Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 39

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

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

CHAPTER XXIV

SITTING BULL THE WAR MAKER (1876-1881)

AN UNCONQUERED LEADER

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

This closed the road, and gave the Powder River region to the Sioux.

They might chase the buffalo, from central Wyoming up across Montana clear to Canada, and no white man could interfere. It was their own game reserve--and the best game reserve in the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They feared him.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sitting Bull. Courtesy of The American Bureau of Ethnology.]

To be the first to count coup on a fallen enemy was high honor.

Frequently a wounded warrior only pretended to be dead, and when his foe approached him close, he shot.

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

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

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

He limped, from a wound.

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

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

Along in 1871 the Northern Pacific Railroad wished to build westward.

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

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

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

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

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

Coached by Spotted Tail and by Red Cloud, the Sioux laughed, and asked sixty millions of dollars. So the deal did not go through, this time.

However, the Sioux lost Pah-sap-pa, just the same.

The United States Government was unable to keep the gold-seekers out.

They dodged through the troops. There were fights with the Sioux, and the Sioux became angered in earnest.

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

The Sioux on the reservations began to leave, and join Sitting Bull.

They felt that Red Cloud's heart was with them. He had notified the United States that it must keep the white men out of Sioux country.

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

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

Sitting Bull answered:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chief Gall, a fine man, of the Hunkpapas, was head war chief; his aide was Crow King. Crazy Horse commanded the Northern Cheyennes. The head of the Miniconjou Sioux was Lame Deer. Big Road commanded the Oglalas.

There were other Sioux also--some Brules, and some Without Bows; and a few Blackfeet and Arapahos.

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

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