* * *
Crazy Horse splits his band of warriors into two separate lines of five riders. Each man knows this part of the plan well, for it is a moment that will require extreme bravery. Even more than their ability to lure the Americans into a trap, this is why they were selected to serve as decoy riders. It is suicide to charge their horses straight at the American cavalry, but as each warrior quirts the flanks of his steed on Crazy Horse’s command, there is no turning back.
“Hoka-he,” cries Crazy Horse as they ride hard into the bitter cold wind. “Today is a good day to die.”
The warriors charge toward the soldiers in two single file lines. On a predetermined signal, they turn their horses and weave among one another.
“Hoka-he!” yells Crazy Horse.
“Hoka-he!”
* * *
Cavalry commander Grummond gallops his white horse toward the two approaching lines of Indians. He hears the sound of “hoka-he,” knowing the exhortation is a traditional Sioux rallying cry. There is a moment of confusion for Grummond, followed by great confidence that the approaching warriors’ hubris will soon come to an end.
But as Grummond and his cavalry rush along the Bozeman Trail toward the small band of ten Indians, the lieutenant is stunned to see hidden Indians rising up from the slopes on both sides of the trail. Everywhere the lieutenant looks, there is danger. To his amazement, many warriors from a variety of tribes have hidden themselves in the rocks and small gullies. These Indians laid here on the cold hard ground for hours, many even pinching the nostrils of their ponies to ensure the horses did not whinny and give away the element of surprise.
The terrifying screech of battle cries echoes across the land as Indians pour forth, shooting their bows and arrows, instantly killing American soldiers and their horses. Some Indians have firearms they have stolen from the whites in previous battles. Many prefer to carry a nine-foot lance with an iron point, while others use a stone war club. Each warrior carries a steel-bladed knife, for when the time comes to take scalps. But the main weapon of these warriors is a four-foot-long bow that fires iron arrows more than two feet long. Amazingly, some forty thousand arrows will be launched before this surprise assault is done.
Many of the cavalry immediately see the attack for what it is. Surrounded on all sides, they quickly dismount and take cover behind their horses, using the Spencer repeating rifles to great effect. One small group of troopers wound or kill almost sixty Indians and horses before they are overrun.
Thirty-two-year-old Corporal Adolph Metzger of the cavalry is armed with a repeating rifle, but he is also the company bugler. The five-foot-eight German-born soldier rides a gray horse named Dapple Dave. He has been in the U.S. Army since coming to America in 1855 and fought in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg. He has blue eyes, brown hair, and an eighteen-year-old wife named Fredericka, to whom he hopes to return when his three-year enlistment ends in the summer. It was Metzger who blew “charge” as the horsemen raced into battle. Now, his rifle empty, he continues to fight the only way he can. Corporal Metzger stands to face his opponents as they come for him, using his bugle as a club, swinging it with lethal effectiveness. He never once turns his back on the enemy. But in the end, the musical instrument cannot stop the flurry of arrows that ensure that he will never see his beloved Fredericka again.
The wife of cavalry officer Lieutenant George Grummond is in closer proximity to her husband. Frances Grummond, the woman with whom Grummond had an affair during the Civil War, has made the journey west for her husband’s posting at Fort Phil Kearny. She waits there now, praying for his return, even as the lieutenant fights for his life. But the pregnant Frances Grummond, due to give birth any day, will pray in vain. Lieutenant Grummond fights bravely, leading his men with honor, even decapitating one warrior with a single slash of his saber. But like his troopers, Grummond is soon overwhelmed, dragged off his horse, and hacked to pieces.
As all of this takes place, Captain William Fetterman is a half mile behind Lieutenant Grummond, in the thick of his own fight. Indians now surround him and his infantry on all sides, rising up out of the valleys and the slopes alongside the trail, on horseback and on foot.
Completely enveloped, Fetterman’s chance to “ride through the Sioux nation” has come and gone.
Forever.
* * *
Crazy Horse weaves his pony deftly through the confused American cavalry, swinging his hatchet with powerful ruthlessness as he splits heads and severs arms. This is war, but it is also a continuing saga of revenge. It was just two years ago, on November 29, 1864, that Colonel John M. Chivington led seven hundred men of the Third Colorado Cavalry on a surprise attack into a Cheyenne and Arapaho camp at a location on the open plains known as Sand Creek. The tribe’s warriors were away, so Chivington—a towering fire-and-brimstone Methodist preacher who famously used the saying “Nits make lice” when justifying his brutal actions—eagerly ordered the execution and mutilation of more than one hundred Indian women and children. Scalps were taken, sometimes so vigorously that the single head of a child was sliced away several times. Fetuses were cut from women’s wombs. Reproductive organs were cut from female bodies and used to decorate the saddles of the “Bloody Third’s” horses.
“The massacre lasted six or eight hours,” one U.S. officer wrote to a fellow soldier two weeks after the slaughter. “I tell you Ned, it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.… They were all scalped, and as high as a half a dozen [scalps] taken from one head. They were all horribly mutilated.… You could think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there, but every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny.… I expect we will have a hell of a time with Indians this winter.”
The prophecy of Lieutenant Silas Soule, writer of that letter, comes to pass. Crazy Horse was part of an avenging force in two separate battles during 1865. The Battle of Platte Bridge and the Battle of Red Buttes saw the Sioux nation join forces with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in an attempt to regain control of the plains. The approach of the white man, with the escalating advances of the Pony Express mail service, then telegraph lines, and finally the ongoing development of a railroad from one side of the nation to the other, is being met with brute force. The whites have shown themselves capable of great brutality toward the Indians of the Northern Plains. The Americans should expect the same in return.
And that is what the eighty-one men from Fort Phil Kearny are now experiencing.
But death does not stop the desecration. The temperature will fall to twenty degrees below zero tonight, so when the wagons are sent out to retrieve the dead in the morning, each corpse will be frozen as solid as cordwood. Each man will be naked, having been stripped of boots, uniforms, socks, underwear, gun belts, weapons, and items of sentimental value.
But as with the Chivington massacre at Sand Creek, death and nudity will be the least of the debasements these soldiers will endure. Some atrocities will be committed while the whites are alive. But many of the soldiers commit suicide rather than be captured.
The after-battle report compiled by the American leadership at Fort Phil Kearny will detail the fates of the eighty-one U.S. soldiers: “Eyes torn out and laid on rocks, noses cut off, ears cut off, chins hewn off, teeth chopped out, joints of fingers taken off, brains taken out and placed on rocks with members of the body, entrails taken out and exposed, hands cut off, feet cut off, arms taken out from the socket, private parts severed and indecently placed on the person; eyes, ears, mouths, and arms penetrated with spear heads, sticks and arrows; ribs slashed to separation with knives; skulls severed in any form, from chin to crown; muscles of calves, thighs, stomach, breast, back, arms, and cheeks taken out; punctures of every sensitive part of the body, even to the soles of feet and palms of the hand.”
Bugler Adolph Metzger is spared this horror. His bravery so impresses the Indian force that his
body is left untouched. Instead, his body is covered in a buffalo robe as a sign of respect.2
* * *
Crazy Horse sanctions the horrendous brutality. As he watches the battle, he sees the Cheyenne warrior Big Nose shot from his horse, his earlier acts of bravery ensuring his legacy with the tribe will live on. Big Nose does not die right away and is carried to a small depression in the earth to witness the remainder of the fight.
Crazy Horse is impressed with the courage of the Americans, for not a single soldier turns to flee. But it is also apparent that these men do not know how to fight his warriors, and they are clearly terrified of the circular nature of the Sioux strategy, attacking the soldiers from all directions.
Crazy Horse is determined to not just win the battle but also ensure that not a single American escapes alive.
“Do not even let a dog get away,” shouts one Cheyenne warrior.
There is no attempt at sentiment. A flurry of arrows cripples and kills the fort dog in an instant.
* * *
It is a warrior named American Horse who surprises Captain Fetterman. The officer’s many boasts prior to the fatal fight were the words, “Give me a single company of regulars and I can whip a thousand Indians.” But now the captain saves a single bullet in his pistol for himself as his men are overwhelmed, all claims of whipping the Sioux nation a cruel memory.
Captain Fetterman’s death, however, is not quick, nor is it by his own hand. Fetterman is jumped by the young warrior American Horse, who clubs the captain over the head, knocking him from his mount. American Horse then leaps from his own steed and uses his scalping knife to slice Fetterman’s throat. The Indian spares no effort, wrenching the knife clear through the thick muscles of the captain’s neck, all the way to Fetterman’s spine.
His hands now dripping with blood, American Horse takes the captain’s scalp.
* * *
This is the best day of Crazy Horse’s life. His success as a decoy, and his ability to lead men using ingenuity and guile, now mark him as one of the Sioux nation’s future leaders.
Just a dozen warriors have been killed today, but Crazy Horse knows many more will die in the future. The white man will not be deterred. But this thought does not disturb the young Sioux. He will not accept the white man’s march into his land.
Ever.
Chapter Fifteen
CHRISTMAS NIGHT, 1866
FORT LARAMIE, WYOMING
11:00 P.M.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is about to appear.
It has been a challenging year for the officers and men stationed at this frontier outpost. Tonight’s full-dress Christmas ball offers a rare chance to relax. Outside, the subzero temperatures and driving snow mean almost no chance of an Indian attack. There isn’t a pine tree within a hundred miles, so wives and children have decorated the indoor “Christmas tree” by hanging painted egg shells, buttons, lace, and even cigar butts on a small prairie sapling. A blaze roars in the great fireplace here at Old Bedlam, as the post headquarters was nicknamed when it served as bachelor officer quarters and a hub of frontier socializing. Stockings are hung on the mantel. Officers and their ladies glide across the dance floor in their finest attire as the drinks flow freely. The air smells of damp wool, cigars, and spilled whiskey. It is a celebration that has been planned for weeks and is certain to last into the morning.1
“Everyone appeared superlatively happy, enjoying the dance, notwithstanding the snow was from ten to fifteen inches deep on the level and the thermometer indicated twenty-five degrees below zero,” Lieutenant David S. Gordon of the Second Cavalry will write.
Suddenly, the merriment is abruptly interrupted. A hulking figure “dressed in a buffalo overcoat, pants, gauntlets, and cap,” steps through the double doors fronting the parade ground. The man’s face is completely bearded. It is well known that a caravan of traders arrived today, en route to Nebraska. Their wagons are laden with buffalo, elk, and deer hides. Such men are welcome to overnight at the fort for their own safety, but the intrusion of this unwashed traveler into a private party goes far beyond the bounds of military hospitality.
Aggressively striding into the gathering, the unkempt man is accompanied by an enlisted orderly and urgently requests to speak with the fort commander, Lieutenant Colonel Innis N. Palmer.
The music keeps playing, but all eyes are on the intruder as he and Colonel Palmer step into another room to have a private word. “The dress of the man, and at this hour looking for the commanding officer, made a deep impression upon the officers and others that happened to get a glimpse of him. And consequently, and naturally, too, excited their curiosity as to his mission in this strange garb, dropping into our full dress garrison ball at this unseasonable hour,” Lieutenant Gordon will later write about his direct involvement in the moment.
“As we were about to select partners for another dance, word was passed into the ballroom that Colonel Palmer desired to see me. Excusing myself, I reported to the commanding officer, who handed me a dispatch dated Fort Phil Kearny, December 21, 1866, signed by Col. H.B. Carrington, commanding post, that Brevet-Colonel Fetterman, with a detachment … had been massacred outside of the post.”
A shocked Lieutenant Gordon returns to the ball. He knows Fetterman well. The ballroom is small, and Gordon’s departure was noticed. In hushed tones, the lieutenant explains himself to a fellow cavalry officer. Word quickly circulates about the horrific slaughter at Fort Phil Kearny.
The news “created such a gloom over all that the dancing party dispersed early,” Colonel Palmer noted. What is to come seems to occupy all the guests. There is no more appetite for gaiety.
* * *
The bearer of the mournful news is John Phillips, a thirty-four-year-old miner of Portuguese birth who chooses to winter in Fort Phil Kearny rather than endure the cold of the Montana gold fields. Immediately after Captain Fetterman’s death was confirmed, Colonel Carrington paid Phillips the amazing sum of $300 to ride through the night and deliver the news to other Americans on the frontier.2 Phillips first stopped at the Horseshoe Station telegraph office so that the message could be wired to Washington, D.C. There it will shock the nation, as the news is soon published in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. A period of national mourning will commence, followed by divided reaction in Congress as to the proper level of vengeance against the Sioux. President Andrew Johnson is ordinarily accommodating toward the western Indians—preferring to spend his time reconstructing the South after the Civil War. Thus, it is left mainly to the Senate to determine military action regarding Indian matters.
John Phillips rested for a few hours before riding on through the snow to Fort Laramie, more than two hundred miles south of Fort Phil Kearny. He arrived after four hard days of wind and cold in the saddle, an act of personal courage that will lead some newspaper reporters to compare him to a western Paul Revere.
Phillips is safe now, at last able to relax in the warmth of Fort Laramie. Meanwhile, back at Fort Phil Kearny, the dead are still to be buried.
All building of winter quarters and the new army hospital ceases as carpenters focus all their labors on constructing coffins. “One half of the headquarters building, which was my temporary home, and this part was utilized by carpenters for making pine cases for the dead,” Frances Grummond, wife of Lieutenant George Grummond, will write. “I knew my husband’s coffin was being made, and the sound of hammers and the grating of saws was torture to my sensitive nerves.”
Enlisted men are to be buried two per casket, while the officers are interred privately. Eighty-one mutilated bodies are reassembled as best as possible, and arrows are removed or simply cut away. The living soldiers and officers alike offer up their spare uniforms so the naked corpses can be dressed and buried with dignity. But the Indians have performed their acts of desecration so well that there is no choice but to bury some of the dead in haunting fashion. Captain Frederick Hallam Brown, the post quartermaster whose frozen body will not thaw, has the misf
ortune of being buried just as he was discovered on the battlefield. “The privates of Capt. Brown were severed and placed in his mouth,” one soldier will recall more than fifty years later. “Considering the nature of the extreme cold weather, they could not be extricated.”
Meanwhile, a mass grave is being hacked out of the frozen earth. Measuring fifty feet long, seven feet wide, and seven feet deep, it takes five days to dig. “The cold was so intense that the men work in fifteen minute reliefs, and a guard was constantly on the alert lest the Indians disrupt their service,” Frances Grummond will remember.
The men are buried the day after Christmas, just hours after the party at Fort Laramie ends. The ceremony proceeds without pomp or speechifying. The freezing weather means the regimental band’s brass instruments cannot be used, so there is no music. Afterward, there is nothing for the residents of Fort Phil Kearny to do for the remainder of the coldest winter anyone can remember but wait for an Indian attack that never comes. Rather than take the chance of allowing women and children to be taken hostage, the plan is for them to take refuge in the powder arsenal at the first sign of attack. Should the fort be overrun, the magazine will be immediately detonated.
Reinforcements arrive from Fort Laramie on January 16, delayed three weeks by the severe weather. Colonel Carrington is then relieved in disgrace and begins the long journey home. Frances Grummond, who will become so close to Carrington that she will one day become his second wife, demands that she be allowed to take her dead husband home with her.
Killing Crazy Horse Page 13
