by Dee Brown
Black Kettle, however, would not go, and some four hundred Cheyennes-mostly old men, women, and a few
badly wounded warriors-agreed to follow him southward.
On the last day before the camp moved out, George Bent said farewell to this last remnant of his mother's people, the Southern Cheyennes.
"I went around among the lodges and shook hands with Black Kettle and all my friends. These lodges under Black Kettle moved south of the Arkansas and joined the Southern Arapahos, Kiowas, and Comanches."
With about three thousand Sioux and Arapahos, the Cheyennes (including Yellow Woman and the Bent brothers) moved northward, exiled into a land that few of them had seen before. Along the way they had fights with soldiers who marched out from Fort Laramie, but the alliance was too strong for the soldiers, and the Indians brushed them off as though they were coyotes snapping at a mighty buffalo herd.
When they reached the Powder River country, the Southern Cheyennes were welcomed by their kinsmen, the Northern Cheyennes. The Southerners, who wore cloth blankets and leggings, traded from white men, thought the Northerners looked very wild in their buffalo robes and buckskin leggings. The Northern Cheyennes wrapped their braided hair with strips of red-painted buckskin, wore crow feathers on their heads, and used so many Sioux words that the Southern Cheyennes had difficulty understanding them.
Morning Star, a leading chief of the Northern Cheyennes, had lived and hunted so long with the Sioux that almost everyone called him by his Sioux name, Dull Knife.
At first the Southerners camped on the Powder about half a mile apart from the Northerners, but there was so much visiting back and forth that they soon decided to camp together, pitching their tepees in an old-time tribal circle with clans grouped together. From that time on, there was little talk of Southerners and Northerners among these Cheyennes.
In the spring of 1865, when they moved their ponies over to Tongue River for better grazing, they camped near Red Cloud’s Oglala Sioux. The Cheyennes from the south had never seen so many Indians camped all together, more than eight thousand, and the days and nights were filled with hunts and ceremonies and feasts and dances. George Bent later told of inducting Young- Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, a Sioux, into his Cheyenne clan, the Crooked Lances. This indicated how close the Sioux and Cheyennes were in that time.
Although each tribe kept its own laws and customs, these Indians had come to think of themselves as the People, confident of their power and sure of their right to live as they pleased. White invaders were challenging them on the east in Dakota and on the south along the Platte, but they were ready to meet all challenges. "The Great Spirit raised both the white man and the Indian," Red Cloud said. "I think he raised the Indian first. He raised me in this land and it belongs to me. The white man was raised over the great waters, and his land is over there. Since they crossed the sea, I have given them room. There are now white people all about me. I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it."
Through the springtime the Indians sent scouting parties down to watch the soldiers who were guarding the roads and telegraph lines along the Platte. The scouts reported many more soldiers than usual, some of them prowling northward along Bozeman's Trail through the Powder River country. Red Cloud and the other chiefs decided it was time to teach the soldiers a lesson; they would strike them at the point where they were farthest north, a place the white men called Platte Bridge Station.
Because the Cheyenne warriors from the south wanted revenge for the relatives massacred at Sand Creek, most of them were invited to go along on the expedition. Roman Nose of the Crooked Lances was their leader, and he rode with Red Cloud, Dull Knife, and Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. Almost three thousand warriors formed the war party. Among them were the Bent brothers, painted and dressed for battle.
On July 24 they reached the hills overlooking the bridge across the North Platte. At the opposite end of the bridge was the military post-a stockade, stage station, and telegraph office. About a hundred soldiers were inside the stockade. After looking at the place through their field glasses, the chiefs decided they would burn the bridge, cross the river at a shallow ford below, and then lay siege to the stockade. But first they would try to draw the soldiers outside with decoys and kill as many as possible.
Ten warriors went down in the afternoon, but the soldiers would not come out of their stockade. Next morning another set of decoys lured the soldiers out on the bridge, but they would come no farther. On the third morning, to the Indians' surprise, a platoon of cavalrymen marched out of the fort, crossed the bridge, and turned westward at a trot. In a matter of seconds, several hundred Cheyennes and Sioux were mounted on their ponies and swarming down the hills toward the Bluecoats. "As we went into the troops," George Bent said, "I saw an officer on a bay horse rush past me through the dense clouds of dust and smoke.
His horse was running away from him . . . the lieutenant had an arrow sticking in his forehead and his face was streaming with blood." (The fatally wounded officer was Lieutenant Caspar Collins.) A few of the cavalrymen escaped and reached a rescue platoon of infantrymen on the bridge. Cannon from the fort broke off further pursuit by the Indians.
While the fighting was going on, some of the Indians still on the hills discovered why the cavalrymen had marched out of the fort. They had been riding to meet a wagon train approaching from the west. In a few minutes, the Indians had the wagon train surrounded, but the soldiers dug in under the wagons and put up a, stubborn fight. During the first minutes of the fighting, Roman Nose's brother was killed. When Roman Nose heard of this, he was angry for revenge. He called out for all the Cheyennes to prepare for a charge. "We are going to empty the soldiers' guns!" he shouted. Roman Nose was wearing his medicine bonnet and shield, and he knew that no bullets could strike him.
He led the Cheyennes into a circle around the wagons, and they lashed their ponies so that they ran very fast. As the circle tightened closer to the wagons, the soldiers emptied all their guns at once, and then the Cheyennes charged straight for the wagons and killed all the soldiers. They were disappointed by what they found in the wagons; nothing was there but soldiers' bedding and mess chests.
That night in camp Red Cloud and the other chiefs decided they had taught the soldiers to fear the power of the Indians. And so they returned to the Powder River country, hopeful that the white men would now obey the Laramie treaty and quit prowling without permission into the Indians' country north of the Platte.
Meanwhile, Black Kettle and the last remnants of the Southern Cheyennes had moved south of the Arkansas River. They joined Little Raven's Arapahos, who by this time had heard of the Sand Creek massacre and were mourning friends and relatives lost there. During the summer (1865) their hunters found only a few buffalo below the Arkansas, but they were afraid to go back north where the big herds grazed between the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers.
Late in the summer, runners and messengers began coming from all directions looking for Black Kettle and Little Raven. Suddenly they had become very important.
Some white officials had journeyed from Washington to find the Cheyennes and Arapahos and tell them the Great Father and his Council were filled with pity for them. The government officials wanted to make a new treaty.
Although the Cheyennes and Arapahos had been driven from Colorado, and settlers were claiming their lands, it seemed that the titles to the lands were not clear. By the law of the old treaties it could be proven that Denver City itself stood upon Cheyenne and Arapaho land. The government wanted all Indian land claims in Colorado extinguished so that white settlers would be certain they owned the land once they had claimed it.
Black Kettle and Little Raven would not agree to meet with the officials until they heard from the Little White Man, William Bent. He told them that he had tried to persuade the United States to give the Indians permanent rights to the buffalo country between the Smoky Hill and Republican, but the government refused to do this because a stage
line and later a railroad would pass through that country, bringing more white settlers. The Cheyennes and Arapahos would have to live south of the Arkansas River.
In the Drying Grass Moon, Black Kettle and Little Raven met the commissioners at the mouth of the Little Arkansas. The Indians had seen two of these treaty makers before-Black Whiskers Sanborn and White Whiskers Harney. They believed Sanborn to be a friend, but they remembered Harney, had massacred the Brule Sioux at the Blue Water in Nebraska in 1855. Agents Murphy and Leavenworth were there, and a straight-talking man, James Steele. Rope Thrower Carson, who had separated the Navahos from their tribal lands, was also there. Gray Blanket Smith, who had endured the ordeal of Sand Creek with them, came to translate, and the Little White Man was there to do the best he could for them.
"Here we are, all together, Arapahos and Cheyennes," Black Kettle said, "but few of us, we are one people. . . . All my friends, the Indians that are holding back-they are afraid to come in; are afraid they will be betrayed as I have been."
"It will be a very hard thing to leave the country that God gave us," Little Raven said. "Our friends are buried there, and we hate to leave these grounds. . . There is something strong for us-that fool band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges and killed our women and children. This is hard on us. There at Sand Creek-White Antelope and many other chiefs lie there; our women and children lie there. Our lodges were destroyed there, and our horses were taken from us there, and I do not feel disposed to go right off to a new country and leave them."
James Steele answered: "We all fully realize that it is hard for any people to leave their homes and graves of their ancestors, but, unfortunately for you, gold has been discovered in your country, and a crowd of white people have gone there to live, and a great many of these people are the worst enemies of the Indians-men who do not care for their interests, and who would not stop at any crime to enrich themselves. These men are now in your country-in all parts of it-and there is no portion where you can live and maintain yourselves but what you will come in contact with them. The consequences of this state of things are that you are in constant danger of being imposed upon, and you have to resort to arms in self-defense. Under the circumstances, there is, in the opinion of the commission, no part of the former country large enough where you can live in peace."
Black Kettle said: "Our forefathers, when alive, lived all over this country; they did not know about doing wrong; since then they have died, and gone I don't know where. We have all lost our way. Our Great Father sent you here with his words to us, and we take hold of them. Although the troops have struck us, we throw it all behind and are glad to meet you in peace and friendship. What you have come here for, and what the president has sent you for, I don't object to.
but say yes to it. . . . The white people can go wherever they please and they will not be disturbed by us, and I want you to let them know. . . . We are different nations, but it seems as if we were but one people, whites and all. . . . Again I take you by the hand, and I feel happy. These people that are with us are glad to think that we have peace once more, and can sleep soundly, and that we can live."
And so they agreed to live south of the Arkansas, sharing land that belonged to the Kiowas. On October 14, 1865, the chiefs and head men of what remained of the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos signed the new treaty agreeing to
“perpetual peace.” Article 2 of the treaty read: "It is further agreed, by the Indian parties hereto . . . that henceforth they will, and do hereby, relinquish all claims or rights . . in and to the country bounded as follows, viz: beginning at the junction of the north and south forks of the Platte River; thence up the north fork to the top of the principal range of the Rocky Mountains, or to the Red Buttes; thence southwardly along the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the headwaters of the Arkansas River; thence down the Arkansas River to the Cimarone crossing of the same; thence to the place of beginning; which country they claim to have originally owned, and never to have relinquished the title thereto."
Thus did the Cheyennes and Arapahos abandon all claims to the Territory of Colorado' And that of course was the real meaning of the massacre at Sand Creek'
Five
Powder River Invasion
1865-April 2, Confederates abandon Richmond. April 9, Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox; Civil War ends.
April 14, John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Lincoln; Andrew Johnson becomes President. June 13, President Johnson issues proclamation for reconstruction of former Confederate States. October, U.S. asks France to recall troops from Mexico. December 18, Thirteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Tolstoy's War and Peace published.
Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows. . . . What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country. . . . When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind.
him. . . . I have two mountains in that country-the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the Great Father to make no roads through them. I have told these things three times now I have come here to tell them the fourth time.
-Mahpiua Luta (Red Cloud) of the Oglala Sioux After returning to the Powder River country following the Platte Bridge fight, the Plains Indians began preparing for their usual summer medicine ceremonies. The tribes camped near each other at the mouth of Crazy Woman's Fork of the Powder. Farther north along that river and the Little Missouri were some Teton Sioux who had moved west that year to get away from General Sully's soldiers in Dakota. Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa people were there, and these cousins of the Oglalas sent emissaries down for a big sun dance, the annual religious renewal of the Tetons.
While the sun dance was in progress, the Cheyennes held their medicine-arrows ceremony, which lasted four days.
The Arrow Keeper unwrapped the four secret arrows from their coyote fur bag, and all the males in the tribe passed by to make an offering and pray to the arrows.
Black Bear, one of the leading chiefs of the Northern Arapahos, decided to take his people west to Tongue River; he invited some of the Southern Arapahos who had come north after Sand Creek to go with them. They would set up a village on the Tongue, he said, and have many hunts and dances before the coming of the cold moons.
And so by late August, 1865, the tribes in the Powder River country were scattered from the Bighorns on the west to the Black Hills on the east. They were so sure of the country's impregnability that most of them were skeptical when they first began hearing rumors of soldiers coming at them from four directions.
Three of the soldier columns were under command of General Patrick E. Connor, who had transferred from Utah in May to fight Indians along the Platte route. In 1863 Star Chief Connor had surrounded a camp of Paiutes on Bear River and butchered 278 of them. For this he was hailed by the white men as a brave defender of the frontier from the
"red foe."
In Ju1y, 1865, Connor announced that the Indians north of the Platte "must be hunted like wolves," and he began organizing three columns of soldiers for an invasion of the Powder River country. One column under Colonel Nelson Cole would march from Nebraska to the Black Hills of Dakota. A second column under Colonel Samuel Walker would move straight north from Fort Laramie to link up with Cole in the Black Hills. The third column, with Connor himself in command, would head in a northwesterly direction along the Bozeman Road toward Montana.
General Connor thus hoped to trap the Indians between his column and the combined forces of Cole and Walker. He warned his officers to accept no overtures of peace from the Indians, and ordered bluntly: "Attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age." ,
Early in August the three columns were set in motion. If everything went according to plan, they would rendezvous about September 1 on Rosebud River in the heart of hostile Indian country.
A fourth column, which had no connection with
Connor’s expeditions, was also approaching the Powder River country from the east. Organized by a civilian, James A.
Sawyers, to open a new overland route, this column had no objective other than to reach the Montana gold fields.
Because Sawyers knew that he would be trespassing on Indian treaty lands, he expected resistance and therefore had obtained two companies of infantrymen to escort his group of seventy-three gold seekers and eighty wagons of supplies.
It was about August 14 or 15 when the Sioux and Cheyennes who were camped along the Powder first learned of Sawyers, approaching train. "Our hunters rode into camp much excited” George Bent recalled afterward,
"and said soldiers were up the river. Our village crier, a man named Bull Bear, mounted and rode about our camp, crying that soldiers were coming. Red Cloud got in his herd and mounted and rode through the Sioux camp, crying the same thing for the Sioux. Everybody ran for ponies. At such times a man always took any pony he wanted; if the pony was killed in the fight the rider did not have to pay its owner for it, but everything the rider captured in battle belonged to the owner of the pony he rode. When all were mounted we rode up the Powder about fifteen miles, where we came upon the Sawyers 'road-building party,' a big train of emigrants moving along with soldiers marching on each side of it."
As part of their booty taken during the Platte Bridge fight the Indians had brought back some Army uniforms and bugles. On leaving camp, George Bent hastily donned an officer's blouse, and his brother Charlie carried along a bugle. They thought these things might mystify the soldiers and make them jumpy. About five hundred Sioux and Cheyennes were in the war party, and both Red Cloud and Dull Knife went along. The chiefs were very angry that soldiers had come into their country without asking permission.