Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03

by Sitting Bull

  To the west, the Oglala would eventually have military irritants of their own in Forts C. F. Smith, Reno, and Phil Kearny. Red Cloud, Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, and Crazy Horse focused their attentions on these forts with the same implacable hatred Sitting Bull directed at those installations nearer to Hunkpapa country.

  Of them all, Sitting Bull reserved the most intense hatred for Fort Rice, which had taken the place of Fort Sully as the principal military post along the Missouri, just a few miles above the mouth of the Cannonball River.

  During the early spring of 1865, Sitting Bull organized several raids on Fort Rice. He had come to understand the significance of the post and was trying desperately to persuade other Hunkpapas of the need to eliminate it.

  Around the council fire, he hammered away at the issue whenever the opportunity presented itself—and whenever he was not leading a war party against a supply train or a wagon train or a cavalry column searching for bands of “hostiles,” as the bands under leaders who thought as he did were characterized. His primary sounding board was his uncle, Four Horns, probably the most respected of the Hunkpapa chiefs and one of the four shirt wearers, who were charged with directing the activities of the tribe.

  One night in March, he raised the issue once more. “You all know that Sully will come again soon. The forts he built are getting stronger every day, while we fight among ourselves. If we wait too long, we will not be able to drive the Long Knives away. They say that the war between the white men will be over soon, and they will then have thousands of soldiers to send against us.”

  Four Horns nodded thoughtfully. “What you say, I have also heard. But I don’t see why the white man would want this land. He wants only to build his railroad. The railroad is far to the south and does not bother us.”

  “But when they found gold, they bothered us.” Sitting Bull reminded Four Horns. “Who can say they will not find gold in our country? Who can say they will not want to build a railroad here? All they do is lie. You know as well as I do that the promises they made to the Indians at Fort Laramie have all been broken. You heard from Inkpaduta and Little Crow how the promises made to the Santee were broken. You know, as I do, what happened to the Cheyenne at Sand Creek. And those were Indians who were friendly to the white man. What will they do to us, if we let them?”

  “There is a difference between fighting to defend your country and your family, and looking for trouble,” Four Horns argued. “If we take the warpath against the forts, the Long Knives will come looking for us. Now, they leave us alone.”

  “For how long, uncle? Why are they building forts if they plan on leaving us alone?”

  Four Horns just puffed on his pipe. Sitting Bull knew it was because he did not have an answer, so he pressed his argument. “If Sully comes, it will not be because of a few puny raids against wagon trains. It will be because the white man wants this land, just like he wants the Powder River country. We have to do like Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. We have to fight while we still can.”

  “Red Cloud—” Four Horns began, shaking his head “—he is different. He wants to be the chief of all the Lakota, so he makes war to make the people stand behind him.”

  “Red Cloud is a great warrior, and he is doing what he has to do. Just as Crazy Horse is … and just as I am.”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  “I want to destroy Fort Rice. I want to push the Long Knives back to the east.”

  Four Horns nodded. Sitting Bull couldn’t tell whether it was a gesture of agreement or resignation. His uncle knew that he would not easily be dissuaded and just might feel that going along with Sitting Bull’s plans would give him some influence. But that was not a bad thing. Four Horns was a wise man, and his word carried great weight among the Hunkpapa. Of the four shirt-wearers, he was the most respected. If he agreed with Sitting Bull, no matter what his reasoning, it would be a great help.

  “All right,” Four Horns finally said. “We will attack the fort, but I don’t think we will be able to destroy it. The Long Knives are very strong. Their guns are better than ours, and they have more of them.”

  “But this is our land; that is one thing they do not have. We are fighting for something that matters to us. They are not. They are paid soldiers who fight because that is their job. They cannot stand against us if we are all together.”

  “We will see,” Four Horns said.

  The other chiefs around the council fire, who had remained silent through the exchange, now nodded. “How!” they said, and Sitting Bull knew he had the support he needed, at least for a little while. How long would depend on what he was able to achieve against the Long Knives.

  In the beginning of April, he led a war party against the fort. It was like the others, a high palisade of timbers, with blockhouses for lookouts and additional defense at the corners. Inside, some buildings, barely thrown together, were used for sleeping quarters and storage, as well as offices for the commanders. Built on flat land on the west bank of the river, the fort was surrounded on the other three sides by hills and ravines. Most of the ravines were wooded and offered excellent cover allowing for a covert approach.

  Leading his band through one of the ravines, Sitting Bull found an ideal vantage point from which to observe activities at the fort. Watching from a clump of thick brush, he saw the herds of horses and cattle grazing on the grassy flats surrounding the fort and decided that one way to flush out the inhabitants would be to drive off the animals, but that was not going to be easy, because negotiating the ravines while driving the stolen stock would leave the war party dangerously exposed. The Long Knives could follow on high ground and easily pick off the warriors at long range if they were hampered by large numbers of horses and sluggish cattle.

  While Sitting Bull watched, the gates opened and a small party of mounted men came out, leading several wagons. The warriors behind him were getting restless and the sight of the soldiers made them anxious to get started. But Sitting Bull restrained them, watching the wagons as they headed upriver and into the hills.

  Ducking back into the ravine, he mounted and led his warriors northwestward, hoping to find the wagons out of sight from the fort. An hour later, two scouts hurried back to report that the Long Knives were cutting wood for their fires, and that there were twenty men—eight guards and twelve woodcutters, all armed with new rifles. If they could be overcome, the Hunkpapa could add the new weapons to their arsenal. The numbers were favorable for an attack.

  When the war party crested a hill overlooking the work site, Sitting Bull crept forward to watch the woodcutters, busy with their long, two-man saws in a stand of cottonwoods. The guards did not seem particularly worried about attack, and the warriors fanned out, ready for the command to charge downhill.

  When it came, the Hunkpapas let out a loud whoop and quirted their ponies over the ridge and down. The work party seemed to freeze in its tracks, and Sitting Bull saw the woodcutters run for their wagons, leaving their saws still stuck in the trees. He thought the soldiers were going to make a run for it, and he kicked his horse to wring a little more speed from it, but the woodcutters pulled rifles from the wagons and formed a ragged line on the far side of the wagons.

  They opened fire almost immediately, and the bullets started to whistle all around the Hunkpapas as they pressed their assault. Blue Buffalo was hit and fell from his horse, bleeding heavily from a shoulder wound, and Standing Elk was hit in the forehead and killed outright.

  The Hunkpapa turned to the north, launching arrows and firing their few weapons, but they were too far from the soldiers to have much effect. Pulling up just out of range, they raised their bows and rifles and shouted insults, but Sitting Bull knew that the Long Knives could not be provoked the way the Crows or the Hohe could. Instead of coming out to avenge a slandered relative or to prove the charge of cowardice was groundless, the soldiers, who did not understand the language, contented themselves with firing a few rounds in hopes of getting lucky.

  Circlin
g toward the riverbank, Sitting Bull led his men back into the fray, but the soldiers simply moved around their wagons, again interposing them between themselves and their enemies. Once more, the Hunkpapa charged straight ahead, this time driving their horses directly toward the wagons, only to be driven back again by the rapid fire from the breech-loading rifles, which were so much faster than the Hunkpapa muskets.

  Two more warriors fell under the relentless onslaught. Sitting Bull managed to count coup on one of the woodcutters as he drove his warhorse through a gap in the wagons. He felt the heat of a bullet as it passed within a fraction of an inch of his left cheek. Two of the woodcutters had been hit with arrows, but were not wounded badly enough to stop firing.

  When he reached the Hunkpapa line again, he called for his men to fall back. Warriors and soldiers exchanged fire at long range, but neither side incurred another injury. The Hunkpapa had already suffered losses—two men killed and three badly wounded.

  Sitting Bull was somber on the way home. He had expected an easier time of it, but the Long Knives had fought well. They were supposed to be weak from having endured a long winter with poor rations, but there was no evidence of that. Some other way would have to be found to lay siege to the fort … but what?

  Chapter 19

  Missouri River Valley

  1866

  FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, SITTING BULL LED raids against Fort Rice and its defenders, but with indifferent success. Again and again, bands of Hunkpapa swept down on the work crews and the herds, driving off small groups of horses and cattle, but the defenders of the fort were efficient, their weaponry superior, and the Hunkpapa still too fragmented to overcome such difficulties.

  Sitting Bull was getting frustrated, and more than once earned derision from other warriors when he withdrew early from a battle he had initiated. Again and again, he tried to convince the rest of the Lakota to join together, to try to achieve by sheer numbers what they could not do otherwise.

  But more than anything else, it was Her Holy Door who was pulling him in another direction, who seemed to distract him. Worried about his safety, she never lost an opportunity to remind him that he was not just a warrior, but a son, husband, and father.

  When he returned from yet another raid on Fort Rice, one which had netted him three horses but inflicted no damage on the Long Knives other than a good scare, she took him aside.

  “You should be more careful,” she said. “You know, with your father gone, if anything happens to you, there is no one else to care for your family.”

  “I care for them,” he snapped. “I see that they have food, that their lodges are warm.”

  “But what if something happens to you? What happens to me if you are killed by the white soldiers? What happens to your wives, your children?”

  “What would happen to you if I were killed by the Crows?” he snapped. Regretting his harshness, he tried to smooth things over immediately. “I am a warrior. A warrior makes war. If not, he is a failure. And a good warrior makes war on his enemies. Now the Long Knives are more dangerous to us than the Crows.”

  “But you are also a leader—a great leader—and a leader knows that there are some things more important than glory. You can’t feed the village babies with scalps. Maybe Running Antelope is right. Maybe the best way is to make peace with the white man.”

  Sitting Bull snorted. “Make peace? You don’t understand what you’re saying. The white man makes peace with the Indian only when he has taken everything he wants. What kind of peace is that?”

  Her Holy Door was quiet for a long time. In the protracted silence, the crackling of coals in the fire pit was the only sound in the lodge. From outside, he could hear the noise of children playing, calling to one another, squealing with delight over some prank or other. At another time, the sound would have given him pleasure. He might even have gone outside to join the children. That was a thing he missed now, and he wondered whether Her Holy Door was right. Somehow his life seemed empty, hollow as a gourd, a dried-up thing the wind would blow away. It was so hard trying to fight a war when the enemy wouldn’t fight fairly. Or, if not fairly, at least in a way he could understand. He wished he could be as oblivious of the future as the children outside, but it was far too late for that.

  In the lodge next door, two women who mattered to him were probably wondering why he was home so seldom. The children sometimes looked at him as if he were a stranger. He would come home from a raid on Fort Rice, and they would shrink into the shadows at the edge of the lodge, watching him as if trying to decide whether they knew him or not.

  That was no way to live. But neither was moving to a reservation, riding up to the white man with your hand out, waiting for whatever meager ration he chose to give you—a handful of moldering corn, some rotten meat, or rancid butter. That was not the way a man should live. Why didn’t the white men understand that? What was so wrong with living as the Hunkpapa had always lived? The country was vast; there was plenty of room for the white men elsewhere. They did not need Hunkpapa land. But they were greedy, they wanted it, and they were prepared to take it regardless of the cost.

  He looked at his mother sadly, feeling as if all the cares of the village were resting on his shoulders, pressing him down until he was no thicker than a blade of grass.

  While he tried to frame some sort of answer, something to meet his mother’s concerns without compromising his own position too severely, Four Horns entered the lodge. He nodded to Sitting Bull and sat down across from his nephew.

  “The white men have asked us to meet with messengers from the Great Father in Washington,” he said.

  Sitting Bull scowled. “You’re not thinking that we should meet them, are you?”

  Four Horns shook his head. “No, I’m not thinking that, but some chiefs are.”

  “Running Antelope,” Sitting Bull said, not bothering to conceal his scorn.

  Again, Four Horns nodded. “Yes, but not only him. There are others, too. And not just Bear’s Rib.”

  Sitting Bull spat when he heard the name of the young chief. “Bear’s Rib has been helping the Long Knives at Fort Rice. He is selling his land and his people for wagons full of white man food.”

  Four Horns took a deep breath and held it for what seemed an eternity. “There is much that we should think about before we decide what to do,” he said.

  “There is nothing to think about. I know that I will not meet with anyone from the Great Father, not as long as the Long Knives are in Lakota lands. And he is not my father, anyway. He is nothing to me.”

  Four Horns smiled. “You have a way of putting things that does not allow one to misunderstand you,” he said.

  Sitting Bull laughed. “I suppose so. But this is too important a thing for me to be misunderstood.”

  “So, you won’t go? Under any circumstances?”

  Sitting Bull shook his head. “Never!”

  “Then neither will I.”

  And when the peace commissioners came, bringing with them yet another packet full of paper promises, Running Antelope and Bear’s Rib touched the pen. So did chiefs from the other Lakota tribes. They were promised annuities in exchange for leaving white travelers alone and for withdrawing from white travel routes, both existing and as established in the future. When Sitting Bull heard the last, he knew he had not made a mistake in refusing to attend the conference.

  Encountering Running Antelope a few days after the conference ended, he asked, “And where will the whites travel in the future?”

  Running Antelope looked at him blankly, and Sitting Bull repeated the question, this time with a preface. “You touched the pen to the white man’s treaty paper. The paper said that Lakota would withdraw from white man travel places now and in the future. Where will they be in the future?”

  Running Antelope still seemed not to comprehend the question.

  Sitting Bull pressed again. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “No.”

  “But you won’t go there, whe
n the white man does? No matter where it is?”

  “No.”

  “Suppose he comes here? Will you leave?”

  “I …”

  “Suppose he goes to Paha Sapa? Suppose he finds something there in the Black Hills that he wants? Will you let him have Paha Sapa?”

  “No!”

  “But the paper says you will. It says that you will withdraw from any place he wants to travel. It does not say that he won’t travel to Paha Sapa, does it?”

  Running Antelope had no answer. He licked his lips, and Sitting Bull watched him closely. The chief’s eyes seemed to be focused anywhere but on Sitting Bull, and he soon made an excuse to leave. Sitting Bull let him go. There was no point in trying to change his mind, and even if he could, the treaty paper had already been signed, and there was nothing that Running Antelope could do about it now.

  For the rest of the year, Sitting Bull continued to snipe at Fort Rice, but the defenses were stronger than ever. Aside from running off stock and an occasional ambush, there was no success to speak of. And now, the Long Knives were building another fort, one they called Fort Buford. It was even deeper in Lakota territory, not far from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and followed the same plan as Fort Rice. It was the deepest permanent military intrusion into Hunkpapa territory, and Sitting Bull was determined that it had to be eliminated before it got fully entrenched.

  While Sitting Bull turned his energies to ridding his land of Fort Buford, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse found they had to contend with three similar fortifications in Oglala territory in the Powder River valley—Forts Reno, Kearny, and C. F. Smith. Whether intended or not, the erection of these forts had a direct effect on Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa, as well as the Oglala. Their presence meant that Sitting Bull could not count on help from the Oglalas, who were now busy with their own occupying army.