by Crazy Horse
But the white men had brought other things, as well—smallpox, measles and, worst of all, cholera. In 1849, an epidemic of cholera took the lives of fully one-half of the Northern Cheyenne nation and hundreds of Sioux. A wave of smallpox took hundreds of additional Sioux and Cheyenne lives in the next few months.
To escape the plague, the Sioux headed north, away from the Platte River country and up into Dakota Territory. As they approached the White River, Curly was riding with a small band of young warriors when they sighted a large Sioux camp. As the warriors approached, they realized the valley was unnaturally quiet. The tipis stood silent. No smoke curled up through the flaps of the lodges. No dogs barked. Nothing moved.
One of the older warriors rode on ahead, calling out to the inhabitants. The rest of the band was not that far behind, now. The warriors’ shouts seemed to be swallowed up, and in their place was only the sound of the river lapping at the stones. Again he called, and again there was no answer.
The young warriors dismounted, leaving their horses in the charge of three or four of the youngest, Curly among them. All calling out, the young Sioux spread out among the tipis. Still, there was nothing but silence in response. A deathly stillness gripped the warriors now. Curly could see them looking at one another, their faces confused, their bodies slack, as if something had sucked out the bones, leaving them sacs of blood and meat.
One of the warriors ducked down to enter a tipi. The others watched. Seconds later, they heard a scream that curdled their blood. For a long moment, nothing happened. Suddenly, the warrior backed out of the tipi and ran to a second, then a third. The others, frozen in place, watched him, motionless as if they had been rooted to the earth. Only when he left the third lodge, did they begin to move again. Curly ran forward, ignoring Hump’s call to come back. Little Hawk, too, sat his horse, calling after his brother, but Curly paid no attention.
He ducked into the first tipi he reached. And he screamed. The stench overwhelmed him, and he felt his stomach begin to churn. It was as if some demon were trying to claw its way into his gut through his nostrils.
Backing out, he looked at Hump, his head shaking, his body beginning to tremble all over. For a moment, he thought he would be unable to stand, and caught himself on the verge of crumbling into a heap on the ground.
He ran back to the horses. Hump jumped down from his mount. “What is it,” he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“They’re dead,” Curly said. “All of them.”
As abruptly as if someone had sounded a silent signal, all the young warriors raced away from the silent camp, their faces drawn, their mouths slack. No one spoke as they mounted up. When they were all back on their ponies, they exploded in unison, wheeling as one and thundering back up the hill toward the main body of the group.
Old Smoke was at the head of the column as the young warriors roared across the plains toward him, screeching war whoops and shrieking in terror.
The old chief rode ahead to meet them. Some thundered on by, unwilling to stop even there, miles from the village of the dead. But Curly, Hump, and Little Hawk reined in. Old Smoke waited patiently for the story to emerge. When he realized that disease, either cholera or smallpox, had wiped out an entire village, he gave orders for a change of direction. The members of the akicitas rode along the straggling column, informing the marchers that they would have to go still farther. They would make a wide detour around the silent village, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of so much death.
When they finally found a place to camp, north of the Black Hills, the warriors were angry. Some said the diseases were deliberately being spread by the whites. Tales were circulated of blankets being infected with the white man’s magic then passed among the Cheyenne. Others didn’t bother with such niceties. They simply swore revenge and vowed that they would not permit another white face to cross the plains in safety.
Within two years, the diseases had all but disappeared, but the death toll had been awful, and the Sioux were as angry as they had been at the height of the epidemics. And there were more whites than ever on the Plains. Agents of the government seemed to be everywhere, and settlers flowed in increasing numbers, almost a flood now. Raids on the wagon trains had continued, but some Sioux wanted nothing to do with the whites, not even vengeance.
On orders from the new Indian Commissioner, David Mitchell, the agents tracked down every band they could find to tell them that the Great Father in Washington had a message for them. He wanted peace, they said, and promised that it would be worth their while. There was to be a great council at a new fort on the Laramie River, not far from Fort William, called Fort Laramie.
By August 1851, more than ten thousand Plains Indians had gathered at the fort. Not only Sioux attended, but Shoshoni, Cheyenne, and Crow also put in an appearance. There had never been a larger gathering of Indians on the Plains. None of the old men could remember such a council.
The soldiers at the fort were awed by the huge gathering. For the first time, many of them began to be afraid. They had had no idea that there were so many warriors out there all, so far as they knew or cared, bloodthirsty savages upon whose whims the fate of all white men depended. When they looked around the fort, its rows of buildings open on all sides, surrounded only by adobe walls that looked too feeble for their purpose, they couldn’t help but wish they had the safety of a stockade, like Fort William, to interpose between themselves and their charges.
For the Sioux, too, it was a revelation. All of them, but especially the young, had a chance to meet deadly enemies without fear. They were free to play games, to stage mock raids on one another’s camps. Despite the language barrier, communication was no problem. Sign language more than compensated for the disparity in tongues.
And the gathering had one primary purpose—to make absolutely certain that the Oregon Trail would not be cut. In order for this to happen, the whites were prepared to make concessions. They would make cash payments to each of the tribes, and agree to present them with huge quantities of trade goods on an annual basis. In exchange, the Sioux and Crow, the Cheyenne and the Shoshoni, would agree not to wage war on the wagon trains, and, a new wrinkle, not to wage war on each other. Intertribal violence was a surefire incitement to continued aggression against the whites, and the government agents were wise enough to understand it.
But the undertaking of the council was sabotaged by the paltry understanding of Plains Indian customs held by the whites. Not only did they not understand the relations between tribes, they also failed to understand the lines of authority, and especially the limits of that authority, within each tribe.
Used to negotiating with kings and diplomats, men authorized to speak for entire nations, they expected the Sioux and the Cheyenne to deal the same way. When Mitchell learned that there was no head chief of the Sioux, he decided to create one. For reasons that no one seemed to understand, he settled on Conquering Bear.
Conquering Bear was a Brule, and a distinguished warrior, but he could no more speak for all the Sioux than he could speak for all the Brule. That wasn’t how things worked, but the whites were determined to make it so.
So, after a month of discussions, the chiefs meeting almost daily with Mitchell and the agents, agreement was reached. On the day the treaty was to be signed, all the chiefs, one for each of the tribes represented, appeared at the center of the huge gathering. Each of them wore the uniform of a U.S. Army general, complete with braid and a gilt sword. The military regalia was made somewhat incongruous, however, because the chiefs had elected to make their appearance in full war paint. One by one, the chiefs stepped forward to make their marks on the white man’s paper. Without realizing it, they were committing their people to terms that none could live by.
But the piece of paper satisfied the representatives of the Great Father, and was duly taken back to Washington. The tribes went their respective ways, and things returned to normal. The warriors continued to raid the wagon trains, steal
ing cattle and horses, extorting sugar, coffee, and whatever else caught their fancy in exchange for safe passage, the same train often being hit three and four times before reaching the Northwest and the friendlier domains of the Nez Percé, Yakima, and Umatilla.
Curly, like any young Sioux just coming into his manhood, rode on his share of raids. In addition to his kola, Hump, he rode often with his brother, Little Hawk, and another young man called Lone Bear.
By now, Crazy Horse and his family were part of the band led by Man Afraid of His Horses. In Sioux, the chief’s name meant that he was so fearsome a warrior that his enemies were frightened even of his ponies. Since his son, a few years older than Curly and also Curly’s friend, had the same name, the chief was called Old Man Afraid and his son Young Man Afraid. For three years, the Sioux drifted across the plains, following the buffalo, which already were beginning to decrease in numbers as the whites passing through had taken to shooting them for sport and letting the carcasses of the great beasts rot in the sun.
Time after time, a hunting party would crest a rise only to find itself staring down into a valley of bones, the great racks of ribs looking like the beached ruins of long dead ships. Sometimes they would come upon a killing ground soon after the slaughter. They could see the sky peppered by buzzards and other carrion eaters and, when they drew close enough, smell the stink of the rotting carcasses.
Old Man Afraid, like most of the other Sioux chiefs, was unhappy with the wanton slaughter, but reluctant to confront the army in order to make an issue of it. He believed, as did most of the chiefs, that there were enough buffalo that his people could continue their way of life forever.
But things were changing more rapidly than the Sioux understood. The troops at Fort Laramie were growing more and more restless, even cocky. The soldiers who had seen the great council of 1851, with its thousands of warriors, were long gone. Their places had been taken by new men, who, if they had seen Sioux at all, had seen only small groups, and those tame Indians who were called Loaf About the Forts.
By 1854, there were many who believed that the Sioux and the other plains tribes were too backward a foe to pose much of a threat. That the belief was widely held in the upper echelons of the army could be discerned by the men the high command chose to govern the western plains.
In August, when Old Man Afraid and his band arrived at Fort Laramie, its command officer was Hugh Fleming, a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant. His second was another lieutenant named John L. Grattan, who was fond of his whiskey, as were most of the soldiers in such lonely outposts and, when in his cups, Grattan was even fonder of boasting what he could do to the Sioux if given half a chance.
“With twenty men and a single field piece,” he liked to say, “I could ride through the entire Sioux nation.” It might have been an admirable courage the young officer possessed, but wisdom was not one of his outstanding qualities. Fleming was not much better. Neither man understood much of the customs of the people they were meant to supervise.
On August 17, Curly and Hump were returning from a hunt, trailing behind a Mormon wagon train wending its way toward Fort Laramie for a rest and some supplies before continuing on its way west. At the tail end of the train, one would-be settler was walking beside his wagon, driving a lame cow along with assorted yips and an occasional crack of a riding crop on its emaciated flanks. The young men were amused by the settler’s actions, and rooting for the cow.
As the train moved past a Sioux village a couple of miles from the fort, the cow, spooked by something or tired of the beating it was taking, broke away from its irate owner and shambled toward the tipis. One of the young warriors, a man by the name of High Forehead, snatched up his bow and, as the cow was about to run through the village, downed it with a single arrow. Hump led a mock charge past the wagon train, frightening all the settlers, and provoking the owner of the cow, who began to shout and curse.
Most of the Sioux ignored him, and those few who didn’t were amused by the man’s anger and evident frustration. Hump and a couple of the others ran him off, and he sprinted after the wagon train, which hadn’t even bothered to slow down. They were still laughing when he disappeared into the cloud of dust kicked up by the wagons.
The following day, it became evident that Lieutenant Fleming did not share the Sioux amusement at the settler’s expense. He sent for Conquering Bear. The old chief, annoyed by what he considered foolishness, sent a messenger to tell Fleming that he would not come.
Fleming sent a message in return, insisting that Conquering Bear come into the fort, and that he bring the offending warrior with him.
Conquering Bear, realizing that Fleming would not rest until the matter was disposed of, went into the fort and asked to see Fleming.
Through an interpreter, he said, “I don’t understand what all the argument is about. It was a lame cow, good for nothing. Not even a white man could find meat on its bones. It was scrawny and useless. Besides, it did not belong in our village. Children were playing in front of the lodges. They could have been hurt. “
Fleming got right to the point. “Did you bring High Forehead with you?”
The old chief shook his head. “No, I did not.”
“I want him arrested. If you don’t bring him in, I’ll have to come and get him.”
“That is crazy. Show me the man who owned the cow. I will take him to my herd and he can pick out any horse he wants. That is more than enough payment for so sad a cow. The worst horse in my herd would pay for ten such cows. I will make an even exchange.”
“You can’t buy me off that easily, Chief. Your man did something wrong and he has to pay for it.”
“He did nothing wrong. “
“He killed an animal that did not belong to him. How would you like it if the man went to your herd and killed one of your horses?”
Conquering Bear was at a loss. “I can’t give you High Forehead.”
“Why not? Has he run away? Then tell me where he went. I’ll go get him myself.”
“No, he has not run off. I don’t have the right to give him up. He is a Miniconjou. I am a Brule.”
“But you’re the chief of all the Sioux …”
“I am Brule. He is Miniconjou.”
“Chief, I’ll give you twenty-four hours. You have him here tomorrow, or I will see to it that he comes in, whether you like it or not. And I don’t give a damn which way it is. You understand?”
The old chief said nothing. Instead, he turned and left Fleming’s office, wondering how things could have gotten so far out of hand. He mounted his horse and rode back to the village, knowing that something was about to happen that he could not prevent. When he explained to the other chiefs and warriors what Fleming had said, many of them wanted to attack the fort. Old Man Afraid, though, counseled patience. Conquering Bear, too, urged them to be calm.
The following morning, Lieutenant Grattan got his chance to ride through the whole Sioux nation, or at least, a small part of it. At the moment, there were more than six hundred lodges in the area, more than a thousand warriors, and they were in no mood for Grattan’s abuse. On the way to Conquering Bear’s camp, Grattan stopped at the trading post. James Bordeaux, the trader, was known to the Sioux. They trusted him, and he was fluent in their language.
Bordeaux greeted the lieutenant coolly. “Good morning,” he said. “I see you are prepared for war.”
Grattan waved grandly. “Thirty-one men. That’s all I need. I got a field piece and a mountain howitzer. We’ll get the job done.”
“You’re a goddamned fool, Lieutenant. It was just a cow. Forget about it.”
Grattan bristled. “Look, if it matters to you so much, why don’t you come along. You can interpret. Maybe it’ll help.”
“You don’t need help. You need to go home and think about what you’re doing, Lieutenant. You are about to make a very big mistake.”
“I can handle anything that comes along, Bordeaux. With you or without you.”
“Does Lieut
enant Fleming know what you’re doing?”
Grattan nodded. “He knows.”
“Then you’re both fools.”
“I take it you won’t come along …?”
“Hell no, I won’t come along. And if you know what’s good for …”
“Savages, Bordeaux. Undisciplined savages. Do you really think they can stand …”
“Have you ever seen the Sioux fight, Lieutenant?”
Grattan hesitated for a moment, before answering. “No, I haven’t.”
“Have you ever seen combat of any kind?”
Grattan shook his head.
“Well, you go ahead with this, and you’ll see more than you want to. Talk to me afterward.”
The men were getting restless, and Grattan was afraid that Bordeaux’s words might inhibit them. Brusquely, he remounted. “I’ll see you this afternoon. And I think Lieutenant Fleming will not be happy you refused to help.”
“Fleming can go to hell.” He turned and went back into the trading post.
Grattan pushed on. He passed a large Oglala camp on his way to Conquering Bear’s Brule village. All the Oglala ponies had been brought in. If he noticed, he didn’t understand the significance. The Oglala were ready for war. Young Man Afraid, son of the chief, and himself a warrior of rising influence, rode along with the soldiers. On the way, he tried to convince Grattan that there would be trouble. Auguste Lucien, the Frenchman who was to serve as interpreter, kept shouting insults at the Sioux warriors as they rode past the Oglala lodges. Between shouts, he drank from a bottle of whiskey. Another bottle was being passed among the soldiers.
Grattan listened to Young Man Afraid, but waved off his warnings. “I will have High Forehead in the jail, or I will die trying.”
“There are many Sioux,” Young Man Afraid said. “Too many for you.”