Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/279

 persons there assembled. General Crook went across country to the stockade erected on French Creek, Dakota, and there had an interview with the miners, who promised to leave the country, first having properly recorded their claims, and await the action of Congress in regard to the opening of that region to settlement. As winter approached another tone was assumed in our dealings with the Sioux and Cheyennes: word was sent to the different bands living at a distance from the agencies that they must come in to be enrolled or inspected; some obeyed the summons, some quietly disregarded it, and one band—a small one, under "Sitting Bull"—flatly refused compliance. The Indians did not seem to understand that any one had a right to control their movements so long as they remained within the metes and bounds assigned them by treaty.

Neither "Crazy Horse" nor "Sitting Bull" paid any attention to the summons; and when early in the summer (1875) a message reached them, directing them to come in to Red Cloud Agency to confer with the Black Hills Commission, this is the reply which Louis Richaud, the half-breed messenger, received: "Are you the Great God that made me, or was it the Great God that made me who sent you? If He asks me to come see him, I will go, but the Big Chief of the white men must come see me. I will not go to the reservation. I have no land to sell. There is plenty of game here for us. We have enough ammunition. We don't want any white men here." "Sitting Bull" delivered the above in his haughtiest manner, but "Crazy Horse" had nothing to say. "Crazy Horse" was the general, the fighter; "Sitting Bull" was a "Medicine Man" and a fine talker, and rarely let pass an opportunity for saying something. He was, in that one respect, very much like old "Shunca luta," at Red Cloud, who was always on his feet in council or conference.

Upon the recommendation of Inspector Watkins of the Indian Bureau, made in the winter of 1875, the War Department was instructed to take in hand the small band of five hundred Sioux supposed to be lurking in the country bounded by the Big Horn Mountains, the Tongue and the Yellowstone rivers. The inspector expressed the opinion that a regiment of cavalry was all that was needed to make a quick winter campaign and strike a heavy and decisive blow. This opinion was not, however,