Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell

Author:Evan S. Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

He had no single quality that would serve to draw his people to him, yet he was by far the most influential man of his nation for many years,—neither Gall, Spotted Tail, nor Red Cloud, all greater men in every sense, exerting the power he did. I never knew him to display a single trait that might command admiration or respect, and I knew him well in the later years of his life. But he maintained his prestige by the acuteness of his mind and his knowledge of human nature.

It is hardly possible to imagine Sitting Bull chopping weeds or planting grain under the supervision of a government agent. One sees him as he used to be, as he was in 1876 when excited warriors under his tutelage shocked the United States silly.

News of the Little Bighorn calamity was at first discredited. Americans could not believe that Sitting Bull had defeated General Custer. A few days later, when there was no doubt, they refused to admit that an uneducated savage could have defeated a West Point graduate. Therefore such a genius must be white—perhaps a disguised renegade. So it was alleged that a mysterious swarthy youth from the Great Plains, nicknamed “Bison,” had attended West Point and there absorbed the military science that laid General Custer low.

In late summer of 1876 an unidentified Army officer publicly asked this question. Evidently he thought there might be substance to rumors that Sitting Bull had graduated from the Academy, could read French, and was familiar with Napoleon’s tactics. Could the dark, hairy cadet known as Bison have been, in fact, this omnipotent Sioux?

Bison was alleged to have graduated in the upper third of his class. He kept to himself, never was known to smile or laugh. Just after graduation he got drunk in the village of Buttermilk Falls near West Point and started a fight, which caused the Army to withhold his commission. He then disappeared, but later turned up in Galveston, Texas, where he fought some outlaws; aboard a California steamer where he got into a brawl with the ship’s officers; and near the mouth of the Colorado River where it empties into the Gulf of California.

This last reputed sighting of Bison sounds very odd. It occurred in 1858, about ten years after he graduated from West Point. Lt. Joseph C. Ives of the Topographical Engineer Corps was surveying the Colorado when a party of Mojave Indians approached. At first they talked in Spanish. Then their leader asked in English: “Ives, do you know me?”

Lt. Ives replied that he did not, and asked the Indian where he had learned to speak English.

“Never mind that,” the Mojave chief said. “But do you know me, Ives?”

Whereupon he disclosed his identity, saying they had been cadets together, and were it not for his presence the Mojaves would have killed the surveyors. “I have made them understand that after you have left and gone back trade will spring up,” he said, “and we can then do better by trading or robbing the boats loaded with goods and supplies of all kinds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.