“Let’s draw them out of that country by making them believe we are ready to run away,” suggested High Backbone.10 Signaling with mirrors, warriors formed in groups from ten to one hundred strong, then drove in charges to within 250 yards of Cole’s perimeter. Suddenly veering away, they tried to lure units of defenders in pursuit, but Cole’s defense was stern. The new seven-shot Spencer repeating carbine kept up a rapid fire that repelled all but the boldest warriors.
After almost three hours of inconsequential action, Crazy Horse rode to the front. “Just keep away for a little while,” he ordered the warriors. “These soldiers like to shoot. I am going to give them a chance to do all the shooting they want to do. You draw back and I will make them shoot. If I fall off, then you can do something if you feel like it; but don’t do anything until I have run by them.” With that, he kneed forward his pony and galloped the length of Cole’s defensive square. Firing at will, the troopers snapped off shot after futile shot at the slim figure leaning low over his pony’s neck. Opposite the end of their line, Crazy Horse drew rein and briefly rested his mount, still in clear range. Then he galloped back, veering closer to the line of barking Spencers. Still no bullet touched him. A third time he charged, nearer again to the soldier line. A few ragged shots tracked his run, but presently the firing stopped. Even when he made a direct dash toward the line, the guns remained silent, and Crazy Horse swung back to rejoin his stunned comrades. His disarming, wry modesty surfaced: “Now my friends, don’t worry,” he grinned as they pressed forward to reassure themselves of his safety.11
Action shifted across the river as Cheyenne warriors led by Roman Nose accessed the field from the east. Not to be outdone, Roman Nose repeated Crazy Horse’s brave run as reinforcing warriors forded the Powder, increasing the pressure all around Cole. The commander ordered his howitzers to open up, and several horses fell screaming as grapeshot exploded across the field. The warriors fell back. Now Cole trained his artillery on the hilltops bristling with warriors. Crazy Horse and the cluster of leaders grouped around a red flag made a distinctive target, and presently a screeching shell exploded on the hillside, dispersing the war chiefs. To the desultory roar of cannon shells, the battle closed as warriors withdrew toward their villages.
While Cole and Walker trudged upstream, the Cheyennes decamped for the Black Hills. On September 8, as the troops neared the Oglala village, Red Cloud and other leaders coordinated a dogged holding action in driving rain. Women worked hard to pack and strike tipis, and the Oglalas too tracked east, leaving the Sun Dance lodge standing in the middle of the deserted circle. Although they withdrew before Cole and Walker, Crazy Horse and his fellow war leaders could congratulate themselves that these soldiers were neutralized as a fighting force. The deteriorating weather finished off another four hundred of the troops’ stock in a single night, and the command limped slowly upstream. The charred remains of their wagons, harness, and other discarded materiel would make a landmark on Powder River for years to come. General Connor, returning from his campaign’s one clear victory—surprising an Arapaho village on Tongue River on August 29—ordered the expedition wound up and marched his men back to Fort Laramie early in October. Except for the skeleton garrison and seventy Winnebago scouts left to winter at Fort Reno, Connor could point to no lasting achievement.12
As their foes slunk south, the Lakotas and Cheyennes could dance in triumph. In mid-September the Oglalas regrouped high up the Little Missouri. After successful defense against a surprise attack on the village, warrior societies commonly nominated a body of blotahunka from the warriors who most distinguished themselves. They would hold the seats of honor at the feasts celebrating victory and be temporarily accorded significant political influence. Honored for his strategic contribution to the events of the summer, Red Cloud “was ranked first,” but Crazy Horse too was invited to attend the councils. Miniconjous High Backbone and Spotted Elk, as well as prominent visitors like Little Wound, a southern Oglala refugee from the central plains, and the Brule chief Iron Shell, joined the conclave. No Water, a Bad Face warrior who had served as an akicita under the Harney regime, completed the roll.13
For the man accustomed to sitting silently through the few councils he had attended, the season promised to be an uncomfortable novelty. Connor’s retreat signaled that the Americans had put the war “back in the bag,” and chiefs and elders hastened to retrack the peace process. Red Cloud declared the raiding season over. Lakota messengers from the Missouri and the North Platte soon brought news of a major American peace initiative. Initial talks were scheduled at Fort Sully—a new post near the site of the old Fort Pierre—for October.14
Red Cloud’s war council refused to attend both the Fort Sully talks and the follow-up councils at Fort Laramie. Reports of the treaty, concluded with friendly bands along the Missouri River, angered Oglala war leaders like Crazy Horse. Aid in agriculture was promised, with guarantees of government protection of Lakotas who took up farming. Potential signatories were reminded that annuities under the Horse Creek Treaty were due to expire. The scale of the promised twenty-year annuity increased about fourfold the annual per capita spending on the Lakotas—a significant inducement to accept the most sinister clause of all: signatory bands must withdraw from all routes of travel through their country, guaranteeing not to molest settlers.
Warrior society meetings nominated Red Cloud to speak for the tribe in subsequent negotiations, empowering him to reject any proposal that legitimized the Bozeman Trail. Runners were sent to other villages to forge a consensus on continuing the war until all troops were removed from north of the Platte.15
An uncommonly hard winter placed strains on the hardliners’ position. Amid howling blizzards, droves of horses starved to death in the drifts. Mothers hacked at the animals’ frozen flanks to feed their hungry families. Resolve wavered. Upper Platte agent Vital Jarrot sent out more messengers, and Man Afraid of His Horse tried to build a new consensus on their proposals. The Hunkpatila chief was surely dismayed at Red Cloud’s usurpation of his diplomatic seniority. Despite its shortcomings, the Fort Sully accord did address the issues that had preoccupied him for the past six years. Not only would Lakotas who engaged in farming receive aid in making the transition from the hunting life, their territorial rights would be guaranteed by the government. If the controversial clause about withdrawal from settler routes could be finessed, the treaty might be sold as providing to the Lakotas the best of both worlds.16
In a high-risk strategy that compromised his authority with his young men, Man Afraid of His Horse, late in January 1866, sent word that one hundred lodges of northern Oglalas wished to plant near Fort Laramie that spring. According to the treaty, such a unit could select its own farming location and receive assistance in plowing, as well as a dedicated blacksmith—always in demand for gun repair and maintenance. Man Afraid of His Horse’s messengers urged Jarrot to ensure a rapid resolution of that issue, lest war resume once good weather fattened stock and refilled meat parfleches.
Even within Man Afraid of His Horse’s own Hunkpatila band, many leaders were disinclined to follow him. Worm began to distance himself from the counsel of the older chief. Worm’s younger half-brother Little Hawk, who at thirty was only four years Crazy Horse’s senior, had emerged as a key war leader in the old Standing Bull tiyospaye. He even more vigorously upheld the antitreaty line. Crazy Horse silently endorsed the skepticism of his “fathers” on the issue. Almost imperceptibly, Crazy Horse’s family was shifting away from the consensus that Man Afraid of His Horse had imposed on Hunkpatila politics for the past generation.17
But hunger bit deep. More messengers from Fort Laramie appeared. At talks on Powder River, even Red Cloud conceded he would visit Fort Laramie early in March. Hou’s of acclaim from the hungry, the old, and the uncommitted met the speech, marking Red Cloud’s bid to extend his zone of influence beyond the irreconcilable. Spotted Tail, nominated by Brule chiefs and warriors as their tribal spokesman, also moved down to the
fort, determined to forge a consensus around accommodation. Agent Jarrot urged the treaty commissioners to hurry west, lest a unique window of opportunity close.18
When he arrived at Fort Laramie, on March 12, Red Cloud undermined the urgency of Man Afraid of His Horse and Agent Jarrot. The people were hungry and the stock poor, he assured treaty commissioners; it would take until late May to gather the bands. In the meantime he would guarantee the de facto truce that had held since the fall. A late spring conclave ensured that Lakotas and officials met on equal terms: replenished stores meant less chance of hungry chiefs signing agreements in return for handouts. Chairman of the commissioners Edward B. Taylor agreed to proceedings opening June 1. Red Cloud rode home in triumph. Without committing the Oglalas to anything, he brought presents of tobacco and provisions to prime his own status networks.19
Sensing the limitations of his position, Man Afraid of His Horse moved his stance closer to Red Cloud’s, but the Bad Face leader shifted gear too as bands regathered along the upper Belle Fourche. When a war party of Oglalas and Miniconjous formed to break the truce, Red Cloud led a line of chiefs and akicita to intercept the warriors, killing their ponies and slashing their tipi covers. The objective of the raiders is not known, but Fort Reno was the most likely target. As such, the warriors might have included Crazy Horse. The incident ended Red Cloud’s honeymoon period as warrior spokesman.20
During May, as Jarrot had predicted, the greening grass hardened warrior opinion. War leaders, including Crazy Horse, refused to travel to Fort Laramie. Instead, a deputation of chiefs and akicita was sent to meet the commissioners, assess their terms, and report. The ranking Oglalas were Red Cloud, retaining his status as tribal spokesman, chiefs Man Afraid of His Horse and Sitting Bear, and Bad Face war chief Trunk and his Hunkpatila counterpart Buffalo Tongue. Red Leaf and Iron Shell represented the Brule bands that hunted in the Powder River country. At Fort Laramie they found two thousand tractable southern Brules, southern Oglalas, and Loafers. Their leaders, including the new Brule head chief Spotted Tail, had no interest in the Powder River hunting grounds and were viewed with skepticism by the war councils.21
Talks finally opened on June 5. The emollient Taylor read a prepared address explaining that the government desired not to buy Lakota lands but simply to secure a right-of-way through the hunting grounds to the Montana goldfields. Amid promises of generous compensation for the loss of game resources, Taylor let slip that the “Great Father does not wish to keep many soldiers in this country,” a tacit acknowledgement that the garrisoning of the Powder River country was under consideration.22
The following day the council was suspended with a series of short statements—nuanced in various grades of reluctance—by which Spotted Tail, Red Leaf, and Man Afraid of His Horse each joined Red Cloud in stating that “a treaty could and would be made” to permit the controversial right-of-way23 Such an outcome, however, needed the presence of all. Speeches closed with a request that messengers be sent with presents to the villages on White River, inviting them to attend a second round of talks. Agreement could then be validated by a full and open council.
On June 8 the chiefs departed for White River with a packtrain of provisions, assuring Taylor they would return in four days’ time, ready to restart talks on the thirteenth. The two-day hiatus and the deployment of the key chiefs indicate that initial messengers had met a stony reception. This was made clear when Bad Face warriors intercepted a commission messenger bound for the Cheyenne village on Powder River: they quirted him soundly and sent him packing back to Fort Laramie. Their words of warning revealed clearly the hardening of public attitudes. While the elders and most band chiefs stood for peace, warrior society meetings favored resuming the war. Most significant, the general mood in private lodges was moving against concessions: “[T]here was no desire for peace” among the people at large. Crazy Horse and like-minded warriors acclaimed the move away from accommodation.24
A couple of days of hard debate followed the chiefs’ return to White River. Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse were confirmed as tribal negotiators, but Crazy Horse and the other war leaders still refused to permit the village to join the treaty conclave. Band-level distinctions are detectable, with Bad Face speakers declaring Crazy Woman Creek a deadline beyond which intruders would face reprisals. Crazy Horse and the Hunkpatila warriors made an unexpected concession, acknowledging that Fort Reno might remain as long as traffic was routed from there west of the Bighorn Mountains, and only if the contingent of Winnebago scouts at the post be removed. Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse were instructed to participate in no further treaty sessions until they had secured total agreement to this agenda from the friendly Lakotas around the fort.25
Returning on schedule, Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse cooperated closely, seeking to secure support from Spotted Tail and the protreaty faction in long talks and feasts through June 12 and 13. Both leaders consistently refused goodwill presents from the commissioners. As the afternoon of the thirteenth lengthened, a completely unforeseen turn of events created an irretrievable crisis. Seven hundred soldiers of the Eighteenth Infantry marched up the Overland Trail and went into camp south of the fort. Their commander, Colonel Henry B. Carrington, with disarming frankness told a Brule visitor that the troops were bound to garrison the Bozeman Trail. Conceding that Spotted Tail’s southern Brules would sign the agreement, Standing Elk warned Carrington that the “fighting men in that country have not come to Laramie, and you will have to fight them.”26
New messengers were dispatched to ask the war councils on White River to attend the talks, again to no effect. Both Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud made speeches openly opposing Carrington’s mission. The Hunkpatila chief was mortified by the crass timing of Carrington’s arrival, compounded by the colonel’s naive wish to act as a facilitator in the treaty talks.
Red Cloud’s response was more robust. On the fourteenth he delivered a stirring harangue, urging the protreaty faction to boycott talks. Red Cloud argued that the commissioners were treating the Lakotas like children, “pretending to negotiate for a country which they had already taken by Conquest.” For years the Americans had crowded the Lakotas onto smaller hunting grounds, he contended, but now all bands must unite and fight to preserve what land they retained. The war might be long, but Lakota unity and the justness of their cause would guarantee the ultimate victory. Spotted Tail and his supporters were unimpressed by Red Cloud’s rhetoric. At length, Red Cloud and his retinue of warriors withdrew, declaring that they would hold no further talks with the peace party.27
Man Afraid of His Horse stayed to hear out the day’s debate but was careful not to undermine Red Cloud’s position. On the following day an unscheduled meeting with Carrington and his officers resulted in angry words. “Great Father sends us presents and wants new road,” succinctly observed one speaker, “but white chief goes with soldiers to steal road before Indian say yes or no!” Both leaders warned the officers that to march north of Fort Reno meant war; Buffalo Tongue, speaking for the Hunkpatila akicita, assented. Restricting threats to a war of stock theft—still a stage down from blood reprisals—the Oglala leaders warned that “in two moons the command would not have a hoof left.” Outside the fort, the two chiefs were observed ordering their followers to strike tipis. Overnight the Oglalas and northern Brules hurried across the North Platte to join their villages. By morning of the sixteenth, only the peace party remained at the fort.28
In early July, the northern Oglalas gathered for the tribal Sun Dance high up Tongue River. Arrivals from Fort Laramie brought news that a second round of talks had resulted in a treaty signed by Spotted Tail, his Brule headmen, and an Oglala contingent headed by Big Mouth. Warriors were enraged at the news and quarreled fiercely with one incoming party packing treaty presents.29
The atmosphere only deepened divisions between war proponents and the civil leadership. These divisions were readily apparent to a party of Cheyenne chiefs invited to attend
the Sun Dance holy days. Away from the reverential hush of the dance arbor, the Cheyennes learned of deep splits. “[N]early all the old men oppose any contests with the whites,” they observed, reflecting the elders’ continued commitment to peace. Warrior society meetings had openly flouted the chiefs’ claim to tribal authority and had vetoed them as candidates for the year’s appointment of Deciders. The war council assumed control of the village. Older war leaders such as Black Twin, of the Bad Faces, the Hunkpatila Buffalo Tongue, and the Oyuhpe Big Road, were invested in the seats of honor at the back of the council shade. First among equals was Red Cloud, recognized as supreme war chief, blotahunka ataya.30
On July 13, scouts reported that Carrington had halted at Little Piney Creek and had begun construction of a major post, Fort Phil Kearny. “White man lies and steals,” Red Cloud fulminated to the Cheyennes, “My lodges were many, but now they are few. The white man wants all. The white man must fight, and the Indian will die where his fathers died.” Only if Carrington withdrew to Fort Reno would the Lakotas concede peace. Red Cloud closed his speech with a veiled threat: the Cheyennes must join the Lakotas in fighting the intruders and preventing any extension of the chain of forts.31
The war council was keen to widen the scope of hostilities. Man Afraid of His Horse moved to distance himself from Red Cloud, taking a position that a negotiated solution must be found to the new crisis. As soon as the Sun Dance ended, he led his camp a day’s journey down Tongue River, the better to formulate an independent policy. Carrington’s rising stockade ruptured Hunkpatila band solidarity. The ranking akicita Buffalo Tongue gathered a faction of war supporters, including Crazy Horse, Little Hawk, and the band chief’s nominated heir, Young Man Afraid of His Horse. Reflecting their commitment to terminating Fort Reno, the dissidents formed a war camp along the middle Powder, scouting parties infesting the Bozeman Trail. Buffalo Tongue declared that his party would “cut off further approach of travel” by troops and civilian trains.32
CRAZY HORSE Page 14