Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (25 page)

During the march north, Spotted Tail and his Brulés left the hostile camp to return to Fort Laramie, where they joined the “Laramie Loafers,” sometimes also called the “Hang-Around-the-Forts.” Spotted
Tail wanted to put the war with the whites aside for the coming season, so that he could concentrate on buffalo and Pawnees. The Arapahoes also left, traveling southwest. The Cheyennes and Sioux continued on, reaching the Oglala camps on the Powder River early in March 1865. The stories the hostiles told the Oglalas of the outrage at Sand Creek and of the retribution they had exacted from the whites greatly excited Old Man Afraid’s warriors. They were even more excited by the sight of all those captured horses, cattle, and general plunder. It must have been at just this time that Old Man Afraid lost his hold over his people—even his own son now began to talk of going on the warpath against the whites.
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Throughout the month of April 1865, the Cheyennes and Oglalas went about their business, hunting some buffalo, killing a few Crows, but mainly giving their ponies a chance to put on some weight. In May, George Bent told Hyde, the headmen of the
akicita
(called “war chiefs” by the whites) held a meeting. Young Man Afraid and Red Cloud took the lead in the council, which decided to attack the whites on the North Platte in midsummer; meanwhile, small war parties would conduct raids along the Holy Road.

The
akicita
chiefs told the members of the raiding parties, Crazy Horse among them, to bring back as much information as possible, so that they would know where to strike the most effective blow in July, when the Indians would be at full strength. By making small raids the Indians would keep the whites stirred up, with troops marching hither and yon in vain attempts to catch them, wearing out their horses and themselves in the process.

In late May 1865 some Cheyennes attacked near Deer Creek, on the Oregon Trail, while Young Man Afraid led a few Sioux warriors in an attack farther to the east on the Holy Road. These pinpricks accomplished exactly what the Indians wanted; the commander at Fort Laramie, Colonel Thomas Moonlight (the War Department, with its usual wisdom, had removed Colonel Collins) set off with most of his cavalry. Finding no Indians, he continued to march west, all the way to the Wind River. The Indians had a glorious time behind him, raiding along the Holy Road.
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While Moonlight was off on his wild goose chase, the tiny garrison remaining at Fort Laramie managed the remarkable feat of turning the Laramie Loafers into hostiles. These Loafer Indians had hardly hunted for years or joined war parties; they were completely dependent on the whites at Laramie for their livelihood. The hostile Sioux despised the Hang-Around-the-Forts, but as Hyde so nicely puts it, “There are at least two sides to every issue, and the people in the
Loafer camp returned the scorn of the wild Sioux of the north, treating them like country bumpkins who came to visit the sophisticated Sioux at the fort. These wild bulls from the Powder River were full of airs and big talk about fighting the whites, but what did they know about the whites and their strength? They imagined that a fight among fifty warriors, in which two men were killed, was a big fight. The Loafers at the fort had heard details of the mighty three-day struggle at Gettysburg, and they knew what the white men meant when they spoke of a battle.”
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Even the Loafers, however, had a limit to what they could take from the whites. Two minor Oglala chiefs, Two Face and Blackfoot, came into Laramie with a captured white woman, Mrs. Eubanks, who had been taken by the Cheyennes the previous winter. Blackfoot and Two Face had bought her from the Cheyennes and brought her to Fort Laramie as a kind of peace offering; they had been hostiles but now, for whatever reason, they wanted to join the Loafers and were returning Mrs. Eubanks as evidence of their good faith.

The temporary commander at Fort Laramie was drunk when they came in, and he listened eagerly while Mrs. Eubanks told an amazing tale. She said the Cheyennes had raped her continuously, then sold her to Two Face for three horses; Blackfoot had bought her from Two Face. They had all raped her, she said, and on the morning they brought her to the fort they had taken her swimming in the Platte, where a whole horde of Sioux raped her. The drunken officer never asked the obvious question: why, if Two Face and Blackfoot had so shockingly mistreated her, did they voluntarily accompany her into the fort and thereby place themselves in the custody of the soldiers? Instead, he ordered the two Indians hanged, which was immediately done, the soldiers attaching big iron balls to their legs. The Loafers were not even allowed to cut the dead men down—a soldier kept guard over the bodies—and they hung there, twisting in the wind, until the balls pulled the legs off the bodies.
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The stupidity of the white officers was limitless. The Civil War had ended by now and a new set of officers was taking over on the Plains, backed up by plenty of reinforcements. Major General G. M. Dodge took command of the military Department of the Missouri. He was astonished to learn that a large group of Sioux were camped next to Fort Laramie and by telegraph demanded to know why they had not been attacked. Local officers carefully explained to him that they were friendlies, living under the protection of the military. An able commander might have seen these Loafers as potentially valuable allies. They would have made excellent scouts
and many of them would have jumped at the chance to get a uniform, an American horse, regular pay, and a repeating rifle. But Dodge decided that they were an intolerable burden. He ordered them all moved to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on the lower Platte River. When Spotted Tail, who was at Fort Laramie, learned of the order, he protested. It would be a march to death, he said, because the soldiers had disarmed most of the Loafers, who were also without ponies. It would be murder to send such a helpless people into Pawnee territory, for the Pawnees would surely kill them all.

But Dodge insisted, and on June 11, 1865, between fifteen hundred and two thousand Loafers and Brulés started southeastward under the guard of one hundred thirty-five soldiers of the 7th Iowa Cavalry. Along the march, the Sioux passed the site of the Brulé village of 1854, where Lieutenant Grattan and his men had been killed; farther down they came to Horse Creek, where in 1851 at the big council the whites had signed a treaty promising eternal friendship and recognizing the Sioux right to all land from Laramie northward.

The march was a nightmare for the Sioux. Small boys caught racing or otherwise cutting up were tied to wagon wheels and whipped. The soldiers kept throwing children into the springtime floods of the Platte River, laughing at their frantic efforts to get out. At night, the troops took young maidens from the village.

When the Oglalas learned what was taking place they sent a group of warriors to the scene to help plan and execute an escape. Crazy Horse went along, and on the night of June 13, he slipped into the Loafer camp, where he conferred with the headmen. There were warriors across the river, on the north bank, Crazy Horse reported, and they were anxious to help. Spotted Tail and the Loafers decided to make a break for it the next day, leaving the tipis and equipment behind. Crazy Horse recrossed the river to prepare the warriors on the north side.

At dawn on June 14, 1865, when the captives failed to pack and start moving, an Army captain with a few men rode into the Indian camp to see what was holding things up (the soldiers had camped on the opposite side of Horse Creek). As the captain was cursing and ordering the Indians to get moving, a warrior shot him dead. The remaining soldiers fled. The Indians raced for the North Platte, crossing it on foot and picking up horses on the other side, where the Oglalas were waiting for them. Everyone got away, except for one poor Loafer man who had displeased the whites and had a ball and chain on his leg. The soldiers killed him and took his scalp. The
Loafers and Brulés scattered northward, greatly swelling the ranks of the hostiles. When the soldiers tried to pursue, Crazy Horse joined other warriors, Spotted Tail among them, to drive the whites back across the North Platte.
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Colonel Moonlight provided a fitting climax to this bitter comedy. He returned to Fort Laramie from his foray to the Wind River just in time to hear the news and immediately gathered every available cavalryman to set off in pursuit. Up by White River, near the Nebraska-South Dakota boundary, he went into camp, turning his horses out to graze. His scouts warned him not to let the horses run loose in Indian country, but Moonlight told them to shut up. A minute later Crazy Horse and a band of warriors came swooping down, yelling, firing, and waving buffalo robes. They stampeded the cavalry horses and made off with them, leaving Moonlight and his men horseless on the prairie. Moonlight’s troops had to walk all the way back to Laramie, their saddles and equipment on their backs.
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Early in June 1865 Young Man Afraid, Little Big Man, Crazy Horse, and the other warriors who had been out on raids returned to the main camp near the Powder River. The Cheyenne and Oglala headmen then sent around orders that no more war parties would be allowed to go on expeditions. They appointed one of the
akicita
societies to police the camp and make certain that no warriors slipped away to make little raids, which would alarm the whites and put them on their guard. Then the Cheyennes made their medicine-lodge ceremonial, while the Sioux held a Sun Dance. Black Wolf, an Oglala who had taken the responsibility for guiding the women and children of the Loafers across the North Platte during the great escape from Horse Creek, had vowed to undergo torture in the Sun Dance if he succeeded in getting the people across safely. He now lived up to his vow, and it is said that all the Indians present marveled at his endurance of the torture.
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Following the Sun Dance the Indians began to prepare themselves for a full-scale expedition against the whites, the whole of both tribes to participate. Throughout the vast encampment young warriors consulted with the old men to learn the sacred ways, what to wear, the words to the old-time war songs, and what paraphernalia to take along. The medicine men did a thriving business. Crazy Horse got a new medicine from Chips, a little stone pebble to tie into the tail of a fast bay horse that he had taken from the Crows and did not want to lose.

Crazy Horse was about twenty-four years old at this time. He was slightly below medium height and remained rather thin, weighing
only around one hundred forty pounds. His color was deepening, but he was still of a lighter complexion than his comrades. His hair was light and long, hanging below his waist when combed out; he almost always wore it in braids. His idiosyncrasies had hardened into habits. Before going into battle he always threw a handful of dust over himself and his pony and never wore anything more than a breechcloth and leggings, a single hawk feather in his hair, his ever-present small stone behind his ear, and another stone from Chips under his left arm. He did not boast about his accomplishments and refused to participate in the wild, emotional mourning scenes the Sioux indulged themselves in when a loved one died. Nor would he smoke the pipe if the tobacco had been packed down in the bowl with a stick, as was the almost universal custom; unless the tobacco was pressed down with the thumb by all the smokers quaffing the pipe, Crazy Horse would not touch it. But no one objected to his quirks of character because he was already one of the most famous Oglala warriors, the youngest of the newly appointed shirt-wearers.
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As the grand expedition against the Holy Road prepared to move out, the warriors dressed themselves, taking hours and even days at their toilet. Shields, bonnets, war shirts, and every article and weapon the warriors might need received careful attention. There were over one thousand lodges in the village, mainly Oglala and Cheyenne but including some Miniconjous, Brulés, Sans Arcs, Loafers, and Arapahoes. The lodges were laid out in a circle; within the circle the warriors held a final parade, riding around the inside, dressed in all their war finery, their ponies painted and decorated with eagle feathers. The men sang the old war songs, then rode out of the camp circle and started up the Powder River.
Akicita
policemen were on each side of the column, to keep everyone in his place.

The headmen marched in front, carrying the war pipes. George Bent, who was a member of the expedition, told Hyde that the men who led the march were Roman Nose of the northern Cheyennes and Young Man Afraid and Red Cloud of the Oglalas. This would seem to indicate that Old Man Afraid, Spotted Tail, and the other older leaders did not approve of the offensive.
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The war chiefs had made an ambitious plan. Runners had established regular contact between the Powder River camp and Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas of the far-north country in Montana and North Dakota. Sitting Bull, always an enemy of the whites, agreed to attack Fort Rice on the Missouri in North Dakota at the same time that the Oglalas and their allies hit the Holy Road, at Platte Bridge. Both offensives were designed to cut the white man’s communications
and make it impossible for him to proceed any farther into Indian country. The leaders had the right idea, but their strategy was deficient. The Oglalas should have gone farther east, at least to Fort Laramie and even better to Fort Kearney in central Nebraska, while Sitting Bull should have attacked farther south, at Fort Sully or Fort Randall in South Dakota. A successful assault on Forts Sully and Kearney, followed by a determined effort to hold both places, would have isolated the forts upstream on the Missouri and the Platte. Forts Laramie and Rice would have quickly fallen of their own weight without a steady flow of supplies. Still, not having a line of communications themselves, the Indians can hardly be blamed for failing to understand fully the vulnerability of the whites.