of no force, a liar, and a coward, he became unreasonable. To fear a
man so small and mean was childish. He also misstated the religion
of the dance. He sneered at my father and others as “Indians lately
developed into medicine men,” and ended by saying, “The Sitting Bull
is making rebellion among his people.” Forgetting all the favorable
reports he had many times made of my chief, he falsely said, “The
Sitting Bull has been a disturbing element ever since his return in
1883.”
What could such a man know of the despair into which my people had
fallen? He was hard, unimaginative, and jealous of his authority. He
was also a bigot and it is hard for anyone not a poet or philosopher
to be just to a people holding a different view of the world. Race
hatred and religious prejudices stand like walls between the red man
and the white. The Sioux cannot comprehend the priest and the priest
will not tolerate the Sioux. Our agent became angry, arrogant, and
unreasonable. He felt that his government was in question. His pride
was hurt.
For a few days after I reported the departure of Mato all was quiet
and the agent believed that the frenzy was over so far as his wards
were concerned. He was only anxious that The Sitting Bull and his
followers should not know how deeply their dances had stirred the
settlements. Nevertheless, the chief knew, and it helped him to
retain some faith in the magic he was testing. He did not refer to
the breaking of his peace pipe, but he declined to give up the dance.
To his friend, John Carignan, the teacher, he said: “The agent
complains that I feed my cattle to those who come to dance. What does
it matter? If the buffalo come back I will not need them. If the
new religion is a lie then I do not care to raise cattle. The Great
Spirit has sent me a message. He has said, ‘_If you wish to live
join the dance I have given_.’ Whether this message is true or not I
cannot yet tell. I am seeking proof.”
Against the bitter words of the agent I will put the words of John
Carignan, who kept the school near The Sitting Bull’s home. This man
speaks our language. “I knew the chief well,” he said, “and I saw no
evil in him. He was an Indian, but I can’t blame him for that.”
During this troublesome period my chief went often to see the teacher
of his children. Jack was the one white man with whom he could talk
freely, and together they argued upon the new religion. Jack liked
my chief and told me so one day as we were discussing the agent’s
attitude toward the dance. “Often the chief came to eat with my
family and he has always borne himself with dignity and honor. I have
always found him considerate and unassuming.”
“Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me,” my
chief said. “The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and
Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our
own? Why does the agent seek to take away our religion? My race is
dying. Our God will soon die with us. If this new religion is not
true, then what does it matter? I do not know what to believe. If I
could dream like others and visit the spirit land myself, then it
would be easy for me to believe, but the trance does not come to me.
It passes me by. I help others to see their dead, but I am not aided.”
“That is it precisely,” replied the teacher. “See the kind of men
who go into the trance. Your strong, clear-headed men do not believe.”
“That is true,” the chief admitted, “but I am hoping some of my head
men may yet enter the trance. Perhaps we do not know how to prepare
the way.”
By this he meant that they had not learned how to hypnotize, for that
is what the dance became. It was like a meeting of spiritualists
who sit for visions. It was like the revival meetings of the Free
Methodists or the old-time Shakers or Quakers. My friend Davies wrote
me a long letter wherein he said: “It is foolish, as you say, but
no more absurd to my mind than scores of other forms of religious
ecstasy. My advice is let it run; it will wear itself out. Movements
of this kind grow by opposition.”
All that he said was true, but, like the chief, I could not help
hoping something would happen, for when they sang their songs warmed
my heart and made my learning of little weight. The painted arrows,
the fluttering feathers, the symbolic figures—every little thing
had its appeal to me. When they raised their quivering palms in the
air and cried to the Messiah in the west, I could scarcely restrain
myself from joining in their supplication. This may seem strange, but
it is true and you will never comprehend this last despairing cry of
my race if I do not tell you the truth.
We believed in what we were. We had the pride of race. We were
fulfilling our destiny as hunters and freemen. Do you think that in
ten years you can make my proud people bow the neck to the scourge of
a white man’s daily hatred? Is the Great Spirit a bungler? Does he
draw a figure on the earth, only to wipe it away as a child writes
upon a slate?
“Why are we so thrust upon and degraded? It must be that we have
angered the Great Spirit. We must go back to the point wherein our
old trail is found,” so my father argued.
The line that divides the mysterious and the commonplace is very
slender, in the minds of my people. You do not realize that.
They take up a cartridge. How wonderful it is! How is it made? A
knife—what gives the point its gleam and its spring? The grass blade,
what causes it to thrust from the earth? The clouds, where do they
go—what are they? To the west of us is the Crow country; beyond that,
who knows? You must put yourself in the place of those who think in
this way before you judge them harshly. Many of these things I now
understand, but I do not know why men are born and why they die. I do
not know why the sun brings forth the grass.
My chief comprehended more than most men of his tribe, but to him the
world was just as mysterious as to me. It did him no good to study
the white man’s religions. They were so many and so contradictory
that he was confused. He had always been a prayerful man—and had kept
the Sun Dance, and all the ceremonials of the Uncapappas carefully.
He was a grave soul, doing nothing thoughtlessly. He always asked
the Great Spirit for guidance, yet he was never a medicine man, as
the white men say. He did not become so during this dance. He helped
to hypnotize the dancers, but so did others; that did not mean that
they were priests or medicine men—it only meant they had the power to
induce these trances.
It was a time of great bewilderment, of question and of doubt. No
one thought of the present; all were dreaming of the past, hoping to
bring the past. The future was black chaos unless the Great Spirit
should restore their world of the buffalo.
The dance went on with steadily growing excitement. The autumn
remained very mild and favorable to the ceremony, and yet there
were fewer people in it than the agent supposed. Those most active
continued to be the mourners. Those who had lost children crowded to
the dance, as white people go to spiritualistic seances, in the hope
of touching the hands of their babes and hearing the voices of their
daughters. They sincerely believed that they met their dead and they
deeply resented the brutal order of the agent who would keep them
from this sweet reunion.
It was deeply moving to look upon their happy faces as they stood
and called in piercing voices: “I saw my child—my little son. He was
playing with his small bow and arrows. I called him and he ran to me.
He was very happy with his grandfather. The sun was shining on the
flowers and no one was hungry. My boy clung to my hand. I did not
wish to come back. Oh, teach me the way to go again!”
I think the number of those who believed that the new world of the
buffalo was coming, that the white man would be swept away, were few,
but hundreds considered it possible to go to the spirit land and see
those who were dead, and they resented, as my chief, the interference
of the government. There was nothing worth while left in the world
but this, and they used bitter words when they were commanded to lay
this comforting faith aside. “Why should our spirit meetings be taken
from us?” they asked of me.
In spite of the wind, the dust, and the blazing October sun, a veil
of mysterious passion lay over the camp. The children were withdrawn
from school to participate in the worship. Nothing else was talked
of. During the day, as the old chiefs counciled, the women gathered
together and told their experiences. There were deceivers among
those who took part in this, and many who were self-deceived, but
for the most part they were in deadly earnestness; the exultation on
their faces could not be simulated. They moved in a cloud of joyous
memories, with no care, no thought of the Great Father’s commands.
They were borne above all other considerations but this—“How may we
bring back the vanished world of the fathers?”
Up at the agent’s office was an absolutely different world. There
hate and cynical coarseness ruled. To go from the dance to the agent
was a bitter experience for me. I was forced into deception. No
one dared to speak of the dance, except in terms of laughter or
disbelief. All the renegades in the pay of the government joined in
the jests and told ribald stories of the chief and of the ceremonies.
They could not understand what it meant. As for me, I said little,
but I foresaw trouble for my people and sorrow for myself.
The chief clerk hated me and all Indians. He was a most capable man,
but sour and sullen to everyone who did not appeal to him. He had no
children, no wife, and no faith. His voice was a snarl, his face a
chill wind. He never spoke to an Indian that he did not curse. The
agent was not so, but he was a zealot impatient of the old, eager
to make a record for himself and the post. Loyal to the white man’s
ideal, he was unsympathetic and harsh and materialistic in dealing
with the traditional prejudices of my race.
He sent for Jack, the teacher, and asked him to come up and talk with
him. “Tell me all about it,” he said, “What is the meaning of it?”
In reply Jack said, soberly: “They are very much in earnest about
this new religion of theirs, but they are peaceable. The Sitting Bull
talked with me a long time yesterday, and I found it a hard matter
to meet his arguments, which he bases on the miracles of the Bible.
The dancers are told to lay aside all that the white man has made and
fix their minds on what they wish to see most of all. They go into a
trance and lie for hours. When they wake they are very happy. They
come and tell me their dreams and some of them are very beautiful.
My advice is to let them alone. It is a craze like the old-fashioned
Methodist revival. It will die out as winter comes on.”
This testimony by a man who understood our language and was in daily
contact with The Sitting Bull band led the agent to pursue a calmer
course. He decided to wait the ebbing of the excitement.
Unfortunately, a long letter he had written to Washington about “the
Messiah craze” was given to the reporters, and the daily papers were
instantly filled with black headlines introducing foolish and false
accounts of what was taking place. Writers hurried to the Standing
Rock and wired alarming reports of what they heard, and all this
reacted unfavorably upon the dancers.
The agent then laid the burden of the blame upon my chief. “He is
a reactionary,” he said; “he is a disturber and has been from the
first. He has opposed every treaty and has insisted at all times
on being treated as a chief,” and in all his letters and talks he
continued to speak ill of him.
He sent word by me and by Jack, saying to The Sitting Bull: “Come to
the agency. I want to talk with you. Stop this foolish dance and come
here and camp for a while where I can talk with you. The white people
are alarmed and you must stop this dance.”
The chief, embittered by the agent’s attack upon him, refused to go
to the Standing Rock. “I am not a dog to be whistled at. I will not
go to the agent to be insulted and beaten,” and he called his old
guard of “Silent Eaters” around him. “The agent threatens to imprison
me and break up the dance. If he comes to fight he will find us
ready.”
Day by day the feeling between the agency and its police on the one
side, and the chief and the dancers on the other, got more alarming,
and the agent was obliged to send many telegrams to Washington and
the outside world to quiet the fears of the settlers, and at last he
decided to go down to Rock Creek and see for himself what was going
on. He should have done so before.
He asked me to go as interpreter, and this I did, but very
reluctantly, for it put me too much on his side.
He planned to come upon the scene of the dance suddenly, and many
were dancing as we rode up to the outer circle of lodges. The word
went about that the agent was come, but no one stopped dancing on
that account. They were too much in earnest to give heed to any
authority. Some of those to whom he called replied with words of
contempt, defying his command, and I, who knew the terrible power of
the President’s army, trembled as I saw the face of the agent blacken.
“What foolery!” he said to me. “This has got to stop! Go tell The
Sitting Bull to come to me.”
I made my way to where the chief sat, and told him what the agent had
demanded.
I could see that he associated me with the renegades who fawned upon
the agent, and he listened to what I said with cold, stern face. I
pleaded with him to do as he was commanded. I informed him of the
fury of fear which had fallen upon the settlers and I warned him that
the soldiers would come to put a stop to the dance.
To all this he made no reply other than to say: “Since the agent has
come to see me, tell him I will talk with him in the morning. I am
busy now. I cannot leave the dance.”
The agent was furious when I told him this, and as we drove off down
to the school muttered a threat, “I’ll make him suffer for this, the
insolent old dog.” We found Carignan, the teacher, almost alone at
the school. The Sitting Bull had said: “If this religion is true,
then it is more important than your books,” and had told his people
to withdraw their children from their studies. “If the white man’s
world is coming to an end, of what use is it to learn his ways?” he
argued.
To Carignan the agent talked freely of the chief. “He must be brought
low,” he declared, wrathfully. “His power must be broken. I will see
him in the morning and give him one more chance to quit peaceably.
If he does not I will arrest him. He will find he can’t run this
reservation.”
To this Carignan replied: “I don’t think he means to make trouble,
but he is profoundly interested in this new religion. I think he will
yield to reason.”
[Illustration: Scouts
_These Indian scouts are on the trail of a Chiricahua Apache
named Massai, famous in the ’nineties as the wildest and most
cruel of the Apaches. So crooked was Massai’s trail that even the
Indians themselves could not follow it._
_Illustration from_
MASSAI’S CROOKED TRAIL
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _January, 1898_]
[Illustration: On the Little Big Horn
_When Cheschapah, son of the aged Crow chief, Pounded Meat,
became a medicine man and aspired to leadership of the tribe, a
party of Sioux came on a visit to the Crows. Fearing that the
feasting and eloquence of Cheschapah might turn their thoughts
to war, troops were sent to bring the visitors home. The Sioux
started for home meekly enough, but Cheschapah, with a yelling
swarm of his young friends, began to buzz about the column,
threatening to attack the troopers who had so rudely broken up
their dinner party, and did not desist even when the soldiers had
forded the river. Whereupon the chief of the Crow police rode out
to Cheschapah, commanding him to turn back, and received for an
answer an insult that with Indians calls for blood. But for old
chief Pounded Meat, who then rode out to his son and cowed him
with a last flare of command, firing would have begun then and
there._
_Illustration from_
LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE
_by_ Owen Wister
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _June, 1894_]
There had already been a great deal of talk of the War Department
sending someone to quiet the disturbance, and this the agent did not
relish. He had been an Indian agent for many years and prided himself
on knowing how to handle his people, and was especially anxious to
keep the chief authority entirely in his own hands. Poor and despised
as The Sitting Bull had become, even the agent considered it an honor
to arrest and imprison him. Furthermore, I could see that he did not
care to attempt this except as a last resort.
The following morning the agent, Carignan, and myself went up to
see The Sitting Bull. He was in his tepee, smoking beside a small
smoldering fire. He was very cold and quiet, and looked tired and
weak. His hair parted in the middle and the sad look of his face
made him resemble an old woman. To me he was only a tragic wraith of
his former self. His eyes were dull and heavy. He was a type of my
vanishing race as he sat there, and my heart went out to him.
He greeted us with a low word and shook hands. We all sat about in
the lodge. Few people were stirring.
“Tell the chief I have come to talk with him about this dance,” began
the agent.
I told the chief, and he said: “Speak on, my ears are open.”
“Tell him I hear he is dancing this foolish dance almost every day,
making his people tired, so that they neglect their cattle and have
taken their children from school. Tell him that all the people are
getting excited. Therefore, Washington says the dance must stop!”
continued the agent.
I told the chief this. His face did not change, but his eyes fired
a little. “Are the white people afraid of this new religion? Why do
they wish to stop it?” he scornfully asked, in answer.
“Say to him that I do not fear the dance—I consider it foolish—but I
do not want him wasting the energies of the people. He must stop it
at once!”
To this the chief replied: “I am a reasonable man and a peacemaker. I
do not seek trouble, but my people take comfort in this dance. They
have lost many dear ones and in this dance they see them again.
Whether it is true or not I have not yet made up my mind, but my
people believe in it and I see no harm in it.” Here he paused for a
moment. “I have a proposition to make to you,” he said firmly. “This
new religion came to me from the Brulé Reservation; they got it from
the west. The Mato and Kios claim to have seen the Messiah. Let us
two, you and I, set forth together with intent to trail down this
story of the Messiah. If, when we reach the last tribe in the land
where the story originated, they cannot show us the Messiah or give
us satisfactory proof, then we will return and I will tell my people
that they have been too credulous. This report will end the dance
forever. It will not do to order my people to stop; that will make
them sure the dance is true magic.”
The chief was very serious in this offer. He knew that he could not,
by merely ordering it, stop the dance; but if he should go on this
journey with the agent and make diligent inquiry, then he could on
his return speak with authority. He made this offer as one reasonable
man to another, and, had the agent met him halfway or even permitted
him to send my father or Slohan, the final tragedy might have been
averted, but the agent was too angry now to parley. His answer was
contemptuous.
“Tell him I refuse to consider that. It is as crazy as the dance. It
would only be a waste of time.”
I urged him to accept, for in the months to follow the excitement
would die out, but he would not listen.
“I will not consider it. It would be like trying to catch up the wind
that blew last year. I do not care to argue here. Tell him to come to
my house to-morrow and I will give him a night and a day to prove to
me that he is not a foolish old man, chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.”
To this the chief replied: “Are there miracles only in the white
man’s religion? I hear you believe there was once a great flood and
all the people were drowned but a man and a woman, who took all the
animals, male and female, into a big steamboat. When did this happen?
How do you know it? Is the ghost dance more foolish? Are my people to
be without a religion because it does not please the white man?”
To this the agent answered, impatiently: “I refuse to debate. I have
orders to stop the dance, and these orders must be carried out. Tell
him to come to the agency to-morrow and we will talk it out there. I
can’t do it now.”
To my surprise, the chief pacifically responded: “I will come. My
people are few and feeble, I do not wish to make trouble. Let us
speak wisely in this matter. You are angry now and my people are
excited. I will come and we will talk quietly together.”
But the faces of the old guard were dark, and Black Bull, who stood
near, cried out, saying: “Let us alone. We will not give up the
dance. We are afraid. Send the coyote away! Is The Sitting Bull
afraid?”
This touched the chief to the quick, and he said, “I am not, but I do
not desire trouble.”
My father spoke and said: “Do not go. The white man will imprison you
if you do.”
Black Bull again shouted: “The white man is a liar! His tongue is
double. He has set a trap. Will you walk into it?”
The chief turned to me. “Is this true? Have they talked of putting me
in prison?”
I could not deny this, and while I sat in silence, seeking words
which would not inflame him, Catch the Bear said: “I have heard that
they have planned to kill you. Do not go to the agency.”
The chief was now convinced that the agent and myself had come to
entice him into a snare. He rose, and his face took on the warrior’s
lionlike look as he said: “I will not go to the agency. I will not
die in prison. If I am to die it will be here, as a soldier, on the
spot where I was born.”
Even then the agent could have won him by pacific speech, but he too
was angry, and he said: “I give you till to-morrow morning to decide.
If you do not come to the agency I will send the police and take
you.” He then went back to the school.
To Carignan he said, as he got into his wagon: “You had better send
all your people up to the post. I am going to arrest The Sitting Bull
to-night and it may make trouble,” and in this spirit he drove away.
XIII
THE CHIEF PLANS A JOURNEY
That was a dark night in The Sitting Bull’s camp. The women were
weeping and the men, with faces sullen and fierce, gathered in
solemn council. Black Wolf, Catch the Bear and The Two Strike loudly
advocated resistance, their hot hearts aflame, but the chief kept on
smoking his pipe, which is the sign of indecision. He was still the
peacemaker and concerned over the welfare of his people.
When he spoke he said: “To fight now is to die. The white man will
crush us like flies. I know that for I have seen his armies. The
happy hunting grounds are as near to me as to any of you, but I am
not ready to die. I have thought deeply over the matter, and I have
resolved not to fight, for unless we intend to kill all our children
and so leave no one to follow us, the white man will visit his hate
on those who remain. If the agent comes with his renegades to arrest
me I will resist to the death, but if the soldiers come for me I will
go with them, for they have the hearts of warriors and know how to
treat a chief. This is my decision; but whatever comes, let no one
interfere in my behalf, for to do so would only mean bloodshed, and
that will do no good. I am your head—they will visit their punishment
on me. I will meet them alone.”
Thereupon he spoke to his “Silent Eaters” and said: “Put sentinels
on the hills and keep watch on all that is done at the agency. Let no
spy approach us.”
The dance went on after that in a sort of frenzy, as if desperate by
need. The cries of those who prayed were heart-breaking to hear. “O
Great Spirit, save us; bring the happy land quickly, ere the white
man slays us,” this they wailed over and over again, for the days
were fleet and the wolves of winter near.
When the chief did not appear as he had promised, then the agent
drew a dead line between the agency and the camp, and brought into
play the forces of hunger and cold. He sent word to all the Grand
River people, commanding them to move up and go into permanent camp
near the agency. “Those who do not come will be cut off from their
rations.” And to his clerk he said: “That will show the old chief’s
followers where they stand.”