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Title: The Tragedy of the Sioux
Author: Standing Bear, Luther (1868/69-1939)
Date of first publication: November 1931
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   The American Mercury, November 1931
   [New York: The American Mercury, Inc.]
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 24 July 2016
Date last updated: 24 July 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1342

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






THE TRAGEDY OF THE SIOUX

BY CHIEF STANDING BEAR

Sixteen years ago I left reservation life and my native people--the
Oglala Sioux--because I was no longer willing to endure existence under
the control of an overseer.

For about the same number of years I had tried to live a peaceful and
happy life; tried to adapt myself and make readjustments to fit the
white man's mode of existence.  But I was unsuccessful.  I developed
into a chronic disturber.  I was a bad Indian, and the agent and I
never got on.  I remained a hostile, even a savage, if you please.  And
I still am.  I am incurable.

I was born during the troublous days of the 60's, the exact year is not
known, when the Sioux were succumbing to the trickery of the whites and
the undermining of their own tribal morale.  My first years were spent
living just as my forefathers had lived--roaming the green, rolling
hills of what are now the States of South Dakota and Nebraska.  I well
remember the first white habitation I ever saw.  It was a dugout in
Northern Nebraska, whither we had gone on a buffalo hunt.  Prior to
that time there was not a fence, a field nor even a log-cabin to break
the natural beauty of the land.  That too, was the first time I ever
saw dead buffalo lying around on the plain.

After the death of Crazy Horse in 1877 abrupt changes came for the
Sioux.  As long as this great leader lived there was a Sioux nation,
but his passing meant its death knell.  There was no other leader with
his power to uphold the integrity of the people.  Up to the time of his
death some of them were still pursuing their life of freedom, but after
that tragic and disrupting incident quick and drastic changes came for
the Oglalas.  Two years afterward I saw the agency buildings erected at
Rosebud.  Reservation life then became an actuality for me.

In 1879 I was sent, with some eighty other boys and girls, to Carlisle
Indian School in Pennsylvania, to be made over into the likeness of the
conqueror.  I went dressed in the traditional apparel of the Plains
tribes--moccasins, breechclout, leggins and blanket.  My hair was long.
I left my people trying to settle down and put the ancestral life back
of them--the older with resignation or with bitter, resentful memories;
the young with wonderment and bewilderment.  When, some three or four
years later, I returned, things were different.  I heard the old men
talking of the last buffalo hunt and everyone was learning to eat
"spotted buffalo."  Instead of the council of chiefs to guide us the
White Grandfather (in Washington) sent his emissaries; then came the
agent and the white soldiery.  The white soldier has always stayed
close to us; he is there today.

But it was upon the Indian police, perhaps, that we looked with most
disdain.  With them was injected into our lives the idea of physical
force--something not known in our intertribal life.  The Indian police
compelled a conduct contrary to all our ancestral notions of lawful and
manly action.  In organized Sioux society there was no punishment--no
jailing, no whipping, no denying of food, no taking away of personal
liberty.  But there was a very effective system of ostracization: the
wrongdoer was ignored--and Sioux society was peculiarly free from
crime.  A few weeks ago, as I left the reservation for my return to the
city, one of my relatives expressed his concern for my safety on the
journey, and especially after I reached the city.  He asked me if I had
a weapon and I said no.  He thought that I should be prepared to
protect myself against the robbers and thieves that infest the city!

Always, in the tribal days, the young deferred to the old, and were so
trained from babyhood.  It was the old who held the wisdom o the
tribe--they were the teachers and instructors.

But under the agency system, often-times the policeman was a young
fellow who was sent out, by order of the agent, to handcuff and bring
in an old man.  This happened in the instance of one of my brothers.  I
felt dishonored and asked him to quit the force, which he did.

There was still another influence that came, almost as soon as the
agency buildings were established, and took a place in routing the old
life--the church.  These things were very foreign, very upsetting, to
minds and bodies that had, out of centuries of struggle, achieved a
harmony with their surroundings.  The Indian fitted the broad plains
and loved them just as did the buffalo; and those great grassy spaces,
even today, are fit only for the raising of the four-footed beast.

The country at large little knew what these sudden changes meant to my
people--both as individuals and as a nation.  It simply felt safe in
the thought that a "warlike" race had been quelled and quieted; that it
had been led into ways of peace and progress; that the "savages" were
being kindly treated and their well-being carefully considered by a
beneficent government.

There is not and never has been a human attitude taken toward the
Indian; no acknowledgement of his virtues; no friendly acceptance of
his native abilities.  He has been made to feel his segregation.  Since
the Indian wars ended the white man has so busied himself wresting
riches from the land that its people have been forgotten.  Forgotten
save for a few friends and humanitarians whose sensitive souls are
uneasy and irritated as long as the voices of the oppressed are audible.



II

A few weeks ago I went back to my people for the first time in sixteen
years.  In the intervening time I have lived constantly in the society
of white men, ostensibly one of them, but in spirit and sympathy still
living with my people, working for them, listening to their entreaties,
and trying to help them with their problems.  So, almost as soon as I
sat in camp on the reservation, many old friends, hearing of my return,
came to see me.  They greeted me with tears of gladness in their eyes,
but with discontent and dejection in their hearts.

I found the destruction of my people continuing; I found conditions
worse than when I left them years ago.  I knew, of course, that the
Sioux were in desperate straits last Winter--that they suffered from
cold and insufficient food, so my first inquiry was about food.  An
old-time friend pointed to a house from which he had just come.  He
said, "See that meat drying on the line?  That is horse meat.  I have
just had a meal of it."

Everywhere we went horse meat was drying in the sun.  We came to one
place--a log cabin near Medicine Root creek--and there was the usual
line of it hung up to dry.  A fine young colt had just been killed.  My
friends came out from the house, trying to be happy to see me.  The
older people were stalwart, the strength and vigor of their forefathers
still apparent.  But the young--they showed weakness coming on.  Their
cheeks were hollowed and their lower jaws drooped down--the inevitable
sign of hunger.  What will my friends do this Winter when the snows
drift high?

Further on we stopped to see more friends.  Three men leaned against
the car as they talked.  An older one looked thin and weak.  A member
of the party inquired if he were ill.  He replied that he was not ill
but that he did not get enough meat to eat.  A Sioux, especially an old
Sioux, must have meat.  They have been raised on meat and their bodies
cannot now be denied.

Another day we knocked at the door of a dirt-floored log cabin where a
woman lay sick.  We asked her if she would not like to go to the nice
new hospital just completed at Pine Ridge.  She said that nothing could
induce her to go there, for she had heard that the patients were not
given enough to eat.  We asked what she desired to eat and she said a
fresh raw kidney would please her.  The ladies of our party lost no
time in getting the raw kidney, a delicacy with the old Sioux.

Nancy Red Cloud told us that she was in an agency office one cold
wintry day when an old Indian whose money was on deposit there came in.
He told the agent that he would like to have some money, for he had
been without food for several days and was hungry.  The agent put him
off, saying he would see about it.  The old Indian, Big Head by name,
while sitting in a chair, waiting, toppled over dead, Nancy catching
him in her arms.  The death was pronounced heart failure by the agency
doctor.  Nevertheless, so much talk was caused by the agent's treatment
of Big Head that he resigned.

I went to see my old-time friend, Chief Black Horn.  He said,
"Conditions last year were very bad.  The rations allowed were
insufficient.  The amount which was supposed to last two weeks was
actually enough for just one day.  If an old person sells a piece of
ground the money is placed in the hands of the agent and rations are at
once stopped.  When the money has been exhausted, rations are again
resumed."  I asked Black Horn why more land was not cultivated by the
Indian farmers and his reply was: "The white farmer can beat us farming
because he has tractors.  We can't farm extensively, so we raise small
gardens.  If our land is not leased to the white man it lies idle."
Then I inquired about the cattle situation.  He corroborated what I had
heard from others: "There was a time when all the Indians had plenty of
cattle, but after the white man was allowed to bring his stock in on
our reserve there was much confusion.  We would like to raise cattle
but it's useless to try in the present condition of things."

Food!  Meat!  Everyone wanting meat!  Yet the Sioux live in the finest
cattle country in the land.  The white farmers scattered liberally all
through their reservation have fine-looking cattle, as well as pigs,
chickens, turkeys and horses.  But not the Indian; he is
poverty-stricken!

The truth is that the Sioux has been disinherited; there _is_ no
reservation.  The fence that once surrounded it, defining its
territory, has been torn down.  White cattlemen have been allowed to
bring their cattle on Sioux grazing ground on the promise to pay
twenty-five cents a head for pasturage.  But it was not long after the
white man's cattle came that the Indian's cattle began to disappear,
and the white man's herds began to increase.  The Indian's herds have
now ceased to exist.  My party and I tried to purchase a steer for the
feast which we gave for our Indian friends.  But no Indian owned one,
so we made our purchase from a white man.

We talked of a solution to the cattle question.  The country is
manifestly a cattle country.  The Sioux are not farmers.  They can
raise cattle and if given a chance will become independent.  The
logical procedure is to give back their reservation to them.  Remove
the white man entirely.  Fence the reservation if necessary.  Stock the
land with cattle and let the Sioux do the rest.



III

The old Indians today are pictures of lost hope.  Many of them travel
daily to the agency office and sit there.  Day in and day out--sit and
wait.  The office is where they draw, now and then, a pittance in
tribal money.  Last year the amount was $7.50 a head for the sick,
disabled and all.  The agent told us that it came at a most needed
time, but what is $7.50 in purchasing power at a trader's store, where
prices are two and three times as high as they are off the reservation?

Most of the old people wear canvas moccasins and almost without
exception they need dental treatment.  In fact, the most noticeable
thing about the Sioux people in general is their dire need of
dentistry.  Spiritual deterioration is in an advanced stage also.
Incentive is gone.  Old and young are meek to the point of docility,
obeying every command of the agent.  They settle no questions for
themselves; their overseer decides everything.  The system has crushed
them; they are nonentities.

For years the Oglala council had been meeting, attended by most of the
old men, until recently.  Some time ago a meeting had been arranged,
and some of the members traveled a distance of fifty miles to attend,
when word came from the agent through an Indian policeman forbidding
the meeting to take place and ordering the visiting members to return
home.  During my sojourn at the reservation word came from the agent
again, saying that the Oglala council could meet once more.  Last
Fourth of July the people of several districts wished to get together
for a big celebration, but were commanded to hold only district
celebrations.  This dictatorial order was still causing much comment
when I left.

If an Indian wants to leave the reservation he must get permission.
Even free-born American citizens--the people who assist in making the
laws of the land and pay taxes to keep petty officials in office--are
under surveillance once they walk on the ground of this government
prison.  My party and I were summoned by the agent to make statements
concerning the reasons for our presence in the reservation.  Not
deigning to answer his inquiries over the telephone, we called in
person at his office at Pine Ridge and answered the following questions:

What are your names?

What are you doing while on the reservation and what were your purposes
in coming?  [Here the agent remarked that we had been seen writing in a
book.]

Who heads the party?

Who finances the party?

Who owns the car in which you travel?

What is the license number?

Chief Turning Hawk is one of the fine old councilors--as splendid a
character as one meets in any society, and in spirit of the old school.
He is tall, has clear-cut features, and wears his poverty with the same
quiet grace as he wears his tribal garments.  He showed me a document
in embellished writing which was sent to him after the World War:


    The
    United States of America

    E Pluribus Unum

    _To All To Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greetings_:

    The thanks of the Nation are extended through the President,
    Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, to
    the people of

    THE DAKOTA OF THE PINE
    RIDGE RESERVATION

    for their unswerving loyalty and patriotism, the splendid service
    rendered, the willing sacrifice made, and the bravery of their sons
    in the military and naval service of the United States when the
    nation was in peril during the World War of 1917-1918.


I asked Turning Hawk if the powers of the medicine men were as strong
as ever.  He said they could no longer perform their wonders; that the
presence of the white people and the rule of the agent had destroyed
the faith of the Indians.  There had been a time when everyone ate or
no one ate; when a man's word was never broken; when there was plenty,
for no man killed except for food.

It is this loss of faith that has left a void in Indian life--a void
that civilization cannot fill.  The old life was attuned to nature's
rhythm--bound in mystical ties to the sun, moon and stars; to the
waving grasses, flowing streams and whispering winds.  It is not a
question (as so many white writers like to state it) of the white man
"bringing the Indian up to his plane of thought and action."  It is
rather a case where the white man had better grasp some of the Indian's
spiritual strength.  I protest against calling my people savages.  How
can the Indian, sharing all the virtues of the white man, be justly
called a savage?  The white race today is but half civilized and unable
to order his life into ways of peace and righteousness.



IV

Against the young there are many complaints.  The government school is
changing everything and the young are losing their tribal ideals and
manners.  One old lady said: "With all the education of the young they
do not read or study the treaties in order to help us.  We sometimes
ask them, but they pay no attention to us."  There is undoubted need
for the young Indians to help the old ones, who cannot speak English
and are bewildered by the routine of an office and legal phrases.

Here is an instance: Mrs. Big Boy brought to me a paper regarding her
widow's allotment of $500.  Not understanding the correct procedure,
she had been holding the paper since early in 1929.  She asked me to go
to the agent for her and see if it granted her the allotment.  I did so
and in fifteen minutes the matter was straightened out in favor of Mrs.
Big Boy.

Here is an instance which shows how the white farmer is favored: About
a year ago I received a letter from one of my friends saying that a
white man had taken his horse and would not return it.  My friend
appealed to the agent but after months of waiting nothing had been
done.  I at once wrote to the agent asking for an investigation of the
matter but my appeal also was ignored.  I was on the point of writing
to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Washington when I suddenly arranged
to go to the reservation.  I had been there but a few days when my
friend came to me saying that his horse had mysteriously reappeared and
was in his corral.  I have reason to believe that my presence had
something to do with the matter.

The government school--the segregated school--is a curse and a blight.
The mission school is credited by both parents and pupils with being
far better than the government school, for all its fine buildings and
equipment.  But all cannot get into the mission schools.  Applications
for admittance far exceed the capacity.  After graduation from the
government school most girls find their life's work in city kitchens
and most boys who do not drift back to the reservation lose their
identity in a shop.

There are great possibilities in the young Indians.  They are capable
of becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and road-builders
on the reservations.  Then too, they should be trained in the history
and arts of their people; it is they who should perpetuate the native
dances, songs, music, poetry, languages and legends, as well as the
native arts and crafts.  Music and dancing are talents peculiar to the
Indian--no other people on this continent sing and dance for the same
reasons that he does, or in the same way.

With this sort of training the young Indian would be better able to
cope with the discrimination he now encounters.  In my motion-picture
work I have come in contact with much of this discrimination.  Always a
white actor is given preference and no Indian girl is given a chance to
lead, even in an Indian picture; and I want to say that I know of
instances in which no Indian girl could exhibit more stupidity than the
white girl who was being coached and actually shoved into a star part
in a picture.  This discrimination is not based on looks either.  The
Indian girl, and especially the mixed blood, is sometimes very handsome.

Both sexes of the young are addicts to drunkenness and cigarettes and
their language has become profane.  These things fill the old Indian
with shame.  Black Horn said that vices were destroying their young.
Self-mastery--which the old Indian knew so well--is weakened and the
young have not the strength to deny themselves.  When Black Horn was
asked if the training of the white man could be offset he answered:
"No, they have been taken too far away.  Their faith is gone.  We are
powerless to save them."

But they can be saved.  If the public conscience can be brought into
action against the slavery of the American Indian it can be wiped out
of existence.  When the enormous sum of $20,000,000 has been supplied
by the taxpayers of this land to uphold an evil system it is manifestly
their business to look into it.

When I was handed my papers of citizenship in the Washington office,
the commissioner, Belt I think it was, said as he extended his hand:
"Here, Standing Bear, are your papers.  You are now a citizen and a
free man.  The cloud from over your head is gone."  I walked out of the
office feeling an exaltation I shall never be able to describe--feeling
once more the sweet freedom of my youth.

But the clouds are not yet gone from over the heads of my people--they
are not free.  And as long as they are in bondage I shall never cease
to be a hostile--a savage, if you please.






[End of The Tragedy of the Sioux, by Chief Standing Bear]
