Now embarking on a nearly two-thousand-mile journey, the trio of Winder and his assistants boards a train on the Central Pacific Railroad line. It had been built by the herculean labors of Chinese immigrants: blasting and tunneling through mountains, laying miles of track. In 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad line met up with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Point, Utah Territory, and the Golden Spike driven into the ground there finally connected the East and West Coasts by rail. The Union Pacific line was built westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa, a town that was roiled by labor strikes in the late nineteenth century. Strikebreakers, meatpackers, and cattlemen fought and rioted there. Beyond the town, trains clattered through a sparsely populated landscape bleached and parched by a killing drought that began in 1891. There are dust clouds, fields of parched crops, and starving animals that forage for the sparse nubbins of anything that remains. The dead landscape stretches along the prairie past sod houses and log houses of the once hopeful settlers, desperate now, hungry, and, while waiting for government assistance, forced to sell or eat their remaining livestock.
At Omaha the trio from California transfers to the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad bound for Valentine, Nebraska, a twelve-hour leg.1
At last they arrive in Valentine, population seven hundred. It is a rough, lawless town of miscreants, robbers, prostitutes, and gamblers. Also journeying through drought-stricken Nebraska and South Dakota around this time was the intrepid New York World reporter Nellie Bly. From Fairfax, South Dakota, on January 21, 1895, she wrote, “They have only one train a day out of Valentine and that’s at 4 a.m. I really believe they have it at that hour for fear everybody would leave if the time were more convenient.”2
From Valentine to the reservation is a distance of forty-four miles—about six to eight hours by horseback or carriage—and there is the Niobrara River to cross. Along the river is Fort Niobrara, an army garrison “established in April 22, 1880, to protect settlers from hostile Sioux Indians and to oversee the Spotted Tail Indian Agency” (the former name of the Rosebud Indian Reservation) just across the Nebraska state line in South Dakota.3
According to tribal information sources, Rosebud “was established in 1889 by the United States’ partition of the Great Sioux Reservation,” and thus that partition occurred the same year South Dakota became a state. The reservation had originally been “created in 1868 by the Treaty of Fort Laramie,” and it “originally covered all of West River, South Dakota (the area west of the Missouri River), as well as part of northern Nebraska and eastern Montana.” It also “included Todd, Mellette, Tripp, and the eastern two thirds of Gregory County.” Now the reservation was smaller, the lands around it snatched or sold away. Its people had been worn down by war, dislocation, and genocide for generations.4
Tall, craggy buttes—stark, brown, and magnificent—loom as the Californians quicken their approach to Rosebud and the Lakota Sioux branch known as the Sicangu Oyate or Brulé (“Burnt Thigh”) people. There in tents, tepees, and camps, along the drifts of snow and frozen grasses, many Brulé hold sacred the memory of Chief Spotted Tail (Sinte Gleska). He had been a fierce warrior, a visionary, an icon, and finally a controversial conciliator who willed his people to bow to the white man, saying, “In the long run they could not win against the power of the Americans.”5
In 1877, a year after his nephew Tasunke Witko, better known as Chief Crazy Horse, had ended the life of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the U.S. Army had retaliated by sending a raging army to wipe out all the Sioux, Spotted Tail concluded it was better to go to the reservation. Better to survive. Better not to join the Ghost Dance to pray, sing, and summon the Indian messiah who would calm the wrath of the gods by spitting fire at the Sioux who had ceded the land to the white man. Forbidden but performed in secret, the whirling, swooning Ghost Dance called on the “spirits of all the dead . . . to join their living relatives and assist them in a return to the old happy life . . . in a land from which all whites had disappeared.”6
Ghost Dancers prayed for clouds of dust to envelop the invading white men and make them magically vanish from the Black Hills, from the sacred Sioux homeland that had been decimated and desecrated by settlers streaming in by land and rail to mine the Black Hills gold, to squat, camp, and commandeer the territories where the great buffalo herds the Sioux relied on for sustenance had been hunted to near extinction.
Although Spotted Tail was murdered on August 5, 1881, by rival chief Crow Dog in a struggle for power and primacy on the reservation once named for him and whose residents both venerated and resented him, in William A.’s time it was the reluctant home of the Rosebud Brulé. Even to this day it spans rivers that border the land: the White River, the Missouri River, the Ponca River crossing Bull Creek, and the Keya Paha River, which led to the prominent Christian mission close by the Rosebud Agency buildings where Winder, Reiter, and Minor will live. Sprawling across the reservation are districts named for “physical features such as creeks, or for tribal leaders.”7
On unfamiliar ground that must be made familiar, on horseback or at times by wagon, Winder, Reiter, and Minor will travel the “districts or communities” of the reservation as recorded by a white photographer and regular Rosebud visitor, John A. Anderson.8
These districts were “Rosebud (or agency), Spring Creek, Ironwood Creek, Upper Cut Meat, Cut Meat, Lower Cut Meat, He Dog’s Camp, Red Leaf, Black Pipe, Corn Creek, Little White River, Pine Creek, Upper Pine Creek, Ring Thunder’s Camp, Butte Creek, Oak Creek, White Thunder, Little Crow’s Camp, Ponca Creek, Whirlwind Soldier, and Milk’s Camp.”9
In the field, the work of Special Allotting Agent William A. Winder was to do just that—allot lands to the Brulé Sioux, and when meeting resistance, he would try to resolve conflicts as best he could. The agency superintendent, Charles E. McChesney, was “the link between the people of the reservation and the government in Washington,” as well as the person charged with overseeing the issue of staples such as “salt, bacon, green coffee, sugar, navy beans, rice, hardtack, flour, baking powder and yellow laundry soap,” brought by railroad cars and “hauled to the Agency by the Indians.” There was a police force on the reservation as well. The mounted officers “guarded the issue of rations[,] . . . protected government property, carried mail and messages to the reservation” and “found and returned truant children to school,” many of whom couldn’t abide the strict, unfamiliar, and often humiliating rules. A truant child was a bad child, a bad Indian child, as William A. would come to see.10
There were twenty-one day schools spread over the reservation, most in the same camps Winder must visit, as well as “two mission boarding schools, one Roman Catholic, one Episcopal, . . . about seven miles south of the agency.”11
At most schools Winder will see children’s tribal identities effaced, as they are required to “wear white man’s clothing. The boys were given haircuts, and all were given Christian names,” but they “were allowed to retain their father’s surnames.” No haircuts were allowed for the girls, but usually a “single braid” was required. This effort to “whiten” the youngest tribal members was a practice encouraged by the U.S. government. Future generations confined to the reservation, having undergone these indoctrinations, instructions, and regulations, might be more manageable than their wary, angry, heartsick parents, who would wish them free, riding across the prairie toward a bountiful bison herd.12
Apart from medicine men and natural remedies for illness and disease, there were only two reservation physicians. Winder is not one of them. Because of his own infirmity or choice or because the government does not need another doctor, his life as a doctor has passed. Now he is an agent, an official agent. Allotments must be offered to the former “hunters and warriors who must not demean themselves by working with their hands.” To feed and sustain the Sioux of Rosebud, rations were supplied; “beef was regularly issued to the Indians . . . to keep the people from leaving the reservation in search of meat.” In addition, branded cattle on the hoof would be driven from corrals to the prairies, where the Indians could shoot the animals and butcher them, after which every part of the animal was used.13 And though it was deemed “a betrayal of the tribe’s honor for any Brûlé to attempt to make a living like the white man by scratching the ground,” they must do just that. If they did not engage in farming, it was the rule across the country and on most if not all reservations that the land would be sold by the government and their allotment would be gone.14
As Winder came to better know the Sicangu, he would hear firsthand of the tragedy of five years earlier. It happened near Pine Ridge after the arrest and killing of the Hunkpapa Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, whom the army mistakenly believed was performing the banned Ghost Dance. Amid confusion and chaos, soldiers of Maj. Samuel M. Whitside’s U.S. Seventh Cavalry pursued Chief Spotted Elk’s tribe to Wounded Knee Creek. Perhaps as many as three hundred Sioux, including fleeing women and children, were massacred—gunned down at close range. It was these lost ones whose spirits were still believed to swirl in the racing wind over Pine Ridge and Rosebud, over tepees, schools, stockades, and log houses, through snow and summer sun, over canyons and pine forests and along endless prairie.
There are those among the Sioux of Rosebud who, when summoning the lost, mourn their tragedies and long for the days when defeat of the white man was an honorable and necessary fight, when the great hunts, the pride in the hunts, when the skins, sinews, bones, and flesh of the buffalo were not wasted, as the white man wasted them.
Winder would meet the “traditionalists”—wanting nothing to do with the allotments, as they were once warriors—struggling with the “progressives” who, inspired by the deeds of Spotted Tail, accepted the mandates of the Indian agents and their promises.15
There was much work and much convincing for Winder to do.
“Since entering upon duty, Special Agent Winder has for the most part been engaged in correcting and revising the work done by Special Agent Crager, but is now engaged in making new allotments,” a government report noted.16
And he has asked for more much-needed help, knowing his stay at Rosebud would not end quickly.
The San Francisco Call reported, “Colonel Chalmers Scott will leave here tomorrow for South Dakota, in response to a telegram from Dr. William A. Winder, allotting agent for the Rosebud Sioux, appointing Colonel Scott chief engineer. There are some 3,500,000 acres in the Rosebud agency to be allotted, and the work will consume three or four years. Three surveying parties are now in the field.” This Colonel Scott was an engineer and surveyor from San Diego and also Winder’s dear friend. The article also noted that “the standard and base lines and township lines are all to be run, and sectionizing is to be done. Then subdivisions are to be made of the land into twenty and forty acre lots. Each Indian will get about that amount where the land is good, but where it is bad it will be allotted in larger tracts.”17
The summer of 1895 at Rosebud brought the usual persistent heat, but there also came news of the passing of Winder’s dear old friend María Amparo Ruiz de Burton on August 12. After struggling and petitioning the government to return her beloved Rancho Jamul, the place John C. Minor called home, she died in poverty in Chicago. She had been there for almost a year, trying also to sell her land in Mexico. She died at the Sherman House of gastric fever, and her remains were embalmed and sent back to San Diego, where the funeral was held. William A. would remember the days he spent working with her on The Squatter and the Don, days sequestered in his frame house in New Town with the friend of his youth at Mission de Alcalá, the friend of his later years when he was writing, painting, and doctoring—the special times with his special friend, the widow of his revered superior officer, Gen. Henry Burton.
Once again, grieving and loss cannot be allowed to interrupt his work. He has made 345 allotments and offered the “allottees some timber for use in connection with their agricultural and grazing lands.”18
William A.’s time at Rosebud, with its hard, demanding work, insulates him from the family circle from which he has long been absent. Slowly the remnants of his Confederate kin are dying without ever having been in contact with him, forever firm in the belief that he was a traitor to the rebel cause. On March 22, 1896, a little more than a year after William A. arrived at Rosebud, his half brother John Cox Winder died in Raleigh, North Carolina, while serving as the vice president of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad. He had made a proper life for himself as a well-paid railroad engineer. No such prominence has come to William A. His current work, so often drudgery but bringing him a much-needed salary of about $1,000 a year, continued as grass fires, snow, and rain whipped the reservation. And if the days and nights in camps—allotting, bargaining, soothing, and helping—tired and weakened him, he managed. He continued.
The Valentine Democrat, a chatty sort of newspaper, was glad to follow the reservation happenings, as well as to agree that the work of men like Winder was beneficial:
Uncle Sam is generous. Up to date, 175 Indians from the Rosebud Agency have received their allotments of wagons, etc., from the depot here. Each Indian receives a wagon, complete with top box, bows and cover; set of harness, harrow, hoe, axe and pitchfork. A team of mares, one with foal, two cows, one with calf by her side, and $50 in cash, will complete the Government gift to those Indians who have taken land in severalty, and will give them a good start on their farms. The outcome of this experiment is difficult to determine, but we hope ’twill prove successful.19
Winder surely knew the hardscrabble life of the Brulé as he toiled among them over this long year. But to many in the United States the vanished days on the plains frontier, when news of massacres by both Indians and whites was still alive in mind and memory, aroused a hunger to see “savages, for titillation, pleasure and profit,” and excited crowds would pay to view them. So, “after signing federally approved contracts . . . officials at the Cincinnati Zoological Society” arranged for eighty-nine Sicangu Sioux men, women, and children, along with two boxcars transporting their tepees and horses, to travel from Rosebud to Valentine and then proceed by rail to Cincinnati. They are encamped and exhibited at the city’s zoo in “a spectacular event [that] lasted three months.” Prodded to show fearsome displays, the Rosebud people face huge crowds who watch them participate in “reenactments of legendary western battles, an attack on a stagecoach, war dances and Indian pony races.” Indians in war paint wielding tomahawks, sounding war cries, and speaking in native tongues galloped along as Cincinnatians traveled vicariously through time and space. Much like other raucous displays throughout the country—Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show comes to mind—the shows are huge draws. Sellouts. They are at once degrading exploitations but a chance for a select, perhaps coerced group of Indians, enticed by the promise of a salary and subsistence (as long as they consumed no alcohol) to leave the reservation—for a world of white gawkers who applauded the stereotypes as their “love affair with frontier events grew, thus immortalizing the vanished frontier and the mythical West.”20
No such stunning displays blazed though Winder’s days as he traveled the reservation, wooing, winning, and convincing the more compliant Brulé to accept the allotments, surely believing his work has merit. He must believe this.
According to the report of the commissioner of Indian Affairs, the year ended with “four hundred and eleven allotments made by William A., making “a total of nine hundred and ten allotments . . . quite a number of Indians are now waiting for government surveys to be made so they can take their land in severalty also.”21
*
At the beginning of 1897, with the departure of Chalmers Scott from Rosebud due to illness, Winder, Reiter, and Minor must now work without him, and even though the Valentine Democrat is now referring to William A. as a doctor, there is worrisome news. The newspaper reports that “Dr Winder, of Rosebud, has been quite ill for several days past.”22
While the specifics of Winder’s infirmity are unclear, the devoted Charles Reiter has been helping him by surveying and selling Indian lands refused by the allottees. And there was a glimpse of the old healer Winder. There was this: “Professor Hadden came in from the Boarding School, Sunday, with his son, Rob, who dislocated his arm at play. In the absence of the Agency physician, Dr Winder, with the assistance of Miss Kleine, put the troublesome member on the road to speedy recovery.”23
With Winder briefly returning to his beloved doctoring, one might ask why he does not continue the healing when he is in a place where there is such need. As summer arrives with unremitting heat he will pause to rest, to reflect on the days when killing Indians was the daily activity of many of his compatriots, activities he had notably refused. Picture him now among the thousands gathered for the grand Fourth of July celebrations on the reservation, which are curiously protracted and massive displays of patriotism.
“In 1897, for the first time, the [Brulé] placed special emphasis on an occasion important to the white man’s history,” authors Henry W. Hamilton and Jean Tyree Hamilton write. Two days before the holiday the Brulé, the local traders, and people from across the Niobrara River valley pour into the fairgrounds just north of the Rosebud Agency. Six thousand were in attendance to see “the Squaw Dance, the Corn Dance, and chief’s dances,” followed on the Fourth by a reading of the Declaration of Independence. The celebrations lasted six days and included a “mock attack on the stockade,” recreating actual events that occurred in 1889—and this mock attack “was to become a Rosebud Institution.” A mock attack, a practiced and prolonged celebration, “bronc riding and steer riding, horse races, foot races and cash prizes”—what to make of it? It is likely that for some of the Sioux, displays of their traditions mingled with their relatively new independent lives as farmers—like the white man—made the time of great celebration uniquely their own.24
With Winder still at his labors by year’s end, a bit of praise came to him in the form of the usually terse Indian Affairs report: “The work on this reservation is progressing satisfactorily under the direction of Special Agent William A. Winder . . . who had made one thousand four hundred and twenty-eight allotments; the whole number of Indians on the reservation entitled to allotments is approximately three thousand five hundred.” The allotments are numbers, to be sure, but the reservation is large. And of the other tribal members not entitled to allotments—whether holdouts, renegades, or simply not on the proper rolls—their fate is unknown. Perhaps the news that “five hundred” Indians have come to Rosebud from south of and near the White River and an additional “five thousand dollars for surveying” will bode well for them, and for their agent, William A.25
There is more to do on the reservation, but at least he has help. “Special Agent John H. Knight has been recently assigned to assist” William A., who “has made two thousand three hundred and five allotments.” And according to the commissioner of Indian Affairs, William A. was “instructed in regard to making allotments to an Indian named John Bob Tail Crow and his children on the Sioux ceded lands.” William A. must protect John Bob Tail Crow and his family from “several white men” who “filed homestead claims.” This was not uncommon, but in this case, and with William A.’s intercession, a dispute before the “local land office” ensued as the white men tried to buy the land for “a paltry consideration.” But after a “decision of the Commissioner of the Land Office in favor of the Indians,” the land was finally allotted to John Bob Tail Crow and his family. The occupation of land by squatters, or settlers as they would have preferred to be called, was not uncommon. But here was a victory. Here was a family.26
*
It is 1899, and it is spring. William A. has survived a hard Rosebud winter. Should he remain well, William A. will see a new century, a time of change and promise, but at the Rosebud Reservation life continues as it has continued, with the exception of a reported Indian uprising in Crookston, Nebraska. From his home in Valentine, the photographer and diarist John Anderson, who was photographing the people of Rosebud during the time William A. was there and would have known him, wrote of news that sent “hundreds of frightened settlers [running] . . . scared almost to death. . . . The scene was never to be forgotten.” Anderson reminded himself and other whites that no matter how well he was received as he lugged his camera though the camps, restive and angry Indians were always to be feared, no matter how many had duly acquiesced to a “civilized” life.27
*
As summer descended on the reservation, William A. travels to Omaha on “reservation business.” On August 1, 1899, the Omaha World-Herald reported on his friendship and kindness to the Indians in his keep. And to animals. It seemed that he had been raising and taming squirrels and decided to give some to a local park so others might enjoy the little animals, so often hunted for fun:
Riverview Park was enriched last evening by a big cage of squirrels. Under ordinary circumstances, and if they were ordinary squirrels, this addition to the big park menageries would hardly be worth passing notice, but these are extraordinary squirrels, they being the possessors of the spirits of little Brule children who have died. Or, at least, such is the belief of the Indians, who treat them with the greatest veneration. . . . The squirrels are the gift of Dr William A. Winder, who has been at Rosebud Agency for a number of years and collected them at and near the agency. They have been the subject of considerable correspondence between Dr Winder and park Commissioner Cornish, who is always active in behalf of the menagerie, and yesterday the latter received a telegram from the former saying that he [Winder] and the squirrels would arrive at the Webster street depot during the afternoon. They were met and at once taken to the park. The squirrels have always been pets, and are very tame, both Dr Winder and the Indians always treating them kindly, the latter often coming long distances to feed and talk to them. Whether the small white boy will treat them as gently is a question now worrying the park commissioner.28
From Omaha, William A. and his assistant John C. Minor then travel to Chicago.
On the way, at Sioux City, Iowa, William A. gives a rare and reluctant interview to the Sioux City Journal. The newspaper may be interested in him because Winder’s brother-in-law is Adm. George Dewey, who gained fame and public adulation during the Spanish-American War, when on April 27, 1898, he crushed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. Winder’s son, Willie, now a captain, is in Admiral Dewey’s fleet, and Dewey’s son George was a resident at the Goodwin home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during his early years. When urged to speak about his now deceased Confederate family, Winder was discomfited. He is being called upon to remember what the journalist perhaps thinks are glowing times, but they are dark days to Winder. And he is old, his memory of names and dates smudged with time.
The Sioux City Journal’s attention-grabbing headline is “Brother-In-Law of Dewey . . . Winder fought on the Union side . . . His Father the Andersonville Jailor.” And the interview proceeds: “A brother-in-law of Admiral George Dewey, the hero of Manila[,] arrived in Sioux City last night. General William H. Winder [the reporter misstates his rank and middle initial], is United States special agent in charge of the allotment of Indian lands. It was with considerable hesitancy the general consented to talk of himself and the days of long ago when he and Lieut. Dewey were courting sisters in New Hampshire.”29
“‘Yes,’ he said, stroking his white beard, ‘Dewey and I married daughters of Gov. Ichabod Goodwin of New Hampshire,’” referring to Dewey’s late wife, Susie, “‘while the governor was in office. I had married two years before his election. Dewey was a lieutenant commander in the navy; I was captain of the Third Artillery. His wife’s first name was Sarah [he means Susie Dewey, who died on December 28, 1872, five days after their son George was born]. My wife was Abbie [Abby] Goodwin. She still is living and at present is visiting at Portsmouth, the old family home.’” Of course, after Winder went back to California in 1866, Abby returned to her father’s home and never lived anywhere else. William A. continued.
“‘After Mrs. Dewey’s death a few years after her marriage, my wife took the young George Dewey and he lived with us until he entered Princeton.’” Winder went on to praise Dewey, saying his “‘great trait is carefulness. . . . I cannot remember of him ever being unprepared.’” And of his attire, he stated, “‘While he was never dudish he always faultlessly dressed.’”
Winder also spoke of a letter written to his wife, Abby, by their son, Willie, about the Battle of Manila. “‘He began the letter the night of the battle and added a few pages every day thereafter,’” William A. said. “‘He told his mother he always wondered how he would act in a fight, “and mother,” Willie wrote, “I was astounded at myself. I had felt that I would be frightened. When we entered the bay I kissed your dear photograph and then saluted the dear old flag. After that I had no thought of fear and when the fight was hottest I watched the shells strike without realizing any danger.”’”
When “reminded that his name sounded like that of Gen. John Henry Winder, of the Confederacy, who during the war of the rebellion had charge of Andersonville and the other southern prisons, and in reply to a question as to whether he knew the man”—one can almost hear an intake of breath at this point in the interview, or see a flinch, a quick closing of the eyes—“‘Yes, sir, he was my father.’” And Winder related their shared histories, their births in Maryland: “‘My father united himself with the Confederacy and I fought with the Union army.’” And does he pause then, to hear his father’s voice through the message he gave to the spy Timothy Webster: Come to me, come south now, fight with me or, if not, Yankee son, desert the Union, be jailed for the whole war, or commit suicide. Those hard words he does not speak of. Instead he tells the reporter, “‘The last time I saw him [Gen. John Winder] was a year before the war. He dropped dead in 1864 [1865].’” He goes on as he has gone on before to speak of loyalty, to forcefully deride the “unjust charges” against General Johnston when he was accused of “‘attempting to turn the state of California over to the Confederacy,’” and he quotes from a letter he wrote to Sherman, before again defending Johnston.
Sherman’s reply must have been a comfort, as Winder truly believed in Johnston, his late rebel friend and former commander at Alcatraz. “I was only too glad to hear the truth, which you now so simply affirm,” Sherman had written to him, “that Johnston was absolutely true to his high trust.”
The interview concluded with the newspaper reminding the readers of Winder’s appointment as special allotting agent by Grover Cleveland in 1892 and that he was assigned to service in California. “Three years ago, he was transferred to South Dakota. He is now accompanied by his clerk . . . [J.] C. Minor.”
According to a Duluth, Minnesota, newspaper, William A. and Minor also stopped in Chicago. “General [sic] William A. Winder, a brother-in-law of Admiral Dewey, accompanied by Major J. C. Minor, was at the Palmer House today,” the newspaper reported. “General Winder married a sister of Admiral Dewey’s wife in 1851. General Winder is special allotting agent of the government at the Rosebud Indian Reservation agency, in South Dakota. Major Minor is the government surveyor at the reservation. General Winder has been located there for five years. . . . ‘We have been ordered to report to Washington by the secretary of the interior,’ said General Winder . . . ‘We hope while there, to see Admiral Dewey.’”30
That November, while at the reservation, William A. received a letter from his subordinate allotting agent, Charles H. Bates, reporting a concern he has for the family of tribal elder Jack Sully. This elder has told Bates that he wanted to talk about how they should proceed to gain their allotments.
Sully was in great distress, Bates wrote:
He told me that they were not drawing rations anywhere, and had not been for a number of years. . . . I found that his people was not on any of our lists, and I told him I thought if his people were allotted the matter for good and all, that is Major McChesney [Charles E. McChesney, William A.’s superior] would not act in the matter to subject it to one of the congressmen for action before the Comm., and to do it as soon as possible so that if they were recognized on the Rosebud Res., then allotments could be made to go on this year[’]s schedules. . . . All that I know about his being ordered off the Res . . . I suppose they still imagined as Sully had told me, that they were to be ordered off. Gamble says McChesny [sic] wrote him that he did not know anything about a man named Sully from the rolls.31
Apparently this was not an uncommon problem. But without rations, the Indians would starve. Bates then wrote, “I told him, if he would go to work right away to find out where he was at, I would set a stake for anybody on the land he claims for his family, unless especially ordered to do so by you. The foregoing is all I know in the matter.” The fate of Sully and his family remained uncertain. Perhaps that was the reason William A. needed to go to Washington. And Bates, who knew that William A. had seen his son and Admiral Dewey while in Chicago, wrote, “I was very much pleased to learn in your letter that your trip to Chicago did you so much good, you certainly enjoyed your visit with your son and I don’t know of anything that would make a man enjoy the good things to eat, and the big crowds of people, and excitement after more than 5 years of life at Rosebud Agency.” Bates added wearily, and clearly tired of paperwork, “I am at work on my field notes and it [illegible] pretty hard to be housed up in this fine weather and I wish every day I was out with your party in the field.”32
*
William A. has toiled to a new century. With winter past, he has once again traveled to Chicago for a much-needed break. The Valentine Democrat offered this on May 17, 1900: “Major Minor and Dr Winder, of the Rosebud Agency, started Wednesday morning for Chicago, where they expected to be gone for ten days or a couple of weeks as a means of recreation after months of toil. The Democrat wishes them an enjoyable time.”33
In early June William A. and Abby were briefly reunited at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago—the Portsmouth Herald referred to them as “Gen. and Mrs W. A. Winder”—as they awaited the arrival of their son, Willie, who was coming in on the USS Michigan. It was a fleeting reunion.34
And again, as though slipping through the fog, William A. has gone back to Rosebud. And has been ailing. Then this odd item from the Valentine Democrat on November 1, 1900, reports that William A. has been on the move: “Major Minor and Dr. Winder of Rosebud are making their home in Valentine now. The Dr. has been feeling unwell for some days but is now better.”35 Here in a November 14, 1900, letter to William A. from his superior, U.S. Indian agent Charles E. McChesney, is more information about William A. needing to be on the move: “I was talking with Major Miner [sic] over the phone yesterday and he seemed to have the idea that it was imperative that both you and himself return to this Agency in the near future.” Apparently there is a smallpox epidemic in Valentine. McChesney urges William A. to leave Valentine for Crookston, where it seems that smallpox is not a problem, and “at the end of two weeks absence from Valentine . . . you would be able to come through without trouble. You could advise me a few days before by telegraph and I could then inform you whether there are any cases of smallpox in Crookston.” He adds, “If I raise the embargo on you I might as well raise it on everyone, which I do not feel justified in doing so long as there is a case of smallpox in Valentine. . . . I regret the delay and inconvenience it has been to you, but I have something over 5,000 people here to consider and I do not wish smallpox or any other contagious disease to come among them, and deem it to be only my duty to take all ordinary precautions in the matter.” Thus, it would seem that the authorities took all ordinary and extraordinary precautions to protect for the welfare of the Indians, as an epidemic would rage unabated.36
Eager as William A. is to continue his allotments, he must stay away. If necessary, he could communicate by telephone. The McChesney letter is the first mention of its use at Rosebud.
*
By 1901 William A. is spending time both on and off the reservation. In summer, on June 13, the Valentine Democrat reported that “Dr Wm A Winder and Major J. C. Minor came down from the agency last Saturday to look after business matters. They are very busy with the allotting of lands to the Indians[,] which will occupy considerable time yet.”37
And it does, for a good period of time. Although there is no evidence of William A. attending patients at this time, he is referred to as Dr. Winder. Perhaps it was just a nod to his years as a healer. In the meantime the Portsmouth Herald announced Willie’s engagement: “Lt. Cdr. William Winder, of the USS Michigan, only son of Mrs. Abbie Winder, of this city and Miss [Ethel] Taylor, a well known society lady of Erie, Pa.” William A. is not even mentioned.38
*
In early 1902 it appears that William A. is no longer in the field among the Indians at the camps. The ever-faithful and diligent Charles Reiter has taken over some of William A.’s duties. Reiter wrote about “a case I wish to submit to you for your decision of the amount of land that Medicine Owl, the widow of Spotted War Bonnet . . . has not been allotted.” After the death of Spotted War Bonnet, his widow, who is in “the census with three children,” remarries Wolf (last name illegible), and Reiter wants to know if she gets “640 acres, or 320 acres,” and benefits. Apparently there is also a similar case involving “Charging Hawk and Not Standing Hawk [and] . . . War Horse Comes Out and Dog Track.” These Indians have numbered stakes on their desired allotments, but some allotments, including those of Kill in the Water and Blanket Long Pheasant, were transferred to the Rosebud Reservation’s territory. Confusion abounded as to these Indians named by Reiter and their entitlements to land. Unfortunately, resolution of these cases is unrecorded.39
*
On April 26 John C. Minor, William A.’s companion, friend, and associate, died in Valentine, Nebraska. A grieving William A. sent a “card of thanks” to the Valentine Democrat: “I wish to extend my thanks to my friends who rendered aid, and to those that offered their services through the sickness of my friend, Major Minor.”40
On May 1 the Valentine Democrat offered this obituary, worth recording in full. It illuminates the life of John C. Minor and allows a glimpse into the increasing frailty of William A.:
Last Thursday morning, about three o’clock, Major John Chew Minor breathed his last after an illness of several weeks from cirossis [sic] of the liver. Thus passes away an eventful and useful life of a man who was modest, gentlemanly, and kind, courteous to all alike, and was untiring in his devotion to Dr Winder, of whom the major frequently spoke and referred to as the “venerable old man.” No less was the devotion of Dr Winder to his friend the Major who has been in the employ of the government with the Doctor and Chas Reiter during the past ten years and their constant association has endeared them one to another.
The obituary then notes that the two men met when Minor was in charge of the Jamul Cement Works in Southern California and was chief deputy collector at the Port of San Diego. As the two traveled together in the area of Rosebud, “our people have seen the familiar forms of the Doctor and Major and noted their devotion to each other. Their fathers were fast friends before them, and they seemed like father and son, the Major always attentive and striving to make the Doctor comfortable, who was nearly 20 years older and though more feeble from age has survived the Major and may yet live another 10 years or more. The Doctor has the sympathy of all who know him and all will feel that he is more endeared to them because of his age and recent bereavement.”41
*
On June 29, 1902, came important news from the Omaha Daily Bee: “Captain William A. Winder . . . lies seriously ill at an Omaha hotel.” His condition was precarious because of the “infirmity of his advanced age. . . . He is now in his 77th year.”42 (He was actually seventy-nine.)
The article contained something more than a health report, however. It also contained a statement from the patient himself: “‘I want to tell the world a story before I leave it to vindicate the name and memory of an honorable man who suffered from a cruel slander during the last few years of his life and whose memory has been defamed by ruthless, baseless utterance.’ . . . This statement was made by the stricken veteran to a reporter for the Bee one day during the week. The man he wanted to exonerate of false charges had been his enemy and [an] enemy of the United States.” It was, of course, Albert Sidney Johnston, the Union officer who became a Confederate general at the beginning of the Civil War and whom William A. repeatedly defended as a man of honor because he never acted against the Union while stationed at Alcatraz.
Described as “emaciated,” William A. had something very important to say: “As for me there was never any doubt in my mind as to what my course would be, though I confess that it cost me many a severe struggle to take sides against my own relatives, as much as I loved the Union, and what it stood for.”
And there it was, his final declaration of loyalty, at what he sensed would be the end of his life.
*
William A. was incapacitated and bedridden at the Henshaw Hotel in Valentine when he got a letter from Charles Reiter suggesting he was still needed, at least on paper.
May 31, 1902
Department of the Interior
U.S. Indian Service
Rosebud S.D.
Wm. A. Winder
U.S. Special Allott. Agt.
My Dear Sir:
Indian agent, Chas. McChesney told me to send you the schedule for your signature, which I have addressed to the Henshaw Hotel. I also enclosed four blank schedule sheets so that in case the ones I send do not prove satisfactory you can make them out again. The schedule is closed again so the Indians that come in from now on will have to wait. Your signature is on several sheets and as there are not enough to reach it I thought it best to send them to you and you can then send them back again for the agent’s signature. It seems that we have about all the allotments we can get, for the Indians had a chance again to take land and receive their benefits but, there was not any to come around and take it. I will commence on the Township Plats and work them through as fast as I can. I trust you stood the trip to Omaha in good shape and that I will hear from you soon. I have no news to write so will wish you good health and remain.
Very Respectfully
Charles Reiter.
P.S. Mr. Jordan sent by registered mail to the Clarkson Hospital, your moccasins. It was done without my knowing it.43
By August 14 the Valentine Democrat was reporting that “Dr Wm Winder departed for Omaha last Thursday morning, where he will try to regain his health. The Doctor is remarkably strong for one so advanced in years and having endured so many hardships.”44
And then the truth of his sickness was reported: “Dr. Winder, accompanied by a trained nurse, returned from Omaha last week. The Doctor is suffering from a cancer on the tongue.”45
And this: “Dr. Wm A. Winder and his nurse from the Clarkson Hospital, Miss [Louisa] Key, returned to Omaha Tuesday to consult the doctor who is attending Mr. Winder. A week or ten days will be their stay, possibly longer. It is hoped that Dr. Winder will be benefitted and return soon,” reported the Valentine Democrat.46
Finally came the news that “Chas Reiter came down Monday [Nov. 3] expecting to go to Omaha to see Dr. Winder, who is not improving in health.”47
In fact he was dying. But what has been the worth of his work?
*
Despite all of William A.’s diligence and well-known humanity, along with his years of caring and careful allotments to the Rosebud Sioux, it seemed that little had changed about the white authorities’ concept of “civilizing” a people and effacing a cherished culture. The words of Winder’s correspondent, agent Charles H. Bates, now “in charge of allotments at the Pine Ridge Reservation,” were recorded by the Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times well after Winder left Rosebud. His letters to William A. expressing concern for the Indians in his keep appeared to have devolved to common prejudice. When asked if Indians are still “painting their faces . . . each decade,” Bates replied laughingly that he is “seeing a great advance in the character of the red fellows. Their type is advancing, and they are being improved in many ways, but will always be Indians. The general tendency is for a pure blood Indian to marry a blood Indian. In the same way it is the tendency of half-bloods to marry half-bloods, and of quarter-bloods to marry quarter-bloods.”48 William A. would have been disheartened to see such an opinion and would have commented if he’d had the chance. But it was too late.
*
It is 1903, on February 26 to be exact. Abby Winder had just learned of her husband’s grave illness. Although William A. and Abby have been living apart since 1865—there are only two or three occasions of record during those long years that they have seen each other when visiting their son Willie—here came a rare and intimate glimpse into Abby’s heartbreak upon hearing her husband was gravely ill in Omaha.
From Portsmouth, in a letter to her cherished cousin Elizabeth “Lizzie” Blanchard in Santa Paula, California, Abby thanks Lizzie for her letter of concern about her “dear brave courageous husband. Oh it is dreadful and since last April, I have had a sad life of sympathy, which does little good. And the [illegible] between hopes that recovery might come—and now the certainty that the end is close at hand. The only consolation is, that he has had such care as only goes to the most favored sufferer[,] a god given nurse [Louisa Key] who has been with the dear soul since April.”49
Abby feared her husband “does not miss me,” but “every day, his nurse wrote, when he did not, I wrote him.” She expresses her sadness in knowing she has lost him forever, is truly losing him—the young soldier she married, the father of their only son, the trying times at Alcatraz they endured together. Perhaps she is mourning the lost years spent apart.
Far away in Portsmouth, Abby feared her “touch was like a sledgehammer,” and if she could touch him and say “poor sufferer,” he “might say yes.” But William A. could no longer speak. As Abby noted, Nurse Louisa Key wrote to her that “except for moaning, he never complained.”
Abby was relieved to know that her son “Willie at last managed to get a week[’]s leave to go to his father—about this time his father expressed a most earnest longing to see him . . . and it was such a comfort to both the dear souls.” Willie consulted with a “Dr. Summers in Omaha who pronounced his malady a cancer of the tongue—and he thought the tongue must be mostly removed. Then it was decided to try a system called the ‘Alexander,’ a very painful treatment but endurable with the hope of recovery.” The Alexander technique involved injections into the tumor. In some cases, it was a cure. Not in this case. “Of course,” Abby wrote, “it was impossible for me to think of going there . . . alas for so many years he has been unaccustomed to my ministrations.”
Nourishment, Abby was told, could not be taken by her husband “except by enema, it seems impossible that it should last long. Oh—if only he could be at rest! . . . But he is so brave—so absolutely uncomplaining.”
Abby also relates what Willie wrote his mother from his father’s bedside: “‘I often tried to hold his hand—or smooth his beautiful silver hair’—but he [Willie] wrote on his pad, ‘I hope I have been a good son’ . . . and his father wrote, ‘you are and have always been the apple of my eye.”
Abby then tells her cousin how Willie wrote that his father scrawled on the pad, “You have devoted your life to your dear mother.” Willie spoke of “the devotion of Miss Key and Charlie [Reiter] as beyond belief.” There was little more to be said.
On March 6, 1903, William A. died at “four [a.m.] in his apartments at the Millard Hotel. The cancer had compelled him to retire from active service and seek rest and quiet some weeks ago. The cause of death was carcinoma hemorrhage,” reported the Omaha Daily Bee.50
Obituaries and death notices came quickly.
On March 7 the Omaha World Herald reported that
Dr. William A. Winder, Indian fighter and friend of the Red Man, dead. Brother-in-Law of Admiral Dewey and Father of a Battleship Commander. Dr. William A. Winder, veteran Indian fighter, scout, traveler and gentleman, who has many times won medals and trophies of gallantry, and whose acquaintance over the west for the past forty years has included all the prominent men of his time, is dead at the Millard Hotel. He was a brother-in-law of Admiral Dewey. . . . The death of Dr. William A. Winder, of Rosebud, South Dakota, removes from the west one of the most interesting individuals and lovable of characters. For a long time he has been allotting agent for the government in South Dakota. It was largely through his influence . . . that the Indians of the Northwest were made to feel that they had an interest in the country in which they lived. He was always kind to the red men, yet stern, and these two characteristics caused him to be respected wherever known.51
The newspaper went on to relate the particulars of William A.’s family, the generals—grandfather, father, and cousin Charles S.—without condemnation and noting the latter two’s Confederate service.
Also on March 7 the San Diego Union reported that “W. W. [William Wallace] Bowers received a telegram yesterday from Omaha announcing the death of his old friend, Dr. Wm. Winder at that place. Dr. Winder was well known in this city[,] having been an old-timer. He was a practicing physician here for a number of years, and won many friends. He was a veteran of the Civil War holding the rank of captain of artillery. For a long time he was stationed at Alcatraz Island, San Francisco. In recent years he has held the position of United States allotting agent at the Indian reservation of Rosebud, S.D.”52
The San Diego Union reprinted the text of the “telegram received” informing the newspaper of William A.’s passing: “Omaha Neb. March 5[6], 1903. Mr. W.W. Bowers Collector of Customs, San Diego Calif. Doctor Winder died tonight. Body will be embalmed and taken to Portsmouth. Notify friends. Charley Reiter.”53 With Winder’s body scheduled for transport to Portsmouth, it seemed that finally and forever, he was returning to Abby and Willie.
Also on March 7, 1903, the Baltimore American reported that “Capt. William A. Winder formerly of this city and a member of the well-known Winder family of this state died yesterday in Omaha, Neb. Aged 79 years.” The piece mentioned his father, John H., and that he was “a brother of W. S. Winder . . . his father was a Southern sympathizer . . . and joined the Confederate Army.” A recital of William A.’s career followed, including his heroism in the wreck of the San Francisco, his army resignation, and his mining ventures, as well as his last job, at the Rosebud Reservation. “Mr. W. S. [Sidney] Winder of this city said last night that he received a letter from his brother’s wife, in which it was stated that Captain Winder was seriously ill,” the article stated.54 When Sidney Winder heard that William A. was dead, he said he had not seen him since 1866. That is probably not true, as Sidney had fled to and remained in Canada the whole of 1866. Perhaps he wished he had seen the half brother who had tried to intercede with President Lincoln in 1863 when William A. thought Sidney might be executed.
Another notice from the Omaha World-Herald was published March 9, 1903: “The body of Dr. William A. Winder, who died suddenly at the Millard hotel Friday morning, will be taken this evening at five o’clock over the Northwestern to his old home at Portsmouth, N.H., by members of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Mr. Winder’s son, who is at Erie, Pa., will meet the body there, and will accompany it to Portsmouth, where the funeral will be held. This is the home of Mrs. Winder and the body is to be taken there on her instructions and those of the son.”55
This from the Portsmouth Herald of March 12: “The funeral of Capt. William E. [sic] Winder was held today at the Gov. Goodwin mansion on Islington street, and was private. Rev. Alfred Gooding of the Unitarian church officiated. The body was placed in the Goodwin tomb in the Proprietor’s cemetery by Undertaker Ham.”56
Probably one of the most compelling headlines about William A.’s death appeared on March 15, 1903, in the Omaha Sunday World-Herald: “Touching Feature of Captain Winder’s Life and Death . . . Because his father and brother were Confederates the distinguished Veteran was pursued by insinuation. . . . Although President Lincoln personally assured him there was no question of his loyalty, disappointment pursued him.” Accompanying the piece is a photo of William A. at the end of his life, when he appeared very aged, somber, and sunken-cheeked. It was his final portrait.57
The last record of Winder’s time at Rosebud came in a letter from the Office of Indian Affairs in Washington dated March 28, 1903. Acting Commissioner A. G. Tonner wrote to Charles E. McChesney, now the Indian agent at Rosebud, “The administrator of the estate of Special Allotting Agent William A. Winder, deceased . . . has been instructed to turn over to you all government property, including books and records, which was in Mr. Winder’s hands at the time of his death.”58 These were important documents that would need to be preserved.
Consider this: the aged Winder spent hard years in South Dakota, with long hours slogging along rutted roads, or in snowdrifts snagging buggy wheels in the long cold winters, or traveling about in the summers amid thigh-high grasses, prairie fires, droughts, and the occasional flood. If on one of those long nights before a warm hearth, or when restless as he grew sicker and sicker, perhaps he saw over those vast hills, over the rivers, visions of long-gone days, visions that came in the dreams, ceremonies, and songs of the Sioux, the ghosts of buffalo dotting the plains and the warriors on fleet ponies charging after them. Or were there warships and cannonade at Alcatraz, a tangle of seabirds and seaweed covering drowning men? His fate was not to drown, never to drown in rumors, in failures, or in rough waters.