The Tulsa Chief. (Tulsa, Okla.), Vol. 19, No. 10, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 18, 1909 Page: 2 of 8
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11K recent Indian uprising In Oklahoma, if by a
■ stretch of the imagination it may be so-called, goes
I I *° show that a largo part of the picturesqueness
■ I I of the plains' warfare has pussed away with the
III years. Crazy Snake's "last stand’’ was made
I I ifiinst the militia of Oklahoma it was not long
I I ago that the whole western country as fur as in-
dlan regulation is concerned, was in charge of the
VX'^^1 regulars of the i'nited States army.
I |^Cy%I Crazy Snake wore "store clothes " In his pic-
he aPI,elirs Ilk8 anything but the wild untu-
tored savage that one would paint an Indian bear-
ing such a name as Crazy Snake. The fights in
the past between the palefaces und the reds were
fights In which, on the Indian side, wore men wearing paints of all colors,
feathers, blankets, moccasins and leggings, or if the scene of action happened
to be In the summer time, wearing nothing at all except breech clout and
paint.
Many of the old picturesque chieftains oi the plains have gone to the
tiappy hunting ground. Among them were those who died old enough to re-
member the day when the rifle was unknown to the red m»n • xcept as a
Weapon In the hundB of the adver-
sary.
Old Raln-in-the-Face died not long
ago and his epitaph is found in the
flippant paragraph that tho Sioux
warrior and chieftain is at last a good
Indian.
Every redskin who ever raised his
hand against a white man is dubbed
a bud Indian. Rain-in-the-Fnco living
was of service to the world, lie add-
ed plcturesquencss and a spirit of
aavagery to the dull canvas of civi-
lized life. Something is lost every
time that one of the old-time warriors
of the plain goes to ti\e land whore
Ihe buffalo grass is always green and
where the herds await the Indian
hunter.
In the deaths of most of the great
Indian chiefs of old there was always
some tragic note. Most of them met
violent deaths. Perhaps (Jeronimo,
who passed away at Fort Sill, Okla.,
some months ago, was the only one of
many aged chieftains to die a natural
death. The Indians' picture of the
happy hunting ground is said by stu-
dents to have made violent death tho
safest mode of entrance to the portals
of the redskin heaven in the Indian
mind. The quality of bravery dis-
played, the Indians also believed In
the old days, had much to do with
their happiness after death, and ns a
consequence to die fighting for their
tribe was the aim of most of the old
school of warriors.
Raln-in-the-Face followed Little
Wound; Little Wound followed
American Horse; American Horse fol-
lowed Young Man Afraid, and Red
Cloud is close upon their trail. Sioux
chiefs and warriors all! Shall no
voice lament their passing?
Most of these chiefs were Chris
Bans—in a way. The water of bap-
tism sprinkled but it never washed
the war paint from their heathen
hearts. The only good thing the
white men ever offered them was his
religion, but they suspected it as they
succumbed to its outward forms. It
takes more than a prayer or two and
more than a little water from a font
to remove from the administering
clergyman the suspicion which the
red man attached to all of the white
race as the result of “a century of
dishonor."
Out at Pine Ridge lii years ago tho
little Episcopal mission church was
turned into a hospital for the care of
the wounded survivors of the band of
Big Foot, the Sioux chief. The pews
ind the altar had been removed and
straw had been strewn on the floor
and there lay the stricken women and
children—all the men of the band had
met dentil- every one sore wounded
by the bullets of the soldiers.
Where the altar had been lay the
wife of a chief and her four little
children, bearing the pain of their
wounds with what we are pleased to
call a savage stoicism. The sun came
up over the pine-topped ridges and
sent its light through the stained glass
window over and above the place of
the altar.
The red and the yellow and the
blue fell upon the family group, and
on the blankets covering tho wounded
children one read, transmitted by tho
sun and the glass, the words: "Glorv
to God in the Highest.” Yet the i ......
Ism still lays hold on the heart of the Sioux' ^ u'alhon'
The tragedy of the light at Wounded Knee where Rig
Foot s warriors the women and the children, all save
a few, were slain, was not the fault cf the soldiers. Tho
Ta v. a I ta' a,ry I(’Rt scores of “their com-
rades. killed and wounded. They were but doing the
fluty enforced upon them by years of civil service theft
and misrule. The Indian, strangely enough, perhaps,
to those who do not know, ever has looked upon the
soldier as His best friend.
When the war of the Dakota reservations was ended
the chiefs of the Ogalala and lirule Sioux, Kicking Bear
8hort Bull, American Horse and the rest, asked that
army officers might be appointed us Indian agents In
the place of the civilians who held those offices for
years. American Horse, when asked why he wanted a
soldier agent, took two paper bags and filled one and half
filled the other. The full one, he said, was the soldier
agents -bagjtnd the half full one wus the civilian agent's
bag. m
This was the heathen American Horse's method of
describing the Indian's rations as they came from the
hand of ageuta with different Ideas of honesty.
Captain, now brigadier-general, Charles G. Penny (re-
tired), wus the first soldier agent appointed ut Pine
Ridge. Capt. Penny was in command of Company K,
Sixth United States lnfuntry, at Fort Sheridan, a com-
pany which, with its command, Company F, Capt. Mun-
son, was sent to the post north of Chicago in the No-
vember of the year that anarchists were hanged.
cjeA'zv
SN/\\C>fto
Capt.
•
Penny stayed at Pine Ridge a long time, and
the Indians bore testimony to the fact that the ration
bags bliowed no signs of having leaked any of their con-
tents before they were delivered at the doors of the
Sioux tepees.
There is a firm paleface conviction that the red man
has no sense of humor. It were better, perhaps, to
qualify the statement by making it a trifle less sweeping.
It Is the palcfuce at a distance who thinks that the In-
dian has no funny bone—the frontiersman knows other-
wise.
There Is old Red Cloud, the Sioux chieftain, now with-
in a short journey of the Joys which the happy hunting
ground holds for him, who probably never laughed tloud
In his life, hut who. behind his maskjsf stolidity, hides
as keen an appreciation of "the fun of'the thing" as cun
be found in the composition of any one of bis white
conquerors.
Nearly 40 years ago Red Cloud, in the prime of his
fighting days, led. with other chiefs, an attack on the
whites near Fort Fetterman. Red Cloud had the better
of his foes on that day. Afterward, when the paleface
soldiers with blue coats proved too inuny for him, Red
Cloud had a change of heart.
He said that lie had plucked out hatred. That was
one of Red Cloud's best jokeB, and when the whites
could not see his face because it was turned uway from
the council fire, the old chief smiled and his eye twinkled
with the Joy of it.
A quarter of u century divided the fight at Fort Fet-
terman from that at Wounded Knee. Red Cloud was at
the Pine ltldge agency when the news of the battle be-
tween the soldiers of
the Seventh cavalry
and the braves at Big
Foot’s band was
brought in by courier.
The chief heard of
the loss of some 300 of
his tribe.and said that,
notwithstanding the
fight and the killing,
his heart was still shut
against the return of
hatred for the pale
faces.
Not long after the
Wounded Knee battle
Miles and Brooke suc-
ceeded In throwing
troops about the bands
of hostiles, and began
the task of forcing
them little by little in-
to the Pine Ridge
agency and to final sur-
render.
There has been critl-1
cism of the action of"
the Seventh cavalry at
Wounded Knee—un-
J| questionably unjust
criticism—and Col.
Forsythe, who was in
command, had been or-
dered into arrest as
the result of the out-
cry, which came from
philanthropists instates
j far removed from thp
scene of Indian war-
fare. *
I .Gen. Miles wanted to
get the reds back to
the agency without pre-
cipitating another fight
and another fire of
criticism. So it was
that he was urging the
Ogalala and the Brule.
Sioux bucks to surren-
der, and was using his
troops rather for herd-
ing and for driving
purposes than for ac-
tual offense.
Young-Man-Afraid-of-
I* is-Horses went to the
hostile camp and harangued his brother savdges implor-
ing them to obey Miles and to come in and be bad In-
dians no more. Young-Man's speech had some effect.
Then Rod Cloud wanted to follow the example of the
young chief. No one knows definitely whether Red C loud
was sent out by the general corpmanding or went on
His peace talking errand of his own initiative, but he
went.
Tho hostiles were north of WhUe Clay creek and west
of Porcupine Butte. Red Cloud reached their camp aad
he talked at the council fire. Then there happened a
curious thing. On the heel of the chiefs a pack band of
the yoimg bucks broke away and'began to raid. There
was a fight with a squadron of the Seventh cavalry near
the Roman Catholic mission school, and an army wagon
train was attacked at a place not far distant from the
agency.
Red Cloud came back to the agency. Even his native
command of himself could not give control to the twinkle
that was in his ancienteye. But what a taleit was that he
told; The Indians with bad hearts had rejected his
pleas for peace and surrender, and had driven him, their
old chief, with curses and with blows from their camp.
He had plodded the trail from the camp to the agency,
footsore and foodless, and in this day of his failing Bight
he would have been lost had not his granddaughter Star
Eyes—or some such name, for here memory is at fault—
led him all the way by the hand.
It wus with as near a sob in his voice as an Indian
ever gets that old Red Cloud told his story. Way down
inside he was enjoying tho ]uke of it btiter, perchance,
tkun were his hearers. The oli%;hlef, who bad made
miles of distance, footsore and foodless, during the night,
was looking in an unusually robast and well-fed con-
dition that frosty January morning 18 years ago.
It would be something of a joy to know Just what
old Red Cloud had said to the Brule and Ogalala bucks
beyond the White Clay creek. The old fellow was an
orator, and when there were no white men listening
he knew the way to the seat of the savage passions.
Is the Indian lacking in a sense of humor? Old Red
Cloud used to get more genuine enjoyment out of tell-
ing his unsophisticated paleface listeners the story of
how he talked peace in the hostile camp than Kicking
Bear ever did in running off a settler’s stock—and this
means much.
There probably never will be seen again on this con-
tinent such a scene of savage splendor as that which
marked the final surrender of the Indian bands of Short
Bull, Kicking Bear, Spotted Elk, and the rest. The sur-
render took place at Pine Ridge in late January, 1891,
and for hours the savages came in over the ridges
guarding until the last their women and children from a
seemingly expected assault. They were painted the
black and green of the warpath, and their ponies were
daubed with vivid pigment. It was the close of what
perhaps will prove to be the last of the great Indian
uprisings. It was the passing of the war glory of a great
race of savage men.
When that warfare on the plains of South Dakota
was brought to art end there was still hatred enough In
the breasts of several of the chieftains to make another
outbreak possible. Kicking Bear and Short Bull, Sioux
chieftains of proved valor and of known hatred for the
whites, were brought east under guard to Fort Sheridan,
Illinois, where they were kept prisoners until it was
believed that their war lust had died. Finally they were
sent back to the reservation and there to-day, while
keeping strictly to the path of peace, it is only in the
nature of things human to believe that after a century
of dishonor at the hands of the whites their hearts are
still for war, though their hands and their bodies are
incapable.
w
Water the World*s Banker
The ancients called water one of the four elements,
and the work which it does in the earth's crust amply Jus-
tifies the name. It is the world's banker, for it is by its
agency that the ores are accumulated in veins, and in a
sense it is a repairing architect. Water is the magio in-
strument by which copper and gold and silver are assem-
bled; it is the true philosopher’s stone; constantly at
work, dissolving, transporting and redepositing. With in-
defatigable zeal and never flagging industry it searches
through the innermost recesses of the rocks, removing
treasures through their very walls, and often repairing
breaches made in the attack so skillfully as to defy de-
tection or to make the masonry stronger than when first
laid.
In an article by H. W. Winchell in Popular Sci-
ence Monthly the method of the action of water and the
Influence of climate, sun, rain, average temperature and
topography on the formation of underground veins of
ore are suggested in an Interesting way and throw some
light on the future tendencies of mining science. * We
may, perhaps, imagine the water as laying down veins of
ore by means of a perpetual circulation.
It arrives at last at a state in which we may imagine
it capable of dissolving anything. Finding no escape
downward and urged on by cooler and heavier waters
coming down, these saturated solutions begin to move
laterally and upward; and as they find their way back to
the surface again they have to drop deposits of metal
which they hold in solution. Such waters may finally
emerge as hot springs or geysers, finding their way
through earth fractures, and these fractures, costed with
metal by the metal carrier, become the veins and lodes of
future ages.
Taking this theory for granted, it Is evident that
many such considerations will govern the laying down of
ores. Countries In which the rain descends through soft
rocks will be more likely to entertain mineral .veins than
those in which the surface is arid or the rocks are hard.
Then there will be few "bonanzas” In Siberia or Russia
or Switzerland; and the countries of mild climate and soft
surface rocks will be most productive. A local difference
may exist on either side of the mountains; the best or#
shoots are on the sunny side; the cold northern shaded
sides produce few veins.
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Henry, George. W. The Tulsa Chief. (Tulsa, Okla.), Vol. 19, No. 10, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 18, 1909, newspaper, May 18, 1909; Tulsa, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1172683/m1/2/: accessed April 18, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.