Evening star., 1936-08-02
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.


STAFF Correspondent of The Star.
TORT YATES, N. OAK, August
- Sitting Bull, the gentle ma
gician, sleeps alone in the deso-
L late prairie.
But the memory of the great Sioux
medicine man is stronger than ever
in the minds of the grandchildren
of his warrior followers. Within the
last few years it has been crystalliz-
ing into the cult of a prophet, for
they say he alone Of the Indians and
white men of his day foresaw the
future of the Dakota countryside. II
the red men had not been lured from
his preachings by siren promises they
would be rich and happy today and
the white men themselves would be
far better off.
The grave Of Sitting Bull is un-
fenced, about mile from Fort
Yates. A cement slab has been placed
over it and a cairn of rocks piled
over the headstone which bears his
name. Otherwise. they say, the stone
long since would have disappeared
at the hands of souvenir hunters and
they might even have dug up his
bones and carried them away one
by one.
The old folks around here, white
and Indian, remember him and the
ghost dance battle of December Is,
1890, in which he was shot in the
back by Red Tomahawk, an Indian
policeman, after his followers had
slain five others sent to arrest him.
Greatest, Wisest Man"
"The greatest and wisest man that
was ever among u.s." says grizzled old
Afraid-of- Hawk, one of the prosper
Gus Indian farmers of the northern
Sioux reservation. He saw what was
coming Alone of the Indians, he
wouldn't sign any treaty with the
whites ceding an inch Of land. He
knew that as soon as the Indians
began letting any of their land go
they were done for. He knew that the
whites would make a mess of it: that
only the Indians could live on it sue
cessfully, and that they needed all
of it,"
Afraid of Hawk was a boy OF IA,
away at school in Montana. the day
Sitting Bull was slain. But before
that he had watched in awed ad-
miration the prophet ride into Fort
Yates surrounded by his followers and
lay down terms to the soldiers. The
proudest memory of the leather-faced
old red man is that his own eyes once
beheld the great Sitting Bull in the
flesh. And Young Eagle, secretary
of the tribal council, who was born
too late for any such great experience,
agrees with him. Down by the arid
dunes of the Grand River, Afraid-of-
Hawk says, there are still half dozen
or more old Indians who actually
had spoken with the man.
Now, strangely enough, 1t Is not
Sitting Bull, the warrior. the man who
is reputed to have inflicted at the
Little Big Horn the worst defeat ever
suffered by American soldiers, that
Afraid of Hawk and the others revere
almost religiously. They deny, in fact,
that he was within 100 miles of the
Little Big Horn the day Custer and
his soldiers were wiped out. Whether
he was Is beside the point. The char
acter Of warrior is out of keeping
with the gentle, far-seeing, inspired
prophet and martyr, such as new
generation envisons as sleeping under
the concrete slab in the lone prairie
1t is not so much the real Sitting Bull
that matters so much as the man that
lives in the imagination of the grand
children.
Warrior Couldn't Endure Peace.
There were great warriors in those
days, whose exploits are historically
beyond question. There was, for in
stance, Gall-perhaps the greatest
of them all. He also is buried on
the reservation, and he's joke to this
new generation. Poor old Gall, hero
of the Little Big Horn, couldn't en-
dure peace. He grew fatter and fat
ter. 1t broke his heart. One day, in
despair. he had the Indian agent Or
der him bottle Of something which
would reduce fat. When it came he
drank the whole bottle at once and 1t
killed him-perhaps the first and
greatest martyr to anti-fat remedies.
The school children around here
have heard Of old Rain-in-the-Face
who Is buried in a weed-overgrown
cemetery at Black Horse, few miles
south Of here. A little while ago Frank
Fiske, editor of the local weekly,
which has a considerable Indian cir
culation, located his unmarked grave.
1t seems that when Rain-in-the-Face
died he had one devoted follower who
wanted to follow the white custom and
place some flowers over his grave. He
had no money to buy any-so he
planted desert cactus. After o long
search Mr.. Fiske found this cactus
among the weeds. Such Is the fate Of
those whose glory rests on the sword.
Editor Fiske, by the way, was born
and brought up on the reservation:
largely shares the Indian views on
Sitting Bull. He never saw the great
man alive, but one Of his brightest
memories is being given q half hoh-
day from the school at the fort to
witness his burial.
Needless to say, this new alteration
of Sitting Bull is not shared whole
heartedly by all who came in contact
with him. Among those who are not
enthusiastic admirers is
gentle. old Father Bernard, who cele-
brated his jubilee as priest last year.
Every one of his so years in the priest
hood has been spent ministering to
these Indians. He was . young man
at the time Of the Ghost Dance re-