Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 03

by Sitting Bull

  In early 1875, Sitting Bull sent word that there would be a grand sun dance and invited all those who wished to attend to meet on the banks of the Rosebud River near Muddy Creek. By early June, hunting bands were pouring in from every direction. Four camp circles were established, one each for the Hunkpapa, the Oglala, the Miniconjou and Sans Arcs, and the Cheyenne.

  As the bands arrived one by one, Sitting Bull was heartened by the turnout. Not only were the numbers of warriors greater than he had hoped, but the best of the war chiefs were there, too. The Oglala had Crazy Horse and Black Twin among their number, while the Miniconjou and Sans Arcs had Spotted Eagle, and the Cheyennes had Little Wolf and the famous warrior and holy man Ice.

  These were the kind of men he needed, men who believed as he did and were as fiercely committed as he was to the preservation of the old ways and the defense of Lakota lands. As confident as he was in his own skills, he knew that he could not do what needed to be done by himself. He needed help, and these chiefs were the men he would have chosen himself to give that help.

  When the people had gathered and the sun dance lodge had been constructed, Sitting Bull prepared to make his appeal to the assembled chiefs and warriors for intertribal unity. He knew that the future of his people depended on his success. He wanted to make an impression. They all knew of him, of his exploits in battle, of his accomplishments as a singer and musician, of his dedication as a holy man. But reputation alone would not be enough to sway his audience; he needed to seize them in a way no one ever had.

  Ice had presented him with a magnificent black stallion, and Sitting Bull decided that it would be just the right horse to ride for his grand entrance. He took great pains getting himself ready, applying his ceremonial paint and wearing a new warbonnet with a full trail of eagle feathers. The black stallion was daubed with white paint in bands and spots. Then Sitting Bull mounted up and rode toward the sun dance lodge, making a great circle.

  The people began to press in from all sides as he made another circuit, then dismounted and leading the magnificent horse by the bridle began to dance. He sang songs he had composed especially for the occasion. By now the lodge was filled to overflowing, and Sitting Bull, knowing that he had the full attention of his audience, announced that he wanted two ceremonial pipes filled, one for the Lakota and one for the Cheyenne.

  When the pipes were ready, he took both and resumed his dance, miming battle with the enemy. By now the audience was itself singing, and with a grand flourish, he wrapped his arms across his chest to signify that he had captured his enemies. A roar went up as Sitting Bull raised the pipes overhead in offering to the heavens.

  Afterward Sitting Bull, Ice, Crazy Horse, and some of the other chiefs gathered in a council lodge. They all knew that war was coming soon, that it would be big, and that it would be pivotal. They were not yet sure when it would start or with whom it would be waged, but there was no doubt at all that it was coming.

  “We all know,” Sitting Bull declared, “that we cannot trust the white man. He has said that we would have the Black Hills forever, and yet Long Hair has gone there without our permission. He has said that we would have the land of the Powder River valley as long as the buffalo run, and now he builds his railroad there and kills the buffalo. He has said many things, but he has never said a true thing to the Lakota.”

  The assembled chiefs nodded their heads in agreement as Sitting Bull continued, “If we want to save our lands, to have them—as is our right—for ourselves, we will have to work together. If it means making war on the white man together, then that is what we should do. I want nothing better than for the white man to go back where he came from and leave me in peace. If he would do this, then I would forever be a friend to him. If he did not bother me, he would never see me, never even know I am here. But always he makes promises and always he breaks them. He is like a child who misbehaves. You tell him to stop, and he says yes, he understands, and then he disobeys again. Again you tell him, and again he says yes, he will stop. And again he misbehaves.”

  Once more, the chiefs indicated their agreement with a chorus of “How!”

  But Sitting Bull was not finished yet. “Now he wants to take away not only our hunting grounds, but our sacred lands of Paha Sapa. This time, I think, it will not be enough to say stop. This time, I think, we will have to make him stop. We will have to do whatever we can to keep what is ours.”

  But even as he spoke, the government was attempting to acquire the Black Hills. Pressure was brought to bear on the agency chiefs in an effort to induce them to sell title to the area. If this could be managed, then the government would simply claim that the agency chiefs had acted on behalf of all the Lakota people, and that the land had been fairly acquired. But there was no real interest in being fair. Any excuse would do, and if no one could be persuaded to sell the Black Hills, then they would just have to be taken by force.

  Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, long since ensconced in their own separate agencies, had been willing to make the deal proposed by the government. Red Cloud had tried to get more than the government offered, but even what he was asking was a pitiful fraction of the true worth of the territory in question. And any deal would ignore the fact that the land was sacred. But Red Cloud suspected that the Black Hills would be taken one way or another, and that the Lakota should get whatever they could. Anything at all was better than nothing. In the eyes of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, though, the Black Hills could not and must not be sold, not at any price.

  Sitting Bull learned of the maneuverings. He was depressed by the news, and beginning to wonder if it was possible to hold onto the land, even if he managed to enlist every nonagency Indian on the plains.

  He spent much time alone, trying to find some way to prevent the white man from taking the land. During long nights, sitting up on a hill overlooking his village, he mulled over his options, but they were few and unpredictable. He knew that some Indians had gone north, to Canada, where they seemed to be well treated, left alone by the government of the Grandmother Country, allowed to live as they had always lived. The weather there was harsher, and the buffalo fewer, but at the rate the buffalo were disappearing from the plains south of the border, there was little reason to think that would continue to be the case much longer.

  He also knew that the Cheyenne had occasionally gone as far south as Mexico, but what he heard of the land there did not appeal to him. It was hot and barren, the buffalo few, and such a move would imperil the Lakota way of life every bit as much as capitulation to the demands of the United States would. It seemed that no matter which way he turned, he found himself staring at a blank wall. And he felt as if he were virtually alone in his understanding of just how dire the circumstances were. It was true that other chiefs were opposed to the treaties, opposed to the white man taking the land, dedicated to the old ways. But only Crazy Horse seemed to see things as clearly as Sitting Bull himself, and two men, no matter how valiant, could not stem the white tide.

  Desperate for an answer to a question that only he and Crazy Horse appeared to be trying to address, he rode off to be alone in late summer. He spent several days in isolation, fasting and building a sweat lodge for himself, spending hours at a time trying to pierce the veil of uncertainty that seemed to hide the way into the future.

  On the fourth day of his fast, he climbed to the top of a nearby hill before daybreak and watched the sun climb over the horizon. All day long he watched the sun, hoping that somehow it would communicate to him the right path to follow.

  By late afternoon, thirsty and hungry, his eyes filmed over by a brilliant, gauzy haze, he heard a sound like thunder. It seemed that the sky was clouding over, and the haze grew dark and thick. For a moment he thought it was going to rain, but as he listened, he realized the sound was not thunder at all but buffalo, thousands upon thousands of them, and they were heading his way.

  Rubbing his eyes with the back of his wrist, he tried to see them, but instead watched as the sun disappeared
in a cloud of thick dust swirling up from the advancing herd. A moment later a bull broke over the next ridge, and he watched in awe as wave after wave of the huge animals followed the great bull in the lead. Then he felt stark terror grip him as he realized that the bull was a skeleton, and as the waves of animals followed it down the hillside into the valley below, the flesh seemed to melt from their bones and vanish in puffs of thick, black smoke. It was this smoke, rather than dust kicked up by the buffalo hooves, that was blotting out the sun.

  He knew that he was watching the end of the Lakota people, and that that end would come soon unless he could find a way to prevent it.

  Chapter 24

  Rosebud River Valley

  1876

  BY 1875, SITTING BULL WAS well known in Washington. Men he had never heard of had heard of him and regarded him as something akin to the devil. His reputation among the enemies of the Hunkpapa, such as the Crows, Shoshone, and Arikara, was such that they too regarded him as death incarnate. His reputation among the Lakota was more accurate, but no less awe inspiring. This complex set of factors had combined to make him the focus of policy making among the politicians and the Indian Bureau.

  That he deserved his notoriety is beyond dispute. It is only the accuracy of these impressions that can be called into question. The Indian Bureau, under constant pressure to resolve the “Indian Problem” by any means necessary, quite naturally looked for a reasonable alibi for its failures. Rather than examine the reasonableness of its own policy and that of the government in general, the Bureau chose to make Sitting Bull the scapegoat for virtually every incident involving the Lakota. Similarly, the Crows and other enemies of the Lakota who had been dealt with rather harshly by Sitting Bull, and who had reason to hate him, blamed him for their misfortunes, never losing the opportunity to blame him for violent confrontations between whites and Indians.

  Sitting Bull was not without enemies among the Lakota themselves, either. Some, such as Red Cloud, had decided that the path of least resistance was the only way to ensure Lakota survival. In order to maintain their own influence among the treaty Indians and with the white politicians and soldiers, such men availed themselves of every chance to paint Sitting Bull in the worst possible colors. Defaming him ensured their own continued power, and while there is no doubt that some of these chiefs were motivated by the best of intentions, their methods are somewhat less than admirable. Other Lakota were envious of his power and influence and did their best to undermine him.

  For whatever reasons, Sitting Bull was widely believed in the East to be the single most influential leader among the so-called hostile Indians. Crazy Horse was as highly regarded by the non-treaty Lakota bands, but he was not nearly as well known among the whites, and his own band of followers was considerably smaller, largely as a consequence of his reclusive nature. That Sitting Bull had become the first among equals in keeping with the plan that Four Horns had devised cemented the war chiefs notoriety.

  By the end of 1875, the government leaders concerned with the maintenance of peace on the western plains, civil and military alike, were convinced that all-out war was the only solution to their problems. The War Department was actively engaged in drawing up plans for an offensive the following spring, one that was intended to put an end for all time to the Sioux wars and bring civilization at long last to the plains.

  There was constant pressure from the railroads, which were having great difficulty completing their construction because of the incessant harassment of work crews. Where the track had ben successfully laid, trains themselves were subjected to attack without warning, which made them less attractive to potential customers. Raids by Lakota bands were costing the railroads money, and they wanted the raids stopped at any cost. Ever sensitive to the concerns of business, the government was determined to do everything in its power to give the railroads what they wanted. If peace meant breaking promises made to savages, then that was a small enough price to pay, and certainly one that no one would object to—no one whose opinion counted, in any event.

  President Grant had convened a meeting of his principal advisers on Indian policy, including Zachariah Chandler, the Secretary of the Interior; E. P. Smith, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and William Belknap, the Secretary of War. The result of the meeting was a foregone conclusion, and everyone in attendance knew it. They knew, after all, what was expected of them, and Chandler drafted an order that served as the opening shot in the great war to pacify the western plains. It was sent to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and read: “Referring to our communication of the 27th ultimo, relative to the status of certain Sioux Indians residing without the bounds of their reservation and their continued hostile attitude towards the whites, I have to request that you direct the Indian agents at all Sioux agencies in Dakota and at Fort Peck, Montana, to notify said Indians that unless they shall remove within the bounds of their reservation (and remain there), before the 31st of January next, they shall be deemed hostile and treated accordingly by the military force.”

  The directive, which did not even reach the Standing Rock Agency until December 22, was silent on several relevant questions, however. It did not explain how the so-called hostile bands were to be notified in time to make the deadline, since the directive left less than sixty days, not only for the word to be passed, but for compliance. Nor did the Secretary much bother with the questionable assumption that the Lakota who had signed no treaty even had a reservation to go to.

  Also overlooked in the Secretary’s desire to solve this most vexing of problems was the reality that even treaty Lakota strayed beyond the perpetually shrinking boundaries of the Sioux reservation in order to track buffalo herds. Hunting was absolutely essential to supplement the meager rations authorized by the government, which more often than not were short-weighted and inedible if they were delivered at all.

  Sitting Bull could no doubt have disabused the Secretary of the Interior of several mistaken assumptions, but as usual the Indians were not consulted about their own lives. And both Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, each of whom had his own agency, could and frequently did testify as to the futility of attempting to go through official channels in order to correct these abuses.

  The military was more than happy to see this retreat from the abortive and frequently sabotaged “peace policy” President Grant had tried on first coming to office. The officer corps had a few scores to settle, such as the Grattan and Fetterman affairs, and the lower ranks were full of would-be Grattans, anxious to settle things at gunpoint.

  But the government moved slowly, and it was months before the full significance of the decision would become apparent to either side in the slowly escalating conflict.

  Sitting Bull was more than two hundred and fifty miles from Standing Rock on December 22. The winter, which promised to be more severe than usual, had already begun in earnest. Messengers had to carry the news hundreds of miles through snowdrifts, howling winds, and sub freezing temperatures. Off and on for the next few weeks, the snow mounted, making those bands even further away than Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas inaccessible until spring. By that time, were they disposed to honor the requirements, they would already be in violation of the directive and months beyond the unreasonable deadline.

  But Sitting Bull was in no mood to observe any limits the white government meant to impose on him. He knew that there was no food at the agencies, because his own camp was full of treaty Indians who had left them rather than starve. Despite the government’s inability to determine whether or not Sitting Bull had even been apprised of the directive, he was declared hostile on February 7, 1876, and orders were issued to subdue him by force.

  Unfortunately for the army, however, the snows were so deep and the weather conditions so inhospitable that a punitive expedition was unable to penetrate into the northwestern reaches along the Powder, where Sitting Bull was camped, by marching up the Missouri River valley. In view of the weather, the commander of the expedition, General George Crook, whom the L
akota called Three Stars for his rank insignia, decided to pursue other bands declared hostile and then living off the reservation by approaching them from the south, where the weather was more moderate.

  On March 1, 1876, Crook led his column out of Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Crook’s initial target was not Sitting Bull but Crazy Horse, and he had information—mistaken however—that Crazy Horse was camped a few miles above the mouth of the Little Powder River. Crook did not realize that the camp in question was actually inhabited by Cheyennes under Chief Two Moon.

  It took the column nearly three weeks to reach its destination, and the battle, which began on March 17, would complicate the war still further by bringing the Cheyennes into it. Colonel J. J. Reynolds, who led the attack, managed to take the camp for a short period, capturing a large number of Cheyenne ponies as well, but he panicked and was unable to hold the camp or the horses for long once the Cheyenne regrouped. All he managed to do was provoke Two Moon and ensure that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would have another powerful and respected ally. He was court-martialed for his failure, but the damage was done.

  The weather continued to be severe. Bands of Oglala and Cheyenne drifted into Sitting Bull’s camp during the rest of March and early April, and when he heard the news of the unprovoked attack on Two Moon’s Cheyennes, he knew that he could no longer postpone the inevitable. Haunted by his vision of the herd of skeletal buffalo, and fearful that he might be leading his people into a war that would bring about their destruction, he realized that he had no choice; the white man would not let his people live as they chose, or where they chose, and the alternative proposed by the representatives of the Great Father was no choice at all.

  Sitting Bull was incensed by the attack on the Cheyennes. He knew that the moment he had been dreading was now at hand. As soon as the weather broke, he sent runners all across the plains, to every Lakota camp, and to the Cheyenne, as well. He even reached out to the Arapaho. The messengers rode until their ponies dropped, and at every camp the message was the same: “It is war. Come to my camp on the Rosebud River and we will have one big fight with the Long Knives.”