United States troops for reinforcement, in case of trouble). These
police are enlisted from among the tribesmen at each agency, and
have proved uniformly brave and faithful. They entered the cabin
at daybreak, aroused the chief from a sound slumber, helped him to
dress, and led him unresisting from the house; but when he came out
in the gray dawn of that December morning in 1890, to find his
cabin surrounded by armed men and himself led away to he knew not
what fate, he cried out loudly:

"They have taken me: what say you to it?"

Men poured out of the neighboring houses, and in a few minutes
the police were themselves surrounded with an excited and rapidly
increasing throng. They harangued the crowd in vain; Sitting
Bull's blood was up, and he again appealed to his men. His adopted
brother, the Assiniboine captive whose life he had saved so many
years before, was the first to fire. His shot killed Lieutenant
Bull Head, who held Sitting Bull by the arm. Then there was a
short but sharp conflict, in which Sitting Bull and six of his
defenders and six of the Indian police were slain, with many more
wounded. The chief's young son, Crow Foot, and his devoted
"brother" died with him. When all was over, and the terrified
people had fled precipitately across the river, the soldiers
appeared upon the brow of the long hill and fired their Hotchkiss
guns into the deserted camp.

Thus ended the life of a natural strategist of no mean courage
and ability. The great chief was buried without honors outside the
cemetery at the post, and for some years the grave was marked by a
mere board at its head. Recently some women have built a cairn of