it is ordered in the world. It is not a question of right, or of the
will of the Great Spirit,” he went on; “it is merely a question of
cannon and food.” There was something appalling in the way in which
he said these things. He did not believe in any Great Spirit. I could
not understand his religion, but his mind was large and his heart
gracious.
“Knowledge is power,” he said to me. “Study, acquire wisdom, the
white man’s wisdom, then you will be able to defend the rights of
your people,” and his words sank deep into my heart.
For two years we lived here under his influence, until one day the
order came for us to go back up the river, and with glad hearts we
obeyed.
It was in the spring and there was joy in our blood, for these years
of close captivity had made the promise of life on the reservation
seem almost like freedom. We went back laughing for joy, and when we
again came in sight of the hill above the Standing Rock my father
lifted his hands in prayer and the women sang a song of joy. As soon
as we were released my chief called his old guard about him, and said:
“My sons, my mind has changed. We are now entering upon a new life.
The white man’s trail is broad and dusty before us. The buffalo are
entirely gone and we must depend on the fruit of the earth. You
observe that The Eagle Killer, The Fire Heart and many of our people
have oxen and wagons. If they did not come into possession of these
things by shooting them out of the sky, I think we shall be able to
acquire similar goods for ourselves. The white people have promised
that so long as grass grows and water runs we shall be unmolested
here. Let us live in peace with our neighbors.”
The Sitting Bull was chief because he could do many things, and,
though he was now a captive with his people, his power and influence
remained. His “Silent Eaters” gathered round him and to them his
words were law. The agent also, for a time, treated him with
consideration, and was very friendly. They spoke often together.
We were at once given oxen and carts and located near the agency,
where we lived for a year, but the chief longed to return to the
Grand River, his native valley, and finally the agent gave his
consent, and we moved to the river flat, just where the Rock Creek
comes in. Here he built a little log cabin and settled down to live
like a white man, but I could see that his heart was ever soaring to
the hills of the West and his thoughts were busy with the past. Truly
it was strange to see Gall and Crane and Slohan sitting in a small
cabin, talking of the brave, free days of old.
VI
IN CAPTIVITY
Of what took place on the reservation during the next four years I
know but little directly, for I went away to Washington to study with
Lieutenant Davies, who was assigned to duty in the War Department,
and I did not return to the Standing Rock for many years. I heard now
and then from my father, who wrote through my friend Louie Primeau.
He told me that the chief was living quietly at Rock Creek, but that
he was opposing every attempt of the white man to buy our lands.
My father complained also of the decreasing rations and said: “The
agent’s memory is short; he has forgotten that these rations are in
payment for land. He calls them gifts.” My mother sent word that my
little sister had died and that many were sick of lung diseases. “We
are very cold and hungry in the winter,” she said, and my heart bled
with remorse, for I was warm and well fed.
I would have returned at once had not my friend Davies told me to
stay on and learn all I could. “Go to the top,” he said. “Do not halt
in the middle of the trail. You will need to be very wise to help
your people.”
He was a philosopher. He had no hate of any race. He looked upon each
people as the product of its conditions, and he often said, “The
plains Indian was a perfect adaptation of organism to environment
till the whites disturbed him.”
His speech and his thought are in all that I write. He taught me
to put down my words simply and without rhetoric. He gave me books
to read that were both right and honest, and in all things he was
truthful. “Your life can never be happy,” he said. “You will always
be a red man in the clothing of the whites, but you will find a
pleasure in defending your people. Your race needs both historian and
defender. Your whole life should be one of teaching your people how
to live and how to avoid pain. I am not educating you to be happy.
There can be no shirking your duty. On the contrary, I believe your
only way to secure a moment’s peace of mind after you return to your
tribe is to help them bear their burdens.”
He warned me of the change which had come to me, as to them. “Your
boyish imagination idealized your people and the life they led. You
saw them under heroic conditions. They are now poor and despairing
and you will be shocked at their appearance and position under the
agent, but do not let this dismay you. The race is there beneath its
rags and dirt, a wonderful race.”
I shall never forget those long talks we had in his study, high up in
his little house, for he was not rich. Sometimes I could not sleep
for the disturbing new thoughts which he gave me. Often he nullified
all the teaching of the schools by some quiet remark.
“I counsel you to be a Sioux, my boy,” he repeated to me one night
after I had been singing some of our songs for a group of his
friends. “You can never be a Caucasian. There are dusky corners in
your thought. The songs you sang to-night made your heart leap with
memories of the chase. A race is the product of conditions, the
result of a million years of struggle. I do not expect a red man to
become a white man. Those who do, know nothing of the human organism.
On the surface I can make some change; but deep down your emotions,
your superstitions are red and always must be; that is not a thing to
be ashamed of.”
I am giving this glimpse into my school days in order that my
understanding of my chief and my race may appear plain. It is due to
my good friend Davies, the noblest white I ever knew. I want everyone
to know how much I owe to him.
It was strange to me and very irritating to find what false ideas
of us and of our chief the Washington people held. When it became
known that I was a Sioux and had been with The Sitting Bull, many
were eager to question me about him, but I refused to do more than
say: “We fought for our lands as Washington fought for his. Now you
confine my chief as if he were a wolf. But he is a wise and gentle
man, a philosopher, therefore he has laid his hands to the plow. His
feet are in the white man’s road.”
This story is not of me, else I could tell you how beautiful some of
the white women came to seem to me, and one small girl, fair as a
spring flower, ensnared my heart and kept me like an eagle bound to
my perch—only I did not struggle against the golden cord that bound
me. It was all very strange to me, for I still loved a girl of my own
race, who sent me presents of moccasins and who wrote through Louis
to say she was waiting for me. It was strange, I say—for my heart
clung to Anita, also, she was so fair and slender and sweet. She was
associated with all the luxury and mystery of the white man’s life.
She called to me in new ways—ways that scared me—while Oma spoke to
something deeper in me—something akin to the wide skies, the brown
hills, the west wind, and the smell of the lodge fire.
How it would have ended I don’t know, had not my friend Davies been
sent again into the West. His going ended my stay in the East.
Without him I was afraid to remain among the white people.
“The time has come for you to return, Iapi,” he said to me. “The
white men are moving to force a treaty upon the Sioux, and now is
your time to help them.”
It was very hard to say good-by to my friend, and harder yet to my
Anita, who loved me, but who told me she could not go with me, though
she wished to do so. “I cannot leave my poor mother, who is sick and
poor,” she said.
I was not very wise, but I knew that I had no place, not even a
lodge, in which to keep her, and so I said: “I will go on before you
and prepare a place for you, and then sometime you will come and you
will help me to teach my people how to live?”
To this she gave me promise and I went away very sad, for it seemed a
long way from Standing Rock to Washington, and especially to a poor
Sioux who knew of no way to earn money.
Some friends joined with my friend, the white soldier chief, to buy
some clothes for me, and a few presents for my father and mother, and
so, with a heart so big I thought it would burst within me, I took
the cars for the West.
I sat without moving for hours—all night long—while the terrible
engine of the white man’s fashioning sped into the darkness. At dawn
I looked out anxiously to see if the land were familiar, but it
was not. Only on the third day did it begin to awaken echoes in my
brain. My command of English words will not permit me to express the
wild thrill of my heart as I looked out of my window and saw again
the wide-lying plains of Dakota, marked by the feet of the vanished
buffalo. I was getting home!
Five years is a long time when it involves such mental changes as
had come to me. It seemed that half a lifetime had passed since I
sorrowfully took the steamer to go down the river to learn the white
man’s language. I was a wild-eyed, long-haired lad then. Now I was
returning, clipped and clothed like a white man, yet in my heart a
Sioux.
There were changes in the country, but not so great as I had
expected. Even the white man makes but little mark on these arid
levels. The cabins were grayer, the fields a little larger, that was
all. After dispossessing my people and destroying the buffalo, the
white settlers had discovered that it was a grim country for their
uses. Their towns seemed small and poor and sad.
My heart came into my throat as I crossed the Cannonball and entered
upon Sioux land and saw the yellowed tepees of our cousins, the
Yanktonaise, scattered irregularly along the river. This was still
the land of my fathers; this much we had retained of all the bright
world which had been ours in the olden, splendid days!
It was in June and the grass was still green. Herds of ponies were
feeding on the swells, and one of the horses I drove lifted his head
and neighed; he, too, remembered the old freedom. The sky blazed with
light and the hills quivered as if in ecstasy of living. The region
was at its best, delusively beautiful. I knew its moods. I knew how
desolate and pitiless those swells could be in midwinter, how dry and
hot of breath in July.
As we topped the hill I met a man driving a small team to a heavy
wagon. He wore a wide hat which lay on his shoulders, and big smoked
goggles hid his eyes. As he came opposite I perceived that he was a
Sioux, and I called to him in my native tongue.
“Wait, my friend. Where are you going so fast?”
He turned his big glasses on me and said:
“First of all, who are you that speak Lakota so badly?”
“I am Iapi, the son of Shato.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, with a smile. “In that case you are getting back
from school? I know you, for I am Red Thunder!”
Red Thunder! I was silent with astonishment. A picture of him as
I saw him in 1876 rose in my mind. Tall and lithe he was then,
with keen, fierce eyes, the leader of the war faction among the
Yanktonaise, a wonderful horseman, reckless and graceful. Now here he
sat in a white man’s wagon, bent in the shoulders and clad in badly
fitting agency clothing. My heart was sick as I said:
“Friend, you are changed since the council on the Powder River. I did
not know you.”
He took off his glasses and put aside his hat; his smile also passed
away. He looked away to the west:
“My son, that is long ago and Red Thunder’s blood is no longer made
from buffalo meat. His muscles are weak. He prefers to sit in his
wagon and drive his ponies. The Great Spirit has forgotten his red
children and the White Father is in command over us. I do the best
I can. The old trails are closed; only one remains—the one made by
Washington.”
I drove on, my exultation utterly gone. If Red Thunder was of this
bitter mood, how would I find the Uncapappas who had been the
conservatives of the tribe?
I passed close by some of the cabins and they disheartened me, they
were so small and dirty. I was glad to see that some of them still
retained the sweat lodge. Each home consisted of a shack and two or
three tepees of canvas, and women were cooking beneath bowers made of
cottonwood as of old. Their motions, and the smell of smoke, awoke
such memories in me that I could hardly keep from both shouting and
weeping.
The farther I went the more painful became the impression made upon
me by these captives. They were like poor white farmers, ragged,
dirty, and bent. The clothes they wore were shoddy gray and deeply
repulsive to me. Their robes of buffalo, their leggins of buckskin,
their beaded pouches—all the things I remembered with pride—had been
worn out (or sold). Even the proud warriors of my tribe were reduced
to the condition of those who are at once prisoners and beggars. My
heart was like lead as I reached the agency.
It hurt me to do so, but I reported at once to the agent and asked
leave to visit my father and mother.
“They are expecting you,” he said. “You’ll find them camped just
beyond the graveyard.”
I am glad that I saw my father and mother first in their tepee. My
mother was cooking beneath a little shed of canvas. I called to her,
and when she looked at me, without knowing me, something moved deep
down in my heart. How brown and old and wrinkled she looked! Then I
said, “Don’t you know me, mother!”
Then her voice rose as she came hurrying to me, calling: “My son! My
son has returned.”
She took my hand, not daring to put her arms around me, for I looked,
she said, exactly like the white man, but I pressed her hands, and
then, while she sang a little song of joy, my father came out of his
lodge and came slowly toward me.
I will not dwell on this meeting. I inquired at once concerning our
chief. “He is still living in the same place near Rock Creek, and
wishes to see you at once,” said my father. “The white men are trying
to get our land again and the chief wants to have a talk about it
with you.”
“Let us go down and see him to-night,” I replied, and for this reason
we broke camp and started away across the plains.
It was a strange thing to me to help my father harness a team to a
wagon. He whom I had seen a hundred times riding foremost in the
chase, whom I had watched at break of day leading a band of scouts up
the steep side of a sculptured butte, or with gun in hand guarding
The Sitting Bull as he slept, was now a teamster, and I, clothed
in the white man’s garments, was sad and ashamed. I could not but
perceive that we were both more admirable as red warriors than as
imitation Saxon farmers. That is my red blood, you see.
But my father was proud of me and of my power to converse with
the agent. “My son,” he said, “our hearts are big because you are
back with us. Now this is your duty. You must listen to all that
the commissioners say and tell us minutely so that we may not be
deceived. We hear that a big council sent out the papers which
Washington wishes us to put our mark on, but The Sitting Bull and
most of our head men are agreed that we will never do so. Once
before, three years ago, they tried to get us to sell, but when the
white men grew angry and said, ‘If you don’t do this we will take
your lands anyway!’ The Sitting Bull rose and said, ‘You are crazy,’
and with a motion of his hand broke up the council and we all went
away. Now the traitorous whites are coming again and we need you to
listen and tell us what they say.”
I knew of the council he spoke of—General Logan was the man who had
threatened them—but I had not heard that the chief had dismissed the
sitting. It showed me that The Sitting Bull was still chief. This I
remarked.
“Yes,” said my father, “he is head man of all the Sioux even yet, but
the agent has set his hand against him. He gives favor to The Grass
and The Gall and The Gray Eagle, who are all jealous and anxious to
be set above The Sitting Bull. The agent has become bitter toward our
chief because he will not do as he says, and because our father works
always for the good of his people. He does nothing for himself alone,
like many others.”
As we came to the top of the hill and looked into the valley my
father pointed at a small two-room log cabin and said, “There he
lives, The Sitting Bull.”
The chief was in a big tepee which stood near the house, and as we
entered we found him entertaining Slohan and Katolan. He was seated
in the center, cutting tobacco, while his guests ate from a dish
of bread and meat. As I stood in the presence of these my honored
leaders my heart swelled with longing for the good old time. Here was
the dignity and the courtesy of the days of the buffalo. The chief
was partly in white man’s dress, but his hair was worn as of old and
his gestures were those of a gentle host. His dignity, as well as the
gravity of all the men, impressed me deeply.
He did not at first recognize me, but greeted my father, who, turning
to me, said, “This is my son, returned from Washington.”
Then the chief smiled, and cried out: “Ho, my son! I am glad to see
you. I have heard you were coming. You look so like a white man my
eyes were blinded. You must tell me all you have done and all you
have heard.”
I shook hands with each of the old men and took a seat near the
chief, to whom I said: “Is all well with you? Does the agent treat
you fairly?”
His face darkened, but he filled his pipe before he replied. “The
agent is no longer my friend. He orders me about as if I were a dog.
He refuses me permission to leave the reservation and checks me in
every way. I think he means to break me, but he will never set his
foot on my neck.”
I was eager to understand the situation, and I listened carefully
while the others talked of the many injustices under which they
suffered. The chief urged me to write to Washington to have things
changed.
I agreed to do so, but promised nothing more, for I well knew such
letters might work harm to those I loved. I foresaw also that my
position in my tribe was to be most difficult.
“We are ready to live the new life,” declared the chief, “but we
cannot farm the soil as the agent wishes. Go look at our fields. Each
year they are burned white by the sun. The leaves of the corn are
even now rolled together. The wheat is beginning to dry up. There is
no hay and our rations are being cut down.”
[Illustration: Burning the Range
_Taught by experience that burning the grass insures its better
growth, we are here shown Indians in the act of burning their
range. In a day or two after the fire sweet, succulent grasses
spring up again, and then the hard-worked Indian ponies revel for
a short season on the tender herbage._
_Illustration from_
BURNING THE RANGE
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _September 17, 1887_]
[Illustration: An Old-Time Northern Plains Indian
_In order to claim a scalp, the warrior must give the dead man
the coup. In the illustration the Indian is in the act of doing
this. In olden times the coup was a stab with a weapon, but in
later times the Indians were provided with coup sticks. Whoever
first strikes the victim with the coup can rightfully claim the
scalp._
_Illustration from_
SOME AMERICAN RIDERS
_by_ Colonel Theodore Ayrault Dodge, U.S.A.
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _May, 1891_]
I could see that he had no heart in his farming. The life was too
hard and too bitter. He was indeed like a chained eagle who sits and
dreams of the wide landscape over which he once floated in freedom.
He had thrown his influence in the right scale, but he was critical
and outspoken upon all debatable questions, and this had come to
anger the agent, who was eager to push all the people into what he
called “self-supporting ways.” This the chief did not oppose, though
he could not live in the white man’s country. “It makes me both weary
and sorrowful,” he said.
It did not take me more than a day to see that I was between two
fires. My friends were all among those whom the agent called “The
irreconcilables,” and my chief was relying upon me to help them
defeat the treaty for their lands, at the same time that the agent
expected me to be a leader of the progressive party. It was not
easy to serve two masters, and I was forced to be in a sense double
tongued, which I did not like.
The agent was outspoken against my chief. “The old man is spoiled by
newspaper notoriety,” he said to me. “His power must be broken. He is
a great and dangerous reactionary force and he and all the old-time
chiefs must be stripped of their power and made of no account before
the tribe can advance. He must be taught that I am the master here
and that no redskin has any control.”
To this I made no reply, for I could not agree with him. A man who is
a chief by virtue of his native ability cannot be degraded and made
of no account. The Sitting Bull was a chief by force of character.
As of old he worked for the good of his people. If he saw a wrong
he went forthwith to the agent and asked to have it righted. This
angered the agent, for he considered the chief officious. He was
jealous of his position as “little father.” He was a good man, but
he was opinionated and curt and irascible. He gave no credit to my
chief. When the others made him spokesman of their council he would
not listen to him. “He is a disturber,” he said.
Now there are certain record books in the office in which copies of
all letters are kept, and when I found this out I took time to read
all that the agent had written of the chief. My position as issue
clerk permitted me the run of the office, and so when no one was
near I read. I wished to know what had taken place during the five
years of my absence.
At first the agent wrote well of the chief. In reply to inquiries
he said: “Sitting Bull is living here quietly and is getting
ahead nicely. He is quiet and inoffensive, though proud of his
fame as a chief.” A year later he wrote of him, “His influence is
nonprogressive, but believers in him are few, while many Indians are
his enemies.”
This I found to be true. Chief Gall and John Grass were both honored
at his expense. The Grass was a man of intelligence and virtue who
had early allied himself with the white man. He was a leader of those
who saw the hopelessness of remaining in the ways of the fathers, and
naturally the agent treated him with marked courtesy. In answer to a
letter asking the names of the chief men of the tribe he named John
Grass first, Mad Bear second, The Gall third—and ignored the chief
entirely.
The Gall, already jealous of the great fame of The Sitting Bull,
was easily won over to the side of the agent. He was a vigorous,
loud-voiced man, brave and manly, but not politic. He had not
entirely broken with his old chief, but he accepted position under
the agent and listened to dispraise of The Sitting Bull from the
agent’s point of view.
With all his gentleness of manner, the old fire was in The Sitting
Bull, for he said to me, when speaking of the attack of Shell Fish
on him: “I am here, old and beaten—a prisoner subject to the word
of a white master, but no man shall insult me. I will kill the man
who strikes me. What is death to me? I will die as I have lived, a
chief.” For the most part he was so quiet and unassuming that he was
overlooked. He never thrust himself forward; he dreamed in silence.
He had visited the white man’s world several times, but these visions
had not helped him; they had, indeed, thrown him into profound
despair. “What can we do in strife with these wonder-working
spirits?” he asked. “It is as foolish as trying to fly with the
eagles. The white man owns all the productive land. What can we
do farming on this hard soil? What are we beside these swarming
settlers? We are as grasshoppers before a rushing herd of buffalo.”
He did not care to look out of the car windows on these journeys. He
and his warriors sat in silence or sang the songs of the chase and
the victorious homecoming, trying to forget the world outside.
“Nothing astonished them and nothing interested them very much,” said
Louis to me in speaking of his trip to Washington. “The chief was at
a great disadvantage, but he seldom made a mistake. He was Lakota and
made no effort to be anything else.”
The chief at last said, in answer to all similar requests, “I do not
care to be on show.”
He was very subjective. He had always been a man of meditation and
prayer, and had scrupulously observed the ceremonials of his tribe.
Now when he saw no hope of regaining his old freedom he turned his
eyes inward and pondered. He was both philosopher and child. Nature
was mysterious, not in the ultimate as with the educated man, but
close beside him as with a boy. The moon, the clouds, the wind in the
grass, all these were to him things inexplicable, as, indeed, they
are to the greatest white men; only to my chief they came nearer some
way.