20. The following analysis depends on contemporary records of the peace commission, RIPC, ID. An interim report summarized progress through December 1867, printed in ARCoIA 1868, 26–50. An invaluable summary of commission activities is Utley, Frontier Regulars, chap. 9. For an account of the Commission’s dealings with the Lakotas south of the Platte, see K. M. Bray, “Spotted Tail and the Treaty of 1868.”
21. G. P. Beauvais to Secretary of the Interior, Dec. 14, 1867, UPA, LR, OIA. Beauvais to John B. Sanborn, Sept. 12, 1867(telegram); Maj. J.W. Howland to Gen. W.T. Sherman, Sept. 12, 1867, both RIPC, ID.
22. Howland to Sherman, Sept. 12, 1867; Col. John E. Smith to AAG, Oct. 1, 1867, DPR; Webb, Chronological List of Engagements, 32. In the action on August 16, Crazy Horse’s warriors struck one of the civilian trains laid over at Fort Reno, killing two men and driving away as many as three hundred head of cattle. Five warriors were allegedly lost in the clash. One month later, a peace commission runner noted, “They have a great many oxen in their camp, and use them in moving.” Black Eagle report, accompanying Stanley to Sanborn, Oct. 6, 1867, RIPC, ID.
23. Black Eagle report; Beauvais to Secretary of the Interior, Dec. 14, 1867; Howland to Sherman, Sept. 12, 1867.
24. Beauvais to Secretary of the Interior, Dec. 14, 1867; Simonin, Rocky Mountain West in 1867, 94 (includes quotation).
25. Webb, Chronological List of Engagements, 34–35; Robinson, History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians, 381. Col. John E. Smith to Maj. Gen. C. C. Augur, Nov. 26, 1867, DPR, expressly identifies the attackers in the fall 1867 campaign as the two bands of Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud. A contemporary, if evasive, Lakota mention of the November 4 action was by Blue Handle, Man Afraid of His Horse’s envoy, one month later: see A.T. Chamblin to Supt H.M. Denman, Dec. 8, 1867, NSOIA. See also Fire Thunder, in DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 108; and, for details of Crazy Horse’s involvement, Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 24.
26. A. T. Chamblin to Supt H. M. Denman, Nov. 29, Dec. 8, 1867, NSOIA.
27. Ibid.; Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 24 (includes quotation).
28. Chamblin to Denman, Dec. 8, 1867.
29. Ibid.; Chamblin to CoIA, Dec. 8, 1867; H. M. Denman to Acting CoIA, Dec. 16, 1867, all UPA, LROIA. On the organization of the White Packstrap Society and its founding by Man Afraid of His Horse, see Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 34–36. Buffalo Tongue’s involvement is deduced from testimony taken by the peace Commission in April 1868: see testimony by The Cook (Brule), Papers Relating to Talks and Councils, 74–5; for Yellow Eagle, cf. Charles E. Gueru testimony, ibid., 78.
30. Chamblin to Denman, Dec. 8, 1867. For diplomacy at Fort Phil Kearny, see H. M. Mathews to CoIA, Jan. 13, 1868 (telegram), Jan. 29, 1868, both UPA, LR, OIA; Mathews to CoIA, Feb. 18, 1868, RIPC, ID.
31. Chamblin to Denman, Dec. 8, 1867; Chamblin to CoIA, Dec. 8, 1867; H. M. Denman to Acting CoIA, Dec. 16, 1867; The Cook testimony; Gueru testimony; Bissonnette to CoIA, Jan. 29, 1868; also J. H. Strader to Acting Quartermaster/Fort Laramie, Dec. 22, 1867, RIPC, ID; Chamblin to Denman, Dec. 22, 1867, Jan. 4, 1868, NSOIA; Chamblin to CoIA, Jan. 4, 1868, UPA, LR, OIA.
32. Mathews to CoIA, Jan. 13, 1868 (telegram) and Jan. 29, 1868; Mathews to CoIA, Feb. 18, 1868; Greene, “‘We do not know,’” 27–30.
33. Chamblin to Sanborn, Apr. 4, 1868(telegram), RIPC, ID; American Horse speech, Apr. 29, 1868, and Battiste Good speech, Apr. 13, 1868, Papers Relating to Talks and Councils, 11, 13–15; K. M. Bray, “Spotted Tail and the Treaty of 1868,” 26–27.
34. The text of the treaty of 1868 is printed in Kappler, Indian Laws and Treaties, 2:998–1007.
35. Ashton S. H. White to Secretary of the Interior, Apr. 11, 14,1868, UPA, LR, OIA. This report also locates the Oyuhpes, seventy-five lodges, and the main Bad Face camp, one hundred lodges, on the Belle Fourche, and American Horse’s camp, fifty lodges, at head of Bear Lodge Creek.
36. Treaty of 1868 (quotations from Articles 11 and 16).
37. Sanborn to CoIA, Apr. 24, 1868, UPA, LR, OIA; American Horse speech, Apr. 29, 1868. Northern Oglala messengers sequentially deferred the scheduled start of talks at Fort Laramie from April 1 (date deferred at commission’s request) through late April, to May 12, and finally to May 21 (American Horse speech). It is significant that Man Afraid of His Horse honored this final date. For Hunkpapa intervention against the treaty, see Col. De Trobriand’s journal, Military Life in Dakota, 259, 264–65.
38. Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 24.
39. Omaha Weekly Herald, June 10, 1868.
40. On Red Cloud’s son, see Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 76. On Hunkpatila movements: Ashton S. H. White to CoIA, June 15, 1868 (telegram), UPA, LR, OIA; Lt. Col. A. J. Slemmer to John B. Sanborn, Oct. 1, 1868, RIPC, ID; Charles Gueru to CoIA, July 1, 1868, ARCoIA 1868, 252–54. Rather overdrawing the point, White observes, “Red Cloud sent Yellow Eagle to the Fort to say that he was on his way down to make peace.”
41. Gueru to CoIA, July 1, 1868;A. T Chamblin to John B. Sanborn, Aug. 17, 1868, RIPC, ID. Minutes of the peace commission’s councils with the Oglalas, May 24–25, 1868, are printed in Papers Relating to Talks and Councils, 85–88.
What exactly did Oglala signatories understand of the implications of the treaty? The official record gives little away, but in a private letter, Sanborn confided that he and Gen. Harney approved the Lakota request to be allowed to trade with their “old traders” in the Platte zone, although he insisted they understood Fort Laramie itself to be off limits (John B. Sanborn to Vincent Colyer, undated, ARCoIA 1870). The nearest thing we have to an impartial observer is William G. Bullock, manager for the post sutler. Bullock observed that the Indians were told “plainly and repeatedly . . . that they need not go on the reservation for anything unless they wanted to go” (emphasis by Bullock). Annuity goods would only be issued them on the reservation, but “they could come and hunt and trade anywhere they wanted to on the North side of the North Platte and trade at Fort Laramie” (Spring, “Old Letter Book,” 287).
42. Gueru to CoIA, July 1, 1868; H. G. Litchfield to Gen. C. C. Augur, June 16, 1868 (telegram), DPR. Messengers from Red Cloud told Bullock on July 10 that they had had no communication with Man Afraid of His Horse since the treaty (Spring, “Old Letter Book,” 278).
CHAPTER 11
1. Location of the village at the time of the Sun Dance is from Garnett interview, tablet 1, Ricker Papers.
2. Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 39–40; Hassrick, The Sioux, 26.
3. A note on dating: All previous secondary accounts have followed Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 174–78, in placing the Oglala Shirt Wearer ceremony in 1865. Nevertheless, solid dating in eyewitness and other primary sources, with most of which Sandoz was familiar, clearly establishes that it took place in 1868. Short Bull stated the investiture of Crazy Horse and his peers was in that year: Short Bull, interview by Helen Blish, July 23, 1929, précis, no. 23, box 27, Sandoz Papers. The Garnett interview, tablet 1, Ricker Papers, precisely dates it to a month or two after the May 25 signing of the treaty of 1868. Garnett was present in the village and observed the ceremony, and his careful memory of events in the period 1867–69 closely contextualizes it. Moreover, the midsummer 1868 dating is confirmed by a contemporary notice. Maj. W. Dye to AAG, Feb. 3, 1869, DPR, observes, “The Ogallallas [sic] have two new chiefs, one the son of [‘]Man-afraid-of-his-horses,’ bearing the same name: the other the son of ‘Brave-bear’ and called the ‘Man who carries the sword’ both made within six months: they replace their fathers” (my emphasis). Taken with Garnett, Dye’s chronology establishes that the ceremony capped the negotiated settlement of the treaty.
4. The Garnett interview, Ricker Papers, is a vivid eyewitness account that I have followed closely in the following discussion.
5. On No Water, I am relying on a traditional statement made by Eddie Herman to Joseph Balmer (Balmer to author, Nov. 9, 1981).
6. Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Asso
ciations,” 40.
7. Black Elk, in DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 322.
8. John Colhoff to Joseph Balmer, Nov. 27, 1950 (transcript in author’s collection).
9. Ibid.
10. Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 40.
11. Military Division of the Missouri, Gen. Order No. 4, Aug. 10, 1868, ARCoIA 1868, 85–86;J. P. Cooper to Supt H. M. Denman, Aug. 27, 1868, ibid., 250–52.
12. Cooper to Denman, Aug. 27, 1868.
13. On the movement to the reservation, see M. T. Patrick to Supt H. A. Denman, Aug. 6, Sept. 16, 1868, UPA, LR, OIA; Gen. C. C Augur to John B. Sanborn, Oct. 4, 1868, Papers Relating to Talks and Councils, 119–20; Lt. Col. A. J. Slemmer to AG, Dept. of the Platte, Sept. 23, 1868, ibid., 120–21. Lt. Col. A. J. Slemmer to John B. Sanborn, Oct. 1, 1868, RIPC, ID, reported that “‘Man afraid of his horse,’ Red Leaf and other Chief men are very much dissatisfied at their people leaving Laramie and if possible will prevent their going.”
14. For conditions on the central plains, see Berthrong, Southern Cheyennes, 305–307, and the trenchant overview of Utley, Frontier Regulars, 137–39. The northern Oglala raids are treated in Slemmer to AG, Dept. of the Platte, Sept. 23, 1868.
15. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 10.
16. Supt H. B. Denman to CoIA, Nov. 6, 1868, ARCoIA 1868, 230; Maj. W. Dye to AG, Dept. of the Platte, Nov. 20, 1868.
17. Dye to AG, Dept. of the Platte, Nov. 20, 1868; Gen. C. C. Augur to Dye, Nov. 4, 1868 (telegram), also UPA, LR, OIA. The actions of Sherman and the Peace Commission are minuted in Papers Relating to Talks and Councils, 122–31.
18. Dye to AG, Dept. of the Platte, Nov. 20, 1868, details the talks with Red Cloud. A valuable eyewitness account of the informal, off-the-record meetings is Adams, “Journal of Ada A. Vogdes,” 3–4; Bullock to Messrs. Robert Campbell and Co., Nov. 19, 1868, Spring, “Old Letter Book,” 287.
CHAPTER 12
1. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 10–12. Background information on Oglala and Brule winter camp strengths and locations in 1868–69 is supplied in Maj. W. Dye to AAG, Feb. 3, 1869, DPR. The projected Crow campaign is mentioned in Dye to AAG, November 20, 1868, UPA, LR, OIA; it is likely the same campaign as mentioned in McGillycuddy, Blood on the Moon, 8, when—according to Man Afraid of His Horse partisans—Red Cloud was granted the temporary chieftainship of the Oglala tribe.
2. Data on Crazy Horse’s courtship of Black Shawl are inadequate. The account of Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 41, is based on anonymous oral sources, but Bordeaux had good connections. Having jettisoned much of his literary baggage, I have retained his chronological framework of approximately eighteen months separating the marriage agreement with Black Shawl’s family and Crazy Horse’s elopement with Black Buffalo Woman (see chapter 13). Since the latter is securely dated to May 1870, I have anchored the courtship of Black Shawl in fall 1868.
3. On the family of Black Shawl, see Red Feather, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 30 (includes quotation). The Pine Ridge census, 1890, places Red Elk Woman, age seventy, and her daughter “Tasina sapa win, Her Black Blanket,” age forty-six, in the Spleen, or Melt, band camp (site of modern Holy Rosary Mission), living next to the family of Black Shawl’s brother Red Feather. As two widows, the women would have lived in their natal tiyospaye, which the Spleen likely represents. At the time of Black Shawl’s marriage to Crazy Horse, however, Red Feather and his family belonged to Big Road’s tiyospaye of Oyuhpes: see He Dog statement, June 30, 1931, folder 16, part 2, box 31, Sandoz Papers. Two facts point to a Miniconjou connection. John Colhoff (to Joseph Balmer, Oct. 5, 1951: transcript in author’s collection) stated that John Red Feather was a nephew of High Backbone’s; Miniconjou headman Red Horse, upon surrendering in 1877, stated that Crazy Horse was his “relative. He married my own sister.” Red Horse statement, Col. W. W. Wood to AAG, Dept. of Dakota, Feb. 27, 1877, Sioux War, file 6207, Military Division of the Missouri, Special Files.
4. The account that follows is of a generic Lakota courtship, but given the conservatism of the Crazy Horse family, it is probably not too far from the concrete situation. For pertinent sources, see Walker, Lakota Society, 50ff; M. N. Powers, Oglala Women, 74–78; Hassrick, The Sioux, 124–26.
5. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 9; Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 41.
6. Walker, Lakota Society, 53.
7. Bordeaux, Custer’s Conqueror, 41.
8. Bullock to Campbell and Co., Nov. 19, 1868;Augur to Dye, Nov. 4, 1868; and Dye’s circular, Nov. 20, 1868, UPA, LR, OIA; Dye to AAG, Feb. 3, 1869 (includes quotation).
9. Dye to AAG, Feb. 3, 1869.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Alex du Bois and Henry Brant to Gen. WT. Sherman, Mar. 6, 1869; Dye to AAG, Mar. 25, 1869, both DPR; American Horse, Cloud Shield, and White Cow Killer winter counts, Mallery, Dakota and Corbusier Winter Counts, 144–45.
13. Oglala hostilities in the Shoshone country began on the lower Sweetwater April 20, 1869, and continued through September. See J. A. Campbell to CoIA, Sept. 23, 1869, ARCoIA 1869.
14. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 16.
15. Short Bull, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 33; cf. Flying Hawk, in McCreight, Firewater and Forked Tongues, 139.
16. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 16. Sandoz’s detailed account of the young love between Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman is presented in Crazy Horse, 131–35. She states that by a cunning ploy, Red Cloud had his niece marry No Water during Crazy Horse’s absence on the warpath, ca. 1862, spoiling the plans of the lovers. No primary source that I have seen bears out this tale, which smacks of a fiction to mitigate the circumstances of Crazy Horse’s adultery. Despite its influence on later secondary accounts, it is time to discard the tale.
17. On movements to the reservation, see Captain Dewitt C. Poole to Governor J. A. Bur-bank, Aug. 14, 1869, UPA, LR, OIA; Poole to CoIA, Aug. 20, 1869, ARCoIA 1869.
18. Crazy Horse speech recollected by Thunder Tail, Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Tales and Texts, 2:624, 629.
19. George W Colhoff, interview by Eli S. Ricker, ca. 1906, tablet 25, Ricker Papers, states that by fall 1869, dissatisfied Lakotas were drifting west from Whetstone Agency onto the hunting grounds. For background on conditions at the Brule-Oglala agency, see Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, chap. 6; Clow, “Whetstone Indian Agency” ; and the reprint of a neglected classic—Poole, Among the Sioux of Dakota, with DeMallie’s valuable introduction. For events on the Republican, I use Little Killer statement, Feb. 1915, Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Tales and Texts, 2:435–46; but for background, consult Utley, Frontier Regulars, 156–57; and K. M. Bray, “Spotted Tail and the Treaty of 1868,” 31–2.
20. White Clay (Cheyenne) report, Captain Eugene Wells to AAG, Oct. 19, 1869, DPR; Omaha Weekly Herald, Jan. 26, 1870.
21. White Clay report. For background on John Richard, Jr.’s activities, see Jones, “John Richard, Jr., and the Killing at Fetterman” ; also Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 87–88, 93. Garnett interview, tablet 1, Ricker Papers, provides valuable details on Richard. An untapped newspaper source is Omaha Weekly Herald, Dec. 8, 1869.
22. On war parties: Plattsmouth Herald, Nov. 25, 1869; Omaha Weekly Herald, Dec. 15, 1869. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 89–92, outlines the Big Horn Expedition.
23. White Clay report; Plattsmouth Herald, Dec. 30, 1869; Omaha Weekly Herald, Jan. 26, 1870; White Swan (Miniconjou) report, Bvt. Maj. Gen. D. S. Stanley to AAG, Dept. of Dakota, Feb. 12, 1870, UPA, LR, OIA; Roman Nose (Miniconjou) report, Captain D. C. Poole to Governor J. Burbank, May 4, 1870, DS Field Office Records. Crazy Horse was definitely involved in the late phase of this campaign: given the new split in Hunkpatila, it seems more than likely that he was engaged from the start.
24. Man Afraid of His Horse left Powder River bound for Whetstone Agency with twenty lodges—” all he could persuade to go” (White Clay report). In garbled intelligence from Whetstone, the Omaha Weekly
Herald, Dec. 8, 1869, reported his following reduced to seven lodges, still en route. They never arrived, and Man Afraid of His Horse is next heard of back on Powder River in March. For Spotted Tail’s request, see Captain D. C. Poole to Governor Burbank, Nov. 24, 1869, UPA, LR, OIA.
25. Utley, Indian Frontier, chap. 5, cogently contextualizes the peace policy and sensitively reads the Lakota engagement with it. His paragraph on Red Cloud, 150, is a necessary departure for any understanding of the Oglala leader’s postwar career.
26. Maj. Alexander Chambers to AAG, Mar. 11, 1870 (telegram), DPR. The routes are inferred from the April locations of the two villages.
27. Maj. Alexander Chambers to AAG, Dept. of the Platte, May 6, 1870 (telegram), UPA, LR, OIA, ascribes prime responsibility for killing of miners to “a band of ‘Ohyacopee’ Sioux and Minneconjous [sic] . . . Crazy-horse-Leading [the party].” Arapaho chiefs also blamed these Lakotas, although the blurred evidence indicates that some Arapaho warriors may have joined Crazy Horse’s party. Eagle Elk, Nov. 27, 1944, 13, Neihardt Papers, places Crazy Horse in the war party “over the Rockies” immediately before the No Water affair, i.e., April 1870. High Backbone was with Crazy Horse and the Oglalas May–October 1870: therefore, he probably left the Miniconjous to join the Wyoming raids. For the winter 1869–70 death of High Backbone’s mother, see e.g. W. K. Powers, Winter Count of the Oglala, 32. For background on March-April hostilities in Wyoming: Trenholm, Arapahoes, Our People, 231–34.
28. Eagle Elk, Nov. 27, 1944,13, Neihardt Papers
29. Maj. Alexander Chambers to AAG, Mar. 18, 1870(telegram), DPR; Gen. W. T. Sherman to Gen. P. H. Sheridan, Mar. 23, 1870 (telegram), UPA, LR, OIA; AAG, Division of the Missouri, to Gen. C. C Augur, Mar. 29, 1870 (telegram; includes quotation), DPR.
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