Case says, “On the other side of the Medicine Line the Americans say there will be more soldiers falling from the sky. But you do not dream this vision, you work and plan for it.”
“No. I will stay here in the Old Mother’s country. Just as Long Lance asks, I will not make war against the Long Knives.”
“Here is what the Americans say, that just as you brought the Oglala, the Brulé, the Miniconjou, the Two Kettles, the Sans Arc, the Hunkpapa, the Blackfeet Sioux, and the Northern Cheyenne together to rub out Custer, you work now to bring all the tribes together. The Americans say you have sent messengers to the Assiniboine, even to the Sioux’s old enemies, the Blackfeet, the Cree, the Slotas, and you say to them, ‘Let us kill all the whites no matter where they live, whether they wear red coats or blue coats. Let us remove them from the face of the earth and live free as we did before.’ ”
“I am tired of war,” says Sitting Bull. “I do everything that Long Lance asks me to do.”
Case glances at Walsh, whose head is lowered, his fingers tted in the fleece he is seated on. It is as if he wilfully refuses to entertain any possibility that the Sioux chief’s responses may be half-truths. And Sitting Bull’s unflappability, his calm, repeated assertions that he is guided by no one but Long Lance, are provoking Case’s head to throb. Spurred on by whiskey and frustration, he says testily, “Yes, you do what Walsh asks now because the uniting of the tribes has not yet come to pass. But I think if you grow strong, you will do as you please.”
“I am at peace with everyone now.”
In a harsh whisper, without raising his head, the Major says to Case, “You’ve had your answer. Stop persecuting him.”
Pointing to the crucifix, Case says, “I am curious why a Sioux holy man would hang the white man’s God around his neck. I wonder what it means.”
“The Black Robe De Smet gave this sacred bundle to me when he came to the Hunkpapa camp to ask me to touch the treaty pen years ago at Fort Laramie. I liked this Black Robe. He was very brave and went everywhere among the Indians, lived with them without fear. Even when I said I would not touch the pen, he gave me this sacred thing. The Black Robe said the Man on the Sticks’ power would protect me.” Sitting Bull gazes down at the cross on his chest. “I think this man hung himself on the sticks just as the Sioux hang themselves from the Sun Dance pole to suffer and win the favour of Wakan Tanka. That is a good thing to do.”
“No, Jesus was nailed on the sticks by others.”
Sitting Bull tips his head. “Who were the others? Why did they do this to him?”
“Where the hell is this going?” says Walsh. “You are supposed to be interviewing him, not giving him a Bible lesson.” The Major addresses Sitting Bull. “A friend betrayed the Man on the Sticks to his enemies for money. Thirty pieces of silver.”
“Ah,” says Bull mischievously, a shadow of a smile hovering on his lips. “Then his friend was a white man. The white men love the coloured metal.”
“That is what is often said,” Case declares, “that it was done for money. But I believe there was another reason.”
“I would like you to tell me the reason he did such a wicked thing.”
Case glances at Léveillé, warning him with his eyes that what is coming next will be difficult to translate. “There were two men,” Case begins, “one called Judas, and the Man on the Sticks, who was called Jesus. For a long time Judas listened to Jesus’ words and did everything he was told to. As you do with Walsh.” For a moment, Case looks steadily at Sitting Bull, who smiles back at him serenely. “Everything that Jesus said, Judas agreed with, saying, ‘Yes, this is true. This is wise. I must listen to this man.’ But I think as time went on, Judas began to feel small and weak. He said to himself, ‘Why must I do as this Jesus says? Am I not as strong and wise a man as he is?’ And he could not get this out of his mind. This is what happens when one man’s will struggles with another’s m’s will – there will be a falling out. I have seen this come true in my own life. The question – which is the stronger man? – must be settled. I think it will be the same between you and Major Walsh.”
“That’s enough,” Walsh barks. “I won’t have any more of this. This bloody farce is over. Stand up and leave now!” He swings to Léveillé. “You have no need to translate what I’ve just said.”
Bull is startled by Walsh’s sudden fury; his eyes dart back and forth between the two men. When Case begins to get to his feet, Bull reaches out a hand and restrains him from rising. The deep voice begins to roll, but when the Métis follows Walsh’s directive and remains silent, Bull speaks to him in a tone of command. Léveillé says, “Sitting Bull wants to know why I no longer speak his words. He says he has something to say to Mr. Case.”
“Christ, all right, proceed if that’s what Bull desires.”
Sitting Bull says, “I smell whiskey on your breath. Whiskey makes a fool even more foolish. All this time you have been trying to turn Long Lance away from me. This is how it is with discontented men who cannot find their own way. They are blind, yet they tell others what path to turn down. But turn yourself,” says Bull softly, “turn yourself, and leave others to do as they think right.”
Case feels his face colour and he stumbles to his feet. “I bid you goodnight. I have nothing more to say.” He hesitates, and adds, “Except to say I am very sorry for the death of your son. That is a hard thing to bear.”
“On your way,” says Walsh, voice clipped and bitter.
He goes out of the lodge and into the night. For a moment, he regards the shadows of policemen and soldiers mingling on the ground lit by the campfires, and considers how he has bungled this encounter. He had meant to reveal Bull to Walsh, but instead has been revealed himself. Prosecuting his case the way he had only ensured it would be lost. Most likely, he has only succeeded in pushing Walsh a little closer to the Sioux chief.
TWENTY-FOUR
AT THREE O’CLOCK SHARP the next afternoon, Walsh, resplendent in his dress uniform, leads Sitting Bull and some twenty-odd lesser Sio
ux chiefs into the officers’ mess to commence talks with the Americans. Before the Sioux settle on the buffalo robes, which are spread on the floor in front of the table where the Terry Commission is seated, Sitting Bull insists on shaking hands with Walsh and Commissioner Macleod. The Major notes that he refuses General Terry and his boys the same courtesy, simply gives them a small, disdainful smile. Bull has blood in his eye.
The room is crammed with Police, soldiers, and anyone else who has been able to finagle admittance to the grand occasion. They are stacked three deep along the walls. The members of the press have been provided with ringside seats and a table so they can make notes on the proceedings. Walsh feels his mouth tighten when he sees Case, thinks how he’d like to put a boot so far up his arse that he’d taste she leather. His little speech about Judas last night had been enlightening. Case is a man well acquainted with the ins and outs of treachery.
Glancing over to the wife of the Bear That Scatters, he wonders if the Americans realize that the Sioux are thumbing their noses at them by including a member of the weaker sex in their delegation. A woman attending a council is unthinkable to the Sioux, a mockery. And she isn’t the only insult being offered to the Yankees; Spotted Eagle has come to the peace parley armed. He is cradling a huge war club studded with three knife blades, and wearing a scowl that suggests he would like nothing better than to start swinging it.
Sitting Bull has donned his Sunday best, a dark navy blue shirt spotted with white dots of paint, black leggings with wide red flannel stripes, ornately beaded moccasins, and a fox-fur cap hung with a badger tail. He has not braided his hair, but left it hanging loose, fanned out over the blanket draping his shoulders. Walsh has never seen him so splendidly dressed.
The discussions get off to a rancorous start. Sitting Bull demands that the Americans join him on the buffalo robes, claiming he cannot see those in the Terry Commission behind their table, and accusing them of trying to hide the
ir faces from him. Terry retorts that it is not the habit of white men to sit on floors; they prefer chairs. But Bull refuses to relent and is satisfied only when the members of the Terry party finally haul their chairs to the front of the offending piece of furniture and drop down on them peevishly.
The Sioux insist that there be no pipe ceremony. They want it known that their only reason for coming to this meeting is because Long Lance had asked them to; they have no intention of solemnizing or sanctifying any part of it by smoking sacred tobacco with enemies who have never told them anything but lies. This puts Terry in a bind, forcing him to state his terms without benefit of the professions of good faith and eloquent speechifying that always characterize such meetings.
He commences by telling the Sioux that they can return to American soil without fear of any retribution or punishment being exacted for the massacre of Custer and his men. While he is saying this, Spotted Eagle keeps broadly winking at Walsh, as if to say, You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Next, Terry informs the Sioux that in return for not being punished for their misdeeds, they must agree to go to a reservation and hand over their horses and guns. The government will sell this surrendered property and use the proceeds to buy cattle for the Sioux so they can begin a new life as ranchers and farmers. The minute he hears this proposal, Walsh knows Terry’s goose is cooked. These warriors will no more turn over their horses and guns for sale than they would put their women and children up on the auction block.
The chiefs say nothing, only light their pipes and puff away, faces stony. Minutes pass, the anxious silence occasionally broken by a cough, the scrape of a boot on the floorboards. Out of the corner of his eye, Walsh can see Macleod’s troubled look. The room grows warmer, begins to reek of musty long johns, tanned hides, and black shag tobacco.
At last, Bull gathers his blanket around his shoulders and rises to address the commission in a booming voice. Although this is Bull’s voice Walsh is hearing, the words don’t seem to belong to the man he knows. The Americans’ translator is making him sound like a pouty, incoherent child. The fellow is clearly incompetent.
Spotting Léveillé, Walsh beckons him over and asks him to interpret what Bull is saying. The Métis scout stands beside the Major, murmuring into his ear.
“Ever since we fought on the side of the British sixty-four winters ago, you have treated my people cruelly,” Bull says. “All we asked was to be left alone. But you kept stealing what was ours. You are responsible for all the troubles between the Sioux and the Americans. In the end we had nowhere to get away from you except the Old Woman’s country. I know this country well. It was on this side of the Medicine Line I learned to shoot a gun, and that was a good thing because if the Sioux had not learned that lesson, we would all be dead today. You would have killed every one of us. Now I have come back to this country and I am happy to be here. Someday soon I will visit the Red River country and thank the Slotas for teaching me how to defend myself from you.”
And then Bull breaks off his speech, approaches Macleod, shakes his hand, turns to Walsh, smiles, grips his hand hard and holds it for several moments, looking into his eyes. Then he faces the Terry Commission and announces, “I am a friend to every person on this side of the Medicine Line. You see how these men treat me with friendship? They gladly take a hand when it is offered to them. Use your eyes and your ears to learn that I live in peace with them. And why is that? Because they keep their promises to me. Today, the Old Woman lends us this house to use as a medicine house. Only the truth should be spoken here. But you come here to tell lies in her house. You dishonour her and you dishonour yourselves. The Sioux have let you speak because Long Lance said it was the Old Woman’s wish that we listen to you. But do not say two more words to us. Go back to where you came from. I intend to stay in the Old Woman’s land. All the Sioux think as I do. We will fill this country with the children we raise here, strong men and women.”
He stops his speech again and goes about the room, shaking hands with every Mounted Police officer he encounters. Walsh glances over to Case sitting at the table with Stillson and Diehl, pencil in his hand but writing nothing. The fool is not making a record of what is occurring here.
Sitting Bull halts beside a Santee chief, the One Who Runs the Roe, points to him, and says, “You drove the Santees out of their land over ten winters ago. Those of their leaders you did not drive away you put ropes around their necks and hung them. Now the Santees call this place home. Let this man make plain to you how you treated his people.”
Walsh listens to the Santee repeat Bull’s accusations that the Americans have stolen land, lied, and provoked war. A succession of other Sioux headmen say the same things. Finally, the wife of Bear That Scatters takes the floor. She whispers a few barely audible words. Walsh asks Léveillé what the woman has said, but his translator only shrugs, he too having been unable to catch her words. The Americans’ interpreter tells her to speak more loudly. She does. The interpreter calls out to Terry, “She says over there on the other side of the Medicine Line you don’t give her time to breed.” There is scattered laughter. The prim bachelor General flushes crimson.
A few more complaints are directed at Terry and then the Sioux rise and begin to make for the door. The General halts them, demanding to know if they are absolutely refusing the President’s amnesty.
Sitting Bull says contemptuously, “If we told you more, you would have paid no attention. That is all I have to say. This part of the country does not belong to your people. You belong on the other side. We are British Indians. This is where we belong.”
Once more he leads the headmen over to Macleod and Walsh and there is another round of handshaking. Bull takes the Major’s hand last. He holds it pressed between both of his, nodding his head slowly. The look on Bull’s face needs no translation. Walsh has no doubts that it gives the lie to every damn thing Case had said the night before.
October 20, 1877
I’ve tried to speak to Walsh, apologize for my behaviour, but each time I approach him he quickly busies himself with another task or conversation. Once he cut me off short by saying that a reporter who took no notes could scarcely be trusted to write anything that would portray a proper picture of Sitting Bull to the public or the government, and that I had been nothing but a waste of his goddamn time. He then stalked off in high dudgeon. Perhaps I ought to tell him that he can add deceit to the list of my misdemeanours, and inform him that although my posing as a journalist may have been inexcusable, I intended no harm to him by it. Quite the contrary.
With any luck, his frostiness may thaw and he may come to realize that despite the way I conducted myself with Sitting Bull, I felt I was acting as his faithful agent, just as I did in my communications to him from Fort Benton. I have always striven to serve his best interests, and never strayed from the desire to see to it that his recklessness does not set him on a wrong course.
At present, Walsh is busy trying to recruit Stillson and Diehl to assist him in improving Bull’s standing with the white man. So far, the Major has only managed to persuade the chief to let Stillson make a sketch of him, but both correspondents told me – rather smugly and triumphantly – that Walsh promises interviews will be granted in the next few days before Sitting Bull heads back to Pinto Horse Butte.
Of course, the Major has his own reasons for cultivating these gentlemen of the fourth estate. He knows the power of the press to buff a man’s reputation, has seen how it picks its darlings and displays them to advantage. They did it for Custer in the days before the Little Bighorn and, if they could do it for Long Hair, they can do it for Long Lance. Walsh wants to be regarded as the only fellow who can hold Bull in check, the one man who can preserve peace on the frontier. If he can be seen as indispensable, he believes no government, fearing a public outcry, will dare dismiss him.
But there are signs that Walsh’s superiors, wh
o know of his penchant for saying things he oughtn’t, are angling to get him away from Stillson and Diehl just as quickly as they can. Colonel Macleod has ordered him to return to Pinto Horse Butte with the Sioux when they depart from Fort Walsh. I’ll wager Walsh is doing all he can to see that the Indians don’t leave here too soon. He wants more time o make an impression on the American journalists.
The meeting that occurred between Terry and Bull three days ago was quite the instructive spectacle, confirmation of my earlier suspicions that the United States never had any intention of treating seriously with the Sioux. The terms they offered Bull were ones he could never accept and keep the loyalty of his people. Terry obviously knew that.
The Americans are happy to see the Sioux remain here, and happy to saddle Canada with the responsibility for them. The United States could not avoid making some response to British pressure to negotiate with Sitting Bull. Now that they have sat down with him, it would be difficult to accuse them of bad faith. They will be able to argue, “We made an offer. It was refused. What more do you expect us to do?” It is clear what they wished to achieve from the very beginning.
If the Americans got what they wanted, so did Sitting Bull – for the time being. Given the situation he faced, a choice between remaining in Canada without assurances that his right to stay was recognized by our government, or returning to the United States under Terry’s terms, it appears Bull has decided to gamble on Canada. It was a masterstroke the way he managed to enter into the record his claim to be a British Indian. None of the Police, not even Colonel Macleod, disputed this assertion. How could they, after his effusive display of affection and loyalty towards the Old Woman’s pony soldiers, his flattering portrayal of British uprightness as opposed to American deviousness? I did not see a single red coat who did not take his depiction of us as anything but the truth. I could almost hear them thinking, “Yes, British fair dealing has tamed the savage.” But as yet, fair dealing has come without a price tag. It has cost us nothing. Let us see how we do when the time comes to put our hands in our pockets and provide material support for these people, as that day will surely come.
A Good Man Page 40