Part 21

The Indian court was held at the agency. My home place was where it now is, over a divide from the agency and on the Tongue river side of the reservation. I accepted the appointment. I was paid ten dollars each month for going to the agency and attending to the court business one or two times each month. Not long after I had been serving as judge, Eddy called me into his office. He said:

“A letter from Washington tells me that Indians having two or more wives must send away all but one. You, as judge, must do your part toward seeing that the Cheyennes do this.”

My heart jumped around in my breast when he told me this. He went on talking further about the matter, but I could not pay close attention to him. My thoughts were racing and whirling. When I could get them steady enough for speech, I said to him:

“I have two wives. You must get some other man to serve as judge.”

He sat there and looked straight at me, saying nothing for a little while. Then he began talking again:

“Somebody else as judge would make you send away one of your wives. It would be better if you yourself managed it. All of the Indians in the United States are going to be compelled to put aside their extra wives. Washington has sent the order.”

I decided to keep the office of judge. It appeared there was no getting around the order, so I made up my mind to be the first one to send away my extra wife, then I should talk to the other Cheyennes about the matter. I took plenty of time to think about how I should let my wives know about what was coming. Then I allowed the released one some further time to make arrangements as to where she should go. The first wife, the older one, had two daughters. The younger wife had no children. It seemed this younger one ought to leave me. I was in very low spirits. When a wagon came to get her and her personal packs I went out and sat on a knoll about a hundred yards away. I could not speak to her. It seemed I could not move. All I could do was just sit there and look down at the ground. She went back to her own people, on another reservation. A few years later I heard that she was married to a good husband. Oh, how glad it made my heart to hear that!

I sent a policeman to tell all Cheyennes having more than one wife to come and see me. One of them came that same afternoon. After we had smoked together, I said:

“The agent tells me that I as the judge must order all Cheyennes to have only one wife. You must send away one of yours.”

“I shall not obey that order,” he answered me.

“Yes, it will have to be that way,” I insisted.

“But who will be the father to the children?” he asked.

“I do not know, but I suppose that will be arranged.”

“Wooden Leg, you are crazy. Eddy is crazy.”

“No. If anybody is crazy, it is somebody in Washington. All of the Indians in the United States have this order. If we resist it, our policemen will put us into jail. If much trouble is made about it, soldiers may come to fight us. Whatever man does not put aside his extra wife may be the cause of the whole tribe being killed.”

Many of our men were angered by the order. My heart sympathized with them, so I never became offended at the strong words they sometimes used. Finally, though, all of them sent away their extra wives. Afterward, from time to time, somebody would tell me about some man living a part of the time at one place with one wife and a part of the time at another place with another wife. I just listened, said nothing, and did nothing. These were old men, and I considered it enough of change for them that they be prevented from having two wives at the same place. At this present time I know of only one old Cheyenne man who has two wives. They are extremely old, are sisters, and they have been his two wives for sixty or more years. He stays a part of the time with one of them and a part of the time with the other. The sister-wives visit each other, but they have different homes, several miles apart.

Throughout ten years I kept the position of judge. I rode my horse or went in my wagon to the agency once or twice each month. It became tiresome to me. Eddy went away, and we had another agent. I decided to resign, and I did so. After I had been out of the office a few years there was another change in agents. The man we now have, the one we have named Sioux Agent, was put in charge of our reservation. One day, Sioux Agent sent a message calling me to his office.

“I want you to be judge again,” he said. “You will be paid twenty-five dollars each month.”

That was better than the ten dollars each month I had been paid during the ten years of my first service. I took his offer. So now, in my old age, I am helping my people to learn the ways of the white man government. For the old people, it is a great change, so I try to apply my thoughts at teaching the young Cheyennes whatever I am expected to teach.

I was chosen two times as a little chief of the Elk warriors, in the old times. But in each instance I got somebody else to take my place. Also, at two different times of election of tribal chiefs, since we have been on the reservation, a band of warriors came to me and said: “We want you to be a big chief of the tribe.” But I did not want to have that position, so in each instance I told my friends to choose some other man, some one who would like to have it. Some white people, at different times, have called me, “Chief Wooden Leg.” But I never was a chief, neither of my warrior society nor of the tribe.

My younger brother’s name was Twin. When he grew up to manhood he went from here to the Minneconjoux Sioux. There he was appointed a policeman. He continued in that duty until his death, a few years ago. My mother died here at my home, on the Tongue river reservation. My younger sister and myself are the only members of my father’s family yet living. This sister is the wife of Little Eagle. Their farm place is only a few miles down the valley from mine.

Both of my daughters went to school at the Tongue river mission. They lived there during the school months. Each Sunday we were allowed to take them to our home. At other times we might go to the mission and see them for a few minutes. Later, I built a house only a quarter of a mile from the Mission, and on a sloping hillside above it. We could look from our front door and see the children at any time when they might be outside of the school buildings. My wife and I were pleased at their situation in life. “They will have more of comfort and happiness than we have had,” we said to each other.

But the younger daughter fell into an illness when she was about fourteen years old. We expected she soon would be herself again, but she grew worse instead of better. She became so weak she could not stay any longer at the school. She continued to go on downward after we brought her to our home. Finally, her spirit went back to the Great Medicine.

All of our love now was fixed upon the other daughter. She advanced to full young womanhood. She could read the white man books, and she could write letters to our friends far away. But she too became ill, the same as her younger sister. During all of one winter she gradually wasted away. Every afternoon her body burned with fever. Every night her bed was soaked with the sweating. Every morning she coughed almost to strangling. Neither the medicines of the agency physician nor the prayers of our own medicine men could help her. Just when the spring grass was coming up, she was buried in our mission cemetery.

My heart fell down to the ground. I decided then that the white man school is not good for Indian children. I think they do not get enough of meat at the boarding schools. I think too that they are kept in school too much during each year. They ought to be out and free to go as they please during all of the good weather of the autumn and the spring. It may be that white children can stand it to be in school most of the year. I do not believe, though, that Indian children can stand it. It is not good sense to have the whites and the Indians living by the same rules.

My sister’s daughter and her husband had pity for me and my wife. They gave to us their oldest son. He makes his home with us. On the agency roll his name is Joseph White Wolf. But according to the Indian way he is our boy, our grandson. He is a good boy, comforting and helpful to us. I pray often that he may become a good man, may get a good wife, may have many children and may live far into old age.

My farming land is back from the valley, on a creek flowing into Tongue river. Each year I have some alfalfa hay and some oats or wheat, or both. I have a garden of vegetables, including an acre or more of corn for our own food. All together, twenty-one acres was the most land I had in cultivation in one season. That was a few years ago. I do not have that much now. I become tired more quickly than I did in past times. It appears my legs are not now made of wood, as they used to be.

I get pension money each month because of my service as a scout at Fort Keogh. For a while it was twenty dollars monthly. Then it was increased to thirty dollars. Now it is forty dollars. As I grow older it will be further increased. My pay as judge added to this pension money makes enough for me to buy food and clothing for my wife and boy, without need for farming. But I like to have more than I need, so I can help my friends. I can not do this many more years.

A few other old Cheyennes get the pension money. We few are the rich men of our tribe of very poor people. Many of our old men and women have a hard time getting enough food. Some white people say to them: “You have good land, so you ought to be prosperous.” They appear not to understand that Indians are not born farmers. Besides, many among us are older than I am. Even if these did know how to farm, they have not the strength to do it.

Another thing the white people appear not to understand: The old Indian teaching was that it is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growths may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities, the same as we were taught to do in killing animals for food or skins. We revere especially the places where our old camp circles used to be set up and where we had our old places of worship. There are many of such spots on our reservation. White people look at them and say: “These Indians are foolish. There is good land not plowed.” But we like to see these places as they were in the old times. They help to keep in our hearts a remembrance of the virtues of the good Cheyennes dead and gone from us.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] A few old Cheyennes still talked this way in 1926. Fear kept them from attending the fiftieth anniversary of the battle.--T. B. M.

[59] The Cheyenne interpreter for them on that occasion informed me this man was Doctor Dixon.--T. B. M.

[60] During 1926 and 1927 I came into possession of six carbines, three ammunition belts, one full pair of saddle-bags and one half-pair of same, that these Fort Keogh Cheyennes had kept hidden ever since their having been taken from the Custer soldiers in 1876.--T. B. M.

XVI

_Clearing the Docket._

Cheyennes still disagree among themselves about the number of sleeps the combined tribes stayed at different camps along the way from east of Powder river to the Little Bighorn and back again to the Powder river country. For a long time there was disagreement as to the length of time we had been at the battle camp before the Custer soldiers came. Some said we had been there only one sleep, others said two sleeps. This dispute was settled, though, several years ago, when a band of Ogallalas visited us on this reservation. In a great gathering with them at our Lame Deer agency there was a general rehearsing of the battle at the Little Bighorn. Little Hawk, a Cheyenne, spoke of us having slept there two nights before the soldiers came. Somebody corrected him:

“We had slept there only one night.”

“I bet you we had been there two sleeps,” Little Hawk replied. He spread out a blanket and laid upon it some money.

His money was matched. Other bets were made, by other Indians differing in their beliefs on the subject. Old men then were called upon, one after another, to tell what was in their memories concerning the question. White Elk, young Chief Little Wolf, Wooden Leg, various other old Cheyennes and several of the old Sioux, all were asked for expressions of their beliefs. Each one of them said:

“One sleep.”

Little Hawk and his supporters finally had to admit themselves mistaken. In the general exchange of talk, many corroborating incidents were mentioned. There came then a full agreement that we had been in this camp only one night, that the soldiers attacked us the next morning, that after the fighting had ended we moved our camps a short distance northwestward and stayed there all of this night, and that in the late afternoon of the day after the great battle we left the place and traveled all night and all the next day up the Little Bighorn valley. Of the two nights at the battle place, one had been at the first camping spot where the soldiers attacked us and the other had been at the second camping spot, a short distance away, where we moved on account of our death losses.

For fifty years we old Cheyennes talked of Bear Coat, or General Miles, as having been big chief of the soldiers who came up the Little Bighorn valley the next day after the Custer battle.[61] We have been corrected by our present white man doctor friend. He informs us that General Miles did not come into this country until more than a month after that time. He says that a General Terry and a General Gibbon were the chiefs of these soldiers. I never before had heard of either of these two men.

I never had heard of any of General Custer’s relatives having been killed with him, until our present white man doctor friend told us about the two brothers and the brother-in-law and the nephew. He tells us also that General Custer’s body was not cut up. I do not know why he was spared, if such was the case. I never heard of any favorings of any dead man there. I do not know of any reason for intentional difference in treatment of them.

It was not then known to us who was the chief of these white men soldiers. It was not known to us where they had come from. We supposed them to be the same men we had fought on the Rosebud, eight days before. We had not known who was the chief of those soldiers on the Rosebud. I never heard any Indians at that time guessing as to who he may have been. It made no difference to us.

I have been told that certain different ones of Indians have claimed special honor for having killed Custer himself. All such men are only boasting to get attention. There was no talk of this kind during the hours and days right after the battle. If there had been, all of us would have known of it. I tell you again: None of us knew anything about Custer being there. The few Southern Cheyennes and the few Sioux warriors who had seen him in earlier times did not learn until many weeks later that he had been killed in this battle. It was weeks or months later when the most of us first learned that there ever was such a man. The white people, not the Indians, told us.

Even if some white man soldier in the battle had been well known to all of the Indians it would have been hard to recognize him there. During the first hour or two of the fighting we were too far away to single out and recognize any particular one. As we got close, the air became more and more full of smoke and dust. The Indians were greatly excited. All of the white men went crazy. It must have been that not any one of them looked like his natural self. I believe that not any warrior then was thinking of trying to find out which one was the chief of the soldiers nor which soldier might be a past acquaintance. Every fighter, on both sides, was sweating and dust-covered. The dead soldiers were dirty and bloody. Very soon, they were much worse than that. Their best friends would not have known them.

Of the thirty Indians killed in both fights, I believe about half fell from the bullets of the Custer men. Of these fifteen or so killed by the Custer men, there were more of them fell during the first close fighting, when Lame White Man led us and himself was killed, down toward the river, than fell at any other one section of the field. The soldiers in the entire battle with the Custer men could have killed a great many more of us, or we should have gone away and left them after some further fighting, if their whisky had not made them go crazy and shoot themselves. I do not know just how many of them we killed, but I believe the number was not more than twenty or thirty, all together. Some of these were during the slow distant shooting time and some were after we had gone among them and found badly wounded men to kill at once. There was no capturing alive. I did not hear any Indian talk of wanting to make such capture.

All of our dead Cheyennes were found, were taken away and were buried. I am not sure about all of the Sioux dead, but it seems they all must have been found, as there was the remainder of that afternoon and much of the next day to make search. The three dead Corn Indians I saw were left where they had been killed.

None of the Custer soldiers came any closer to the river than they were at the time they died. When the first Indians went out and met them, and exchanged shots with them, these soldiers were riding along the ridge far out northeastward.[62] They kept moving westward along its crest until they spread out on the ridge lower down, the ridge where the most of the battle took place. After about an hour and a half of the slow fighting at long distances, the group of forty soldiers who rode down from the ridge along a broad coulee and toward the river were charged upon by Lame White Man, followed at once by many Cheyennes and Sioux. This place of the first Indian charge and the first sudden great victory is inside of the present fence around the battlefield and at its lower side.

The most important warrior among the Cheyennes was Lame White Man. I believe all of our old men consider him so. Next in importance and usefulness were Old Man Coyote, leading chief of the Crazy Dog warriors, Last Bull, leading chief of the Fox warriors, and Crazy Head, one of our tribal chiefs who had been a warrior society chief when he was a younger man. The first Indians to go across the river and fire upon the Custer soldiers far out on the ridge were two Sioux and three Cheyennes. These three Cheyennes were Roan Bear, Buffalo Calf and Bobtail Horse. This last named man is still living, his home being on the Rosebud side of our reservation.

Two Moons used to tell white people of his own great importance in the battle. I believe he was brave, like many others there, but he was not thought of as being very important. He was one of the nine little chiefs of the Fox warriors. The only special way I heard him talked about was concerning his having a repeating rifle, the only one of such guns among the Cheyennes in this battle. When the smaller part of our Cheyenne tribe surrendered to General Miles, at Fort Keogh, Two Moons was chosen by him as their one big chief. For several years those Indians were governed by General Miles. From time to time, in the years following, others of our people were added to these. The coming of Little Wolf made a difference, but he lost his place when he killed the Cheyenne. When all of the tribe finally were assembled on the present reservation, the Fort Keogh officers and the government agents still kept Two Moons as the one big chief over all of us. I do not know of there being among us any great dissatisfaction because of this, but I do know that it was General Miles, not the Cheyennes, who selected him as our leader.

There are yet living (1930) among the Cheyennes more than twenty men and about the same number of women who were full-grown people with us in the camp beside the Little Bighorn. I suppose that each tribe of the Sioux have, in proportion, the same numbers. We have many more who were children in the camp and who remember much of what was done at that time. Last Bull, leading chief of the Fox warriors, took his family and joined the Crows after the days of peace came. His two daughters married Crow men. The scared and screaming girl I took upon my horse when the soldiers burned our forty lodges on Powder river has become an old woman, a Cheyenne-Crow woman. She is known to the white people as Mrs. Passes.

Every time I have been where white people have been asking questions about the Custer battle, somebody has wanted to know:

“Where was Sitting Bull during the fight?”

For a long time I did not understand why this question was pressed so strongly. Then I learned that white people had been saying: “Sitting Bull was a coward. He was not with the warriors in the fighting.”

I do not know where he was. I had not thought about trying to find out. I suppose he was helping the women and children and old people, where he belonged. He had a son in the fight. Any man having a son serving as a warrior was expected to stay out of battles and give the son his chance to get warrior honors. Lame White Man, the Southern Cheyenne tribal chief who was killed, went into the fight because of his having no son there. I suppose it was the same with Chief Crazy Horse, of the Ogallalas, and Chief Hump Nose, of the Arrows All Gone. I do not know of any other tribal chiefs or old men having mixed into the battle. My father stayed in the camps, but his staying there was not on account of personal fear.

I am not ashamed to tell that I was a follower of Sitting Bull. I have no ears for hearing anybody say he was not a brave man. He had a big brain and a good one, a strong heart and a generous one. In the old times I never heard of any Indian having spoken otherwise of him. If any of them changed their talk in later days, the change must have been brought about by lies of agents and soldier chiefs who schemed to make themselves appear as good men by making him appear as a bad man.

It is comfortable to live in peace on the reservation. It is pleasant to be situated where I can sleep soundly every night, without fear that my horses may be stolen or that myself or my friends may be crept upon and killed. But I like to think about the old times, when every man had to be brave. I wish I could live again through some of the past days when it was the first thought of every prospering Indian to send out the call:

“Hoh-oh-oh-oh, friends: Come. Come. Come. I have plenty of buffalo meat. I have coffee. I have sugar. I have tobacco. Come, friends, feast and smoke with me.”

FOOTNOTES:

[61] This mistake of the old Cheyennes arose from their having found Miles in command of the soldiers at Fort Keogh when they surrendered there in 1877. They supposed, and kept right on supposing, that he had been the leader of the Yellowstone river soldiers who came up the Bighorn and the Little Bighorn in June, 1876.--T. B. M.

[62] Many Custer rifle shells have been found scattered along this high far-out ridge, by J. A. Blummer and other residents.--T. B. M.

THE END

Legend for opposite map: A.--Near the present-day Crow Agency, Montana.

1. Uncpapa camp circle.

2. Blackfeet Sioux camp circle.

3. Minneconjoux camp circle.

4. Arrows All Gone camp circle.

5. Ogallala camp circle.

6. Cheyenne camp circle.

Arrows ➝ ➝ show Reno troops’ advance and retreat.

7. Reno battle line, for a few minutes.

8. Present Garryowen railroad station.

9. Reno entrenchment hill, after retreat across the river.