by 1864-1898 Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life;Campaigns in the West
If Merritt hesitated one minute, not even his closest advisors knew it. Hardly had he received the news when “Boots and Saddles” sounded and the men were in the saddle taking the trail back to where it was supposed the Indians would attempt to cross Hat Creek, about six miles south of the Dakota line. To reach that place unobserved by the Indians, the troops would have to march eighty-five miles while the Indians were making twenty-five. However, at 8 o’clock on the evening of the sixteenth the command reached the spot where a natural place in the creek bottom and behind two large buttes completely concealed them from the Indians until they would be too close to avoid an encounter.
William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody scouted for the army in 1876, and during the engagement at Warbonnet Creek, Nebraska, fought and killed a young Cheyenne warrior, Yellow Hair. Courtesy of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
The night was dark as night could be. No fires were allowed in camp, and no trumpet calls were sounded. Having been assigned to duty as signal man, I was sent to the top of the nearby butte with my flag and torch in order that the observation by the pickets posted at the front could be quickly communicated to headquarters. During the night nothing happened, but about daybreak Cody came in from the direction where it was supposed the Indians were encamped. He came directly to my post and told me to notify the command that he had been close enough to the Indian camp to see them preparing to move. However, he hastened to camp, and before the signal man in camp had time to make the report he was at Merritt’s headquarters and made his report personally. In a few minutes the camp was alive and the horses saddled. The men were not feasted neither at supper time nor in the morning, for our provision wagons were miles behind.
As soon as the troops were ready, the orders were given to move to a point below the buttes where they would be completely concealed from any parties coming from the direction where the Indians were reported to be. Merritt and his staff soon arrived at the butte just below my station. What they said I could not hear, but from their movements I knew they were watching for the Indians to appear. Several of the company officers were nearly ready to carry out such orders as the chief would issue. Cody was near Merritt, and as some few Indians appeared about a mile to the southeast the troopers were quietly ordered to remain in the saddles with carbines loaded and ready for action.
The peculiar action of the few Indians who were coming down a ravine, where they could be seen plainly at times by the officers and pickets, seemed to puzzle Merritt until two couriers were seen coming across the prairie toward the place where the command had been camped during the night. The stage coach for the Black Hills, or some other covered conveyance, was also moving along on the road, and it soon became plain that the Indians were unaware of the presence of the soldiers but were bent on making a raid on the unsuspecting travelers. What Merritt told Cody I could not hear, but just as the Indians were near the mouth of the ravine Cody and a small party of scouts and soldiers dashed away to cut them off. Cody was some distance ahead of the other members of the party, and at the same time the Indians emerged from the ravine and were coming out in the open [where] Cody came face to face with them.
The reports and stories about the Indian chief and Cody challenging one another to single combat may be good stuff for dime novels, but did not happen. There was no time for talk on an occasion of this kind, where victory or death depended on who could pull the trigger first, and the two first shots fired by Cody and the Indian sounded as if only one gun had been fired. Cody’s bullet had gone through the Indian’s leg and killed his horse, a small pinto pony. Cody’s horse had stepped into a prairie dog hole and stumbled, and Cody was either thrown from the horse or jumped away from the animal when it fell. Cody then took deliberate aim and the Indian’s spirit was started on its way to the happy hunting grounds. Two shots fired by the Indian did no harm, and the battle was over before the scouts or soldiers had time to draw their guns. Several times afterward when I met Cody, he would discuss the affair with me, and when we did not agree on particulars would always acknowledge that at the time he was rather too busy to notice the details, while I, an observer out of harm’s way, had time and leisure to take in the show.
As soon as the others recovered from their surprise, a general fusillade started, but as the seven troops came charging around the butte the Indians turned about and did not even look back. Eight hundred bold warriors, who were supported by a still larger party that never reached the front, found that a peaceful life on the reservation, where Uncle Sam supported them with plenty of rations, was, after all, a better place to spend their time in idleness than a life in the wilds where they would have to hunt for their food. As soon as the Indians fled, Cody went to the fallen warrior and removed his scalp. There is no mistake about that, although Brigadier General Samuel S. Sumner and Brigadier General Charles King, both company officers at that time and present near where the combat took place, say they did not see it. Perhaps they did not. They had their troops to look after and were not there as observers. And perhaps they felt that officers and gentlemen should not witness such a barbaric act without making a protest. But I, a common soldier, trained to see the effects of war on foreign battlefields, and having in mind that at some future time perhaps my topknot would be dangling from a warrior’s belt, felt no regret or scruples about being a witness to an act which the savages in whose school Yellow Hair had been trained, had so skillfully employed themselves less than a month before when Custer and his command lay bleeding on the banks of the Little Bighorn.
Sergeant John Hamilton of Captain Sumner’s troop, who later was retired as ordnance sergeant, in a statement made to [retired] Brigadier General William C. Brown, says that he saw Cody shoot Yellow Hand (or Hair), and that when the troops made the charge on the Indians he [Hamilton] had to stop at the place where the Indian was lying in order to help fix the saddle on a pack animal; that he found that the Indian’s scalp had been removed; that he was lying on his stomach on bended arms, wrapped partly in an American flag, and had with him a scalplock of a yellow-haired young white woman; also tin bracelets on his arms, a charm, a wampum belt, and war feathers. When the man who had been detailed to bring my horse to me finally found me, and I was ordered to go to the extreme left flank with my signal outfit, I passed by the Indian and saw that his scalp had been removed, but did not take time to make any examination of the equipment.
I did not play any part of a hero in the drama, but by reading the many reports of the number of Indians killed, both by those who actually were present and by others who were miles away, I am forced to believe that I am the only man who did not kill at least one Indian in that “battle.” And I was all primed to slay the whole bunch if I had been given a chance, but the guns issued to the army at that time did not throw a bullet five miles. That was about as near as I came to any of them after the scrap between Cody and Yellow Hair. So I must content myself with telling what others did, and for that part I am perhaps better qualified than those who did the real work, for the place where, by chance, I had been posted, gave me a better opportunity to see what was going on than was enjoyed by those actually engaged in the skirmish. I believe I have the upper hand of some of the writers who have filled magazines and pamphlets with stories of the “great” fight.
As for Cody scalping the Indian, I want to state that after we reached the reservation and the pursuit of the Indians ceased, the skirmishers were called in, and before I could find my company I met Cody and traveled with him for a short distance. We met two Indians apparently attempting to leave the reservation. Cody asked them where they were going and one of them replied, “To join Sitting Bull.” They knew they were safe on the reservation and wanted to show their bravery where there was no danger. Cody pulled Yellow Hair’s scalp from his saddle pocket and held it up for the Indians to look at, at the same time telling them that if they left the reservation something like what happened to Yellow Hair would happen to them in short order. They gazed at the scalp f
or a moment then let out a grunt and turned homeward.
The fight itself was of small magnitude, but the fact that the Indians had been outwitted, and that 800 who had actually left their reservations to reinforce the hostiles in the field, and that probably 2, 000 more who turned back at the first news of the defeat of the other 800, had likewise been convinced that they were no match for seasoned troops commanded by expert officers, had probably more to do with settling that war than a greater battle would have accomplished. John F. Finerty, war correspondent in 1876, and later member of Congress from a Chicago district, in his report of the fight said: “Buffalo Bill was in the van, and reaped the brightest laurels of his adventurous life that morning by slaying Yellow Hand, the Indian leader, in single combat…. The savages taken totally by surprise were driven back upon the agency in wild disorder. They thought that Merritt must have dropped from the clouds.” Eastern people, knowing little or nothing of life on the frontiers, condemned Cody for scalping the Indian. Why? They did not know that fire is best fought by fire on the open plains, and that fighting the Indian his own way had more effect than petting and handling him with soft gloves.
About midnight, my outfit reached Camp Robinson after passing through some of the camps and witnessing the Indians in their hideous make-ups dancing around fires and singing their death songs. It was easy to read in their manners what they would have done to us had they been masters of the situation. As it was, their weird songs and unearthly yells almost chilled the blood in a man’s veins. As Custer once said, “One who had witnessed one of those witch-like performances would never forget it.” The next day we took up the march to join General Crook, and joined his command at the head of Goose Creek in Montana [Wyoming] on the third day of August. Cody remained as chief of scouts until we reached the Yellowstone River, when he quit to rejoin his theatrical company….
Witness to Cody at Warbonnet Creek (Diary entries by James B. Frew, formerly of Troop D, Fifth U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, April 30, 1936)
Comrade James B. Frew, late Troop D. Fifth U. S. Cavalry, sends…a photostatic copy of a page of a diary which he kept day by day while serving in the army. Under date of July 17, 1876, the copy of his diary states, “Indians reported by the pickets. Command ordered to secrete in the ravines, but two couriers arriving from agency being in danger, Cody fired on them, killing the chief, Yellow Hand. The rest (Indians) tried to rescue him but we charged, killing six. Followed them into the agency 40 miles.”
The entries preceding this one and Mr. Frew’s explanation of the affair reveal that his detachment, which had been stationed at Fort Laramie in Wyoming had been sent on a scouting expedition. When the Indians were reported, he said, the order to conceal themselves was given the soldiers with an idea of taking the Indians by surprise. However, when the couriers arrived and were pursued by Yellow Hand and his band, original plans were revised.
Mr Frew said that Yellow Hand streaked out ahead of his band and Buffalo Bill,…who was riding ahead of the troops, spurred forward to meet him. As soon as Buffalo Bill was within range he fired at the red-skinned chief. The first shot, he said, wounded the Indian in one leg, but it killed his horse. As Yellow Hand extricated himself, Colonel Cody fired again, the bullet striking Yellow Hand in the body and dropping him.
Mr. Frew said he was riding not more than fifty feet behind Buffalo Bill when Yellow Hand fell. He said it was possible that Colonel Cody might have dismounted long enough to plunge a knife into the Indian to make certain of killing him, but he is certain that if anything as spectacular as the reputed knife duel had occurred he would have seen it and would have noted it in his diary.
Surrounding Red Cloud and Red Leaf (By Luther North, formerly of the Battalion of Pawnee Scouts. From Winners of the West, July 30, 1933)
We had a very good time [during a 1933 visit to the Nebraska Sand Hill country] and I met many old timers that I hadn’t seen for more than forty years…. At Chadron we were met by a delegation of Sioux Indians. Some of the old bucks were in the Red Cloud village when Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie surrounded and captured him on October 23rd, 1876. My brother and myself with forty of our Pawnee scouts were with Mackenzie.
We made a long night ride and reached Chadron Creek before daylight. We found the Indians in two camps about two miles apart. Red Cloud was in one village and Red Leaf and Swift Bear were the leading chiefs of the other village. Colonel Mackenzie divided his force, taking about 200 cavalry and twenty of our Pawnee scouts, under command of my brother, Major Frank North. He went to Red Cloud’s village. Major George A. Gordon with about the same number of cavalrymen and twenty Pawnee scouts under my command went to the Red Leaf village.
The part the Pawnees were to take was to dash through the village and capture the horses. Then the soldiers were to surround the village and compel the Indians to move their camp to their reservation at Camp Robinson, about twenty-five miles away. We had strict orders not to fire a shot unless we were fired upon by the Indians. They made no resistance, so there was not a shot fired. We, with the Pawnee scouts, rounded up the horses. Colonel Mackenzie told Red Cloud what he must do. Then he let the Indians have enough horses to move their camp to Camp Robinson, where the horses were again taken from them and turned over to Major Frank North with instructions to take them to Fort Laramie and turn them over to the quartermaster there. This was done, and Frank got a receipt from the quartermaster for 722 horses. A few days later, most of these horses were sold at auction by the government.
The Indians that met us a few days ago [1933] at Chadron took us out to the creek a few miles from town and pointed out to us where the Red Cloud and Red Leaf villages were located, with the object of having markers put up there. One of the old Indians, when telling me about the rounding up of their horses, said, “Tell him (pointing to me) that they never would have gotten our horses if they had not had the Pawnees with them.”….
Battle of the Red Fork, 1876 (By James S. McClellan, formerly first sergeant, Troop H, Third U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, May 30, 1930)
On the morning of November 25, 1876, I was first sergeant of Troop H, Third U. S. Cavalry, in command of first platoon, with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie at the fight with Dull Knife’s and Little Wolf’s band of Northern Cheyennes on the Red Fork of Powder River, Wyoming Territory, then known to us as the North Fork. We went into the engagement on the north side of the village, and just after First Lieutenant John A. McKinney was shot and his company checked, Captain Henry W. Wessells, Jr., gave the command, “Dismount and fight on foot!” Troop H at once engaged the Indians.
Deploying, we followed up the washout which gave them cover, and as we advanced toward the foot of the mountain an Indian leaped out of a hole on my right front, and I was on the right front of the skirmish line. He fired point blank at me, but missed and did not have time to re-load, as I shot from the hip and quickly to put end to his career. I took from this Indian, whose name was Bull Head, a Sharps carbine and also a cartridge belt full of .50 caliber cartridges. On this belt was a silver belt plate with the name Little Wolf stamped thereon; also, in an old-fashioned army cap box studded with brass nails was a steel used for striking fire and a flint stone. The belt plate and the steel are the identical relics taken by me that morning from Bull Head, a half brother of Little Wolf, who in the rush had grabbed and fought with Little Wolf’s equipment. When the Indians surrendered at Camp Robinson the following spring, we learned that Little Wolf was the real owner of the outfit.
These articles have been in my possession since I took them off the dead body of Bull Head on the morning of the fight, but I regret very much that I have lost the rifle and cartridge belt. In those days we had hard work to keep alive, without loading ourselves down with souvenirs of the battle.
Dismounting and Disarming the Agency Sioux along the Missouri River (By Theodore W. Goldin, formerly of Troop G, Seventh U. S. Cavalry. Typescript in Folder 16, Philip G. Cole Collection, Thomas Gilcrease Institute of Ameri
can History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma)
At the breaking up of the 1876 campaign the remnant of the Seventh Cavalry returned to its home station at Fort Abraham Lincoln in what is now North Dakota, expecting there to split up and return to the various posts where they were usually stationed, but instead of that the entire command went into camp on the flats below the post. It was already early in November [1876], the weather was cold but fortunately we as yet had no snow and managed to keep fairly comfortable in our tent homes. There was a rumor that there was a move of some sort in prospect, but where to and for what purpose no one seemed to know. Hardly were we well settled until a train load of some five hundred recruits arrived to fill our sadly depleted ranks, and a cosmopolitan bunch they were—English, Irish, Scotch, Italians, and French, with a goodly share of Americans. All ages from sixteen to forty and from all parts of the country, from farms, mines, cities, and towns, not one with the slightest idea of army life. There they were dumped down, out there on the frontier at the beginning of a hard winter, with but a meager supply of blankets and none too much clothing. They were at once assigned to the various troops and officers, noncommissioned officers, and the best of the older well-drilled men, and we started the task of making soldiers of them. I doubt whether a third of them had ever ridden a horse.