and-bead traders are a different species
from the high powers of the tribe sitting in council, making treaties.
It was like appearing before a high tribunal.

"Take Indian lands. All time more," grunted one of them.

"The settlers' land is no good to the Indian," I argued; "no water, no
berries, no wood, no more value. The government is making the whites pay
money, not giving them allotments as they do the red men."

If they would not give us _minne-cha-lu-za_, I went on, we could not
print the paper any more, or keep _she-la_, or trade for posts.

They went into ceremonious council, and delivered their concession
officially by an interpreter, Little Thunder I think it was, attired in
all his regalia of headdress with eagle feathers, beaded coat, and
fringed breeches.

It appealed to their sense of power to grant the favor. At last the
whites had to come to them for help. Whether the deal was official or
unofficial, no one cared. In those crucial days Washington seemed to the
homesteaders as remote as the golden gates.

We took a short-cut back. There was not a single building anywhere in
sight, and the only moving thing was a herd of range cattle going slowly
toward water. Through the silence came a deep, moaning sound, the most
eerie, distressed sound I ever heard. I was passing an Indian cemetery,
and beside a grave stood an Indian woman--alone with her dead.

As is the Indian custom, she had come alone, walking many miles across
the plain. She would probably slash her breast or mutilate her flesh in
some other way as a sacrament to her grief. As I rode on slowly, her
wailing cry rose and fell until it grew dim in my ears, blending with
the moaning sound of the wind.

Some of the settlers turned stock over on the Indian lands after our
negotiations, and the Indians hauled loads of life-giving water to the
print shop now and then. Our collection of antique animals we turned
loose to go back and live off the Indians.

"Might be it will rain," Heine said one day. "Did you see that cloud
come by in front of the moon last night?"

But it wasn't a cloud. It was smoke.

[Illustration]

XIV

THE LAND OF THE BURNT THIGH

We were living in the Land of the Burnt Thigh, the famous hunting ground
of the Brule Indians, whose name was derived from a great prairie fire
which had once swept the land.

The story of that great fire was told me by a famous interpreter who had
heard the tale many times from his