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
From this point of view we shall consider Sitting Bull’s career. We say
he is an untutored man: that is true so far as learning of a literary
type is concerned; but he was not an untutored man when you view him
from the standpoint of his nation. To be sure, he did not learn his
lessons from books. This is second-hand information at best. All that he
learned he verified for himself and put into daily practice. In personal
appearance he was rather commonplace and made no immediate impression,
but as he talked he seemed to take hold of his hearers more and more. He
was bull-headed; quick to grasp a situation, and not readily induced to
change his mind. He was not suspicious until he was forced to be so. All
his meaner traits were inevitably developed by the events of his later
career.
Sitting Bull’s history has been written many times by newspaper men and
army officers, but I find no account of him which is entirely correct.
I met him personally in 1884, and since his death I have gone thoroughly
into the details of his life with his relatives and contemporaries. It
has often been said that he was a physical coward and not a warrior.
Judge of this for yourselves from the deed which first gave him fame in
his own tribe, when he was about twenty-eight years old.
In an attack upon a band of Crow Indians, one of the enemy took his
stand, after the rest had fled, in a deep ditch from which it seemed
impossible to dislodge him. The situation had already cost the lives of
several warriors, but they could not let him go to repeat such a boast
over the Sioux!
“Follow me!” said Sitting Bull, and charged. He raced his horse to the
brim of the ditch and struck at the enemy with his coup-staff, thus
compelling him to expose himself to the fire of the others while
shooting his assailant. But the Crow merely poked his empty gun into his
face and dodged back under cover. Then Sitting Bull stopped; he saw that
no one had followed him, and he also perceived that the enemy had no
more ammunition left. He rode deliberately up to the barrier and threw
his loaded gun over it; then he went back to his party and told them
what he thought of them.
“Now,” said he, “I have armed him, for I will not see a brave man killed
unarmed. I will strike him again with my coup-staff to count the first
feather; who will count the second?”
Again he led the charge, and this time they all followed him. Sitting
Bull was severely wounded by his own gun in the hands of the enemy, who
was killed by those that came after him. This is a record that so far as
I know was never made by any other warrior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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