t and went for the
wolf, and as he was going to strike him he turned back again into a wolf,
and the two wolves were there together fighting. The wolf buffalo said:
'I was happy as a buffalo, and was living fat--why did you come around here
and make me into a wolf again?' And he began to fight him. And thus the
story ends. And this is why the Indians are always fighting each other."

[Chief Bear Ghost]

Chief Bear Ghost

Chief Bear Ghost

The great Siouan, or Dakota family, is divided into many different tribes.
They are the dislocated remains of the "Seven Great Council Fires." The
Indians resent the title of Sioux, meaning "Hated Foe," and prefer the
word Dakota, which means "Leagued," or "Allied." There is the Brule
Sioux, meaning "Burnt Hip"; the Teton, "On a Land without Trees"; the
Santee Sioux, "Men Among Leaves," a forest; the Sisseton Sioux, "Men of
Prairie Marsh," and the Yankton Sioux, which means, "At the End." Chief
Bear Ghost is a Yankton Sioux. Among the Dakotas the chiefs are
distinguished by a name that has either some reference to their abilities,
having signalized themselves on the warpath or in the chase, or it may be
handed down from father to son. Chief Bear Ghost bears the hereditary
name of his father, Mato-wanagi--the ghost of a bear. The Dakotas count
their years by winters, and all their records are called winter counts.
They say a man is so many snows old, or that so many snow-seasons have
occurred since a certain period. Adopting their own phrasing Chief Ghost
Bear is fifty-seven snows old. Custer was not poetical when he gave the
Sioux the name of "cut-throats," but he may have been true to the
character and history of these fierce and warlike tribes. We may not
wonder then that Bear Ghost should say: "The greatest event in my life was
the participation in two great wars. I was on the warpath on the Missouri
River against the Gros Ventres and the Mandans. It was a hard, fierce
struggle; we had been facing and shooting each other from early dawn until
the sun went down. An Indian near me, an enemy, was shot, and when I went
after him my horse was shot, but still I pressed on and struck the enemy
with a tomahawk. One of the enemy aimed at me, but I struck him with the
tomahawk before he could shoot, and when this struggle was over the
Indians called us men. In other years we came to that same place again.
T