Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (38 page)

That night Fetterman and Captain Fred Brown called on Carrington, proposing that they lead an offensive expedition of fifty men to Red Cloud’s main camp on the Tongue River, where they could destroy the village and thus raise the siege. Carrington told the two captains, with some heat, that he could not possibly spare fifty men for a hazardous expedition and in any event he had only forty-two serviceable horses. Brown muttered as he left that “he knew it was impossible, but that he just felt he could kill a dozen [Indians] himself.” Within half a day, he would get his chance.
²⁰

While Carrington was dealing with his daredevil young officers, Red Cloud revised his plans. After some discussion, the shirt-wearers themselves decided to lead a small decoy party the next morning. There would be a separate attack on the wood train; when the soldiers rode out of the fort to chase away the attackers, the decoys
would appear from behind Sullivant Hill and lure the pursuers into Peno Valley, beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. If Crazy Horse and the decoys could get the soldiers to follow that far, they would be out of view and beyond supporting distance from the fort.

Later that same night, December 20, the Miniconjous sent out a
winkte,
who was thought to have special powers, to see what their luck would be. Pulling a black cloth over his head, the
winkte
rode over a hill, zigzagging one way and another as he went, tooting on his whistle. Presently he rode back, came to where Red Cloud and the shirt-wearers had gathered, and said, “I have ten men, five in each hand; do you want them?” The leaders shook their heads; “No, we do not wish them. Look at all these people here. Do you think ten men are enough to go around?” The
winkte
rode away again. He soon returned, riding faster, swaying on his horse. “I have ten men in each hand,” he gasped. “Twenty in all. Do you wish them?” Red Cloud said no, it was not enough. Again the
winkte
rode off; when he returned he said, “I have twenty in one hand and thirty in the other. The thirty are in the hand on the side toward which I am leaning.” The shirt-wearers said it still wasn’t enough. Without a word, the
winkte
rode off. On the fourth return he rode up fast and as his horse stopped, he fell off and struck the ground with both hands. “Answer me quickly,” he said. “I have a hundred or more.” All the warriors yelled their approval. That was what they wanted. Let the sun come up quickly—it was going to be a glorious day.
²¹

December 21 dawned bright and cold. The mass of warriors deployed on each side of Peno Valley, but not until they had been harangued by Hump and others about holding their positions until the decoys, ten in all, gave the signal to attack. The Sioux graciously gave their allies, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others, the sunny side of the valley ridge, while they took their places on the shaded, colder side. Red Cloud watched from a distance.

Two Arapahoes, two Cheyennes named Little Wolf and Wolf Left Hand, and Hump and Lone Bear joined the Sioux shirt-wearers American Horse, Young Man Afraid, He Dog, and Crazy Horse to form the decoy party. It was so cold that Crazy Horse did not strip for battle as he usually did, but instead kept his blanket belted around him. He led the decoy party into a little gulley, where it could not be seen from the fort and where the men could escape the biting wind, to wait for the attack on the wood train.

Almost as soon as the woodcutters reached the pine woods, a small group of Indians rode to the attack. Carrington had prepared a relief party of seventy-nine men, mixed infantry and cavalry, giving
the command to the same cautious officer who had led the pursuit on December 19. It was a wise choice, but just as the troops were about to leave the fort Captain Fetterman caught Carrington’s arm and demanded that he be given command, as he was the senior officer next to Carrington himself at the fort. Carrington acquiesced, with obvious misgivings, as he gave Fetterman a cautious written order: “Support the wood train. Relieve it and report to me. Do not engage or pursue Indians at its expense. Under no circumstances pursue over the ridge, that is, Lodge Trail Ridge.” So worried was Carrington about Fetterman, in fact, that he twice verbally repeated the order not to pursue beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. As Fetterman mounted up, Captain Brown appeared. He was scheduled to be transferred in a few days, but he begged Carrington for “one more chance to bring in the scalp of Red Cloud myself.” When Carrington gave his permission, Fetterman had exactly the number of men he said he needed to ride down the whole Sioux nation.
²²

When Fetterman emerged from the fort, Crazy Horse led the decoy party out of hiding. From this point on it was Crazy Horse versus Fetterman. Red Cloud and Carrington had done all they could; victory would now belong to the side that had produced the best combat leader.

As Fetterman swung his command to the left and started out to relieve the wood train, Crazy Horse and the decoys popped up on his right. Carrington fired a field artillery piece in their direction, knocking one of the decoys from his horse. The others began whooping and yelling, running in all directions, zigzagging, looking as if they were terrified. Red Cloud, meanwhile, signaled to the party attacking the wood train, and those Indians broke off their action and began retreating in the general direction of Lodge Trail Ridge. With all this happening in front of him in a matter of seconds, Fetterman must have been confused. It was the critical moment of the battle, Fetterman turning his head every which way wondering what to do. Crazy Horse seized the moment. He caught and held Fetterman’s attention, charging toward the eighty soldiers alone, whooping and waving his blanket, giving the impression that he was covering a retreat for the remainder of the decoy party. Fetterman decided to give chase. Instead of proceeding to his left toward the wood train, he struck out to the north, directly away from the fort, following a path that would take him past the east slope of the Sullivant Hills and onto Lodge Trail Ridge.

The ambush was working. Crazy Horse took one look at the advancing soldiers, checked his own pony, and turned back toward
Lodge Trail Ridge, using the old trick of pretending to beat the horse with one hand while actually holding it back with the other. Fetterman and his officers knew all about the decoy game, or thought they did, but Crazy Horse’s performance was so realistic that they were convinced that finally, for once, they had caught a small group of Indians in the open and could give them the thrashing they deserved. If Fetterman thought at all about the wood train and the Indians who had attacked it, he evidently reasoned that they had already gotten away and he had better concentrate on the ten-man decoy party. After months of frustration, he would show Carrington what could be done by offensive tactics.

The decoys, with Crazy Horse in the rear, stayed just out of effective range of the soldiers’ guns, a tantalizing target. Fetterman’s command was about half infantry, half cavalry, so he moved forward slowly in order to keep his men together. The decoys, consequently, could not just ride off and hope for the soldiers to follow them into the ambush. They needed to maintain their distance, not getting so far ahead that Fetterman would give up and return to the fort, yet not falling back close enough to get shot. Several times Crazy Horse leaped off his horse, once pretending to tie his war rope closer, once to lift up a foot of the animal and shake his head disgustedly as if the horse had gone lame. He led the animal by the jaw bridle, running awkwardly. The other decoys, meanwhile, circled around him, as if to protect his retreat. When the distance between the decoys and the soldiers became too large, Crazy Horse sat down behind a bush and built a small fire. The other decoys yelled at him to get out of there, but he gestured that his horse was finished and indicated that he was giving up. Bullets began to zing over his head, kicking up puffs of dust and snow around him, the decoys reluctantly riding off and leaving him to his fate. At the last minute, when he was about to be overwhelmed, Crazy Horse jumped on his pony and rode off, whipping after the other decoys. He plunged down over the end of Lodge Trail Ridge toward Peno Valley, the soldiers following fast, Fetterman shouting at them to come on.

When Crazy Horse caught up with his fellow decoys he glanced over his shoulder, saw that all the soldiers had entered the valley behind Lodge Trail Ridge (about five miles from the fort), and felt his heart lift. It had worked! The warriors had remained hidden, the decoys had done their job, Fetterman had fallen for the oldest trick in Plains warfare, and the
winkte’s
vision was about to come true. Crazy Horse divided the decoys and had them ride back and
forth across each other’s trail, the signal to the waiting warriors to attack. Some two thousand Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahoes came charging down on both sides of Peno Creek, hitting Fetterman’s command on its front, rear, and both flanks. The sound of so many hoofs on the frozen ground made a noise like thunder.

Fetterman glanced in the direction he had come, but the bulk of the warriors were on his rear and he had no chance to retreat to the safety of the fort. He ordered his command to move to the right, up the slopes of a nearby hill—a difficult task at best because snow and ice made the going slippery. Arrows were flying everywhere—in the forty-minute battle the Indians fired forty thousand arrows—and the soldiers were looking for any shelter they could find. There were some boulders scattered about on the ground, and the infantrymen began to duck behind them. At this point Fetterman made his second major error—he allowed the cavalrymen to break loose from the infantry and lead their horses up the hill, where abundant rocks provided more protection. As a result, the cavalry watched while the infantrymen fought for their lives.

No one directed the Indian assault—it was every man for himself. First one, then two or three warriors rode through the infantry, counting coup and yelling at the top of their lungs. Eats Meat, a Miniconjou, tried it and fell. Then a Cheyenne rode into the infantry, only to be cut down. A young Oglala warrior charged through the smoke on foot toward a soldier who had just fallen with an arrow in his head. Grabbing the soldier’s rifle, the warrior came dashing back, waving the weapon and shouting like a crazy man, “I have a gun! I have a gun!” All the while arrows flew through the air, so thick that the Oglalas were hitting Miniconjous, Cheyennes were wounding Arapahoes. The Indians’ heaviest losses that day came from their own fire.

But in less than twenty minutes the white infantry was wiped out. The Indians began to crawl up the hill in pursuit of the cavalry. The horse soldiers let their mounts loose, hoping that the Indians would chase the loose stock and leave them alone. Some of the warriors took the bait, but most stuck to the business at hand. A few warriors remained mounted, but the majority were on foot, sneaking forward, using rocks for protection, talking to each other, shouting warnings to keep down. Occasionally an Indian would pop up and take careful aim; soldiers’ heads appeared from behind the rocks as the white men tried to bring down the brave individual; the Indians would then fill the air with arrows. There was no need to save ammunition that day, as there were arrows lying all around, so the warriors only had to pick them up and keep firing. In a short time, less than fifteen minutes, the mass of warriors was close enough to the cavalry position to rush it.

1. Crazy Horse’s photograph was never taken. He refused to pose because he held the Indian belief that to steal his shadow would shorten his life. This is one of Crazy Horse’s “dress” shirts, fringed with hair from ponies’ tails. It is not the shirt he was awarded to go with his position of shirt-wearer.

2. He Dog in 1879. He Dog was a lifelong friend of Crazy Horse and his chief lieutenant in battle. They were also related by marriage. He Dog was one of the few Oglalas who remained loyal to Crazy Horse until the very end. The cross around his neck was typical of the Indians after they came into the reservation and posed for formal portraits. It did not indicate conversion.