The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (42 page)

99
    See Pierre-Jean De Smet,
Life, Letters, and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., 1801–1873,
ed. Hiram Martin Chittenden and Alfred Talbot Richardson (New York: F. P. Harper, 1905), 4:1512; Sandoval Family Genealogy (photocopy in author’s possession); William R. Swagerty, “Marriage and Settlement Patterns of Rocky Mountain Trappers and Traders,”
Western Historical Quarterly
11, no. 2 (April 1980): 167–68.

100
    “Act of Incorporation,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 1:16–17.

101
    For more on the roots and ideology of the herrenvolk, see George M. Frederickson,
White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981).

102
    
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1864,
38th Cong., 2nd sess., 441.

103
    Tom Stout,
Montana, Its Story and Biography: A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Montana and Three Decades of Statehood
(Chicago: American Historical Society, 1921), 339. See also Hugh A. Dempsey,
The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories: Three Hundred Years of Blackfoot History
(1994; Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 47–58.

104
    Lyman E. Munson, “Pioneer Life in Montana,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 5:214–16.

105
    For the full text of the treaty, see the Institute for the Development of Indian Law
, Treaties and Agreements,
70–74.

106
    A thorough discussion of these events can be found in Ewers,
The Blackfeet,
236–53.

107
    U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians
, House Executive Document 269, 41st Cong., 2nd sess. (1870), 4.

108
    This account relies on the events described in Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 259–68, with additional information in Langford, “A Frontier Tragedy.”

109
    Author interviews with Darrell Robes Kipp, Oct. 2006; Carol Murray, Oct. 2006; and Darrell Norman, June 2007.

110
    There are differing accounts of the Indians who accompanied Owl Child. This version reflects the telling found in Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke.”

111
    It seems that Coth-co-co-na’s mother shared this name with the aunt, though some insist that it was her mother—and not her aunt—who was the one at the ranch to begin with. See, e.g., George Black,
Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 221.

112
    Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 266.

113
    Ibid., 262, 267–68.

114
    Letter and notes by N. P. Langford on the Cullen Treaty with the Blackfoot Indians, 1 Sept. 1868, MTHS, NPL, SC 215, folder 1.

115
    Van Cleve, “A Brief Story,” 15–16 (emphasis in the original). The news was all the more distressing to Charlotte because she had lost her own Malcolm (Clarke’s nephew and namesake) to a murder several years earlier in California.

116
    Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 268.

117
    See Elliott West,
The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

118
    Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 268. Sherman does not mention this episode in his official report, though he notes that the party stopped twice at Wolf Creek (the location of the ranch, then owned by James Fergus), once for dinner on 24 Aug. and then, on the return from Fort Benton, for breakfast on 28 Aug. See
Reports of Inspection Made in the Summer of 1877 by Generals P. H. Sheridan and W. T. Sherman of Country North of the Union Pacific Railroad
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office., 1878), 84, 86.

Chapter 3: The Man Who Stands Alone with His Gun

1
    George Black,
Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 239.

2
    Letter from Régis de Trobriand to O. D. Greene, 2 Jan. 1870, Montana Historical Society (cited hereafter as MTHS), Régis de Trobriand Papers (cited hereafter as RDT), SC 5, folder 1–2.

3
    The name of his second wife, whom Sully met while stationed at Fort Randall, was Sihasapawin (Blackfeet Woman). One of their children was Mary Sully, known also as Akicitawin (Soldier Woman), who, like her father, was an accomplished painter. I am grateful to Phil Deloria (great-grandson of Mary Sully) for this information.

4
    For Sully’s report on his meeting with the chiefs, see U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
House Executive Document 269, 41st Cong., 2nd session (1870), 36–37. James Welch offers a vivid (if fictional) imagining of this conference in his novel
Fools Crow
(New York: Penguin, 1986), 268–84. It is worth noting that because of their own name for the river, Piegans call the event the “Bear River Massacre.”

5
    Larry McMurtry spends only four pages on the episode in his catalog of such events, placing much greater emphasis on Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, among others. See
Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West, 1846–1890
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 115–19. For a recent study of another horrific but obscure slaughter of Indians in the nineteenth-century West (though perpetrated not by whites but by a joint force of Mexicans and other native peoples), see Karl Jacoby,
Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History
(New York: Penguin, 2008).

6
    
New North-West,
20 Aug. 1869.

7
    See Paul Andrew Hutton,
Phil Sheridan and His Army
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 60–62; and Langdon Sully,
No Tears for the General: The Life of Alfred Sully, 1821–1879
(Palo Alto: American West Publishing, 1974), 216–18.

8
    U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
7.

9
    Ibid., 50–51.

10
    For more on de Trobriand’s life and career, see Régis de Trobriand,
Military Life in Dakota: The Journal of Philippe Régis de Trobriand,
trans. Lucille M. Kane (1951; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1982); and Marie Caroline Post,
The Life and Mémoirs of Comte Régis de Trobriand, Major-General in the Army of the United States
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910).

11
    Letter from Régis de Trobriand to A. S. Simmons et al., 6 Oct. 1869, MTHS, RDT, SC 5, folder 1-2 (emphasis in the original).

12
    See Dee Brown,
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
(1970; New York: Owl Books, 2007), 170–72. Tosawi has been rendered in multiple ways, including Toch-a-way, Tosawa, and Toshaway.

13
    Though in later years Sheridan vehemently denied ever making much a statement, Captain Charles Nordstrom of the Tenth U.S. Cavalry claimed to have overheard the exchange. See Edward S. Ellis,
The History of Our Country: From the Discovery of America to the Present Time,
8 vols. (1895; Cincinnati: Jones Brothers, 1900), 6:1483. In time this maxim was shortened to “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” also attributed to Sheridan.

14
    Quoted in Hutton,
Phil Sheridan and His Army,
2.

15
    For more, see William G. Thomas III,
The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2011), 149–73.

16
    See Paul A. Hutton, “Sheridan’s Pyrrhic Victory: The Piegan Massacre, Army Politics, and the Transfer Debate,”
Montana: The Magazine of Western History
32, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 32–35.

17
    U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
52.

18
    The literature on the battle is extensive. See Hutton,
Phil Sheridan and His Army,
56–114; Jerome A. Greene,
Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867–1869
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2004); and Thom Hatch,
Black Kettle: The Cheyenne Chief Who Sought Peace but Found War
(New York: Wiley, 2004).

19
    Quoted in Hutton,
Phil Sheridan and His Army,
99.

20
    For Hardie’s report to Sheridan, see U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
19–34.

21
    For Hardie’s communications with Sully, see ibid., 43–44.

22
    Ibid., 47 (emphasis in the original).

23
    See Theophilus F. Rodenbaugh,
From Everglade to Canyon with the Second United States Cavalry
(1875; Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 7–13.

24
    Douglas C. McChristian,
The U.S. Army in the West: Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 22–23. More on the history of Fort Shaw is in a letter from Richard Thoroughman to the author, 3 July 2007.

25
    Thomas Marquis,
Custer, Cavalry & Crows: The Story of William White as Told to Thomas Marquis
(Bellevue, Neb.: Old Army Press, 1975), 32.

26
    For more on Cobell, see William F. Wheeler, “Personal History of Joe Cobell,” MTHS, William F. Wheeler Papers, MC 65, box 1, folder 15.

27
    Black,
Empire of Shadows,
251.

28
    
New North-West,
21 Jan. 1870.

29
    For de Trobriand’s orders, see U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
48.

30
    There are multiple accounts of the expedition, but this retelling relies primarily on the two best ones: Robert J. Ege,
Strike Them Hard: Incident on the Marias, 23 January 1870
(Bellevue, Neb.: Old Army Press, 1970); and Dave Walter,
Montana Campfire Tales: Fourteen Historical Narratives
(Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 1997), 33–50. It is worth noting that, while Ege’s narrative is scrupulously researched, it is also—in the words of its author—“much kinder to Major Eugene M. Baker than most historians have written.” See Robert J. Ege to Merrill G. Burlingame, 3 April 1969, Montana State University Library, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, Merrill G. Burlingame Papers, collection 2245, box 36, file 6. See also Ben Bennett,
Death, Too, for The-Heavy-Runner
(Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1981); Wesley C. Wilson, “The U.S. Army and the Piegans: The Baker Massacre on the Marias, 1870,”
North Dakota History
32, no. 1 (Winter 1965): 40–58; and J. P. Dunn,
Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886), 509–42.

31
    For the best account of the engagement, see John H. Monnett,
Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth
(Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2008). See also Shannon D. Smith,
Give Me Eighty Men: Women and the Myth of the Fetterman Fight
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2008).

32
    
Great Falls Tribune,
27 Jan. 1935.

33
    Bear Head’s account (related in 1935) of the events of 23 Jan. 1870 appears in James Willard Schultz,
Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life among the Indians
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 282–305. For a shorter but somewhat different version that he offered in 1915, see deposition of Bear Head, 18 Jan. 1915, MTHS, Heavy Runner Records (cited hereafter as HRR), MF 53.

34
    
Billings Gazette,
3 April 1932. This account was offered by Spear Woman, a daughter of Heavy Runner who was seven at the time of the massacre. More than a decade after her death, Spear Woman’s own daughter, Mrs. George Croff, gave her mother’s story to the newspaper.

35
    Statement by Joe Connelly to Marguerite Marmont in 1931, Glenbow-Alberta Institute (cited hereafter as GAI), Stan Gibson Fonds (cited hereafter as SGF).

36
    For more on the military armaments of this period, see McChristian,
The U.S. Army in the West.

37
    See, e.g., deposition of Buffalo Trail Woman, 16 Jan. 1916, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

38
    Schultz,
Blackfeet and Buffalo,
301–2.

39
    Montana place-names in Blackfeet and English, Montana State University Library, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, James Willard Schultz Papers, collection 10, box 6, folder 7.

40
    For more on Doane, see Orrin H. Bonney and Lorraine Bonney,
Battle Drums and Geysers: The Life and Journals of Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, Soldier and Explorer of the Yellowstone and Snake River Regions
(Chicago: Sage Books, 1970); and Marquis,
Custer, Cavalry, and Crows.
See also Black,
Empire of Shadows.

41
    U.S. Congress,
Piegan Indians,
73. Baker did not report specific information on the ages and sexes of the victims until pressed to do so, more than two months after the incident on the Marias. One can only assume that the figures he provided came from Doane’s body count.

42
    Statement of Joe Kipp, 8 Feb. 1913, MTHS, HRR, MF 53. The Blackfeet recognize Kipp’s figure as the correct body count. See
Great Falls Tribune,
23 Jan. 2007. Doane gave this assessment in 1889 as part of his unsuccessful application for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park; it is uncertain whether he made this assertion with pride or regret. Quoted in Bonney and Bonney,
Battle Drums and Geysers,
22.

43
    McKay was long mistakenly identified as “Walter.” See Stan Gibson to U.S. Army Center of Military History, 14 Feb. 1997, GAI, SGF; and Stan Gibson, notes on Walton McKay, GAI, SGF. It is worth noting that another soldier suffered a broken leg when pitched from his horse, becoming the only trooper wounded in the affair.