by Sitting Bull
“We will camp here,” he said. Many Horses nodded and picked a handful of warriors to supervise,
Sitting Bull lifted his mother to her feet, then bent to pick up his father’s body. He looked into the old man’s face, the wrinkled skin that once had been as smooth as his own, the eyes closed now forever, and chewed at his lower lip. The moment he had known would come, and had hoped he would not live to see, had come at last.
It was time to prepare Jumping Bull for the burial scaffold.
Chapter 16
Missouri River Valley
1864
AS SETTLEMENT CONTINUED IN THE COUNTRY east of the Missouri River, pressure on the eastern Sioux, the Dakota, grew intolerable. Reduced to reservations and dependent on the whim of a United States Congress that seemed to have no idea of the conditions on the reservations, they needed the annuities promised them in a series of treaties. But the treaties were honored only sporadically, and the Dakota grew desperate. A Santee Dakota chief, Inkpaduta, began to lead covert raids against the white settlements, and officials were unable to locate him.
In 1861, a hard winter had ravaged the Santee, who were waiting for the promised annuities, only to find they had been delayed by low water on the river routes to the Indian agency. While they waited, they were unable to hunt; and when the annuities finally arrived, they amounted to the princely sum of two dollars and fifty cents per person. When there was no food, the agency was forced to feed more than a thousand people for the entire winter. The following year the government, with questionable wisdom, decided to subtract the cost of that food from annuities due for the year 1862.
The Santee and the Sisseton people pressed the agency for fair treatment, but Congress was slow to act, and once again there were food shortages. In an aborted attempt to get the food they needed, a small band of warriors attacked the agency, intending to take the food they felt belonged to them. But a squad of soldiers, with the aid of a howitzer, was able to drive them off.
Once more, the Dakota were reduced to begging for their sustenance. One insensitive trader was overheard suggesting that the Indians should learn to eat grass. The remark enraged the younger men, but the chiefs were still trying to preserve the peace and restrained the hot-blooded young warriors. They knew their control was precarious, and they tried with little success to convince the government to respond to the needs of both the northern and southern Dakota.
On the way home from an unsuccessful hunt, four young warriors approached the settlement of Acton, Minnesota, and asked several whites for whiskey, which was refused them. They left angry, spoiling for a fight, and soon came upon a farm in an outlying area. Once more, they asked for whiskey, and again they were refused. The settler was accompanied by two friends, and the four young Dakota challenged them to a marksmanship contest.
The nervous settlers reluctantly agreed. After the first round of firing, the Dakota reloaded faster than the three settlers and turned their guns on their opponents. When the smoke had cleared, the three white men were dead, along with the wife and daughter of one of them.
The four warriors returned home, fully expecting punishment. Instead they were greeted like heroes. Many other young warriors wanted to rise up against the whites and take back their native land by force, since pleas and prayers had proven ineffective. Little Crow, a chief of the Santee, tried to persuade the young hotheads to be patient, but the warriors were in no mood for moderation. Already in a precarious position because of his advocacy of peace, Little Crow did his best, but when it became apparent that he was not going to prevail, he agreed to go along with the younger men.
On April 16, 1862, the uprising began. The agency post for the lower Santee was attacked. The trader who had made the insulting remarks was one of the first to die, and as he lay on the ground, the enraged warriors crammed his mouth full of grass—a message for the rest of the whites. But the main object of the raid was food, not punishment of the whites, and while the warriors were busy stripping the storehouse, several whites escaped from the agency and fled to Fort Ridgely, fifteen miles down the Minnesota River.
Captain John S. Marsh was the military commander of Fort Ridgely, and he immediately led a column of fifty men out of the fort, intent on taking back the agency and capturing the raiders. But as he crossed the Minnesota River, the Santee attacked, killing half of the soldiers. Marsh himself was wounded and drowned in the river crossing.
The news spread quickly, and apparently the discontent was so general that more and more Santee joined the uprising. Repeated raids destroyed the town of New Ulm, not far from the agency and the fort, and the Santee then turned their attention to Ridgely itself. Three times they attacked and three times they were driven off. The howitzers at the fort gave the defenders the advantage, but the Santee managed to inflict casualties and considerable damage. Before they were able to capture the fort, however, reinforcements under the command of Henry Sibley—who had been commissioned a colonel by Alexander Ramsey, the governor of Minnesota Territory—arrived and drove off the attackers.
Sibley, despite some serious blunders that cost him several dead and wounded, soon put an end to the rebellion. But the Santee were in no mood to submit meekly. Little Crow led a significant portion of the Santee nation westward out of Minnesota and onto the plains, where they soon set up camp with a band of Hunkpapas.
Of those who remained behind, nearly four hundred were convicted in hasty trials of crimes against the white settlers, and over three hundred of those were sentenced to be hanged. President Lincoln reviewed the cases individually before the sentences could be carried out, however, and reduced the number of death sentences to thirty-eight. Thirsty for blood, the settlers pushed for the executions, and on December 26, all thirty-eight Indians were hanged on a massive scaffold. It was learned the next day that two of those hanged had been mistakenly executed, but the white settlers did not seem overly concerned about the error.
To the west, Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas, while welcoming the Santee, were now in a difficult position. Already pressed by troops from the southwest, they knew they would also now face military pressure from the east, as a punitive expedition was launched after the Santee fugitives. By the summer of 1863, the United States government had decided that the rebellious Santee had to be punished. That they were now allied with the Lakota to the west seemed not to matter. Two columns were dispatched, one under Sibley, now a general, and a second under General Alfred Sully. Sully began establishing more forts, this time in Lakota land, and this campaign marked the beginning of warfare between the Hunkpapa and the United States that would continue for the next fifteen years.
Sitting Bull, now the most prominent Hunkpapa war chief, had no choice but to fight to defend the hunting grounds. Already angry at the influx of settlers and miners along the Missouri, precipitated by the discovery of gold in the upper Missouri Valley, he had led several raids against small groups of white intruders. But those raids were a kind of warfare that the Lakota knew well, hit-and-run guerrilla tactics that worked against small groups of invaders. Sully and Sibley were leading heavily armed columns of well-trained soldiers, and the Hunkpapa were about to encounter a kind of warfare already visited on the Oglala and other more southern Lakota by General Harney in his punitive expedition after the Grattan affair.
In July of 1863, Sibley’s column inflicted defeats on a mixed contingent of Hunkpapa, Santee, and Blackfeet Lakota—on the twenty-fourth at Big Mound, on the twenty-sixth at Dead Buffalo Lake, and again on the twenty-eighth at Stony Lake. In each battle, Sibley’s overwhelming superiority in firepower drove the Indian forces further and further west. Hampered by the need to protect their families and to move all their worldly goods or lose them to the invading white army, Sitting Bull’s forces were reduced to fighting a defensive campaign, delaying the advance of Sibley’s column just long enough to allow the women and children to pack and move the camp.
At Dead Buffalo Lake, Sitting Bull garnered special honor, advancing on the c
olumn on horseback, ignoring the bullets flying all around him while he attacked a mule skinner, counted coup, and made his escape, driving a stolen army mule ahead of him. But it was a hollow triumph; the army pressed on, and the Sioux were driven relentlessly westward.
At all three battles, loss of supplies was the most serious damage inflicted. Many lodges, vast quantities of meat necessary for the coming winter, weapons, and household articles had to be abandoned. The meat was tossed into ravines, where the Hunkpapa hoped to retrieve it as soon as the fighting stopped. But each time the army discovered the abandoned food they burned it, along with everything else the soldiers could find.
After the battle at Stony Lake, Sibley turned back to Minnesota and the Sioux moved across to the west bank of the Missouri River. It was tempting to think that the worst was over. Looking for buffalo, the Sioux again crossed the Missouri. Sully, as Sitting Bull knew, was at Fort Pierre. Slowed by drought, he was presumed to have given up the field for the year, but that was a miscalculation. At Whitestone Hill, Sitting Bull and Sully locked horns once again, and the encounter cost the Sioux forces one hundred dead, one hundred and fifty-six taken prisoner, and once more huge losses of food and other supplies.
Once again the Sioux scattered, the Santee heading east and the Hunkpapas recrossing the Missouri yet again and heading north. They needed food, and the Ree might be willing to trade corn for buffalo hides. Sully broke off his pursuit and turned his attention to building another fort on the Missouri, raising Fort Sully near the meeting of the Missouri and the Cheyenne Rivers. The fort was fully garrisoned, and Sitting Bull now realized that the white soldiers had come to stay. The winter would allow him time to regroup, but he knew that when spring came, the soldiers would take the field again.
All winter long, Sitting Bull and the other Sioux chiefs made preparations for the coming campaign. At the same time, they sent messages by whatever means came to hand—traders, missionaries, friendly Indians—that Lakota lands were inviolate and that the white men did not belong. It was saber-rattling, but the chiefs were determined to back it up with force if necessary. However, Sully paid no attention.
In the spring of 1864, Sully led a column up the east bank of the Missouri. An advance unit stumbled into an ambush set by three warriors, and an engineer was killed. Sully’s men caught the three warriors and beheaded them, setting the severed heads out on stakes on a hilltop. If there had been any doubt that Sully meant business, there could be no longer.
As word of the atrocity spread, the Sioux began to concentrate their forces near the Knife River. By mid-July, Sully had three thousand men in the field, and the Sioux had established nearly fifteen hundred lodges, quarters for several thousand warriors. When word reached the huge village of Sully’s approach, the Sioux broke camp and moved northward to the edge of the Dakota badlands, establishing a camp nearly four miles long at Killdeer Mountain. They had chosen their position with an eye both to defense and escape, should it prove necessary. Sitting Bull and the other chiefs conferred on the best way to halt Sully’s column. They were confident, and their sheer numbers seemed to give them an advantage they had lacked in previous confrontations with both Sibley and Sully.
When word reached them that Sully was coming, the warriors prepared for the battle in high spirits. Sitting Bull was accompanied by his uncle, Four Horns, and his nephew, White Bull. Instead of moving the camp, as they had before, they left it in place. Those who would not be involved in combat climbed the mountain to get a good overview of the battle, and the mountainside teemed with women, children, and old men.
The Sioux rode out from the village confident, almost cheerful. They had wanted a good fight, the chance to teach the white soldiers a lesson, and it looked like their chance had finally come. Five miles from the village, the two forces met, Sully at the head of twenty-two hundred men. He had left several hundred soldiers behind to protect a wagon train of immigrants and miners headed for the gold fields.
Sully’s men had dismounted, because the land was not fit for cavalry tactics, and they spread out in a long skirmish line. There were other troops behind it, holding the horses and manning the long-range weaponry. The Sioux squared off, and the two lines stood facing one another, each waiting for the other to make the first move. One Lakota, Lone Dog, decided to test the waters. “I’m going to ride across their line,” he said. “If they shoot at me, then we should shoot back.”
He advanced on horseback, keeping a wary eye on the skirmish line, then crossed in front of it, waving a huge, ornate war club and shouting at the soldiers as he would at a band of Crows. Before long, bullets were sailing all around him, kicking up dust around the hooves of his war pony, and whistling as they passed over his head. He made it all the way to the far end of the skirmish line without being hit, then turned toward the Sioux line, the troopers still trying to bring him down.
Lone Dog rode for cover, then reappeared almost immediately, intending to dare the soldiers once more. But by this time, the fight had gotten started. The skirmish line began its advance. Armed with better weapons, the soldiers pressed the Sioux hard, driving them back slowly but surely. The Sioux, used to individual combat, had no supreme commander. They fought in their usual way, each warrior—either alone or with a small group of friends—advancing as he saw fit. But the disciplined white soldiers were controlled and deliberate in their advance, easily overmatching any thrust made by solitary warriors or the occasional knot of charging Sioux.
For five miles, the Sioux were driven back, fighting every inch of the way but losing ground steadily. Sully’s artillery had bursting shells and used them to good effect, reserving them for concentrated groups of Sioux on horseback. The rapid fire and long range of the soldiers’ guns kept the Sioux beyond their effective range, where bows and old muskets could not reach the soldiers at all.
The warriors were forced now to take cover in ravines and hollows and clumps of brush. Once more, they were fighting not to conquer but to delay. The women and children swarmed down the mountainside now, rushing to break camp and salvage as much of their possessions as they could, while the warriors tried to slow the advancing column.
The cover offered by the ravines concentrated the Sioux and made them easy prey to the artillery. Shells lobbed into the ravines were wreaking havoc all along the line. Whenever the Sioux tried to mount a counterattack, gathering fifty or a hundred warriors for an assault, a unit of the column would detach and army discipline enabled it to beat back the Sioux assault, often turning the tables and inflicting heavy casualties as the Sioux were forced to withdraw to high ground, where they were still within reach of the army rifles.
One crippled Lakota, a man who was unable to walk and barely had use of his arms, asked to be allowed to die in battle. His wish was granted, and Bear’s Heart was lashed to a drag pulled by a horse. He advanced on the white soldiers, his feeble arms pulling helplessly at makeshift reins. He was unarmed and could not defend himself, let alone inflict damage on the soldiers. He was cut down by heavy fire and lay in the field, beyond help, while the battle raged on.
The column was close to the Indian settlement now, and the Sioux were desperate. As Sitting Bull and Four Horns tried to fend off a thrust toward the scurrying noncombatants, Four Horns was hit in the back. “I am shot,” he called.
Sitting Bull rushed to his uncle’s aid and grabbed the bridle of Four Horn’s horse, while the older man hung on as best he could. Leading the horse to cover, Sitting Bull helped Four Horns from his mount and tried to remove the bullet, but it was buried too deeply, and there was no time to get at it. Dressing the wound, Sitting Bull saw the soldiers overrun the village. Most of the lodges were still standing, and hardly any of the supplies had been removed. It was the same as Dead Buffalo Lake and Stony Lake. The village was taken by the soldiers, and the women and children ran for their lives.
As Sitting Bull helped Four Horns back onto his horse for flight, the soldiers had already begun to torch the tipis, and thick bl
ack smoke was curling up into the cloudless sky.
Chapter 17
Missouri River Valley
1864
SITTING BULL LED FOUR HORNS to safety as the Sioux bands scattered, leaving Sully and his men in possession of the village … or what was left of it. For miles, Sitting Bull kept looking over his shoulder at the thickening black smoke as the Sioux lodges were reduced to cinders. He was worried about the loss of food. Then, too, with the buffalo harder and harder to find, lodges were going to be more difficult to replace. It took several skins for a single lodge, and there had been hundreds of lodges in the village, most of them abandoned to the enemy. How difficult it might be to hunt enough buffalo to replace them was something he could only imagine.
But he had more important things on his mind on this ride. Every glance at the dense black smoke reinforced the impression he had gained that a new way to fight had to be found. The white men did not fight like the Crows or the Hohe. They had tactics that the Hunkpapas had never encountered, and they fought for different reasons. They were not interested in glory. They did not care whether they managed to touch an enemy with a hand or something held in the hand, the only thing that really mattered to a Sioux warrior. As it was, the white soldiers seemed content to remain at a distance and fire their guns. Killing Sioux was all that mattered to them.
Intuitively, Sitting Bull understood that the gap between his culture and that of the white soldiers was enormous, and since the white soldiers were not going to cross over to his ways, he would have to find a way to convince the Sioux to adjust to the white man’s way of making war. If he couldn’t, then the Sioux would be pressed further and further west, something the Crows were unlikely to accept. And he knew that it would be increasingly difficult for the Sioux to get guns, because the white men would try to prevent their modern weapons from falling into Sioux hands. That would put the Lakota at a further disadvantage against the Crows and the other tribes to the west. But he knew that changing the habits of a lifetime would take a great deal of persuasion. Killdeer Mountain had convinced him, and he had to find a way to teach the others what he had learned.