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
