Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1890-12-20
The SPACE Writer.

Senator Pettigrew was recently in
terviewed in Washington by an
Evening Star reporter on the Indian
question. He is quoted as having said
This Indian scare has been an out
rage an outrage on the people Of the
Northwest. There is not, nor has there
been any good and sufficient cause for
alarm. For years these same Indians
habitually INDUCED in what is known as
the "sun dance" most barbarous cele-
bration of the semi-religious -chanae.er
The government very properly forbade
those dances, and social life among the
Sioux became somewhat tame. Then
arose the Messiah business, and, as
dancing was its principal feature, the
Indians took hold OF il at once. The
ghost dance" has in itall the elements of
q purely aboriginal religion, and il was
by no means unnatural that the dance
became popular.
By this time some OF the agents
thought they ought to be doing some
thing, so they sent out their Indian
police TO stop the saltatory gyrations of
the common herd and the sanctimonious
genuhexions of the cunning medicine
men. The dancers did not see il IN that
light, however. They were simply at
tending TO what they believed was re-
ligious duty, and they declined the prof
fered police escort to the guardhouse.
That brought the troops and the result
ed scare. The poor Indians who had
after their own fashion been worship
ing the great spirit and his earthly agent,
the new Messiah, thought they we're
going to be punished for disobeying the
police. and they promptly moved away
from the vicinity of the agencies as a
matter of precaution. Instantly the cry
went up "the Sioux are on the war
path The Indians knew nothing of
this. and when they found out that they
were not to be chastised they, most of
them, promptly returned to their agen-
cies. Those who remained out are the
vagabonds, the thieves, the murderers,
and If they can only be kept away from
the reservations and from the rest OF
the earth, il will be the best for man
kind generally.
People who live in South Dakota, right
where these alleged troubles have been
located, are astonished beyond measure
at the wildly untruthful reports that
have been circulated. A friend of mine
has thousand head of cattle within
five miles of where these Indian war
riors are camped in the Bad Lands, and
his herds still unscathed, are pursuing
the even tenor of their way ignorant
OF the danger which is popularity sup
posed to be all around them.
Who has done this alarmist work
Who has perpetrated this outrge upon
the Northwest? The space writer; he
did it with his little pen. The big East
ern papers have no regular resp~siAle
correspondents in that country, but the
superficial area of the region now groans
beneath the tread of the space writer.
He, like Jobs war horse, shifts the bat
tie from afar. There is an outbreak in
every rustling bough, while the deep
bass Of the bull frog, and the hum of the
mosquito suggest to his fevered brow
the massacre of inumerable settlers, and
the devastation of thousand happy
homes. To-day he sends three columns
of gore to any paper that will bny it, and
tomorrow he will contradict what he
sends to-day, that his reward may be
the greater. All he wants Is money. and
he will write anything to get it. Such
men see a snowflake, and they straight
way scribblea n bloodchillng description
ofan awful blizzard, in which human be-
ings perished by hundreds and the car
casses Of the frozen cattle filled every
creek bed and made locomotion difficult
over bill and the plain between Omaha
and the Cascade range Of the Rocky
mountains. know the space writer
newspapers would refuse to purchase
matter which they must know is un.
true the space writer must vanish. He
cannot depart too soon.