by In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Story of the Indian Wars
When he left, about half the camp went with him, and the rest soon caught up and joined them. As they rode toward the Pine Ridge agency, however, Short Bull and Kicking Bear unnerved themselves by reflecting on the likelihood that they would be sentenced to military prison.5With a few hard-core ghost dancers, they turned back to the Stronghold. Among those who continued on to Pine Ridge were Two Strike's people, Plenty Horses probably among them.
Two Strike's band straggled into the agency on December 15 and 16, some nine hundred Brulé in all.6Short Bull and Kicking Bear were still at large, but, with few followers, they were not likely to cause serious problems for the army. And so there the whole "ghost dance trouble," as contemporaries called it, should have come to a close, and would have, had it not been for James McLaughlin's intractable hatred of Sitting Bull.
A sentry guards horses watering in the White River outside a Lakota camp the U.S. military labeled "hostile." (Library of Congress)
MCLAUGHLIN WAS A FORMER BLACKSMITH who went from his native Canada to Minnesota at the age of twenty-one. He moved in 1871 to the Devil's Lake Dakota Reservation in southern Dakota Territory, where for five years he worked as an assistant to the agent. He took over as the agent of Standing Rock in 1881, the year Sitting Bull surrendered. Married to an Indian, McLaughlin ruled the reservation firmly. He held a high regard for his profession, and in an 1878 report to the Bureau of Indian Affairs he wrote: "To successfully manage Indians and conduct a large Indian agency requires a man of extraordinary ability. He must be a business man, a farmer and a mechanic, together with a good judge of human nature, have great patience and be endowed with practical common sense. Such a man, with his heart in his work, if left alone to manage the Indians, will succeed. . . ."7
McLaughlin may have had himself in mind when he wrote that description. If so, independent sources corroborated his sense of self-esteem. In 1886 a representative of the Indians Rights Association wrote of McLaughlin's work at Standing Rock: "The liberal and intelligent support given to schools here, and the system of practical instruction in farming with teachers stationed in different settlements to direct and assist beginners, have produced effects which are already conspicuously interesting and valuable. I observed that some desirable things which are accounted impossible in other places are a part of the regular administration on this reserve and appear to be done without especial difficulty or friction."8
This particular Indian rights advocate seems to have missed the friction between McLaughlin and Sitting Bull. In fact, McLaughlin seems to have had an unreasonable disdain for Sitting Bull, who was in most visible ways making an effort to adapt to the new regime. In his fifties in 1890, the chief created one of the more successful reservation farms, including cattle and chickens, and urged his own and others' children to go to school to learn white ways. Perhaps McLaughlin simply did not like dealing with a man whose resolve was as strong as his own despite years of defeat. Or he may have been siding with one of his favorite chiefs, John Grass, who allegedly was in a power struggle with Sitting Bull.9
Sitting Bull (left) and reservation agent James McLaughlin at the 1886 dedication ceremony for the holy standing rock from which Standing Rock Lakota Reservation takes its name. Resembling an Indian woman and child, the rock can still be seen at the reservation. (Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, B342)
Officials in Washington, like Pontius Pilate, failed to see what sins the accused had committed and rebuffed McLaughlin's request to arrest and remove Sitting Bull. McLaughlin persisted, and as tension over the ghost dance increased and fear of a Lakota outbreak escalated, Washington finally relented.10
Arresting Sitting Bull was a sensitive issue because of his high status among the Lakota as a warrior, chief, and holy man. He also was famous across the United States and its territories, perhaps the best known of all American Indians. Widely but erroneously credited with leading the Lakota in the battle that wiped out George Custer, he had traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, where his autographed photos were much in demand. His arrest was likely to stimulate a certain amount of unhappiness and protest among the more conservative Lakota.
Consequently, although getting permission to arrest Sitting Bull had been a challenge, actually arresting him was even more difficult. General Nelson Miles, in charge of the army's Division of the Missouri, which ranged from Illinois to Colorado, from Canada to Texas and Arizona, wanted the military to arrest Sitting Bull. McLaughlin wanted his Indian police to do the job, fearing that military intrusion would lead to violence. He worked out an agreement with Lieutenant Colonel William Drum, the commander of nearby Fort Yates, to allow the police to make the arrest, with U.S. troops standing by to provide support if needed. McLaughlin hoped in this way to avoid the widespread panic that would result among the Lakota if the army showed up in force. Drum agreed, and so did Drum's immediate superior, Brigadier General Thomas Ruger, stationed in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Miles, stationed at his headquarters in Chicago, nearly demolished McLaughlin's plan by sending Buffalo Bill Cody, the former scout and famous showman, to Standing Rock to bring in Sitting Bull dead or alive. Cody, who had gotten to know Sitting Bull during the chief's year with the Wild West show, considered himself a friend of the holy man, leading Miles to believe that, despite the orders, Cody could complete the assignment without bloodshed.
Drum and McLaughlin immediately conspired to stop Buffalo Bill. As soon as he arrived at Standing Rock—according to some accounts, still decked out in the evening clothes he had been wearing when he dined with Miles back in Chicago—McLaughlin and Drum took him to the post saloon and plied him with drinks. Cody had a reputation as an avid boozer, a reputation he apparently had earned honestly. Drum's officers drank in relays to keep Cody from single-handedly putting them under the table. Despite the impressive imbibing, the next morning Buffalo Bill was ready to hit the trail to Sitting Bull's compound far up the Grand River.
McLaughlin and Drum tricked Buffalo Bill into taking the wrong road, then tricked him into going back to the agency. By the time Bill realized what was going on, McLaughlin had a telegram from Washington rescinding Miles's orders to allow Buffalo Bill to make the arrest. The ball was back in McLaughlin's court.
On the night of December 14, 1890, McLaughlin made his play, sending Indian police under Lieutenant Bull Head to arrest Sitting Bull. Bull Head was an odd choice for command if the purpose was to avoid bloodshed, as he and Sitting Bull had been feuding for months and had long been on the verge of exchanging blows. Bull Head also had led the Indian police in quashing Sitting Bull's efforts to disrupt the Crook Commission meetings during the allotment conferences the previous year.
The police gathered at Bull Head's house, on the Grand River a few miles from Sitting Bull's compound. The night was cold and stormy. Snow and ice came down, the countryside froze, and the mood in the cabin was solemn. These men, who knew and had admired Sitting Bull, were saddened by what they were about to do. They offered a prayer to the white man's god and then headed into the night.
As they approached Sitting Bull's compound at around dawn the next day, owls hooted and coyotes howled. Even they, one of the policemen said, cried out warnings, so the police should beware.
The police descended on the sleeping compound and crashed into Sitting Bull's house. The old warrior, bleary from sleep, agreed to go with them peacefully. However, within moments a crowd gathered, and Sitting Bull's fourteen-year-old son, Crow Foot—who years before had handed over Sitting Bull's rifle at the time of his surrender—taunted his father for acquiescing. At these words, Sitting Bull balked. His followers threatened the police. Shots rang out, and instantly Lakota was fighting Lakota. Drum's soldiers, down the road but within earshot, rode to the compound and fired at Sitting Bull's people, driving them away. When the shooting ended, Sitting Bull and Crow Foot were dead, and Bull Head was dying. In all, at least fourteen Lakota died as a result of the fight. After the shooting had stopped, one of the In
dian police used a wooden yoke to smash Sitting Bull's face.11
Sitting Bull's death reaped a variety of emotionally heated responses. It appalled the Reverend W. H. H. Murray, a New York minister opposed to making Indians into farmers. In the New York World for December 21, 1890, he wrote: "The land grabbers wanted the Indian land. The lying, thieving Indian agents wanted silence touching past thefts and immunity to continue their thieving. The renegades . . . among the Indian police wanted an opportunity to show their power . . . And so he was murdered."12
An observer at Fort Yates, Thomas Stewart, wrote in a January 9,1891, letter to Herbert Welsh of the Indian Rights Association that McLaughlin had wanted Sitting Bull killed, which was why he sent a hardened enemy of the holy man to arrest him.13McLaughlin wanted Sitting Bull out of the way because prostitution was rampant near the military garrison, Stewart contended, and McLaughlin feared that an inspector from the Indian Bureau might visit, talk to Bull, and find out how bad the agent's management really was. McLaughlin, Stewart said, never tried to stop the ghost dances until Sitting Bull adopted them. Stopping the dances was merely an excuse for arresting Bull. "Sitting Bull never either by threats or other means mollested [sic] anyone," Stewart wrote, "and had he been left alone the dance would soon have been discontinued as the Indians were leaving everyday."
L. Frank Baum, in the December 20, 1890, issue of his newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, weighed in with a different perspective.
Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.
He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies?
The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is exterminated, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of the forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism [sic].
We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.14
Sitting Bull's son Crow Foot, who in 1890 was about fourteen years old when he was shot to death by Indian police during his father's arrest. (Library of Congress)
After the attempted arrest, Sitting Bull's people panicked and fled, some going to the Stronghold to join the most militant ghost dancers and others going to the band headed by Sitanka, or Big Foot, one of the last traditional chiefs. On the day Sitting Bull was killed, Sitanka was leading his band down the Cheyenne River to the agency for their ration issue, slated for December 22.
CHAPTER 6
Gunfire at Wounded Knee
BY LATE DECEMBER THE MILITARY had been swarming into the reservations for almost a month in what eventually became the nation's biggest army deployment since the Civil War. The flight of Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa led General Ruger to order Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Sumner to arrest Sitanka, who Miles thought was a hostile cast from the same mold as Sitting Bull. Sitanka, a Miniconjou Lakota, was indeed a hard-core traditionalist who found hope in the ghost dance, but he was also known as a peacemaker, which was not a term much applied to the fiery Sitting Bull. Nevertheless, Miles wanted Sitanka and his band brought into the agency of the Cheyenne River Reservation—their homeland—where they could be monitored.
Sumner and his soldiers caught up with Sitanka on December 21.1Tension between the troops and Sitanka's warriors prompted Sumner—who repeatedly showed empathy for the Lakota—to allow Sitanka to lead his people to the agency on his own. But Sitanka was pondering another plan. Oglala chiefs at Pine Ridge had asked him to visit them and help settle differences among them concerning the ghost dance religion. In return for his advice, they would give him one hundred ponies. This offer, and the urging of some members of his band, led Sitanka to give Sumner the slip and head for Pine Ridge instead of Cheyenne River.
When Miles heard of Sumner's failure to bring in the wandering Miniconjou, he was furious. He mobilized nearly every army unit in the area to locate the band. Ironically, the soldiers closing in on Sitanka were from the Seventh Cavalry—Custer's old command—and among them were veterans of the Little Bighorn who had survived the battle under Major Marcus Reno. Commanded by Major Samuel Whitside, the Seventh soon located Sitanka and his band moving south along Porcupine Creek toward Pine Ridge. Sitanka contacted army scouts and told them he wanted them to surrender. Whitside, taking no chances, instead sent out his soldiers to end the chase on the spot without further discussion. When they met up with Sitanka's band west of Porcupine Creek, both sides set up skirmish lines. Whitside told Sitanka to surrender immediately and to camp along the banks of a stream the Lakota called Cankpe Opi, which the whites translated as Wounded Knee.2Sitanka, sick with pneumonia, complied.
When he got word of the surrender, General Brooke ordered Colonel James Forsyth to ride with the rest of the Seventh Cavalry to Wounded Knee and help Whitside disarm the Miniconjou. Forsyth was under repeated orders and warnings from General Miles not to let his men mingle with the Indians.
At about this time, Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and the militant ghost dancers who had returned to the Stronghold when Two Strike surrendered, started heading toward Pine Ridge to turn themselves in. But events surrounding Sitanka would soon cause them to turn back a second time.
AT WOUNDED KNEE CREEK, WHERE Sitanka lay half dead from pneumonia, Forsyth surrounded the Indian camp with soldiers, artillery, and machine guns. On the morning of December 29, 1890—two weeks to the day after the death of Sitting Bull—Forsyth ordered his men to disarm Sitanka's band. Forsyth made a serious error at this point, putting his men into the camp among the Lakota precisely as Miles had ordered him not to do. He even had soldiers searching tepees for guns. These men and the Lakota were both under the sights of the Seventh Cavalry's heavy guns. If the guns were fired, the soldiers in the camp were likely to be blasted by friendly fire. Among those soldiers was Captain George Wallace, who had survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His command, Troop K, was only a few paces from Indians clustered in the center of the camp.
As the disarmament was taking place, a shot rang out, and then a general melee ensued. The soldiers had the Indians in a cross fire, but likely shot one another as well. Wallace was hit in the head and died at the outset. Sitanka, too—lying sick on a cot in the center of the camp—was among the first killed, riddled with bullets.
Indians, mostly unarmed women and children, fled on foot, and mounted soldiers rode them down and killed them. When the shooting stopped, as many as 200—some sources even say 350—Lakota were dead.3
Wounded Knee just after the December 1890 battle, with bodies in the foreground backed by the skeletal remains of tepee frames abandoned on the frozen plain. (Library of Congress)
Some survivors sought refuge at Pine Ridge, where Elaine Goodale and other schoolteachers were decorating a church for Christmas, which they were celebrating late that year. Hearing the distant sho
ts at Wounded Knee and fearing that the Lakota had gone on the warpath, they fortified the church and kept the Indian students inside for their own safety. Instead of warriors, wounded women and children soon were filtering in. Goodale helped turn the church into a hospital, covering the floor with straw for bedding, and Dr. Charles Eastman tended the injured. One girl, brought in battered and bleeding, begged for the removal of her ghost shirt now that it had "wholly failed to protect her from the storm of flying steel," Goodale wrote.4
"Our patients cried and moaned incessantly, and every night some dead were carried out," Goodale recalled. "In spite of all we could do, most of the injuries proved fatal. The few survivors were heartbroken and apathetic, for nearly all their men had been killed on the spot. The [Christmas] tree was dragged out, but joyous green garlands still wreathed windows and doors, while the glowing cross in the stained glass window behind the altar looked down in irony—or in compassion—upon pagan children struck down in panic flight."5
THE SHOTS AT WOUNDED KNEE were heard for miles around the battleground, and among those who heard them were Short Bull and Kicking Bear as they led the last of the militant ghost dancers to the Pine Ridge agency. The shooting panicked them, and they reversed course. At the agency itself Two Strike's people, among them Plenty Horses, believed they were about to be attacked by the army and started to exchange gunshots with Indian police. They set fire to houses and captured Red Cloud, aging and infirm but still a powerful symbol among the Lakota, and took him with them as they fled.
The violence that Royer had feared had finally arrived, primarily thanks to measures he had taken. Dr. Charles Eastman described the shooting at Pine Ridge. "General Brooke ran out into the open, shouting at the top of his voice to the police: 'Stop! Stop! Doctor, tell them they must not fire until ordered!' I did so, as the bullets whistled by us, and the General's coolness perhaps saved all our lives, for we were in no position to repel a large attacking force. Since we did not reply, the scattered shots ceased, but the situation remained critical for several days and nights."6
