To Crazy Horse and Little Hawk, none of their objectives had been met. Not only had the commissioners failed to close the Bozeman, reinforcements continued to pass up the trail. As if that were not enough, another five hundred soldiers were locating a fourth post, dubbed Fort Fetterman, to anchor the trail on the upper North Platte. News of this development forced a crisis in the village. Forty years later, Horn Chips recalled that this was the only time he and his hunka were separated: “Crazy Horse went north and [Horn] Chips came with the white people.” Forty lodges, the personal kindreds of Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Leaf, started for the Platte forks. A single tipi—possibly Horn Chips’ family—hurried south, to arrive in Spotted Tail’s village on July 8 and announce the imminent arrival of the two chiefs.13
The news was premature. Although sources fall silent, it is clear that akicita deployed to prevent their chief’s departure. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk were doubtless prime articulators of a movement to discredit the peace faction; after the diplomatic disaster, the mood of the village swung again behind them. Everywhere grass was up and the horses fattening. News from Red Cloud hastened the drift back to hostilities. His village was moving up Tongue River toward the Sun Dance rendezvous. After a month of desultory raids, a larger war party led by Yellow Hand reopened hostilities against Fort Phil Kearny on June 12, pointedly the day Man Afraid of His Horse met the commissioners. Again, on the eighteenth, the war party clashed with a cavalry patrol. Yellow Hand revived the decoy tactic but found the troops reluctant to bite. A final blow in this minicampaign was struck on June 30. The war party turned homeward to prepare for the Sun Dance.14
During the first days of July, the Man Afraid of His Horse village opened a cautious dialogue with Red Cloud. Mutual suspicion ran deep, and recriminations deteriorated into an ugly brawl when Bad Face warriors rode into the Hunkpatila camp. Elders intervened to prevent bloodshed. Crazy Horse and his comrades had a part to play, too, and things were patched up after Man Afraid of His Horse and the other chiefs produced the ammunition they had received through trade. In giveaways on the campground, they tried to create obligations among their Bad Face counterparts, presents of powder and ball committing the recipients to restoring reciprocity.15
Nevertheless, the chiefs favoring negotiations were marginalized again. Hunkpatila warriors forbade further talks, flatly declaring their chiefs to be fools. “The chiefs took the part of the whites,” they rebuked, “they got the whites into our country, now the Buffalo are scarce and we can hardly live.”16
The evidence indicates that Crazy Horse and Young Man Afraid of His Horse, as the band’s ranking war leaders, represented the Hunkpatilas in the war councils to plan an offensive after the Sun Dance. Oglalas, Miniconjous, northern Brules—all agreed on a new principle articulated by Red Cloud: resumption of negotiations was impossible until the Bozeman Trail posts were abandoned. Crazy Horse acclaimed the new diplomatic bottom line. Tribal speakers declared that the Oglalas “were all determined to make war this summer [even] more actively than last.” Akicita announced that no one would be permitted to travel to the Platte. Miniconjous, Sans Arcs, and Cheyennes joined the Oglalas, and a massive warrior party rode into the Bighorn foothills to force a trade for horses with the nervous Crows.17
For the Sun Dance, the gathering moved to the Little Bighorn, only forty miles from Fort C. F. Smith. Confident of victory, war leaders met to discuss strategy. Oglalas favored another attack on Fort Phil Kearny; most Cheyennes wanted to attack the Bighorn post. On the morning of July 31, a final council was held. Red Cloud forcefully argued that the first blow fall on Fort Phil Kearny: after it was destroyed, the alliance might take out the post on the Bighorn. Several Cheyennes and Miniconjous disagreed, and after a bitter quarrel, the leaders decided to split their force. Most Cheyennes rode to Fort C. F. Smith, while the Oglalas, Sans Arcs, and some straggling Miniconjous and Cheyennes would ride the one hundred miles to attack the fort on Little Piney Creek.18
The war party immediately set out, but hasty preparations showed in a lack of coordination. This operation would not be conducted with the precision and control High Backbone had demonstrated the previous winter. No blotahunka led the expedition; instead, knots of warriors formed around the “big braves” like Red Cloud, High Backbone, the Sans Arc Thunder Hawk, and Fast Thunder of the Oyuhpes. The largest group strung behind Crazy Horse, flanked by Young Man Afraid of His Horse. Their strength showed the solidarity of the Hunkpatila band in its new war front. The fifty or so Cheyennes led by Ice also clustered around Crazy Horse, fired by the inspirational example the Hunkpatila warrior now represented even to non-Lakotas.
Late on August 1, the war party climbed out of the Peno Creek valley to survey the environs of Fort Phil Kearny. Wood trains were once more busy in the pinewooded foothills, and the party quickly agreed to attack first the woodcutters’ camp six miles west of the fort. Between the big and little forks of Piney Creek lay a high meadow a mile or so square. Near the center, the wood party’s escort, Company C, Twenty-seventh Infantry, had formed a corral of fourteen wagon boxes stripped of their running gear and laid in an oval to provide nighttime security for the wood train’s livestock. On the south side of the corral was pitched a line of wall tents. The woodcutters were working the lower pinery, a mile south across Little Piney Creek, guarded by four soldiers. At the creek crossing, three more sentries manned a picket post.
In the early hours of August 2, the war party, at least six hundred strong, got into position, then filtered west along the hills north of Big Piney. Parties of warriors were still arriving, and smoke signals plumed the foothills soon after daybreak. Strategy called for the meadow to be surrounded, and before daylight, Crazy Horse led about half the force in a wide detour upstream, fording the creek and striking across the valley to enter the woods beyond Little Piney. Silently they approached the woodcutters’ camp deep in the timber, finding a clearing dotted with sawyers’ gear, tents, wagons, and smoking breakfast fires. One train had already started for the fort, and men had unhitched oxen and mules to load the second train with cordwood. Briefly, the warriors waited for the signal to attack, an assault to be synchronized with a rush on the mule herd and a charge on the corral from beyond the Big Piney.
Seven scouts led by High Backbone made the bid for the herd. Whipping their ponies into a dead run, they charged over the meadow. Sleepy sentries at the picket post sprang to life and at seven hundred yards opened fire, dropping the lead warrior’s pony. Its rider scrambled up behind a comrade, and the charge continued. At sound of the shot, action broke out everywhere. Parties of warriors converged on the meadow, darting for the mule herd. A large force of dismounted warriors failed to drive off the animals, but sixty mounted braves galloped in, dispersing the herders and stampeding the mules behind Indian lines.
In the woods Crazy Horse led a charge that sliced into the woodcutters’ camp. Alerted by the shots, most of the civilians and their escort had broken for the hills. An unfortunate four woodcutters were caught in the camp and killed by Crazy Horse’s party. Two soldiers were also killed in the retreat. The warriors looted the camp, burning the tents and wagons and carrying off arms and foodstuffs. Some warriors seemed more intent on eating than on fighting. Crazy Horse’s fifteen-year-old cousin, Eagle Elk, tried driving away a yoke of oxen. Most strung out in pursuit of the sentries who fled from the picket post toward the wagon boxes. The soldiers withdrew well, covering their retreat with a steady fire that felled Paints Yellow, an Oglala, and dropped the pony of Few Tails. In the timber Eagle Elk momentarily forgot the oxen and dashed across the meadow to rescue his cousin. From the corral, a sergeant raced out to lay down a covering fire for the sentries. Lead rained around Eagle Elk as he hauled back his pony and dashed for cover, Few Tails clinging behind him.
Inside the corral, Captain James W. Powell commanded a force of thirty-two men, including four civilians. Powell coolly watched the parties of warriors converging near the Little Piney. Riding in a circle form
ation that buzz-sawed closer with each pass, individual warriors charged to within yards of the corral—none nearer than Crazy Horse’s cousin Fast Thunder, reckoned the bravest warrior in the battle. The command hunkered under cover, but they had an advantage unsuspected by the Indians. The warriors were used to the infantry being armed with single-shot muzzle-loading rifles, but in July, the garrison had been issued the new Springfield 1866 model breechloader. Although still single shot, the weapon was rapidly reloaded and reliable. Seven thousand rounds of ammunition lay at the defenders’ disposal. Now they faced hundreds of warriors streaming along the south side of the corral, leaning low behind their ponies’ necks as the soldiers dared the first volley.
Shots crashed out, felling ponies, unhorsing many warriors and wounding several more. Here lay the pause where determined warriors might overwhelm the wagons, but a fresh volley barked, dropping more ponies. The warriors fell away to regroup beyond rifle range. The soldiers observed many strip to the breechclout, as if for close combat. A few warriors lost all interest in the fight and fell to feasting on captured oxen before leaving the field. On a hill one half-mile east of the corral, a group of older war leaders including Red Cloud conferred. They pointed out that the curving bank of the Big Piney afforded cover within one hundred yards of the northwest side of the corral. A dry gully feeding the creek offered access for a foot charge below the soldiers’ field of fire. Action shifted to this sector of the field. Gun-armed marksmen leveled a dangerous fire into the corral, killing Lieutenant John C. Jenness and two privates. Bowmen lobbed fire arrows that ignited hay and a month’s accumulation of dried dung. During the lull, Powell’s command worked tirelessly, dowsing fires, pooling scanty water supplies, and downing the tents that offered warrior cover. Scores of warriors were visible watching from the low hills or idling their ponies over the meadow.
As the baking morning drew toward noon, hundreds of warriors dismounted in the creek bottom and advanced in regular formation up the gully, voices raised in a low chant. At their head marched Red Cloud’s nephew Lone Man, distinguished by a magnificent headdress. Within one hundred yards of the corral, they broke from the swale and charged forward in a wedge formation. Lone Man made a perfect target for the soldiers and fell dead, but the warriors advanced in broad line, only buckling when concentrated fire poured into their right flank. The warriors melted back into the swales, mounting little sallies that zigzagged from gully to gully, trying to drag away their dead and wounded. Two or three smaller charges on foot failed to carry the position, and four Miniconjous lost their lives in dashes to within feet of the corral.
As Indian will was sapped, the warriors regrouped below Red Cloud’s position, summoned by mirror flashes and galloping messengers. Powell anxiously observed the knots of spectators dissolve to join the massing throng. A last mounted charge was driven in from the Little Piney, for the loss of one Cheyenne. Half-heartedly, warriors tried setting fire to the grass. Powell’s sharpshooters targeted the hilltop conference of war leaders, and Red Cloud’s group rapidly dispersed as the Spring-fields threw up dust around their horses’ hooves. Down the trail, the tardy relief column appeared and lobbed a howitzer shell among the warriors. After four hours of action, it was time to leave the field. Crazy Horse, High Backbone, and Thunder Hawk each called to their followers that the fight was over. The warriors mounted and withdrew northward, leaving the field to Powell’s doughty fighters and the welcome reinforcements. The Wagon Box Fight was over.19
It was time to take stock when the villages regrouped on the Rosebud. Cheyennes returning from the August 1 assault on Fort C. F. Smith could report a nearly identical repulse. Undoubtedly, warriors were concerned about the improved firepower of their foes, but the Lakotas and Cheyennes were not demoralized. Their losses were far from the hundreds soon claimed by Americans keen to expunge the memory of the Fetterman disaster, and their tally of stolen stock had risen again. Moreover, Red Cloud’s strategic aims had been met. The Bozeman Trail had been closed to civilian traffic, and its strengthened garrisons forced onto the defensive. Supply trains were harried between the North Platte and the Bighorn, forcing the government to contemplate the unthinkable: closing the trail and removing the contentious garrisons.
Nevertheless, disappointment at a wasted opportunity may have been uppermost in Crazy Horse’s mind as the villages prepared to scatter. Dissension and hasty rethinking of strategy had spoiled what should have been a victory as well timed as that over Fetterman. The failure to implement the clear command structure mastered by High Backbone in December had led to a bewildering spinoff of mini-battles as warriors chased stock, pursued stragglers, or simply sat out the fight. Crazy Horse had fallen on the woodcamp in good time, but when his force should have joined in overwhelming the wagon box corral, it was occupied in looting. Fifteen crucial minutes between the first shots and the massed charge on the corral were lost, and the battle with it. Behind their defenses, Powell’s men were able to deploy their superior firepower and repeatedly repulse the most spirited charges.
Although five years would pass before he fought another large-scale action against troops, the Wagon Box Fight was a lesson not lost on Crazy Horse. Weaponry was a clear issue. Judging from the random sampling of bullet wounds sustained by Fetterman’s men, less than 10 percent of warriors were equipped with firearms—and most of them were still the smoothbore flintlocks of the robe trade era. In the following decade, Lakotas would systematically seek to upgrade their firearms, so that at surrender in 1877, more than 50 percent of Crazy Horse’s warriors would turn in a gun—a figure discounting the weapons they were able to cache. Moreover, although flintlock trade guns remained the core of their armory, more warriors tried to keep up with technological developments. Crazy Horse paid tribute to the weapon that won the Wagon Box Fight: by the early 1870s he owned a Springfield breechloader. Improved repeating rifles were also desirable, commanding the price of a good horse or a mule from traders operating without benefit of a license. By the Sioux War of 1876, about one in ten Lakota warriors was armed with a repeater. Crazy Horse would turn in no fewer than three Winchesters upon surrender.
The fighting around Fort Phil Kearny taught wider lessons too. Crazy Horse was temperamentally unsuited to the kind of fixed-position strategy that High Backbone had so devastatingly implemented against Fetterman—a victory reminiscent of woodland Indian warfare against colonial period troops. Massed foot charges, another standard tactic in prehorse Lakota warfare, were employed at the Wagon Box Fight—with disastrous results against improved firepower. All Crazy Horse’s instincts lay in open action, the rapid deployment of mounted warriors against a moving foe. The kicamnayan tactic of mastering the moment of maximum instability favored fluid fighting in open terrain. In future battles he knew that he must keep the combat open and mobile, keep the soldiers on the run, and prevent them from securing a permanent defensive position. He would be prepared to risk much to dislodge the enemy from an unsatisfactory position, but would as quickly drop a costly assault on an impregnable defense. In a fluid fight, mounted warriors might count on their better riding skills, their shock and rapid-response capabilities, to isolate troop units. Deprived of the soldiers’ greatest advantage—a coordinated command structure that overrode all sectional interests—the troops could be defeated piecemeal; of that Crazy Horse had been convinced in the Fetterman battle. In such fighting, the individualistic ethos of the Plains Indian warrior could better be deployed, turned to advantage against a foe prone to panic if prescribed tactical situations broke down. When full-scale warfare returned to the Powder River country, in 1876, Crazy Horse would have had time to digest these lessons.
As Crazy Horse’s summer activities climaxed in the weeks following the Sun Dance, high diplomacy one thousand miles east was shaping the contours of the Lakota future. Washington policymakers turned to address the issue of Indian affairs with a renewed zeal following the end of the Civil War. Hawkish army chiefs and social improvers agreed that Indians sho
uld be excluded from a wide belt of the central plains. Two massive tracts of land were proposed, one north of Nebraska, the other south of Kansas, as reservations for the tribes of the northern and southern plains. Such a scheme isolated the crucial transcontinental routes along the Platte and Arkansas rivers from Indian interference, making the job of the army easier by separating the warlike nomads of the high plains into distinct regional blocs, and defining a swath of territory off-limits to Indians and subject to army jurisdiction.
The proposal satisfied Indian policy radicals by securing legally guaranteed reservations where the Indians could be protected from the worst effects of American civilization. The tribes would be culturally debriefed, and reeducated in the prevailing Christian, agrarian ethos to become yeoman homesteaders tilling the soil. Supported in the crucial transition years by increased subsistence spending on food, clothing, and hardware, Indians were expected to react with simple gratitude and be fully absorbed into the national mainstream within a decade. Thankless recalcitrants might regretfully be turned over to the military.
Such was the paradigm underlying the Indian policy review in the summer of 1867. On July 20 an act empowered the creation of a new Indian Peace Commission. Comprising a cross-section of military and civilian opinion, the commission was instructed to review once more the causes of Indian hostility, but this time their remit was extended to remove those causes, a concession that might have startling consequences for the Bozeman Trail garrisons. Army chiefs were loath to sacrifice the route, but Indian resistance had rendered it not a route to Manifest Destiny but an economic liability. And every westward mile of the transcontinental railroad being built across Nebraska reduced the significance of other routes over the plains. The generals were reluctantly prepared to pull back their posts and pour men and materiel into holding the Union Pacific line.20
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