He had largely adopted
the dress and habits of civilized man, and he urged his people to
abandon their savage ways, build houses, cultivate fields, and learn to
live like the white people. He clearly forsaw the ultimate extinction of
his people as a distinct race. He well knew and realized the numbers and
power of the whites then rapidly taking possession of the
hunting-grounds of the Dakotas, and the folly of armed opposition on the
part of his people. He said to me once: "No more Dakotas by and by;
Indians all white men. No more buffaloes by and by; all cows, all oxen."
But his braves were restless. They smarted under years of wrong and
robbery, to which, indeed, the most stinging insults were often added by
the traders and officials among them. If the true, unvarnished history
of the cause and inception of the "Sioux Outbreak" in Minnesota is ever
written and published, it will bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of
every honest man who reads it.
Against his judgment and repeated protests, Little Crow was at last,
after the depredations had begun, forced into the war on the whites by
his hot-headed and uncontrollable "young men.
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