Killing Crazy Horse

by Bill O'Reilly

  2. Corporal Metzger’s horse, Dapple Dave, will be the lone American survivor of the Fetterman Battle. The gray will flee the battlefield but will be shot through with so many arrows and bullets that he will be put down upon his discovery by U.S. troops.

  Chapter 15

  1. The celebration of Christmas was a relatively new phenomenon in America at the time. Following the Revolutionary War, citizens of the United States turned their backs on all traditions associated with Britain, among them Christmas. But the popularity of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, and a growing reconnection with European customs, saw the return of Christmas. However, December 25 did not become a federal holiday until 1870, when President Grant signed it into law.

  2. Roughly $5,000 in modern money.

  3. The decision to close the forts was made on March 2, 1868, by General Ulysses S. Grant, whose position as General of the Army gave him full authority to withdraw these forces. The decision was pragmatic, based on the belief that the Bozeman Trail was defenseless against the Sioux and that the troops within these forts could be put to better use fighting Indians on the Southern Plains. However, making the closures a tenet of the Treaty of Fort Laramie allowed the Sioux to believe they had won the war for control of their lands.

  Chapter 16

  1. Sheridan would forever deny making this statement. Eyewitnesses attested that the general made the claim in 1869, although some say his actual utterance was, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”

  2. The original Irish title was spelled “Garryowen,” based on a village near Limerick of the same name. The composer Ludwig von Beethoven wrote his own version of the song. British soldiers during the Peninsular and Crimean Wars made it their regimental march. The song came to America in 1851, when a group of Irish immigrants formed a volunteer regiment and made it their official marching song. The Seventh Cavalry adopted “Garry Owen” as their official “air” in 1867. To this day, the regimental band plays this song.

  Chapter 17

  1. The most famous of these was the Pony Express, which saw service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, from April 1860 to October 1861. The telegraph brought the demise of the Pony Express, but mail riders were still passing through Apache territory in New Mexico and Arizona well into the late 1860s.

  2. The first passengers to make the journey arrived in San Francisco on September 6, 1869.

  3. Abraham Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his running mate in 1864, casting aside Hannibal Hamlin, the vice president from his first term. Johnson was a Democrat and Lincoln a Republican. The decision was made in pursuit of national unity and because Lincoln admired Johnson’s effort to keep the southern state in the Union while governor of Tennessee. Lincoln even set aside his Republican affiliation for this election, preferring that the two men run on the ticket of the National Union Party. As the authors wrote in Killing Lincoln, the first signs of trouble between Lincoln and Johnson began when the governor showed up quite drunk at their 1865 inauguration.

  4. Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862 in an effort to settle the plains. Citizens were given 160 acres of land if they settled on the spot for five years and improved the property. About one-third of those who filed an application to homestead failed, but more than 400,000 families were successful.

  Chapter 18

  1. It is believed that the conversation took place in Spanish, the common language between the Americans and the Apache. It is further believed that Cochise’s translator was a young warrior named Geronimo, who would go on to great renown.

  Chapter 19

  1. The 1872 price of $3.75 per hide is slightly more than $82 in 2019 money. The legendary hunter Brick Bond shot more than six thousand buffalo over a sixty-day span in 1874, utilizing a team of five wagons and fifteen skinners to bring back hides from Comanche lands in the Texas Panhandle. Unfortunately for the twenty-five-year-old Bond, the repetitive firing of his .50-caliber Sharps took his hearing. He lived to be eighty-eight. In a turn of heart, he devoted the final years of his life to advocating for strict laws against the killing of wild game.

  2. In fact, President Theodore Roosevelt became good friends with Quanah Parker. The Comanche leader marched in Roosevelt’s 1905 inauguration parade and the two men went wolf hunting later that same year. During their conversations, Parker successfully lobbied the president to reintroduce buffalo to the Southern Plains.

  3. As far as the authors can find, the president never showed any remorse for reversing his Indian policy.

  Chapter 20

  1. While a cadet at West Point, Frederick Grant was responsible for the brutal hazing of James Webster Smith, the academy’s first black student. During a meeting with his father at the White House, in which President Grant requested that his son tone down the abuse, Frederick Grant’s reply was, “No damned nigger will ever graduate from West Point.” Smith, who was born a slave, was termed “deficient” in his studies at the end of his junior year and expelled. Smith was posthumously awarded a commission in the U.S. Army in 1997.

  2. This figure is equivalent to $220 million in 2019.

  Chapter 21

  1. Wakan Tanka is variously translated as the “Great Spirit” and “Great Mystery”—a god influencing and empowering the Lakota people through both animate and inanimate objects.

  2. Senator Allison actually hated the Indians, calling them “idlers” and “vagabonds” in his report, demanding that the U.S. government use “such powers as necessary to enforce education in English, in manual labor, and other industrial pursuits upon the youths of the tribes”—completely invalidating the traditional tribal way of life.

  3. President Grant was keeping things quiet because a strong peace movement on the East Coast sought to protect the Indians and their land. The politically astute Grant felt this might become an issue in the upcoming presidential election.

  Chapter 22

  1. First made popular by the Duke of Wellington, the British commander who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Wellington boots—or “Wellies,” as they are nicknamed—were transformed into a rubber rain boot during World War I because leather rotted in the muddy trenches. Wellington boots are still popular around the world as wet-weather gear.

  Chapter 23

  1. The authors of this book believe they have accurately represented the battle known as Custer’s Last Stand. However, scholars differ on some of the battlefield locations and the times at which events took place, and that should be noted.

  2. President Grant’s animosity toward Custer began in March 1875, when the general was ordered to come to Washington to testify in a federal corruption case involving Grant’s brother, Orvil. Custer had spoken out publicly about Orvil Grant, a government contractor, overcharging soldiers at U.S. Army forts in the west. The general even wrote anonymous articles for the New-York Herald detailing the graft. President Grant took all this personally, removing Custer from command of the Seventh Cavalry. However, that action made headlines in the New York press, embarrassing Grant. He was forced to reinstate Custer to command. Had he not done so, Custer would not have been killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

  3. Captain Benteen was not held responsible for Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn and went on to fight in the Nez Percé War of 1877. He was promoted to major but in 1887 was suspended from the army for drunk and disorderly conduct. Benteen retired the following year, then died in Atlanta on June 22, 1898, at the age of sixty-three. Major Marcus Reno was dismissed from the army after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. However, he requested a formal court of inquiry, which successfully restored him to active-duty military status. Unlike the teetotaling George Custer, Reno’s impulsivity was often due to drink. This would be his undoing. Shortly year after returning to the service, Reno faced charges of drunkenness. He was dismissed from the army on April 1, 1880. Major Marcus Reno died in 1889 of tongue cancer. In 1967, Reno’s remains were reinterred at the Custe
r National Cemetery on the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

  Chapter 24

  1. Wild Bill Hickok is laid to rest in Deadwood. A quarter century later, at her own insistence, Calamity Jane is buried at Wild Bill’s side, where she remains to this day. Poker players still consider a hand containing two black aces and two black eights a “dead man’s hand,” based on Wild Bill’s murder.

  Chapter 25

  1. Keogh’s horse, Comanche, survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, despite several bullet wounds. He was never ridden again, living out his days on army posts. Comanche died in 1891, but visitors to the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas can still view Comanche’s stuffed remains on display in a climate-controlled glass case.

  2. Roughly $1,500 in modern currency.

  Afterword

  1. The couple are buried within twin red granite sarcophagi inside the tomb, which is the largest mausoleum in North America.

  Afterword

  Nine years after Chief Joseph surrenders, an Apache warrior named Geronimo bolts the reservation in Arizona. In addition to being a great fighter, Geronimo is also considered a medicine man for his spirituality and abilities as a healer. For the past decade, Geronimo has periodically done this, leading warriors on raids into Mexico to plunder and kill.

  At first, U.S. authorities looked the other way, but now Geronimo is being pursued by Lieutenant Charles Bare Gatewood, called “Big Nose” by the Indians.

  Geronimo is fifty-eight years old. As a younger man, he waged war alongside the great Chiricahua chiefs Cochise and Mangas Coloradas. Geronimo well remembers the glory days of Apache Pass, before the whites intruded and built the garrison known as Fort Bowie atop that sacred land. He respects the treaty Cochise made with the Americans but, like many Apache, Geronimo believes Mexicans are still legitimate targets.

  About thirty years ago, in 1858, the Apache medicine man lost a wife and three children when the Mexican Army retaliated against his tribe. For that reason, he still seeks vengeance: “I have killed many Mexicans,” he will write in his autobiography. “I do not know how many, for frequently I did not count them.”

  Geronimo has proved so elusive to U.S. troops that Nelson Miles, who has been promoted from colonel to general, is now in charge of capturing him. Miles has directed Lieutenant Gatewood to stalk the Apache. By August 1886, Geronimo’s followers have dwindled to fewer than forty men, women, and children, and he has run out of food and supplies. Like Chief Joseph, Geronimo knows it is futile to keep running. So on September 4, he surrenders to Lieutenant Gatewood.

  Fearing Geronimo’s charisma among the Apache already on the reservation, the army designates him a prisoner of war and sends him by train to Fort Sam Houston, Texas. From there, he goes to another military prison at Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, then finally to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. All the while, Geronimo enjoys great celebrity throughout the United States and, possibly because of bribes, the military frequently allows him to make personal appearances with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Incredibly, Geronimo even takes part in the inaugural parade of President Teddy Roosevelt in 1905, the same year he writes his autobiography. In February 1909, at age seventy-nine, Geronimo is thrown from a horse while in U.S. custody. He dies shortly afterward. According to his son, his last words were these: “I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

  Geronimo is buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

  * * *

  As with Geronimo, Sitting Bull was never comfortable on a reservation. Also like the Apache, Sitting Bull toured with Wild Bill Cody and made money doing so.

  But upon returning to the reservation in the Dakota Territory, Sitting Bull was confronted with the vengeful reservation agent James McLaughlin. Tension between the two men reaches critical mass when a new religious movement known as the Ghost Dance spreads through the various Indian reservations of the Dakota Territory. The Ghost Dance allows Indians to commune with dead relatives and promises that white settlers would leave tribal lands forever, bringing about a return to Native American superiority.

  Sitting Bull does not take part in the Ghost Dance movement, but he openly allows its practitioners to settle near his camp. On December 14, 1890, fearing that Sitting Bull will soon leave the Standing Rock reservation to spread the Ghost Dance movement, Agent McLaughlin orders tribal police to arrest the supreme chief.

  At 5:30 the next morning, thirty-nine Indians working for the U.S. government surround Sitting Bull’s home. Word travels around the reservation that he is to be arrested, causing other tribe members to come to his aid. A confrontation ensues—and a Sioux chief named Catch-the-Bear shoots his rifle at a member of the tribal police. Fire is returned, and Sitting Bull is shot in the chest. He dies instantly.

  Sitting Bull was initially buried at Fort Yates in North Dakota. In 1953, his body was exhumed by his descendants and relocated to Mobridge, South Dakota. A monument to Sitting Bull now marks his burial spot.

  * * *

  Just two weeks after Sitting Bull’s death, on December 28, 1890, soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry—the same mounted regiment once commanded by General George Custer—escort 350 Cheyenne and Sioux warriors with their dependents to a place called Wounded Knee Creek in the Dakota Territory. The Indians are being moved to prevent their participation in the Ghost Dance movement. The Sioux and Cheyenne are restive, not happy about the relocation.

  The following morning, more soldiers arrive and surround the Wounded Knee Creek encampment. They are heavily armed. The arsenal includes an M1875 mountain gun artillery cannon. The soldiers enter the camp to disarm the Indians.

  As the story goes, a deaf Indian is confused by the disarmament order and fires at the soldiers. Chaos breaks out. Officers in charge lose all control. U.S. soldiers go on a killing rampage that results in the deaths of an estimated three hundred Sioux and Cheyenne.

  An eyewitness describes the horror this way: “The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through.… Little boys … came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.”

  The incident is still today lamented by Native Americans all over the country. None of the soldiers were brought up on charges. The Indians were buried at the Wounded Knee site, where a memorial marks the location.

  * * *

  On March 2, 1889, President Grover Cleveland, who considered Native Americans a nuisance, signs into law the Indian Appropriations Act. That sets the stage for what will become known as the Oklahoma Land Rush. With the stroke of a presidential pen, the prairielands once termed “Indian Territory” are now open to white settlement, with Congress stripping two million acres from Native American tribes. At precisely noon on April 2, 1889, a cannon sounds on the Oklahoma plains, and an estimated fifty thousand men, women, and children rush forth to claim Indian land as their own. Traveling by wagon, by bicycle, by horse, and on foot, whites quickly stake off plots of land and file claims of ownership. The Oklahoma “Sooners” is a nickname given to those who cheat and jump the gun, thereby obtaining by illegal means the most preferred properties. In 1907, Oklahoma is eventually admitted as the forty-sixth state in the Union, ending the term “Indian Territories” forever.

  * * *

  The great Sauk leader Blackhawk died from illness on October 3, 1838, at age seventy-one. He was buried on the farm of his friend James Jordan on the north bank of the Des Moines River in Davis County. In July 1839, his remains were stolen, leading to years of dislocation. Finally, Blackhawk’s sons Nashashuk and Gamesett located the remains and appealed to Governor Robert Lucas of the Iowa Territory, who used his influence to bring the bones to security in his offices in Burlington.

  The Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League are named after Blackhawk. The team’s first owner, Frederic McLaughlin, was a major with the 86th Infantry Division during World War I—nicknamed the “B
lack Hawk Division.” McLaughlin chose the same name when he became owner of the NHL hockey franchise in 1926.

  * * *

  Quanah Parker, the Comanche chief, dies on February 23, 1911, at age sixty-six. He prospered in the years after the Comanche were ordered to the reservation in Oklahoma. Parker’s home still exists just outside the small town of Cache and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Quanah was a founder of the Native American Church, which combines Christianity and Native American rituals, among them the use of peyote to see visions. Director John Ford’s 1956 Western film The Searchers is based on the Comanche abduction of his mother, Cynthia Parker. John Wayne’s character in the film is based on James W. Parker, the uncle who searched tirelessly to bring Cynthia home. Cynthia Parker is believed to have died in 1871. She was buried in Poynor, Texas.

  Like Geronimo, Quanah Parker is buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In 1957, Cynthia Parker’s remains are relocated to the Fort Sill Post Cemetery so that she might rest near her son.