circle behind it, our
satisfaction was complete. Thousands of Sioux, men, women, and children
could be seen moving about the teepees, while platoons of mounted
warriors swept like scouting war parties across the plain. I
congratulated myself on having reached this famous agency while yet its
festival held something tribal and primitive.

After reporting to the Commander at Fort Yates, and calling upon the
Agent in his office, we took lodgings at a little half-breed boarding
house near the store, and ate our dinner at a table where full-bloods,
half-bloods and squaw men were the other guests.

Every waking hour thereafter we spent in observation of the people. With
an interpreter to aid me I conversed with the head men and inquired into
their history. The sign-talkers, sitting in the shade of a lodge or
wagon-top, depicting with silent grace the stirring tales of their
youth, were absorbingly interesting. I spent hours watching the play of
their expressive hands.

The nonchalant cow-boys riding about the camp, the somber squaw-men
(attended by their blanketed wives and groups of wistful half-breed
children), and the ragged old medicine men all in their several ways
made up a marvelous scene, rich with survivals of pioneer life.

The Gall and the Sitting Bull were both dead, but Rain-in-the-Face (made
famous by Longfellow) was alive, very much alive, though a cripple. We
met him several times riding at ease (his crutch tied to his saddle), a
genial, handsome, dark-complexioned man of middle age, with whom it was
hard to associate the acts of ferocity with which he was charged.

My letter of introduction from General Miles not only made me welcome at
the Fort, it authorized me to examine the early records of the Agency,
and these I carefully read in search of material concerning the Sitting
Bull.

In those dingy, brief, bald lines of record, I discovered official
evidence of this chief's supremacy long before the Custer battle. As
early as 1870 he was set down as one of the "irreconcilables," and in
1874 the Sioux most dreaded by the whites was "Sitting Bull's Band." To
Sitting Bull all couriers were sent, and the brief official accounts of
their meetings with him were highly dramatic and sometimes humorous.

He was a red man, and proud of it. He believed in remaining as he was
created. "The great spirit made me red, and red I am satisfied to
remain," he declared. "All my people ask is to be let alone, to hunt the