Viewing page 20 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-17-

own free will, chose to attend.  As soon as the Indians obtained title to lands in severalty, Iron Eye selected a location on the Logan River, near the town of Bancroft, Nebraska.  He built a good two-story house and barn, bought a supply of the latest improved farm machinery, and opened up a large farm.

There were many sides to Iron Eye's character.  He was a great hunter, and in defence of his tribe, he was a fierce warrior.  Many a Sioux...started on his long journey to the happy hunting ground at the crack of Iron Eye's riffle.  He was a trader, and at one time had accumulated a large fortune, several thousand dollars of which he lent to a white man, who refused to pay, and then Iron Eye felt the full force of the old Indian system, when he learned that an Indian could not sue or be sued in the white man's courts of law.  So his creditor could not be made to pay and Iron Eye lost all his money.

Still another side of his character is illustrated by an incident related by his daughter, Ishta Theamba. (Bright Eyes).

"We were out on a buffalo hunt.  I was a little bit of a thing when it happened...I was playing near my father, when a little Indian boy...came up and give me a little bird he had found....my father said to me...Take it carefully in your hand, out yonder where there are not tents, where the high grass is, put it