Campaigns of General Custer in the North-west, and the final surrender of Sitting Bull

by Walker

  It was but a short time before an unconditional surrender was effected. During these operations against the " Wily Gall," on the part of Major Ilges, the chief warrior, " Crow King," was an attentive witness, standing on the roof of the trader's store at the Popular River Agency, and, strange as it may seem, not only sanctioned, but encouraged in every way possible, Major Ilges in forcing this surrender, as he could not move his own lodges into the Agency until Gall and his warriors were out of the wav.

  CHAPTER II.

  The Surrender.

  As the terms of his surrender, Crow King demanded 160 acres of land for every man, woman and child belonging to his tribe. He also asked that school-houses might be built for the children, and the money obtained from the sale of Indian lands devoted to this purpose, and to the education of his people. There was no doubt of his earnestness in the.matter. The officers in the field, of course, could promise him nothing more than that his requests should be laid before the proper authorities in Washington.

  Chief Gall

  This, for amp; ime, gave rise to angry feelings among the warriors, particularly among the young chiefs. They stated emphatically that if they could not have the land, as requested by their head chief, they would prefer to brave starvation and roam over the plains, and occasionally join a war-party of hostiles. The influence of Crow King, aided doubtless by the cold weather and the scarcity of provisions, quieted these malcontents, and they finally agreed to throw themselves on the generosity of the Great Father at Washington, and abide by his decision, agreeing to accept and settle upon the reservation allotted to them by the government, and to take an interest in farming, stock-raising, and educating their children. Crow King was growing old, and was enfeebled from his wounds. These facts doubtless tended to convince him that it was greatly to his interest, as well as for the future welfare of his people, to settle down upon a reservation, and conform to the rules and regulations of the government. As for the young warriors, while outwardly acquiescing in the military plans for their future usefulness, it was doubtless with a mental reservation that when the little exigency of war, in which they were unwilling participants, had been safely passed, and the genial summer breezes came again, they would lightly scatter off to join the war-parties on the wild prairies in their raids on frontier settlers. Some possibly were laying plans to go to Arizona and New Mexico, while others may have thought to join the untamed Coman-ches and Kiowas in the southern Indian country.

  But whatever may havo been the secret thoughts and purposes of the discomfited warriors at the formal surrender of their chief to the military, they deported themselves in the highest style of Indian etiquette, prescribed by custom from time immemorial for such interesting occasions. Tricked out in their finest paint and feathers, gorgeous in war-bonnets of snowy eagle's feathers, adorned with beads, and their half-naked, tawny figures glittering with savage gew-gaws, and mounted on ponies whose emaciated forms were decked with gaudy colors, they bore themselves with a lofty dignity and grave hauteur befitting to a race of royal blood.

  Tet was there a ludicrous element in the pathetic affair.

  The picture of the defeated savages surrendering their arms And ponies, as an act of special grace to their powerful captors, and gravely dictating the terms of. surrender, demanding cattle and sheep in payment for their ponies, was a sin-gular one ; and a somewhat ridiculous effect of the policy of the Government in treating the savages like spoiled children. " Til be good, if you'll give me a stick of candy; if you don't, Til be terribly naughty," is the childlike argument employed by the anomalous creations of nature, alternately known as wards and dependents of the Government, and anon figuring as " prisoners of war." The policy adopted by the Government, of first yielding to their insolent demands, then punishing them for disobedience; again coaxing, petting, and bribing them into good behavior; then again administering deserved chastisement; and still again resorting to bribes and presents to coax them into submission, is a course that would speedily make an end of family government; and it is not to be wondered at that the unsophisticated red children of nature should imbibe false and mistaken ideas relative to the strength and good judgment of the Great Father at Washington.

  After the formal surrender had been effected, with all the "" pomp and circumstance " of Indian finery and display, and the terms of capitulation agreed upon by the commandant of the troops and Crow King (through an interpreter), in a council of his warriors, in which the captive chieftain assumed to himself great credit for gracefully submitting to the inevitable, and leading his half-famished people to the military lines, a grand " pow-wow " and peace dance was held in honor of the event. Rations were divided by the soldiers with the prisoners, and every effort made by the humane commander of the troops to make comfortable the squaws and papooses, together with the sick and helpless of the late hostile camp. Wagon transportation was furnished them to Fort Buford, D. T., where they were comfortably garrisoned.

  The eloquent plea of the savage warrior, that " the white man has kept pushing, and driving, and fighting the red man all around and all around, and all over the prairie, until he has no place to go," is surely a weighty one.

  Would that the government of the best and most enlightened nation on the face of the globe would reform its mode of treatment of these " wayward children of the forest," who, in their inmost hearts, are bloodthirsty assassins and mur-derers, yet who are entitled to ordinary justice in business transactions.

  It is a standing disgrace to our civilization to alternately whip, cheat, bribe, and coax. Treaties should not be made with them; but, if made, should be religiously kept.

  At present writing the Indian problem in the great Northwest is still unsolved. God grant a fair and speedy solution.

  SECTION IV.

  THE SURRENDER OF SITTING BULL. (TA-TON-E^-I-Y-A-TON-E^.)

  CHAPTEE I

  As a happy finale to the series of sanguinary chapters and exciting incidents of savage warfare in the Northwest, the author is pleased to append a brief resume of the career of Sitting Bull, the monarch of the hostiles, and leader of their lawless bands through nearly twenty years of continuous warfare with the whites; a career distinguished above that of his fellow-hostiles for murder and rapine, yet which terminated unexpectedly in his bloodless surrender to Major Brotherton, of the regular army, July 19th, 1881.

  Of the early life of Sitting Bull, little is known; yet there is no question of his having been at war with the whites since 1862, and during all the period intervening between that date and his recent surrender, he has been a steady annoyance in the field to the army, and constant source of terror and anxiety to the isolated settlers on the remote frontier. All the way from Yankton to the headquarters of the Missouri, he left traces of his presence in bloodshed and burnings. In the year 1865, a passenger on the steamer " Effie Deans," en route to Fort Benton, relates that when at Bound Butte, Montana, about six hundred miles by river below Benton, the steamer was fired upon from a hunting camp, comprising about three thousand souls, of whom eight hundred were warriors, of Sitting Bull's tribe. Four days previously the steamer " General Grant" had passed up › several shots were fired into the boat, and four men were killed Sitting Bull is supposed to have been encamped at this place some two months, this being a favorite place of resort for buffalo, elk and other wild game, and here for

  years the Sioux, under Sitting Bull and his associate chiefs, had repaired in the hunting season to seek the spoils of the chase.

  Sitting Bull's record, from the earliest date of which mention is made of him, is that of a vindictive and determined enemy of the white man, yet, previously to the year 1866, he had not attained distinction above his fellow chiefs, or gained a tithe of the overshadowing fame that has placed his name on the highest pinnacle of savage greatness.

  In the year 1866, Sitting Bull, a warrior of the Uncapapa Sioux, attained wide-spread notoriety throughout the frontier posts and settlements, by means of his murderous raids and savage cruelties.
From that time he has held high rank as a leader of the hostile Sioux-revered by his own people as a skillful general, wise in council and powerful in war, and dreaded by the whites as a cruel and relentless enemy. Of late years, a series of uninterrupted successes in the field, culminating in the Custer massacre of 1876, gave him a prominence not hitherto enjoyed by any hostile chief, and rendered his name a familiar but dreaded household word in every hamlet in America. Sitting Bull was thought to be invincible, hence his recent surrender, brought about though it was by the subtle agencies of want and hunger, aided as it was by the firm attitude of the Canadian authorities, who refused longer to permit his followers to come and go at pleasure upon British soil, was a surprise as unexpected as it was agreeable to the country at large.

  The bulk of our present adult aboriginal population were born in savagery, and have lived in savagery. Try as they will, they cannot entirely subdue the savage instincts to roam at will, to defy restraint, and to inAulge their lawless appetites for blood and plunder. Sitting Bull's influence for evil among all the aboriginal tribes had been unbounded. He had ever made it his boast that he would never go upon a reservation or make peace with the whites.-a resolution to which he tenaciously adhered. His nomadic and unrestrained life of freedom on the plains was a constant lure to those Indians who, though settled upon agencies, and ostensibly engaged in cultivating the arts of peace, yet could

  not wholly conquer the natural savage longing for a life of unrestrained and careless liberty. His camp-fires in the wild fastnesses of the far Northwest were alluring lights to the wild and restless spirits, whose untamed natures chafed and fretted under the unwonted restraint of agency rule. His bold example inspired the pining warriors on the reservations to break away from the civilizing influences there brought to bear upon him, and to seek by his council-fires in the wilderness pursuits moje congenial.

  With the freshening of the grass in the spring, large numbers of the young and able-bodied warriors of the tribes confined at the various Indian agencies on the Missouri, would set forth to join his lawless hordes on their annual round of plunder, and under cover of his name to prey upon the exposed settlements, and destroy the lives of any luckless whites who, by chance, came within the scope of their operations.

  It had long been a recognized fact, both in the Military and Interior Departments, that an Indian absent without leave from his proper reservation, was necessarily an Indian hostile, defacto and de jure ; and since it was manifestly impossible to prevent the agency Sioux from slipping away during the season of buffalo hunting, and attaching themselves to the hostile forces, the capture of Sitting Bull, or the breaking up of his hostile rendezvous in the Northwest, became a strategic measure of overshadowing importance in all plans devised by the military authorities for subjugating, or by the officials of the Interior Department for benefiting and civilizing the Indians.

  Mutual plans were devised by both Departments to remedy the grave evil# arising from Agency Indians rallying to the medicine banner of Sitting Bull, and sharing with his restless followers the spoils and plunder of the war-path; but all to no avail. The evil increased alarmingly. The Missouri River Agencies became but bases of supplies for Sitting Bull's insolent army, from whence were drawn, by the hands of professedly peaceful Indians, arms and munitions of war, clothing, and provisions. The ranks of the hostiles were increased to an unusual extent during the hunting sea-

  son, by the accession of large numbers of able-bodied warriors, whose winter subsistence was derived from the bounty of the government. Those who remained upon the reservations evinced a* uneasy and discontented spirit, until, at length, the signs of disaffection at the larger Agencies, such as Standing Rock, Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, etc., containing then some 40,000 Indians, became so marked that a general outbreak was feared, unless steps were promptly taken to subdue the outlaws under Sitting Bull, and compel them to settle down upon some designated spot, to be selected by the government. Accordingly, in December, 1875, the Secretary of the Interior notified the hostiles that they must, before the close of the following January, come into the reservations, " or a military force would be sent out to compel them to come in." This peremptory order was met with the scorn and defiance that had characterized the demeanor of the hostiles in all their communications with the white man's government. As a last recourse, therefore, on the expiration of the stated time, the Secretary of War was formally notified that these Indians were turned over to* the military authorities, for such action as might be deemed proper for their subjugation and chastisement.

  The campaign of 1876 was then organized by General Sheridan, on the plan already described at some length in this volume, by which, in the simultaneous movement of three distinct columns from Montana, Dakota, and the Platte, toward a common centre, where was supposed to be located the camp of the hostiles, a crushing blow could be administered to the forlorn hope of savage obduracy, seeking to escape the fate that had been decreed to the red man in the remnants of his once wide domain, the alternative of either civilization or extermination. The movements of these columns, the repulse of General Crook, and the tragic death of General Custer and his men, which formed the bitter fruits of this unfortunate expedition, have been already described in detail in these pages. Suffice it, then, to say, that, after the battle, the victorious savages proceeded northward, and crossed the boundary line into the Dominion of Canada, and quartered themselves upon the bounty of her

  Majesty the Queen of England. Here Sitting Bull and his followers remained in peace through the following year, refusing the overtures of Chief Joseph to take part in the Nez Perces campaign of 1877. In the stirring events of that campaign, the opening fight at Big Hole, Howard's long and arduous pursuit, and final success, with Miles' aid, in capturing Joseph and his band, together with the later fight at Bear-Paw Mountain, between Lame Deer, a Sioux, and the troops under General Miles, engrossed, for a time, public attention, and the conqueror of Custer was left to his repose. But not long did quiet reign.

  The followers of the stoic chieftain began to cross the lines, commit depredations on the people of Montana, and elude capture and punishment by escaping to their leader's camp at Wood Mountain. . Grave questions of international law now puzzled the authorities at Washington, and to avoid complications with a border territory, as well as to insure protection to the helpless settlers south of the Canadian boundary line, it was decided to make an effort to effect by diplomacy what force of arms had failed to bring about, and to send, to treat with Sitting Bull, a commission of such dignity and character, that he would necessarily be convinced of the truth and reliability of its promises and presentations.

  Leave was accordingly obtained from the British authorities for the entrance of the commission into the Canadian territory. The followers of Sitting Bull at this time comprised but a moiety of those who had participated in the Custer massacre, many of the warriors who had there glutted their fiendish thirst for blood and torture having returned to the agencies to which they belonged, and wwe there re-enacting the role of good Indians, by submissively devouring the rations issued by a magnanimous government to its " wayward children."

  The Peace Commission to Sitting Bull was composed of General A. H. Terry, the commander of the defeated Dakota column in the campaign of the previous year, and Hon. A. G. Lawrence, of Massachusetts. The embassy proceeded with an escort to the British line, and were there met by a battalion of the Northwestern mounted police, who guided them to Fort Walsh-and here was presented the extraordinary spectacle of a powerful government sending overtures of peace and reconciliation to the leading outlaw and freebooter of the country, by the hand of the military commander whose troops he had defeated by force of arms. Much trouble was experienced in obtaining the consent of Sitting Bull and his leading chiefs to an interview; but this was finally gained through the intercession of the British officers at the fort, and on the 17th of October an interview was held within the limits of the fort.

  The renegade c
hieftain received his distinguished visitors with every mark of savage discourtesy. He haughtily refused their proffered hands, demanded that they should not sit behind the table, at which they had seated themselves, and sneeringly told them to speak the truth to the assembled chiefs. The ambassadors, on* behalf of their government, then presented the reasons why the hostiles should ‹5ease their hostile acts, return to the United States, and join the agencies.

  The honorable treatment meted out to the tribes who had surrendered, the ever-recurring bounty of the government, the daily rations and frequent gifts, were painted in glowing colors.

  It was promised to the Canadian refugees, on behalf of the United States Government, that no harm should befall Any of their number who would consent to cross the line, and peacefully take up their abode at any of the agencies. Not only would they be protected from harm, but many favors and privileges would be granted them; while the proceeds from the sale of their ponies and arms, which they would be required to surrender, would be applied to their benefit. These proposals were rejected emphatically and insolently, and the commission was, so far as any good results were attained, a complete failure.

  During the remainder of that, and of the following year {1878), Sitting Bull and his band remained quietly on the northern side of the boundary line, only a few of his warriors occasionally crossing to American soil in pursuit of

  buffalo, and their stay was never prolonged. Reports of his. coming in force were, however, frequently rife among the frontiersmen, and in the summer a reconnoissance of troops in force was made north of the Missouri, without result, however, and as the hostiles seemed inclined to keep the peace, and remain permanently north of the line, operations against them were, for the time, suspended, by order of General Sherman. Trouble with the Bannock Indians having then arisen, and the hostile remnant of the Nez Perces making demonstrations of hostilities, Sitting Bull once more dropped out of public notice.