Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (37 page)

Thus was the stage set for an epic tale. The leading actors were Red Cloud and Crazy Horse on the Indian side, Carrington and Captain William Fetterman on the white side. Crazy Horse was in his late twenties at this time, at the height of his powers. He was an intrepid but skillful and prudent combat leader; unlike Custer he had tasted defeat from his enemies, both red and white, and had a realistic idea of what could and could not be accomplished with the warriors who followed him. Red Cloud took no active part in the fighting that ensued (and he has been much criticized for this alleged shortcoming, but it should be obvious that middle-aged men—Red Cloud was forty-five years old—do not make combat leaders). Instead, he directed the strategy and, more important, was the organizing genius that made the whole campaign possible. Red Cloud had an extremely forceful personality. He was an adept politician in both inter- and intratribe dealings and with the possible exception of Spotted Tail he understood the whites better than any other important Indian on the Plains.

Like Red Cloud, Carrington was middle-aged and no fighter, but he was an able administrator, an excellent engineer, and a man of unusual talents (he read some portion of the Bible every morning in either Greek or Hebrew, and was the author of several histories of the American Revolution).
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He was the perfect choice for Sherman’s fantasy—to establish forts along the Bozeman Trail and prepare them for an active offensive campaign the next year, to be directed by a more experienced combat soldier—but he was about the worst possible choice for the situation that actually existed. Captain Fetterman, in his midtwenties, was Carrington’s principal tactical officer. He had established an outstanding combat record in the Civil War but had not enjoyed the breaks that had come to Custer and had consequently not risen in rank, a fact that preyed on his
mind. He was determined to advance his reputation and could imagine no better tool for that purpose than the Sioux, whom he held in contempt. “With eighty men,” he was often heard to say, he could “ride through the entire Sioux nation.”
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Like his opposite number, Crazy Horse, Fetterman was itching for a fight; unlike Crazy Horse, Fetterman knew next to nothing of his enemy. That simple fact gave Crazy Horse an enormous advantage.

Red Cloud also enjoyed an advantage over Carrington. The Indian leader was not only an executor of policy, but a maker of it as well. Carrington was an agent, doing what he was told, carrying out a policy set by men hundreds of miles from the scene. He did that part of his job superbly—Fort Phil Kearny was perhaps the most secure military establishment ever built during the Plains wars—but he could not begin to compete with Red Cloud as a strategic leader, nor could he convince his government to give him proper manpower or material support.

Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and the other hostiles believed that a final struggle for control of the Powder River country was underway, that their existence as a nation was at stake, and they acted with great vigor and enthusiasm. Red Cloud assembled a large force of warriors and held it together for three full years of fighting. Even more impressive, it was an allied command, containing Oglalas, Miniconjous, some Hunkpapas, Sans Arcs and Brulés, along with northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes. After storming out of Fort Laramie, Red Cloud traveled throughout the northern Great Plains, carrying a war pipe and trying to convince all the Indians of the area that the time had come to put aside their endemic wars with each other and co-operate in an all-out offensive against the whites. He even went to his hereditary enemies the Crows, where the young warriors were willing to sign up but the old chiefs refused. (Red Cloud’s attitude toward the Crows contrasts sharply with Carrington’s. After the Crows refused Red Cloud’s offer of an alliance, they went to Carrington and asked to be included in his force, but he scornfully turned them down.)
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Within a week of Carrington’s establishment of Fort Phil Kearny, Red Cloud had established his own camp along the Powder River, from which place warriors went out each day to harass the travelers on the Bozeman Trail. Crazy Horse was one of Red Cloud’s chief lieutenants. Together, they carried out what was virtually a three-year siege. In the first five months of fighting alone—from early August to mid-December 1866—the Indians killed 154 soldiers and travelers, wounded 20 more, and captured nearly 700 horses, cattle,
and mules. They made 51 attacks on the fort itself during that time and did not allow a single wagon train to make it through without the loss of at least some of the emigrants. By the spring of 1867 they had brought all travel along the Bozeman Trail to a halt.
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It was warfare ideally suited to Crazy Horse’s talents. He was active almost daily, usually working together with Hump, Little Hawk, their friend Lone Bear, and Young Man Afraid. Crazy Horse led war parties as far south and east as Fort Laramie, attacking wagon trains. Sometimes he would join Red Cloud on the ridges overlooking Fort Phil Kearny. Using smoke signals or mirror flashes, Crazy Horse and the other warriors co-ordinated their efforts, attacking any party of soldiers that dared to venture out of the fort. Carrington had located the fort on a grassy plateau, so the Indians could not approach it unseen, but he had to have wood for fuel and construction, and the nearest stand of pines was some five miles to the west, along the slopes of the Bighorn Mountains. Although Carrington provided a strong escort for the woodcutters, the Indians attacked at every opportunity, killing a soldier here, wounding another there, and generally adding to the depression within the fort.

So confident had Sherman been that the Indians would not resist the building of the fort that he had urged officers to bring their wives along, and most of them did. One of these women, Frances Grummond (who became a widow that winter and in 1871 married Carrington) described a typical attack. In September 1866 a group of miners set up camp outside the walls of the fort. They had lost two men getting as far as Fort Phil Kearny and decided to stay where they were; they would do their prospecting for gold in the Bighorn Mountains where they enjoyed the protection of the garrison. On the morning of September 19, Mrs. Grummond reported, “Quite a large body of Indians suddenly appeared at the summit of the hill in full warpaint, brandishing their spears, giving loud yells and lifting their blankets high in the air as they moved down in an attempted charge upon the miners’ camp. Between one and two hundred Indians were scattered along the crest of that hill.”
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The Indians, perhaps led by Crazy Horse, attacked with spears and bow and arrow; the miners repulsed the attack with their carbines. After both sides suffered slight losses, the Indians broke off the engagement. Crazy Horse was much too wise to try to press home a charge against such well-armed opponents.

Carrington sent a small detachment in pursuit of the Indians, but as always it was no use. The Indians dropped out of sight as if by magic, a process that was repeated over and over. Carrington himself
once made an attempt to lead a pursuit, chasing Crazy Horse all the way to the Tongue River in the hope of recovering some beef cattle the Indians had run off. Crazy Horse gleefully led him in the direction of Red Cloud’s main camp, hoping to achieve a spontaneous ambush, but at the last minute Carrington realized what he was getting into and beat a hasty retreat.
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Throughout the fall of 1866 Carrington begged Sherman for more men, more arms, more ammunition, more supplies. He got virtually nothing, the authorities in Washington being certain that peace had come to the Plains and that Carrington was an alarmist who had only a small group of malcontents to deal with. While the garrison at Fort Phil Kearny suffered from the lack of nearly everything, Red Cloud’s camps were bursting with provisions. Red Cloud even had sufficient ammunition for the few rifles his men possessed. He had a line of communication between Fort Laramie and his Powder River camp that surpassed Carrington’s. Friendly Indians, mainly young Brulés, made a regular run between Fort Laramie and the hostile camp, bringing ammunition and other supplies with them; on the return trip they carried buffalo robes for which they found a ready market among the traders. Occasional hunting parties provided more meat than the hostiles could use. In every respect, in short, Red Cloud supported and equipped his army better than the government supported Carrington.
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When winter came on, Red Cloud moved the allied camp to the base of the Bighorns, near the headwaters of the Tongue River, where he found shelter in the cold weather and from which he could send war parties out against Fort Phil Kearny on clear days.

Following one last big buffalo hunt, Red Cloud prepared to rub out the garrison. He now had over five hundred lodges of Indians gathered together, including a few Gros Ventres; the camp covered a forty-mile stretch of the Tongue Valley. There were smaller camps along the Powder River. In all, Red Cloud had a thousand or more warriors on active duty. For the final offensive, he called up his reserves—the young Brulés and Hang-Around-the-Forts who ordinarily spent the winter at or near the agencies, coming to the Powder River country only during the summer. But in December of 1866, Red Cloud had most of these youngsters with him, swelling the ranks of the hostiles by perhaps as many as a thousand additional warriors.

Crazy Horse and his fellow shirt-wearers knew that they could not hope to destroy the whites, despite a nearly six-to-one superiority, unless they could draw a portion of Carrington’s command into the open. All the soldiers had single-shot rifles, while only a handful of
warriors possessed firearms. But if a large number of soldiers could be lured into the open, where the Indians could fire volleys of arrows at them or overwhelm them by sheer numbers, using clubs and spears as the principal weapons, something significant could be accomplished. Accordingly, the shirt-wearers did not even bother to discuss attacking the fort; instead, they laid plans for a decoy party for the whites.
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On the morning of December 6 Crazy Horse joined Red Cloud and the shirt-wearers on Lodge Trail Ridge to watch the action. Behind them were about three hundred mounted warriors, while another large group of braves was over the ridge on the other side of the valley. Blanket wavings and mirror signals made it possible for the two groups to communicate. When all was ready, Red Cloud signaled for a force of about one hundred to attack the wood train (Carrington’s Achilles’ heel was his need for wood). Using captured binoculars, Red Cloud then turned to watch the fort to see what Carrington’s reaction would be.

Carrington sent Captain Fetterman and forty cavalrymen to deal with the Indians attacking the wood train. Expecting the enemy to retreat to the north, along the western slope of Lodge Trail Ridge, Carrington then took forty mounted infantrymen around the Sullivant Hills in an attempt to ambush the hostiles. Neither side got what it wanted. Fetterman pursued the decoys just as Red Cloud wanted him to do, but before they had even arrived at Carrington’s position the decoys turned to fight. They evidently believed that they could take care of Fetterman’s command by themselves. The Indians across the valley from Crazy Horse, meanwhile, prematurely broke ranks and attacked Carrington’s forty-man detachment. Both ambushes failed. After some lively hand-to-hand fighting, Fetterman and Carrington joined forces and retreated safely to the fort. They had lost two men killed and seven wounded; Indian losses were about the same.
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Fetterman returned to the fort fuming. He practically accused Carrington of cowardice (for sounding the retreat) and grumbled even more than usual about inept leadership. For weeks Fetterman had been turning the officers and men of the command against Carrington, second-guessing his decisions, wondering aloud when the Army would send a real soldier to take charge, demanding that Carrington take offensive action against the Indians. After December 6 such talk increased and became more vicious, but Carrington did nothing to stop it. His single foray against the enemy had risked almost a quarter of his troop strength (not to mention his own
annihilation), and he became more determined than ever to avoid any further risks until reinforced in the spring.

Crazy Horse also fumed. He spoke to Hump and some of the shirt-wearers about it, hoping that they would speak up in front of the warriors, Crazy Horse not being an orator himself. Crazy Horse said the Indians would never get anywhere unless they could learn to hold their place in line and then act as a unit. Nothing would come of counting coup, he said, and most of all the decoys must learn to play their role properly. There had been too many of them on December 6 and there should be less next time. Then they would not be tempted to turn and fight on their own, but would bring the soldiers to a spot where all the warriors could get at them.
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Red Cloud, meanwhile, had come to a more hopeful conclusion based on the lesson of the December 6 fight. He believed, from what he had seen, that his forces could overpower and destroy any force of soldiers Carrington might send out from the fort. He decided that on the first auspicious day after the full moon he would lay a great trap with two thousand warriors, make another feint at the wood train, draw out the soldiers, work the decoy trick, and kill all the pursuers.
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Red Cloud made his first attempt on December 19, but when Carrington sent a party out to relieve the wood train he put it under the command of his most cautious officer, with explicit orders not to pursue the Indians beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. Despite everything the decoys did, the soldiers would not follow, so there was no ambush that day. Red Cloud and his warriors made a temporary camp for the night, disappointed but still determined. The next day it snowed, so the Indians stayed in camp.