Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  With the remembrance of Laramie, something crawled inside Curly’s stomach. Like the slow plip-plip of water on a rock. He straightened and sucked deep at the cooling air of twilight fallen on this high place.

  Treaty-talk had been a waste of their time, after all. Better that the Lakota had followed the herds of buffalo and antelope across the prairie. Better that they had spent their time mending bows and filling their quivers with cherrywood arrows. Preparing for what surely lay ahead—now that the soldiers marched north, intent on crossing the Crazy Woman Fork. Coming to goad the Sioux into fighting for what had long been their favored hunting ground.

  With a stick Curly scratched idly at the dirt before him, remembering the hairy-faced soldier chief with the slicked-back hair who had ridden up to the treaty-talk. A soldier chief accompanied by all his blue-shirted warriors. Until the moment that dark-haired soldier chief had marched into Laramie, Curly and the others had begun to think this treaty-talk might be different than treaty-talks gone before. This time the white man might talk straight.

  But when the treaty-talkers had introduced the bearded soldier chief, a jolt of cold splashed down each warrior’s spine. Realization as numbing as a January waterfall.

  “Here stands the white chief marching north to occupy Powder River,” the Sioux were told. “Going to the Big Horn and Yellowstone country.”

  Curly again tasted the bitter gall stinging the back of his throat. He and Man-Afraid had been right all along. The white man was indeed a treacherous devil! He would lie if he had to, making the Sioux leaders watch his right hand while his left hand plunged a knife squarely into the heart of their most sacred hunting ground. The bearded soldier chief and his columns of soldiers would be the knife the white devils would use.

  But this time, the Lakota would be ready.

  Even the old chiefs had admitted they had been tricked by the smooth sound of the treaty-makers’ words, Curly remembered. But the bearded soldier chief had come to lead his soldiers into sacred Lakota hunting ground. And the lie to the white man’s words had been laid bare. Shamed and saddened, the old ones had joined the march north from Laramie, back to their tribal lands where the Lakota would make their stand.

  Curly savagely drove the stick into the loose soil at his feet, recalling the long blue columns arriving at the Laramie post. Twenty-two women and children had marched with the soldiers. This was no ordinary exploring expedition. Those women and children and wagons of household goods shouted it plain enough for any warrior to understand.

  No longer was the white man content to pass through on his road to the Crow land. This time, the white man had come to stay!

  “This is Colonel Carrington,” the interpreter had told them that warm afternoon in the Moon of Fat Horses. “He comes to protect the road that crosses the Powder River. His soldiers will garrison three posts between here and the Yellowstone country of the Crows.”

  With that announcement Red Cloud had leaped to his feet on the platform placed immediately in front of a long table where the treaty commissioners sat. But the chief did not shout at the white men. Instead, he had turned to harangue his fellow Sioux.

  “Do you see?” he shrieked. “The presence of this bearded chief and his soldiers are proof enough that the white man intends to steal our hunting grounds from us. Even without the treaty they want us to sign!”

  The chiefs on the platform had stirred uneasily, hearing many of the young warriors crowded behind them grunt in agreement. Huhn-huhn! they had growled the courage words.

  “Can you now see the white man’s treachery? Is it not as plain as a hand held in front of your faces?”

  Curly recalled how flushed Red Cloud’s face had grown, how his old, scarred chest had heaved with short gasps of breath. Like a warrior riding into battle.

  “The Great Father has sent us presents and asks us to sell him his road. But this soldier chief—he brings his soldiers to steal the road even before the Lakota can say yes or no!”

  Man-Afraid had joined Red Cloud with the next heartbeat. “I have ears! I can hear the lies. I have eyes! I can see the treachery. Before this day we saw nothing, we heard nothing of the forts and the soldiers coming. Yet here we sit like fools, watching the white man’s tongue wag at us with lies once more … while we should be making meat for the winter. It will be a long winter, this one.”

  “A hard winter not only for the Lakota!” Red Cloud harangued his chiefs and warriors while the treaty commissioners and army officers shifted nervously. “This will be a very long winter for the white soldiers they send to guard the road!” He had finally wheeled on the treaty-talkers, lunging at the long table to spit his words into the face of the soldier chief who would lead his troops north into Sioux land.

  “For every mile you march beyond Crazy Woman Fork, a new grave will mark the dying place for one of your soldiers!”

  Curly remembered how many of the young, hot-blooded warriors had growled in agreement. After fifteen winters of white treachery, each one thirsted for soldier blood.

  “I swear this before you,” Red Cloud had continued, his lips flecked with angry spittle as he pointed his finger like a copper lance at the soldier chief heading toward the Powder. “I will kill every man, woman, and child who crosses Crazy Woman Fork! Mark my words—for that land will be your grave!”

  “Aiyeee!” Man-Afraid stepped in front of Red Cloud, slamming his fist down on the table. “I have been driven from one gully to the next, like a buffalo in search of grass. I have been hunted down and wounded like an animal by your soldiers. Not once has the Great Father’s hand been offered in kindness to his red children. But from this day forward, we are no longer his children! I will not stand by and watch the white man take away the very ground Wakan Tanka gave to our ancestors in the time gone before. Lakota bones have always whitened beneath the sun above. Our land is where our warrior dead lie sleeping! No longer will your road disturb their dreams!”

  Red Cloud moved to the table once more. “We have passed a winter when bellies pinched in every lodge. No man can forget the cries of the little children.” He spoke softly, with words gritted between yellowed teeth. “No white men will kill our game. Nor chase the animals from our hunting lands as he travels this road into the land of our enemies, the Crow. Hear me! No more will our lodges be filled with tears and the keening of hungry women and children this winter. Your lodges will echo with the cries of widows and fatherless children!”

  Man-Afraid straightened himself, still angry, his courage like a cloak about his muscled shoulders. “Red Cloud has promised you what will happen to every man, woman, and child who crosses the Crazy Woman Fork. Now this I promise you: before two moons have come and gone over your march north, not one hoof will be left your soldiers.”

  Smiling now, Curly recalled how the fire in those threats had shaken the white treaty-makers, especially the soldier chief, who stood riveted, his fingers pressed against his silent lips.

  “Mark these words,” Man-Afraid had finished, his voice no more than a whispered growl, “first we will steal your ponies and run off the spotted buffalo you bring on your march. Then we will take your scalps. One, by one, by one…”

  Man-Afraid had leaped from the platform accompanied by the grunts and cheers of the young Oglalla warriors. Red Cloud had joined him after stomping past the soldier chief’s horse and the wagon where the soldier chief’s wife sat petrified in silence and fear.

  Once more it stirred Curly to remember how his heart had beat with so much pride at that moment. To defy at last the treacherous white treaty-makers. To stand strong before the bearded soldier chief, warning him of the soldier deaths to come. On the horizon loomed what Curly had waited for all these years.

  War.

  One long, sweet breath of rose-tinged twilight he drew into his lungs. Its medicine filled Curly’s spirit with this place and this time. A place of glittering, jewel-bright air. A land like no other flung beneath a stinging sun—carved by harsh winds that drove be
fore them the endless seasons of rumbling thunderstorms and blinding winter blizzards.

  A land as much a mother to him as any person could be. That ache he had carried inside for seventeen summers now. No mother to call his own. Curly had been born in the moon of Wild Goose Honking, during the great cholera outbreak of 1849. The white man’s disease took his mother from him. This land had become his one true mother.

  The sun sank like a red ache beyond the western hills, backlighting the Big Horns in one splendid moment of fiery glory. Curly rose, stiff in the sitting. His muscles tingling, ready for what lay at hand. All those years of training. Stealing horses. Learning the bow. Fighting Crow and Pawnee. Killing enemies of the mighty Lakota. Curly stood ready to protect his people against the greatest danger they had ever encountered. The white man, hungry for land.

  Curly’s land. Sioux land. A wild, unbridled country as savage and beautiful as the jealous and defiant folk who would hold onto it. And drive from its breast the troopers who were following behind the bearded soldier chief, marching straight into the jaws of death.

  * * *

  “You telling us that if we try to push on up the road on our own, you’ll sick your soldiers on us?” Captain Samuel Marr demanded of the army officer seated behind the dusty table that served as a desk. From the looks of Marr, he wasn’t the kind of man anyone would want to get on the down side of.

  Col. Henry E. Maynadier sized Marr up quickly. “Captain Marr, you seem to know how the army works——”

  “All too well.” He ran a hand through the long, gray hair that spilled from his wide-brimmed hat over his collar.

  Maynadier found himself almost at the end of his string with the civilians who tramped through his post like a turnstile in a railroad station, heading to the goldfields of Montana with stars in their eyes and a dream in their heart. As the commander of Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory, here in the summer of 1866, the colonel had to be the one to throw some cold water on a lot of those dreams. Most of those in whose breast burned this gold fever saw the good sense in going roundabout to Alder Gulch. Many went on west to Salt Lake’s City of the Saints, found their way north from there. A few more took the northern roundabout, up the Missouri as far as steamboats could take them, on mules from there to the Three Forks and thence south to Virginia City.

  First came those who had scratched the ground in California then panned in the icy streams of Colorado’s high-country. But after the war the colonel began to see more come through Laramie. So damned many of them following last winter. Veterans mostly. Union and Confederate both, who had little alike to return home to. Maynadier knew any dream at all could ignite men such as these.

  “Captain Marr, I’m not saying that I’ll stop you from traveling north on the Bozeman Road. But the army is here to assure your safety in this part of the world.”

  “You yourself told us the Eighteenth Infantry left here a week ago.” The big Irishman standing beside Marr squinted at the well-groomed colonel. “Told us they’d be stationed north of here to secure the road for travel.”

  Maynadier sighed. “Do you have a name, sir?”

  “Seamus Donegan, late of the Army of the Shenandoah, Colonel.”

  “Mr. Donegan, surely someone of your experience and background will understand that the mere presence of our troops won’t guarantee safe travel on the road.”

  “What the bejesus you send them soldier-boys up there for?” Marr demanded.

  “Gentlemen!” Maynadier bolted out of his leather, horse-hair chair, flinging his cigar into an ashtray atop the desk. “I’ll say this one last time, and then you’ll excuse me. The road is yours to take. Go right ahead!” He flung an arm toward the door.

  Both Marr and Donegan regarded the colonel suspiciously. A third man in their party sat unconcerned in the corner of the colonel’s office, whittling at a year’s crop of black soil buried beneath his fingernails.

  “We’ll not detain you here,” Maynadier continued. “Instead, all we can do is recommend that you don’t attempt any travel north of here using the Bozeman Road without military escort.”

  “I suppose you’ll be pleased as punch to supply us that military escort, eh?” Marr asked, his old hand slamming down on the desk.

  Without taking his eyes off Marr, Maynadier addressed the fifth man present in the room. “Lieutenant, read to our guests the official notification from Departmental Headquarters concerning military parties scheduled for travel on the road——”

  “I don’t wanna hear any more official clap-trap from your departmental——”

  “Captain Marr.” The colonel held up a hand. “You’ll want to listen carefully to one particular item. Lieutenant, please.”

  As the two civilians and his superior turned their attention on him, the colonel’s adjutant began to read. “… Detail traveling north from Fort Sedgwick, destined for final duty station in Mountain District, reporting to Colonel Henry B. Carrington, Eighteenth Infantry. Detail under command of Lieutenant George Templeton. Accompanying party are wives of two officers, two young children, and one colored servant girl. Due Fort Laramie first week of July.” He looked up at the colonel. “Sir, the rest of this message goes on with——”

  “I understand, Lieutenant,” Maynadier replied, waving a thick hand to silence his adjutant. “There, gentlemen. You have your military escort. As I recall, there’ll be four officers in the group, accompanied by fourteen enlisted men. And, you’ll be happy to note, you won’t be the only civilians traveling north with Templeton’s detail. There’re two more gentlemen who’ve been waiting for close to a week now for an escort north. Three days ago I gave them the happy news that as soon as Templeton arrives here, they can——”

  “Bound for the goldfields like us?” Marr broke in.

  “No, Captain. On the contrary—a Ridgeway Glover, photographer for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, out of Philadelphia. Came west for camera studies of the land and its wild inhabitants, he tells me. The other gentleman is a man of the cloth. Reverend David White. Methodist. Assigned chaplain attached to the Eighteenth Infantry … wherever Colonel Carrington decides to build his post.”

  “You know where we might be finding these two … civilians?” Donegan stuffed his big hands in the pockets of his gray britches, which in turn were stuffed inside the tall, hog-leg boots with mule-ears.

  “Lieutenant,” Maynadier asked his adjutant, “can you steer Mr. Donegan in the right direction?”

  “They’re camped in the cottonwood grove below Bedlam, sir.”

  “Bedlam?” Donegan inquired.

  “Bachelor Officers Quarters. You’ll go out my door, around the building, and down the slope into the trees…”

  “Thank you, Colonel.” Donegan presented his hand.

  “You’re quite welcome.” Maynadier sighed, this ordeal over. “The army’s here to protect, gentlemen.”

  Marr stopped at the door, July sunlight flooding into the room. “Who’re you really protecting. Civilians like us? Or the Indians?”

  He wheeled and pushed out into the sunshine with Donegan and Bobby Ray Simpkins on his heels. “Well, Seamus. We’re on our way north to the Montana goldfields at last. So close I can smell it.” He drew a deep breath, drinking deep on the dry heat of the high plains.

  Donegan measured the older man again. “Still so bleeming sure those Injins won’t cause us any trouble, eh?”

  “Not since you and me bought those big Henry’s.”

  “That fancy gun cost me nearly all my separation pay. But what really hurt was it took most of my drinking money to boot.”

  “Day’ll come you’ll be damned glad we got them repeaters.” Marr slapped the big Irishman on the back. “C’mon, boys. I’ll buy a drink over to the sutler’s. Then we’ll go look up these other gents waiting for an escort into the land of milk and honey.”

  Chapter 3

  Brown pulled the pipe from his mouth, watching the old scout plod his way through the knee-high grass. He didn’t know
what it was about Bridger that made his belly go sour.

  Just a harmless old man dressed like any sod-buster.

  Almost laughable, with that floppy hat pulled down over Bridger’s silver hair. Brown decided it might be those clear, blue eyes twinkling above the scout’s ready grin. Eyes that many times seemed to mock him and his fellow officers, as if Bridger alone knew something the army did not. Whatever it was, the captain was certain Bridger didn’t like him a shade either.

  “Mornin’, Cap’n.”

  Brown knocked the dollop of burnt tobacco from his pipe against a boot-heel before he answered, “Mr. Bridger.”

  The scout fell silent. Leaning back against the wagon Brown had been working in, his elbows propped up against the side-boards, he stared wistfully at the sunrise daubing rose light across the Big Horns. Jim cleared his throat.

  “You have something to say,” Brown blurted suddenly, “why don’t you just say it.”

  “Well, I do have something what needs some dusting off, I suppose.” Bridger scratched at his gray chin-stubble.

  “Be out with it. I’m damned busy these days. Counting our stores. Seeing what we’ve lost since departing Fort Kearney. Inventory has to be taken, what made it here unbroken … what the mice, rats, or weevils didn’t eat. I’m damned busy, Mr. Bridger.” He bent back over a sheaf of papers rustling in an insistent breeze that danced through the tall grass in rolling waves.

  “The colonel ever say why he didn’t want me along when he rode off to look over that country round the Tongue and Goose Crik for his new fort?”

  Brown peered up from his papers. For the first time this morning he smiled. “That’s right, isn’t it, ol’ fella? Carrington didn’t take you along with him, did he?”

  “It’s got me some confused.”

  “You wanted him to choose a site farther north, didn’t you? But all along the colonel’s been set on building his fort right here.”