Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (13 page)

At the council Harney tried to impress the Indians with the power of the whites. Chloroform was just then coming into use as an anesthetic and Harney told the chiefs, “Why, we can kill a man and then restore him to life. There, surgeon, kill that dog and then restore it.” The surgeon administered a dose of chloroform to an Indian dog and Harney then passed it around among the Indians, who pronounced it “plenty dead.” “Now,” said Harney, “bring it to life.” The surgeon tried hard, applying all known restoratives, but the dog was plenty dead, sure enough. The Indians laughed boisterously. “White man’s medicine too strong,” they said.
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Unknown to Harney, the Sioux decided at the end of the council to meet again the next summer at Bear Butte, just north of the Black Hills. They sent runners out with the sacred pipes to call all the Sioux people together. The headmen hoped to work out some unity among the Sioux, enough to make resistance to white encroachment possible.

Despite the call for a meeting at Bear Butte, with its promise of future resistance, Harney had won the campaign for control of the Platte River Valley. The Brulé, Oglala, and other Sioux tribes stayed away from the Holy Road, except to go to Fort Laramie for their yearly hand-outs. Curly wandered from band to band; everywhere he found the Sioux confused and frightened. He spent the winter of 1856–57 with the Cheyennes, Yellow Woman’s people; Young Man
Afraid, son of the Oglala headman Old Man Afraid, was with him. Medicine-man Ice had a special fondness for Curly and taught him the ways of the Cheyennes that winter, on the Smoky Hill River in Kansas, well south of the Platte, and ten years later the site of Custer’s first Indian campaign.

In the spring of 1857 the Cheyennes had a number of small skirmishes in central Kansas with the white soldiers. The visiting Sioux told them that the whites would soon come in force, so the Cheyennes made ready. Ice and another medicine man took the warriors down to a small lake, where they dipped their hands into the water while they sang medicine songs and made ritual gestures. Satisfied, they asked a warrior to shoot at them with his gun. The warrior took a shot at each man from close range, but neither was injured—the bullets bounced off their hands. Here was strong medicine indeed. The Cheyennes rushed to the water to dip their hands into it, Curly among them. Now let the soldiers come.
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On July 29, 1857, the troops came, six companies of cavalry under the command of Colonel E. V. Sumner. The Cheyennes were on the Solomon River in north-central Kansas. They rode out to meet the soldiers, Curly with them, the stream on their left and high bluffs on their right. After giving their ponies their second wind, the Indians formed themselves into a line of battle—one of the few recorded instances of this happening in Plains warfare—and began a slow advance. The cavalry at the other end of the valley also formed a battle line, three deep, and came forward at a gallop. The whites were struck by the extreme confidence the Indians displayed. Most of the Cheyennes had their weapons at their sides or over their backs and held their open hands toward the whites, in order to catch the bullets so that they would fall harmlessly to the ground.

But no gun sounded. At the last minute, Sumner ordered his men to draw their sabers and charge. They did so with a whoop. The Cheyennes scattered in total confusion. They put up no fight at all, but simply fled, so confounded were they by the saber charge and the soldiers’ failure to use their guns. Four Cheyennes lay dead; the rest, panic-stricken, ran away as fast as they could. The women and children joined them, and the Cheyennes abandoned their camp, lodges and all, retreating far south. Curly stayed with them a day or so, then started north to rejoin the Sioux.
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Curly had much to think about as he rode north. Just fifteen years old, he had seen three Indian camps destroyed or abandoned in the
past three years, and except at the Grattan battle in 1854 few soldiers had been harmed. He knew that the whites had taken the Platte River Valley away from the Sioux and made it their own. He had learned that Indian medicine did not work against the whites, and that no single Indian village could stand up to an assault by white soldiers. Perhaps, however, if the Sioux could act together, they could preserve what was left of their territory.

Curly set out for the great council at Bear Butte. Most of the Teton Dakotas were there, the Oglalas, Miniconjous, Sans Arcs, Blackfeet, Two Kettles, and Hunkpapas. The wild Sioux from the north country, led by the Hunkpapas, had seen few whites and suffered no defeats at their hands—they, at least, were not intimidated. It was the largest gathering of the Sioux people in years. Its objective was to set a national policy for dealing with the whites; surely something good would come of it. Only the Brulés had not come to Bear Butte—Spotted Tail and Little Thunder had had enough of fighting the whites and were now interested only in their perpetual war against the Pawnees.
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There were over 5,000 and perhaps as many as 7,500 Sioux camped at the base of the butte, their tipis making one gigantic circle. Curly was reunited with his parents, sister, and his brother Little Hawk, already a daredevil warrior, veteran of at least two war parties at the age of twelve. Hump was there, along with Young Man Afraid, Lone Bear, and Pretty One. Scores of pretty girls tormented the teen-age boys with their shy smiles and subdued giggles. There was much feasting and exchange of gossip, and, of course, courting. Curly’s favorite seems to have been Red Cloud’s niece, Black Buffalo Woman.

As Curly renewed friendships and struck up new ones, he observed the great men of the Sioux, men he heard about around the winter campfires. Old Four Horns, the Hunkpapa, and his nephew Sitting Bull; Long Mandan of the Two Kettles; Crow Feather of the Sans Arcs—heroes all. And the headmen of the northern Oglalas were there too, Old Man Afraid, Red Cloud, perhaps the most famous of the warriors, and others. The Miniconjous were led by Lone Horn and his seven-foot warrior son, Touch the Clouds.
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The Dakotas were pleased with themselves, delighted to see how many they were, and how strong. The chiefs decided that they had made a mistake in giving in to Harney so easily, and they agreed to act together to stop any further white encroachments on their land. The Sioux of the north country set the tone of the council, a tone of defiance toward the whites. Solemn vows were taken, promises made.
According to some accounts, Curly was moved to pledge to his father that he would fight the whites the rest of his life. Whether true or not, that was the spirit and atmosphere of the Bear Butte Council.

But there was no follow-up. Having made their vows and completed the Sun Dance, the Sioux went off their separate ways. They had not elected a head chief or indeed done anything to provide for an institutional basis for resistance. No generals were appointed, no scouts organized, no system for exchanging information set up, no provision made for arming the warriors with guns instead of bow and arrow (a general guess would be that one in one hundred warriors had a gun at this time, and probably less than half of the guns worked). Nor was there any discussion on
how
to fight the whites. Nothing but promises.

At the conclusion of the council, Curly and Crazy Horse went off alone. Curly was fifteen now, nearly a full-grown warrior, and he had traveled far and seen many things. Crazy Horse wanted to instruct him in his duties and responsibilities, so they built a sweat lodge, fasted, then purified themselves. Crazy Horse said Curly must always look after the helpless ones, provide food for the hungry, and be brave. Curly then told his father of his dream, the dream he had had while Conquering Bear was dying.

Crazy Horse interpreted the dream for his son. He said Curly must be the man in the dream, must do as he said, dress as he dressed, wear a single hawk feather in his hair, a small stone behind his ear. He must lead the people and never take anything for himself.
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Father and son then moved south, to the western edge of the Black Hills, where they joined some Oglalas and Miniconjous on a buffalo hunt. They had located a herd, along the line separating South Dakota and Wyoming, but the buffalo did not have their full growth of hair as yet, so the Sioux were herding the animals, holding them in place until the hair was satisfactory for winter robes. The
akicita
kept the young braves from disturbing the main herd—hunters picked off only a few stragglers from time to time for food—and posted scouts to the south to keep the buffalo in place. Curly enjoyed the fine fall weather and lazy days in camp.

But there was no escaping the whites. One bright afternoon Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, a U. S. Army topographical engineer at the head of a small surveying party, stumbled onto the Sioux camp. The younger warriors were for attacking the soldiers at once —the whites had no business being in the Black Hills and the Sioux had just agreed at Bear Butte to resist further white encroachments
on their land—but the older men stopped the braves. The elders were afraid that if they killed Warren and his party, General Harney would march again. In the conference that followed, Warren emphasized that retribution would be swift and terrible if he were attacked.

Still, the encounter could have led to disaster had not both sides displayed common sense. Warren was only twenty-six years old, but he had graduated second in the West Point class of 1850 and was an outstanding officer. He listened sympathetically as the Indians explained the situation and begged him not to proceed, because he would drive the buffalo away. “For us to have continued on,” Warren wrote in his report, “would have been an act for which certain death would have been inflicted upon a like number of their own tribe had they done it.” Further, Warren did not want a war, as he explained in his report. “I felt that besides being an unnecessary risk to subject my party and the interests of the expedition to, it was almost cruelty to the Indians to drive them to commit a desperate act which would call for chastisement from the government.” If the Army had had more officers like Warren on the frontier, there would have been much less bloodshed to mark Indian-white relations.

The Sioux told Warren there were other reasons why they wanted him out of the Black Hills. The agreement with Harney gave the whites the right to use the Oregon Trail and a road from Fort Laramie to Fort Pierre, but otherwise they were to stay out of Indian territory. One old man told Warren that “having already given up all of the country they could spare to the whites, these Black Hills must be left wholly to themselves.” Besides, if Warren made his survey it would be a great advantage to the whites in the event of another red man-white man war. “I was necessarily compelled to admit to myself the truth and force of these objections,” Warren wrote. He agreed to stay where he was until Bear’s Rib, a prominent Miniconjou, returned from a war party he had led against the Crows.

Warren waited a few days but Bear’s Rib did not show up, so the survey party started east, across the base of the Black Hills and away from the buffalo herd. Bear’s Rib caught up with the whites two days later. After a long conference, Bear’s Rib agreed that Warren could head north for Bear Butte, but then he must march east, away from
Pa Sapa,
the holy place. Warren agreed to do so. “In return for this,” Warren reported, Bear’s Rib “wished me to say to the President and to the white people that they could not be allowed to come into that country; that if the treaty presents were to purchase such a right that they did not want them. All they asked of
the white people was to be left to themselves and let alone; that if the presents were to induce them not to go to war with the Crows and their other enemies, they did not want them. War with them was not only a necessity, but a pastime.”

Clearly Bear’s Rib was no Conquering Bear, a peace-at-any-price headman. He said that “the annuities scarcely paid for going after them,” and that the Sioux wanted no part of the whites any longer. Bear’s Rib had just heard about the Yankton Sioux of the Missouri selling their lands along that river to the whites, and he told Warren he wanted the Yanktons “informed that they could not come to his people’s lands. They must stay with the whites.” If the Yanktons came west, the Miniconjous and Oglalas would drive them back.

Both men were as good as their word. Warren proceeded to Bear Butte, then marched east and away from the Black Hills. The Indians let him alone, as Bear’s Rib had promised.
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Bear’s Rib had spoken for all the Sioux of the Black Hills country. By this time the whites had destroyed the good hunting along the Platte River. The grass was trampled down or overgrazed by emigrant stock, and the great buffalo herds were gone. For the first time since they left Minnesota eighty years earlier, the Sioux of the Plains were feeling a pinch. The main buffalo herds were now north and west of the Black Hills, in the Powder River country, and the Sioux had to follow the herds. Economic necessity dictated their attitude toward their cousins the Yanktons, and toward their enemies the Crows and the whites. They could not stay in the Fort Laramie region, or, rather, they could stay there only by becoming agency Indians, “Hang-Around-the-Forts” (or “Laramie Loafers,” as the wild Indians and frontiersmen contemptuously called them), accepting handouts from the whites to stay alive. And they could not make peace with the Crows, because they had to have Crow land (the same factors were the basic cause of the endemic Brulé-Pawnee war).

For the next decade and more the Oglalas, Miniconjous, and other northern Sioux were to be engaged in a struggle with the Crows, Shoshonis, and Arapahoes for possession of the Powder River country. It had been a sort of no man’s land, a place where war parties stumbled across each other and where hunting parties constantly looked back over their shoulders for signs of the enemy. By 1857, however, the Sioux had determined to drive the Crows and Shoshonis and Arapahoes back to the Bighorn River and beyond, right into the mountains. Just as the whites had conquered their land, so they would take the land of the Crows. Until the very end, this Sioux war with the western Plains Indians would be the central fact of
Curly’s life; conflict with the whites was only incidental, a bothersome nuisance.