Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (18 page)

On August 28, when Cole and Walker reached the Powder, they sent scouts to the Tongue and Rosebud to find General Connor, but he was still far to the south that day preparing to destroy Black Bear’s Arapaho village. After their scouts returned to camp without finding any trace of Connor, the two commanders put their men on half-rations and decided to start moving south before starvation brought disaster.

During the few days that the soldiers were camped there on the Powder where it curved north toward the Yellowstone, bands of Hunkpapa and Minneconjou Sioux were following their trail out of the Black Hills. By September 1 the trackers numbered nearly four hundred warriors. With them was the Hunkpapa leader, Sitting Bull, who two years before at the Crow Creek camp of the exiled Santees from Minnesota had sworn that he would fight if necessary to save the buffalo country from land-hungry white men.

When the Sioux war party discovered the soldiers camped in timber along the Powder, several of the young men wanted to
ride in under a truce flag and see if they could persuade the Bluecoats to give them tobacco and sugar as peace offerings. Sitting Bull did not trust white men and was opposed to such begging, but he held back and let the others send a truce party down toward the camp.

The soldiers waited until the Sioux truce party came within easy rifle range and then fired on them, killing and wounding several of them before they could escape. On their way back to the main body of warriors, the survivors of the truce party made off with several horses from the soldiers’ herd.

Sitting Bull was not surprised at the way the soldiers had treated their peaceful Indian visitors. After looking at the gaunt horses taken from the soldiers’ herd, he decided that four hundred Sioux on fleet-footed mustangs should be an equal match for two thousand soldiers on such half-starved Army mounts. Black Moon, Swift Bear, Red Leaf, Stands-Looking-Back, and most of the other warriors agreed with him. Stands-Looking-Back had a saber that he had captured from one of General Sully’s men in Dakota, and he wanted to try it against the soldiers.

In pictographs that Sitting Bull drew later for his autobiography, he showed himself on that day wearing beaded leggings and a fur cap with earflaps. He was armed with a single-shot muzzle-loader, a bow and quiver, and carried his thunderbird shield.

Riding down to the camp single file, the Sioux encircled the soldiers guarding the horse herd, and began picking them off one by one until a company of cavalrymen came charging up the bank of the Powder. The Sioux quickly withdrew on their fast ponies, keeping out of range until the Bluecoats’ bony mounts began to falter. Then they turned on their pursuers, Stands-Looking-Back in the lead, brandishing his saber and riding right in until he knocked a soldier off his horse. Stands-Looking-Back then wheeled his pony and dashed safely away, yelling with glee over his exploit.

After a few minutes the soldiers reformed, and at the sound of a bugle came charging after the Sioux again. Once more the swift mustangs of the Sioux took them out of range, the Indians scattering until the frustrated soldiers came to a halt.
This time the Sioux struck from all sides, racing in among the soldiers and knocking them off their horses. Sitting Bull captured a black stallion, afterward making a pictograph of the event for his autobiography.

Alarmed by the Indian attack, the Eagle Chiefs, Cole and Walker, formed their columns for a forced march southward along the Powder. For a few days the Sioux followed the soldiers, scaring them by appearing suddenly on ridgetops or making little forays against the rear guard. Sitting Bull and the other leaders laughed at how frightened the Bluecoats became, bunching up all the time and looking over their shoulders, and always hurrying, hurrying, trying to get away from them.

When the big sleet storm came, the Indians took shelter for two days, and then one morning they heard scattered firing from the direction the soldiers had gone. The next day they found the abandoned camp with dead horses everywhere. They could see that the horses had been covered with sheets of freezing-rain, and the soldiers had shot them because they could not make them go any farther.

Since many of the frightened Bluecoats were now on foot, the Sioux decided to keep following them and drive them so crazy with fear they would never return to the Black Hills again. Along the way these Hunkpapas and Minneconjous began meeting small scouting parties of Oglala Sioux and Cheyennes who were still out looking for Star Chief Connor’s column. There was great excitement in these meetings. Only a few miles south was a big Cheyenne village, and as runners brought the leaders of the bands together, they began planning a big ambush for the soldiers.

During that summer Roman Nose had made many medicine fasts to obtain special protection against enemies. Like Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, he was determined to fight for his country, and he was also determined to win. White Bull, an old Cheyenne medicine man, advised him to go alone to a medicine lake nearby and live with the water spirits. For four days Roman Nose lay on a raft in the lake without food or water, enduring the hot sun by day and thunderstorms at night. He prayed to the Great Medicine Man and to the water spirits. After Roman Nose
returned to camp, White Bull made him a protective war bonnet filled with so many eagle feathers that when he was mounted, the war bonnet trailed almost to the ground.

In September, when the Cheyenne camp first heard about the soldiers fleeing south up the Powder, Roman Nose asked for the privilege of leading a charge against the Bluecoats. A day or two later the soldiers were camped in a bend of the river, with high bluffs and thick timber on both sides. Deciding that this was an excellent place for an attack, the chiefs brought several hundred warriors into position all around the camp and began the fight by sending small decoy parties in to draw the soldiers out of their wagon corral. But the soldiers would not come out.

Now Roman Nose rode up on his white pony, his war bonnet trailing behind him, his face painted for battle. He called to the warriors not to fight singly as they had always done but to fight together as the soldiers did. He told them to form a line on the open ground between the river and the bluffs. The warriors maneuvered their ponies into a line front facing the soldiers, who were formed on foot before their wagons. Roman Nose now danced his white pony along in front of the warriors, telling them to stand fast until he had emptied the soldiers’ guns. Then he slapped the pony into a run and rode straight as an arrow toward one end of the line of soldiers. When he was close enough to see their faces clearly, he turned and rode fast along the length of the soldiers’ line, and they emptied their guns at him all along the way. At the end of the line, he wheeled the white pony and rode back along the soldiers’ front again.

“He made three, or perhaps four, rushes from one end of the line to the other,” said George Bent. “And then his pony was shot and fell under him. On seeing this, the warriors set up a yell and charged. They attacked the troops all along the line, but could not break through anywhere.”
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Roman Nose had lost his horse, but his protective medicine saved his life. He also learned some things that day about fighting Bluecoats—and so did Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Dull Knife, and the other leaders. Bravery, numbers, massive charges—they all meant nothing if the warriors were armed only with bows, lances, clubs, and old trade guns of the fur-trapper days. (“We were now attacked from all sides, front, rear, and flanks,”
Colonel Walker reported, “but the Indians seemed to have but few fire arms.”
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) The soldiers were armed with modern Civil War rifles, and had the support of howitzers.

For several days after the fight—which would be remembered by the Indians as Roman Nose’s fight—the Cheyennes and Sioux continued to harass and punish the soldiers. The Bluecoats were now barefoot and in rags, and had nothing left to eat but their bony horses, which they devoured raw because they were too pressed to build fires. At last in the Drying Grass Moon toward the end of September, Star Chief Connor’s returning column arrived to rescue Cole and Walker’s beaten soldiers. The soldiers all camped together around the stockade at Fort Connor on the Powder until messengers from Fort Laramie arrived with orders recalling the troops (except for two companies, which were to remain at Fort Connor).

The two companies which were ordered to stay through the winter at Fort Connor (soon to be renamed Fort Reno) were the Galvanized Yankees who had escorted Sawyers’ wagon trains west to the gold fields. General Connor left these former Confederate soldiers six howitzers to defend their stockade. Red Cloud and the other leaders studied the fort from a distance. They knew they had enough warriors to storm the stockade, but too many would die under the showers of shot hurled by the big guns. They finally agreed upon a crude strategy of keeping a constant watch on the fort and its supply trail from Fort Laramie. They would hold the soldiers prisoners in their fort all winter and cut off their supplies from Fort Laramie.

Before that winter ended, half the luckless Galvanized Yankees were dead or dying of scurvy, malnutrition, and pneumonia. From the boredom of confinement, many slipped away and deserted, taking their chances with the Indians outside.

As for the Indians, all except the small bands of warriors needed to watch the fort moved over to the Black Hills, where plentiful herds of antelope and buffalo kept them fat in their warm lodges. Through the long winter evenings the chiefs recounted the events of Star Chief Connor’s invasion. Because the Arapahos had been overconfident and careless, they had lost a village, several lives, and part of their rich pony herd. The other tribes had lost a few lives but no horses or lodges.
They had captured many horses and mules carrying U.S. brands. They had taken many carbines, saddles, and other equipment from the soldiers. Above all, they had gained a new confidence in their ability to drive the Bluecoat soldiers from their country.

“If white men come into my country again, I will punish them again,” Red Cloud said, but he knew that unless he could somehow obtain many new guns like the ones they had captured from the soldiers, and plenty of ammunition for the guns, the Indians could not go on punishing the soldiers forever.

1866
—
March 27,
President Johnson vetoes Civil Rights Bill. April 1, Congress overrides the President’s veto of Civil Rights Bill and gives equal rights to all persons born in United States (except Indians); President empowered to use Army to enforce the law. June 13, Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving Negroes rights of citizenship, is forwarded to states for ratification. July 21, several hundred die in London cholera epidemic. July 30, race riot in New Orleans. Werner von Siemens invents the dynamo. Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
and Whittier’s
Snowbound
are published.

1867
—
February 9,
Nebraska admitted to Union as thirty-seventh state. February 17, first ship passes through Suez Canal. March 12, last French troops leave Mexico. March 30, U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. May 20, in London, John Stuart Mill’s bill to permit women to vote is rejected by Parliament. June 19, Mexicans execute Emperor Maximilian. July 1, Dominion of Canada established. October 27, Garibaldi marches on Rome. November 25, congressional committee resolves that President Johnson “be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.” Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. Christopher L. Sholes constructs the first practical typewriter. Johann Strauss composes “The Blue Danube.” Karl Marx publishes first part of
Das Kapital.

This war did not spring up here in our land; this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things. The Great Father and his children are to blame for this trouble. … It has been our wish to live here in our country peaceably, and do such things as may be for the welfare and good of our people, but the Great Father has filled it with soldiers who think only of our death. Some of our people who have gone from here in order that they may have a change, and others who have gone north to hunt, have been attacked by the soldiers from this direction, and when they have got north have been attacked by soldiers from the other side, and now when they are willing to come back the soldiers stand between them to keep them from coming home. It seems to me there is a better way than this. When people come to trouble, it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it.

—
SINTE-GALESHKA (SPOTTED TAIL) OF THE BRULÉ SIOUX

I
N LATE SUMMER AND AUTUMN
of 1865, while the Indians in the Powder River country were demonstrating their military power, a United States treaty commission was traveling along the upper Missouri River. At every Sioux village near the river, the commissioners stopped to parley with whatever leaders they could find. Newton Edmunds, recently appointed governor of the Territory of Dakota, was the prime mover on this commission. Another member was the Long Trader, Henry Sibley, who three years earlier had driven the Santee Sioux from the state of Minnesota. Edmunds and Sibley handed out blankets, molasses, crackers, and other presents to the Indians they visited, and had no difficulty in persuading their hosts to sign new treaties. They also sent runners into the Black Hills and Powder River country inviting the warrior chiefs to come in and sign, but the chiefs were too busy fighting General Connor’s invaders, and none responded.

In the spring of that year the white man’s Civil War had been brought to an end, and the trickle of white emigration to the West was showing signs of increasing to a flood. What the treaty commissioners wanted was right of passageway for trails, roads, and eventually railroads across the Indian country.

Before autumn ended the commissioners completed nine treaties with the Sioux—including the Brulés, Hunkpapas, Oglalas, and Minneconjous, most of whose warrior chiefs were nowhere near the villages on the Missouri. Government authorities in Washington hailed the treaties as the end of Indian hostilities. At last the Plains Indians were pacified, they said; never again would there be a need for expensive campaigns such as Connor’s Powder River expedition, which had been organized to kill Indians “at an expense of more than a million dollars apiece, while hundreds of our soldiers had lost their lives, many of our border settlers been butchered, and much property destroyed.”
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