But then the Sioux uprising called him and his troops away to the north, because of the smallness of the army. Crook, a general now, tried to round up the Sioux with two thousand soldiers, whom he had drained the west to get. Conditions there wouldn’t permit him to use his Apache methods. Even under his able leadership he was nearly trapped and reduced to starvation. All he could do was to make his escape and let the Indians roam on. The Sioux were too strong for his puny force. Meanwhile the Apaches were left to the control of Indian Agents, who mishandled, defrauded and abused them. So awful did the conditions become, that even in the east the President felt obliged to send General Crook back to the Apaches in 1882. There Crook, after six years’ absence, found his previous work had been worse than undone. The Agents had ejected the Indians from their reservations because silver had been found there, had thrown them into prison to languish for months without trial, starved them, stolen their crops and in general treated them like cattle. Crook set himself to win them back by his old methods. But it was a monstrous task now, since the Indian had been infuriated afresh and had lost faith in all whites. In his old, bold way Crook set out through the trails to investigate complaints and find out the causes. Fortunately the Indians recognized and remembered him. They told him stories that would have wrung pity from a hardened criminal. But the way they met him--a real friend and champion after all these years of cruelty--was pathetic in its child-like appeal. The faces of the old men brightened and the squaws wept when they saw him again. The chieftain, Old Pedro, with dimmed eyes spoke to him pitifully. His words were taken down at the time and here they are: “When you, General Crook, were here, whenever you said a thing, we knew it was true, and we kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was here, our women and children were happy and our young people grew up contented. And I remember Brown, Randall, and the other officers who treated us kindly and were our friends. I used to be happy. Now I am all the time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where is old Colonel John Green, and Randall, and those other good officers, and what has become of them? Where have they gone? Why don’t they come back? And the young men all say the same thing’.”