Lo! The Poor Sioux

When Sitting Bull's outlaw Sioux massacred General George Custer and five troops of the 7th Cavalry on the Little Big Horn, the U.S. rumbled with indignation. Amid all the furore the Army brass was struck by a wonderful idea--since it was almost impossible to catch mounted Sioux, why not take away their horses?

This scheme had obvious defects, the chief of which was that Sitting Bull and most of his followers had already ridden off to Canada. But the Army put it into operation with vast enthusiasm. In the fall and winter of 1876 cavalrymen seized 8,567 ponies from baffled, friendly Indians, at Camp Robinson, Neb., and the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Indian Agencies.

Sioux and their friends were quick to clamor for payment: by 1892 the U.S. Government had paid a quarter of a million dollars in damages. But even this left 2,298 horses still unpaid for. The case wore on, collecting exotic language. Original claimants had names like Dewey Distribution, Take Her Leggins Off, Lizzie Eagle Louse, Henry Tobacco Sack and George No Belly. Their heirs had names like Susie Sounding Side, Johnson Scabby Face, Bennie Bear Lies Down.

By 1928, when an investigation of Indian claims was authorized, time had not simplified the problem. But this spring, 69 years after Little Big Horn, Congress voted to pay off the last of the Sioux claims. Last week the President solemnly signed a bill granting them $101,630 ($91,920 for ponies, $9,710 for property lost in the scuffle). Nobody suggested restoring the Sioux to mobility by replacing the horses with second-hand jeeps.

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