White Mouth and Rotten Tail said that they were half a day in riding through the Sioux village; there were fifteen hundred lodges. In truth, Chief Red Cloud had over two thousand warriors, with whom to stand in the path.

And there he stood. Nobody might doubt that. His raiders watched every mile of the trail back to Powder River, and not an emigrant train got through. He himself, with two thousand warriors, guarded Fort Kearney, where the white chief lived.

Nobody might venture from it to hunt game. The wood wagons might move only when many together and well armed. Not a load of hay could be brought in without strong escort. After a time no mail could be sent on to Fort Smith.

Colonel Carrington had five companies of infantry and one company of the Second Cavalry. The infantry was mostly recruits. Their guns were old style muzzle loaders; but the band had the new Spencer breech-loaders.

He asked for better guns and more ammunition. The Government was not certain that the Sioux could do much against soldiers of a country which had just been trained by a four years' war, and Carrington was left to prove it.

Chief Red Cloud had his first chance to prove the opposite on December 6. He had been amusing his warriors by letting them gallop past the fort and shout challenges to the soldiers to come out and fight; then when the cannon shot at them, they dodged the shells—but did not always succeed.

The big guns that shot twice surprised them.

On the morning of December 6 Red Cloud struck in earnest, and had planned to strike hard. He had a line of signal flags seven miles long, by which to direct his army. Then he sent a company to attack a wood train.

The attack on the wood train brought the troops out of the fort. One detachment of thirty-five cavalry and a few mounted infantry was commanded by Captain William J. Fetterman. He was very anxious to fight Indians; in fact, the officers all had set their hearts upon "taking Red Cloud's scalp."

Captain Fetterman rescued the wagon train, by chasing the Sioux away; but in about five miles Red Cloud faced his men about and closed. It was an ambuscade. The troopers of the cavalry were stampeded, and the captain found himself, with two other officers and a dozen men, surrounded by yelling warriors.

Colonel Carrington arrived just in time to save him; but young Lieutenant H. S. Bingham of the Second Cavalry was killed, and so was Sergeant Bowers.

When Captain Fetterman had returned to the fort he had changed his mind regarding the prowess of the Sioux, whom he had thought to be only robbers.

"I have learned a lesson," he remarked. "This Indian war has become a hand-to-hand fight, and requires great caution. I'll take no more risks like that of today!"

Red Cloud was not satisfied. His warriors had not done exactly as he had told them to do. He bided his time.

On the morning of December 21 he was again ready. His men were stationed, waiting for a wood train to appear. It appeared, starting out to chop timber in the pine woods, and haul the logs to the fort.

It was an unusually strong train—a number of heavy wagons, and ninety armed men.

Red Cloud let it get about four miles along, and ordered it attacked. He had spies upon a ridge of hills, to watch the fort.

When the attack was heard at the fort, soldiers dashed out. The Red Cloud warriors allowed the wagon train to think that it had whipped them. He withdrew, across the ridge.

The leader of the soldiers was Captain Fetterman, again. He had asked for the command. With him was Captain Fred H. Brown, who expected to go back to Fort Laramie, and wished, first, to get a scalp. He and Captain Fetterman were rivals for scalps and had almost forgotten the affair of December 6. They were gallant soldiers, but reckless.

Altogether the detachment numbered seventy-nine officers and men, and two scouts named Wheatley and Fisher.

Captain Fetterman was distinctly ordered by Colonel Carrington to do nothing but rescue the wagon train. He must not cross the ridge in pursuit of the Sioux.

Captain Fetterman did not move directly for the place of the wagon train. He made a circuit, to cut off the attacking Sioux, at their rear, or between the wagon train and the ridge to the north of it.

He had taken no surgeon, so Dr. Hines was hurried after him. The doctor came back in another hurry. He reported that the wagon train was on its way to the timber, without the captain; and that the captain had disappeared, over the ridge! Many Indians were in sight, and the doctor had been obliged to stop short.

Now, on a sudden, there was a burst of distant gun-fire. In twelve minutes a second detachment of soldiers was on the run, from the fort for the battle; wagons and ambulances and more men followed; and soon only one hundred and nineteen men remained.

The firing was very heavy, in volleys—then in fire-at-will; then it died down—quit. Not a sound could be heard, as the women and men in Fort Kearney strained their ears and eyes.

Presently a courier from the second detachment galloped headlong in. He said that the valley beyond the ridge was swarming with Sioux; they yelled and dared the soldiers to come down to the road there. But of the Captain Fetterman command, no trace could be sighted.

The soldiers and the reinforcements stayed out all the afternoon. They returned at dark; but of the eighty-one others, none came back. All of them, the entire eighty-one, had fallen to the army of Red Cloud.

Nobody was alive to tell the story of the fight. The signs on the field were plain, though; and of course the Red Cloud warriors knew well what had occurred.

Captain Fetterman had crossed the ridge, to chase the Sioux. Two thousand Red Cloud men were waiting for him. They permitted him to advance to the forbidden road. The white soldiers fought until their ammunition was almost spent. Then the Red Cloud men rushed. Only six of the white soldiers were shot; the rest were killed by hand.

The plan of Red Cloud and his chiefs had been laid to get all the troops out of the fort, together; kill them and seize the fort.

But the warriors had not waited long enough. Their victory was too quick, and they lost too many men, themselves, in the one fight: seventy, of killed and wounded, they said; sixty-five of killed, alone, said the red blotches on the field.

Still, Red Cloud had closed the road with the bodies of the soldiers. He had made his word good.

The garrison in Fort Kearney gave up all thought of glory by capturing Red Cloud; and this winter there was no more fighting. How many warriors Red Cloud had, to "cover the hills with their scarlet blankets," nobody knew; but the count ran from three thousand to five thousand.

The spring came, and the summer came, and the road had not been opened. In more than a year, not a single wagon had passed upon it, through the hunting grounds of the Sioux.

Another white chief had been sent to take command of Fort Phil Kearney. He was Brigadier General H. W. Wessels. All this summer the soldiers were having to fight for wood and water. The contractor in charge of the teams hauling lumber complained that he must have more protection or he would be unable to do the work.

Captain James Powell of the Twenty-seventh Infantry was ordered out to protect the lumber camps. He took Lieutenant John C. Jenness and fifty-one men.

The wood choppers had two camps, about a mile apart. The captain detailed twenty-five of his men to guard the one camp, and escort the wagon trains to the fort; with the twenty-six others he made a fort of wagon boxes, at the second camp.

He arranged fourteen of the wagon boxes on the ground, in a circle. Some of the boxes had been lined with boiler iron. Two wagons were left on wheels, so that the rifles might be aimed from underneath. The boxes were pierced low down with a row of loop-holes. The spaces between the ends of the boxes were filled with ox-chains, slabs and brush. He had plenty of ammunition and plenty of new breech-loading rifles.

The little fort was located in an open basin, surrounded by gentle hills. He directed the men of the other camp to come in at the first sign of trouble.

The Sioux were at hand. Red Cloud had been merely waiting for the soldiers to march out and make it worth his while to descend. He was resolved to destroy Fort Kearney this year, before the snows.

It seemed to him that again he had the soldiers where he wanted them. Word of the flimsy little corral spread a laugh among his two thousand warriors. The squaws and old men were summoned from the allied Sioux and out-law Cheyenne village, to come and see and be ready with their knives.

On the morning of August 2 he so suddenly attacked the unfortified wood camp that he cut it off completely. Two hundred of his men captured the mule herd; five hundred of them attacked the wagon train there, burned the wagons and drove the soldiers and teamsters and choppers who were outside the corral, in flight to Fort Kearney. Scalps were taken.

Now it was the turn of the puny corral, and the rest of the soldiers.

He could see only the low circle of wagon-boxes. They were covered with blankets; underneath the blankets there were soldiers—few and frightened.

The hill slopes around were thronged with his people, gathered to watch and to plunder. He felt like a great chief indeed. And at wave of his hand eight hundred of his cavalry dashed in a thundering, crackling surge of death straight at the silent circle.

On they sped, and on, and on, and were just about to dash against the circle and sweep over, when suddenly such a roar, and sheet of flame, struck them in the face that they staggered and melted. Now—while the guns were empty! But the guns were not yet empty—they belched without pause. Veering right and left around a bloody lane the warriors, crouching low, tore for safety from the frightful blast.

Red Cloud could not understand. His own men were well armed, with rifles and with muskets captured from the soldiers during the past year or supplied at the trading post. It seemed to him that there were more soldiers under those blankets than he had reckoned. But he knew that his men were brave; his people were watching from the hills; he had no mind for defeat.

In the corral Captain Powell had told his twenty-six soldiers and four civilians to fight for their lives. The poor shots were ordered to load guns and pass them as fast as possible to the crack shots.

Red Cloud rallied his whole force, of more than two thousand. He dismounted eight hundred and sent them forward to crawl along the ground, as sharpshooters; they ringed the corral with bullets and arrows.

He himself led twelve hundred, afoot, for a charge. His young nephew was his chief aide—to win the right to be head chief after Red Cloud's death.

But although they tried, in charge after charge, for three hours, they could not enter the little fort. Sometimes they got within ten yards—the soldiers threw augers at them, and they threw the augers back—and back they reeled, themselves. The guns of the little fort never quit!

Red Cloud still could not understand. He called a council. In the opinion of his chiefs and braves, the white soldiers were armed with guns that shot of themselves and did not need reloading.

The squaws on the hills were wailing; his men were discouraged; many had fallen. So finally he ordered that the bodies be saved, and the fight ended. His braves again crawled forward, behind shields, with ropes; tied the ropes to the bodies, in spite of the bullets, and running, snaked the bodies away behind them.

"Some bad god fought against us," complained the Red Cloud people. "The white soldiers had a great medicine. We were burned by fire."

And all the Indians of the plains, hearing about the mystery, when the breech-loading rifles mowed down the Sioux and the Cheyennes, spoke of the bad god fight that defeated Chief Red Cloud.

The Sioux reported that they had lost eleven hundred and thirty-five warriors. Red Cloud's nephew was sorely wounded in the charge. Captain Fetterman's loss was Lieutenant Jenness and two men killed, two men wounded. He said that when the reinforcements, with the cannon, arrived from Fort Kearney, while the Sioux were removing their dead, he was in despair. Another charge or two and he would have been wiped out.

But the road remained closed. Red Cloud remained in the path. This fall the Government decided that, after all, it had no right to open the road. In April of the next year, 1868, another treaty was signed with the Sioux and the Cheyennes, by which the United States gave up any claim to the Powder River and Big Horn country, and the Indians promised to let the Union Pacific Railroad alone.

Red Cloud did not sign. "The white men are liars," he insisted; and he waited until the three forts, Smith and Kearney and Reno, were abandoned. Then, in November, after his warriors had burned them, and all the soldiers were gone out of the country, he put his name to the treaty.

Thus he won out. He had said that he would close the road, and he had done it.

Through the following years he remained quiet. He had had his fill of fighting. His name was great. He was head chief of the Red Cloud agency, later called Pine Ridge. Spotted Tail of the Brules controlled the other agency, later called Rosebud.

Red Cloud always closely watched the whites. He was at peace, but suspicious. When the Black Hills were finally demanded by the United States, he sent out men to count the buffalo. The number in sight was too small. Some day, soon, the Indians would have no meat on their hunting grounds. Therefore Red Cloud decided that the red men must begin to live by aid of the white man; and he favored the reservations—even the sale of the Black Hills so that his people would be made rich enough to settle down.

He was looked up to as a warrior and a councillor, but the United States did not trust him; and after a time, put Spotted Tail over him, in charge of the two agencies. This made bad feeling, and Red Cloud and Spotted Tail did not speak to each other. However, his own people, who rose under Sitting Bull, urged him to join with them, in vain.

Red Cloud lived to be a very old man. He became almost blind, and partly paralyzed. He stuck to his one wife. They were together for many years.

He died in December, 1909, in a two-story house built for him by the Government on the Pine Ridge agency in South Dakota. He was aged eighty-seven. Five years before he had given his chief-ship over to his son, young Red Cloud, who carried the name. It is a name that will never be forgotten.



CHAPTER XXIII

STANDING BEAR SEEKS A HOME (1877-1880)

THE INDIAN WHO WON THE WHITE MAN'S VERDICT

The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska.

Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas and Osages.

The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska.

When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had been cut by the small-pox to only some two hundred people. They never have been a big people. Their number today, about eight hundred and fifty, is as large as ever in their history.



They and the Omahas warred with the Sioux, but they never warred with the white men. They have always been friendly to the white men, except once; and that once brings up the story of Standing Bear.

Back in 1817 the Poncas made a treaty of friendship with the United States; and in 1825 they made another treaty, allowing white traders to live among them, and agreeing to let their own bad men (if any) be punished by the United States; and in 1859 they made another treaty, selling their hunting grounds to the United States, and keeping a tract on the Niobrara River for their own homes.

None of these treaties did they break. They were at peace with even the Sioux. They had good farms, and were prospering.

But in 1868 the United States laid out a new reservation for the Sioux. By a mistake this took in the Ponca reservation in Nebraska, and the Poncas were not told. The way they found out, was this: The Sioux began to come in and claim the land.

"That is not right," said the Poncas. "You do not belong here. All this country is ours. Go back. We do not want you."

So there was fighting, every little while, and the Poncas lost many warriors. This continued for nine years, until, by the raids of the Sioux, one fourth of the Poncas had been killed or captured.

Still they had not been told by the United States that these lands were theirs no longer; but, suddenly, in 1877, they were told that they must get out.

At this time they had three villages, on the lower Niobrara River, and eight bands, each under a chief. The chiefs were Standing Bear, White Eagle, Big Soldier, Traveling Buffalo, Black Crow, Over-the-land, Woodpecker, and Big-Hoofed Buffalo.

The United States informed the eight chiefs that they must remove their people to the Indian Territory, but did not say why.

Standing Bear had been born in 1829, so he was forty-eight years old. He stood high among the Poncas, because of his clan, the Wa-zha-zhe—a clan that could cure rattle-snake bites and work other wonders.

He strongly opposed giving up the Ponca home-land, upon which the tribe had lived for almost one hundred years, and which the United States had agreed, on paper, to give them in exchange for their hunting grounds. The other chiefs thought the same. They could not understand why they all should be thrown off, when they had done nothing wrong.

But the white men paid no attention. One of them, who was the United States Indian Inspector, only answered:

"The President says that you must sell this land. He will buy it and pay you money, and give you new land in the Indian Territory."

"We do not know your authority," argued Standing Bear. "You have no right to move us until we have held a council with the President."

"If you like the new land, then you can see the President and tell him so," offered the inspector. "If you don't like it, then you can see him and tell him so."

So Standing Bear and nine other chiefs went; but they were dubious.

The inspector showed the three pieces of land, and told them to choose. All the pieces were bad pieces. It was a hot country and a bare country, and not suited to the Poncas, who had good corn-fields and houses in their own country of the Niobrara.

Besides, now the white man said that they were to have no pay for their Niobrara laud. He told the chiefs, according to Standing Bear:

"If you do not accept what land is offered you here, I will leave you here alone. You are one thousand miles from home. You have no money. You cannot speak the language."

Then he slammed the door.

"But we do not like this land," explained Standing Bear. "We could not make a living. The water is bad. Now send us to the President, as you promised."

The man would not send them. He would not take them home. He would not give them any of the Indian money, for buying food. He would not give them a paper, to show to the people along the way. He would not give them the interpreter, to talk for them. He would not take them to a railroad.

"He left us right here," said Standing Bear. "It was winter. We started for home on foot. At night we slept in hay-stacks. We barely lived till morning, it was so cold. We had nothing but our blankets. We took the ears of corn that had dried in the fields; we ate it raw. The soles of our moccasins wore out. We were barefoot in the snow. We were nearly dead when we reached the Oto reservation. It had been fifty days."

Their feet made bloody marks on the Oto reservation. The Otos and the Oto agent treated them kindly. They stayed ten days, to rest; then the Otos gave them each a pony, and in two more weeks they were home.

It had been a cold, hungry journey, of five hundred miles, and their relatives and friends were glad to see them again.

But the United States inspector was waiting for them. He was angry. He said that the Great Father had ordered the Poncas to change homes. It did not seem to matter whether or not they liked the new home. And he called for soldiers, and all the Poncas were bundled out of their villages and taken to the hot country of the south. On the way women and children died. Standing Bear's daughter died.

Just as Standing Bear and the other chiefs had tried to explain, the new country was not a good country for the Poncas. It was humid and hot; their Niobrara country had been dry and bracing. Within one year a third of them were dead from sickness; the rest were weak and miserable. They pined for the villages that they had built and loved, and that they had lost without any known reason.

After a year and a half Standing Bear's boy died, as so many others had died; and the heart of Standing Bear was heavy. He did not sleep, by thinking that his son's bones must lie here in this unfriendly country. His medicine demanded that the boy should rest with their ancestors, in the Ponca ground along the dear Niobrara.

Therefore, in January, 1879, he placed the bones in a sack, and tied the sack to his neck, and taking his people who could travel, he set out to walk to Ponca land.

That was hard work. They made their way as best they could, but had been over three months on it when, in May, they arrived at the reservation of their friends the Omahas, near the Missouri River in northeastern Nebraska.

Chief Standing Bear asked the Omahas if they might rest, and plant a few acres of ground, so as to get food. The Omahas gave them seed and ground. Standing Bear still had the bones of his son, in the bag. When he had started a crop, he was going on with the bones, and bury them at the Niobrara, where the Poncas of happier years had been buried.

Before the crop was in, soldiers appeared, and arrested him and all his party, to take them back to the hot country.

This much alarmed the Omahas. They had heard how the Poncas had been moved off without warning and without reason. Standing Bear was not being allowed to stay; he had lost his country forever. The same thing might happen to the Omahas.

They had a similar treaty with the United States. They thought that they owned their lands. They had been improving them and living on them for years. They had spent much money of the tribe, for tools and buildings, and were becoming like white men. The Government had issued papers to them, showing which land each man possessed.

Now they were liable to lose their lands, as the Poncas had lost.

The Omahas hastened to ask white lawyers about it. They were told that the papers did not show that they owned the land; the papers only showed which lands each man had a right to farm.

The Omahas were Indians, and not white citizens, and could not own lands, man by man. When a man died, his land might be given to somebody else.

Now dread fastened upon the Omaha tribe. They hastened to draw up a petition to Congress, asking that the lands which their men owned or thought they owned be put down on paper forever. They wanted titles such as the white men had, so the lands could be recorded.

Miss Alice Fletcher, from Washington, had been sent to study the Omaha people; and they appealed to her. She helped them. The petition went to Washington, but the months passed without an answer.

Meanwhile Standing Bear and his bag of bones and his party were being taken south, by the soldiers from Fort Crook, Omaha, to the sickly hot country. When they camped on their way, near Omaha, a newspaper man talked with them. His name was Mr. T. H. Tibbles.

The story was printed in the Omaha papers, and at once Standing Bear had many white allies.

The Omaha City people invited him to come in and talk to them; and so he did, in a church that was crowded with listeners. Two lawyers, Mr. Poppleton and Mr. Webster, adopted him as a client; and before the soldiers had started on with him, the lawyers asked the court for a writ of habeas corpus—a challenge to the United States to surrender him, as a person who had been unlawfully arrested.

The United States argued that Standing Bear was an Indian, and that an Indian was not a "person," under the laws of the United States; he did not have any rights, in court.

Standing Bear had left his tribe, and was nobody, until he returned; and even then, he would be only an Indian.

Standing Bear's lawyers brought witnesses into court, to state that the Standing Bear party had traveled peacefully, like good citizens; had not even begged along the way.

Standing Bear was told to arise and repeat his story. Part of it is contained in this chapter. It was a remarkable speech. The people in the court-room believed it. Standing Bear's heart warmed. He was no Indian; he was a man.

The judge decided. He said that an Indian was a person, and had a right to the courts, and to liberty when he had not done wrong. The Poncas had been unjustly removed by force from their lands, and Standing Bear's party had been unjustly arrested. Therefore they should be released.

When this word was carried to Standing Bear by his lawyers, he was so pleased that he almost wept.

"Before this," he said, "when we have been wronged we went to war to get back our rights and avenge our wrongs. We took the tomahawk. We had no law to punish those who did us wrong, and we went out to kill. If they had guns and could kill us first, it was the fate of war. But you have found us a better way. You have gone into court for us, and I find that our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for the tomahawk. I want to lay it down forever." So he put it on the floor. "I lay it down. I have found a better way. I can now seek the ways of peace."

He gave the tomahawk to Attorney Webster, "to keep in remembrance of the great victory."

And a great victory it was, not only for the Poncas, but for all the Indians. Standing Bear's trip with the bones had gained him many new friends.

Now he traveled straight to the Niobrara, and nobody dared to stop him.

The next winter he made a tour of the East, with interpreters, and with Mr. Tibbles the newspaper ally. He spoke from many platforms, telling of the wrongs of the Indians. The newspapers everywhere spread his talk wider. Soon letters from white people and their societies began to pour into Washington, for the President and for the Congressmen.

As a result, in the spring of 1880 the Senate of the United States sent a commission into the West, to find out if Standing Bear's stories were really true.

They were true. Therefore the Poncas were told that they might go back to the Niobrara, if they wished. Some did so. They were called the Cold Country Band. Those who were willing to stay in the Indian Territory were granted better lands, and they were paid for the lands that they had lost in the north. They were called the Hot Country Band.

Each band was given titles to the lands held by it. The Omahas, too, won out, and were given titles. They and the Poncas secured the rights of citizens of the United States.

As for Standing Bear, he died, well satisfied and much honored, in 1908, aged seventy-nine, and was buried there near the Niobrara, in ancient Ponca country, where his ancestors slept. He had saved his tribe.



CHAPTER XXIV

SITTING BULL THE WAR MAKER (1876-1881)

AN UNCONQUERED LEADER

The treaty that Chief Red Cloud at last signed in the fall of 1868 was half white and half red. The white part made the Sioux agree to a reservation which covered all of present South Dakota west of the Missouri River. Here they were to live and be fed. The red part, put in by Red Cloud, said that the whole country west of the reservation to the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming, and north of the North Platte River, should be Indian country. Here the Sioux and their Indian friends were to hunt as they pleased.

This closed the road, and gave the Powder River region to the Sioux. They might chase the buffalo, from central Wyoming up across Montana clear to Canada, and no white man could interfere. It was their own game reserve—and the best game reserve in the United States.

The Sioux numbered thirty thousand. Many of them preferred living in their hunting grounds instead of upon the reservation. That was their natural life—to hunt and to war. Besides, they found out that the United States was not doing as had been promised. There were to be cows, seeds, farm tools, teachers, and so forth, for the reservation Indians—and scarcely a third of these things was supplied.

The Indians upon the reservation did not live nearly so comfortably as those who did as they pleased, in the hunting grounds.

So the treaty did not work out well. The hunting-ground Indians were perfectly free. They had guests from other tribes; and in the passing back and forth, white men were attacked. The Crows of western Montana complained that the Sioux invaded them, and that they might as well go to war, themselves, as try to stay at home.

The Government had intended that the Sioux should settle upon the big reservation, and from there take their hunting trips. Speedily, or in 1869, General Sherman, head of the army, declared that the Indians found outside of the reservation might be treated as hostiles, and brought back.

Nevertheless, by the terms of the Red Cloud treaty, the Sioux had a right to be in this country, which was all theirs, if they behaved themselves.

Among the leaders of the hunting-ground Sioux, Sitting Bull ranked with the foremost. He was a Hunkpapa Sioux, of the Teton division—in which Spotted Tail was leader of the Brules and Red Cloud of the Oglalas.

But Sitting Bull was no chief. By his own count he laid claim to being a great warrior; by the Sioux count he had powerful medicine—he could tell of events to come. And this was his strong hold upon the Sioux. They feared him.

He had been born in 1834, in present South Dakota. The name given him as a boy was Jumping Badger. His father's name was Four Horns, and also Ta-tan-ka Yo-tan-ka or Sitting Buffalo-bull. When Jumping Badger was only fourteen years old he went with his father on the war trail against the Crows. A Crow was killed, and little Jumping Badger touched the body first, and counted a coup, or stroke.



To be the first to count coup on a fallen enemy was high honor. Frequently a wounded warrior only pretended to be dead, and when his foe approached him close, he shot.

Upon their return home, old Sitting Bull gave a feast, and distributed many horses, and transferred his own name to Jumping Badger.

After this, although young Sitting Bull counted many coups, he practiced making medicine until he gained much reputation as a future-teller. He openly hated the whites. His hate was as deep as that of O-pe-chancan-ough, the Pamunkey.

He grew to be a burly, stout man, with light brown hair and complexion, a grim heavy face pitted by small-pox, and two shrewd, blood-shot eyes. He limped, from a wound.

His band was small; but his camp was the favorite gathering place for the reservation Indians, on hunting trips. They took presents to him, that he might bring the buffalo.

Thus matters went on, broken with complaints. It was hard to tell which were reservation Indians and which were wild Indians. When the Sitting Bull people and other bands came in to the reservation, and drew rations of flour, they emptied the flour on the prairie and used the sacks as clothing. This helped to make the reservation Indians ill content. The wild Indians evidently were living very well indeed.

Along in 1871 the Northern Pacific Railroad wished to build westward. The route would take them through the country given to the Sioux, and the Sioux said no. Their treaty protected them against the white man's roads. They attacked a surveying party escorted by soldiers, and killed two. This was in 1872.

It was a brutal killing. Rain-in-the-face was arrested for this, on the reservation; but he escaped and vowed vengeance. He went to Sitting Bull, and was safe.

In 1874 the United States began to ask for the Pah-sap-pa, or Black Hills, in South Dakota. To the Sioux and the Cheyennes, Pah-sap-pa was medicine ground. Spirits dwelt there; it was the home of the Thunder Bird and other magic creatures; it contained much game, and quantities of tent poles, for lodges.

Spotted Tail of the Brules went in. He hung around the white men's mining camps, and found out that the white men were crazy for the gold.

The United States had been accustomed to buying Indian land cheap, and getting rich out of it. Now it offered to buy the Black Hills for six millions of dollars, or to rent them for four hundred thousand dollars a year.

Coached by Spotted Tail and by Red Cloud, the Sioux laughed, and asked sixty millions of dollars. So the deal did not go through, this time. However, the Sioux lost Pah-sap-pa, just the same.

The United States Government was unable to keep the gold-seekers out. They dodged through the troops. There were fights with the Sioux, and the Sioux became angered in earnest.

They saw their Black Hills invaded by a thousand white men. Other white men, guarded by soldiers, were planning to run a railroad right through the Powder River country. On the Great Sioux reservation Spotted Tail and Red Cloud were the head chiefs; but out on the hunting grounds the Sitting Bull people stayed and prepared to make war and hold the Sioux lands.

The Sioux on the reservations began to leave, and join Sitting Bull. They felt that Red Cloud's heart was with them. He had notified the United States that it must keep the white men out of Sioux country.

The United States also was alarmed. The Sioux seemed to be using the reservation as a sort of supply depot; they got provisions and clothing there, and took them to the hunting grounds.

General Alfred H. Terry, who commanded the Military Department of Dakota, sent scouts to inform Sitting Bull that unless he came in, with all his people, out of the Big Horn Valley and the Powder River country, before a certain time, troops would bring him out. There would be war.

Sitting Bull answered:

"When you come for me you need bring no guides. You will easily find me. I shall be right here. I shall not run away."

In February, this 1876, the United States started to go after him, but the cold weather delayed the plans. Then, in May, matters were all arranged. There were to be three columns, to surround the unruly Sitting Bull.

General George Crook, the famous Indian fighter, was to march into the Big Horn country from the south with thirteen hundred men; Colonel John Gibbon was to march in from the west with four hundred men; General Terry's infantry, and General George A. Custer's Seventh Cavalry, one thousand men, were to march in from the east.

They were to meet at the Powder River, and capture Sitting Bull.

A great many Indians had rallied to Sitting Bull and his comrade chief Crazy Horse—an Oglala who commanded the Cheyennes. Sitting Bull was making medicine. He told the warriors that in a short time there would be a big fight with the soldiers on the Big Horn, and that the soldiers would be defeated.

Crazy Horse struck the enemy first. He met General Crook's column and stopped it. Then he joined Sitting Bull again.

Now in June the Sitting Bull camp upon the Little Big Horn River in the Big Horn Valley of southern Montana was three miles long and contained ten thousand people. It had twenty-five hundred good fighters. It was not afraid, but its people were here to hunt and dance and have a good time. Although they listened to the prophecy of Sitting Bull, they really did not expect that the soldiers would find them.

Chief Gall, a fine man, of the Hunkpapas, was head war chief; his aide was Crow King. Crazy Horse commanded the Northern Cheyennes. The head of the Miniconjou Sioux was Lame Deer. Big Road commanded the Oglalas. There were other Sioux also—some Brules, and some Without Bows; and a few Blackfeet and Arapahos.

General Custer, whose regular rank was lieutenant-colonel, found the village with his Seventh Cavalry. He had left General Terry, in order to scout across country; and when his scouts told him that the Sioux camp was before him, he rode on to the attack.

About noon of June 25th he divided his troops into three columns, to attack from different directions. The largest column, of five companies, he led, himself.

Not until that morning did the Sitting Bull people know that the soldiers were near. There was much excitement. The ponies were saddled, and the women began to pack their household stuff; but the warriors did not intend to run away.

Sitting Bull was certain that the white men would be defeated. The night before, his medicine had been very strong. An eagle had promised a great victory. Now he said that during the fight he would stay in the village and make more medicine. So Chief Gall it was who commanded.

But Sitting Bull did not stay in the village. When the bullets of the soldiers pelted into the lodges he lost faith in his own prophecy. Taking his two wives and whatever else he might gather, he bolted for a safer place. He missed one of his twin boys, but he did not stop to look for him.

He was ten miles out, when he received news of the victory. And a terrible victory that had been: of the five companies of General Custer, the Long Hair, only one man had escaped—although the Sioux did not know of that escape. He was Curly, a Crow scout. At any rate, the Long Hair's warriors, to the number of two hundred and twelve, had been killed in an hour.

The other soldiers were penned up, and could be killed, too.

So Sitting Bull rode back again, with his family. He said that he had not intended to run away. He had been out in the hills, making his medicine; and the bodies of the soldiers would prove it.

That certainly seemed true. The Indians had lost only twenty, and had killed more than two hundred.

Sitting Bull was greater than ever. Never before had such a victory been won at such little cost. This night the village danced and sang, and Sitting Bull kept by himself, and accepted the presents given to him.

Chief Gall had thought to starve out the soldiers who were penned up, and were being watched by warriors. These were the two other columns, of the Seventh Cavalry. But the next day, General Terry and Colonel Gibbon approached, in order (they had planned) to meet the Custer detachment. When Chief Gall heard that the "walking soldiers" were nearing, he decided that there had been fighting enough.

So he ordered the village to be broken, and the warriors to come in; they all left before dark, depending upon the medicine of Sitting Bull to lead them to new hunting grounds.

Soon Crazy Horse took his band and branched off for himself. He was a nephew of Chief Spotted Tail, but fierce against the whites. The rest followed Chief Sitting Bull and Chief Gall.

For a while they saw no more soldiers. Now and then other Indians from the reservation joined them, bringing supplies; and now and then parties left, to scout by themselves. Sitting Bull and Gall and all knew this country very well; it was Sioux country. They knew it far better than the soldiers did. There were many hiding places.

When the weather began to grow cold, in the fall, the Sitting Bull people commenced to think of winter. They received word that the soldiers were stopping everybody from leaving the reservation. This cut down the supplies.

The Gray Fox, who was General Crook, struck several bands in the midst of the hunting grounds. He had wiped out American Horse and had pressed Crazy Horse very hard. More soldiers were pouring in.

The Sitting Bull band numbered three thousand. They used lots of meat. The buffalo were being frightened by so much travel of soldiers, and for the band to stay long in one spot was dangerous. Some of the women and men got faint-hearted, and deserted. They carried word to the soldiers, and asked to be sent to the reservation. Sitting Bull's medicine did not prevent them from running away.

He and Gall planned to march farther northward, across the Yellowstone River, to a better buffalo country, and make camp for a big hunt. A store of meat ought to be laid in, before winter.

A new fort was being located on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Tongue River, southeastern Montana. They marched to cross the Yellowstone below; this fort; and while near the Yellowstone they drove back a soldiers' wagon-train that was trying to reach the fort.

The wagons tried again, five days later, and there was another fight. Sitting Bull sent a note to the white chief.

Yellowstone.

I want to know what you are doing traveling by this road. You scare all the buffalo away. I want to hunt in this place. I want you to turn back from here. If you don't, I will fight you again. I want you to leave what you have got here and turn back from here.

I am your friend.

SITTING BULL.

I mean all the rations you have got and some powder. Wish you would write as soon as you can.

This was a "feeler," to see what kind of a man the white chief was. The white chief, whose name was Lieutenant-Colonel E. S. Otis, of the Twenty-second Infantry, answered at once.

To Sitting Bull:

I intend to take this train through to Tongue River, and will be pleased to accommodate you with a fight at any time.

Sitting Bull and his chiefs held council. If they might make a peace, they could stay out all winter with their families, and when the grass greened in the spring they could travel as they pleased. The white soldiers had the advantage, in the winter.

So two Indians were sent forward with a flag of truce, to say that the Sitting Bull people were hungry and tired, and to propose a peace talk. The white chief said that there was a higher chief at the mouth of the Tongue River, with whom they must talk, but he sent them some bread and bacon.

Sitting Bull and Chief Gall, Low Neck, Pretty Bull and the others did not go to find the white commanding chief; they continued on, and in a few days the American commander caught up with them, himself, north of the Yellowstone.

He agreed to meet Sitting Bull between the lines, for a talk. They each took six men. The white chief was Colonel Nelson A. Miles. He had only about four hundred soldiers, and one cannon. Sitting Bull had one thousand warriors, and was not afraid.

"What are all these soldiers doing in this country?" he demanded. "Why don't they stay in their forts, where they belong? It is time they went there, for the winter."

"The soldiers are in this country to bring you and your men out and put them on the reservation," replied Colonel Miles. "We do not wish war. But if you insist on war, then you will be shut up. You cannot roam about over the country, and cause trouble."

"This country belongs to the Indian and not to the white man," retorted Sitting Bull. "We want nothing to do with the white man. We want the white man to go away, and leave us alone. No white man ever lived who loved an Indian, and no true Indian ever lived that did not hate the white man. God Almighty made me an Indian. He did not make me an agency Indian, and I'll fight and die fighting before any white man can make me an agency Indian. How did you know where I was to be found?"

"I not only knew where you were, but I know where you came from and where you're going," asserted Colonel Miles.

"Where am I going?"

"You intend to remain here three days, and then move to the Big Dry and hunt buffalo."

This showed Sitting Bull that he had been betrayed by spies. He flared into a rage, and his words were hot. He hated the whites; he had a thousand warriors at his back, and his power was great.

He would make peace, but only if all the white men got out of the country. There must be no forts or roads or towns. He wanted no presents of food or clothing from the United States. If the United States would leave a few trading posts, he would trade for powder and flour, but he would live free, to do as he chose.

So this talk and other talks amounted to nothing new. The white chief told him to prepare for war, and there was a battle. At one moment, the Sitting Bull warriors had the soldiers surrounded; but the cannon shells were too much to face, the walking soldiers stood stanch, and finally the Sioux had to retreat with their families.

The white chief, Miles, proved to be a stubborn fighter. He pursued and captured almost all the camp supplies. This broke the hearts of the Sitting Bull band. His medicine had grown weak. Five chiefs, with two thousand of the warriors and women and children, surrendered, so as to be kept warm and to be sure of food. But Sitting Bull and Gall went on, leading four hundred northward.

The weather got very cold and snowy. They stayed for a time near the Missouri River in northern Montana. Sitting Bull's medicine failed entirely. The soldiers marched upon them right through the blizzards, and no place seemed safe.

The other bands were being captured. The walking soldiers and the big-guns-that-shot-twice were everywhere, to south, east and west. The Crazy Horse Cheyennes and Oglalas were taken. They agreed to go upon the reservation.

When Sitting Bull heard of this, he resolved to get out of reach of the Americans altogether. He and Gall headed north again, and crossed into Canada.

This was Sioux country, too. The Sioux never had had any dispute with the Great White Mother; she seemed better than the Great White Father. Accordingly Sitting Bull plumped himself and his band down upon Canada ground, and defied the United States to meddle with him.

Other runaways joined him. It was now spring. Some of the runaways were from the reservation. They reported that they had almost starved, there, during the winter.

So when the United States sent up after Sitting Bull, he laughed. General Terry, his old enemy, was in the American party, and did the talking.

The President invited the Sioux to come back into the United States, and give up their arms and their horses, in exchange for cows. Sitting Bull replied scornfully.

"For sixty-four years you have kept me and my people, and treated us bad. What have we done that you should wish us to stop? We have done nothing. It is all the people on your side who have started us to do as we did. We could not go anywhere else, so we came here. I would like to know why you come here? I did not give you that country; but you followed me about, so I had to leave and come over to this country. You have got ears, and eyes to see with, and you see how I live with these people. You see me. Here I am. If you think I am a fool, you are a bigger fool than I am. You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. I don't wish any such language used to me. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and raise this country full of grown people. That is enough, so no more. The part of the country you gave me, you ran me out of. I don't want to hear two more words. I wish you to go back, and to take it easy going back. Tell them in Washington if they have one man who speaks the truth to send him to me and I will listen. I don't believe in a Government that has made fifty-two treaties with the Sioux and has kept none of them."

Back went the commission, to report that they could do nothing at all with Sitting Bull.

Other parties from the American side of the line crossed over to talk with Sitting Bull. He laid down the law to them.

"If the Great Father gives me a reservation I don't want to be held on any part of it. I will keep on the reservation, but I want to go where I please. I don't want a white man over me. I don't want an agent. I want to have a white man with me, but not to be my chief. I can't trust any one else to trade with my people or talk to them. I want interpreters, but I want it to be seen and known that I have my rights. I don't want to give up game as long as there is any game. I will be half white until the game is gone. Then I will be all white."

"Did you lead in the Custer fight?"

"There was a Great Spirit who guided and controlled that battle. I could do nothing. I was supported by the Great Mysterious One. I am not afraid to talk about that. It all happened—it is past and gone. I do not lie. Low Dog says I can't fight until some one lends me a heart. Gall says my heart is no bigger than a finger-nail. We have all fought hard. We did not know Custer. When we saw him we threw up our hands, and I cried, 'Follow me and do as I do.' We whipped each other's horses, and it was all over."

By this it is seen that Sitting Bull was a poser, and had lost the respect of the Sioux. Chief Gall despised him. The camp was getting unhappy. The life in Canada was not an easy life. The Great White Mother let the red children stay, because it was Indian country, but she refused to feed them, or help them against the United States.

There were no buffalo near. When the Sioux raided into the United States, the soldiers and the Crow scouts were waiting. Their old hunting grounds were closed tight.

Rain-in-the-face and other chiefs surrendered, to go to the reservation. Chief Gall defied Sitting Bull, and took two thirds of the remaining Indians and surrendered, also.

Sitting Bull now had only forty-five men and one hundred and forty women and children. They all were starving. A white scout visited them, with promise of pardon by the United States. So in July, of 1881, after he had stayed away four years, he surrendered, at Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone River.

He came in sullen and sour and unconquered, but not as a conqueror. They all were dirty and shabby and hungry. With Sitting Bull there rode on ponies his old father, Four Horns, and his elder children. In a wagon piled high with camp goods rode his two wives, one of whom was named Pretty Plume, and his small children.

A long train of other wagons and carts followed. There was no glory in this return.

At the Standing Rock Sioux agency he found that Chief Gall was the real ruler. The people there now thought little of Sitting Bull. His medicine had proved weak. He tried to make it strong, and he was laughed at.

Soon the Government deemed best to remove him and his main band, and shut them up for a while. Sitting Bull was kept a prisoner of war for two years. After that he took a trip through the East, but he was hissed. He rode in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show for a short time. But the white people never forgot the Custer battle, and looked upon Sitting Bull as a thoroughly bad Indian.

He assumed to settle down, at peace, upon the Standing Rock reservation, in a cabin not far from the place where he had been born. But as he had said, he was not "an agency Indian," and did not want to be an agency Indian.

There is another chapter to be written about Sitting Bull.



CHAPTER XXV

CHIEF JOSEPH GOES TO WAR (1877)

AND OUT-GENERALS THE UNITED STATES ARMY

After Colonel Nelson A. Miles of the Fifth Infantry had driven Sitting Bull and Chief Gall of the Sioux into Canada and his troops were trying to stop their raids back, at present Fort Keogh near Miles City on the Yellowstone River in southeastern Montana he received word of another Indian war.

The friendly Pierced Noses of Oregon had broken the peace chain. They had crossed the mountains and were on their way north, for Canada.

That the Pierced Noses had taken the war trail was astonishing news. For one hundred years they had held the hand of the white man. Their proudest boast said: "The Nez Perces have never shed white blood."

They spoke truly. During the seventy years since the two captains Lewis and Clark had met them in 1805, only one white man had been killed by a Pierced Nose. That was not in war, but in a private quarrel between the two.

Hunters, traders and missionaries had always been helped by the Pierced Noses. The white man's religion had been favored. The Good Book had been prized.

Young Chief Joseph was now the leader of the Pierced Noses upon the war trail. His Indian name was Hin-ma-ton Ya-lat-kit—Thunder-rising-from-the-water-over-the-land. But his father had been christened Joseph by the missionaries; so the son was called Young Chief Joseph.

A tall, commanding, splendid-looking Indian he had grown to be, at forty years of age. He was every inch a chief, and had a noble face.

His people were the Lower Nez Perces, who lived in the beautiful Wallowa Valley—their Valley of the Winding Waters, in northeastern Oregon. Here they raised many horses, and hunted, but put in few crops. Old Chief Joseph had believed that the earth should not be disturbed; the people should eat only what it produced of itself. The earth was their mother.

He believed also that nobody owned any part of the earth. The earth had been given to all, by the Great Creator. Everybody had a right to use what was needed.

Twenty years ago, or in 1855, Old Chief Joseph had signed a paper, by which the United States agreed to let the Pierced Noses alone on their wide lands of western Idaho, and eastern Oregon and Washington.

But it was seen that the Pierced Noses did not cultivate the better portion of this country; the white men wanted to plough the Valley of Winding Waters; and eight years later another treaty was made, which cut out the Winding Waters. It narrowed the Nez Perces to the Lapwai reservation in Idaho.

Old Chief Joseph did not sign this treaty. Other chiefs signed, for the Nez Perces. The United States thought that this was enough, as it considered the Pierced Noses to be one nation. The Valley of the Winding Waters was said to be open to white settlers.

The Old Chief Joseph Pierced Noses continued to live there, just the same. They asserted that they had never given it up, and that the Upper Pierced Noses had no right to speak for the Lower Pierced Noses.

As Young Chief Joseph afterwards explained:

"Suppose a white man comes to me and says: 'Joseph, I like your horses and I want to buy them.' I say to him: 'No; my horses suit me; I will not sell them.' Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him: 'Joseph has some good horses. I want them, but he refuses to sell.' My neighbor answers: 'Pay me the money and I will sell you Joseph's horses.' The white man returns to me and says: 'Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them.' That is the way our lands were bought."

When Old Joseph died, Young Joseph held his hand and listened to his words:

My son, my body is returning to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more, and white men will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.

Young Joseph promised.

"A man who would not love his father's grave is worse than a wild animal," he said.

After that he was careful never to accept any presents from the United States.

Even before the treaty of 1863 which was supposed to cover the Winding Waters valley, the white men had invaded the Pierced Nose country. Gold had been discovered in Idaho. In 1861 the white man's town of Lewiston had been laid out, among the Nez Perces—and there it was, without permission.

The Black Hills were being taken from the Sioux, in the same way.

Now trouble occurred between the Indians and the whites in the Valley of the Winding Waters, also. The Government started in to buy the settlers' claims, so that the Pierced Noses might remain undisturbed, but Congress did not appropriate the money.

In order to force the Indians off, the settlers stole their horses, and their cattle; Indians were whipped, and killed. Chief Joseph's brother was killed. The murderer was not brought to trial, because Joseph would not allow his people to appear in court.

"I have decided to let him escape and enjoy life," said Joseph. "I will not take his life for the one he took. I do not want anything in payment for what he did. I pronounce the sentence that he shall live."

All that the Nez Perces asked, was that the white men get out.

Among the Indians of this Columbia River region there had sprung up a prophet, as in the days of Tecumseh. His name was Smo-hal-la. He preached the doctrine that the land belonged to the Indians, and that the red man was the real child of the Great Spirit. A day was nearing, when the Great Spirit would repeople the earth with Indians, and the white race would be driven out. In the meantime the red men must live in their own way, and have nothing to do with the white men. They must not dig into the body of their "mother," the earth.

The followers of Smohalla were called Dreamers. Chief Joseph was a member of the Dreamers: so were many of his band.

As the Chief Joseph people would not come in upon the Lapwai reservation, and the missionaries and Indian agent and soldiers could not persuade them, General Oliver O. Howard, who commanded the Military Department of the Columbia, met in council with them, at Fort Lapwai, in April and May, 1876.

General Howard was a brave soldier who had lost his right arm in the battle of Fair Oaks, during the Civil War. He was a kind, just man, one whom the Apaches and other tribes greatly trusted; but he could do little with the stubborn Pierced Noses.

They usually dressed like white people. When they came to the council they were painted, and wore buckskins and blankets, according to the custom of the Dreamers.

Chief Joseph finally appeared. His younger brother, Ollicut, whom he dearly loved, was here. So were Hush-hush-cute, chief of the Palouse tribe who mingled with the Pierced Noses in friendship; and Sub-Chiefs Looking Glass and White Bird; and old Too-hul-hul-so-te, a Too-at, or Drummer Dreamer chief.

In the principal councils Too-hul-hul-so-te was the most out-spoken, for the Pierced Noses. Chief Joseph and Ollicut his brother were more quiet. But General Howard and Toohulhulsote had several tilts.

The white chiefs stated that the Nez Perces were to go upon the Lapwai reservation; then they would be given the privilege of hunting and fishing in the Winding Waters country.

"The earth is our mother. When the earth was made, there were no marks or lines placed upon it," grunted the surly, broad-shouldered Toohulhulsote. "The earth yields enough, of itself. It is not to be disturbed by ploughs. It is not to be bought or sold. It carries its own chieftain-ship. Nobody can sell possession of it. We never have made any trade. Part of the Indians gave up their land. We never did. The Great Spirit made the earth as it is, and as he wanted it, and he made a part of it for us to live upon. I don't see where you get the right to say we shall not live where he placed us."

"You have said twenty times that the earth is your mother," replied General Howard, growing angry. "Let us hear no more about it, but come to business."

"Who are you, that you ask us to talk and then tell me I sha'n't talk?" retorted the saucy old Toohulhulsote. "Are you the Great Spirit? Did you make the world? Did you make the sun? Did you make the rivers to run for us to drink? Did you make the grass to grow? Did you make all these things, that you talk to us as though we were boys? If you did, then you have the right to talk as you do."

"But," argued General Howard, "you know very well that the Government has fixed a reservation and that the Indian must go upon it."

"What person pretends to divide the land and put me on it?" growled old Toohulhulsote.

"I am the man," General Howard answered. "I stand here for the President."

"The Indians may do as they like, but I am not going on the reservation," announced Toohulhulsote.

His words were causing much excitement and bad feeling, and General Howard ordered him arrested. The young men murmured among themselves, and would have begun war at once by rescuing him; but Chief Joseph spoke to them and quieted them.

Toohulhulsote was kept locked up for five days. Meanwhile Chief Joseph had resolved to permit no war.

"I said in my heart," related Joseph, "that rather than have war I would give up my country. I would rather give up my father's grave. I would give up everything, rather than have the blood of white men on the hands of my people."

Thirty days was named as the time within which he must gather his people and goods and remove to the reservation. He counseled everybody to obey. When Toohulhulsote came home he urged the Nez Perces men to fight, and not be driven like dogs from the land where they were born; but Joseph stood with a strong heart.

The time seemed too short for moving so many families, their horses and cattle. Still, he worked hard, and all was going smoothly, when without warning some bad white men raided the gathered cattle, and killed one of the herders.

This aroused the young men, again. A grand council of the Pierced Noses met, and talked war and peace both. Chief Joseph talked peace. He was very anxious to get his people into the reservation before more killings took place. The thirty days were almost up.

Then, on the very last day, or June 13, his young men broke away from him. There was one, whose father had been killed by the settlers. There were the young man's father's relatives. There were two Indians who had been whipped.

The young man rode away from the council, vowing war. He and his friends went out; they killed the white murderer, and others; they came back and shouted to the council:

"Why do you sit here like women? The war has already begun."

So it had. Joseph and Ollicut were not here, but Chief White Bird hastened about, crying:

"All must join now. There is blood. You will be punished if you stay back."

More went out. The man who had whipped the two Indians was killed. A dozen of the settlers were killed. Chief Joseph found that war had been declared; plenty of ammunition had been collected without his knowing it; there was no use in any peace talk now.

He tried to make his people agree not to injure more settlers. Then he moved the camp to White Bird Canyon, at the Salmon River in Idaho just across from the northeast corner of Oregon.

They did not have long to wait. General Howard at once sent two troops of the First Cavalry against him. Troop F was commanded by Captain David Perry, and First Lieutenant Edward Russell Theller of the Twenty-first Infantry; Troop H was commanded by Captain J. G. Trimble and First Lieutenant William B. Parnell. The two troops numbered ninety men. Ten settlers joined them, so that the whole number was one hundred.

Chief Joseph and Chief White Bird his assistant had sixty warriors. At dawn of June 17 Ollicut, through a spy-glass, saw the soldiers entering the narrow canyon.

Ollicut and White Bird wished to cross over the Salmon River with the women and children, and fight from the other side.

"No, we will fight them here," said Joseph.

He had never fought a battle. The soldiers and settlers did not expect him to do much; he himself did not know what he could do; but he was a born general, he had watched the white soldiers drill, and, as he explained: "The Great Spirit puts it into the heart and head of man to know how to defend himself."

Now he stowed the women and children in a safe place, and posted his warriors. White Bird commanded the right flank; he, the left. He cleverly seized upon the high ground on the broken sides of the canyon.

The soldiers rode in, by column of twos, until at the wide spot they changed to column of fours. Chief Joseph's men suddenly fired. Captain Perry used all his military skill, but in short order he was thoroughly defeated.

Joseph missed not a point. No white man could have done better. He threatened the right flank—Captain Perry hastened men to strengthen it and then White Bird turned the left flank. The volunteers ran away, Chief Joseph grabbed the best position; now he had the soldiers under his thumb, and they retreated helter-skelter.

He cut off the rear guard, and every one in it was killed fighting. Captain Perry had worked hard to rally his men. No use. The Chief Joseph men pressed furiously.

The actual battle had occupied only a few minutes. The soldiers lost Lieutenant Theller and thirty-two men shot dead, out of the ninety; seven were wounded. The volunteers lost four men. The Pierced Noses did not try to take any scalps.

Chief Joseph's warriors pursued for twelve miles, and quit. During the battle his wife was presented by the Great Spirit with a little daughter. So now he had a baby to look out for.

Captain Perry was much mortified by the easy victory over him. The Pierced Noses of Joseph and White Bird rejoiced. They had done better than they had expected. The soldiers had proved to be not very great.

Joseph had planned to take his people only beyond the Bitter Root Mountains of northeastern Idaho, by the Pierced Noses' Road-to-the-buffalo, and stay in the Powder River country of Montana until he might come to terms with the United States. He was willing to risk the Sioux.

But General Howard did not sleep. He summoned troops from all his wide department of the Columbia. The telegraph carried the word into California, and down into Arizona.

When he had two hundred soldiers he led them, himself. Chief Joseph ferried his women and children over the roaring Salmon River on skin rafts towed by swimming ponies, and put the river between him and General Howard.

General Howard viewed the position, and was puzzled. His rival general was a genius in defense. He crossed the river, to the attack. Chief Joseph dodged him, crossed the river farther north, and circling southward cut his trail and his communications with Fort Lapwai; fell upon Captain S. G. Whipple's First Cavalry, which was in his path—surrounded it, wiped out Lieutenant Sevier Rains and ten cavalrymen, scattered the reinforcements, and passed on, for the Road-to-the-buffalo.

General Howard heard that he had been side-stepped, and that the Nez Perces were beyond his lines. With almost six hundred men, two field-pieces and a Gatling gun he followed at best speed. The "treaty" or friendly Pierced Noses aided him; so did the Bannock Indians.

Chief Joseph had been joined by his friend Chief Looking Glass. Now he had two hundred and fifty warriors—also four hundred and fifty women and children, two thousand horses, as many cattle, and much lodge baggage. In all the history of wars, no general carried a greater burden.

On July 11 he turned at the banks of the south Clearwater, in northern Idaho, to give battle again. He had thrown up dirt entrenchments, and was waiting for General Howard's infantry, cavalry, artillery and scouts.

General Howard formed line. He had graduated with honors at West Point in 1854, and had won high rank in the Civil War. But Joseph wellnigh defeated him—nearly captured his supply train, did capture a spring and keep him from the drinking water; and had it not been for reinforcements coming in and creating two attacks at once on the Pierced Noses' position, he would have made General Howard retire.

The battle lasted two days. It was really a victory for Chief Joseph.

"I do not think that I had to exercise more thorough generalship during the Civil War," General Howard confessed.

Chief Joseph withdrew his people in good order. General Howard in desperation sent the cavalry, under Chief-of-Staff E. C. Mason, to find the Pierced Noses and hold them. Colonel Mason did not find them—they found him, and he was very glad to return in haste to General Howard.

The Joseph people were now safely in the Lo-lo Trail, or the Road-to-the-buffalo, that wound up the Bitter Root Range, and down on the other side. On this trail the two captains Lewis and Clark had almost perished. What with the great forest trees fallen crisscross, the dense brush and the sharp tumbled rocks, no trail could be rougher.

Over and under and through the trees and rocks Chief Joseph forced his women and children, his ponies and cattle and baggage. Behind him he left blood and disabled horses and cows. One hundred and fifty miles behind him he left the toiling, panting soldiers, whose forty axe-men were constantly at work clearing a passage for the artillery and the packs.

Even at that, the soldiers marched sixteen miles a day; but the Pierced Noses marched faster.

The telegraph was swifter still. Fort Missoula, at the east end of the trail, had been notified. Captain C. C. Rawn of the Seventh Infantry hastily fortified the pass down, with fifty regulars and one hundred volunteers. Chief Joseph side-stepped him also, left him waiting, and by new trails turned south down the Bitter Root Valley on the east side of the mountains! The Bitter Root Valley was well settled. The Pierced Noses molested no ranches or towns. They traded, as they went, for supplies.

Colonel John Gibbon, who had campaigned against Sitting Bull, now took up the chase. Chief Joseph did not know about Colonel Gibbon's troops, and made camp on the Big Hole River, near the border in south-western Montana. He was preparing lodge-poles, to take to the buffalo country.

Here, at dawn of August 9, Colonel Gibbon with two hundred regulars and volunteers surprised him completely. A storm of bullets swept his lodges, before his people were astir. Everybody dived for safety.

Some of the warriors left their guns. The white soldiers charged into the camp. All was confusion; all was death—but the warriors rallied.

In twenty minutes the white soldiers were destroying the camp with fire. In an hour they were fighting for their lives. The Pierced Noses had not fled, as Indians usually fled in a surprise; they had stayed, had surrounded the camp place, and were riddling the soldiers' lines.

The squaws and boys helped. On the other side, Colonel Gibbon himself used a rifle. He ordered his troops into the timber. The Chief Joseph people rushed into their camp, packed up under hot fire, and bundled the women and children and loose horses to safety. The warriors remained.

The soldiers threw up entrenchments. Colonel Gibbon was wounded. The Indians captured his field-piece, and a pack mule loaded with two thousand rounds of rifle ammunition. They disabled the cannon and drove off the mule. They fired the grass, and only a change of wind saved the soldiers from being driven into the open.

All that day and the next day the battle lasted. At dusk of August 9 Colonel Gibbon had sent out couriers, with call for reinforcements. "Hope you will hurry to our relief," he appealed, to General Howard. Couriers rode to the Montana forts, also. The whole country was being stirred. Even Arizona was getting troops ready.

This night of August 10 Chief Joseph learned from one of his scouts who had been posted on the back trail, that General Howard was hurrying to the rescue. So he withdrew his people again, to make another march.

He had lost heavily. Eighty men, women and children were dead. Out of one hundred and ninety men in the battle of the Big Hole, Colonel Gibbon had lost sixty-nine in killed and wounded, including six officers.

But the white men could easily get more soldiers; Chief Joseph could get no more warriors. He decided to join with Sitting Bull's Sioux, in Canada.

Canada was a long way; maybe a thousand miles. General Howard and Colonel Gibbon pursued. Joseph crossed the mountains again, into the southward. He veered east for the Yellowstone National Park. On the road he found two hundred and fifty fresh ponies. General Howard sent Lieutenant G. B. Bacon with cavalry to cut in front of him and defend a pass; and camped, himself, for a short rest, on the Camas Meadows, one day's march behind the enemy.

Chief Joseph turned on him, deceived his sentries with a column of fours that looked like Lieutenant Bacon's men coming back, and ran off all of General Howard's pack mules.

"I got tired of General Howard, and wanted to put him afoot," said Chief Joseph.

And he almost did it; for had not the cavalry horses been picketed close in, they would have been stampeded, too.

General Howard had to wait for mules from Virginia City. Lieutenant Bacon wearied of watching the pass; left it—and Chief Joseph marched through, into the Yellowstone Park.

Now Colonel Miles, at Fort Keogh, far in the east, had been notified. He sent out Colonel S. D. Sturgis and six companies of the fighting Seventh Cavalry, with Crow scouts, to head Joseph off.

Colonel Sturgis made fast time to the southwest. But Chief Joseph fooled him; pretended to go in one direction and took another, leaving the Seventh Cavalry forty miles at one side.

Colonel Sturgis obtained fresh horses from General Howard, and started in chase. On September 17 he came up with Chief Joseph's rear guard, captured several hundred ponies and sent back word to General Howard that there was to be a decisive battle.

General Howard hurried. He marched all night. When he got to the battle-field he found only the Seventh Cavalry there, with three killed and eleven wounded, and everybody exhausted. Chief Joseph was marching on, north, in a great half circle. Somebody else must head him off.

General Howard sent a dispatch to Colonel Miles.

"The Nez Perces have left us hopelessly in the rear. Will you take action to intercept them?"

From Fort Keogh on the Yellowstone, one hundred and fifty miles eastward, Colonel Miles sallied out. It was a relay race by the white chiefs. He took four mounted companies of the Fifth Infantry, three companies of the Seventh Cavalry, three companies of the Second Cavalry, thirty Cheyenne and Sioux scouts and some white scouts, a Hotchkiss machine gun, a twelve-pounder Napoleon field-piece, a long wagon train guarded by infantry, and a pack train of mules.

A steamboat was ordered to ascend the Missouri, and meet the troops with more supplies. Telegraph, steamboats, trained soldiers, supplies—all the military power of the United States was fighting Chief Joseph.

Joseph reached the Missouri River first, at Cow Island. There was a fort here, guarding a supply depot. He seized the depot, burned it, and leaving the fort with three of its thirteen men killed, he crossed the river.

Canada was close at hand. Pretty soon he thought that he had crossed the line, and in the Bear Paw Mountains he sat down, to rest. He had many wounded to care for; his women and children were worn out. He had marched about two thousand miles and had fought four big battles.

"I sat down," said Joseph, "in a fat and beautiful country. I had won my freedom and the freedom of my people. There were many empty places in the lodges and in the council, but we were in a land where we would not be forced to live in a place we did not want. I believed that if I could remain safe at a distance and talk straight to the men sent by the Great Father, I could get back to the Wallowa Valley and return in peace. That is why I did not allow my young men to kill and destroy the white settlers after I began to fight. I wanted to leave a clean trail, and if there were dead soldiers on it I could not be blamed. I had sent out runners to find Sitting Bull, to tell him that another band of red men had been forced to run from the soldiers, and to propose that we join for defense if attacked. My people were recovering. I was ready to move on to a permanent camp when, one morning, Bear Coat and his soldiers came in sight, and stampeded our horses. Then I knew that I had made a mistake by not crossing into the country of the Red Coats; also in not keeping the country scouted in my rear."

For he was not in Canada. The Canada border lay a day's march of thirty-five miles northward yet. And he had not known anything about Colonel Miles, the Bear Coat.

Colonel Miles brought three hundred and seventy-five soldiers, and the cannon. Chief Joseph had already lost almost one hundred of his men and women. But his brother Ollicut, Chief White Bird, and the Drummer Dreamer, old Too-hul-hul-so-te, were still with him; and one hundred and seventy-five warriors.

The first charge of the Bear Coat cavalry, early in this morning of September 30,1877, scattered the camp and cut off the pony herd. Chief Joseph was separated from his wife and children. He dashed for them, through the soldiers. His horse was wounded, his clothes pierced, but he got to his lodge.

His wife handed him his gun.

"Take it. Fight!"

And fight he did; his people fought. They dug rifle-pits, the same as white soldiers would. There was fighting for four days. The Bear Coat lost one fifth of his officers and men. He settled to a close siege, shooting with his cannon and trying to starve the Pierced Noses. He was much afraid that Sitting Bull was coming down, and bringing the Sioux. He sent messages to notify General Terry, in the east, and General Howard, in the south.

Chief Joseph's heart ached. His brother Ollicut was dead. Old Toohulhulsote was dead. Looking Glass was dead. Twenty-four others had been killed, and forty-six were wounded. He had over three hundred women and children. Of his own family, only his wife and baby were left to him. Sitting Bull did not come.

"My people were divided about surrendering," he said. "We could have escaped from the Bear Paw Mountains if we had left our wounded, old women and children behind. We were unwilling to do this. We had never heard of a wounded Indian recovering while in the hands of white men. I could not bear to see my wounded men and women suffer any longer."

So he rode out, on the morning of October 5, and surrendered. General Howard had arrived, at the end of his long thirteen-hundred-mile chase, but the surrender was made to Colonel Miles.

Chief Joseph handed over his gun.

"I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohulhulsote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. [That was Ollicut.] It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead."

He raised his hand high, toward the sun.

"Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

White Bird had taken a company and escaped to Canada. Colonel Miles promised Chief Joseph that he would ask to have the surrendered people sent back to the Nez Perces' country. Those were the terms. The surrendered people numbered eighty-seven men, three hundred and thirty-one women and children.

"Thus," reported General Sheridan, the head of the army, "has terminated one of the most extraordinary Indian wars of which there is any record. The Indians throughout displayed a courage and skill that elicited universal praise; they abstained from scalping, let captive women go free, did not commit indiscriminate murder of peaceful families, which is usual, and fought with almost scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines and field fortifications."

The Government did not send the Chief Joseph Pierced Noses to their own country. It was claimed that White Bird had broken the terms, by his escape. At any rate, the Joseph people were kept a long, long time in Indian Territory. Many of them sickened and died. They were mountain Indians. They missed their cold streams and their pure air. They fell away from over four hundred to two hundred and eighty.

Chief Joseph's heart broke utterly. He issued an appeal—his own story—which was published in the North American Review magazine, in 1879.

"If I cannot go to my own home, let me have a home in some country where my people will not die so fast.... Let me be a free man—free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade, where I choose; free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself—and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty."

Not until 1884 was he permitted to return to the mountains of the Northwest. The majority of his people were located again in Idaho, among their kindred. He himself was placed upon another reservation, near Spokane, Washington.

He pleaded for the Wallowa Valley—his Valley of the Winding Waters; but that had been settled by the white men. All that he found was his father's grave. A white man had enclosed it with a picket fence. Chief Joseph wept.

He lived to a good age. In 1903 he visited the East; he talked with President Roosevelt and General Miles. He met General Howard. The next year he exhibited himself in an Indian show at the St. Louis fair. That hurt his pride. He was ashamed to sell his face for money.

When he went home, he was sick. This September he died, on the Washington reservation. The doctor asserted that he died from a broken heart.

He was the last of the great chiefs of the American Indians. The Historical Society of the State of Washington has erected over his grave a noble monument. Under it he lies, while people read his name, translated: "Thunder-rolling-in-the-mountains."



CHAPTER XXVI

THE GHOST DANCERS AND THE RED SOLDIERS (1889-1890)

AND SITTING BULL'S LAST MEDICINE

In 1889 the Sioux, upon their reservations in South Dakota, were much dissatisfied. Their cattle were dying, their crops had failed, there were no buffalo, and the Government supplies were not being issued according to promise.

The Sioux no longer occupied the Great Sioux reservation of western South Dakota. By several treaties they had sold the greater portion of that land. The last treaty, signed only this year, had left them five tracts, as reservations.

On the Missouri River at the middle north line of South Dakota there was the Standing Rock reservation, where lived Sitting Bull and many of the Hunkpapas and Oglalas whom he had led.

Next to it, on the south was the Cheyenne River reservation, for the Miniconjous, Without Bows, Two Kettles, and others.

Then there was a wide strip of land which had been sold, with the small Lower Brule reservation in the east end of it.

Then, side by side against the Nebraska line, south, there were the Rosebud reservation, for the other Brules; and Chief Red Cloud's Pine Ridge reservation, for his Oglalas, and various bands.

The Sioux numbered twenty-five thousand. The lands left to them were the poorest of the lands. White men had failed to make a living upon such lands. The Sioux were supposed to help themselves by farming and cattle raising, but they found themselves starving.

Sitting Bull had been placed upon the Standing Rock reservation in May, 1883. His home was a log cabin with a stable and corral, on the Grand River in the southern part of the reservation. He still kept a peace pipe, as sign that he would not go to war.

He had been among those who opposed the selling of the lands. After the last sale, this year, he was asked what the Indians thought about it.

"Indians!" he angrily blurted. "There are no Indians left now but me."

He viewed the Sioux police sullenly. These were a fine company of fifty young Sioux under First Lieutenant Bull Head and Second Lieutenant Chatka. They were drilled as United States soldiers, wore the army uniform of blue, and were well armed. Their duty was that of keeping order for the Indian agent. They were proud of their trust, and faithful to it.

Now in the fall of 1889 the restless Sioux heard a voice. Their young people were being educated at the Indian schools of the East, and at the agency schools, and were learning to read and write.

The eastern school Indians exchanged letters with Indian friends whom they had met or of whom they knew; the agency school Indians in different parts of the country also wrote letters. Word came by letters from the west, to Sioux at the Pine Ridge agency, that beyond the Rocky Mountains a man who claimed to be Christ, the Son of God, had appeared upon earth.

The white people once had tried to kill him by nailing him to a cross. He was back again, to punish them for their treatment of him, and for their treatment of the Indians. The Indians were to be his people, and possess the land. This sounded reasonable.

It aroused curiosity and hope. It was only the same old story, as spread by other prophets, and here put in a little different form; but the red people of America had never yet ceased to look forward to a miracle that would restore to them their game and their liberty and their loved country.

Old Chief Red Cloud, Young-man-whose-horses-are-feared and other head men of the Pine Ridge reservation called a council, to choose delegates who should travel into the west and find out if the Arapahos and Shoshonis of Wyoming were telling the truth.

Kicking Bear from the Cheyenne River reservation and Short Bull from the Rosebud reservation, were the leaders selected. The other men were Good Thunder, Flat Iron, Yellow Breast, and Broken Arm, from Pine Ridge.

Without permission from their agents they traveled west into Wyoming, to talk with the Arapahos and Shoshonis at the Fort Washakie reservation. Some Cheyenne delegates from the Tongue River reservation in Montana were there also, seeking information.

The Arapahos and Shoshonis said that the word was true. The Messiah had come; he did not live among them, but was living west of the mountains, among the Fish-eaters. A Bannock Indian had brought the news across to them. They had sent men to see. The men had seen the Messiah, and had talked with him. They had seen the dances that he had ordered, which would waken the dead to life and populate the earth again with Indians.

Porcupine and his Cheyennes, and Kicking Bear and Short Bull and their Sioux were much impressed. They decided to go on, and see for themselves. So they did. They got on the train at Rawlins, Wyoming, and rode all day and branched off by another train, and rode still farther, and arrived at Fort Hall of Idaho, in the Bannock country.

From here the Bannocks guided them onward, by train and by wagon, until at last they reached the country of the Fish-eaters, or Pai-Utes, at Pyramid Lake in western Nevada!

The Pyramid Lake Fish-eaters sent them south, to Walker Lake of the Pai-Utes. Here they met the Christ, listened to his talk, danced the sacred dances, and felt that everything was true.

Kicking Bear and Short Bull and their Sioux were absent from the Sioux reservations all winter. They sent back letters from Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Nevada, telling of their progress. In April, of 1890, they returned.

They reported to the council. They had seen the Messiah. Delegates from many other tribes had been there, too. The Messiah talked to each tribe in its own language. He bore the scars of nails, on his wrists. He looked like an Indian, only lighter in color. He taught them dances called Ghost Dances, which would bring the spirit people back upon earth. He fell into a sleep, and went to heaven and saw all the spirit Indians. The earth was too old; it was to be made new and would stay green and new, and the Indians who obeyed his teachings and lived good would never be more than forty years old, themselves. This fall all the good people were to be made young; and after that they would be made young every spring. Anyone who had shaken hands with the Messiah could call him in sleep.

The Sioux delegates told their story over and over again. At the Cheyenne reservation in Montana, Porcupine talked for five days and four nights.

There was indeed a Pai-Ute prophet, named Wo-vo-ka or the Cutter. He later took the name Kwo-hit-sauq, or Big Rumbling Belly. To the white people he was known as Jack Wilson. He had worked on ranches near the Walker Lake reservation, until, when he was about thirty years old, while sick with a fever he went into a trance, during an eclipse of the sun.

On waking up, he said that he had been to heaven, had visited God and the spirits, and had received command to preach a new gospel.

The Pai-Utes were glad to believe whatever he claimed for himself. He seemed to hypnotize them. The word that Wo-vo-ka was the Messiah and could perform miracles spread through the Pai-Utes of Nevada and the Utes of Utah; it crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California on the west, and the Rocky Mountains into Wyoming on the east; and it kept going, east and north and south.

This spring Good Thunder, Short Bull, Cloud Horse and Yellow Knife journeyed to see the Messiah again.

When they came back they reported that he had appeared to them out of some smoke. He welcomed them, and showed them a land that bridged the ocean, and upon the land all the Indians of all nations were on their way home again.

They saw lodges, of buffalo hides, in which the dead were living. They talked with dead Sioux whom they had known.

The Messiah had given them red and white paint, that would ward off sickness, renew youth, and cause visions. He had told them to have the Sioux send their children to school, and to attend to farming. There was to be no fighting with the white people. But the whites were to be destroyed, by a great landslide that would cover the world with new earth. Upon the new earth would roam the buffalo and deer, as of old. The Indians who obeyed the Messiah would be lifted up, above the landslide, and gently dropped back again, there to live forever with all their friends and relatives who had come with it from spirit land.

This reunion was to occur the next spring, of 1891, when the grass was knee high.

The Good Thunder party brought what they said was a piece of buffalo meat. The Messiah had told them that if on their way home they killed any buffalo, they were to leave the hoofs and tail and head on the prairie, and the buffalo would spring up, whole, when they turned their backs.

All the buffalo would act this way, in the happy time to come.

The day of buffalo herds on the plains was past; but the party asserted that they did find a herd, and killed one buffalo—and he sprang up, from the hoofs and tail and head, just as the Messiah had promised.

The Cheyennes, the Shoshonis, the Arapahos, the Kiowas, the Utes, the Pai-Utes, were dancing the Ghost Dance. The Sioux now danced.

The Ghost Dancers danced in a circle, holding hands and chanting, until they fell over and went to spirit land. From the spirits they brought back signs, such as buffalo tails, buffalo meat, and other things of an Indian country.

The Sioux Ghost Dancers wore Ghost shirts, of white muslin. These Ghost shirts would turn a bullet: no enemy weapon could pierce a Ghost shirt! That was the word of Kicking Bear and Short Bull.

The Ghost Dance ceremonies were many, and the dance was noisy.

Away up on the Standing Rock reservation, which had not yet joined in the craze, Sitting Bull, the former great medicine leader of the Sioux, was much interested. The agent, Mr. James McLaughlin, refused to permit him to visit Kicking Bear, the prophet on the Cheyenne River reservation, south. Kicking Bear was hard at it, preaching the Messiah religion to his Miniconjous and the other Sioux there.

But Sitting Bull was anxious to learn. So he sent six of his young men down, to ask Kicking Bear to come up for a visit at the Grand River in the Standing Rock reservation.

Kicking Bear appeared, in October, this 1890, with several of his followers, and preached to the Sitting Bull people.

"My brothers, I bring to you the promise of a day in which there will be no white man to lay his hand on the bridle of the Indian's horse; when the red men of the prairie will rule the world, and not be turned from the hunting grounds by any man. I bring you word from your fathers the ghosts, that they are now marching to join you, led by the Messiah who came once on earth with the white men, but was cast out and killed by them. I have seen the wonders of the spirit land, and have talked with the ghosts. I traveled far, and am sent back with a message to tell you to make ready for the coming of the Messiah and return of the ghosts in the spring."

This was the commencement of Kicking Bear's sermon, as reported to Agent McLaughlin by One Bull, an Indian policeman who was Sitting Bull's nephew.

Kicking Bear spoke for a long time. He told Sitting Bull everything. The new earth, that would bury the whites, was to be five times the height of a man. It would be covered with sweet grass, and with herds of buffalo and ponies. The Pacific Ocean would be filled up; the other oceans would be barricaded. The white man's powder would not burn, against the Ghost Dancers. The whites who died would all belong to the Evil Spirit. Only the Indians would enjoy life, under the Good Spirit, with no white people to molest them.

To the unhappy, starving Sioux this was a promise full of hope. Sitting Bull at once took the lead at Standing Rock. He danced himself, reported Agent McLaughlin, "to mere skin and bone." He introduced new wrinkles of his own.

Down at Pine Ridge reservation old Red Cloud had adopted the new belief. On the Rosebud reservation Short Bull, who also "had seen the Messiah," was making the Brules defiant. Now at Standing Rock Sitting Bull had the fever, and was tireless.

Kicking Bear proved to be a nuisance. The Sioux feared him. It was said that in the dark there was a halo around his head, and a star over him; that he had the power to strike unbelievers dead, with a look, or change them into dogs.

Agent McLaughlin sent thirteen police under Sergeant Crazy Walking, to arrest Kicking Bear and put him off the reservation.

Crazy Walking went, and found Kicking Bear and Sitting Bull in the midst of a Ghost Dancer meeting. He listened to the stories, and was afraid of the medicine. He returned to the agency, and said that Sitting Bull had promised that Kicking Bear should leave, the next day.

Agent McLaughlin called Second Lieutenant Chatka. Lieutenant Chatka had good sense. He was a soldier and did not put much faith in such "medicine." He asked for only two men, and rode straight to Sitting Bull's camp, on the Grand River, forty miles south of the Agency quarters.