Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1877 — SITTING BULL AND HIS POWER. [ARTICLE]

SITTING BULL AND HIS POWER.

How He Maintains His Control of the Several Sioux Tribee. [Fort Walsh Cor. New York Herzld.] Sitting Bull has never been either a chief or a warrior, and yet his influence over his tribe is stronger than that which he would exercise in either of these capacities. The head soldier is not Sitting Bull, but Long Dog, one of the most notorious of the Sioux chiefs. Though he is neither a chief nor a warrior, Sitting Bull is a necromancer. He is a “ medicine man ” of such uncommon ability as to have retained his power for ten consecutive years. In this respect his position as the counsellor of his people is greater than thatof any Cabinet Minister in the civilized world. Yet his course has been extremely simple. He merely marked out a clear line of policy and had the pluck to pursue it under all circumstances. He said in 1867: “Let us have nothing to do with the Americans; let us make no peace with them; let us live and die like Indians.” Adhering to this policy, never swerving from it, always succeeding with it, he has naturally carried his people with him. This is the secret of his power and of the apparent infallibility of his advice. His dictum is t relied on in every emergency, his dreams are reckoned by the Sioux around him as more infallible than Newton’s tests or Herschell’s observations. His omens of the war-path, his prescience regarding the buffalo and other game have never failed him. Consequently he is to-day as secure in his dominion over the minds and fears of those about him as the war chiefs are in the confidence of their followers in battle. Indeed, he directs the events of war and peace with the skill of a Senate and the authority of a President united in one man.

Two or three days prior to his departure from his own camp Sitting Bull had lost a son. He was therefore in mourning, which was signified by a red handkerchief, wound around his head, as he sat in a corner, mysterious as ever, among the shadows. Throughout the night—a bright moonlight one above the roof and walls that encompassed him and his chiefs—he made ‘ ‘ medicine” and told his dreams. Near him was squatted a solitary squaw, who moaned and groaned occasionally in response to his adjurations. In the meantime sentinels passed to and fro. The calls of the night sounded, and the decision between peace and war, on the part of 2,000 savages, Ishmaelites and outlaws, in respect to the people of the United States, waited in the brain of their ablest man. There he sat on a dirty floor in his blankets, in rapt meditation, mute and motionless. * * *

At 8 o’clock Sitting Bull entered, followed by Spotted Eagle and the rest of his train. Now for the first time was visible to white men since the beginning of the late Indian wars the most noted Indian of the period, and now was made rial Cooper’s often-derided vision of an Indian face. Neither ignorance nor cruelty nor savages as barbarous as any displayed in savage history has detracted in the least from the expression of manhood and womanliness combined in Sitting Bull’s physiognomy. Less rude than Satanta’s, less sharp than Spotted Tail’s, more intelligent than Red Cloud’s, his features, like Goethe’s, made music to the senses. He wore a quiet, ironical smile. His black hair streamed down along his beardless and swarthy cheeks over clean-cut ears not burdened with ornaments. His red mourning handkerchief was replaced by a wolf-skin cap. His shirt was a black calico specked with white dots. His blanket wrapped negligently around him revealed below its edge a pair of rich beaded moccasins, the only finery he wore. Silent, stately and impassive, this aboriginal leader, this scoundrelly “medicineman,” this rascally foe and treacherous friend, this model, in sooth, of Machiavelli’s own sort, squatted himself on a buffalo robe next the wall and took out his pipe and smoked it, and expressed, with his insolent manner, the following sentiment: ‘ ‘ This commission which has come to interview me can go to the devil.”