In August several thousand Lakotas gathered to hold their traditional Sun Dance — the annual tribal gathering that doubled as a rejuvenating religious ceremony and the year’s largest social event — along the big bend of the Powder River in southeastern Montana. Two days after the Sun Dance, on August 14, 1872, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took part in an attack on army troops escorting a survey crew for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was surveying its course west along the Yellowstone River. The army camp lay on the north bank of the river. Both leaders distinguished themselves that day, each in his own way. Sitting Bull halted an attack by a Lakota leader who had convinced seven young warriors that they were “holy” (bulletproof), while Crazy Horse earned many admirers for his daring as he rode out into the open. Indeed, his audacity may have compelled Sitting Bull to act. In the midst of the battle, the Hunkpapa leader walked out toward the soldiers’ lines and sat down on the open plain within shooting distance of them. He calmly took out his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke. Four other Indians, two Sioux and two Cheyennes, joined him. As bullets kicked up dust around them, they all sat there quietly. Sitting Bull shared his pipe, and when it was empty, he cleaned it out with a stick. Only then did he walk back to his tribesmen two hundred yards away, followed quickly by the others. Inspired, Crazy Horse decided to make one more charge close to the army lines. On the way back, his pony was shot out from under him, and he ran back to safety.21 Both men had covered themselves in glory.
Ten months later, in the late summer of 1873, an even larger survey expedition — almost 2,000 men — set out from Fort Rice, on the Missouri River. By August they had reached the Yellowstone again. In charge of the mounted contingent was Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
CUSTER AND HIS Seventh Cavalry Regiment had recently been transferred to Dakota Territory and would now garrison a new post, Fort Abraham Lincoln, on the western bank of the Missouri, five miles downstream and across the river from the frontier town of Bismarck, which the Northern Pacific Railroad had just reached. Once the Northern Pacific route entered Montana Territory, it was to follow the Yellowstone River to the Rockies and a navigable pass through the mountains. The survey expedition kept to the north side of the river (though the railroad, when finally finished several years later, would run along the south).22 The unceded territory’s northern boundary was not defined in the 1868 treaty; the agreement also allowed for a railroad to be built virtually anywhere in Lakota country, reservation land or unceded territory. But of course Sitting Bull and the rest of the Powder River Indians had signed no treaty. These renegade Lakotas considered the valley of the Elk River — their name for the Yellowstone — theirs, for they had pushed the Crows out of the area almost a century before.
The first spark came on August 4, a brutally hot day. Custer was scouting ahead with two companies of cavalry several miles in advance of the main column. The Lakotas sent out a decoy party in an attempt to lure the bluecoats into a trap. Custer, reconnoitering on his own, galloped in pursuit but turned back just before it was too late, making it to his lines in the nick of time. Several hundred Lakotas made it hot for the cavalry until the rest of the column appeared, then retreated to their camp. A week later, the Lakotas attacked the Seventh’s bivouac, firing furiously from across the Yellowstone. Sitting Bull watched the battle from the bluffs on the south side of the river; it is not known whether Crazy Horse was present. The fight lasted most of the day. Groups of Sioux crossed the river and met mounted cavalry in a series of skirmishes, all to the strains of “Garry-Owen” played by the Seventh’s band. Late in the day, the infantry showed up and blasted across the river with cannons, which sent the Lakotas galloping away. In accounts he later wrote, Custer seems not to have taken either encounter — or the Sioux’s fighting capabilities — too seriously,23 mistaking a calculated withdrawal for cowardice and lack of fighting spirit.
When the Northern Pacific went bankrupt later that year, inducing the Panic of 1873 and the severe depression that followed, all immediate plans to push the railroad west from Bismarck were canceled. But a year later, the Northern Pacific was no longer the chief grievance of the Lakotas. Another trespass would precipitate the final chapter of the Sioux War, and it would again involve the man they knew as Long Hair.
It mattered little to the Lakotas that they had wrested the Black Hills from the Cheyennes, who had taken them from the Comanches and Kiowas, who had ejected the Crows less than a century earlier. They did not care that each Indian landgrab had been even more direct than the whites’. The Lakotas viewed the region’s lush valleys and heavily wooded hillsides as a “food pack” that they could access if necessary.24 Bands led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other leaders had kept busy over the past few years policing their lands, harassing white settlers and expeditions along the Yellowstone and on the edges of their territory. But actual attacks were sporadic and less serious than newspapers portrayed them to be. For example, the thousands of miners in the Black Hills faced only minor Lakota opposition, despite what the newspapers said.
Just as important to the Lakotas was making war on the Crows to the west. The Crow reservation below the Yellowstone as defined by the 1868 treaty extended east to the 107th meridian, near the Powder River’s upper reaches. The Lakotas ignored such abstract boundaries and routinely engaged their worthy opponents in “civilized” intertribal warfare. Hunting territories had to be fought for, horses and women appropriated, honors won.
Many of the roaming bands had spent the long, cold winter of 1874–75 at the agencies. As spring arrived, they left for the north country, taking with them government-supplied arms, ammunition, and foodstuffs. The Black Hills lay along the trail north from two of the largest agencies, Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s, and some of these young Lakotas made occasional raids into the hills to harass and sometimes murder miners and settlers. Free-roaming Lakotas from the Powder River country also trekked down to the Black Hills. Large groups of whites were safe, since the Lakota war parties were usually small; most of the deaths were of men traveling alone.25
At the end of 1875, the reservation Indians and some of the hunting bands returned to the agencies. Most of the 1,200 or so Northern Cheyennes wintered at Red Cloud Agency, although one large camp led by a chief named Old Bear remained in the Powder River country. So did the hard-line Lakota roamers under Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Lame Deer, and other leaders. These camps hunkered down in their fastnesses along the Tongue River and the Powder River and their tributaries, oblivious to the machinations of the whites in Washington and other points east. That winter was even more severe than the previous one. In December and January, runners were sent out from the agencies with the government’s ultimatum — return to the reservations by January 31, 1876, or be declared “hostiles” subject to military action. The order (or invitation, as some viewed it) was generally ignored; only a few small bands returned to the agencies. Near the end of March, two lodges came in to Standing Rock Agency with a courier, who reported that others would come in when the weather permitted.26 Sitting Bull knew that there was little or no food at the agencies; a number of young men from the reservations had journeyed north to his village for that reason. His people had little incentive to return to the agencies.
Save for the railroad survey parties, U.S. troops had not entered Sioux country eager to initiate hostilities in years. A few weeks earlier, agency Indians visiting their free-roaming brethren had warned, “Soldiers are coming to fight you.”27 But most of the nontreaty Indians had scoffed. The treaty allowed them to hunt between the Black Hills and the Rockies, and they had been largely peaceful for quite a while. Why would the wasichus invade the Powder River country to find and fight them? It made no sense.
Old Bear’s band of about sixty-five lodges, mostly Cheyennes with about fifteen visiting Oglala and Minneconjou lodges led by He Dog,28 lay on the west bank of the upper Powder River in southern Montana. They were a peaceful group, heading leisurely in to their agencies, bivouacked al
ong the river waiting for better grass and less severe weather. Early on a subfreezing morning in mid-March, a 400-man U.S. cavalry force fell upon the sleeping village. The inhabitants panicked and fled, but the 150 men in the village regrouped and fought back. The troops left several hours later with half the pony herd. Warriors followed and later that night managed to steal back most of their horses.
The Indians’ casualties were light — only two dead and several wounded. But half of the village had been put to the torch, and most of Old Bear’s band were without shelter and food. Guided by the visiting Oglalas, they trudged through the freezing night down the Powder until they reached Crazy Horse’s small winter village a few days later. His Oglalas gave what they could, and the combined villages rode northeast to a larger camp led by Sitting Bull. The Hunkpapas also gave generously to the Cheyennes, sharing food, blankets, clothing, tepees, horses, even medicine pipes — anything they could spare. The old-man chiefs sat in council for three days and finally decided to travel together for protection. At a Sun Dance the previous summer attended by several Lakota tribes and Northern Cheyenne bands, Sitting Bull and Ice, a Cheyenne mystic, had bonded and sworn to support each other. Now the time had come to act on that allegiance. Sitting Bull counseled peace — or at least avoidance of the whites — with the firm caveat that the Hunkpapas would fight if their friends were attacked. He sent runners to the agencies calling for warriors to help fight the white troops.29
The large gathering of Cheyennes, Oglalas, and Hunkpapas moved north and then west in April and May. The Cheyennes considered themselves the people at war with the wasichus and so led the way. The Oglalas, their first friends, were next. The Hunkpapas, still desirous of peace, brought up the rear. The column was joined by other scattered bands of free roamers angry at the news of the cavalry attack — more Cheyennes and the Minneconjou, Sans Arc, and Blackfeet Lakotas. Some Assiniboines from the northwest also moved in, traveling and camping with the Hunkpapas and Blackfeet.30
Arriving from Manitoba in the Great White Mother’s country to the north, with thirty lodges of refugees — Santees (Dakotas) and Yanktonais (Nakotas) — was the old patriot Inkpaduta and his longtime ally White Lodge. Two decades of wandering the plains had left Inkpaduta’s small band almost destitute. They had no horses, only dogs to carry their small tepees and meager belongings. The women were poorly clothed, and the men wore so little that some of the other groups called them the No Clothing people.31 But Inkpaduta, now almost blind, still hated the wasichus. He and Sitting Bull renewed their friendship — and their mutual desire to live as their ancestors had, free of the white man and his encumbrances.
By early June, the growing village numbered almost 500 lodges and nearly 1,000 warriors, and hundreds, even thousands, were leaving the agencies to join them. The warehouses at several agencies were bare, and reports of plentiful buffalo lured many Lakotas from the southernmost reservations, where the spring grass strengthened ponies earlier. Patriotism, too, played a part. Young men especially heeded the call to arms and the chance to gain glory and status on the battlefield in a great cause. In addition, Lakotas returning to the agencies from the Powder River country had spoken in glowing terms of the great spiritual powers of their charismatic leader, who could interpret the divine desires of Wakantanka, the Great Spirit, like no other.
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Inkpaduta — few whites understood their importance to a Sioux nation that took its inspiration and direction, much like a warrior in battle, from their leaders. If they had, they would have realized that these three Sioux leaders shared one overriding trait — an unyielding insistence on defending their homelands, their families, and their way of life to the death.
FOUR
Outside the States
I expect to be in the field, in the summer, with the 7th, and think there will be lively work before us.
GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER
Life in Dakota Territory suited George Armstrong Custer.
A year and a half on Reconstruction duty in the backwater burg of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, had driven him to boredom. When not purchasing horses for the army, he had spent as much of his time as possible out of town. When he had been notified in February 1873 by his good friend Phil Sheridan that the Seventh was being ordered to Dakota Territory to escort a Northern Pacific engineering survey party into the Yellowstone region of Montana, then man a new fort in Indian country, his response, in a telegram to Libbie, was: “Regiment ordered to Dakota first of March this suits me. GAC.”1 He had hoped for a transfer to the plains two years before.2
Now, after two and a half years at Fort Abraham Lincoln, “the General” — as Lieutenant Colonel Custer was referred to, in honor of his wartime brevet rank — was largely content. For a man of his temperament and passions, life on an army post hundreds of miles from the States was an idyllic existence.
While the Seventh had been skirmishing with the Sioux along the Yellowstone in the summer of 1873, 150 carpenters and mechanics had worked steadily at Fort Lincoln to construct the spacious officers’ quarters and relatively comfortable barracks of the enlisted men, using pine transported by train from St. Louis.3 The result was one of the largest and perhaps the best-appointed post on the frontier, particularly after the buildings had been painted eggshell white and lace curtains had been hung in the seven houses on Officers Row. The monotony of garrison life at the fort was brightened by the frequent visits (some of them months long) of luminaries, friends, and acquaintances from the East — not a few of them attractive, young single women, whose long stays were encouraged by Armstrong and Libbie in an effort to enliven the officers’ austere existence. All participated in a host of social activities, some manufactured, some spontaneous: frequent dances and parties, stage productions, large-scale hunts, baseball games, and endless rounds of charades. Virtually every day and evening saw a gathering of some sort at the two-story Custer quarters in the center of Officers Row. This was the largest and fanciest residence in Lincoln and, as the commanding officer’s, the fort’s center of social activity. Libbie felt an obligation to keep their doors open, and even her husband’s regimental enemies admired her generosity. “In the evenings the house is crowded with company and they have dancing in the parlor. The Gen. has got a beautiful house with five servants and they live in high style,” wrote one young visitor.4 At least twice a week, the Custers hosted a ball for the officers and their wives that featured the regimental band playing waltzes, polkas, and square dances. The billiard room was also a popular hangout.5 The Seventh’s band was a particular source of pride to the music-loving Custer, for its leader, Felix Vinatieri, was a talented composer and arranger. He had been the bandleader of the Queen’s Guard of Spagnis in Italy before coming to America and serving for a short time in the same capacity in the Union army. The General had heard him in Yankton upon first arriving in Dakota Territory three years before and had persuaded him to join the Seventh as chief musician. The diminutive Italian had immediately taken steps to improve the band’s quality.6 Since then their relationship had deteriorated, and Vinatieri had asked for a discharge in 1875, complaining, “I have not been treated with that amount of respect which I expected when I enlisted with the Regiment.”7 His request had been denied.
Custer usually made an appearance at an evening function, but he was just as likely to retire to his study to devote himself to one of his several indoor passions: taxidermy, which he had picked up during the 1874 Black Hills Expedition; studying the tactics of his favorite General, Napoleon, or other military texts; writing articles about his experiences for the Galaxy magazine; or reading for pleasure, perhaps a novel by Dickens or Ouida.8 Libbie occasionally heard him laugh out loud while reading a book by Mark Twain, another favorite.9 Somehow he found the time to write frequently to his parents and also to his beloved half sister, Lydia Ann, who had been a second mother to him. In fact, he was so fond of her only son, Harry Armstrong “Autie” Reed, that he had proposed adopting the boy years earlier, but Libbie
had opposed the idea.
The days were always busy. There was the constant tedium of administering a large fort and three other Missouri River posts with the help of his longtime adjutant and close friend Lieutenant William Cooke. The tall Canadian with the long dundreary whiskers had been with him for a decade, since the founding of the regiment. As adjutant he handled the General’s many administrative duties.
After two successive summers with large expeditions into Indian country, the summer of 1875 was relatively uneventful. The government had decided to send another expedition into the Black Hills to confirm the glowing reports of gold strikes Custer had sent in 1874, and Custer had been told that he would be its commander.10 But another officer, Lieutenant Colonel Richard I. Dodge, had been assigned to lead it instead. After a careful exploration, Dodge’s geologist, Walter P. Jenney, had confirmed Custer’s claims but advised that extraction would be more difficult than previously reported. Nevertheless, the existence of gold in the Black Hills was now undeniable, and the resultant headlines lured even more miners.
Custer had spent some of his time the previous spring arranging a peace parley between several of the reservation Indian tribes in the vicinity. For almost a century, the powerful Lakota Sioux had preyed upon the smaller, friendly Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa (Gros Ventre) tribes to the north, which had banded together generations before after disease had decimated their numbers. After another recent raid, the peacefuls had begged for assistance from the government and headed south from their village on the Missouri in hopes of a parley. Arriving at Fort Lincoln in early March, they had asked the General to formally request help from the Sioux agents. “I trust and doubt not you will see the importance of encouraging the various bands under your charge to send their leading and influential Chiefs and head men,” Custer had written in March 1875 to the Indian agent at Cheyenne River Agency on the Missouri River south of Fort Lincoln. That agency was home to several Lakota tribes. Custer continued:
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