U.S. Army Recruiting News

UNITED STATES ARMY RECRUITING NEWS

I-See-O, Last of Kiowa Scouts

(Continued from Page Five)

in 1890 and led to many encounters between them and the forces of the United States.

The Ghost Dance was intimately connected with an Indian Messiah who emerged from the Paiutes in Nevada. "Wavoka" was his tribal name, but his white neighbors knew him as Jack Wilson. Wilson, like Pontiac and other great Indian leaders, gained his influence by promising a revival of Indian power and a return to the happy days when the Redman possessed the land before the appearance of the white interlopers. Tradition among the Indians had for many years promised the appearance of such a savior, and, as with the Arabs, almost anyone who came anywhere near fulfilling the specifications was hailed as the genuine deliverer. Wilson knew his people, and ordained that the Ghost Dance should be celebrated on every possible occasion as fitting preparation for the impending changes and in propitiation of the high gods under whose ordinance the great deliverance would come. Almost any primitive people are susceptible to the hypnotic power of monotonous, everlastingly repeated and unvaried body action, especially when it is accompanied by the reiterated, unchanging note of the drums. From a semicomatose state of mind they were rapidly worked into a frenzy, when, if no better subject offers, they resort to self-mutilation, at times, even, to the point of death. More often, however, at the period when Wavoka flourished neighboring white settlers offered a fairer and much more interesting subject on which the Indians could display the savagery aroused in them by the dance. The Sioux, the Cheyennes and the Arapohoes in the North were rapidly infected by the prevailing madness and broke from their reservation, carrying devastation and death with them. The uprising was undoubtedly the most serious that had confronted the Army since the '70s. Where the tribes came in contact with other tribes, the infection spread and it was not long before the virus had penetrated into the Southwest, threatening the peaceful wellbeing of the Kiowas, Apaches, Chickasaws, Comanches and Cherokees. The danger was real and imminent.

In the North several encounters, between the half-crazed Indians and the troops had taken place, culminating in the battle of Wounded Knee, in which Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief, and 300 Indians were killed. That the Southern Indians were kept within their borders. and resisted the common mania was due solely to the work of Lieutenant Scott and I-See-O. They travelled together, penetrating into the very heart of the territories belonging to tribes which at

their coming were almost openly hostile. But the good, common-sense advice of I-See-O expressed with the eloquence of which he was a master, backed up by the actual presence of the American officer representing the great white power, won the day, and none of the tribes of the Southwest succumbed to the malady which had proved so costly to their brothers in the north. Just what I-SeeO's influence was can be appreciated only when it is realized that he accomplished his end by simply preaching moderation and common sense to a herd of fanatic savages, worked into murder pitch by religious fervor and the semi-hypnotic effects of their barbarous ceremonies. Never for a moment, in spite of his membership in the hated whiteman's Army or his obvious friendship for the Indian's hereditary foes, did they suspect him of treachery or ulterior motives. They believed him honest; that he was actuated only by consideration of their welfare. This was the secret of his success with them, and had they only known it, he really was their messiah and savior in that his counsels saved them from extermination.

In writing to General E. H. Plummer, in command at Fort Sill, in 1918, General Scott, mentioning I-See-O, says: "You may not know about him but you will remember the time of the Ghost Dance.

The southern Indians had the same dance and I was put in charge by General Merritt. * * * It was largely through I-See-O that I got underneath the surface of affairs. He and I went about together wherever the excitement was greatest * and between us we pulled the southern Indians through that troublesome time without firing a shot." In another letter, this one to I-See-O direct, acknowledging the latter's condolences on the death of his son, General Scott says to the old Scout: "You and I together brought all those Oklahoma tribes through the same excitement without firing a shot, which brought about the death of many Sioux,

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so the white people owe much to you as do your own people.

"I am going to leave here in a few days and will go on the retired list of the Army. I have a farm at Princeton, N. J. where I was brought up as a boy and intend to make a home for my family there * * *. I have been appointed on the Board of Indian Commissioners and when I can get around to it I want to stop and see you. I am going to stop and see you and my other Kiowa, Comanche and Apache friends every chance I get."

With the passing of the power of the Indians, the Scout found time hanging heavily on his hands. Grievances, real or imagined, led him to resign from the service, but he was really incapable of earning

a living in the new world of progress and civilization into which his resignation had thrown him. He was in a fair way of suffering real hardships when General Scott heard of his plight and on the score of his past services won for him his present position. But he will have none of this modern nonsense of living in a house. The Army built for him a very comfortable shack and equipped it with many conveniences, including a kitchen range. The shack he uses as a

store house and the range as sort of a chiffonier. He cooks his meals in the open as did his ancestors, and his dwelling place is a tepee, set on the prairie in defiance of all the winds that blow. He and his squaw are happy and I-See-O gets a great deal of comfort out of his religious belief. No hearth- and heart-rending struggle of modernist and fundamentalist vexes his sturdy soul. He is an out-and-out fundamentalist in the matter of the "Peyote" ritual, the forms of which he follows to the letter. This religious observance takes its name from the peyote plant, a sort of cactus which when dried and eaten by the Indians acts as a mild narcotic. If it is taken to excess, I-See-O admits that the indulgence may be harmful, but no good Indian uses the peyote except in religious ceremonials. A recent bill introduced in Congress to abolish the ritual provoked a comment from the old Scout that white folks are a bit intolerant in the matter of other peoples' religion. He attributes the improvement in the condition of his paralysed daughter to the virtues of a peyote ceremonial to which the helpless girl was carried after the white man's medicine administered in hospital had failed to cure. He is secure in his faith and no iconoclastic modernist can shake his belief.

So the Indian, peaceful and secure in his old age, watches from his tepee the tide of time and progress sweep by. He has no desire to plunge into the stream and be buffeted about. Like most old folk he lives in the past. Sturdy men and women of Oklahoma with more than a little Indian blood in their veins hardly realize how great is their debt to the old man whose name was so familiar to the lips of their grandfathers, saved from national suicide by his efforts. He may live in the past, for memory can have no terrors for him, no haunting ghost of ill deeds done nor duty neglected. Great men who come his way, like General Pershing, are glad to stop and shake his hand-and he snaps to attention and salutes as a soldier should. But he soon slips back into memory and muses on the great days when, thigh-to-thigh, he and Lieutenant Scott rode into the mountain or down the rivers, and by sheer cloquence and man-to-man talk, made the people of his own race and breed take the better way.