by Jon E. Lewis
On 27 July 1874 the prospectors found traces of gold at French Creek. By the spring of 1875 the Black Hills were alive with the sound of thousands of illegal White picks. Red Cloud and the other reservation leaders furiously demanded that the Whites should be removed, and called Custer “The Chief of all the thieves.” Equally furiously, Whites demanded that the Indians be removed:
This abominable compact [the Treaty of 1868] is now pleaded as a barrier to the improvement and development of one of the richest and most fertile sections in America. What shall be done with these Indian dogs in our manger? They will not dig gold or let others do it.
Yankton Press and Dakotian
The government tried to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux for $6 million, or lease mining rights at $400,000 a year. Red Cloud and the reservation Sioux met in council and turned the offer down.
As soon as the negotiation failed, the White invaders became totally brazen, laying out towns and organizing local governments in the Black Hills. Then they demanded troops to protect them.
Although the White settlers were acting illegally, Washington decided to remove the Indians instead. It was easier. In December, President Grant signed an executive order requiring all Indians in the “unceded land” to go voluntarily on to reservations by 31 January 1876. If they did not, they would be treated as “hostiles” and driven in. By this order, the government seized the Powder River country as well as the Black Hills.
News of the order was to be taken by messenger from the agencies to the camps of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, Rain-in-the-Face, Low Dog and the other Indians living up on the buffalo ranges. Blizzards and snowdrifts held up the messengers. Some camps never even received the order.
When the deadline came and the Powder River camps had not entered the reservation, the Secretary of War received a brief dispatch: “Said Indians are hereby turned over to the War Department for such action as you may deem proper.”
No sooner had the snows in the northern ranges begun to thaw than General George Crook was in the field, destroying a Sioux–Cheyenne camp on the Powder River. Bad weather – including a blizzard so severe that the mercury in the expedition thermometer froze – caused Crook to return to camp unsatisfactorily early.
Meanwhile, General Phil Sheridan began to plan a three-pronged assault on the “hostiles”. One column, led by Colonel John Gibbon, would drive down the Yellowstone from Fort Ellis. Crook would move up through Wyoming and strike the Indians from the south. A third column, under General Alfred Terry and Colonel Custer, would head west out of Dakota.
Throughout the spring, White soldiers gathered for the big campaign. The Army had been drastically reduced in strength since 1866, down to 27,000 men, was beset by bullying and poor pay (a mere $13 a month for privates), and weakened by alcoholism and scurvy. Disease killed more troopers than did Indians. A frequent morale-lowering lament of troopers in the 1870s was that Indians had better rifles (they seldom did). Despite all this, the 7th Cavalry, full of veterans, considered itself an elite, and was almost as good as it thought it was. On 17 May 1876, Custer – his long hair cut short for the campaign – and the 7th Cavalry marched out of Fort Lincoln towards Indian country, the regimental band striking up the familiar tones of “The Girl I Left Behind Me”.
While the White soldiers had been gathering, so had the Native Americans. From all over the northern plains Indians gathered in the Powder River country. For the first time in years, more Indians left the reservation than joined it, as thousands streamed to the buffalo ranges for a joyous summer hunt. And for a war, if it was necessary.
By late May, Sitting Bull’s camp had swollen to more than 7,000 people, from the Teton Sioux (even some eastern Santee Sioux), Arapaho and other Northern tribes. Seldom before had so many Plains Indians come together.
During the second week of June, the great Indian camp moved up the Rosebud Valley to the head of Ash Creek. Here they held a Sun Dance. Among those who sought vision was Sitting Bull, whose adopted brother, Jumping Bull, cut 100 pieces of flesh from his arms with an awl and a sharp knife: then Sitting Bull danced with eyes fixed on the sun for 18 hours until he fell unconscious. At length, a great vision came: he saw many soldiers falling into the camp upside down. “These dead soldiers are the gifts of God”, said Sitting Bull.
Shortly after the Sun Dance was over, Cheyenne scouts rushed into the camp to report that White soldiers headed by “Three Stars” (General Crook) were in the valley of the Rosebud. The Indians decided to intercept him.
On the morning of 17 June Crook and his 1,300 men, including Shoshoni and Crow scouts (always particularly keen to fight the Sioux), halted for coffee. Suddenly there was firing up ahead and shouts of “Sioux! Sioux!” from the scouts, and then Crazy Horse and 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were right on top of the soldiers. All day long the battle raged over the hills, the Indians preventing Crook forming a single strong front. This was the sort of war Crazy Horse liked best, small isolated fights, a chaos in which Western military theory had no application or point. By nightfall, Crook had lost 57 men and, short of ammunition, opted to withdraw back to base camp at Goose Creek. He was immobilized for the rest of the summer.
The Indians had just beaten Crook – the Army’s best Indian fighter. After a triumphal four-day scalp dance, the great Indian village moved towards the Greasy Grass River – the stream the White man called Little Big Horn.
The Battle of the Greasy Grass
Up on the Yellowstone the other two columns of the Army’s campaign met in conference aboard the steamer Far West. A reconnaissance by the 7th Cavalry’s Major Marcus A. Reno had located a great Indian trail leading towards Little Big Horn. General Terry, in overall command, decided to split his forces. He ordered Gibbon’s infantry into the field, and sent Custer’s fast-moving 7th Cavalry to pick up the Indian trail and follow it. There would be no escape for the Indians. They would be trapped between infantry and cavalry at Little Big Horn.
Custer drove his men relentlessly, a pace of 30 miles a day and more, hoping to defeat the Indians before the infantry could encounter them. On the second day out the cavalry hit the Indians’ trail: it was over a mile wide. Ree and Crow scouts found scalps of Crook’s soldiers which had been thrown aside. The scouts advised Custer to proceed with caution. He brushed them aside, and ordered his exhausted men to move on, towards the hills in the distance.
At dawn on 25 June, Custer’s scouts climbed to the top of a mountain for a reconnaissance of the route ahead. As the light improved they could make out the Little Big Horn 15 miles away. And then they saw a pony herd which seemed to cover the distant land like a blanket. A second later they saw the hundreds upon hundreds of tipis, arranged in huge tribal circles, of the Huncpapas, the Miniconjous, the Oglalas, the San Arcs and the Cheyenne. There were nearly 7,000 Indians assembled before them, probably the greatest concentration ever of Plains Indians in one place.
Custer’s scouts began singing their death songs. One told Custer that there were not enough bullets to kill all the Indians down there. Custer merely told his officers, “The largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead and I’m going to attack it.”
A little after noon the 611 officers and men of the 7th Cavalry started down into the valley of the Little Big Horn. Not knowing the terrain or the disposition of the enemy, Custer made a fateful decision. He would reconnaissance in force – split the regiment into several components, which could be employed separately or together as circumstances dictated. It made sense but it also weakened his attacking power. Thinking the Indians might try to escape, Custer sent Captain Frederick Benteen with about 125 troopers off to scout the hills on the south. Major Marcus Reno and his battalion was ordered to cross the Little Big Horn and attack the Indian village from the South. Custer and the rest of the regiment would proceed parallel to Reno and support his action.
Fording the Little Big Horn at around 2 o’clock, Reno began advancing along the open valley bottom. Ahead, aroun
d a timbered bend in the river, was an enormous cloud of dust, thrown up by hundreds of Indian war ponies’ hooves, rising up into the blazing afternoon heat. Reno signalled a charge, and his command raced forward. Occasionally he threw glances behind, looking for Custer’s support, but it was nowhere to be seen. Afraid of plunging into superior Indian numbers, Reno threw up his hand to halt the galloping charge which ground to a confused halt, with Reno then ordering the men to fight on foot. They began firing ragged volleys at milling horsemen in front of them.
Without informing Reno, Custer had changed his battle plan. Instead of supporting Reno’s charge, he rode north, screened by hills, and circled the Indian village so that it was between him and Reno. Presumably he intended to strike into the village through a gap in the hills, thus confronting the enemy with attacks from two directions. Indians fleeing from Reno’s attack would also be cut off.
Custer and his men probably never reached the Little Big Horn River. As they descended a coulée 1,500 Huncpapa warriors led by Gall rode screaming up to meet them. Custer’s men began to fall back, trying to seek higher ground. Their situation was critical, but not entirely without hope – until Crazy Horse led a thousand Oglala and Cheyenne warriors up the ridge behind them. Custer had been outflanked by Crazy Horse, who had led his warriors out of the camp in a huge swinging arc to attack the cavalry from behind. The cavalry fought desperately. They shot their horses to form breastworks, vainly trying to find shelter from the overwhelming Indians. Some troopers fought to the last. Some tried to make a break for the river. Some probably killed themselves to avoid torture. The battle took an hour, perhaps slightly less. And then Custer’s men were all dead.
A eye-witness view of “Custer’s Last Stand” from the Indian side was later given by Two Moons, a Cheyenne chief:
Then the Sioux rode up the ridge on all sides, riding very fast. The Cheyenne went up the left way. Then the shooting was quick. Pop-pop-pop very fast. Some of the soldiers were down on their knees, some standing. Officers all in front. The smoke was like a great cloud, and everywhere the Sioux went the dust rose like smoke. We circled all round him – swirling like water round a stone. We shoot, we ride fast, we shoot again. Soldiers drop, and horses fall on them. Soldiers in line drop, but one man rides up and down the line – all the time shouting. He rode a sorrel horse with white face and white fore-legs. I don’t know who he was. He was a brave man.
Indians keep swirling round and round, and the soldiers killed only a few. Many soldiers fell. At last all horses killed but five. Once in a while some man would break out and run towards the river, but he would fall. At last about a hundred men and five horsemen stood on the hill all bunched together. All along the bugler kept blowing his commands. He was very brave too. Then a chief was killed. I hear it was Long Hair [Custer], I don’t know; and then the five horsemen and the bunch of men, may be forty, started toward the river. The man on the sorrel horse led them, shouting all the time. He wore a buckskin shirt, and had long black hair and mustache. He fought hard with a big knife. His men were all covered with white dust. I couldn’t tell whether they were officers or not. One man all alone ran far down toward the river, then round up over the hill. I thought he was going to escape, but a Sioux fired and hit him in the head. He was the last man. He wore braid on his arms [sergeant].
All the soldiers were now killed, and the bodies were stripped. After that no one could tell which were officers. The bodies were left where they fell. We had no dance that night. We were sorrowful.
Next day four Sioux chiefs and two Cheyennes and I, Two Moon, went upon the battlefield to count the dead. One man carried a little bundle of sticks. When we came to dead men we took a little stick and gave it to another man, so we counted the dead. There were 388. There were thirty-nine Sioux and seven Cheyennes killed and about a hundred wounded.
Some white soldiers were cut with knives, to make sure they were dead; and the war women had mangled some. Most of them were left just where they fell. We came to the man with the big mustache; he lay down the hills towards the river. The Indians did not take his buckskin shirt. The Sioux said “That is a big chief. That is Long Hair.” I don’t know. I had never seen him. The man on the white-faced horse was the bravest man.
Three miles south of Custer, Reno had been badly mauled and retreated up a hill. Benteen arrived in time to save him, and the combined companies held out for another scorching day. Reno and Benteen would have their share of blame for the débâcle at Little Big Horn; Benteen, an able officer but public in his dislike of Custer, failed to respond to messages sent out by Custer to hurry to join him for the attack; Reno was indecisive, failed to keep a front at the river and failed to send Benteen, his subordinate, forward to a possible relief of Custer, whose battle he could hear.
Late in the afternoon of 26 June the exultant Indians withdrew, leaving behind their dead warriors on burial scaffolds, surrounded by a circle of dead ponies to serve the braves in the spirit land. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was over. Sitting Bull’s vision had been good.
The next day Colonel Gibbon’s infantry column arrived and found the ghastly piles of Custer’s mutilated dead. “Long Hair” himself had been shot twice, once through the left temple, once through the heart. According to Kate Bighead, a Cheyenne woman who was on the battlefield, his ear was punctured to enable him to hear better in the afterworld.
The Sioux and Cheyenne had won an astounding victory. All five of Custer’s companies, 225 men, had been killed. Reno and Benteen had lost 53 killed.
It took eight days for the news of the massacre to reach the town of Helena, Montana, and from there to be flashed by telegraph all over the world. Most Americans found out on reading their newspaper on the morning of 5 July, just a day after they had celebrated the centennial of independence.
Surrender
Yet, although the Indians won the battle, they lost the war. An enraged nation demanded immediate vengeance. All reservations in the northern plains were placed under military control. Congress passed a law compelling the Sioux to hand over the Black Hills, the Powder River and Big Horn mountains and to move onto reservations.
Throughout the rest of the year the free Indians of the northern plains were harassed by Crook, Mackenzie, Colonel Nelson A. Miles, and just about every seasoned Indian fighter the Army could get into the field. Through-out the winter small bands of Sioux and Cheyenne limped into the Red Cloud Agency.
On 6 May 1877 Crazy Horse led his lodges into Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and surrendered. He gave his left hand to Lieutenant W. P. Clark and said: “Friend, I shake with this hand because my heart is on this side; I want this peace to last for ever.” Four months later he was dead. Peace faction Indians and the Army regarded him as too dangerous to be loose. On 6 September he was brought under guard to the army compound at Fort Robinson. Seeing that the soldiers intended to imprison him, Crazy Horse tried to escape. There was a scuffle. An officer called out, “Stab at the son of a bitch! Kill him!” A soldier named William Gentle bayoneted Crazy Horse twice.
He was taken into the adjutant’s office. He refused to lie on the White man’s cot, and died on the floor an hour later.
Of the mighty Sioux nation only the Huncpapa band of Sitting Bull and Chief Gall were not on the reservation. They were across the border in Canada, where they hoped to find sanctuary. Instead they found disease, diplomatic intrigues, dissension and famine. Gradually they trickled back across the border and into the reservation. In 1881 Sitting Bull himself finally gave up. At midday on 19 July, near starving and dressed in rags, Sitting Bull rode into Fort Buford in Dakota. With him were just 143 followers.
No Indians were spared in the backlash that followed Custer’s Last Stand. Although the Nez Perce (“Pierced Noses”) had never killed a White man, they were ordered in 1877 to leave their homeland for a new reservation elsewhere in Idaho. They were given just 30 days to round up their stock and dismantle their homes. While they were doing this, a young Nez Perce whose fathe
r had been killed by Whites led a series of raids that took the lives of 18 settlers.
Fearing reprisals, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce led 700 of his band into hiding in White Bird Canyon. After beating back an army detachment, he decided to lead his people to safety in Canada. Newspapers and politicians clamoured for the Nez Perce to be punished, for the Whites to be avenged. For 1,300 miles the Nez Perce walked, through Idaho, Wyoming, the Yellowstone (already a national park) and up towards the border, and as they did so they beat off army attack after attack. Only when Chief Joseph’s “Long March” was in the snows of the Bear Paw Mountains, within 40 miles of Canada, did Colonel Nelson A. Miles manage to trap the Nez Perce. Chief Joseph surrendered after being promised that his people would be sent back to Idaho. “I am tired; my heart is sick,” Chief Joseph told Nelson Miles. “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
The Nez Perce were not sent home to Idaho. They were sent to Indian Territory, where many died. Nelson Miles protested, and eventually the Nez Perce went to a reservation in Washington.
After the Nez Perce, it was time for the Bannocks – the same Bannocks who had just scouted for Miles against the Nez Perce. When Congress failed to provide their promised rations, the starving Bannocks began fighting the settlers who had illegally occupied their camass (an edible plant of the hyacinth family) prairie. “I do not wonder,” General Crook reported, “that when these Indians see their wives and children starving, and their last source of supplies cut off, they go to war. And then we are sent out to kill them.”