Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (43 page)

The Army was damned if it did, damned if it didn’t. If an Army
column found and destroyed an Indian village, Easterners generally and the peace-policy advocates especially denounced the officers as bloodthirsty butchers. If the Army tried to negotiate with the Indians, Westerners generally and frontiersmen especially denounced it for neglect of duty at best, or even cowardice. But for the Army, as General John Pope put it, “Whatever may be the right or wrong of the question … the Indian must be dispossessed. The practical question to be considered is how the inevitable can be accomplished with the least inhumanity to the Indian.”
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The Army’s over-all record in the Indian wars, in short, was a mixed one. Having said that, it must then be added that no campaign the Army ever undertook matched the Hancock campaign of 1867 for sheer stupidity. In the first place, there was no reason at all to send a force of 1,400 infantry, artillery, and cavalry chasing around the central Plains looking for Indians. There had been no trouble in Kansas or Nebraska nor any reason to expect any. Nevertheless Hancock marched forth from Fort Riley looking for war, at a time when he had a total force of only slightly more than 4,000 soldiers to hold the vast spaces of the central Plains.
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To make the comic turn ridiculous, he set out with infantry, artillery, and heavy pontoon trains (temporary movable bridges) to catch Indians somewhere,
anywhere,
in Kansas, Nebraska, or eastern Colorado. He never explained how he proposed to catch wild Indians with infantry and pontoon trains.

Hancock’s main idea was to show the flag, or so he said. The immediate problem was, whose flag—the Army’s, or the Indian Bureau’s, or the government’s? The Army’s policy was to drive the Indians onto reservations north of the Platte or south of the Arkansas rivers; the Indian Bureau’s policy was to bribe them there; the government’s policy shifted from month to month. Legally, the Indians were under the control of the Indian Bureau (which was under the Department of the Interior) and more especially the Bureau’s agents in the field. The agents insisted that the Indians were peaceful, while the Army charged that the agents lied and then compounded the lie by selling arms and ammunition to the hostiles. Cheyenne agent Edward W. Wynkoop took the brunt of this criticism—Custer accused him of being a direct accomplice to outright murder.
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The Army was supposed to support the Indian Bureau’s policies, but no one in the Bureau, least of all Wynkoop, wanted a huge force of soldiers wandering around the Indian country, frightening the red men and possibly spurring them to go on the warpath. The Cheyennes would be especially fearful after the Chivington massacre
at Sand Creek three years earlier. Nevertheless, Hancock determined to march toward the Cheyennes living in western Kansas with all the pomp and display he could muster, then bully the Indians out of the path of the advancing railroads.

The expedition set out on March 22, 1867, from Fort Riley. The 1,400 soldiers comprised the largest force yet sent out on the Plains. Custer commanded the 7th Cavalry, about 400 men. Hancock had arranged for publicity; for the first time in America’s Indian wars, newspaper correspondents accompanied a military expedition in the field. Theodore R. Davis, an artist-reporter for
Harper’s Weekly,
was there, along with the not-yet famous Henry M. Stanley, a correspondent for the New York
Tribune.
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Hancock told agent Wynkoop, who also accompanied the expedition, that there would be no war unless the Indians started it. He said he was prepared to aid the agents in controlling, arresting, or punishing any warrior who might be guilty of outrages, but otherwise he intended to leave the tribes alone. To his troops, however, Hancock expressed more hawkish sentiments. “We go prepared for war,” Hancock proclaimed in his general orders, “and will make it if a proper occasion presents … No insolence [from the Indians] will be tolerated.”
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Early in April 1867, Hancock arrived at Fort Larned on the Arkansas River in central Kansas. Here he had Wynkoop call in the Cheyenne chiefs for a conference. Hancock had promised Wynkoop that so long as the Indians left the travel routes alone the agent would remain in charge of all negotiations, but when the council began, Hancock broke his promise and would not allow Wynkoop to speak. Instead, the general lectured the Cheyennes on their responsibilities, held them guilty of depredations they had had no connection with, and told them that he intended to march his force to the Cheyenne village on Pawnee Fork, about thirty-five miles west of Fort Larned. Wynkoop protested the decision, saying it would terrify the Cheyennes to have such a huge force suddenly appear in their vicinity, but Hancock insisted.
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Finally Wynkoop persuaded the general to remain at Fort Larned a few days and allow the Indians to come to him to talk.

The Cheyennes agreed to bring in the whole village on April 10, but on the ninth Kansas caught the tag end of the hard winter Crazy Horse and his comrades had been suffering through up north. There was an eight-inch snowfall followed by bitterly cold weather, so cold in fact that the American horses survived only by having their oats ration doubled and by having troopers whip them through the
night to keep them moving. After the storm had blown over, the Cheyennes set out for Fort Larned, but they ran into a buffalo herd on the way and decided to stop and make a hunt. On April 14 Hancock, furious at what he regarded as betrayal, set off for Pawnee Fork. By noon of the next day the soldiers were within a few miles of the Indian camp.

Coming over a rise, Custer saw a sight he would never forget. It was, he later wrote, “one of the finest and most imposing military displays … which it has ever been my lot to behold. It was nothing more nor less than an Indian line of battle drawn directly across our line of march; as if to say: thus far and no farther. Most of the Indians were mounted; all were bedecked in their brightest colors, their heads crowned with the brilliant war-bonnet, their lances bearing the crimson penant, bows strung, and quivers full of barbed arrows.”
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Hancock immediately had his troops deploy into line of battle. Custer’s cavalry took the right flank, and he ordered his men to draw their sabers, the bright blades flashing in the sunlight. He was dying to get at the redskins. Everything about the situation invited a cavalry charge, including the level ground and the vast prairie that offered no hiding place.

At this critical moment, when a clash seemed inevitable, agent Wynkoop rode up to Hancock and obtained grudging permission to go forward and talk with the Indians. Wynkoop then rode out alone, a fact Custer failed to mention in his otherwise voluminous account of the campaign. Instead, Custer made it appear that he, Hancock, and a handful of other brave officers rode out to meet the Indians, implying that this was an act of great courage.
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In fact, Wynkoop calmed the Indians somewhat (they knew and trusted him), then signaled for Hancock and his party of officers to come forward. Hancock spoke sharply to Roman Nose, whom he regarded—wrongly—as the head chief, asking if Roman Nose wanted war. The Cheyenne warrior replied sarcastically that if the Indians had wanted war they would not have been likely to come out in the open and face such a force or have come so close to Hancock’s artillery pieces. Roman Nose then asked Hancock to make camp where he was, instead of proceeding closer to the village, lest he frighten away the women and children who remembered Sand Creek all too well. Hancock refused the request, the force of Cheyennes turned and rode back toward their village, and the expedition resumed its march.

By late afternoon, Hancock was within sight of the village and he made camp. Roman Nose and some other Cheyennes then rode up to his headquarters to tell him that the women and children had
fled—they could not believe the Army’s intentions were peaceful in view of all the troops Hancock had with him—and to ask him if the soldiers wouldn’t please withdraw. Instead, Hancock ordered the warriors to take some fresh American horses, catch up with the fleeing villagers, and bring the women and children back. Roman Nose said that he would do so.

After darkness fell, Hancock ordered Custer to take the 7th Cavalry and surround the village to make sure that no Indians escaped. Gathering his men together in the dark, Custer ordered them to maintain perfect silence, then proceeded on his hazardous mission. When he had the village surrounded, Custer and three companions crawled toward it. They had no idea what to expect; it was cold (there was a freeze that night), dark, and still. Custer loved the situation; it was almost as exciting as fighting rebels. “While all of us were full of the spirit of adventure,” he later wrote, “and were further encouraged with the idea that we were in the discharge of our duty, there was scarcely one of us who would not have felt more comfortable if we could have got back to our horses without loss of pride.”
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Adventure, duty, pride, all wrapped up in one—what more could a man ask?

Inching his way forward on hands and knees, his heart pounding, sweating despite the cold, expecting to meet a savage warrior at any moment, Custer slowly realized the embarrassing truth. The Indians had taken off, leaving all their belongings behind. The village was deserted. When Custer reported the mortifying facts to Hancock, the general solemnly concluded, “This looks like the commencement of war.”
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Custer did not agree. After some reflection, he decided that “the hasty flight of the Indians and the abandonment of, to them, valuable property, convinces me that they are influenced by fear alone, and it is my opinion that no council can be held with them in the presence of a large military force.” He was learning, obviously, and doing so much faster than Hancock. One reason, perhaps, was that he spent all the time he could with Wild Bill Hickok, the famous scout who was working for Hancock. Hickok knew as much about Indians as any white man on the Plains and Custer was wise enough to pump him for all the information he could get. Despite Hickok’s presence, however, the Army hardly knew what it was doing. As Custer reported, “Captain Robert M. West, of the Seventh Cavalry, and possessed of great experience with Indians, is firmly of the opinion that they have gone north or south.”
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Wise counsel, indeed.

The following morning Hancock ordered Custer to pursue the fleeing Indians. Delaware scouts found the trail and led the way. The trail led north, but because the Indians had no travois with them (having left everything at Pawnee Fork), it was indistinct. Custer pushed on as hard as he could, heading north in the direction of the Smoky Hill River.

While on this march Custer pulled one of his stunts that left men speechless with rage or admiration, depending on how they felt about him. Custer had a pack of greyhounds along and he was anxious to let them try their speed against an antelope. On the third day, seeing some antelope grazing two miles away and mounted on a fine thoroughbred horse that he had ridden in the Appomattox campaign, Custer gave in to his impulses, left his column, and gave chase. He rode for several miles before giving it up and calling in his dogs, who were unable to gain on the antelope. Looking around, Custer tried to figure out where he was, how far he had ridden, and where his column was, but it was all a mystery. He was lost on the Great Plains—and he had deserted his command in the field.

Custer hoped the dogs could lead him back to the column, but they wandered around aimlessly. Suddenly, about a mile distant, he saw a buffalo bull. It was the first buffalo he had ever seen but he didn’t hesitate. With a whoop that would have matched the cry of an Indian about to count coup, he took off after the beast. His magnificent horse soon caught up with the lumbering bull. Together, the buffalo, the thoroughbred, and Custer galloped across the prairie, Custer yelling, shouting, whooping with pure joy. Several times he placed his pistol beside the bull’s head, but always withdrew it to allow the chase to continue a little longer. The bull’s tongue was halfway to the ground but still the beast pounded on, Custer beside him. Finally Custer’s horse began to play out (he estimated they had ridden at top speed for several miles by then) and he decided to finish the business. Placing his revolver alongside the bull’s head, he prepared to fire.

At that instant the bull whirled on horse and rider. Custer’s horse reared, Custer accidentally pulled the trigger, and he shot his thoroughbred through the head. “Quick as thought,” he later wrote, “I disengaged myself from the stirrups and found myself whirling through the air over and beyond the head of my horse.” Jumping to his feet, Custer saw the bull trot off, shaking its head at the wonder of it all. “How far I had travelled, or in what direction from the column, I was at a loss to know. In the excitement of the chase I had lost all reckoning. Indians were liable to pounce upon me at any
moment. My command would not note my absence probably for hours.” It was a desperate situation, but Custer’s luck held. Within a couple of hours the column found him, alone (except for a pack of exhausted dogs) and on foot on the prairie, wandering around and wondering which way was north.
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His men suppressed whatever emotion they felt upon discovering their commander alone on the prairie after having shot his own horse.

The next morning, April 18, Custer resumed his pursuit of the Indians, but the trail soon gave out completely, the Cheyennes having scattered in small groups. Custer pushed on northward, hoping to strike a trail when he hit the Smoky Hill stageline. The only real excitement came the next morning at dawn, when the guards cried out, “Indians!” The men leaped to their horses and Custer rode to the head of a rapidly formed column, while a group of horsemen swept down on the camp. At the last minute, the two sides recognized their mutual mistake—the horsemen were soldiers whom Custer had sent out the previous night to scout for Indian campfires. The detachment had gotten lost, traveled in a semicircle, come upon Custer’s camp from the opposite side, in the uncertain light mistaken Custer’s tents for tipis, and charged. It was about this time that correspondent Davis noticed that Custer was becoming depressed.
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