Stránka:book 1922.djvu/585

Campfire Stories of Indian Character 555 broken, and our rations were short. Those not worn by disease were wasted by hunger. To stay there meant that all of us would die. Our petitions to the Great Father were unheeded. We thought it better to die fighting to regain our old homes than to perish of sickness. Then our march we begun. The rest you know. " Then turning to Captain Wessells and his oflEicers: "Tell the Great Father Dull Knife and his people ask only to end their days here in the north where they were born. Tell him we want no more war. We caimot live in the south; there is no game. Here, when rations are short, we can hunt. Tell him if he lets us stay here Dull Knife's people will hurt no one. Tell him if he tries to send us back we will butcher each other with our own knives. I have spoken." Captain Wessells's reply was brief — an assurance that Dull Knife's words should go to the Great Father. The Cheyennes sat silent throughout the council, all save one, a powerful young buck named Buffalo Hump, old Dull Knife's son. With a thin strip of old canvas, that served as his only covering, drawn tightly about his tall figure, his bronze face aflame with sentiments of wrong, of anger, and of hatred, Buffalo Hump strode rapidly from one end to the other of the long barrack room, casting fierce glances at the white men, the very incarnation of savage wrath. From beginning to end of the council I momen- tarily expected to see him leap on some member of the party, and try to rend him with his hands. Of course nothing came of the council. The War and Interior Departments agreed that it would be imprudent to permit these unsubduable people to be merged into the already restless ranks of the Sioux. It was therefore decided to march them back south to Fort Reno, whence they had come.