The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (31 page)

On August 5, General George Crook, along with Wesley Merritt's troops—nearly twenty-three hundred in total—marched from his base camp on Goose Creek down the Tongue River trailing the Indians. At the same time, General Alfred Terry, with Colonel John Gibbon and the Seventh Cavalry, took another seventeen-hundred-man detachment down the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Rosebud.

The columns—to their mutual surprise—happened upon each other on August 10 in the Rosebud Valley. The reinforced column then embarked on an arduous march through rain and mud, with many men succumbing to sickness and fatigue. They arrived on August 17 at the mouth of the Yellowstone River without having come within one hundred miles of the hostiles. By this time, Sitting Bull and his band had escaped to the lower Missouri, and Crazy Horse was leading his people toward the Black Hills.

On September 5, General Terry made the decision to disband his portion of the expedition. Gibbon returned to Fort Ellis, and the Seventh Cavalry rode for Fort Abraham Lincoln. Crook, however, decided on a forced march to the Black Hills in an effort to overtake those Indians who had earlier embarrassed him on the Rosebud.

Crook was under the impression that he could quickly catch up with the hostiles and ordered that all wagons, extra clothing, tents, and other nonnecessities be abandoned. His column, however, was soon plagued by bad weather and supply problems on what would become known as the “starvation march.” Scores of exhausted animals died, and the men were reduced to eating mule and horse meat. Near the town of Deadwood, Crook dispatched Captain Anson Mills with a detail of 150 cavalrymen to buy rations.

On September 9, Mills happened upon a Sioux camp of thirty-seven lodges near Slim Buttes, a landmark rock formation. The cavalrymen charged and routed the enemy—killing Chief American Horse—and occupied the camp while withstanding heavy fire from warriors who took up a nearby defensive position.

At about noon, Crazy Horse and another two hundred warriors arrived and attacked. A fierce battle raged without a decision until Crook and reinforcements reached the field and the Indians broke contact. The army lost three killed and twelve wounded; Indian casualties are unknown. A search of the camp revealed various items taken from Custer's command—clothing, horses and saddles, a guidon, and a gauntlet that had belonged to Captain Myles Keogh.

Crook's beleaguered column was finally rescued when wagons laden with supplies accompanied by a herd of cattle reached them on September 13. At that time, he made the decision to abandon his futile search for the hostiles.

The Little Bighorn Campaign had come to an inauspicious end, and the United States Congress vowed to make the Lakota Sioux tribe pay dearly for its treachery. It was decreed in the annual Indian appropriation act of August 15 that the Sioux would be denied subsistence until the tribe relinquished all claims to hunting rights outside the reservation and signed over ownership of the Black Hills to the government.

This ultimatum was delivered to the reservations in September and October, and in order to save their people from starvation, a number of chiefs at the various agencies signed the new treaty—instead of the two-thirds of adult males as specified by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Regardless, Paha Sapa, formerly Lakota land, was now officially owned by the United States. Colonel Nelson A. Miles worked throughout the fall building winter quarters at his Tongue River Cantonment, which he used as a supply base from which to chase various Sioux tribes, including that of Sitting Bull, across half of Montana. Skirmishes and negotiations between the two warring factions failed to produce agreeable results, although small bands did occasionally submit to the reservations.

Nelson Miles, a thirty-seven-year-old Massachusetts native, had helped organize an infantry unit during the Civil War. He had been deemed too young to command at that time but proved himself in such battles as Seven Pines, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Petersburg—he was wounded in each of them. He had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Chancellorsville and promoted to brigadier general after Petersburg. After a stint as commander of a black regiment, he was placed in charge of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where former Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was being held. Miles assumed command of the Fifth Infantry in 1869, commanded them in the so-called Red River War of 1874–75, and had now come north to pursue hostile Cheyenne and Sioux.

Meanwhile, General Crook, with a column of more than twenty-two hundred men, had marched on November 14 from Fort Fetterman up the old Bozeman Trail to a location near his earlier battle on the Rosebud. At that point, scouts reported finding a large Cheyenne village to the west in the Bighorn Mountains. Crook dispatched Colonel Ranald Mackenzie with ten cavalry troops—about eleven hundred men—to engage the hostiles.

At dawn on November 25, Mackenzie and his cavalrymen stormed into a canyon of the Red Fork of the Powder River and attacked a two-hundred-lodge village under chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf. The army horsemen quickly routed the surprised occupants.

About four hundred warriors, however, regrouped within the boulders on a nearby bluff and poured a deadly fire back into the village while others closed with the soldiers and Indian scouts, fighting hand to hand. Chief Little Wolf was said to have been wounded seven times but escaped and survived.

It was midafternoon before the cavalrymen had fought off the assault and maintained control of the village. They then set to work destroying everything of value—lodges, clothing, and food—and capturing the herd of seven hundred ponies. Once again items from Custer's command were found, including a guidon that had been made into a pillowcase. Also, a bloody photograph of Captain Thomas McDougall's sister that for some unknown reason had been carried by Captain Myles Keogh was also found in that Cheyenne village.

Mackenzie lost one officer and five enlisted killed and twenty-six wounded. The Indians suffered about forty dead—including the horrible loss of eleven babies who had frozen to death that night.

The Cheyenne fled in search of Crazy Horse on the upper Tongue River. Crook determinedly followed but after enduring low temperatures and blizzards ended his campaign in late December without another major engagement.

The military pressure, however, was taking its toll on the renegade Indians. Many of these people submitted to the reservation and others were prepared to surrender. To that end, communication was opened between the chiefs and Colonel Nelson Miles to discuss terms.

On December 16, a delegation of Cheyenne approached the Tongue River Cantonment to talk but was attacked by some of Miles' Crow scouts, who killed five of their enemy. The Cheyenne fled, and hostilities resumed.

In early January 1877, Miles and about 350 men set out to search for hostiles up the Tongue River Valley. On January 7, the Indians attempted to lure them into an ambush, but anxious warriors sprang the trap too soon, which enabled Miles to escape and in the process capture a number of Cheyenne women and children. At daybreak the following morning, January 8, Crazy Horse and about five hundred Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked Miles's command with intentions of freeing the captives.

The two sides fought fiercely throughout the morning on a battlefield covered with deep snow. Miles was well prepared for the attack and skillfully deployed his artillery and marksmen, which kept the Indians at bay. The Battle of Wolf Mountain, or Battle Butte, ended about noon when a blizzard obscured visibility and the Indians withdrew. Miles had intended to continue his campaign, but the difficulty in obtaining supplies forced him to return to Tongue River Cantonment.

The battle, although each side had sustained only light casualties, convinced many of the hostiles that they could never prevail against the army. Sitting Bull decided to take his band to Canada, while other small bands scattered across the Plains and mountains and still others chose to straggle onto the reservations.

After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse and his followers, who probably numbered around six hundred, spent about a month celebrating their victory with feasts and dances. He then returned to the Black Hills to harass prospectors. While other Sioux bands split up and had apparently lost their lust for war, Crazy Horse waged what amounted at times to a one-man fight to regain the land promised to his people.

But Crazy Horse's defiance began to waver as time passed. His people were starving, and his wife had contracted tuberculosis. General George Crook had promised Crazy Horse a reservation of his own if he would submit. On May 5, 1877, the legendary warrior led eight to nine hundred of his brethren in a parade two miles long, guided by Red Cloud, into Fort (Camp) Robinson.

There were, however, a few bands that remained defiant and vowed to continue their resistance. One such group of Sioux under Lame Deer had chosen not to surrender with Crazy Horse. Colonel Miles, acting on information from Indians who had surrendered, marched up the Tongue to search for these hostiles.

A village of fifty-one lodges was located on Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Rosebud. At dawn on May 7, Miles, with four cavalry troops, charged into Lame Deer's village. The surprised Indians fled to the hillsides, while the army easily secured the village and commandeered the 450-head pony herd.

One of Miles' scouts convinced Chief Lame Deer and Iron Shirt, the head warrior, to surrender. Another scout, however, rode up and shot at the two men, who, in turn, retrieved their weapons and fled toward the high ground while firing—one bullet just missing Miles and striking a trooper to the rear. Both Indians were shot down by a barrage of fire from the troops.

Fourteen Indians had been killed in the assault, while the army lost four enlisted killed and one officer and six enlisted wounded. More than two hundred of Lame Deer's band had escaped, and Miles gave chase, without success, before returning to destroy the village. These Indians were followed throughout the summer by Miles—including eleven troops of the Seventh Cavalry under Colonel Samuel Sturgis—which resulted in most of them eventually surrendering.

Discontent and tension gripped the Lakota Sioux reservations throughout the summer of 1877. The presence of Crazy Horse at Red Cloud Agency had a great effect on young braves who worshiped him, the older chiefs who resented him, and the army, which distrusted him. The reservation that Crook had promised apparently had been simply a ruse to encourage Crazy Horse to surrender. He was asked by Crook to visit Washington but refused. Crook, through interpreter Frank Grouard, asked Crazy Horse if he would help the army fight against the Nez Percé. Grouard reportedly misinterpreted the response on purpose to indicate that Crazy Horse wanted to fight whites, which led Crook to believe that the Sioux warrior intended to lead his people in a rebellion.

Crazy Horse requested that he be allowed to take the ill Black Shawl to Spotted Tail Agency, but that was viewed as a threat and he was denied permission. He went anyway, chased by soldiers who failed to catch him. He did, however, agree to return and did so—to his surprise as a prisoner—on September 5.

Crazy Horse was being led to the stockade at Fort Robinson when he panicked at the thought of incarceration and tried to escape. Little Big Man and several other Indian guards grabbed him, and Private William Gentiles stepped forward to run his bayonet through Crazy Horse's body.

Crazy Horse said as he lay on his deathbed:

I was not hostile to the white man.… We had buffalo for food, and their hides for clothing and our tipis. We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on the reservations, where we were driven against our will. At times, we did not get enough to eat, and we were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt. We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government then. All we wanted was peace, to be left alone.… They tried to confine me, I tried to escape, and a soldier ran his bayonet through me. I have spoken.

The great warrior Crazy Horse died later that day. His father, also named Crazy Horse, buried the body of his son at some secret location in his homeland—legend has it near Wounded Knee Creek—which has yet to have been discovered by the white man.

The Northern Cheyenne—including chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf—unlike the Sioux, had been denied the right to live on a reservation located in their own part of the country and had been escorted in August to their new home at Fort Reno in Indian Territory.

Meanwhile, the Nez Percé, a tribe from Wallowa Valley, Washington, led by the legendary strategic genius Chief Joseph, had gone to war against the United States government. The tribe had been pressured to move onto a reservation in Idaho, which would have forced them to reduce the size of their prized herds of Appaloosa horses. Chief Joseph negotiated a peaceful settlement of the dispute and the tribe was prepared to move when a clash between settlers and young warriors over stock stolen by the settlers left eighteen whites dead. Joseph was compelled to head into the mountains with 650 of his people and was chased by the army.

The outnumbered Nez Percé were caught by surprise on three separate occasions—at White Bird Canyon and Clearwater, Idaho, and by Colonel John Gibbon at Big Hole Valley, Montana—but each time fought off the attack of the superior force and escaped. As skirmishes escalated, casualties on both sides mounted and Chief Joseph decided to make a mad dash to Canada in an attempt to join Sitting Bull's band of Sioux.

On September 13, Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis and 350 troopers of the Seventh Cavalry intercepted the Nez Percé at Canyon Creek, Montana, near present-day Billings. In a running battle, Sturgis, who was criticized for his timidity, failed to prevent the tribe from escaping.

Colonel Miles marched with reinforcements and on September 30 attacked Chief Joseph's camp on Snake Creek near the Bear Paw Mountains. In the ensuing bloody battle, the Seventh Cavalry bore the brunt of the casualties—Captain Owen Hale was killed, and Captain Myles Moylan and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey were wounded.