Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877 tp-12

by Terry C. Johnston

  The painting would be better ascribed to Mackenzie’s attack on Morning Star’s village: the on-foot, lodge-to-lodge fight of it made on 25 November 1876.

  Truth is, the Sioux and Cheyenne village was at least seventeen miles south of Battle Butte. A man who knows firsthand the nature of not only that terrain but a half century of Montana snowstorms, Charlie Erlanson himself, said of this controversy, “The last part of the battle was fought in a blizzard of such intensity that it … would have been futile for Miles’s foot soldiers to attempt to pursue the ‘finest light cavalry in the world’ through the deep snow.”

  Having myself visited the site on a clear winter day, with close to a foot of snow on the level, I have to concur not only with William Jackson (the half-breed Blackfoot scout with Miles), but with the current thinking of historians: that the pursuing soldiers did not chase the Indians to and through their village. Instead, the infantry would have been lucky to follow those fleeing horsemen a matter of two, perhaps three, miles at most, on foot before they were forced to turn back beneath the onslaught of a Montana blizzard.

  By considering only the record of casualties, one might infer that this was an inconsequential affair brought to an indecisive conclusion only by the extremities of severe weather. But even the casualty counts are conflicting for some reason.

  William Jackson states that three soldiers were killed (although his recollection may be clouded by time and by witnessing Batty’s death earlier on their march upriver). He goes on to state that eight soldiers were wounded. Two other writers concur with these same figures, one of which was Captain Edmond Butler in his own brief account of the campaign.

  So why, I ask myself, did Miles officially report one man killed and nine wounded during the battle? Because of the soldier who died on the northbound march, I think I can understand a discrepancy of one fatality—but this still does not account for the other death.

  Perhaps it’s nothing more than the fact that these eye witnesses are recalling Private Batty’s death before the battle, Corporal Rothman’s death during the battle, and Private McCann’s death after the battle.

  As for the casualties on the Indian side of the fight, we first look at the “body count” given by the officers and enlisted men immediately after the fight. Lieutenant Baldwin wrote in his personal diary that the Indian loss “must have been considerable.” Trumpeter Edwin M. Brown recorded in his journal that “the loss of the Indians was estimated at 15 killed and 25 wounded.”

  Another army source noted that ten Indians fell in front of the Casey-Butler-McDonald battalion, in addition to the war chief in the fancy warbonnet (Big Crow). In the subsequent reports submitted to Miles, the officers of the Fifth Infantry noted that as many as twenty-three Indians fell during the battle and were presumed dead. The colonel himself wrote that he believed the enemy’s loss to be “about twelve or fifteen killed and twenty five or thirty wounded.”

  The belief of these officers that they had taken a great toll on the Crazy Horse warriors was strengthened the following day when they more carefully examined the Indian positions on the ridge, finding much blood on the snow as well as a great deal of blood trails along the escape route upriver.

  Yet all of this appears to clash with what are consistent reports from the Indian participants themselves—those who, like Eagle Shield, eventually gave a rendition of the fight through interpreters. Wooden Leg states that Big Crow was the only Cheyenne casualty but goes on to say that two Sioux warriors were killed as well. Red Cloth, a Miniconjou, later testified that in addition to the two Sioux killed in the battle, three more Lakota had been wounded, and two of those had later died. Again and again the Indian reports consistently testify to a much, much smaller casualty count than Miles and his officers had represented.

  Considering all the shooting from both sides, especially in light of all the bullets used up by Casey’s, Butler’s, and McDonald’s companies, it is surprising that there were not more Indian casualties. Still, this fact once more points up the true lack of marksmanship on the part of most frontier soldiers. The army supplied ammunition enough to waste in battle but would not provide ammunition to use for target practice at their posts.

  In addition to the soldiers killed and wounded, the Indians did take a further toll with their marksmanship (or, some might argue, lack of it): three of the army’s horses were killed, and one horse and two mules wounded.

  Although we do not have a single written account of Sitting Bull’s fight with Baldwin’s battalion at Ash Creek in December, we are much more fortunate to have a record in the case of the Battle Butte fight. A handful of stories were made through interpreters in subsequent weeks, as the warrior bands began slipping back in to the agencies. But for the most part, more stories of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain” were related over the next ten years—not a long time at all, considering a culture with an oral tradition. These were people who passed along their history in a precise and unembellished manner. What is shown by the record from Cheyenne renderings to Sioux versions of the fight is that they all generally conform to the military record of the battle (while adding a detail here or there depending upon a particular warrior’s individual exploits).

  One of the most interesting facets of the warrior tales of the fight is that the warriors of Crazy Horse had again planned on using the tried-and-true decoy technique that had worked for them across the last ten years—ever since the Fetterman massacre in December 1866. Their statements record the fact that they planned to ambush the Bear Coat by using a small decoy party to draw the main body of the soldiers from their bivouac to a point some two miles upstream (between Battle Butte and the mouth of Wall Creek), where the mass of warriors lingered on ground the war chiefs considered favorable for the fight.

  Again, as in most cases, the young, eager decoys advanced much too quickly, engaging the soldiers, revealing their positions, and thereby giving away the plan before they could lure the soldiers south. When the first shots were fired and the army engaged, the warriors waiting in ambush had no choice but to hurry north with their Henry and Winchester carbines, along with a few of the Springfields taken as spoils from the Custer dead.

  This ruined ambush was but another indication to many of the war chiefs that their people had indeed failed to listen to the Great Mystery’s warning not to take the spoils from the Greasy Grass fight. Not only did their decoy plan not work, but they were forced by a potent winter storm to withdraw—two more acts by Wakan Tanka to show the Lakota people his great displeasure with them.

  The village, with a population that ranged anywhere between twenty-five to thirty-five hundred people (of which at least a thousand were of “fighting age”), limped away to the south during the storm. While there was renewed talk of resistance, there was also a growing voice among those who recommended surrender at the reservations.

  Wooden Leg himself would stay out until the Cheyenne went in after the spring. While the flowers bloomed along the Tongue River, he made the journey back to the rocks where he had carefully buried Big Crow. With the warmth of summer coming, Wooden Leg found the body, still wrapped in its buffalo robe, undisturbed by time and predators. Its location somewhere south of Battle Butte along the eastern rim of the Tongue River Valley remains a secret to this day—as it should. Big Crow continues to be a hero to his people.

  The army selected some of their own for hero status following the battle. Private Philip Kennedy and Private Patton G. Whited, both from Captain Edmond Butler’s C Company, were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their courage in being the first two men to reach the crest of the ridge in the face of heavy fire from the enemy. For his action in leading the charge, Butler himself was given a Medal of Honor and received a brevet rank of major.

  In addition, Captain James Casey and Lieutenant Robert McDonald received Medals of Honor from the army for their heroism that day in the face of the enemy. Lieutenant Frank Baldwin went on to win universal acclaim for his singular act of bravery in bringing that
case of ammunition to the battalion, then leading them against the snowy slope.

  With so many who had distinguished themselves in the line of duty, it is sad and unfortunate to me that the officers of the Fifth Infantry soon split into rival camps when attempting to assess the results of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain.”

  A thin-skinned Butler attempted to minimize Baldwin’s role in the charge against the heights—perhaps due to the fact that Baldwin’s actions tended to diminish the yard-by-yard bravery exhibited by the Irish captain as well as Butler’s readiness to continue pitching into the warriors despite being low on (or in some cases out of) ammunition for their Spring-fields.

  In consequence, other officers far from the bluffs where the hottest fighting took place—men like Lieutenant James Pope and Adjutant George Baird—sought through the record to minimize Butler’s gallant courage in the face of the enemy—leading his men in the assault as ordered by Miles.

  Sad indeed that these personalities, all officers in one of the finest regiments involved in the Indian Wars, would descend to such petty backbiting and ego baiting. Even Baldwin—hero of McClellan Creek, the hero who held his men together at Bark Creek, and the hero who a few days later routed Sitting Bull at Ash Creek—yes, even Frank Baldwin would later snipe away at his fellow officers by saying:

  With the exception of Pope & Dickey there was not an officer on duty with companies who seemed to comprehend the character of the engagement beyond blindly defending the point they were assigned, or by chance might drift to.

  Now, for those of you who haven’t had yourselves enough of this crucial and pivotal month (or “Moon”) in the Wolf Mountain country with our beloved gray-eyed Irishman, I have some suggested reading for you—titles I used in compiling my story of the beginning of the end for the warrior bands that terrible winter.

  Battle of the Butte—General Miles’ Fight with the Indians on Tongue River, January 8, 1877, by Charles B. Erlanson

  Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877—the Military View, edited by Jerome A. Greene

  “The Battle of Wolf Mountain,” by Don Rickey, Jr., Montana, The Magazine of Western History, vol. 13 (Spring, 1963)

  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown Cheyenne Memories, by John Stands In Timber and Margot Liberty

  Crazy Horse—The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz

  Crazy Horse Called Them Walk-A-Heaps, by Neil Baird Thompson

  Crazy Horse and Custer—The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Death on the Prairie—The Thirty Years’ Struggle for the Western Plains, by Paul I. Wellman

  A Dose of Soldiering—The Memoirs of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882, edited by Thomas T. Smith

  Faintly Sounds the War-Cry—The Story of the Fight at Battle Butte, by Fred H. Werner

  The Fighting Cheyennes, by George Bird Grinnell

  Frontier Regulars—The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891, by Robert M. Utley

  General George Crook, His Autobiography, edited by Martin F. Schmitt

  “Historical Address of Brigadier General W. C. Brown,” Winners of the West, August 30, 1932

  Indian-Fighting Army, by Fairfax Downey

  Indian Fights and Fighters, by Cyrus Townsend Brady

  Lakota and Cheyenne—Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, by Jerome A. Greene

  The Lance and the Shield—The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, by Robert M. Utley

  Memoirs of a White Crow Indian (Thomas H LeForge), as told by Thomas B. Marquis

  Nelson A. Miles—A Documentary Biography of his Military Career, 1861-1903, edited by Brian C. Pohanka

  Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army, by Robert Wooster

  People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830–1879, by Peter J. Powell, S.J.

  Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nehon A. Miles, introduction by Robert Wooster

  The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone, by Mark H. Brown

  Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, by James C. Olson

  Soldiers West—Biographies from the Military Frontier, edited by Paul Andrew Hutton

  Spotted Tail’s Folk—A History of the Brule Sioux, by George E. Hyde

  Stone Song—A Novel of the Life of Crazy Horse, by Winfred Blevins

  Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History, by Peter J. Powell, S.J.

  The U.S. Army in the West, 1870-1880—Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment, by Douglas C. McChristian

  War Cries on Horseback—The Story of the Indian Wars of the Great Plains, by Stephen Longstreet

  War in the West—The Indian Campaigns, by Don Rickey

  Warpath and Council Fire—The Plains Indians’ Struggle for Survival in War and in Diplomacy, by Stanley Vestal

  William Jackson, Indian Scout, as told by James Willard Schultz

  Wolves for the Blue Soldiers—Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860-1890, by Thomas W. Dunlay

  Wooden Leg—A Warrior Who Fought Custer, interpreted by Thomas B. Marquis

  Yellowstone Command—Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, by Jerome A. Greene

  “Yellowstone Kelly”—the Memoirs of Luther S. Kelly, edited by Milo Milton Quaife

  To the small-minded it seems that great battles must surely have horrendous death tolls. Such niggardly people point to the Alamo, the Fetterman fight, and the Custer battle—none of which had any immediate or lasting effect on the war of which it was a part.

  On the other hand, the Battle of the Butte, this “Battle of Wolf Mountain,” was to seal the fate of the winter roamers, those warrior bands who for the better part of a year had stymied, defeated to fight another day, or completely crushed the finest outfits in the frontier army.

  After 8 January 1877 the Cheyenne were done. What Mackenzie had begun at the Battle of the Red Fork in November was finished at Battle Butte by the Fifth Infantry. The richest tribe on the northern plains had suffered all they could. They would surrender to Miles or trudge into their agencies that spring … to begin a last and even more tragic chapter in their history at Fort Robinson (a story we will tell in a forthcoming volume).

  With so little buffalo and game to feed the camps, with such extreme cold and the constant harrying by soldiers from both the north and the south, the Sioux bands splintered, fractured, never to coalesce again as they had in the spring and summer of 1876—the zenith of their greatness. As the camps fractured into bands, the bands split into clans, and the clans broke apart into family units, there seemed no longer to be any use in trying to stay together in the great camp circles that had greeted Reno’s charge that hot June day, the great confederation that had encircled and utterly crushed Custer’s five companies.

  This terrible winter a man had to worry about his family—feeding them, keeping them warm, keeping them safe from the wolfish armies prowling their traditional hunting grounds.

  After a while this matter of the unceded hunting grounds did not matter. There weren’t any buffalo left anyway. If a man could not be a hunter and provide for his family—of what use was he to his people?

  The stormy fight at Battle Butte pierced these two great nations to the very heart of what they were as a culture. The bleeding had begun, drop by drop, that winter and continued into a cold, rainy spring. There would be no way to stop that bleeding.

  The hoop was unraveling.

  What once was would never be again.

  Saddest of all—it was to be Crazy Horse’s last fight.

  At Battle Butte he chose the ground where he would engage his antagonist, Nelson A. Miles. This was the fight that proved the Bear Coat good at his word. At the Cedar Creek parleys* he had promised the Sioux he would not give them any rest that winter. Miles kept his vow. The winter roamers learned that the army could a
nd would hunt them down, despite the most severe weather.

  Day by day, moon by moon, it was becoming more and more clear that there would be no peace until they went in to their agencies.

  This last battle for Crazy Horse was a fight that stripped the Northern Cheyenne of what little they still had left after close to a year of constant war.

  This was a winter that proved to Crazy Horse that his people could not go on any longer.

  After 8 January 1877, the choices were as clear as a high-country stream: follow Sitting Bull in fleeing to Canada … or limp into one of the agencies and hope for the mercy of those who have labored long and hard to defeat you.

  For Crazy Horse, the greatest warrior of the Titunwan Lakota nation, the hardest thing for him to do was to consider giving up his war pony, handing over his weapons, and abandoning the path being a defender of his people. Harder still to leave the land that rested in his bones and ran in his blood.

  If the Battle of the Butte accomplished nothing more, it convinced Crazy Horse that the war was over. The fight was done.

  No longer was there any home on the face of his beloved land for a warrior.

  Many winters before, his feet had been planted on the road that would hurtle him toward his youthful vision of a man he called Horse Rider—a vision in which Horse Rider could not be killed by the white man. Instead, Crazy Horse knew Horse Rider was to die at the hands of his own people … the way they clawed at him, tugged at him, trying to hold him back.

  With his fight against the white man done, Crazy Horse knew he had those last terrible steps to take along the trail that would lead him to his fate.

  And to the spiritual death of his people.