Killing Crazy Horse

by Bill O'Reilly

  So it is that President Ulysses S. Grant, the great Sioux leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and General George Armstrong Custer are now on a collision course for total war.

  * * *

  The roots of the upcoming conflict really begin on July 26, 1861, after the Civil War’s Battle of Bull Run—coincidentally, the first military engagement of young George Custer’s career. The Union loses the battle, seen by hundreds of spectators who drove their horses and buggies twenty-five miles south of Washington to witness the fighting as popular entertainment—only to find themselves stunned and horrified as men on both sides actually fall dead and dismembered.

  The U.S. Treasury has slightly less than $2 million in monetary reserves as Bull Run ignites the Civil War. No one believes the conflict will continue for more than three months, but as the fighting soon consumes more than $1 million per day in spending, the federal government in Washington must either find a new source of money or concede defeat to the Confederates.

  For the first time in its brief history, the United States is forced to admit the failure of its monetary policy. The nation does not have any debt but issues only coins as legal currency. Individual states print paper money, but the paper is not accepted in other states. This changes when Abraham Lincoln signs the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which introduces a national paper currency that quickly earns the nickname “greenbacks,” for the color of ink on one side. But printing too much cash to pay for the war would be ruinous, as the Confederate states will soon learn. Their “blueback” paper money is so worthless by war’s end that a shoebox full of cash is not enough to purchase a loaf of bread.

  President Lincoln sees the solution to America’s war funding in Treasury notes. These “war bonds” are essentially a loan to the government from banks and private citizens, purchased and repaid in gold. By the end of the Civil War, $6.2 billion of war bonds have been traded, with one-fourth sold by a single man, Jay Cooke, a banker and devout Christian born in 1821. Named after former Supreme Court justice John Jay, Cooke has an unsurpassed skill at selling war bonds to Americans. By March 7, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln places Cooke in control of all U.S. bond sales. The financier opens banks in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington bearing his name. By war’s end commissions and fees have allowed Cooke to amass a fortune of more than $10 million.2 He has become America’s most powerful financial figure.

  On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. At that time, the United States has paid off all but $2.5 billion of its war debt. However, eight years later, despite the introduction of income, excise, and estate taxes, the country’s financial obligation remains just about the same. Seeking a new source of revenue, Jay Cooke has turned his moneymaking efforts to selling bonds to support construction of the Northern Pacific railroad.

  Among Cooke’s many influential friends is President Ulysses S. Grant. With the completion of the Northern Pacific deemed vital to America’s economic growth, the president authorizes the U.S. Cavalry as armed escorts for Cooke’s surveying crews. Between June 20 and September 23, 1873, a contingent of more than fifteen hundred infantry soldiers and the Seventh Cavalry watches over 353 civilians attempting to link Tacoma and Bismarck by train tracks running directly through Indian Territory in Montana and Wyoming.

  General George Custer is among the officers in charge. This journey into Indian Territory is Custer’s first significant foray into Montana and Wyoming. The general has long been at home on the plains and revels in the long days and short nights in the saddle. The route takes him past rivers with names like the Powder, Tongue, and Little Bighorn. His men camp for one night at a spot known as Pompey’s Pillar on the Yellowstone River, a giant sandstone rock where the explorer William Clark carved his initials on July 25, 1806, during the legendary Lewis and Clark Expedition.

  The New York Times has been following the story of the Yellowstone railroad survey from its beginning, receiving detailed reports from the War Department in Washington. On Saturday, August 16, the paper declares the project an unqualified success, stating that “the new and final route across Western Dakota, from Missouri to the Yellowstone River, is entirely practicable and satisfactory,” thus raising Jay Cooke’s hopes of selling more bonds to finance construction.

  But George Custer will dash those hopes. Writing in the shadow of Pompey’s Pillar, on a plain beside the Yellowstone River, the general pens the after-action report that will doom Jay Cooke’s bond sales—and much more.

  On August 15, 1873, the general writes a detailed report of two recent skirmishes with Sioux warriors. “The Indians outnumbering us almost five to one were enabled to envelop us completely between their lines,” Custer writes in his official version of events, detailing a three-hour battle on August 4. “Until the Indians were made to taste freely of our lead they displayed unusual boldness, frequently charging up to our line and firing with great deliberation and accuracy.”

  Then, noting the presence of Crazy Horse leading the Sioux into battle, Custer adds: “Among the Indians who fought us on this occasion were some of the identical warriors who committed the massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, and they no doubt intended a similar program when they sent the six warriors to dash up and attempt to decoy us into a pursuit past the timber in which the savages hoped to ambush us.”

  * * *

  One week later, on August 11, it is Sitting Bull whose warriors ambush Custer. Again, the Seventh Cavalry escapes annihilation. Despite the deaths of eleven U.S. soldiers during the Yellowstone journey, Custer and his men are battered but not defeated. He sends the report to Fort Laramie. From there it travels by telegraph to Washington.

  In August 1873, Custer’s “Official Report of the Engagements with Indians on the 4th and 11th” is leaked to the press.

  The general is fond of the limelight and is no stranger to self-aggrandizement. He cannot possibly imagine the effect his words will soon have upon the nation.

  “The truth is, we have now struck upon the last and bravest of the old Indian races of the plain,” the New York Times reports after reading Custer’s accounts. “The Sioux beyond the Missouri is a very different Indian from the stupid, peaceful vagabond creatures who haunt the neighborhood of white settlement in the north-west, or who are learning agriculture on reservations.… If several thousand of our best soldiers, with all of the arms of the service, under some of our most dashing officers, can only hold the ground on their narrow line of march for 150 or 200 miles west of the Upper Missouri, [what] will peaceful bodies of railroad workmen be able to do, or what can emigrants accomplish in such a dangerous region?

  “The … [Sioux] must be taught a lesson by force. They must learn to submit,” the newspaper opines.

  Public reaction is swift. Investor confidence in the Northern Pacific railroad plummets. The stock market dips. Jay Cooke & Company, America’s largest banking house, soon runs low on cash. President Grant has dinner at Cooke’s fifty-three-room mansion north of Philadelphia on September 15, with the Northern Pacific and a panicked Wall Street as the main topics of discussion. Europe is facing similar economic problems. But after eating well, both Grant and Cooke agree that the crisis will soon pass.

  They are wrong.

  On Thursday, September 18, at 11:00 a.m., Jay Cooke is notified of a run on his bank. Investors have lost faith in the Northern Pacific, thanks to General Custer and the New York Times. Average citizens are racing to withdraw their life savings. Cooke’s banks cannot possible pay out all the money. The financier immediately orders the doors closed and locked. But Cooke is too late.

  America’s premier financial institution, Jay Cooke & Company, collapses, and its demise has catastrophic effects on the nation. In a domino effect, other banks begin closing. The New York Stock Exchange closes for ten days. Bank after bank fails. The price of Treasury bonds plummets. Thousands of Americans lose their jobs as factories go out of business. The nation will soon see a wave of impoverishment, as the newly unemployed cannot find work. By sheer coin
cidence, America is further punished by a yellow fever epidemic breaking out in the Mississippi Valley from Illinois down to New Orleans. In addition, grasshoppers blacken the skies over Nebraska and Kansas in a plague of biblical proportions, descending only to feast on the crops of local farmers.

  In America, bad news is everywhere.

  This is the Panic of 1873.

  * * *

  Nine months later, as General George Armstrong Custer leads nearly a thousand soldiers into the Black Hills, it might be said that the fate of the national economy rests on his shoulders. Simply put, Custer needs to find enough gold so the federal government can begin selling lucrative Treasury bonds again. With that potential revenue stream, the nation might emerge from its yearlong depression. So it is no surprise that journalists are allowed to join Custer’s expedition. If there is gold in the hills, this news needs to find its way to the general public as soon as possible in order to bolster confidence. America’s destiny can no longer be stymied by the Treaty of Fort Laramie or the spiritual concerns of the Plains Indians.

  President Grant eagerly awaits Custer’s findings.

  * * *

  It is August 3, 1874, almost one year after George Custer wrote the ruinous report that damned the Northern Pacific railroad. Custer’s 883-mile Black Hills Expedition still has one more month before its conclusion, but he has completed a new report, this one spreading far more positive news. The information is so promising that Custer sends delivery rider Charley Reynolds to Fort Laramie so the document can be immediately transmitted by telegraph to the East Coast.

  “Gold was obtained in numerous localities in what are termed gulches,” Custer writes. “No large nuggets were found. The examination, however, showed that a very even, if not a very rich distribution of gold is to be found throughout the entire valleys.”

  The correspondent from the Chicago Inter Ocean is much more sensationalist: “From the grass roots down it was pay dirt.”

  Custer and his expedition soon ride for home. Both he and Libbie are glad she has been allowed to remain at Fort Abraham Lincoln in his absence.

  “When the day of their return came, I was simply wild with joy,” Libbie Custer will write of their reunion one month later. Her husband is sunburned and heavily bearded, his clothing torn and patched. “I hid behind the door as the command rode into the garrison, ashamed to be seen crying and laughing and dancing up and down with excitement. I tried to remain there and receive the general, screened from the eyes of outsiders. It was impossible. I was down the steps and beside my husband without being conscious of how I got there.”

  General Custer’s gift to his wife is a keg of clear stream water, a novelty at Fort Abraham Lincoln, where a muddy drink is the norm. The couple race to their home, then quickly up the steps, shutting the door behind them. In the distance, Libbie will always remember hearing the wonderful sound of a brass band after two months of silence.

  So it is that the Custers are at peace on the Northern Plains. The general has once again succeeded in his command and pleased President Grant. The nation sees George Custer as a hero.

  But in the Black Hills, there is another point of view. The Sioux and other tribes are not naive. They know George Custer has now put their lands in danger.

  And they know this is something they will not accept.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  JUNE 9, 1875

  WHITE HOUSE

  DAY

  Chief Red Cloud is on a mission.

  The fifty-four-year-old Sioux leader has traveled by train from his northwestern Nebraska reservation to meet with the Great White Father. There is talk that the government wants to purchase the Black Hills, but there are many other issues present on Red Cloud’s mind that must be discussed first. The Sioux chief is two years older than President Grant but is physically far more conditioned than the potbellied, chain-smoking former general. At two hundred pounds and six feet tall, the chief towers over the diminutive Grant.

  Except for the lone eagle feather in his hair, Red Cloud wears white man’s clothing: a button-down shirt, black vest and pants, hard leather shoes. The president wears his usual three-piece business suit with a bow tie. This is Red Cloud’s second visit to Washington. In his lifetime, the chief will make twenty-one such journeys to lobby on behalf of his people, but none will be as important as today’s.

  Five years ago, Red Cloud stood defiant before Grant. The warrior chief had successfully driven the U.S. Army off his tribal lands, defeating them in battle time after time. Red Cloud signed the Fort Laramie Treaty reluctantly, and only as a means of protecting his tribe from another generation of war. The chief brought his people onto the reservation under his own free will, believing in the white promises of food and protection in exchange for peace. On that day in 1870, when Red Cloud last visited the White House, he and Grant met as equals.

  That meeting led to the establishment of a reservation bearing Red Cloud’s name on the North Platte River in 1871. But as time passed, the Great White Father lost interest in Red Cloud’s fate. In 1874, the government relocated Red Cloud’s band one hundred miles north, to the border of Nebraska and the Dakota Territory. The reservation still bore Red Cloud’s name, but the U.S. Army also opened a military installation on the premises, pointedly giving it the name Fort Robinson, after a young officer killed by Indians. The peace Red Cloud once sought from the president has diminished with each passing year, replaced by a growing contempt from the white man toward the Sioux. In fact, the once-proud chief is now often treated as a beggar.

  So Red Cloud has returned to Washington to air his grievances. With him are several other chiefs and tribal leaders, including Spotted Tail and American Horse, the warrior who personally slit the throat of Captain Fetterman almost a decade ago. Red Cloud tells President Grant that the white agent assigned to his reservation is corrupt. The chief is also angered by the fact that his people have no blankets to keep them warm and by the poor quality of their rations, which often include rotten bacon. This is when they are fed at all. Instead of an issue of rations every week, as promised, a month or more can go by without food. In those times, Red Cloud’s tribe must slaughter their own ponies to sate their hunger.

  But the Great White Father has no interest in the quality of life on Red Cloud’s reservation, and he cares even less for the chief’s griping. Since summoning Red Cloud and a host of other Sioux leaders from the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands to Washington in late May, the president has been elusive, pawning them off on his subordinates.

  But the time has now come to let these Indians know that the relationship between Washington and the tribes of the Northern Plains is about to drastically change.

  For the worse.

  * * *

  The president’s “peace policy,” which defined relations with America’s Indians during his first six years in office, is now a myth. There is no peace. In fact, the worst fighting between the U.S. Army and America’s Indian population has taken place since Grant’s first inauguration. And if the point of these battles has been to subjugate the tribes and confine them to reservations, that aspect of Grant’s peace policy has also failed. Some tribes choose to live on a reservation, while many do not. The Sioux nation is almost evenly divided between those who choose to “come in” and those determined to fight for their freedom. But even then, the distinction is fluid. Reservation Indians routinely pack up and ride off for months at a time to hunt, and even wage war on the Americans or other tribes, then return to the reservation when it is convenient.

  President Grant’s top frontier commander, General Phil Sheridan, has noted that “if a white man commits murder or robs, we hang him or send him to the penitentiary; if an Indian does the same, we have been in the habit of giving him more blankets.”

  But the failure of the reservations to contain the Native American population does not rest entirely with the tribes. Money and food guaranteed to the Indians by treaty is often stolen by the agents responsible for safeguar
ding tribal life. The problem is so bad that Grant’s entire Board of Indian Commissioners was forced to resign in 1874 amid charges of corruption and scandal.

  But without a doubt, President Grant’s greatest headache is the Black Hills problem. Thousands of miners are now flooding into these sacred Indian lands, following the “Thieves’ Road,” as General Custer’s exploratory route is known to the Sioux. As the New-York Tribune has noted, “If there is gold in the Black Hills, no army on earth can keep the adventurous men of the west out of them.” This assessment has already proven correct.

  “Black Hills fever” is sweeping the nation. Despite a spring that saw sixty-seven consecutive days of rain in the Black Hills—and snow on June 2—many Americans now unemployed by the Panic of 1873 rush west to make their fortune. Lugging their tents, belongings, and food supplies in overstuffed carryalls, they travel by the Union Pacific Railroad to Cheyenne, Wyoming, 175 miles south of the gold fields. Also, they travel by the Northern Pacific to Bismarck, 300 miles away from the Black Hills.

  There is little the U.S. Army can do to stop them. The Black Hills span eight thousand square miles—and almost none of the rugged terrain is conducive to military maneuvering.

  Just two months ago, on April 7, 1875, the army managed to evict a small contingent of prospectors. But they soon snuck back, giving lie to the president’s promise to protect Indian land.

  In fact, Grant is under increasing pressure to annex the Black Hills and forcibly relocate the Sioux and other plains tribes. Many in his administration are pushing the president to move them all to Oklahoma, there to reside with the Creek, Cheyenne, Comanche, and other tribes already under strict U.S. supervision. And even as Grant now meets with Red Cloud here in the White House, yet another group of soldiers and scientists are marching into the Black Hills not only to confirm the gold claims of General Custer but also to map the entire region.