Convening in St. Louis in August, the commissioners wasted no time in preparing the way for their progress. Loafer messengers were once more recruited, inviting the Oglala and Brule chiefs to meet the commission at Fort Laramie at the next full moon, September 13.21
Immediately following the Wagon Box Fight, the villages had scattered. The Man Afraid of His Horse village had returned to the middle Powder valley, where the peace chiefs remained discredited. Authority was recalled from the Deciders and vested in a thirty-man akicita force. Crazy Horse was among its leaders, with Little Hawk one of the leading speakers. The war council approved a new round of attacks along the southern Bozeman. On August 14 and 16 skirmishing resumed around Fort Reno, and over the next week Crazy Horse’s raiders began targeting work details building Fort Fetterman on the North Platte.22
Early in September, the messengers from Fort Laramie entered the village. The initial response was muted. Akicita spokesmen reiterated that no negotiations were possible until the Bozeman Trail was abandoned. Man Afraid of His Horse would not publicly depart from this line, but he questioned the messengers closely and readily detected the shift in American opinion: closure of the contentious road was finally negotiable. The war council conceded that a party of five Oglalas and one Brule should accompany the messengers to Fort Laramie. They should remain there four nights, check the veracity of the messengers’ news, and report back. Meanwhile envoys were sent to invite Bad Faces and Miniconjous to attend talks at the village. Black Twin hurried down to counsel; Lone Horn appeared with some Crow guests; and a Cheyenne camp arrived, so that by late September the village numbered three hundred lodges.23
Despite initial optimism, the latest round of talks was repeatedly postponed and finally foundered. The commissioners were delayed in dealing with the southern Plains tribes. At Fort Laramie, Lakota messengers were badly treated. Moreover, the real possibility of post closure convinced some that this was no time to quit the armed struggle. Crazy Horse and the Hunkpatila militants once more prevented Man Afraid of His Horse from attending talks, delivering a flat rejection of negotiation: “[T]he whites have always deceived them and they no longer wish to come at their call.”24
Late in October, the Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse villages reunited for fall hunts. The war councils approved a new round of raids along the seventy-mile stretch of the Bozeman Trail, centering on Fort Phil Kearny. No large-scale campaign like the previous winter’s was planned, and Fort Reno was dropped as a target. Instead, small war parties were permitted to target details patrolling the trail. Warriors first struck at the Crazy Woman crossing on October 20, losing one man; six days later, they attacked a cavalry patrol north of the fort. Early in November a supply train started for Fort C. F. Smith, escorted by a detachment of the Twenty-seventh Infantry under command of Lieutenant E. R. P. Shurley On the fourth, the train wound along the course of Goose Creek a few miles north of modern Sheridan, Wyoming. The village was nearby, but with most of the warriors absent, a party of old men and boys rode over to investigate. Crazy Horse was present with a handful of fighting men, and as they scanned the line of covered wagons, they sketched out a strategy. Skylined atop a ridge, two outriders made a handsome target. A well-concerted fire tore into the escort, killing one soldier and wounding four more, including Lieutenant Shurley. Teamsters whipped up their mules, and the train hurried northward, abandoning two sutler’s wagons. Satisfied with their coup, the ad hoc war party looted the wagons and drove one home. A rich stock of army blankets was among the booty. Crazy Horse is said to have selected a fine scarlet blanket for himself, and to have worn it until his death.25
Later in the month, after fall hunting closed, Red Cloud’s village remained in the Tongue River drainage, but Man Afraid of His Horse moved east to the Powder south of Clear Fork. The two men remained in dialogue. Further raids followed, hitting patrols at Crazy Woman again on November 13, and at Lake De Smet on the 22nd. At this point, with war parties still in the field, a new peace initiative took hold. The commissioners outlined a new round of talks early the following summer to be held either at Fort Rice or at Fort Phil Kearny. They stated that a final decision on the future of the Bozeman Trail could not be made yet but proposed a truce, asking that Red Cloud and other chiefs accept a ceasefire until negotiations started. Finally, they were leaving a special agent at Fort Laramie to oversee preliminary negotiations through the winter: he would be happy to receive visits from the Lakota chiefs.26
A party of Bad Face scouts met the messengers and led them into Man Afraid of His Horse’s village. Sensing a final breakthrough, the Hunkpatila chief moved firmly to consolidate village opinion. His brother Yellow Eagle, brother-in-law Blue Handle, Worm, and Little Hawk represented the other Hunkpatila tiyospaye. Crazy Horse was prominent among the war leaders the chief would have been careful to cultivate. A prized gift, or the pledge of a famous pony, may have accompanied the wand inviting Crazy Horse to feast with the band council. Man Afraid of His Horse forcefully presented the case for accepting the ceasefire proposal—the simple fact that, with winter approaching, the Bozeman Trail would be closed to all traffic. By spring, Lakota negotiators would have gauged the sincerity of the peace commission and could recommend a full peace or resumption of hostilities.
The chief quickly convinced the council that they had nothing to lose by agreeing to the truce. One by one, Worm and the other headmen assented and the pipe was passed, pledging each to the ceasefire. Crazy Horse’s words were doubtless few and marked by a wary caution: oral tradition indicates “he decided to remain aloof” from the whole peace process, but he did not attempt to thwart negotiations. He would honor the truce, he tacitly agreed, until next spring; accepting the pipe, he drew a whiff and passed it along the arc of headmen.27
With his key war leader at least tentatively on board, Man Afraid of His Horse wasted no time in preparing a message for Red Cloud. Red Cloud saw the logic in the ceasefire proposal. Red Cloud was in the true sense a strategic war chief: he was fighting not a war of race hatred, but a contest for a set of explicit objectives. He saw those objectives now within his grasp. Once all the war parties were in, no more would be permitted out, Red Cloud promised. Tell the special agent, Red Cloud concluded, “I will come in and see him” once all was arranged.28
At the very end of November, 150 lodges met in general council. A party of fourteen young men and four women was deputed to meet the special agent. The party was led by Buffalo Tongue and by Crazy Horse’s comrade Yellow Eagle III, son of the Hunkpatila second chief. Since the numbers exactly match the officers and female singers of the White Packstrap Society, this warrior club was probably prepared to support its founder’s bid to negotiate a new peace treaty. Sounding out the special agent, the envoys were to assure him that Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Leaf would visit the fort before midwinter. Red Cloud too hoped to make the trip if his schedule permitted; if not, Black Twin might represent the Bad Face council.29
A new spirit of reconciliation marked relationships between the Oglala bands. Diplomacy was synchronized, both villages ordering the suspension of war parties. Messengers kept each informed of developments in their respective spheres. Once more spokesmen stressed the unity of Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud in the round of preliminary talks with commission special agent A. T Chamblin at Fort Laramie, and his counterpart H. M. Mathews at Fort Phil Kearny.30
On the Platte, diplomacy opened when the White Packstrap officers met Chamblin on December 6–8. Two larger deputations followed over the next month. They stated that they would seek to secure a general agreement for a treaty council at Fort Laramie. As he had done two years earlier, Man Afraid of His Horse argued for a tight schedule, proposing mid-April as the date.31
On Rosebud Creek the White Horse Owners deputed Red Cloud’s brother Spider as its principal negotiator for the winter. Meeting with Mathews at Fort Phil Kearny early in January, Spider stipulated the closure of all three posts. It was the first time a Bad Face repres
entative had included Fort Reno in his demands. The move assured Crazy Horse and Little Hawk that their agenda was being addressed, keeping intact the fragile consensus for peace.32
In March the two northern Oglala villages reunited high up the Little Powder. Almost immediately, positive word arrived that the War Department had ordered the Bozeman Trail posts abandoned. It was left to warrior societies to debate the parameters of a new modus vivendi with the United States. As one of the new generation of war leaders whose victories had forced the Americans to terms, Crazy Horse was a key player in these debates. Political engagement was still anathema to him, but the time spent with Sitting Bull had helped Crazy Horse shape instinctive beliefs into a consistent set of policies. Reflecting renewed harmony between chiefs and warriors, peace was to be restored with the Americans. Assuming the Bozeman Trail was closed, and no further trespass occurred in the interior of the Lakota domain, hostilities would permanently end. Trade, as the guarantor of interethnic cooperation, should be reinstated immediately.
So much reflected the restoration of the status quo. Other measures the warriors insisted on were more radical. Drastically redrawing the diplomatic paradigm established by the treaty of 1851, they demanded a minimalist peace, one without annuity goods in exchange for rights-of-way. Treaty presents, distinguished as “peace goods,” were acceptable in the spirit of goodwill gifts “on the prairie.” In return, the northern Oglalas and northern Brules were willing to concede all routes south of the North Platte. The warriors wished no more goods: they expected to trade for their necessities as of old—. “not to get goods,” they emphasized, “without trading for them.” They specifically named Fort Laramie as their favored place of trading: the very term “agency” —owakpamni, referring to the distribution of annuities—was dropped in favor of the less divisive “trading post.” Finally, the warriors accorded Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse the roles of joint negotiators with the commission. Messengers were sent to announce that the northern Oglalas would arrive at Fort Laramie late in April.33
Meanwhile in Washington, the commission was putting the finishing touches to the treaty it would offer to the northern plains tribes. Its central clauses established the Great Sioux Reservation, bounded on the east by the Missouri River, on the south by the northern border of Nebraska, on the west by the 104th degree of longitude, and on the north by the 46th parallel. Comprising the western half of the present state of South Dakota, the reservation embraced the old Lakota heartland between the Missouri and the Black Hills. Elaborate clauses provided for the rapid transformation of the Lakotas from hunters to homesteaders. From the common pool of reservation land, every head of family would be guaranteed exclusive ownership of up to 320 acres suitable for agriculture. For variable terms, cooperating Indians would receive free seeds, cattle, agricultural implements, and comprehensive training in modern farming techniques.
Education was a priority of the document, with the government pledged to provide a schoolhouse with resident teacher for every thirty children enrolled. Physicians, farmers, carpenters, and other craftsmen would also be payrolled by the Interior Department to serve the Indian community. For a term of thirty years, the United States agreed to supply annually clothing for every man, woman, and child. The commissioners were unwarrantedly optimistic about the time it would take for Lakota farmers to become self-sufficient. To fill the gap, subsistence rations of meat and flour were pledged for every person over the age of four for four years from date of enrollment on the reservation.34
These clauses satisfied the aspirations of radicals and reformers on and outside the commission and went some way toward fulfilling the needs of Indians not wedded to the old nomadic life. Many bands living along the Missouri no longer had access to rich hunting grounds: they knew that a new economic solution was imperative to the Lakota future. Meeting the westbound commissioners in early April, Spotted Tail also extended personal support for the reservation scheme.
The commissioners finally arrived at Fort Laramie on April 10. Immediately they dispatched runners to hurry in those bands still in the north. The northern Oglalas had grouped in four camps totalling 315 lodges along the northwest edge of the Black Hills: reflecting their renewed ideology of cooperation, Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse remained in a single camp. Crazy Horse was probably also in the camp, ninety lodges strong on Bear Lodge Creek. Councils debated the news from Fort Laramie.35
The elaborate plans for a farming future held little attraction for Crazy Horse and his peers, but the runners indicated that the commissioners had approved territorial concessions that went some way toward addressing the warrior society terms. Two zones of hunting range, distinct from the reservation, had been agreed to, “so long as the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase.” In response to the demands of Spotted Tail and others, the commissioners extended one zone south, across western Nebraska to the Republican River. The second would comprise the region immediately west of the reservation, “north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains.” The northern boundary of this “unceded Indian territory” was left tantalizingly vague, but the concession meant that the Powder River country was exempt from American occupation and trespass. In a bid to hasten in the northern chiefs, the commissioners guaranteed the abandonment of the Bozeman Trail and its garrisons “within ninety days after the conclusion of peace with all the bands of the Sioux Nation.”36
Testing the commission’s good faith, a deputation of chiefs and warriors parleyed at Fort Phil Kearny on April 8. The garrison seemed in no hurry to leave, and new unease gripped the Oglala camps. The Oyuhpes were the first to oppose going to Fort Laramie. The band council made a vague undertaking to join Miniconjou relatives in a second round of talks on the Missouri, scheduled to start in early June. Capitalizing on the uncertainty, Hunkpapa envoys from Sitting Bull were drawing Sans Arcs and Miniconjous out of the peace camps, and several small war parties were launched into the peace zone south of the Platte. As messengers from Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse repeatedly warned of delays in the schedule, consensus began to unravel.37
Late in April, warrior society meetings withdrew all support for negotiations until the Bozeman Trail posts were physically abandoned. In traditions probably recalling these events, Crazy Horse is said to have rejected further negotiations over “False Papers.”38 Red Cloud and most Bad Faces and Oyuhpes ordered their camps moved west to the upper Tongue to monitor developments along the Bozeman. The Hunkpatilas were again divided. Frustrated, Man Afraid of His Horse remained committed to the treaty, but forty-five lodges of his band followed Yellow Eagle and Little Hawk west. Crazy Horse rode with his relatives. Early in May, Red Cloud sent the commissioners a message: “We are on the mountains looking down on the soldiers and the forts. When we see the soldiers moving away and the forts abandoned, then I will come down and talk.”39
Red Cloud’s son formed a war party to raid the Shoshones; chafing after months of idleness, Crazy Horse may well have joined it. In the Wind River valley, the Oglalas clashed with the enemy, but Red Cloud’s son was killed, and the warriors withdrew. By the time they returned to the Oglala camps, political events had taken a new turn. Messengers had brought news that the Brules had signed the treaty and that Man Afraid of His Horse had finally gone in to open talks with the peace commission. Reassurances had convinced the Hunkpatila leaders to follow their chief to Fort Laramie. Even Red Cloud agreed that he would soon follow. But the news of his son’s loss committed the Bad Face leader to sponsoring a war pipe against the Shoshones.40
Crazy Horse, still resisting any visit to Fort Laramie, remained on Tongue River, but in mid-June word from Little Hawk arrived of his reception at Fort Laramie. The post commander had approved issuing the Hunkpatila camp twenty-five beef cattle, while interpreter Charles E. Gueru handled the distribution of “peace goods” —. “blankets, cloth, cooking utensils, butchers’ knives, and some guns and ammunition.” Convinced b
y Man Afraid of His Horse that the peace was a fair one, and with the clear impression that they were under no compulsion to settle on the reservation, Yellow Eagle and Little Hawk touched the pen. Their message concluded with a request that all war parties terminate operations.41
The report meshed with the warrior society demands for a minimalist peace—closely enough to convince Crazy Horse to rejoin his relatives. Red Cloud’s people determined to remain in the north until the posts were visibly abandoned, but Crazy Horse hurried south. Man Afraid of His Horse impatiently laid plans for a separate Sun Dance southwest of the Black Hills. Pointedly, he issued no further invitations to Red Cloud. With the Bozeman Trail garrisons visibly gearing for abandonment, it was time at last to celebrate the victory of diplomacy.42
11
SHIRT OF HONOR
Summer had lengthened before the bands gathered in a single circle to offer the Sun Dance. At a spot high up the valley of the south fork of Cheyenne River, the cangleska wakan, or sacred hoop of tipis, stood on a wide flat of yellowing grass. Red Cloud’s people would remain in the north, but the circle still comprised as many as two hundred lodges, fronting a campground a half mile in diameter. The northeast quadrant of the hoop, abutting the camp entrance facing east toward the Black Hills, was occupied by the fifty-five tipis of the reunited Hunkpatila band. Still living in the unpretentious lodge of his father and stepmothers, Crazy Horse had no household of his own; but as ever, the poor and infirm knew that this family’s eldest son stinted no one in gifts from his herd and the bulging meat parfleches of Sun Dance time.1
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