The next morning, I had walked to high ground so I could get a good shot of the camp and the river and the sky floating above the land. I had just finished setting up the camera when the RCMP arrived in four patrol cars, trailed by a rented cube van. Everything was much too far away for me to hear what was being said, but you could tell that the cops had not come to negotiate a treaty.

There was a brief confrontation, after which the officers moved in quickly and arrested everyone. Littlechild tried to take refuge in one of the tipis. I watched as she was dragged out, handcuffed, and shoved into the back of one of the cruisers.

Then, quickly and efficiently, the police moved on the camp itself. They broke down the tipis, gathered up the sleeping bags, the folding chairs, the barbecue, and the generator, and threw everything into the back of the cube van.

The raid lasted less than an hour.

There was little I could do. So I did nothing. And, in the time it took the police to arrest everyone and dismantle the camp, I didn’t move.

SOMEWHERE IN MY CAREER as a photojournalist, I had written a feature story about Wild West shows for Saturday Night, and what I had enjoyed most about the research were the photographs.

I had used four in the article.

One had been a candid shot taken during the 1901 Pan-American exhibition in Buffalo, New York. It showed Indians on horseback, sporting full feathered headdresses, getting ready for a race.

Or a raid.

The second photograph, taken in 1905, was a re-enactment of the death of Custer. This image was staged and probably shot in a studio. Custer is standing upright with a raised sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. At his feet are three dead Indians, the inference being that George Armstrong did not go down without a fight. A fourth Indian stands in front of the lieutenant colonel and is in the process of driving a knife into Custer’s chest.

It wasn’t Sitting Bull. Not that it mattered.

In any case, whoever the Indian was, he had a full feathered headdress just like the riders in the first photograph.

The real Sitting Bull was in the third photograph I used. It had been taken earlier, in 1885, and showed him standing side by side with Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody has one hand over his heart, as though he’s in the middle of making the Lakota chief a promise, while his other hand rests on his rifle. Sitting Bull stands next to the famous frontiersman, in full headdress, his eyes closed as though he’s asleep or simply bored with the whole process of myth-making.