' But the guards of the two
black troops didn't have a single run-in with the savages. The Indians
made it a point to remain strictly away from the Negro soldiers' guard
posts. Moreover, the black soldiers got ten times as much obedience
from the Indians loafing around the tepees and wickleups as did we of
the white outfit. The Indians would fairly jump to obey the uniformed
Negroes. I remember seeing a black sergeant make a minor chief go
down to a creek to get a pail of water--an unheard of thing, for the
chiefs, and even the ordinary bucks among the Sioux, always make their
squaws perform this sort of work. This chief was sunning himself,
reclining, beside his tepee, when his squaw started with the bucket
for the creek some distance away. The Negro sergeant saw the move. He
walked up to the lazy, grunting savage."
"'Look a-yeah, yo' spraddle-nosed, yalluh voodoo nigguh,' said the
black sergeant--he was as black as a stovepipe--to the blinking chief,
'jes' shake yo' no-count bones an' tote dat wattuh yo'se'f. Yo' ain'
no bettuh to pack wattuh dan Ah am, yo' heah me.'"
"The heap-much Indian chief didn't understand a word of what the Negro
sergeant said to him, but he understands pantomime all right, and when
the black man in uniform grabbed the pail out of the squaw's hand and
thrust it into the dirty paw of the chief the chief went after that
bucket of water, and he went a-loping, too.
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