Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1876 — The Sioux Indians. [ARTICLE]

The Sioux Indians.

The Sioux tribe of Indians are by far ! the largest body of the surviving aborigines in North America. Not only are there over forty thousand of these savage people in the United States, but across the line in British America are to be found no less than twenty-five thousand more, making in all something like sixty-five or seventy thousand souls. As a tribe, the Sioux are noted above all existing Indian band 4 of any size for their warlike inclinations, their skill and lheir cunning. A few of the minor tribes of American Indians, sack as the Utes, and others along the Rocky Mountain Range, are quite as ■ • • - ■ \ #*

bloody. Matured, but being comparatively insignificant as bands, are not to be ranked with the Sioux for general ugliness and dangerous strength. The Sioux IndiaHs formerly ranged East of the Mississippi, but were driven with much difficulty to the Western reservations some twenty-five years ago. Since their settlement upon their vast lamia in Wyoming and Dakota, they have been a constant source of expense and complaint, it being their weakness to never tire of making demands upon the Government or weary in robbing and killing the Indians of oilier tribes in that locality, which also arc cared for* by the Government. In this way they have done more to keep the Indian question constantly agitatea than all the other Indian nations of the country combined. While a few leading chiefsof the Sioux, such as Spotted Tail and Young-Man Afraid-of-His-Horscs, have been inclined to be friendly and keep peace with the whites anti reds, an influential number of such chiefs as Sitting Bull, Black Moon and Crazy Horse have steadfastly pursued a hostile course. With these last the young wumors of the tribe have generally been allied, making up just the element that lias precipitated upon the country its present Indian war. With these bad chiefs at their head, some 10,000 young Sioux started out in the spring to go beyond the limits of their reservation, with the sole intention of robbing smaller tribes and killing and robbing whitefinen and Government soldiers. If the reports be true that the three hostile chiefs named above were killed in that bloody encounter with Custer’s command, then “ is retribution cheated of its food. If these be dead, there will be little or no more fighting, for Indian braves are totally at sea when their chiefs are gone, and almost invdriably return to their reservations and sue for a cessation of war, until some other of their number, by superior bravado and bloody accomplishments, inspires them to follow him into other troubles. It is a notable fact in connection with these savage Sioux Indians, that their squaws are more bloodthirsty and brutal, if possible, than the males, and there can be no doubt that a greater portion of the mutilation inflicted upon the dead of Custeris command was the work of tiie.se beastly and vulture-like red females. But, male or female, the Sioux Indians are certainly too untamable and fiendish to deserve a place upon the earth’s surface, though the sentiment of humanity in the American citizens’ breast will probably not only grant them a place to live, but feed and clothe them for a century to come, or until the last descendant of the present 40,000 shall have fallen into his grave as a victim of his own innate vices. —Chicago Journal.