Accompanied by Lieutenant Bailey, three mounted enlisted men, and two mounted color bearers, as well as scout Robert Jackson, the colonel advanced some four hundred yards toward the designated site, then halted, waiting while Bailey and the rest of the party covered the last hundred windswept yards. It took the better part of another hour as Bailey and Johnny Bruguier held more protracted talks before a dozen unarmed Sioux finally dismounted and moved forward on foot from the north. They were followed at a prudent distance by more than twenty warriors who stayed atop their ponies, tails and manes tossing in the cold breeze. Thirty yards out, the dozen Hunkpapa on foot stopped in the brilliant but brutally frigid sunshine streaming through the dispersing clouds.
“They want us to dismount, General,” Bailey explained after he and the half-breed flung their voices back and forth across the distance.
As Nelson was considering whether or not to accept that request, five warriors moved away from the others, crossing half the distance to the soldiers before they spread buffalo robes and blankets upon the autumn-dried grass. They promptly sat, ready to parley.
“Which one is the chief?”
Bailey pointed to the one seated in the middle of the others as the more than two dozen Sioux horsemen milled anxiously some thirty yards farther away. Nelson suspiciously regarded those mounted Hunkpapa—every one of them armed with a Springfield carbine, Henry or Winchester repeater, a few with older model Spencer carbines. After a moment his eyes were drawn back to study his long-sought adversary. Sitting Bull wore only buckskin leggings, breechclout, and fur-lined moccasins. He wore no feathers, much less any sort of headdress, to signify his high office or his standing among the Hunkpapa people. Impassive, he sat clutching only a buffalo robe tightly around his shoulders.
Miles swallowed quickly with some growing excitement, then looked over his own entourage, saying, “Let’s go see what Sitting Bull has to say about his surrender.”
As the soldiers approached, the Hunkpapa chief waved an arm, signaling one of the horsemen forward. The rider came up, dropped a buffalo robe to the ground in front of his tribesmen, then reined about and returned to the rear with the others still mounted on their ponies. When two of the warriors with Sitting Bull quickly spread the robe on the prairie, the chief gestured to have Miles take a seat there before him.
Miles shook his head. “Bailey, tell them I think it better that we don’t get quite so close.”
But before the lieutenant could translate, the dark-skinned warrior seated at the chief’s left hand was already whispering in Sitting Bull’s ear.
“Who’s that?”
“The one I told you about. Half-breed. Name’s Brug-gair, something like that.”
“He speaks their tongue well, eh?” Miles asked.
“Does a good job with ours too,” Bailey replied.
“All right, if you fellas have your pistols ready under your coats,” the colonel finally said as he trudged forward again, “let’s see what these unsavory characters have to say for themselves.”
* April 11, 1873—
Chapter 9
20 October 1876
Russia Ready for an Advance
on Turkey
Austria, France and Germany
Remain Neutral
Indians Still Raiding Settlers
In Wyoming
THE INDIANS
More Raiding up North.
CHEYENNE, October 18.—Almost every hour brings news of new depredations by Indians upon ranchmen located west and north of the Chug. On Sunday last Coffey 8c Cunney’s train, near Laramie Peak, was run down to Kent’s, on Laramie River. A saddle blanket and vest belonging to a man named Sullivan, of the independent volunteers, was found near that place, and he is probably killed. Frank Sprague was attacked on his ranch at the old mill near Laramie Peak. He fought the Indians during a whole day, killing two, but they burned his hay and ranch and ran off all his stock. He escaped barefooted to O’Leary’s ranch on Richard Creek before the Indians fired the bushes in which he had been concealed. Kerr, who arrived at the Chug to-day, saw an Indian camp within two miles of Searight’s ranch and men and ammunition left here on his order to-day. A large body of Indians encamped at the head of the North Laramie, distant from Fort Laramie forty miles. A party of volunteers who went in search of Aspenfelter and the mail carrier from Laramie city, who was due at the Chug Monday, returned to-night to that place having discovered no trace of the missing men.
As soon as the soldier chief in the big coat came up and stood by the robe, Johnny Bruguier said, “Soldier chief, Sitting Bull want you to sit while you talk with him.”
“No,” Miles said stiffly, his jaw jutting. “I think better of it. I’ll just stand while we parley.”
Glancing at the Hunkpapa chief a moment, seeing the strain of confusion in Sitting Bull’s eyes, Johnny tried again. “If you want to make war, then stand. If you come to talk peace with these Lakota—then you must sit.”
For several moments Nelson Miles deliberated on that, his eyes looking from the interpreter, to the seated chiefs, to the line of mounted warriors to their rear. Then back to the buffalo robe offered him. At last the wary officer turned and mumbled something to his men, then advanced a few more feet so that he could kneel on the buffalo robe.
“You will not sit to talk?” Johnny asked.
“I will kneel here,” Miles grumbled, clearly vexed. “Now—get on with what Sitting Bull wants to tell me.”
Johnny stepped over so he could sit directly between Sitting Bull and the colonel. The chief reached beneath his robe to pull out a pipe, which Sitting Bull lit by taking a smoldering coal from a small gourd his nephew, White Bull, produced from a pouch he carried over his shoulder. White Bull sat at the chief’s left hand, while the Brule named High Bear sat on the chief’s right, along with Jumping Bull, a Hunkpapa, and Fire-What-Man, a Sans Arc.
This ceremonial smoking and passing the pipe around the circle took much time. Johnny did not smoke. Instead, he watched the faces of those surrounding him in that small circle, both white and red. It had been many months since he had been so vividly reminded how he was a man-in-between. In his veins coursed white blood, and red too. But he was far from truly belonging in either world. While the Hunkpapa had accepted him, he had to admit he shamelessly enjoyed the raucous life of the bawdy frontier towns all the more. He was truly caught in between, one foot snared in either world, able to make a home for himself in neither.
As he looked now at Sitting Bull’s face, for some reason the chief appeared older—the furrow between his brows, those deep clefts running down from the corners of his sharp nose. But mostly the sadness in his eyes. Yes, sadness. For many, many days now the chief had been in mourning. The loss of his child kicked in the head by a mule. Eating nothing, Sitting Bull had fasted, smeared cold ashes on his flesh, slept but little, and wore only his
