MOON EYES, THE BRULE MEDICINE MAN.

The Indians are wedded to their superstitions, and their medicine men hold an influence over them far more powerful than the priests of a church in civilization would over their congregations.

A medicine man of tact, cunning, and courage can move a tribe to his liking, even the war chiefs fearing to go against his commands.

And these same medicine men are respected and feared, their slightest vagaries tolerated, and their every wish gratified, be it what it may.

Of late the influence of the war chiefs has been upon the wane, and it was, perhaps, that they realized this fact, and many of them sought, by an Indian war against the whites, to recover their waning prestige.

The power of the medicine men, however, has held firmly, and yet only those who could show their claims to be just by deeds, were acknowledged men of influence.

The contract of the Indians with the whites has caused evolution to work among the tepees of the red men as well as in the haunts of civilization.

I refer to this fact to show how it was possible for a medicine man to wield great power over the superstitious minds of the redskins, and it will be remembered that Sitting Bull, the greatest Roman of them all, was a medicine chief, that his call to be rescued was promptly answered, and that a medicine man, Red Hatchet, brought on the fight at Wounded Knee Creek.

Upon the night following the entrance of Red Hatchet and his captive into the hostiles' camp an Indian with bent form, carrying a red staff, and with his black, bushy hair overhanging his face, as though to shield it, was making his way into the Bad Lands.

He wore the costume of a Brule medicine chief, a robe of white beaver skins being thrown over his form, and his war-paint, where visible, was of the most gorgeous hues and disfiguring.

He had necklaces of grizzly bears' claws, others of the beaks of eagles and vultures, and beneath his white beaver robe was the ghost shirt, painted with red hieroglyphics and symbols intelligible only to the medicine chiefs.

His hands were painted blood red, and hanging to a string of braided scalps was a hatchet painted a carmine hue.

As he went along he chanted a weird song, yet his keen eyes seemed to take in the country thoroughly as he approached the Bad Lands.

And such a country, if so it could be called, for it was wild and barren to the extreme of desolation.

The surroundings were seamed and scarred with ravines, rocks, and desert patches.

A table land, or what the Indians called a mesa, arose abruptly from the plain surrounding, and could only be reached by two or three passes, one coming in from the Cheyenne River, which was wild, precipitous, and dangerous to ascend.

Ascending this steep, winding pass, the medicine chief halted, and gazed about him by the fast receding light, for the sun was upon the horizon.

The mesa was many miles long, and several in width in some places, and almost as desolate as the plains surrounding it.

Over in one corner, securely sheltered, the camp of the hostiles was discernible, for the camp fires began to brighten in the gathering twilight.

Indian guards were stationed at the passes, and scouts in small bands were encircling the plateau, to warn the camps of the approach of a foe.

The approach of the medicine man had been signaled by the scouts, and the guards at the pass crowded about him, and yet with seeming awe and respect, for not a word did they utter.

The stranger half-straightened up, shaded his eyes and glanced toward the eastern skies, yet rosy with the sunset, and bent low again.

Then he turned toward the other direction, unshaded his eyes, and seemed to regard the darkened skies as though he could read there omens of good or evil.

In silence he passed on toward the distant camps of the hostiles.

In the same bent posture he entered the village of tepees, making his way along toward the medicine lodge of the Brules.[7]

The medicine chief of the Brules was a cunning old fox, very infirm, however, from his years, and yet one who could mold his people to his will.

Suddenly the strange medicine chief, wearing the white beaver robe[8] of honor, entered the sacred precincts of the medicine tepee, and said in a low voice:

"The Moon Eyes has come to see by night what the Sun Gazer cannot behold in the darkness. The Moon Eyes has come from the foes of our people, and he wears the ghost shirt to kill, and the red tomahawk."

The Sun Gazer, for such was the name of the Brule medicine chief, at once welcomed the stranger to the tepee, and the two talked long and earnestly together.

At last the Moon Eyes arose and glided from the tepee, making his way about the Indian village, and gradually edging toward the pass nearest the Cheyenne River.

He passed the guards in silence, held on down the winding trail, and thus on for a mile or more, constantly turning and glancing back in the moonlight to see that he was not tracked.

At last he halted at a narrow, deep ravine, and gave a low call.

A response came from the darkness below, and then from beneath his robe the medicine chief took a pencil and paper, and when it was finished placed it upon the end of his long, red staff, and handed it down into the ravine.

When he withdrew the staff the paper was gone, and he said, in the same guarded tone:

"Let the Flying Fox go like the wind, straight as the bird flies, to the camp of General Miles, and to-morrow night I will come here again."

A response came from below in the ravine, and the medicine chief then slowly retraced his way toward the hostiles' camp, making signs at the moon as he neared the guards at the pass.