outlook—a hill above his cabin—a minute speck against the sky, deeply
meditating upon the will of the Great Spirit, and my heart was filled
with pain. I, too, mourned the world that was passing so swiftly and
surely.
VII
HE OPPOSED ALL TREATIES
During my absence the white settlers had swept across the ancient
home of the Dakotas and were already clamoring for the land on
which Sitting Bull dwelt, and he was deeply disturbed. He knew how
rapacious these plowmen were and he was afraid of them. To his mind
our home was pitifully small as it stood, and he urged me to look
into this threatened invasion at once.
I did so, and reported to him that a commission was already on its
way to see us and that they would soon issue a call for us.
Throwing off his lethargy, he became once more “the treaty chief.”
Calling a council of all the head men he said to them:
“It will be necessary to choose speakers to represent us at this
meeting. It is not wise that I should be one of these. Let us council
upon what we are to do, name our speakers, and be ready for the
commission when it comes.”
So they chose John Grass, Mad Bear, Chief Gall, and Big Head to
speak, and went a few days later to meet the commissioners.
My people asked for their own interpreter, Louis Primeau, whom they
trusted, and the council began with everybody in good humor. The
commissioners rose one after the other and made talk and gave out
many copies of the treaty. Then the council adjourned.
That night the head men all met at the lodge of the chief. I read the
treaty to him, and so did Louie. Again The Sitting Bull said: “The
pay is too small, and, besides, they have changed our boundaries.
Do not sign.” And so when we assembled the next day our speakers
declined to sign and the commissioners were much disappointed. They
argued long and loud, to no effect.
It was explained to us again that the Government proposed to set
aside five great reservations, one for the Ogallallahs, one for the
Brulés, one for the Crow Creek people, one for the Cheyenne River
people, and that the lines were fixed for the great Sioux nation at
the Standing Rock. The north boundary was the Cannonball River; on
the south, the Moreau; but to the west it extended only eighty miles.
Speaking to his head men, our chief said: “Who made that line on the
west? Was it a white man or an Indian? They say the lines of the old
treaties, whether fixed by the red man or the white man, must stand.
But I do not grant that treaty. It was stolen from us. We have paid
for all they have done for us, and more. They have never fulfilled a
treaty. See the pitiful small land that is left us. Do not sign. If
you sign we are lost.”
The commissioners, hitherto displeased, now became furious. They
accused The Sitting Bull of intimidating the people. They raged and
expostulated. They wheedled and threatened, but the chief shook his
head and said: “Do not sign. This man is talking for the white man’s
papers, and not for us. He uses many words, but he does not deceive
me. Do not listen to him.” And they laughed at the false speaker.
At last Gall, who sat beside the chief, spoke. “We are through. We
are entirely finished.”
Then The Sitting Bull rose and said: “We have spoken pleasantly and
have reached this point in good humor. Now we are going home,” and
made a sign and the council broke up in confusion.
The treaty was not signed and The Sitting Bull was made to bear
the blame of its defeat. As for me, I exulted in his firmness, his
self-control, and his simple dignity. He was still the chief man of
treaties.
But the white people did not give up. They never recede. The defeat
of the Democrats made a different Congress and a new attempt was at
once made to get a treaty. Profiting by the mistakes of the other
commissions, they did not come to the Standing Rock first (they
feared the opposition of The Sitting Bull); they went to the lower
reservations and secured all the Santees, all the “breeds,” and
members of other tribes, men whom my people did not recognize as
belonging to us. The news of this made my chief very angry. “The
white men have no sense of justice when they deal with us,” he said,
bitterly. “They are mad for our lands. They will do anything to steal
them away.”
When the commissioners appeared at the Standing Rock they were
triumphant through General Crook. Rations were short and the people
were hungry and General Crook took advantage of this. He was lavish
of beef issues during the treaty. On the third day he said, gruffly:
“You’d better take what we offer. Congress will open the reservation,
anyhow.”
Each night, as before, The Sitting Bull stood opposed to the treaty.
“It is all we have,” he said, despairingly. “Once we had a mighty
tract; now it is little. You have bought peace from the whites by
selling your lands; now when you have no more to sell what will you
do? I have never entertained a treaty from the whites. I am opposed
to this. I will not sign. Our lands are few and they are bad lands.
The white men have shut us up in a desert where nothing lives, yet it
is our last home. Will you break down the walls and let the white man
sweep us away? You say we will have a great deal of money in return.
How has it been in the past? How has the government fulfilled its
obligations? Congress cuts down our rations at will; what they owe
us does not matter. You have seen how difficult it is to raise food
here. We need every blanket’s breadth of our land if we are to live.
I am getting to be an old man; a few years and I will be with my
fathers; but before I go I want to see my children provided for. Let
the government pay us what they owe us in cattle and we will then be
able to live. I will not sign.”
That night John Grass gave way. The commission convinced him that
this treaty was the best that could be secured. A new council was
hastily called in order to get The Grass to sign, and my chief was
not informed of it till the hearing was nearly over.
As he came into the room he was both angry and despairing, and
demanded a chance to speak. “I have kept in the background so far,”
he said. “Now I wish to be heard——”
But they were afraid of him and refused to hear him. “We want no more
speaking. John Grass come forward and sign!”
Grass went forward. The Sitting Bull cried out in a piercing voice:
“_Do not sign!_ Let everybody follow me.”
At his command all his old guard rose and went away, but John Grass
took the pen and signed. He was the man of the hour; he represented a
compromise policy. He was willing to be the white man’s tool. And I,
sitting there as interpreter, powerless to aid my chief in his heroic
fight for the remnant of the empire that was ours, could only bow my
head in acknowledgment of the wisdom of the majority—for I knew the
insatiable white man better than John Grass. To have rejected the
treaty would have but delayed the end.
My chief went to his lodge, still the Uncapappa, still unsubdued,
representing all that was distinctive and admirable in the old life
of the chase; but he knew now that the white man possessed the earth.
“This is now the end,” he said, sorrowfully, to my father. “Nothing
remains to us but a home in the Land of the Spirits.”
VIII
THE RETURN OF THE SPIRITS
The year that followed the signing of this treaty was a dark one for
The Sitting Bull. Even those who had been most clearly acquiescent in
the white man’s way grew sad.
You must remember that my people, the Uncapappas, are the westernmost
branch of the great Sioux nation and had known but little of the
white man up to the time of their surrender in 1880. We knew nothing
of tilling the soil. We were essentially buffalo hunters and had
been for many generations. The Yanktonaise, the Minneconjous, had
far greater knowledge of the white man’s ways. In the days when they
occupied the whole of the upper Mississippi Valley we still kept our
western position, always among the buffalo and the elk. Our tepees
were still made of skins.
Can you not see that these horsemen of the plains—these wandering,
fearless, proud hunters—even under the best conditions would have
found it very hard to give up the roving life of the chase and settle
down to the planting of corn and squashes?
It is easy to clip the wings of eagles, but it is not of much avail
to beat them and give command that they instantly become geese. Under
every fostering condition it would have been difficult for Slohan and
Gall and Sitting Bull to become farm laborers.
I call upon you to be just to my great chief, for he honestly tried
to take on this new life. I assert that no man of his spirit and
training could have done more. He tried hard to be as good as his
word; for witness I call the agent himself who in those early days
said of him: “The Sitting Bull is living here peaceably and doing
well.” Even up to the month of November in 1888, the year of the
first commission, he praised him. It was afterward that the agent
changed his mind and began to abuse him. I will tell presently why
this was so.
You see the white people allowed us no time to change. We had been
many centuries forming habits which they insisted should be broken
instantly. They cut us off from our game. They ordered us to farm,
and this without knowing the character of our reservation. The soil
of this country is very hard and dry and the climate is severe. It
is high, upland prairie cut by a few thin, slow streams which lie in
deep gullies. The upland grows a short, dry grass, and there are many
years when it is dry as hay in early June. It is good for pasture,
but it makes very little hay for winter. It is a drought country; for
the most part the crops burn up under the fierce sun and the still
more savage wind. In winter it is a terrible place to live unless one
is sheltered by the cottonwood and willow groves on the river. It was
given us originally because they thought it useless to the plowmen.
On this stern land the white man set my people and said, in a
terrible voice, “Farm or die!” We tried, but year by year the trial
ended in failure. Wrong implements were given us, great plows which
our ponies could not draw, and bad seeds, and this outlay exhausted
our annuity and cut us off from cattle issues. Our friends among the
white people early began to see the folly of trying to force us to
till this iron soil, and urged the issue of cattle, but the giving
of useless things was thereupon taken as an excuse for not issuing
stock, and when at last they were sent—a few cows and sheep—too few
to be of any use, they were used as warrant to cut down our rations,
which (as the chief constantly asserted) were not a gratuity, but a
just payment.
They had never been enough even when they were honestly and fully
issued, and when the quality was bad or the issue cut down many of
them were actually hungry for three days in the week. You may read
in one of the great books of the government these words: “Suddenly
and almost without warning they were called upon to give up all
their ancient pursuits and without previous training settle down to
agriculture in a land largely unfitted for such uses. The freedom of
the chase was exchanged for the idleness of the camp. The boundless
range abandoned for the circumscribed reservation, and abundance of
plenty supplanted by limited and decreasing subsistence and supplies.
Under these circumstances it is not in human nature not to be
discontented and restless, even turbulent and violent.” So said the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
In spite of all these things I assert my people were patient. The
Sitting Bull was careful to do nothing which would harm his people,
and often he walked away in silence from the agent’s harsh accusation.
Hunger is hard to bear, but there were many other things to make life
very barren and difficult. Around us to north and east and west the
settlers were swarming. Our reservation seemed such a little thing in
comparison with our old range—like a little island in great water.
Every visit our head men made to the east or the west taught them the
gospel of despair. The flood of white men which had been checked by
the west bank of the Missouri now flowed by in great streams to the
west and curled round to the north. Everywhere unfriendly ranchers
set up their huts. They all wore guns, while we were forbidden to do
the like. They hated us as we hated them, but they had all the law on
their side.
Thus physically we were being submerged by the rising tide of an
alien race. In the same way our old customs and habits were sinking
beneath the white man’s civilization. One by one our songs were
dying. One by one our dances were being cut off by the government,
and our prayers and ceremonies, sweet and sacred to us, were already
discountenanced or positively forbidden. Our beautiful moccasins were
tabooed, our buckskin beaded shirts replaced by ragged coats. Our
women were foolish in the dress of cheap white women. We became a
tribe of ragamuffins like the poor men whom the newspapers make jokes
about and call “hoboes.”
Let me tell you farther. You cannot understand my people if you
consider the white man’s religion and the white man’s way of life the
only ones sanctioned by the Great Spirit.
My friends in Washington, the men with whom I studied, gave me this
thought. There is good in all religions and all races and I am trying
to write of the wrongs of my people from that point of view. The
Sitting Bull loved the old life, but he often said: “We were living
the life the Great Spirit outlined for us. We knew no other. If you
can show us that your manner of life is better, that it will make us
happier, then we will come to your way,” and for a time he thought
that perhaps the white man’s way of life was nearer to the Great
Spirit’s will; but when he was cold and hungry he felt the injustice
of this superior race, and doubted.
We all saw that as the years went on and the old joys slipped away
no new ones came to take their places, while want, a familiar foe,
remained close to every fireside. Our best thinkers perceived that
fine large houses and nice warm clothing were unattainable to vast
numbers of the white men, “how then can the simple red man hope to
win them?” They began to say: “We have given our freedom, our world,
our traditions, for a dark cabin, hard, cruel boots, the settler’s
contempt, and the soldier’s diseases.” “Our race is passing away.
The new conditions destroy us. If we cannot persist as Sioux, why
persist at all? There are enough white beggars in the world, why add
ourselves to the army of the poor?”
It was for this reason that the chief opposed the treaty subdividing
the reservation. “Our strength is in being a people. As individuals
the white man will spit on us.” When the treaty was about to be
executed a white man said to him: “What do you Indians think of it?”
He drew himself up and the old-time fire flamed in his eyes as he
said: “Indians! There are no Indians left but me.” But later he said,
sadly: “It is impossible for me to change. I cannot sign, but my
children may sign if they wish.”
Just at this time our cattle began to die of a strange disease and
our children were seized by a mysterious malady which the white
people call grippe, but for which we had no name. We were without
medicine to counteract these fevers, and the agency doctor could not
do much for us. Our children died in hundreds. This was terrible. It
seemed that all were to be swept away.
Bishop Hare and General Miles both saw and reported upon these
conditions, and I wrote to all my friends in agony of haste, but
the government was slow to act in our need, though it was ever in
haste to cut up our land and give it away. No one cared what became
of us. We had no votes, we could not help any man to office. All
promises were neglected, and to add to our misery it was said the
new administration would still further reduce our payments and the
rations which were our due. When this news came to us it seemed as if
the very earth on which we stood was sinking beneath our feet. The
old world of the buffalo, the free life of the past, became each day
more beautiful as the world about us, the prison in which we lived,
grew black with the clouds of despair.
In this moment of hopeless misery—this intolerable winter of tragic
dejection—there came to my people the rumor of something very
wonderful. A messenger to my chief said that far in the west, at the
base of a vast white mountain, a wondrous medicine man had descended
from a cloud to meet and save the red men. Just as Christ came long
ago to the Jews, so now the Great Spirit had sent a messenger to the
red people to bring back the old world of the buffalo and to repeople
its shining vistas with those who had died. So they said, “By faith
and purity we are to again prevail over that earth.”
It was a seed planted at the right time in the right soil. In the
night of his despair my chief listened to the message as to a sweet
story, not believing it, yet eager to hear more.
The herald of the new faith was a Brulé, who ended by saying: “The
Kicking Bear, one of our chiefs, is gone to search into the beginning
of this story. He it was who sent me to you. He wished me to acquaint
you with what he had heard.”
“When he returns,” replied the chief, “tell him I wish to talk with
him of this strange thing.”
A report of this man’s message spread among the people and many
believed it. We began to hear obscurely about a new dance which some
of the people at Rosebud and Pine Ridge had adopted—a ceremony to
test the faith of those who believed—a medicine dance to bring back
the past—and the people brooded upon the words of the Brulé, who said
that the world of the buffalo was to be restored to them and all the
old customs and joys brought back.
It was a magical thought. Their deep longing made it expand in their
minds like a wonderful flower, and they waited impatiently the coming
of the herald.
You must not forget that every little word my people knew of the
Christian religion prepared them for this miraculous change. The
white man’s religion was full of miracles like this. Did not Christ
raise men from the dead? Was he not born of a Virgin and did he not
change water into wine? The wise men of the Bible, we were told,
were able to make the sun stand still, and once the walls of a great
city crumbled before the magic blast of rams’ horns. Many times we
had heard the preachers, the wise men of the white men, say: “By
faith are mountains removed,” therefore our minds were prepared to
believe in the restoration of the world of the buffalo. Was it not
as easy for the Great Spirit as to make the water cover the highest
mountains? My friend the Blackbird used to say “Every race despises
the superstitions of others, but clings to its own.” I am Sioux, I
could not help being thrilled by this story.
My brain responded to every story the old man told. I saw again the
splendid reaches of the plain. I rode in the chase of the buffalo.
I heard the songs of rejoicing as the women hung the red meat up to
dry. I played again among the lodges. Yes, it was all very sweet to
dream about, but I said to the chief: “I have been among the white
people; I have studied their books. The world never turns backward.
We must go on like the rivers, on into the mystery.”
“We will see,” he answered. “I have often reproved you for saying,
‘Yes, yes,’ to all that the white man says. This may be all a lie.
The Kicking Bear has gone forth into the west to meet this wonder
worker. When he returns we will council upon his report. Till then we
will do nothing.”
But no power could prevent the spread of the story and its dream
among my people. They were quick to seize and build upon this slender
promise. Can you not understand our condition of mind? Imagine that
a great and powerful race had appeared from over the sea and had
driven your people from their ancestral lands, on and on, until at
last only a handful of you remained. Imagine this handful corralled
in a small, bleak valley cut off from all natural activities, its
religions tabooed, its dances and ceremonies forbidden, hungry, cold,
despairing. Could you then be logical and reasonable and completely
sane?
If my race had been a servile race, ready to play the baboon, quick
to imitate, then it would not have vanished, as it has, in war and
famine. We are freemen. We had always been unhampered by any alien
laws. We moved as we willed, led by the buffalo, directed by the
winds, cowering only before the snows. Therefore, we resented the
white man’s restrictions. We had the hearts of eagles in our cages,
and yet, having the eyes of eagles and the brains of men, we came
at last to see the utter futility of struggle. We lost all faith in
physical warfare and sat down to die. As a race we were resigned to
death, and in this night of our resignation the star of prophecy
rose. We turned toward the mystic powers for aid.
IX
THE MESSAGE OF KICKING BEAR
One October day in 1890 a party of Brulé Sioux from the Cheyenne
River agency came riding down into the valley of the Grand River,
inquiring for The Sitting Bull. As they were passing my father’s
lodge he came out and stopped them.
“What do you want of The Sitting Bull?” he asked, with the authority
of one of the old-time “Silent Eaters.”
“We bring a message to him,” replied the head man. “I am Kicking
Bear. Take us to him without delay.”
The chief at this time lived with his younger wife in a two-room log
house (a cabin for his first wife stood near) and as the strangers
came to the door they were accosted by an old woman who was at work
about the fire under an open lodge. In answer to my father’s inquiry
for the chief she pointed toward a large tepee standing behind
the house, and, turning aside, my father lifted the door-flap and
entered. The chief was alone, smoking his pipe in grave meditation.
“Father,” said my sire, “here are some men from the Cheyenne River to
see you.”
“I am Kicking Bear,” said the visitor, “for whom you sent.”
[Illustration: An Indian Chief
_Illustration from_
A BUNCH OF BUCKSKINS
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published by_
R. H. RUSSELL, _1901_]
The chief greeted his visitors with gentle courtesy and motioned
them to their seats. “My friends, I am glad to see you. You are
hungry. Rest and eat. When you are filled and refreshed we will
talk.” Then calling to his wife to put food before the guests, he
smoked quietly while they ate. When they were satisfied and all were
composed and comfortable he said to Kicking Bear: “Now, my friend, my
ears are open.”
The visitor’s voice was full of excitement, but well under control at
first. He said:
“My friend, we all know you; your fame is wide. You are the head of
all our people. We know it. You have always been true to the ways
of the fathers. You fought long and well against the coming of the
whites. Therefore I come to you. This is the story: The first people
to know of the Messiah on earth were the Shoshones and the Arapahoes.
A year ago Good Thunder, the Ogallallah, hearing of this wonderful
story, took four of his friends and went to visit the place where the
wonder-working Son of the Great Spirit was said to be. He was gone
many days, but at last he sent word that he had found the Messiah,
that he was among those who eat fish, far toward the high white
mountains, and he asked that I come and bear witness. Thereupon I
also went—with much fear. After many days I found the place. It was
deep in a strange country—a desert country. Many people were camped
there. All tongues were spoken, yet all were at peace. It was said
that sixteen different tribes were present, and that they had all
come, as I had done, to know the truth. No one thought of war. All
strife was put away.”
The Sitting Bull listened with half-closed eyes, weighing every word.
It was plain, my father told me, that Kicking Bear was struggling to
control his emotion. One by one the chief’s family gathered around
the tepee to listen. It was a momentous hour.