Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian WomenSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
History
Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian Women
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Indians of North America -- Biography; Indians of North America -- Wars
Back went the commission, to report that they could do nothing at all
with Sitting Bull.
Other parties from the American side of the line crossed over to talk
with Sitting Bull. He laid down the law to them.
"If the Great Father gives me a reservation I don't want to be held on
any part of it. I will keep on the reservation, but I want to go where
I please. I don't want a white man over me. I don't want an agent. I
want to have a white man with me, but not to be my chief. I can't
trust any one else to trade with my people or talk to them. I want
interpreters, but I want it to be seen and known that I have my rights.
I don't want to give up game as long as there is any game. I will be
half white until the game is gone. Then I will be all white."
"Did you lead in the Custer fight?"
"There was a Great Spirit who guided and controlled that battle. I
could do nothing. I was supported by the Great Mysterious One. I am
not afraid to talk about that. It all happened--it is past and gone.
I do not lie. Low Dog says I can't fight until some one lends me a
heart. Gall says my heart is no bigger than a finger-nail. We have
all fought hard. We did not know Custer. When we saw him we threw up
our hands, and I cried, 'Follow me and do as I do.' We whipped each
other's horses, and it was all over."
By this it is seen that Sitting Bull was a poser, and had lost the
respect of the Sioux. Chief Gall despised him. The camp was getting
unhappy. The life in Canada was not an easy life. The Great White
Mother let the red children stay, because it was Indian country, but
she refused to feed them, or help them against the United States.
There were no buffalo near. When the Sioux raided into the United
States, the soldiers and the Crow scouts were waiting. Their old
hunting grounds were closed tight.
Rain-in-the-face and other chiefs surrendered, to go to the
reservation. Chief Gall defied Sitting Bull, and took two thirds of
the remaining Indians and surrendered, also.
Sitting Bull now had only forty-five men and one hundred and forty
women and children. They all were starving. A white scout visited
them, with promise of pardon by the United States. So in July, of
1881, after he had stayed away four years, he surrendered, at Fort
Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone River.
He came in sullen and sour and unconquered, but not as a conqueror.
They all were dirty and shabby and hungry. With Sitting Bull there
rode on ponies his old father, Four Horns, and his elder children. In
a wagon piled high with camp goods rode his two wives, one of whom was
named Pretty Plume, and his small children.
A long train of other wagons and carts followed. There was no glory in
this return.
At the Standing Rock Sioux agency he found that Chief Gall was the real
ruler. The people there now thought little of Sitting Bull. His
medicine had proved weak. He tried to make it strong, and he was
laughed at.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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