The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill

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       SITTING BULL

       Chief of the Prairie Sioux

      17 DECEMBER 1890

      SITTING BULL IS DEAD. He has fallen as dramatically as he has lived, in conflict with the hated whites, or their Indian mercenaries. Were the Red Indians a people possessed of vitality sufficient to throw off fresh legends, the old chief might figure in ages to come as the hero of some wild saga, credited with stupendous victories against the advancing hordes of white men, and with a miraculous translation to the happy hunting grounds of the Great Spirit. In truth Sitting Bull approaches nearer to the ideal of a national hero than any Indian of recent times. For all we know, he may have worn trousers and a stove- pipe hat. These are weaknesses from which the greatest modern braves are not exempt.

      There would be, moreover, according to civilized ideas, some difficulty in allowing the quality of heroism to a chief who dissects the writhing bodies of his captives in war, drives splinters under their fingernails, and lights slow fires upon their stomachs. But we must not expect to find the Red Indian- of all savages the most unteachable and the most impervious to civilized influences – endowed with Christian virtues. It would even be unfair to compare Sitting Bull and his athletic son, who headed his father’s rescue and shared his father’s fate, with Tecumseh and Uncas, or any other of Fenimore Cooper’s redskin heroes. There is a tolerably general opinion among those who have studied the Indian character in later days that Tecumseh and Uncas were impossible Indians. With all his craftiness and vindictiveness – faults that are virtues in savage codes of morality – Sitting Bull has been a very picturesque figure in American history for twenty years past as one of the last champions of a decaying race. His career will some day fill a page of romance.

      The romancer, let us hope, will discreetly forget that his hero allowed himself to be dragged at the tail of Colonel Cody’s ‘Wild West Show.’ That reminiscence would rather jar upon the rest of the story. But let us not make too much of what seems to us a humiliation. The Indian stoic sees these things with different eyes. For him there is no more ignominy in exhibiting himself for hire in a circus than in wearing the hats and trousers of the white man, or begging for rum or rations. Whether herein he be a philosopher or a child, it is not for us to say.

      President Harrison is reported to have expressed a confident hope that, the prime disturber of the peace being out of the way, the Indian difficulty would be settled without bloodshed. Those who know the Indians well are not equally hopeful. The skirmish or affray in which Sitting Bull lost his life – whether by the bullets of the Indian police. or of his rescuers – may prove to have precipitated the conflict which has been for a long time impending. Very probably Sitting Bull had, as the authorities allege, made up his mind to join the band of Sioux who were raiding settlers’ cattle from their strongholds in the ‘Bad Lands,’ and, if so, then it was right and expedient to arrest him, although not with the inadequate force despatched for the purpose. But, whatever his intentions, Sitting Bull can by no stretch of imagination be said to be the cause of the Messianic craze which is now inflaming the imaginations of not only Sioux, but Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Apaches, Utes, and other tribes. Although physical exhaustion and hard weather have apparently stopped the ‘ghost-dances,’ the exaltation and unrest arising from the predicted appearance of a deliverer from the whites still continue and have to be reckoned with. In this very combustible state of Indian feeling there is a danger that the fight near Sitting Bull’s camp may kindle a serious conflagration. The braves who attempted to rescue Sitting Bull have tasted blood.

      Through the injudicious action of the authorities they were allowed to score a decided advantage over the arresting party before the arrival of cavalry armed with Gatlings made further conflict impossible. The Americans call it a victory; but it was a victory in which their own side seems to have suffered as severely as the Sioux, and to have brought away from the field a very lively appreciation of the accuracy of the rebels’ shooting: Moreover, no attempt was made to follow up the defeated party, who made good their retreat to the hostile camp in the ‘Bad Lands.’ It is certain that if the rebel Sioux, thus reinforced, think it worth while to resist, their subjugation will be a more serious business than GENERAL BROOKE’S telegram represents it, and, in the meanwhile, a general uprising of the Indians might change the situation altogether. The Americans owe it to their credit as a humane nation to see that the war of extermination to which some of their Generals look forward with complacency is not provoked by the ‘energetic treatment’ so popular in American military circles. The saying current among United States soldiers that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ expresses a sentiment which is responsible for many atrocious massacres and needless wars.

      The information provided to the American press was that that Sitting Bull and his son had been killed when the Indian police arrested Sitting Bull, as they had heard that he intended going to ‘Badlands’. A troop of cavalry followed the police, and upon their arrival at Sitting Bull’s camp, it was evident that arrangements had already been made for СКАЧАТЬ