More Than Cowboys

by Tim Slessor

  If you drive to the battlefield, just before turning off the main road you will find the Crow Trading Post (where they do excellent burgers); and there is the Little Big Horn Casino and Motel. Nearby, Colonel Sanders has established himself (one might guess that he was probably a mere corporal in 1876); in his wake is a Kentucky Fried Chicken house, the Song Bird Child Care Center and a Jim Cuts-the-Hair barbershop. There is also an office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and, across the road, a neat white church whose pastors are Anita and Duane Bull Chief. Overlooking the whole scatter is a magnificent hospital of the Indian Health Service. This is land belonging to the Crow tribe, and one is told that they zealously guard against any suggestion that their old enemy, the Sioux, have anything but visitors’ rights.

  It used to be called the Custer Battlefield. Then, a few years back, in deference to the large number of Native Americans who were also involved (and they most certainly were) the name was changed to the Little Big Horn Battlefield. The land is owned by the nation; it is administered by the National Parks Service, and the Stars and Stripes fly over it. In the summer, the car park alongside the Visitors’ Center is usually full. The spring or the fall are the times to go: the staff have more time to answer your inquiries, and to any half-sensible question, their patience is remarkable. Indeed, you get the feeling that they are at least as interested in your questions as you are in their answers. Or are they just being polite? Anyway, I have phoned them from London with some question, and found myself still listening 20 minutes later, despite calling long-distance.

  ***

  One can spend all day (and then some) wandering the nearly 4 miles between the site of the Last Stand and Reno’s Hill. Unlike many battlefields, this one looks very much as it must have done on that day in 1876 - except for those white markers. The geography of the place has not changed. So if you have done a little homework and are not too worried about the minutiae of exactly who was where when they fell, you can work out, more or less, how it all happened, or at least how most of it happened. Not that this is quite the same as saying you can work out why it all happened...

  ***

  Each time I go, I notice something different. For example, the authorities have recently replaced the rather inadequate wooden markers that indicated where various Indian warriors were found. Normally, the Indians carried away all their dead, but for a few - perhaps, in all the confusion, they were missed - their last resting place was where they fell. Anyway, markers of red granite (exactly comparable to the soldiers’ white marble) now poke through the sagebrush; remembered are warriors like Noisy Walking or Lame White Man.

  One of those red stones states that “Long Road, a Sans Arc warrior, died here while defending his homeland and the Sioux way of life”. Well, yes and no. He was certainly defending his way of life, but the claim that he was defending his homeland is, except in the broadest sense, stretching things. If this particular homeland belonged to anybody, it belonged to the Crow. The bullying Sioux had pushed the Crow off through the first half of the nineteenth century. So there is both justice and irony in the fact that the site of the most famous Sioux and Cheyenne victory is now just an enclave surrounded on all sides by land belonging to their old enemies, the Crow.

  White man, Custer died for your sins.

  A bumper sticker sometimes seen on Sioux pick-up trucks. The slogan is also the title of an incisive book by the Sioux author, Vine Deloria.

  Towards Wounded Knee

  One of the American Indian tendencies that led to our distress was their abiding passion for survival. The Indian developed an immunity to extinction.

  A comment by John Steinbeck

  There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us.

  Attributed to Chief Red Cloud sometime in the 1880s

  ***

  If one assumes that the Indian warriors saw Little Big Horn as a great victory, one can wonder if some of them, even as they packed up and rode away, might also have sensed that it had been just too great. Did they, even dimly, foresee that there was now no way that the Army, humiliated far beyond mere embarrassment, would or could accept that it had any choice but to finish them, the Hostiles, once and for all? One hardly needs hindsight to see that that battle was crucially definitive: it signaled the accelerated, inevitable and final end of the Sioux and Cheyenne as sovereign peoples.

  Nevertheless, if one were concerned with the minutiae of the next few months, one could catalog for several pages the many miles of marching and ineffective counter-marching that characterized most of the military endeavors through the rest of that summer. For the soldiers, the problem was that the Sioux and Cheyenne, although still moving in bands of some size, were proving difficult to find. Perhaps a single example of military frustration will make the point: General Crook, with more than 2,000 soldiers, advanced from the south while General Terry, with 1,600 (neither of them would seem to have been taking any chances), came down from the north in an optimistic but ill-coordinated attempt to sweep and then trap the Hostiles between them. But the Sioux and Cheyenne had “scatterated”, as guerrillas or partisans are wont to do when chased by more heavily armed forces. It is reported that when, in mid August, the plodding columns of those two generals eventually met face to dusty face, neither had sighted a single Indian. Maybe.

  Anyway, back east, Congress was in something of a panic and quickly funded what today would be called a Surge. It voted funds for 2,500 more soldiers. After minimal training they were sped west by rail, river steamers, wagons and foot. Their arrival coincided with the cooling weather of fall.

  With the approaching hardships of winter, several hundred Sioux, including (extraordinarily) Red Cloud and his band, were persuaded via a combination of promises and threats to come in to the alleged comforts of various Agencies. But, once arrived, they found themselves quickly hemmed in by soldiery with the demand that they surrender their guns and ponies. One doubts that this was an effective way to entice other groups, still undecided, to follow. Indeed, a number of potential Friendlies took the hint and promptly turned around - to rejoin the Hostiles.

  Out in the back-country, the known militants, particularly Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Dull Knife (a Cheyenne), were judged by the generals to be the leaders who would have to be brought to heel if the Army’s honor was ever to be restored. The coming winter would be the time... With temperatures headed to somewhere far below mere freezing, with the war ponies growing thinner, and travel (let alone hunting) becoming increasingly difficult, the quicksilver wanderings of those scattered bands would slow down until, coalescing into semi-static camps, they would become vulnerable. Against the rigors of the coming campaign, the troops were issued with buffalo-skin coats, fur caps, gauntlets and heavy-duty leggings. They would need them.

  The Army’s first success came with the first snows of late October when Colonel Miles, a vain but competent officer, met with Sitting Bull. A truce had been arranged as a result of a message from the Indian saying that he wanted to parlay. He came quickly to his unrealistic point: he wanted the whites to get out of his country - forever. Colonel Miles countered by demanding that Sitting Bull and his followers, numbering over 2,000 (say 600 warriors), should surrender and then make their way to the Reservation. Indeed, Miles is alleged to have told Sitting Bull that he had 15 minutes to think things over. “Surrender”, he said, “or fight.” Shouting that he would never become a Reservation man, Sitting Bull swung onto his horse and galloped away to rejoin his warriors. The truce was over before it had really begun.

  There followed a chase which lasted two days over a distance of about 40 miles. The Sioux put in several counter-attacks, but Colonel Miles, aided by his skilful deployment of some light artillery, always came out on top. It was not a resounding victory, but it was enough. Several hundred Sioux surrendered, to be directed south to the Reservation. The rest had already scattered. Eventually, led by Sitting Bull,
many of them would escape to Canada and the protection of Queen Victoria, the Great White Grandmother.

  Away to the south and a few weeks later, in a snowy late November, the Army had a more definite success, against Dull Knife. It was the result of incoming intelligence followed by a confirming reconnaissance; the Army was learning. A sizeable winter camp of the Cheyenne had been located, tucked away in a canyon-like valley of the southern Big Horn Mountains. (Less than 25 years later, these parts would become known as the Hole-in-the-Wall country: a sometime refuge of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.) The troops, more than 1,000 of them (including 200 turn-coat Sioux “scouts” temporarily recruited at 40 cents a day from among the reservation Friendlies), moved up quietly and then attacked at dawn. Most of the Cheyenne were asleep. Grabbing their rifles, they scrambled half-naked from the tepees. Some were shot or cut down, but enough managed to scramble up the valley walls from where they fired on the troopers below. As usual, the concern of the warriors was to cover the escape of their women and children. They soon saw that there was no way they could retake their village, which was then torched by the soldiers - after they had recovered a number of articles taken from the Little Big Horn: uniforms, revolvers, boots, bridles, saddles, even a 7th Cavalry guidon. Meanwhile the already freezing temperature was dropping; a blizzard was on its way. Over the next few days those native families, in flight and without shelter or proper clothing, are said to have lost a dozen or so young children and babies to the extreme cold. Some of the elderly and the wounded were lost as well. For the next ten days, Dull Knife led his people - what was left of them - on a miserable trek north through the mountains until eventually, after 140 miles, they managed to find Crazy Horse.

  There were other skirmishes and engagements that winter and into the early spring (1876-7). For the Hostiles, ammunition was low, food was short, hope was thin, their war seemed unwinnable. The news that even Sitting Bull, an inspirational leader right across the Sioux nation, had sought refuge in the land of the Great White Grandmother was deeply demoralizing. So it was that a growing number of Sioux and Cheyenne began to argue among themselves: might it not be better to parlay with the military and, if terms could be arranged, join their brothers who were already on the Reservation? But there was a twofold problem. First, among the hardliners like Crazy Horse, the peace-seekers were abused as traitors. A second problem lay in the Army’s insistence that any surrender would have to be unconditional; movement would be circumscribed and all pony herds and weapons would have to be handed over.

  It was not until those unimaginative demands were eased that some of the more recalcitrant Sioux began to come in. As a further incentive, General Crook now sent a message that, if they behaved after their surrender, he would see to it that a whole new Reservation would be established in their favorite buffalo hunting ground along the Powder River. It was this particular assurance, plus the illness of his wife (it seems she had TB), that seems to have persuaded even Crazy Horse to move toward the Reservation. But, defiant to the last, when in early May he rode in at the head of several hundred mounted warriors, it was as if he were leading a victory parade. All were resplendent in war paint and feathers; all were chanting battle cries and shaking their weapons aloft: guns, bows and war clubs. This was no meek capitulation. The officer who formally received Crazy Horse that day later wrote that he found him “remarkably brave, generous and reticent... a pillar of strength for good or evil”. In sour contrast, an agent of the Indian Bureau thought him “an incorrigible wild man... silent, sullen, lordly and dictatorial”. At different times, it seems that he could be both.

  It is near unbelievable that the seven tribes of the Sioux nation could so quickly have fallen so far. And in just three more months, Crazy Horse himself would be dead. The reasons for his death are still discussed, but not least among them must be the fact that Crook proved unable to honor his promise of that new, buffalo-rich Reservation out on the Powder. He had certainly lobbied the Army’s high command and the politicians in Washington. But he was up against both apathy and antipathy: there was ill will towards a Sioux chief who was widely seen as the leading tactician behind the disaster of just a year earlier. Additionally, even among the Sioux - always a fractious people - there were tensions and rivalries. Some seem to have felt that, at their expense, Crazy Horse was receiving too much deference from the military. Certainly, his presence on the Reservation stirred deep jealousies. Indeed, there were those who would have welcomed his come-uppance; sadly, they included his old comrade Red Cloud, who, not long back from a trip to New York and Washington (and reluctantly impressed), had now become a full-time collaborator with the white authorities. Anyway, when the news came through that Crook was unable to deliver on his earlier assurances about a new Reservation, Crazy Horse became resentful and bad-tempered. Soon there came a rumor that he was planning to make a last run for freedom and, no doubt, more mischief. So Crook ordered his arrest - by other Sioux. Initially, thinking he was being invited to negotiate, he came in without much fuss. But when he realized that he was about to be locked in a guardroom cell, he reacted violently. In the ensuing scuffle, he was stabbed or bayoneted by one or several of his own kinsmen. Within a few hours, this greatest of all the Sioux was dead. He had never lost a battle; he had never signed a treaty. He was just 37.

  It was surely more than mere coincidence that, with the passing of Crazy Horse, the last remaining spirit finally ebbed from the Sioux. In effect, they had to recognize that they were now a captive and wholly dependent people. The Army had won.

  ***

  What about Sitting Bull? From the beginning, the Great White Grandmother’s local representatives, her North-West Mounted Police, had treated the refugee chief and his followers with a cold correctness. After all, diplomacy demanded that the sensitivities of the United States, where Sitting Bull was viewed as an unsurrendered Hostile and a likely source of future trouble, had to be recognized. So the Canadian authorities were not sympathetic when the old chief began demanding that he and his people be given their own permanent Reservation. Nor, when the hunting was poor, were they more than minimally responsive to his call for supplementary rations. As refugees, he and his followers were tolerated as long as they were not too demanding. Meanwhile, the Americans were becoming increasingly worried that, sitting just out of reach, there was an enemy who, as they saw it, might come south again at any time to spark all kinds of trouble among the now “pacified” tribes. So they sent officers north to persuade Sitting Bull to return to his homeland, where they could keep a closer eye on him. He refused to meet the Americans, until reminded by the Mounties that he was a guest who did not have much choice. So although Sitting Bull had to obey, he refused to shake hands with the visitors. He accused them of coming north only to tell lies of which, over recent years, he had heard too many already. The Americans went home.

  In fact, Sitting Bull and his immediate band of followers stayed in Canada for another four years. Perhaps it was a diminishing supply of buffalo meat, the Sioux staple, that finally tipped the balance; the local herds were being hunted by both Sioux refugees and the nearby Canadian tribes. The latter were becoming resentful at having to compete for their food with the late arrivals. In the end, Sitting Bull realized that a long-term future in Canada, let alone a permanent one, was unlikely. So, in July 1881, he decided to take his chances; he would go home.

  Waiting for an issue of rations on Pine Ridge Reservation

  Having crossed the border, he was escorted to Fort Buford, along with 45 men, 67 women and 73 children. But still unwilling to take part in the ritual of a formal surrender, he gave his rifle to his 8-year-old son, who took it to the fort commander. A few days later they were all put aboard a steamer heading down the Missouri for a larger fort. Most of the party were then released onto the nearby Reservation. But the authorities were not ready to let the last and greatest of the one-time Hostiles out of their sight; Sitting Bull was held at the fort fo
r two more years.

  In time, the Great Sioux Reservation (very approximately much of today’s South Dakota) would be reduced, squeezed and subdivided into five much smaller Reservations. Across them, all Sioux hostility was finished. At the top of the Army, General Sherman could write with confidence on his retirement: “I now regard the Indians as substantially removed from the problems of the Army.”

  The psychological weight of their defeat must have been very heavy. They knew that they would never again hunt buffalo; there were hardly any buffalo left to hunt. Never again would they ride out to intimidate their enemies; never again would they exult in their freedom. All excitement was gone. Under white supervision a few tried farming, but it didn’t work; the land was too poor. After all, it was mostly land that the whites did not want. So there was nothing to do on the Reservations except to turn up every few weeks at the nearest Agency for an issue of rations: some beef, a sack or two of flour, a little sugar, a blanket or two, maybe some tobacco. Between times there was nothing to do - except to grumble that the scale of rations was far below what they had been promised in various treaties and agreements. They were being continually short-changed - partly through corruption, partly through policy: keep them hungry, and thereby docile. So this once proud people were now physically and mentally destitute; their under-nourished children and old people were dying daily of malnutrition, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and flu.

  A people in despair will latch onto any hope, however remote. For the Sioux, a people whose lives had always been in thrall to visions, prophesies, magic and a whole panoply of the supernatural, deliverance - if it lay anywhere - would surely come from the spirit world. But, as the years went by... nothing. Then, in the late 1880s, they heard rumors of a mystic who lived somewhere far away in the deserts to the west. Apparently, on a day when “the sun had died” (a time of powerful “medicine”, but, in reality, a solar eclipse), a Paiute shaman had had a powerful vision. In his trance, Wovoka had been lifted up to paradise. He had been shown many things up there. Now, down on earth again, he prophesied that, by performing a few simple rites, the white man would be swept away for ever; dead relatives would come back, the buffalo herds would be reborn, the blind would see again, the old life would return. To find out more, eleven Sioux emissaries made the long train journey west to Nevada. They met Wovoka and were deeply impressed; they saw hope of deliverance. They learned how to do a particular dance which was the central feature of what, within months, became a new religion.