First of all, we might consider that these were men totally steeped in a warrior tradition. They were trained for battle, taught to regard ponies and rifles as the only legitimate displays of one’s manhood. When offered the chance to go riding off to war, even against the members of one’s own band, such a venture would likely seem much more preferable to endless days of boredom and confinement on the reservation.
Certainly there were others, especially among the Sioux scouts, who used the army’s need for their services as a wedge or lever to extract what they in turn wanted from the white man—in the way of pay, ponies, weapons, and so on.
But in the end, we must remember that while the white man saw the Sioux as Sioux, and the Cheyenne as Cheyenne, there were not only separate bands among each tribe, but separate kin-based clans and extended-family groupings as well. Loyalties went first to those family clans rather than some loose confederation of the Ohmeseheso, or the Oglalla, or the Hunkpapa. In addition, the record shows that some of the army scouts believed they were doing what they considered to be right by their people in going to help the soldiers drive their nomadic cousins back to their reservations. Such a life would be better for them in the end, they rationalized, better than being chased and harried, shot and impoverished, after all.
So the presence of those Sioux and Cheyenne scouts was vital not only to demoralize the Morning Star warriors, but the scouts had already played an important role in knowing how and where to locate the village. They were the ones who stayed behind among the rocks while the rest scampered down the backtrail to inform Mackenzie to hurry up. They were the ones who made possible the long-night march through the rugged mountain terrain. And they were the ones who played a prominent role in the day’s fighting: showing themselves to the Morning Star Cheyenne, thereby exacting a demoralizing effect hour after hour as the destruction of the village began.
For generations afterward there was bad blood between many of the Sioux and Cheyenne groups. Like Wooden Leg, many of the Cheyenne were highly critical of those who would come with the soldiers “to kill their friends.” For years many of the tribe did not allow stories to be told by those who had served as scouts for Crook and Mackenzie. Wooden Leg had himself lost a brother in the battle, and for years he often wondered if one of the Cheyenne scouts who had come with the ve-ho-e had killed him.
Forgiveness would come hard. Very, very hard.
Without a doubt, that winter campaign signaled the end of the great Sioux-Cheyenne coalition that had crushed Custer, twice held Crook at bay, and given Phil Sheridan one hell of an ulcer. No more would the warrior bands so readily trust one another.
The first of the Cheyenne limped into the Red Cloud Agency by January 1877. Dull Knife himself would surrender in April of that year, saying to Mackenzie, “You are the one I was afraid of when you came here [to Camp Robinson] last summer.”
So it was that years later Cyrus Townsend Brady made a glaring mistake in his story of the battle in Indian Fights and Fighters when he wrote: “Dull Knife, their leader, was found in the village with half a dozen bullets in him. He had fought gallantly in the open until he died.”
After they were beaten by the soldiers, after suffering the loss of everything they owned, but especially after being rebuffed by no less than Crazy Horse himself, some of the Ohmeseheso decided to go into the reservation. Other small bands began to send in runners to the agency, saying they would come in when they were able to—impoverished of weapons and horses, lodges, and clothing—so poor were they. And many of those runners mentioned the inhospitable reception they got from the Crazy Horse people, sending word to the reservation agents that they would be willing to go out with the army and hunt down the Oglalla leader.
In fact, more than one of the Northern Cheyenne war chiefs specifically stated as a condition of his surrender that he be “allowed to send his warriors with the white soldiers to fight Crazy Horse.”
To this day, this is a continuing controversy between the former allies once considered so close as to be “cousins.” While the Crazy Horse faction among the Oglalla Lakota deny the war chief’s rejection of the Morning Star people at worst, and play it down as inconsequential at best—the Northern Cheyenne still harbor a resentment against the man, a resentment against the Lakota band who refused them help in that awful winter.
Once Crazy Horse turned his back on the Ohmeseheso, there was no other hope for them. No other choice for many a man but to take his family in to be fed at the agency, and there to offer his services to the army desperately seeking to capture the elusive Oglalla war chief.
Unlike their former allies, the Northern Arapaho were able to establish a good relationship with their longtime enemies—the Shoshone. Beginning from that council Crook held with his allies at Reno Cantonment in the days prior to the Dull Knife Battle, the Arapaho fostered good relations with the Shoshone, who eventually invited the Arapaho to settle on the Wind River Reservation—thereby avoiding exile to Indian Territory—what would be the final humiliation and punishment for the Northern Cheyenne … but that is another story for us to tell through the eyes of Seamus Donegan in the years to come.
In those weeks leading up to the battle, we see the beginning of the erosion of those traditional powers of the Cheyenne chiefs. Last Bull’s success in blunting the orders of Old-Man Chiefs first to pick up and flee, then to build defensive breastworks, would be paid out in a heavy cost for many years to come. At the beginning of the reservation period more and more of the Cheyenne saw that nothing remained for them in practicing their traditional ways, so adopted the white culture. As well, Indian Bureau officials were quick to play upon this weakening of the traditional Cheyenne way of governing, acerbating the intratribal, intrasocietal frictions for their own benefit and to keep matters on the “civilizing pathway.”
Through the next few winters there were some traditionalists among the Ohmeseheso who watched from the wings and found good reason to believe in the old ways.
You will recall how Black Hairy Dog performed his ritual curse against the soldiers and those scouts who led the ve-ho-e against the Morning Star village. Even Old Crow, one of those scouts, recognized the gravity of what was going on and went to offer cartridges to the warriors and priests in the rocks.
“I must fight against you, but I am leaving a lot of ammunition on this hill,” he shouted to the priest, hoping to mollify the spirits.
Despite finding the bullets where Old Crow said he would leave them, for many years afterward the Cheyenne scorned their chief, Old Crow—openly declaring that he had betrayed his own.
In his research while writing Sweet Medicine, Father Peter Powell states, “Many of the Old Ones, alive during the 1950’s and 1960’s, declared that all the Cheyennes who scouted for the soldiers died not long after this fighting [at the Dull Knife Battle]. They were killed by the power of Maahotse, when the Sacred Arrow points were turned against them.”
And tribal historian John Stands in Timber agrees in his book compiled by Margot Liberty, saying that all of Mackenzie’s Cheyenne scouts were dead by 1885 because the Sacred Arrows were turned against them that day in the Red Fork valley.
The Sacred Buffalo Hat remains not only a spiritual object, but a pawn in the struggles between warring factions in the Northern Cheyenne here on their Montana reservation. As recently as November 11, 1994, the traditionalists “kidnapped” the Hat from its Sacred Lodge near Lame Deer. For nearly three months the lines were clearly drawn between those who are traditional and those who are more willing to accommodate white culture on the reservation. And then, even after Cheyenne U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell came west to mediate unsuccessfully, the two sides agreed at least to talk.
Eventually, as one would turn over a hostage, the Sacred Hat Bundle was peacefully turned over to the Sun Dance Priest, Francis Kills Night, although Bureau of Indian Affairs police were on hand in the event matters got out of hand. It was agreed that the tribe’s traditional warrior societies would now d
iscuss and decide upon who would become the new Keeper of the Hat. They stated it was far better to solve their religious differences among themselves than allow the interference of outside forces including the Indian Bureau and the FBI.
So it was that at three minutes till noon on Friday, January 27, 1995—Sun Dance Priest Kills Night trudged through the mud and a misting rain with the sacred bundle on his back. He entered its Sacred Lodge. Esevone had come home to her people.
On the Northern Cheyenne Reservation there are three people I have called upon to help in explaining culture and religion to this ve-ho-e writer, hoping that I would get it right, praying I would capture the spirit of those people, the true spirit of that time. First of all, I want to thank Josephine Sootkis and her daughter Ruby, of the Dull Knife Memorial College, both of whom are direct descendants of Morning Star. And I appreciate the help of Ted Rising Sun, another direct descendant of the chief known to the white man as Dull Knife. Their stories and heartfelt scholarship have proved invaluable to me in expressing the horror of this tragic conflict. Ruby herself is busy at work on a screenplay dealing with the 1879 outbreak of the Dull Knife forces from Fort Robinson. In addition, Bill Tall Bull, tribal historian, always makes himself available to answer questions, however minute, no matter how ignorant those questions may sound coming from the mouth of a white man.
Disappointed and cold, Crook and Mackenzie sat on the banks of the Belle Fourche as long as they could in that December. Then on the twentieth they received a terse telegram from Phil Sheridan with the information that their transportation bill for the campaign was sixty thousand dollars per month, while the allowance was a mere twenty-eight thousand dollars. “Those few words,” John Bourke noted in his diary, “mean that this campaign must terminate speedily.”
The commanders were forced at last to turn the expedition back to Fort Fetterman, where within weeks the campaign was disbanded.
Headquarters Powder River
Expedition
Cheyenne, W.T., January 8, 1877
General Orders
No. 10
The Brigadier General Commanding announces the close of the Powder River Expedition, and avails himself of the opportunity to thank the officers and men composing it, for the ability, courage, endurance and zeal exhibited by them during its progress.
With the mercury indicating such extreme degrees of cold as to make life well nigh unbearable, even when surrounded by the comforts of civilization, you have endured, with uncomplaining fortitude, the rigors of the weather from which you had less to protect you than an Indian is usually provided with.
The disintegration of many of the hostile bands of savages against whom you have been operating attests the success of the brilliant fight made by the Cavalry with the Cheyennes on the North Fork, and your toilsome marches along the Powder River and Belle Fourche.
It is a matter for solemn regret that you have to mourn the loss of the distinguished and brilliant young Cavalry officer, First Lieutenant John A. McKinney, 4th Cavalry, and the gallant enlisted men who fell with him in the lonely gorges of the Big Horn Mountains …
By Command of Brigadier-General Crook
(signed) John G. Bourke
As Crook disbanded the expedition, he ordered Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry back to Camp Robinson. Not only were many of the animals broken down and almost out of forage in those final weeks, but the endless and severe cold, coupled with that intensely contested battle and their brutal march to the Belle Fourche, had all taken its toll on not just the soldiers but Crook’s officer corps as well.
Most dramatic was the deteriorating mental condition of Ranald Mackenzie himself.
In those weeks leading up to the battle and the days that followed, the colonel’s extreme sensitivity to the most minor slight was exhibited with increasing degrees of paranoia. To the soldiers who had served under him for some time, it seemed they were now serving under a commander who was becoming inconsistent at best, capricious at worst. But in the emotional wake following the Dull Knife Battle, Mackenzie’s fellow officers and his troopers simply believed their leader was suffering from nothing more than self-doubts about his actions during the fight.
Most of those closest to Mackenzie at that time, including Crook and Dodge, merely believed the colonel’s mental state was a result of Mackenzie’s so severely chastising himself for not bringing the battle to a more concrete conclusion, for not pursuing the Cheyenne into the mountains and capturing (if not killing) more of the enemy. Clearly, a supreme opportunity had been laid in his lap, so that over the days following the battle he criticized himself more and more for not fully seizing that opportunity.
There existed such an intense rivalry among the officers serving the frontier army—especially among those few colonels who had their gaze firmly set on the stars: general’s stars. In fact, one of those very human pieces to the puzzle that is the Mackenzie legend has it that one night in bivouac, while campaigning against the Kwahadi Comanche on the Staked Plain of the Texas-panhandle country, the colonel walked some distance from his campfire and stood staring up at the brilliant, crystal-clear night sky dusted with a resplendent display of heaven’s brightest lights twinkling overhead.
The legend goes on to tell us that Mackenzie’s adjutant came up in the dark to stand beside his commander, then said, “Sir, there’s someone between you and that star.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Mackenzie turned to ask.
“His name is Miles, sir.”
Indeed, from the days of that campaign on the southern plains when Miles and his Fifth Infantry were whittling away at the Indians every bit as effectively as was Mackenzie and his Fourth Cavalry—it had become clear to everyone in the army that the three rising stars were Custer, Miles, and Mackenzie. As in any endeavor when the reward is so rich, so great as a general’s star, the feelings of competition had to be extremely keen … the chance for messing up and making a mistake so precarious.
Perhaps his self-doubts about how he could have done better in the Dull Knife fight began to aggravate what had heretofore been nothing but an imbalanced mental state.
Yet here I stand more than a century later, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight knowing what despair Mackenzie was to exhibit in the months and years left him, knowing that his would be a premature death exacerbated by the severe depression he was wallowing in, and from which he could not save himself.
While he was on the return trip to Camp Robinson, Mackenzie received orders to report to Washington, where he was to place himself under no less than the secretary of war. By that time back east the disputed returns from three southern states meant that the outcome of the presidential election was still in question—a situation that with every day was raising more and more passion among the parties on both sides. Many of the more extreme Democrats were threatening to raise their own private armies to force the seating of their candidate, Tilden.
Determined to preserve order, a worried President Grant began to call in troops from the western frontier in the event of a revolt or civil insurrection. He personally selected Ranald Mackenzie to take command of those troops who would be protecting Washington City itself—a remarkable testament of faith in the abilities of this commander who continued to suffer so many self-doubts.
Over the years many of you have written to say just how much you appreciate having me list a bibliography for you to use when you go in search of further sources on each particular campaign. So for those of you who want to do some more digging into Crook’s and Mackenzie’s Powder River Campaign and the Dull Knife Battle, you’ve got some winter reading to do:
Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, by George F. Price.
“A Day With the ‘Fighting Cheyennes’: Stirring Scenes in the Old Northwest, Recalled for Motor Tourists,” Motor Travel Magazine (December 1930, January 1931, February 1931).
Bad Hand—A Biography of General Randal S. Mackenzie, by Charles M. Robinson III.
Bad Hand: The Militar
y Career of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, 1871–1889, by Lessing H. Noel, Jr. (Ph.D. dissertation), Department of History, University of New Mexico, 1962.
Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877—The Military View, edited by Jerome A. Greene.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown.
By Cheyenne Campfires, by George Bird Grinnell.
Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life, by Charles King.
“Campaigning with the 5th Cavalry: Private James B. Frew’s Diary and Letters from the Great Sioux War of 1876,” by Paul L. Hedren. Nebraska History 65 (Winter 1984).
Campaigning with King—Charles King, Chronicler of the Old Army, edited by Paul L. Hedren.
Centennial Campaign—The Sioux War of 1876, by John S. Gray.
Cheyenne (Wyoming) Daily Leader (Aug., Oct., Nov., Dec, 1876).
Cheyenne Memories, by John Stands in Timber and Margot Liberty.
Chronological List of Engagements Between the Regular Army of the United States and Various Tribes of Hostile Indians Which Occurred During the Years 1790 to 1898, Inclusive, by George W. Webb.
Crazy Horse and Custer—The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose.
Crazy Horse—The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz.
Crimsoned Prairie—The Wars Between the United States and the
Plains Indians During the Winning of the West, by S. L. A. Marshall, Brigadier General (Ret.).
“The Death of Lt. McKinney in the Dull Knife Fight,” by L. A. LaGarde (Address at the Order of the Indian Wars Assembly, March 6, 1915).
Death on the Prairie—The Thirty Years Struggle for the Western Plains, by Paul I. Wellman.
Death Song—The Last of the Indian Wars, by John Edward Weems.
The Dull Knife Battle—“Doomsday for the Northern Cheyennes,” by Fred H. Werner.
“The Dull Knife Symposium,” presented by the Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trail Association, funded by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities—August 1989 (papers delivered by John D. McDermott, moderator; Margot P. Liberty; Jerome A. Greene; Ted Risingsun; Sherry L. Smith; and Douglas C. McChristian).
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