Edmund B. Tuttle

“ Iron Bull said that about two hundred years ago, when the moon shone brighter, and there were more stars, his nation was a great people, and they roamed over all that country from the Missouri River to the west of the Yellowstone, and no dog of a Sioux dare show himself there. But the people had been wicked, and the Great Spirit had darkened the heavens and made the sun to shine with such heat that the streams were dried up, and the snow disappeared from the highest peaks of the mountains. ”

“ Among other things, Red Cloud said:
"I have tried to get from my Great Father what is right and just. I have not altogether succeeded. I want you to believe with me, to know with me, that which is right and just. I represent the whole Sioux nation. They will be grieved by what I represent. I am no Spotted Tail, who will say one thing one day, and be bought for a fish the next. Look at me! I am poor, naked, but I am chief of a nation. We do not ask for riches; we do not want much; but we want our children properly trained and brought up. We look to you for that. Riches here do no good. ”

“ If one could imagine a mass of beauty, loveliness, and full dress crowded into rather a small compass, with thirty Indians, and as many more of the male sex of our own color, all eating, chatting, and laughing at the same time, then you have a faint idea of this first great entertainment to a body representing thirty thousand warriors, as a new feature of inaugurating peace for bloodshed, rapine, and murder, in the presidential state dining-room that night. ”

“ Our nation is melting away like the snow on the side of the hills where the sun is warm, while your people are like the blades of grass in the spring when summer is coming. I don't want to see the white people making roads in our country. Now that I have come into my Great Father's land, see if I have any blood when I return home. The white people have sprinkled blood on the blades of grass about the line of Fort Fetterman. Tell the Great Father to remove that fort, and then we will be peaceful, and there will be no more troubles. ”

“ If we find them fierce, hostile, and revengeful, if they are cruel, and sometimes perpetrate atrocities that sicken the soul, and almost paralyze us with horror,—burning and pillaging,—let us remember that two hundred and fifty years of injustice, oppression, and wrong, heaped upon them by our race, with cold, calculating, and relentless perseverance, have filled them with the passion of revenge and made them desperate. If you and I, boys, were Indians, we would do just as Indians do. ”

“ When we had a talk at the mouth of Horse Creek, in 1852, you made a chief of Conquering Bear and then destroyed him, and since then we have had no chief. You white people did the same to your great chief. You killed one of our great fathers. The Great Spirit makes us suffer for our wrong-doing. You promised us many things, but you never performed them. You take away everything. Even if you live forty years or fifty years in this world and then die, you cannot take all your goods with you. The Great Spirit will not make me suffer, because I am ignorant. ”

“ After a little while, all rose up from their knees, and the tall chief, standing erect, said, with beaming eye, "Say to the Father, say to him, it's all gone! all gone!" He added, "We are glad to hear such words from the Great Spirit. We have been told many words from our fathers many moons since; they have told us good words; that when we do wrong the Great Spirit is angry with us. Sometimes we forget what they told us, and do wrong, killing one another. ”

“ Some had on their drawers only,—some in one stocking, and many without boots,—all seized their arms, and rushing to the picket lines, unhitched their horses, jumped on with no time to saddle, and without hats galloped over the hills in pursuit of the flying Indians. Learning that some cattle were run off near the town, some of the soldiers galloped through the streets and hallooing "Indians!"—a cry the most terrible of all alarms along the border,—soon brought every man to his feet, and gun in hand, rush out to meet the foe. ”

“ No young warrior can get a wife till he has taken the scalp of a white man or Indian, and have stolen a horse or pony. This being a law of the Sioux, so in proportion as he scalps and steals horses so does his number of wives increase, and the greater a warrior does he become. In short, he becomes "a big heap chief." What to us becomes a murder or a theft,—the very first act of a young Indian,—in his own tribe is a great and praiseworthy deed. ”

“ The banks are skirted with cottonwood-trees, and to the west, one sees the tall spurs of the Rocky Mountains rising up, as it were, from your feet, their dizzy heights covered with snow; while the haze that surrounds them gives to them a halo of glory and weirdlike appearance, that the imaginative might compare to the garments that mantle the spirits of the blessed in Paradise! ”

“ I visited Omaha in the fall of 1869, where they were lodged in jail awaiting their trial. Just before I came one of them had escaped, and gone back to the Pawnee reservation, near Columbus. Here the sheriff and soldiers found him with his squaw, decked out in all their style of paint and ornament, ready for the sacrifice. He was ready and willing to be slain among his own people, but to go back and suffer the ignominy of being hung up by the neck till dead was more than he could bear. If the Indian dies in this way, all believe they cannot enter into the happy hunting-grounds. ”

“ But my father also told me to fight my enemies, and since the white man has made himself an enemy I fight him. How are you our enemy? You come here and drive away our game, and he who does that steals away our bread, and becomes the Indian's bitterest enemy, for the Indian must have food to live. I have fought you, and I have stolen from you, but I have done both to live. The only road you have a right to travel is the Platte road. We have never crossed it to fight you. I am a soldier. I have a great many young men here who are soldiers, and will do my bidding. ”

“ There was a treaty made, and the man who made the treaty (alluding to General Mitchell) , who performed that service for the government, told the truth. The goods which have been sent out to me have been stolen all along the road, and only a handful would reach to go among my nation.
"Look at me here! I am poor and naked. I was not provided with arms, and always wanted to be peaceful. The Great Spirit has raised you to read and write, and has put papers before you; but he has not raised me in that way. The men whom the President sends us are soldiers, and all have no sense and no heart. ”

“ But the general could wait his time, and the judgment of the whole people will be, to give him credit for a far-sighted policy, the result of a wise head and an understanding heart, that swerves neither to the right hand nor the left, so it be in the plain path of duty! Why not believe and trust him in the future, as we have in the past? We are to take care how we draw down upon our nation God's anger for previous years of injustice and bad treatment ”

“ Within the memory of the writer, the tomahawk once reflected the light of burning cabins along the Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers, and the scalping-knives dripped with the blood of our border settlers, as we have driven the Indians back, back, to the setting sun!
But behold the change to-day, where the church has missions, and the red men are treated like immortal beings, with souls to be saved.
Mr. Wm. Welsh says of what he saw in Nebraska: "The blanket and bow discarded; the spear is broken, and the hatchet and war-club lie buried. ”

“ The next speaker was a Crow chief, who, standing by the council-table, said,—
"Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Crows, Father: I have been listening to your words, and they sound good. I hope you are not lying to each other. The Crows have long been the friends of the whites, and we want peace for all. We want powder, and when the white Father makes us presents, I want him to give us a good deal of ammunition." ”

“ Arrived at Omaha, they were quartered at the Cozzens Hotel; but instead of occupying bedrooms and beds, they spread their blankets and skins on the floor, and sank down to a rest much coveted after a long and tedious journey of a thousand miles. Here crowds poured in from every quarter to interview these noted warriors; but as they did not speak English, they were only gazed at by curious people.
Red Dog ranks next as a warrior chief, and is much finer looking; but Man-afraid-of-his-Horses (sick at home) is head chief in civil matters. ”

“ Sometimes the chiefs and old Indians will cut slits in their cheeks and rub ashes in them, sitting over the fire and bemoaning the loss of their dead children. They present a horrid appearance to one who looks at their pagan mode of bewailing the departed.
Arrived at Fort Laramie on the third day, we were courteously welcomed by Colonel F. F. Flint, of the 4th Infantry, commandant of the post. Delicacy dictates that we forbear to speak of the charming family which surrounds him; but the rarity of Christian households in the army made our visit there like to an oasis in the desert. ”

“ Five hundred Indians of all ages flocked, soon as attacked, to the head chief's camp,—"Black Kettle,"—and he raised the American flag, with a white truce beneath. This, you know, is respected in all civilized warfare. Then the slaughter began.
One who saw it said, "The troops (mainly volunteers) committed all manner of depredations on their victims,—scalped them, knocked out their brains. The white men used their knives, cutting squaws to pieces, clubbed little children, knocking out their brains and mutilating their bodies in every sense of the word." ”

“ At one place there is a valley which has the appearance of a floor of an ancient lake, where turtles lie imbedded by hundreds, and some weighing a ton. This wonderful place looks like the city of the dead; and as nothing grows there, and there is no water for animals, no living thing is found there, not even a bird. General Sully made a forced march through it with cavalry a few years ago, and had to carry water for the men and horses. The Indians never go there, unless driven in by some tribe attacking in superior numbers. ”

“ Dear children, thanks to our holy religion, a few faithful men, taking their lives in their hands, have gone forth at the church's call,—bearing precious seed,—struggled and toiled, endured severe privations, afflictions, and trials, and saved in tears the germs of light, truth, and hope, which to-day have ripened into a glorious harvest of intelligence and Christian civilization! ”

“ Again, as the Indian is crowded back beyond the tide of emigration, and hanging like the froth of the billows upon the very edge is generally a host of law-defying whites, who introduce among the Indians every form of demoralization and disease with which depraved humanity in its most degraded form is afflicted. ”

“ Colonel Parker told him of the many difficulties the Indian Bureau had to contend with in order to get moneys through Congress, and the great difficulties such a great government as ours had to go through in conducting all its affairs. But he gave his word to Spotted Tail that all the promises now made in the treaties would be fulfilled, and that they should get the provisions as soon as possible. He said that the Indians must not go to war among themselves, preying on other tribes, nor must they fight any more against the people of the United States, nor steal their cattle or horses. ”

“ When the railroad had been built as far as Plum Creek, two hundred and thirty miles west of Omaha, in 1866, the track-layers saw a lot of Indians coming toward them from over the bluffs; and the poor Irishmen, dreading nothing so much as the sight of a red-skin, at once took to their heels to hide from the foe. ”

“ Boys would be surprised to see how much an Indian can eat at a single meal. A "big chief" can eat a whole goose or turkey at one sitting. The Indians eat right along, till they have gorged themselves and can eat no more. Perhaps it is because they seldom get what is called "a square meal," and so when plenty offers they make the most of it. One day, four chiefs of the Ar-ap-a-hoe tribe came to Fort Russell, to see about getting rations for three hundred of their tribe. ”

“ The hearts of the Indians were glad, and they ate and were merry, and returned thanks to the Great Spirit and to the good white woman.
The great fissure in the rocks is the cañon of the Big Horn River.
Iron Bull avers that when anything of note is about to befall the tribe, the image of the white woman can be seen hovering over the peak of the mountain at "Crazy Woman's Fork." He says the Crows have never killed any of the whites, and his people say and believe "that they are treated by the government agents worse than the tribes who give us all the trouble." ”

“ I want to receive some pay for the lands where you have made railroads. My Father has a great many children out West with no ears, brains, or heart. You have the names to the treaty of persons professing to be chiefs, but I am chief of that nation. Look at me. My hair is straight. I was free born on this land. An interpreter who signed the treaty has curly hair. He is no man. ”

“ INDIANS DON'T BELIEVE HALF THEY HEAR.
When several chiefs are allowed to visit Washington on errands for their tribes, to get more given them, they tell their people how numerous are the children of their Great Father they have met on their way, and what big guns they saw, etc. But those at home believe it is a lie, gotten up by the "white man's medicine," as they call it. All have heard of a young chief whose father gave a stick, on which he should cut a notch for every white man he met. ”