned guns—many of our men had only
clubs or arrows or lances. Many were boys like myself, with not
even a club. We were taken unawares, not they. They had the new
magazine rifles and six-shot revolvers. They were all experienced
warriors, while we were not; indeed most of our men had never been in
battle before and they had no notion of discipline. Each man fought
alone, without direction. We were a disorderly mass of excited men.
Everybody gave orders; no one was leader. That is the way of my
people. We have no commander-in-chief. We fight in bands. Chief Gall
led one charge, the daughter of Old Horse led another, American Horse
led a third, and so it proceeded as a mob goes to war.
I could not see much of what followed, for a great cloud of dust and
smoke covered the hill. Nobody had any clear idea of the battle. It
was very hot and we took no notice of time, but it must have been
about half past ten when the fight began. It did not last very long.
Once as I dashed near I caught a glimpse of the white soldiers,
some kneeling, some standing, with their terrible guns ever ready,
_crack_—_crack_—_crack_, while our warriors circled around them,
dashing close in order to fire and retreating to reload. It seemed
that some of the soldiers ran out of ammunition early, for they sat
holding their guns without firing.
The fire was slackening as I rode down to the river to drink, and
when I returned all was still and the smoke was slowly drifting
away. Once or twice a band of young braves dashed in close to the
last group of tangled bodies, and when no weapon flashed back they
dismounted to peer about, looking for Long Hair.
We did not know then that General Custer had cut his hair short, and
we all took the body of a man with long black hair to be the chief.
I now see that we were mistaken. He was a scout. Some of the men
stripped the bodies of the white men of their clothes, while others
moved about, counting the dead. There were not many red men killed.
Our manner of fighting saved us from heavy loss. You have heard that
our soldiers mangled the dead. This is not true. Some crazy old women
and a few renegades did so, but our chiefs did not countenance this.
You call this a “massacre,” but to us it was a battle, honorable to
us as to the bluecoats.