Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1905-10-08

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
BY their fires the Sioux chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
And the menace of their wrath
Revenge" cried Rain-in-the-F Face,
Revenge upon all the race
OF the White Chief with the yellow
hairi''
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
OF his anger and despair.
In the meadow, spreading wide
BY woodland and riverside,
The Indian village stood;
All was silent as dream,
Save the rushing of the stream
And the blue-jay i'll the wood.
In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the clefts and caves,
Savage, unmerciful!
Into the fatal snare
The White Chief with yellow hair
And his three hundred men
Dashed headlong, sword in hand;
But of that gallant band
Not one returned again.
The sudden darkness of death
Overwhelmed them like the breath
And smoke of furnace fire;
BY the rivers bank, and between
The rocks of the ravine.
They lay in their bloody attire
But the foeman fed in the night,
And Rain-in- the-Face, in his flight,
Uplifted high in air
AS a CHASTITY trophy, bore
The brave heart, that beat no more,
OF the White Chief with yellow hair.
Whose YVES the right and the wrong?
Sing it, o funeral song,
With a voice that Is full Of tears
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and seattle,
In the year of a Hundred Years.
Henry WadswOrth Longfellow.
Rain in the Face, the Sioux Indian
chief who is reputed to have killed
Gen. Custer at the battle of the Little
Big horn in June, 1876, died recently at
the Bullhead station, Standing Rock
reservation, N. D., in his sixty-third
year.
In 1878 George A. Custer, brevet
major general in the volunteer armies
of the Union and lieutenant-colonel OF
the Seventh regular cavalry3 was sent
with his command to Dakota. He
made an expedition into the Yellow
stone country and came into bloody
contact with the Sioux. Two civilians
accompanied this expedition, one a
geologist and naturalist. In spite OF
all warnings these two men would
stray from the line of march, wandered
about gathering strange plants and
chipping rocks in search of minerals
One day they did not return to camp
and a search revealed the fact that
both had fallen victims to the Indians
who were hanging on the TANKS of the
expedition. The unfortunate geologist
had had his brains beaten out with
his own hammer.
Some months after this Gen. Custer
learned that n-the-Face, vino
was with his fellows on the Standing
Rock reservation fifty or sixty miles
below Fort Lincoln, had boosted OF
having murdered, with the aid of a
companion. these two unfortunate
civilians. He told, with savage regret,
that the naturalist was so bald they
could not scalp him, and had therefore
beaten in his head with his own
hammer.
Rain-in-the- Face was a young Sioux
warrior in 1873, not a chief, but known
and noted in his tribe as brave and
crafty, and filled with an undyins
hatred for the white man. There was
quasi truce between the Sioux and
the government. That is, the Sioux
were on the Standing Rock reserVa-
ton, located along the western side of
the Missouri river, partly in North and
partly in South Dakota. 1t was the old
story over again: THE government fed
the Indians in the winter and fought
them in the summer" The white man
and civilization were steadily advanc
ing westward. The naughty Sioux
beyond doubt the most dangerous tribe
the settler ever faced, were watching
every step with jealous eyes. The
Northern Pacific railroad was being
pushed westward through Dakota
hitherto a terra incognita to the white
man. Their last hunting grounds, the
valleys of the Powder Tongue Big
Horn and Yellowstone rivers, were
soon to be startled by the whistle Of
the locomotive, and when that was
heard the buffalo, source of supply OF
food, raiment and homes of the In
dams would soon disappear. The
Sioux were eager for war, and used
the government for the purpose of pre-
pairing themselves for the conflict.
Custer, in the winter of 1874, sent his
brother Capt. "Tom" Custer, down to
the Standing Rock agency to arrest
Face. 1t was very deli