Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03 (30 page)

Ahead lay Fort Buford, the trading post where Sitting Bull had so often gone to trade skins for guns and ammunition. He tried not to think about it, about those days when he had ridden to a post knowing that in a day or two or three, whenever he chose, he would climb onto his horse and ride away again. Those days were gone now, dead as the buffalo whose skeletons lay all around him. But he could not think of another way. There was no other place to go, and he set his jaw, trying to hold back the flood of emotions welling up inside him.

Looking at the pathetic column straggling along in the wake of the wagons, he shook his head. It was hard to believe that it had come to this; that a life so rich, so full, and so free could have been reduced to this bedraggled procession. He wanted to shout out his defiance, but there was no one to hear, no one to quake at the sound of his voice, and if it were to be a prayer, no one to answer it.

They reached Fort Buford on the afternoon of July 19 and set up camp. Some of the Long Knives, like curious children, came to gape at the man whose very name had once made their skin crawl. He could see it in their faces—the wonder, the disbelief, the question … could this tired and ancient-looking man in tattered clothes once have been the scourge of the plains? When camp was established, Sitting Bull retired to his lodge to rest.

He was feeling his age. At fifty, he could no longer do what he had done at thirty … or even at forty. The years had taken their toll, wearing him down.

It seemed to him as if the ravages of time on his body replicated in some symbolic way everything that had happened to his people. They too were worn down, old and tired. Not just the older ones who had come with him to Fort Buford, but all of them. The faces of the young men at the fort looked haggard and drawn as if they, too, had been worn out, made old before their time.

When they had rested overnight, it was time to turn in their horses and their guns. The ragged and hungry Lakota lined up before the officers and, one by one, surrendered everything that had made them free—the buffalo runners and warhorses, of which they had managed to retain only fourteen, then their pistols and revolvers.

Sitting Bull, as befitted his station, went last, accompanied by Crow Foot, his eight-year-old son. He set his treasured Winchester repeater, which had been a gift from White Bull so long ago, on the floor, nodded to it and to Crow Foot, then looked Major David Brotherton in the eye … still proud, bent but not broken … but no longer free.

A
FTER HIS SURRENDER, SITTING BULL
was taken to Fort Randall, where he was interned as a prisoner of war. The officers at the fort treated him well, and those who came to know him admired his courage and intelligence. His health improved, and he began to recover his old vigor. And, as could be expected, he never lost his concern for his people.

When he was finally released to the agency at Standing Rock, he became active in the affairs of the Lakota reservation, working unstintingly to improve conditions there, and waging an uphill battle against the indifference of the Indian Bureau, the treachery of the United States government, and the greed that continued to fuel westward expansion and piecemeal subjugation of his former country.

But the biggest threat to his influence, which remained considerable and actually seemed to increase, was the backbiting and jealousy of other chiefs, including former friends like Gall and Running Antelope. The Lakota knew they had been
given a raw deal, but powerless to throw off the white yoke, they turned their bitterness inward, many of the chiefs competing with one another for influence that no longer counted for much.

The agent at Standing Rock, James McLaughlin, tried repeatedly to undermine Sitting Bull’s authority, refusing to acknowledge his status as chief and constantly trying to sabotage Sitting Bull’s efforts to improve conditions on the reservation.

For a time, the chief joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and became a celebrity. Everywhere he went, people lined up for his photograph, which he sold by the hundreds, almost always giving the money away to poor children he encountered on his travels. Generosity was—and for Sitting Bull remained—one of the four cardinal virtues for a Lakota, especially for a chief.

The government remained uneasy about Sitting Bull. When another Lakota, the dreamer and medicine man Wo-vo-ka, began to preach his Ghost Dance religion, that uneasiness quickly turned to paranoia and then to hysteria. The Ghost Dance cult believed that all the great chiefs would come back, and that the white man would be driven away. The buffalo would return, and the Lakota would be able to return to their old way of life.

Sitting Bull was not a member of the cult, but he thought the Ghost Dance itself harmless. Nonetheless the government, concerned about a possible uprising, overreacted. Several Indian policemen were sent to arrest him, rousting him out of bed in the middle of the night. When friends grabbed weapons and came to his assistance, a gun-fight
broke out. Sitting Bull was shot once each by Bull Head and Red Tomahawk, two of the policemen. Like his friend Crazy Horse, probably his only rival for preeminence among the Lakota chiefs, Sitting Bull met his death while unarmed, at the hands of his own people.

There are several biographies of Sitting Bull, but the most recent, and by far the best, is by Robert Utley,
The Lance and the Shield.
For those who wish additional reading, two other biographies, by Stanley Vestal and Alexander Adams, are helpful, as is Vestal’s
Warpath,
a biography of Sitting Bull’s nephew, White Bull. There is, of course, a multitude of works available on the Sioux War of 1876, but one of the most comprehensive overviews is
Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876
by John S. Gray. For a broader acquaintance with Lakota society, Royal Hasrick’s
The Sioux
is excellent, and the work of James Walker, published in several volumes by the University of Nebraska Press, is comprehensive and invaluable on Lakota myth, ritual, and belief.

Sitting Bull took the lead. “I have killed many whites,” he began, “but not without provocation. They have taken our land, they have killed our women and children, they have come where they were not welcome, telling those who have always lived there that they would have to leave. I am willing to listen to what you have to say, and I am prepared to be peaceful, but not if it means giving up everything my people need to live.”

De Smet listened respectfully, occasionally asking a question or two. “I am not here to make peace,” he said. “I cannot do that, but it is something I want to see happen. I think it would be a good thing if you were to meet with the peace commissioners at Fort Rice. This war is a terrible thing. It is terrible for the whites and it is terrible for the Lakota. The cruelty is causing pain to everyone involved, and it would be a good thing if it could be ended now.”

Sitting Bull said nothing.

B
OOKS BY
B
ILL
D
UGAN

WAR CHIEFS

Chief Joseph
Crazy Horse
Geronimo
Quanah Parker
Sitting Bull

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