Finding himself among the raspy, throaty snores of rough and unlettered men, long-haired, bearded, and caked with the stench of horses … instead of awakening within the warm bosom of his little family.
For Young Two Moon there was nothing warm about the last two mornings. As they moved out of the mountains into the foothills, it snowed off and on throughout the day, and each night it grew so cold even he found it hard to move come the dawn.
Yet some of the young warriors had managed to locate some game. This, like the horse meat that had sustained them, the women would throw onto the glowing red bed of coals in the fires, as they had no cooking utensils. Using their belt knives, the men occasionally would turn over the strips and slabs of meat until they were properly roasted. The old folks and the little ones were always fed first. And with what was left, the women and warriors finally ate at every stop. Never was there anything left but hoof and hide.
Joining Yellow Eagle, Turtle Road, Beaver Heart and a few others, Young Two Moon had mounted some of the stronger ponies and left the main group behind as they skirted the foothills to the south. These young men intended to see once more where the soldiers were going, and possibly steal back some of their captured herd from the Indian scouts.
Early in the evening the warriors caught up with the soldier column after it had settled in for the winter night—fires glowing, men talking, many of the ve-ho-e attempting sleep beneath their blankets. Some distance beyond the head of the soldier march the warriors discovered the pony herd, this night watched over by the Tse-Tsehese men who were scouting for the soldiers.
On that subfreezing night, those guards had little idea they were watched by the ten warriors as the herders went to the mouth of a draw where they would be protected from the wind and built themselves a shelter from dried brush, bark, and grass. Inside, the herd guards built a fire. It was not long before Young Two Moon and the others—waiting silently in the snow and the cold—heard the snoring of the guards.
“Those ponies will remember our smell?” Yellow Eagle asked in a whisper.
“It does not matter. We move among them slowly,” Young Two Moon asserted, “they will come to know our smell.”
“Then we can take them home to our people,” Turtle Road declared.
It was as Young Two Moon had said it would be. They went among the unguarded herd, stroking the ponies, breathing in the nostrils of some of the mares, then slipped horsehair ropes around the necks of ten ponies. These few the young warriors led up the long slope to the north. In the dark, silvery silence of that winter night, many of the herd followed obediently.
And once beyond the hilltop, Young Two Moon signaled the others.
“Now we ride!”
With quiet yips of excitement, the warriors leaped to the backs of the ponies they had brought to this place from the Peopic’s march and quickly got the herd of eight-times-ten moving into the snowy night.
“It is a blessing upon us!” Little Wolf cried out as the ten warriors returned just before dawn with the horses. “Now more of the old ones and the ones crippled with cold can ride.”
They continued that day down Lodgepole Creek* all the way until the People reached the “Big Lake”† before following their scouts over the divide to the head of Crow Standing Creek,† where darkness caught them for a third cold night, forced to huddle out of the wind and snow, taking shelter down in the coulees and draws near the frozen streambank.
It was to this camp early in the morning that Big Head and Walks Last returned from their ride with five others back to the burned village in the Red Valley. They had gone back to search for any ponies that might have run off into the hills then wandered back to the People’s camp once the soldiers deserted the canyon. None of the seven warriors brought in any horses.
The white man had taken them all.
THE INDIANS
Gen. Mackenzie’s Fight—List of Casualties.
NEW YORK, November 29.—a dispatch dated in the field, November 25, via Fort Fetterman the 27th, gives the following additional particulars of General Mackenzie’s fight on the 25th: The hostiles had been having a war dance all night, and were not taken by surprise by the attack which was made at sunrise. The village was located in a canyon running nearly north and south. It contained about 200 lodges, with perhaps five hundred warriors. General Mackenzie’s fighting force numbered nearly one thousand men. Most of the enlisted Indians behaved well at the start but after the first heat of the charge very many of them relapsed into apparent indifference to everything except plundering the abandoned tepees of the Cheyennes, and trying to run off horses. About twenty Indians that can be counted were killed, and doubtless many more have fallen behind the rocks. About five or six of our forces have been killed. The following is a partial list of casualties: Killed—Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry; Corporal Ryan, Company D, and Private Keller, Company E. Wounded—Sergeant Thomas H. Forsyth, Corporal W. J. Lynn, Corporal W. H. Pool, Corporal Dan Cunningham, Jacob Schlafer, privates E. L. Burk, G. H. Stickney, J. E. Talmadge, August Streil, Issac Maguire, Charles Folsom, Joseph Mc Mahon, Edward Fitzgerald, Alexander McFarland, George Kinney, Henry Holden, William B. Smith and David Stevens.
The fight in that red canyon would eventually claim one last victim—its daring cavalry commander.
But for now, ever since returning to the Crazy Woman camp, rumor had it Crook was going to return the troops to winter quarters. There’d be no more god-awful chasing around in the cold and the snow.
For Richard I. Dodge, it was just about the best news he had heard through this whole insufferable campaign.
Then at eleven A.M. that Thursday, 30 November, one of Crook’s men came by to pay a courtesy on the colonel, informing Dodge that the general was dispatching twenty-five of the best men on the strongest horses to follow up the rumor that there was a large band of Cheyenne warriors in the neighborhood under a chief called White Antelope, ready to attack the wagon camp. Earlier that morning Crook had sent out Luther North and four Pawnee to push north through the deep snow to Clear Creek, where they were to look for sign of the fleeing village.
Then at noon what cavalry wasn’t on guard duty turned out to solemnly commit five of their number to the frozen, rock-hard Wyoming ground. Between two long double lines of silent mounted men, the thirty pallbearers trudged with their blanket-wrapped corpses to the common grave. Nearby sat the sad-eyed spectators—Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Shoshone and the others—in all their wild finery as they witnessed this most final of the white man’s rites.
All morning long soldiers had struggled in relays to force open the breast of the earth just enough to admit these five young soldiers. As the hundreds fell silent, two officers read from the Book of Common Prayer, then Crook said a few words over the grave. In the end seven guns were fired in three relays, the last sharp rattle disappearing over the windswept hills before a lone trooper took up the mournful notes of “Taps.” As the quiet returned to the valley of the Crazy Woman, one of the men from the Third played a sad dirge on his tin fife, each plaintive note quickly carried off by the stiffening wind.
Lieutenant McKinney’s body rested in the back of a freight wagon—to be returned east by way of wagon and rail, there to be buried among his people.
Yet for all the excitement of Mackenzie’s return, and later the melancholy of the burial, for once there wasn’t all that much for his infantry to do that afternoon but rotate the guard and watch the cavalry troops grain and water their horses, besides wolfing down their poor Thanksgiving dinner of fried bacon and flapjacks.
Clutching a cup of steaming coffee, Dodge returned to his tent and his diary, where he confided his first intimations of a troubled Ranald Mackenzie, who seemed to be plagued by second thoughts about the success of his Dull Knife fight.
Altogether it has been a very successful affair. It might have been much more so had McKenzie possessed as much administrative and political sagacity as he has gallantry in the field. Still it is no time, no
r is there any cause for grumbling. The affair stamps our campaign as a success even if nothing more is accomplished. I only regret that my portion of the command had no share or lot in the affair. All say that had the Doboys been there not an Indian would have escaped. If I had been allowed to go, we would have had a more complete story to tell.
Indeed, for much of last night and into today, Dodge found Mackenzie consumed with chastising himself for not pressing the warriors once the Cheyenne encapsulated themselves in the rocks. While both Crook and especially Dodge offered their words of encouragement, the cavalry commander nonetheless appeared to be snared in a deepening well of despair, delusion, and melancholia.
Dodge went on to pen in his diary:
We found [Mackenzie] very downcast—bitterly reproaching himself for what he called his failure. He talked more like a crazy man than the sane commander of a splendid body of Cavalry. He said to an officer that if he had courage enough he would blow his brains out. [The other officers present] went out soon, and Mac opened his heart to me. He is excessively sensitive. He said he had often done better with a third of the force at his command here—that he believed he degenerated as a soldier as he got older—that he regarded the whole thing as an utter failure. He even stated that he was sensitive lest someone might attribute cowardice to him—and much more of the same kind.
He was so worked up that he could hardly talk and had often to stop and collect himself. I bullied him and encouraged him all I could—told him that he was foolish and absurd to talk so, that we all regarded the affair as a grand success and that his record was too well known for anyone to attribute cowardice to him. I left him feeling much better, but he was in such a state that I thought it right to tell General Crook about it. The General was greatly worried and soon left my tent, I think to send for Mac and get him to play whist or something.
Those bitterly cold days in the wake of his fight on the Red Fork of the Powder River would mark the last campaign of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie … as well as the beginning of his slow and agonizing mental disintegration.
* Trumpet on the Land, Vol. 10, The Plainsmen Series.
* What the white man today calls Clear Creek.
† Lake DeSmet.
† Present-day Prairie Dog Creek.
Chapter 43
Big Freezing Moon 1876
For many days now, more than two-times-ten by the count of notches on the stick in his belt pouch, Wooden Leg had been out hunting with a small party of other young warriors. The last they had seen of Morning Star’s village, it was moving south slowly toward the Red Canyon of the White Mountains.* There Wooden Leg and the others expected to find their people camped a few days from now as the young men began turning about, slowly working their way back to their village.
That morning as the sun rose pale and heatless in a cold blue sky, Wooden Leg’s party was moving upriver along the western bank of the Tongue River, slowly working the game trails before them as they eased along.
“Look!” one of those in front called out.
Quickly they all halted—putting hands to their brows, frost curling from their faces as they squinted into the distance.
“They are walking,” Wooden Leg declared.
“A few ride,” said Stops in a Hurry. “Why do they have only a few horses?”
“Yes. Who are these people?” Wooden Leg wondered aloud. “Why would they be so poor that they are not riding?”
“Indeed, they are very poor,” commented Fox, another of their warriors. “You see they have few robes and no blankets to speak of.”
“Let us go closer and take a good look,” Wooden Leg suggested. “Then we might know if these are friends of the Ohmeseheso or if these are our enemies.”
Quickly retreating down the slope into the long, wide ravine, the young hunters hurried their pack animals south by east in the direction of the strangers. Then, upon leaving their horses in a coulee, some of them went to the brow of a snowy hill to have themselves a closer look at the slow procession inching its way below like a dark worm wriggling against a white world.
The more he studied the people, the more confused he became. Few wore moccasins. Most had stiff, frozen pieces of raw hides lashed crudely around their feet. Some helped old women and men hobbling along between them. Small children rode in the arms of the women, or on the shoulders of the men. There were no travois. These strangers had nothing to carry from place to place!
“These …” Wooden Leg gulped in shame, feeling the burn of sadness sting his heart, “these are the poorest people I have ever known.”
“Perhaps we should take them to our village,” Fox suggested. “We are prosperous and we can share all we have with those who have nothing.”
Then both of them heard the breath catch in the throat of Stops in a Hurry. He had the far-seeing eyes. And with them he stared at the strangers in shock.
Wooden Leg demanded, “What do you see?”
Painfully, Stops in a Hurry turned, his face gone pale with horror. “These are … are our people.”
“Our p-people?”
“Tse-Tsehese?” asked Fox. “Ohmeseheso?”
To the rising despair of the young hunters, it was indeed their own people—their own families, their own relatives and friends who had been driven into this winter wilderness with little but those green horsehides frozen on their backs. The young men rushed back to the coulee, leaped atop their ponies, and kicked them into a lope.
When the hunters were still a long way off, the women started trilling their tongues in warning. At first the warriors escorting the sad procession hurried forward on cold, stiffened limbs—prepared to meet the attack. But in a few moments they realized the young horsemen had not come to attack them. The older warriors, the chiefs, began to call out.
And the young hunters answered to their names, quickly searching among the many for their loved ones and relatives. Women began to cry and old men began to weep. And it made Wooden Leg cry too, for here he looked over the three Old-Man Chiefs. And thanked Ma-heo-o that Coal Bear’s woman still carried Esevone upon her back. Too, Medicine Bear helped the feeble prophet called Box Elder hobble forward, his bony hands still clutching his Scared Wheel Lance and the Turner over their heads.
While they might have no lodges and few weapons, while they no longer owned the finest in clothing and an ample supply of winter meat—the Ohmeseheso still had what mattered most. They had protected their most sacred objects. The People could rebuild!
“The soldiers and Wolf People came to our camp in the Red Canyon,” the story was told to the young hunters in a gush of words and tears, both happy and sad.
“We were camped far up Powder River near where you left us,” said another.
“Our women and children had to run away with only a few small packs.”
Wooden Leg nodded bitterly with remembrance, then said, “Just as we did last winter far down on the Powder River.”*
“This time the soldiers and their Indian scouts made sure they burned all our lodges and most of our horses were stolen. Many of our men, women, and children have been killed in the fight. Others have died of their battle wounds or have starved or frozen on our journey here.”
And a woman shrieked, “One of my sisters and her boy were captured with two other women by the Wolf People!”
“Where are you going?” Wooden Leg asked.
Little Wolf looked away into the distance a moment, then back into the young warrior’s face. “We are going there.” He pointed north. “Down the Tongue River … to find the Hunkpatila people.”
“Here,” Wooden Leg replied as the other hunters came forward, “take our horses for those who cannot walk. We will cross the ice with you and go down the river until we find Crazy Horse. Last winter when the soldiers drove us out into the snow and cold, Crazy Horse welcomed us … welcomed us as if we were his brothers.”
Headqrs. Mil. Div. of the Mo.
Chicago, Dec. 1, 1876
Gen. W. T. Sherman
The following telegram from General Crook, dated Crazy Woman’s Fork, Wyoming Territory, November 28th, has just been received:
(signed) P. H. Sheridan
Lieutenant General
Before reaching General Mackenzie, I learned of the Indians’ retreat, and that he was returning with his command; so I countermanded the foot troops to this place. I sent you Mackenzie’s report of his operations against the Cheyennes. I cannot commend too highly his brilliant achievements and the great gallantry of the troops of his command. This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as those Cheyennes were not only the bravest warriors, but have been the head and front of most all the raids and deviltry committed in this part of the country.
(signed) George Crook
Brigadier General, U.S.A.
Commanding
The day before had been a damned forgettable Thanksgiving, Seamus brooded that next morning, the first of December. What with the burials of those dead soldiers, and the presence of that lone pine box Crook would have Lieutenant O. L. Wieting of the Twenty-third Infantry deliver by rail to McKinney’s family back in Memphis, Tennessee. For the rest of the afternoon details of the Fourth Cavalry rode teams of horses back and forth over the mass grave, and that evening the men started fires over the site in hopes of betraying that sacred ground to both the enemy and any four-legged predators roaming this wilderness.
Donegan could not remember ever seeing Mackenzie nearly as melancholy. The colonel marched to the grave site with Crook and Dodge at the head of the procession, but while the others sang the hymns and bowed their heads in prayer, Mackenzie only stared into the distance, transfixed on the clouds mantled across the snowy mountains. The man looked numb, almost unaware of events around him, his face a mask to some private torment and despair.
A Cold Day in Hell Page 49