When rearguard scouts indicated they had outpaced the pursuit, Crazy Horse ordered a halt along a timbered ridge. After the captured herd was turned out to graze and while men ate hastily from their pemmican wallets, shots suddenly rang out and an enemy dash swept away almost half the herd. The stampede drove off several of the warriors’ trained war ponies. While most of the party scrambled downhill into the wooded breaks, Crazy Horse turned his pony to form a hasty rearguard.
“Cousin,” he called to Eagle Elk, “be of courage and be brave. Let’s fight to the finish even if we have to be killed.” Two other mounted warriors joined the pair, and Crazy Horse told them to fan higher along the ridge, taking advantage of whatever cover they could find. Eagle Elk dismounted in a patch of timber and levered a rapid fire from his Winchester at the enemy atop the ridge. Crazy Horse, thumbing cartridges into his Springfield carbine, coolly combed the hillside with lead. Four more Lakotas rode up to reinforce the rearguard. “Everybody be of courage and let’s fight them,” came the war chief’s cry. “It would not do to see the enemy kill all of us. Fight them until some [of us] do get away alive. There has to be someone left to tell the tale.”40
The rearguard pressed uphill, but when Eagle Elk approached too closely, an enemy charge swept toward him. Circling, he galloped downhill to join the main party guarding their herd in the breaks. Four of the rearguard scrambled after him, leaving Crazy Horse and one comrade to deter the enemy advance. Slowly, with determined fire, they withdrew downhill in the twilight. With dark closing in, the enemy scattered homeward, and Crazy Horse urged his followers on a night ride through the hills. The party trekked into the Missouri bottom, dragged the bullboats out of the trees, and relaunched, as tired horses were whooped across the river.
When the warriors drove their nearly one hundred horses along the length of the moving village, however, they encountered an anticlimactic reception. Although Crazy Horse had demonstrated cool tactical acumen, bravery under fire, and the rarer capacity for protective care of his men, not a single coup had been counted nor scalp taken. The village was humming with word of the Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek, where Sitting Bull had staged a dramatic pageant of intertribal unity. Riding into the crowded dance arbor, Sitting Bull had asked one Lakota and one Cheyenne elder to present him their calumets. Then, his stripped body vivid with paint designs symbolizing his wakan helpers, he had danced toward the center pole, waving the pipe stems in mystic rapture. His painted war pony paced behind him as he approached the pole, retreated, approached again, all the time sweeping out his arms, declaiming, “I have nearly got them.” A fourth time his arms swept out, and then he closed the pipestems to his chest, as if surrounding his enemies. “We have them,” he proclaimed, holding up the calumets to the sky: “Wakan Tanka has given our enemies into our power. . . we are to wipe them out.” Seven hundred warrior voices joined his chant of thanksgiving.41
Crazy Horse talked with friends and relatives about the promise of victory. No one knew the identity of the enemy, but the petroglyph scratchings on the face of the Painted Rocks, just upstream of the Sun Dance site, now showed soldiers with their heads hanging down.42
The identity of the defeated enemies remained unclear, but Sitting Bull used the intertribal conclave to articulate an ideology of total resistance. Envoys from the agencies were expected to update the Northern Nation on the delegations’ business in Washington, and it was time to propound a rhetoric of unity. After the Sun Dance, Sitting Bull was ready to reveal his reflections on the crisis facing his people. One factor in the resounding Lakota silence following the invasion of the Black Hills was a general uncertainty about the region’s significance in a time of unprecedented crisis. To all Lakotas, it was the symbolic center of their domain, in Red Cloud’s phrase, “the head chief of the land.” It held powerful sacred connotations as the setting of ancient myths, the scene of vision quests, and the home of awesome spiritual beings. Awe readily translated into avoidance, however, for the Lakotas had never lived year round in the region. The Northern Nation roamed the high dry plains west and north of the Black Hills, and the agency Lakotas—having to think the unthinkable in this era of momentous change—were forced to consider the benefits of a sale. Sitting Bull knew that this would be the burden of the envoys’ message, and he moved to counter it.
Over half a century later, old people still remembered the persuasive sway of Sitting Bull’s oratory in the summer of 1875. It is easy to picture him on his feet within the crowded council shade, a slight limp favoring an old bullet wound, the stocky figure exuding an unassuming dignity as he turned to address the arc of elders, the warriors grouped behind them, and the outer press of women and children. Crazy Horse’s Miniconjou cousin Standing Bear recalled, “At this time I was about fifteen years old and I heard Sitting Bull say that the Black Hills was just like a food pack and therefore the Indians should stick to it.” Expanding on his theme, Sitting Bull reiterated, “That is the food pack of the people and when the poor have nothing to eat we can all go there and have something to eat.”
Like all successful political concepts, the idea of the “food pack” was both simple and suggestive. Standing Bear—and hundreds of others—went away and pondered. “At that time I just wondered about what he had said and I knew what he meant after thinking it over because I knew that the Black Hills were full of fish, animals, and lots of water, and I just felt that we Indians should stick to it. Indians would rove all around, but when they were in need of something, they could just go in there and get it.”43
Sitting Bull’s metaphor was characteristically precise. A food pack was a container for storing dried meat and vegetables. It identified the Black Hills, properly husbanded, as a guarantee against times of scarcity, an alternative to the reservation dole. The idea of selling them should be anathema to every right-thinking Lakota. As the round of councils lengthened, the confirming rumble of “hou, hou” echoed every iteration of the food pack theme.
As August, Moon of Black Cherries, opened, the expected envoys arrived from Red Cloud Agency. One hundred men strong, the party was met by a discouragingly hostile reception from the northern warriors. The leaders were Young Man Afraid of His Horse and Louis Richard, the half-Oglala brother of John Richard, Jr. Riding with them was Frank Grouard. They immediately called on Crazy Horse, and while the war chief hosted a private meal, Worm harangued the noisy Oglala circle “to listen to what we had to say.”44
The warriors’ anger reflected news from the Black Hills. Another military survey was assessing mining prospects; moreover, within the last six weeks, the number of miners had mushroomed to fifteen hundred—more men than the Oglala tribe could muster. Inside Crazy Horse’s tipi, the envoys announced a council of all Lakotas to be held in September between the two White River agencies. Following the breakdown of delegation talks, commissioners had been appointed to settle the Black Hills crisis. Young Man Afraid of His Horse sold the council as a pan-Lakota summit, an opportunity to forge a truly national policy. Crazy Horse was polite, his tone judicious and moderate. As the leader of the northern Oglala warriors, he stated that he had no objection to the council—. “all who wanted to go in and make this treaty could go,” he acknowledged.
Grouard pressed the point of the war chief’s own participation, but Crazy Horse demurred. “I don’t want to go,” he declared. But he repeated his commitment to consensus: “[W]hatever the headmen of the tribe concluded to do after hearing our plan, they could and would do.” The war chief even agreed to facilitate dialogue with the Hunkpapa hardliners in Sitting Bull’s tipi.
The following morning, a council of all adult males, over one thousand men, was convened on the campground, and the envoys delivered their formal invitation. Responding for the Miniconjous, Black Shield flatly refused to meet the commissioners: “All those that are in favor of selling their land from their children, let them go.”
Sitting Bull spoke to the same effect for the Hunkpapas, mocking Richard as the commissioners’ mou
thpiece: “Are you the Great God that made me, or was it the Great God that made me who sent you? If he asks me to come see him, I will go, but the Big Chief of the white men must come see me. I will not go to the reservation. I have no land to sell. There is plenty of game here for us. We have enough ammunition. We don’t want any white men here.”45 Sitting Bull ordered Grouard directly to tell the wasicu at Red Cloud that he would fight any Americans in his country from this time on. As long as the game remained, his people would never visit the agencies.
Sitting Bull resumed his seat. Eyes turned on the Oglala Deciders, but after an uneasy moment, Crazy Horse declined to speak. Instead, Little Hawk rose: “My friends, the other tribes have concluded not to go in, and I will have to say the same thing.” Over the next few hours, some one hundred speeches reiterated northern resolve and the determination of the envoys to promote their council as a national forum. After the envoys announced they would remain in camp for another three days, the northern chiefs conceded Crazy Horse’s private line—all who wished to attend might cross Tongue River and accompany the envoys to the agency.
The envoys spent an anxious night. According to Grouard, a faction of irreconcilables plotted their massacre, but Crazy Horse intervened to protect his relatives, invoking Lakota obligations of hospitality. “He said that he supposed that when anybody came in amongst them they would feed him, water him, and give him a smoke. He called the parties together who were the leaders of the proposed massacre, called them by name, and told them it would have to be stopped. He said: ‘My friends, whoever attempts to murder these people will have to fight me too.’” The plot fizzled out.
For the next two days, the envoys hosted talks. Although the Hunkpapas, Miniconjous, and Sans Arcs remained adamant, with the Oglalas the envoys made significant progress. Little Hawk had toed the Sitting Bull line, but in private talks, the other Deciders proved more amenable. To close relatives, Young Man Afraid of His Horse could reveal something of the complexity of the situation at Red Cloud. Far from simply selling out their birthright, the agency chiefs were seriously considering the future. With game palpably vanishing from the hunting grounds, the Americans might reclaim the unceded territory. Young Man Afraid of His Horse was among leaders proposing a new agency on Tongue River. If the government could be held to its treaty obligations, the depleted hunting grounds might subsist future generations of Lakotas as ranch lands.
Furthermore, the agency council had sent its own fact-finding mission to the Black Hills. Brigadier General George Crook, newly commanding the Department of the Platte, had convened a meeting of miners and issued a deadline—all must leave by August 15 or face military expulsion. At Red Cloud, the White Packstrap police welcomed the deadline, which would remove the miners “before the northern Indians came down to the great council.”46 Sure enough, Young Man Afraid of His Horse’s announcement de-escalated tensions. The key was Black Twin, and, after a year of conciliating Crazy Horse, he was ready to call in his political debts. Little Big Man would lead an Oglala delegation to meet the commissioners. The council was unprepared to commit the village to attending the summit, citing the lateness of the season and the necessity of hunting for tipi skins. Nevertheless, it promised the long-deferred visit for spring 1876, when they could trade winter robes and parley. Both Crazy Horse and Black Twin conceded that they might visit the agency “in a while,” but regardless of that, “they will agree to any treaty that is made by the Indians at [Red Cloud] Agency.” With this encouraging news, the envoys departed one day early, to arrive home on August 16.47
In the long history of Lakota-U.S. diplomacy, no negotiations were more tortured than those of the Black Hills councils of September 1875. What triggered the repolarization of Lakota society in the weeks following Young Man Afraid of His Horse’s mission was one simple fact: the miners did not leave the Black Hills. When General Crook’s ultimatum expired on August 15, no significant evacuation had taken place, and Crook’s troops attempted no systematic expulsion. Talks that could have been desensitized by removal were poisoned from the start.
Crazy Horse’s messengers kept the village informed of these developments, which forced a hardening of attitudes, realigning northern Oglala flexibility to the rejectionism of Sitting Bull. The village shifted east, toward favorite fall haunts around Bear Lodge Butte, where the crisis in the hills could be monitored. Little Big Man departed for the summit at Red Cloud with as many as three hundred warriors. With the stakes upped by the failure of Crook’s ultimatum, Little Big Man’s mission was simple: to speak out against any sale of the people’s land, and to disrupt proceedings if necessary. As they traveled, the warriors extemporized a song that pithily summed up their position:
The Black Hills is my land and I love it
And whoever interferes
Will hear this gun. 48
At the agency, the commission had arrived on September 4, but more than two weeks passed before substantive discussion opened, when commission chairman William B. Allison proposed that the government lease the hills and purchase outright the section of the unceded territory lying west of a line drawn from the northwest corner of Nebraska to the intersection of the 107th degree of west longitude with the Yellowstone River. To the chagrin of the commissioners, Indian Office personnel advised their wards of the true worth of the hills, urging an asking price of at least $30 million. Even so, a strong antisale sentiment existed. Red Dog, leader of the agency faction of the Oyuhpe band, formulated a proposal that slowly achieved consensus. A limited-term leasing of the inner hills would be funded through subsistence spending and payments to the next seven generations of Lakota people. Although Spotted Tail distanced himself from the Seven Generations Plan, Red Cloud tentatively approved the scheme. Delegations from the Missouri River agencies, and representatives of the Cheyennes and Arapahos, all affirmed it. A vocal minority of younger men remained opposed to any lease or sale, arguing bitterly until Red Dog brought warily on board the Kit Fox Society, strongest of the warrior lodges.49
Just as consensus formed, Little Big Man’s party arrived from the north. The northern leader angrily rejected the Seven Generations Plan. On September 24 he made a public threat, wrote the Omaha Weekly Bee’s correspondent, “to shoot the first chief that spoke in the council in favor of making a treaty.”50 As talks opened that afternoon, Little Big Man rode onto the council ground astride a painted war pony, waving a Winchester carbine and a fist stuffed with cartridges, declaring he would have the blood of a commissioner. Young Man Afraid of His Horse had his White Packstrap police disarm the firebrand, but the demonstration succeeded in breaking up the talks. Little Big Man rode home confident that the Black Hills sale was off the agenda.
He was right. Asked by Spotted Tail to present their formal offer for the hills, the commissioners read out a final proposal on the 29th. The sums offered—four hundred thousand dollars per year to lease the hills, or $6 million for an outright sale—were plainly inadequate. The agency leaders, warned that current subsistence spending was charity, not treaty guaranteed, were determined to ensure that any sale translated into continued government support. As the commission itself conceded, annual spending on Lakota annuities and rationing was now in the order of $2.4 million. Their leasing arrangements would fund a mere two months’ subsistence out of the twelve; the sale figure, spread over fifteen annual installments, little more. A second offer, of $15,000 per year for ten years to cover sale of the unceded territory, was roundly rejected when the chiefs acknowledged that those lands were too precious to the northern Lakotas to be sold. Talks wound down. Weary and disheartened, the commissioners made their way east.
In the Bear Lodge district, Crazy Horse was preparing to leave for the buffalo grounds. As the Oglalas traveled, he decided to repeat the vision quests of his youth. Near Powder River forks, he left the village alone, and climbed the rugged hills flanking the valley. Atop an isolated butte, he marked off a square of ground with wands to mark the Sacred Directions. From each wand he hu
ng wopiye, a sacred bag filled with offerings. Then, as in the turbulent days of adolescence, he took his position within the vision pit, pleading with the wakan powers for a vision of guidance.
On the morning of the third day, Crazy Horse gathered up the wands and descended the ridges to the village. After purifying himself in the sweat lodge, he sat quietly while Black Shawl placed before him a bowl of buffalo meat. In solitary meditation, he smoked his pipe until the door flap swung open and Worm stepped in, followed by his Miniconjou kinsman Touch the Clouds. The pair sat in silence until finally, Crazy Horse acknowledged their presence with a murmured “hou.” Worm asked if his vision quest had revealed anything of significance. Crazy Horse quietly stated that his dream had showed him, in vivid, concrete images, the total scattering of the buffalo herds. He had seen Lakotas reduced to poverty, forced upon reservation charity. With grim tenacity, he declared his determination to protect his homeland.51
Touch the Clouds had spent most of the year at the White River agencies as envoy for his father, Lone Horn, who had engaged closely in the intensive round of diplomacy, mindful that a negotiated solution was imperative. But Lone Horn had bitterly rejected the Seven Generations Plan. After the talks, he rode north to assure Sitting Bull personally of his continued solidarity, and sent Touch the Clouds and other messengers to apprise Crazy Horse and Lame Deer of the news. After the unsettling revelations of his vision, Crazy Horse probably viewed the report as more evidence for avoiding all American entanglements.52
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