by Dee Brown
To keep the reservation Indians peaceful, the Great Father sent out a new commission in september to cajole and threaten
the chiefs and secure their signatures to legal documents transferring the immeasurable wealth of the Black Hills to white o*rr"r.hip. Several members of this commission were o1d hands
at stealing Indian lands, notably Newton Edmunds, Bishop Henry Whipple, and the Reverend Samuel D' Hinman' At the
Red Cloud rg"r"y, Bishop Whipple opened the proceedings with
a prayer, and then Chairman George Manypenny read the conditions laid down by congress. Because these conditions were
stated in the usual obfuscated language of lawmakers, Bishop
whipple attempted to explain them in phrases which could be
used by the interPreters.
"My heart has for many years been very warm toward the red man. We came here to bring a message to you from your
Great Father, and there are certain things we have given to -
you
in his exact words. We cannot alter them even to the scratch of
a pen. . . . When the Great Council made the appropriation this year to continue your supplies they made certain provisions'
three in number, and unless they were complied with no more
appropriations would be made by Congress' Those three pro-
,ri.iorrr are: First, that you shall give up the Black Hills country
and the country to the north; second, that you shall receive your rations on- the Missouri River; and third, that the Great
Father shall be permitted to locate three roads from the Missouri River across the reservation to that new country where the
Black Hills are. . . . The Great Father said that his heart was full of tenderness for his red children, and he selected this commission of friends of the Indians that they might devise a p1an,
as he directed them, in order that the Indian nations might be
saved, and that instead of growing smaller and smaller until
the last Indian looks upon his own grave, they might become as
the white man has become, a great and powerful people., 85
To Bishop Whipple's listeners, this seemed a strange way in_
deed to save the Indian nations, taking away their Black Hills
and hunting grounds, and moving them far away to the Mis_
souri River. Most of the chiefs knew that it was already too late
to save the Black Hills, but they protested strongly against having their reservations moved to the Missouri. "I ihink ir -
y
people should move there," Red Cloud said, , they would all be
destroyed. There are a great many bad men there and bad whiskey; therefore I don't want to go there., s6
No Heart said that white men had already ruined the Missouri River country so that Indians could not live there.
,,you
travel up and down the Missouri River and you do not see any
timber," he declared. "You have probably seen where lots of it
has beeu, and the Great Father's people have destroyed it.,
"It is only six years since we came to live on this stream where
we are living nov," Red Dog said, "and nothing that has been
promised us has been done." Another chief remembered that
since the Great Father promised them that they would never be
moved they had been moved five times. , I think you had better
put the Indians on wheels," he said sardonically, , and you can
run them about whenever you wish."
Spotted Tail accused the government and the commissioners
of betraying the Indians, of broken promises and false words.
"This war did not spring up here in our land; this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came
to take our laud from us without price, and who, in our land, do
a great many evil things. . . . This war has come from robbery
-from the stealing of our land." 3? As for moving to the Missouri, Spotted Tail was utterly opposed, and he told the commissioners he would not sign away the Black Hills until he could
go to Washington and talk to the Great Father.
The commissioners gave the Indians a week to discuss the terms among themselves, and it soon beeame evident that they
were not going to sign anything. The chiefs pointed out that the
treaty of 1868 required the signatures of three-fourths of the male adults of the Sioux tribes to change anything in it, and Bury My Heart at'lV ounded Knee
more than half of the warriors were in the north with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In reply to this the commissioners explained that the Indians off the reservations were hostiles; only
friendly Indiaus were covered by the treaty. Most of the chiefs
did not accept this. To break down their opposition, the commissioners dropped strong hints that unless they signed, the Great
Council in its anger would cut off ali rations immediately, would
remove them to the Indian Territory in the south, and the Army
would take all their guns and horses.
There was no way out. The Black Hills were stolen; the Powder River country and its herds of wild game were gone.
Without wild game or rations, the people would starve. The thought of moving far away to a strange country in the south
was unbearable, and if the Army took their guns and ponies they
would no longer be men.
Red Cloud and his subchiefs signed first, and then Spotted Tail and his people signed. After that the commissioners went
to agencies at Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Lower Brul6, and Santee, and badgered the other Sioux tribes
into signing. Thus did Palta Sopa, its spirits and its mysteries, its
vast pine forests, and its billion dollars in gold pass forever from
the hands of the Indians into the domain of the United States.
Four weeks after Red Cloud and Spotted Tail touched pens to
the paper, eight companies of Lrnited States cavalry under Three Fingers Nlackenzie (the Eagle Chief who destroyed the
Kiowas and Comanches in Palo Duro Canyon) marched out of
Fort Robinson into the agency camps. Under orders of the War
Department, Nlackenzie had come to take the reservation Indians' ponies and guns. All males were placed under arrest, tepees were searched and dismantled, guns collected, and all ponies
were rounded up by the soldiers. Nlackenzie gave the women
permission to use horses to haul their goods into Fort Robinson.
The males, including Red Cloud and the other chiefs, were forced to walk to the fort. The tribe would have to live henceforth at Fort Robinson under the guns of the soldiers.
Next morning, to degrade his beaten prisoners even further, Mackenzie presented a company of mercenary Pawnee scouts
(the same Pawnees the Sioux had once driven out of their PHOTO PAGE 301
Powder River country) with the horses the soldiers had taken
from the Sioux.
Meanwhile, the United States Arrrr5r, thirsting for revenge, was prowling the country north and west of the Black Hills, killing Indians wherever they could be found. In late summer
of 1876, Three Stars Crook's reinforced column ran out of rations in the Heart River country of Dakota, and started a forced
march southward to obtain supplies in the Black Hills mining
camps. On September 9, near SIim Buttes, a forward detachment
under Captain Anson Mills stumbled upon American Horse's
village of Oglalas and Minneconjous. These Indians had left Crazy Horse's camp on Grand River a few days before and were
moving south to spend the winter on their reservation.
Captain
Mills attacked, but the Sioux drove him back, and while he was
waiting for T
hree Stars to arrive, all the Indians escaped except
American Horse, four warriors, and fifteen wbmen and children,
who were trapped in a cave at the end of a small canyon.
When Crook came up with the main column, he ordered soldiers to positions from which they could fire volleys into the
mouth of the cave. American Horse and his four warriors returned the fire, and after some hours of continuous dueling, two
Bluecoats were dead and nine wounded. Crook then sent a scout, Frank Grouard, to ask the Indians to surrender.
Grouard,
who had lived with the Sioux, spoke to them in their language.
"They told me they would come out if we would not kill them,
and upon receiving this promise, they came out." American Horse, two warriors, five women, and several children crawled
out of the cave; the others were dead or too badly wounded to
move. American Horse's groin had been ripped open by buckshot. "He was holding his entrails in his hands as he came out,"
Grouard said. "Holding out one of his bloodstained hands, he
shook hands with me." 38
Captain Mills had found a little girl, three or four years old, hiding in the village. "She sprang up and ran away like a young
partridge," he said. "The soldiers caught her and brought her to
me." Mills comforted her and gave her some food, and then he
asked his orderly to bring her along when he went down to the
cave where the soldiers were dragging out the Indian casualties.
Two of the dead were women, bloody with many wounds.."The
little girl began to scream and fought the orderly until he placed
her on the ground, when she ran and embraeed one of these
squaws, who was her mother. I told Adjutant Lemly I intended
to adopt this little girl, as I had slain her mother."
A surgeon came to examine American Horse's wound. He pronounced it fatal, and the chief sat down before a fire, holding a
blanket over his bullet-torn abdomen, until he lost consciousness
and died.
Crook ordered Captain Mills to ready his men for a resumption
of the march to the Black Hills. "Before starting," Mills said,
"Adjutant Lemly asked me if I really intended to take the little
girl. I told him I did, when he remarked, 'Well, how do you think Mrs. Mills will like it?' It was the first time I had given that side of the matter a thought, and I decided to leave the child where I found her." 3e
While Three Stars was destroying American Horse's village, some of the Sioux who had escaped made their way to Sitting
Bull's camp and told him about the attack. Sitting Bull and Gall, with about six hundred warriors, immediately went to help
American Horse, but they arrived too iate. Although Sitting Bull launched an attack on Crook's soldiers, his warriors had so
little ammunition that the Bluecoats held them off with rearguard actions while the main column marched on to the Black
Hills.
When the soldiers were all gone, Sitting Bull and his warriors
went into American Horse's devastated village, rescued the helpless survivors, and buried the dead. "What have we done
that the white people want us to stop?" Sitting Bull asked.
"We
have been running up and down this country, but they follow us
from one place to another." ao
In an effort to get as far away from the soldiers as possible, Sitting Bull took his people north along the Yellowstone, where
buffalo could be found. In the Moon of Falling Leaves, Gall went out with a hunting party and came upon an Army wagon
train traveling through the Yellowstone country. The soldiers
were taking supplies to a new fort they were building where Tongue River flowed into the Yellowstone (Fort Keogh, named
for Captain Myles Keogh, who was killed at the Littie made passing mention of a reservation for the Hunkpapas, but
Sitting BulI brushed it aside. He would spend the winter in the
Black Hills, he said. The parley ended with nothing resolved, but
the two men agreed to meet again the next day.
The second meeting quickly became a succession of disagreements. Sitting Bull began by saying that he had not fought the
soldiers until they came to fight him, and promised that there
would be no more fighting if the white men would take their
soldiers and forts out of the Indians' country. Bear Coat replied
that there could be no peace for the Sioux until they were all on
reservations. At this, Sitting Bull became angry. He declared that
the Great Spirit had made him an Indian but not an agency fndian, and he did not intend to become one. He ended the conference abruptly, and returned to his warriors, ordering them
to scatter because he suspected that Bear Coat's soldiers would
try to attack them. The soldiers did open fire, and once again
the Hunkpapas had to start running up and down the country.
By springtime of 1877 Sitting Bull was tired of running. He decided there was no longer room enough for white men and the
Sioux to live together in the Great Father's country. He would
take his people to Canada, to the land of the Grandmother, Queen Victoria. Before he started, he searched for Crazy Horse,
hoping to persuade him to bring the Oglalas to the Grandmother's land. But Crazy Horse's people were running up and
down the country trying to escape the soldiers, and Sitting Bull
could not find them.
In those same cold moorls, General Crook was also looking for
Crazy Horse. This time Crook had assembled an enormous army
of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. This time he took along enough rations to fill 168 wagons and enough powder and ammunition to burden the backs of 400 pack mules. Three Stars,s
mighty column swept through the Powder Iliver country like a
swarm of. grizzly bears, mauling and crushing all Indians in its
path.
The soldiers were looking f.or Crazy Horse, but they found a Cheyenne village first, Dull Knife's village. Most of these Cheyennes had not been in the Little Bighorn battle, but had slipped
away from Red Cloud agency in search of food after the Army
took possession there and stopped their rations. General Crook
Bighorn).
sent Three I'ingers Mackenzie against this village of 150
lodges.
It was in the Deer Rutting Moon, and very cold, with deep snow in the shaded places and ice-crusted snow in the open
places. Nlackenzie brought his troopers up to attacking positions
during the night, aud struck the Cheyennes at first daylight'
The Pawnee mercenaries went in first, charging on the fast ponies Mackenzie had taken from the reservation Sioux'
They
caught the Cheyennes in their lodges, killing many of them as
they came awake. Others ran out naked into the biting co1d, the
warriors trying to fight off the Pawnees and the onrushing soldiers long enough for their women and children to escape.
Some of the best warriors of the Northern Cheyennes sacrificed their lives in those first furious moments of fighting; one
of them was DulI Knife,s oldest son. Dull Knife and Little wolf
finally managed to form a rear guard along the upper ledges of
a canyon, but their scanty supply of ammunition was soon exhausted. Little wolf was shot seven times before he and Dull Knife broke away to join their women and children in lull flight
toward the Bighorns. Behind them Mackenzie was burning their
lodges, and after that was done he herded their captured ponies
against the canyon wal1 and ordered his men to sh
oot them down,
just as he had done to the ponies of the Comanches and Kiowa's
in Palo Duro Canyott.
For Dull Knife's Cheyeuttes, their flight was a repetition of the flight of Two Nloon',s cheyennes after the surprise attack in
March by the Eagle Chief, Reynolds. But the weather was eolder; they had only a few horses, and scarcely any blankets,
robes, or even moccasins. Like Two Moon's people, they knew
only one sanctuary-Crazy Horse's village on Box Elder Creek'
During the first night of flight, twelve infants and several old people froze to death. The next night, the men killed some of
ihe ponies, disemboweled them, and thrust small children inside
to keep them from freezing. The old people put their hands and
feet in beside the children. For three days they tramped aeross
the frozen snow, their bare feet leaving a trail of blood, and then
they reached Crzzy Horse's camp.
Crury Horse shared food, blankets, and shelter with Dull Knife's people, but warned them to be ready to run. The Oglalas
did not have enough ammunition left to stand and fight'
Bear
Coat Miles was looking for them in the north, and now Three
Stars Crook was coming from the south. To survive, they would
have to keep running up and down the country.
In the Moon of Popping Trees, Crazy Horse moved the camp
north along the Tongue to a hiding place not far from the new
Fort Keogh, where Bear Coat was wintering his soldiers.
Cold
and hunger became so unbearable for the children and old people that some of the chiefs told Crazy Horse it was time to go
and parley with Bear Coat and find out what he wanted them to
do. Their women and children were crying for food, and they
needed warm shelters they would not have to run away from.
Crazy Horse knew that Bear Coat wanted to rnake prisoners of
them on a reservation, but he agreed that the chiefs should go if