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Little Crow

Leader of the Dakota

Gwenyth Swain

STATUS: AVAILABLE
$22.95, cloth, ISBN 0-87351-502-1
$12.95, paper, ISBN 0-87351-503-X
112 pp., 31 b&w illus., glossary, chronology, notes, bibliography, index
SUBJECT: Biography/Children - Middle Readers (ages 9 and up)

Phone Orders: 1-800-621-2736

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BOOK EXCERPT

Taoyateduta was asleep when the men arrived. On the ground floor of his house was a low, sofa-like shelf built into a wall. There, Taoyateduta and his family slept. And there, in the big ground-floor room, the members of the soldiers' lodge crowded around the former leader's bed just before dawn.

When the men told Taoyateduta what had happened and asked him to lead them in a war, he flatly refused. He said they were fools--fools to fight the Wasicu and fools to ask him. After all, he wasn't the speaker for the Mdewakanton. They should ask Traveling Hail, who had won the election.

But the men persisted. Someone argued that "the whites must be pretty hard up for men to fight in the South, or they would not come so far out on the frontier and take half-breeds or anything to help them." Surely the Great Father was too busy to counter a Dakota attack.

Taoyateduta reminded warriors of the vast cities he had seen on his trips to Washington, D.C. He tried to argue them out of waging such a hopeless war. But his arguments fell on deaf ears.

The men taunted him. Had Taoyateduta grown old and tired? Was he no better than a farmer, hiding food in his cellar? Was he a coward?

"Ta-o-ya-te-du-ta is not a coward," he answered hotly, "and he is not a fool." No Dakota warrior could stand by quietly when called a coward. . . . Was he really too old and tired to lead? Was he a coward? No, he said firmly, "Ta-o-ya-te-du-ta is not a coward: he will die with you."