Campfire Stories or Glimpses of Indian Character

GoogleTranslate
Sem klikněte, pokud chcete obsah přeložit.
Překlad se vám otevře v nové záložce.
Upozorňujeme, že možnosti automatického překladače jsou omezené!

XVII. Campfire Stories or Glimpses of Indian Character

The Teachings of Winnemucca
Chief of the Piutes
About 1800

Winnemucca was one of the famous old Chiefs who stood for valor, goodness, and courtesy; and was in himself a noble example of all his own doctrines.

Gen. O. O. Howard, who knew his people well, has recorded the teachings of Winnemucca. He ceaselessly exhorted his people:

“To love peace and make constant effort to keep it; always to be kind, one to another; always to tell the truth; and never to take for one's self what belonged to another; to treat old people with tender regard; to care for and help the helpless; to be affectionate in families, and show real respect to women, particularly to mothers.” (“Famous Indian Chiefs I Have Known,” p. 208–9, O. O. Howard, U.S.A., Century Co., N.Y. 1908.)

THE TEACHINGS OF WABASHA I.

In the day of his strength no man is fat. Fat is good in a beast, but in a man it is disease and comes only of an evil life.

No man will eat three times each sun if he would keep his body strong and his mind unclouded. Bathe every sun in cold water and one sun in seven enter the sweat lodge.

If you would purify your heart and so see clearer the way of the Great Spirit, touch no food for two days or more, according to your strength. For thereby your spirit hath mastery over the body and the body is purged.

Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise men turn fools. Neither touch food nor taste drink that robs the body of its power or the spirit.

Guard your tongue in youth, and in age you may mature a thought that will be of service to your people.

Praise God when you rise, when you bathe, when you eat, when you meet your friends and for all good happenings. And if so be you see no cause for praise the fault is in yourself.

A proven Minisino is at all times clean, courteous and master of himself.

The wise man will not hurt his mind for the passing pleasure of the body.

If any man be given over to sex appetite he is harboring a rattlesnake, whose sting is rottenness and sure death.

By prayer and fasting and fixed purpose you can rule your own spirit, and so have power over all those about you.

When your time comes to die, sing your death song and die pleasantly, not like the white men whose hearts are ever filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes, they weep and wail and pray for a little more time so they may live their lives over again in a different manner.

THE LESSONS OF LONE-CHIEE, SKUR-AR-ALE-SHAR, GIVEN HIM BY HIS WIDOWED MOTHER

When you get to be a man remember that it is ambition that makes the man. If you go on the warpath do not turn around when you have gone part way, but go on as far as you were going; then come back.

If I should live to see you become a man I want you to become a great man. I want you to think about the hard times we have been through.

Take pity on people who are poor, because we have been poor, and people have taken pity on us.

If I live to see you a man, and to go off on the warpath, I would not cry if I were to hear that you had been killed in battle. That is what makes a man, to fight and to be brave.

Love your friend and never desert him. If you see him surrounded by the enemy do not run away; go to him, and if you cannot save him, be killed together, and let your bones lie side by side. — (“Pawnee Hero Stories,” by G. B. Grinnell, pp. 46-47.)

THE TEACHINGS OF TSHUT-CHE-NAU CHIEF OF THE KANSAS, ABOUT 180O

On the lowest plane of all the great Indian teachers, perhaps, was Tshut-che-nau, Chief of the Kansas Indians. In 1800 he was a very old man, so probably his epoch was 1750 to 1800.

This Hammurabi of his people used to lecture the young Indians — as part of their training — and J. D. Hunter, the white boy, who was adopted into the tribe and sat at the old man's feet, has thus recorded principles there laid down:

When you become men be brave and cunning in war, and defend your hunting grounds against all encroachments.

Never suffer your squaws or little ones to want.

Protect the squaws and strangers from insult.

On no account betray your friend.

Resent insults.

Revenge yourself on your enemies.

Drink not the poisonous strong water of the white people; it is sent by the Bad Spirit to destroy the Indians.

Fear not death; none but cowards fear to die.

Obey and venerate the old people, particularly your parents.

Fear and propitiate the Bad Spirit, that he may do you no harm.

Love and adore the Good Spirit, who made us all, who supplies our hunting grounds, and keeps us alive.

— (“Captivity Among the Indians,” 1798–1816; John D. Hunter, p. 21.)

COURAGE OR THE TRAINED SCOUT

“With the Indian courage is absolute self-control. The truly brave man, we contend, yields neither to fear nor anger, desire nor agony. He is at all times master of himself. His courage rises to the heights of chivalry, patriotism, and real heroism.

“‘Let neither cold, hunger, nor pain, nor the fear of them, neither the bristling teeth of danger nor the very jaws of death itself, prevent you from doing a good deed,’ said an old chief to a Scout who was about to seek the buffalo in midwinter for the relief of a starving people.” (“Soul of the Indian,” p. 115; by Ohiyesa.)

AN INDIAN PRAYER

(Supplied by Miss Natalie Curtis)

O Powers that be, make me sufficient to my own occasions.

Give to me to mind my own business at all times and to lose no good opportunity for holding my tongue.

When it is appointed for me to suffer let me take example from the dear well-bred beasts and go away in solitude to bear my suffering by myself.

Help me to win, if win I may, but — and this especially, O Powers — if I may not win, make me a good loser.

GENESIS (OMAHA)

From the ritual of the Omaha Pebble Society
(Fletcher — LaFlesche, Eth. Ann. 27; p. 570)

“At the beginning all things were in the mind of Wakonda. All creatures, including man, were spirits. They moved about in space between the earth and the stars (the heavens). They were seeking a place where they could come into a bodily existence. They ascended to the sun, but the sun was not fitted for their abode. They moved on to the moon and found that it also was not good for their home. Then they descended to the earth. They saw it was covered with water. They floated through the air to the north, the east, the south, and the west, and found no dry land. They were sorely grieved. Suddenly from the midst of the water uprose a great rock. It burst into flames and the waters floated into the air in clouds. Dry land appeared; the grasses and the trees grew. The hosts of spirits descended and became flesh and blood. They fed on the seeds of the grasses and the fruits of the trees, and the land vibrated with their expressions of joy and gratitude to Wakonda, the maker of all things.”

THE QUICHÉ'S MYTH OF CREATION

This is the first word and the first speech: There were neither men nor brutes, neither birds, fish nor crabs, stick nor stone, valley nor mountain, stubble nor forest, nothing but the sky.

The face of the land was hidden; there was naught but the silent sea and the sky.

There was nothing joined, nor any sound, nor thing that stirred; neither any to do evil, nor to rumble in the heavens, nor a walker on foot; only the silent waters, only the pacified ocean, only it in its calm.

Nothing was, but stillness and rest and darkness and the night.

Nothing but the Maker and Moulder, the Hurler, the Bird Serpent.

In the waters, in a limpid twilight, covered with green feathers, slept the mothers and the fathers.

And over all passed Hurakan, the night-wind, the black rushing Raven, and cried with rumbling croak, “Earth! Earth!” and straightway the solid land was there. — (From Ximenes.)

CLEAN FATHERHOOD

“This is the sum of everything that is noble and honorable — Clean Fatherhood,” the words of Chief Capilano of the Squamish. (Pauline Johnson's “Legends of Vancouver,” 1912, p 10.)

OMAHA PROVERBS

“Stolen food never satisfies hunger.”

“A poor man is a hard rider.”

“All persons dislike a borrower.”

“No one mourns the thriftless.”

“The path of the lazy leads to disgrace.”

“A man must make his own arrows.”

“A handsome face does not make a good husband.”

(Fletcher — La Flesche, Eth. Ann. 27 p. 604)

THE MEDICINE MAN AND HIS WAYS

During the later Indian days the army surgeons came into close contact and rivalry with the Indian, and to the amazement of all whites, it frequently happened that the Indian doctor undertook and cured cases which the white doctors had pronounced hopeless. These were of all kinds, broken limbs, rheumatism, consumption, and obscure maladies (see “Medicine Man” in Clark's “Indian Sign Language”).

This led to an investigation and a report on the ways of the medicine man. These were shown to be their chief peculiar methods:

1st: They took the patient home, giving him camp life with the daily sun-bath, and with pure air night and day. 2d: They gave him a periodic Turkish bath with purgatives.

3d: They gave him regular massage.

4th: They worked on his faith; they sang to him; they convinced him that great things were doing on his behalf. They did all in their power to set his mind at ease.

Besides which they had some knowledge of curative herbs and of dieting.

All of these have now a place among our own medical methods, yet we scoffed at them when offered to us by the Indians. They had to reach us from the East before we found them acceptable.

Of course there was a measure of quackery and fraud in many of the medicine men, but it is just possible that medical humbug was not entirely confined to the doctors of the Red Race.

THE INDIAN SILENCE

The first American mingled with his pride a singular humility. Spiritual arrogance was foreign to his nature and teaching. He never claimed that the power of articulate speech was proof of superiority over the dumb creation; on the other hand, it is to him a perilous gift. He believes profoundly in silence — the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood, ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence — not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool — his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life.

If you ask him, “What is silence?” he will answer, “It is the Great Mystery! The holy silence is His voice!” If you ask, “What are the fruits of silence?” he will say, “They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity, and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.”

“Guard your tongue in youth,” said the old Chief Wabasha, “and in age you may mature a thought that will be of service to your people!” — (“The Soul of the Indian,” by Ohiyesa, pp. 89-90.)

THE INDIAN BABES IN THE WOODS

(By permission of Messers. Fleming H. Revell Company, N.Y.)

The charming story “Two Wilderness Voyagers,” by F. W. Calkins, gives a true picture of the ways and powers of Indian children. Two little Sioux, a boy and a girl, Etapa and Zintkala, were stolen from their people and carried off into the land of the Ojibwa. They escaped and, though but eleven or twelve years old, wandered alone in the woods for months and eventually reached their own people on the plains.

Their ways and the thoughts of their kind toward the wonders of nature are admirably illustrated in the scene before Grandfather Rock:

In one of these short excursions the boy came upon a venerable gray boulder which stood as high as the surrounding trees and was many steps in circumference at its base. Except where the moose had eaten them off, this towering rock was thickly grown with lichens which gave it a hoary appearance of great age.

Etapa stood for some minutes, his eyes cast upward, venerating this aged and eternally enduring one which knows not time, seasons, nor change. Then the boy went softly back to Zintkala. “Come,” he said, “I have found Grandfather Inyan — the very aged one. Let us smoke and pray to him!”

So they went together softly among the sand hillocks, until they confronted Grandfather Inyan. While Etapa prepared his pipe and willow bark for smoking, Zintkala stood — as a small devotee before a shrine — looking devoutly up at the everlasting one, the vast sentinel and guide, set so mysteriously among the trees.

“It is taku-wakan” (something wonderful), she said. While Etapa smoked, offering incense to the rock, sky and trees, she prayed thus:

“Behold us small ones, O Grandfather Inyan. You are doubtless very old and wise, therefore you, O Grandfather Inyan, and ye trees, assist us greatly that we may find our way homeward.

Fire is sacred to Inyan; therefore, under the shadow of the great rock they built one of dry sticks and gathered a heap of fagots to keep the blaze going until far into the night. Then alternately they said, "We will make a feast and dance to Grandfather Inyan, and so he shall help us.”

“After they had eaten they combed their hair, greasing it with pieces of goose fat which Zintkala had saved, and then braided and tied their tresses becomingly.

After a reasonable time, by the light of the fire they had built to him, they gave a sacred dance to Grandfather Inyan and his protecting pines. Upon a little plat of level ground, facing a broad scrap of the rock, and embowered in dark-topped evergreens, these little brown children danced.

The girl, with close drawn-blanket, with rapt face and serious air, performed her part in measured, dainty movements, dancing with her toes turned inward.

The boy, with less grace, but no less reverent face, sprang lightly from foot to foot, chanting low ejaculations of prayer.

Had the rock and the trees, sheltering their small circle of light and their brown swaying figures, possessed the ears, hearts and powers attributed to them, they must have moved even their roots to respond to the appeals for pity which these lost and revering waifs addressed to them.

When they had danced until they were weary they stretched themselves, tightly rolled in their blankets, upon the sands, and with renewed trust in the future, fell asleep.” — (Pp. 112-114.)

THE STORY OF NO-HEART

(By permission of the Author)
(From “My Life as an Indian,” by J. W. Schultz)

This story of No-Heart gives a realistic and kindly picture of life in an Indian village. The heroine, a young girl nearing womanhood, had been caught with her family in a terrible thunderstorm. When it was over all were dead but herself. In the village she had no other kinsfolk; thus she was left alone in the world:

Kind friends buried the dead, and the many different ones asked the girl to come and live with them; but she refused them all. “You must go and live with some one,” said the chief. “No one ever heard of a young woman living by herself. You cannot live alone. Where would you procure your food? And think of what people would say, should you do so; you would soon have a bad name.”

“If people speak ill of me, I cannot help it,” said the girl. “They will live to take back their bad words. I have decided to do this, and I will find a way to keep from starving.”

So this girl lived on alone in the lodge her parents had built, and with no company save her dogs. The women of the camp frequently visited her and gave her meat and other food, but no man, either young or old, ever went in and sat by her fire. One or two had attempted it, but only once, for she had told them plainly that she did not wish the society of any man. So the youths gazed at her from afar, and prayed the gods to soften her heart. She was a handsome young woman, a hard and ceaseless toiler; no wonder that the men fell in love with her, and no wonder that they named her No-Heart.

One young man, Long Elk, son of the great chief, loved the lone girl so much that he was nearly crazy with the pain and longing for her. He had never spoken to her, well knowing that her answer would be that which she had given to others. But he could not help going about, day after day, where she could always see him. If she worked in her little bean and corn patch he sat on the edge of the river-bank nearby. If she went to the timber for wood, he strolled out in that direction, often meeting her on the trail, but she always passed him with eyes cast down, as if she had not seen him. Often, in the night, when all the camp was fast asleep, Long Elk would steal out of his father's lodge, pick up a water skin, and filling it again and again at the river, would water every row in No-Heart's garden. At the risk of his life he would go out alone on the plains where the Sioux were always prowling, and hunt. In the morning when No-Heart awoke and went out, she would find hanging in the dark entrance way, choice portions of meat, the skin of a buffalo or the deer kind. The people talked about this, wondering who did it all. If the girl knew she gave no sign of it, always passing the young man as if she did not know there was such a person on earth. A few low and evU ones themselves hinted wickedly that the unknown protector was well paid for his troubles. But they were always rebuked, for the girl had many friends who believed that she was all good.

In the third summer of the girl's lone living, the Mandans and Arickarees quarreled, and then trouble began, parties constantly starting out to steal each other's horses, and to kill and scalp all whom they could find hunting or traveling about beyond protection of the villages. This was a very sad condition for the people. The two tribes had long been friends; Mandan men had married Arickaree women, and many Arickaree men had Mandan wives. It was dreadful to see the scalps of perhaps one's own relatives brought into camp. But what could the women do? They had no voice in the councils, and were afraid to say what they thought. Not so No-Heart. Every day she went about in the camp, talking loudly, so that the men must hear, scolding them and their wickedness; pointing out the truth, that by killing each other the two tribes would become so weak that they would soon be unable to withstand their common enemy, the Sioux. Yes, No-Heart would even walk right up to a chief and scold him, and he would be obliged to turn silently away, for he could not argue with a woman, nor could he force this one to close her mouth; she was the ruler of her own person.

One night a large number of Arickarees succeeded in making an opening in the village stockade and, passing through, they began to lead out the horses. Some one soon discovered them, however, and gave the alarm, and a big fight took place, the Mandans driving the enemy out on the plain and down into the timber below. Some men on both sides were killed; there was both mourning and rejoicing in the village.

The Arickarees retreated to their village. Toward evening No-Heart went down into the timber for fuel, and in a thick clump of willows she found one of the enemy, a young man badly wounded. An arrow had pierced his groin, and the loss of blood had been great. He was so weak that he could scarcely speak or move. No-Heart stuck many willow twigs in the ground about him, the more securely to conceal him. “Do not fear,” she said to him, “I will bring you food and drink.”

She hurried back to her lodge and got some dried meat and a skin of water, put them under her robe, and returned to the wounded one. He drank much, and ate of the food. No-Heart washed and bound the wound. Then she again left him, telling him to lie quiet, that in the night she would return and take him to her home, where she would care for him until he got well. In her lodge she fixed a place for him, screening one of the bed places with a large cow skin; she also partly covered the smoke hole and hung a skin across the entrance, so that the interior of the lodge had but little light. The women who sometimes visited her would never suspect that any one was concealed, and especially an enemy in a lodge where for three summers no man had entered.

It was a very dark night. Down in the timber there was no light at all. No-Heart was obliged to extend her arms as she walked, to keep from running against the trees, but she knew the place so well that she had little trouble in finding the thicket, and the one she had come to aid. “Arise,” she said in a low voice. “Arise, and follow me.”

The young man attempted to get up, but fell back heavily upon the ground. “I cannot stand.” he said; “my legs have no strength.”

Then No-Heart cried out: “You cannot walk! I had not thought but that you could walk. What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“You will let me carry him for you,” said some one standing close behind her. “I will carry him wherever you lead.”

No-Heart turned with a little cry of surprise. She ould not see the speaker's face in the darkness, only his dim form; but she knew the voice. She was not afraid. “Lift him then,” she said, “and follow me.”

She herself raised the wounded one up and placed him on the newcomer's back, and then led the way out of the timber, across the plain, through the stockade, in which she had loosened a post, and then on to her lodge. No one was about, and they were not discovered. Within a fire was burning, but there was no need of the light to show the girl who had helped her. He was Long Elk. “We will put him here,” she said, lifting the skin in front of the couch she had prepared, and they laid the sick man carefully down upon it. Then Long Elk stood for a little, looking at the girl, but she remained silent and would not look at him. “I will go now,” he said, “but each night I will come with meat for you and your lover,”

Still the girl did not speak, and he went away. But as soon as he had gone No-Heart sat down and cried. The sick man raised up a little and asked, “What troubles you? Why are you crying?”

“Did you not hear?” she replied. “He said that you are my lover.”

“I know you,” said the man. “They call you No-Heart, but they lie. You have a heart; I wish it were for me.”

“Don't!” the girl cried. “Don't say that again! I will take care of you, feed you. As your mother is to you, so will I be.”

Now, when night came again, No-Heart went often out in the passageway, staying there longer and longer each time, returning only to give the sick man water or a little food. At last, as she was sitting out there in the dark. Long Elk came, and, feeling for the right place, hung up a piece of meat beyond the reach of the dogs. “Come in,” she said to him. “Come in and talk with the wounded one.”

After that Long Elk sat with the Arickaree every night for a time, and they talked of the things which interest men. While he was in the lodge No-Heart never spoke, except to say, “Eat it,” when she placed food before them. Day after day the wounded one grew stronger. One night, after Long Elk had gone, he said, “I am able to travel; to-morrow night I will start homeward. I want to know why you have taken pity on me; why you saved me from death?”

“Listen, then,” said the girl. “It was because war is bad; because I pitied you. Many women here, and many more in your village, are crying because they have lost the ones they loved in this quarre. Of them all, I alone have talked, begging the chiefs to make peace with you. All the other women were glad of my words, but they are afraid and do not dare speak for themselves. I talked and feared not; because no one could bid me stop. I have helped you, now do you help me; help your women; help us all. When you get home tell what was done for you here, and talk hard for peace.”

“So I will,” the Arickaree told her. “When they learn all that you have done for me, the chiefs will listen. I am sure they will be glad to stop this war.”

The next night, when Long Elk entered the lodge, he found the man sitting up. By his side lay his weapons and a little sack of food. “I was waiting for you,” he said. “I am well now and wish to start for home to-night. Will you take me out beyond the stockade? If any speak you can answer them and they will not suspect that their enemy passes by.”

“I will go with you, of course,” Long Elk told him. Whereupon he arose, slung on his bow and quiver, the sack of food, and lifted his shield. No-Heart sat quietly on the opposite side of the lodge, looking straight at the fire. Long Elk turned to her: “And you?” he asked. “Are you also ready?”

She did not answer, but covered her face with her robe.

“I go alone,” said the Arickaree. “Let us start.”

They went out, through the village, through the stockade, and across the bottom to the timber, where they stopped. “You have come far enough,” the Arickaree said; “I will go on alone from here. You have been good to me. I shall not forget it. When I arrive home, I shall talk much for peace between our tribes. I hope we may soon meet again in friendship.”

“Wait,” said the Long Elk, as he turned to go, “I want to ask you something: Why do you not take No-Heart with you?”

“I would if she were willing,” he answered, “but she is not for me. I tell you more truly this. She has been a mother to me; no more, no less. And you,” he continued, “have you ever asked her to be your woman? No? Then go now, right now, and do so.”

“It would be useless,” said Long Elk sadly. “Many have asked her, and she has always turned them away.”

“I have seen much while I lay sick in her lodge,” the Arickaree continued. “I have seen her gaze at you as you sat talking to me, and her eyes were beautiful then. And I have seen her become restless and go out and in, out and in, when you were late. When a woman does that it means that she loves you. Go and ask her.”

They parted; Long Elk returned to the village. “It could not be,” he thought, “that the young man was right. No, it could not be.” Had he not kept near her these many winters and summers? and never once had she looked at him, or smiled. Thinking thus, he wandered on, and on, and found himself standing by the entrance to her lodge. Within he heard, faintly, some one crying. He could not be sure that was it, the sound of it was so low. He stepped noiselessly in and carefully drew aside the door skin. No-Heart was sitting where he had last seen her, sitting before the dying fire, robe over her head, and she was crying. He stole past the doorway and sat down beside her, quite close, but he dared not touch her. “Good-heart,” he said, “Big-heart, don't cry.”

But she only cried harder when she heard his words, and he was much troubled, not knowing what to do. After a little, he moved closer and put his arm around her; she did not draw away, so then he drew the robe away from her face. “Tell me,” he said, “why you are crying?”

“Because I am so lonely.”

“Ah! You do love him then. Perhaps it is not too late; I may be able to overtake him. Shall I go and call him back to you?”

“What do you mean?” cried No-Heart, staring at him. “Who are you talking about?”

“He who has just left: the Arickaree,” Long Elk answered. But now he had edged up still closer, and his arm was tighter around her, and she leaned heavily against him.

“Was there ever such a blind one?” she said. “Yes, I will let you know my heart; I will not be ashamed, not afraid to say it. I was crying because I thought you would not return. All these summers and winters I have been waiting, hoping that you would love me, and you never spoke.”

“How could I?” he asked. “You never looked at me; you made no sign.”

“It was your place to speak,” she said. “Even yet you have not done so.”

“I do now, then. Will you take me for your man?”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and that was answer enough.

In the morning, like any other married man. Long Elk went out and stood by the entrance to the lodge which was now his, and shouted feast invitations to his father and friends. They all came, and all were pleased that he had got such a good woman. Some made jokes about newly married ones, which made the young woman cover her face with her robe. Yet she was so happy that she would soon throw it back and laugh with the others.

In a few days came a party from the Arickarees, and the wounded young man was one of them, asking for peace. The story was told then, how No-Heart had taken in the young man and brought him to life again, and when they heard it many women prayed the gods to be good to her and give her and her man long life. Peace between the two tribes was then declared, and there was much rejoicing. — (“My Life as an Indian"; Schultz; “The Story of No-Heart,” pp. 230-238.)

TECUMSEH

Of all the figures in the light of Indian history, that of Tecumseh, or Tecum tha the “Leaping Panther,” the war chief of the Shawnees, stands out perhaps highest and best as the ideal, noble Redman.

His father was chief of the tribe. Tecumseh was born in 1768 at Piqua Indian Village, near the site of Springfield, Ohio. Of all the Indians, the Shawnees had been most energetic and farseeing in their opposition to the encroachments of the whites. But the flood of invasion was too strong for them. The old chief fell, battling for home and people, at Point Pleasant, in 1774. His eldest son followed the father's footsteps, and the second met death in a hopeless fight with Wayne in 1794, leaving young Tecumseh war chief of his tribe. At once he became a national figure. He devoted his whole life and strength to the task of saving his people from the invaders, and to that end resolved that first he must effect a national federation of the Redmen. Too often tribe had been pitted against tribe for the white men's advantage. In union alone he saw the way of salvation and to this end he set about an active campaign among the tribes of the Mississippi Valley.

His was no mean spirit of personal revenge; his mind was too noble for that. He hated the whites as the destroyers of his race, but prisoners and the defenceless knew well that they could rely on his honor and humanity and were safe under his protection. When only a boy — for his military career began in childhood — he had witnessed the burning of a prisoner, and the spectacle was so abhorrent to his feelings that by an earnest and eloquent harangue he induced the party to give up the practice forever. In later years his name was accepted by helpless women and children as a guaranty of protection even in the midst of hostile Indians. He was of commanding figure, nearly six feet in height and compactly built; of dignified bearing and piercing eye, before whose lightning even a British general quailed. His was the fiery eloquence of a Clay and the clear-cut logic of a Webster. Abstemious in habit, charitable in thought and action, he was brave as a lion, but humane and generous withal — in a word, an aboriginal American knighterrant, whose life was given to his people. — (14 Ann. Rep. Ethn. p., 681.)

During the four years 1807 to 1811 he went from tribe to tribe urging with all his splendid powers the need for instant and united resistance.

His younger brother, Tenskwatawa the Prophet, was with him and helped in his way by preaching the regenerated doctrine of the Indian life. The movement was gaining force. But all Tecumseh's well-laid plans were frustrated by the premature battle of Tippecanoe, November 7, 1811. In this his brother, the Prophet, was defeated and every prospect of an Indian federation ended for the time.

The War of 1812 gave Tecumseh a chance to fight the hated Americans. As a British general he won many battles for his allies, but was killed leading his warriors at Moraviantown, near Chatham, Ontario, on October 5, 1813. His personal prowess, his farseeing statesmanship, his noble eloquence, and lofty character have given him a place on the very highest plane among patriots and martyrs. If ever the great Hiawatha was reincartiated it must have been in the form of Tecumseh. Like Hiawatha, he devoted his whole life to the service of his people on the most heroic lines. Like Hiawatha, he planned a national federation of all Redmen that should abolish war among themselves and present a solid front to the foreign invader. “America for the Americans” was his cry, and all his life and strength were devoted to the realization of his dream. Valiant as Pontiac, wise as Metacomet, magnificent as Powhatan, kind and gentle as the young Winona, he was a farther-seeing statesman than they ever had had before, and above all was the first leading Redman to put an end to the custom for which they chiefly are blamed, the torturing of prisoners. His people were always kind to their own; his great soul made him kind to all the world. He fought his people's battles to the end, and when he knew the cause was lost he laid aside his British uniform, girded himself in his Indian war-chief dress for the final scene, bade good-bye to his men and went forth, like King Saul on Mt. Gilboa's fatal field, to fight and fighting die. And the Star of his race had set.

Measured by any scale, judged by any facts, there can be but one verdict: He was a great man, an Indian without guile, a mighty soldier and statesman, loved and revered by all who knew him. More than a Red nobleman, he was acclaimed by all his kin who knew his life as in very truth a Son of God.

KANAKUK, THE KICKAPOO PROPHET

“My father,” he pleaded with President Monroe, “the Great Spirit holds all the world in his hands. I pray to him that we may not be removed from our lands. … Take pity on us and let us remain where we are.” Such was the petition of Kanakuk, peace prophet and leader in 1819, when the Kickapoos were ordered to leave the fertile corn lands of their fathers in Illinois and move out into the rugged hills of Missouri, among their traditional enemies, the Osages.

The effect of the petition was much the same as that which Naboth sent unto Ahab when that “president” of God's people coveted Naboth's heritage.

And what had they to charge against Kanakuk or his people? Their claim to the land was unquestioned. Were they objectionable or dangerous as neighbors? Surely not. No one pretended it. The doctrine Kanakuk taught his kindly people was a close parallel of the Ten Commandments, with the added clauses of non-resistance to violence, and of abstinence from drinking, gambling, and horse-racing.

Catlin, who visited the Prophet in his new home in 1831, and erronoeusly supposed the Kickapoo got these teachings from the Bible and the Christian missionaries, says (p. 697):

I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought amongst them by enlightened Christians. How far the efforts of this zealous man have succeeded in Christianizing, I cannot tell; but it is quite certain that his exemplary and constant endeavors have completely abolished the practice of drinking whiskey in his tribe, which alone is a very praiseworthy achievement, and the first and indispensable step toward all other improvements. I was some time amongst those people, and was exceedingly pleased and surprised also to witness their sobriety and their peaceable conduct, not having seen an instance of drunkenness, or seen or heard of any use of spirituous liquors whilst I was among them. — (Catlin, Vol. 11, p. 98.)

In 1883 there was a great renewal of his teaching among his people, and their kin in the Indian Territory. Their ritual consisted chiefly of a ceremonial dance. The doctrine taught the same code as the Ten Commandments, but especially forbade drinking, gambling and horse-racing. — (14 Ann. Rep. B. A. E., p. 706.)

In 1885 the local Indian agent, Patrick, wrote in a curiously superior vein of this ancient faith revived.

These Indians are chaste, cleanly, and industrious, and would be a valuable acquisition to the Prairie band if it were not for their intense devotion to a religious dance started among the northern Indians some years since. This dance was introduced to the Prairie band about two years ago by the Absentee Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes, and has spread throughout the tribes in the agency. They seem to have adopted the religion as a means of expressing their belief in the justice and mercy of the Great Spirit and of their devotion to him, and are so earnest in their convictions as to its affording them eternal happiness that I have thought it impolitic, so far, to interfere with it any further than to advise as few meetings as possible and to discountenance it in my intercourse with the individuals practising the religion. It is not an unmixed evil, as, under its teaching, drunkenness and gambling have been reduced 75 per cent., and a departure from virtue on the part of its members meets with the severest condemnation. As some tenets of revealed religion are embraced in its doctrines, I do not consider it a backward step for the Indians who have not heretofore professed belief in any Christian religion, and beheve its worst features are summed up in the loss of time it occasions, and the fanatical train of thought involved in the constant contemplation of the subject. — (Comr., 6.) (Mooney's “Ghost Dance Religion,” 14 Ann. Rep. B. A. E., p. 706.)

CHIEF JOSEPH HINMATON OF THE SAHAPTIN OR NEZ PERCE

They [Nez Perces and Flat-heads] were friendly in their dispositions, and honest to the most scrupulous degree in their intercourse with the white men… Simply to call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of their conduct. Their honesty is immaculate; and their purity of purpose and observance of the rites of their religion are most uniform and remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.

So they were described in Captain Bonneville's narrative after his visit in 1834.

They were first officially noticed in the report of the Indian Commissioner for 1843, where they are described as “noble, industrious, sensible,” and well disposed toward the whites, while “though brave as Caesar,” the whites have nothing to dread at their hands in case of their dealing out to them what they conceive to be right and equitable. — (14 Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., p. 712.)

About the middle of the last century their chief was Hinmaton-Kalatkit (Thunder-rolling) , known more generally as Chief Joseph.

He was a splendid example of the best type of Redman, of superb physique, clinging to the ancient way, beloved by his people, feared by his enemies and, as it proved, a leader of tremendous power and resource. In 1877, after they had sustained innumerable encroachments and flagrant violations of their treaty, a quarrel broke out between them and the whites and an Indian was killed.

Chief Joseph restrained his men and appealed for justice. For reply a band of whites raided the Indian reservation, ran off their cattle and killed the Indian in charge. So the war broke out. The first three fights were defeats for the whites, but more troops were soon rushed up. Joseph had barely one hundred warriors and three hundred and fifty helpless women and children. General Howard was behind him, General Miles in front, Colonel Sturges and the Crows on his flank. He was obliged to retreat, and did so for one thousand miles. “A retreat worthy to be remembered with the story of the Ten Thousand.”

After four months his starving band of warriors, now reduced to half, surrendered to General Miles on condition of being sent back to Idaho in the spring.

It was promised Joseph that he would be taken to Tongue River and kept there till spring and then be returned to Idaho. General Sheridan, ignoring the promises made on the battlefield, ostensibly on account of the difficulty of getting supplies there from Fort Buford, ordered the hostiles to Leavenworth … but different treatment was promised them when they held rifles in their hands. — (Sutherland, i.)

Seven years passed before the promise was kept, and in the meantime the band had been reduced by disease and death in Indian Territory from about 450 to about 280.

This strong testimony to the high character of Joseph and his people and the justice of their cause comes from the commissioner at the head of Indian affairs during and immediately after the outbreak:

I traveled with him in Kansas and the Indian Territory for nearly a week and found him to be one of the most gentlemanly and well-behaved Indians that I ever met. He is bright and intelligent, and is anxious for the welfare of his people. … The Nez Perces are very much superior to the Osages and Pawnees in the Indian Territory; they are even brighter than the Poncas, and care should be taken to place them where they will thrive. … It will be borne in mind that Joseph has never made a treaty with the United States, and that he has never surrendered to the government the lands he claimed to own in Idaho. … I had occasion in my last annual report to say that “Joseph and his followers have shown themselves to be brave men and skilled soldiers, who, with one exception, have observed the rules of civilized warfare, and have not mutilated their dead enemies.” These Indians were encroached upon by white settlers on soil they believed to be their own, and when these encroachments became intolerable they were compelled, in their own estimation, to take up arms.” — (Comr. 27a.) In all our sad Indian history there is nothing to exceed in pathetic eloquence the surrender speech of the Nez Perce chief:

“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 who say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ He who led the young men is dead. 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. 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. " — (Sec. War. 3.) (Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. 14, p. 714-15.)

WHITE CALF, CHIEF OF THE BLACKFEET

(Died at Washington, Jan. 29, 1903)
(By George Bird Grinnell)

For sixty years, as boy, young man and fierce warrior, he had roamed the prairie, free as the other wild creatures who traversed it, and happy in his freedom.

He had been but a little fellow when the white men first came into the country to trade, but he was old enough to have been present, and was well enough thought of in the tribe, at the signing of Governor Stevens's treaty with the Prairie people in 1855, to afifLx his mark — as The Father — to that paper. As yet the coming of the white man meant little to him and to his people. It furnished them a market for their robes and furs, for which they received in exchange guns and ammunition, which made them more than ever terrible to their enemies. The whole broad prairie was still theirs to camp on and to hunt over. Their lodges were pitched along the streams from the Red Deer River on the north to the Elk River on the south, and their war journeys extended south to the country of the Mexicans.

More than twenty years ago happened the greatest misfortune that ever came to his tribe. The buffalo disappeared and never returned. From this time forth they were forced to depend on the food given them by the white men, and, in order to receive that food, they were obliged to stay in one place, to confine themselves to that little comer of ground, their reservation.

Long before this he had become the chief of his tribe — the father of his people. Already he was putting their welfare before his own, was thinking first of them and of himself last.

For it was the duty of a cliief to look out for the well-being of his people; to care for the widows and orphans; to make peace between those who quarrel; to give his whole heart and his whole mind to the work of helping his people to be happy. Such were the duties that the old-time chief studied to perform. And since on his example and his precept so much depended, he must be a man who was brave in war, generous in disposition, liberal in temper, deliberate in making up his mind, and of good judgment. Such men gave themselves to their work with heart and soul, and strove for the welfare of those in their charge with an earnestness and a devotion that perhaps are not equaled by any other rulers of men.

And this devotion to his fellows was not without its influence on the man himself; after a time the spirit of good will which animated him began to shine forth in his countenance, so that at length, and as they grew old, such chiefs came to have the beneficent and kindly expression that we may sometimes see on the countenance of an elderly minister of God whose life has been one long, loving sacrifice of self to his Maker and to his fellowmen. And if the face was benevolent and kindly, not less sweet and gentle was the spirit that animated the man. Simple, honest, generous, tender-hearted, and yet withal on occasion merry and jolly. Such men, once known, commanded universal respect and admiration. They were Hke the conventional notion of Indians in nothing save in the color of the skin. They were true friends, delightful companions, wise counselors — men whose conduct toward their fellowmen we all might profitably imitate. We do not commonly attribute a spirit of altruism to Indians, but it was seen in these oldtime chiefs.

Such a chief was White Calf, long chief of the Blackfeet. In his day he had been a famous warrior, and in the battle which took place in 1867, when the great chief. Many Horses, was killed. White Calf with two others had rushed into a great crowd of the enemy — the Crows and Gros-Ventres — who were trying to kill Wolf Calf, even then an old man, and, scattering them like smoke before the wind, had pulled the old man out of the crush and brought him safely off. It was not long after this that he put aside the warpath forever, and since then had confined himself to working for the good of his people by the arts of peace. No sacrifice was too great for him to make if he thought that by it the tribe might be helped; yet he possessed a sturdy independence that bullying and intimidation could not move — even that threats of soldiers and the guard house could not shake. When he was sure that he was right he could not be stirred. Yet, if reasons were advanced which appealed to his judgment, no man was quicker to acknowledge error.

Though nearly eighty years old the chief was not bowed with the weight of time nor were his natural forces greatly abated. He was still erect and walked with a briskness and an elasticity rare for one of his years. Yet in a degree he felt that his powers were failing, and he sometimes avoided the decision of important questions on the ground that he was getting old and his mind was no longer good.

A little more than two weeks ago he stood in the presence of the Chief Magistrate of the nation, who shook him warmly by the hand and talked to him and the others of his people present. A few days later, just as they were about to leave Washington for their distant prairie home, the old chief caught cold, pneumonia set in, and just before midnight on the 29th of January he peacefully passed away.

He was a man who was great in the breadth of his judgment, and in the readiness Vv^ith which he recognized the changes he and his people were now obliged to face, and adapted himself to these changes; but greatest of all, in the devotion that he held for his tribe, and in the way in which he sacrificed himself for their welfare. Buffalo hunter, warrior, savage ruler and diplomat; then learner, instructor, persuader and encourager in new ways, he was always the father of the people. Just as for many years he had been constantly serving them, so now, at the end of his long chieftainship, he gave up his life in the successful effort to protect them from a great calamity.

WOVOKA, THE PROPHET OF THE GHOST DANCE

There have been many in every tribe and every time who have brought shame on their people. There have been whole tribes who forgot their race's high ideals. From time to time great prophets have arisen amongst them to stir up these backsliders, and bring them back to the faith of their fathers. The last of these was Wovoka, the Piute — the Mystic Dreamer. About 1887 he began preaching his doctrine of the coming Messiah and taught the Redmen that they must worship him by the Ghost dance. This is his own simple setting forth of the doctrine:

When the Sun died I went up into Heaven and saw God and all the people who had died a long time ago. God told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one another and not to fight or steal or lie. He gave me this dance to give to my people. — (Ethn. Ann. 14. p. 764.)

At Pine Ridge, S. D., in the winter of 1890, the Sioux were learning this dance with its songs and its Christ-like creed. It meant the end of war. War had been their traditional noblest pursuit. But now at the bidding of the new prophet they agreed to abjure it forever; and they prepared to take up the new religion of love.

The Indian agent, like most of his kind, was ignorant and utterly unfitted for his position. He said it was some new sort of a war dance. The troops were sent for and the Indian populace was gathered together at a place called Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge (Dec. 29, 1890). They had submitted and turned in their rifles. Then, maddened by the personal indignities offered them in searching for more arms, a young Indian who still had a gun fired at the soldiers. It is not stated that he hit any one, but the answer was a volley that killed half the men. A minute later a battery of four Hotchkiss machine guns was turned on the defenceless mass of virtual prisoners; 120 men, and 250 helpless women and children were massacred in broad daylight, mown down, and left on the plain, while the white soldiers pursued the remnant and the cripples, to do them to death in the hills.

Almost all the dead warriors were found lying near where the “fight” began, about Bigfoot's teepee, but the bodies of the women and children were found scattered along for two miles from the scene of the encounter, showing that they had been killed while trying to escape. — (Ethn. Ann. 14, pp. 868 - 870.)

As the men were in a separate company from the women and children, no one pretended that it was accidental.

The women, as they were fleeing with their babes, were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed. All the Indians fled in these three directions, and after most all of them had been killed, a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight, a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there. — (“Ghost Dance Religion,” Mooney; Ethn. Rep. 14. 885-886.)

Nothing in the way of punishment was done by the authorities to any of the assassins. When the guards of Czar Nicholas shot down some scores of peasants who, contrary to orders, marched in a body to his palace, all America rang with horror and indignation, but nothing was said about the infinitely worse massacre at Wounded Knee.

As sure as there is a God in Heaven, this thing has to be met again, and for every drop of righteous blood spilled that day and on a thousand other days of like abomination, a fearful vengeance is being stored and will certainly break on us.

As sure as Cain struck down himself when he murdered Abel; as sure as the blood of righteous Naboth cried from the ground and wrecked the house and the kingdom and the race of Ahab; so surely has the American nation to stand before the bar of an earthly power — a power invincible, overwhelming, remorseless, and pay the uttermost price.

As sure as this land was taken by fraud and held by cruelty and massacre, we have filled for ourselves a vial of wrath. It will certainly be outpoured on us to the last drop and the dregs. What the Persian did to rich and rotten Babylon, what the Goth did to rich and bloody Rome, another race will surely do to us.

If ever the aroused and reinspired Yellow man comes forth in his hidden strength, in his reorganized millions, overpowering, slaying, burning, possessing, we can only bow our heads and say, “These are the instruments of God's wrath. We brought this on ourselves. All this we did to the Redman. The fate of Babylon and of bloody Rome is ours. We wrote our own doom as they did.”

THE APACHE INDIAN'S CASE

(From “On the Border with Crook” by Captain John G. Bourke, U.S.A. Courtesy of Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons.)

For years I have collected the data and have contemplated the project of writing the history of this people, based not only upon the accounts transmitted to us from the Spaniards and their descendants, the Mexicans, but upon the Apache's own story, as conserved in his myths, and traditions; but I have lacked both the leisure and the inclination, to put the project into execution. It would require a man with the even-handed sense of justice possessed by a Guizot, and the keen, critical, analytical powers of a Gibbon, to deal fairly with a question in which the ferocity of the savage Redman has been more than equaled by the ferocity of the Christian Caucasian; in which the occasional treachery of the aborigines has found its best excuse in the unvarying Punic faith of the Caucasian invader; in which promises on each side have been made, only to deceive and to be broken; in which the red hand of war has rested most heavily upon shrieking mother and wailing babe.

If from this history, the Caucasian can extract any cause of self-laudation I am glad of it: speaking as a censor who has read the evidence with as much impartiality as could be expected from one who started in with the sincere conviction that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and that the only use to make of him was that of a fertilizer; and who, from studying the documents in the case, and listening little by little to the savage's own story, has arrived at the conclusion that perhaps Pope Paul III was right when he solemnly declared that the natives of the New World had souls and must be treated as human beings, and admitted to the sacraments when found ready to receive them. I feel it to be my duty to say that the Apache has found himself in the very best of company when he committed any atrocity, it matters not how vile, and that his complete history, if it could be written by himself, would not be any special cause of self-complacency to such white men as believe in a just God, who will visit the sins of parents upon their children, even to the third and fourth generation.

We have become so thoroughly Pecksniffian in our self-laudation, in our exaltation of our own virtues, that we have become grounded in the error of imagining that the American savage is more cruel in his war customs than other nations of the earth have been; this I have already intimated, in a misconception, and statistics, for such as care to dig them out, will prove that I am right. The Assyrians cut their conquered foes limb from limb; the Israelites spared neither parent nor child; the Romans crucified head downward the gladiators who revolted under Spartacus; even in the civihzed England of the past century, the wretch convicted of treason was executed under circumstances of cruelty which would have been too much for the nerves of the fiercest of the Apaches or Sioux. Instances in support of what I here assert crop up all over the pages of history; the trouble is, not to discover them, but to keep them from blinding the memory to matters more pleasant to remember. Certainly, the American aborigine is not indebted to his pale-faced brother, no matter of what nation or race he may be, for lessons in tenderness and humanity.

After reviewing the methods by which the gentle, friendly natives were turned into tigers,Bourke gives this final example:

“And then there have been ‘Pinole Treaties,’ in which the Apaches have been invited to sit down and eat repasts seasoned with the exhilarating strychnine. So that, take it for all in all, the honors have been easy so far as treachery, brutality, cruelty and lust have been concerned. The one great difference has been that the Apache could not read or write and hand down to posterity the story of his wrongs, as he, and he alone, knew them.” — (“On the Border with Crook,” John G. Bourke, pp. 114–118.)

THE WIPING OUT OF NANNI-CHADDI

(December 27th, 1872.)

(From the account by Captain J. G. Bourke, in his book “On the Border with Crook” 1892. By permission of Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons.)

For the same old reason, as always before, the Apaches of Arizona were fighting the whites, but doing it successfully.

The Government at length sent against them fresh troops under Gen. George Crook, who was said by Gen. W. T. Sherman to be the greatest Indian fighter and manager that the Army of the United States had had. But, more than this, he was a man respected, admired and beloved by every one who knew him — friend or foe. All the wise ones felt that the solution was in sight when Crook took command.

Throughout the history of the matter, we find the great General torn by two conflicting thoughts — first, “My duty as a soldier of my country”; and, second, “These Indians are in the right.” In his own words, “The American Indian commands respect for his rights, only so long as he inspires terror with his rifle.”

With characteristic sternness, energy and fortitude he began the campaign, as winter set in, just when his predecessors had moved into comfortable quarters.

To realize that the mountains were full of Apaches that swooped down at unexpected times, spreading fire and slaughter and fearful destruction — was one thing and an easy one, but to find them and strike back was a wholly different matter.

The white soldiers under Crook would have been powerless, in spite of their far superior numbers, their superb equipment, abundance of food and ammunition, but for the fact that the Apaches themselves were divided, and the white soldiers had with them a large band of these red renegades, who did all the scouting, trailing and finer work of following and finding the foe, as well as guarding their white allies from surprise.

Late in December, Major Brown, with three companies of the Fifth Cavalry, some forty Apache scouts, and about one hundred more from the Pima nation, under their Chief, Esquinosquizn or Bocon, set out to run down the band of Chief Chuntz, who was terrorizing those settlers that had encroached on the acknowledged territory of the Apaches, the Gila and Salt River valleys. They were led by Nantahay, a renegade Apache of the region, and set out fully equipped and determined to kill or capture every Apache they could find.

Led by these renegades, the soldiers crept silently up a tremendous canyon, and at last into plain view of a large, shallow cave or natural rock shed in which was a considerable band of Apache Indians, men, women, and children, only forty yards away and wholly unconscious of the enemy so near.

The men were singing and dancing in a religious ceremony; the women were preparing the midday meal. The white soldiers had ample time to post themselves and select each his victim.

Had not the Apaches been interested in their own singing they might surely have heard the low whisper, “Ready! aim! fire!” but it would have been too late; the die was cast, and their hour had come.

The fearful noise, which we have heard reverberating from peak to peak and from crag to crag, was the volley poured in by Ross and his comrades, which had sent six souls to their last account, and sounded the death-knell of a powerful band.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Brown's first work was to see that the whole line was impregnable to assault from the beleaguered garrison of the cave, and then he directed his interpreters to summon all to an unconditional surrender. The only answer was a shriek of hatred and defiance, threats of what we had to expect, yells of exultation at the thought that not one of us should ever see the light of another day.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

There was a lull of a few minutes; each side was measuring its own strength and that of its opponent. It was apparent that any attempt to escalade without ladders would result in the loss of more than half our command; the great rock wall in front of the cave was not an inch less than ten feet in height at its lowest point, and smooth as the palm of the hand; it would be madness to attempt to climb it, because the moment the assailants reached the top, the lances of the invested force could push them back to the ground, wounded to death. Three or four of our picked shots were posted in ehgible positions overlooking the places where the Apaches had been seen to expose themselves; this, in the hope that any recurrence of such foolhardiness, would afford an opportunity for the sharpshooters to show their skill. Of the main body, one half was in reserve fifty yards behind the skirmish line — to call it such, where the whole business was a skirmish line — with carbines loaded and cocked, and a handful of cartridges on the clean rocks in front, and every man on the lookout to prevent the escape of a single warrior, should any be fortunate enough to sneak or break through the first line. The men on the first line had orders to fire as rapidly as they chose, directing aim against the roof of the cave, with the view to having the bullets glance down among the Apache men, who had massed immediately back of the rock rampart.

This plan worked admirably, and, so far as we could judge, our shots were telling upon the Apaches and irritating them to that degree that they no longer sought shelter, but boldly faced our fire, and returned it with energy, the weapons of the men being reloaded by the women, who shared their dangers. A wail from a squaw and the feeble cry of a little babe were proof that the missiles of death were not seeking men alone. Brown ordered our fire to cease, and for the last time summoned the Apaches to surrender, or to let their women and children come out unmolested. On their side, the Apaches also ceased all hostile demonstrations, and it seemed to some of us Americans that they must be making ready to yield, and were discussing the matter among themselves. Our Indian guides and interpreters raised the cry, “Look out! there goes the Death Song; they are going to charge!” It was a weird chant, one not at all easy to describe, half wail and half exultation — the frenzy of despair, and the wild cry for revenge. Now, the petulant, querulous treble of the squaws kept time with the shuffling feet, and again the deeper growl of the savage bull-dogs, who represented manhood in that cave, was flung back from the cold, pitiless brown of the cliffs.

“Look out! here they come!” Over the rampart, guided by one impulse, moving as if they were all part of one body, jumped and ran twenty of the warriors — superblooking feUows, all of them; each carried upon his back a quiver filled with the long reed arrows of the tribe; each held in his hands a bow and a rifle, the latter at full cock. Half of the party stood upon the rampart, which gave them some chance to sight our men behind the smaller rocks in front, and blazed away for aU they were worth — they were trying to make a demonstration to engage our attention, while the other part suddenly slipped down and around our right flank, and out through the rocks which had so effectively sheltered the retreat of the one who had so nearly succeeded in getting away, earlier in the morning. Their motives were divined, and the move was frustrated; our men rushed to the attack like furies, each seeming to be anxious to engage the enemy at close quarters. Six or seven of the army were killed in a space not twenty-five feet square, and the rest driven back within the cave, more or less wounded.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

One of the charging party, seeing that so much attention was converged upon our right, had slipped down unnoticed from the rampart, and made his way to the space between our two lines, and had sprung to the top of a huge boulder, and there had begun his war-whoop, as a token of encouragement to those still behind. I imagine that he was not aware of our second line, and thought that once in our rear, ensconced in a convenient nook in the rocks, he could keep us busy by picking us off at his leisure. His chant was never fiendish; it was at once his song of glory and his death song; he had broken through our line of fire, only to meet a far more cruel death. Twenty carbines were gleaming in the sunUght just flushing the cliffs; forty eyes were sighting along the barrels. The Apache looked into the eyes of his enemies, and in not one did he see the slightest sign of mercy; he tried to say something; what it was we never could tell. “No! no! soldadoes!” in broken Spanish, was all we could make out, before the resounding volley had released another soul from its earthly casket and let the bleeding corpse fall to the ground, as limp as a wet moccasin. He was really a handsome warrior; tall, well-proportioned, finely muscled, and with a bold, manly countenance. “Shot to death,” was the verdict of all who paused to look upon him, but that didn't half express the state of the case. I have never seen a man more thoroughly shot to pieces than was this one; every bullet seemed to have struck, and not less than eight or ten had inflicted mortal wounds.

The savages in the cave, with death staring them in the face, did not seem to lose their courage — or shall we say despair? They resumed their chant, and sang with vigor and boldness, until Brown determined that the battle or siege must end. Our two lines were now massed in one, and every officer and man told to get ready a package of cartridges; then, as fast as the breech-block of the carbine could be opened and lowered, we were to fire into the mouth of the cave, hoping to inflict the greatest damage by glancing bullets, and then charge in by the entrance on our right flank, back of the rock rampart which had served as the means of exit for the hostiles when they made their attack.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

The Apaches did not relax their fire, but, from the increasing groans of the women, we knew that our shots were telling, either upon the women in the cave, or upon their relatives among the men for whom they were sorrowing.

It was exactly like fighting with wild animals in a trap; the Apaches had made up their minds to die, if relief did not reach them from some of the other “rancherias” supposed to be close by.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Burns and several others went to the crest and leaned over, to see what all the frightful hubub was about. They saw the conflict going on beneath them and in spite of the smoke, could make out that the Apaches were nestling up close to the rock rampart, so as to avoid as much as possible the projectiles which were raining down from the roof of their eyrie home. It didn't take Burns five seconds to decide what should be done; he had two of his men harnessed with the suspenders of their comrades, and made them lean well over the precipice, while the harness was used to hold them in place; these men were to fire with their revolvers at the enemy beneath, and for a volley or so they did very effective work, but their Irish blood got the better of their reason and, in their excitement, they began to throw their revolvers at the enemy; this kind of ammunition was rather too costly, but it suggested a novel method of annihilating the enemy. Brown ordered his men to get together and roll several of the huge boulders, which covered the surface of the mountain, and drop them over on the unsuspecting foe. The noise was frightful, the destruction sickening. Our volleys were still directed against the inner faces of the cave and the roof, and the Apaches seemed to realize that their only safety lay in crouching close to the great stone heap in front; but even this precarious shelter was now taken away; the air was filled Vvdth the bounding, plunging fragments of stone, breaking into thousands of pieces, with other thousands behind, crashing with the momentum gained in a descent of hundreds of feet. No human voice could be heard in such a cyclone of wrath; the volume of dust was so dense that no eye could pierce it, but over on our left, it seemed that for some reason we could still discern several figures guarding that extremity of the enemy's line — the old Medicine Man, who, decked in all the panoply of his office, Vi/ith feathers on head, decorated shirt on back, and all the sacred insignia known to his people, had defied the approach of death, and kept his place, firing coolly at everything that moved on our side, that he could see, his rifle reloaded and handed back by his assistants — either squaws or young men — it was impossible to tell which, as only the arms could be noted in the air. Major  Brown signaled up to Burns to stop pouring down his boulders, and at the same time our men were directed to cease firing and to make ready to charge; the fire of the Apaches had ceased, and their chant of defiance was hushed. There was a feeling in the command as if we were about to rush through the gates of a cemetery, and that we should find a ghastly spectacle within, but, at the same time, it might be that the Apaches had retreated to some recesses in the innermost depths of the cavern, unknown to us, and be prepared to assail all who ventured to cross the wall in front.

Precisely at noon we advanced, Corporal Hanlon, of Company G., Fifth Cavalry, being the first man to surmount the parapet. I hope that my readers will be satisfied with the meagrest description of the awful sight that met our eyes. There were men and women dead or writhing in the agonies of death, and with them several babies, killed by our glancing bullets, or by the storm of rocks and stones that descended from above. While one portion of the command worked at extricating the bodies from beneath the pile of debris, another stood guard with cocked revolvers or carbines, ready to blow out the brains of the first wounded savage who might in his desperation attempt to kill one of our people. But this precaution was entirely useless. All the warriors were dead or dying.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Thirty-five, if I remember aright, were still living, but in the number are included all who were still breathing; many were already dying, and nearly one half were dead before we started out of that dreadful place. None of the warriors were conscious, except one old man, who serenely awaited the last summons; he had received five or six wounds, and was practically dead when we sprang over the entrance wall. There was a general sentiment of sorrow for the old Medicine Man who had stood up so fiercely on the left of the Apache line, we found his still warm corpse crushed out of all semblance to humanity, beneath a huge mass of rock, which has also extinguished at one fell stroke the light of the life of the squaw and the young man who had remained by his side.” — (“On the Border with Crook”; Bourke; pp. 196–9).

Seventy-six, including all the men, were killed. Eighteen women and six children were taken prisoners. Thus was wiped out a band of heroic men whose victorious foes admitted that their victims were in the right.

THE CHEYENNES' LAST FIGHT, OR THE ENDING OF DULL KNIFE'S BAND

(Condensed by permission from E. B. Bronson's account as given in “Reminiscences of a Ranchman.” D. P. & Co. This with “The Redblood” by the same author should be read by all who are interested in the heroic days of the West.)

After the Custer fight, the American Army succeeded in rounding up the Indians who could not or would not escape to Canada, the one land of justice that was near, and among these were Dull Knife's Cheyennes. They surrendered on promise of fair treatment.

But as soon as they were in the power of the American Government (President R. B. Hayes), they were marched six hundred miles south into Indian Territory, where they were crowded into a region so unhealthy that it was obviously a question of but three or four years before all would die. They were starving, too, for the promised rations were never delivered. Nearly half were sick of fevers and malaria, for medicine was refused them. The two hundred and thirty-five warriors were reduced to sixty-nine. The extermination of the tribe was being effected. They begged for succor; they asked only to go home to their own land, but, as usual, no notice was taken of their prayers.

They could not live where they were. The American Government was obviously bent on killing them off, so they decided that it would be better to die at home — taking the chance of bullets rather than the certainty of fever.

On the ninth of September, 1878, therefore. Dull Knife, their head chief, gathered in his ponies, packed up his camp, burned the last bridge, and, with warriors, women, and children, set out for home, in defiance of the soldiers of a corrupt government.

At dawn his departure was discovered, troops were ordered out, telegraph wires were busied, and then began a flight and a pursuit the story of which should thrill the world for the heroism of the fugitives, and shock humanity for the diabolical brutality of the American authorities.

Two thousand troops were sent against this handful of some sixty-nine warriors, sick and weak with starvation, and encumbered with about two hundred and fifty, more or less, sick women and children.

I do not believe there was an American soldier who was not ashamed of his job. But he had no right to an opinion. He was under orders to run down and capture or kill this band of starving Indians, whose abominable crime was that they loved their homes.

We have had fragmentary accounts of that awful flight. Night and day the warriors rode and fought. Some days they, covered seventy miles and when their horses gave out, they raided the settlements for a new supply. Against them were four lines of soldiers, with railroads to keep them supplied and the United States Treasury to draw on, and yet this starving band of heroes fought them in two or three pitched battles every week; fought them when nearly even; eluded them when too strong; fooled them, and caring ever for their wives and families, left all behind; and, at last, on the fourth of October, the grand old warrior led his people across the South Platte and on to the comparative haven of the Niobrara Sandhills.

This waterless waste of sand gave them a little respite from the troops, but no chance to rest, or food to eat. They must push on, subsisting on flesh of horses, sacrificed as they had need.

Fresh cordons of troops were made in the country north of the Sandhills, and on the eighth of October army scouts reported Indian signs near Hot Creek.

On the thirteenth of October a small band of the fighters raided a store and drove off a band of horses from a place one mile east of Fort Robinson. These gave them new supplies, but it also gave their enemies the trail, and four troops of cavalry were at once sent to surround Crow Butte, the Cheyenne camp. But the Indians were not caught napping, the next morning dawned to show only that they had quietly passed all lines and were now far on the road to Canada.

Later it was learned that this was the larger part of the band, but was under Little Wolf not Dull Knife. He safely led them all, and escaped without the loss of a man to the far north and found rest.

This march is not excelled in the annals of warfare. It covered a distance of more than one thousand miles in less than fifty days, with a column encumbered with women and children, every step of the trail contested by all the troops of the United States Army that could be concentrated to oppose them; a march that struck and parted like ropes of sand the five great mihtary barriers interposed across their path; the first across the Kansas Pacific Railway, commanded by General Pope; the second along the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska, commanded by General Crook; the third along the Niobrara, commanded by General Bradley; the fourth, the Bear Butte (Seventh Cavalry) column, stretched east from the Black Hills; the fifth along the Yellowstone, commanded by General Gibbon.

But Dull Knife and his band of those less able to travel — some one hundred and fifty — were still in the Sandhills. He sent an urgent prayer to Red Cloud of the Sioux for help, but the sad answer was that it was hopeless to resent the President's will. Ten days later the troops located the Cheyennes.

(From this to the end is quoted from Bronson.)

In rags, nearly out of ammunition, famished and worn, with scarcely a horse left that could raise a trot, no longer able to fight or fly, suffering from cold and disheartened by Red Cloud's refusal to receive and shelter them, the splendid old war chief and his men were forced to bow to the inevitable and surrender.

Later in the day Johnson succeeded in rounding up the last of Dull Knife's scattered command and headed north for White River with his prisoners, one hundred and forty-nine Cheyennes and one hundred and thirty-one captured ponies.

The evening of the twenty-fourth, Johnson camped at Louis Jenks's ranch on Chadron Creek, near the present town of Chadron, Neb. A heavy snowstorm had set in early in the afternoon, and the night was so bitter and the Indians so weakened by their campaign that Johnson felt safe to leave them free to take the best shelter they could find in the brush along the deep valley of Chadron Creek.

This leniency he was not long in regretting.

Dull Knife and his band had been feeding liberally for two days on troopers' rations, and had so far recovered strength of body and heart that when morning came on the twenty-fifth the sentries were greeted with a feeble volley from rifle pits in the brush, dug by Dull Knife in the frozen ground during the night!

And here in these pits indomitable old Dull Knife fought stubbornly for two days more — fought and held the troops at bay until Lieutenant Chase brought up a field gun from Fort Robinson and shelled them to a final surrender!

Thus ended the first episode of Dull Knife's magnificent fight for liberty and fatherland, and yet had he had food, ammunition, and mounts, the chances are a hundred to one that his heroic purpose would have been accomplished, and the entire band that left Reno, barring those killed along the trail, would have escaped in safety to freedom in the then wilds of the Northwest Territory.

And that, even in this apparently final surrender to hopeless odds, Dull Knife was still not without hope of further resistance, was proved by the fact that when he came out of his trenches only a few comparatively old and worthless arms were surrendered,while it later became known that twenty-two good rifles had been taken apart and were swung, concealed, beneath the clothing of the squaws!

After taking a day's rest Johnson marched his command into Fort Robinson, arriving in the evening in a heavy snowstorm, where the Cheyennes were imprisoned in one of the barracks and their meagre equipment dumped in with them, without further search for arms or ammunition. Later it was learned that that night the Indians quietly loosened some of the flooring of the barrack and hid their arms and ammunition beneath it, so that when a more careful search of their belongings and persons was made two days later, they were found to be absolutely without weapons of any description.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Dull Knife and his people were confined in the log barrack at the southeast angle of the parade ground [at Fort Robinson]. No doors were locked or windows barred. A small guard patroled the barrack prison night and day.

What to do with these indomitable people puzzled the Indian Bureau and the army.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

In December a great council was held in the barrack prison. The Sioux chiefs, Red Cloud, American Horse, Red Dog, and No Flesh, came over from their agency to attend it. The Government was represented by Captains Wessells and Vroom and their juniors. The Cheyennes were gathered in a close circle, the officers and visiting chiefs near its centre, the bucks back of them, and farther back still the squaws and children.

Red Cloud was the principal Sioux speaker. He said in substance:

“Our hearts are sore for you.

“Many of our own blood are among your dead. This has made our hearts bad.

“But what can we do? The Great Father Is all-powerful. His people fill the whole earth. We must do what he says. We have begged him to allow you to come to live among us. We hope he may let you come. What we have we will share with you. But, remember, what he directs, that you must do.

“We cannot help you. The snows are thick on the hills. Our ponies are thin. The game is scarce. You cannot resist, nor can we. So listen to your old friend and do without complaint what the Great Father tells you.”

The old Cheyenne war chief, Dull Knife, then stepped slowly to the centre of the circle, a grim, lean figure.

Erect, despite his sixty-odd years, with a face of a classical Roman profile, with the steady, penetrating glance and noble, commanding bearing of a great leader of men. Dull Knife stood in his worn canvas moccasins and ragged, threadbare blanket, the very personification of the greatness of heart and soul that cannot be subdued by poverty and defeat.

Never when riding at the head of hundreds of his wild warriors, clad in the purple of his race — leggings of golden yellow buckskin, heavily beaded, blanket of dark blue broadcloth, warbonnnet of eagles' feathers that trailed behind him on the ground, necklace of bears' claws, the spoils of many a deadly tussle — never in his life did Dull Knife look more a chieftain than there in his captivity and rags.

He first addressed the Sioux:

“We know you for our friends, whose words we may believe. We thank you for asking us to share your lands. We hope the Great Father will let us come to you. All we ask is to be allowed to live, and to live in peace. I seek no war with any one. An old man, my fighting days are done. We bowed to the will of the Great Father and went far into the south where he told us to go. There we found a Cheyenne cannot live. Sickness came among us that made mourning in every lodge. Then the treaty promises were 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 officers:

“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 cannot 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 momentarily 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. January opened with very bitter weather. Six or eight inches of snow covered the ground. The mercury daily made long excursions below zero. Even the troops in cantonment at Canby were suffering severely from the cold — some with frozen feet and hands. It was all but impossible weather for marching.

Nevertheless, on January 5th, Captain Wessells received orders from the War Department to immediately start Dull Knife's band, as quietly and peaceably as possible, and under proper escort, on the march to Fort Reno, six hundred miles away in the south! This was the decision of the Indian Bureau, and the Secretary of War was requested to have the decision immediately enforced. Hence the order which reached Captain Wessells.

Captain Wessells sent a guard to the barrack and had Dull Knife, Old Crow, and Wild Hog brought into his presence at headquarters. On the arrival of the Indians a council was held. Captain Wessells advised them of the order of the Department that they were to return to the Indian Territory.

Dull Knife rose to reply. His whole figure trembled with rage; his bronze cheeks assumed a deeper red; the fires of suppressed passion blazed through his eyes until they glittered with the ferocity of an enraged beast at bay. Nevertheless, he spoke slowly and almost calmly. He did not have much to say. He made no threats or gestures.

He said he had listened to what the Great Father had ordered. It was the dearest wish of him and his people to try to do what the Great Father desired, for they knew they were helpless in his hands. But now the Great Father was telling them to do what they could not do — to try to march to the Indian Territory in such weather. Many would be sure to perish on the way, and those who reached the reservation would soon fall victims to the fevers that had already brought mourning into nearly all their lodges. If, then, the Great' Father wished them to die — very well, only they would die where they then were, if necessary by their own hands. They would not return to the south, and they would not leave their barrack prison.

Captain Wessells knew that Dull Knife's complaint was well founded. Still, bound by the rigid rules of the service, he had absolutely no latitude whatever. He therefore directed the interpreter to explain to Dull Knife that the orders were imperative and must be obeyed, and to assure him that the cavalry escort would do all in their power to save the Indians from any unnecessary hardship on the journey.

Dull Knife, however, remained firm, and his companions, when appealed to, only growled a brief assent to Dull Knife's views.

“Then, Interpreter,” said Wessells, “tell them their food and fuel will be stopped entirely until they conclude to come peaceably out of their barrack, ready to march south as ordered.”

The three chiefs silently heard their sentence, and were then quickly marched back to their barrack prison by a file of soldiers.

All this occurred shortly after “guard mount” in the morning.

Apart from its inhumanity, Wessells's order was bad policy. Hunger drives the most cowardly to violence. Then, to add to the wretched plight of the Indians, they we all but naked. No clothing had been issued to them since their capture, and they were clad only in tattered blankets and fragments of tent cloth. Requisitions for clothing had been sent to the Indian Bureau, but none had come.

Thus, half naked, without food or fires, these miserable people starved and shivered for five days and nights, but with no thought of surrender!

Captain Wessells sent the interpreter to propose that the children be removed and fed, but tliis they refused; they said they preferred to die together.

For five days and nights the barrack rang with shrill, terrible death chants. It was clear that they had resolved to die, and weakening fast indeed they were under the rigors of cold and hunger, weakening in all but spirit.

The morning of the ninth of January, the fifth day of their compulsory fast, Captain Wessells again summoned Dull Knife, Old Crow, and Wild Hog to a council.

Only the two latter came.

Suspecting violence, the Indians refused to let their old chief leave the barrack.

Asked if they were ready to surrender, Wild Hog replied that they would die first.

The two chiefs were then ordered seized and ironed. In the struggle Wild Hog succeeded in seriously stabbing Private Ferguson of Troop A, and sounded his war cry as an alarm to his people.

Instantly pandemonium broke loose in the Indian barrack.

They realized the end was at hand.

The war songs of the warriors rang loudly above the shrill death chants of the squaws.

Windows and doors were quickly barricaded.

The floor of the barrack was torn up and rifle-pits were dug beneath it.

Stoves and flooring were broken into convenient shapes for use as war clubs.

The twenty-odd rifles and pistols which had been smuggled into the barrack, by slinging them about the waists of the squaws beneath their blankets, at the time of the capture, were soon brought from their hiding place and loaded.

They expected an immediate attack, but none came.

And all day long the garrison was kept under arms, ready for any sortie by the Indians.

Night at last came, and, notwithstanding the terrible warnings of the day, no extraordinary precautions were taken. A guard of only seventeen men were under arms, and of these only a few were on post about this barrack full of maddened savages.

All but Captain Wessells were so certain of a desperate outbreak that night that Lieutenant Baxter and several other officers sat fully dressed and armed in their quarters, awaiting the first alarm.

“Taps” sounded at nine o'clock, the barracks were soon darkened, and the troopers retired.

Only a few lights burned in the officers' quarters and at the trader's store.

The night was still and fearfully cold, the earth hid by the snow.

Ten o'clock came, and just as the “all's well” was passing from one sentry to another, a buck fired through a window and killed a sentry, jumped through the window and got the sentry's carbine and belt, and sprang back into the barrack. Then two or three bucks ran out of the west door, where they quickly shot down Corporal Pulver and Private Hulz, both of Troop A, and Private Tommeny, of Troop E.

At doors and windows the barrack now emptied its horde of desperate captives, maddened by injustice and wild from hunger. Nevertheless, they acted with method and generalship, and with heroism worthy of the noblest men of any race.

The bucks armed with firearms were the first to leave the barrack. These formed in line in front of the barrack and opened fire on the guardhouse and upon the troopers as they came pouring out of neighboring barracks. Thus they held the garrison in check until the women and children and the old and infirm were in full flight.

Taken completely by surprise, the troops, nevertheless, did fearfully effective work. Captain Wessells soon had them out, and not a few entered into the fight and pursuit clad in nothing but their underclothing, hatless and shoeless.

The fugitives took the road to the sawmill crossing of White River, only a few hundred yards distant from their barracks, crossed the White River, and started southwest toward my ranch, where they evidently expected to mount themselves out of my herd of cow ponies, for they carried with them all their lariats, saddles, and bridles to this point. Here, pressed hopelessly close by the troops, their gallant rear-guard melting fast before the volleys of the pursuers, the Indians dropped their horse equipments, turned, and recrossed White River, and headed for the high, precipitous divide between Soldier Creek and White River, two miles nearer their then position than the cliffs about my ranch. They knew their only chance lay in quickly reaching hills inaccessible to cavalry.

All history affords no record of a more heroic, forlorn hope than this Cheyenne sortie.

Had the bucks gone alone, many would surely have escaped, but they resolved to die together and to protect their women and children to the last.

Thus more than half their fighting men fell in the first half mile of this flying fight. And as the warriors fell, their arms were seized by the squaws and boys, who wielded them as best they could!

In the gloom of night the soldiers could not distinguish a squaw from a buck. Lieutenant Cummings fell into a washout near the sawmill nearly atop of two Indians. They attacked him with knives, but he succeeded in killing both with his pistol — only to find that they were squaws!

The struggle was often hand-to-hand, and many of the dead were powder-burned. For a long distance the trail was strewn thick with bodies.

A sergeant and several men were pursuing two isolated fugitives who proved to be a buck and squaw. Suddenly the two fugitives turned and charged their pursuers, the buck armed with a pistol, the squaw with a piece of an iron stove! They were shot down.

This running fight afoot continued for nearly a mile, when the troops, many of them already badly frozen, were hurried back to the garrison to get needed clothing and their mounts.

[E. B. Bronson, who tells the tale, was in his ranch five miles away that night but the sound of firing at ten o'clock caused him to mount horse and hurry to the Fort with a friend.]

Presently, nearing the narrow fringe of timber that lined the stream, we could see ahead of us a broad, dark line dividing the snow: it was the trail of pursued and pursuers — the line of flight. Come to it, we halted.

There at our feet, grim and stark and terrible in the moonlight, lay the dead and wounded, so thick for a long way that one could leap from one body to another; there they lay grim and stark, soldiers and Indians, the latter lean and gaunt as wolves from starvation, awful with their wounds, infinitely pathetic on this bitter night in their ragged, half-clothed nakedness.

We started to ride across the trail, when in a fallen buck I happened to notice I recognized Buffalo Hump, Dull Knife's son.

He lay on his back, with arms extended and face upturned. In his right hand he held a small knife, a knife worn by years and years of use from the useful proportions of a butcher knife until the blade was no more than one quarter of an inch wide at the hilt, a knife descended to domestic use by the squaws as an awl in sewing moccasins, and yet the only weapon this magnificent warrior could command in this his last fight for freedom!

As I sat on my horse looking down at Buffalo Hump, believing him dead, the picture rose in my mind of the council in which he had stalked from end to end of the barrack, burning with an anger and hatred which threatened even then and there to break out into violence, when suddenly he rose to a sitting position and aimed a fierce blow at my leg with his knife. Instinctively, as he rose, I spurred my horse out of his reach and jerked my pistol, but before I could use it he fell back and lay still — dead. So died Buffalo Hump, a warrior capable, with half a chance, of making martial history worthy even of his doughty old father.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Immediately on hearing the fire, Vroom, at Camp Canby, had thrown two troops in skirmish order across the valley to prevent escape to the east, and hurried into Robinson himself at the head of a third troop.

Already mounted, Vroom was the first to overtake and re-engage the flying Cheyennes, whose knowledge of the geography of the country proved remarkable. They had selected a high bluff two miles west of the post as their means of escape, its summit inaccessible to horsemen for more than six miles from the point of their ascent. Almost daily for months had I ridden beneath this bluff and would readily have sworn not even a mountain goat could ascend to its summit; but, hidden away in an angle of the cliff lay a slope accessible to footmen, and this the Indians knew and sought.

Just below this slope Vroom brought the rear guard to bay, and a brief, desperate engagement was fought. The Indians succeeded in holding the troops in check until all but those fallen under the fire of Vroom's command were able to reach the summit.

Here on this slope, fighting in the front ranks of the rear guard, the “Princess,” Dull Knife's youngest daughter, was killed!

Further pursuit until daylight being impossible, the troopers were marched back into the garrison.

By daylight the hospital was filled with wounded Indians, and thirty-odd dead — bucks, squaws, and children — lay in a row by the roadside near the sawmill, and there later they were buried in a common trench.

At dawn of the tenth, Captain Wessells led out four troops of cavalry, and, after a couple of hours' scouting, found that the Indians had followed for ten miles the summit of the high divide between White River and Soldier Creek, traveling straight away westward, and then had descended to the narrow valley of Soldier Creek, up which the trail lay plain to follow through the snow as a beaten road.

Along this trail Captain Vroom led the column at the head of his troop. Next behind him rode Lieut. George A. Dodd, then a youngster not long out of West Point, and later for many years recognized as the crack cavalry captain of the army. Next behind Dodd I rode.

Ahead of the column a hundred yards rode Woman's Dress, a Sioux scout.

For seventeen miles from the post the trail showed that the fugitives had made no halt! A marvelous march on such a bitter night for a lot of men, women, and children many of them wounded, all half clad and practically starved for five days!

Presently the trail wound round the foot of a high, steep hill, the crest of which was covered with fallen timber, a hill so steep the column was broken into single file to pass it. Here the trail could be seen winding on through the snow over another hill a half mile ahead.

Thus an ambush was the last thing expected, but, after passing the crest of the second hill, the Indians had made a wide detour to the north, gained the fallen timber on the crest of this first hill, and had there entrenched themselves.

So it happened that at the moment the head of Vroom's column came immediately beneath their entrenchment, the Cheyennes opened fire at short range, emptied two or three saddles, and naturally and rightly enough stampeded the leading troop into the brush ahead of and back of the hill, for it was no place to stand and make a fight.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

Nothing remained but to make a run for the brush, and a good run he made of it, but, encumbered with a buffalo overcoat and labouring through the heavy snow, he soon got winded and dropped a moment for rest behind the futile shelter of a sage bush.

Meantime, the troopers had reached the timber, dismounted, taken positions behind trees, and were pouring into the Indian stronghold a fire so heavy that Dodd was soon able to make another run and escape to the timber unscathed.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

The Indian stronghold on the hilltop was soon surrounded and held under a desultory long-range fire all day, as the position was one impregnable to a charge.

No packs or rations having been brought, at nightfall Captain Wessells built decoy campfires about the Indians' position and marched the command back into the garrison.

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

⁎

He told me Lieutenant Baxter, with a detachment of ten men, had located, on the slope of a bluff a mile east of the Deadman Ranch, a camp of Indians which he believed represented a large band of hostiles still loose.

Pointing to a spur of the bluffs, three or four hundred feet high, standing well out into the valley a scant mile east of my ranch, the trooper hurried on in to the garrison for reinforcements, and I spurred away for the bluff, and soon could see a line of dismounted troopers strung along the crest of the ridge.

As I rode up to the foot of the bluff, skirmish firing began on top of the ridge.

After running my horse as far up the hill as its precipitous nature would permit, I started afoot climbing for the crest, but, finding it inaccessible at that point, started around the face of the bluff to the east to find a practicable line of ascent, when suddenly I was startled to hear the ominous, shrill buzz of rifle balls just above my head, from the skirmish line on the crest of the ridge — startled, indeed, for I had supposed the Indians to be on the crest of the bluff, farther to the south.

Dropping behind a tree and looking downhill, I saw a faint curl of smoke rising from a little washout one hundred yards below me, and, crouched beside the smouldering fire in the washout, a lone Indian.

This warrior's fight and death was characteristic of the magnificent spirit which had inspired the band, from the beginning of the campaign at Fort Reno.

In mid-afternoon, scouting to the south of the garrison for trails, Lieutenant Baxter had discovered this campfire, and, quite naturally assuming that none but a considerable band of the Indians would venture upon building a campfire so near to the garrison, had immediately sent a trooper courier into the garrison with advice of his discovery.

Then he dismounted his command and approached the campfire in open skirmish order, until it was plain to be seen that the fire was deserted. The trail of a single Indian led into the washout, and imprints in the snow showed where he had sat, evidently for some hours, beside the fire. But of the washout's fugitive tenant no trace could be found, no trail showing his route of departure. In one direction along a sharp ridge leading toward the hogback's crest, the snow was blown away, the ground bare, and this seemed to be his natural line of flight from Baxter's detachment.

After what all believed a thorough search of the vicinity of the fire. Lieutenant Baxter left Corporal Everett and a trooper near the fire, and, remounting, led the balance of his men up the slope with the view to cut the Cheyenne's trail wheresoever it might again enter the snow.

Baxter was gone barely ten minutes when he was startled by two rifle shots in his rear, from the vicinity of the fire! Looking back, he saw his two troopers prostrate in the snow, and later learned that Everett and his mate, while stamping about to keep warm, had approached a little shallow washout within thirty yards of the fire that all vowed they had looked into, and suddenly had discovered the Indian lying at its bottom, wrapped in a length of dirty old canvas the precise color of the gray clay soil which doubtless had served to conceal him through the earlier search. The moment the Indian made sure he was discovered, he cast open his canvas wrap and fired twice with a carbine, shooting Corporal Everett through the stomach and killing him almost instantly, and seriously wounding his mate.

Thus rudely taught that humanity was useless, and that it must be a fight to the death, observing “Papa” Lawson approaching from the fort at the head of his troop, Baxter swung his own men up and along the top of the ridge, where they could better command the old Cheyenne's position, and opened on him a heavy fire — and it was just at this juncture I arrived.

Immediately after I first sighted the Indian, “Papa” Lawson swung around the foot of the hill with his troop, dismounted, and charged up on foot — thus making sixty men concentrated upon one!

The old Cheyenne kept up his rapid fire as long as he could. Toward the last I plainly saw him fire his carbine three times with his left hand, resting the barrel along the edge of the washout, while his right hand hung helpless beside him.

Suddenly I saw him drop down in the bottom of the washout, limp as an empty sack.

When we came up to him it appeared that while the shot that killed him had entered the top of his head, he nevertheless earlier in the engagement had been hit four times — once through the right shoulder, once through the left cheek, once in the right side, and a fourth ball toward the last had completely shattered his right wrist.

It was apparent that he had been making a desperate break to reach my horses, which usually ran in the very next canyon to the west, for he still carried with him a lariat and bridle; but his unprotected feet had been so badly frozen during the night that he had become entirely unable to travel farther, and, realizing himself to be utterly helpless, in sheer desperation had built a fire to get what poor, miserable comfort he could for the few minutes or hours remaining to him!

A curious incident here followed.

An ambulance had come with Lawson's troop to the field, in which the body of Everett and his wounded mate were placed, while the body of the dead Cheyenne was thrown into the boot at the back of the conveyance. Upon arrival in the garrison, Lieutenant Baxter discovered that the body of the Indian had been lost out of the boot on the short four-mile journey into Robinson, and sent back a sergeant and detail of men to recover it. But the most careful search along the trail failed to reveal any trace of the body, and whatever became of it to this day remains a mystery. On the night of the tenth, fifty-two Indians had been captured, approximately half of them more or less badly wounded, and thirty-seven were known to have been killed, leaving a total of sixty unaccounted for.

Still without food, on the morning of the eleventh, the seventh day of their fast, and unable to march farther. Captain Wessells's column found the fugitives occupying a strong position in the thick timber along Soldier Creek at the foot of the hill upon which they had been entrenched the day before, better sheltered from the severity of the weather.

Again long-range firing was the order of the day, for a charge would have incurred needless hazard.

During this day the Indians succeeded in killing a troop horse on an exposed hillside within three or four hundred yards of their position. The rider narrowly escaped with his life.

The ground where the horse fell was so openly exposed, the carcass had to be left where it had fallen, and that night, after Captain Wessells had again marched his command back to the garrison, the carcass furnished the first food these poor wretches had eaten for seven days!

That their hearts were firm as ever and that all they needed was a little physical strength the next few days effectually proved.

The twelfth they lay eating and resting, and when on the thirteenth, Wessells's column returned to the attack, the Indians were found six miles farther to the west, well entrenched on the Hat Creek Bluffs, and there again an ambush was encountered in which two troopers were wounded.

On this day a twelve-pound Napoleon gun was brought into action, and forty rounds of shell were thrown into the Indians' position, without dislodging them.

The same day Captain Wessells and Lieutenants Crawford and Hardie crept near the rifle-pits with an interpreter and called to the Cheyennes to bring out their women and children, promising them shelter and protection. A feeble volley was the only reply!

Realizing the Indians had now reached a cattle country in which they could kill meat and subsist themselves. Captain Wessells had brought out a pack-train, with blankets and rations, to enable him to surround the Indians' position at night, and, should they slip away, to camp on their trail.

This night they were surrounded, but at dawn on the fourteenth, Lieutenant Crawford discovered the wily enemy had again slipped through the picket lines, headed south-westward along the high bluffs which lined the southern edge of Hat Creek Basin.

For six days more the same tactics on both sides prevailed; the Indians were daily followed in running fight, or brought to bay in strong positions practically impregnable of direct attack, surrounded at nightfall, only to glide away like veritable shadows during the night, and of course more or less were killed in these daily engagements. On the twentieth, Captain Wessells's command was joined by Lieutenant Dodd and a large band of Sioux scouts.

Tuesday, the twenty-first (January, 1879), saw the finish.

At a point on the Hat Creek Bluffs, near the head of War Bonnet Creek, forty-four miles a little to the south of west of Fort Robinson, the Cheyennes lay at bay in their last entrenchment, worn out with travel and fighting, and with scarcely any ammunition left.

They were in a washout about fifty feet long, twelve feet wide, and five feet deep; near the edge of the bluffs.

Skirmishers were thrown out beneath them on the slope of the bluff to prevent their escape in that direction, and then Captain Wessells advanced on the washout, with his men formed in open skirmish order.

A summons through the interpreter to surrender was answered by a few scattering shots from the washout.

Converging on the washout in this charge, the troopers soon were advancing in such a dense body that nothing saved them from terrible slaughter but the exhaustion of the Cheyennes' ammunition.

Charging to the edge of the pit, the troopers emptied their carbines into it, sprang back to reload, and then came on again, while above the crash of the rifles arose the hoarse death chants of the expiring band.

The last three warriors alive — and God knows they deserve the name of warriors if ever men deserved it — sprang out of their defences, one armed with an empty pistol and two with knives, and madly charged the troops!

Three men charged three hundred!

They fell, shot to pieces like men fallen under platoon fire.

And then the fight was over.

The little washout was a shambles, whence the troops removed twenty-two dead and nine living, and of the living all but two (women) were badly wounded! These were all that remained out of the sixty unaccounted for after the fighting near Fort Robinson, excepting five or six bucks, among them Chief Dull Knife, who had been cut off from the main band in the first night's fight and had escaped to the Sioux.

And among the Ogallala Sioux thereafter, till he died, dwelt Dull Knife, grim and silent as Sphinx or dumb man; brooding his wrongs; cursing the fate that had denied him the privilege to die fighting with his people; sitting alone daily for hours on the crest of a Wounded Knee bluff rising near his teepee, and gazing longingly across the wide reaches of the Bad Lands to a faint blue line, on the north-western horizon, that marked his old highland home in the Black Hills.

The Message of the Indian

The message of the Indian for us is sixfold:

1st. He was the great prophet of outdoor life. He was strong when he lived in the sun; and when, under pressure, he took to a house, he was like Samson shorn of his hair. By the physical perfection of his body, he showed the truth of his way. He was a living protest against house-life. He, above all others, can show us how to get the joys, and escape the dangers, of life in the open air.

2nd. He was a master of woodcraft — woodcraft, the oldest of all the sciences; the one, that, above all, makes for manhood. Strength, speed, skill, courage, knowledge of the woods and its creatures, star-wisdom, water-wisdom, plant lore, and everything that makes for the well-built man in masterful touch with a large environment of blue air, is part of woodcraft. And in this above all other men, the Indian can be our guide.

3rd. He taught the sacred duty of reverencing, beautifying and perfecting the body.

4th. He sought for the beautiful in everything. He teaches us that, if we have the spirit of beauty within, we may beautify everything in every office and walk of our lives. Every weapon, tool, utensil, garment and house; yes, every gesture — he has taught us how to make beautiful. His songs, stories, dances, ceremonies, his system of etiquette and courtesy, were expressions in his daily life that proved his mind; and in the making of beautiful tents, blankets, baskets and canoes, he has easily led the world. These things were mere expressions of his broad creed that the Great Spirit is in everything, everywhere, all the time.

5th. He solved one great economic problem that vexes us to-day. By his life and tribal constitution, he has shown us that the nationalization of all natural resources and national interests puts a stop at once equally to abject poverty and to monstrous wealth.

6th. He was the world's great historic protest against avarice. Under various euphonious names we encourage greed as a safeguard against destitution. He showed that it has no bearing on the case and that it unavoidably ends in measureless crime:

That seems to be the sixfold message of the Indian; but there is also a thought that will not down, as one reads these chronicles of a trampled race.

The law of this land gives every one the right to think and decide for himself, so long as he does not infringe on the rights of others. No man may compel the conscience of another, except that other be a soldier or a marine. When a man joins army or navy, he must leave his conscience behind. That is the law. Why? Because those in the high place of authority know so well that the soldier or sailor, going to the front and seeing with his own eyes the abominations and human tortures that warfare really means, would be so horror-stricken that he would recoil as from a very hell. He would refuse to be a party to such unspeakable atrocities, and so army and navy, yes, the whole system back of it, would crumble.

No, sir, discipline must be maintained. The soldier and sailor must leave his conscience at home and do as he is told, stifling the voice within that tells him he is espousing the cause of Jezebel, Herod and Moloch, and pledging his manhood to the service of hell.

When General Crook set off in deep winter to hound the Dakota patriots to their death, and to slaughter their women and babies, he admitted, as we have seen, that it was a hard campaign to go on. “But,” he added, “the hardest thing is to go and fight those whom we know are right.”

Then why did he go?

If Crook had been ordered by the War Department to nail the Saviour to the Cross, I suppose he would have done it, and wept as he obeyed; or, under orders of Herod, he would have slaughtered the babes of Bethlehem as expeditiously as his broken heart would have allowed. The British general who led his troops against China, probably all against his better judgment, and there, by force and bloodshed, established the diabolical opium traffic, obeyed his government, indeed, and gained some money for his country's merchants. But he made an awful day of reckoning for himself and for his race.

When the French army decided that it was wise to sacrifice innocent Dreyfus for the cause of patriotism, they set the army above justice and their country in a higher place than God. And thus struck France a blow from which she never yet has recovered — we cannot tell — maybe a death-blow.

Most men agree with the Indian that courage is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of virtues. How many of them dare live up to this belief? To most men, in some measure, there comes a time when they must decide between their duty to country and their duty to God. How many dare take the one course that they know to be right? Are there no times when man's allegiance to high principle must override his allegiance to constituted authority? No? Then, how do you justify 1776? And the martyrs, from Socrates, seditious preacher of the truth, right down to men of our own times; were they all wrong? All set their God above their country's laws, and suffered cruel, shameful deaths.

If they did not teach us by their lives and deaths that justice and truth are above every consideration of one's country and its laws, then Socrates, St. Peter, St. Stephen, St. Paul, St. John, Becket, Huss, Coligny, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer — yes, the Lord Himself — all lived and died in vain.

THE END