Those who’d had a heavy hand in designing that ill-begotten policy, the Friends of the Indian, met at Riggs House in Washington on January 8. News of the Wounded Knee fiasco made them angry and resentful, eager to pillory someone for wrecking their pious plans for remaking the Sioux. They sniffed at the possibility that someone might be misguided or depraved enough to charge them with being responsible for the sufferings of the Sioux. It was, they concluded, their usual whipping boys—Red Cloud and other stubborn old chiefs, and the sinister nonprogressives in general who were to blame. They ignored the fact that it was the desperate young men who’d caused the bloodshed. Roundly damning their scapegoats, Congress and the administration, lifted their spirits, and they were quickly able to look on the bright side of the tragic affair.
The Messiah craze, they happily agreed, was the last stand of the evil nonprogressives. The Sioux, they assured themselves, having learned the penalty for heeding wicked leaders, were now ready to make the instant transformation into imitation white farmers. Commissioner Morgan wholeheartedly agreed with the brethren. There was, he said, no reason to be any more despondent over Wounded Knee than over the Haymarket affair. He cheerfully quoted carefully selected and doctored Indian Office figures to show a bright future for all tribes.
On January 21, the troops at Pine Ridge held a final parade before departing the following day. While Miles watched infantry and cavalry pass in review, a blinding, suffocating sandstorm swept over the parade ground, concealing the marching columns from the Indians who nervously watched from the hills. Still not fully trusting the bluecoats, they’d taken the precaution of rounding up their ponies in case flight was necessary.
Miles departed on January 26, accompanied by twenty-five Ghost Dance leaders who were to be confined at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, until the echoes of Wounded Knee had died away and the Indian Messiah was forgotten. Buffalo Bill was preparing to take his Wild West Show on a year-long European tour, and he requested permission to take the Indians. The army was pleased at the prospect of having the troublemakers out of the country for a year, but Commissioner Morgan had a low regard for circus life and denied the request. Cody secured the help of the Nebraska congressional delegation in persuading Secretary Noble to overrule Morgan and allow the Indians to go.
Before leaving Pine Ridge, Miles arranged to have a delegation of chiefs and headmen, both progressives and nonprogressives from all the agencies, taken to Washington to present their grievances to the Secretary of the Interior and other officials. He proposed having an army officer of his choice escort them, but his arrogance and unconcealed contempt for Indian Bureau officials made them seethe with fury. Morgan persuaded the President to order the Indians escorted by civilians.
Thirty chiefs and headmen reached Washington on February 4 on a visit Miles had designed for the purpose of putting them in a happy and cooperative frame of mind. They expected leisurely discussions and opportunities to talk freely and at length, but Washington officials had more pressing concerns and their time was limited. The Indians chose Grass, American Horse, Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, Hump, and several others to speak for them, but the Secretary insisted their talks be brief. Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses was able to ask some embarrassing questions, but he received no satisfactory answers. To Miles’ outrage, the chiefs were sent home more discontented than before.
Miles, who regarded himself the leading expert on the Sioux and who was nearly correct, pushed his own program for them. It was far more reasonable and practical than the Indian Bureau’s plans. First the government must win their confidence, and it could start by belatedly making good on the promises of the Crook Commission. On January 19, in fact, the President had already signed the hastily passed bill that had been before the House for nearly a year without action.
It was, Miles continued, patently wrong to teach Indians to support themselves by starving them. Rations should be maintained at an adequate level until the Indians could provide for their own sustenance. Since the climate and soil of Dakota prevented them from ever supporting themselves by agriculture, the farming program so dear to the Friends of the Indian and certain officials should be jettisoned in favor of stock raising. “I do not think any one thing would please those Indians more than to give each family, as far as possible, the Angus or Galloway cattle, which come nearer to their dream of the restoration of the buffalo than anything else.”
The young Brulé Plenty Horses, who killed Lt. Casey, was arrested on February 18 and taken to Fort Meade. He had no money to hire a lawyer even if he’d been inclined to raise a hand in his own defense, and the Indian Bureau had no funds for such purposes. His plight aroused the sympathy of officers like Col. Sumner, who informed the Indian Rights Association about him, and it engaged an attorney to plead his case. To the federal grand jury in Deadwood that same month, Plenty Horses explained the reason for his fatal action.
“I am an Indian,” he said. “Five years I attended Carlisle and was educated in the ways of the white men.” As a result, he said, both whites and Indians despised him. “I was lonely. I shot the lieutenant so I might make a place for myself among my people. Now I am one of them. I shall be hanged and the Indians will bury me as a warrior. They will be proud of me. I am satisfied.”
Since Plenty Horses had freely admitted his guilt, the grand jury had no choice but to indict him. In April he was tried in the federal district court at Sioux Falls, but the jury was unable to reach an agreement on whether the charge should be murder or manslaughter.
He was tried again in June. The judge now ruled that Plenty Horses acted as a combatant in time of war and therefore couldn’t be held liable under criminal law. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and Plenty Horses returned to Rosebud a free man.
The Ghost Dance affair had cost the government $1,200,000. At Wounded Knee, twenty-five officers and men were killed and many more wounded. The Indian losses can never be known, for an unknown number escaped only to die of their wounds later. When the burial party reached the battlefield, the grisly scene was shrouded in a light blanket of snow brought by the storm Yellow Bird had predicted. A huge trench was dug where the Hotchkiss guns had stood, and 146 bodies—84 men and boys, 44 women, and 18 children—were interred in it. The site was known thereafter as Cemetery Hill. As anthropologist James Mooney remarked, the cost in lives and money was a significant commentary on the bad policy of breaking faith with the Indians.
Man on Two Ponies Page 23
