Page 30 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

exploding. Fighting breaks out. An arm waves furiously. A man falls to the

ground, his eye swivels in the straw and the cold dust; suddenly, a police
officer shoots point-blank. Sitting Bull teeters. Perhaps he can hear the
catcalls rising for the last time from the bleachers; he’s a dead thing, but he
can still see the horrible small faces of men who are alive. And then, another
police officer steps forward and finishes him off with a rifle shot. Someone
rolls the body over with a foot.

AFTER THAT, the Indians packed up their felt and leather tents, the tatters, old
blankets and bags, the little that remained to them. The children cried. The
wind blew into the wagons. A hoarse voice yelled an instruction to start
moving. Bile rose briefly in their throats. Fleeing their village, the Lakota

found refuge in Big Foot’s encampment; but General Miles immediately
ordered his arrest. The Army delayed. There was a flurry of commands and
countermands. Big Foot was a pacifist, and it would probably be better to trust
him and allow things to calm down.
But fearing the arrival of the soldiers, the Lakota, along with Big Foot’s
Miniconjou, were on the move again. It was horribly cold, they made slow
progress beneath the frozen trees, and along the mountain ridges. Big Foot

was ill. Many of the children were ill. They waded across the mouth of Cherry
Creek, and then followed an old wagon trail along the Cheyenne River. The
horses walked slowly beneath the cold rain. The riders advanced in silence,
followed by a long procession of old nags, men and women on foot, and carts.
People pant and grumble. The track is so crowded that the horses miss their

footing; the procession moves off again. Everyone is alone, alone with their
own weariness. They halt in the late afternoon, any old where, in a jumble of
tents and clustered cabins.
It was at that point that General Miles deployed two cavalry regiments to
cut off the convoy of fugitives. In the meantime the Indians had set off again,
dragging themselves along, and starving. The wind swept across the plain.
Faces hardened, skin turned grey. Women and children huddled in the corner

of a wagon beside a few stalks of rotting straw. A few hours later, below
Porcupine Butte, they came across a group of cavalrymen; the two hundred
men from the 7th cavalry regiment led by Major Whitside, the Little Big Horn
regiment, the one that was wiped out when they were defeated by Sitting Bull.