Black Hills Gold: The Untold Story of Mad Bear and Big Wolf (ePub)

Mad Bear and Big Wolf wouldn't have left Talking Rock Reservation if they hadn't been drunk, but they were, after three days and nights of drinking. This was 1880 and Indians weren't allowed off of the reservation without written permision. Life on the reservation was unbearable for these two who had grown up free on the Great Plains and they fled for Canada to join Sitting Bull. It wasn't their best plan, but it was spring, they were young, and Sitting Bull was free, having gone to Canada after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer's Last Stand.

Cavalry men were sent out from Ft. No Fort to capture the two renegades but the soldiers decided to desert the Army and collect the reward money for themselves. Reward money Agent Tom Laughlin had posted for the capture, dead or alive, of Mad Bear and Big Wolf for insurrection against the United States Government.

Mad Bear and Big Wolf made it safely into Canada with their wives, Whispering Wind and Many Tears, this was where they would rekindle their people's ancient way of life. Soldiers weren't allowed to cross the border, they knew, but Sgt. Hardy and his men did anyway. The border was a line no man could see and with four-thousand dollars they could start a new life somewhere else..

Agent Tom had sent Black Heart, Chief of the Agency Police, and his men after Mad Bear and Big Wolf with orders they weren't to return to their white man's comforts on the reservation without the two dead renegades. Black Heart had no interest in chasing those two clear to Canada just to kill them and had no intention of living without the white man's goods to which he had grown accustomed. It was thus that Agent Tom found himself negotiating for his own life with Black Heart. The price for his life was that all the gold taken out of the Black Hills by the white man was to be put back. The Black Hills were sacred to the Lakota.