by In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Story of the Indian Wars
Nock and Powers opened the day by recalling Philip Wells to the witness stand. He described the Drexel Mission fight, the positioning of troops, and the ghost dance. The dance, he said, put the Indians into trances in which they believed that they visited the afterworld. They believed, too, that the whites soon would be wiped out in favor of the Indians and that their ghost shirts would protect them from bullets. "This testimony was introduced by the defense to show that the Indians, including Plenty Horses, were in a peculiar state of mind and hardly accountable for any of their acts," McDonough told his readers.21
Next the attorneys put Living Bear before the jury. He talked about the Indians' retreat to the camp on White Clay Creek and how they danced there and built fortifications for the onslaught they expected from the U.S. Army. "We dug rifle pits, dragging pine logs in front of them. They were dug and made so that we could get in there and get sheltered from the fire, and we could shoot from there," he said. "We were surrounded by different camps of soldiers, and we expected they would come after us."22
Living Bear said that at the time of the shooting, the Lakota had been in a state of war with the whites for two weeks. He offered a pathetic view of Brulé life during that period, with the military chasing down frightened Lakota in the wake of the Sitting Bull shooting. The slaughter at Wounded Knee had both angered and frightened the Brulé, sending them in flight to the Badlands and to the camp along White Clay Creek, where they united in their willingness to fight the army more from fear than from desire for a war that would have resulted in the destruction not only of warriors but also of women and children. In addition, the Indians were hungry, going for two weeks without promised government rations.
Sterling cross-examined Living Bear severely in an attempt to make him admit that the Indians were about to surrender at the time that Casey was killed, but Living Bear was unshakable in his denial—no, they were entrenched and expecting a fight.
He Dog was next, and he supported Living Bear's description of the fortifications and the Indian belief that they would be attacked soon. Bear Lying Down followed He Dog and repeated that the Lakota anticipated an attack at any moment, but he also testified that they were about to go to Pine Ridge when Casey was killed. Thus he managed to score points for both sides of the trial.
The defense then reached the anticipated climax of the day and even of the trial, calling Plenty Horses to the witness stand. He stood, pulled his blue blanket up around his shoulders, and strode to the front of the courtroom to be sworn in with Philip Wells, his interpreter.
Sterling immediately stood to object. "This man has had an education and can get along without an interpreter," he said.
"But, Your Honor, I know that he cannot speak English good enough to testify intelligently, and I say that an interpreter is absolutely necessary," Nock responded.
Judge Edgerton asked Plenty Horses several questions, which Plenty Horses answered. The judge ruled that no interpreter would be used unless the defendant failed to understand what was wanted of him.
Nock did not give in. "I have been with the man almost daily, and we have always had an interpreter to conduct our conversations," he said. "In fact, I never tried to talk any length of time with him, after the first futile attempt, without the aid of Philip Wells. The defendant understands some English, but he is unable to describe what it will be necessary to describe on the stand, and in trying to do so he might prejudice his case beyond repair. We ask for an interpreter, because it is absolutely essential for the proper presentation of his evidence, and if that be refused, you will force us to close our case without a word from the defendant in his behalf."
"It is not necessary to make a threat," Judge Shiras replied, angered.
"We are not threatening, but presenting the case in its true light," Nock said.
The judges did not budge.
"Then we refuse to permit Plenty Horses to testify," Nock said, "and we also close our case."
The courtroom hung suspended in utter silence. J.J. McDonough described the scene, at the same time showing how even reporters were being won over to Plenty Horses.
Over near the witness chair, with his eyes turned to the open window, head erect, arms easily folded, stood the accused, giving no sign that he knew, if indeed he did know, that the most important ruling of the Court during the trial had just been given against him. All eyes were upon him, yet he gave no heed.
No more striking figure than this proud young Sioux ever appeared under similar circumstances. His life had not been a happy one, but doubtless bright dreams of the future filled his heart until this shadow came over him. Of course, he holds life dearly, and yet he never indicates that he is afraid lest death be decreed, and now, before the very eyes of the twelve men who hold his fate in the balance, he waits with the calm reserve of one who has no sense of fear.
He paused in his reverie and turned his large brown eyes full on the Judge, who had just spoken to him, and then the Deputy Marshal twitched his arm as if to awaken him. Then he knew that there would be no opportunity for him to tell the jury of the wrongs he suffered, of the war which brought about the death of his near relatives, of his entire absence of intent to murder when he shot the officer dead, and so he went back to the jail with the two marshals, followed by his never-absent father.23
"I wanted to tell them all that I am not guilty of murder," Plenty Horses later told McDonough. "If they do not care to hear me, I am satisfied. Probably it is better that way."
However, Plenty Horses got his chance to testify to the public if not the jury. In a New York World interview he outlined the testimony he might have offered the court.24 He reiterated that he had come back from the Carlisle school with "no chance to get employment, nothing for me to do whereby I could earn my board and clothes, no opportunity to learn more and remain with the whites." He went on to say, "I was at Pine Ridge with my father last winter when the troops were brought in. Then came the killing of Big Foot's band. I heard the shooting and ran out to help. It was an awful sight. The survivors told such a pitiful tale that we all went into camp not far away, and it was said that there would be war. Everybody seemed to feel that the government had injured him too much to ever give in. There was ghost dancing and much excitement at the time. The day Casey was killed I was out from the camp watching that no troops came to harm my father and relatives. Of course, I was in a very bad frame of mind. Our home was destroyed, our family separated and all hope for good times was gone. There was nothing to live for."
Along came Casey, on horseback in the company of a lone Cheyenne scout, an enemy Indian who had allied with the whites against the Lakota. The Cheyenne would have added to Plenty Horses' jaundiced view of Casey, who the young Brulé said became very angry when told he could not examine the Indian camp. According to Plenty Horses, Casey said "that he would go away then but would return with soldiers enough to capture our chief. I understood him to say that his object in taking them was to kill them. You can understand my state of mind at hearing that we were to suffer still more because we arose to demand the food and clothing the government owed us. All this passed before my mind, and then I thought that right at my side rode a spy from our enemy who was boldly announcing his determination to come back and do us still further injury." Plenty Horses closed his story as if he personally had had no connection with the way in which Casey died: "He turned to go and a moment later fell dead with a bullet from my gun in his brain."
THE LAST DAY OF THE trial opened with a crowd amassed on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, eager to attend even though the heat inside was suffocating. To control the crush, court officials issued tickets for admission and brought in Plenty Horses an hour early to avoid the jam. Women, fully a hundred of them, made up more than two-thirds of the audience and even overflowed into the area reserved for the attorneys.
Plenty Horses sat in his usual place behind the rail and during the entire morning, as defense and prosecution delivered closing remarks, made not the slight
est movement. When Nock and Powers spoke, he trained his gaze downward and did not look up until the break for lunch. Living Bear sat behind him and, like other Indians in the audience, listened closely to what was said.
Plenty Horses' sad story, his forlorn look, or both had won over the crowd. According to the New York World, "It was a cheerful, eager, sympathetic audience." The newspaper reported, probably with more color than accuracy, that women wept during closing remarks when Nock or Powers referred to the "poor savage" and glared at Sterling when he called Plenty Horses "a coldblooded murderer."25
Powers and Nock read from the New York World stories about the previous winter's events on the reservations to show that General Nelson Miles had fortified Pine Ridge, putting it into a state of war, and that the Indians had received no rations throughout the hostilities. Nock, most of whose actual words at the trial have been lost, described the fear and confusion that struck the reservations after Sitting Bull's death and after Wounded Knee, where, Nock said, Plenty Horses' cousin was killed. He argued that Plenty Horses and other Lakota had been in a state of high excitement even before these events, crazed by the ghost dance religion. He spoke of the Indians' maltreatment at the hands of the whites for years and years.
Nock's summary, according to the Argus-Leader, was very effective and clearly swayed both jury and audience. "He wound about the case such a showing of conditions of hostilities that one might have thought a life-long war had just ceased," effused J. J. McDonough of the New York World. "His strong voice filled every part of the court-room. He pleaded for the accused, whom he pictured as a savage who believed he did right in a cause sacred to his race. He was, he truly believed, protecting his people from a spy."26
Nock at this point waxed eloquent.
How did Casey leave his camp? Did he leave it as though peace was lingering on every side? No. Nor as a peace-going citizen, but he starts armed, as he had a right to, and as a warrior should.
It is said that he went over to look at the camp of the hostiles. He did not say that they went over there on a friendly mission to have a talk with the chiefs. When Lieutenant Casey left that camp that morning, it was not for a friendly visit. It was not that he might take the hand of Red Cloud and Two Strike, or any other chief, and say, "Let us have peace." He went out of that camp that morning, if we may believe the testimony of White Moon, for the purpose of inspecting the hostile camp and getting whatever information he could to use against the Indians. He rides along with the defendant, Plenty Horses, and what was said between them God and the accused alone know.
This defendant went out of his camp in the same capacity that Lieutenant Casey left his, not for the purpose of friendship, as they would have you believe, because the evidence shows that over on the hillside was the camp of the United States Army, under General Brooke. They were supplied with all the implements and accoutrements of war, and that every man in the United States camp knew it was war.27
Nock next went on to make a plea for a fair trial, the verdict of which would assuage rather than rend the heart of old Living Bear, Plenty Horses' father.
At 2 p.m. Sterling rose to speak for the prosecution, attacking both the idea that the reservation was in a state of war and the notion that Casey was a spy.28 As with the defense attorneys, most of his comments are lost, covered only in general terms in the contemporary newspapers. He said that the reservation was not at war when Casey was shot and that if there had been a state of war, Plenty Horses had taken no part in it. Moreover, he argued that even if war had been under way, Casey had been killed on neutral ground. He also called specifically upon the jury's Civil War veterans to expose the fallacy of the war argument during deliberations. Finally, he asserted that the condition of Lakota society could have no bearing on Plenty Horses' individual actions. "I ask you to treat this defendant as a white man," he said.
I do not ask and would be loath to see any other treatment. I call this one of the most inexcusable, one of the most unprovoked, one of the most-cowardly murders in history. Here is a man who shook hands with Lieutenant Casey as a friend, and a minute later, when his back was turned, he deliberately drew his gun and put a bullet through his victim. Could anything be more dastardly, more unprovoked, more cowardly, more inexcusable than that? You must remember that there is testimony that Plenty Horses took no part in the ghost dance, his own statement is that he did not believe in the Messiah.29 An hour before the murder was committed, Plenty Horses was as cool and deliberate as he was at the time he shot his gallant victim.30
Sterling attempted to show that the Indian camp was anything but hostile. He drew a verbal picture of Casey as a brave young soldier riding to his death, then ended his oration with a shot to the jurors' hearts.
Something has been said about sympathy for the defendant and of sorrow for his old father. My sympathies are with that poor old Indian father; my sympathies are with the family of the defendant; and I appreciate the sorrow of that old man. I do not ask you to forget the sorrow of this poor old father or the grief of his family, but I do ask you not to forget that by this terrible act, by this brutal murder, other hearts have been stricken with sorrow, another broken. I ask you not to forget that while Edward Casey, like the prisoner, had neither wife nor children, he had a mother, and today his mother, who lives by the side of yonder sea, yearns for her son with a mother's love, which never dies, yearns for her soldier boy who will never return to her. In her heart there is no thought of revenge, for she is too near her grave, with her head bowed down with cares and sorrow and her hair whitened with the snows of many Winters. Before she retires she will take down from its place on the shelf the well-worn Bible and draw strength from it. She will turn to the page wherein is written the divine commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," and again to that divine judgment that [a] man who has done this thing shall surely die. So it is that she awaits the news of the result of this trial with the abiding conviction that a just God will put into your hearts to mete out even-handed and exact justice.31
This speech was a fabrication. Casey's mother, far from living by yonder sea, was buried by it, near her soldier son, and had been buried there for nearly thirty years. The only woman alive who could claim anything akin to a maternal connection to Edward Casey was his father's second wife and widow, with whom the Casey brothers had had long and acrimonious disputes over inheritance.
But Sterling was not yet finished. In conclusion, he kicked up the emotional appeal: "I plead not only for the broken-hearted mother; not only for that young life of Edward Casey which was so sadly and cruelly blotted out, but I plead for justice; I plead for the sanctity of human life; I plead for the honor and for the safety of the people of the State and the district of Dakota."32
On that note, the case went to the jury. Judge Shiras spent half an hour outlining the case for the jurors, telling them that the Indians had no status as an independent nation and so could not declare war. Nevertheless, he said that they could engage in a war against the government, declared or otherwise. Consequently, he said the jury could come to one of three conclusions about the Casey shooting. One, that Casey was shot while the United States and the Lakota were at war, in which case Plenty Horses should be acquitted. Two, if the United States and the Lakota were not at war, and Plenty Horses shot Casey with deliberation and malice, the Brulé was guilty of murder. Finally, if Plenty Horses fired in a state of great mental excitement, without deliberation and premeditation, even if there were no state of war on the reservation at the time, he should be found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.
The jurors began deliberations at 3:40 p.m. on April 29, 1891. At 9:15 p.m. they returned to ask the court about such matters as Plenty Horses' activities prior to visiting Pine Ridge and what role the ghost dance was permitted to play in their deliberations. Then the jurors went back to casting judgment.
THE CASE FELL INTO THE jury's hands at a time when newspaper accounts might have led Plenty Horses to believe that his own people were disavowing him,
perhaps to soften the hard feelings of settlers and soldiers after the ghost dance period. Young Man Afraid of His Horses—Few Tails's close relative— had reported on April 27,1891, to Captain C. M. Bailey of the Eighth Cavalry that "his people are all right and friendly, perhaps a little more so than ever."33 Young Man held five councils with Lakota from three reservations and said that "they are satisfied and do not want trouble." They wanted peace and to learn farming, he told Bailey. According to Bailey, " 'Young-man' [sic] is quietly absorbing Brulés [sic] in his band, that is, all who so desire, and is obtaining a big influence and following." The Lakota leader promised to do all he could to enlist warriors in the army scouts.
More stinging to Plenty Horses would have been an April 11, 1891, letter that Two Strike himself sent to Richard Henry Pratt, head of the Carlisle school,34 and that later was quoted in the Argus-Leader.35 Two Strike's words renounced the traditional Lakota ways that had inspired Plenty Horses. "You wrote me about the Indians here making more trouble," Two Strike said in a letter dictated to a lieutenant in the Sixth Cavalry. "There is no intention here of making trouble. If we were going to make trouble why would we enlist our young men as soldiers for the Great Father—as we are now doing? We see that this is a very good chance for our young men to do something for themselves, and make men of themselves and we let them enlist." Wounded Knee, he said, "gave us a lesson. We did not want to fight in the first place, but somebody called for troops. All we think about now is to farm. I received a letter about the same matter from the Lower Brulé [sic] Agency, and I told them that we were not going to make any more trouble, and that they must not pay attention to such talk. This talk gives me much trouble, and I do not like it. I do not want to tell my officer friends any lie, for I know they are here for the Great Father." Two Strike signed with an X.
