Killing Crazy Horse

by Bill O'Reilly

  So it is that Lieutenant George W. Grummond is exhumed after just a few weeks of burial, then loaded onto a wagon. It is thirty-eight degrees below zero as the caisson rolls away from Fort Phil Kearny on January 23, 1867. The body of Lieutenant Grummond is bound for Tennessee, his widow winning her quest.

  * * *

  For the Sioux, the change of guard at Fort Phil Kearny goes unobserved.

  Crazy Horse and his warriors briefly linger on the battlefield after the Fetterman massacre, tending to their wounded. Those Indians who cannot ride are tied to a travois to be dragged from the battlefield by horse. The dead are stashed behind rocks and in the grass so the white men cannot desecrate them. Their corpses will soon be covered by snow.

  Among the severely wounded is Lone Bear, a warrior and lifelong friend of Crazy Horse. Despite the falling snow, Crazy Horse and his fellow leader, High Backbone, remain with Lone Bear, who has been shot in the leg and is now suffering blood poisoning. It is apparent Lone Bear cannot be saved. Crazy Horse cradles his childhood playmate in his arms as the Sioux warrior breathes his last.

  Even as the whites in Fort Phil Kearny remain vigilant, waiting for another Indian assault, their Sioux attackers are miles away, celebrating. Soon they will ride to their winter camps on the Little Bighorn River or in the Yellowstone Valley. But for now Crazy Horse and the other warriors gather along the Tongue River to dance and feast. The Indians gather in their lodges to share tales of their exploits, recounting the battle over and over again in great detail. They did not burn the white fort, as they had hoped, and it is certain that reinforcements will soon arrive at Fort Phil Kearny. But thanks to the decoy exploits of Crazy Horse, the Americans have been dealt a cruel blow. The coming spring will bring new chances to strike again.

  A reconstructed stockade wall at Fort Phil Kearny, in what is now Johnson County, Wyoming. The fort, along the Bozeman Trail through the northern Rocky Mountains, was an outpost of the U.S. Army in the late 1860s.

  It was never the Sioux nation’s intention to wage war during months of heavy snow. After their celebration, Crazy Horse and his band settle into their lodges, enduring the harsh winter. He is now a “shirt wearer,” as battlefield commanders are known. The massacre marks Crazy Horse’s ascendance to tribal leadership, and despite his preference for solitude and silence, he now freely offers advice and opinion to warriors and chiefs alike who seek his insight.

  Crazy Horse and his band make winter camp along the Powder River, their seventy lodges forming a large encampment on the banks. The geese and ducks flew south long ago, but now the elk herds and buffalo also flee for warmer territory. Food becomes scarce as the months pass. Crazy Horse and his fellow warriors hunt for food almost daily but often return to camp empty-handed. The few remaining buffalo who fail to keep up with the migrating herd can be found alone in the snowdrifts, their bodies frozen solid.

  Then on February 27, 1867, an impatient Crazy Horse strikes a detachment of American infantry heading toward the Bozeman Trail, killing three soldiers. He quickly retreats, reminding the whites that the Sioux can strike wherever and whenever they want.

  It is Sioux tradition that the passage of time is marked by counting winters, with significant events painted on buffalo skins. The tribe’s history is spread through such visual reminders, as well as by the many nights of storytelling as warriors gather before a campfire. It is natural that word travels from one Sioux band to another in this oral tradition, particularly when warriors boast about their exploits on the battlefield. The harsh winter of 1866 and the victory at Fort Phil Kearny are no doubt primary topics of conversation in lodges throughout the Wyoming Territory.

  History does not record the specific day or time when members of the Hunkpapa Sioux learn of the battlefield exploits of Crazy Horse. The Hunkpapa were too far north to take part in the massacre. So on those occasions when Crazy Horse’s Lakota Sioux and the Hunkpapa gather together in their winter lodges, it is the Lakota warriors who can brag with confidence about that fateful day.

  Among the Hunkpapa leadership is a revered warrior in his late thirties named Tatanka Iyotake. Translated from the Sioux language, the words mean “Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down.” His childhood nicknamed was “Slow,” for his unhurried approach to life. As an adult, his wisdom, patience, courage, and grit are already legendary. He fought his first battle at the age of fourteen and still prefers to lead the charge during attacks, refusing to rein in his horse as he approaches the enemy. In September 1864, this warrior was wounded in battle with the white soldiers, enduring a gunshot wound in his left hip. Among his band, he is respected for his generosity, kindness, and abilities as a peacemaker.

  The whites call him Sitting Bull.

  “The name ‘Sitting Bull’ was a tepee word for all that was generous and great. The bucks admired him, the squaws respected him highly, and the children loved him,” U.S. Army scout Frank Grouard will write. “He would have proved a mighty power among our politicians—a great vote-getter from the people.”

  Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Sioux leader

  Sitting Bull is thirty-five years old. He is five foot nine, with a slim build. His face is stoic, belying his fondness for storytelling and laughter.

  In time, the battlefield genius of Crazy Horse and the political power of Sitting Bull will unite. Neither is now a chief, but both enjoy the deepest respect from their warriors. Because the white man shows no sign of retreating from their lands, the Sioux nation will require a most unique form of leadership to counter that intrusion.

  Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse will provide it.

  * * *

  The aftermath of Fort Phil Kearny massacre is felt across America. The country divides between those who wish peace with the Indians and those who seek to destroy them. Finally, after Crazy Horse once again successfully raids near the fort in the summer of 1867, the United States of America seeks peace.

  The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 establishes a Sioux nation stretching from the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory all the way west to Montana and south into Nebraska. Whites are forbidden to settle on these lands. The treaty is ratified by the U.S. Senate on February 16, 1869, then signed by President Andrew Johnson on February 24, just one week before leaving office.

  During his successful run for the presidency in that same year, General Ulysses S. Grant admits the duplicitous nature of America’s relationship with Native Americans, stating, “Our dealings with the Indians properly lay us open to charges of cruelty and swindling.” Grant promises to abide by the new treaty and avoid further war on the plains.

  The new accord is signed by the U.S. government and leaders from the Sioux and Arapaho nations. In a display of good faith, the U.S. Peace Commissioners add a clause stating that the forts lining the Bozeman Trail will be abandoned. However, Sitting Bull, now a Sioux chief, refuses to sign the treaty, having no faith in the white man’s promises. Crazy Horse is not in attendance.3

  In the weeks to come, the U.S. Army marches away from a number of forts, including Fort Phil Kearny. Crazy Horse and his warriors then return to the fort. But there is disagreement about what to do with the structure—some warriors believe it should remain standing because it provides the perfect place to endure a hard winter.

  But Crazy Horse and others disagree, wanting all vestiges of the white man destroyed.

  So it is that on August 1, 1868, flames climb into the summer sky as Fort Phil Kearny burns to the ground.

  The hellish scene convinces some of the Indians that they have prevailed over the hated white intruders.

  But Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull know differently.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NOVEMBER 27, 1868

  WASHITA RIVER, OKLAHOMA

  DAWN

  Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer is apprehensive.

  The newly appointed commander of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry has slept just one hour on this frozen morning. His seven hundred troops have not been allowed to sleep at all. Instead, t
hey spent the night in the saddle, dressed in boots and thick overcoats. Speaking in a voice above a whisper is forbidden. An Indian village has been located along the distant riverbank. Custer does not know the name of the tribe or whether they are peaceful. He does not care. This will be the young general’s first engagement with an Indian force, and he aims to use the element of surprise to destroy them. Indeed, Custer has been so vigilant about maintaining silence that he has not allowed his men to pitch tents, light pipes, or even dismount and stamp their feet in search of warmth, believing the noise could alert the nearby tribe.

  Custer rises from the buffalo robe laid atop the snow that briefly served as his bed. A thick beard covers his face, his blond hair covered with rime and icicles. The three years since the end of the Civil War have been a time of upheaval for the brevet general, who left the service for a time as he weighed a potential run for Congress and enjoyed the night life of Manhattan. Upon his return to the military in 1866, the nation was confronted by the massacre at Fort Phil Kearny. Railroad companies and stage lines were demanding the army provide better protection for western travelers. Some newspapers even accused soldiers of cowardice for allowing Indians to control the prairie. “As might naturally be expected, a massacre like that at Fort Phil Kearny,” Custer will write in his autobiography, “… excited discussion and comment throughout the land, and raised inquiry as to who was responsible for this lamentable affair.”

  The violent actions of the Sioux nation were directly responsible for Custer’s posting in Oklahoma. The brilliant battlefield tactics of Crazy Horse and subsequent call to arms by white settlers will lead to his new posting in Kansas as commander of the Seventh.

  But Custer’s ascent did not come easily, despite his heroics at Gettysburg. He was actually court-martialed four years later, in July 1868. The offense was deserting his post at Fort Wallace in Kansas, to be with his wife, Libbie, a society debutante whom he married in 1864. His sentence was a one-year suspension from the army without pay.

  The Custers’ relationship is deeply amorous, and the two are fond of writing steamy letters to each other, fraught with innuendo and sexual double entendres. In response to Libbie’s written admission that she likes to “ride tomboy,” Custer responds: “I’m nearly starved for a ride. But I cannot without much expense and much danger enjoy the luxury of such a ride as that I refer to. I never did enjoy riding strange horses.”

  Even before their marriage, the correspondence between George Custer and Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon was so randy that Custer requested she be more careful. Confederate soldiers had intercepted a batch of their letters during the war, and he was aghast at the thought of them being read by the enemy.

  So it was little surprise that Custer would make the decision to risk his career for what Libbie would call “one perfect day.” This should have been the end of the flamboyant Custer’s military aspirations. However, General Phil Sheridan, the nation’s leading Indian fighter, interceded. He personally requests that General of the Army U. S. Grant revoke the suspension after just two months, thus allowing Custer to once again rejoin the Seventh Cavalry as commander. Sheridan did so in order that Custer could participate in a winter campaign against the tribes of the Southern Plains.

  The main food source for Indians is buffalo, which are being hunted to extinction by roving bands of white sharpshooters. Literally hundreds of buffalo are gunned down each day, then stripped of their hides. In the next four years, some four million buffalo will be shot in this fashion. And despite the fact that these rogue hunters are disallowed by treaty from entering or hunting on Indian land, General Sheridan does nothing to stop the whites from violating the treaty and slaughtering the Indian’s main sustenance.

  In addition, though the transcontinental railroad is a year away from completion, its slow creep westward means the arrival of train stations at regular intervals, and with them the small towns that spring up to service the rail lines. The loss of the buffalo, coming of the railroad, and encroachment of white civilization onto lands once promised the Indians in perpetuity is pushing the plains tribes such as the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, and Comanche farther and farther into the fringes of the frontier as they seek to maintain their way of life.

  It is Sheridan’s ambition to find these tribes in their winter quarters and force them to relocate to government reservations. In the general’s mind, even Indians that have agreed to terms of peace and presently live on reservations are acceptable targets of violence. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” believes Sheridan.1

  “I will back you with my full authority,” Sheridan’s handwritten order to Custer makes clear. “I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin to carry out their barbarous warfare on any kind of pretext they may choose to allege.”

  Elizabeth Clift Custer, American author, public speaker, and wife of General George Armstrong Custer

  Now, as the sun casts its first rays upon the ice-cold waters of the Washita River, Custer prepares to carry out those brutal orders. During a snowstorm four days ago, he and his men marched away from their base camp on the North Canadian River. Custer brings two of his dogs along for company—and warmth, planning on having them sleep alongside him each night. A buffalo robe draped over his shoulders, Custer navigates through the blizzard by compass, ordering his soldiers to ride in tight formation to prevent anyone from getting lost. The path takes the Seventh through Texas and Oklahoma in their search for an Indian camp. Buffalo are hunted along the way so that the men might have meat.

  Yesterday afternoon, three days into the search, Custer’s scouts located what appears to be a path followed by Indians returning from a hunting expedition. “Early in the night, with my scouts, I struck a hostile trail leading southeast,” chief scout Ben Clark will tell the New York Sun. “Two of these scouts discovered a campfire. Crawling cautiously toward it, they learned that the Indians had gone toward the river, having joined the war party. Several miles down the river the tinkle of pony bells was faintly heard, and from the summit of a hill the ponies were seen in the valley below, their bodies standing out dark against the snow.”

  Custer is immediately alerted and rides forth. The night is clear. Stars shine brightly. Tribal dogs bark in the distance. The brevet general lies down atop the snow so his silhouette does not give him away. The scouts point out a series of lodges hidden within the forest.

  “When the camp was discovered,” Sergeant John Ryan of the Seventh Cavalry’s M Company will write, “Custer thought the dogs might alarm the Indians’ dogs and arouse the camp, and I understood that Custer had to kill two of his hounds. One dog in my company, of whom the men were very fond, was a little black dog called Bob, and harmless as a kitten. We had to part with him, and one of our men drove a picket pin into Bob’s head and left him for dead.”

  The tribal camp is located in a wooded valley. It is 1:00 a.m. as Custer gathers his officers and asks them to temporarily remove their sabers, believing the weapons might accidentally make a metallic clanking sound that can be heard in the distance. He then lays out a daring plan, which calls for splitting his force and attacking the Indians from four directions at once.

  The next five hours are spent carefully moving the separate columns of troops into position. The snow is deep, with a layer of ice on top that makes a crunching sound as the horses walk forward. There is nothing that can be done to silence the animals, but in the end the noise is not a problem. The tribe fears nothing and has posted no guards. All is silent in the Indian encampment, and not even their dogs bark to send the alarm.

  At dawn a low fog settles over the valley. “The hour was so still that a man could almost hear his watch tick,” one American soldier will long remember.

/>   The calm is shattered when Custer gives the regimental band the order to play “Garry Owen,” a triumphal drinking song that has become the Seventh’s official anthem. Custer has positioned the band near the river crossing leading to the Indian encampment. Though the cold is so intense that spittle almost instantly freezes within the brass horns, the raucous tune can be heard across the river and into the trees.2

  The Seventh Cavalry gallops into the sleeping village with orders to spare no one.

  “The Indians were taken completely by surprise and rushed panic-stricken from their lodges, to be shot down almost before sleep had left their eyelids,” chief scout Ben Clark will remember.

  “The air was full of smoke from gunfire, and it was almost impossible to flee, because bullets were flying everywhere. However, somehow we ran and kept running to find a hiding place,” a fourteen-year-old Cheyenne girl will remember. “In the grass we lay flat, our hearts beating, and we were afraid to move.”

  Wounded Indian ponies moan loudly in pain as they limp off to escape the battle. American soldiers shoot every man, woman, and child they can find in the village—even as many other Indians escape to hide in the freezing river or in the snow and tall grass. Scalps are taken. Bodies are mutilated and stripped.

  Soldiers looting the many lodges come across coffee, as well as U.S. Army pots and pans, evidence that this tribe had been given these gifts as signatories of the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty and are thus peaceful. Yet the killing does not stop. The corpses of dead Indian men and women are posed by the soldiers in sexually provocative positions. Other dead are hurled into the flames as the entire village is set ablaze. Finally, to ensure that the Indians lack the ability to ever again raid or wage war, Custer gives the order to shoot each and every one of the spotted Indian ponies. Eight hundred horses are quickly shot dead. The skulls of these ponies will litter these lands for decades to come.