Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1914 — RESULTS OF HIKER EXPEDITION TO INDIAN TRIBES USED FOR UPLIFT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RESULTS OF HIKER EXPEDITION TO INDIAN TRIBES USED FOR UPLIFT

Head of Party Says a Race of Thinkers and Statesmen Could Have Been Developed Among the Red Men—Declares That Destruction of the Indian- Great Loss to the Nation—Their Ambitions Are Destroyed. ill

New York.—"lf the United State* government had expended honest effort and money in the conservation and uplift of the North American Indian there would have been produced from the race a remarkable line of thinkers and statesmen who would have added to the fame of our halls of congress with their wisdom and fine ideals.” v That was the declaration of Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon, in charge of the Rodman Wanamaker expedition to the North American Indian, which returned to New York from a six months’ tour of the reservations in the west. In a hook Dr. Dixon gives his estimate of the American Indian as follows.:.. ....... - “The Indian is a paan of lofty Ideals; he is heroic in temperament and ineffably tragip in thought. Today the sublime thought in the Indian mind seems to be that although he 1b doomed to extermination, yet will he :<ite iuplitnt>*ari| Dr. Dixon’s book is dedicated “to my brother, the Indian.” It contains the stories of surviving scouts of the Custer massacre, and alfeo the stories of some of the Indian chiefs who fought Custer. The story of White-Man-Runs Him, a Custer scout, is as follows: “The Great White Father at Washington sent representatives out to our country. The Indians met them and held a council. The Sioux were hereditary enemies of the Crows. The head man sent by the Great Father said to the Crows: ‘We must get together and fight and get this land from the Sioux. We must win it by conquest.’ “I stood faithfully by the soldiers. They did not know the country. I did. They wanted me for their eye; they could not see. The soldiers and I were fighting in friendship. What they said I did. What I said, they did. So I helped my tribe. "We heard that General Custer was coming, and I and 30 soldiers went down the river in boats. I was the first one of the Crows to shake hands with Custer. He gripped me tight and said: ‘You are the one I want

make the battle. Custer sent me to a high knoll. ‘Go and look for me,’ he said, ‘and see where I can -make a success.’ He left it to me. When I was up there I looked around, and the troops were very close upon me. I motioned to them to come on, and we passed up the ridge. “The Indian scouts stood in front of Custer and led his men. The Sioux fired at us. We looked over the river

and saw Reno in his engagement with the Sioux. "Finally they wiped out Reno, and he - retreated to the hills. “Custer and all of us got off our horses. The enemy were surrounding us. They were banging away at us. Custer then came up and said: ‘You have done your duty. You have led me to the enemy’s camp. And now the thing -for you to do is to obey orders and get away. You go; I am now going with my boys.’ "Had Custer not ordered me to go, the people who visit Custer Field today would see my name on the monument. Even more realistic is the story of the Sioux Indians who fought Custer. Their Justification of their conduct is interesting. Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, says:

"Suddenly we heard firing, and we found out that the soldiers were on us. The women and children were all frightened, -and started to run across the hills, and we men mounted our horses and started toward the enemy. I remember that we pushed Reno back until he had to the river, and go up against the bluffs, and then some, of our Sioux rode around the hill to head him off. and we had him in a pocket. "After we had killed many of Reno’s men, Custer came along the ridge, and we were called off- to fight Custer. We kept circling around Custer, and as his men cam& down the ridge we shot them down. And then the rest dismounted and gathered in a bunch, kneeling down and shooting from behind their horses. We circled round and round, firing into Custer’s men until the last man was killed. “I did not see Custer, fall, for all the Indians did not know which was Custer. One reason Why we did not ricalp Custer was because the Indians and the white soldiers were so mixed up that it was hard to distinguish one man from another; and another reason was because Custer was the bravest man of all and we did not want to touch him, as he made the lest stand. Thli. U also the. opinion of Rain-in-the-Face. "Regarding the cause of the Custer

to see, and I am glad that you are Arat.’ I directed Cuater up to No-Hip-Bone. We always traveled at sight* climbing the mountains and wading the rivers. Daring the day we made a concealed camp. "When we reached the top of the Wolf mountains we saw the enemy’s •camp, near where the Custer Field Is at the present time. Custer was rejoiced and anxious to go ahead and

fight, I must say wfe were pursued by the soldiers, we werfe on the warpath and we were on the warpath with the Crows and other tribes. “We were driven out of the Black Hills by the men seeking gold, and our game was driven off, and we started on our journey in search of game. Our children were starving and we had to have something to eat. There was buffalo in that region and we were moving, simply camping here and there and fighting our Indian enemies as we advanced, in order to iret thb game that was in this country- We fought this battle from daylight until three o’clpck in the afternoon, and all of the white men were killed. , I think that Custer was a very brave man to fight all these Indians with his few men from daylight until the sun was almost going down.” The poetical nature of the Indian was exemplified in the words of Chief Plenty Coos, chief of all the CroW nation, in summoning other chiefs to “The Lest Great Council,” organized in the valley of the Little Big Horn, Montana, by the Rodman Wanamaker expedition. The Indian chieftain said in part: "I see as in a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I sed no more the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the-women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wall of the coyote is heard. "The white man’s medicine Is stronger than ours; his Iron horse rushes over the buffalo trail. He talks to us through his ‘whispering spirit.’ (The Indian’s name for the telegraph and telephone.) We are like birds with a broken wing. My heart is cold within me. My eyes are growing dim—l am old. "Before our red brothers pass on to the happy hunting ground, let us bury the tomahawk. Let us break our arrows. Let us wash off our war paint in the river. And I will instruct our medicine men to tell the women to prepare a great council lodge. 1 will send our hunters into the hills and pines for deer. “I will send my runners to the lodges of-the Blackfeet, where in that far north flowers border the snow on the hills. I will send them across the fiery desert to the lodges of the Apaches in the south. I will send them east to the lodges of the Sioux, warriors who have met us in many .x hard battle. I will send them to the west, where among the mountains dwell the Cayuse and the Umatillas. “I will have the outriders build smoke signals on all the high hills, calling the chiefs of all the tribes gether, that we may meet here as brothers and friends in one great last council, that we may eat our bread and Jneat together, and smoke the council pipe, and say farewell as brothers, never to meet again,”

Chief Two Moons.

Red Cloud.