Part 17

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.

Often during these days I saw him sitting at sunset on his favorite 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.