After reuniting with Fitzpatrick, Mitchell immediately called for a council of the chiefs. Runners carried Mitchell’s invitation to all of the Indian camps. Soon, the chiefs were gathered inside the walls of the fort. After formal greetings were exchanged all around, the Brule Sioux leader, Terra Blue, appraised Mitchell of the chiefs’ complaints and suggested that the entire camp move thirty miles to the east. There, where the Platte and Horse Creek met beneath a swale of cottonwood trees, the Brule chief said, there was plenty of fresh grass and running water for the horses. Also, it was far removed from the white man’s Medicine Road. The hunters would have better success at finding buffalo in the country around Horse Creek.
Mitchell readily agreed and proposed to reconvene at the new venue. Feasts were held in all the camps that night, and when Mitchell woke the following morning, he stepped out of his tent and gazed in astonishment at the mute and grassless plain. Without a sound, twelve thousand Indians had packed up their lodges and disappeared over the hills toward the Platte.
When the Indians and the treaty commissioners finally met on the banks of Horse Creek on September 8, before them was a blank map of the West, a map with no interior lines other than geographic features that gave the country its essential character. They could draw any lines on this map that they pleased. This was the very solution to the “Indian problem” promoted by Chief Justice John Marshall thirty years before, when he ruled that tribal claims to land were made through aboriginal title that predated the “discovery” of the Americas by Europeans. The million square miles of territory that Congress wanted to divide between the principal tribes of the West was four times greater than the combined area of the original thirteen states. But if Washington was serious about taking steps to avoid bloodshed in the coming years, Mitchell told Congress, it had no choice but to lie down in its own bed. They were asking the tribes to accept boundaries to their home territories and grant white immigrants safe passage on the Oregon Trail. For these concessions Congress was offering the tribes annuities and the formal recognition of their perpetual right to hunt, gather, and fish in their accustomed forests and waters. Anything short of this, Mitchell told Congress, would be rejected out of hand. From the Indians’ perspective, the Great White Fathers in Washington were in no position to drive hard bargains.
No one better appreciated what was riding on the success of this council than its portly commissioner, David Mitchell, and his tall, one-handed partner, Thomas Fitzpatrick. Their master plan envisioned peace with tribes from the desert Southwest to the Canadian border. When Mitchell and Fitzpatrick arrived at Fort Laramie, news awaited them that the Apache and Comanche had elected not to make the long trek to the Platte. This setback was not entirely unexpected. More unsettling to both men was the unexplained absence of the Crow. Months ago in St. Louis, both had identified the Crow as holding the key to the success of the master plan. Occupying prime buffalo country between the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers, the Crow were surrounded on every side by fierce enemies. Despite incessant encroachments on their homelands for thirty years, the Hidatsa’s first cousins had easily repulsed the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet. Living with ceaseless hostilities had transformed the nomadic Crow into the most fearsome warriors and finest horsemen on the Northern Plains, and their prized homeland was the central piece in the commissioners’ million-square-mile puzzle. Even in their absence, the commissioners would have to establish boundaries for the tribe in order to have any hope of brokering peace with so many of the Crow’s enemies.
At daybreak on the first morning, David Mitchell raised the American flag above the thatched canopy of the council circle. The arbor was a simple affair, a canopy of cottonwood branches that served the dual purpose of providing shade and avoiding diplomatic pitfalls. No position in the circle could be construed as favoring one leader more than another.
Shortly after nine o’clock, Mitchell touched the ash of his cigar to the fuse of a cannon to announce the opening ceremony. The council’s secretary, B. Gratz Brown, opened his journal and quickly scribbled a note to himself: “I deeply regret that among our many fine American artists there is not one present.” Instead, the young attorney climbed a low-lying hill above the council circle and described what he saw after “the cannon gave forth its thunder”:
The whole plains seemed to be covered with the moving masses of chiefs, warriors, men, women, and children. . . . Each nation approached with its own peculiar song or demonstration and such a combination of rude, wild, and fantastic manners and dances, never before was witnessed. It is not probable that an opportunity will again be presented of seeing so many tribes assembled together displaying all the peculiarities, features, dress, equipments, and horses. They came out this morning not armed or painted for war, but decked out in all their best regalia, pomp, paint, and display for peace. The Chiefs and Braves were dressed with punctilious attention to imposing effect. . . . It must be confessed that the prairie dandy, after his manner, displays quite as much sense and taste as his city prototype. . . . The “belles” (there are Indian as well as civilized belles) were out in all they could raise of finery, and the way they flaunted, tittered, and talked and made efforts to show off to the best advantage before the bucks justly entitled them to the civilized appellation we have given them. . . . A novice in this wild country, surrounded by the excitement of transpiring scenes, has scarcely the time to put all he observes on paper.
As the pageant of Indians closed around the council circle, Mitchell announced that only the principal headmen of each nation would be seated beneath the peace arbor. Mitchell and Fitzpatrick greeted each chief by name as he stepped forward. Four Bears, Raven Chief, and Gray Prairie Eagle were the first to take their seats beneath the arbor. Though they were a small band compared to their neighbors, they had overcome the greatest hardships in getting there. Joining them as their translators were DeSmet and Culbertson. Once all the chiefs had been greeted by the commissioners, a coterie of dignitaries who had come at Mitchell’s invitation to witness the proceedings formed an outer circle around the peace council.
As he surveyed the faces around the arbor, Father DeSmet realized that the only person there who actually looked out of place was Commissioner Mitchell himself. His short heavy body, the thick shoulders and ponderous brow, struck DeSmet as an undistinguished presence cast among this stately congress of chiefs. For the first time in American history, nearly all the chiefs of all the great western Indian nations were assembled in one place, surrounded by thousands of their tribesmen and women. “For quietness, decorum, and general good behavior,” wrote B. Gratz Brown, “the Indians might be models for more civilized society. . . . Everything was as quiet as a church.”
After welcoming all the “red children” to the council, Mitchell assured the chiefs that “the Great Father at Washington does not want your land, your horses, or your robes, nor anything you have. We come to confer with you, and to make a treaty with you for your own good. When the red man intends to tell the truth, and faithfully fulfills his promises, he takes an oath by smoking to the Great Spirit,” said Mitchell. “The Great Spirit sees it all and knows it all, and for that reason, I do not wish any Indian to smoke with me that has any deceit or lies in his heart.”
All watched in silence as Mitchell lit the bowl of tobacco in the ceremonial pipe. Momentarily, he disappeared in a cloud that rose from the pipe’s three-foot-long stem. The redstone pipe, beautifully decorated with beaded ornaments, feathers, and various talismans intended to bring good fortune, was passed first to Terra Blue, who passed it to the Cheyenne, the Assiniboin, and the Shoshone, then to the Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan, and finally to the Arapaho. Several of the chiefs rose to their feet and presented the pipe to the four points of the compass, to the Great Spirit, “and down to the Bad.” When the smoking had concluded, Mitchell stood to address them as the cadre of translators stepped up to sit with their assigned chiefs.
“I am glad we have all smoked together like brothers,” he told
them. “The ears of your Great Father are open, and he has been alarmed to hear that the white children have driven off the buffalo. The White Fathers desire to pay the tribes fairly for things being destroyed by his white children, but for these payments, they expect you to allow the white people to travel over the Great Medicine Road in peace.”
Mitchell told them that times had changed. The days when they could roam freely across the continent were fast coming to an end. Congress had sent him to ask them to divide the country into tribal territories. Henceforth, each tribe would own its own territory, its own homeland. Washington desired to make peace with all of the Indian people, but each tribe needed to select its principal spokesman with whom Congress would transact all future business. If they agreed to these conditions, Mitchell told them, the Great Fathers in Washington promised to give each of the tribes $50,000 a year for fifty years.
“This is all I have to say to you today,” said Mitchell. “Go back to your lodges, think about what you have heard. Talk about what I have proposed to you. Make peace and visit each other.”
When Mitchell had finished, twelve thousand Indians rose to their feet. As the council circle broke up, the Brule patriarch, Terra Blue, stepped forward to shake hands with both commissioners, addressing Mitchell through his interpreter.
“I have heard you were coming, ever since the grass began to grow,” the old warrior told him. “Now you are here. I have not two hearts. My ears have been open. It seems good to me, and I believe our Great Father is good, but I will go home and talk to my people. We will think on what you have told us.”
As the Sioux chief finished and turned from the circle to rejoin his people, the chiefs from Like-a-Fishhook waited for their turn to shake Mitchell’s hand. B. Gratz Brown recorded their remarks through their translator, Alexander Culbertson. “Your talk is good,” Gray Prairie Eagle told Mitchell. “The ears of my people have not been on the ground. They have been open. We feel good in our hearts at what you have told us. The ground is not as it used to be. We come here from a long way off, from the Missouri River. We arrived hungry. We found no buffalo on our trail, but we found friends when we arrived here and they fed us. This makes our hearts glad. We live far away. We wish to satisfy the Great Father so he will send us more buffalo.”
Mitchell’s presentation had made for a long session, but more had been accomplished than either he or Fitzpatrick had dared to hope. The only nagging disappointment was the absence of the Crow.
For the next several days, chiefs and warriors of each nation met in lengthy council sessions. Shortly before noon on September 11, Mitchell’s secretary, B. Gratz Brown, accompanied him on a ride out to the Sioux camp. They found the chiefs sequestered at the center of the village, their shoulders pressed close together in a council circle. Terra Blue’s loosely formed confederacy was the most troublesome on the plains. Rather than being a cohesive tribe, the Sioux were instead a confederation of wide-ranging bands that were hopelessly tangled in a web of blood relationships, ceremonial rituals, vague boundaries, and mercurial political alliances. Reluctant to interrupt, Mitchell and Brown quietly left the village, mounted their horses, and rode back to their camp beside Horse Creek.
Early the next morning, Fitzpatrick raised the Stars and Stripes above the arbor. The cannon again boomed out across the plains. Mitchell, up before dawn, had wrestled with his doubts through a sleepless night. Yet when the cannon roared, nothing moved on the plains. The surrounding country lay still and utterly silent. Commissioner Mitchell’s darkest fears raced through his mind. This must be their answer, he told Fitzpatrick. They must be going home.
The commissioners gazed across the Platte at the silent encampments. Before the two men could panic, a voice yelled the news from the Shoshone camp. “The Crow are coming . . .”
Both men sprang to their horses, charging across the Platte at a gallop toward a nearby hilltop to meet the approaching tribe. What they saw as they crested the hill, wrote Brown, abruptly brought them to a halt. Arriving from a journey of eight hundred miles
The Crow were all mounted and their horses, though jaded and reduced by the long trip, were beautiful animals. The Crow Indian rides better than any other, and he sits his horse with ease and elegance. This is much the finest delegation of Indians we have yet seen, as they came down the plain in a solid column, singing their national melody. . . . They were dressed with more taste, especially the headdresses of the chiefs, than any of the other tribes, and though they rode down into the midst of their enemies the whole plain seemed now alive with a moving mass of redskins, and amidst it all, riding through the middle, they were not the least disturbed or alarmed.
The commissioners turned and rode back to the council grounds as the Crow came riding triumphantly over the hill and down through the scattered Indian villages toward the government camp. Thousands of Indians followed them on foot from the surrounding encampments. As the two Crow headmen dismounted, Mitchell gave a brief speech of welcome and offered the tribe the campground nearest his own. As the women moved off to set up their camp, the warriors hobbled their horses and took their places outside the arbor. The two chiefs chose seats at the east end of the circle beside the Arapaho named Cat Nose.
One by one, the chiefs now rose to report the results of their deliberations. Terra Blue was the first to speak. The Sioux leader quickly confirmed what Mitchell already suspected.
“We want a chief for each of our bands,” the Brule chief demanded. “The White Father does not understand. We are many bands. If you make two chiefs for each band, it will be better for you whites. It is not possible to make one chief to speak for all of us.”
Several other Sioux now rose to echo Terra Blue’s message. Big Yankton reminded Mitchell that the western tribes could go where they wanted, as they pleased. No one could tell them where to live. “We have moved around in this country with the freedom of the wind, and we still like it this way.”
When the Sioux had finished, a heavy silence hung under the arbor. Cat Nose, the distinguished chief of the Arapaho, finally rose to his feet to address the commissioners.
“I thank the Great Spirit for putting us on this earth,” he began. “It is a good earth. We Arapaho hope there will be no more fighting on it. I hope that the water will fall from the sky and make the grass grow and bring plenty of buffalo. I come to tell you that we have heard your words, and we think there is much good in what you say. We will go home from here satisfied if we do not have to watch our horses at night, or be afraid for the safety of women and children. We have to live on these streams and in the hills. I would be glad if the whites would pick out a place for themselves and not come into our country anymore. We have chosen our chief as you requested. Whatever he does we will support him in it, and we expect the whites to support him also. That is all I have to say.”
Mitchell thanked Cat Nose, and for the benefit of the Crow, he repeated the proposals that the tribes had heard two days before. When they gathered under the arbor the following morning, the Crow chief informed Mitchell that they had spent the entire night in council deliberating the proposals from Washington. The Crow were ready to speak with one voice. A man named Big Robber now rose to face the commissioners. He was a prepossessing figure of size and physical power, and like many of his Hidatsa cousins, Big Robber was fully a head taller than either commissioner.
“Father,” he began, “we live a great way off, and we have but little to do with the whites, but we are willing to be at peace with them. We believe it would be for the good of all to be at peace and have no more war. We listen to our old men. They told us to come and see you and to listen to what you had to tell us. Father, what I promise I will perform, and my people will sustain me. For our part, we will keep the peace. I have been asked to speak as the voice of my people. The sun, moon, and earth are all witnesses of the truth, and all that I have promised here will be fulfilled.”
Acceptance of territorial boundaries by the Crow immediately shifted the political de
bate taking place in the Sioux’s Tribal Council. Because the Crow’s homeland was the most productive buffalo ground north of the white man’s Medicine Road, the Crow declaration now put Terra Blue and his subchiefs under pressure to join in the peace. Big Robber’s surprising speech underscored Mitchell and Fitzpatrick’s belief that the success of the treaty conference would ride on the shoulders of the Crow. The Sioux were now obliged to deal with Congress in good faith. They could not afford to have both the whites and the Crow as their enemies. After Big Robber’s speech, their only alternative to peace was to go home empty-handed and prepare for war with the whites and all of their neighbors.
Mitchell now announced that henceforth, deliberations in the council circle would take a different form. The new scheme would commence the following morning. He instructed the chiefs to bring five or six of their principal men to the arbor. Each group would meet together with individual interpreters and the commissioners. The interpreters, men such as Culbertson and Jim Bridger, had lived with the tribes for years. These men knew the rivers and mountains of their homelands as well as anyone in the tribes.
“Tomorrow begins the most important task before us,” Mitchell told them through the interpreters. “We will begin to draw the boundaries around your home territories. When you agree to this peace, that land will be yours, for as long as the waters flow. Now, go make great feasts.”
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