July 2019 42 By Alan Rockman The 45-year-old medicine man found himself in a new land, that if not too strange to him was still different from the hunting grounds he knew so well in the Black Hills and Yellowstone Valley and that he so valiantly and vainly had fought for throughout that past year of 1876. Sitting Bull Sitting Bull was welcomed warmly (at first) by the Canadian authorities and their representative, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector James Walsh, who was as comfortable in buckskin as he was in the regimental Redcoat (there's a famous photo of him posing as if he were Buffalo Bill Cody). Walsh who was one of the very first recruits when the Mounties were formed to restore order in the wild Canadian West, would, for the next three years become a firm friend and a trusted adviser to Sitting Bull. He was able to secure Sitting Bull and his fellow exiles reservation land in that region of Saskatchewan that still contained plenty of buffalo - called PTE by the Indians - but a good distance away from the many Canadian tribes that did not get along with the Sioux. There they would have remained if three things had been in place. If the buffalo had remained plentiful, if the Americans had left them alone, and in relation to the first two if the Canadian authorities didn't have a sense of unease over the impact of the PTE being gone and of having to deal with worsening relations with the Americans. While they did let the Sioux know they could stay in "Grandmother's Land" as long as they needed to, they also encouraged them to talk to and make peace with the Americans. And the Americans were not far away. A delegation led by General Alfred "One Star" Terry himself arrived at Fort Walsh (named after Sitting Bull's Mountie friend) in early October 1877 attempting to persuade Sitting Bull and the refugees to return to American soil. Any slim chance of Terry succeeding in his mission was firmly quashed on October 8th. A pitiful band of Nez Perce Indians arrived at the Canadian Sioux encampment bleeding, cold, and terrified less than ten days before he was to meet with the Sioux delegation. Only three days earlier, Chief Joseph had surrendered his tribe to Bear Coat Miles at Bear Paw Mountain, just over the border in Montana, and this remnant, led by White Bird, were the only ones to escape to Canada. Sitting Bull had been no friend of the Nez Perce, but he had followed Chief Joseph's desperate struggle closely, and he felt both a tinge of sympathy towards the new refugees and an aroused anger at the "Long Knives" (U.S. Cavalry) who had pursued them so unmercifully and so relentlessly. On October 17, in the main conference room at Fort Walsh, the Hunkpapa Chief finally faced the man who had sent Custer to attack him. Sitting Bull at first listened impassively to the mixed message promises and threats made by General Terry. Then standing tall, facing Terry, the Hunkpapa chief dismissed him contemptuously citing the long record of treaties made and broken by the Americans. Finally, after the chief angrily branded everything General Terry had said as "all lies," he turned to the sympathetic Canadian commissioners, saying he and his people had found their home in the Grandmother's Land and would not return to the States. Terry went home, one could say, with his tail between his legs. Sadly for Sitting Bull and the Sioux though, the Canadian refuge, so dependent on three impossible conditions being met, would prove illusory, and in the end, a refuge not at all. During the first year of the Sioux refuge in Canada (1877- 1878), the PTE remained numerous enough for all of the tribes residing on Canadian soil. The tribe had been able to hunt and fish to contentment. Sitting Bull had become friends with the great Crowfoot, the leader of the Blackfoot, so peace existed between the Sioux and one of their major rivals. He would name one of his sons after him, a son, who with his father, would meet a very sad ending together 13 years later. But disaster would catch up with both the Sioux and the Canadian tribes only a year later in the form of the diminished herds of buffalo. As the Canadian historian Hugh Dempsey would write in his biography of Cree Chieftain Big Bear: That fall, (1879) Big Bear took his scant harvest of buffalo robes and meat on a long journey to trade at Fort Pitt. Where the land had been teeming with buffalo a few years before, he saw now only piles of bleached bones. The prairies were still painted in the drab colors of autumn and the sky was still a striking blue overhead, but after countless centuries the cycle of nature had long last been broken. No more would the cows drop their orange-colored calves in the spring. No more would the Indians leave their winter camps, strike their skin tepees and follow the herd. No more would the sun rise to the halting songs of a holy man praying to the Old Man Buffalo. The buffalo and a way of life had come to an end (Dempsey, Hugh A., Big Bear: The End of Freedom, Douglas and MacIntyre Ltd., 1984, p. 92). Then came the border raids. With the disintegration of the Canadian buffalo herds, additional pressure was placed on the Sioux to re-commence raids across the border into Montana to hunt the ever-diminishing herds that remained on American soil. This brought the wrath of Colonel (soon to be General) Bear Coat Miles down upon the Sioux raiding bands. Miles attacked the Sioux camps inside Montana with a force of nearly 900 infantry, cavalry, and Crow scouts. He bought battle to Sitting Bull at Milk River, just on the American side of the border on July 17, 1879. Having forced Sitting Bull to retreat back into Canada, Miles pressed his superiors to press on into Canada, but horrified at the thought of war with Great Britain, officials in Washington denied his request. By the summer of 1880, the Canadians had had enough. The Canadian tribes were now themselves dangerously short on food reserves, the worsening situation along the border and a growing impatience with the Sioux finally forced Ottawa's hand to get tough with Sitting Bull and the exiled Sioux. Major Walsh, who was so sympathetic to the Sioux was dismissed and replaced by Inspector Lief N.F. Crozier, who in contrast took a dim view of Sitting Bull's behavior and power. The die was cast the moment he took over from Walsh and while it took him a year to do so he was determined to rid Canada of the Sioux once and for all. Inspector Crozier dismissed Sitting Bull's leadership, refusing at times to meet with him and when he did, treating him contemptuously. He set in motion future rivalries between Sitting Bull and his sub-chiefs, who despairing over the fate of the buffalo, were eager to make their peace with the Americans and return home. Then, with the support of the American Major David Brotherton, the commanding officer of nearby Fort Buford, he managed to cajole Sitting Bull to return to American soil - the carrot and stick approach. The carrot was the promise of being treated fairly with plenty of rations back on American soil. The stick being a realistic threat by the Canadians to cut off all rations to the Sioux if they refused to go. Abandoned by his fellow chiefs, who had packed up and returned home, scorned by the Canadians and facing the very real threat of starvation, Sitting Bull and 187 of his ragged, weary, hungry followers, 43 men, 144 women and children crossed the border on July 19, 1881, to be briefly incarcerated as prisoners at Fort Buford. (Utley, The Lance and the Shield, pp. 230-231). In the surrender ceremony at Fort Buford the following day, the great chief faced Major Brotherton and handing his rifle to his son Crow Foot, sent him forward to hand off the rifle to the U.S. Cavalry officer, stating eloquently: "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle" (Utley, The Lance and the Shield, p. 232). Sitting Bull had naively trusted that the Americans would first give him a reservation along the Little Missouri, and then allow him to roam freely back and forth across borders. He would soon be shocked when Major Brotherton informed him that he and his people would be sent as prisoners-of-war almost 200 miles downriver to the Standing Rock Reservation. While he still didn't fully grasp his predicament, he knew well enough to chant this plaintive cry. "I - ki - ci- ze -wa-on kon he wa-na he-na-la ye-lo he i-yo-ti- ye ki-ya wa-on" A warrior/I have been/Now/It is all over/A hard time/I have" (Utley, The Lance and the Shield, p.233). PART 2 William Notman