The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

  XXXVI

  UNDER THE ETERNAL STARS

  After the massacre at the battle of the Little Big Horn, a vast numberof Indian refugees fled over the borders into Canada. There theydwelt, drawing three pounds of beef a day from arbitrary uniformedindividuals, who were strangely lacking in sympathy, and very observantof the few rules and regulations which a mysterious White Mother overthe sea had seen fit to impose. Three pounds of meat a day is notmuch. Still it is enough to get along on, and with the necessity, andindeed, the opportunity of the chase gone, the bucks were able to waxlazy, drunken, and generally shiftless to their hearts' content. Allthis was frowned on by the uniformed individuals, but opportunitieswere not far to seek.

  There has never been a nation more warlike, brave, and hardy than theSioux in its native environment of war and hunting. These twofurnished every point of leverage--physical, moral, intellectual--whichthe savage required to lift him to the level of his greatestefficiency. From the buffalo itself the Sioux family obtained itssupply of wigwams, robes, food, fuel, light, harness, bow-strings,instruments of industry--in fact almost every article of necessity orluxury appertaining to its everyday life. From the chase of the animalthe young Dacotah learned to ride, to shoot, to risk his life. Andthen in his constant strife with his neighbors, the Blackfeet or theCrows or the Pawnees, he was forced, if he would survive, to develop tothe last degree his cunning, his observation, his strategy, hisresourcefulness, his patience, his power to endure, his personalcourage. Habituated to these two, the chase and war, from his earlyyouth, he came at last to be the coolest, most dangerous warrior of theplains. He could ride anything, bareback, in any position. With hisshort, powerful bow he could launch a half-dozen arrows into the airbefore the first reached the ground, or could drive one of his shaftsquite through the body of a buffalo. When necessity required, he wasbrave to the point of recklessness; but again, when expediency advised,he could worm his way for miles through the scantiest cover, flat onhis face, by the laborious use alone of his elbows and toes. He couldread a whole history in a trail which another might not evendistinguish. He could sit absolutely motionless for hours in thehottest sun or the bitterest cold. And he could bear, as he was oftencalled upon to do, the severest physical pain without a quiver of theeyelid.

  But when the buffalo vanished, the Sioux passed the meridian of hispowers. No other means of subsistence offered. He was forced toplunder, or go to the reservation for Government beef. Thence camemuch whisky and much loafing. The new young man had not the trainingof his father. So, in a little, the Teton nation was subdued andbrought to reservations, and herded in anoverall-plug-hat-blanket-wearing multitude, even now but half-tamed,and fiercely instinct with hereditary ferocity and resourcefulness.Other Indians go to Carlisle, learn to plough, and become at leastpartially civilized. The Sioux, fierce, hawk-eyed, wide-nostrilled,sits in solitary dignity before his lodge, brooding. Occasionally hehas to be rounded up with a Gatling, as witness Wounded Knee. I havenever been able to envy the agents of Dakota reservations.

  When the statute of limitations ran out, or whatever mysterioustime-limit the Government puts on its displeasure against Indianmurderers, Sitting Bull and a horde of his fellow-warriors came back.Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill's show, where he had a good time untilhe began ghost-dancing and was killed in the Wounded Knee campaign.But some, Lone Wolf's band among them, remained in Canada. They hadvarious reasons for doing so.

  Lone Wolf stayed because he was in hard luck. He had barely settleddown in his new home before the great Manitou had seen fit to strikehis children with the Spotted Sickness. When finally the last case hadbeen buried hastily, and its clothes and belongings burned under thedistant eye of the uniformed man, the formerly powerful band founditself reduced by almost half. By dint of sitting innumerable daysnaked in a circle on the prairie and beating a tom-tom until the agentprayed for rain, the survivors managed to secure for themselvesimmunity from the Spotted Sickness at least. Then some of the ponieswere stolen. Then a schism occurred in the community; and Three Knivestook with him a dozen families and established a new clan within plainsight of the old. Lone Wolf was powerless because of the uniformedindividual, who frowned on the Indian idea of patriarchal chastisement.A very young man of the band killed the agent, hoping thus to earnpraise, but almost before the embers were cold and before the scalp ofThree Knives had clotted dry, there appeared an astounding number ofuniforms, who promptly decimated Lone Wolf's warriors and took away alltheir arms. Lone Wolf discovered that these uniformed men were inreality nothing but soldiers--a disgusting fact which he had not beforesuspected. They hung six of his young men, and that night a number ofthings happened, such as the unprovoked fall of Lone Wolf's standardfrom over his lodge, which showed plainly that Gitche Manitou was stillangry.

  Lone Wolf gathered his remnants about him and journeyed south toSpotted Tail.

  There he enjoyed the discontented tranquillity of a United Statesreservation, with occasional privileges if he was good.

  Lone Wolf had gone into the north country at the head of three hundredefficient fighting men, well armed with rifles, rich in ammunition,ponies, and the luxuries of daily existence. He came back as thenominal chief of thirty-five warriors, with few firearms, and lesswealth. Counting in the women, children, and old men, his originalband had numbered nearly a thousand souls--a large camp even for theold days. Now there remained barely a tenth of that number.

  Misfortunes such as these must have a reason. Gitche Manitou is stern,but he is not unjust. Everybody knows that. And the reason LoneWolf's band was so afflicted, Big Thunder, the medicine man, haddiscovered, lay in the fact that the defiling of the tribe's token,after the Little Big Horn, had been done by a member of the tribeitself. Until the culprit should be brought to justice the wrath ofGitche Manitou would continue to be visited impartially on the entireband.

  The recognition of Rippling Water made a profound impression on thosestanding about. There flashed into Lone Wolf's eagle face a gleam ofsatisfaction so intense that Black Mike started. He had not theremotest notion that he was in any actual danger, for his dealings withthe tribe in those old times when he had been a member of it had alwaysbeen rather to its advantage than to his own. That it was unfriendlyto him because of his unceremonious desertion of it, he did not doubt.Nor did he hope to escape a typical Indian tirade from the two old hagswho, so short a time ago, had been his not unattractive young wives.But beyond this, and perhaps--as he glanced over the motley indicationsof their poverty--the promise of gifts, he anticipated nothing moreserious in the end than a delay. A delay, however, was what he couldnot at present afford.

  "Ah, well," he acknowledged in the Indian tongue, "I am he,Man-who-speaks-Medicine. You have known me. It is I. It is manymoons that I have not seen my brothers, but I have accomplished manythings, and I have gathered gifts for my brothers which will rejoicetheir hearts. I go to the lodges of the white men near Swift-waternow, and I haste; so I cannot linger to clasp my brothers' hands; butto-morrow I return bearing the gifts."

  "MY LITTLE MOLLY," HE CHOKED.]

  He took up his reins with all confidence, for in those days no one wasafraid of Indians--at least when they were accompanied by their womenand children. The two bucks at the horses' heads did not move,however; and at a signal from Lone Wolf three others leaped lightlyinto the wagon-body behind the half-breed and pinned his arms to hissides. So suddenly was it done that Lafond could not even struggle.

  His captors tied his elbows together at the back and lifted him to theground, where a number of others hustled him into a wigwam, and aftertying his feet left him lying on the ground. In a moment he heard thefaint sound of wheels somewhere above him, by which he knew that BillyKnapp and Buckley were passing the point of his intended ambush. Hedrew a deep breath and shouted. Instantly two young Sioux ran in andthrew a blanket over his head, nearly smothering him. The sound of thewheels died into distance.

  After perhaps
two hours he heard the hoof-beats of a large party ofhorsemen. They, too, died away. The men composing the party werelooking for him, Michail Lafond, but this he did not know. He tried todistinguish from the noises just outside what was taking place in thelittle camp, but he could not.

  At the end of another half-hour the two young men who had beenappointed as his guards led him out to a horse, on which, after hisfeet had been untied, he was compelled to mount. He asked themquestions, to which they vouchsafed no reply. Looking about himcuriously, he saw that the camp had been struck. The long teepeepoles, bound on each side of the ponies, trailed their ends on theground, and on the litters thus formed, the skins of the lodges, allthe household utensils, and many of the younger children had beenplaced. Squaws bestrode the little animals. The warriors,ridiculously incongruous in their overalls and flannel shirts, satmotionless on their mounts. Lafond recognized his own team, but couldnot discover either his wagon or the harness. These had been draggedaway into the bushes and left, for very good reasons.

  The cavalcade took its way directly down the narrow, overgrown littlecanyon, riding in single file. Lafond could not understand this. Theroad above would have been much easier.

  After an hour's hard work in dodging obstructions, getting aroundfallen trees or between standing timber, the party emerged on thebroad, rolling foothills, grass-covered and bare of trees. Here LoneWolf led the way south-east for several miles, and finally came to ahalt on the brow of a round hill of gentle descent. The band at oncedismounted. A number of the squaws deftly relieved the ponies of theirburdens, and the younger boys led them away to the bottom-lands forpasture. The women then began without delay to erect the lodges in awide circle surrounding the brow of the hill, so arranging them thatthe flaps or doorways opened into the common centre. After this hadbeen done, they built in the middle of the circle a huge fire of woodbrought from the Hills, but did not light it as yet. Then all silentlydisappeared to the bottom-lands, where they made little fires and setabout supper.

  Before each lodge a warrior established himself, crosslegged, and beganto smoke. When the sun dipped behind the Hills and threw their longshadows silently out across to the Bad Lands, the chill of twilightstruck in, and so the Indians wrapped themselves closely in theirblankets. As by a stroke of enchantment, with the concealment of theshirts and overalls, the Past returned. Against the sky of evening,the silhouettes of the pointed wigwams and the suggestion of theshrouded warriors smoking solemnly, silently, their pipes, all belongedto the nomadic age before such men as Michail Lafond had "civilized"the country.

  After a time they rose and departed silently to the bottom-land for awhile, leaving Lafond in charge of the two young men. They had gone toeat their suppers. The half-breed had not tasted food since the earlymorning, nor slept for thirty odd hours.

  The stars came out one by one, and the stillness of that great inlandsea men call the prairies fell on the world. Such occasional sounds asrose from the creek bottom seemed but to emphasize the peace. And thensuddenly, from the shadows somewhere, without disturbance, theblanketed figures appeared and took their places again. A squaw camebearing a torch, and lit the fire in the centre of the circle, andthere sprang up a broad shaft of light which drew about the littlescene a great canopy of imminent blackness. From hand to hand passed agreat red-stone calumet or pipe. Each warrior puffed at it twice andpassed it to his neighbor. It was not offered to Michail Lafond, whosebonds had now been loosened.

  After each of the seated warriors had taken his part in this ceremony,and the pipe had completed the circle to Lone Wolf, that chief arose,throwing back his blanket from his shoulders.

  With a sudden chill of fear, Michail Lafond saw that he was to assistat a state council of the sort held only when the tribe is to sit injudgment on one of its own number.

  The savage was naked to the waist. In his hair, worn loose andunbraided after the Sioux fashion, three eagle feathers with white tipswere thrust slantwise across the back of his head; and under its heavymass his fierce bright eyes and hawk face gleamed impressively. Abouthis neck hung a fringe of bears' claws, from which depended a roundsilver medal. Now as he stood there--the lithe strength of his bronzetorso revealed one arm clasping the blanket about his waist, the otherholding loosely at his side the feather-bedecked calumet ofsandstone--the stigma of sordidness and drunkenness and squalor seemedto fall away, so that the spectator would have seen in this group ofsilent men under the silent western heavens only the pomp and pride ofa great and savage people in the zenith of its power.

  Lone Wolf stood for the space of several minutes without a sign. Thenwith a magnificently sweeping gesture he held the calumet aloft andbegan to speak.

  At first his voice was low and monotonous, but as his speech continuedit took on more color, until at the close it responded in modulation toevery flash of his eye. He began with a recital of the tribe's ancientglory, dwelling rather on concrete examples than on broadergeneralities. He numbered its warriors, its ponies, its arms, andlodges. He told of the beauty of its women and the greatness of itsmen, whom he ran over by name. He told of its deeds in war,enumerating the enemies it had struck, the ponies it had stolen, thestratagems it had conceived and carried out. And then he swept his armand the feather-fluttering calumet abroad as he described the boundlessextent of the hunting grounds over which it had used to roam. As hecontinued, the warriors' expressive eyes brightened and flashed withpride, though they moved not one muscle of their faces or bodies.Beyond the circle could be dimly descried another not less interestedaudience of women and older children.

  "These and more were ours!" cried Lone Wolf, "these and many more. Thefavor of Gitche Manitou was ours and the riches of the world. Whereare they now?" With an indescribably graceful gesture the oratorstooped to the ground and grasped a handful of the loose dry earth."Gone!" he said solemnly, letting the sand fall from his outstretchedsuddenly opened palm.

  Then, without pause or transition, he began, in equally vivid objectivelanguage, to detail the tribe's misery and poverty of to-day. Herecounted its disasters, just as a moment before he had recounted itsvictories. He told of the Spotted Sickness, the dividing of forces,the battle with the red coats, all the long series of oppressions greatand little which had brought them to their present condition. Hecounted over by name the present members, to show how their numbers hadshrunken, and to each name he added others of those who had gonebefore. So real was the picture that the orator himself faltered,while from outside the circle rose for a single instant a longtrembling wail. The warriors had half covered their faces with thefolds of their blankets.

  "Thus our glory went and our young men are seen no longer on the warpath, but only in the white men's towns. And yet our fathers werebrave before us and we have struck well in our time. Why is this so?Why has Gitche Manitou veiled his face from his children?"

  Leaving the question unanswered, Lone Wolf unexpectedly took upLafond's connection with the tribe. In the recounting of this, too, heheld to the greatest minuteness of detail, showing plainly thehalf-breed's rise from despised squaw man to a person of influence inthe councils. He gave the half-breed full credit for all he did. Heeven went out of his way to show that to Lafond was due much of thepower that had so distinguished the Brule Sioux among the other tribes.He described again briefly that power, and told of the battle of theLittle Big Horn. He dwelt on that as to some extent the culmination ofthe tribe's glory. It was the last and greatest of its exploits.After it misfortune commenced. Gitche Manitou that day veiled his face.

  "And he turned his hand against the totem of the Turtle," said LoneWolf impressively, "because one of its children had committed asacrilege. The very night of that great victory, a brave from among usarose and took the sacred totem, the great Turtle, from the lodge ofhis chief, and slew Buffalo Voice, the medicine man favored of GitcheManitou, and defiled the totem.

  "From that time Gitche Manitou has frowned upon his children. Fromthat time
misfortune has visited the tribe of Lone Wolf. From thattime the man who did these things has lost his old warrior name and hasbeen known as the Defiler."

  He paused and looked about the circle until his eye rested on Lafond.With a sudden fierce enmity he stretched his arm toward the captive.

  "That is he," he concluded impressively; "and it has been revealed byBig Thunder that never will Gitche Manitou smile on his children untilthe Defiler dies!"