Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/450

 Horse" and settle their score with him, at the first sign of treachery.

"Crazy Horse's" warriors were more completely disarmed than any other bands coming under my observation, not so much in the number of weapons as in the pattern and condition; to disarm Indians is always an unsatisfactory piece of business, so long as the cowboys and other lawless characters in the vicinity of the agencies are allowed to roam over the country, each one a travelling arsenal. The very same men who will kill unarmed squaws and children, as was done in January, 1891, near Pine Ridge Agency, will turn around and sell to the bucks the arms and ammunition which they require for the next war-path. At the very moment when Crook was endeavoring to deprive the surrendering hostiles of deadly weapons, Colonel Mason captured a man with a vehicle loaded with metallic cartridges, brought up from Cheyenne or Sidney, to be disposed of to the young men at Spotted Tail. As with cartridges, so with whiskey: the western country has too many reprobates who make a nefarious living by the sale of vile intoxicants to savages; this has been persistently done among the Sioux, Mojaves, Hualpais, Navajos, and Apaches, to my certain knowledge. Rarely are any of these scoundrels punished. The same class of men robbed the Indians with impunity; "Spotted Tail" lost sixty head of ponies which the Indian scouts trailed down to North Platte, where they were sold among the stock-raisers. The arrest of the thieves was confided to the then sheriff of Sidney, who, somehow, always failed to come up with them; possibly the fact that he was the head of the gang himself may have had something to do with his non-*success, but that is hard to say.

"Crazy Horse" took his first supper at Red Cloud Agency with Frank Gruard, who had been his captive for a long time and had made his escape less than two years previously. Frank asked me to go over with him. When we approached the chief's "tepi," a couple of squaws were grinding coffee between two stones, and preparing something to eat. "Crazy Horse" remained seated on the ground, but when Frank called his name in Dakota, "Tashunca-uitco," at the same time adding a few words I did not understand, he looked up, arose, and gave me a hearty grasp of his hand. I saw before me a man who looked