The belief of these officers that they had taken a great toll on the Crazy Horse warriors was strengthened the following day when they more carefully examined the Indian positions on the ridge, finding much blood on the snow as well as a great deal of blood trails along the escape route upriver.
Yet all of this appears to clash with what are consistent reports from the Indian participants themselves—those who, like Eagle Shield, eventually gave a rendition of the fight through interpreters. Wooden Leg states that Big Crow was the only Cheyenne casualty but goes on to say that two Sioux warriors were killed as well. Red Cloth, a Miniconjou, later testified that in addition to the two Sioux killed in the battle, three more Lakota had been wounded, and two of those had later died. Again and again the Indian reports consistently testify to a much, much smaller casualty count than Miles and his officers had represented.
Considering all the shooting from both sides, especially in light of all the bullets used up by Casey’s, Butler’s, and McDonald’s companies, it is surprising that there were not more Indian casualties. Still, this fact once more points up the true lack of marksmanship on the part of most frontier soldiers. The army supplied ammunition enough to waste in battle but would not provide ammunition to use for target practice at their posts.
In addition to the soldiers killed and wounded, the Indians did take a further toll with their marksmanship (or, some might argue, lack of it): three of the army’s horses were killed, and one horse and two mules wounded.
Although we do not have a single written account of Sitting Bull’s fight with Baldwin’s battalion at Ash Creek in December, we are much more fortunate to have a record in the case of the Battle Butte fight. A handful of stories were made through interpreters in subsequent weeks, as the warrior bands began slipping back in to the agencies. But for the most part, more stories of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain” were related over the next ten years—not a long time at all, considering a culture with an oral tradition. These were people who passed along their history in a precise and unembellished manner. What is shown by the record from Cheyenne renderings to Sioux versions of the fight is that they all generally conform to the military record of the battle (while adding a detail here or there depending upon a particular warrior’s individual exploits).
One of the most interesting facets of the warrior tales of the fight is that the warriors of Crazy Horse had again planned on using the tried-and-true decoy technique that had worked for them across the last ten years—ever since the Fetterman massacre in December 1866. Their statements record the fact that they planned to ambush the Bear Coat by using a small decoy party to draw the main body of the soldiers from their bivouac to a point some two miles upstream (between Battle Butte and the mouth of Wall Creek), where the mass of warriors lingered on ground the war chiefs considered favorable for the fight.
Again, as in most cases, the young, eager decoys advanced much too quickly, engaging the soldiers, revealing their positions, and thereby giving away the plan before they could lure the soldiers south. When the first shots were fired and the army engaged, the warriors waiting in ambush had no choice but to hurry north with their Henry and Winchester carbines, along with a few of the Springfields taken as spoils from the Custer dead.
This ruined ambush was but another indication to many of the war chiefs that their people had indeed failed to listen to the Great Mystery’s warning not to take the spoils from the Greasy Grass fight. Not only did their decoy plan not work, but they were forced by a potent winter storm to withdraw—two more acts by Wakan Tanka to show the Lakota people his great displeasure with them.
The village, with a population that ranged anywhere between twenty-five to thirty-five hundred people (of which at least a thousand were of “fighting age”), limped away to the south during the storm. While there was renewed talk of resistance, there was also a growing voice among those who recommended surrender at the reservations.
Wooden Leg himself would stay out until the Cheyenne went in after the spring. While the flowers bloomed along the Tongue River, he made the journey back to the rocks where he had carefully buried Big Crow. With the warmth of summer coming, Wooden Leg found the body, still wrapped in its buffalo robe, undisturbed by time and predators. Its location somewhere south of Battle Butte along the eastern rim of the Tongue River Valley remains a secret to this day—as it should. Big Crow continues to be a hero to his people.
The army selected some of their own for hero status following the battle. Private Philip Kennedy and Private Patton G. Whited, both from Captain Edmond Butler’s C Company, were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their courage in being the first two men to reach the crest of the ridge in the face of heavy fire from the enemy. For his action in leading the charge, Butler himself was given a Medal of Honor and received a brevet rank of major.
In addition, Captain James Casey and Lieutenant Robert McDonald received Medals of Honor from the army for their heroism that day in the face of the enemy. Lieutenant Frank Baldwin went on to win universal acclaim for his singular act of bravery in bringing that case of ammunition to the battalion, then leading them against the snowy slope.
With so many who had distinguished themselves in the line of duty, it is sad and unfortunate to me that the officers of the Fifth Infantry soon split into rival camps when attempting to assess the results of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain.”
A thin-skinned Butler attempted to minimize Baldwin’s role in the charge against the heights—perhaps due to the fact that Baldwin’s actions tended to diminish the yard-by-yard bravery exhibited by the Irish captain as well as Butler’s readiness to continue pitching into the warriors despite being low on (or in some cases out of) ammunition for their Spring-fields.
In consequence, other officers far from the bluffs where the hottest fighting took place—men like Lieutenant James Pope and Adjutant George Baird—sought through the record to minimize Butler’s gallant courage in the face of the enemy—leading his men in the assault as ordered by Miles.
Sad indeed that these personalities, all officers in one of the finest regiments involved in the Indian Wars, would descend to such petty backbiting and ego baiting. Even Baldwin—hero of McClellan Creek, the hero who held his men together at Bark Creek, and the hero who a few days later routed Sitting Bull at Ash Creek—yes, even Frank Baldwin would later snipe away at his fellow officers by saying:
With the exception of Pope & Dickey there was not an officer on duty with companies who seemed to comprehend the character of the engagement beyond blindly defending the point they were assigned, or by chance might drift to.
Now, for those of you who haven’t had yourselves enough of this crucial and pivotal month (or “Moon”) in the Wolf Mountain country with our beloved gray-eyed Irishman, I have some suggested reading for you—titles I used in compiling my story of the beginning of the end for the warrior bands that terrible winter.
Battle of the Butte—General Miles’ Fight with the Indians on Tongue River, January 8, 1877, by Charles B. Erlanson
Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877—the Military View, edited by Jerome A. Greene
“The Battle of Wolf Mountain,” by Don Rickey, Jr., Montana, The Magazine of Western History, vol. 13 (Spring, 1963)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown Cheyenne Memories, by John Stands In Timber and Margot Liberty
Crazy Horse—The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz
Crazy Horse Called Them Walk-A-Heaps, by Neil Baird Thompson
Crazy Horse and Custer—The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose
Death on the Prairie—The Thirty Years’ Struggle for the Western Plains, by Paul I. Wellman
A Dose of Soldiering—The Memoirs of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882, edited by Thomas T. Smith
Faintly Sounds the War-Cry—The Story of the Fight at Battle Butte, by Fred H. Werner
The Fighting Cheyennes, by George Bird Grinn
ell
Frontier Regulars—The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891, by Robert M. Utley
General George Crook, His Autobiography, edited by Martin F. Schmitt
“Historical Address of Brigadier General W. C. Brown,” Winners of the West, August 30, 1932
Indian-Fighting Army, by Fairfax Downey
Indian Fights and Fighters, by Cyrus Townsend Brady
Lakota and Cheyenne—Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, by Jerome A. Greene
The Lance and the Shield—The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, by Robert M. Utley
Memoirs of a White Crow Indian (Thomas H LeForge), as told by Thomas B. Marquis
Nelson A. Miles—A Documentary Biography of his Military Career, 1861-1903, edited by Brian C. Pohanka
Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army, by Robert Wooster
People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830–1879, by Peter J. Powell, S.J.
Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nehon A. Miles, introduction by Robert Wooster
The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone, by Mark H. Brown
Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, by James C. Olson
Soldiers West—Biographies from the Military Frontier, edited by Paul Andrew Hutton
Spotted Tail’s Folk—A History of the Brule Sioux, by George E. Hyde
Stone Song—A Novel of the Life of Crazy Horse, by Winfred Blevins
Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History, by Peter J. Powell, S.J.
The U.S. Army in the West, 1870-1880—Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment, by Douglas C. McChristian
War Cries on Horseback—The Story of the Indian Wars of the Great Plains, by Stephen Longstreet
War in the West—The Indian Campaigns, by Don Rickey
Warpath and Council Fire—The Plains Indians’ Struggle for Survival in War and in Diplomacy, by Stanley Vestal
William Jackson, Indian Scout, as told by James Willard Schultz
Wolves for the Blue Soldiers—Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860-1890, by Thomas W. Dunlay
Wooden Leg—A Warrior Who Fought Custer, interpreted by Thomas B. Marquis
Yellowstone Command—Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, by Jerome A. Greene
“Yellowstone Kelly”—the Memoirs of Luther S. Kelly, edited by Milo Milton Quaife
To the small-minded it seems that great battles must surely have horrendous death tolls. Such niggardly people point to the Alamo, the Fetterman fight, and the Custer battle—none of which had any immediate or lasting effect on the war of which it was a part.
On the other hand, the Battle of the Butte, this “Battle of Wolf Mountain,” was to seal the fate of the winter roamers, those warrior bands who for the better part of a year had stymied, defeated to fight another day, or completely crushed the finest outfits in the frontier army.
After 8 January 1877 the Cheyenne were done. What Mackenzie had begun at the Battle of the Red Fork in November was finished at Battle Butte by the Fifth Infantry. The richest tribe on the northern plains had suffered all they could. They would surrender to Miles or trudge into their agencies that spring … to begin a last and even more tragic chapter in their history at Fort Robinson (a story we will tell in a forthcoming volume).
With so little buffalo and game to feed the camps, with such extreme cold and the constant harrying by soldiers from both the north and the south, the Sioux bands splintered, fractured, never to coalesce again as they had in the spring and summer of 1876—the zenith of their greatness. As the camps fractured into bands, the bands split into clans, and the clans broke apart into family units, there seemed no longer to be any use in trying to stay together in the great camp circles that had greeted Reno’s charge that hot June day, the great confederation that had encircled and utterly crushed Custer’s five companies.
This terrible winter a man had to worry about his family—feeding them, keeping them warm, keeping them safe from the wolfish armies prowling their traditional hunting grounds.
After a while this matter of the unceded hunting grounds did not matter. There weren’t any buffalo left anyway. If a man could not be a hunter and provide for his family—of what use was he to his people?
The stormy fight at Battle Butte pierced these two great nations to the very heart of what they were as a culture. The bleeding had begun, drop by drop, that winter and continued into a cold, rainy spring. There would be no way to stop that bleeding.
The hoop was unraveling.
What once was would never be again.
Saddest of all—it was to be Crazy Horse’s last fight.
At Battle Butte he chose the ground where he would engage his antagonist, Nelson A. Miles. This was the fight that proved the Bear Coat good at his word. At the Cedar Creek parleys* he had promised the Sioux he would not give them any rest that winter. Miles kept his vow. The winter roamers learned that the army could and would hunt them down, despite the most severe weather.
Day by day, moon by moon, it was becoming more and more clear that there would be no peace until they went in to their agencies.
This last battle for Crazy Horse was a fight that stripped the Northern Cheyenne of what little they still had left after close to a year of constant war.
This was a winter that proved to Crazy Horse that his people could not go on any longer.
After 8 January 1877, the choices were as clear as a high-country stream: follow Sitting Bull in fleeing to Canada … or limp into one of the agencies and hope for the mercy of those who have labored long and hard to defeat you.
For Crazy Horse, the greatest warrior of the Titunwan Lakota nation, the hardest thing for him to do was to consider giving up his war pony, handing over his weapons, and abandoning the path being a defender of his people. Harder still to leave the land that rested in his bones and ran in his blood.
If the Battle of the Butte accomplished nothing more, it convinced Crazy Horse that the war was over. The fight was done.
No longer was there any home on the face of his beloved land for a warrior.
Many winters before, his feet had been planted on the road that would hurtle him toward his youthful vision of a man he called Horse Rider—a vision in which Horse Rider could not be killed by the white man. Instead, Crazy Horse knew Horse Rider was to die at the hands of his own people … the way they clawed at him, tugged at him, trying to hold him back.
With his fight against the white man done, Crazy Horse knew he had those last terrible steps to take along the trail that would lead him to his fate.
And to the spiritual death of his people.
The Battle of the Butte was his last fight.
So what did death matter when his people no longer had need of a warrior, no longer had need of a Shirt Wearer … no longer had need of this Strange Man of the Oglalla?
—Terry C. Johnston
Battle of the Butte
Quarter Circle U Ranch, Montana
8 January 1996
*A Cold Day in Hell, vol. II, The Plainsmen Series
TERRY C. JOHNSTON
1947-2001
Terry C. Johnston was born on the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and lived all his life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. After writing more than thirty novels of the American frontier, he passed away in March 2001 in Billings, Montana. Terry’s work combined the grace and beauty of a natural storyteller with a complete dedication to historical accuracy and authenticity. He continues to bring history to life in the pages of his historical novels so that readers can live the grand adventure of the American West. While recognized as a master of the American historical novel, to family and friends Terry remained and wi
ll be remembered as a dear, loving father and husband as well as a kind, generous, and caring friend. He has gone on before us to a better place, where he will wait to welcome us in days to come.
If you would like to help carry on the legacy of Terry C. Johnston, you are invited to contribute to the
Terry C. Johnston Memorial Scholarship Fund
c/o Montana State University-Billings Foundation
1500 N. 30th Street
Billings, MT 59101-0298
1-888-430-6782
For more information on other Terry C. Johnston
novels, visit his website at
http://www.imt.net/~tjohnston
send e-mail to
[email protected]
or write to
Terry C. Johnston’s West
P.O. Box 50594
Billings, MT 59105
The Fifth Infantry in action against Crazy Horse’s warriors
at the Battle of the Butte.
(Painting by Frederic Remington)
WOLF MOUNTAIN MOON
Bantam edition / February 1997
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1997 by Terry C. Johnston.
Map designed by GDS / Jeffrey L. Ward.
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