Man on Two Ponies

by Don Worcester

  It was a difficult search, for the women had skillfully concealed the guns; some were sitting on them and had to be lifted to one side. Gradually, however, the officers and men built up a pile of guns, hatchets, and knives—anything that could serve as a weapon. When they saw the guns carried away, the women wailed.

  While the slow search went on, the Miniconju men became even more agitated, and the troops were as nervous as the Indians. Yellow Bird was still dancing and chanting in front of the warriors, but he finally stopped and began shrilly haranguing them. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Let your hearts be strong to face what is before you. There are many soldiers around you and they have lots of bullets, but I have been assured their bullets can’t penetrate your shirts.”

  “Hau!” the warriors responded. Although the air was chilly Billy wiped sweat from his face, for he knew the Ghost Shirts couldn’t stop bullets. Porcupine had proved that.

  Yellow Bird began dancing and muttering again and blowing on his eagle-bone whistle as Whitside returned from the Indian camp. “Major, that man is making mischief,” Wells warned him, nodding at Yellow Bird.

  “Tell the colonel,” Whitside replied.

  Through Wells, Forsyth ordered Yellow Bird to sit down and remain quiet. “He’ll sit down when he gets around the circle,” Homed Cloud told Wells. Yellow Bird completed the circle and took his place among the squatting warriors. Billy glanced at his thin face and shuddered. Yellow Bird’s eyes blazed with hatred, and he looked eager to fight.

  After an hour the search details returned with 38 rifles, but only a few of them were good Winchesters. Billy knew that one of them was his, for he hadn’t hidden it. Whitside grimly shook his head. They still had many rifles. There was only one place they could be—under their blankets. He looked over the sullen warriors, wondering how they could conceal rifles even while squatting. Searching them would be a ticklish business, for they would bitterly resent it. But would they resent it enough to fight against such overwhelming odds? He shrugged and looked at Forsyth. “They’ve got them under their blankets, colonel,” he said. “It means we’ve got to search every last one of them, and if anything can touch off a fight, that’s it.” Forsyth nodded and gazed at the Mini con jus with piercing eyes, his bushy eyebrows twitching. “My orders are to disarm them,” he said in a flat voice. “I think we should wait till they’re at Pine Ridge and let the Oglala friendlies disarm them, but we can’t do that.” He nodded to Wells.

  “Tell them I don’t want to subject every man to a personal search,” he said, “but they must submit to inspection. Tell them to come forward like men and remove their blankets, then throw their guns on the ground.” Wells translated the order.

  “Hau! the older warriors responded. Twenty of them arose and walked toward Whitside and Forsyth, who stood in front of Big Foot’s tent. While the young men remained sullenly in place, the others removed their blankets in front of the two officers. Not one of them had a gun. To Billy, the young men looked like cougars tensed to spring, their eyes on the soldiers.

  At that moment Yellow Bird arose and stretched his arms west-ward toward the Messiah, begging him to make the Ghost Shirts strong. Then he began haranguing them again, urging them not to give up their guns. “Your Ghost Shirts will protect you,” he reminded them. “Bullets can’t harm you.” Billy trembled, for it was clear they believed him. Hearing this the scouts shouted to the young men not to make a false move and to give up their weapons.

  Whitside and Capt. Charles Varnum stood facing each other a yard apart and motioned for the young men to pass between them. From the first three they removed two rifles and emptied their cartridge belts. Yellow Bird continued haranguing the young warriors, his voice shriller than before, the young men even more agitated. “Look out!” he said. “Something bad is about to happen. I have lived long enough. It’s a good day to die!” That was, Billy knew, what men said when going into battle. Wells urged Homed Cloud to silence Yellow Bird and reassure the young men they were in no danger, but the medicine man ignored him.

  The rising tension, like the electric air around a lightning bolt, seemed to envelop white and Indian alike. When many of the Indians began singing their death chants, the frightened Oglala scouts drew back, for they knew what was coming.

  Lt. Charles Mann glanced over the crowd. “I had a peculiar feeling come over me,” he recalled later, “a presentiment of trouble.” Billy heard him quietly warn his troopers. “Be ready,” he said, “there’s going to be trouble.” He ordered them to fall back fifteen paces.

  A Miniconju named Black Coyote, “a crazy man, a young man of very bad influence, in fact a nobody,” in the words of scout Turning Hawk, took his new Winchester from under his blanket and waved it over his head. “This gun is mine!” he shouted. “It cost me much money! No one takes it without paying me for it!” Two troopers walked up behind him and grabbed him. As he brought his rifle down it fired in the air.

  At that moment Yellow Bird snatched up a handful of dirt and threw it in the air, then blew on his eagle-bone whistle—the old-time signal for battle. Six young men on one end of the line leaped to their feet, threw off their blankets, and leveled their rifles at the troops facing them. Lt. W. W. Robinson, who was between the two lines, spurred his horse out of the way. “Look out, men!” he shouted. “They’re going to shoot!”

  Capt. Varnum spun and saw the men with rifles at their shoulders. “My God! They’ve broken!” he exclaimed. It seemed, Lt. Mann remembered, that the warriors appeared to hesitate for an endless moment. “I thought, the pity of it! What can they be thinking?” Revolver in hand, he moved to the front of Troop K as the Indians fired a volley and the square exploded into gunfire. “Fire! Fire!” he shouted.

  B and K troops fired at the same time as the Indians. The warriors fired their repeating rifles as rapidly as they could work the levers and pull the triggers, while the soldiers replied as fast as they could reload their single-shot carbines. In seconds a cloud of smoke and dust obscured both sides; the firing was so constant it sounded as to some men like the tearing of heavy canvas.

  Some of the troops were between the Indians and their camp, and when the warriors missed their targets their bullets sped toward the women and children, who screamed and ran. When some of the warriors ran among the tipis and continued shooting, the Hotchkiss guns, which were aimed at the Indian camp, opened fire. Exploding shells burst among the tipis, setting some on fire and striking down the terrified women and children.

  At the first sound of gunfire, Big Foot pulled himself into a sitting position, then fell back against Horned Cloud with a bullet hole in his forehead. His daughter screamed and ran toward him, only to fall across his body with a bullet in her back.

  The shrieking women and children fled in all directions, many of them up the ravine to the west. The hand to hand fighting between Indians and soldiers was over in little more than a minute as the surviving warriors broke through line of troops between them and the ravine, clubbing soldiers with their rifles as they tried to reload their carbines. Terrified, and deafened by the roar of gun fire, Billy raced after the warriors to the mouth of the ravine. When a warrior fell in front of him, Billy snatched up the Winchester he dropped. He was shaking so he feared his legs would fail him.

  Suddenly Billy realized he was running alongside Pawnee Killer. They dashed up the ravine and around a bend, where they were shielded from the sight of the pursuing troops. Billy gasped. Blood was spreading rapidly down the side of Pawnee Killer’s white Ghost Shirt. His father slowed down, then stopped. “Save yourself, my son. I can go no farther. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

  Billy whirled and ran a few steps up the ravine, then stopped, his thoughts racing. He called me his son. That’s what I’ve waited for. I’m no longer a man on two ponies. He turned back and knelt by his father, filling the rifle chamber with cartridges from his pouch. “You told me once it is better to die young fighting your enemies than to grow old and weak,” he said
. “Like Yellow Bird said, it’s a good day to die.” He cocked his rifle. The shouts of the soldiers came closer.

  Pawnee Killer weakly turned his head and looked at Billy. “You’re a real Brulé, my son,” he said.

  Epilogue

  “If he fights, destroy him,” General Brooke had ordered Forsyth when he marched to Wounded Knee to help disarm Big Foot’s band. The Soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry, shocked into a blind fury by seeing their comrades fall in what they considered a treacherous attack, did their best to carry out Brooke’s command. Once the battle had started, they shot at any Indian that moved. The officers shouted again and again at the pursuing troops not to kill the women, but when men and women were together and the warriors continued firing at them, the soldiers returned the fire indiscriminately. Bodies of slain women and children were found three miles away.

  Near the smoke-shrouded square, Yellow Bird darted into the Oglala scouts’ tent and cut a slit in it. He had shot several soldiers before others spotted his smoking rifle barrel. “I’ll get the son-ofa-bitch!” a private of Troop K shouted as he ran toward the tent with knife in hand.

  “Don’t! Come back!” Lt. Mann bellowed, but the private cut a slash in the tent, only to catch Yellow Bird’s bullet.

  “My God! He’s shot me! I’m killed! I’m killed!” he exclaimed, staggering a few paces toward Lt. Mann before falling. His infuriated comrades riddled the tent with bullets and set it on fire. As the tent burned to the ground they saw the charred corpse of Yellow Bird still clutching his rifle, his scorched face contorted with undying hate.

  The firing into and out of the ravine finally stopped, and Wells called to the Indians: “All of you still alive come over here; you won’t be shot at any more.” A wounded old man farther up the ravine painfully raised himself as a mounted unit that was sweeping the ravine from the upper end appeared. Seeing the old man move, the troopers riddled him with bullets.

  Forsyth, who was trying desperately to stop the killing, screamed “For God’s sake stop shooting them!” One by one the wounded Indians crawled out and were carried off to the hospital area.

  Wells went next to the square, where at least fifty men lay dead or wounded, and called for those still alive to raise their heads. A dozen responded. One of them, a warrior named Frog, pointed to the body of Yellow Bird. “Who is that man?” he asked. Wells told him. Frog pointed his closed fist at the grisly corpse and shot his fingers out toward it. This was the Teton’s deadliest insult, meaning I could kill you and still be dissatisfied because I could do no more to you. “If I could be taken to you, I’d stab you,” he growled, then turned to Wells. “He is our murderer,” he said. “But for him inciting the young men we’d all be alive.”

  At Pine Ridge that morning the keen ears of the Indians heard the dull booming of the Hotchkiss guns fifteen miles to the east and, knowing that Big Foot’s people were under attack, went wild with rage. Two Strike’s warriors were aroused to action; 150 of them hastily painted their faces, mounted their ponies, and raced toward the sound of the guns. They met two cavalry troops that had gathered some Miniconju women and children and drove them off, killing one trooper. The Brulés took the women and children and rode away.

  The remaining Brulés at Pine Ridge and many Oglalas struck their tipis, loaded their wagons, and despite the efforts of Brooke and Royer to calm them, fled north. Shortly after noon, the Brulé war party returned with the rescued women and children, and their tale of the killings aroused the others even more. The Brulés especially were eager to fight. A large number of them rode over a ridge southwest of the agency, which was protected by only a few companies of infantry and the Indian police, and fired at them out of rifle range.

  General Brooke wisely ordered the infantry and the police not to return the fire, and thereby prevented a serious attack on the poorly defended agency. He knew that all were excited, but he was convinced that not many were actually hostile. The Brulé war party left before dark, forcing old Red Cloud to accompany them.

  The Indians were kept agitated by the rumor that Big Foot’s men had been disarmed and then callously attacked. The whites heard that the Miniconjus had attacked the troops and had the cavalry cut off, and they huddled in the agency buildings in terror.

  Two Strike’s people and the Oglalas under Little Wound, Big Road, and No Water fled down White Clay Creek and camped about fifteen miles from Pine Ridge. On the way they met Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and their followers, who were cautiously moving toward the agency, and who immediately joined them. Together they numbered about 4000, a fourth or fewer of them warriors. During the night a number of wounded men and women who had escaped from Wounded Knee straggled into the camp, and the doleful wailing of the women and the death chants of the men mingled with the howling of coyotes. Short Bull and Kicking Bear ordered that no one was to leave the camp–they would fight and die together. The aroused Brulé warriors enforced the order.

  On December 29 Major Henry’s black troopers of the Ninth Cavalry made a fifty-mile scout for Big Foot’s band, then returned to their base camp after dark. At nine that night two Oglala scouts arrived with orders from Brooke to Henry to make a forced march to Pine Ridge to defend the agency against an expected attack. The weary troopers struck their tents, loaded the wagons, and, wrapped in their buffalo hide coats, rode the fifty miles to Pine Ridge in a light snow. They arrived at reveille and found that Forsyth and half of the Seventh Cavalry had reached the agency the previous afternoon.

  At noon the same day, Forsyth and the First Squadron rode out to check on burning buildings in the vicinity of the Drexel Mission. Warriors lured them into low ground and other hostiles in the surrounding hills cut them off. In the skirmishing, Lt. Mann was fatally wounded. A courier raced to Major Henry, whose black troopers were soon in the saddle again, although their jaded mounts could barely trot. They drove the hostiles from the hills and rescued the beleagured troopers of the Seventh, who embraced their deliverers.

  On December 31, Gen. Miles arrived at Pine Ridge and took charge. He immediately ordered Forsyth relieved of his command because of the Wounded Knee debacle. Despite Miles’ heavy handed pressure, a court of inquiry exonerated Forsyth of culpability for the killing of women and children.

  The huge hostile camp was cut off from the Stronghold by a concentration of troops to the north and west of them. Miles sent conciliatory letters to the chiefs, gently reminding them they were surrounded by a great many soldiers. Not a shot would be fired or a hand raised against them, he assured them, if they did as he directed.

  The chiefs were willing to trust Bearcoat Miles, for he had never lied to them, but the Brulé followers of Short Bull and Kicking Bear refused to surrender or to allow others to leave. Day after day they quarreled bitterly in council. Finally Big Road, He Dog, Little Hawk, and Jack Red Cloud slipped away at night, and others left when they had the chance.

  Two companies of Cheyenne scouts kept the hostile camp under close surveillance day and night. One company was under Lt. Edward Casey, a promising young officer who was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the Indians. His scouts frequently met and talked with men from the camp. On June 6, several of them visited Casey in his camp and encouraged him to talk to the leaders, most of whom were eager to return to Pine Ridge.

  The next day Casey and two Cheyenne scouts rode up the valley and met several men from the camp. One returned, carrying a message to Red Cloud that Casey wanted to talk to him. Red Cloud replied that Casey must leave at once, for the fanatics in the camp would kill him on sight. Just as Casey received the message, two Brulés rode up and stopped to talk, a warrior named Broken Arm and Plenty Horses, a youthful Carlisle graduate. As Casey turned to ride back down the valley, Plenty Horses shot him in the back of the head.

  When the influential Young-Mao-Afraid-of-His-Horses returned to Pine Ridge from his long visit to the Crows, Miles sent him to the hostile camp to persuade the Indians to come to the agency. With difficulty, he induced the reluctant,
tempestuous Brulés to move the camp a few miles nearer the agency. The troops to the north, now commanded by Gen. Brooke, immediately followed, which made the Brulés hesitant to move again. Miles, well aware that it was a delicate, explosive situation, ordered the troops to make no threatening gestures, but their mere presence a few miles away kept the hostiles nervous. On January 11 they finally reached the Drexel Mission, after several more short moves. They were now five miles from the agency, with the troops not far behind them. Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and most of the Brulés still preferred to die fighting rather than surrender. They continued to quarrel furiously every day.

  On January 12 the Oglalas in the camp, over the threats of Brulé fanatics, moved two miles closer to the agency. The Brulés, seeing themselves alone and exposed to the nearby troops, soon struck their tipis and hurried after the others. They had hardly departed before troops bivouacked at the mission. White Tail, a Brulé chief, rode back to the soldier camp and begged Brooke not to follow them so closely. Finally, on January 15, they entered the agency and surrendered.

  When asked for their guns they handed over 200 rifles without protest. Miles knew they had many more but he judiciously refrained from pressing the matter. More guns were voluntarily surrendered once the fear of a treacherous attack subsided. Symbolizing the end of the Ghost Dance affair was a meeting between Kicking Bear and Miles. The two warriors stared at each other for a few moments, then the tall Ghost Dance leader leaned over and laid his rifle at Miles’ feet.

  Brig. Gen. L. W. Colby of the Nebraska National Guard, who’d been at Pine Ridge as an observer, remarked: “This Indian war might be regarded as the result of a mistaken conception or misunderstanding of the Indian character and of the real situation and conditions on the reservations. The general condition of things, however, which made such misunderstanding possible, was the result of the Indian policy of the government.”