Indian Heroes and Great ChieftainsEastman, Charles A.
History
Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains
Eastman, Charles A.
Dakota Indians -- Biography; Heroes; Indians of North America -- Biography
When he reached the military camp, Little Big Man walked arm-in-arm with
him, and his cousin and friend, Touch-the-Cloud, was just in advance.
After they passed the sentinel, an officer approached them and walked
on his other side. He was unarmed but for the knife which is carried for
ordinary uses by women as well as men. Unsuspectingly he walked toward
the guardhouse, when Touch-the-Cloud suddenly turned back exclaiming:
“Cousin, they will put you in prison!”
“Another white man’s trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting!” cried Crazy
Horse. He stopped and tried to free himself and draw his knife, but
both arms were held fast by Little Big Man and the officer. While he
struggled thus, a soldier thrust him through with his bayonet from
behind. The wound was mortal, and he died in the course of that night,
his old father singing the death song over him and afterward carrying
away the body, which they said must not be further polluted by the touch
of a white man. They hid it somewhere in the Bad Lands, his resting
place to this day.
Thus died one of the ablest and truest American Indians. His life was
ideal; his record clean. He was never involved in any of the numerous
massacres on the trail, but was a leader in practically every open
fight. Such characters as those of Crazy Horse and Chief Joseph are not
easily found among so-called civilized people. The reputation of great
men is apt to be shadowed by questionable motives and policies, but here
are two pure patriots, as worthy of honor as any who ever breathed God’s
air in the wide spaces of a new world.
SITTING BULL
IT is not easy to characterize Sitting Bull, of all Sioux chiefs most
generally known to the American people. There are few to whom his name
is not familiar, and still fewer who have learned to connect it with
anything more than the conventional notion of a bloodthirsty savage. The
man was an enigma at best. He was not impulsive, nor was he phlegmatic.
He was most serious when he seemed to be jocose. He was gifted with the
power of sarcasm, and few have used it more artfully than he.
His father was one of the best-known members of the Unkpapa band of
Sioux. The manner of this man’s death was characteristic. One day, when
the Unkpapas were attacked by a large war party of Crows, he fell upon
the enemy’s war leader with his knife. In a hand-to-hand combat of
this sort, we count the victor as entitled to a war bonnet of trailing
plumes. It means certain death to one or both. In this case, both men
dealt a mortal stroke, and Jumping Buffalo, the father of Sitting Bull,
fell from his saddle and died in a few minutes. The other died later
from the effects of the wound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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