Saga of the Sioux

by Dee Brown

  Before the settlers could reach them, Wowinapa hurriedly dressed his dead father in new moccasins for the journey to the Land of Ghosts. He covered the body with a coat and fled to the camp. After warning the other members of the party to scatter, he started back to Devils Lake.

  Wowinapa was later captured by some of Sibley’s soldiers, who had marched into the Dakota country that summer to kill Sioux. The soldiers returned the 16-year-old boy to Minnesota, where he was given a military trial and sentenced to be hanged. He learned then that his father’s scalp and skull had been preserved and placed on exhibition in St. Paul. The state of Minnesota presented the settlers who had killed Little Crow with the regular scalp bounty and a bonus of $500.

  When Wowinapa’s trial record was sent to Washington, military authorities changed the boy’s sentence to imprisonment.

  Meanwhile, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle remained in Canada, believing themselves beyond reach of the vengeful Minnesotans. They were wrong.

  In December 1863, Major Edwin Hatch and a battalion of Minnesota cavalry arrived at Pembina in the northeast Dakota Territory, just below the Canadian frontier. From there Hatch sent a lieutenant across the border to Fort Garry to secretly meet with an American citizen, John McKenzie. With the aid of McKenzie and two Canadians, the lieutenant kidnapped Shakopee and Medicine Bottle. In complete disregard of international law, the lieutenant hauled his captives back into the Dakota Territory and delivered them to Major Hatch at Pembina. A few months later, Sibley staged another spectacular trial, and Shakopee and Medicine Bottle were sentenced to be hanged. The St. Paul Pioneer newspaper commented about the verdict: “We do not believe that serious injustice will be done by the executions tomorrow, but it would have been more creditable if some tangible evidence of their guilt had been obtained…. ​no white man, tried before a jury of his peers, would be executed upon the testimony thus produced.” After the hangings, the Minnesota legislature gratefully appropriated $1,000 as payment to John McKenzie for his services.

  The day of the Santee Sioux in Minnesota now came to an end. The uprisings had given the white citizens an opportunity to seize the Santees’ remaining lands without even making a show of paying for them. Previous treaties were torn up. The surviving Indians were informed that they would be removed to a reservation in the Dakota Territory. Even those leaders who had collaborated with the white men had to go.

  Crow Creek on the Missouri River in the south-central Dakota Territory was the site chosen for the Santee reservation. The soil was barren, rainfall scanty, wild game scarce, and the water unfit for drinking. Soon the surrounding hills were covered with graves. Of the 1,300 Santees brought there in 1863, fewer than 1,000 survived their first winter.

  Among the visitors to Crow Creek that year was a young Teton Sioux. He looked with pity upon his Santee cousins and listened to their stories of the Americans who had taken their land and driven them away. He resolved that he would fight to hold the buffalo country of his people. His name was Tatanka Yotanka, the Sitting Bull.

  FOUR

  War Comes to the Powder River

  When the white man comes in my country, he leaves a trail of blood behind him.

  —RED CLOUD OF THE OGLALA SIOUX

  IN JULY 1865, unaware that the Civil War had ended four months earlier, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho began preparing for their usual summer medicine ceremonies along the Powder River in what is now northeast Wyoming.

  By late August, the tribes were scattered from the Bighorn Mountains on the west to the Black Hills on the east. They were so sure that the region was beyond the reach of the Bluecoats that most of them were skeptical when they heard rumors of soldiers coming at them from four directions.

  But the rumors were true.

  Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor had announced in July that the Indians north of the Platte River “must be hunted like wolves.” He organized three columns of soldiers for an invasion of the Powder River country. One column, commanded by Colonel Nelson Cole, would march from Nebraska to the Black Hills of Dakota. A second column, under Colonel Samuel Walker, would move straight north from Fort Laramie to link up with Cole in the Black Hills. The third column, with Connor himself in command, would head in a northwesterly direction along the Bozeman Trail toward Montana. General Connor thus hoped to trap the Indians between his column and the combined forces of Cole and Walker. He warned his officers to accept no offers of peace from the Indians, and ordered bluntly, “Attack and kill every male Indian over twelve years of age.”

  This map of the Powder River basin shows the Bozeman Trail and the two forts, Reno (built in 1865) and Phil Kearny (built in 1866), that were the cause of Red Cloud’s War.

  In the beginning of August, the three columns set off. If everything went according to plan, they would rendezvous about September 1 on the Rosebud River in the heart of hostile Indian country.

  A fourth group, which had no connection with Connor’s plans, was also approaching the Powder River country from the east. Organized by a civilian, James A. Sawyers, to open a new overland route, this expedition had no other objective than to reach the Montana gold fields. Because Sawyers knew he would be trespassing on Indian treaty lands, he expected resistance and therefore had obtained two companies of infantrymen to escort his group of 73 gold seekers and 80 wagons of supplies.

  It was mid-August when the Sioux and Cheyenne who were camped along the Powder River learned of Sawyers’s approaching wagon train. The son of a Cheyenne mother and a white father, George Bent, who chose to live among his mother’s people, recalled afterward, “Our village crier, a man named Bull Bear, mounted and rode about our camp, crying that soldiers were coming…. ​Everybody ran for ponies.”

  About 500 Sioux and Cheyenne were in the war party. Leading the Sioux was an Oglala chief who would become famous for his war against the Bluecoats. His name was Mahpiua-luta, but he was known to the whites as Red Cloud. Leading the Cheyenne was their great chief Tamilapesni, or Dull Knife. The chiefs were very angry that soldiers had come into their country without asking permission.

  Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor would try to blame subordinates for his failures during the Powder River campaign. [LOC, DIG-cwpb-06318]

  An undated photograph of Red Cloud in ceremonial dress. Red Cloud is considered one of the greatest American Indian diplomats. [LOC, USZ62-91032]

  When they sighted the wagon train, it was moving along between two hills with a herd of about 300 cattle following behind. The Indians divided and spread out along opposite ridges and, at a signal, began firing upon the soldier escorts. In a few minutes the train formed a circular corral with the cattle herded inside.

  For two or three hours, the warriors harassed the soldiers by creeping down gullies and suddenly opening fire at close range. A few of the more daring riders galloped in close, circled the wagons, and then swept out of range. After the soldiers started firing their two howitzers, the warriors kept behind hillocks, uttering war cries and shouting insults.

  The wagon train could not move, but neither could the Indians get at it. About midday, to end the stalemate, the chiefs ordered that a white flag be raised.

  A meeting was quickly arranged. George Bent and his brother Charlie were the interpreters for Red Cloud and Dull Knife. Colonel Sawyers and Captain George Williford came out with a small escort. (Colonel Sawyers’s rank was honorary, but he considered himself in command of the wagon train. Captain Williford’s rank was genuine.)

  When Red Cloud demanded an explanation for the presence of soldiers in the Indians’ country, Captain Williford replied by asking why the Indians had attacked peaceful white men. Sawyers protested that he had not come to fight Indians. He was seeking a short route to the Montana gold fields and wanted only to pass through the country.

  George Bent said afterward, “Red Cloud replied if the whites would go clear out of his country and make no roads it was all right. Dull Knife said the same for the Cheyenne; then both chiefs said for the officer
[Williford] to take the [wagon] train due west from this place, then turn north, and when he had passed the Bighorn Mountains, he would be out of their country.”

  Sawyers again protested. To follow such a route would take him too far out of his way. He said he wanted to move north along the Powder River valley to find a fort that General Connor was building there.

  This was the first that Red Cloud and Dull Knife had heard of General Connor and his invasion. They expressed surprise and anger that soldiers would dare build a fort in the heart of their hunting grounds. Seeing that the chiefs were growing hostile, Sawyers quickly offered them a wagonload of goods. Red Cloud suggested that gunpowder and ammunition be added to the list, but Captain Williford objected strongly. In fact, he was opposed to giving the Indians anything.

  Finally the chiefs agreed to accept the goods in exchange for granting permission for the wagon train to pass through. After this had been done, the wagon train went on its way. It was later harassed for several days by a second band of Sioux that also demanded goods but was refused.

  Meanwhile, Red Cloud and Dull Knife and their warriors had left to confirm the rumors of soldiers building a fort on the Powder River.

  In fact, Star Chief Connor had already started construction of a stockade about sixty miles south of the Crazy Woman Fork and named it in honor of himself, Fort Connor.

  An Edward Curtis photograph taken in 1910 of a young Arapaho woman. [LOC, USZ62-97843]

  On August 22, General Connor decided that the stockade on the Powder River was strong enough to be held by one cavalry company. Leaving most of his supplies there, he led the rest of his men on a forced march, a rapid advance with little rest. They moved northwest toward the Tongue River valley in order to find as quickly as possible any large concentrations of Indian lodges. This group included a number of Pawnee scouts, since the Pawnee were longtime enemies of the Sioux and Arapaho. Had General Connor moved north along the Powder River, he would have found thousands of Red Cloud’s and Dull Knife’s warriors searching for Connor’s soldiers and eager for a fight.

  About a week after Connor’s column left the Powder River, a Cheyenne warrior named Little Horse was traveling through this same area with his wife and young son. Little Horse’s wife was an Arapaho woman, and they were making a summer visit to see her relatives at Black Bear’s Arapaho camp on the Tongue River. One day, a pack on his wife’s horse got loose. When she dismounted to tighten it, she happened to glance back across a ridge. A line of mounted men was coming along the trail far behind them.

  An 1898 Frank A. Rinehart photograph of an Arapaho woman named Freckled Face in ceremonial dress. [LOC, DIG-ppmsca-15854]

  “Look over there,” she called to Little Horse.

  “They’re soldiers!” Little Horse cried. “Hurry!”

  As soon as they were over the next hill and out of view of the soldiers, they turned off the trail. Little Horse cut loose from a packhorse the poles of the travois on which his young son was riding, took the boy on behind him, and they rode fast—straight for Black Bear’s camp. They came galloping in, disturbing the peaceful village of 250 lodges pitched on a mesa above the river. The Arapaho were rich in ponies that year. Three thousand were corralled along the stream.

  None of the Arapaho believed that soldiers could be within hundreds of miles. When Little Horse’s wife tried to get the crier to warn the people, he said, “Little Horse has made a mistake; he just saw some Indians coming over the trail, and nothing more.” Certain that the horsemen they had seen were soldiers, Little Horse and his wife hurried to find her relatives. Her brother, Panther, was resting in front of his tepee. They told him that soldiers were coming. “Pack up whatever you wish to take along,” Little Horse said. “We must go tonight.”

  Panther laughed. “You’re always getting frightened and making mistakes about things,” he said. “You saw nothing but some buffalo.”

  “Very well,” Little Horse replied, “you need not go unless you want to, but we shall go tonight.” His wife managed to persuade some of her other relatives, and before nightfall they left the village and moved several miles down the Tongue River.

  Meanwhile, some Pawnee scouts under the command of General Connor’s subordinate, Captain Frank North, found the Arapaho camp and reported it to Connor. Early the next morning, Star Chief Connor’s soldiers prepared to attack. By chance, a warrior who had taken one of his racehorses out for a run happened to see the troops assembling behind a ridge. He galloped back to camp as fast as he could and raised a warning.

  A 1908 Edward Curtis photograph of an Atsina Indian on a horse pulling a travois. The Atsinas, also called the Gros Ventre, lived in north-central Montana and were distant neighbors of the Sioux. The travois was the system Plains Indians used to carry their possessions. [LOC, USZ62-97842]

  Moments later, at the sound of a bugle and the blast of a howitzer, 80 Pawnee scouts and 250 of Connor’s cavalrymen charged the village from two sides. The village suddenly became a scene of fearsome activity—horses rearing and whinnying, dogs barking, women screaming, children crying, warriors and soldiers yelling and cursing. The Pawnee swerved toward the 3,000 ponies, which the Arapaho herders were desperately trying to scatter along the river valley.

  As quickly as they could, the Arapaho mounted ponies and retreated up Wolf Creek, the soldiers chasing them. For 10 miles the Arapaho retreated. When the soldiers’ horses tired, the warriors turned on them, shooting their old muskets and bows and arrows. By early afternoon Black Bear and his warriors had pushed Connor’s cavalrymen back to the village. But artillerymen had mounted two howitzers there, and the big-talking guns filled the air with whistling pieces of metal, forcing the Arapaho to stop.

  While the Arapaho watched from the nearby hills, the soldiers tore down all the lodges in the village. They heaped poles, tepee covers, buffalo robes, blankets, furs, and piles of dried meat called pemmican into great mounds and set fire to them. Everything the Arapaho owned went up in smoke. Then the soldiers and the Pawnee mounted up and went away with 1,000 Arapaho ponies they had captured.

  The Arapaho had nothing left except the ponies they had saved from capture, a few old guns, their bows and arrows, and the clothing they were wearing when the soldiers charged into the village. This was the Battle of Tongue River that happened in the Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers (August).

  Star Chief Connor then marched on toward the Rosebud River, searching for more Indian villages to destroy. As he neared the rendezvous point on the Rosebud, he sent scouts out in all directions to look for the other two columns of his expedition. No trace could be found of either one, and they were a week overdue. On September 9, Connor ordered Captain North to lead his Pawnee mercenaries in a forced march to the Powder River in hopes of intercepting the columns. On the second day the group ran into a blinding sleet storm. Two days later, they found where Cole and Walker had recently camped. The ground was covered with 900 dead horses. Nearby were charred pieces of metal buckles, stirrups, and rings—the remains of saddles and harnesses. Captain North was uncertain what to make of this evidence of a disaster. He immediately turned back to report to General Connor.

  Later they learned what had happened.

  On August 18 the two columns under Cole and Walker had joined along the Belle Fourche River in the Black Hills. Though the 2,000-man force was strong in numbers, in almost every other respect, it was weak. The soldiers’ spirits were low. Before leaving Fort Laramie, the men in one of Walker’s regiments mutinied. Only after they were threatened with cannon fire did they agree to march. In addition, the troops had not brought enough food. By late August, rations for the combined columns were so short that they began slaughtering mules for meat. A disease called scurvy broke out among the men. Because of the shortage of grass and water, their horses grew weaker and weaker. With men and horses in such condition, neither Cole nor Walker had any desire to fight Indians. They only wanted to reach the Rosebud River and rendezvous with General Connor.

&n
bsp; As for the Indians, most were busy in the sacred places of Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, with their Sun Dances and other religious ceremonies. A few kept watch over the soldiers and reported the Bluecoats’ movements. All were angry with the soldiers who trespassed on the sacred soil. But because they were busy with their ceremonies, at first they did not send out any war parties. That soon changed.

  An Edward Curtis photograph of Cheyennes constructing a Sun Dance lodge in 1910. The Sun Dance is the most important religious ceremony conducted by the Plains Indians and is held during the summer. [LOC, USZ62-106279]

  On August 28, when Cole and Walker reached the Powder River, they sent scouts to the Tongue and Rosebud rivers to find General Connor, but he was still far to the south. After their scouts returned, the two commanders put their men on half rations and decided to start moving south before starvation brought disaster. What they did not know was that they were being followed. By September 1, nearly 400 Hunkpapa and Minneconjou Sioux warriors were shadowing them. With them was the Hunkpapa leader, Sitting Bull.

  When the Sioux war party discovered the soldiers camped in the woods along the Powder, several of the young men wanted to ride in under a truce flag and see if they could persuade the Bluecoats to give them a peace offering. Sitting Bull did not trust white men and was opposed to such begging, but he let the others send a truce party.

  The soldiers waited until the Sioux truce party came within easy rifle range and then fired, killing and wounding several before they could escape. On their way back, the survivors made off with several horses from the soldiers’ herd.

  After looking at the gaunt horses, Sitting Bull decided that 400 Sioux on their fleet-footed mustangs should be an equal match for 2,000 soldiers on such half-starved Army mounts. Most of the other warriors agreed.