A Cold Day in Hell (75 page)

Indian Wars
, by Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn.

The Indian Wars of the West
, by Paul I. Wellman.

“The Journals of James S. McClellan, 1st Sgt., Company H., 3rd Cavalry,” edited by Thomas R. Buecker,
Annals of Wyoming
57 (Spring 1985).

The Lance and the Shield—The Life and Times of Sitting Bull
, by Robert M. Utley.

Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard
, by Joe DeBarthe.

Life and Manners in the Frontier Army
, by Oliver Knight.

“Mackenzie Against Dull Knife: Breaking the Northern Cheyennes in 1876,” by Lessing H. Nohl. In
Probing the American West: Papers from the Santa Fe Conference
, edited by K. Ross Toole, et al.

Mackenzie’s Last Fight with the Cheyennes: A Winter Campaign in Wyoming and Montana
, by Captain John G. Bourke.

Man of the Plains—Recollections of Luther North, 1856–1882
, edited by Donald F. Danker.

Military Posts in the Powder River Country of Wyoming, 1865–1894
, by Robert A. Murray.

Military Posts of Wyoming
, by Robert A. Murray.

The Most Promising Young Officer—A Life of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie
, by Michael D. Pierce.

Motor Travel Magazine
, articles by Lieutenant John G. Bourke, May 1930, July 1930, August 1930.

“Mounted Riflemen: The Real Role of the Cavalry in the Indian Wars,” by James S. Hutchins. In
Probing the American West: Papers from the Sante Fe Conference
, edited by K. Ross Toole, et al.

Nelson A. Miles—A Documentary Biography of His Military Career, 1861–1903
, edited by Brian C. Pohanka.

Nelson A. Miles and The Twilight of the Frontier Army
, by Robert Wooster.

On the Border with Crook
, by John G. Bourke.

Paper Medicine Man—John Gregory Bourke and His American West
, by Joseph C. Porter.

“Pawnee Trails and Trailers,” by Captain Luther H. North,
Motor Travel Magazine
, March 1929, April 1929, May 1929, June 1929, July 1929, August 1929, September 1929, October 1929, December 1929, January 1930, February 1930, March 1930, June 1930, July 1930, May 1931, June 1931, August 1931.

People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830–1879
, by Peter J. Powell.

Personal Diary, by John G. Bourke, on microfilm, in possession of the Denver Public Library, Western History Section.

Personal Recollections of General Nelson A. Miles
, by Nelson A. Miles.

The Plainsmen of the Yellowstone—A History of the Yellowstone Basin
, by Mark H. Brown.

Sagebrush Soldier
, by Sherry L. Smith.

The Shoshonis—Sentinels of the Rockies
, by Virginia Cole Trenholm and Maurine Carley.

“Sitting Bull Strikes the Glendive Supply Trains,”
Westerners Brand Book
, (Chicago) Vol. 28, (June, 1971).

Soldiers West—Biographies from the Military Frontier
, edited by Paul Andrew Hutton.

Son of the Morning Star
, by Evan S. Connell.

Spotted Tail’s Folk—A History of the Brule Sioux
, by George E. Hyde.

Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History
, by Peter J. Powell.

Two Great Scouts and Their Pawnee Battalion—The Experiences of Frank J. North and Luther H. North
, by George Bird Grinnell.

The View from Officers’ Row—Army Perceptions of Western Indians
, by Sherry L. Smith.

Warpath—The True Story of the Fighting Sioux
(The Biography of White Bull), by Stanley Vestal.

Warpath and Council Fire—The Plains Indians’ Struggle for Survival in War and in Diplomacy, 1851–1891
, by Stanley Vestal.

War-Path and Bivouac—The Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition
, by John F. Finerty.

William Jackson, Indian Scout
, by James Willard Schultz.

Wolves for the Blue Soldiers—Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–1890
, by Thomas W. Dunlay.

Wooden Leg—A Warrior Who Fought Custer
, interpreted by Thomas B. Marquis.

Yellowstone Command—Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877
, by Jerome A. Greene.

The Dull Knife Battlefield exists today much as it did over a hundred years ago—with the exception of the simple stone marker erected near the village site, the single dirt road that hugs the foot of Mackenzie Mountain, and the fact that in the last century the leafy cottonwoods have taken hold along the stream bottom and down in the bogs once infested with ten-foot-high willow at the time soldiers and warriors clashed here.

Only a year after the fight Harmon Fraker came in to homestead the valley. The mountain that forms the north rim of the site is named Fraker Mountain for that first settler. Then in
1901 a rancher by the name of Charles N. Graves came to Wyoming out of Nebraska, gaining title to the valley five years later. Through the twenties and into the thirties, both he and his son, Frank O. Graves, witnessed numerous visits to the battle site by many of the old soldiers and aging Indians who had taken part in the tragic struggle. Next to take over operations was Norris Graves, and now his son and daughter-in-law, Ken and Cheri, run cattle and sheep in that ruggedly secluded corner of the Big Horns.

This is the famous “Hole in the Wall” country of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Climbing close to five thousand feet above sea level, you reach the valley by a long, twisting stretch of dirt road that winds through some stunning blood-red mountains dotted with one variety or another of emerald evergreen. As you draw closer, the walls begin to rise dramatically to a height of a thousand feet or more above you. And then, before you’re really prepared, you are suddenly thrust around a bend and down the slope into the valley itself, which measures some two miles long and from a quarter of a mile to about a mile wide in places.

The Morning Star camp was pitched for the most part along some flat ground on the south bank of a gentle, trickling stream running from west to east all year long because it was fed by a warm spring that prevented the stream from freezing (a fact heretofore neglected by the historians). Here, where the village stood, the valley is its widest. Downstream to the east, where Mackenzie’s cavalry burst through the gap, the valley is at its most narrow.

This is truly a dramatically spectacular symbol of some of God’s finest sculpturin’s!

And there was no finer way to see such sculpturin’s than on horseback, accompanied by the two most knowledgeable guides I could have wanted. Ken Graves saddled us up just before sunrise on this anniversary date as I trudged over to the corral and got to know his part-time ranch hand, Mike Freidel—a historian in his own right and athletic coach over at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. Mike’s been coming over to the place for better than fifteen years now, and—believe me—Ken and Mike know every square foot of that valley, from far out of the east gap where the cavalry came in, formed up, and began their charge, to the breastworks and the narrow escape canyon at the other end of the valley, and on up the mountainsides
where the Cheyenne fled into the winter night toward Fraker Pass.

More important, for all those years the two of them have traveled the ground by horseback, in and out of that maze of rocky walls, trackless ravines, and well-used game trails, coming to know exactly where Mackenzie’s scouts led the soldiers into the valley, just where Cosgrove and Schuyler led their Shoshone single file up the steep and precarious mountain path to reach the top of what is today called Mackenzie Mountain. So if I was forced to choose in a disagreement between an academic historian and these rancher-horsemen on how an army was going to march into the east gap and on into the valley, you can bet your last twenty-dollar gold piece I’d lay everything I had on Ken Graves and Mike Freidel showing me just where Mackenzie’s horse planted its hooves back in 1876.

And those fellas did just that. They led me all the way east to that flat area the Sioux scouts called the race ground, where Mackenzie stopped his scouts and troopers and sent ahead his small band of spies while they listened to the Cheyenne drum echo down the canyon. From there we rode into the valley as the charging cavalry would have, picking our way across the narrow feeder creeks and down into the willow bogs, just as those cavalrymen would have done. Finally onto the flat where we hugged the long, low plateau at the base of Fraker Mountain until we stopped, getting our first magnificent view of the valley itself.

Just as Mackenzie would have seen his first view. The village is arrayed on our left in a crude horseshoe. Ahead of us, as the Shoshone open fire and the Pawnee hurl themselves against the fringe of lodges, the enemy is already bolting out of the upper end of the village, some of the warriors sprinting into a deep ravine—a large band of them hurrying across the open ground to seize some of their ponies before the herd can be captured.

These are the ponies Mackenzie does not want to lose.

“Would you like to ride it the way McKinney’s men charged that morning?” Ken asked.

Already my eyes were misting, and I had one hell of a lump in my throat. “You damn bet I would!” I croaked.

Without another word, those two horsemen suddenly spurred themselves away, leaving room between them for me as we rolled those three eager horses into a full, windblown gallop that whipped the cold breeze across my cheeks, the tears from my eyes. On and on over the gently rolling ground we raced,
heading for the knoll where the Cheyenne riflemen were setting up shop. Then suddenly—

Ken and Mike reined up just ahead of me, shouting for me to do the same. If I hadn’t stopped when I had, your author would have been faced with choosing to jump his horse across an impossibly wide ravine, or slam into the far side, where I would have eaten a few yards of the Wyoming landscape for breakfast.

I came to see firsthand how Lieutenant John A. McKinney and the men of his M Troop failed to see the ravine until they were all but on top of it—at the moment the Cheyenne warriors rose out of the bowels of the earth like screaming demons and fired point-blank into those blue ranks.

Believe me, the more I travel these battlefields, I become all the more a believer that there is no substitute for being
there
. Going to the place myself, so that I can factually, accurately translate the countryside, the very
feel
of a piece of sacred ground like this for the millions of readers who will never get a chance to be there themselves.

Ken and Mike showed it all to me from horseback, around the Red Butte behind which the surgeons set up their field hospital and near which private Baird was buried by the willows in an unmarked, unknown grave. We rode halfway up the precipitous slope of the rocky outcrop Mackenzie used as his command post during the hottest of the fighting. With them I circled around toward the twin buttes, which stood near the final northernmost end of the soldier line. Then we climbed the horses up the front of the ridge where the sharpshooters sat in the snow, the very top of which was occupied by the women and others singing the strong-heart songs to their warriors.

What a thrill it was for me to dismount, moving carefully among the piles of rocks frozen hands placed one on top of another more than a century ago! To stand there where the
Ohmeseheso
stood, watching their greatness spiral into the cold blue sky overhead with the oily black curl of smoke rising from every burning lodge. Then finally to mount up and ride on to the far upper end of the valley, there to get a feel of the steepness of the slope as the survivors scurried hand and foot, scrambling ever higher toward Fraker Pass, hoping for safety from the soldiers.

By the time we returned to the corrals near the ranch house, the three of us had been out in the saddle for more than five and a half hours. Unlike those two saddle-hardened veterans,
this Ol’ boy doesn’t get much of a chance to do that kind of
real
riding: almost straight up or straight down in places! So you better believe that the following day, my Ol’ bones were cussing me but good!

We had lunch with Cheri and the Graves daughters, then spent part of the afternoon sharing more stories of that battle, tales of Custer and the Indian wars in general, and with me just wanting to get a feel for what winter was like in that beautiful, silent valley. For, you see, the only problem with our ride this anniversary day was that I looked out of the Graves’s ranch-house window, but I didn’t see any snow.

That afternoon on the way back to Buffalo, Wyoming for the night, the local radio weatherman said there was a major winter storm expected late tomorrow. Ain’t that the luck? But it’s something I’ve come to expect in this country. Here I came down on the battle’s anniversary: sunny, almost shirtsleeve weather … and tomorrow there’s going to be at least a fifty-degree drop in the temperature, and a major amount of snow blowing in! Just what the old frontiersmen came to know about this country—you better be prepared for anything, because you’re bound to get it in the way of fickle weather.

In the months to follow, Ken and Cheri Graves, as well as Mike Freidel, kindly answered my numerous questions, all three of them putting up with me until I could finally send them both big “overnight” packages filled with the appropriate chapters on the battle—asking for their corrections and suggestions. I can’t thank them enough for allowing me to impose upon them at a particularly busy time of the year as I finish this afterword—March is, after all, recruiting season for Mike, and it’s when the lambs and calves are dropping for Ken and Cheri.

I especially want to express my gratitude to Mike Freidel for his repeated work with me on the battlefield map. From those first days of the four of us going over the maps done for previous works on the Dull Knife fight—when Ken, Cheri, and Mike pointed out errors and discrepancies—to coming up with our own crude pencil sketches, and finally to working over a dining-room-table-sized USGS topographic map … all that labor just so we could give the reader as much a feeling of being right there as we could. Ken and Cheri and Mike all had a big hand in helping me make this battle come to life for you.