Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1909-10-03
PASSING Of The
GREAT SIOUX LANDS
HISTORIC AND FERTILE AREA
COMPRISED IN THE GREAT
SIOUX RESERVATION
TO BE OPENED.
NOTABLE INDIAN WARRIORS
WHOSE TEPEEs WE'RE FOR
MERLY PITCHED
THERE.
CHOICEST OF THE ONCE GREAT
BUFFALO RANGE iNCLUD-
ED IN LANDS NOW BE-
ING ISSUED.

An incalculable amount of blood
and treasure was expended in open
ing the way for the white man into
the Great Sioux Reservation, of
which the richest portion is now be-
ing thrown open to settlement. In
it's original form this vast body of
land extended from the international
boundary on the North to the North
Platte on the south and from the
Missouri to the Little Big Horn
mountains. 1t was the traditional
home of the Teton Sioux, warrior
nation that had dominated for many
generations the magnificent hunting
grounds included in this great terri
tory, and they defended it on many
a field, in which they displayed real
prowess against both their red foes
and the whites whose coming pre-
figured their end as a distinct peo-
pie.
The original reserve was cut down
by treaties in which the great men
of the government found themselves
pitted against red orators and states
men whose capacity in council was
equal to the valor they had displayed
in the field. They were cunning as
they had been ferocious and they
found means to delay what they con-
ceived, to be the evil day for many
years, for it was just at the close
of the Civil War that the first treat
les were essayed with view to re-
stricting the Indians and paving the
way for the settler. 1t was not I'M
til the horror of the Custer massacre
had been brought home to the coun-
try that effective means were resort
ed to for the restraining of the
Sioux. Within a year thereafter the
disarming and dismounting Of the
Indians along the Missouri river be
gan the processes whereby this fight
ing nation has become an agricul
tural people; their lands given over
to the requirements of peace and
progress and the husbandman finds
rich recompense for his labor in .
country that saw the last of the buf
falo less than thirty years ago.
The annals OF the romance of the
west bristle with the names of the
warriors now dead and gone who
led their people on the warpath or
to the hunting grounds Of the Sioux
And it is but yesterday that they
constituted a turbulent menace to
great men in their day and genera
ton. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail of
the southern agencies gave up the
fight long ago. But years after the
partial pacification Of the Sioux al
the lower agencies the Standing
Rock Agency, commanding much OF
the territory which is now being
opened to settlement, was the home
agency of the savage spirits vino con
tinIed to defy the government after
the Custer affair. It was to this
agency that Sitting Bull was taken,
when he succumbed to the forces of
starvation and came in. On the Grand
river, forty miles southeast of the
agency, at Standing Rock, the old
chief fought in bitterness of spirit,
the doom OF his people. 1t was there,
on Dec. IS, 1890, that he was killed
by the Indian police sent by Maj:
James Mclaughlin, 20 arrest him as
the only means of putting a stop to-
the Ghost Dancing which threatened
to precipitate all the horrors of border
warfare.
1t was on this same reservation
that Rain in the Face, Gall, John
Grass and the others, whose names
will live in history, made their home
in the days when peace descended
upon the west. These great figures in
Indian history have all passed, except
John Grass, the law giver and chief
justice of the Sioux nation, whose
wonderful gift Of oratory was more of
a restraint upon the passions of the
Sioux than the guns of the soldiers.
He dwells in peace on farm carved
out of the hunting grounds of his an
cestors.
It is the choisest Of the land of
the Sioux reservation that is now be-
ing opened up. There was a tradi-
ton among the Sioux that when the
buffalo passed the Indian would soon
follow him. And it was on the west
end of the tract now being opened
that the last great buffalo hunt of
the Sioux took place in the fall OF
1883. The hosti1es recently brought
into the agency were dissatisfied
largely because they were hungry.
They had been disarmed to some ex-
tent and dismounted. Major MsLaugh-
lin organized the buffalo hunt and the
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