Authors: William M. Osborn
The Wild Frontier (41 page)
Troops destroyed the village of Cheyenne chief Dull Knife that same year. In the village a warrior was found with a necklace of human forefingers around his neck. There was also a bag containing the right hands of 12 Shoshoni babies and children (the Shoshoni were enemies of the Cheyenne).
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Two scalps of 10-year-old girls were found, one white and one Shoshoni.
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That same year, a wounded Sioux warrior was discovered by a group of Crows. The Crows shot the wounded man 6 times and mutilated his body, said Coward, “until there was nothing recognizable as human.”
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Colonel George Crook was engaged in a campaign in the Tonto Basin against the Apache in 1874. Some Tonto Apache on the San Carlos Reservation who had surrendered later killed an army officer, Lieutenant Jacob Almy, and left the reservation. There was a fresh outbreak of Tonto atrocities. Crook sent out troops. The San Carlos Apache tried to surrender again, but Crook demanded the heads of the 3 leaders of the outbreak and also offered the San Carlos Apache a bounty for the head of Western Apache chief Delshay. The Tonto Apache brought in 7 heads for the 3 San Carlos leaders and 2 for Delshay. Crook said about the Delshay heads that “being satisfied that both parties were earnest in their beliefs, and the bringing in of the extra head was not amiss, I paid both.” He displayed one at Camp Verde and one on the San Carlos Reservation.
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I
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1876, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer ordered Major Marcus A. Reno to pursue a party of around 40 Indians, but Reno’s men suffered a disastrous defeat,
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and Indian women and children mutilated the bodies of the dead. If a ring could not be taken off a dead soldier easily, the women would cut off the finger.
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The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the most significant of the entire war for many reasons. Because Custer had been popular with the people, his death galvanized many who had been opposed or indifferent to the war to support the generals,
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something akin to the effect on the country of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Congress gave the army what it wanted to fight the Indians.
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The military got the support of the civilian
government and control of the Sioux agencies.
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Many Cheyenne and Sioux surrendered.
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Robinson concluded, “Custer was performing greater service [to the military] dead than he had ever done alive.”
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Custer’s Last Stand was the beginning of the end for the Indian in the war.
The battle came about because the army had ordered the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes to come to an agency within 2 months or be classified as hostile. They failed to report, so General Sheridan ordered forces commanded by General George Crook from the south, Colonel John Gibbon from the west, and General Alfred Terry from the east to make a winter strike on these tribes.
Army troops under General George Crook
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fought the Sioux in the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876. Nine soldiers were killed. About midnight the bodies were wrapped in blankets and laid in a long trench on the bank of the Rosebud River. The grave was filled with stones and mud, the earth packed down, and a bonfire built on top. The entire column then was marched back and forth over the mass grave. Robinson reported, “It was hoped that the [Sioux] would not find it and desecrate the bodies.” After the troops withdrew, the next morning about 20 warriors returned to the battlefield, found the mass grave, uncovered the bodies, took the burial blankets, took jewelry from the bodies, and scalped at least one dead soldier.
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Crook retreated to Fort Fetterman, Wyoming.
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After the Battle of the Rosebud, the Sioux went to an encampment on the Little Bighorn River, where they met other Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. The Terry and Gibbon forces met, and when Major Reno reported the general location of the Indians, Terry ordered Custer to cut them off from the south while the remaining troops approached from the north.
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There were about 7,000 Indians (perhaps more), 1,800 of whom were warriors, at the Indian encampment on the Little Bighorn River. Custer
recklessly attacked immediately with only about 200 men instead of waiting another day for Terry and Gibbon, whom he knew were on the way. Not only was Custer vastly outnumbered, his carbines were older and inferior to those of the Indians.
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He and all his soldiers were killed.
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Major Reno later wrote to General Sheridan that “Custer was whipped because he was rash.”
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President Grant told a reporter, “I regard Custer’s massacre as a sacrifice of troops brought on by Custer himself that was wholly unnecessary—wholly unnecessary.”
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Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn had begun, several Sioux boys announced that they would take a suicide vow to fight to the death in the next battle. A Dying Dance was put on to formalize the oath. The Sioux had borrowed the suicide vow from the Cheyenne. Not more than 20 took the vow, “and no one seemed to believe they would have to fulfill it.”
The dance ended at dawn with a parade in honor of the suicide boys.
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They fulfilled their vows at the battle. When it was nearly over, with fewer than 100 soldiers still alive, Sioux heralds arrived, shouting that the warriors should stand aside and watch the suicide boys, who were by the river preparing for their assault on Custer’s position. As planned, the suicides plunged in among the troops, engaged them in hand-to-hand fighting, and distracted them while the rest of the warriors moved in and killed the soldiers. Robinson described what happened:
The suicide boys charged. Some went among the army horses, stampeding the grays. The rest rode straight into the mass of soldiers. While the troops concentrated their fire on these youthful warriors, swarms of Indians swept in from all directions…. Every one of the young suicide warriors was either killed outright or mortally wounded.
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To this point, there had been no Indian atrocities in the battle. The atrocities occurred after the battle ended. The Indian women cut off fingers after Custer’s defeat just as they had after the Battle of the Rosebud. Robinson said they were also “slashing and hacking away with sheath knives and hatchets. Hands and feet were cut off; limbs, torsos, and heads were repeatedly stabbed and slashed.” A Cheyenne woman whose son had been killed in battle 8 days earlier wandered across the battlefield with an ax. “A wounded soldier tried to escape, but was grabbed and held by two warriors while the woman hacked him to death.”
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After the battle, those who visited the field reported what they had
found. Scout George Herendeen said, “Another man had strips of his skin cut out of his body…. Many bodies were gashed with knives, and some had their noses and other members cut off.” Black interpreter Isaiah Dorman
lay with his breast full of arrows and an iron picket pin thrusted through his testicles into the ground, pinning him down…. Dorman’s penis was cut off and stuffed in his mouth…. [His] body had been ripped open, and a coffee pot and cup which he carried with him were filled with his blood.
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Major Reno also reported what he found:
One ghastly find was near the center of the field where three tepee poles were standing upright in the ground to form a triangle. On top of each were inverted camp kettles, while below them on the grass were the heads of three men. The three heads had been placed within the triangle, facing each other in a horrible, sightless stare.
Many of their skulls had been crushed in, eyes had been torn from their sockets, and hands … arms, legs and noses had been wrenched off. Many had their flesh cut off in strips the entire length of their bodies.
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Private Theodore Goldin said his party found “two human heads which were so charred and burned as to be beyond recognition.”
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Private Jacob Adams added that
the men … were … scalped and horribly mutilated. Some were decapitated, while many bodies were lacking feet…. As I walked over the field I saw many unfortunate dead who had been propped into a sitting position and used as targets by bowmen who had proceeded to stick them full of steel-headed arrows…. Some bodies were set up on their knees and elbows and their hind parts had been shot full of arrows.
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Fred Girard saw his comrades “disembowled, with stakes driven through their chests.” George Glenn found his bunkmate, Tom Tweed. “His crotch had been split up with an ax and one of his legs thrown over his shoulder.”
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Lieutenant Edward Godfrey discovered the body of Tom Custer, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s brother. He had been scalped, his skull smashed in, arrows shot in his back, and “his belly had been cut open and his entrails protruded.”
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Thomas Goodrich added that
nearby Jacob Adams saw the body of Colonel Custer which was stripped with the exception of his sox. He had a gunshot wound in his head and another in his side, and in his left thigh there was a gash about eleven inches long that exposed the bone. Custer was not scalped.
But Girard and Godfrey also reported they saw an arrow shaft rammed up Custer’s penis.
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Two Cheyenne women claimed they punctured Custer’s eardrums with awls to improve his hearing because he did not listen when their chiefs told him he would be killed if he ever made war on the Cheyenne again. The Sioux Good Fox was told this story by someone who saw it. Good Fox related, “I was there, but all I remember is one big cloud of dust.”
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Many claimed they killed Custer. They included White Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, Flat Hip, and Brave Bear. Red Horse said it was an unidentified warrior. Low Dog said they didn’t know who Custer was until the battle was over. Sioux war chief Rain-in-the-Face told his story of the battle to W. Kent Thomas in 1894 while he appeared at Coney Island, New York. He confirmed what Red Horse had to say about the soldiers asking to be taken prisoner. “Some of them got on their knees and begged; we spared none.” Rain-in-the-Face claimed in Cyrus Townsend Brady’s report that he shot Custer with his revolver, then
I leaped from my pony and cut out his heart and bit a piece out of it and spit it in his face. I got back on my pony and rode off shaking it. I didn’t go back on the field after that. The squaws came up afterward and killed the wounded, cut their boot legs off for moccasin soles, and took their money, watches, and rings. They cut their fingers off to get them quicker.
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Opinions differ concerning the extent of mutilation of the soldier dead. Axelrod indicated that all the soldiers were found naked and mutilated after the battle.
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Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn stated, “The chief of scouts had counted 197 naked, mutilated bodies.”
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Marshall said a few of the dead were scalped or otherwise mutilated.
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General Alfred H. Terry, who arrived 2 days after the battle, reported that his men found that the bodies of only some of the soldiers had been scalped or otherwise mutilated.
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Carl Waldman made this evaluation of Custer:
Custer is more important as a symbolic figure—a man whose ambitions, recklessness, and disregard for Indian peoples made him a victim
of the last great Indian victory—than for his actual military contributions.
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Sioux chief American Horse was badly wounded in 1876 in the Battle of Slim Buttes in South Dakota. Soldiers had trapped him and others in a cave. He emerged from the cave holding his intestines from a wound, refused chloroform from an army surgeon, and endured his pain by biting on a piece of wood. After his death, the soldiers scalped him.
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The American dead were buried in unmarked graves, and the troops walked over them to try to conceal them. Later, the Indians claimed they opened the graves and scalped the dead.
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Colonel Wesley Merritt was the leader of an expedition against the Cheyenne that same year. Buffalo Bill was his chief scout. They found some Cheyenne war parties in Nebraska and fought the Battle of War Bonnet Creek. Buffalo Bill shot Yellow Hair, the Cheyenne leader, in the leg and killed his horse. Yellow Hair killed Buffalo Bill’s horse, according to Cody. They then exchanged shots at less than 20 paces. Yellow Hair missed, but Buffalo Bill hit Yellow Hair’s breast, then drove his knife into Yellow Hair’s heart. “Jerking the war bonnet off, I scientifically scalped him in about five seconds.”
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The Yellow Hair episode became the subject of a play called
The Red Right Hand, or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer.
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In Oregon in 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard
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had given the Nez Perce orders to leave their homes in the Wallowa Valley by June 14. The chiefs met to decide what to do. Three chiefs spoke for peace, but Shore Crossing, whose father had been murdered by a settler, demanded war, as did his cousin Red Moccasin Tops. When the meeting was over, a drunk Shore Crossing rode his horse across some camas bulbs a squaw had put out to dry. Her man, Yellow Grizzly Bear, yelled at him, asking why he didn’t go after the man who killed his father.
Apparently as a result of this comment, the 2 Indians and another young Indian, Swan Necklace, went on a killing spree. Two settlers were killed, and a third was wounded. Nez Perce leader Toohoolhoolzote, along with 15 of his warriors and the 2 cousins, went on another raid, killing 2 more settlers and plundering houses. General Howard sent out 2 groups of soldiers to punish or bring in the guilty Indians. One group
with civilian guide Ad Chapman went to the White Bird camp. A small truce party carrying a white flag came out. Chapman fired on the flag, wounding an Indian. A return shot killed the bugler so that the force commander, Captain David Perry, could transmit no commands above the noise of battle. Even though less than half the Indians had rifles, 34 soldiers were killed.
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Stung by these losses, the army under Howard mobilized 400 troops, and the Nez Perce began their long trek to try to reach Canada.
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