clan might by no means attempt to excuse or to defend him,
but his judges took all the known circumstances into consideration, and
if it appeared that he slew in self-defense, or that the provocation was
severe, he might be set free after a thirty days' period of mourning in
solitude. Otherwise the murdered man's next of kin were authorized to
take his life; and if they refrained from doing so, as often happened,
he remained an outcast from the clan. A willful murder was a rare
occurrence before the days of whiskey and drunken rows, for we were not
a violent or a quarrelsome people.

It is well remembered that Crow Dog, who killed the Sioux chief, Spotted
Tail, in 1881, calmly surrendered himself and was tried and convicted
by the courts in South Dakota. After his conviction, he was permitted
remarkable liberty in prison, such as perhaps no white man has ever
enjoyed when under sentence of death.

The cause of his act was a solemn commission received from his people,
nearly thirty years earlier, at the time that Spotted Tail usurped the
chieftainship by the aid of the military, whom he had aided. Crow Dog
was under a vow to slay the chief, in case he ever betrayed or disgraced
the name of the Brule Sioux. There is no doubt that he had committed
crimes both public and private, having been guilty of misuse of office
as well as of gross offenses against morality; therefore his death was
not a matter of personal vengeance but of just retribution.

A few days before Crow Dog was to be executed, he asked permission to
visit his home and say farewell to his wife and twin boys, then nine
or ten years old. Strange to say, the request was granted, and the
condemned man sent home under escort of the deputy sheriff, who remained
at the Indian agency, merely telling his prisoner to report there on
the following day. When he did not appear at the time set, the sheriff
dispatched the Indian police after him. They did not find him, and his
wife simply said that Crow Dog had desired to ride alone to the prison,
and would reach there on the day appointed. All doubt was removed next
day by a telegram from Rapid City, two hundred miles distant, saying:
"Crow Dog has just reported here."

The incident drew public attention to the Indian murderer, with the
unexpected result that the case was reopened, and Crow Dog acquitted.
He still lives, a well-preserved man of about seventy-five years, and is
much respected among his own people.

I