So when the United States sent up after Sitting Bull, he laughed.
General Terry, his old enemy, was in the American party, and did the talking.
The President invited the Sioux to come back into the United States, and give up their arms and their horses, in exchange for cows. Sitting Bull replied scornfully.
"For sixty-four years you have kept me and my people, and treated us bad. What have we done that you should wish us to stop? We have done nothing. It is all the people on your side who have started us to do as we did. We could not go anywhere else, so we came here. I would like to know why you come here? I did not give you that country; but you followed me about, so I had to leave and come over to this country.
You have got ears, and eyes to see with, and you see how I live with these people. You see me. Here I am. If you think I am a fool, you are a bigger fool than I am. You come here to tell us lies, but we don"t want to hear them. I don"t wish any such language used to me.
This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and raise this country full of grown people. That is enough, so no more. The part of the country you gave me, you ran me out of. I don"t want to hear two more words. I wish you to go back, and to take it easy going back. Tell them in Washington if they have one man who speaks the truth to send him to me and I will listen. I don"t believe in a Government that has made fifty-two treaties with the Sioux and has kept none of them."
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.
Soon the Government deemed best to remove him and his main band, and shut them up for a while. Sitting Bull was kept a prisoner of war for two years. After that he took a trip through the East, but he was hissed. He rode in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show for a short time.
But the white people never forgot the Custer battle, and looked upon Sitting Bull as a thoroughly bad Indian.
He a.s.sumed to settle down, at peace, upon the Standing Rock reservation, in a cabin not far from the place where he had been born.
But as he had said, he was not "an agency Indian," and did not want to be an agency Indian.
There is another chapter to be written about Sitting Bull.
CHAPTER XXV
CHIEF JOSEPH GOES TO WAR (1877)
AND OUT-GENERALS THE UNITED STATES ARMY
After Colonel Nelson A. Miles of the Fifth Infantry had driven Sitting Bull and Chief Gall of the Sioux into Canada and his troops were trying to stop their raids back, at present Fort Keogh near Miles City on the Yellowstone River in southeastern Montana he received word of another Indian war.
The friendly Pierced Noses of Oregon had broken the peace chain. They had crossed the mountains and were on their way north, for Canada.
That the Pierced Noses had taken the war trail was astonishing news.
For one hundred years they had held the hand of the white man. Their proudest boast said: "The Nez Perces have never shed white blood."
They spoke truly. During the seventy years since the two captains Lewis and Clark had met them in 1805, only one white man had been killed by a Pierced Nose. That was not in war, but in a private quarrel between the two.
Hunters, traders and missionaries had always been helped by the Pierced Noses. The white man"s religion had been favored. The Good Book had been prized.
Young Chief Joseph was now the leader of the Pierced Noses upon the war trail. His Indian name was Hin-ma-ton Ya-lat-kit--Thunder-rising-from-the-water-over-the-land. But his father had been christened Joseph by the missionaries; so the son was called Young Chief Joseph.
A tall, commanding, splendid-looking Indian he had grown to be, at forty years of age. He was every inch a chief, and had a n.o.ble face.
His people were the Lower Nez Perces, who lived in the beautiful Wallowa Valley--their Valley of the Winding Waters, in northeastern Oregon. Here they raised many horses, and hunted, but put in few crops. Old Chief Joseph had believed that the earth should not be disturbed; the people should eat only what it produced of itself. The earth was their mother.
He believed also that n.o.body owned any part of the earth. The earth had been given to all, by the Great Creator. Everybody had a right to use what was needed.
Twenty years ago, or in 1855, Old Chief Joseph had signed a paper, by which the United States agreed to let the Pierced Noses alone on their wide lands of western Idaho, and eastern Oregon and Washington.
But it was seen that the Pierced Noses did not cultivate the better portion of this country; the white men wanted to plough the Valley of Winding Waters; and eight years later another treaty was made, which cut out the Winding Waters. It narrowed the Nez Perces to the Lapwai reservation in Idaho.
Old Chief Joseph did not sign this treaty. Other chiefs signed, for the Nez Perces. The United States thought that this was enough, as it considered the Pierced Noses to be one nation. The Valley of the Winding Waters was said to be open to white settlers.
The Old Chief Joseph Pierced Noses continued to live there, just the same. They a.s.serted that they had never given it up, and that the Upper Pierced Noses had no right to speak for the Lower Pierced Noses.
As Young Chief Joseph afterwards explained:
"Suppose a white man comes to me and says: "Joseph, I like your horses and I want to buy them." I say to him: "No; my horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him: "Joseph has some good horses. I want them, but he refuses to sell." My neighbor answers: "Pay me the money and I will sell you Joseph"s horses." The white man returns to me and says: "Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them." That is the way our lands were bought."
When Old Joseph died, Young Joseph held his hand and listened to his words:
My son, my body is returning to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more, and white men will be all around you.
They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father"s body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.
Young Joseph promised.
"A man who would not love his father"s grave is worse than a wild animal," he said.
After that he was careful never to accept any presents from the United States.
Even before the treaty of 1863 which was supposed to cover the Winding Waters valley, the white men had invaded the Pierced Nose country.
Gold had been discovered in Idaho. In 1861 the white man"s town of Lewiston had been laid out, among the Nez Perces--and there it was, without permission.