Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  Bridger snorted and glanced at the bright sun overhead once more. Remembering.

  But ol’ Glass said I was just a young pup and didn’t know no better. So, for the rest of them forty-odd years … well, no man ever found Jim Bridger leaving a friend behind to the critters of the wilds. Or, even worse—Ol’ Gabe Bridger never left a man behind for the Injuns to have a cutting spree with.

  He swiped at his nose and focused on the procession worming its way across the valley. The tail end of the caravan had made the crossing of the Big Piney.

  Damn, but didn’t Black Horse bring ’em all with him. Every nit, prick and stillbirth sonofabitch come along to meet Carrington and his soldiers.

  “Quite an impressive sight, wouldn’t you say, Jim?”

  Bridger watched Carrington stride up beside him.

  “That ain’t no ragtag bunch of dust-tailed Injuns, Colonel.” Jim almost felt sorry for the old warrior.

  Black Horse almost as old as me, I’d suppose. He’s seen the glory days come and go. A time few white men will ever know. Most of them ol’ boys gone now too. What ones ain’t gone under, they’ve packed up and moved on to Oregon country.

  But this here’s Cheyenne land much as the Sioux’s. Black Horse watched his lodges rise against this very sky. He’s felt the same breeze sweep down off that snow on them peaks way yonder. Down where Carrington’s men cut down their first timber for the stockade, them Cheyenne found shelter against many a winter storm, I’d reckon. Sad to think—the white man’s here to stay. Not like it was so many summers ago. Goddamn the settlements! Here we was the first to plant a moccasin. But where first the white man comes, next come the women and preachers.

  Jim felt all the sadder for Black Horse. And the end to an ancient way of life they had shared.

  “Them’s Northern Cheyenne,” he explained to Carrington. “Proud as peacocks. I figure Black Horse wants you to know he ain’t come to beg at your feet. He’s come to show the soldier chief that he’s a proud warrior—that’s one Injun who won’t come lapping up your scraps, the way Spotted Tail does down to Laramie.”

  Carrington nervously straightened his tunic, freshly pressed and resplendent with brass buttons, gold braid and epaulets above the crimson sash and tinkling saber chains. “We’ll welcome him as a friend.”

  Bridger studied the side of the colonel’s face. “It’s a far sight better to have that ol’ warrior as your friend.”

  The procession reached the base of the plateau. Without a pause, Black Horse and some forty of his warriors began their slow ascent to the soldier camp. The colonel signaled Bandmaster Samuel Curry. With a wave of his baton, Curry set his forty-piece regimental band to pumping out the strains of Carrington’s musical welcome.

  With the blare of those first brassy notes, half the warrior ponies reared and twisted in fright. A sudden and strange medicine to these Cheyenne. Undeterred, Black Horse pressed on—his own pony prancing sideways yet under control, its nostrils wide, eyes muling in fright. Riding beside Jack Stead, he was the first to reach the top of the plateau. Lieutenant Adair greeted the Cheyenne chief with a salute and a wave of his elegant full-dress shako.

  Jim turned, finding Carrington fussing like a society hostess over the details of the hospital tent, smoothing the huge American flag draped ceremonially over the surgeon’s operating table. Above the excited yells of children and the soldiers’ laughter, Bridger overheard snatches of an argument between Carrington and Captain Brown, their shrill voices erupting from the tent.

  “… dressing us like monkeys before these savages!”

  “… to the Indian mind, ceremony is their life breath itself.”

  “… hold the bastards ransom!”

  “… I’ve given personal guarantee … we command less than four hundred men, including civilians.”

  “… show them the strength of our hand—a march right through their camps!”

  “… will not be marred by your eagerness to flaunt that clenched fist of yours, Captain!”

  Bridger turned when the murmuring of the crowd grew louder. The warriors halted, dismounted, allowing their ponies to be attended by young soldiers. Warily, the Cheyenne followed Stead and Adair on foot to the hospital tent.

  “… be damned if I’ll give them presents, Colonel. Rifles, indeed!”

  “… bring my requisition here immediately. Dismissed.”

  Down through the long blue gauntlet of soldiers and civilians alike strode the anxious warriors, some aware of their vulnerability as they hid hands beneath their blankets and warshirts. Jim kept his eyes moving from one to another. Likely got a pistol hiding there. Yet most walked on confidently. Trusting in the faith Black Horse held in the soldier chief.

  Black Horse wrapped himself in a dressed buffalo robe, the fur against his body, the hide painted with primitive pictographs of his exploits in war and pony-stealing. Just behind him walked Dull Knife, younger but proven war-chief of the Northern Cheyenne. Well did he know the effect his costume would have on these troopers, for he wore a captured soldier-blue tunic, brass buttons and all. Beside him walked The-Wolf-That-Lies-Down, resplendent in brain-tanned warshirt, scalplocks dangling from shoulder seams and down both arms. Round his neck hung a ceremonial grizzly necklace, the huge claws separated by tufts of blond-tipped fur. Pretty Bear walked alone, strutting proud as any peacock, wearing nothing but moccasins and his breechclout, sporting a gay parasol at his shoulder. Undoubtedly traded from French Pete himself.

  Brass armbands and beaded pipebags. Finger-rings and dentalium shells all the way from the Oregon coast hung from earlobes. Medicine pouches, quilled knife scabbards, and huge silver medals suspended on ribbon from a few necks. The-Rabbit-That-Jumps, Two Moon and Red Arm, and finally The-Man-That-Stands-Alone-On-The-Ground. Each warrior made his grand entrance through the open flaps of the tent and took his assigned seat upon the blankets spread across the ground according to his rank among the tribe. Just beyond the flaps the rest of the warriors took their places upon the grass.

  Better than thirty minutes passed while the pipe made its rounds of chiefs and officers alike. A nonsmoker, Carrington attempted a brave smile as he gagged on the stem. During the long wait, most of the soldiers and spectators crowded forward, whispering at this close-up view of savage warriors. In that radiant warmth of midday, Adjutant Phisterer continued scribbling across his long sheets of foolscap, recording the proceedings. Round him the various captains and lieutenants stirred restlessly, hot in their full-dress uniforms. A few dozed. Others pinched their delicate noses, unfamiliar with the smell of the plains Indian.

  Black Horse stirred, fluttered his eyes from a dreamy slumber and raised his chin from his chest. In rising, the chief allowed the buffalo robe to slip from his shoulders so that it fell round his waist, where it hung over his quilled leggings from a wide belt. White scars of many sun-dances dotted his chest. High near one shoulder he had circled the white pucker of an old bullet wound with vermilion paint.

  The chief stopped halfway between his seated warriors and the table where Carrington stirred, anxious to get his conference under way.

  A pink tongue darted out to lick his wrinkled lips. Only then did his hands begin to sign as he spoke, his eyes dancing between the soldier chief at the center of the table and Jack Stead, the interpreter close by Carrington’s left arm.

  “He speaks for 176 lodges,” Jack whispered, his head turned so that he spoke into Carrington’s ear while his eyes remained locked on the old chief. “In their hunt along Goose Creek, they ran into many of Red Cloud’s Sioux. Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses’s warriors. Proud of their raids on the white soldiers.”

  Carrington sensed an angry stir among his officers. Black Horse, too, sensed that strained uneasiness as he went on.

  “We are a brave people, but will be stronger still when 125 of our young men return from the Arkansas far to the south. They have gone with Bob-Tail to hunt and make war on our enemies in the warm country. The Cheyenne in Old Bear’s band
camp this summer in the shadow of the Black Hills. Our cousins in the south distrust the whites who are crawling onto the plains beside the path of the iron horse that spits smoke.”

  Bridger waited for a pause in Jack’s interpretation. “He means the Southern Cheyenne, Colonel. South of the Republican. Along the railroad tracks they’re laying.”

  “Red Cloud tells Black Horse that the soldier chief came to Laramie with his soldiers while the white treaty-talkers were wanting the Sioux to sell the road through Indian land. Red Cloud says the soldiers come now to take the land from us, even before our chiefs can say yes. Or no.”

  Carrington turned to Stead. “Ask Black Horse why the Sioux and Cheyenne claim this land when it belongs to the Crow.”

  The chief nodded. “It is good to answer so that you will understand why we are here … why the Crow live far to the west now. Many winters ago, the Cheyenne were driven here. Along the great waters to the east, the white man already grows crowded. He pushed us here. We needed this hunting ground. Mountainsides filled with the bear and elk. Valleys thick with deer and buffalo. Birds blanketed the ponds and marshes. We saw that it was good. Because the Cheyenne alone could not take it from the Crow, we asked the Sioux to help us. The Lakota share this land with the Cheyenne. Now Red Cloud asks us to help the Sioux hold this land against the white man.”

  “Who is the great chief of the Cheyenne people?”

  “Black Horse.”

  “And who is the great chief of the Sioux?”

  “Red Cloud,” he answered, his fingertip slashing his throat in the ancient sign for the Sioux. “Man-Afraid is a powerful war chief, holding many warriors in his hand.”

  “Does Black Horse come to tell us he will join the Sioux in making war on the soldiers sent to protect this road?”

  Black Horse shook his head. “I come to tell you these words of Red Cloud: If the soldier chief wants peace, he must go back to the mud fort he has at the Powder River. The Sioux promise not to bring trouble to the soldiers there. But Red Cloud will not allow soldiers to travel over the road he has never given to the whites. And he will not allow you to build this fort.”

  “Not allow us to build this fort?”

  “Red Cloud wants you to understand, his Bad Faces will surround you, cut you off north and south. They plan to slowly strangle you, Colonel,” Jack Stead explained the Cheyenne chief’s warning. “Red Cloud promises his warriors will kill your men one at a time, or a hundred at a time. Whenever they can. Red Cloud wants Black Horse to tell you that you sit on a small piece of ground. While Red Cloud’s warriors own the hills encircling us.”

  “Ask the chief how many warriors camp with Red Cloud now.”

  Black Horse held a gnarled fist before Carrington, spreading five fingers he swept across his chest.

  “He says Red Cloud’s got five hundred warriors,” Jack whispered.

  “Colonel,” Bridger interrupted quickly, “you best remember that’s a drop in the bucket to what he’ll have come next month.”

  “Why more?”

  “Now’s the time most of Red Cloud’s warriors are out hunting buffalo and antelope. By the time they lay in meat for the coming winter and head back to join the chief on the Tongue, there could be better’n twenty-five hundred warriors in Red Cloud’s camp. All itching to make it a long winter for your soldiers.”

  Carrington nodded. “Yes, Jim. Go ahead.”

  “Worse yet, come next month when the tribes gather, they meet on the Tongue for the sun-dance held each summer. A sun-dance means Red Cloud and Man-Afraid will whip their warriors into a fighting frenzy right quick.”

  Carrington grew thoughtful. “How far is Red Cloud?”

  “Two days ride. North on the Tongue.”

  “Ask Black Horse if he’ll join Red Cloud to make war on the new friend he has made here today, the soldier chief who sits before him.”

  As Jack Stead translated and signed, a few of the older warriors offered Black Horse counsel. The old chief inched closer to the council table where the soldiers waited for his answer. His voice began soft and low. Yet strong. Proud as ever.

  “The Cheyenne are not many. Alone, they cannot fight the Sioux.”

  Carrington whirled on Stead, interrupting Black Horse. “I know that! I’m asking if he’s going to join Red Cloud’s war.”

  Jack bobbed his head several times as he signed, sensing the tension between the Cheyenne and soldier chiefs thicken like blood congealing on cold ground.

  In the way of the Plains Indian, the old chief wanted to explain his answer before he gave the soldier chief his answer.

  “It has been a bad year for the Cheyenne. A bad, bad winter. My people are hungry.”

  Carrington nodded, making no sound. His eyes never left Black Horse. The old chief’s gaze never strayed from the colonel. “Ask Black Horse what we can do for him. For his people.”

  The chief inched closer to the table, as if shamed by having to ask. His hand rubbed his belly, and two fingers on his right hand went into his mouth. Then he wrapped his two arms around himself, sweeping them up and down his sides.

  “They … his people are hungry. You can give them food. And the soldier chief can give them clothes.”

  Carrington nodded. Stead fell silent. The old chief dropped his eyes, embarrassed in what appeared as begging.

  That private place inside Bridger’s gut knotted for these once proud people now caught between the white man who would feed and clothe them … and the Sioux who would slaughter them if they went to the white man for help.

  “Colonel.”

  Carrington started, perturbed as Lieutenant Adair bent at his elbow. “What is it?” the colonel snapped at the interruption.

  “Captain Haymond, commander of the Second Battalion, just arrived from Reno, sir.” He gestured out the rear of the tent. “With his compliment of troops, you have the Eighteenth about back to fighting strength, sir.”

  Carrington studied the clamor as four companies of soldiers, some 250 men, dismounted at Haymond’s shrill order. He glanced at the Cheyennes, certain they noticed the arrival of these reinforcements.

  Dull Knife angrily motioned Black Horse to the Cheyenne circle. In hurried, furtive words and glances, the chief and his advisers argued among themselves.

  “Colonel!” It was Brown’s whisper at his ear. Along with the smell of stale whiskey on the captain’s breath. “Show the buggers our mountain howitzers. Let them see how one shell will kill many Sioux. It’ll make the yellow bastards cower in fear!”

  Like swatting at a troublesome mosquito, Carrington waved Brown back as he rose and left the tent to welcome his new captain. Carrington felt certain of failure.

  Dear Lord, I prayed for your assistance in this meeting with the Cheyennes, asking for heavenly council. I’ve botched this badly. Have I asked more than these poor savages can give? Have I demanded that they make an alliance they aren’t ready for? Asking that they join me against the Sioux—who would slaughter the Cheyenne as quickly as they’d slaughter my white soldiers?

  Black Horse returned to the table. This time the old Cheyenne no longer held his eyes steady on Carrington. A knot of concern furrowed between his plucked eyebrows. The chief motioned Jack Stead forward. Black Horse whispered. In turn, the scout bent to whisper to Carrington. The other officers rocked forward to hear Jack’s message.

  “Black Horse fears that Red Cloud will find out that he stayed too long in the soldier chief’s camp. Red Cloud will be angry. He’ll find the village of Black Horse and sweep all the Cheyenne before him.”

  Palms together, one of Stead’s hands flew across the other, the ancient sign of rubbing out an enemy. Carrington gulped, watching Bridger’s eyes narrow. The colonel wasn’t new to this sort of fear. He had seen the same fear etched on a black man’s face many times before. In the fifties, the colonel had been a passionate antislaver, even before it became fashionable in the North.

  “Tell Black Horse that we’ll protect him. Together with my
soldiers, his young men will defeat Red Cloud.” Carrington straightened proudly, smoothing the front of his dark blue tunic, fingers caressing the bright crimson sash.

  Black Horse shook his head only once. He whispered to Stead. Jack swallowed hard.

  “The chief says you won’t protect the Cheyenne. Only he can protect his people by going far away from the Sioux. All your soldiers can’t help his people. When Red Cloud comes to fight … you … you’ll not be able to … to save yourselves.”

  Most at the table who heard Jack stutter gasped in dismay. Carrington and his officers fell silent. For moments now the tent had drawn close, the air steamy with rancid bear grease smeared on the black braids, heavy with white soldiers sweating in wool tunics. Bridger’s arthritic joints ached in sitting so long on the ladder-backed chair.

  “Captain Brown.” Carrington’s voice cracked uncontrollably. “Bring the gifts for our guests.”

  The quartermaster signaled six soldiers who scurried forward, their arms heavy with gifts they laid on blankets before the Cheyenne chiefs. Into the stacks of presents the old warriors dove, the eldest and highest-ranking selecting the best for themselves: some secondhand army tunics, brass buttons polished for the occasion, every tunic seeing service in the bloody war the 18th had survived to arrive at this place in history.

  When the clothing had been distributed, there remained the two shakos Carrington presented to Black Horse and Dull Knife. A few soldiers giggled as the old chiefs placed the tall, cylindrical ceremonial hats on their heads, bright plumes swaying in the air. Above the laughter, the Cheyenne murmured in appreciation. Bridger understood—to a warrior, appearance meant everything.

  Next came sacks of flour, coffee and sugar. At Carrington’s request Jack explained the many miles and many sleeps it had taken for these gifts of food to travel to the Big Horns. Two Moon grabbed one of the greasy, waxed bundles bound with brown twine. First he sniffed it. Then tore a strip of paper free for a better smell. Pronouncing it good, he bit off a corner of the slab bacon, a little grease dribbling from the corner of his mouth as he grinned, smacking loudly for all to see his good fortune.