The rest of the Sioux were not slaughtered, however, and that was one of the odd things about the affair. As a rule, the whole lot would have been blotted out, but the chief in command of the Pawnees simply gathered in the women and the children and carted them away as prisoners. The moment I heard of this little exploit, I guessed that a new hero had appeared in Indian warfare, though, of course, I never dreamed that he would come to such fame as he afterwards did. The chief was Bald Eagle, and before long his name was enough to send a chill through every Dakota in the land. The Brules, when they heard that part of their tribe had been blotted out, gathered a big war party and went whooping it up across the prairie.
Ten days later they overtook the Pawnees, who were traveling slowly because they had so many prisoners. When the Brules showed up from the east, the Pawnees wanted to murder all their prisoners, even the babies, so that their hands would be free for the fun that was coming - especially since the Sioux outnumbered them almost three to one. But Bald Eagle swore that he would throttle with his own hands the first man who touched a captive. Then he made his preparations for the fight.
The Sioux scouts reported the enemy getting in line of battle on the far side of a low hill. So the Brules got together and started a charge. An Indian charge has no order to it and only one idea - that is for each man to get at the enemy first. They whirled across the top of the hill and went crash into a solid wall of fire. Old Bald Eagle had used the few minutes left to him to make his men form in a line and scoop out a shallow ditch. The captives were forced to fall to help in the work. In a minute or two they had sunk themselves into a neat little trench. Then they lay on their bellies in the cool of the sod and blew that Sioux charge into atoms. As I’ve said before, Indians are not very accurate, but Bald Eagle had brought up the average in his tribe amazingly. At any rate, they rolled about two score and ten Brule braves in the grass on the strength of that first charge.
The Sioux went scattering and staggering back to the far side of the hill to gather their forces and think over what should be done next with this difficult Pawnee lot. While they were sitting and thinking, they heard a brief rumble of hoofs, and the whole Pawnee lot, with big Bald Eagle in front, came swarming over the hilltop and dropped right in among them like a bomb. That Pawnee chief had decided to follow up the first repulse, and he had clapped his men on horseback instantly. But the charge had other queer features.
Usually an Indian uses his lungs as his chief weapon, shooting bullets and arrows more or less at random, and hoping to frighten the other fellow into bolting for the rear. But Bald Eagle had taught his fellows new tactics. They came over the top of that hill in a solid mass, without uttering a single cry. They had neither guns nor bows; but each man had a broadbladed hatchet in his hand. They went into the Brules in a deadly silence and made the sun dance on their working hatchets. In about thirty seconds the Sioux had enough of it. They decided that the devil had taken possession of those unlucky Pawnees. Each Brule turned and combed away for the farthest horizon. Altogether, it was a catastrophe. But still that was not all.
Whereas the ordinary Indian makes one raid and then goes home with all of his plunder to have a dance and a big smoke and talk about what he has done, Bald Eagle followed up every success like a regular Napoleon. He left his party of captives under a small guard, working their way steadily along toward the heart of the Pawnee nation. He himself kept right on with his warriors after their charge. They rode for three days, straight east and south until they came to the main village of the Brules. I should say that there were not more than one hundred and fifty men with Bald Eagle. And there were five hundred Brule warriors, at the very least, in that village. However, they had not the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong. They supposed their youngest and best braves were away chasing this Bald Eagle.
The first thing Bald Eagle did was to bunch his horses together. Whereas most Indians like to fight from horseback - because, if they miss, they have faster legs to run away on - Bald Eagle had an odd habit of getting his braves on foot. A man on foot shoots ten times straighter than a man on horseback and fights ten times harder - simply because he can’t run away. Then, without waiting for the darkness to come, he marched down on that village in two lines, seventy-five men in a line. The Brules came foaming out like so many hornets. Bald Eagle blew the foam off the cup with a volley from his first line. Then as the Brules staggered, riding around in circles, the first line lay down on their bellies, and the second line sent a smashing volley home.
That was quite enough. The Sioux went reeling back into the village, and the Pawnees went after them, not in a rush, but marching slowly. When the Sioux turned and charged, there was always that implacable line to receive them and two volleys in deliberate succession. They filled that village with blood and gore. They scattered the Brule warriors to the four winds, and they marched off with five thousand head of horses, loaded down with all the belongings of the teepees. Included in their plunder was the whole bulk of the women and the children.
Here were three blows delivered in swift succession, each harder than the last, each more unexpected, each more decisive. The Sioux had not received such a check in the memory of man. Bald Eagle became the hero of the Pawnee tribe. As for the Brules, they were too badly hurt to do anything for the moment. The rest of the Sioux made a great noise about wiping the Pawnees off the face of the earth, but nothing was done. As a matter of fact, they were all a little bit frightened, as the Allies in Europe must have been frightened when they heard of the thin-faced young general who had stolen through the Alps, won Montenotte, and slid suddenly into the heart of Italy. Here were brains; here was real generalship. No wonder the Sioux rubbed their chins and became thoughtful.
Morris made up his mind on the spot. “No Indian that ever lived could have done it,” he declared. “It may be a half-breed …more likely it’s a white man turned Indian… because there are white man’s brains in that work. See how he worked like a good fighter. When he hit a really hard blow, he followed it up at once. Look at his new tactics, too. He turned cavalry into infantry at the right time, and then turned the infantry back into cavalry again. Think of that hatchet charge. Confound me, I’m glad that I didn’t have to stand up against it.”
I agreed with him, except that it seemed odd that any white man should ever be accepted among them as a chief. However, there was no more of Bald Eagle for the time being. Bald Eagle and the rest of the Pawnees were having new trouble to the west of their lands, and we got only scattered reports now and then of the havoc that the new war chief of the Pawnees was making. These were very prosperous times with Standing Bear and his tribe. We passed that winter and came into the next spring, and then a real war party was made up to punish the Pawnees. It was not large. But it was choice. I was away at the time, or I should have ridden with them, and Rising Sun was too happy in his teepee with his squaw to pay any attention to a little thing like a war. Zintcallasappa turned out a true homemaker, poor girl, and, since Morris was now “rich,” they had everything that an Indian could dream of to make them happy, from pounds and pounds of beads to a whole herd of horses.