Chapter II: Part 2

They debated voluminously all night long, and at last decided to fight—but in the early morning a terrible noise was heard below on the plain, and when they rushed to see—behold the warriors in blue were rushing to and fro on their horses, shouting, firing off their appalling weapons. It was plain they were doing a war dance out of wanton strength, and so terrible did they seem that the hearts of the small people became as wax. “We can do nothing against such men; they are demons; they hold the thunder in the palms of their hands. Let us submit; perhaps they will grow weary of the heat and sand and go away. Perhaps they will long for their wives and children and leave us. We will wait.”

Others said: “Let us send our children—what will it matter? We can watch over them, they will be near us, and we can see that they do not forget our teachings. Our religion will not vanish out of their minds.”

So the old men went again to the war chief, and, with bowed heads and trembling voices, said: “We yield. You are mighty in necromancy and we are poor and weak. Our children shall go to the Iron Khiva.”

Then the war chief gave them his hand and smiled, and said: “I do not make war with pleasure. I am glad you have submitted to the commands of my great chief. Live in peace!”

III

For two years the children went almost daily to the Iron Khiva, and they came to love one of those who taught them—a white woman with a gentle face—but the man in the black coat who told the children that the religion of their fathers was wicked and foolish—him they hated and bitterly despised. He was sour-faced and fearful of voice. He shouted so loud the children were scared—they had no breath to make reply when he addressed them.

But to even this creature they became accustomed, and the life of the village was not greatly disturbed. True, the children began to speak in a strange tongue and fell into foolish songs which did little harm—they were, in fact, amusing, and, besides, when the cattlemen came by and wished to buy baskets and blankets, these skilled children could speak their barbarous tongue—and once young Kopeli took his son who had mastered this hissing language, and went afar to trade, and brought back many things of value. He had been to the home of the Little Father, and the fort.

In short the Pueblans were getting reconciled to the Iron Khiva and the white people, and several years went by so peacefully, with so little change in their life and thought, that only the most far-seeing expressed fear of coming trouble—but one night the children came home in a panic—breathless and storming with excitement.

A stranger had arrived at the Iron House, accompanied by a tall old man who claimed authority over them—the man who lived in the big white man’s town—and they had said to the teacher, “we want six children to take away with us into the East.”

This was incredible to the people of the cliff, and they answered: “You were mistaken, you did not understand. They would not come to tear our children from our arms.”

_Far in advance of settlers, in those early days when every man
had to fight for his right of way, the American cow-puncher used
to journey along the waste hundreds of miles of the then far
Western country. Like a true soldier of fortune, he adventured
with bold carelessness, ever ready for war, but not love; for in
the Indian villages he visited there was no woman that such a man
as he was could take to his heart._

_Illustration from_
THE EVOLUTION OF THE COW-PUNCHER
_by_ Owen Wister

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _September, 1895_]

_In the ’eighties the habitat of the Apaches was in the Sierra
Madre Mountains in Arizona. When pursued the Apaches always
took to the mountains. They were hideously cruel. The settlers
entertained a perfect dread of these marauding bands, whose
onslaughts were so sudden that they were never seen. When they
struck, all that would be seen was the flash of the rifle,
resting with secure aim over a pile of stones or a bowlder,
behind which was the red-handed murderer._

_Illustration from_
SOME INDIAN RIDERS
_by_ Colonel Theodore Ayrault Dodge, U.S.A.

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _May, 1891_]

But the little ones were shivering with fear and would not go back to the plain. They moaned and wept all night—and at sunrise the old men went down to the Iron House, and said:

“Our little ones came home last night, crying. They said you had threatened to carry them away into the East; what does this mean?”

Then the strange men said, “This is true. We want six of your children to take away to school. We will not hurt them. They will live in a big house, they will have warm clothing, they will want for nothing. We are your friends. We want to teach your children the ways of the white man.”

Passionately the grandsires responded. “We do not want to hear of these things. Our children are happy here, their hearts will break if you take them away. We will not submit to this. We will fight and die together.”

Then the old white man who had been speaking became furious. His voice was sharp and fierce. “If you don’t give up the children I will take them. You are all fools—your religion is wicked, and you are not fit to teach your children. My religion, my God, is the only God that is true and righteous, and I will take your children in order that you may be taught the true path and become as white men.”

Then the old men withdrew hurriedly, their lips set in a grim line. Their return—their report, froze every heart. It was true then—these merciless men of the East were planning to carry their children into captivity. Swiftly the word passed, the goats were driven into their corrals, the water bags were filled, the storehouses were replenished. “We will not go down to the plain. Our children shall go no more to the Iron House. If they take them, it will be when all our warriors are dead.”

So it was that when the agent and the missionaries climbed the mesa path they came upon a barricade of rocks, and men with bows and war clubs grimly standing guard. They made little talk—they merely said, “Go your ways, white men, and leave us alone. Go look to your own sons and daughters, and we will take care of ours. The world is wide to the East, go back to it.”

The agent said, “If you do not send your children down to school I will call my warriors, and I will kill every man with a war club in his hand.”

To this young Kopeli, the war chief, said: “We will die in defense of our home and our children. We were willing that our children should go down to the Iron Khiva—till now—now when you threaten to steal them and carry them afar into captivity where we can never see them again, we rebel. We will fight! Of what value is life without our children? Your great war chief will not ask this hard thing of us. If he does then he has our answer.”

Then with dark faces the white men went away and sent a messenger across the desert, and three days later the sentinels of the highest roof saw the bluecoat warriors coming again. Raising a wild song, the war song of the clan, the cliff people hastily renewed their defenses. They pried great rocks from the ledges, and set them where they could be toppled on the heads of the invaders. They built the barricades higher. They burnished their arrows and ground their sickles. Every man and boy stood ready to fight and die in defense of their right to life, and liberty, and their rocky home.

IV

Once again the timid prevailed; they said: “See this terrible white man, his weapons are most murderous. He can sit where he is, in safety, and send his missiles against our unprotected babes. He is too great. Let us make our peace with him.”

So at last, for a third time, the elders went down to talk with the conquerors, and said, “What can we do to make our peace with you?”

Then the tall, old man said, “If you will give us two of your brightest sons to go away into the East we will ask no more, but your other children must return to the Iron House each day as before.”

The elders withdrew, and the news flew about the pueblo, and every mother looked at her handsomest son in sudden terror, and the men assembled in furious debate. The war party cried out with great bitterness of clamor, “Let us fight and die! We are tired of being chased like wolves.” But at last up rose old Hozro, and said, “I have a son—you know him. He is a good son, and he has quick feet and a ready tongue. He is not a brawler. He is beloved of his teachers. Now, in order that we may be left in peace, I will give my son.”

His short and passionate speech was received with expressions of astonishment as well as approval, for the boy Lelo was a model youth—and Hozro a proud father. “What will the mother say?” thought all the men who sat in the council.

Then gray old Supela, chief priest and sage, rose slowly, and said, “I have no son—but my son’s son I have. Him I will dedicate, though he is a part of my heart. I will cut him away because I love peace and hate war. Because if the white man rages against us he will slaughter everybody.”

While yet they were in discussion some listening boys crept away and scattered the word among the women and children. “Lelo and Sakoni are to be bound and cast among the white men.”

There was wailing in the houses as though a plague had smitten them again—and the mothers of the lads made passionate protestations against the sacrifice of their sons—all to no purpose. The war chief came to tell them to make ready. “In the morning we must take the lads to their captors.”

But when morning came they could not be found in their accustomed places, they had fled upon the desert to the West. Then, while the best trailers searched for their footprints, the fathers of the tribe went down and told the white chief. He said:

“I do not believe it, you are deceiving me.”

“Come and see,” said Hozro, and led the way round the mesa to the point where the trailers were slowly tracing the course of the fugitives.

“They are running,” said young Klee. “They are badly scared.”

“Perhaps they go to Oraibi,” said one of the priests.

“We have sent runners to all the villages. No, they are heading for the great desert.”

They followed them out beyond all hope of water—out into the desolate sand—where the sun flamed like a flood of fire and only the sparse skunk-weed grew—and at last sharp eyes detected two dark flecks on the side of a dune of yellow sand.

“There they are!” cried Klee, the trailer.

The stern old white man spurred his horse—the soldier chief did the same—but Klee outran them all. He topped the sand dune at a swift trot, but there halted and stood immovably gazing downward.

At last he came slowly down the slope and, meeting the white man, the agent, and the soldier, he said, with a sullen, accusing face, and with bitter scorn:

“There they are; go get them; my work is done!”

With wonder in their looks the pursuers rode to the top of the hill and stood for a moment looking; then the lean hand of old Hozro lifted and pointed to a little hollow. “There they lie—exhausted!”

But Klee turned and said, “They are not sleeping—they are dead! I feel it.”

With a sudden hoarse cry the father plunged down the hill and fell above the body of his son.

When the white men came to him they perceived that the bodies of the boys lay in the dark stain of their own blood as in a blanket. They were dead, slain by their own hands.

Then old Hozro rose and said, “White man, this is your work. Go back to your home. Is not your thirst slaked? Drink up the blood of my son and go back to the white wolves who sent you. Leave us with our dead!”

In silence, with faces ashamed and heads hanging, the war chief and stern old white man rode back to their camp, leaving the heroic father and grandsire alone in the desert.

That night the great mesa was a hill of song, a place of lamentation. Hozro and Supela were like men stunned by a sudden blow. The old grandsire wept till his cry became a moan, but Hozro, as the greatness of his loss came to him, grew violent.

Mounting his horse, he rode fiercely up and down the streets. “Now, will you fight, cowards, prairie dogs? Send word to all the villages—assemble our warriors—no more talk now; let us battle!”

But when the morning came, behold the tents of the white soldiers were taken down, and when the elders went forth to parley, the soldier chief said:

“You need not send your children away. If they come down here to the Iron House that is enough. I am a just man; I will not fight you to take your children away. I go to see the Great Father and to plead against this man and his ways.”

“And so our sons died not in vain,” said Supela to Hozro, as they met on the mesa top.

“Aye, but they are dead!” said Hozro, fiercely. “The going of the white man will not bring them back.”

And the stricken mothers sat with haggard faces and unseeing eyes; they took no comfort in the knowledge that the implacable white man had fled with the blue-coated warriors.

THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE

THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE

The spring had been cold and wet, and pneumonia was common throughout the reservation on the Rosebud, and yet the trained nurse whom the government had sent out to preside over the little school hospital had little to do.

She was a grimly conscientious person, but not lovable. Men had not considered her in their home plans, and a tragic melancholy darkened her thin, plain visage, and loneliness added something hard and repellent to her devotional nature. She considered herself a martyr, one carried to far countries for the love of the gentle Galilean. She never complained vocably, but her stooping walk, her downcast eyes, and her oft-bitten lips revealed her discontent with great clearness to the red people, who interpret such signs by instinct.

“Why does she come here?” asked reflective old Tah-You, the sage of the camp on the Rosebud.

“She comes to do you good, to give your children medicine when they are sick,” replied the subagent, speaking in signs.

“She is not happy. Send her away. We do not need her. I am medicine giver.”

“I can’t do that. Washington sent her. She must stay. She looks unhappy, but she is quite content. When your children are sick you should send them to her.”

To this Tah-You made slow answer. “For many generations we have taken care of our own sick in our own way,” said he. “I do not think Washington should require us to give up all our ways. You tell Washington that we are able to care for our sick.”

It was only later that the agent found that the little hospital, the pride of his eyes, had been tabooed among the tribe from the very start. On the surface this did not appear. The children marched over, two and two, each morning, and took their prevention medicine with laughter, for it had a sweet taste, and the daily march was a ceremony. Their teacher took occasion to show them the clean white walls and the wide soft beds, and told them to tell their parents that this beautiful little house was for any one who was sick.

To this they all listened with that patient docility which is their most marked characteristic, and some of the old men came and looked at the “medicine house” and spoke with the “medicine woman,” and while they did not show enthusiasm, they were not openly opposed.

All this gave way to a hidden, determined aversion after one of the employees had died in the place. The nurse, being sheathed in the boiler iron of her own superstitions, could not understand the change in the attitude of the red people. It was not her business to give way to or even to take into account their own feelings. If they were sick she insisted that the superintendent hale them forthwith to her rooms and bind them on her beds of painful neatness. The opposition of the old people she would put down with the bayonet if necessary.

A group of the old men came to the agent and said: “Friend, a white man has died in the medicine house. That is bad. Among us we do not let any one use the lodge in which one has died—we burn it and all that is connected with the dead one. There is something evil which comes from the clothing of one who is dead of a disease. We do not wish our children to enter this medicine house.”

“Furthermore,” said Tah-You, “there are many bottles standing about in the house, and they stink very strong—they make us sick even when we go in for a few moments. It is not good for our children to sleep there when they are ill.

“More than this,” continued Tah-You, prompted by another, “the medicine woman drinks whisky in the night, and our children ought not to see that their medicine woman is a drunkard.”

Slowly and painfully Mr. Williams explained that all the bed-clothes were purified and the room made clean after a person died in it. Also that the smell of the bottles was not harmful. As to the medicine woman and her drinking, they were mistaken. She was taking some drink for her cough.

“We do not believe in keeping a house for people to die in,” repeated Tah-You. “Spirits and things evil hover round such a place. They cry in the night and make a sick child worse. They are very lonely. It is better that they come back to the tepee when they are ill. The children are now frightened, and we want you to promise that when any of them fall sick you will not send them to this lonesome house which is death-tainted.”

The face of the agent hardened. To this end he knew the talk would come. “Listen, friends. Washington is educating your children. He is feeding them. He has sent also a medicine man and a medicine woman to take care of you when you are ill. I have built a nice clean house for you to be sick in. When your children are sick they must go there. I will not consent to their returning to the tepee.”

This was the usual and unavoidable end of every talk. Every wish of the red man was necessarily thwarted—for that is manifestly the way to civilize them. They rose silently, sadly, with the patient resignation to which they had schooled themselves, and passed out, leaving the agent with a sneaking, heart-burning sense of being woefully in the wrong.

In the weeks that followed, the smug little hospital stood empty, for no sick one from the camp would so much as look toward its glass-paneled door. The children no longer laughed as they lined up for their physic. The nurse sat and read by the window, with no duties but those of caring for her own bed. She had the professed sympathy of all those who have keen noses for the superstitions of other people, but none whatever for their own. She thought “the government should force these Indians to come in and be treated.”

And as for Tah-You, these people of a creed were agreed that he was the meanest Indian in the tribe, and it was his influence which stood in the way of the medicine woman’s curative courses, and interfered with the plan to convert them into Christian citizens. “The power of these medicine men must be broken,” said the Rev. Alonzo Jones.

Once in a while a child was made to stay overnight in the dread, sleek little rooms of the hospital, but each one escaped at the earliest moment. In one case, when the sick one chanced to be an orphan, she was made a shining decoy and coddled and fed on dainties fit for a daughter of millions, in order that her enthusiastic report of the currant jelly and chicken broth might soften the hearts of her companions toward the hard-glazed walls and echoing corridors of the little prison house. But it did not. She told of the smells, of the awful silence and loneliness, of the sour-faced nurse who did many most mysterious things in the deep of the night, and the other girls shuddered and laughed nervously and said, “When we are sick we will run away and go to camp.” The opposition deepened and widened.

The struggle came when Robert, the first sergeant of the school, the captain of the baseball team, fell sick. He was a handsome, steady, good-humored boy of twenty, of fine physical development, and a good scholar. He spoke English readily and colloquially, and was a cheering example of what a reservation school can turn out. The superintendent trusted him implicitly, and found him indispensable in the government of the school and the management of the farm and garden, and the agent often invited him to his house to meet visitors.

_This incident occurred in the days of the so-called “Indian
Ring,” when the Interior Department used to appoint as Indian
agents men whose sole object was to enrich themselves by stealing
the property of their savage wards. As a result of their reckless
operations there was constant friction between these agents and
the men of the army._

_Illustration from_
NATCHEZ’S PASS
_by_ Frederic Remington

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _February, 1901_]

_When a mere maid, the chief of the Gros Ventres Indians kidnaped
her and, binding her securely to himself, rode off for his own
village. When within sight of their destination the girl stabbed
him, killing him. This feat not only won her the right to wear
three eagle feathers, but Old Sun, the rich and powerful chief of
the North Blackfeet Indians of Canada, made her his wife._

_Illustration from_
CHARTERING A NATION
_by_ Julian Ralph

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _December, 1891_]

Robert, after ploughing all one cold, rainy afternoon, took a griping chill and developed a cough which troubled him for some days. He said nothing about it, and kept on with his work when he should have been in bed, for he dreaded the hospital, and was careful to minimize all his bad symptoms, but one morning he found himself unable to rise, and the doctor pronounced him a very sick boy—“Another case of pneumonia,” said he.

Robert was silent as they moved him across the road into the men’s ward of the little hospital; but his eyes, bright with fever, seemed to plead for something, and when the agent bent down to ask him if he wanted anything, the boy whispered, “Stay with me.”

“All right, Robert, I’ll watch with you to-night. I must go now, but I’ll come back at noon.”

It was a long day for the sick boy, who watched and listened, giving little heed to the nurse who was tirelessly active in ministering to his needs. He knew just what was going on each minute. He listened for the assembly bell at seven o’clock. He could see the boys in their uniforms lining up in the halls. Now they were marching to chapel. They were singing the first song—he could hear them. Now they were listening to the little talk of the superintendent—and all was quiet.

At last they went whooping to their games in the play hour just before bedtime, and it seemed hard to lie there and hear them and be alone and forgotten. “The teachers will come to see me,” he thought, “and some of the boys.” But they did not come. It began to grow dark at last, and the taciturn nurse lit a smoking lamp and sat down to read. When she asked him a question it sounded like the snarl of a cat, but her hands were tender and deft. Oh, it was hard to be sick and lie still so long!

When the agent came in the boy said: “Major, tell my mother. Let her come. Tell her I’m very sick, Major!”

“All right, Robert. I’ll take the first opportunity to send her word. But she’s a long way off, you know. I hear she went to Tah-You’s old camp. But I will watch with you, my boy. Go to sleep and rest.”

The boy grew very much worse in the night, and in his temporary delirium he called piteously for his mother and in his native tongue, and the agent told one of the policemen to carry word to the mother, “Pawnee Woman,” that her son was sick. “Say to her that we are doing all we can for him, and that he is in no danger,” he added.

That day was a long day to Robert, a day that was filled with moments of delirium as a June day is filled with cloud shadows. Each hour carried him farther from the white man’s religion and the white man’s medicine—only his good agent comforted him; to him he clung with ever-weakening fingers. The agency doctor, earnest to the limits of his powers (you can’t buy great learning at eight hundred dollars per year), drew the agent aside and said: “The boy is in for a siege, Major. His temperature is rising in spite of everything. He must be watched closely to-night.”

“I’ll look out for that,” said Williams. Weary as he was, he watched again the second night, for the boy would not let him go, and his heart was very tender toward him.

The next morning as he sat in his little office he heard the swift soft thud of moccasined feet in the hall, and a timid knock. “Come!” he shouted, and before he could turn, a Cheyenne woman ran swiftly in. Her comely face was set in tragic lines of grief, and sobbing convulsively, while the tears flooded her cheeks. She laid one hand upon the agent’s shoulder, and with the other she signed: “Father, my son is going to die. Your work and your lodge have killed him. Have pity!” As she signed she wailed heart-brokenly, “He will die.”

“Dry your tears,” he replied, “He is not going to die. Two nights I have watched with him. I have myself given him strong medicine. He is better.”

She moaned as if all hope were gone. “No, no. He is very sick, father. He does not know me. His eyes are like those of a dead boy. Oh, have pity! Come with me. Come and aid him.”

To comfort her the weary man went back to the hospital, and as they entered, the mother made a wild gesture of repulsion, and said to the nurse: “Go away, dog woman! You are killing my son.”

In vain Williams tried to tell her how faithful the nurse had been. She would not listen.

“Father, let me take my son to the lodge. Then he will get well.”

He shook his head. “No, that would not do. He would die on the way. Let him stay here till he is better. You and I will watch over him here. No harm will come then. See how nice and clean his bed is, how sheltered his room is. It will be cold and windy in camp; he will be made worse. Let him remain till he is able to stand. Then it will be safe to take him away.”

By putting forth all his powers of persuasion he comforted and reassured the distracted mother, and she sat down in the hospital; but an understanding that she wanted to have Tah-You the medicine man visit the boy and breathe upon him and sing to him ran round the school and the agency, and the missionaries and the nurse were furious.

“The idea of that nasty old heathen coming into the hospital!” said the nurse to one of the teachers. “If he comes, I leave—that’s all!”

The doctor laughed. “The old cuss might do him good. Who knows?”

The Reverend Jones pleaded with Williams: “Don’t permit it. It will corrupt the whole school. Deep in their hearts they all believe in the old medicine man, and if you give in to them it will set them all back ten years. Don’t let them take Robert to camp on any plea. All they want to do is to smoke and make gibberish over him.”

To these impassioned appeals Williams could only say: “I can’t order them not to do so. They are free citizens under our present law, and I have no absolute control over them. If they insist on taking Robert to camp, I can’t stop them.”

Mr. Jones went away with a bitter determination to make some kind of complaint against somebody, to something—he couldn’t quite make up his mind to whom.

Then old Tah-You came, very grave and very gentle, and said: “Father, the Great Spirit in the beginning made both the white man and the red man. Once I thought we could not be friends and live on the same soil. I am old now and wise in things I once knew nothing of. I now see that the white man knows many good things—and I know also that the red man is mistaken about many other things. Therefore we should lay our medicines side by side, and when we have chosen the better, throw the worthless one away. I have come to put my curative charms and my lotions beside those of the white medicine man. I will learn of him, he will learn of me. This sick boy is my grandson. He is very ill. I ask you to let me go in to him, and look upon him, and smoke the sacred pipe, and breathe upon him, and heal him with strong decoction of roots.”

To this Williams replied: “Tah-You, what you ask I cannot grant. This medicine house was built for the white man’s doctor by people who do not believe as you do. Those who gave the money would be very angry at me if I let you enter the door.”

The old man’s face fell and his lips worked as he watched the signs made by the white chief.

“So be it,” he replied as he rose. “The white man’s heart is hard. His eyes are the eyes of a wolf. He gives only in his own way. He makes all men walk in his own road. He will kill my son and laugh.”

Williams rose also. “Do not harden your heart to me, friend. I know that much of your medicine is good. I do not say you shall not treat the boy. To-morrow, if he is no better, you can take him to camp. I cannot prevent that, but if you do and he dies I am not to blame.”

The old man’s face grew tender. “I see now that you are our friend. I am content.”

The Reverend Mr. Jones came down upon the agent again, and the nurse and the teachers (though they dared say nothing) looked bitter displeasure. It seemed that the props on which their sky rested, were tottering, but Williams calmly said: “To have the boy die in hospital would do us a great deal more harm than to have him treated by Tah-You. Were you ever young? Don’t you remember what it meant to have your old grandmother come and give you boneset tea and sit by your bed? Robert is like any other boy; he longs for his old grandfather, and would be quieted and rested by a return to the tepee. I will not sacrifice the boy for the sake of your mission. I won’t take any such responsibility.”

“It will kill him to be moved,” said the nurse.

“I’m not so sure of that. Anyhow and finally, these people, under the present ruling of the department, are citizens, and I have no authority to make them do this or that. I have given my consent to their plan—and that ends the matter.”

Early the next morning the father and mother, together with the grandmother, tenderly folded Robert in a blanket and took him away to camp, and all day the missionaries could hear the sound of the medicine man’s rattle, and his low chant as he strove to drive out the evil influences, and some of them were exceedingly bitter, and the chief of the big medicine house was very sad, for it seemed that his work was being undone.

Now it happened that Tah-You’s camp stood in the bend of the deep little river, and the tepees were based in sweet-smelling grasses, and when the sick boy opened his eyes after his swoon, he caught the flicker of leaf shadows on the yellowed conical walls of his mother’s lodge, and heard the mocking-bird’s song in the oaks. The kind, wrinkled face of his grandfather, the medicine man, bent over him, and the loving hands of his mother were on his neck. He was at home again! His heart gave a throb of joy, and then his eyes closed, a sweet langour crept over him, an utter content, and he fell asleep with the humming song of Tah-You carrying him ever farther from the world of the white man’s worry and unrest.

The following day, as Williams lifted the door-flap and entered, Tah-You sat contentedly smoking. The mother, who was sewing on a moccasin, looked up with a happy smile on her face and said, “He is almost well, my son.”

“I am glad,” said Williams.

Tah-You blew a whiff from his pipe and said, with a spark of deep-seated humor in his glance:

“The white men are very clever, but there are some things which they do not know. You—you are half red man; that accounts for your good heart. You see my medicine is very strong.”

Williams laughed and turned toward the boy who lay looking out at the dear world with big, unwavering eyes. “Robert, how are you?”

Slowly the boys lips shaped the whispered word, “Better.”

“There is no place like home and mother when you’re sick, Robert. Hurry up and get well. I need you.”

As Williams was going, the mother rose and took his hand and cried out, poignantly: “You are good. You let me have my son. You have saved him from the cruel-hearted medicine woman. Do not let her make evil medicine upon us.”

“I will not let any one hurt him. Be at peace.”

Then the mother’s face shone with a wonderful smile. She stood in silence with heaving breast as her white chieftain went out. “He is good,” she said. “He is our brother.”

To this, serene old Tah-You nodded: “He knows my medicine is very strong—for he is half red man.”

RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER

RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER

He sat in the shade of the lodge, smoking his pipe. His face was thin, keen, and very expressive. The clear brown of his skin was pleasant to see, and his hair, wavy from long confinement in braids, was glossy as a blackbird’s wing. Around his neck he wore a yellow kerchief—yellow was his “medicine” color—and he held a soiled white robe about his loins. He was about fifty years of age, but seemed less than forty.

He studied me quizzically as I communicated to him my wish to hear the story of his life, and laughingly muttered some jocose remark to his pretty young wife, who sat near him on a blanket, busy at some needlework. The humorous look passed out of his face as he mused, the shadows lengthened on the hot, dry grass, and on the smooth slopes of the buttes the sun grew yellow.

After a long pause, he lifted his head and began to speak in a low and pleasant voice. He used no gestures, and his glance was like that of one who sees a small thing on a distant hill.

“I am well brought up,” were his first words. “My father was chief medicine man[1] of his tribe, and one who knew all the stories of his people. I was his best-loved son, and he put me into the dances of the warriors when I was three years old. I carried one of his war-bonnet feathers in my hand, and was painted like the big warriors.

“When my father wished to give a horse to the Cut Throat or Burnt Thigh people who visited us and danced with us, he put into my hands the little stick which counted for a horse, and I walked across the circle by his side and handed the stick to our friend. Then my mother was proud of me, and I was glad to see her smile.

“My father made me the best bows, and my mother made pretty moccasins for me, covered with bright beads and the stained quills of the porcupine. I had ponies to ride, and a little tepee of my own in which to play I was chief.

“When I was a little older I loved well to sit near my father and the old men and hear them tell stories of the days that were gone. My father’s stories were to me the best of all, and the motions of his hands the most beautiful. I could sit all day to listen. Best of all I liked the stories of magic deeds.

“One day my father saw me holding my ear to the talk, and at night he said to me, ‘My son, I see you are to be a medicine man. You are not to be a warrior. When you are older, I will teach you the secrets of my walk, and you shall follow in my path.’

“Thereafter I watched everything the medicine men did. I crept near, and listened to their words. I followed them with my eyes when they went aside to pray. Where magic was being done—there was I. At the dance I saw my father fling live squirrels from his empty hand. I saw him breathe smoke upon the body of a dead bird, and it awoke and ran to a wounded man and tore out the rotting flesh and cured him. I saw a mouse come to life in the same way. I saw the magic bladder move when no one touched it; and I saw a man buried and covered with a big stone too great for four men to lift, and I saw him come forth as if the stone were a blanket.

“I saw there were many ways to become a medicine man. One man went away on a high mountain, and there stood and cried all the day and all the night, saying:

“‘O Great Spirit!
I am a poor man.
I want to be wise.
I want to be big medicine man.
Help me, Great Spirit!
I want to be honored among my people.
Help me get blankets, horses.
Help me raise my children.
Help me live long,
Honored of my people.’

“So he chanted many hours, without food or water, and it was cold also. At last he fell down in a sleep and dreamed. When he came home, he had medicine. A big bird had told him many secrets.

“Another went into a sweat house to purify himself. He stayed all night inside, crying to the Great Spirit. He, too, dreamed, but he did not tell his dreams.

“A third man went into his tepee on a hill near the camp, and there, with nothing to eat or drink, sat crying like the other two, and at last he slept, and in the night voices that were not of his mouth came in the tepee, and I, who listened unobserved, was afraid, and his women were afraid also. He soon became a great medicine man; and I went to my father, and I said:

“‘Make me a medicine man like Spotted Elk.’

“He looked upon me and said:

“‘My son, you are too young.’

“Nevertheless I insisted, and he promised that, when I became sixteen years of age, he would help me to become like Spotted Elk. This pleased me.

“As I grew older I put away in my memory all the stories my father knew of our people. I listened always when the old men talked. I watched the medicine men as they smoked to the Great Spirits of the world. I crept near, and heard them cry to the Great Spirit overhead and to the Dark One who lives below the earth. I listened all the time, and by listening I grew wise as an old man.

“I knew all the wonderful stories of the coyote and of the rattlesnake. I knew what the eagle said to his mate, and I knew the power of the great bear who sits erect like a man. I was a hunter, but I followed the game to learn its ways. In those days we were buffalo eaters. We did not eat fish, nor fowl, nor rabbits, nor the meat of bear. Our women pounded wild cherries and made cakes of them, and of that we ate sometimes, but always we lived upon buffalo meat, and we were well and strong, not as we are now.

“I learned to make my own bows and also to make moccasins, though that was women’s work, and I did not sew beads or paint porcupine quills. I wanted to know all things—to tan hides, to draw pictures—all things.

“By and by time came when I was to become a medicine man. My father took me to Spotted Elk, the greatest of all medicine men, he that could make birds from lumps of meat and mice from acorns.

“To him my father said: ‘My son wishes to be great medicine man. Because you are old and wise I bring him to you. Help me to give him wisdom.’

“Then they took me to a tepee on a hill far from the camp, and there they sat down with me and sang the old, old songs of our tribe. They took food, and offered it to the Great Spirits who lived in the six directions, beginning at the southeast. Then they smoked, always beginning at the southeast. This they taught me to do, and to chant a prayer to each. Then they closed the tepee, and left me alone.

“All night I cried to the Great Spirits:

“‘Hear me—oh, hear me!
You are close beside me.
You are here in the tepee.
Hear me, for I am poor and weak.
I wish to be great medicine man.
I need horses, blankets. I am a boy.
I wish to be great and rich.
Hear me—oh, hear me!’

“All night, all next day I cried. I grew hungry and cold by and by. I fell asleep; then came to me in my sleep a fox, and he opened his mouth, and talked to me. He told me to put weasel skin full of medicine, and wear fox skin on my head, and that would make me big medicine. Then he went away, and I woke up.

_Illustration from_
THE SIOUX OUTBREAK IN SOUTH DAKOTA
_by_ Frederic Remington

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _January 24, 1891_]

_Illustration from_
THE NEW INDIAN MESSIAH
_by_ Lieutenant Marion P. Maus, U.S.A.

_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _December 6, 1890_]

“I was very hungry, and I opened the tepee and came out, and it was sunrise. My father was sleeping on the ground, and when I touched him, he woke quickly and said:

“‘My son, I am glad to see you. I heard voices that were not yours calling in the tepee, and I was afraid.’

“‘All is well,’ I said. ‘Give me food.’

“When I was fed, I took my bow and arrow and went forth to kill a weasel. When I was alone, I sat down and prayed to the Great Spirits of the six world directions, and smoked, beginning at the southeast, and a voice came in my ear which said, ‘I will lead you.’ Soon I came upon a large, sleeping weasel; he was white all over as snow, though it was yet fall. Him I killed and skinned, and stretched the pelt on a flat stick to make a pouch. Then I sought the medicine to go in it. What that was I will not tell, but at last it was filled, and then I slew a big red fox, and out of his fur I made my cap.

“Each night I went into my tepee alone to smoke and chant, and each night strange birds and animals came to me and talked and taught me much wisdom. Then came voices of my ancestors, and taught me how to cure the sick and how to charm the buffalo and the elk. Then I began to help my father to heal the sick people, and I became honored among my companions; and when I caught a maid on her way to the spring, she did not struggle; she was glad to talk with me, for I had a fine tepee and six horses and many blankets.

“I grew skillful. I could do many things white people never see. I could be buried deep in the ground, while a mighty stone which six men alone could lift was rolled upon me. Then in the darkness, when I cried to the Great Spirits, they came swiftly and put their hands to the stone and threw it far away, and I rose and walked forth, and the people wondered. I cured many people by the healing of my hands, and by great magic like this: I had a dried mouse, and once when a man came to be stiff and cold with a hole in his side, I said, ‘Put him before me.’

“When they did as I bid, I took the mouse and put it before the man who was dead, and I blew smoke upon the mouse and said: ‘Great Spirits, help me to do this great magic.’ Then the mouse came to life, and ran to the dead man and put his beak in the hole, and pulled out the bad flesh, and the wound closed up and the man rose.

“These wonderful things I did, and I became rich. I had a fine, large tepee and many horses and skins and blankets. People said: ‘See, there goes Rising Wolf. He is young, but he has many horses.’ Therefore, I came to be called ‘Many Horses’; but I had only one wife, Sailing Hawk. I cared only for her.”

The chief’s handsome face had long since become grave and rapt. Now it suddenly grew grim. His little wife moved uneasily in her seat by his side, and he looked at her with a strange glance. Between them had crept the shadow of Sailing Hawk’s death.

“One day while I sat with Sailing Hawk in my tepee, a big, black cloud came flying from the west like an eagle, and out of it the red fire stabbed and killed my wife and set my tepee on fire. My heart was like ice when I rose and saw my Sailing Hawk dead. I seized my gun. I fired many times into the cloud. I screamed at it in rage. My eyes were hot. I was crazy.—At last I went away, but my wife was dead, and my heart empty and like ashes. I did not eat for many days, and I cared no more for the Great Spirits. I prayed no more. I could not smoke, but I sat all night by the place where my Sailing Hawk lay, and no man dared come to me. My heart was very angry toward everybody and all things. I could not see the end of my trail. All was black before me.

“My people at this time were living on their own lands. The big fight with ‘Long Hair’ had passed away, and we were living at peace once more; but the buffalo were passing also, and we feared and wondered.

“Then the white man came with his soldiers, and made a corral here in the hot, dry country, and drove us therein, and said, ‘If you go outside we will shoot you.’ Soon we became poor. We had then no buffalo at all. We were fed poor beef, and had to wear white men’s clothes which did not fit. We could not go to hunt in the mountains, and the land was waterless and very hot in summer, and we froze in winter. Then there were many sick, but the white men sent a doctor, and he laughed at me, and ordered me not to go near the sick ones. This made my heart black and sorrowful, for the white man gave strange white powders that were very bitter in the mouth, and the people died thereafter.

“But many times when he had gone I went in and made strong magic and cured the sick, and he thought it was his white powders. Nevertheless, more and more of my people came to believe in the white man, and so I grew very poor, and was forced to get rations like the rest. It was a black time for me.

“One night there came into our midst a Snake messenger with a big tale. ‘Away in the west,’ he said to us in sign talk, ‘a wonderful man has come. He speaks all languages, and he is the friend of all red men. He is white, but not like other white men. He has been nailed to a tree by the whites. I saw the holes in his hands. He teaches a new dance, which is to gather all the Indians together in council. He wants a few head men of all tribes to meet him where the big mountains are, in the place where the lake is surrounded by pictured rocks. There he will teach us how to make mighty magic and drive away the white man and bring back the buffalo.’

“All that he told us we pondered long, and I said: ‘It is well, I will go to see this man. I will learn his dance.’

“All this was unknown to the agent, and at last, when the time came, four of us set forth at night on our long journey. On the third day two Snake chiefs and four Burnt Thighs joined us, then four Cut Throat people, and we all journeyed in peace. At last we came to the lake by the pictured rocks where the three snow mountains are.

“There were many Indians there. The Big Bellies were there from the north; and the Blackfeet, and the Magpies, and the Weavers, and the People-of-the-south-who-run-round-the-rocks, and the Black-people-of-the-mountains all were there. We had council, and we talked in signs, and we all began to ask, ‘Where is the Great Helper?’ A day passed, and he did not come; but one night when we sat in council over his teachings, he suddenly stepped inside the circle. He was a dark man, but not so dark as we were. He had long hair on his chin, and long, brown head-hair, parted in the middle. I looked for the wounds on his wrists; I could not see any. He moved like a big chief, tall and swift. He could speak all tongues. He spoke Dakota, and many understood. I could understand the language of the Cut Throat people, and this is what he said:

“‘My people, before the white man came you were happy. You had many buffalo to eat and tall grass for your ponies. You could come and go like the wind. When it was cold, you could go into the valleys to the south, where the healing springs are; and when it grew warm, you could return to the mountains in the north. The white man came. He dug the bones of our mother, the earth. He tore her bosom with steel. He built big trails and put iron horses on them. He fought you and beat you, and put you in barren places where a horned toad would die. He said you must stay there; you must not hunt in the mountains.