34

“I HAVE MET FEW men, Indian or white, as strong in purpose as Red Cloud was then,” Dane said. “He would get a thought in his head and let it grow there. When the troubles came he knew what to do, and the other chiefs listened and followed him. Red Cloud won many victories, but in the end he had to compromise to survive and the spirit went out of him. I went to see him the last time I visited Pine Ridge. He’s almost blind, hair whiter than mine, but still a man whose face is pleasing to look upon.

“He brought presents to our camp on the Powder when he heard a daughter had been born to Sweet Medicine Woman. Blankets and bear-claw necklaces and earrings. Most of the young Cheyenne women in our camp gathered around just to look at this handsome young man from the Oglalas. At that time in his life, Red Cloud was always getting into trouble over women, other men’s wives, because he was so handsome and showy.

“That day on the Powder he ignored the young women, though. He had other things on his mind. After he gave Sweet Medicine Woman the presents, he asked what name she was going to call our first girl child. ‘Amayi,’ she told him, ‘Dane wants her named for his grandmother.’

“ ‘Amayi. That is not a Cheyenne name,’ he said.

“ ‘Muskogean,’ I explained, ‘Creek.’

“ ‘It has a good sound in my ears,’ he said, and then grasped my arm. ‘I want to talk with you. Let’s go where there are not so many gabbling girls.’

“Red Cloud wanted to talk about a great council that was to be held soon at Fort Laramie. Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, an agent for the United States, had been visiting the tribes between the Missouri River and the Arkansas, inviting them to this council, promising many valuable presents to all who would attend. Most of the Indians liked Broken Hand. He and Jim Carrothers had come west together to trap for pelts and like Carrothers he had an Indian wife and family. But our leaders were suspicious of this council.

“ ‘What do you think they want, the Wasicus?’ Red Cloud used the Lakota word for white men.

“ ‘They want our land,’ I said, and told him how the Wasicus had wormed their way into Cherokee lands by first beguiling the chiefs into letting them build roads and trading posts and forts.

“Sure enough, when we all went down to Fort Laramie, in the Drying-Grass Moon, the first thing the agents from Washington asked for was a promise from all the chiefs to protect travelers along the Oregon Trail and on any other roads that might be built through our country. That council at Laramie was the greatest gathering of Indians in our people’s history, more than were on the Little Bighorn when Custer foolishly attacked us. So many came that the agents had to move us several miles down to Horse Creek so there would be enough grass for the horses that numbered in the thousands, and room for the tipis that stretched as far as the eye could reach. The remarkable thing was that half the tribes there were old enemies of the other half—Sioux and Arikara, Cheyenne and Crow, Arapaho and Shoshone, as well as Assiniboin, Hidatsa, and Mandan. For almost a moon we camped together with only a few dragoons in fancy blue uniforms to keep us apart. If we’d wanted to fight each other, those dragoons would’ve been run over and trampled into the ground.

“As it was, the only trouble we had was caused by a hot-tempered dragoon officer. One day, at the request of the agents, Lean Bear led his Dog Soldiers in a mock battle, using only hand signals to control the movements of his horsed warriors in fast turns and charges while they pretended to fight with their guns, lances, and bows and arrows. After the show ended, Lean Bear rode up to the big tent where the council meetings were held. He dismounted and bowed to the agents and army officers, who were clapping their hands. He was leading his horse off to make room for a parade of Oglala warriors when he passed a buggy in which a dragoon officer was sitting with his wife. This woman’s hand was dangling over the side of the buggy and on one of her fingers was a ring that sparkled bright in the sunlight—a diamond, I suppose. Now, Lean Bear was always attracted to beautiful things. He had quite a collection of jewels—bracelets, rings, necklaces. Impulsively he reached for the woman’s hand to examine the glittering ring, probably to compliment her, but she screamed. Her husband grabbed his buggy whip and slashed Lean Bear across the neck and shoulder. Lean Bear might’ve killed that officer on the spot if several dragoons had not moved in on him. Without a word then, he mounted, rode back to our Cheyenne camp, and painted his face black and white. He was riding through the tipis, summoning his Dog Soldiers to battle against the dragoons to avenge the insult, when Big Star, his uncle, came from the council tent to try to calm him down. Finally Broken Hand Fitzpatrick settled the matter by arranging for the dragoon officer to present Lean Bear with a fine blanket and offer an apology.

“As I have said, what the government agents wanted us there for was to make a treaty—which meant take some of our land—and to do this they insisted that each tribe be represented by a chief. The Cheyennes of course did not have one chief. We had many chiefs, of many small bands. Little Wolf and Dull Knife were from the Rosebud country and Black Kettle was from the Arkansas River country hundreds of miles to the south. Big Star’s people moved back and forth. And there were many others. At last we settled on old Wannesahta, keeper of the Cheyennes’ sacred medicine arrows. Wannesahta was no more a chief than I was, and did not want to be a chief, but he went to the council meetings as our chief.

“Because I spoke English and Cheyenne, I was chosen to be the tribe’s interpreter, and so I had an inside view of how clever the white agents were at cheating the Indians through treaties. First they talked about the Oregon Trail being only a narrow piece of ground no wider than two wagon wheels, but the way they worded the treaty they were taking the whole Platte Valley for miles across. They talked about the vast areas in which each of the tribes would live free of white intrusion, but at the same time they introduced provisions for more roads, with forts to protect them, wherever the whites might wish to build roads.

“Every night I talked about this with Big Star, who as a little chief was allowed to attend the councils. ‘Why would the whites want to build a road and forts through our country?’ he would ask. ‘There is no gold beyond the Yellowstone.’

“ ‘Someday they may find gold there, or something else they want,’ I would say. ‘If they come into our country they will never leave.’

“Red Cloud saw the treaty the way I did, but there was nothing he could do about it then. The agents named Brave Bear, a Brule, as chief of all the Sioux, although the Oglalas far outnumbered the Brules. Red Cloud’s uncle, Old Smoke, and Whirlwind and Red Water attended the council only as little chiefs of the Oglalas. All that Red Cloud could do was fume about Brave Bear being a trading-post loafer who would do whatever the agents wanted him to do.

“The way they divided up the land for the different tribes satisfied no one. The Sioux were given the Black Hills, although that was sacred Cheyenne Territory. The Crows were given land from the Bighorns to Powder River, although that was Sioux and Cheyenne hunting grounds. The Cheyennes’ northern boundary was the North Platte, although most of our northern cousins lived far above that river. The white agents solved that difficulty by saying that any tribe could hunt where it pleased so long as its people lived in its assigned home area. Red Cloud and I had a good laugh about that.

“For nine days the chiefs and the agents argued and harangued and then the treaty was laid out on a table, just about the way the agents had written it before the council began. The agents did agree to let us trade for arms and ammunition to be used for hunting, but we could not hunt in the Platte Valley or anywhere near where other roads might be built. After this was settled, the chiefs came up and marked their X’s and we interpreters wrote their names beside the X’s. Then each chief was marched into a small tent to be presented special presents. These were dragoon uniforms, light blue trousers and dark blue frock coats with gold buttons and epaulets. They were also given big medals to wear around their necks and handwritten copies of the treaty with a wax seal and scarlet ribbon. The medals had clasped hands on one side and an engraving of President Millard Fillmore on the other.

“The chiefs were told to put on the uniforms and medals and stand together outside the tent with the dragoon officers while an artist from Washington sketched their portraits. The chiefs looked very ill at ease, but most of them were proud of those uniforms. Big Star kept his for several years, wearing it only for important occasions, one of them being the day the soldiers killed him.

“After the artist finished his sketches, a dragoon fired off a little cannon that stood beside the tent, and a train of wagons loaded with bolts of calico and bags of flour, sugar, and coffee rolled into the grounds. The soldiers dumped all these presents out on the ground and the chiefs spent the rest of the day dividing them up. The treaty promised us similar presents every year for fifteen years, but in later years the government agents kept most of the goods themselves and sold them secretly to traders.

“In that time of our prosperity none of us really needed the things they gave us at Horse Creek. We could have obtained enough buffalo hides in one day’s hunt in the Powder River country to trade for all those goods. Another fool thing the government agents did—they slaughtered about a hundred beef cattle they’d driven all the way from Westport Landing, and invited us to a barbecue along the creek. A few of us went down there, but the meat was stringy and tasted too sweet. We left most of the carcasses to the flies. After living on white man’s food through the Drying-Grass Moon, we were ready for some buffalo tongues and beaver tails. And so in a day the thousands of tipis were struck, ending the first big land-steal in the West.”