A Cold Day in Hell (74 page)

Despite finding the bullets where Old Crow said he would leave them, for many years afterward the Cheyenne scorned their chief, Old Crow—openly declaring that he had betrayed his own.

In his research while writing
Sweet Medicine
, Father Peter Powell states, “Many of the Old Ones, alive during the 1950’s and 1960’s, declared that all the Cheyennes who scouted for the soldiers died not long after this fighting [at the Dull Knife Battle]. They were killed by the power of
Maahotse
, when the Sacred Arrow points were turned against them.”

And tribal historian John Stands in Timber agrees in his
book compiled by Margot Liberty, saying that all of Mackenzie’s Cheyenne scouts were dead by 1885 because the Sacred Arrows were turned against them that day in the Red Fork valley.

The Sacred Buffalo Hat remains not only a spiritual object, but a pawn in the struggles between warring factions in the Northern Cheyenne here on their Montana reservation. As recently as November 11, 1994, the traditionalists “kidnapped” the Hat from its Sacred Lodge near Lame Deer. For nearly three months the lines were clearly drawn between those who are traditional and those who are more willing to accommodate white culture on the reservation. And then, even after Cheyenne U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell came west to mediate unsuccessfully, the two sides agreed at least to talk.

Eventually, as one would turn over a hostage, the Sacred Hat Bundle was peacefully turned over to the Sun Dance Priest, Francis Kills Night, although Bureau of Indian Affairs police were on hand in the event matters got out of hand. It was agreed that the tribe’s traditional warrior societies would now discuss and decide upon who would become the new Keeper of the Hat. They stated it was far better to solve their religious differences among themselves than allow the interference of outside forces including the Indian Bureau and the FBI.

So it was that at three minutes till noon on Friday, January 27, 1995—Sun Dance Priest Kills Night trudged through the mud and a misting rain with the sacred bundle on his back. He entered its Sacred Lodge.
Esevone
had come home to her people.

On the Northern Cheyenne Reservation there are three people I have called upon to help in explaining culture and religion to this
ve-ho-e
writer, hoping that I would get it right, praying I would capture the spirit of those people, the true spirit of that time. First of all, I want to thank Josephine Sootkis and her daughter Ruby, of the Dull Knife Memorial College, both of whom are direct descendants of Morning Star. And I appreciate the help of Ted Rising Sun, another direct descendant of the chief known to the white man as Dull Knife. Their stories and heartfelt scholarship have proved invaluable to me in expressing the horror of this tragic conflict. Ruby herself is busy at work on a screenplay dealing with the 1879 outbreak of the Dull Knife forces from Fort Robinson. In addition, Bill Tall Bull, tribal historian, always makes himself available to answer questions, however minute, no matter how ignorant those questions may sound coming from the mouth of a white man.

Disappointed and cold, Crook and Mackenzie sat on the
banks of the Belle Fourche as long as they could in that December. Then on the twentieth they received a terse telegram from Phil Sheridan with the information that their transportation bill for the campaign was sixty thousand dollars per month, while the allowance was a mere twenty-eight thousand dollars. “Those few words,” John Bourke noted in his diary, “mean that this campaign must terminate speedily.”

The commanders were forced at last to turn the expedition back to Fort Fetterman, where within weeks the campaign was disbanded.

The Brigadier General Commanding announces the close of the Powder River Expedition, and avails himself of the opportunity to thank the officers and men composing it, for the ability, courage, endurance and zeal exhibited by them during its progress.

With the mercury indicating such extreme degrees of cold as to make life well nigh unbearable, even when surrounded by the comforts of civilization, you have endured, with uncomplaining fortitude, the rigors of the weather from which you had less to protect you than an Indian is usually provided with.

The disintegration of many of the hostile bands of savages against whom you have been operating attests the success of the brilliant fight made by the Cavalry with the Cheyennes on the North Fork, and your toilsome marches along the Powder River and Belle Fourche.

It is a matter for solemn regret that you have to mourn the loss of the distinguished and brilliant young Cavalry officer, First Lieutenant John A. McKinney, 4th Cavalry, and the gallant enlisted men who fell with him in the lonely gorges of the Big Horn Mountains …

By Command of Brigadier-General Crook
(signed) John G. Bourke

As Crook disbanded the expedition, he ordered Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry back to Camp Robinson. Not only were many of the animals broken down and almost out of forage in those final weeks, but the endless and severe cold, coupled with that intensely contested battle and their brutal march to the Belle Fourche, had all taken its toll on not just the soldiers but Crook’s officer corps as well.

Most dramatic was the deteriorating mental condition of Ranald Mackenzie himself.

In those weeks leading up to the battle and the days that followed, the colonel’s extreme sensitivity to the most minor slight was exhibited with increasing degrees of paranoia. To the soldiers who had served under him for some time, it seemed they were now serving under a commander who was becoming inconsistent at best, capricious at worst. But in the emotional wake following the Dull Knife Battle, Mackenzie’s fellow officers and his troopers simply believed their leader was suffering from nothing more than self-doubts about his actions during the fight.

Most of those closest to Mackenzie at that time, including Crook and Dodge, merely believed the colonel’s mental state was a result of Mackenzie’s so severely chastising himself for not bringing the battle to a more concrete conclusion, for not pursuing the Cheyenne into the mountains and capturing (if not killing) more of the enemy. Clearly, a supreme opportunity had been laid in his lap, so that over the days following the battle he criticized himself more and more for not fully seizing that opportunity.

There existed such an intense rivalry among the officers serving the frontier army—especially among those few colonels who had their gaze firmly set on the stars:
general’s
stars. In fact, one of those very human pieces to the puzzle that is the Mackenzie legend has it that one night in bivouac, while campaigning against the Kwahadi Comanche on the Staked Plain of the Texas-panhandle country, the colonel walked some distance from his campfire and stood staring up at the brilliant, crystal-clear night sky dusted with a resplendent display of heaven’s brightest lights twinkling overhead.

The legend goes on to tell us that Mackenzie’s adjutant came up in the dark to stand beside his commander, then said, “Sir, there’s someone between you and that star.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Mackenzie turned to ask.

“His name is Miles, sir.”

Indeed, from the days of that campaign on the southern plains when Miles and his Fifth Infantry were whittling away at the Indians every bit as effectively as was Mackenzie and his Fourth Cavalry—it had become clear to everyone in the army that the three rising stars were Custer, Miles, and Mackenzie. As in any endeavor when the reward is so rich, so great as a general’s star, the feelings of competition had to be extremely keen … the chance for messing up and making a mistake so precarious.

Perhaps his self-doubts about how he could have done better in the Dull Knife fight began to aggravate what had heretofore been nothing but an imbalanced mental state.

Yet here I stand more than a century later, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight knowing what despair Mackenzie was to exhibit in the months and years left him, knowing that his would be a premature death exacerbated by the severe depression he was wallowing in, and from which he could not save himself.

While he was on the return trip to Camp Robinson, Mackenzie received orders to report to Washington, where he was to place himself under no less than the secretary of war. By that time back east the disputed returns from three southern states meant that the outcome of the presidential election was still in question—a situation that with every day was raising more and more passion among the parties on both sides. Many of the more extreme Democrats were threatening to raise their own private armies to force the seating of their candidate, Tilden.

Determined to preserve order, a worried President Grant began to call in troops from the western frontier in the event of a revolt or civil insurrection. He personally selected Ranald Mackenzie to take command of those troops who would be protecting Washington City itself—a remarkable testament of faith in the abilities of this commander who continued to suffer so many self-doubts.

Over the years many of you have written to say just how much you appreciate having me list a bibliography for you to use when you go in search of further sources on each particular campaign. So for those of you who want to do some more digging into Crook’s and Mackenzie’s Powder River Campaign and the Dull Knife Battle, you’ve got some winter reading to do:

Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry
, by George F. Price.

“A Day With the ‘Fighting Cheyennes’: Stirring Scenes in the Old Northwest, Recalled for Motor Tourists,”
Motor Travel Magazine
(December 1930, January 1931, February 1931).

Bad Hand—A Biography of General Randal S. Mackenzie
, by Charles M. Robinson III.

Bad Hand: The Military Career of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, 1871–1889
, by Lessing H. Noel, Jr. (Ph.D. dissertation), Department of History, University of New Mexico, 1962.

Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877—The Military View
, edited by Jerome A. Greene.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—An Indian History of the American West
, by Dee Brown.

By Cheyenne Campfires
, by George Bird Grinnell.

Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life
, by Charles King.

“Campaigning with the 5th Cavalry: Private James B. Frew’s Diary and Letters from the Great Sioux War of 1876,” by Paul L. Hedren.
Nebraska History
65 (Winter 1984).

Campaigning with King—Charles King, Chronicler of the Old Army
, edited by Paul L. Hedren.

Centennial Campaign—The Sioux War of 1876
, by John S. Gray.

Cheyenne (Wyoming)
Daily Leader
(Aug., Oct., Nov., Dec, 1876).

Cheyenne Memories
, by John Stands in Timber and Margot Liberty.

Chronological List of Engagements Between the Regular Army of the United States and Various Tribes of Hostile Indians Which Occurred During the Years 1790 to 1898, Inclusive
, by George W. Webb.

Crazy Horse and Custer—The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
, by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Crazy Horse—The Strange Man of the Oglalas
, by Mari Sandoz.

Crimsoned Prairie—The Wars Between the United States and the

Plains Indians During the Winning of the West
, by S. L. A. Marshall, Brigadier General (Ret.).

“The Death of Lt. McKinney in the Dull Knife Fight,” by L. A. LaGarde (Address at the Order of the Indian Wars Assembly, March 6, 1915).

Death on the Prairie—The Thirty Years Struggle for the Western Plains
, by Paul I. Wellman.

Death Song—The Last of the Indian Wars
, by John Edward Weems.

The Dull Knife Battle—“Doomsday for the Northern Cheyennes,”
by Fred H. Werner.

“The Dull Knife Symposium,” presented by the Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trail Association, funded by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities—August 1989 (papers delivered by John D. McDermott, moderator; Margot P. Liberty; Jerome A. Greene; Ted Risingsun; Sherry L. Smith; and Douglas C. McChristian).

The Fighting Cheyennes
, by George Bird Grinnell.

The Fighting Norths and Pawnee Scouts
, by Robert Bruce.

“Fighting the Cheyennes: A Hot Little Battle on the Red Fork of the Powder River, Nov. 23, 1876, with Renegades,” by S. Millison,
National Tribune
, May 17, 1928.

Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents Among the Indian Campaigners
, by Oliver Knight.

Fort Laramie—“Visions of a Grand Post”
by Robert A. Murray.

Fort Robinson—Outpost on the Plains
, by Roger T. Grange, Jr.

Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay—The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian Wars
, by Don Rickey, Jr.

Frank Grouard, Army Scout
, edited by Margaret Brock Hanson.

Frontier Regulars—The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891
, by Robert M. Utley.

The Frontier Trail
, by Colonel Homer W. Wheeler (Ret.).

General George Crook—His Autobiography
, edited by Martin F. Schmitt.

“General Philip Sheridan’s Legacy: The Sioux Pony Campaign of 1876,” by Richmond L. Clow.
Nebraska History
57 (Winter 1976).

“Getting Into Uniform: Northern Cheyenne Scouts in the United States Army, 1876–81,” by Karen Easton (master’s thesis, University of Wyoming), 1985.

“Historical Address of Brig. Gen’l. W. C. Brown, U.S. Army Retired” (Read at Unveiling of Monument to Lieut. Frank D. Baldwin Near Olanda, Montana; June, 11, 1932),
Winners of the West
, August 30, 1932.

Indian-Fighting Army
, by Fairfax Downey.

Indian Fights and Fighters
, by Cyrus Townsend Brady.

“The Indian Situation: Mackenzie’s Fight with the Cheyennes,”
Army Navy Journal
, December 19, 1876.