Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (67 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Crazy Horse Fights on the Rosebud While Custer Closes In

“I now have some Crow scouts with me, as they are familiar with the country. They are magnificent-looking men, so much handsomer and more Indian-like than any we have ever seen, and so jolly and sportive; nothing of the gloomy, silent red-man about them. They have formally given themselves to me, after the usual talk. In their speech they said they had heard that I never abandoned a trail; that when my food gave out I ate mule. That was the kind of a man they wanted to fight under; they were willing to eat mule too.”  Custer to Libbie, June 21, 1876

The Sioux hadn’t seen anything like it since the Fort Phil Kearny days almost ten years earlier. The flow of movement had been reversed. After the treaty of 1868 the Sioux—individuals, families, and bands—had been slowly, reluctantly, moving south and east into the agencies. So many went that by 1875 the number of hostiles had shrunk from over ten thousand to less than three thousand; meanwhile the population of the agencies doubled and then doubled again, reaching more than ten thousand in 1875. But by February 1876 the tide had turned and by May of that year, its force was almost overwhelming. The agencies lost half or more of their Indian population. Those who stayed behind were old men, women, and children. Spotted Tail and Red Cloud refused to join the hostiles, but Red Cloud’s son Jack was one of those who participated in the exodus.

There were almost as many motives for going north as there were Indians making the trek. Some of the agency Sioux made it as a matter of course—they had been wintering on the agencies and spending the summers with the hostiles for years. In 1876, however, many of these Indians left early, moving to the Powder River in February and were joined by others who wanted a chance at some buffalo. This was a direct result of the United States Government
Indian policy, which was almost unbelievably stupid. On the one hand, the government had declared war on the Powder River Indians and was preparing a series of expeditions to march against them. On the other hand, the government was bickering over appropriations to feed the agency Sioux so that no food was arriving at the agencies and the people there were starving. They begged their agents for permission to go hunting up by the Yellowstone and the agents gave it; they had no real choice in the matter—if they had said no, the agency Indians would have starved before their eyes.

But most of the Sioux moving north had more in mind than a good hunt. Some wanted a chance to pick up some coup and horses at the expense of the Crows. Others brought along trading items-white man’s goods—to exchange for robes and furs, which commanded relatively high prices at the agencies. Many were just curious, youngsters who wanted to see Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the other famous Sioux for themselves. Some of the young warriors had never been in a fight and wanted to prove themselves—Jack Red Cloud, for example. In his late teens at this time, he had been living on the agency since 1870 and had not been on a war party; there were many other youngsters like him. Older men came along, some with their families, in order to visit relatives they had not seen in years. Some young warriors were mainly concerned with finding a wife among the hostile women, for rumor had it that they were prettier, livelier, and more fun than the agency squaws.

Above and beyond these (and surely other) motives for leaving the agencies, one reason stood out. The Indians were going north to fight the soldiers and to have one last summer of the old wild life. Most of them seem to have held no illusions about the long-term future. The Army certainly made no attempt to hide its preparations for the campaign, which was common gossip among whites at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies and the agency Indians knew enough about the white man and his power to realize that the end had come: when the Army took possession of the only buffalo range left in the United States, the Sioux would roam no more. It was almost as if the entire Sioux nation (or at least a goodly portion of it) had decided to have one last, great summer before giving in to the whites.

The hostiles played on this sentiment brilliantly. Sitting Bull sent runners to the agencies in February to tell the Indians there to come on north and have a big fight with the whites. There would be a grand Sun Dance, some real old-time buffalo hunts, an enormous get-together (and no race of people enjoyed getting together more
than the Sioux), and a good fight against the soldiers, with plenty of coup for everyone. Crazy Horse told the Cheyennes to come join him for a little fighting against the whites.
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The appeal was well-nigh irresistible. Crazy Horse’s Oglalas and Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas had already joined hands and were camped on the Rosebud Creek, which flowed into the Yellowstone in eastern Montana. Oglalas from Red Cloud’s and Brulés from Spotted Tail’s agencies swelled their numbers. Then the Cheyennes, who had also been at Red Cloud Agency, came, fifty lodges strong, to camp near Crazy Horse. Some Blackfeet Sioux from western South Dakota rode into camp, enough to have their own circle of lodges. The Sans Arcs were also there with their own circle of lodges. Santees from the Missouri River came, along with some Assiniboines and Arapahoes.

And as the hostile camp increased in size, it became even more of a magnet to other Indians. It was obvious to every Indian in the northwest Plains that the Army was gunning for them, literally, and that any Indian seen anywhere in the unceded Indian territory would be fair game; it didn’t take any particular brains to figure out that when you were caught in a situation like that the best place to be was with your comrades. Agency Indians felt the same way. They remembered Sand Creek and the Washita; a number of them indicated to white friends, before leaving the agencies to join the hostiles, that they could not feel safe even on the reservation, not with all those troops about. Their only safety lay in numbers, and by April the camp of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse was where the numbers were.

Since the opening of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, this gathering in 1876 was the closest the Sioux ever came to presenting a united front to the whites. But, of course, not all the Sioux agreed with the Sitting Bull-Crazy Horse policy. One defection that particularly grieved Crazy Horse came in early March. He Dog, with ten lodges of Oglala followers, had decided to obey the government and go into Red Cloud Agency. He was joining some forty lodges of Cheyennes, under Old Bear, who were doing the same thing. He Dog explained to Crazy Horse that his women were afraid, that his people had little children who could not run in the snow when the horse soldiers came. He Dog, two years older than Crazy Horse, was in his late thirties. He had no need for any more coup or any excitement of any kind—he had been beside Crazy Horse in almost every battle of Crazy Horse’s life. He did not need to prove his courage, but he did need to protect his helpless ones. Crazy Horse made no attempt to
stop him, but he watched He Dog go with a heavy heart, certain that He Dog was making a mistake.
²

Crazy Horse was right; it proved to be a mistake. As the southern prong of the Army’s campaign against the Sioux, General Crook was leading a powerful column (eight hundred soldiers) from Fort Fetterman up the Bozeman Trail, in search of Indians. On March 16, 1876, Crook stumbled across the He Dog-Old Bear village. Frank Grouard, once Crazy Horse’s white friend, was one of Crook’s scouts. Grouard recognized some of He Dog’s horses. He assumed that Crazy Horse was, as always, with He Dog, and therefore reported to Crook that they had hit it lucky. Next to Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse was the biggest catch of all, and now Crook had him in his hands, or so Grouard said. Because He Dog and Old Bear were on their way to the agency, they expected no trouble and had neglected to post scouts. Thus Crook was able to achieve complete surprise in a dawn attack reminiscent of the Washita, except that He Dog and most of the people fled to safety. Crook’s men got possession of the village and destroyed everything in it, including enormous quantities of fresh and dried buffalo meat. This was remarkably stupid, even for the Army, since Crook was out of supplies. After the battle he had to fall back to Fort Fetterman to replenish his stores.

Crook’s success was ephemeral. Unlike Custer at the Washita, he failed to kill many warriors, and after recovering from the initial shock, the Sioux and Cheyennes counterattacked and managed to recover most of their large pony herd. This development, coupled with Crook’s retreat after the battle, gave Indian morale a significant boost, for within a week the news of Crook’s fiasco was known by every Indian on the northwest Plains. It emboldened the hostiles to the point where they felt they could safely defy the government. The flow of Indians into the Sitting Bull-Crazy Horse camp became a flood. And He Dog, Old Bear, and their followers were a part of it.
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How big the great camp became is a matter of speculation that can never be settled. Indian estimates run from nearly one thousand to as many as two thousand lodges and sometimes even higher. The best guess—and it is only a guess—would be that there could not have been less than two thousand warriors or more than four thousand. Whatever their number, there were enough to swell the hearts of the braves, to make them—and their leaders—feel invincible.
⁴
They were better armed than they ever had been. Agency Indians living cheek by jowl with whites had managed, one way or another, to acquire white man’s weapons for themselves. The best estimate is
that almost half the warriors had guns. But the Army’s claim, after the fact, that the hostiles were better armed than the soldiers was ridiculous. The majority of Indian weapons were old flintlocks, condemned muskets, muzzleloaders, and smoothbores. Sitting Bull’s own gun was a forty-year-old Hawken rifle.
⁵
No matter how deficient the weapon, however, possession of a gun gave the individual warrior confidence.

The Indians knew that the soldiers were coming at them from the south, west, and east, but nevertheless it was a joyous camp, reminding older members of the camps the Sioux used to make at Bear Butte near the Black Hills. Certain that they were strong enough to repel any force of soldiers, no matter how large, the Indians enjoyed themselves. The camp had to move every few days in order to find fresh grass for the gigantic pony herd and to find buffalo, though there was more than enough meat.
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Everyone feasted everyone else. Dancing was almost continuous. So was visiting back and forth. Old friends met and embraced, new friends were made. Youngsters raced their ponies from dawn to dusk. Slightly older boys, resplendent in full dress, strutted from circle to circle, showing off. Wherever one looked there were teen-aged boys and girls wrapping themselves inside a blanket, courting. Warriors outdid themselves in bragging about their exploits against the Crows, Pawnees, or Shoshonis and in boasting about what they would do to any white soldiers who might dare to attack the Sioux nation.

The Cheyennes, as honored allies, had first place in the circles of lodges. They led the marches and picked out the camping grounds. So big was the encampment that when it moved in column the
Cheyennes would have their tipis up and their suppers eaten before the Hunkpapas, in the rear, had reached the campground. Yet this huge outfit, with a pony herd of at least ten thousand, could move with remarkable speed. Edgar Stewart, who has done the most intensive research on the subject, writes that the camp was “able to make fifty miles a day despite the presence of women and children and the fact that they were burdened with the lodges and miscellaneous baggage of the camp.”
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Hanging over the whole camp was the foreboding knowledge that this was the last time it all could be done, the last big encampment of the Sioux. That feeling, however, only fed the joyous mood, as it made individuals more determined to enjoy themselves. Some of the agency Indians hadn’t seen a buffalo in years, and the good hunting was pure joy to them. It was one last fling, and the Sioux made the most of it. Every Indian who was there, man, woman, or child, even those who survived well into the twentieth century, always remembered it as the most glorious summer of his or her life.
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The irreconcilables among the hostiles did not share the general thought that this was a last fling before moving permanently onto the reservations. Sitting Bull talked about “fighting to the last man,” and Crazy Horse agreed. They were determined to stay out forever, if they could, or die trying. They hoped to defeat the whites as badly in 1876 as they had at Fort Phil Kearny in 1866 and thereby, perhaps, win another ten years of freedom for themselves. Having seen only white soldiers, and not many of them at that, they did not believe the agency Indian stories about the power of the whites. Sitting Bull said such stories were part of the white man’s medicine, that the agency people had been fooled.
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In early June 1876 the camp moved to the Little Bighorn Valley, a favorite resort of the Indians because of its luxuriant grasses and the plentiful buffalo, deer, and elk. But even so favored a place could not support so many people for very long, and after a few days the camp moved back to the Rosebud Valley. There, the Indians held a Sun Dance.

It was a big one, talked about for decades thereafter. All the people, Sioux and Cheyenne, went into one enormous circle. Everything was done in the old way, according to strict and elaborate ritual. Virgins cut the sacred tree; chiefs carried it into the camp circle; braves counted coup upon it. The buffalo skulls were set up, along with the sacred pipes and other paraphernalia. Many men pierced at that dance, undergoing the self-torture so that Wakan Tanka, the All, would smile upon his people. Sitting Bull, his breast already
covered with scars from previous Sun Dances, was the sponsor and leader. He sat on the ground with his back to the sacred Sun Dance pole while his adopted brother, Jumping Bull, lifted a small piece of his, Sitting Bull’s, skin with an awl and cut it with a sharp knife. Jumping Bull cut fifty pieces of flesh from Sitting Bull’s right arm, then fifty more from the left arm.