he talked he seemed to take hold of his hearers more and more. He
was bull-headed; quick to grasp a situation, and not readily induced to
change his mind. He was not suspicious until he was forced to be so. All
his meaner traits were inevitably developed by the events of his later
career.

Sitting Bull's history has been written many times by newspaper men and
army officers, but I find no account of him which is entirely correct.
I met him personally in 1884, and since his death I have gone thoroughly
into the details of his life with his relatives and contemporaries. It
has often been said that he was a physical coward and not a warrior.
Judge of this for yourselves from the deed which first gave him fame in
his own tribe, when he was about twenty-eight years old.

In an attack upon a band of Crow Indians, one of the enemy took his
stand, after the rest had fled, in a deep ditch from which it seemed
impossible to dislodge him. The situation had already cost the lives of
several warriors, but they could not let him go to repeat such a boast
over the Sioux!

"Follow me!" said Sitting Bull, and charged. He raced his horse to the
brim of the ditch and struck at the enemy with his coup-staff, thus
compelling him to expose himself to the fire of the others while
shooting his assailant. But the Crow merely poked his empty gun into his
face and dodged back under cover. Then Sitting Bull stopped; he saw that
no one had followed him, and he also perceived that the enemy had no
more ammunition left. He rode deliberately up to the barrier and threw
his loaded gun over it; then he went back to his party and told them
what he thought of them.

"Now," said he, "I have armed him, for I will not see a brave man killed
unarmed. I will strike him again with my coup-staff to count the first
feather; who will count the second?"

Again he led the charge, and this time they all followed him. Sitting
Bull was severely wounded by his own gun in the hands of the enemy, who
was killed by those that came after him. This is a record that so far as
I know was never made by any other warrior.

The second incident that made him well known was his taking of a boy
captive in battle with the Assiniboines. He saved this boy's life and
adopted him as his brother. Hohay, as he was called, was devoted to
Sitting Bull and helped much in later years to spread his fame. Sitting
Bull was a born diplomat, a ready speaker, and in middle life he ceased
to g