Powder River : disastrous opening of the Great Sioux War 9780806153834, 0806153830

Table of contents :
The long road to an inevitable Sioux war --
Pointing the gun --
Organizing a campaign --
The trail north --
Hot pursuit on a frigid night --
Egan's charge --
Destroying Old Bear's village --
Abandoning Private Ayers --
Withdrawal --
"I see my horse" --
Lodge Pole Creek --
The rancor begins --
Misplaced justice --
Justice served --
Loose ends --
Appendixes: Big Horn Expedition order of battle, March 1-27, 1876 --
Powder River order of battle, March 16-17, 1876 --
Big Horn Expedition killed and wounded --
Henry E. Noyes general court-martial orders --
Alexander Moore general court-martial orders --
Joseph J. Reynolds general court-martial orders.

Citation preview

P OW D E R

RIVER

D i s a s t ro u s O p e n i n g o f t h e

GREAT SIOUX WAR P au l L . H e d r e n

Powder River

Also by Paul L. Hedren First Scalp for Custer: The Skirmish at Warbonnet Creek, July 17, 1876 (Glendale, Calif., 1980; revised, Lincoln, Nebr., 2005) With Crook in the Black Hills: Stanley J. Morrow’s 1876 Photographic Legacy (Boulder, Colo., 1985) Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War (Lincoln, Nebr., 1988); reprinted as Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War (Norman, Okla., 1998) (ed.) The Great Sioux War, 1876–77: The Best from Montana The Magazine of Western History (Helena, Mont., 1991) (ed.) Campaigning with King: Charles King, Chronicler of the Old Army (Lincoln, Nebr., 1991) Traveler’s Guide to the Great Sioux War (Helena, Mont., 1996; revised, 2008) We Trailed the Sioux: Enlisted Men Speak on Custer, Crook, and the Great Sioux War (Mechanicsburg, Penn., 2003) Great Sioux War Orders of Battle: How the United States Army Waged War on the Northern Plains, 1876–1877 (Norman, Okla., 2011) After Custer: Loss and Transformation in Sioux Country (Norman, Okla., 2011) (ed.) Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War (Pierre, S.Dak., 2012)

Powder River Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War

Paul L. Hedren

University of Oklahoma Press : Norman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hedren, Paul L. Title: Powder River : disastrous opening of the Great Sioux War / Paul L. Hedren. Description: First edition. | Norman, OK : University of Oklahoma Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015045698 | ISBN 978-0-8061-5383-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Powder River, Battle of, Mont., 1876. | Black Hills War, 1876–1877. | Reynolds, Joseph Jones, 1822–1899. | United States. Army—Cavalry—History—19th century. Classification: LCC E83.876.H417 2016 | DDC 973.8/2—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045698 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. ∞ Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Manufactured in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act—without the prior written permission of the University of Oklahoma Press. To request permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, University of Oklahoma Press, 2800 Venture Drive, Norman OK 73069, or email rights [email protected].

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Dedicated to John D. “Jack” McDermott, dear friend and mentor, and the first to shine scholarly light on a place we both love, Fort Laramie

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Part I. Prelude 1. The Long Road to an Inevitable Sioux War

3

2. Pointing the Gun

42

3. Organizing a Campaign

53

4. The Trail North

99

5. Hot Pursuit on a Frigid Night

119

Part II. The Battle 6. Egan’s Charge

145

7. Destroying Old Bear’s Village

165

8. Abandoning Private Ayers

183

9. Withdrawal

194

10. “I See My Horse”

206 vii

viii

CONTENTS

11. Lodge Pole Creek

223

Part III. Aftermath 12. The Rancor Begins

237

13. Misplaced Justice

284

14. Justice Served

304

15. Loose Ends

333

Appendixes A. Big Horn Expedition Order of Battle, March 1–27, 1876

355

B. Powder River Order of Battle, March 16–18, 1876

357

C. Big Horn Expedition Killed and Wounded

359

D. Henry E. Noyes General Court-Martial Orders

361

E. Alexander Moore General Court-Martial Orders

363

F. Joseph J. Reynolds General Court-Martial Orders

367

Notes

375

Bibliography

419

Index

437

Illustrations

Figures Indian peace commissioners, 1868 Miners leaving the Black Hills, 1875 Brigadier General George Crook, 1877 Headquarters, Department of the Platte, 1876 Second Lieutenant John G. Bourke, 1875 Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 1873 Captain and Assistant Surgeon Curtis E. Munn Ben Clark Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 1877 Louis Richard, 1875 Baptiste “Big Bat” Pourier Frank Grouard, 1877 Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, 1877 Major Thaddeus H. Stanton, 1880 Robert E. Strahorn, 1900 Winter garb on the Big Horn Expedition Captain Edwin M. Coates Captain Anson Mills

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

ix

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

Captain James Egan and Company K, Second Cavalry, 1876 Second Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley, 1874 “Stirring, Spirited Battle with Crazy Horse and His Bands” Captain Henry Noyes Second Lieutenant Bainbridge Reynolds Second Lieutenant Charles Morton Wooden Leg Little Wolf, 1873 He Dog, 1877 Two Moon Major Alexander Chambers Officers Row, Fort Fetterman, 1877 Major Horace B. Burnham Colonel John E. Smith, 1877 Inter-Ocean Hotel John J. Jenkins First Lieutenant Christopher T. Hall, 1868 General John Pope and officers of the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial, 1877 Brigadier General William McKee Dunn Powder River Battlefield today Northern Cheyenne marker, Powder River Battlefield Monument, Powder River Battlefield

97 98 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283

Maps Cartography by Robert G. Pilk Big Horn Expedition, March 1–27, 1876 Attack, Powder River battle, 9 a.m., March 17, 1876 Destroying Old Bear’s Village, Powder River battle, 11 a.m., March 17, 1876 Withdrawal, Powder River battle, 1:30 p.m., March 17, 1876

104 152

Lodge Pole Creek Camp, 8 a.m., March 18, 1876

227

171 196

Preface

A

historian whose work I greatly admire explained the reason for writing the particular book that I then held in my hands, perhaps concerned that some would think that he was only adding to the congestion of previous studies on the subject. He saw it another way, viewing the profusion of new sources of all sorts that were continually appearing and the unique subject-pertinent microstudies finding their way into print as an opportunity that allowed, he was sure, for a powerful refinement of an old, almost timeworn story in a comprehensive new narrative. Simply put, he concluded, “It is time.” And so it is with the story of the Powder River battle of March 17, 1876, an episode that is rarely the subject of lengthy studies but is almost always a component (a mention of sorts or perhaps a chapter) in the telling of a great story where the notion of print congestion seems apt. In a very real way, indeed, one cannot tell the story of the Great Sioux War or of its singularly most important battle, Little Big Horn, without telling of Powder River. And yet this lack of individual study is somewhat puzzling. Attorney J. W. Vaughn’s book The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, published in 1961, may simply have scared historians away. It’s the only book-length treatment on the subject to date. While it shows

xi

xii

PREFACE

its age, it also has a number of commendable features that I’ve used here unhesitatingly (or elements of them anyway), as have most historians in their various Little Big Horn and Great Sioux War narratives. Vaughn’s transcriptions of battle reports and his lists of soldier participants seem just fine to me and not worth redoing, although he attributes several of the battle reports incorrectly. Pay careful attention to my notes. Several short but pertinent essays on Powder River also were helpful here, including W. C. Brown’s “Reynolds’ Attack on Crazy Horse’s Village on Powder River, March 17, 1876,” Zenobia Self’s “Court-Martial of J. J. Reynolds,” Louise Barnett’s “Powder River,” and Gregory J. W. Urwin’s “Reynolds: A Complex, Respected Officer with [a] Distinguished Career.” These writers contributed something unique to the story. Several other items round out the meager historiography, including a master’s thesis readily accessed online, Michael L. Hedegaard’s “Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds and the Saint Patrick’s Day Celebration on Powder River” (largely a cribbing of Vaughn); and a booklet, “The Soldiers Are Coming”: The Story of the Reynolds Battle, March 17, 1876, by Fred H. Werner (also cribbed straight from Vaughn, with an added account and photographs of Werner’s relic-hunting adventures on the field). Such indiscriminate artifact collecting is widely discredited these days, and in any case Werner offers no maps that might actually aid future researchers in placing action on the landscape. While the framework of any Powder River narrative is much the same, this book contains a great deal that is different from Vaughn’s work. Improved finding aids at the National Archives, the venerable mother lode for anyone researching a western army or Indian topic, are continually refined and today allow ready access to documents that Vaughn and scholars of his era could only have dreamed of examining. He knew, for instance, that surgeon Curtis Munn had written a detailed report on the campaign and battle but mentions it only casually, as if he never actually saw it. It still takes an ounce of ingenuity to locate today but is a gem of a source. I also examined every extant pertinent Appointment, Commission, Personal (ACP) file, the sometimes hefty personnel files maintained by the old Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) for each of its

PREFACE

xiii

commissioned officers, as well as pension files, quartermaster records, regimental and post returns, and much more. Predictably, the voluminous court-martial transcripts and exhibits for the three trials emanating from the campaign (almost one thousand pages of mostly legal-sized paper) were an invaluable source, fully comparable to the lengthy transcript of the Reno Court of Inquiry in 1879 for the Little Big Horn battle. Almost as important is the voluminous correspondence maintained by the AGO: one file consolidated all of the administrative paperwork, internal notes, and jottings pertaining to these courts-martial as well as Reynolds’s constant bickering ever after, plus the Judge Advocate General’s reviews of the cases. Vaughn was apparently unaware of this file, which was rich and revealing. I searched every principal character and story thread on the Internet not once but repeatedly and was often astounded by the results. That is a tool of the present, of course, utterly unimagined in Vaughn’s time. The passage of years has exposed new sources of all sorts, including matter overlooked by or more probably simply unknown to Vaughn—newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, reminiscences— scattered in repositories from coast to coast. Moreover, parallel scholarship on the story of the Great Sioux War has also revealed unique sources, connections, revelations, and interpretations of this heady era of George Crook, Joseph Reynolds, Crazy Horse, George Armstrong Custer, and the fateful Indian war of 1876–77. Another principal difference between then and now is the manner in which we rightly address the Indian side of the story and integrate it into the narrative. I did so here in two ways. In this book I deliberately chose to start way back, looking at the land and its people, in an attempt to connect the Northern Cheyennes and Sioux with inklings of all that shaped them and their environment, formed their unique worldviews and resolve, and eventually culminated in the consequential Great Sioux War and the delivery of some of these people to that place on the Powder River in midMarch 1876. This narrative also benefits greatly from an abundance of insightful interviews and reminiscences of contemporary Northern Cheyennes and Lakotas reposing today (mostly) in public and private archives and collections throughout the country and abroad.

xiv

PREFACE

The Northern Cheyenne side of this story is both wrenching and glorious. Starting “way back” has a second purpose. George Crook’s Big Horn Expedition was the product of a collective grand plan inspired at the White House on November 3, 1875, designed in the midst of boiling political, economic, and cultural strife on the northern plains and in the wake of a similar, and successful, Indian campaign recently concluded on the southern plains. Looking forward, Philip Sheridan and Crook imagined a comparably complex but equally successful campaign against the northern people. Custer was to be a part of that plan: he and Crook were two of the army’s illustrious field marshals. Failure was simply unimagined. It seems to me that one cannot tell the story of the Big Horn Expedition and its Powder River battle without fully understanding the rosy-tinted context in which Crook and fellow officers presumed and planned. There is yet another compelling reason to explore the Powder River story very carefully. The Powder River battle went poorly for the army, and three officers were immediately held accountable. Charges were filed, courts convened, verdicts rendered, and punishments meted out. This was not the only complex engagement in this long and costly Indian war in which the pitiable showings of certain officers had dire and even disastrous consequences. But it was the only battle where accountability was fixed and consequences directly addressed. This alone makes the Powder River courtsmartial worthy of very careful examination: they are astonishingly unique to the story of the Great Sioux War. My hope is that readers of Powder River: Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War will gain refreshed and new insights on this first battle of this Indian war and the campaign (the Big Horn Expedition) of which it was a part. The narrative of the Great Sioux War arcs: Rosebud Creek, Little Big Horn River, the Starvation March, Slim Buttes, and Red Fork of the Powder are uniquely tied to this inglorious start on a wintery day in March 1876. Here is how it all began. It is time.

Acknowledgments

I

began collecting materials on the Reynolds fight more than twenty years ago and in some circles loudly proclaimed this as my next book project. Book projects have their own way of transfixing me, of course, and I’ve taken on a number of others while simultaneously collecting information on this story. Scott Forsythe of the National Archives–Great Lakes Region in Chicago suffered the longest: he was the first to support in a rather meaningful way my Powder River collecting by providing copies of courts-martial records, ACP files, and maps, no doubt believing that this was the project of the moment, not of two decades later. But here it is, Scott: thank you, and enjoy retirement. Serious collecting led me to libraries and archives throughout the land, and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of David Whittaker, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Ginny Kilander, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie; Dennis Hagen, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library; Jackie Reese, Laura Sikes, and Kristina Southwell, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Norman; Paul Myers, Love Library, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Zoe Ann Stoltz, Montana Historical Society, Helena; Laura Jowdy, Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Mount Pleasant, South

xv

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Carolina; Jill D’Andrea, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Moira Fitzgerald and Matthew Rowe, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Teresa Kreutzer-Hodson, Hastings Museum, Hastings, Nebraska; Lisa Posas and Marilyn Van Winkle, Southwest Museum/Autry National Center, Los Angeles, California; and Peter Blodgett, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Additionally, I am especially pleased to single out Sandra Lowry, Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Fort Laramie, Wyoming, for special recognition. Sandy has cheerfully assisted me repeatedly over the years and did so again here, many times ferreting out details large and small from an archive of remarkable depth and diversity and still hardly known. E. Lee Hubbard and Bob Talcott of the Powder River Historical Museum in Broadus, Montana, unhesitatingly guided me locally and proudly showed off their unique cache of artifacts collected from the battlefield. Through Lee I connected with Della and Ken Greslin, owners of the battlefield, who repeatedly granted permission to explore the place. Through Della I connected with Ryan and Camille Simmons Howard, ranch managers, who were keenly supportive and well aware of others that I should talk with. Lee Hubbard also put me in contact with the now deceased George Fulton of Moorhead, Montana, whose unique interest in the place spanned many decades. George’s familiarity with the likes of Jesse Vaughn and Fred Warner provided wonderful insights. My nearly afternoon-long conversation with George in 2012 was the most revealing of any during the long course of fieldwork. I deeply regret his passing. Among others who provided copies, links, insights, and encouragement were Mike O’Keefe, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Lori CoxPaul, National Archives–Kansas City; Keith Werts, Spokane Valley, Washington; Tom Lindmier, Hulett, Wyoming; Emmett Essin, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City; Molly Holz, Montana Historical Society, Helena; Greg Michno, Longmont, Colorado; Willy Dobak, Hyattsville, Maryland; Catharine Franklin, Texas Tech University, Lubbock; Sarah Goetsch, Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska; Ray DeMallie, Indiana University, Bloomington; Glen Swanson, Agua Dulce, California; Gerry Groenewold,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xvii

Grand Forks, North Dakota; Tom Richter, National Park Service, Omaha, Nebraska; Meghan Saar, True West Magazine, Cave Creek, Arizona; Tom Farrell, Wind Cave National Park, Hot Springs, South Dakota; Jim Donovan, Dallas, Texas; Lin and Tucker Respess, L & T Respess Books, Northampton, Massachusetts; Kathleen Anderson, Chippewa County Genealogical Society, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin; Paul Hutton, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Bob Rea, Woodward, Oklahoma; Gail Potter and Jim Hanson, Museum of the Fur Trade, Chadron, Nebraska; Marv Kaiser, Prescott, Arizona; Patrick Zimmer, Lead, South Dakota; and Nate Skoglund, Pierre, South Dakota. Nate is an accomplished artist with a special interest in the Great Sioux War. His portfolio includes two Powder River paintings, one of which now hangs prominently in my study. My friends at the Nebraska State Historical Society were also tremendous supporters, providing unfettered access to microfilms of the courts-martial, the vast AGO correspondence associated with the trials, and many other documents. The work of Matt Piersol, Jim Potter, and the late Tom Buecker, a sorely missed friend, continues to demonstrate public service to Nebraskans of the highest sort. The search for photographs was its own unique quest. I probed widely and am grateful for advice from Sandy Barnard, Wake Forest, North Carolina; Louise Barnett, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Robert Kolbe, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Gregory Urwin, Temple University, Philadelphia; Cindy Hagen, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Crow Agency, Montana; Layce Johnson, Idaho State Historical Society, Boise, Idaho; Melynda Seaton, Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska; Marilee Meyer, West Point Association of Graduates, West Point, New York; and Carol Breuer, Fort Collins, Colorado. Assistance with the acquisition of images was graciously provided by Marlea Leljedal, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Martha Miller, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln; Mark Kasal, Lake Forest, California; Sean Campbell, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming; Sandy Lowry, Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming; Lisa Marine, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; Casey Madrick, United States Military Academy Archives,

xviii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

West Point, New York; Tawa Ducheneaux, Oglala Lakota College Archives, Kyle, South Dakota; Cindy Brown, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne; Erin Chase, Brian Moeller, and Manuel Flores, Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Melissa VanOtterloo, History Colorado, Denver; and Jim and Peg Aplan, Piedmont, South Dakota. In my quest to tell the Northern Cheyenne side of the Powder River story as inclusively as possible I sought help on the Tongue River Reservation and from others who knew of Powder River and its story. Early on, I connected with Father Paschal Siler and Ken Kania of Ashland, Montana, and Richard Littlebear, Joan Hantz, and Mina Seminole of the Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer, Montana, and their assistance is much appreciated. I am especially grateful for the wonderful exchanges with Father Peter J. Powell of Saint Augustine’s Center for American Indians in Chicago, Illinois, whose books on the Northern Cheyennes are monumental and whose friendship is a true pleasure. I particularly enjoyed the startling discovery and presentation here of new insights on Old Bear, the patriarch in the Powder River village that day. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Jerry Greene of Arvada, Colorado, and Jack McDermott of Rapid City, South Dakota, whom I pestered first on this imponderable quest; as well as Kingsley Bray, Manchester, England; Cheri Waara, Spearfish, South Dakota; Margot Liberty, Sheridan, Wyoming; and Sharon Small, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Montana, who added immeasurably when the door finally cracked open. The long course of the project also allowed for wonderful exchanges with old and new friends on a wide array of the story’s challenges and peculiarities. Tom Powers, South Royalton, Vermont, strongly urged that I time-line the story, which proved to be such a boon. Doug McChristian, Tucson, Arizona, offered help on such diverse matters as Department of the Platte administration, the “bull ring,” the cavalry and its pistols, and the effective range of Springfield carbines. I also received help from Jack McDermott, on the soldierly mettle of Captain Anson Mills; Eric and Patsy La Pointe, Chubbuck, Idaho, on their relative, Louis Richard; Ephriam Dickson, Burke, Virginia, on Lorenzo Ayers and D. S. Mitchell and

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xix

his photographs; Jerry Greene and Paul Magid, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, on Crook and his tactics; Dennis Clark, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the quirks of late-nineteenth-century courtsmartial; Doug Owsley, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., on the mummified remains of a Cheyenne Indian, likely Chief Eagle; and Randy Kane, Crawford, Nebraska, on the veracity of Indian casualty reports. My daughter, Ethne Denham, an attorney in Rogers, Minnesota, and I had many engaging conversations on the lexicon of the courtroom and the tactics of prosecuting and defense attorneys in a world where actions and motives in many ways are timeless. Early on, Jack McDermott lent a box of files on an array of Powder River topics from his voluminous and renowned manuscript holdings, representing a lifetime of research and collecting on northern plains military and Indian topics. Among other items, Jack had Thaddeus Stanton’s official report, which I had not seen before and is otherwise buried in a National Archives file where few would imagine looking. I am pleased for many reasons to dedicate this book to Jack. Jerry Greene, too, was an extraordinary lender, providing a stash of bound government volumes that I studied and copied at my leisure rather than obliging the University of Nebraska to pull them from their dead books warehouse for constrained use in Lincoln. Carl Ashford of Omaha’s stellar Jackson Street Booksellers permitted me to take home a rather valuable 1850s book for a weekend of study. Most antiquarian bookstores are not lending libraries, except perhaps just this once. And Marc Abrams of Brooklyn, New York, graciously and repeatedly word-searched his voluminous electronic archive of nineteenth-century newspapers, providing names and contexts that I likely would not have found in any other way. Bob Pilk of Lakewood, Colorado, accepted the challenge of map making. His steady hand and artful style are greatly appreciated and add significantly, I think, to the completeness of this work. A single battle map, the hallmark of the few other Powder River studies, simply would not suffice this time. Along the way, Randy Kane, Jack McDermott, and Ephriam Dickson read portions of the manuscript and offered valuable advice;

xx

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and Jerry Greene, Eli Paul of Kansas City, Missouri, and Paul Magid were courageous enough to read a final draft in its entirety: their comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. I long ago learned to value the advice and critical eye of my friends and owe them plenty. I also appreciate commentary offered by the Press’s unnamed referees, who provided suggestions that tightened and strengthened the story in important ways. At the University of Oklahoma Press, my old friend Chuck Rankin, Associate Director and Editor-in-Chief, was unfailing in his encouragement and wise counsel (particularly in the reshaping of one problematic chapter, which I of course had liked as first drafted but several others had not). I have learned to heed Chuck’s advice, and the present version is much sharper. From there, Powder River fell into the capable hands of Steven Baker, the press’s Managing Editor, who kept the project moving along, cordially accommodated an important scheduling interest, and once more connected me with Kathy Lewis, my copy editor on recent projects. Kathy smoothed over this old geographer’s trying prose and was yet again a true pleasure to work with. Finally, as always, I am pleased to acknowledge the untiring support of my girls, Ethne and Whitney, and especially my lovely wife, Connie, who would tell you now that she bears a scar and memories of surgery after that cactus incident at Fort Reno but still unhesitatingly accompanies me to the field. To one and all, thank you very much. Omaha, Nebraska March 17, 2015

Part I ✧✧✧✧

Prelude

1 ✧✧✧✧

The Long Road to an Inevitable Sioux War

W

hen Colonel Joseph Jones Reynolds and six companies of cavalry struck a Northern Cheyenne village on the Powder River in southeastern Montana on March 17, 1876, he opened an Indian war that bloodied the northern plains for more than eighteen months. The war’s long and excruciating course featured a score of battles large and small and many unfathomable deaths, including Custer at the Little Big Horn River and Crazy Horse at Camp Robinson. Reynolds, in fact, thought that he was attacking Crazy Horse and Sioux Indians, then the focus of the government’s attention on the northern plains. Instead they were mostly Northern Cheyennes, a people who turned instantly to war. The Powder River fight was a disaster for the army. Reynolds had marched his troops to the Powder River through the afternoon and night of March 16 and into the wee hours of March 17 and then deployed them in the half-light of dawn for an attack on a village that no one in his command had yet seen. Reynolds’s inadequate reconnaissance had a profound influence on the outcome of the engagement, ultimately allowing his foe to escape. The colonel was the senior officer on the field but never really seemed in command, as officers went about ignoring or challenging his orders. In prowling the captured village, he grew annoyed by the tedious pace of

3

4

PRELUDE

his soldiers as they burned tipis filled with foodstuffs, clothing, buffalo robes, munitions, and cultural finery. He also seemed rattled by the casualties incurred by his command and by a presumptive order from George Crook to rally their separated forces twenty miles upriver, a distance yet to be traveled that day. Finally calling it quits after nearly five hours in the Cheyenne camp, Reynolds departed the field with an almost reckless haste, even abandoning his dead, and the next morning lost the captured Indian pony herd. With tribesmen steeled and the army perplexed, the Powder River battle set the wrong tone for this unfolding Great Sioux War, as the conflict was known almost from the start. Reynolds was brought to account almost immediately. Recoiling from the personal attacks and charges leveled at him by Crook, fellow officers, and a newspaperman, he blamed others for the failings that day. Ultimately Reynolds and two company commanders were court-martialed for their actions on March 17 and convicted. The story of Reynolds at Powder River, and the Great Sioux War of which the event was a signal part, had a long and compelling history. The collision of events on the northern plains in 1876 had generations of precedents. The Sioux and their allies, especially the Northern Cheyennes, occupied a rich and diverse landscape that itself had evolved well before these tribes came on the scene in the early eighteenth century. This lush countryside was spotted with remarkable natural phenomena and resources, including vast herds of buffalo. When whites appeared on these same plains late in the eighteenth century, a collision course was assured. Certainly no one then foresaw this ultimate Indian war, but whites, since arriving on the Atlantic seaboard in the early seventeenth century, had consistently viewed the frontier as a land of opportunity and spilled continually westward. They were emboldened by notions of Manifest Destiny, the self-righteous claim to everything in sight, and untroubled by the claims of the Native peoples who had already occupied these lands for centuries. Three centuries elapsed before attention turned to the northern plains, which had become Sioux Country, but then change came with lightning speed. The Great Sioux War of 1876–77 was the triggering action that ultimately transformed the northern plains

LONG ROAD TO WAR

5

from what it had been to what it is. That trigger was first pulled at Powder River.

✧✧✧✧ Understanding the story of Powder River is well served by looking far back. America’s Indian wars were always about land. The area of the northern plains, largely Sioux Country in the nineteenth century, was the largest geographic province of the North American Great Plains, that confounding and dynamic heartland of the continent. The boundaries of the northern plains meander. As on the central and southern plains, geographers have commonly used the 100th meridian to define the region’s eastern border because that is the proximate limit of twenty-inch annual rainfall in America and the relative separation between the tall-grass prairies of the East and the short grasses of the West. The 100th meridian is a mere blip on most maps, of course: a straight and invisible northsouth line dividing the Dakotas and Nebraska in half, slicing away the western third of Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma, and splitting Texas in two. Readily perceived boundaries also exist, fortunately, especially in the Dakotas. The gently arcing Missouri River serves as a functional dividing line, a place where, as a literary sage keenly observed with only the barest embellishment, one sees the river’s green and lush eastern side and its tan and dusty western side. The western bounds of the Great Plains are much more readily visible, where flat land meets the Rocky Mountains.1 On the southern margins, the northern plains roughly begin at the Platte and North Platte Rivers in Nebraska and Wyoming. The land south of there is often referred to as the high plains, a subset of the central plains. From the Platte River and its northern branch, the region opens broadly as it rolls hundreds of miles northward into the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.2 Thinking of the northern plains as a featureless, flat plain is broadly misleading, although that impression is an old and lingering one. The plains have a gentle roll, a grain, to them and are often highly eroded, scored by greater and lesser rivers and spotted with interesting and often dramatic geological phenomena. Physical

6

PRELUDE

geographers particularly note distinctive and compelling northern plains features like the Sand Hills of Nebraska; the slender Pine Ridge Escarpment winding through Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota; the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming; the White River and Little Missouri River badlands of South Dakota and North Dakota, respectively; the uniquely eroded Big Open countryside sandwiched between Montana’s Musselshell, Yellowstone, and Missouri Rivers; and the Cypress Hills and Wood Mountain of southern Saskatchewan.3 This diverse physical landscape is supported by comparably distinctive vegetative cover. Profuse and nutritious buffalo and grama short grasses cover the ever dominant prairie, while pine and cedar forests typically speckle the pronounced highlands and blacken hills and mountains. The illusions of rolling seas of grass or nearly literal “black” hills (as viewed from afar) spawned on the plains are sometimes magical. Sinuous prairie river floodplains feature their own distinctive woody and bush vegetation, including vast intermittent groves of sheltering cottonwood trees, the ubiquitous timber monarchs of the plains.4 The northern plains are also known for their quirky weather attributes. As one geographer observed, nowhere else has wind done more effective work than on the Great Plains, where it blows harder and more consistently than anywhere else on the continent. Strong winds, hot winds, and cold winds are all accepted norms, giving rise to countless tales. “Does the wind blow this way here all the time?” asked a ranch visitor one day. “No, Mister,” answered the cowboy. “It’ll maybe blow this way for a week or ten days, and then it’ll take a change and blow like hell for a while.”5 Sometimes the seemingly omnipresent winds are welcomed. A down-slope warm wind, known to people of the plains as a chinook, flowing down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado is a winter delight that briefly moderates the cold and evaporates the snow. Northers are the dangerous opposite, amounting to frigid belting winds out of the arctic north that drop temperatures swiftly, sometimes last for days, and invariably occasion the suffering of people and animals. Worse yet are blizzards, the “grizzlies of the plains,” which combine extreme

LONG ROAD TO WAR

7

cold, harsh winds, sleet, and snow. Incessant winds, chinooks, northers, and blizzards coupled with periodic droughts, summer cloudbursts, and tornados are common features on the Great Plains and among the unusual conditions that people must overcome in order to survive and succeed there.6 In this unique grassland setting, many remarkable large and small animal species evolved and thrived, including American antelope or pronghorns, grizzly bears, gray or so-called buffalo wolves, and even prairie dogs. Without question, however, the dominant species was the buffalo, an extraordinary animal with an outsized head, muscular hump, and shaggy brown coat perfectly adapted to the extreme environmental conditions of the grasslands. As many as twenty-four million buffalo filled the Great Plains in the early nineteenth century, not as one gargantuan herd as is sometimes imagined but in innumerable lesser herds numbering thousands and sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands of bulls, cows, and calves grazing micro-ranges across the landscape. The buffalo gave rise to a distinctive human culture. Buffalo meat, both fresh and dried, was a healthful and savory Plains Indian staple, augmented by the animal’s tallow and marrow. Buffalo hides and fur provided Indians with robes, shirts, leggings, mittens, belts, lodge covers, and bedding and such utilitarian wares as straps, bags, shields, ropes, bindings, and even boats. Buffalo sinew, bone, and horns became bowstrings, thread, tools, and ornaments. The buffalo inspired Indian social, political, and religious beliefs and rituals. Buffalo migrations governed the movement of the tribes and fixed the cycles of life. Hunted in prodigious numbers, the cumulative herd on the northern plains had been reduced to some two million animals by the mid-nineteenth century at the time of the great Indian wars. Colonel Reynolds stepped into this world when he attacked the Northern Cheyenne village on the Powder River that day but probably never grasped even its slightest nuance.7

✧✧✧✧ The Great Plains was Indian country too. Native peoples had been pioneering in the West long before the great civilizations of ancient

8

PRELUDE

Greece and Rome flourished and fell, and had their own unique affinities for the land. Archaeological and biological evidence suggests ancient links between Asia and America dating to thirteen or fourteen thousand years ago, when the last Ice Age was in retreat and Pleistocene mammals were becoming extinct. The story of humankind in America is a complex one, still unfolding. The original migration from Asia was across the Bering Strait, though there is no guarantee that this was the only route. However Indians came to America and the plains, these early peoples lived close to the land and close to the edge. They survived by hunting and gathering strategies suited to their locales and moved about constantly, adapting to changing environmental conditions and embracing new technologies. In time these Native peoples gave their habitat place-names that described locations, natural features, and local animal life. They knew where plants, herbs, minerals, and other natural resources might be gathered for food, medicine, ceremonial purposes, and art. They became highly skilled hunters, resourceful and resilient, and all of this before they acquired tribal identifications.8 Powerful forces of change also came to the West. When corn and beans arrived on the plains around 700 a.d. (some sources say 1100), coinciding with changing climatic conditions, many Indian people surrendered their mobile hunting life and adopted a sedentary farming existence. In turn, when horses began appearing in the West in the early sixteenth century, spreading from Spanish America into the far north, some village people gave up their sedentary existence to become mobile hunters. Horses revolutionized the West, changing how Indian people lived their daily and seasonal lives and organized their societies. Horses spread north through elaborate systems of trade and were in the hands of Kiowas (who were still northern plains people living near the Black Hills), Pawnees, and Poncas by the late seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century the Cheyennes had gained horses; and by midcentury the Shoshones, Crows, Arapahos, Blackfeet, and Assiniboines had them too. It was probably the Cheyennes who drove horses to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara villages along the Missouri River where the Arikaras traded horses to the Sioux.9

LONG ROAD TO WAR

9

The interaction of Indians, horses, buffalo, and grasslands created a new order on the Great Plains linked directly to the annual cycle of the buffalo. Mounted hunters mirrored the actions of their mobile food supply. Tribal group numbers fluctuated in response to the movement of the herds. Bands dispersed into smaller groups during winter months and congregated in larger bodies in the summer for communal hunts and ceremony, to renew relationships, and to reaffirm their oneness as a people. Horses, more than a simple commodity of exchange, became a measure of wealth and prosperity and central to the Plains Indian hunting and warrior ethos. As one chronicler of this dynamic time on the plains put it, “raiding for horses became both a cause of war and a way of war.”10 This was the world of the Lakota Sioux in the early seventeenth century. The Lakotas (Tetons) together with the Nakotas (Yanktons/Yanktonais) and Dakotas (Santees) formed the three divisions of the Sioux Nation that emerged from the forest and lake country at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in today’s northern Minnesota. They had been pushed to the forest and prairie margins by Chippewa Indians, with whom the Sioux periodically warred during this time of transition. The three divisions reflected geographical and linguistic differences, although all Sioux speakers were intelligible to one another. At first the Sioux were distinguished only as the Sioux of the East and Sioux of the West, reflecting preferred geographical positioning relative to the Mississippi River, with the Santees largely living astride that river and other Santees and the Yanktons and Tetons occupying the prairie countryside between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The Sioux of the East hunted buffalo but also cultivated corn and harvested wild rice, while the Sioux of the West were exclusively hunters. In 1660 French-Canadian explorer Pierre-Esprit Radisson called the Sioux the “nation of the Beef,” because of their widespread embrace of buffalo hunting and consumption.11 By the eighteenth century the entire Sioux Nation had shifted westward, partly pushed by better-armed Chippewa and Cree Indians, partly in reaction to buffalo herds that were themselves contracting westward, and partly lured by white fur traders. The

10

PRELUDE

Lakotas particularly gravitated to Hudson’s Bay Company and Montreal traders coming from the north to the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the Upper Missouri River and French traders coming to those same villages from Saint Louis. Through trade the Sioux, like other area tribes, were introduced to a dazzling array of utilitarian and domestic wares in exchange for dressed furs of beaver and later buffalo. During this period the Teton Sioux occupied lands east of the Missouri in today’s South Dakota but were moving westward. This migration brought about significant cultural changes, many developed through contacts with other tribes, including the Cheyennes and Arikaras. It was during this period that the Sioux obtained horses and evolved their distinguishing buffalo hunting economy.12 By the end of the eighteenth century the Lakotas were fully mounted and continued their expansion onto the northern plains. When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed the Upper Missouri country in 1804–1805 they reported Tetons living on both sides of the river. By the 1830s the Lakotas almost exclusively occupied lands west of the river, ranging as far as the Black Hills but also maintaining trade relations on the Missouri, including most particularly at Fort Pierre, a trading post established in 1832 by the American Fur Company expressly for the Sioux. As Sioux migrations continued, they allied with the Cheyennes and Arapahos and drove the Kiowas and Crows from the Black Hills, claiming that resource-rich landscape as their own. By the mid-1840s the seven principal Lakota bands or subtribes—Brulé, Oglala, Sans Arc, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Blackfeet Sioux, and Two Kettle—were well dispersed across the Black Hills landscape and beyond, each with favored homelands. The Brulés and Oglalas preferred lands south of the Hills and trade at Fort William (Laramie), an American Fur Company post established in 1834 on the Laramie River in eastern Wyoming. The Sans Arcs occupied the country west and southwest of the Hills, while the Two Kettles and Miniconjous generally resided east and north of the Hills in the lower Cheyenne River countryside. The Hunkpapas and Blackfeet Sioux, meanwhile, preferred lands farther north in today’s western North Dakota and eastern Montana. The Hunkpapas often traded at Fort Union, yet

LONG ROAD TO WAR

11

another American Fur Company post, established in 1828 at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. The tribes’ attachments to trading posts served many purposes, acknowledging that traders were sources of brass kettles, knives, awls, blankets, and other functional wares and most importantly firearms, lead, and gunpowder. The posts were also accepted as health and social centers and places of cross-cultural exchange at a time when Indians and whites alike embraced trade and were not yet competing for the land.13 The journey of the Cheyenne Indians onto the Great Plains paralleled the journey of the Sioux in points of origin, relative timing, and drive, but with some differences as well. The Cheyenne people also trace their roots to northern Minnesota, where they once lived in bark-covered lodges, subsisted largely on wild rice and other local foodstuffs, and occasionally hunted buffalo on the margins of the plains. Like the Sioux, the Cheyennes were driven from the timber and lakes country of the Upper Mississippi by the Chippewas and Assiniboines, who were newly armed by French fur traders farther east. As the Cheyenne people moved, first south to the Minnesota River and then northwest toward the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the Upper Missouri, some met and allied with the Sioux. Others adopted the horticultural practices and lifeways of the village dwellers but did not sustain this sedentary lifestyle. For the most part the Cheyennes continued their own inexorable drift onto the northern plains and toward the Black Hills. By the early eighteenth century they had fully adopted a buffalo-hunting culture, trading or raiding for horses from horserich tribes farther south, particularly the Kiowas, Plains Apaches, and Comanches. The Cheyennes were noted go-betweens in the movement and exchange of horses from the south to the Missouri River villages and appear to have been critical in bringing horses to the Sioux.14 By the late eighteenth century the Cheyennes had fully occupied the Black Hills country. Many of their religious traditions stem from there, particularly their sacred mountain, Noaha-vose (the Lodge of All Being) or Bear Butte as whites later called it. From the Black Hills the Cheyennes extended their territory south into

12

PRELUDE

the prime buffalo-hunting country south of the Platte River. This continual reach to the south proved profitable, at least for some, as it introduced the tribe to trade at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River in today’s southeastern Colorado. Some bands allied closely with William Bent, who married into a prominent Cheyenne family and encouraged them and others to live nearby. Other Cheyennes preferred trading at Fort William on the Laramie River in eastern Wyoming. These preferences led directly to the separation of the Cheyenne tribe into northern and southern divisions. The opening of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s further divided the tribe and pushed the bands northward or southward as they withdrew from the environs of the emerging Platte River Road. The last traditional camp circle with all Cheyenne bands present is thought to have occurred in 1838.15 By the 1840s both the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne people had firmly cemented their grip on the northern plains, fighting Kiowas, Pawnees, Crows, and others for supremacy there. Each tribe hunted the dense buffalo herds that filled the Republican River Basin of Nebraska and Kansas, the Powder River Basin south of the Yellowstone River in Montana and Wyoming, and the vast Big Open countryside between the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, all the while perfecting the buffalo hunting and horse cultures that came to define them. While buffalo dominated all thinking, this new lifeway was actually grounded on horses. The Sioux and Cheyennes learned to live on their horses’ terms, regimenting day-to-day and week-to-week movements based on the forage needs of their herds. The tribes spent winters in secluded river bottoms, which provided shelter, water, and cottonwoods. Cottonwood deadfall warmed Indian tipis, and their inner bark nourished Indian ponies when deep snows prevented grazing. In the spring the bands returned to the grasslands, migrating constantly to ensure steady supplies of forage and fresh water. Buffalo hunting occurred in the summer, but only after horses had recovered from their winter hardships, often exacerbated by the renowned severity and quirkiness of the northern plains weather. And yet this northern plains landscape suited these people perfectly. The striking mosaic of

LONG ROAD TO WAR

13

grasslands, wooded high country, cottonwood-speckled bottomlands, and the profusion of deer, pronghorns, and especially buffalo seemed limitless and able to serve any need. Though forced to contest with other tribes for these extraordinarily rich hunting grounds, for a while the buffalo, the Lakota Sioux, their Northern Cheyenne friends, and the northern plains were inseparable and in near perfect harmony.16

✧✧✧✧ The appearance of whites on the margins of Sioux Country initially had relatively minor impacts and consequences. Fur traders and explorers led the way, never breaching the interior of the northern plains but repeatedly probing its outlying water courses. This early intercourse of traders, explorers, and Indians was amicable, marked with gift giving and professions of friendship and peace or exchanges of functional wares for beaver plews (skins) and buffalo robes. Incursions into the hinterland were rare, little more than forays by trading companies operating small wintering houses on the Yellowstone or in the Powder River Basin in the hope of capturing quick profit so long as their presence was tolerated by the tribes. Even as emigrant travel on the great Platte River Road gained momentum in the early 1840s, peaceful relations prevailed for a surprisingly long while. Mindful of the potential for trouble on the northern plains, the government negotiated peace and friendship accords with the northern tribes as early as 1815 and again in 1825. While the messages delivered at these gatherings were invariably murky, the distribution of blankets, fire steels, rifles, tobacco, and other trappings always made the parleys worthwhile for the tribes. The greatest of these early treaty events occurred in 1851 at Fort Laramie, where some ten thousand plains Indians from as far away as the Arkansas River in the south and the Missouri River in the north gathered to hear Washington’s plea for lasting peace. They heard substantive matters too, including the government’s interest in establishing roads and military posts in the Indian country and accountability for

14

PRELUDE

wrongs committed by Indians and whites. The Fort Laramie or Horse Creek Treaty (the proceedings relocated to Horse Creek, thirty-six miles down the North Platte River, after grazing at the fort was exhausted) also prescribed nonbinding tribal boundaries for the signatories, including the Gros Ventres, Mandans, Arikaras, Assiniboines, Blackfeet, Crows, Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Sioux.17 The notion of discrete lands for the tribes was problematic from the start. At best, it reflected circumstances prevailing at the time and was limited to the tribes and subtribes present and the government’s limited understanding of their present homelands. The lands defined for the Cheyennes, for instance, encompassed territory south of the Platte and North Platte Rivers to the Arkansas River and between the Rocky Mountains and a north-south line bisecting the forks of the Platte. While this encompassed lands embraced by many Cheyennes, and especially the emerging southern alliance, it did not reflect the interests of the northern people. The lands defined for the Sioux were comparably skewed, defined as existing from the mouth of the White River on the Missouri, west to the forks of the Platte, west again along the North Platte to Red Buttes (southwest of today’s Casper, Wyoming), from there northeast to the headwaters of the Heart River, east along the Heart to the Missouri, and finally down the Missouri to the White. While that definition included the Lakotas’ relatively newly acquired Black Hills, it applied only to lands then more or less occupied by the Brulé, Oglala, and Two Kettle Sioux, who participated in the council, not to lands favored or occupied by the other major Teton tribes, most particularly the Hunkpapas. Perhaps mindful of the treaty’s arbitrariness in this regard, one proviso stipulated that the signers did not surrender any rights or claims to contested ground; nor did they yield any privilege to hunt, fish, or pass through any of the countryside defined as belonging to others.18 For all its lofty intents, the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty brought little peace. The next fifteen years were scored with regular bloodletting, though mostly still on the scattered margins of the increasingly well-defined Sioux Country. Each episode escalated distrust and foreshadowed a time when the pervasive white tide would be directed from the periphery to the very heart of the northern Indian

LONG ROAD TO WAR

15

hinterland. Critical encounters, of which there were many, were invariably devastating and unforgettable. The killing of Brevet Second Lieutenant John L. Grattan and all twenty-nine men of his infantry command near Fort Laramie in August 1854 evoked Colonel William S. Harney’s brutal retaliation at Blue Water Creek in western Nebraska in September 1855, when eighty-six Lakotas were killed. Some six hundred or seven hundred Minnesota settlers were slain in the brief but cold-blooded Santee Sioux uprising in southwestern Minnesota in August 1862, a civilian wreckage virtually unprecedented in American history. More than one hundred of the victims were children under the age of ten, and fewer than fifty of the settlers were armed. Thirty-eight Santees were hanged as a consequence. While this was a Santee affair in far-off Minnesota, its effects spilled westward and brought ruthless punitive campaigns affecting Dakotas, Nakotas, and Lakotas alike. Troops struck the Sioux at Whitestone Hill in the Dakota Coteau Prairie east of the Missouri River in September 1863, killing some 200 tribesmen and capturing another 120 and in July 1864 at Killdeer Mountain in Dakota west of the river, where another 100 Indians were slain. Nakotas and Lakotas were victimized in both attacks, guilty only of their associations with Santees. The Cheyennes and Arapahos were victimized too, when 163 Indians were mindlessly massacred and mutilated at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado in November 1864. Two-thirds of the Sand Creek victims were women and children.19 Whitestone Hill, Killdeer Mountain, and Sand Creek enraged the Indians of the northern plains and brought on all-out war across the Platte and Missouri River countryside that for the first time reached into the Sioux Country heartland. In 1865 Sioux and Cheyennes harassed troops at Fort Rice on the Missouri in Dakota and attacked the small army garrisons scattered along the Platte and its forks. Indians sacked Julesburg, Colorado, burned stage stations, ran off cattle, ripped up miles of telegraph line, stopped the movement of stagecoaches and freight wagons, and boldly clashed with troops. At Platte Bridge Station in July Second Lieutenant Caspar Collins (struck in the forehead by an arrow) and twentyfive cavalrymen were killed by Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.20

16

PRELUDE

In July 1865 the army responded by dispatching three separate columns into the Powder River Basin. Broadly led by Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor, commander of the District of the Plains in Salt Lake City, an eastern force headed by Colonel Nelson Cole scoured Nebraska’s Loup River valley and the prairie east and north of the Black Hills, while Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Walker’s central column marched straight north from Fort Laramie and combed the prairie west of the Hills. Meanwhile Connor led a third column, also from Fort Laramie, northwest directly toward the Powder River. A portion of his command briefly diverted to Platte Bridge Station to investigate the Caspar Collins killing. Upon reaching the Powder, Connor erected a stockade to secure caches of commissary and quartermaster stores and then continued north. In late August he learned of an Indian village along the Tongue River in the foothills of the Big Horns. On August 29 he charged that Arapaho encampment. The fighting lasted all day, with Connor holding the Indians at bay and destroying their camp. Sixty-three tribesmen were killed at Tongue River and five hundred ponies captured.21 These aggressive encounters of the early and mid-1860s brought total war upon the Lakotas and their allies. This morally and politically charged strategy of warfare had many elements, including multiple columns of troops converging in a war zone, surprise attacks on Indian villages, destruction of personal possessions including lodges and ponies, and inevitable collateral casualties. This proven if brutal strategy had been employed repeatedly against the South during the Civil War, including at Vicksburg, in William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea, and in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign. Its practitioners were invariably excoriated by humanitarians because of the consequences for noncombatants, but the practice was never halted in the course of the Indian wars and was widely embraced by the army’s top generals. Total war was the prescription for the Great Sioux War and came to the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne people repeatedly during its course, including at Powder River.22 The people of Sioux Country no longer felt isolated. From time to time the tribes had already witnessed the passing of explorers

LONG ROAD TO WAR

17

directly through the northern plains, not bypassing them as had been the case with Lewis and Clark. William Harney’s column in 1855 had an explorer at hand, Gouverneur K. Warren, who recorded impressions of a southwestern Dakota landscape showing some potential for cultivation but occupied by powerful tribes. In 1857 Warren and Ferdinand V. Hayden traversed central and western Nebraska and circled the Black Hills. In 1859 William F. Raynolds passed around the northern Black Hills, traveled along the Powder River to its mouth, ascended the Big Horn River to the mountains, and skirted the prairie east of the Big Horns south to the Oregon Trail. Like Warren, Hayden and Raynolds praised the agricultural potential of the landscapes that they traveled through. Their reports and later commentary also mentioned gold in the Black Hills: Hayden noted “every indication of rich deposits in these Hills.” These explorers did not linger, however, and their travels posed no immediate threat to the Indians. Even the mentions of gold in the Black Hills were seemingly lost as other events unfolded in Sioux Country that turned the Lakotas’ world topsy-turvy.23

✧✧✧✧ Discoveries of placer gold on Cherry Creek in the Colorado Front Range in July 1858 caused an extraordinary emigrant surge to Colorado in 1859 that confounded the Cheyennes and Arapahos residing on Kansas and Colorado lands identified as theirs by the Horse Creek Treaty. The Sand Creek Massacre was baldly linked to this rush and the perceptions and realities of Cheyenne resistance to it. A more direct threat to Sioux Country came in July 1862 when prospectors from Idaho found rich placer deposits on Grasshopper Creek, a tributary of the Beaverhead River in far southwestern Montana. Four hundred people crowded Grasshopper Creek and Bannack City, the new town on its banks, by summer’s end. Within a year a thousand people packed the diggings, with more en route. In May 1863 parties exploring the Ruby River valley east of Bannack discovered gold in Alder Gulch. Soon thousands worked the rich gravels above and below the newly established Virginia City in Montana’s richest gold discovery yet. A year later other

18

PRELUDE

prospectors found placer gold in Last Chance Gulch north of Virginia City, founded Helena, and also discovered pay dirt in Confederate and Emigrant Gulches to the east.24 News of the Montana gold discoveries sparked a rush from all quarters, and prospectors eyeing the opportunity had many avenues of access. A relatively safe but discouragingly expensive route was passage aboard a Missouri River steamboat from downriver ports such as Omaha and Sioux City to Fort Benton, Montana, and overland from there to the diggings two hundred miles into the mountains. The river route was handicapped by the Upper Missouri’s short navigation season, however, which rarely exceeded four months. Still, river traffic was robust, bringing supplies and machinery to the gold country. James Fisk pioneered an overland trail from Minnesota to Montana in the early 1860s, traveling by way of Fort Union and skirting the Missouri and Milk Rivers to Fort Benton. Fisk’s route was neither short nor quick. Others preferred traveling the Montana Trail from Salt Lake City north past Fort Hall, Idaho, and across Monida Pass into Montana. This was a relatively short and direct route, although burdened by a long journey from west or east to Salt Lake City.25 Of all the Montana options, the venerable Platte Valley route through Fort Laramie emerged as the most logical and efficient pathway from the east to a number of jumping-off points between the fort and Platte Bridge Station, each connecting to the north. Some Montana-bound emigrants exited the Overland Trail at Red Buttes and traveled the Bridger Trail, particularly in 1864, following a twisting course through the Big Horn Basin west of the Big Horn Mountains to the Yellowstone River, a route that avoided most of Sioux Country. But this tedious and often waterless pathway was never heavily used. The most promising route was the one blazed backward—from west to east—in 1863 by John Bozeman, a Montana prospector and promoter. Bozeman and a partner, John Jacobs, traveled through Crow Indian country north of the Big Horns and through Sioux Country to the North Platte River. Their audacious pioneering effort established the most direct route to Montana to date (about five hundred miles long from its divergence

LONG ROAD TO WAR

19

from the North Platte valley), with good water and easy grades, and initially unopposed by Indians.26 Despite initial calm, passage on the Bozeman Trail was obstructed almost immediately and helped tip the balance in what the Sioux chose to tolerate in their country: they now resisted, even to death. The Lakotas and their friends had spent several decades coming to a fearsome new resolve, which involved more than merely their country. These Indians had evolved a unique culture centered on horses and buffalo and the freedom of movement across a landscape that filled every earthly and spiritual need. They had developed a warrior ethos required to take and hold these plains from other tribes that had come before them and still contested the rich hunting ground. The Indians had freely engaged whites who offered gifts, trade relationships, personal friendships, and offers of accommodation and accord, taking what suited them and ignoring the rest. They had witnessed the lethal consequences of epidemic diseases brought by the whites to the villages of the sedentary tribes, though mostly escaping the diseases themselves. The Lakotas watched intently the incursions into their lands by explorers like Hayden and Raynolds and the more recent road surveyor James Sawyers of Sioux City, all passing through but never lingering. They remembered when Harney retaliated at Blue Water after a Miniconjou butchered a footsore cow in 1854, leading to the Grattan Massacre. Some had personally witnessed the wanton slaughters at Whitestone Hill and Killdeer Mountain, but everyone knew of them. They knew of Sand Creek and of Connor’s attack on the Arapaho village on the Tongue River too. The once perfect harmony that existed in Sioux Country in the 1830s and 1840s had become utter chaos by the middle 1860s, threatening the lifeway of these northern people altogether. Two worldviews were colliding. What the whites considered frontier, an ever expanding edge of possibility, was just the opposite to the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes: a world collapsing around them.27 During the winter of 1865–66 the Indians on the northern plains were restive, but events took a promising turn in the spring when Sioux chiefs including Spotted Tail, Standing Elk, and Red

20

PRELUDE

Cloud appeared at Fort Laramie seeking to air grievances but also to end the fighting that was bloodying the plains. These overtures brought yet another peace commission. (In 1865 a commission had negotiated a number of accords at Fort Sully on the Missouri River with various Sioux bands, but not with these Brulés and Oglalas.) In late May 1866 thousands of Sioux and smaller numbers of Northern Cheyennes and Northern Arapahos gathered at the fort. Their chiefs deliberated with the government’s commissioners, expressing their resolve to keep whites off of the Bozeman Trail and out of the Powder River country entirely and demanding good agents and the delivery of the annuities promised in earlier accords. The commissioners knew that at that very moment Regular Army troops were somewhere west of Fort Kearny in Nebraska, marching toward Fort Laramie and bound for the Bozeman road. The talks, seemingly favorable at first, collapsed on June 13 when Colonel Henry B. Carrington led the Second Battalion of the Eighteenth Infantry into Fort Laramie. Red Cloud was outraged and harangued the agents and Carrington: “The Great Father sends us presents and wants us to sell him the road, but [the] White Chief goes with soldiers to steal the road before the Indians say Yes or No.”28 Any hope of an accord disintegrated when Red Cloud and most of the other northern Sioux stormed from the proceedings and returned to the security of the Powder River country. A few Platte River Sioux remained and signed an agreement that ultimately had no meaning and was never ratified by Congress.29 Carrington proceeded to occupy the Bozeman Trail, scattering his eight companies of infantry at forts built by his men: Reno on the Powder River, succeeding the nearby insubstantial and subsequently abandoned Fort Connor; Phil Kearny on Piney Creek in the lee of the Big Horn Mountains; and C. F. Smith on the Big Horn River north of the Big Horns in Montana. For the next three years Carrington’s troops engaged in one of the most exasperating frontier army deployments in all of U.S. history. Red Cloud and his allies (including influential chiefs and subchiefs Man Afraid of His Horses, High Back Bone, Big Road, Red Leaf, and Crazy Horse of the Sioux; Little Wolf, Dull Knife, and Old Bear of the Northern

LONG ROAD TO WAR

21

Cheyennes; and Black Coal and Eagle of the Northern Arapahos) so effectively warred on the trail and its diminutive garrisons that Montana-bound civilian traffic almost ceased altogether. The troops at the three posts, at best only modestly reinforced and resupplied, sustained themselves through sheer will. This was also a period of violent attacks—the infamous Fetterman Massacre on December 21, 1866, when Captain William J. Fetterman and eighty soldiers were killed by Red Cloud’s warriors three miles north of Fort Phil Kearny; the Hay Field Fight near Fort C. F. Smith on the afternoon of August 1, 1867; and the eight-hour-long Wagon Box Fight on August 2, 1867, at Phil Kearny’s pinery west of the post. Each episode demonstrated the Indians’ fearsome resolve to defend Sioux Country, seemingly regardless of costs to themselves.30 In reality, of course, the Indians could not sustain a war that incurred the loss of irreplaceable lives and demanded ceaseless perseverance that itself disrupted the normal daily and seasonal cycles central to their existence. Even while raiding continued week after week in 1867, some chiefs and headmen openly communicated with officers and agents at the trail forts, at the new Fort Fetterman, established in July 1867 on the North Platte River, and at Fort Laramie, where each side at least heard the other out. In mid-September a number of chiefs and headmen, including Spotted Tail, Big Mouth, Swift Bear, and Pawnee Killer of the Sioux and Turkey Leg of the Northern Cheyennes, met at North Platte, Nebraska, with members of yet another peace commission. No issues were resolved. The Indians demanded the abandonment of the trail while the government offered only to pay for damages while insisting on maintaining the road. The commission also counseled with southern tribes and in October 1867 consummated a number of accords at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, under which the Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahos agreed to their removal to a reservation in the Indian Territory, the preservation of hunting rights south of the Arkansas River so long as buffalo remained there, the allowance of railroad construction on their reservation and elsewhere, the provision of annuities, and schooling of the children. A die was cast at Medicine Lodge.

22

PRELUDE

Those terms resurfaced, in some instances almost word for word, in negotiations with the northern people at Fort Laramie in the spring of 1868.31 The work of the Indian Peace Commission was more revolutionary than most people immediately knew, particularly on the plains. Congressional investigations into the deplorable state of Indian affairs in the West, coupled with heightened hostilities on the central and northern plains and the destruction of army commands like those of Collins and Fetterman, resulted in a legislative initiative aimed at wresting control of Indian affairs from the executive and implementing benevolent measures to resolve issues and end warfare. Predominant in this new thinking was the reapplication of an almost timeless U.S. strategy of moving Indians out of the way of whites, not just to clear paths for settlement on former Indian lands but also to secure a genuine future for the tribes. As evident in the spirit of the Medicine Lodge accords, reservation Indians would be provided livestock and agricultural implements and domestic stuffs like clothing and yard goods, together with schooling and missionary instruction in Christianity. Furthermore, the tribes would be isolated from all whites except government employees and other functionaries permitted on the reservations.32 The members of the commission charged with implementing this reform agenda were civilians and army officers with an interest and competency in Indian matters, including Commissioner of Indian Affairs Nathaniel G. Taylor, commission president; Missouri senator John Henderson, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs; Samuel F. Tappan of Boston, a humanitarian crusader and former chair of the committee that had investigated the Sand Creek Massacre; and John B. Sanborn, a Minnesota lawyer and businessman who had participated in earlier Indian negotiations. Taylor, a politically moderate, Princeton-educated, God-fearing Tennessean, was dubious of the military’s handling of Indian affairs and stoutly embraced the emerging peace policy, a stance that often had him at odds with the military officers serving with him. Three senior Regular Army officers joined Taylor, including Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, commander of the Military

LONG ROAD TO WAR

23

Division of the Missouri in Saint Louis, whose jurisdiction encompassed all army commands on the Great Plains; Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, a trained lawyer and commander of the newly created Military Department of Dakota headquartered in Saint Paul; and Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur, commander of the Military Department of the Platte in Omaha. The army trio was joined by retired Brigadier General William S. Harney, a soldier well-remembered among the Sioux both as a treaty maker and for his deeds at Blue Water Creek in 1855. Despite internal tensions, humanitarians praised the prospect of an era of diplomacy in Indian affairs rather than a continuation of warfare. Ultimately these men negotiated and signed eleven treaties in 1867 and 1868 with the Kiowas, Comanches, Crows, Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Sioux, among others.33 One major factor also played directly into the looming negotiations with Red Cloud and his allies. In Washington, D.C., General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the U.S. Army, was paying careful attention to day-to-day news emanating from the West on the advance of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. Two railroad companies, the Union Pacific (UP) and Central Pacific (CP), had broken ground in 1863 and after slow starts were respectively advancing in measurable strides westward and eastward. Maintaining safe and easy access to the Montana gold fields was a national priority, but Grant understood that this transcontinental line would change everything. By the winter of 1867–68, as the generals deliberated the future of the Bozeman Trail, the UP had extended rail through all of Nebraska and was momentarily wintering west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, near the summit of Sherman Pass. At the same time, the CP had nearly finished tunneling its way through the Sierra Nevada and resumed its own vigorous track laying east from Truckee, California, across the deserts of the Great Basin. Within the next twelve or fifteen months the two lines were destined to meet somewhere in between, presumably at or near Salt Lake City.34 Once the transcontinental railroad opened fully to traffic, the bloody Bozeman Trail would become obsolete. Travelers bound for western Montana would have unfettered rail access to the

24

PRELUDE

perfectly secure Montana Road running north from Salt Lake City to Virginia City and beyond. (The point where rails met the trail was actually Corinne, Utah, some fifty miles north of Salt Lake City; the overland trail was soon supplanted by the narrow-gauge Utah Northern Railroad, which began construction in 1871.)35 Ever mindful of the frightful support costs incurred and lives lost in maintaining the Bozeman Trail, and also frankly acknowledging its increasingly marginal usefulness, Grant determined in midFebruary 1868 that the Powder River forts and trail would be abandoned. On March 2 Sherman implemented the directive breaking up those posts. A costly and bloody overland trail through Sioux Country was no longer imperative.36 As winter waned across the northern plains news of the government’s willingness to abandon the Powder River country if the Sioux would meet at Fort Laramie with the peace commissioners circulated widely. Even while Indian raiding continued along the Bozeman and Overland roads, as early as April Sioux and Northern Cheyenne bands trickled into the post, feasted, and listened to remarks delivered by Taylor or another one of the commissioners. The tone was consistent. The government was indeed ready to withdraw the army from the Powder River forts and equally prepared to exclude whites from those portions of Indian country to be designated as reservation and hunting land, concede the continuing right to hunt game wherever it might be found, and provide stock, seeds, and implements for those willing to abandon the chase and embrace husbandry. Furthermore, during a presumed era of transition, tools, clothing, and foodstuffs would be provided at an agency on the Missouri River at the mouth of Whetstone Creek, not far from Fort Randall.37 The Sioux accord was the featured document. Specifics were found in the treaty’s seventeen articles spanning some twentyseven sheets of white ruled paper. While all were of consequence, some were of exceptional importance. Article 2 defined a reservation for the Sioux, a vast landscape encompassing Dakota Territory west of the Missouri River and south of the forty-sixth parallel (slightly more than today’s South Dakota west of the Missouri River). Article 2 also limited white access to the reservation,

LONG ROAD TO WAR

25

declaring that non-Indians “shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article,” except for officers, agents, and employees of the government in the discharge of their duties. These extremely precise words of exclusion would haunt the Grant administration in a few years, but in 1868 Hayden’s and Raynolds’s passing mentions of gold in the Black Hills a decade earlier captured no one’s attention. The Black Hills fell squarely inside the new reservation.38 Article 4 provided for the construction of an agency for the Sioux to be located along the Missouri River. This was an ambitious and ambiguous notion that flew in the face of reality. The premise of a single Sioux agency on the Missouri served the government well, lowering administrative costs by facilitating the delivery by steamboat of the goods and materials prescribed in the treaty. But it failed to reckon with the broad scattering of the Lakota tribes across the whole of the northern plains. The Hunkpapa and Blackfeet Sioux, for instance, always people of the north, rarely if ever engaged in the affairs of the Oglalas and Brulés of the south, aside from their communal gatherings each summer. The relative distance between those respective homelands amounted to some three hundred or four hundred miles. By then the Sans Arcs commonly resided west of the Black Hills, and the Miniconjous north and northeast of the Hills. Hence the objective of a single agency for the Sioux could never be achieved. Multiple agencies were established in its stead, scattered from the Grand River in the north to the North Platte River in the south and at several points in-between. Confounding post-treaty politics was the eventual establishment of Sioux agencies in Nebraska for Red Cloud’s Oglalas and Spotted Tail’s Brulés that were not on the reservation in Dakota Territory at all.39 Article 11 addressed a scattering of issues, including hunting rights, the relinquishment of the right permanently to occupy lands outside of the reservation, the security of railroad construction then underway in Nebraska and Kansas, and the persistence of threats and harm to whites. The critically important issue of hunting was addressed in the article’s first clause, whereby the Sioux retained the ability to hunt on any lands north of the North Platte

26

PRELUDE

River and on the Republican Fork of the Smoky Hill River (today’s Republican River), “so long as the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase.” In 1868 these ranges were still filled with buffalo: the government was simply being pragmatic, allowing the Sioux to continue to feed themselves as they adjusted to the coming time of presumed self-sufficiency as stock raisers and farmers. The sixth clause of article 11 obliged the Sioux to cease opposition to the construction of the Pacific Railroad and allowed for an array of “works of utility,” in the language of the treaty, suggesting other railroads, wagon roads, mail stations, and the like, “which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States” so long as the payment of damages occurred.40 Perhaps the most critical article from the Sioux perspective was article 16, the second to last in the treaty. It had two sections. In the first the government agreed that the country north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains (and, implicitly though unstated, west of the reservation boundary) would be held as unceded Indian territory, where Indians could hunt and whites could not settle, occupy land, or even pass through. Indians could not permanently occupy this land, however, as stipulated in article 11. The treaty did not define a northern boundary for the unceded territory, and its full extent in Montana has been debated ever since. The treaty’s silence on the point may suggest the commissioners’ tacit recognition that the Yellowstone Valley and the area beyond was indeed filled with Sioux and buffalo but outside the focus of the day. Ultimately the unceded territory became a no-man’s land principally valued for its still robust buffalo herds. The second component of article 16 prescribed the abandonment of the military posts in the unceded territory and “the road leading to them and by them to the settlements in the Territory of Montana” within ninety days of concluding the treaty. The government appeared to have acceded to all of Red Cloud’s demands.41 The Sioux signed the treaty over a period of months, band by band. The Brulés led by Spotted Tail, Red Leaf, Swift Bear, and Standing Elk were the first, on April 29, followed by a large delegation of Oglalas including Man Afraid of His Horses, Sitting Bull (the Oglala, not the Hunkpapa), and American Horse, on May 25; and Miniconjous, including Spotted Elk (Big Foot of the Wounded

LONG ROAD TO WAR

27

Knee Massacre) and Bull Bear, on May 26. The commissioners departed Fort Laramie two days later, intent on gaining signatures from the northern Sioux. One copy of the document was left behind for others to sign when they came in, and the Fort Laramie commander was vested with authority to act on the commissioners’ behalf. To help broker the accord on the Missouri River, the commissioners enlisted the support of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Catholic missionary who had long proselytized among the Sioux, and Reverend Samuel D. Hinman, an Episcopal missionary to the Dakotas and a critical intermediary during the days of the 1862 Dakota Uprising. Hunkpapas, including Gall (signing as The Man That Goes in the Middle), Bear’s Rib, and Running Antelope, marked the document at Fort Rice on July 2, as did representatives of the Blackfeet, Two Kettle, and Sans Arc bands. Noticeably absent among the signatories was the Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull, who steadfastly refused all overtures and persisted in his own demands that Forts Buford and Stevenson on the Upper Missouri be abandoned. Red Cloud was also a holdout but finally signed at Fort Laramie on November 6, intent on ensuring that troops first actually abandoned Forts C. F. Smith, Phil Kearny, and Reno.42 While the treaty with the Sioux drew almost all attention in 1868 and remains an object of interest, study, and scorn to this day, two other treaties were also signed at Fort Laramie that year. On May 7 the Crow tribe concluded its own accord with the peace commissioners. Like the other treaties, it envisioned the assimilation of the Crow people into white society, prescribing educational and agricultural tenets along with an agent, agency, and interim subsistence. Like the Sioux treaty, the Crow agreement established a permanent reservation, stipulating a substantial tract of land in south-central Montana. The new Crow Reservation amounted to a considerable diminution of that tribe’s land from the boundaries put forth in the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty. Unlike the Sioux accord, the agreement did not prescribe unceded land or hunting privileges.43 On May 10 the commissioners also concluded a treaty with the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho tribes, the first for both and a recognition, at last, of the separation of these people

28

PRELUDE

from their southern kin who had signed the Medicine Lodge treaty the year before. Most of its articles conformed in every respect to the other treaties promulgated by the Peace Commission, with one exception. Instead of setting aside a specific reservation for these tribes, the treaty allowed them to choose a permanent home with the Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahos in the Indian Territory or alternatively with the Sioux in Dakota. It also acknowledged that one group of these Indians might attach itself to one of the identified reservations and another group to another reservation. The Cheyennes and Arapahos were given one year to decide their fate by affiliating themselves with one of the identified agencies or, curiously, with the Crows at their prescribed new agency on the Yellowstone River. The reason for this odd inclusion in that article is unclear, especially since the Crows were hereditary enemies of both tribes. The commission had just concluded the Crow treaty, so perhaps this clause was the result of coincidental timing and wishful thinking.44 In due course the Northern Cheyennes attached themselves to the Oglala agency. But in 1874 the government rescinded the concession, fearful that the Cheyenne and Sioux alliance was growing too powerful and needed to be broken. Naturally the Cheyennes viewed the situation quite differently, and the consequence of the government’s reversal became yet another critical note in the long road to the Great Sioux War. Meanwhile the Northern Arapahos were determined to remain in Wyoming. They cultivated rapport with the officers at Fort Fetterman, hoping to remain in that proximity, and also sought accord with their former enemies, the Shoshones, who in 1868 had been granted a reservation in western Wyoming. Neither overture was immediately successful. For most of the 1870s the Arapahos were in political limbo until their future was finally settled in 1878, when they were permitted to join the Shoshones. The treaty also allowed both tribes the “right to roam and hunt while game shall be found in sufficient quantities to justify the chase.”45 The fateful realities of the Bozeman Trail War and Fort Laramie treaty belie the perception that Red Cloud had somehow won his

LONG ROAD TO WAR

29

war, although the army indeed abandoned the detested trail forts and Bozeman road. This had been a war about Sioux Country and its sanctity as a secure and dependable homeland and rich buffalo hunting ground for the Lakotas and their friends. Prominent Sioux leaders signed the Fort Laramie accord that in its many pages and articles redefined the inherent Indianness of the northern plains, yielding three-fourths of yesterday’s land base for a reservation in Dakota Territory and setting the Sioux on a new and abstract course designed to remake them into white people. While the surrender of land, confinement on a reservation, farming, day schools, and Christian religion were foreign to most of the Sioux, some Indians complied with the treaty from the start, relocating to the new agencies at the mouth of Whetstone Creek on the Missouri River or upstream at Cheyenne River and Grand River. But many more did not, choosing to remain in the buffalo country immersed in the traditional lifeway. As the acting commissioner of Indian Affairs put it succinctly in 1870: “The wild and restless disposition of the Indians clings to them closely, and their nomadic habits are not easily shaken off.”46 Red Cloud initially was among those who wanted nothing to do with the new agencies, preferring the landscapes that he had long called home and an occasional visit to Fort Laramie to engage with familiar traders. Sitting Bull also was hardly ever seen on the fringes of white society. He and the Hunkpapas held firm to the freedom and independence of the Little Missouri and Yellowstone River countryside and the last of the great buffalo herds that drew them westward into the Big Open. The young Crazy Horse, a newly anointed Shirt Wearer for his praiseworthy leadership and heroics in Red Cloud’s War, was seen even less, preferring the haunts of the Powder and Tongue River countryside and its bounteous hunting. In the end the Fort Laramie Treaty closed one war with the Sioux but in multiple ways set the course for another that ultimately would lead to the conquest of the Sioux and their Northern Cheyenne allies and wrest possession of Sioux Country forever. Manifest Destiny, that pervasive expansionist zeal acknowledged

30

PRELUDE

as “paramount” in white society by one Indian commissioner, which threatened all Indian land in America, had fully reached the northern plains.47

✧✧✧✧ For those Indians accepting the new course, life in the proximity of the agencies was not particularly threatening, although what they witnessed was a powerful testimonial to the government’s earnestness in attempting to remake warriors and hunters into farmers. At the Whetstone Agency established for the Brulés and Oglalas on the Missouri eighteen miles north of Fort Randall, the landing was crowded with strange contraptions—sod breaking plows, corn planters, cultivators, rakes, harrows, and threshing machines. Grist and saw mills had begun operating. The landscape had sprouted a small village of about a thousand people centered on the new agency, plus a handful of stores operated by old friends like Joseph Bissonette and James Bordeaux, Fort Laramie–area traders before then. Most of the Indian camps nearby were those previously seen in the proximity of Fort Laramie, filled with people who had grown to prefer the security and advantages of such places, including many Sioux women married to white interpreters, traders, and intermediaries and tipis teeming with mixed-blood children. Scornfully disparaged in the buffalo hunting camps as Laramie Loafers or Hangers-On, in reality these people knew the whites and dealt shrewdly with their officers, traders, and agents. Above all, they were pragmatists. At Fort Laramie some half-decade earlier they had heard of the mighty three-day battle at Gettysburg. They knew what the white people meant when they spoke of a battle. One of the mixed-bloods was William “Billy” Garnett, whose father, Richard B. Garnett, an officer at Fort Laramie in the early 1850s and later a Confederate general officer, had been killed in Pickett’s charge.48 Still, many Indians did not embrace the agencies at all. At their core were bands of fervent traditionalists led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Lame Deer, Lone Horn, High Bear, and others who had not marked the Fort Laramie Treaty, never lived at an agency, and

LONG ROAD TO WAR

31

never took government rations or annuities. Their dislike of whites was visceral. They did not want white people coming into Sioux Country and were resolved to protect their homeland and lifeway. The whites gave these nontreaty people a variety of names that plainly reflected this isolationist or contentious disposition, from the purely dispassionate “Northern Indians” or “Northern Sioux,” suggesting their embrace of a northern plains homeland, to “non-progressives” or “wild Sioux,” or sometimes “Sitting Bull’s band.” Most often, however, they were referred to by the uniquely pejorative term “hostiles.” By whatever name, so long as these Indians roamed free on the northern plains, the ambitions of the Indian Peace Commission and its treaties would not easily be realized.49 The fluidity of movement between the northern camps and the agencies further complicated affairs. While some northern people refused the advances and lures of the agencies, others readily appeared at one agency or another, particularly when it suited their purposes. Hunting buffalo for part of the year, they took advantage of government rations, blankets, clothing, supplies, and weapons and seized opportunities to trade buffalo robes, deer skins, and other furs for practical, utilitarian, and colorful wares of the sort introduced in the earliest days of the fur trade. Agency traders usually had available varieties of firearms, fixed ammunition, lead, and black powder. When the sale of weaponry was restricted, these items could also be acquired from the unlicensed traders who lurked on the not-too-distant margins of the agency settlements. These traders also freely peddled whiskey. Movement also commonly occurred between the agencies and northern camps, with agency dwellers finding their way to the buffalo country to hunt or join the traditional summer gatherings at Sun Dance time. The trails between the agencies and the buffalo country were sometimes quite pronounced. Perhaps the most distinctive of them in the mid-1870s was a proverbial “great highway” connecting the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies on the White River in northwestern Nebraska with the Powder River country in northern Wyoming. Known by various names such as the Powder River Trail and the Red Cloud Trail, the avenue was the object of considerable

32

PRELUDE

anxiety and bloodletting during the course of the forthcoming Great Sioux War.50 Providing an agency acceptable to Red Cloud was its own long and difficult struggle. As a concession during treaty negotiations, the Oglalas understood that they would not have to go to the Missouri River and could reside where they wished. This point was instantly contended and was plainly contradicted in article 11, wherein the Sioux conceded any right permanently to occupy lands beyond the reservation. To air the issue, Red Cloud and a delegation of Oglalas traveled east in 1870 to meet with the president, which was an eye-opening experience all-around. In Washington the chiefs met with Grant and Secretary of the Interior Jacob D. Cox and argued treaty terms once more, with many Oglalas insisting that they were hearing some conditions for the first time. Often angered, Red Cloud denounced the treaty, insisting that it was merely a peace accord that removed the white soldiers from the Powder River country and that he and the Oglalas had been assured that they could continue to trade at Fort Laramie and reside where they wished. Both sides were entrenched. After touring the Naval Yard and witnessing the firing of one of the navy’s largest guns that skipped a cannonball four or five miles down the Potomac, the entourage moved on to Philadelphia and New York City. Red Cloud’s eloquence in front of large audiences in those cities brought the intercession of humanitarians, who persuaded the interior secretary to concede to the chief’s demands or lose the treaty. The government relented, allowing the Oglalas to continue trading at Fort Laramie while seeking an agency location suitable to both parties.51 To resolve the dispute yet another commission was assembled and charged with persuading Red Cloud to abandon the notion of day-to-day contact at Fort Laramie in favor of an agency at Rawhide Buttes, forty miles north of the post and nearer the Dakota reservation. The negotiations were difficult and prolonged. Unwilling to accept Rawhide Buttes, Red Cloud finally agreed to a site in Nebraska thirty-two miles east of the fort on the north bank of the North Platte River. The North Platte Agency, often called the Sod Agency, posed a new set of problems. Red Cloud continued

LONG ROAD TO WAR

33

to trade with old friends at Fort Laramie, while the Indian Bureau was frustrated by the need to maintain an agency so distant from the reservation and conventional routes of travel. Moreover, Nebraskans resented the presence of this or any Sioux agency in their state, eyeing the settlement and ranching potential of the North Platte Valley.52 The commission was also charged with relocating Spotted Tail’s Brulés, whose growing dislike of the Whetstone Agency had become its own issue. In summer 1871 the Brulé agency was relocated from the Missouri to Big White Clay Creek and eventually to Beaver Creek, in the Pine Ridge country of northwestern Nebraska, just a few miles south of the reservation. On January 1, 1875, Whetstone was renamed Spotted Tail Agency, acknowledging the patriarch of the Brulé Sioux. Red Cloud inspected lands nearby and agreed to relocate there but wanted to counsel again with the president. Grant and Red Cloud personally debated the treaty and the agency prospect. The chief was reminded that the site that he now preferred was still in Nebraska and that the Oglalas might have to move yet again. This time, however, consensus overrode the wearying discord, and in August 1873 Red Cloud Agency was established on the White River, thirty miles west of Spotted Tail Agency.53 A core tenet of the Fort Laramie Treaty presumed the cessation of bloodletting on the northern plains, but strife was unrelenting and episodes were quickly decried by citizens and the press in the rise to all-out war. Many episodes were small and rather inconsequential though distracting, but striking clashes occurred as well. An attack by 150 Indians on a ten-man infantry mail escort on December 2, 1869, near Horseshoe Creek south of Fort Fetterman, resulted in the deaths of a soldier and several Indians. A sharp clash with Indians near Miner’s Delight, Wyoming, on May 4, 1870, resulted in the deaths of seven tribesmen, an enlisted man, and an officer, First Lieutenant Charles B. Stambaugh, Second Cavalry. Shortly thereafter a small army post was established nearby, dubbed Camp Stambaugh. Back-to-back incidents on the Heart River in northern Dakota in October 1872 claimed the lives of First Lieutenants Eben Crosby, Seventeenth Infantry, and Lewis D. Adair,

34

PRELUDE

Twenty-Second Infantry, plus an enlisted man, slain by Sioux Indians while hunting. A group that probably included the same warriors, sometimes numbering as many as three hundred, in October 1872 twice attacked the newly established Fort McKeen, at the confluence of the Heart and Missouri Rivers, and returned to fight again in April and June 1873, with casualties occurring on both sides on nearly every occasion. First Lieutenant Levi H. Robinson, Fourteenth Infantry, and Corporal James Coleman, Second Cavalry, were ambushed and killed by Indians near Laramie Peak, west of Fort Laramie, on February 9, 1874, in a demonstration of aggression that spilled eastward and threatened the sanctity of the new Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies and brought about the establishment of army camps at both. The one adjacent to Red Cloud Agency was named Camp Robinson and the other Camp Sheridan.54 Troubles bloodied the prairies of Montana too, including continued intertribal strife in the buffalo country between the Sioux and Crows; attacks at Fort Ellis, near Bozeman, and Fort Benton on the Missouri; and striking fights associated with the Northern Pacific Railroad surveys in the Yellowstone Valley in 1871, 1872, and 1873. These railroad surveys were among government actions specifically sanctioned in article 11 of the Fort Laramie Treaty. Of course, the Northern Sioux and their friends cared not a whit whether such work was somehow technically permitted by some obscure treaty, which they had not signed anyway. In their view railroad surveyors were daring to invade the buffalo country, so they objected forcefully, leading to the abrupt cessation of surveying work in 1871 and 1872. In the 1872 survey railroad engineers and other personnel experienced a traumatizing night attack on their Yellowstone River camp by hundreds of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors, the so-called Poker Flat fight. Surveying in 1873 was no less perilous, although its escort had been enlarged substantially to nineteen hundred men. The surveyors completed their labors in 1873, but under steady duress and only after three sharp clashes between warriors and troops, including the Seventh Cavalry commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. Custer’s regiment had been specifically transferred from Reconstruction duty in the South to deal with the bold and frequent attacks occurring on the

LONG ROAD TO WAR

35

Dakota frontier and on these surveys. The government viewed these clashes as mounting evidence of the failure of the Fort Laramie Treaty, whether these northern Indians were signatories or not.55 Circumstances worsened in Sioux Country. Of many factors contributing to a dangerously deteriorating state of affairs on the northern plains, none was greater than the 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills. Rumors of gold there had persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Its presence was actually confirmed, though unmeasured by the Hayden and Raynolds surveys, in the late 1850s. Until the 1870s gold discoveries in California, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana had sufficed to sustain the nation’s economy and satisfy a persistent western prospecting appetite. Conditions were different now, especially after the devastating Panic of 1873, one of the most severe financial calamities in the nation’s history, responsible for widespread unemployment and economic despair from coast to coast. The 1873 Panic stalled construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad for five years at Bismarck, despite the completion of surveying work in western Dakota and Montana.56 The Black Hills always had its partisans, certainly, particularly in Yankton, Dakota, and Sioux City, Iowa. Citizens agitated tirelessly for additional surveys of this prospective enrichment despite the Indian conflicts of the 1860s and the location of the Black Hills in a remote corner of the new Great Sioux Reservation. The nation’s economic woes gave Yankton’s and Sioux City’s advocacy new meaning.57 As the Panic of 1873 swept the land, the Grant administration could no longer ignore a potential new El Dorado yet had no clear political course or easy decision. As fate had it, not the golden lure of the Black Hills but continuing troubles with the Sioux unleashed the army on the 1874 exploration that proclaimed the presence of gold there “from the grass roots down.”58 Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan, now commanding the Military Division of the Missouri in Chicago, spoke for the army’s interest in the Black Hills in his annual report for 1873, recommending “the erection of a large military post near the base of the Black Hills, at some good point. . . . In this way we could secure a strong foothold in the heart of the Sioux country, and thereby exercise a controlling

36

PRELUDE

influence over these warlike people.”59 Sheridan plainly viewed the army’s long-standing deployment on the margins of Sioux Country instead of in its interior as a critical military weakness—a limitation that in hindsight would greatly trouble him during the long course of the Great Sioux War. The pragmatism of Sheridan and the Grant administration was plainly evident, too, when Custer’s 1874 expedition counted among its members a geologist and several experienced miners. The economic potential of the Black Hills could no longer be ignored.60 Custer’s miners indeed found gold on French Creek in the central Black Hills, and news of this discovery spread quickly throughout the land. Within months a prospecting party from Sioux City led by John Gordon had wended its way west along the Nebraska-Dakota border and was living within a small stockade along the banks of French Creek near the site of Custer’s gold discovery. No one questioned whether this party was in the Black Hills illegally. The army and senior officials of Congress and the administration, including Grant, did openly wonder whether this emigration occurred with the consent of the Indian tribes holding that country. Of course, they knew the answer. Sheridan promptly ordered the miners’ eviction, which troops affected in March 1875, and the commencement of regular cavalry patrols of known and presumed routes to the Black Hills. This quickly proved to be challenging, nearly fruitless labor. The Dakota and Nebraska frontier was vast. While some prospecting parties were intercepted (most notably John Gordon’s in western Nebraska when he attempted a return in May 1875), many others successfully evaded the cordon, reached the diggings in the central Hills, and fueled the gold rush. The army’s interdiction efforts, frustrating as they were, reflected the administration’s policy of upholding the Fort Laramie Treaty and particularly the treaty provision that stipulated that “no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy” the Great Sioux Reservation, at least until the Black Hills could be acquired from the Sioux.61 A severance clause existed in the Fort Laramie Treaty that detailed a mechanism for the Indians to cede reservation lands. Before the Black Hills could be purchased from the Sioux, however,

LONG ROAD TO WAR

37

if that would somehow be possible, Grant needed a fair estimation of their worth. While Custer’s expedition discovered gold in 1874, its purpose was not to assess value. Consequently, in 1875 a second expedition was organized to determine the mineral worth of the Black Hills. That responsibility fell to a corps of geologists led by Walter P. Jenney and Henry Newton, both from the Columbia School of Mines in New York City. This pair and their assistants spent four months examining quartz outcroppings and panning the gravels of the central and northwestern Black Hills. (They traveled widely around Whitewood and Deadwood Creeks, ultimately the richest area in the Black Hills.) Jenney and Newton concluded that miners could make wages but that the placers presently being worked were not remarkably rich. As with the Custer expedition, however, practical miners accompanying the 1875 expedition found sufficient coarse gold to spike interest. Even soldiers among the expedition’s escort panned gold, as did the scores of interlopers that Jenney and Newton regularly encountered in nearly every gulch as they went about their survey. In the end the scientists’ tempered assessments were almost wholly ignored as public interest in Black Hills gold intensified.62 Black Hills boosterism was reaching a fevered pitch. Despite occasional interdictions of emigrants by troops from Forts Randall and Laramie and Camps Robinson and Sheridan, hundreds of civilians were proving adept at avoiding contact with the army and finding their way to the diggings. By the end of July 1875 Jenney estimated that one thousand to fifteen hundred miners were quietly working the streams of the central Black Hills. This increasingly distressed the administration, especially on the eve of dispatching commissioners to the Sioux agencies to negotiate the purchase of the area. To gain some measure of control over this alarming and unwieldy invasion of Indian country, Sheridan ordered Brigadier General George Crook, new commander of the Military Department of the Platte in Omaha, personally to visit the gulches and to exercise whatever measures he felt necessary to expel the miners before the commission commenced its labor.63 George Crook’s name would loom large in the coming Indian war but he had never served on the northern plains before and at

38

PRELUDE

that moment knew very little about the issues embroiling Sioux Country. A West Pointer, class of 1852, Crook had proved himself an indifferent student, graduating thirty-eighth in a class of fortythree but counting among his classmates David Stanley, Alexander McCook, August Kautz, and particularly Phil Sheridan, his closest friend at the academy and an Ohio country boy like himself. After West Point the quiet but intensely earnest new officer was posted to the West with the Fourth Infantry and swiftly embraced the rigors and opportunities of the frontier, participating almost immediately in the campaigns of the Rogue River War in Oregon in 1856 and Pit River War in California in 1857. Crook was wounded in the right hip by an Indian arrow in an engagement in California. As he tugged at the shaft, the flint detached. He recovered readily enough, but the arrowhead was never removed. He carried it to his grave.64 While in the West Crook developed an abiding interest in the culture and religion of the tribes with whom he had contact, joining a long line of Indian fighting officers paradoxically empathizing with the very Indians that they were obligingly warring against. Crook’s interest in the tribes and their welfare grew over the years and often put him at odds with superiors. In California he also demonstrated a considerable passion for hunting and fishing, avocations that conspicuously marked his life in the West. During the Civil War, Crook rose to the rank of major general of volunteers and led troops with distinction at South Mountain, Chickamauga, and in the Shenandoah and Appomattox campaigns, earning numerous brevets for gallant and meritorious service. He returned to the West after the war where he joined the Twenty-Third Infantry as its lieutenant colonel and led troops against Paiute Indians in the Great Basin. From 1872 until transferring to Nebraska in March 1875 he commanded the Department of Arizona and campaigned aggressively and innovatively against Apaches, resulting in considerable national attention and an astonishing leap in Regular Army grade from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. The approbation was well justified. The innovations that he honed in Indian campaigning, particularly in the desert Southwest, surfaced repeatedly in the forthcoming war with the Sioux.65

LONG ROAD TO WAR

39

Crook’s journey to the Black Hills in July 1875 was a notable effort but yielded only mixed results. He panned gold himself, located miners readily enough, and heard them out. Their exchanges were civil, he remembered, but the miners resented Crook’s interference, arguing that as sovereign citizens they had the right to do as they pleased. Crook was sympathetic but told the miners that their views could not be accommodated without violating the Sioux treaty and that until some new accord was made they must leave. He plastered a proclamation throughout the diggings that set a departure date of August 15 but also urged the miners to meet first in the budding Custer City hamlet on French Creek and draft resolutions that secured their claims for a presumed day when the gold country would be opened legally. Several hundred miners followed Crook out of the Black Hills. To deter others he established a small military outpost at Custer City, which he believed was sufficient to make it disagreeable if not dangerous for any prospectors who remained.66 The attempt to purchase the Black Hills from the Sioux proved a resounding failure. In mid-September a commission led by Iowa senator William B. Allison and counting among its members veteran negotiators from the 1860s (including Brigadier General Alfred Terry and the Reverend Samuel Hinman) met near Red Cloud Agency with Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and other headmen from the Oglala and Brulé bands. Present too, alarmingly enough, were many northern Indians who had come from the Powder River country. The discussions were turbulent. Both sides argued their positions, varying from no sale whatsoever to the lease of mineral rights to outright purchase of the Black Hills, so long as the necessary approval of three-fourths of the adult males of the Sioux tribes could be secured in conformance with the land cession provision of the treaty’s article 12. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail seemed inclined to sell, but the prices they asked ($30 million, $50 million) baffled the commissioners. Red Cloud also wanted food, clothing, guns, and ammunition for seven generations, while Spotted Tail demanded that the Sioux people be cared for as long as Indians lived. Allison offered $6 million, in fifteen annual installments, which some

40

PRELUDE

headmen seemed willing to accept, realistically believing that “the white men will take the country anyway.” Taunts and threats from the northerners ultimately soured the proceedings. After eight days of haggling and several moments of near mayhem, the negotiations collapsed. The commissioners departed, wholly frustrated and with no agreement in hand.67 Meanwhile the army’s interdiction efforts continued. As early as September 1874 Sheridan had directed commanders in the Dakota and Platte departments to intercept invading parties and “burn the[ir] wagon trains, destroy the outfit, and arrest the leaders.” That labor proceeded even while the Allison Commission stumbled. Sheridan’s directive particularly focused attention on points of embarkation such as Bismarck, Yankton, and Sioux City. Crook’s action in establishing Camp G. H. Collins at Custer City positioned troops in the very heart of the gold country. From that expedient camp the local commander, Captain Edwin Pollock, Ninth Infantry, repeatedly dispatched cavalry companies to the gulches north of and by Custer City in search of miners and other unauthorized persons, who were to be arrested and delivered to his camp. While these efforts disrupted some activity, determined Black Hillers and toiling miners were adept at avoiding contact. In the end Pollock and the army could not be everywhere, and the invasion continued apace.68 Conditions on the northern plains were spinning out of control. Grant faced increasing pressures to rein in the Sioux. Most of the unrest was attributed to the northern Indians, but eventually all of the Sioux and their friends were sucked into the maelstrom. Indian raiding across the vast periphery of the unceded territory continued. The northerners who had previously contested the Northern Pacific Railroad surveys now posed an intractable obstacle west of Bismarck. They also interfered with the management of the reservation Indians, appearing as they pleased for foodstuffs, annuities, trade wares, and munitions, and luring away disaffected agency residents. Now the northerners had sabotaged the sale of the Black Hills. The right to roam the Republican River countryside and the unceded territory, ostensibly for buffalo (envisioned in the treaty as a seasonal activity), made this possible. To whites,

LONG ROAD TO WAR

41

the Indians’ continued roaming emboldened the northerners, perpetuated the “old ways,” and frustrated every notion of acculturation contained in the 1868 treaty. The seeds of an ultimate Sioux war planted on the northern plains generations ago had fully matured and were nearing harvest.69

2 ✧✧✧✧

Pointing the Gun

T

he fomenting Black Hills Crisis took a decisive turn on November 3, 1875, at a meeting called by President Grant at the White House. Joining the president that Wednesday were Secretary of War William Belknap, Secretary of the Interior Zachariah Chandler, Chandler’s assistant secretary, Benjamin R. Cowan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Edward P. Smith, and Generals Sheridan and Crook. Noticeably absent was General Sherman, commander of the army, who was embroiled in yet another feud with Belknap over administrative matters within the army and enduring a self-imposed exile in Saint Louis. General Terry, commander of the Dakota Department, was absent too, sick in Saint Paul. The conference’s proceedings were not recorded, and Sheridan almost immediately proclaimed them “confidential.” The silence that he achieved and the span of years between then and now have muted the discussions, frustrating anyone wishing to gain a clearer sense of the day’s conversations and momentous decisions. Yet Sheridan and Crook both quietly mentioned the gathering soon afterward and in each instance provided a few details. Other minor particulars can be gleaned from brief dispatches appearing in many of the nation’s major newspapers within a day or two. As today, any meeting involving the president was newsworthy. The points of discussion, however, were evident in the flurry 42

POINTING THE GUN

43

of orders emanating from the Platte and Dakota departments over the next several weeks as critical decisions made at the White House on November 3 were implemented by the Interior Department and War Department.1 Most certainly Grant and the secretaries and generals discussed the Black Hills gold rush and related escalating difficulties on the northern plains. Grant knew that he was cornered. He understood that the infusion of Black Hills gold into crippled national financial markets and the relief afforded by a gold rush to an underemployed population served the nation’s economic interests. Of the attendees, only General Crook had firsthand knowledge of the situation in the Black Hills, having toured there barely two months earlier. His recollections of face-to-face encounters with miners and their assertions of sovereign rights to go and do as they pleased surely resonated with Grant and the others. The old frontier maxim bellowed by the miners that it was not just them violating the treaty but the Indians too resonated as well. Very visible stock raiding and other predatory incursions against settlers throughout Sioux Country were well publicized. To the attendees, the Black Hills amounted to straightforward and extremely desirable property on the national landscape. The conferees did not seem to grasp in even the slightest way the innate importance of the Black Hills to the Sioux and their Northern Cheyenne allies. For nearly a century these Indians had embraced the Black Hills as their “meat pack,” a veritable food reserve of animals, plants, minerals, and water. They had repeatedly expressed this in their meetings with the Allison Commission in September. Furthermore, both tribes believed that this place of mountains and buttes, caves and canyons, and springs and rivers possessed mystic value and sacredness far beyond the comprehension of most Americans of the time. To the northern Indians, the Black Hills, which of course lay within the bounds of the Great Sioux Reservation, were another integral feature of a land worth fighting for.2 While Indian concerns about meat packs and sacredness held no currency in the White House, Grant acknowledged that he could not openly ignore the guarantees and prohibitions in the Fort Laramie Treaty and would not rescind previous orders forbidding the

44

PRELUDE

occupation of the Black Hills by miners. But he finessed the matter by quietly ordering the withdrawal of the army from its policing duties and permitting the rush to ensue. The attempted purchase of the Black Hills had failed, but perhaps a flood of prospectors would influence the Sioux to negotiate after all. Within days Sheridan passed word to Terry to withdraw the troops engaged in policing actions in his Department of Dakota, and Crook affected the same in the Department of the Platte, including ordering the abrupt withdrawal of Captain Pollock’s infantry and cavalry companies from Custer City on November 8, coyly covering that departure with expressed concerns over snow and cold weather. Those were the last troops in the Hills, and their withdrawal surprised and confused the miners. The army clearly would not impede the Black Hills gold rush any longer.3 The White House conferees certainly discussed the northern Indians, the lure of the unceded territory, buffalo, and the continuing bloodshed and disruptions in Montana, Wyoming, and Dakota. The various Fort Laramie treaties had obliged the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho people to submit themselves at an agency somewhere, where the forces of acculturation would be at work. Yet only a few of the northerners were treaty people. Instead these northerners held steadfastly to the old ways and were joined by other Indians who passed freely between the agencies and the buffalo country. In Indian Country in November 1875 it was hard to find much commitment to the white man’s road. The Interior Department had grown weary over this untenable situation. Grant and the others with him that day agreed that the northern people must submit and conceived an ultimatum. On December 3 Secretary Chandler instructed Commissioner Smith to order the Sioux Indians living beyond the bounds of the reservation to remove themselves to their respective agencies before January 31, 1876, and remain there or be “regarded as hostile and turned over to the military.” Smith’s communiqué to the Indian agents at Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Cheyenne River, and elsewhere on the Great Sioux Reservation followed on December 6, echoing Chandler virtually wordfor-word. Smith’s letter was the official edict upon which the Great Sioux War was grounded.4

POINTING THE GUN

45

Before the historic White House meeting drew to a close, Grant, Sheridan, and Crook discussed the likelihood of an all-out war with the Sioux. Crook later quoted Grant as saying that the Sioux must go to their reservation “or be whipped,” an outcome that the president actually had been contemplating for some time and for that reason had summoned Sheridan to the White House a month earlier. Sheridan, however, was then honeymooning in San Francisco and could not reach Washington before November 2. The military side of Indian affairs on the Great Plains was wholly within the command of Sheridan, who ruled his vast Military Division of the Missouri with an iron resolve. He had just successfully concluded the all-out Red River War with the Southern Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas. In that year-long affair the southern plains had been swept clean of those Indians, forcing them onto reservations in the Indian Territory and imprisoning a number of key leaders. If the northern Indians refused the Indian Bureau’s entreaties, Sheridan made it plain enough to Grant that he was fully prepared to unleash the forces in Crook’s and Terry’s respective departments and work to achieve the same outcome on the northern plains.5 Grant approved of war. So too did Interior Secretary Chandler and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Smith. Like Grant, Smith had come to accept the inevitability of an all-out war with Sitting Bull and the nontreaty Sioux even before the White House conference convened. He said as much in his annual report to the interior secretary on November 1, declaring the probable necessity of compelling the northern nontreaty Sioux to cease marauding and settle down. All along, Sheridan doubted the Indians’ willingness to comply with a summons and stood ready and eager to unleash his army and conquer the Sioux on battlefields wherever a war might lead. The ultimatum was a pretext for war, and everyone knew it.6

✧✧✧✧ In Indian Country the notion of outright immediate submission at an agency or facing the consequences was a farce from the start. Timing was its own issue. After receiving Smith’s communiqué, the reservation agents forwarded the summons with due diligence,

46

PRELUDE

dispatching runners to Sioux and Cheyenne camps throughout the Yellowstone and Powder River countryside. But not every agent received Smith’s directive at the same time. The Cheyenne River and Standing Rock agents received the message on December 20 and 22, respectively, which consequently narrowed the compliance windows for the bands that they communicated with to five weeks or less. The difficulties of cross-country travel in December and January in the season of poor grazing, bitter cold, deep snow, and crippling northers were well known. The winter of 1875–76 was exceedingly severe, a detail appearing in Reynolds’s campaign reports after the Powder River fight and in Indian recollections of their whereabouts that winter. This is evident even in the travels of the Standing Rock Agency courier, who did not return to his Missouri River home until February 11, well after the submission deadline had come and gone.7 Despite these problems, the northern bands received and duly considered the summons. To believe otherwise, somehow embracing the notion that the bands were caught unaware and simply did not know what the government was demanding, is to ignore the testimony of Indian informants. In fact most bands, like the Cheyennes, received word of the summons many times. Their responses certainly varied. Some bands rejected it out of hand, even contemptuously. Others acknowledged receiving the summons but responded that they were hunting buffalo in the unceded territory and were unable to return before spring, a right guaranteed by treaty. That response, of course, could be either the truth or a ruse. Other recipients were truly puzzled. Why, they wondered, would the government use force to compel a new way of life? Even the use of the January 31 deadline created confusion, a point especially apparent in hindsight. While the deadline provided Sheridan with a justification for war, in Indian Country the date conveyed no urgency and had little meaning. Moreover, any band appearing at an agency in February, March, or April, whether returning from a hunt or legitimately heeding the call and coming in as best they could, would not have become a target in the field. The sanctity of the reservation changed after Little Big Horn, and the Slim Buttes fight in September 1876 in western Dakota Territory actually

POINTING THE GUN

47

occurred on the reservation itself. But at the start, as the Great Sioux War unfolded, Sheridan’s army made war on Indians within the unceded country. The mere presence of Indians there became its own justification. Even then nothing was so simple, and the Cheyennes at Powder River are a fair example of this.8 John Q. Smith, commissioner of Indian affairs (succeeding Edward P. Smith on December 11, 1876), obliged his Sioux agents to forward news of Indian intentions and movements “by letter and telegraph.” Washington and Chicago needed to know. Smith, like his predecessor, particularly focused on the reaction of Sitting Bull, the best known and most visible and charismatic of the northern Indians. Sitting Bull did not come in, and no one had expected him to do so. But no other bands came in either. On February 1 Interior Secretary Chandler informed Secretary of War Belknap that, because none of the Indians had complied with Smith’s ultimatum, “the said Indians are hereby turned over to the War Department for such action on the part of the Army as you may deem proper.” Sheridan could now proceed with his war of conquest.9

✧✧✧✧ The Northern Cheyennes were subjected to Commissioner Smith’s summons too. They had long ago aligned themselves with the Oglala Sioux, with whom they had developed many common bonds through marriage and kinship and had grown to consider each other close friends. This alliance often confused white people, because the similarities between the two tribes in outlook, habits, and appearance were so striking. The Northern Cheyenne language had even assimilated a great many Lakota words. By now the tribe had loosely attached itself to the Red Cloud Agency on the White River in Nebraska in conformance with one of the requirements in its own Fort Laramie Treaty, obliging them to affiliate with a northern agency somewhere. And the Northern Cheyennes were among those Indians who freely divided their time between their agency and the buffalo country. As with the Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne treaty had conceded “the right to roam and hunt while

48

PRELUDE

game shall be found in sufficient quantities to justify the chase.”10 In 1875 the Northern Cheyennes and Sioux had further cemented their alliance in a communal Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek that resonated with the theme of intertribal unity. There the visionary Sitting Bull intoned: “The Great Spirit has given our enemies to us. We are to destroy them. We do not know who they are. They may be soldiers.” The next winter, when Red Cloud agent James S. Hastings received Smith’s directive, he dispatched several couriers northward, including to the Cheyenne camp (then reportedly located on the Powder River some hundred miles beyond Bear Butte).11 In reality there were several Cheyenne camps beyond Bear Butte or, more precisely, south of the Yellowstone River in the Powder River and Tongue River countryside. Varying in size from thirty or forty lodges to two hundred or more, most of those camps were legitimately engaged in gathering buffalo robes and meat. A few Cheyenne warriors spent the fall and early winter with Miniconjou Sioux who were actively harassing a clutch of white men then corralled at Fort Pease, a small traders’ and wolfers’ stockade constructed that summer on the north bank of the Yellowstone just below the mouth of the Big Horn River. Other Cheyennes had just come from Red Cloud Agency and possessed new canvas tipis received there and also a supply of goods, including canisters of gunpowder, which they intended to trade to the Sioux. Mostly, however, the Cheyennes kept to themselves or stayed near their close friends the Oglalas. They spent the early winter on Otter Creek, a secluded forty-mile-long tributary of the Tongue River. The Tongue and all of its side streams were intermittently wooded and offered seclusion, reliable water, adequate grazing, and bounteous hunting.12 The surrounding countryside was dotted with Indian camps. Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapas wintered on the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Powder, and Miniconjous, Sans Arcs, Oglalas, and other Cheyennes wintered west of the Powder on the middle reaches of the Tongue, very near the eastern boundary of the Crow Reservation. These were the sometimes hastily abandoned camps that baffled Crook’s and Reynolds’s scouts in the days immediately preceding the Powder River fight. As yet the Indians felt no

POINTING THE GUN

49

particular threat from the whites at all but were on a constant alert for the Crows, who ceaselessly thieved their horses. Wooden Leg, a warrior in the Elkhorn Scrapers Society and later a chronicler of this remarkable time in Cheyenne history, recalled the general ease in the Indian camps and the freedom of movement between the reservation and hunting grounds. Bands were always coming and going, he remembered, even in winter. In all, the northern Indians seemed oblivious to the forces gathering against them.13 While none of the Cheyennes immediately heeded the government’s call to abandon their winter camps and make their way to Red Cloud Agency, news coming from Nebraska in February raised concerns. Last Bull, head chief of the Kit Fox Society, led his family to Old Bear’s camp late that month with dire news: “Soldiers are coming to fight you.” He explained that the army intended to fight all Cheyennes and Sioux who were off the reservation. He did not know what forts they were coming from or who would lead them, but he had heard the talk at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies of soldiers there seeking to recruit Indians and mixedbloods to hunt other Indians. This talk of war was true, Last Bull assured them. The chiefs and elders discussed the warning but at first did not believe it. The Cheyennes were hunting as their treaty allowed and were not warring against the whites; in fact most were trying hard to avoid them.14 Then came a measure of reality. News of soldiers marching eastward along the Yellowstone River from Fort Ellis (near Bozeman) in late February passed among the northern camps and served to heighten anxiety. During the fall and winter the northern Indians had laid siege to Fort Pease (the perturbing little civilian stockade on the Yellowstone), killing six and wounding eight of its two dozen occupants. Heeding a plea for military intervention, a contingent of cavalry and infantry towing a twelve-pounder bronze field gun (a heralded Napoleon) led by Major James S. Brisbin of the Second Cavalry was ordered to the citizens’ relief. Brisbin’s action was only barely associated with Sheridan’s evolving Sioux War strategy, and no shots were fired during the brief deployment. Yet the notion of soldiers coming to fight gained a ring of immediacy and authenticity.15

50

PRELUDE

The threat and reality of troops in the buffalo country spurred many Northern Cheyennes to action. In early March Chiefs Old Bear, Box Elder, and Black Eagle led some sixty lodges of Indians from the Tongue River eastward over the broad divide into the valley of the Powder River, moving steadily upstream to a place some forty miles above the mouth of Little Powder River. Traveling with them were some Miniconjous plus ten lodges of Oglalas, a portion of the Soreback band led by He Dog. He Dog, thirty-six, a prominent chief among the Oglalas and an intimate acquaintance of Crazy Horse, had also received the warning of war from a friend named Crawler, who had come out from Red Cloud Agency. The number of lodges at Powder River was later estimated at nearly one hundred, likely including some wickiups and sweat lodges, and the camp’s population was thought to number 735, including perhaps 210 men of fighting age. The new campsite was well sheltered in a long, wide stand of leafless cottonwood trees that filled the floodplain west of the river. It was the Northern Cheyenne season of the Light Snow Moon (March) and spring grasses were slowly emerging on the broad bench west above the camp, on the floodplain south of the tipis, and east of the river, helping to sustain the camp’s sizable pony herd. Soon after the Indians arrived, however, a late winter storm struck the valley and covered the smokestained buffalo skin and canvas tipis with a new blanket of deep snow. Most of the villagers believed that it was a good time to stay close to camp.16 A number of chiefs and band leaders were counted in the Powder River camp, including Box Elder (also known as Maple Tree), now a nearly blind old man who was no longer chief of the Northern So’taaeo’o Band but still held the position of a council chief; and Black Eagle, chief of the Scabby Band and also a council chief. The acknowledged patriarch among them was Old Bear, fiftyfour, one of four Northern Cheyenne “Old Man Chiefs.” Only scattered tidbits illuminate this accomplished figure in early tribal history. His aura as a venerable Old Man Chief, however, suggests an individual of striking maturity, courage, skills in the ways of war, abundant wisdom, and kindness, qualities possessed by only

POINTING THE GUN

51

a few and especially striking in this tumultuous time in Northern Cheyenne history.17 Foremost, Old Bear was an unwavering conservative. An army officer who knew him slightly in the early 1870s labeled Old Bear and his band “irreconcilables, who persisted in maintaining an attitude of hostility towards the whites.” Old Bear’s involvement with the Bozeman Trail War is acknowledged, though he is not known to have participated in the Fort Laramie Treaty proceedings. He was not among the signers of the 1868 Northern Cheyenne treaty, although Little Wolf and Morning Star (other Old Man Chiefs) were. His name is associated with the attack on a freighter’s train south of Fort Fetterman on May 1, 1872, and the separate killing on the same day of Sergeant James Mularkey of the Fourteenth Infantry on LaBonte Creek while escorting the Fetterman mail. He is also linked to the murders of the Jordan family in western Kansas in August 1872, while reportedly then visiting southern kin at Fort Supply, Indian Territory. Old Bear’s travels also took him occasionally to the margins of Red Cloud Agency, where in August 1875 he was acknowledged as a taciturn witness to meetings with government commissioners investigating affairs there. Old Bear was embittered over the invasion of the Black Hills but counseled that it was wisest to avoid all contact with the whites and spoke against war with them. All this suggests a cautious, fervent traditionalist, who shunned contact with the whites and embraced above all the unfettered freedom of life in the buffalo country.18 Soon after settling in along the Powder, three other Cheyenne chiefs (Spotted Wolf, Medicine Wolf, and Twin) who had spent the winter on the reservation visited the camp and once again warned the people, as had Last Bull, that soldiers were coming to fight them and that they needed to move to the White River. The new warning was thoroughly discussed, but Old Bear, Box Elder, and Black Eagle decided to stay where they were, proclaiming: “If soldiers come we shall steal their horses. Then they cannot fight us.”19 Yet apprehension gripped the camp. Hunting and scouting parties were on the lookout for soldiers and their trails. Women and children were poised for flight. Prized possessions were tied

52

PRELUDE

up in bundles and made ready to be snatched up at the first warning of an attack. The camp was also visited by Little Wolf, another of the tribe’s Old Man Chiefs. Little Wolf was also the Northern Cheyenne Sweet Medicine Chief, meaning that he presided at major councils. Traveling alone, Little Wolf likely came to visit his relative Box Elder. Little Wolf was a brave man, and many in the camp were comforted knowing that he would help protect the people if soldiers attacked. Yet no one wanted a fight. As Two Moon recollected, he and the Cheyennes wished to avoid the soldiers, for “they are never good when they come on marches for that purpose [meaning to make war]. They fight any Indian they run onto.”20 A bitterly cold, near-moonless night descended on Powder River. Except for small curls of cottonwood smoke rising from the Cheyenne lodges, the camp was buried in a mantle of tall leafless trees and snow and locked in an ethereal quiet almost as if abandoned. But a new day was coming, bringing with it new prospects: March 17, 1876.

3 ✧✧✧✧

Organizing a Campaign

G

eorge Crook took warmly to the notion of having become one of the army’s Wunderkinder in the dangerous business of Indian warfare. The forty-five-year-old brigadier general’s reputation had grown steadily since the days of the Civil War, burnished after he successfully stormed the Great Basin in the late 1860s and Arizona in the early 1870s in decisive campaigns against Paiutes and Apaches. Crook’s successes kept him in the public eye and endeared him to superiors, including John Schofield in San Francisco and Phil Sheridan in Chicago and now the president himself. Crook and Grant had known each since their days of service together in California before the war. Grant, nine years Crook’s senior, had thoughtfully shepherded him thereafter, bringing him to the Army of the Potomac as chief of cavalry late in the war and approving his move to Arizona in 1871 and his unusual leap from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general in 1873. At the White House conference Crook was Grant’s steadiest counselor on the Black Hills, already demonstrating an able grip on the affairs of the Department of the Platte, with its many Black Hills connections. He provided critical firsthand descriptions of the gulches, having panned for gold there and taken the pulse of cagey prospectors. Grant and the army viewed Crook’s successes and unorthodoxies in Indian campaigning as transferable to the Platte and 53

54

PRELUDE

counted him, like Custer, among a small coterie of officers ideally suited for the looming campaign. They appreciated Crook’s nononsense style in dress and habit and his willingness to lead by example. In his campaigns he indeed pushed his troops as hard as he pushed himself, often into the realm of extreme privation. He embraced winter campaigning, where the hardships that he suffered were no less than the misery inflicted on his foe. Crook believed fervently in using Indian trackers in the field and especially members of the same tribe being pursued, a concept not particularly original in Indian warfare but refined by Crook. He outfitted his Indian allies as he did his soldiers, paid them the same, and valued their individuality, prowess, and endurance. The army also embraced Crook’s innovative uses of veteran packers and pack trains, enabling his troops to achieve remarkable mobility in extreme landscapes far beyond the ordinary tether of conventional wagons. Much was expected of Crook in his new assignment. Failure was unimagined.1 Among the troops at Crook’s disposal in the Department of the Platte were several regiments personally familiar to him. He had been a company grade officer in the Fourth Infantry before the war. Now that regiment was scattered at posts across Wyoming, including Fort Fetterman, the army’s gateway to the Powder River country. Much had changed in the regiment in the intervening years as the war took a dreadful toll, just as it had on all the Regular Army units. Few veterans from Crook’s day remained, although their reputations and memories lingered. After the war Crook served as lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-Third Infantry. That regiment trailed him to Arizona in early 1872 and played a significant role in his Apache campaigns. In the army’s ordinary shuffling of regiments from time to time, the Twenty-Third preceded Crook to the Department of the Platte and was now posted at garrisons from Omaha to Cheyenne. He knew and respected its officers, and they respected him. Crook also had two cavalry regiments under his command, including headquarters and eight companies of the Second (the unit’s four other companies had been stationed in the Department of Dakota since 1869, becoming the renowned “Montana Battalion”), and headquarters and all twelve

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

55

companies of the Third. The two regiments were deployed to posts in western Nebraska and Wyoming. Elements of both were nearly continuously in the field, tending Black Hills surveyors and treaty commissioners or chasing Indians. Before its transfer to the Platte, the Third Cavalry had also briefly campaigned in Arizona with Crook. So he was familiar with the Third and most of its officers, including Colonel Joseph Jones Reynolds, with whom he had associations dating to the Civil War. Like all senior officers, Crook appreciated the inherent mobility and versatility of cavalry. When war came he drew disproportionately from these mounted units, although virtually every company of every regiment in the department, foot and mounted, took its turn at the front as the conflict raged on.2 In his new assignment Crook was surrounded by an able corps of staff officers and aides. Some were veterans of the department, like Major Horace B. Burnham, judge advocate, and Major John E. Summers, medical director, who had both served Crook’s predecessor, Brigadier General E. O. C. Ord. Other staff members were new and arrived about when Crook did, including Lieutenant Colonel Robert Williams, department adjutant general and Crook’s chief administrative assistant, and Major Marshall I. Ludington, department quartermaster. These officers would play important supporting roles in the coming campaign and its interminable aftermath. Crook’s personal aides-de-camp, Captain Azor H. Nickerson, Twenty-Third Infantry, and Second Lieutenant John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, had been affiliated with him in Arizona. Harsh duty there aggravated Nickerson’s already frail health (he had been grievously wounded at Gettysburg), which limited his role in the coming Sioux war. Thirty-year-old Bourke was a vigorous intellectual, West Point graduate (1869), and devoted diarist privy to nearly all of Crook’s thoughts and decisions. Bourke campaigned tirelessly throughout the Sioux war and ultimately became Crook’s devoted biographer, with the highly successful memoir On the Border with Crook (1891). One other officer from Crook’s Arizona days now also served in the department. Major Thaddeus H. Stanton of the Pay Department met Crook in 1871. During the Sioux war the two would form a close and enduring friendship. Stanton

56

PRELUDE

now served as a department paymaster based in Cheyenne. When Crook went to the field in March, Stanton went along, fought valiantly at Powder River, and expected others to do the same. He had Crook’s ear and ultimately became Reynolds’s most intractable critic.3

✧✧✧✧ On November 9, 1875, Erwin C. Watkins, U.S. Indian inspector in the office of the commissioner of Indian affairs, filed a blistering report to Commissioner Smith on the volatile state of affairs in Sioux Country, gained from a personal tour of western Dakota and eastern Montana. This was a rich hunting ground, a virtual “paradise,” he conceded, affording game of such variety that Sitting Bull’s band and other Sioux had no need for government aid whatsoever and thus had never been brought under control. Moreover, they were rich in horses and robes and thoroughly armed. These people, Watkins thought, were openly defiant of law and authority and boasted that the government was not strong enough to conquer them. Moreover, they held United States troops in utter contempt. Watkins also believed that these were only a few hundred warriors who were never together and never under the control of a single chief. All of this was disquieting enough, but it was Watkins’s recommendations that stirred Washington the most. One thousand men under the command of an experienced officer should be sent into this country in the winter to “whip them into subjection” and “the sooner the better.”4 Watkins’s fiery letter had reached the army within a month and by December 13 had been passed to Sheridan, who forwarded it to Crook and Terry. The three exchanged views, agreeing that wintertime operations could be undertaken and would be decisive and also that troops in the respective departments were sufficient to undertake such movements. Terry quickly equivocated, acknowledging the impracticalities of a wintertime campaign in Dakota, where that season’s storms had brought movement of every sort to a virtual halt. Crook was not similarly handicapped and recognized that Union Pacific trains still ran on time. While the army

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

57

had not yet been unleashed to wage war on the northern Indians, with Sheridan’s encouragement, Crook immediately commenced purposeful planning.5 Some elements of campaign orchestration were simpler than others. Crook could delegate much to his department staff, allowing Major John P. Hawkins of the Commissary and Subsistence Department to tend to the requisitioning and shipping of foodstuffs and Captain Martin L. Poland of the Ordnance Department to oversee the procurement of ordnance. These men, including the department’s quartermaster, were comfortable with forms, material, transportation, ration ratios, forage requirements, and elements of logistics. Needed stores were directed to the department’s Cheyenne Depot, located on a Union Pacific spur by Fort D. A. Russell. Whether at their posts or in the field, troops and mounts received standard fare. Pistol, carbine, and rifle munitions were standard issue too. Basics and overages were easily determined, making much of the department’s work a matter of simple calculation, requisition, and follow-through. Crook took a greater interest in quartermaster requisitioning, ordinarily the responsibility of department quartermaster Ludington. This was the realm of wagons, grain, horses, mules, packsaddles, packers, and his coveted Indian trackers, all quartermaster business, and nearly all elements of a “Crook style” Indian campaign. Over the next six weeks telegrams flew to Crook’s regimental commanders, inquiring about the numbers of horses required to fill out cavalry companies; to post commanders ordering wagons and teams in excess of local needs to be concentrated at Cheyenne Depot for campaign use; and to company commanders advising on sources of blankets, boots, drawers, and such and by implication prescribing a standard outfit for winter campaigning.6 Crook particularly relished the details associated with packers and mules, an obsession that Bourke later called the great study of Crook’s life. He probably knew mules as a farm boy in Ohio but said nothing about that in his autobiography. He described and praised mules as a saving grace in his ride across the isthmus of Nicaragua en route to his first assignment in California. During that tour and certainly during the Civil War his appreciation for

58

PRELUDE

mules as beasts of burden and reliable mounts for infantry and himself grew. Although intractable in the hands of inexperienced handlers, if managed well mules were agile and strong, capable of going farther, carrying more at a faster pace, and eating less than either of its parents (an ass and a mare).7 Crook’s sense of mules, pack trains, and packers was especially well honed in his Arizona tour where, as Bourke recalled, he first encountered unsavory pack masters addicted to alcohol and illsorted collections of bony equine giants and undersized Sonoran “rats,” whose withers were always a mass of sores. He phased out the hard cases and replaced them with healthy, well-groomed animals and jealously devoted handlers. This transformation was especially keyed on two individuals: chief packer Thomas Moore and Moore’s lifelong sidekick, David Mears, two veteran frontiersmen who went to California in 1849 and thereafter made mule handling and packing in the West their lifelong pursuit. Both served Crook in Idaho and Oregon and again in the Apache campaigns. At the conclusion of the Great Sioux War the affable and surprisingly scholarly Moore wrote the definitive treatise on pack train management, penning an initial draft at Camp Robinson that was published in May 1877 by the Department of the Platte and hence reprinted often and embraced as the pack master’s bible. Interestingly enough, despite Crook’s firm admiration of mules, on the coming campaign he rode a horse.8 Crook invited Moore and Mears to Cheyenne in January 1876 to organize transportation for the coming campaign. The men brought with them from Arizona three organized trains, including mules, bell horses, pack masters, cargadors, horseshoers, cooks, packers, and uniquely fitted pack saddles known as aparejos, and set about expanding the outfit. As in the case of horses, wagons, and soldier equipments, telegrams flooded department offices over the next month, calling in mules from distant posts to Cheyenne Depot, grousing to Sheridan repeatedly about the struggle to obtain enough animals, and eventually seeking authority to purchase eighty mules at $100 per animal to complete the expanded train.9 Thus far Crook’s preparations for war with the Sioux still had the tone of an academic exercise, despite a looming deadline and

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

59

a known mission. Through Sherman and Sheridan, Crook was privy to the continuing political machinations at the highest levels in Washington. When the submission deadline of January 31, 1876, passed, everyone knew that it had yielded nothing. Washington waited no longer. On February 1 the Department of the Interior requested the War Department’s intervention to bring Sitting Bull’s Indians to heel. On February 3 the War Department acknowledged the Interior Department’s letter and notified it that the General of the Army had been directed to take immediate measures to compel those Indians to return and remain upon the reservation. In his annual report Sherman described the moment bluntly: “General Sheridan .  .  . instructed General Crook to proceed to reduce these Indians to subjection.” Terry and the Department of Dakota were not yet engaged. The first movement of the Sioux war and any success derived belonged to Crook alone.10 By now Crook had given considerable thought to the composition of his expedition and its leadership. The posts nearest the old Bozeman Trail (Forts Sanders, D. A. Russell, and Laramie) would yield most or all of their cavalry companies. Fort Fetterman would provide not only its lone cavalry unit but also two of its three infantry companies to create an expedition of twelve companies: ten of cavalry and two of infantry. Of the mounted force, half of the expedition’s companies were ordered from the Second regiment and half from the Third. The Fourth Infantry provided the foot troops, chiefly intended for camp and wagon support. Indian inspector Erwin Watkins had imagined a Sioux expedition of one thousand men. Crook, doubtless with Sheridan’s full concurrence, seemingly focused on Watkins’s estimation of a foe numbering not more than a few hundred warriors and accordingly fashioned an expedition numbering about six hundred men, a ratio seemingly well favoring the army.11 To command the expedition Crook chose Colonel Reynolds of the Third Cavalry, a fairly logical selection in a realm of few alternatives. The choice was made with simple motives, including Crook’s wish to have a senior cavalry officer at his side leading troops in the field. This was largely a cavalry command, so Crook’s senior infantry officers from the four regiments in the department

60

PRELUDE

(the Fourth, Ninth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-Third) were probably never considered. Before the war’s end only one would go to the field: Lieutenant Colonel Richard I. Dodge of the Twenty-Third. Fifty-two-year-old Colonel Innis N. Palmer of the Second Cavalry, commanding that regiment at Fort Sanders, may have been considered and perhaps also William B. Royall and Albert G. Brackett, respective lieutenant colonels of the Third and Second. Of these other cavalry officers, only Royall would eventually serve with Crook in 1876 (but not now). Reynolds recalled learning of his assignment in a confidential letter from Crook dated February 8, 1876, wherein Crook identified the troops in the expedition and offered “some directions as to fitting them out &c.”12 The mutton-chopped, balding, and by then rather stout Reynolds was fifty-four and still eight years shy of the army’s compulsory retirement age. A bookish soldier, at West Point he graduated tenth of thirty-nine in the class of 1843 and counted among his closest friends classmate Ulysses Grant. Reynolds served in Texas during the buildup to the Mexican War but returned to West Point in 1846 as an instructor in the departments of geography, history, ethics, and natural and experimental philosophy, an appointment that he held for nine years. In 1857 he resigned his commission to accept a position as professor of mechanics and engineering at Washington University in Saint Louis, where he was particularly remembered for his effort in supporting Grant’s application for a civilian position in Saint Louis County. Grant did not land the job, but Reynolds’s support was never forgotten.13 At the outbreak of the Civil War, Reynolds secured a colonelcy in an Indiana infantry regiment and in due course was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and then major general of volunteers in assignments that alternated between administration and the field. While commanding a division in the Fourteenth Corps of the Army of the Cumberland in 1863, Crook served briefly as one of Reynolds’s brigade commanders, but neither seems to have made a strong impression on the other. The wife of another brigadier remembered Reynolds “as an honest man, modest and courteous, without the sign of the impudence and rudeness of the

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

61

Americans, in his manners or in the discharge of his official duties.” (She and her husband were Russian born.) Reynolds and Crook both fought at Chickamauga but in widely separate sectors and different commands. Reynolds was brevetted for gallant and meritorious service there, but his contributions are debated. At one stage of the battle he was remembered for losing all taste for combat and openly discussing surrender and for hastily retiring from the battlefield. His assignments thereafter were administrative. After the war Reynolds returned to the Regular Army, gaining a coveted colonelcy, first with the Twenty-Sixth Infantry, then with the Twenty-Fifth, and eventually with the Third Cavalry.14 Detached service kept Reynolds away from the Third during its Arizona days. He was then in command of the Department of Texas in his volunteer rank. That assignment might have been extended had he not become embroiled in a heated dispute with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie of the Fourth Cavalry, who accused him of fraudulent practices in the disbursement of army contracts. The charges against Reynolds were unfounded, but his reputation was sullied. In November 1871 he was ordered to rejoin his regiment, then in the midst of transferring from Arizona to Nebraska and Wyoming. When Crook, in turn, transferred to the Department of the Platte in 1875, Reynolds commanded the regiment at Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne. It is generally believed today that Crook’s tapping him for command of this Sioux expedition was based solely on providing Reynolds an opportunity to redeem his reputation, especially in light of Reynolds’s political connections. Bourke suggested as much in On the Border with Crook: “Crook was very kindly disposed towards General Reynolds, and wanted to give him every chance to make a brilliant reputation for himself and retrieve the past,” and it may indeed have been that simple.15 Reynolds almost assuredly welcomed the redemption, because he otherwise suffered from debilitating infirmities that easily would have been grounds for refusal of this command and in fact eased his retirement from the army a year later. In a cross-country march in 1846 from Corpus Christie to Fort Brown, on the Rio Grande, Reynolds had incurred an inguinal hernia on the right side that

62

PRELUDE

obliged him permanently to wear a strong truss to overcome the relaxation of his abdominal wall, a condition that one surgeon noted only worsened with age. The affliction was compounded by chronic ulcerations of the scrotum incurred after injuries to his left testicle in West Virginia early in the war and to his right testicle in Texas in 1871. Injuries of the sort suffered in the line of duty were regarded by the army as sufficient reason for retirement on account of disability. Major John F. Randolph, Fort D. A. Russell’s surgeon, professionally advised Reynolds against commanding the coming expedition, regarding it “as almost suicidal on his part to undertake.” The colonel surely discussed the matter with Crook but must have minimized it. Participants in the campaign describe Reynolds as an old soldier but not a sickly old man. And he was proud too, later lamenting that “after being in the saddle for a long time and not having opportunity for bathing frequently chaffing occurs from the wearing of my truss, and severe pain in my testicles . . . , but I had to continue riding. I would have taken an ambulance on our striking the wagon train at old Fort Reno, but I persisted in riding on horseback as long as the troops were in the field.”16 Before departing Omaha for Cheyenne and the campaign, Crook tended several other final details, including an order on February 15 for assistant surgeon and Captain Curtis E. Munn from Camp Robinson to report to the field as the campaign’s chief medical officer. Munn departed Robinson the next day for Fort Laramie, where he drew and packed an array of medical supplies from the post’s hospital stores. A Vermont native, Munn was forty years old and had served as a hospital steward early in the Civil War and then as a surgeon with a succession of Massachusetts infantry regiments. He gained a Regular Army commission in 1868 and served in the Department of Dakota and Division of the Atlantic before being ordered to the Department of the Platte in 1875 for duty at Camp Robinson. Munn had an exacting personality, which some fellow officers considered prickly. His official report of the campaign is both precise and vivid.17 With troops, stores, packers, mules, horses, wagons, and a surgeon in motion, Crook and Bourke departed Omaha on February 17,

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

63

traveling by the Union Pacific to Cheyenne in the company of paymaster Stanton, Captain Frederick Van Vliet of the Third Cavalry, and Ben Clark from the Indian Territory. It was at Sheridan’s suggestion that Crook secured Clark’s services as a guide, and Sheridan’s headquarters made the arrangements. A revered all-purpose plainsman much like William F. Cody, Clark was a particular friend of Custer and Sheridan and a keen outdoorsman like Crook. While not at all acquainted with the Big Horn country, he had a natural aptitude for learning about new localities and thrived in the companionship of field service. In Cheyenne over the next several days Crook and Bourke immersed themselves in the commotion of a gold rush and looming Indian war. At their lodging at the Inter-Ocean Hotel, Cheyenne’s newest and most elegantly appointed accommodation, Crook received Colonel Reynolds, Tom Moore, and Colonel Innis Palmer from Fort Sanders at Laramie City, officers from Fort Russell and Cheyenne Depot, and eventually a reporter from the local newspaper, all seeking information about the coming campaign.18 The Cheyenne Daily Leader was Wyoming’s pioneer newspaper and a fanatical voice for the Black Hills and northern plains Indian affairs. The edition that Crook took in hand on the day of his arrival in Cheyenne had several stories about the “Indian Question.” One was an interview with Custer reprinted from a recent Chicago Tribune that hinted at campaign preparations only barely begun in Terry’s department, and another recounted the “warlike preparations going on in this vicinity,” meaning, of course, greater Cheyenne. “All indications prove that Gen. Crook is preparing for an advance upon the Sioux,” the Leader intoned on February 18, and “our people will rejoice to see ‘our boys in blue’ march to the front.” During Crook’s stay in the city, the Leader shadowed him closely. He finally consented to a brief interview on February 21 but was characteristically cagey about his objectives, only predicting an unusually arduous campaign. One of the Leader’s stories was reprinted by the Omaha Republican on February 23, offering that city its first detailed accounting of the activities that had consumed Crook and his department all winter long.19

64

PRELUDE

On Saturday Crook welcomed his other aide-de-camp, Captain Nickerson, upon his own arrival in Cheyenne after a hurried visit to Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies in northwestern Nebraska. On Crook’s behalf he had sought to recruit guides and trailers for the expedition. His report now was greatly disheartening. Unlike Crook’s experiences in Oregon and Arizona, in this case no fullblooded Indians were willing to join any army campaign pitted against their kin. Nickerson, however, was able to secure a contingent of mixed bloods and veteran plainsmen, including Louis Richard, Baptiste Garnier, and Baptiste Pourier, who agreed to meet Crook at Fort Laramie and accompany the expedition.20 Crook spent time on Sunday in the Cheyenne telegraph office, communicating with Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and the commanders of Forts Fetterman and Laramie, variously reporting on planning still underway, passing on news from the agencies just received from Nickerson, and forecasting his own travel.21 He and Bourke then immersed themselves in the bustle of the gold rush, which was almost overwhelming this city of nearly five thousand. As Bourke later wrote, Cheyenne was “wild with excitement,” its stores advertising every inducement as an outfitting station, its merchants and saloon keepers doing a rushing business, its streets crowded with long trains of wagons loading for the Black Hill, and everywhere stage drivers, boot blacks, and bell boys talking about nothing but the Black Hills, “which their fancy pictured as stuffed with the precious metals.” Contributing to the town’s wild stir was the movement of troops and trains bound for the expedition. Since arriving on February 17, two Second Cavalry companies from Fort Sanders had encamped at Fort Russell and finished outfitting at the depot. They departed on the twentieth for Fort Fetterman with pomp, with Colonel Innis Palmer reviewing the companies in passing. In an equally visible but much more melancholy mood, Fort D. A. Russell’s resident Third Cavalry companies departed the next day for Fetterman, the designated rendezvous for the campaign. Leaving wives and children was never easy for troops, especially at the start of a major Indian expedition.22

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

65

Their business complete, on February 22 Crook and Bourke departed Cheyenne for Fort Laramie in an ambulance consigned to Doctor Munn’s service and overnighted at John “Portugee” Phillips’s ranch on Chugwater Creek. Phillips was a Wyoming pioneer who now ran a cattle spread and popular roadhouse on the Cheyenne–Fort Laramie Road, itself a transformed highway packed with pedestrians, mounted men, and wagons bound for the Black Hills. Phillips was an engaging host who regaled Crook and Bourke that evening with recollections of Fort Phil Kearny, the Fetterman Massacre, and having delivered news of that tragedy to Fort Laramie in December 1866. He provided Crook with a detailed description of the old Bozeman Trail, including distances between landmarks and river crossings from Fort Fetterman to Fort Reno and beyond. This was new country to Crook and also of course the standard route into the Powder River country.23 Crook and Bourke arrived at Fort Laramie on the afternoon of February 23 and stepped into yet another version of the turmoil of gold and war. The garrison of Fort Laramie, a venerable and sprawling post dating to the time of the California gold rush and still one of the largest and most vital in the department, had just witnessed the construction and completion of a new three-span iron bridge across the North Platte River, over which the surging Black Hills traffic was passing. The influx, in turn, prompted the near transformation of John Collins’s trader’s store into yet another outfitting station: its shelves and bins were stuffed with pans, shovels, picks, and other prospecting essentials. The post’s two cavalry companies ordered to join Crook’s campaign had themselves just returned from hurried field service. Captain Henry E. Noyes and Company I, Second Cavalry, had engaged in a 100-mile scout down the North Platte to the old Sod Agency, briefly the home of Red Cloud’s people a few years back, and then cross country north to Rawhide Buttes before being abruptly recalled. Captain James Egan and Company K, Second Cavalry, returned from a 110-mile trek up the North Platte to Bridger’s Ferry and then southward into the Laramie Mountains on the trail of a Sans Arcs “stealing expedition.” The turnaround for both companies was quick.24

66

PRELUDE

At the fort Crook conferred first with Lieutenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley, Ninth Infantry, the commander of the post, and then with Doctor Munn, who had finished assembling medical stores and was now packing conveyances, including the newly arrived ambulance. Munn’s medical entourage ultimately consisted of four ambulances and a supply wagon, each with a soldier driver and loaded tight. “The supplies proved to be abundant, and nothing was afterwards needed in the field which was not found in the packages,” he reported. Munn still needed staff, however, but understood that two other doctors and a hospital steward would join him at Fort Fetterman. That night, in one of the few light-hearted interludes during the entire campaign, the guests thronging the fort attended a theatrical entertainment presented by the officers and ladies of the post. The plays Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady and A Regular Fix were capitally interpreted, Bourke recalled.25 While the Fort Sanders and Fort D. A. Russell cavalry companies traveled the cutoff route to Fort Fetterman, a northwesterly bearing from Cheyenne instead of angling right at the Laramie River to Fort Laramie, Colonel Reynolds and his own small entourage purposefully traveled the latter road to unite with Crook. Accompanying Reynolds were Second Lieutenant Charles Morton, expedition adjutant, and First Lieutenant George A. Drew, expedition quartermaster and commissary officer, both detailed from the Third Cavalry. The three arrived on the afternoon of February 24. Also appearing that day were the scouts recruited by Azor Nickerson from the Camp Robinson area, in the charge of Louis Richard. The contingent included brothers John and Louie Shangrau, Charlie Richard (Louis Richard’s cousin), Charlie Janis, Baptiste “Little Bat” Garnier, John Provost, Mitch Seminole, Baptiste “Big Bat” Pourier (Louis Richard’s brother-in-law), John “Buckskin Jack” Russell, and John Farnam. Most were mixedbloods, and all had long histories at Fort Laramie and now at the White River agencies, where they had Indian families, and were acknowledged for their fluency in the Sioux or Cheyenne tongues and their ease in the complicated political world of forts and agencies and with the northern Indians.26

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

67

Louis Richard (pronounced Reshaw), leading the Camp Robinson contingent, was the thirty-year-old second son of John Richard, a Frenchman from Missouri and a prominent, if invariably quarrelsome, figure in the Fort Laramie area and along the North Platte since the earliest days of the fur trade. Louis Richard was an adept interpreter and had served in that role during the Fort Laramie Treaty proceedings in 1868 and more recently in the Black Hills purchase negotiations, where he had the dubious burden of delivering in absentia Sitting Bull’s emphatic words of opposition to the sale, a long, strident statement in effect declaring “We don’t want any white men here.” He was also a veteran scout, having participated in northern plains military expeditions led by Patrick Connor in 1865 and John E. Smith in 1874 and guided and interpreted for Othniel C. Marsh on his fossil-hunting expedition in Nebraska and Wyoming in 1874. Crook took time to meet them all, quizzing them on their familiarity with the northern countryside and whether there was any chance of finding and attacking Indians there in the winter. All were enrolled directly by quartermaster Drew, the hiring officer.27 Crook’s examination of guides and scouts continued the next morning and was highlighted by his interview with Frank Grouard. Grouard and Crook did not yet know each other, but Grouard’s reputation as a plainsman had preceded him. He had learned of Crook’s call for scouts from J. W. Dear, trader at Red Cloud Agency, and had also discussed it with Captain Egan of the Second Cavalry. Both had urged him to make his way to Fort Laramie and introduce himself. A mixed-blood of another sort (with a Mormon missionary father and Polynesian mother), Grouard was dark skinned, with features that allowed him to pass as an Indian or a black man. In the early 1870s he had lived with Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas and perhaps even had joined in their resistance against white encroachments. What he brought to the conversation now was unique credibility. Having lived with the northern Indians for nearly six years, and mostly with Sitting Bull’s people, he spoke with authority. He knew their camps, their haunts, the language, and (as would play out soon) could even identify their ponies. Crook

68

PRELUDE

hired him on the spot and came to trust him implicitly. In time Grouard gained another hallmark. Chroniclers of this fascinating era appreciate that Grouard, a mixed-blood commoner and reallife Jack Crabb (Little Big Man), had a contemporary biographer. Joe DeBarthe wrote the lively Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard. First published in 1894, this work has embellishments and is necessarily used with some caution, yet it remains a rich, vital narrative critically important for an understanding of this period.28 By mid-morning on February 25 Crook’s business at Fort Laramie was finished. He, Reynolds, Munn, and their aides and attendants, together with an assortment of wagons, departed for Fort Fetterman, escorted by Noyes’s and Egan’s Second Cavalry companies and the newly enrolled scouts. The melancholy nature of such departures was captured perfectly by Elizabeth Burt, wife of Captain Andrew S. Burt of the Ninth Infantry, in her reminiscence of life in the Old Army: It was not surprising that the harmony of our pleasant garrison life received a dreadful shock when a winter campaign was announced. Fortunately for us “Infantry” wives, the expedition was to be composed of cavalry with only two companies of infantry. The morning the column started it was bitter cold with snow on the ground and my heart ached for General Reynolds braving the winter elements on this march planned to surprise the Indians. His gray hairs proclaimed that such hardships were better suited to a younger man. Of course it was very quiet for those wives left in the Post whose husbands were absent, but most of them were kept busy with children and household duties.29 The little column traveled along the south bank of the North Platte and that evening camped at Bull Bend, a trail landmark some thirty-two miles upriver. Had they crossed the river on the new bridge and traveled the north bank, some or most of these men would have put this difficult crossing behind them. But Fort Fetterman sat on a bluff high on the river’s south bank, and the expedition’s rendezvous camp sprawled beneath it.30

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

69

✧✧✧✧ Fort Fetterman, the assembling post on this campaign and an unforeseen succession of campaigns in 1876, was a rustic humbug of a place, a throwback to the rugged days of the Bozeman Trail. Its buildings, constructed variously of adobe and log, sat on a high wind-swept bluff overlooking the confluence of La Prele Creek to the west and the North Platte, directly north. Its parade ground faced the Laramie Mountains, sixteen miles south, and the 10,274foot-tall Laramie Peak. North across the river was a sweeping grass and sage prairie that ran to a horizon dozens of miles away. In that direction lay the South Fork of the Cheyenne River 35 miles away, the Belle Fourche River 60 miles out, and then the Powder River and old Fort Reno, 110 miles away. The once distinct Bozeman Trail ran that way. While its ruts were now mostly grassed over, its ambling course was still plainly evident as a deep sinuous scar on the rolling prairie landscape. The time of surging emigration on the various overland trails that followed the North Platte was now long past, and Fort Fetterman was about as isolated a post as existed in the Department of the Platte. Duty there for its two or three companies of infantry and single company of cavalry was considered a hardship. Fort Fetterman was a dreary post, an island in a desolate land, but not at that time in the presence of a general officer and the spontaneity of an assembling Indian campaign.31 Companies I and K, Second Cavalry, escorting Crook and Reynolds from Fort Laramie, were the first of the expedition’s line troops to arrive, encamping along La Prele Creek on the evening of February 26. They were joined the next day by Companies B and E, Second Cavalry, from Fort Sanders, traveling by way of Fort D. A. Russell and riding the 162 miles from Cheyenne in a fairly leisurely seven days. Russell’s five companies of Third Cavalry, A, D, E, F, and M, arrived on February 28 and joined the sprawl below the post.32 Campaigns offered welcome opportunities for regiments, even portions of regiments, to assemble and renew acquaintances. Later in the decade and in the 1880s unit consolidations came into vogue in the army and helped transform its respective components into

70

PRELUDE

much more cohesive forces, but that lay in the future. Right now the eight companies of Second Cavalry serving in the Department of the Platte were scattered at six different posts in Wyoming. Companies rarely saw one another, let alone functioned together. Many of the officers camped with their units along the La Prele although some were welcomed into quarters on the bluff. Second Lieutenant Daniel Pearson of Fetterman’s resident cavalry company invited two of his West Point classmates, Bourke and Morton, to join him in his quarters. Crook took lodging with the post commander, Major Alexander Chambers of the Fourth Infantry, while Reynolds lodged with Captain Edwin Coates.33 By day Fetterman was a place of ceaseless commotion. A small band of Arapaho Indians was encamped along the North Platte. Black Coal, chief of the band, told Crook that the Indians he sought were on the lower Powder River, below Fort Reno, some 150 miles from Fetterman. That comported with the intelligence that Crook had been hearing all along about Indians on the Tongue, on the Powder, straight north. One source of doubtful accuracy suggests that Crook hired ten of Black Coal’s Arapahos as scouts, although fullblooded Indian scouts are never mentioned in contemporary accounts. But he did hire nine civilian scouts carried on Fetterman’s quartermaster rolls, plus the post’s guide and local roustabout, Speed Stagner, bringing the expedition’s scouting contingent to nearly thirty. Crook also spent time in Fetterman’s telegraph office, particularly exchanging advices with Custer. While he was able to report Reynolds’s pending departure “in a couple of days,” he was unable to “determine a line of operations until we arrive in that country, as our information is so contradictory.” This second exchange with Custer in a week suggests that the nominal commander of the Seventh Cavalry was still embraced as the Department of Dakota’s foremost field officer and was Crook’s direct counterpart in this unfolding war. History reminds us, of course, how quickly that circumstance changed for Custer.34 Paymaster Stanton, one of Crook’s trusted friends, arrived on February 27, traveling from Cheyenne to pay the assembled troops and then join the expedition. When the Reynolds court later inquired about this, puzzled why a paymaster would attach himself to an

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

71

active Indian campaign, he told them that his joining occurred rather spontaneously at Fetterman at Crook’s suggestion. Stanton was stretching the truth and had contemplated the chance all along, as evidenced in his accompanying Crook from Omaha to Cheyenne a week earlier and then traveling so hurriedly from Cheyenne to Fetterman. The trip took barely four days instead of the customary six or seven, and en route he rushed past Fettermanbound wagons, mules, and cavalry. Stanton needed time to complete his official duties at the post and then prepare to join the expedition at its start. Crook, of course, was elated and readily accommodated Stanton’s wish, giving him an official role as chief of scouts. When Stanton finished paying the troops, he invoiced his records and remaining funds in the care of Major Chambers and prepared for the campaign, the first of several in 1876 that earned him the unique army sobriquet “The Fighting Paymaster.”35 Thaddeus Stanton looms large in the Powder River story. Fortyone years old, college educated, and urbane, the near career-long paymaster craved the adrenaline rush of field service, at least during this period of his army career. He had previously participated in three extended field movements since coming to the Department of the Platte in 1872, including having accompanied Colonel John Smith’s expedition in 1874 from Fort Laramie to the Red Cloud Agency to quell unrest between the Oglalas and the Indian Bureau as well as Crook’s expedition into the Black Hills in 1875. Stanton was known to nearly every officer on the expedition because they were quartered within his paymaster circuit, which required that he meet them and their troops face to face at payday every two months. Although a genial campaigner and well enough liked, Stanton also had an exactitude and inflexibility about him, doubtless essential qualities for an army money manager but also amounting to an intolerance for those without such habits.36 Stanton traveled to Fetterman with two employees and a small group of friends, several proving important to the campaign, but for strikingly different reasons. One of the hands was acknowledged in a newspaper account simply as Stanton’s “secretary,” an unnamed individual who was probably a civilian clerk or General Service enlisted man who traveled with Stanton and tended to

72

PRELUDE

clerical matters associated with his paymaster duties. This individual is not mentioned again. Stanton’s other employee, his personal cook, Jefferson or Jeff Clark, is mentioned in a number of campaign accounts: the writers were astounded that a black man went to the field in this Indian war.37 Conventional sources reveal nothing about Jefferson Clark. While the 1870 and 1880 U.S. censuses list many black men with that name, some of the correct age, they all resided in the Deep South and had no links to cooking or the West. Bourke mentions Clark several times in his diary and summarizes those jottings in On the Border with Crook, extolling Clark’s extraordinary culinary abilities but also tending to focus on him as the butt of frontier humor. Clark apparently possessed a morbid fear of Indians, so his cohorts taunted him mercilessly. He was also a skilled poker player, as evident in one newspaper account of his accumulation of “buffalo overcoats, beaver gloves, silver mounted revolvers, loose change, and so on,” gambled away from soldiers and teamsters. Clark was most of all an extraordinary chef, “the best army cook on the frontier,” and during the campaign uniquely served the Stanton-Crook-Bourke mess. He ensured that Stanton not only had Crook’s ear but also fed his friend’s stomach.38 Stanton’s other notable traveling companion on the rush to Fort Fetterman was his friend Robert E. Strahorn, a newspaper correspondent for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. The prospect of a major Sioux war, linked to the Black Hills gold rush as most accounts had it, filled newspaper columns nationwide. The expedition was gaining increasing visibility, particularly when the Cheyenne Daily Leader commenced generating small news jottings that were widely reprinted regionally and nationally. The Leader did not have the staffing capacity or wherewithal to afford its own correspondent in the field, but the Rocky Mountain News dispatched Strahorn. The twenty-four-year-old had been in the newspaper business since the age of fourteen, moving from Illinois to Colorado in 1870 and working first in the mining towns of Central City and Black Hawk before joining the News staff. Stanton was Strahorn’s entrée to the campaign. As a subscriber to the paper Stanton was familiar

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

73

with his writing and had invited him on an 800-mile disbursing trip to the military posts in Wyoming and Nebraska. Strahorn recalled that the journey began in September 1875 and ended in time for the two to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner at Fort D. A. Russell, from whence they had set out. What lay ahead now was the young journalist’s first Indian campaign. He would quickly prove his mettle, bearing hardships without complaint, exposing himself in the fight, and penning lively, straightforward, and eminently readable accounts from the field under the nom de plume “Alter Ego,” not only for the Rocky Mountain News but also for the Omaha Republican and Chicago Tribune.39 Crook was not at all averse to good newspaper coverage and separately had contacted Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, to request a correspondent on the campaign. A fellow Ohioan, Reid had carefully covered Crook’s exploits in the Civil War. He was unable to find anyone willing to go, but, presuming Crook’s consent, suggested Stanton as a soldier-correspondent. Stanton had already quietly sent a letter to the paper from Cheyenne reporting on the pending campaign, the communication dated February 24 and published on February 28 under the pen name “Occasional Correspondent.” The Tribune had used soldier-reporters the year before when covering the army’s Black Hills survey. While many newspapers had their own correspondents in the Black Hills reporting the Newton-Jenney Expedition, the Tribune instead relied on stories filed from time to time by Captain Andrew S. Burt of the Ninth Infantry. The root of the Reid-Stanton connection is unclear, but Crook had no objection. The paymaster-turned-scoutwrangler now added journalism to his portfolio.40 On February 28 Colonel Reynolds issued the campaign’s first general orders, numbers 1 and 2, announcing the organization of the now formally designated Big Horn Expedition and confirming himself as commander, with Second Lieutenant Charles Morton as adjutant, First Lieutenant George Drew as quartermaster and commissary officer, Captain Curtis Munn as chief medical officer, and the civilian Thomas Moore as chief of pack trains (Bourke calls him master of transportation). The expedition’s twelve companies

74

PRELUDE

were divided into two-company battalions, each commanded by a captain (three companies were fielded with lieutenants only). Inexplicably, Reynolds split the two companies from Fort Sanders, pairing one with the odd Third Cavalry company from Fort Russell and the other with the Second Cavalry company from Fort Fetterman. In instances where two captains were present in the battalion, the senior officer commanded. The army had no protocol for organizing expeditions. Later orchestrations in this war featured much bigger battalions, sometimes three, five, even ten companies large. But, as events proved, Reynolds’s structure worked well enough. The colonel also divided the pack train equally among the cavalry battalions. Its burden was largely grain and this ensured that each battalion was uniformly supplied with one of the expedition’s most critical stores.41 After several days of preparation, the first major movement of the Sioux war was about to commence. The soldier camp along La Prele Creek was scattered widely, with long lines of pitched tents on the creek banks and hundreds of men crowded around camp fires, fueling themselves with coffee, cleaning arms, and searching for last-minute items that a soldier might need or want on campaign. Nearby stretched long picket lines, tethering more than fifteen hundred horses and mules, all pawing at forage and neighing a constant din. Wagons loaded with commissary supplies, arms, munitions, and grain trailed from the fort’s storehouses to staging areas on the broad flat between the bluff and river. Officers galloped to and fro from the headquarters above to company commanders, sergeants, pack masters, and teamsters below, working to bring order to the seeming chaos. On the morning of February 29 the last of the troops joined. Company A, Second Cavalry, and Companies C and I, Fourth Infantry, were relieved from duty at Fetterman and ordered into camp, with the cavalry company joining branch brethren and the foot soldiers ordered immediately to ferry across the river and encamp on the north bank. Crossing the icy river would be a headache, but at least not for these soldiers.42 When Fetterman’s troops were mustered for the field, a separate order on February 29 from Major Chambers directed the fort’s second

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

75

doctor, acting assistant surgeon John Ridgely, and its lone hospital steward, William C. Bryan, to accompany the expedition under Munn. Just arrived the day before was Munn’s other assistant, acting assistant surgeon Charles R. Stephens, detailed from Fort McPherson. Nebraska. The three doctors provided a study in contrast. Munn, a commissioned officer in the small and elite Medical Department, necessarily possessed both medical and classical educations and held himself aloof from his civilian counterparts, acting assistant surgeons (contract doctors) who ordinarily possessed only medical training. A chronic shortage of physicians plagued the army, and contract doctors filled the void, usually working alongside commissioned officers like Munn or, in Ridgely’s case, Fort Fetterman’s assistant surgeon and captain, Joseph R. Gibson. The record is scant on Stephens, whose services until then mostly had been limited to duty at Fort McPherson. Ridgely was an elderly physician with nearly thirty years of service as an army contract doctor. He served during the Mexican War, continued with scattered interruptions through the Civil War, where he was attached to the Army of the Potomac, and did later service in Louisiana and Texas (where he had contact with Colonel Reynolds). He then had assignments in the Department of the Platte beginning in July 1874 at Camps Robinson and Sheridan before being ordered to Fort Fetterman in September 1875. Ridgely’s service at Camp Robinson did not coincide with Munn’s. The two knew each other casually, if at all, but before the campaign ended sparks would fly between them and then flame.43 On the final evening at Fort Fetterman, as a late winter storm blanketed the landscape with fresh snow and plunging temperatures, Crook and Reynolds assembled the participating officers at post headquarters and outlined the campaign. These thirty men, including the commanders, besides a handful of onlookers from the garrison, represented a fair cross section of the officer corps of the post–Civil War Regular Army. Crook, Reynolds, and Alexander Chambers constituted the senior class. Each had graduated from West Point before the war and had attained high rank and distinction during the conflict. Ten others were also academy

76

PRELUDE

graduates, and Anson Mills had attended but did not graduate. Some were classmates, including Henry Noyes and Samuel Ferris of the class of 1861, which was also Custer’s class; and Morton, Drew, Bourke, and William Robinson of the class of 1869. George Drew, then a major with the Sixth Michigan Cavalry, served under Custer during the Civil War, including at Gettysburg. Alexander Moore was a Gettysburg veteran too (that battle was already a defining moment in American military history). Fourteen of the men present had experience in a previous Indian campaign, including Noyes and Thomas Dewees, who both had served on the Bozeman Trail, an inescapable feature on this intended movement. With few exceptions these men knew and respected one another and understood and accepted individual quirks. Some were genuine friends. Two were related. Colonel Reynolds’s son, Bainbridge Reynolds, an 1873 West Point graduate, was now the second lieutenant in Alexander Moore’s Company F, Third Cavalry.44 Crook explained to the men that they would secretly and expeditiously march into the Powder River country and, he hoped, surprise the hostile bands of Little Big Man, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull (each of whom was presumed to have a separate village) and chastise them before spring, before they were joined by reinforcements from the reservation as always occurred. This news was enthusiastically received, Bourke recalled, especially among the younger set, some hoping for the distinction that might come, some intrigued by the chance to explore unknown country, and some plainly grateful for the opportunity to escape the tedium of garrison life. In the Old Army, it often boiled down to simply that.45 The care of animals and men was paramount for Crook, and he discussed both. He wanted the animals kept in the best condition possible. The absence of forage would be a great challenge, he worried, urging the officers to pay special attention to the grasses. Acknowledging that grazing would be limited during the winter season, he assured his attentive audience that the column’s wagons would be heavily laden with grain. The ambulances and pack mules would supplement the pasturage and help keep the horses and mules healthy and vital.46

ORGANIZING A CAMPAIGN

77

Crook cautioned the officers to pay careful attention to their men, not allowing them to fall out or straggle and being careful in posting pickets, ensuring that they could see but not be seen. He forecast the probable establishment of a depot at some convenient point from which scouts and explorations would be made by light, swiftly moving columns. He told his officers that as long as they were with the wagons they would have access to warm bedding and A-frame and “dog” tents. But when starting any cross-country movement the men would be limited to the clothing on their backs. As for uniforms, anything would be allowed, and he encouraged the use of extra blankets and extra layers of underclothing, top clothing, mufflers, and mittens, anything to augment the standard issue wear and protect feet, knees, wrists, and ears from bitter temperatures and cutting winds. The officers carried these instructions to an extreme. Enlisted personnel had fewer options but were still reasonably outfitted with blanket-lined overcoats, buffalo overshoes, and woolen mittens. Despite his ignorance of the countryside and weather, Crook exuded nothing but optimism. His tactics, care, and pluck had not failed him yet.47 According to the accounts, Crook did all the talking. Over the years much has made about the command of the Big Horn Expedition, whether it was truly led by Reynolds or by Crook, and the issue would be examined even by the Reynolds court. From the start Crook made it very clear that Reynolds was in immediate command of the troops and that he himself accompanied them in the capacity of department commander. In his official report Reynolds expressed it much the same way: “The expedition was commanded by . . . Crook, immediate command of the troops being assigned to the undersigned.”48 In this Indian war there were planners and day-to-day commanders. Sheridan was a visionary. It can be said that he orchestrated the Great Sioux War, though he never directly commanded the troops that waged it. On the Big Horn Expedition Crook was the visionary. While his counsel and direction were almost constantly sought, and he freely weighed in, in the end Reynolds organized the column, directed the march,

78

PRELUDE

fixed the camps, provided for security, and ultimately led in battle. The circumstances were different on Crook’s next movement, but this was the Big Horn Expedition, and these details were perfectly clear to the officers assembled at Fort Fetterman on the evening of February 29. On the morrow, March 1, the Big Horn Expedition went to war.

Indian peace commissioners, 1868 Six of the eight Indian peace commissioners who negotiated treaties at Fort Laramie with the Lakotas, Northern Cheyennes, and other tribes posed for photographer Alexander Gardner. From left to right are Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, retired Brigadier General William S. Harney, Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, Minnesota businessman John B. Sanborn, Indian rights activist Samuel F. Tappan, and Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur. The Indian woman at the center is unidentified. Nebraska State Historical Society, RG1227-PH-11–2.

79

Miners leaving the Black Hills, 1875 On November 6, 1875, Harper’s Weekly newspaper provided readers with this illustration showing gold miners leaving the Black Hills with General Crook. The exodus is greatly exaggerated. The actual number of prospectors who went with the general is unknown but is thought to number only a few hundred. Crook, after having met with miners in the gulches that summer, thought that most of them left. Author’s collection.

80

Brigadier General George Crook, 1877 Crook was forty-seven years old when he organized the Big Horn Expedition, the first significant movement against the northern Indians in 1876. He had just finished a successful Indian campaign in Arizona. At the onset of the Sioux war he and Sheridan were overly confident that his Arizona feats could be duplicated on the northern plains. Crook discovered instead a people, landscape, and environment quite different from those of Arizona. D. S. Mitchell photograph. Author’s collection.

81

Headquarters, Department of the Platte, 1876 Crook administered the vast Department of the Platte, spanning Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and a corner of Idaho, from this headquarters in Omaha’s central business district. Nebraska State Historical Society, RG2341-PH-2–69.

82

Second Lieutenant John G. Bourke, 1875 Described as Crook’s own Boswell, John Bourke served as the general’s aide and confidant from 1871 to 1883 and participated in nearly all of his adventures and Indian campaigns. On the Big Horn Expedition Bourke was the general’s prime informant on the Powder River debacle and helped shape the charges leveled against Reynolds and Moore. Bourke’s meticulous diaries (now mostly all published) and his unique reminiscence, On the Border with Crook, have become essential sources on this compelling time in the American West. Bradley and Rulofson photograph. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 83

Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 1873 Most of Colonel Reynolds’s post–Civil War service was administrative. He tended Reconstruction activities in Texas from 1867 to 1872 and then commanded several posts in the Department of the Platte before Crook tapped him to command the Big Horn Expedition. Reynolds retired from the army in 1877 and died in 1899, an embittered man. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute. 84

Captain and Assistant Surgeon Curtis E. Munn Munn was a long-serving army physician. Although the Big Horn Expedition was his only field service during the Great Sioux War, he was present at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, when Crazy Horse was killed there in September 1877. Oddly, Munn then limited his practice to the hospital, while his tireless assistant, Doctor Valentine McGillycuddy, tended the many adjacent army and Indian camps and the mortally wounded Oglala chief. Army Medical Museum.

85

Ben Clark A versatile plainsman from the Indian Territory, Benjamin H. Clark joined Crook and the Big Horn Expedition at Sheridan’s suggestion. Clark came to an unfamiliar landscape but proved an amiable companion. This was his only service against the Sioux, but he returned to Dakota and Montana in 1878 during the tumult associated with the Nez Perce exile in Canada. Nebraska State Historical Society, RG2955-PH-0–29.

86

Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 1877 The aged, sprawling Fort Laramie, established in 1849 during the heady days of the California gold rush, witnessed a resurgence during the Sioux campaigns and Black Hills gold rush. In 1876 Crook partly staged each of his field movements there, and Sheridan visited in September to gain his own impressions of a still unfolding Indian war. Private Charles Howard photograph. National Park Service, Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

87

Louis Richard, 1875 Thirty-year-old mixed-blood Louis Richard was a skilled middleman at Fort Laramie and the White River agencies. He had already interpreted at Fort Laramie during the treaty proceedings there in 1868, scouted for Connor’s expedition in 1865, Smith’s in 1874, and the paleontologist Marsh’s in 1874. Here he is seen in 1875 when accompanying the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Lakota delegation to Washington. Richard served Crook well on the Big Horn Expedition but competed with Frank Grouard for the general’s attention. Alexander Gardner photograph. James O. Aplan Collection. 88

Baptiste “Big Bat” Pourier A Missouri Frenchman, Baptiste Pourier was a member of the sprawling John Richard clan known in the Fort Laramie area since the late 1850s. He married one of John’s daughters (Louis’s sister). Known on the plains as “Big Bat” to distinguish himself from his close friend, mixed-blood Baptiste “Little Bat” Garnier, Pourier was yet another interpreter and plainsman thoroughly familiar with the wiles of the Sioux. Oglala Lakota College Archives.

89

Frank Grouard, 1877 Crook met Frank Grouard for the first time at Fort Laramie as the Big Horn Expedition was assembling, and the two bonded almost immediately. Grouard had lived among the northern Indians, knew their haunts and ways, and ultimately guided Crook on each of his campaigns in 1876. Grouard remained a visible figure on the northern plains through the end of the century, though he had been living in Saint Joseph, Missouri, when he died in 1905. D. S. Mitchell photograph. Missouri History Museum; Wikimedia Commons. 90

91

The isolated, windswept Fort Fetterman in central Wyoming, established in 1867, was the northernmost garrison in the Department of the Platte. Perched on a bluff overlooking the confluence of La Prele Creek and the North Platte River, the fort served as the gateway for Crook’s three campaigns in 1876. Private Charles Howard photograph. Nebraska State Historical Society, RG2955-PH-0–58.

Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, 1877

Major Thaddeus H. Stanton, 1880 The army’s “Fighting Paymaster” was among Crook’s closest confidants and after the Powder River battle the first who openly criticized Reynolds and Moore for their debatable performance there. Stanton’s accusations led directly to the courts-martial of both officers. Here he is seen as chief paymaster of the Department of the Platte, based in Omaha. Stanton went on to become paymaster general of the army. E. L. Eaton photograph. Mark Kasal Collection.

92

Robert E. Strahorn, 1900 Strahorn reported for the Rocky Mountain News on two of Crook’s Sioux War campaigns and openly preferred marching with the troops and experiencing combat firsthand. He went on to propagandize the American West, extolling its natural wonders and prospects in popular guidebooks and earning considerable wealth as a town builder. Strahorn died in San Francisco in 1944. Northwest Room, Spokane Public Library; Wikimedia Commons.

93

Winter garb on the Big Horn Expedition The men of the Big Horn Expedition and especially its officers layered themselves with assortments of heavy winter clothing. Here Major Stanton, seated, poses with a friend, Captain George M. Randall, Twenty-Third Infantry, in January 1877. Both are cloaked in fur and blanket leggings, buffalo overcoats and mittens, and sealskin caps. Author’s collection.

94

Captain Edwin M. Coates Among the original officers of the Eleventh New York Infantry (the colorful Ellsworth Zouaves) Edwin Coates gained an appointment to the Twelfth U.S. Infantry late in 1861 and had been promoted to captain in the regiment by 1865. In 1869 he transferred to the Fourth Infantry, a unit subsequently noted for long service in the Department of the Platte. Coates retired a colonel of infantry in 1900, died in 1913, and is buried in Arlington. D. D. Dare photograph. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute.

95

Captain Anson Mills Mills, seen here in 1892 as a colonel, attended West Point but did not graduate. He gained a Regular Army commission early in the Civil War and was repeatedly brevetted for gallant service. In 1870 Mills transferred to the Third Cavalry and came to be known as one of the regiment’s most astute Indian fighters. He was also an inventive man who devised cartridge belts and other equipments for soldiers and sportsmen that earned him considerable wealth. Mills died in 1924 and is buried in Arlington. Bradley and Rulofson photograph. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Vincent Mercaldo Collection, P.71.759.

96

97

Egan, mounted far right, General Crook, mounted third from the right, and Egan’s cavalry troop pause in Custer City on September 18, 1876. Crook’s summer campaign was over, and he was now hurrying to Fort Laramie to confer with General Sheridan, with Egan and Company K escorting. In November Egan’s company returned to the field for Crook’s third campaign. D. S. Mitchell photograph. South Dakota State Historical Society.

Captain James Egan and Company K, Second Cavalry, 1876

Second Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley, 1874 Sibley, seen here in his West Point graduation portrait, enjoyed a long and successful army career. At Powder River his racing off the mountaintop with Stanton typified an innate courage and fearlessness, qualities exhibited again at Rosebud Creek and Slim Buttes and during the perilous Sibley Scout. Stanton later commended Sibley for a Medal of Honor for his heroics at Powder River, although by then too few witnesses survived to corroborate the case. Sibley later commanded cadets at West Point, led the Fourteenth Cavalry in the Philippines and on the Mexican border, and retired a brigadier general in 1916. He died in 1918 and is buried in Arlington. U.S. Military Academy.

98

4 ✧✧✧✧

The Trail North

B

y dawn on March 1 the night’s storm had passed, but not before blanketing Fort Fetterman and the scattered soldier, packer, and teamster camps along the La Prele and North Platte with nearly a foot of fresh snow. Any hope of delaying the start because of the storm was dashed when a comment from Crook the night before made the rounds as men huddled around morning campfires eking out warmth. “The worse it gets the better,” he told his assembled officers. “Always hunt Indians in bad weather.” Repeated snows and dangerous arctic cold would torment the Big Horn Expedition in the coming days and weeks, but not on this morning. While a steady northwesterly wind chilled the air, the breaking day brought brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky, which Robert Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain News, the expedition’s lone dedicated newspaperman, considered a good omen.1 The soldiers called their campaign the “Crazy Horse Expedition of 1876,” and it started in grand style. Though flowing deep and swift, the icy North Platte was crossed without incident. The Fetterman ferry, capable of handling no more than thirty men or one wagon at a time, was of limited use. Cavalry, mules, wagons, and cattle crossed on the rocky ford just below the mouth of La Prele Creek. At the start the column was led by Major Stanton and the scouts. Crook usually accompanied these men thereafter, but 99

100

PRELUDE

on this day he and Bourke watched the departure from the bluff top and remained behind at the fort one more day to tend final business and await the mail from Medicine Bow, Fetterman’s mail transfer point on the Union Pacific Railroad. Reynolds’s ten companies of cavalry fell in behind the scouts, marching battalion by battalion, with the lead battalion one day becoming the trailing battalion the next in a marching order maintained throughout the campaign. Captain Edwin Coates’s infantry battalion came after the cavalry, followed by the ambulances, wagons, and five pack trains, one for each of the cavalry battalions. Bringing up the rear was a herd of sixty or seventy beef cattle, to be slaughtered along the way as provisioning required.2 Colonel Reynolds summarized the composition of the Big Horn Expedition in his official report written at Fort D. A. Russell after the campaign closed. His column stretched some two miles along the old Fort Reno road and counted in its mix 30 commissioned officers, 662 enlisted men, 32 scouts and guides, 3 herders, 62 packers, 89 teamsters, and 5 drivers of Doctor Munn’s ambulances and supply wagon, totaling 883 soldiers and civilians. The column’s parade of animals and vehicles was striking, tallying 85 wagons and ambulances, 656 public horses, 892 mules, including 400 devoted exclusively to packing, and the cattle herd. The expedition was rationed for forty days, featuring coffee, hard bread, and meat, with the cattle on the hoof providing two-thirds of the meat ration and bacon the other third. Transported stores, including reserve ammunition, blankets, and tentage, were distributed among the wagons and mules, which also carried 200,000 pounds of grain intended as supplemental feed for the horses and mules when suitable grazing could not be found.3 Winter campaigning on the northern plains included the use of an extraordinary array of garb, particularly outerwear. This was an era before the army issued the standardized buffalo overcoats and sealskin and muskrat gauntlets and caps seen in the classic photographs of Nelson Miles’s Fifth Infantry at Fort Keogh barely a year later. Understandably, common soldiers were the least capable of supplementing their winter wardrobes. Most were limited to extra layers of underclothing and blouses drawn from personal

THE TRAIL NORTH

101

stocks or standard issue apparel, with most everyone also wearing the woolen caped greatcoats of one pattern or another and mittens and caps provided by the Quartermaster Department. Coats were often modified by adding fur collars and blanket linings. For footwear, some soldiers preferred Indian-style calf-high moccasins instead of issue boots and shoes. Almost everyone wore buckled overboots fabricated of buffalo skin, with the hair side inward. Officers and civilians with greater access to funding usually opted for custom-made knee-length double-breasted blanket coats, canvas blanket-lined coats, or coats made of buffalo or beaver skin, usually complemented with buffalo skin leggings and an exquisite variety of mufflers, caps, and gloves. Bourke later quipped that a stranger would not have suspected at first glance that this command had any connection at all with the military of the United States, shrouded as it was from head to toe in thick wrappings of wool and fur, almost entirely concealing whatever small touches of uniform the officers or men did wear.4 The expedition traveled sixteen miles on its first day, a deliberate break-in march of sorts, to a camp along Sage Creek, a small tributary of the North Platte. That morning the column passed a band of frightened-looking Arapahos, according to Strahorn, making their way to Fort Fetterman along with ponies, among the finest he had ever seen, as fat as stall-fed cattle. Reynolds’s march on the campaign’s second day was another short one, covering thirteen miles to a camp on the Cheyenne River. The trail this day crossed the divide between the Sage Creek and Cheyenne drainages, affording striking views of the Black Hills to the northeast, Laramie Peak to the south, and Pumpkin Buttes forty miles straight north. The four singular flat-topped prominences of the buttes were an important landmark in the Powder River drainage that all northbound travelers conventionally oriented themselves by. The Fort Reno road veered only slightly west away from the buttes before reaching the abandoned fort and the Powder River. Crook and Bourke, escorted by a detachment from Company F, Third Cavalry, commanded by Captain Alexander Moore, reached Reynolds’s camp after dark, having ridden all day from Fort Fetterman only to find their comrades snugly bedded in their tents.5

102

PRELUDE

The Crook-Moore pairing this day was a curious combination, because the two had a troubled history. Like almost every officer attaining a captain’s rank in the postwar Regular Army, Moore had a credible Civil War record, time in grade, and often one or more patrons. During the war he had served on the staffs of Generals Joseph Hooker and Daniel Sickles in the Army of the Potomac and saw action at Antietam and Gettysburg and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, receiving several brevets. Sickles was one of Moore’s more ardent supporters, writing letters on his behalf and at one point praising Moore’s “remarkable aptitude for the cavalry.” Moore dropped Sickles’s name incessantly. Moore obtained a captaincy in the Thirty-Eighth U.S. Infantry after the war and in 1870 transferred to the Third Cavalry. His performance in Arizona in 1871, however, earned him Crook’s enmity when he flagrantly disobeyed an order to advance on a particular freshwater spring, the probable destination of pursued Chiricahua Apaches. Moore instead led his company conspicuously into a valley in plain sight of the Indians. Crook supposed that this was deliberate movement to avoid a confrontation. The Apaches faded into the mountains. Crook was furious and considered court-martialing Moore but allowed the matter to pass. Within months the Third Cavalry had transferred to Nebraska. In Crook’s autobiography, written in the late 1880s in full light of this episode in Apacheria and also Moore’s troubling conduct during the Big Horn Expedition, he revealed his contempt for this officer: “I was then satisfied that Capt. Moore lacked one of the most essential qualities of a soldier,” implying a lack of courage and a commitment to duty.6 The Big Horn Expedition had thus far only advanced twentynine miles from Fort Fetterman. The weather remained frigid and quickly came to dominate the soldiers’ outlook. The troops were marching slowly into the lair of the northern Indians, as evidenced in the 2 a.m. pitch darkness of March 3 when a small band of raiders fired upon two mounted herders, critically wounding civilian James Wright in the right lung and then driving off his horse and all of the cattle. Bourke presumed that the Indians were Sioux. The commotion stirred the camp, rousing the troops from their tents. But no pursuit was ordered until daybreak, when Captain Moore and his company (some of them fresh off the trail with

THE TRAIL NORTH

103

Crook) along with several scouts were sent to investigate. In light of Moore’s prior history with Crook, the general may have had an additional intent in assigning the captain the task, perhaps as a trial or an opportunity. Such tasks were quickly becoming one of the undertones of this campaign. Moore followed the cattle for six miles, always at a great distance, and concluded that they could not be caught. He rejoined the column empty-handed, claiming that the herd was not in Indian hands and was simply bound for Fort Fetterman. This was a severe loss, because the herd represented two-thirds of the expedition’s meat provision. Also, Doctor Munn was now saddled with the care and transportation of a seriously wounded civilian while the expedition was still on its outbound course. The episode was disturbing beyond that. It seems preposterous that Moore and ultimately Reynolds and Crook somehow accepted that the cattle were not in Indian hands but were merely following their own tracks back to Fort Fetterman. Reynolds later acknowledged that the herd was never recovered and also asserted that Wright’s horse was subsequently recaptured in the Powder River village, a confounding statement without substantiation.7 The matter was forgotten for the moment as the focus of the scouts and column over the next several days turned to the increasingly obvious Indian signs encountered in the advance: fresh pony and lodge pole tracks passing in all directions, a dust trail on the distant horizon, wisps of smoke curling from buttes, and a flickering light that Bourke was convinced was a “looking-glass signal by hostiles on our flank.” At evening camps at Curtis Wells on the third day and on the Dry Fork of the Powder on the fourth, Crook ordered the greatest care in the posting of sentinels and utmost vigilance. On the evening of the fourth day one of the sentries, Private William Riley of Company I, Second Cavalry, fired on an Indian caught prowling in the grass. Again the camp was roused, but the alarm passed. The next morning it was found that three or four Indians had crept into the margins of the camp, “taking observations,” Strahorn concluded.8 The peculiarities of command were surfacing. Captain Noyes was questioned closely on this point during Reynolds’s court-martial. His testimony, better than anyone else’s, explained how it all

M

O

N

E

R

R

T

A

N

A

I

T

O

R

Cr.

Y

Ot

e Big

Ro

ttl

se

Li

d bu

T

te r C

eR

.

r.

Ho r n R.

Powder River Battlefield

To n

gu

Reynolds

eC

r.

Crook

ol

an’

s

Fo

el

le

ur

ch

eR

Cra z y

W Fo r k o

m

.

Pk. oud Cl

Powd e r

R.

Lo

dg

eP

B

Pumpkin Buttes

Fort Reno (abandoned) Ch

N

W

T

E

W

Y

O

M

E

R

R

I

Nor

MILES

N O

nn

e R.

G R

Y

Fort Fetterman C r. ele

Pr La

50

T

th P la t te R.

S

0

I

eye

Fort Laramie

Big Horn Expedition, March 1–27, 1876. Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.

104

THE TRAIL NORTH

105

worked. Sometimes, he said, he received orders from Reynolds and sometimes from Crook. “I looked upon General Crook as the actual commanding officer, though Colonel Reynolds was assigned to the command by orders. General Crook gave orders to Colonel Reynolds about pickets and other details of that kind.” “Who gave the orders to go into camp?” questioned John Jenkins, Reynolds’s lead defense attorney. “General Crook,” answered Noyes. “Who gave orders to march?” “General Crook.” In answer to another question, Noyes told the court about the first occasion when as officer of the day he dutifully reported to Reynolds, who told him to report to General Crook. Reynolds’s admitted inexperience in Indian country had already become evident, particularly in the nighttime encounters on March 3 and 4, when Crook unhesitatingly stepped in, with no apparent complaint from the colonel and no undue consternation from any of the other officers.9 Tormenting cold, snow, and headwinds buffeted the members of the expedition on the morning of March 5 as they descended the Dry Fork of the Powder to old Fort Reno and established camp on the broad flat on the east side of the river, directly opposite the ruined post. Signs of Indians were again alarmingly common, including the sight of two mounted warriors at about six or seven miles out, who were intently watching the troops. When the gap between the column and Indians closed to one thousand yards, the warriors scampered over the hills to the north and disappeared. Other Indians were seen near the rear of the column a while later. Crook would not allow any pursuit. It would only wear out the animals, he contended. The storm abated, and that afternoon in camp Crook ordered the repacking of the mule train with grain and rations for fifteen days. Crook’s plan of operation was now pretty clear, Bourke thought. A party of hand-picked scouts would leave the camp in the moonlight and search down the Powder River for the village from which these Sioux or Cheyenne lurkers had come. Meanwhile the troops and wagons would continue up the Montana Road as far as Crazy Woman’s Fork of the Powder and encamp there. The mounted

106

PRELUDE

column would strike off in the darkness down Crazy Woman’s Fork without the wagons to a rendezvous with the scouts somewhere in between.10 Just after dark Crook’s scouts (Louis Richard, Big Bat Pourier, Little Bat Garnier, Charlie Janis, and Frank Grouard) headed downstream looking for Indians and a village. Under the full moon the little troupe rode unshod ponies so that their tracks would not excite the suspicion of any Sioux or Northern Cheyenne warriors in the vicinity. Pickets were posted around the camp; those on the right or east drawn from Edwin Coates’s Fourth Infantry battalion. At about 8 p.m. a sentry in Coates’s command discovered three mounted Indians approaching. The sentry had orders not to challenge anyone coming from that direction and opened fire. The Indians returned the fire. Almost immediately shooting and commotion erupted from the opposite side of the camp, from the direction of the old fort, where Indians attempted to stampede the horses and mules with gunfire and a shaking of buffalo robes. In the darkness all the soldiers could see were the muzzle flashes of the Indian guns flickering right and left in a broad but ineffectual cross fire, while all that the Indians saw were soldiers scurrying around their bright campfires until each fire was hurriedly extinguished. Some soldiers dug rifle pits, while others stacked hardcracker boxes and firewood. For half an hour bullets zipped about, scaring many but striking no horses or mules and wounding only one soldier, Private James M. Slavey of Company I, Fourth Infantry, shot in the face. Then quiet returned as the attackers slipped away. Slavey’s wound was not serious, and he returned to duty a few days later. Corporal John P. Slough of Company I, Second Cavalry, noted in his diary that a man in the Fourth Infantry had been shot in the jaw, irreverently adding “but he has plenty left.”11 Four or five miles downriver Richard and the scouts had paused on a high bank for a smoke and to rest their ponies when Charlie Janis noticed the flashes from the Indian guns and then a great flash when the soldiers returned fire. Knowing that a fight was underway, the scouts started back to the camp. When they reached the fort around midnight they encountered videttes that Reynolds had reestablished on a wide perimeter and obligingly passed between

THE TRAIL NORTH

107

two large fires along the road started by the soldiers so that the scouts could be examined as they came in. In the camp Crook received their report, to the effect that no village had been spotted.12 The expedition started on the trail an hour earlier on March 7, a hastened start designed to frustrate any warriors still hoping to inflict damage on the camp. No opposition appeared. The Powder River was crossed easily enough. Although the river had a soft bottom for miles upstream and down, the crossing immediately below the fort had a stony bottom, which explained the trail alignment and presence of the fort at that very location. On broad prairie streams like the Powder, hard bottoms were always critical. Two broad avenues ascended the bench from the ford leading straight onto the ruined post, where the soldiers passed portions of walls, a bake oven, a handful of chimneys, and dilapidated headboards in its graveyard, all stark reminders of a short, harsh existence in the days of the Bozeman Trail. The road then rose to the high bluffs west of the Powder and afforded the column dramatic head-on views of the Big Horns and Cloud Peak, the towering 13,165 sentinel at the heart of the range. Signs of Indians were again commonplace, along with buffalo and antelope. Game had been conspicuous by its absence, so as the day passed scouts brought in several pronghorns that supplemented several of the messes. By three o’clock the column reached Crazy Woman’s Fork and established camp. The place afforded the best water since leaving the North Platte and plenty of dry cottonwood for fuel, but no grass for the stock.13 At seven o’clock that evening Crook summoned the officers to his camp and explained in careful detail a critical new deployment for the campaign, foreshadowed in the repacking of stores begun at Fort Reno. The wagons and infantry would be left behind, at Reynolds’s suggestion, not at this camp but at Fort Reno after a very visible return. Meanwhile the column would rest tomorrow until after sundown and then strike due north for Clear Creek, a tributary of the Powder. Clear Creek had several names: Clear Fork of the Powder, Pole Creek, and Lodge Pole Creek. The Indians preferred the name “Lodge Pole Creek,” Crook later recalled. As closely as the column had been watched before this, Crook was sure that a night march would mask the expedition’s intent and put him

108

PRELUDE

nearer a village of northern Indians. Sole dependence on the mule train repacked at Fort Reno necessitated further repacking and a great shedding of gear. At Crook’s specific direction, superfluous baggage would be left behind. Every officer and soldier thereafter would be limited to the clothing on his back. Bedding would be limited to one buffalo robe or two blankets per soldier. Shelter halves would also be allowed, and each officer might take one piece of canvas or two officers one tent fly. Officer messing arrangements would be broken apart: henceforth company officers would take meals with their men and staff and unattached officers with the packers. Rations for fifteen days would be carried, consisting of hard bread and a half ration of bacon in addition to coffee and sugar. And every trooper would carry one hundred rounds of ammunition, with an equal amount packed on the mules. Even grain for the horses was to be rationed at one-sixth the normal daily allowance, which still amounted to transporting 25,000 pounds of grain, the largest share of the available packing load. “It was quite a lengthy talk,” remembered Captain James Peale of the Second Cavalry.14 Shots were fired again that evening, but this time it was determined that they had been directed at a man from the camp who had wandered too near a posting of skittish videttes. The next day the interlude at the place that correspondent Strahorn dubbed “Camp Separation” was a mix of bustle and comparative ease. Nearly everyone had something personal to stow in the wagons (officers more than enlisted men), and most had something extra to pack, particularly the additional ammunition. Strahorn finished a lengthy report for the Rocky Mountain News, detailing the movement of the column to this point, and then put the dispatch in the hands of an unnamed friend in the infantry battalion for conveyance southward to Fort Fetterman in a presumed mail exchange. Meanwhile Munn and his assistants spent the day supervising the packing of two mules, drawing from their ambulances and supply wagon a complete surgical kit of instruments, dressings and chloroform, a well-stocked medicine pannier, and two blanket cases, each with twelve blankets, a rubber bed cover, and several bottles of brandy and turpentine. Munn then detached one of his assistants,

THE TRAIL NORTH

109

acting assistant surgeon John Ridgely, to accompany the infantry, the wagons, the wounded herder James Wright, and several incapacitated soldiers back to Reno, where Ridgely was directed to establish a field hospital. Munn assumed the high probability of returning with many wounded or sick men.15 Amid murmurs of farewell and good wishes, just after dark the Big Horn Expedition’s five cavalry battalions, attendant pack trains, and scouts commenced a night march to the Clear Fork. The trail for the most part followed the Montana Road due north, a gentle, undulating avenue until it reached the Clear Fork divide and then a much more demanding descent through what one trooper deemed an “impassable mountainous country.” From one vantage Bourke thought that the column resembled “an enormous snake, whose scales were glittering revolvers and carbines. The view was certainly very exhilarating[,] backed as it was by the majestic landscape of moonlight on the Big Horn Mountains.” The weather on March 7 had been warm enough, Bourke remembered, to make heavy winter clothing almost oppressive. The warmth lingered until nearly midnight, when a sharp chill struck the column, followed by snow. Soon the gorgeous vistas failed to assuage the pain afflicted on the soldiers by the plummeting temperature and the drowsiness that overcame them as the column pushed on to the Clear Fork, a continuous ride of some thirty-five miles from Camp Separation. Daniel Pearson, second lieutenant in A Company, Second Cavalry, remembered the night as the longest that he had ever passed. “The most intense desire for sleep asserted itself, chiefly, no doubt, because sleep was among the impossibilities, and altogether out of the question.” One officer comrade, to whom a night march was not such a novelty, quipped back to Pearson in a mocking tone that this was probably his “first night march.” “At this date,” Pearson confessed in 1896, “I do not mind admitting that it was.”16 When the column reached Clear Fork at 5 a.m., Crook called a halt and allowed the men to brew coffee and breakfast. The place was dreary, Bourke noted in his diary in an uncommonly sarcastic tone, with scarcely any timber, the barest of grazing, and plenty

110

PRELUDE

of water frozen solid. What the men sought most was rest, which Crook permitted. After the horses were unsaddled and mules unpacked, they rolled themselves in their overcoats, blankets, and canvas shrouds and were quickly asleep.17 The morning’s respite lasted only until 10 a.m., when Crook moved the troops five miles down Clear Fork. For the first time since leaving Fort Fetterman, the column no longer followed the clearly defined Montana Road. The march might have continued farther down Clear Creek had scouts not reported back that wood, water, and grass were not abundant further on. The night’s snow and plunging cold, recorded by one soldier as thirty degrees below zero, had turned into a raging blizzard that obscured the trail and imperiled limb and body. When Crook halted the column in a stark cove at the mouth of Piney Creek, the soldiers settled in, fighting the storm that raged through the day, staying as close to the fires as much as the whipping winds allowed, and struggling to get water. The ice was eighteen inches thick in Clear Creek, which was frozen over from bank to bank. Crook and Stanton burrowed into an abandoned beaver lodge and survived the day in that most curious shelter. Soldiers on picket duty and horse guard had no protection whatsoever. Guards on the bluff crests were instructed not to walk their posts but instead to lie on the snowy ground and maintain a vigil without moving during their two-hour tours. Corporal John Slough of Noyes’s I Company, Second Cavalry, judged those orders absurd and instead consolidated the horse and picket guards in his charge into a running guard lasting one hour, not two. The corporal’s impudence had a consequence, however. “I thus disobeyed official orders,” he confided in his diary, “to obey the more humane orders of humanity[,] for which I was placed in arrest.” The outcome of Slough’s censure is not recorded.18

✧✧✧✧ While Crook, Reynolds, and the cavalry battalions were moving down Clear Creek on March 8, the infantry battalion led by Captain Edwin Coates began its own return to Fort Reno, escorting wagons,

THE TRAIL NORTH

111

ambulances, and some one hundred armed teamsters. This column suffered from the same blustery cold and snow as the mounted troops but traveled a less demanding and now familiar route. On the first day it covered twenty miles to an overnight on Dry Creek and on the next the final seven miles to Reno, encamping on the west side of the Powder just upstream from the old post. Coates’s campsite was reasonably well sheltered. The men raised their tents, filled them with winter bedding, and settled in for nearly two weeks.19 Among Coates’s duties was the maintenance of communication with Fort Fetterman. On the evening of March 13 he dispatched a courier named Fielding to the post. Riding at night and carrying letters and newspaper dispatches, including several from Strahorn, Fielding reached the fort two nights later. Little quotable news was gleaned from the courier, merely that the infantry and cavalry had separated and that the force thus far had incurred two wounded, a herder and the infantryman. Among the letters that Fielding carried was one to the Cheyenne Daily Leader from an individual identified only as “M. M.,” whom the paper heralded as “our Special Cor[respondent] at Fort Reno.” That writer, likely a teamster, reported the loss of the cattle herd, the wounding of the herder and a soldier, and Crook’s advance from Crazy Woman’s Fork with the cavalry, scouts, and mules (“Jacks”). “M. M.” assured the Leader’s readers that the two companies of soldiers and seventyfive teamsters at Fort Reno were well armed and “would be able to give the Sioux a lively deal.”20

✧✧✧✧ For two days Crook’s column wended its way northward, turning into the valley of Piney Creek for a few miles and then heading overland across a difficult divide between Piney and Prairie Dog Creeks. Ambient temperatures remained below zero and snows persisted, nearly always obscuring the frozen ground, filling the coulees, and making passage an icy proposition for horses and riders. On March 9 the ration was reduced: the men were obliged to subsist on twelve hardcrackers and the horses on ten pounds of grain

112

PRELUDE

per day. “The torchers [sic] of cold, hunger, the fatiguing loss of sleep and rest and Indian alarms pressing us hard in this truly arctic winter,” lamented the free-spirited Corporal Slough.21 Strahorn remembered the day only because the line of march took the column to within seven miles of the site of the “neverto-be-forgotten Phil Kearny massacre.” The campsite on March 9 at the head of Prairie Dog Creek was an improvement, offering good water, cottonwood fuel, and grass. The site occupied on the tenth, after a march of twenty-two miles down the Prairie Dog, was equally satisfactory. Yet that day was chiefly remembered because of a nearly fatal accident when the horse ridden by Corporal John H. Moore of D Company, Third Cavalry, slipped and fell, crushing the soldier while he walked alongside and rendering him nearly helpless with spinal and kidney injuries. Munn and Doctor Stephens rigged a travois and carried him along to the end of the campaign. It was feared that Corporal Moore would not recover, but he must done so at least in part, because he was discharged from the army on a Surgeon’s Certificate of Disability at Fort D. A. Russell on May 7, 1876, and then disappeared from history. Interestingly, Moore is not listed on Munn’s casualty reports, which were plainly limited to gunshot wounds. In those days such accidents in the field, however ruinous to a man’s life, were occasionally acknowledged but seldom formally recorded.22 Crook’s quest for Indians was intensifying, despite the adverse weather. From studying his map, intelligence gained before the campaign about the probable locations of the camps of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the constant interrogation of scouts and trailers, he knew well that he was advancing deeply into the homeland of the northerners. Indian signs became all the more common as the troops descended Prairie Dog Creek. Yet Crook’s scouts had not located a village. Twenty trailers were again advanced from the camp at the head of Prairie Dog Creek and on the evening of March 10 returned with important news. While exploring the Tongue River above the mouth of the Prairie Dog to its confluence with Goose Creek, they came upon a hurriedly abandoned campsite of some sixty tipis, a first for the campaign. The camp had the look of long occupancy but had been abruptly abandoned, as was

THE TRAIL NORTH

113

apparent in the supplies of buffalo, deer, and elk meat left behind— even a freshly strangled puppy still hanging from a tree branch. Everyone understood that leaving such a delicacy behind surely bespoke a hasty departure. While the deep fresh snow obscured the direction of the Indians’ flight, this was a sure indication that villagers were somewhere near.23 After a four-mile march on the eleventh to the mouth of Prairie Dog Creek, Crook turned the column north into the valley of the Tongue River and soon crossed into Montana. Thermometers that morning variously registered from minus 22 to 39 degrees Fahrenheit, with the mercury congealing in some bulbs, but the weather moderated slightly during the day and the sun shone brightly. The valley was narrow and constricted, with cottonwood, ash, and willow crowding the banks. This obliged the horsemen and mules to cross the river repeatedly, the first of more than thirty such crossings in the coming week. River crossings on slick ice were dangerous, so riders usually dismounted and led their smoothshod horses carefully. Grazing noticeably improved, however, as the column made its way downstream. After traveling eight miles, Crook halted the command at a place that several of the diarists applauded as the finest campsite yet, with grama grasses especially luxuriant on the hillsides. Horses were hobbled and grazed for the remainder of the day. Meanwhile scouts explored the headwaters country of Rosebud Creek (the next drainage west of the Tongue) in a direction that the people from the abandoned village might have taken but returned without having discovered any new trails.24 For the next several days the expedition pushed down the Tongue, a difficult passage with repeated crossings and sometimes travel directly on the ice. The members of the column had a pervading sense of an ominous drift ever deeper into the land of the northern Indians. Every principal chronicler—Bourke, Stanton, Reynolds, Strahorn, even Slough—paid direct heed to the increasing evidence of Indian activity encountered almost everywhere. They saw Indian graves scaffolded high in the branches of massive cottonwoods. Almost every well-wooded and sheltered turn of the Tongue Valley held vestiges of old and newer camps, filled with brush shelters for people and animals, freshly picked bones from recent hunts, meat

114

PRELUDE

racks, corrals large enough to hold hundreds of ponies, bundles of tipi poles nestled in the crooks of trees, and enormous stockpiles of cottonwood deadfall used both as fuel and feed for stock. The evidence confirmed the belief that some important Sioux band must be near.25 Meanwhile the scouts remained on a constant prowl. Louis Richard and eleven others returned to the Rosebud Valley, and Ben Clark and Frank Grouard combed down the Tongue. Both parties returned late on March 12, having discovered no villages or Indians. The scouts ranged ahead again on the thirteenth and this time returned with a fine mule, a presumed stray from Crazy Horse’s camp, Strahorn reckoned. Stanton acknowledged the faithfulness and diligence of the scouts, who were by now “well into harness and do[ing] good work,” but he also conceded the reality that many of them faced. “There is no concealing the fact that some of them, who have Indian wives, are not half as eager to encounter the enemy now as when they were at Fort Fetterman.”26 While huddled near an evening campfire on March 13, Bourke seized a moment to log in his diary a vivid description of Crook, the young lieutenant’s patron and friend. Crook’s personal appearance was unique, different “from that of any other officer of high rank I have ever seen in the U.S. Army.” Bourke’s flashes of literary adeptness captured the essence of a man that he idolized, who was as yet undiminished in this first and soon fateful campaign against the northern Indians: The general’s boots are of the Government pattern, no 7’s; pantaloons of brown corduroy, badly burned at the ends, shirt of brown, heavy woolen; blouse an old army style; hat brown Kossuth of felt, ventilated at top. An old Army overcoat, lined with red flannel, and provided with an enormous wolf-skin collar, completes his costume, except a leather belt of forty or fifty compartments for copper cartridges. This belt is held up, suspended by a couple of leather bands passing over the shoulders. His horse and saddle are alike good and with his rifle well cared for. The General, in size is about six feet even, weight one hundred and seventy

THE TRAIL NORTH

115

pounds, built very spare and straight, limbs straight, long and sinewy: complexion, nervo-sanguine [healthy]; hair, lightbrown; cheeks, ruddy without being florid; features, delicately and firmly chiseled, eyes blue-gray; nose, a pronounced Roman, and quite large; mouth, mildly chiseled, but showing with the chin much resolution and tenacity of purpose. His general expression is placid, kind and good-humored. Unaffected and very accessible in his general demeanor, there is a latent “noli me tangere” [untouchable] look of dignity about him repelling undue familiarity. His powers of endurance are extraordinary and his fortitude remarkable. A graceful rider, a noted hunter, and a dead-shot, skilled in all the secrets of wood-craft and Indian warfare, having the prestige of complete success in every campaign heretofore undertaken, he is by all odds the worst foe the Sioux have ever yet had to meet.27 Even as Bourke was penning his penetrating if fawning description of the general, the introverted commander might have been beside him, warming himself at that same fire, charring those corduroy cuffs in yet another attempt to warm his feet, and pondering the whereabouts of his foe. Aside from the tribesmen who had so menacingly eyed his column as it approached the Powder and old Fort Reno, now more than a week ago, and the flashes of gunfire in the little nighttime fight there, neither he nor anyone in his command had seen Indians. Bourke regularly quizzed Grouard and the scouts about this. Grouard later recollected later how different the scouts’ views were: some trailers were sure that the Indians were on the Tongue, while others suggested a location much farther west on the Little Big Horn. Grouard, however, was positive that Indians would be found on the Powder River, the drainage to the east. Sioux and Northern Cheyenne accounts of their whereabouts during this late winter actually confirmed all of these locations. But Grouard was sure that it was the Powder River, and Crook asked him why he thought that was so. “I told him from my knowledge of the Indians and their mode of living in the wintertime. I knew where they ranged during the winter months. They had a certain

116

PRELUDE

range where they went, just like animals.” Crook again dispatched his scouts into the lower Rosebud and Tongue River valleys, encouraging them to explore both watercourses all the way to the Yellowstone (then barely sixty or seventy miles north) and rejoin the command in two days.28 Crook had another concern too. At Crazy Woman’s Fork in Wyoming on March 8 he had rationed the command for fifteen days. Since the loss of the beef herd at the second night’s camp, the meat allowance for the men had been limited to bacon. To stretch his meat supply, at Crazy Woman’s Fork Crook prescribed a half-ration of bacon, meaning half the allowance per soldier per day. The prescribed army diet provided twenty ounces of beef or twelve ounces of pork or bacon and sixteen ounces of hardbread per soldier per day. A half-ration of bacon amounted to six ounces, a mere morsel to sustain a soldier’s vigor through an entire twentyfour-hour day. Moreover, according to Corporal Slough, at the Piney Creek camp on March 9 the cracker ration was reduced from sixteen to twelve per day. Crook’s men had now sustained themselves for six days on a severely reduced ration. The transported foodstuffs were now nearly half consumed. Soldiers enjoyed poking about in the abandoned Indian camps, especially when they might find meat left behind, but a “monster hunger” was consuming them, Slough remembered. The men, officers included, were even eating the little corn reserved for the stock.29 On March 14 Crook advanced the expedition ten miles down the Tongue, fighting yet another heavy snow and penetrating northerly wind that held the daily temperature at minus 5 degrees F. Four old buffalo bulls were encountered in the morning. Crook wounded one, but it escaped. That afternoon he bagged six pin-tailed grouse for his mess. Indian signs were again commonplace throughout the day. That afternoon the troops encamped in a sizable abandoned village opposite the mouth of what Reynolds called Red Clay Creek and Bourke called Pumpkin Creek, which is likely today’s O’Dell Creek. Like other Indian village sites in the Tongue River drainage, this one also exhibited vestiges of long occupancy, including large stockpiles of firewood: enough to last for months, Bourke thought. Soldiers collected an Indian arrow in the camp and then

THE TRAIL NORTH

117

discovered a severed human arm, cut off at the elbow, with two fingers shot off and five other buckshot wounds. The soldiers had no way of understanding this grisly trophy aside from a guide’s assertion that it was probably from a Crow Indian killed by the Sioux. Grouard explained it more fully afterward. The arm had indeed been torn from a Crow Indian horse thief, whose dismembered body he had seen a bit farther downstream and whose limbs tied to trees now served as marks of both triumph and warning.30 Crook had agreed to wait at Red Clay Creek for the return of the scouts. The extra day allowed a welcome rest and some quality grazing on the exposed hillsides for the horses and mules. The morning temperature on the fifteenth was minus 10 degrees, but the day was sunny and quickly warmed to 32 degrees by midafternoon. The guides returned at around four o’clock, having seen no Indians on either the lower Rosebud or Tongue. Crook joined them in their camp and sought their advice as to which way to go, but the opinions of Louis Richard and Grouard were stridently different. The debate between the two became rancorous. Richard argued that he saw trails suggesting that the Indians had moved west to the Little Big Horn. Grouard was equally emphatic that he saw trails indicating that the villages had crossed the hills eastward to the Powder River valley. Grouard then almost haughtily challenged Crook, asking him if he wanted to find the Indians. Crook replied that it was either a fight with the Indians or starvation: “We can’t starve; we have too many mules but only two or three days’ rations left.” In reality, of course, Richard and Grouard were likely both right, but Crook had come to trust Grouard implicitly and indicated his intent to turn the column east to Powder River in the morning.31 On Thursday, March 16, the members of the Big Horn Expedition breakfasted at 5 a.m. in a bitter minus 8 degree chill, broke camp at 8 a.m., and marched on an easterly course out of the valley, for a while following the dry Red Clay Creek drainage. Their overland route took them through high ground spotted with juniper and pine, a countryside that reminded Bourke of the Black Hills and that some called the Panther Mountains, and then into the valley of Otter Creek. On the higher ground, snow covered the trail a foot and more deep.32

118

PRELUDE

Stanton and Crook rode with the scouts this day and were far ahead of the column. Farther ahead yet was Frank Grouard, who had departed the Tongue River camp alone at midnight and had cut the snow trail that everyone else now followed. At about 7 a.m. on March 16 Grouard came onto the last of the hills before a final descent into the Otter Creek valley. He pulled up at a rise, grabbed his field glass, and peered upstream. To his astonishment, he saw two Indians trailing a buffalo or some other animal track in the snow some four or five miles away and coming slowly down the creek directly toward him. Grouard remained hidden all morning and kept a careful watch on the Indians. The two were oblivious of him and continued riding down the valley until they were nearly opposite his perch on the hillside. Then they suddenly stopped their horses and looked directly toward him. Grouard and the Indians were not a mile and a half apart, and he could plainly see their features in his glass. They whipped their ponies and ran into some pines directly ahead of them, still intently peering in Grouard’s direction. The two Indians dismounted and crept onto the brow of a hill. Grouard’s confusion at what had captured their attention, if not himself, was resolved very quickly. Behind him, some two miles away, scouts from the column were running their horses along a hill in plain view of the Indians.33 The two Indians quickly skedaddled as if flushed by the scouts. Instead of going back the way they had come, however, they rode in a northeasterly direction toward the Powder River. Grouard held his position until the scouts came up and then took four of them and began trailing the Indians, worried that they had seen the command. But he grew confident that they had not in fact spotted the troops but only the little body of scouts. He was equally sure that the Indians had been unable to distinguish whether they were white men or Indians and might simply have concluded that the riders were Crows. Grouard and his mates doubled back and sought out Crook, who by then had fully descended into the Otter Creek valley with the entire command. It was 2:30 p.m. When Crook asked if Grouard thought that he could find a village, Grouard replied: “I don’t think anything about it; I know it.”34

5 ✧✧✧✧

Hot Pursuit on a Frigid Night

T

he story of the Big Horn Expedition and its Powder River fight turns on Frank Grouard’s discovery of the two unidentified Indians on Otter Creek on the morning of March 16 and Crook’s critical decisions and directions over the next several hours. It was a momentous break that Crook, Grouard, and Richard recognized immediately. In the preceding two weeks Crook and Reynolds had led ten companies of cavalry deep into the Powder River Basin, homeland of a vaguely understood conglomeration of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians under the presumptive leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. As these officers viewed it, these northern Indians had been a continuing source of trouble to whites for decades, waging war at their whim, ignoring the government’s entreaties, obstructing a railroad and a gold rush, and turning their back at a last chance to avoid an all-out war. That war was now about to be visited on a village somewhere on the Powder River. The campaign had thus far followed Crook’s prescription rather carefully. The punishing cold, fatigue, and hunger suffered by his command were small costs borne in delivering a forceful blow that would surely deprive these Indians of their security and sustenance, drive them to the reservation, and serve as fair warning of like consequences to everyone else still lingering in the war zone. 119

120

PRELUDE

This expedition was similar to Crook’s recently completed campaigns in Arizona, where commands of cavalry and infantry, ably supported by packers and mules and guided by Indian auxiliaries, had run down roving bands of Apache and Yavapai Indians in the rugged Mogollon Rim and Tonto Basin country. Those too were rigorous wintertime campaigns, conducted at a considerable cost to Crook’s soldiers in a war of attrition leading to the submission of those Indians. Reynolds remembered the frequent conversations that he had had with Crook during the course of this campaign and their mutual hope of achieving the same results here: capturing a village and its plunder and accruing the benefits that would follow. What they needed now was a forceful blow.1

✧✧✧✧ By 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. the entire command had descended from the Tongue River–Otter Creek divide onto Otter Creek, where Crook ordered it into bivouac. He wanted the companies to unsaddle, start fires, and make coffee, which they gladly started doing immediately. Grouard had not yet returned, and Crook believed then that the entire column had been spotted not just the scouts. He meant the fires and appearances of a camp as a ruse, a way of suggesting to the Indians that he was unaware of their presence. Grouard had followed the two Indians as they rode out of the Otter Creek valley in a northeasterly direction. Crook was curious as to which way they had come. He summoned Louis Richard and directed him to send scouts up the valley five or six miles to see what evidence they might encounter. Richard sought out his cousin Charlie Richard and John Shangrau and put them on the Indians’ trail, but they ultimately found nothing.2 Soon after the command reached Otter Creek, Reynolds came to Crook’s campfire and learned of the discovery of the two Indians and that Grouard was now on their trail and other guides were exploring up the creek. Either track, Crook proposed, might lead to more Indians or a village. He then explained the plan that he was formulating. Crook intended to divide the command. Six companies would go forward by a night march on the trail that

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

121

Grouard was then exploring, which probably led to the Powder River. The remaining four companies and pack train would spend the night on Otter Creek and advance on the Powder in the morning by a different route. This apparently was Crook’s own plan, as confidants like Bourke, Stanton, and Grouard are silent about it in their writings. Even Reynolds later remarked that “the measure was matured before I reached camp.” Crook then said to Reynolds that “one of us must go forward and the other remain with the pack train.” Reynolds offered to lead the night march, and Crook readily assented. Of course, this is what the general had imagined from the start.3 Years later Captain Anson Mills of Company M, Third Cavalry, who commanded his unit and the expedition’s First Battalion, alleged that he had been Crook’s preference to lead the attack at Powder River, not Reynolds, because the colonel knew nothing about Indian fighting. Mills and Crook were on friendly terms, and on the Big Horn Expedition he was the ranking officer in his regiment after Reynolds. Mills was sure that Crook did not want the colonel to go but under the circumstances could not very well avoid sending him. At Reynolds’s court-martial Crook testified that he had indeed first suggested that Reynolds should take the six companies as if ordering it, but afterward, “when something was said on the subject,” had given Reynolds the option. The court did not press Crook on this subtle equivocation. In the end Crook may simply have favored the colonel, as Bourke later asserted, and offered him this chance to enhance his reputation and retrieve the past.4 In his conversation with Reynolds Crook detailed his proposed splitting of the command. The first, third, and fifth battalions, led by Mills, Noyes, and Moore, respectively, would march with the colonel, while Crook retained the second and fourth battalions (commanded respectively by Captains William Hawley and Thomas B. Dewees) plus the pack train. The advancing companies would be drawn equally from the Second and Third Regiments. The determining factor in the selections, apparent but unspoken, was Crook’s desire to have the advance officered by his most experienced field commanders. Each of the company commanders going forward—

122

PRELUDE

Mills and First Lieutenant John B. Johnson in the First Battalion, Noyes and Captain James Egan in the Third Battalion, and Moore and First Lieutenant William C. Rawolle in the Fifth Battalion— was a seasoned cavalryman with combat experience in the Civil War. Mills, Noyes, Egan, and Moore were also veteran Indian campaigners. Reynolds’s son, Second Lieutenant Bainbridge Reynolds, was Moore’s subaltern. Crook apparently welcomed a father and son on the chase together, despite the potential distraction of them worrying about each other. At Crook’s direction Stanton and fifteen of the scouts, including Grouard, would accompany the attacking column, as would surgeon Munn, adjutant Charles Morton, and quartermaster George Drew. Crook later rationalized this fundamental division of the command and having separated out himself and four companies by suggesting a concern with the vulnerable “impedimenta” of the column (the pack train, an injured soldier on a travois) and the difficulty of the icy terrain for mules wearing worn, slick shoes. It is unclear whether he expressed these views at the time. Crook was later criticized for this decision, which continues to cloud the Powder River story.5 At their meeting Reynolds visibly fretted over his inexperience in fighting Indians and invited Crook’s suggestions on the fine art of such warfare. Crook’s initial response was vague and unsatisfying, almost dismissive: “Act according to circumstances and use [your] discretion.” Reynolds pushed the subject again and Crook opened up, offering insights on attacking Indians in the open, in a village, and under cover. “The difficulty of dislodging Indians who have taken shelter was specially dwelt upon,” Reynolds recalled. If Reynolds’s probing caused Crook any self-doubt about allowing him to lead the movement, Crook never openly mentioned it. The sources, even Crook’s autobiography, which is often reflective on such matters, are silent on the point.6 At some moment before the two officers separated, Crook gave Reynolds final specific instructions pertaining to the attack on a presumptive village. What was communicated, and overheard by others, was disputed even before the next day was out and then challenged vigorously in Reynolds’s court-martial ten months later. It seems quite clear, however, that Crook made it plain that if an Indian village was found and attacked Reynolds was to save any

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

123

recovered meat, save any buffalo robes and Indian saddles, save the ponies, and take some prisoners if possible, with a view to learning where other villages were located. The Indian village was then to be burned. Saving meat was a direct response to the palpable hunger rising in the command, owing in part, of course, to the earlier loss of the beef herd. Not only would such meat benefit the troops immediately, but a good stock might well prolong the campaign. Saving buffalo robes would stave off the debilitating cold and alleviate widespread suffering in the command. Saving saddles would allow the meat to be transported from the village on Indian ponies. Finally, Crook identified the location and time of a proposed rendezvous, at the mouth of Lodge Pole or Clear Creek the next evening, and indicated that he contemplated no cooperation before reuniting. Lodge Pole, according to the scouts, was an easy ride south for both commands.7 We know the critical elements of this conversation—meat, robes, saddles, ponies, prisoners—from Crook and Reynolds themselves, recorded in various testimony at Reynolds’s court-martial and in the colonel’s own written statement presented as Exhibit P in the defense documents. These points and the consequences of not achieving what was ordered were so bitterly disputed that in the court proceedings both officers expressed themselves carefully in both direct and cross examination. The initial conversation was also overheard by at least two others, who each repeated Crook’s words nearly verbatim. Grouard was one witness. He had returned from his foray by then and was in the camp. In his court testimony he confirmed these details and later expounded upon them to his biographer, Joe DeBarthe. Robert Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain News also overheard the conversation, as a quiet spectator at Crook’s campfire. He too repeated these critical elements at the court-martial (though he provided none of the details in the dispatch that he wrote from Otter Creek that appeared in his newspaper report on April 12). Despite the apparent clarity about these directions and orders on the afternoon of March 16, however, the din of battle on March 17 muddled virtually everything. Reynolds, given the opportunity that he probably ultimately never sought, assembled all of the expedition’s officers and hurriedly explained that two Indians had been discovered that morning and

124

PRELUDE

that the command was being divided, with six companies joining him and taking up the Indians’ trail on a night march while four companies remained with Crook and the pack train. Half of the scouts would go forward, with one from the group to be detailed to each battalion commander to guide him should he lose the trail. The officers going forward were instructed to ensure that their men carried a complete day’s ration of hard bread and the prescribed allotment of ammunition. If a village was attacked, Reynolds told the officers that prisoners were to be taken. Reynolds and Crook would then rendezvous on the evening of March 17 at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek. To a question posed by one of the officers about Indian prisoners and what they should do if they suddenly encountered Indians without time for further orders, Noyes remembered Reynolds saying that “we were to kill all the bucks we could and to capture the women and children; that is if it was practicable.” The officers were then released to tend to their companies.8 By now it was mid-afternoon on Otter Creek and the bivouac was in full commotion, as troopers scurried about finishing coffee, feeding themselves hardtack and bacon, feeding grain to their horses, securing rations and ammunition from the pack train, and stowing those articles in their saddlebags or bedrolls. Reynolds was specific about ordering a complete ration of hard bread, mentioning only that staple. Noyes said he ordered a “complete” ration for his company, to include bacon and coffee. “I can’t say about the rest of the troops,” he added. Crook was certain that everyone took a complete soldier ration, including meat. The supply of grain was now nearly exhausted, and Grouard remembered that Crook said that he would feed the horses what was left. Surgeon Munn divided his medical stores. Doctor Charles Stephens would remain with Crook and tend the injured Corporal Moore and the second and fourth battalions. Munn and his assistant, hospital steward William Bryan, would go forward with Reynolds, carrying the “absolute medical necessities for an engagement,” meaning ball and artery forceps, a pocket case of instruments, chloroform, brandy, bandages, binder boards, and a field medicine case, all stuffed into Munn’s and Bryan’s saddlebags or strapped to their horses.9

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

125

With preparations complete, at about 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. in the closing daylight, Reynolds’s battalion started following the trail of the two Indians whose discovery had so charged this day. The column did not follow the trail used by these Indians as they left the Otter Creek valley, which disappeared in the giant rock outcroppings and timber in the northeastern divide between Otter Creek and Powder River. Instead, following Grouard’s lead and with Stanton and the other scouts in the fore, the column rode six or eight miles up Otter Creek to its “forks,” perhaps today’s Indian Creek or more likely an unnamed small tributary entering from the east, upstream of Indian Creek. “Finding that the Indians we had seen had come down the left-handed fork, I was almost satisfied where the village lay,” remembered Grouard. The companies were kept closed up, with Moore’s battalion in the lead, with Rawolle at the head and Moore riding beside him. Mills’s Third Cavalry companies followed, with Johnson second there or fourth in line. Last came Noyes’s Second Cavalry companies, with Egan bringing up the rear.10 Back at the mid-day bivouac, before Reynolds’s column was entirely out of sight, Bourke sought out Crook and obtained permission to go forward. When Crook consented, Bourke hurriedly outfitted, saddled up, and caught up to Reynolds at the head of the column. He explained to Reynolds that he had Crook’s permission to come along but wished to ride with Stanton and the scouts. Reynolds did not object but in turn asked Bourke to convey an order to Stanton to send back one or two of the guides for each of the battalions, an initial desire apparently not yet achieved. Bourke rode on and joined Stanton, Strahorn, and hospital steward Bryan in the van, and the four remained together throughout the night. Bourke could see Grouard farther ahead and marveled at his ability to discern the trail, “leading the column with the accuracy of a bird, and following like a hound the tracks of the two young Indians our guides had come upon so suddenly in the morning.”11 Maintaining the trail was not nearly as effortless as Bourke’s simple observation suggests. The night was pitch black, and a cutting wind and snow had come up. The column hugged creek

126

PRELUDE

bottoms as long as possible. But even then the trail was dangerous, with foot-deep snow, sheets of ice, and successions of snow-filled cross-cutting gullies and incised ravines that often stopped the march until crossings could be located without the “risk of breaking our animals’ necks.” The new snow that night was not heavy enough to obscure the trail fully, and then let up entirely. Grouard, Big Bat Pourier, Buckskin Jack Russell, and Little Bat Garnier were usually able to discern the pony tracks. Sometimes Grouard would advance on hands and knees as he scoured for faint prints, Strahorn remembered, and sometimes the scouts would seemingly lose the trail and begin darting to and fro before locating it again. Farther back with Reynolds and the column, the guides were occasionally obliged to dismount and light matches in order to discern a track or find it again when lost. After leaving the Otter Creek valley, the orientation was nearly due east, in Strahorn’s words “over rugged bluffs, up narrow valleys, through gloomy defiles, and down break-neck declivities.” Near the tail of the column was Company I, Second Cavalry, and the cagey diarist Corporal Slough, who remembered the night as one of continuous falls and sliding of the horses, with no smoking, no talking, hunger, fatigue, cold, and “a thousand other tortures.”12 When the evening’s clouds broke and the sky cleared, an intense cold again descended on the troops. This campaign was already exhaustingly scored by snow and bitter cold. With few exceptions since leaving Fort Fetterman, the Big Horn Expedition had been buffeted nearly daily by snows and incessant penetrating winds, crippling blizzards, and nighttime temperatures that routinely plummeted to twenty, thirty, even forty degrees below zero. The cold was so intense that accurate measurements were often impossible, even freezing and bursting Bourke’s jealously shielded little bottle of ink. Compounding the freakishness of the weather, the men of the cavalry brigade had advanced from Camp Separation at Crazy Woman’s Fork with no more than the clothes on their backs, two blankets and a sheet of canvas each, and saddle blankets that as often as not covered a horse’s back at night and not a soldier’s. Grouard remembered this particular night as the coldest that he had

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

127

ever experienced in the north country. Bourke called it “especially severe.” Stanton labeled the cold “more intense than we had yet felt, and seemed to be at least 30 degrees below zero.” The chill was doubly excruciating, of course, because the men were up and about, not wrapped in their blankets and canvases and huddled around campfires. Yet despite it all, at least some soldiers found an upside. Lieutenant Morton later told an interrogator that “this was how [we] were able to surprise the village. The weather was so cold that even the Indians kept indoors.”13 After threading through the pines and junipers at the divide between Otter Creek and the Powder River, across what Bourke recollected as a “gently undulating surface,” the column began a slow descent into the valley of the Powder River, still some eight or nine miles away. The route, still dictated by a semblance of the Indian trail discerned by Grouard, descended into a drainage known today as Graham Creek and offered another challenge of ice, snow, and hazardous slopes. The exhausted troopers mostly led their horses. They had not slept since leaving their Tongue River camp nearly twenty-two hours earlier, and the general fatigue had become as numbing as the frigid temperatures.14 At about 4 a.m. Reynolds finally halted the command some four or five miles short of the river and concealed it in a deep coulee that afforded some seclusion but no escape from the penetrating cold. No fires were allowed, no matches were struck, no noise or ruckus was heard. Soldiers wanted badly to lie down and sleep, “just for a minute you know,” and had to be shaken by officers on a constant prowl to keep men from freezing to death. Private John Lang remembered how the troopers of Lieutenant Rawolle’s E Company, Second Cavalry, ran the “bullring” to keep blood circulating, stumbling around in a wide circle, shoulders and limbs in forced motion. Sergeant Hugh K. McGrath of Noyes’s I Company, Second Cavalry, remembered the men in his company “sling belting one another to keep from freezing to death by being overcome by the hellish torture of loss of sleep,” evoking a vivid image of men slapping each other’s backs, sides, and legs with their wide leather carbine slings. When that was not enough, Noyes also had his men

128

PRELUDE

run in circles and joined them. Despite all efforts, frost-bitten feet, faces, and ears were commonplace. Even the horses suffered, particularly for want of water in this weary frozen world.15 Grouard and four others, meanwhile, continued down Graham Creek, passing through a broad opening about two miles above the river and angling eastward onto a dry branch of that creek. Encountering fresh pony trails, Grouard quickly surmised that a village was somewhere directly ahead. In the dark they could not yet see or hear anything, but to Grouard the fresh tracks and the nearness to the river were telling. Leaving his companions, Grouard returned to Reynolds “in great glee,” remembered Bourke, announcing that a village was “directly under our feet.” At 6 a.m. the column again took up the trail with Grouard and other scouts in the lead. Once the column had its bearing, Grouard rode ahead and rejoined his secreted companions. Taking along Buckskin Jack Russell, the twenty-nine-year-old Missourian renowned for his affinity for fringed mountain man attire, Grouard continued down the dry branch to within a mile or so of the river and climbed to the brow of the northerly divide overlooking Thompson Creek and the greater Powder River valley beyond. From that vantage point, peering down the valley in the early morning twilight, Grouard and Russell could barely discern the tops of lodges about a mile away, obscured by trees and what Grouard called a fog and Noyes a hoar frost.16 Grouard sent Russell to the rear to urge the command forward while he edged closer to the camp, carefully screening himself as he scampered northward across the width of the Thompson Creek bottom and climbed the side slopes of a hillock just north of it. From that brow he could see the village more clearly and heard the bells on Indian ponies that were crowding the wide bench beneath him. In his reminiscence he claimed that he could hear Indians talking in the camp and one of them haranguing others and that he overheard that a party had gone back to Otter Creek “to find out who we were.” He concluded that that party had taken a lower trail and had thus missed encountering the column. “I could hear it as plain as could be,” he recollected. It is hard to imagine Grouard having gotten close enough to the village actually to hear such talk, so perhaps this is a recollection of matters overheard later. It does

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

129

refer back to the disappearance of the two Indians seen on the morning of March 16, however, and the return trail that they might have taken from Otter Creek to this camp. It also corroborates an evident wariness in the Indian camp recollected by Northern Cheyennes themselves.17 Back in the column the anticipation was growing palpable. As the troopers threaded their way down Graham Creek, Lieutenant Rawolle remembered it this way: “I had heard, simply by report, such as men current through the command, that the scouts had not found any Indians. We traveled till some time after sun up— till about half past 7 o’clock, our battalion leading, and my company leading the battalion, when there was a commotion in front and it was reported that there was an Indian village at the river.”18 The first news of a village actually having been spotted was delivered by Buckskin Jack, but soon Grouard showed up as well. Satisfied with his grasp of the camp, the ponies on the bench beneath him and across the river, and the general points of approach and escape, Grouard turned back and sought out Reynolds. The column was still descending the narrow, snow-filled creek bottom but nearing the distinct opening at the head of Graham Creek’s dry fork, the place where Grouard had diverted from Graham Creek. The sun was now up. Reynolds estimated the time at about 7 a.m. (the reported time in the sources varies, but all agree that it was after sunrise). From this perspective Reynolds could see nothing of the village, river, or bottom and to his credit later lamented this tactical blindness: “nevertheless right here I had to make my dispositions and give my orders, subject of course to such modifications if any as I might find necessary on reaching the village myself.” To a small knot of officers (including Reynolds, Stanton, Bourke, and Moore) Grouard explained what he had seen: the village, smoke rising from tipis, the location of ponies, the river, and the cottonwoods in the bottom. When Reynolds inquired about the number of lodges, Grouard replied, “100, maybe more.” Reynolds asked about “the best way to go down, or what shall we do, or some such remark as that,” to which Stanton, believing that the question was directed at him, replied that “we had better attack at once as it was day light and

130

PRELUDE

we could not remain there without being discovered.” Grouard agreed. Moore asked who was there. Grouard said that “he thought the whole caboodle was there—that was his language—Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and all.”19 Stanton later complained that in his estimation unnecessary time passed between Grouard’s return and Reynolds’s proposal but in fact a plan of attack quickly emerged from the discussion. Stanton said that he took the liberty of suggesting that Noyes’s battalion be sent in to capture one side of the village and that the other battalions close in and surround or capture or kill the Indians. Grouard said that when Reynolds pushed him about a plan he suggested simply, “Send some down this way and some down the other way and keep the Indians from going into the hills.” Reynolds then asked Grouard if he would place the command, meaning position it, and the scout replied, “Yes, I will place one party and send another man with the other.” At his court-martial Reynolds explained that his dispositions and orders were ultimately “governed by the judgment of my guide.” Stanton and Grouard were recommending the same thing, but Grouard had seen the land and agreed to guide the placement of the companies.20 The generalities of Reynolds’s plan very quickly became specifics. As the column continued its descent of Graham Creek, Reynolds dispatched his adjutant, Lieutenant Morton, to the rear to call forward Noyes’s battalion. As Morton passed Mills, whose battalion was second in the column, Mills was also directed to double up on Moore’s battalion at the front. When Noyes, Egan, and Mills joined Reynolds at about 7:30 a.m., he told them of the village under the bluff ahead, pointed in that direction, and then ordered their deployments. Noyes’s Second Cavalry companies would become the “charging column” because Egan’s Company K possessed pistols. (Egan’s cavalry company was the only one of ten in the entire Big Horn Expedition to have them.)21 These companies would descend to the valley floor, where Egan would charge the village directly and then turn upriver after passing through it, positioning himself to block any Indian escape in that direction. Noyes would follow Egan directly and with the help of the scouts capture the Indian ponies and drive them off. Meanwhile Moore’s

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

131

battalion, dismounted, would support the charge on the left by “going under the bluff” (meaning beneath the towering prominence defining the western side of the valley proper) to a position northwest of the village and thereby block any routes of Indian escape in that direction. Reynolds made it clear to Egan that Moore would be on his left and support him.22 When Mills overheard this he remonstrated, expressing his belief that Egan would only scare the Indians and they would get away. Mills suggested that all of the companies should dismount and creep in among them. Reynolds affirmed his faith in Egan, expressing “confidence in his pistols.” Mills turned to Morton and asked him to try to persuade Reynolds to adopt his own recommended course. Morton nodded but achieved nothing. When Mills then asked Reynolds what he should do, he was told that he was being held for future developments. He returned to his battalion and had the men dismount and stand “to horse.” Mills’s reaction aside, at this juncture on Graham Creek, within a mile and a half or so of the river and tactically blind as Reynolds later lamented, the deployment scheme made sense.23 Lieutenant Bourke was close enough to gain the general sense of Reynolds’s conversation with Stanton, Grouard, and the others but not near enough to hear every word. When the conversation ended, Reynolds (surely mindful of Bourke’s official and personal ties to Crook) turned to him and said: “Mr. Bourke, I am going to give them Egan’s pistols,” a meaning that the aide easily grasped. Reynolds then explained that Noyes would round up the horses, Moore would catch the Indians from the top of the ridge, and Mills’s company would go in dismounted to follow up Egan and destroy the tipis. Bourke’s prompt reaction was that if “Captain Egan was going into the village, I would like to go with him.” Reynolds assented. Bourke also encountered Moore, who was visibly anxious over having to “crawl in close to the enemy, give them what he called a ‘blizzard’ and get a ‘bucket-full of blood.’” Bourke was appalled by Moore’s braggadocio. “He made many remarks of similar purport, forgetting that a true soldier in the hour of trial conducts himself with modesty and gentle quietness of manner.”24

132

PRELUDE

✧✧✧✧ Reynolds’s tapping of James “Teddy” Egan and K Company, Second Cavalry, to lead the “charging battalion” was about more than pistols. The sinewy thirty-eight-year-old Irishman had served nearly continuously in the U.S. Cavalry since 1856, rising through the ranks to first sergeant, engaging in Indian skirmishes in Texas before the Civil War, and early in the war fighting in the battles of Antietam, Maryland, and Franklin, Middleton, and Shelbyville, Tennessee. In the cavalry fight at Middleton Egan’s horse was shot and fell on him, injuring his right knee and resulting in a permanent limp. At Franklin he received a saber blow to the left side of his head, which caused complete deafness in that ear, and a wound in the palm of his left hand, losing full use of it. Egan’s gallantry and fearlessness were often recognized in orders and led fellow officers to recommend that he be commissioned. On August 10, 1863, he was discharged from the Fourth Cavalry and appointed second lieutenant in the Second Cavalry, his discharge bearing this note: “I lose the best 1st Sergeant in the Army and the 2nd Cavalry gain a lieutenant they will be proud of is all the character I can give to James Egan. L. B. McIntyre, Captain, 4th Cavalry.” The now thrice wounded soldier was crippled yet again at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in May 1864, where his right arm was badly shattered by a minié ball. He spent months recovering. The bones of the arm healed only roughly and the muscles atrophied, limiting the full use of that limb and hand ever after.25 After the war Egan served mostly on the plains, being promoted to first lieutenant in 1866 and captain in 1868. In 1872 he and Company K served as the military escort and provost guard of the internationally heralded Royal Buffalo Hunt in Nebraska, a fête for the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia organized by General Sheridan and including luminaries William F. Cody, George Armstrong Custer, and Spotted Tail, the renowned Brulé chief. In 1874 Egan was among those marching on Red Cloud Agency to quell unrest there in the wake of the killing of First Lieutenant Levi Robinson near Laramie Peak, Wyoming. Egan was revered by his men. His savvy was so widely regarded among peers and senior officers that

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

133

when he told Reynolds that he “had confidence in his pistols,” his word carried staggering weight.26

✧✧✧✧ Before Noyes and Egan left Reynolds and the mass of troops drawn up on the flat along Graham Creek, Robert Strahorn obtained Egan’s permission to accompany his force into the fray. “I was not anxious to go with Moore, as he strutted around so pompously making such foolish remarks,” Strahorn remembered, and “assuming much less gore would satisfy him, I asked Captain Egan.” Egan was cautious in his reply, not wanting the task of guarding a civilian. Strahorn assured him that he would be no burden, was prepared to fight, and wanted to get the news from the front, not the rear. When Stanton and Bourke interceded on his behalf, Egan “grudgingly included me.”27 Egan also permitted hospital steward William Bryan to accompany him. During the course of the campaign the gregarious twenty-three-year-old had fallen in with Strahorn and Bourke and now also wanted to be in the thick of the action. After gaining Munn’s reluctant consent and then Egan’s, he rode at the head of the company, armed with a Springfield rifle and sandwiched between Egan and Bourke. Bryan had come from an infantry command and thus uniquely carried an infantry weapon.28 Soon after 8 a.m. the Noyes and Moore battalions were in motion, each traveling a different route. Noyes’s companies followed the trail east down the north branch of Graham Creek, guided by Buckskin Jack Russell, Big Bat Pourier, and Charlie Janis. This was the track cut through the snow by Grouard and Russell earlier that morning when the two first spotted the village. With them now were the rest of the scouts except for Grouard, who would assist in driving off the ponies. Within five hundred or six hundred yards of their departure the companies encountered an icy ravine where the men had to dismount and lead their horses from point to point. Despite their caution, the crossing was fatal to the horse ridden by Private William G. Henno, which fell and broke its neck. Henno was slightly injured too and forced to abandon everything except his carbine.29

134

PRELUDE

Across the ravine Noyes’s and Egan’s approach turned north through a saddle in the high ground separating the dry fork and Thompson Creek. They then descended onto Thompson Creek about three-quarters of a mile above its mouth. Again they followed Grouard’s trail from earlier that morning. After passing through the saddle the two companies were exposed to potential view for a while but soon reached the Thompson Creek bottomland and kept close to its northern banks. There the battalion dismounted. The men hastily examined their arms, checked their cartridge belts and boxes, and strapped greatcoats to their saddles.30 From this point the village could have been approached from two directions. The longer route was a dogleg, first down Thompson Creek to near its mouth and then a sharp left on the Powder River floodplain, a total distance of nearly a mile to the village. Noyes instead eyed a more direct route across the bench to their front, a nearly straight line of about a half-mile to the village. Before advancing, Noyes had Bat Pourier survey the bench and in short order received word of an easy flat surface and that no Indians could possibly escape in that direction, meaning due west.31 Meanwhile Alexander Moore’s course from Graham Creek took a more northeasterly bearing. His orders from Reynolds were to go “under the bluff” and place his companies at the rear of the village, blocking any possible flight in that direction, and thereby broadly support Egan’s frontal attack. Moore was to do this dismounted, doubtless on advice from Grouard that in taking this position he would necessarily cross difficult broken ground on the immediate west side of the valley that rose and fell and ultimately pinched directly against the river near the northernmost end of the village. Natural arroyos cut deeply where the river and this broken ground met, making it a perfect position for the soldiers and an equally perfect egress for fleeing villagers. These initial directions given to Moore, coupled with an immediately apparent fundamental misunderstanding of the landscape, became a disturbing example of a failure of meaningful reconnaissance before the fighting started, despite Grouard’s hurried survey of the hillsides and valley. As Moore came to see it, there was no way of easily taking his assigned position, and certainly no way of taking it under the bluff, dismounted

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

135

or otherwise, without being seen by Indian herders and the villagers. But Moore’s decisions as he reckoned with these difficult realities demonstrated no initiative or free thinking whatsoever.32 Moore’s initial path took his battalion directly toward Thompson Creek, with Grouard guiding and Stanton accompanying. In a draw south of the creek his two companies dismounted, linked horses, and detailed every fourth trooper as a horse holder who would now be left behind. Before they dismounted, Grouard also departed, but not before discussing with Moore the alternatives that he faced in getting into position. The “under the bluff” option was almost immediately and logically cast aside, its exposure becoming fully apparent when the ground was scanned carefully. The alternative was to climb the back side of the hill to Moore’s left and follow its crown to the designated position. Moore’s men commenced climbing immediately.33 Moore’s ascent went smoothly enough. Although strenuous, the climb up the back of the hill was not nearly as steep as its eastern or southern faces, which dropped precipitously to broken ground and the bench below. The men of both companies intermingled in their climb but near the top reformed into a sprawling front: Company E, Second Cavalry, took the left, and Company F, Third Cavalry, the right, with both lines oriented east toward the Powder. The soldiers were cautioned to lie below the crest and not expose themselves to the village. It was difficult to keep the men down, Lieutenant Rawolle recalled, although he himself crept forward to the brow and plainly saw the village nestled half a mile ahead among the trees dotting the floodplain and also a few Indians below among the ponies. The hill that Moore’s battalion now occupied dominated the western side of the valley, its five-hundredfoot-long crest rising nearly six hundred feet above the bench below before tapering sharply to the northeast to the maze of crags and gullies scoring its juncture with the river.34 Stanton came up with Rawolle and immediately explored the far left of the ridge top where it began its long descent. He assumed that the battalion would move in that direction just as soon as the men caught their breath. But the line did not move. Stanton first approached Rawolle and asked why he was not advancing toward

136

PRELUDE

the assigned position. Rawolle bristled, no doubt due to Stanton’s own sharp tone, and replied that he took his orders from Moore, his battalion commander. Rawolle opined that any movement down slope toward the gullies and river would necessarily expose the command and that he believed anyway that he was already in a good position to charge the village when the shooting began. Stanton started to argue, but Rawolle told him to take his case to Moore.35 Stanton walked the line, found Moore on the far right end, and confronted him as he had Rawolle, insisting that this was not the place for his battalion. Moore said simply, “Yes it is.” Stanton pointed out that the village was still more than a thousand yards off and that he could hurt nobody but Captain Egan’s men if he fired from the hilltop. But Moore paid him no heed. Stanton blurted a prickling barb: “We might as well be in Cheyenne as there,” as surely the Indians would all escape. Now steaming, Stanton again crossed the front of the line and told Rawolle that the Indians would all escape if they remained there and that he was going in the direction the battalion should go, “if I had to go alone.”36 At some point during this hilltop interlude Moore and Rawolle conferred. How carefully they actually reconnoitered the northern slopes or discussed their options is unclear, but they did in fact did face difficult realities. If they were careless in following or leading Stanton down the grade toward the village, they could well be exposed. The long slope northeastward opened toward the river, had a tangled, sharp back slope, and all exposures (front, crown, and back) offered very little ground cover other than scattered cedars. Seemingly the only perfectly safe alternative was a much more convoluted and ill-defined pathway around it all, a wide circle to the northwest through another swale and sequence of high ridges similar to the ridge that they now occupied, before descending onto Flood Creek a mile or more above its mouth. Flood Creek was the potential point of Indian escape that Reynolds most particularly wanted blocked, although he had no clue as to how this was to be achieved other than by proceeding “under the bluff.” Moore and Rawolle surely were aware of their predicament, because the lieutenant suggested placing sharpshooters on a knoll some 150 yards down the northeastern slope nearer the village, reasoning that if

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

137

the Indians saw the cavalry companies and made for the rocks they might be picked off. Moore approved the move. Rawolle’s suggestion might also be construed as a quiet acknowledgment by the two that Stanton was right and that someone (a squad if no more) ought to get closer to the village.37 Rawolle sought out Sergeant Lewis Gilbert of Company E, whom he knew by reputation as the best shot in the outfit. (This was not Rawolle’s regular company: he had been assigned to this command from Company B at Fort Sanders during a shuffling of officers when preparations for the campaign began.) Gilbert in turn sought out the company’s first sergeant, William Land, who helped pick the detail, which included himself, Private William C. Kingsley, and three others. The men followed Rawolle to the end of the line, where he pointed out a jumble of rocks down the slope and told them to head in that direction, to select a good position close to the village without giving off an alarm, and after Egan’s charge to pick off any Indians escaping into the rocks and crags below.38 The sharpshooters were still atop the hill when Stanton began his descent. He noticed them huddled in a clump of bushes and barked at Sergeant Gilbert to take the men and follow him. Stanton acknowledged at the Reynolds court-martial that he had no authority to do this and that they were not obliged to obey his order, but they went along. After having descended a short distance, Stanton glanced back and saw Second Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley, Rawolle’s subordinate, standing in front of the E Company line. He motioned for Sibley to come along too. On what authority Sibley abandoned the line and started toward Stanton is unclear, but the seven men scrambled down the hillside and took a position in the rocks overlooking the rear of the village. They had traveled nearly a third of a mile unseen and arrived just ahead of Egan’s charge. How clandestinely this move might have been made by two companies of soldiers, not just seven men, is debatable. But that it could be done at all, and ahead of Egan’s charge, was a damning indictment of Moore, a point that the headstrong Stanton drove home as soon as he saw Crook the next day.39 Elsewhere on the field Colonel Reynolds was slowly making his own way toward the Powder River from the disbursement halt on Graham Creek. He and Adjutant Morton had gone ahead with

138

PRELUDE

Noyes and Egan. But after advancing four hundred or five hundred yards, Morton returned to Mills at the disbursement point, saying that Reynolds wanted him to report with his company. When Mills asked whether Reynolds meant reporting with the battalion, Morton confirmed that the colonel meant Mills’s Company M alone and that First Lieutenant John B. Johnson’s Company E of the Third should remain where it was. Mills started down the trail and joined Reynolds, who was watching Noyes and Egan crossing the deep ravine. Reynolds told Mills that he wanted his company to dismount, cross the saddle between the dry fork and Thompson Creek, and support Moore on the hill. Anticipating some sort of call, Mills’s company had already designated horse holders, the usual one man to four horses. Reynolds countermanded this, directing Mills instead to leave behind one man for every ten horses. Mills’s company dismounted at the ravine, linked animals, followed Egan’s trail on foot, and soon crossed onto the Thompson Creek side. Mills could not see Moore’s battalion but knew the direction it had taken when leaving the disbursement point. He turned his company obliquely left and continued in a northwesterly direction toward the back of the mountain. Mills’s company struggled up and down the icy saddle, encumbered by their heavy winter garb. To ease their movement and better handle their arms, in a gully on the Thompson Creek side, Mills directed his men to remove and pile up their greatcoats. He and his first lieutenant, Augustus C. Paul, did so as well. Leaving forty-eight winter coats behind was the first of several fateful decisions for Mills that day.40 Mills and his men started climbing the mountain, and the captain soon spotted Moore. Looking back, Moore could see a company coming his way and started down, motioning for Mills to come no farther. Mills halted his men and had them lie flat while he and Paul advanced and conferred with Moore about two-thirds of the way up. Mills explained that he had been ordered to support him and asked what he was going to do. Moore replied that he occupied a position that overlooked the village, referring to the sharpshooters that he had just allowed forward and not necessarily to the rest of his direct command. When Egan charged, he intended to fire a volley directly into the village then descend the mountain and

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

139

follow Egan in. Lieutenant Paul remembered Moore repeating one of his overweening lines: “just as Captain Egan makes his charge we will give them a blizzard from the hill.” Despite Moore’s attempts at dissuasion, Mills remained under orders to join him. Moore suggested sending a note to the colonel explaining the situation and asked whether Mills carried a pencil and paper. Mills did and took a dictation from Moore, word for word, including Moore’s notion that he was within 150 yards of the village. They could see Reynolds coming onto Thompson Creek below. Mills handed the note to Paul, who in turn passed it to Private George Rabb from the company for delivery to the colonel.41 All of this troubled Mills, especially Moore’s assertion that his soldiers were already close to the village when he could so plainly sense otherwise. Mills acted on his suspicions and he and Paul continued their climb to the top with Moore to see for themselves. “I rather forced myself up there . . . he did not want me to come,” Mills recalled. From the top he and Paul could see that Moore’s battalion was fully half a mile from the village, which was in plain sight and rather large. To explain his point about distances, Moore pointed out that he had some sharpshooters placed in advance. Mills and Paul could also see that any careless movement to the left could possibly expose the troops, but so would a movement directly forward or off the ridge top to the right. Mills worried that Moore might actually fire from this position. He told him that his guns could not carry the distance to the village and made him promise that he would not do so. He could see that Moore had no intention of moving from this place but also that another company was not needed at the top, which was already crowded with soldiers. Moore then suggested that Mills remove his company down and around the mountain and hillock below as far as possible without being exposed and advance from there onto the village when Egan charged. “Mills, if you will lead, I will follow,” he declared. Mills agreed, and he and Paul returned to their company and moved it to the south side of the hillock. In making his final disposition Mills feared that his men were in sight of Indian herders, but he was not seen. Nor had the villagers apparently discovered any of the troops clambering up or down the hill. He

140

PRELUDE

ordered his men to lie down and await the triggering shots from Egan announcing that the fight had begun.42 Private Rabb delivered Moore’s note to Reynolds. He and Morton returned to Lieutenant Johnson and Company E, Third Cavalry, still waiting on Graham Creek with Drew and Munn. Slowly they too began their descent onto Thompson Creek, following Moore’s trail. This was not Johnson’s ordinary company. Regularly the regimental adjutant, he had been detailed to the command of Company E in the absence of its entire complement of officers. Certainly Johnson and Reynolds had a functional if not warm rapport, which may well explain his being held to the last, thereby providing the colonel with an escort to the field. On the creek bottom Reynolds found Grouard, who had paused at the base of the mountain about where Moore had begun his ascent. There Reynolds received Moore’s note and read it as best he could. “I did not have my glasses, and did not want to take them out just then, [and] put it in the pocket of my overcoat, and have not seen it since.” Peering down the creek Reynolds spotted Noyes’s battalion and at first thought they were Indians but then signaled to the captains to proceed. On learning from Grouard that Moore’s battalion was on the mountaintop above them, Reynolds blurted to those around him that “Moore was 1000 or 1500 yards away [from the village] and might as well be in Texas.” On that sarcastic note, the colonel then paused too and awaited the battle’s opening salvo.43

✧✧✧✧ Reynolds’s six companies had by now traveled for nearly twentyfive straight hours since departing their Tongue River camp on the morning of March 16. They had paused briefly for rations and coffee that afternoon before pressing on along a treacherous, cold, and almost nonstop trail over the divide from Otter Creek to Graham Creek and the Powder. The men were hungry, sleep-deprived, and chilled to the bone. To everyone’s delight, the day broke sunny and hinted at a moderating temperature. By 8:45 a.m. the command was fully deployed, although not particularly well, and the battalion structure was fraying. Moore momentarily retained his

HOT PURSUIT ON A FRIGID NIGHT

141

two companies on the mountaintop far from his assigned position but was now missing one of his officers, Lieutenant Sibley, who had run off with Stanton. Mills’s battalion was torn apart, and Noyes’s battalion was also about to separate. Thus far the Indians in the Powder River village seemed entirely unaware of what awaited them, but by now the camp was awake and herders were moving horses to water. At nine o’clock on this Friday morning a fight broke out that these villagers did not seek or expect and in fact had deliberately avoided. These soldiers brought on this fight and then handled it poorly in so many ways. A great blunder at Powder River was at hand.

Part II ✧✧✧✧

The Battle

6 ✧✧✧✧

Egan’s Charge

T

he daunting, impassable landscape confounding Captain Alexander Moore and his cavalrymen in the high-country west of the Powder River was, from another perspective, a measure of security for the inhabitants of the Indian village snuggled on the floodplain. The people below, repeatedly forewarned that soldiers sought to make war on them and others in the buffalo country, were perhaps lulled by the surrounding geography and thus entirely unaware of the hell about to be unleashed that morning. Rugged hillsides too steep for cavalry horses relieved anxiety over an attack from that quarter, and to the north, east, and south the Powder River’s wide floodplain was sweeping and mostly open. Troops approaching from those directions could be seen. Anyway, it was assumed that the camp’s scouts—its wolves—would give ample forewarning. The Powder River ran in a north by northwesterly course in the immediate area until it curved directly north again downstream of the village. Old Bear, the Old Man Chief in this mostly Northern Cheyenne camp, had deliberately located his followers in the bottomland between the channel and breaks. Fringes of willow, buffaloberry, and rosebushes screened the camp on the river side. With forethought and practicality, Old Bear had buried his camp in a dense stand of cottonwood trees whose trunks and canopy, even in leafless winter, broke the wind and provided useful almost endless 145

146

THE BATTLE

supplies of downfall and bark that heated tipis and fed ponies. Fallen tree limbs and piles of gathered firewood were strewn everywhere, mingled with scattered wild plum bushes. The camp was a perfect jumble and was now fully awake. Curls of smoke rose from tipi vents, while herders moved among the scattered bunches of ponies, pushing them to water. Grouard recollected that criers were admonishing the camp to be on the alert because soldiers had been spotted on Otter Creek the day before. Up Thompson Creek a quarter of a mile above its mouth Captain James Egan was fidgeting. Twenty minutes had passed since he and Noyes had come to this final pause before the attack, allowing Bat Pourier some time to survey the bench ahead and the men to make final preparations for the attack. Egan passed an order through his company that they should keep at a walk until entering the village or until they were discovered by Indians and then charge at a slow trot, using their pistols to best advantage. That was a practical order from a practical man. The horses, Bourke remembered, were cold and tired and could do little more. Finally, at 9 a.m., Noyes ordered the advance, with his Company I on the left and Egan on the right. The troops easily ascended the broad open bench that extended from the floodplain on the right to the breaks and highlands on the left and from Thompson Creek behind them to the village in the north, some six hundred yards distant. Egan led Company K in a column of fours on a line roughly paralleling the “declivity”—the relatively gentle break from the bench to the floodplain. Noyes’s company skirted nearer to the hillock at the base of the ridge. Ponies grazed this bench and scurried off right and left as the troops passed. No herders were encountered. After closing the distance to the camp by about half and descending onto the floodplain, Egan ordered “Left Front into Line.” The company maneuvered leftward into a straight line facing the village. Egan again quietly cautioned his men to maintain their walk.1 The bench was featureless, just as Pourier had reported. But shortly after dropping onto the floodplain very near the southern end of the camp Egan unexpectedly encountered yet another ravine, ten or twelve feet deep and some forty or fifty feet wide, cutting the

EGAN’S CHARGE

147

floodplain directly to the river. Challenging ravines of the sort had become so commonplace on this campaign that they were hardly thought of as obstacles anymore. This one was not mentioned by anyone afterward. Before commencing the crossing, however, the men dismounted and shed what Bourke called “all the heavy or cumbrous wraps with which we could dispense,” piling everything to one side. The men had already strapped their greatcoats to their saddles and now were removing what little else winter gear remained. Still dismounted, the troopers proceeded through the ravine, reformed their line north of it, and drew their revolvers. As the men were assembling, several on the right (including Egan and Bourke) encountered an Indian boy wrapped in a blanket amid some ponies. He was barely ten feet from Bourke. “I covered him with my revolver & could have killed him,” Bourke confided in his diary, but Egan said, “Let him alone, John,” knowing that a shot would echo through the camp. The boy, perfectly stoic as the soldiers passed, then began to howl. His shrill voice prompted Egan to shout down the line: “Charge, my boys.”2 The distance to the southern end of the village was now only a few hundred feet, and the charge accelerated despite the exhausted condition of the horses. The lodges and shelters were not arranged in any discernible order, Bourke remembered, but simply stood in the scattered nooks between trees and bushes. As the line reached the first of the tipis, dogs barked and howled. Startled by the commotion, a woman raised her door flap, saw the troops coming on, and screamed with all her might. As yet no shots had been fired, but the camp was stirring quickly, “like mad hornets,” remembered Private James N. Connely of Company K. And then a single shot rang out, followed by the peppered ring of pistol fire as the mounted troops entered the camp and took aim at Indians emerging from tipis. At first the Indians were greatly frightened, Bourke recalled, as they immediately comprehended the deadly threat. While women and children fled north through the village and into the breaks the men took cover and opened a lively defense. Egan later said that his intention was to ride through the village and re-form on the north side, precisely as ordered, but his men became almost immediately entangled in the downed trees and brush that encumbered

148

THE BATTLE

the place—“slash timber” he called it. Just as quickly the warriors brought down a lethal fire on the attackers.3 The Powder River battle was bloodiest at its very start. As Egan and Company K quickly discovered, the village sprawled for nearly half a mile, with no easy passages through it. The tangle of downed trees, piles of firewood, bushes, and scattered tipis, wickiups, and brush shelters slowed the soldiers’ advance to a walk. Bourke thought that the advantage shifted to the Indians very quickly. From whatever cover they could find, warriors spontaneously fired and quickly wounded several privates, including Patrick Goings in the left shoulder and John Droege in the left elbow. The warriors well knew the vulnerability of the company’s distinctive horses (Company K was mounted entirely on grays). The horse ridden by Vernon Droninburg, the company blacksmith, was struck in the intestines, reeled, and fell backward. Another bullet struck both eyes of hospital steward Bryan’s horse. As his mount stiffened in death, Bryan called out to Bourke: “There is something the matter with my horse!” Captain Egan’s own horse was wounded in the neck. Two others were wounded and six killed in the first minutes of the fight, throwing the company into disorder. Company K had barely reached the middle of the village, but already one-fourth of its strength was wounded or unhorsed.4 Egan’s initial line of attack was north-northeasterly, but the axis of the village (somewhat kidney-shaped) at about mid-point veered noticeably to the northwest. With his line faltering and some troopers having come to the willows along the river’s edge where the village alignment shifted, Egan halted to regroup. Seeing the soldiers hesitate and then pull to one side, and imagining that these were the only attackers, the Indians stiffened their resistance. Warriors could plainly see their enemy, still mostly mounted, but the soldiers mostly saw only smoke, tipis, and cottonwoods as they withstood the warrior’s punishing return fire from all directions. As the men dismounted at the river’s edge and linked horses into fours, Private George Schneider was killed, shot through the neck. The men found immediate cover: the same cottonwood clutter that encumbered their advance now provided excellent protection on

EGAN’S CHARGE

149

foot. Nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since the action had begun and there was no apparent support from any of the other companies, although Egan and others by then had discerned straggling shots from the west and also a pronounced singular boom. Some soldiers in Company K believed that they had been left in the lurch. Yet Egan went about re-forming his line and preparing to continue the assault but now on foot.5 Egan had no subalterns with him on this campaign. As he reformed his company to continue the charge on foot, he drafted Bourke to command on the left while he commanded on the right. After ordering his horses to be led upstream and redrawing his line, Egan signaled for the company to fire a volley and then reenter the village on an alignment nearly perpendicular to the line that it had come in on, firing volleys as it advanced. Egan’s left soon reached the twenty-foot-high declivity that rose from the floodplain to the bench. Near the rise Bourke saw one of the soldiers near him raise his revolver and prepare to fire at someone coming through the haze. Bourke screamed at him to stop, realizing that it was a dismounted man from Captain Mills’s M Company, Third Cavalry, advancing from a different direction. The two lines quickly joined (Egan’s left attaching to Mills’s right) as the northward surge through the village continued.6

✧✧✧✧ After giving Egan the prompt to advance from Thompson Creek, Captain Noyes’s Company I and most of the scouts angled their own way across the bench in a column of twos, generally following Egan’s men to their descent of the declivity. Some of the scouts separated on the higher ground to gather ponies there. On the floodplain, as Egan veered leftward and almost immediately confronted the ravine south of the village, Company I wheeled in behind to the right and started pushing ponies, calmly at first and then more aggressively as the shouts and shots attendant on Egan’s charge riled the animals nearest the commotion. Noyes later recalled the cacophony of the attack, Egan’s pistol shots, and then other rifle or

150

THE BATTLE

carbine fire. “Some of the balls evidently from Indian arms came down towards my company, evidently fired at Captain Egan.” The truth, of course, was not nearly so benign.7 Noyes’s business was to round up the ponies, scattered widely in bunches along Thompson Creek, on the bench that Egan and Noyes had just crossed, north of the camp, to the right, and across the river to the east. The greater part of the herd was on the expansive floodplain directly south of the village. Noyes’s men and the scouts collected and drove ponies upriver to a gathering place across Thompson Creek, roughly half a mile south of the village. With the first drive complete, Noyes then divided the company into squads and sent several north again to round up stragglers. First Lieutenant Christopher T. Hall and a few men crossed the river and gathered ponies on that side, driving them to the herd. As the number of ponies in the assemblage grew, the scouts and some men from the company were detailed as herd guards and worked to keep the animals pinned south of Thompson Creek. Noyes spent nearly an hour collecting Indian stock, a fine mix that included broodmares, some mules, and many branded American horses, eventually totaling more than seven hundred animals. Barely had he completed the roundup when an orderly from Reynolds directed him to drive the herd farther south, pinning them against the point of land where the high breaks between Thompson and Graham Creeks butted against the Powder, and to hold them there.8

✧✧✧✧ Mere chance had placed Captain Anson Mills’s M Company, Third Cavalry, in an advantageous position to support Egan’s charge, which in every respect was attributable to Mills’s own initiative. An hour earlier Reynolds had ordered him to support Moore, which led to the frustrating confrontation with Moore when Mills saw that the Fifth Battalion had not taken a useful position to support the attack and certainly was nowhere near where Reynolds wanted it. Mills had also comprehended that if Moore fired a volley from the ridgetop, his bullets would fall among advancing troops, not Indians, and had secured Moore’s promise that he would not shoot

EGAN’S CHARGE

151

from there. Ever mindful of his orders, however, before taking his final pre-attack position Mills ensured that Reynolds was served with a written explanation of this change of circumstances. The colonel grasped this clarification but, by his own admission, only glancingly read it. Mills moved his company around the ridge eastward and ordered the men to lie down. The company had followed him about halfway up the hill where Mills and Moore had first conversed. From this vantage point the village was in plain sight. Mills could see Indian herders below but was confident that his own men had not been discovered. He was also in a position to watch Egan’s charge. When the whoops and shooting began, he advanced his men on the double quick toward the fighting. Company M descended the ridge and crossed a ravine between the towering mesa and a side hillock at its base, which the men passed with relative ease, and quickly reached the bench. While crossing the flat en route to the village, mostly following Noyes’s trail, Mills “was astonished to hear Moore fire a volley over our heads.” His men heard the boom too as well as the bullets whistling overhead and striking in the scrub around them. Remarkably, no injuries are known to have occurred. Some of Mills’s men turned and were startled to see riders coming from behind them. They initially thought that the shooting had come from those men and presumed that the riders were Indians but quickly discerned that they were scouts collecting and driving away ponies. By the time Mills’s company neared the declivity the captain could see that Egan’s charge had stalled and that Company K was “falling to the right” and dismounting. Mills and the men of Company M could also plainly see that the village was “full of Indians and full of excitement.”9 As Mills’s soldiers dropped off the bench and into the village, the Indians in front of them were thoroughly surprised and ran off as fast as they could. The women and children made their way north through the village and, the captain presumed, took with them their wounded and killed. For many of the inhabitants this was their first comprehension that more than Egan’s forty-seven men were engaged. The combined companies continued their sweep of the village, now finding it almost entirely deserted. Yet they found occasional

ig h

Gr ound

H

Gr ou nd

od

Cre

ek

High

Flo

di In

Fl

Stanton

ee

an

s

Ponies

PO

F3 E2

WDER

Th

o

m ps

on

Ponies

Cr

ee

es rs 3 Ho 2 F E

K2

I2

k

Grouard’s Observation Point Reynolds HQ, E3

Gr

ah

Ponies

am

Creek

N

W

0

Ponies

RIVER

Horses M3

Ponies

E

S ½

1

MILE

Attack, Powder River battle, 9 a.m., March 17, 1876. Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.

152

EGAN’S CHARGE

153

surprises. One soldier charging through the tipis took a bullet through his cap, grazing his scalp. Intending to wreak vengeance on the Indian who fired the shot, the soldier and several comrades rushed into a tipi and were astonished to see three or four women armed with revolvers cutting their way through the back side and fleeing. The sweep of the camp continued until the companies reached its northernmost end. They took positions along that margin, with Company M establishing a line that stretched from the declivity east and Company K occupying the other half of this line all the way to the river. The men used downed cottonwoods and other natural features for cover, but by now the shooting had all but ceased.10

✧✧✧✧ In the fray on the riverbank where Captain Egan halted his initial charge and regrouped to continue his sweep of the village on foot, hospital steward William Bryan first showed some of the pluck that earned him a Medal of Honor for gallantry at Powder River. Bryan was among those who had been unhorsed barely moments before, his mount having been struck in the head and instantly killed. In the tumult of oncoming riders, dismounting, and linking horses in preparation for their removal amid stiffening Indian resistance, Bryan witnessed Private Edward Eagan being wounded and falling from his horse. Bryan scanned the village and glimpsed Eagan’s assailant, who carefully leveled a revolver over the top of a tree stump, intending to shoot the soldier again. Bryan instantly shouldered his Springfield and fired at the warrior, missing him but driving him away. He then ran to Eagan, who lay grimacing in the snow. After examining a grave penetrating chest wound, Bryan saw that the veteran trooper needed surgeon Munn’s immediate attention. He knew that Munn intended to establish a field hospital somewhere on the perimeter of the battlefield, as they had discussed that morning. All points of withdrawal would be to the south, so Bryan threw Eagan on his back and carried him directly through the abandoned camp, seeking the surgeon. When Munn arrived on the field, having accompanied Colonel Reynolds and

154

THE BATTLE

E Company, Third Cavalry, he spotted Bryan and Eagan. Munn quickly chose a distinctive site on the floodplain behind a place known then and now as “the corner,” where the upper bench projected noticeably into the plain just below the first line of tipis. Most importantly, soldiers could readily find this place along the distinctive declivity that bordered the western margins of the village, where the view of the floodplain south from the village was interrupted. Bryan delivered Eagan even as other wounded men from Company K were making their own way toward them and joined the surgeon in rendering assistance to all those at hand. Then, over Munn’s objection, Bryan returned to the village seeking Captain Egan and the likelihood of other medical challenges on the line.11

✧✧✧✧ Egan’s charge successfully routed the village. Every warrior immediately comprehended the threat, rushed from his lodge with weapons and cartridges, and put up a stout defense, lethal at first and sufficient to buy time for the escaping noncombatants. This flight and its route were predictable: north opposite the charge then west into the breaks and mostly up the drainage now known as Flood Creek. To meet this flight, Grouard and Reynolds had envisioned the placement of Moore’s two companies at what was vaguely referred to as “the northern end of the village,” somewhere in the breaks above the deep ravines and drainages that provided avenues of cover and escape. Yet, when the shooting began, only seven soldiers occupied the desired position—Major Stanton, Second Lieutenant Frederick Sibley, and five enlisted men from Rawolle’s Company E, Second Cavalry.12 Under Stanton’s lead, in the hour before the shooting began, this little makeshift squad had scurried to a position in the lower breaks facing the village. The dry course of Flood Creek was plainly visible 250–300 yards to the left as well as a portion of the village 200 or 300 yards in their front. Sergeant Lewis Gilbert of Rawolle’s company was among the party and remembered observing Egan’s men riding in, slowly at first, then going “front into line” and

EGAN’S CHARGE

155

galloping into the camp. He also saw Indians fleeing and hiding behind cottonwoods as they headed for washouts and ravines north of him. Gilbert remembered a volley being fired on his right a few minutes after Egan’s charge. With little for cover besides bushes and rocks, the men commenced firing on the retreating Indians when the attack began. The Indians returned the fire, but not for long. “I judge we fired from 25 to 50 shots,” Stanton later recalled. “We poured in an enfilading fire . . . but of course we were too few to prevent the escape of the 500 or 600 Indians who were there.” Unable to make much of a difference, Stanton, Sibley, and the men then made their way out of the breaks and into the village.13 A comment made by Stanton in hindsight offers a meaningful reflection on the importance of this little episode. Writing to the adjutant general in 1896 in endorsing the application of then Captain Sibley for a Medal of Honor for gallantry in the Great Sioux War, Stanton wrote: “This movement, exposing a small party of men to what might have been considered almost certain destruction, so confused the Indians that, instead of occupying the bluffs, where they could have poured in a galling fire on our command, at the almost certain cost of many lives, induced the greater body of them to escape down the river.”14 Twenty years earlier allowing the Indians to escape had been viewed only as a failing. Yet denying them any ability to occupy high ground above the evolving soldier lines, if only temporarily, was a worthy outcome. This contentious episode certainly provided some basis for the case against Captain Moore involving disobedience of orders and a violation of the 42nd Article of War: misbehavior in the face of the enemy.

✧✧✧✧ On the ridgetop west of the valley, Egan’s charge served as the cue for one of the most bizarre incidents associated with the fight: Moore’s senseless volley. Alexander Moore never conceded that he occupied an utterly pointless position more than half a mile from the nearest tipi. His cohort, First Lieutenant Rawolle, commanding the other company on the ridge, acknowledged the mistake to Stanton: “I know this is not the place for this battalion, but you see I

156

THE BATTLE

am not in command.” The major allegedly responded in a final fury: “[S]hoot me if you will, but I am going to help our comrades” and darted down the hill.15 The only other officer remaining with Moore and Rawolle was the colonel’s son, Second Lieutenant Bainbridge Reynolds of Moore’s company. Rawolle’s second officer, Frederick Sibley, had scampered off with Stanton. As the two company commanders contemplated loosing a volley at the Indians, they apparently gave little consideration to the effective range of their carbines or whether such firing was in any way helpful or even hazardous to the attack. Mills had challenged the notion of firing into the village from Moore’s vantage point when he and Moore had their verbal altercation atop the hill. Mills made the case that such an action would pose grave danger to troops operating below.16 The .45–55 caliber Springfield carbine was no longer a new weapon for these soldiers or for the army in general. It had been introduced in 1873 as the standard issue shoulder arm for cavalry troops, so the men by now were well familiar with its use. Although marksmanship was not yet the obsession that it became for the army after Little Big Horn, veteran soldiers understood the principle of sighting and had a workable sense of range. Moreover, sergeants and commissioned officers working the firing line were critical in helping to regulate the fire and in determining and calling out variables such as range. But nothing of the sort apparently happened here. At Moore’s court-martial Bainbridge Reynolds was asked whether the men had sighted their guns. He replied: “I don’t know” but allowed that “the men usually do.” “Did you give them the range?” the judge advocate asked. “I did not,” Reynolds replied. A weapon with a maximum effective range of about 600 yards was useless when brought to bear on targets varying from 880 yards to 1,175 yards away. Moore’s volley achieved little more than lobbing lead not at Indians but rather at soldiers maneuvering on the flats below.17 Moore’s single volley reverberated across the valley, and troops in the village, on the bench, and moving elsewhere reacted to it. Grouard remembered it caustically: “I don’t know whether they

EGAN’S CHARGE

157

thought they were firing at the Indians or not, but they were firing into Egan’s company.”18 The most striking response came from Second Lieutenant Charles Morton, the expedition’s adjutant, who was riding with Colonel Reynolds and Company E, Third Cavalry, then making their way down Thompson Creek. “Soon after Captain Egan started on his charge—I don’t know whether before he got in the village or not—there was firing opened from the top of that hill. I saw the men off to the left were dodging, as if the bullets were striking among them. I rode in the direction of the hill and waved my hat and called out to them to cease firing, that they were firing on our men. Whether it was heard or not, I don’t know.”19 After firing his volley, Moore advanced on the village. Holding to the belief that any movement to the left was impossible (despite Stanton’s departure in that direction) and that the sheerness of the ridge face in front precluded any movement directly east, Moore directed his battalion in a southeasterly course, slipping and sliding off the crown. Leading the way was Sergeant John Warfield and fifteen men from Moore’s Company F. Their route crossed the position halfway down the slope that Mills’s men had occupied just before Egan’s charge, then followed Mills’s route through the same deep ravine between the ridge and hillock and the same bench, ending near the southwest edge of the village above the corner. By then the camp had been fully abandoned, its occupants mostly having been swept northward by Egan and Mills. Moore’s battalion passed through the encampment, following the western margins of the tipis and the base of the meandering declivity until it neared Mills’s Company M. Observing the line formed on the northern perimeter, Moore proceeded to extend it southward along the high break of the declivity, facing west. Rawolle’s company connected to Mills’s line. Company F, south of it, extended the line nearly to the corner.20 Meanwhile Colonel Reynolds and his escort and headquarters complement were in motion too, entering the village from the south, having followed Egan’s tracks from Thompson Creek. Munn was the first to separate from Reynolds’s party. He broke off at the southernmost end of the tipis when hospital steward Bryan came,

158

THE BATTLE

carrying the wounded Edward Eagan. On the far right against the river Reynolds saw the massed horses and holders of Egan’s Company K, who had moved there after the unit dismounted downstream. He also saw Grouard returning after having helped drive horses south with Noyes and sent an orderly to bring him over. Reynolds made it clear to Grouard that he wanted him to stay close in order to be able to lead the column to Lodge Pole Creek as soon as the village was destroyed. Grouard had assumed that the troops had planned to stay in the village that night and asked Reynolds about it, but the colonel countered with an emphatic “No.” Grouard then asked for permission to go into the village to collect Indian trinkets from the tipis, which Reynolds permitted so long as the scout remained relatively near at hand, which Grouard said he would do.21 Reynolds then continued into the village with Lieutenant Johnson, E Company, Adjutant Morton, and Quartermaster Drew. The profusion of tipis, swirling smoke, and cottonwoods generally obstructed the view as it had for others. The yelping of dogs, neighing of scattered bunches of jittery ponies, and sporadic weapons fire added to the confusion. Johnson pointed out the large numbers of ponies that Noyes had not cut out and requested permission to gather them and drive them off. Reynolds turned him loose on the condition that he return directly and then continued riding north through the camp. Mills spotted Reynolds almost immediately as he emerged from behind the last of the tipis and ran over to him, wanting to know what was to be done. At the colonel’s courtmartial ten months later Mills recalled that Reynolds “was very much pleased, riding his horse, and said what have you got,” and the captain explained that they had captured “a very large village, with meat and everything.” Just then shots rang out. Mills advised Reynolds to get off his horse, as he was conspicuous and the Indians might pick him off, but the colonel did not dismount.22 Mills requested the return of Johnson and E Company, which Reynolds allowed as soon as they returned from gathering and delivering ponies to Noyes. Reynolds informed Mills that he wanted everything burned and that they would then get away as quickly as possible to a safer place. Mills responded in a tone of frustration,

EGAN’S CHARGE

159

again noting that this was a very large village, rich with everything that they needed, and that they ought to stay and wait for Crook to come up. Only after valuables were secured should the balance be destroyed. Saving meat and robes, of course, was Crook’s priority, and both officers knew that Crook was not coming in support, short of being summoned. When Reynolds asked whether the camp could be held, Mills replied, “Certainly.” The colonel then instructed the captain to organize a detail, separate property of value, and destroy the rest. Reynolds had spotted Captain Moore some 150 yards to the west along the declivity, so he ended his conversation with Mills and rode off in that direction. Mills returned to his line, found First Lieutenant Paul, and informed him that they were going to camp in the village for the night and that he needed to prepare to resist an attack, which surely would come once the Indian noncombatants were in places of safety. He also should organize a detail to gather meat and robes and commence burning all else.23 If Reynolds harbored dissatisfaction with Moore over his having taken the ridgetop position, for firing on the troops from there, or for allowing the Indians to escape and failing to take any prisoners for interrogation, these matters seem not to have been discussed when the two met on the line. Reynolds’s instinctive fatherly demeanor probably operated to moderate the exasperation that he had shown earlier when blurting out that Moore might as well have been in Texas as on that ridgetop. Instead their brief conversation focused on little more than the destruction of the village and the apparent vulnerability of the lines. Reynolds had seen enough of the village as he came in and of Mills’s and Moore’s positions to conclude that holding the skirmish line, as he called it, and destroying the camp would be an almost impossible undertaking for such a small command. He had offered Mills the return of Johnson and E Company, so every available man would be deployed except for the horse holders and herd guard, with no reserve whatsoever for unforeseen emergencies. Reynolds accordingly reversed himself, ordering the full destruction of the village and all its contents and then, as quickly as possible, a march to Lodge Pole Creek.24

160

THE BATTLE

Adjutant Morton was tasked with delivering the word to Mills and Egan. Mills had barely gotten troops into the tipis nearest him to separate meat, saddles, and robes and commence the torchings when Morton appeared to announce that Reynolds had changed the order and that everything was to be burned and the troops positioned for a rapid departure. Mills again protested, exclaiming that it would take a long time to destroy everything because the tipis were mostly leather and proved hard to burn, which was in any case dangerous. This was plainly evident from the explosion of caps, powder, and munitions as soon as the first of the tipis was fired. With no recourse, however, Mills told his men that the order had been changed and that they were to burn everything and prepare to get away. “It was hard to make the men understand, and we had to go to each person, many of them carrying robes to the rear.” Soldiers exposed to the elements over the past two weeks while protected by the barest of cover (especially in view of their desperate exposure on the previous night’s march from Otter Creek) found it difficult to accept the notion of abandoning those robes. But for Mills the change of orders was quickly overshadowed, as matters on the line took an ominous turn.25 A full hour had elapsed since Egan’s charge. All six companies were engaged, four directly in the village and Noyes and Johnson elsewhere in the valley, chasing or managing Indian ponies. A hospital had been established and was receiving wounded men. Stanton and his small detail had come off their perch overlooking the northern end of the village. But when Sergeant Gilbert encountered his company commander, Rawolle, near the declivity, the lieutenant immediately ordered him and his fellow sharpshooters back onto the high side into a jumble of rocks near the intersection of his and Mills’s lines. That was a vulnerable point, he rightly concluded. As Rawolle was placing his men, he was struck by a nearly spent rifle ball in the left leg, a serious enough contusion to inflict pain and blacken his leg but not breaking the skin. Reynolds thought that the wound was serious enough to list Rawolle as one of the casualties of the engagement. Rawolle mentioned it in one of his two battle reports but also thought it so trifling that

EGAN’S CHARGE

161

he would not allow Munn to mention it in his official medical report. It went unlisted.26 Elsewhere individuals and small parties were tending to duties of mercy. Private Michael Himmelsbaugh and several others from Egan’s Company K carried the body of their deceased comrade George Schneider off the field, delivering it to Doctor Munn at the hospital. Himmelsbaugh was another of the remarkable men in this company, an 1870 recipient of a Medal of Honor for bravery in action against Indians on the Little Blue River in Nebraska.27 When hospital steward Bryan returned to the village after delivering the wounded Edward Eagan and caring for other injured men from Company K, he came upon Lieutenant Bourke in the middle of the camp, nursing frozen toes. After assisting Egan with the management of one end of the K Company line when it swept the village on foot, Bourke had withdrawn in crippling pain. On the advice of Lieutenant Hall of Noyes’s company, whom he had chanced upon when Hall was sweeping for ponies, Bourke had immersed his hands and feet in river water and was now vigorously rubbing them with a piece of gunnysack to restore circulation. Bryan dug out a bottle of tincture of iodine and liberally applied some to Bourke’s frozen appendages. Puzzling though this may seem to modern sensibilities, Bourke was sure that this treatment precluded any amputation.28 The Indian village posed yet another challenge for Reynolds and his officers. Its tipis brimmed with artifacts of beauty and artistic value. From the earliest days of Indian-white contact on the Great Plains, whites had prized objects of Indian culture such as quilled or beaded moccasins, knife sheaths, shirts and leggings, bags, pipes, shields, bows and arrows, bonnets, and effigies. Plain or unornamented clothing was the daily apparel of Indian people, and almost certainly the Indians had fled wearing the simplest of attire. But this was a culture that valued extraordinary finery, all of which was highly desirable to whites. While Reynolds and his soldiers had no inkling yet as to whose village this was (other than Grouard’s casual assessment that it belonged to Crazy Horse), at hand were nearly a hundred lodges and shelters of all sizes, most

162

THE BATTLE

buffalo skin, some of canvas, and nearly all bursting with the wealth of the tribe.29 While tending his frozen toes in the middle of the camp, Bourke gazed about in wonder and later devoted six full paragraphs of his diary to the tipis surrounding him, which he knew contained more than meat, saddles, and robes. Here were the wealth and cultural achievements of a people, including their buffalo robes “wonderously embroidered with porcupine quills, paint and trimmings,” painted parfleches filled with fine clothing embroidered with beadwork, furs of all sorts, eagle feather bonnets, hunting knives, tin cups, pans, pots and kettles, blankets, and pillows. There was a surprising richness, he noted, “in everything a savage would consider comfortable and much that would be agreeable in a white man’s house” or ornamenting his walls. Grouard also was impressed with what he saw. He saw everything that an Indian was supposed to have, he told the Reynolds court. “They were well to do in an Indian way, about as well as any village I ever saw.”30 When Reynolds met Grouard as the colonel was initially entering the village, Grouard agreed to stay close, but he also wanted an opportunity to prowl the village for trinkets. Searching for trinkets or plunder, as it was more commonly referenced in the soldier accounts, became an issue at Powder River as the day wore on. Most soldiers detailed to the firing of the camp at first found time to rummage, and so did some of the officers. One instance of plundering, or at least allegations of it, led to one of the most horrendous episodes of the day (see chapter 8).31

✧✧✧✧ Reynolds’s vacillation over whether the contents of the camp should be sorted and saved or blindly destroyed brings into question issues of personal character and leadership. Reynolds discussed the camp’s destruction with Grouard before entering and again with Mills at the camp’s northern end, where he repeated his intention to destroy everything. Both instances suggest that he had made this critical decision before going in, despite Crook’s specific direction the day before to save the meat, saddles, and robes to benefit the campaign.

EGAN’S CHARGE

163

Crook’s clear charge had been overheard by others, and Reynolds reiterated it to the officers of the command when he addressed them on Otter Creek, yet now it seemed to be of no consequence whatsoever. Grouard and Mills also discussed with Reynolds the notion of spending the night in the village, although Crook had been clear about meeting the column at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek that evening. Both Grouard and Mills seem to have comprehended the complexities of sorting property and destroying such a large camp and the time required to do so. That Reynolds equivocated only added to the dilemma. He knew that Crook had no intention of supporting him. Even if summoned, he could not appear this far north anytime soon. The decision to pack or destroy the meats and robes was Reynolds’s alone to make. Reynolds kept his own counsel during this campaign. No political courtship occurred between himself and newsman Robert Strahorn, so he did not become the focus of stories until the campaign collapsed. He attempted to explain himself during his courtmartial, particularly in his written defense at the close of the trial. But that document, Exhibit P, was understandably self-serving and was not seen outside the courtroom. History therefore has no contemporary reaction to Reynolds’s thoughts at the time of the engagement. Ultimately Reynolds can be understood only by his actions on the field. He could have risen to expectations and fulfilled Crook’s orders, effectively utilized his company commanders, and withdrawn in good order after having extracted from the village some or all of its valuables, thus demonstrating that maturity, experience, grade, and opportunity mattered. Success would have played evermore to his credit and to Crook’s as well. But the Powder River battle did not play to Reynolds’s benefit. In the first hours of the morning his relative composure turned to uncertainty. He was the oldest soldier on the field at age fifty-four. Despite appearances, his age and physical infirmities affected his performance. He acknowledged as much in his court-martial defense. Certainly he had endured the same campaign-long privations as the rest of the command, including the long, cold, sleepless night before the attack. He had witnessed Moore’s folly on the ridgetop but now seemed oblivious to its consequences. He had captured a remarkable

164

THE BATTLE

village, rich with campaign-sustaining property and almost all of the Indian ponies but viewed those valuables only as encumbrances. Perhaps his growing bewilderment was rooted in the perplexing camp itself, buried deep in a large, tangled, smoky grove of cottonwoods. Perhaps he was influenced by the officers who hounded him for decisions and reconsiderations, one of them seething over Moore’s actions. Or perhaps it was simply the bloodshed. His command had taken casualties. Although the fight was momentarily halted, it was at a crossover. The troops on this battlefield urgently needed a clear-thinking commander. Otherwise the fruits of the engagement would be jeopardized or even lost altogether. At this critical juncture Reynolds’s decision making ultimately proved wanting. The Powder River battle was on the verge of going to hell.

7 ✧✧✧✧

Destroying Old Bear’s Village

O

bliterating the Powder River Indian camp proved a daunting task. In the earliest moments of the fight Reynolds and his company officers barely grasped the scale of this village and its unique and nearly obscured sprawl. Even a simple count of tipis proved trying. In the months and years afterward the reported number of lodges in the Powder River village varied greatly, from as few as 80 or 85 to 130. In his official report Reynolds reported 105 tipis. Grouard said 84, “including all the little lodges.” Apparently only a few officers actually took the time to count them. Paymaster Stanton did so but parsed the number greatly. “There were probably eighty or ninety occupied lodges,” he told the Reynolds court. When asked if he had counted them, he replied: “Yes, sir: I counted 105, including those occupied by dogs, ponies, and what they called brood mares.” Adjutant Charles Morton took the time to count them too, later telling Sioux War historian Walter Camp that he tallied 104 lodges, strewn for nearly half a mile from just below “the corner” north to where the declivity, floodplain, and river pinched together against the western breaks. Destroying everything would take time.1 Reynolds’s order to burn the lodges and property was widely circulated by 10:00 or 10:15 that morning. First Sergeant William Land, arriving with Lieutenant Rawolle and Moore’s battalion,

165

166

THE BATTLE

recalled that the burning commenced about an hour after they had entered the village. The business of destruction fell to squads of enlisted men led mostly by sergeants. Each of the companies on the line, Moore’s F and Rawolle’s E on the west and Mills’s M and Egan’s K on the north, pulled men and turned them inward. At the Reynolds court-martial only Captain Egan specifically described the process of destruction, which usually began with a cursory search of each lodge and a hope that a fire of sorts smoldered inside. Any fire inside was returned to life, or a new one was started using the dry flammables invariably at hand. With a fire raging inside, the tipi’s poles were then pulled down, the slender dry lodgepole pines and skin or canvas covers collapsing onto the flames. Outside even more combustibles were piled on, including stashes of firewood lying beside almost every tipi plus saddles, robes, and anything else that could possibly burn. They piled on “everything we could find to destroy it,” Egan recalled. Asked by the judge advocate whether any meat in the lodge was fit for use afterward, the captain replied with a touch of sarcasm: “I think the green meat was nicely cooked; that which was dried and packed in their little sacks, and all that was partially dried was rendered unfit for use.”2 The quick prowls inside the lodges led to interesting discoveries. While beaded objects and other decorative wares fascinated some soldiers and many stashed buffalo robes despite orders to burn them all, the variety and abundance of fresh, frozen, and sacked foodstuffs tucked away in parfleches and valises proved to be of the greatest interest. Stores of coffee, flour, sugar, and tea were discovered, along with tobacco and especially large quantities of buffalo and other meat, dried and fresh. These soldiers had not eaten much more than scant morsels of hardtack and cold bacon since leaving Otter Creek and now gleefully helped themselves to what they wanted, stuffing blouse and trouser pockets with as much as they could carry. Stanton, wandering through the tipis himself, remembered a soldier carrying off a live chicken. For the men in the camp this was good picking. As the news of this abundance spread to the men holding the lines, maintaining functional order there became its own challenge, as individuals slipped away for their own chance at gathering meat and robes. Mills “went along

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

167

the line ordering the men to remain and reproving those attempting to go into the rear [for] plunder,” he reported. “I tried hard and so did Lieutenants Johnson and Paul but despite ourselves some would slip out.”3 Aside from Noyes, only Lieutenant Johnson and Company E, Third Cavalry, of Mills’s First Battalion had not yet been wholly involved in the fight. That morning Company E, still mounted, had come down from Graham Creek escorting Reynolds and the headquarters detachment and entered the camp soon after Egan’s charge. Johnson immediately gained Reynolds’s approval to round up and deliver additional ponies to Noyes’s herd south of Thompson Creek. Johnson later estimated that he gathered as many as three hundred animals, mostly from the flats north of the camp and scattered throughout the village. Meanwhile Mills sought Johnson’s return in order to strengthen his own position. As they passed Reynolds on their return to the camp after delivering the ponies, the colonel ordered Johnson and Company E to join Mills but first had them dismount and draw off their own animals, with one horse holder to eight mounts. Company E’s horses were subsequently removed to a position along the declivity above the hospital, where they remained until the general withdrawal began.4 When E Company joined Mills, a few of the men were sent into the village to burn tipis, but most were intermingled with Company M on the line. As that occurred, Egan’s Company K shifted eastward nearer the river, still guarding Mills’s right and some of the northern position but also refusing that line southward and facing the river. During this shuffle through the snow Private Theodore Gouget of Company K tripped on rough ground and fell into a deep pit or furrow along the riverbank. Unhurt and quickly regaining his composure, Gouget realized that he occupied a relatively safe but critical position where Company K’s line turned. Although exposed to fire from three sides, he held that corner until the wholesale withdrawal in the afternoon and from this position fired some sixty rounds at the Indians.5 By mid-morning the nearly hour-long calm on the lines diminished as warriors increasingly crept into positions opposite the soldiers’ perimeter and commenced a harassing, desultory fire that

168

THE BATTLE

never waned for the rest of the day. The troopers returned that fire, with men like Gouget expending considerable ammunition. What each side achieved by this exchange was sometimes not altogether clear. Yet the expenditure of ammunition, particularly on the military side, was striking, exemplifying an issue that plagued troops throughout the Great Sioux War.6

✧✧✧✧ With no evident strategic location on the battlefield suitable for establishing a headquarters position from which to oversee the action, Reynolds chose instead to ride the field continuously. For the remainder of the morning he, Morton, and an orderly or two were always somewhere in the village. Reynolds was particularly interested in the destruction of the lodges though not as intrigued with their contents as were others. As he watched the growing conflagration, he grew increasingly irritated by the pilfering that he saw, particularly men bringing out robes and meat. “I required them to throw these things down where they were and ordered that the destruction of the village be promptly made,” Reynolds recalled. Perhaps mindful of the reason for this pilfering, he finally allowed the men to retain small bits of meat that could be conveniently carried yet pushed the matter of completing the destruction and urged his officers on the line to take a greater interest in ensuring this result as well. As Mills recalled, “General Reynolds . . . was very indignant at the men who were plundering and ordered me to stop it. I tried hard and so did [my l]ieutenants,” but men were always slipping out.7 Nearer the lines Reynolds could also see that the Indians were becoming more deliberate in their retaliation, “creeping in among the logs, trees, sage brush, rocks and willows which were found from one end of our line to the other” and “pick[ing] off our men.” The most critical positions on the field now belonged to Mills’s battalion, which occupied a line among the trees north of the village, and Rawolle’s company, which held a jagged line running southward along the high break of the declivity. Six or eight of his men, including the sharpshooters who had advanced with Stanton

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

169

during the initial attack, were now scattered among the jumble of rocks to the northwest, slightly beyond where the lines converged. That apex and these lines were the most exposed on the field. The Indians’ enfilading fire was proving dangerous, even lethal. During this exchange Private Jeremiah Murphy of Company M had the stock of his carbine shattered in his hands, and the same ball ripped his trousers.8 Elsewhere on the northern line, Private Peter Dowty of Company E, Third Cavalry, became the second fatality of the morning. Dowty was among the men of Johnson’s company detailed to Mills’s line after driving ponies to Noyes and upon returning had taken a position near the northwestern corner. There he was shot through the head and killed instantly. First Sergeant William Land of Rawolle’s Company E, Second Cavalry, supporting his unit’s line along the declivity and himself near the angle, observed the commotion and rushed over to find Dowty dead. Land sought out his counterpart, First Sergeant Jeremiah Foley, working farther down the northern line, who carried the news to Lieutenant Johnson. When Mills learned of this, he directed that Dowty’s body be carried to the rear, just as the body of Company K’s Private Schneider had been. The task of carrying Dowty’s body fell to Sergeant Foley, who pulled six men off the line and joined them in the long hike to the hospital. As Foley and his detachment made their way through the village they encountered Reynolds, who cornered the sergeant and sought an explanation for the size of the detail. The colonel directed Foley to carry the body to a place “behind the bluff,” meaning the corner where Munn had established his hospital, to cover him with some buffalo robes, and to report back to the front.9 Barely had Dowty’s body been taken from the line when another of Mills’s men was shot. Sergeant Charles Kaminski of Company M was struck by a bullet passing through his left leg just above the knee. Mills had sent Kaminski and two men to destroy several tipis near the riverbank when he was hit by gunfire coming from the willows. Hospital steward Bryan, engaged in firing tipis near the K Company line, heard his name being called. Looking around, he spotted Kaminski lying in the snow fifty yards away, crying for help while pointing to the willows. Bryan watched two Indians

170

THE BATTLE

creeping toward Kaminski but ignored them and ran to the sergeant. Lieutenant Bourke, close by, called out: “Don’t risk it Bryan; they will kill you,” but Bryan continued to Kaminski’s aid despite several shots fired in his direction. Bourke fired several shots that succeeded in driving off the attackers, while Bryan joined several others from M Company in carrying Kaminski through the village to Munn’s care at the hospital.10 By now it was late in the morning. The action in the north remained dogged and costly. Mills, holding the critical line on the north side of the village and suffering increasing casualties, grew troubled as he surveyed his position. On the right Egan’s men had almost wholly withdrawn to a new position upriver at about the village’s midpoint near where they had dismounted during the initial attack. This redeployment was driven in part by the progressive southward destruction of the village and a desire to protect the men doing the work on an otherwise exposed eastern flank. The simple need for reshaping the lines this morning had necessarily scattered the five companies widely, with Mills’s battalion emplaced north of the village, Moore’s two companies lined-out to the west, and Egan’s company alone holding the east side. That was a quieter front for Egan, to be sure, and his shift rightly troubled Mills, whose line was that much thinner. Matters were not comforting on the left either, as Mills witnessed the alarming diminishing of that line. With so many men having been detailed to the destruction of the village and others to the aid of casualties, weaknesses were quickly apparent. Worse yet, Mills discovered that the sharpshooters from Rawolle’s command had abandoned the rocky point on the high ground beyond the intersection of the lines, a critical area that was now being infiltrated by warriors who began a raking fire on the lines. Johnson also had witnessed Indians boldly demonstrating from that sagebrush and rocky corner, a developing threat that was only sporadically checked by concentrated fire from Mills’s line. Mills saw no officers on the western line but did observe ten or fifteen men huddling there as if preparing to run. When he cornered a sergeant, demanding an explanation, he learned that they had been ordered to go for the horses. Unbeknownst to Mills, a short while earlier

H

oo

Gr ou nd

d

Gr ound

Fl

ig h

ek

High

Cre

E2

WDER

E3

PO

M3

o

m

K2

Th

ps

F3

on

Hospital

Cr

es rs 3 Ho 2 F E

ee

k

K2 Horses E3 Horses Indian Pony Herd

Horses M3

I2

R

Gr

ah

ER

am

Creek

N

W

0

IV

E

S ½

1

MILE

Destroying Old Bear’s Village, Powder River battle, 11 a.m., March 17, 1876. Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.

171

172

THE BATTLE

Moore had obtained Reynolds’s permission to retrieve his battalion’s horses from the back of the mountain. Mills would hear none of it and immediately directed the men back onto the line.11 Colonel Reynolds now appeared at the lower end of the village in the midst of Mills’s growing angst. Mills cornered him, complaining bitterly. He reported that Egan and Moore were not treating him well, that Egan had entirely abandoned the front and right, that Moore was falling back on his left, and that the destruction of the village required more time. What he needed most now, he implored of Reynolds, was help in holding this extended position. Reynolds explained that in his view Egan had done so well in the opening charge that he did not want to call on him yet again. But he agreed to send Noyes as soon as he could. Reynolds did not linger, and his responses did not assuage Mills. In view of the persistent Indian fire on the northern line, Mills sent a runner, Private Alexander Shore of Company E, directly to Moore, pleading with him to hold onto the bluffs (a reference to Moore’s position along the high side of the declivity). Shore soon returned with Moore’s assurance that he would do just that, yet no soldiers arrived from his command to reoccupy their former places—a gap now more than 150 yards wide. Mills then sent Lieutenant Johnson directly to Reynolds, again complaining that, with Moore having fallen back, his flanks were exposed and that if he was not supported he too would have to withdraw. Johnson returned with another assurance from Reynolds that Noyes would soon be up. Now irate, and not an officer to be trifled with, Mills pressed Lieutenants Morton and Bourke, whom he encountered nearby, to carry the same message to Reynolds. In due course both officers worked their way south through the village, but neither sent replies back to Mills. Bourke did deliver Mills’s message to Reynolds and received the same assurance that Noyes was coming up. When Moore also found Reynolds, he complained about Mills’s harangues: “he told me not to mind him.”12 Behind Mills, the destruction of the village continued, sometimes with surprising, even startling consequences. Lieutenant Rawolle recalled looking into one smoldering lodge, drawn to it by the many dogs lingering about. Soon after he left, the tipi exploded:

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

173

its consuming fire had reached a powder keg. Rawolle investigated no others. During the course of the destruction exploding tipis became an anticipated phenomenon, each fire generating “a puff! as its little magazine of powder ignited.” Often, however, the explosions were more pronounced. Bourke recalled how the detonation of powder kegs sometimes sent lodgepoles flying like rockets into the air, descending and smashing everything in their way. “It was a great wonder to me that some of our party did not receive serious injuries from this cause.” The immense quantities of fixed ammunition and gunpowder encountered and destroyed (which most officers presumed had been obtained at Red Cloud Agency, in some cases recently) would emerge as a political issue in the months to come.13 The large numbers of domestic stock were a curiosity. Robert Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain News told his readers of the broods of chickens and fine dogs that the men frequently encountered. Often the dogs would lie by their masters’ tipis even as the lodges were torn down and set afire, all the while “heedless of coaxing, gazing wistfully and without a growl at the bands of destroyers.”14 Easily the least anticipated and most compelling discovery in the camp as the destruction progressed was a wounded old Indian woman in one of the tipis. When chanced upon by soldiers, she was stretched out on a couch inside her lodge. Grouard and several of the mixed-bloods were promptly summoned and interrogated the old woman. She told Grouard that she had been wounded by her husband at the very beginning of the fight as he was shooting from the entrance of their lodge. She explained to Grouard that the village belonged to Crazy Horse, who had with him a force of Miniconjous, and that some Cheyennes had just arrived from Red Cloud Agency, as had two other lodges of Sioux that had arrived two days earlier. The old woman told Grouard that Sitting Bull was camped downriver at the mouth of Beaver Creek. “I had suspected this all the time,” Grouard told his biographer. “The village we had destroyed was Crazy Horse’s,” he said. “I knew this village by the horses. Knew every horse there.”15 This chance encounter with the old woman and her identification of the village as belonging to Crazy Horse was largely

174

THE BATTLE

responsible for the gross misidentification of this camp that persisted for decades afterward, compounded by Grouard’s certainty about such things as the Indian horses. Much of this can be explained. The Oglala chief He Dog later stated that the old woman was Cheyenne, but her familiarity with Sioux matters suggests an alliance of sorts, perhaps by marriage. Indeed she might have belonged to He Dog’s or Crazy Horse’s band. In the village were ten lodges of Oglalas led by He Dog, plus some Miniconjous. He Dog was a close friend of Crazy Horse’s. One source suggests that He Dog may actually have had one of Crazy Horse’s ponies with him this day. Furthermore, when Grouard lived with the Sioux, he resided for a time in He Dog’s lodge. Under these circumstances Grouard’s recognition of horses and certain tipis appears entirely plausible. Furthermore, some of the people present had indeed just arrived from Red Cloud Agency, including both Cheyennes and Sioux. As for the whereabouts of Sitting Bull, the great holy man had indeed camped near the mouth of the Powder, though not when Grouard and Ben Clark had scouted there several days earlier. “The plunder of the camp confirmed” the presence of Cheyennes in this village, recalled Captain Noyes. In the end the relative proportionality of Sioux versus Northern Cheyennes present on that day and the identity of the camp’s patriarch, Old Bear, were a matter reserved for historians, who see it clearly. This was indeed a Northern Cheyenne village. “As nobody in the command wanted” the old woman, “she was left there.” Her lodge remained the only one standing when Reynolds and his force withdrew.16 The firing remained brisk on Mills’s line, and he incurred yet another casualty. The men on his right had been watching an agitated Indian in the distance described in Bourke’s diary as a chief “in full war costume” riding up and down among his followers, “haranguing them and animating their valor.” In the continuing exchange one of the warriors mortally wounded Private Michael McCannon, who was shot in the head. McCannon belonged to Moore’s Company F. It remains unknown why he was among the men of Mills’s battalion and on the river side of their line. When McCannon fell, Mills was told that the soldier belonged to Egan’s Company K, because he was not recognized by other M Company

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

175

men and troopers from Company K had worked alongside that end of the line until minutes earlier. Mills ordered the man taken to the rear and Munn to be summoned. As soldiers were carrying the man off Reynolds came up and inquired about him, asking how badly he was injured. Mills reported that the soldier was from Company K and appeared mortally wounded. When Reynolds asked once more whether the soldier was dead, one of those carrying him said “no,” but nearly so. Reynolds then dispassionately ordered Mills to leave the man, telling him it was impossible to take him along. Mills said nothing, he later recalled, “but [I] told the men to drop him and get back to their places.”17

✧✧✧✧ The summoning of Doctor Munn to treat a gravely wounded soldier at the northern end of the smoky village may have seemed logical to Mills, but it was an improbable idea. Working in his makeshift hospital behind the corner, Munn was already fully focused on the care of four wounded soldiers lying about in blankets, plus occasional stragglers like Bourke, who came in to have his feet dressed. Munn’s hands were full. Commotion only complicated things: the drum of gunfire to the north, the steady movement of soldiers streaming by, and even the deposit and shrouding of the two casualties. The corner had become the busiest position on the battlefield.18 Several wounded men in Munn’s charge required transportation from the battlefield when the withdrawal began. Early in the destruction he obtained a number of lodgepoles from the tipis nearest at hand, from which his attendants fashioned Indian travois. Munn had first learned about this means of conveyance on March 9, when Corporal John Moore was injured along Prairie Dog Creek when his horse fell on him. Already two more soldiers required such transportation: Privates Edward Eagan, wounded in the abdomen and administered “plenty of opium,” according to Munn, and Charles Kaminski, wounded in the left knee.19 Captain Moore was frequently in the proximity of Munn’s hospital, particularly after his line shifted farther south and reached

176

THE BATTLE

the corner. There Munn stepped into a curious conversation between Moore and Reynolds, most of which he did not overhear. He did recall the captain talking in an excited manner, with “a pistol in his hand.” Apparently what drew Munn around the corner and into the exchange was the rapid rate of carbine fire coming from Moore’s men, who were seemingly shooting blindly into the mountainside. The doctor coolly asked Moore whether “he did not think the men on the line were wasting their ammunition.” Moore took offense at what seemed to him to be a prying remark, replying that “he would tend to that part of the business if I would tend to mine.”20 Munn was not the only officer challenging Moore late in the morning. Mills, working his line, observed the wounding of yet another soldier, Corporal John Lang of Rawolle’s Company E, Second Cavalry, struck in the right ankle by a bullet. As Lang was being carried to the rear, the rest of his comrades went along, effectively abandoning the northernmost extreme of the E Company line. “I called out to them for God’s sake not to abandon that position. Some of them halted and listened to me, but went on, apparently under orders.” Fuming over this defection and already smarting over the general lack of support given to him over the last hour when the battle lines had turned hot, Mills personally strode down Moore’s line and found him huddled far to the rear in a clump of trees with other officers of his battalion plus twenty or thirty men. They were all in “comparative safety,” he protested at Reynolds’s court-martial.21 “I said to Captain Moore there is a fight going on in front and we are hard pressed, and I have not seen you in the fight. I do not give you any orders, but as a brother officer ask you to come and help us. We were within six feet of each other, but he made me no reply. I turned on my heel and left.”22 As Mills spun away, he spotted a sergeant from his own command among Moore’s men and called after him, telling him that “he ought to be ashamed of himself and ordered him into the fight.” The sergeant said that he had been ordered by Reynolds to stay where he was. Upon returning to his line Mills told Lieutenant Johnson that they were not going to receive any help and that it

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

177

was time to get out of there. “I went along the line calling to the men that we were going to retire from the village, that we would all go at the same time, firing a volley first, and move off slowly, and to see that all were taken away.”23

✧✧✧✧ Thus far the only outfit not entirely engaged in the Powder River fight was Captain Henry Noyes’s I Company, Second Cavalry. The unit had come onto the field on the heels of Egan’s charge at 9 a.m. but had wheeled right at the southern end of the village and driven off ponies scattered along the floodplain south of there. The initial herd was pushed south one-half mile to the near side of the distinctive promontory rising just beyond Thompson Creek and framing the battlefield landscape in that direction. The only way around the promontory then (as now) was crossing the river and traveling the floodplain on the east side. After the initial gathering, Noyes and his lone subaltern, First Lieutenant Christopher Hall, rode part way up the hillside and gazed northward upon the village and surrounding flats, scanning the bench to the left and the floodplain east of the river. They saw many other clusters of ponies and quickly realized that they had corralled barely half of the animals in sight. After securing the herd below them with scouts and a few men drawn from the company, fanned out in a semicircular skirmish line–like deployment, Noyes dispatched other scouts to gather ponies from the bench. Hall and several squads collected others from the floodplain east of the river. Into this growing herd Lieutenant Johnson and Company E, Third Cavalry, of Mills’s Battalion, drove another two or three hundred animals gathered mostly from north of the village. By late morning Noyes controlled almost seven hundred ponies, among them a handful of so-called American horses and one gray mule.24 Capturing the ponies was a significant accomplishment, achieving one of the objectives that Crook had given Reynolds on Otter Creek the day before. It acknowledged an important element in Indian warfare: a village herd was always regarded as valuable

178

THE BATTLE

property, and its capture served to deprive the occupants of a means of escape or retaliation. The Powder River pony herd constituted a great prize. Although Noyes’s conduct at Powder River was thus far highly commendable, a lapse of judgment late that morning tempered his success and led to his court-martial and a stain on his record. The thirty-six-year-old West Point graduate (a classmate of Custer) and veteran campaigner had indeed completed the assignment given him that morning when Reynolds detailed his battalion to the initial attack. Later that morning, from the hillside, Noyes watched the village in smoke and flames. “The bulk of the business appeared to be over,” he concluded, and so told the Reynolds court ten months later. Not foreseeing any further need for his company and thinking this lull afforded an opportunity for his men to rest their own horses and eat, at around 11 a.m. Noyes ordered all but the horse guard to unsaddle and make coffee. The battle was plainly not yet over, so in hindsight the order was unorthodox if predictable, “knowing,” as Lieutenant Hall later recalled, “that it was a custom of Captain Noyes to unbridle and unsaddle whenever there was the slightest chance to give his horses rest.” The company was exhausted. The horses had been under saddle for nearly twenty-six hours, and the men and mounts had marched virtually nonstop some fifty-five miles.25 The men of Company I who were immediately permitted to unsaddle, build fires, and make coffee, perhaps two-thirds of the company in Noyes’s estimation, crossed the Powder on a thick sheet of ice and bivouacked on the east side. In a way their presence there augmented the pony guard, with the herd circled directly opposite them on the west side of the river. The record does not speak clearly on the matter of coffee for all. But nearly an hour elapsed between the unsaddling and brewing of coffee and the company’s response to Reynolds’s summons to the village, so it appears logical to assume that everyone, scouts included, enjoyed the respite in some manner of rotation. The unsaddled cavalry mounts were both hobbled and lariated on the east side. The propriety of unsaddling and making coffee would later be probed at Noyes’s courtmartial, where Lieutenant Hall was asked by the judge advocate

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

179

whether the unsaddling delayed or embarrassed the company in the execution of any orders either to take part in the action or to take up the retiring line. Hall was positive that it did not delay the company but allowed that “it probably embarrassed them some in leaving the place where they had unsaddled,” doubtless a reference to the time required to remove hobbles and saddle up and how every other soldier on the field witnessed this peculiar folly.26 While his troopers unsaddled their mounts and prepared coffee, Noyes received a flurry of orders from Reynolds. The first directed him to move the herd around the promontory and secure it on the south side, then a countermanding order directed him to hold the pony herd north of the promontory where the troops already were. Finally, at about noon, he was ordered to bring the company forward, dismounted, for duty on the line at the village. In reply Noyes had the courier notify Reynolds that he had unsaddled his company but would promptly respond to the call. When Reynolds repeated the summons soon after, Noyes, in the colonel’s words, “appeared upon the ground in due season.” Meanwhile Noyes also learned in a communication from Doctor Munn that Reynolds wanted the wounded men moved south to Noyes’s position. Noyes’s impromptu bivouac was fully one-half mile from Munn’s hospital at the corner, and the first tipis were a bit farther away.27 By late morning the objective of abandoning the Powder River village and withdrawing upriver to Crook, presumably awaiting on Lodge Pole Creek, came to dominate Reynolds’s thinking. While he saw progress in destroying the village, Mills, Johnson, and Egan still only saw continuing difficulties. Adjutant Morton acknowledged the enormity of the task of burning the tipis and destroying property, telling historian Walter Camp that tipi poles often were frozen in the ground so tightly that pulling everything down was a slow and onerous task. Mills told Camp on another occasion that frequently the damp skin and cloth lodges simply would not burn and that deep snow on the ground hampered things all the more. Confounding the task was the sheer welter of property encountered in nearly every lodge. Most officers and men combing the village commented on the abundance of meat, dried and green, inside and outside of the lodges and confessed afterward that a great deal of

180

THE BATTLE

it was not destroyed. Saddles were common too. In his memoir Bourke recollected that 150 saddles “were given to the flames.” Mills suggested that the number was even larger. The Reynolds court specifically asked about saddles because they played into the story in so many ways. Mills’s reply was startling and by then almost expected: “Some tipis had from 12 to 20 in them. I think I counted 20 saddles in one tipi.” Destroying meat, saddles, and buffalo robes was especially difficult, in Mills’s view, particularly in light of such emphatic instructions from Crook to the contrary and the general hunger and bone-numbing chill that the troops had suffered the night before.28 Since around 8 a.m. the mounts of Moore’s battalion and Mills’s company had remained under the care of horse holders in two different cedar-shrouded coulees along their respective approaches to the battlefield, locations that somehow had not yet been discovered by warriors. After discussing the matter several times, particularly with Moore, late in the morning Reynolds finally sent word to both Moore and Mills to bring down their horses. Squads were dispatched to make their way up Thompson Creek and lead the animals down. This was a risky task, as by now warriors were successfully making their way south along the base of the mountain and seemed fully aware of this movement along the creek, while at the same time they were pressing the attack on Moore’s and Rawolle’s feeble line opposite them along the high break of the declivity. This was why men had been firing into the mountainside, attracting Doctor Munn’s notice.29 The movement of so many horses (those of two companies coming from deep up Thompson Creek southwest of Moore’s first position on the ridgetop and those of Mills’s company from the dry fork of Graham Creek beyond the swale that they had crossed on their approach) drew sharp attention from warriors. Advancing at two different times, the horse holders of the respective groups led their mounts along the bottom of Thompson Creek east to its mouth and then north on the floodplain, halting under the cover of the declivity alongside the held mounts of Johnson’s Company E, Third Cavalry. Watching for opportunities to intercept these horses, the warriors on the west end of the bench were seen moving south.

DESTROYING OLD BEAR’S VILLAGE

181

Reynolds, alerted to this, hurriedly ordered the horse holders of Johnson’s company along the declivity and Egan’s company among the willows on the river side of the floodplain, to tie their horses to trees and advance onto the bench, carbines in hand, to hold the warriors at bay. Reynolds put Adjutant Morton in charge of this impromptu defense. The lieutenant organized a skirmish line on the bench and fired several volleys toward the mountainside. As that was occurring, the thirty-five dismounted men of Noyes’s Company I appeared near the corner where Munn’s hospital had been. Reynolds ordered them onto the bench also, to support Morton’s thin line. The whole intercept episode lasted no more than twenty or thirty minutes before the cavalry horses were firmly secured on the floodplain and the Indians’ focus shifted elsewhere.30 Noyes was criticized for his slow arrival at the Indian camp, especially by Mills, yet such criticism seems unwarranted. Noyes directly responded to Reynolds’s summons. The movement did take upward of thirty minutes, chiefly because Noyes came up dismounted, as ordered by Reynolds, traversing fully one-half mile of snow-covered bottomland from the promontory to the village. En route Company I passed the wounded men and two of the battle’s fatalities, all being moved south. Several of the injured men rode on travois and others with lesser wounds on horseback, all in the care of surgeon Munn, hospital steward Bryan, and attendants drawn from the companies. Munn established a second hospital on the west bank of the river at the foot of the promontory, amounting only to a holding area as the general withdrawal from the field was being organized. Munn received no additional wounded soldiers there.31 With the company horses safely drawn up, Morton’s makeshift contingent of horse holders/defenders returned to their horseholding duties. With Munn’s hospital safely relocated and the village a vast smoldering ruin, Reynolds’s anticipated withdrawal began. Reynolds deployed Noyes’s company as a retiring line across the floodplain west to east at the southern end of the village. Observing that, the nearest officers, Egan on the right and Moore and Rawolle on the left, had their horses brought up and prepared for the afternoon ride. There was nothing formal about these initial

182

THE BATTLE

movements. Reynolds’s relative silence about what was in fact a turning point in the engagement, as expressed both in his official report and in his written defense at his court-martial, suggests that the officers were matter-of-factly aware that when the horses were up it was time to go. This had been conveyed frequently enough in the exchanges with Reynolds at the southern end of the village late that morning. Reynolds said: “[W]e fought four hours and entirely destroyed the village and the property therein. We then resumed our march for the point at which we were to meet the remainder of the command, taking with us the herd of captured ponies.”32 Were it only so simple.

8 ✧✧✧✧

Abandoning Private Ayers

B

y some measures Reynolds’s initial withdrawal from the Powder River village was smooth and orderly, generally triggered by the arrival of Noyes’s Company I, Second Cavalry, at the southern end of the smoldering camp shortly after midday. Reynolds had commenced the attack that morning, seemingly with the simplest of objectives: to drive off the Indians, capture their ponies, destroy the property, and then rendezvous with Crook after an uncertain ride of fifteen or twenty miles up the Powder River in what by then would be the waning hours of the day. Failing to save meat, robes, and saddles could be explained away, he surely believed, with a careful description of the fight itself and an acknowledgment of the thinness of his lines and the casualties he suffered. It could be compensated for by the destruction inflicted and the capture of the pony herd. What Reynolds could never explain or rationalize away, however, was his abandonment in the village of a living soldier, Private Lorenzo Ayers, who fell into the hands of Northern Cheyenne warriors. This unconscionable act would profoundly sour the Reynolds court and contribute greatly to Reynolds’s conviction. It sullied Mills’s reputation too and tarnished the legacy of the Third Cavalry and the supposed heroics of Ayers’s companions, who were with him at the last. It tarnished even more the luster of America’s venerated Medal of Honor. 183

184

THE BATTLE

✧✧✧✧ At the north end of the village, Mills’s withdrawal was something of a stutter step. After confronting Moore and coming to the realization that no help was coming his way despite his many pleas, Mills returned to his line and announced that the battalion would fire a volley and pull out. Ten or fifteen minutes elapsed before he gave that order. When he did, the men fired a volley in relative unison and commenced backing off the line. The First Battalion had held its position, the most exposed and costly on the field, since the earliest moments of the attack. Barely had the broadly scattered soldiers moved a few yards south into the village when Lieutenant Johnson screamed across the line at Mills that Noyes was within sight and apparently coming their way. Mills stopped the movement, ordered the battalion back onto the line, and sent Johnson to Noyes to confirm his intentions. At the south end of the village Johnson saw that Noyes in fact was not continuing on at all but instead had been deployed by Reynolds across the southern perimeter of the field to provide a covering line during the general withdrawal. Reynolds was at hand now and directed Johnson to tell Mills to retire his battalion to their horses. Johnson returned as quickly as he could—these long cross-village jaunts were all on foot through the smoldering camp—and explained what he had seen and heard. When Mills ordered his battalion to abandon the line, “every man moved out, and without any excitement.” Or so he thought.1 As Mills’s battalion made its way through the village, a few of the men passed the remains of Private Michael McCannon of Company F, Third Cavalry, shot in the head and unceremoniously abandoned where he lay. Elsewhere the retiring soldiers drew in scattered comrades still actively at work toppling and firing the few remaining standing tipis. At the southern end of the devastated camp the battalion passed through Noyes’s skirmish line and continued another third of a mile to near the mouth of Thompson Creek, where the company horses were being held, having been led down from Graham Creek only moments before. Reynolds, who had been on Noyes’s line, joined Mills and traveled with his battalion

ABANDONING PRIVATE AYERS

185

the last part of the way until he finally gave an order to halt and lie down and rest. As Mills passed through Noyes’s line, he warned his colleague that there were Indians in the grass on the right and left and that Company I would be in danger if it went forward. Moore and Rawolle cautioned Noyes about “certain groups of Indians beyond certain rocks.”2 At their horses, Reynolds told Mills that the entire force would shortly be moving to the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek and that he wanted Company M to lead. In that exchange Mills relayed to Reynolds that the company had deposited its overcoats in a draw high above Thompson Creek and asked for permission to retrieve them. Reynolds refused the request, declaring that the hills were full of Indians and that Mills would lose men in doing this. This was certainly true to some degree, as Reynolds had just countered the spontaneous challenge posed by warriors as the horses were brought down. To what extent that threat persisted is unclear, though Lieutenant Hall of Noyes’s company told the Noyes court that he saw Indians among the trees above the pony herd, meaning in the high pinnacle dividing Thompson and Graham Creeks, which suggested that warriors were likely lurking everywhere. Despite the threat Mills pleaded his case again, but Reynolds held firm: “and I said nothing more.” The day was sunny, but the temperature was still penetratingly cold and the night would surely be frigid too. Mills returned to his battalion. It was now about one o’clock.3 As the men of the First Battalion were forming for the march to Lodge Pole Creek, Private Albert Glawinski, Company M’s blacksmith, came rushing from the direction of the village and Noyes’s line, sought out Mills, and blurted out that Private Lorenzo Ayers of the company was lying wounded in the village. Mills was incredulous and scowled at Glawinski, asking: “How in the world is that?” “We left him there,” said the blacksmith. Mills asked where he was and was told and then asked where Ayers was wounded. “In the arm,” Glawinski replied. “Why did they not bring him off?” Mills asked, glowering.

186

THE BATTLE

“Because he could not walk,” said Glawinski. “He must be wounded somewhere else,” countered Mills. Glawinski said that “he thought he was.”4 The stunned Mills sent a sergeant off to find Colonel Reynolds, who had continued riding south toward Munn’s relocated hospital. Adjutant Morton was with the colonel and remembered his reaction when hearing the news: “We were moving out of the village at the head of the column, standing on the ice, [when] a non-commissioned officer rode up and called out with the compliments of Captain Mills, that a wounded man of his company was left behind or on the field, I don’t remember which. General Reynolds seemed very much annoyed and said that it is too late now, or I can’t help it—something of that kind.”5 Reynolds returned quickly enough, however, and heard the captain exclaim: “My God, colonel, I have word that I left a wounded man in the village. What shall I do?” Reynolds’s response was predictable and callous. He had already ordered the grievously wounded Private McCannon to be dropped at the north end of the village and allowed to die. He seemed indifferent to his hungry troopers and those, as he had just learned, without greatcoats and likely facing another outlandishly cold night. Reynolds only wanted out of the Powder River village. “You can do nothing,” he told Mills. “If you go back you will renew the engagement and lose twenty men. You must move on.”6 As Reynolds rode off, others came on. At Reynolds’s courtmartial, Mills told of several enlisted men who came up and sought permission to go back and get Ayers. “I said, yes, they could go, and I said to them that Captain Noyes was there and to give him my complements and tell him for God’s sake to get the man.” But this testimony is misleading. Other witnesses suggest that only Corporal Dennis Giles of Moore’s Company F and the blacksmith Glawinski went north and no farther than Noyes’s line. By now Company F was also upriver, almost alongside Company M, and likewise preparing to ride to Lodge Pole Creek. Moore sent Giles north to find several men from that company who were as yet unaccounted for; Giles presumed that they were still on the skirmish line.7

ABANDONING PRIVATE AYERS

187

Giles and Glawinski delivered Mills’s request to Noyes, but he did not act on it. At the Reynolds court-martial Noyes complained about his own thin line and expressed the belief that Mills was liable for any wounded men that he had in the village. “I sent him back word that I could not help his wounded man off, that he would have to remove him himself.” When the court asked: “Did you know where he [Ayers] was?” Noyes replied: “I heard he was off to our right.” The judge advocate probed further: “What do you think would be the result if you had tried to get the wounded man?” Noyes replied: “I thought the wounded man had been moved” and added: “I believe the general principle of warfare is for each organization to take care of its own wounded.” Whether Noyes’s reply was delivered to Mills is unknown. Based on testimony given later, it seems likely not. Upriver adjutant Morton also sought details from Mills and learned that Reynolds would not consent to any effort to recover the wounded private. Morton said that he would gladly lead ten men to go and get him. Mills’s reply reflected not only his feverish frustration but also an incomprehensibly strident adherence to the chain of command: “I said it was no use. Colonel Reynolds prohibited it, and we had better obey orders and go on.”8

✧✧✧✧ At least four men (one eyewitness says four or five) inexplicably lingered deep in the village after Mills’s battalion withdrew: blacksmith Glawinski and privates Jeremiah Murphy and Lorenzo Ayers of Mills’s Company M, Third Cavalry, and Private George H. Maitland of Egan’s Company K, Second Cavalry. All had been well scattered on an undulating line that was never particularly open or totally visible in its expanse, being buried in trees, brush, snow, and the crags of the riverbank. Missing an order to withdraw was entirely plausible, almost inevitable, in the din, and at Reynolds’s court-martial both Murphy and Glawinski professed not to have heard the order. Mills testified that he later learned that Ayers “and some others” had stopped and were looking for plunder. Whatever

188

THE BATTLE

the explanation and obvious confusion, the general abandonment of the northern line emboldened the opposing warriors, who commenced their own infiltration of the line and northern end of the village almost as quickly as the soldiers pulled back. The Indian advance in fact triggered several sharp exchanges between the lingering troopers and the oncoming foe.9 At the Reynolds court-martial each of the three surviving witnesses to the Ayers episode told a slightly different version of what occurred, reflecting their individual circumstances. Yet from their testimony it becomes possible to piece together a tragic tale. All four were scattered on the east half of Mills’s line, the side near the river. Glawinski recalled being in “some kind of a valley,” a reflection perhaps of the broken ground at the river’s edge (the same sort of rough ground that swallowed Theodore Gouget of Company K, earlier in the fight, which he then held onto and turned into a personal redoubt). None of the four were together when Mills’s line was withdrawn, although pairings occurred rather quickly after Ayers’s calls for help. Maitland, also unaware of the general withdrawal, recalled an attack by ten or fifteen Indians, firing as they came. “We returned the fire as well as we could, and one man was wounded in two places—through his hand and through the bone of his leg.”10 Murphy and Glawinski were the first to respond to Ayers’s cries. The wounded twenty-three-year-old was “ten rods to the left of me in the village when he got wounded,” Murphy remembered. Ayers’s leg was shattered, and the impact had thrown him to the ground. As Murphy and Glawinski gathered around their young comrade, Maitland came, also having heard the pleas. Maitland and Glawinski, like Ayers, were twenty-three years old and Murphy twenty-two, all in their first enlistments in the U.S. Army. The nature of any conversation between the three survivors, including whether they discussed carrying Ayers to safety, is unknown. At this point three hearty armed soldiers, one a presumably muscular blacksmith, huddled over a grievously wounded fellow soldier. From their actions it seems that they only decided to summon help. Glawinski was the first to run. He testified at the Reynolds courtmartial: “I took my gun and turned around and could not see

ABANDONING PRIVATE AYERS

189

anything of the company, and I ran as fast as I could toward the command.” When the judge advocate asked: “Why did you not bring him off?” Glawinski responded simply: “I could not.”11 Maitland’s actions are all the more disturbing and even more obscure, because he did not know these men of the Third Cavalry and had no further interaction with this company or regiment aside from a brief appearance and short testimony at the Reynolds court-martial ten months later. Maitland ran off toward Captain Egan and the men of Company K, perhaps hoping to summon help from a unit closer to the scene than Company M probably was by then. Maitland’s testimony at the Reynolds court-martial, however, suggests a far less valorous motive. The judge advocate asked: “What became of him [Ayers]?” “He was left on the field.” Maitland replied. “Under what circumstances?” the prosecutor continued. “The Indians were within forty or fifty yards of us and we had to save ourselves,” Maitland responded. “Did he say anything in reference to leaving him?” the judge advocate asked. Maitland replied: “I think he said for God’s sake don’t leave me.” We know no more of Private George H. Maitland, and Egan and Company K, Second Cavalry, do not figure further in the Ayers story. If Maitland successfully carried a plea for help to the captain, he did not act on it in any visible way and seems not to have discussed it with Mills, Reynolds, or anyone else. When Maitland quietly left the army in 1878 upon the expiration of his current and only enlistment, his character was noted as excellent.12 Private Jeremiah Murphy was the third soldier and only eyewitness to Ayers’s death in the village, closing this episode but not the broader spectacle of the event. Murphy noted at the Reynolds court-martial that time passed, implying that he remained with Ayers for some unspecified while. The judge advocate did not press the point. “I could not get him away, and the Indians were coming so close that I had to get away,” Murphy told the court. He was asked: “How near were the Indians when you left him?” “About a dozen of them were about seventy-five yards off,” he replied.

190

THE BATTLE

“What did he say to you?” the court asked Ayers “called for help but no help was coming,” Murphy replied: “he said I might as well get out of there, as there was no use in two of us getting killed.” They looked at each other one last time, and Murphy gave Ayers some extra ammunition. “Then you left?” the judge advocate asked. “Yes sir,” said Murphy.13 As Murphy ran off, intent only on saving himself, he ran only a short distance and stopped in some bushes. Then Murphy’s testimony turned chilling. “What did you see there after you left?” the judge advocate asked. “They quit firing at me,” Murphy replied, “and I saw them circling around the wounded man—ten or fifteen of them.” “Is that the only wounded man you know about?” Reynolds’s counsel inquired. “Yes sir,” said Murphy. The questioning continued: “After you saw those Indians around him, what did you do?” “I got out toward where the command was, and reported to Captain Mills.” “Where was Captain Mills at that time?” Reynolds’s counsel asked. “About two miles from the village,” replied Murphy. “What did Captain Mills say?” “He said he had heard about it before and wanted to go back and get the man, but Colonel Reynolds said Captain Noyes was going to bring off all the wounded.” “How long after you saw the Indians around that man till you reported to Captain Mills?” “About half an hour.” Murphy’s testimony at the Reynolds court-martial concluded on that disquieting note.14

✧✧✧✧ The Northern Cheyennes remembered the Ayers killing too. Indian accounts of this day’s battle recall the wounded or killing of several

ABANDONING PRIVATE AYERS

191

soldiers, but no recollection related to Ayers’s death is as vivid and filled with particulars as that provided by the Northern Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg. Wooden Leg was about eighteen years old at the time of the battle and had been fighting elsewhere earlier in the day when he, Bear Who Walks on a Ridge (Ridge Bear), and Two Moon (both Kit Fox Society little chiefs) observed the soldiers pulling back from the northern end of the village and seized an opportunity to attack one particular man. Wooden Leg related his account in the 1920s to Thomas B. Marquis, a physician on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation who was intently interested in collecting and recording the tribe’s history:15 Two Moons, Bear Walks on a Ridge and myself were together. We centered an attack on one certain soldier. Two Moons had a repeating rifle. As we stood in concealment he stood it upon end in front of him and passed his hands up and down the barrel, not touching it, while making medicine. Then he said: “My medicine is good; watch me kill that soldier.” He fired, but his bullet missed. Bear Walks on a Ridge then fired his muzzle-loading rifle. His bullet hit the soldier in the back of the head. We rushed upon the man and beat and stabbed him to death. Another Cheyenne joined us to help in the killing. He took the soldier’s rifle. I stripped off the blue coat and kept it. Two Moons and Bear Walks on a Ridge took whatever else he had and they wanted.16 Other Cheyennes told the story hardly any less vividly. John Shangrau, one of the mixed-blood scouts with Reynolds and Grouard that day, remembered hearing “several Indians who were there at this time afterwards say that when the soldiers went away they came down into the village to get whatever they could, as they were naked and suffering, they found this wounded soldier sitting up on the ground. They killed and scalped him.”17 For the Northern Cheyennes and Sioux rousted at Powder River, this horrendous battle was far from over. Remarkably, as noted later, their links to the killing and the mortal remains of Lorenzo Ayers were not yet complete.

192

THE BATTLE

✧✧✧✧ News of a soldier left behind alive in the village passed through the column quickly, much as men would current gossip or news through a command, as Lieutenant Rawolle had so aptly expressed the notion on the trail. William Miller, a private in Company E, Second Cavalry, with Rawolle in Moore’s battalion, recollected: “We lost four killed, one man badly wounded belonging to M Company 3rd Cavalry, who fell into the hands of the Indians. His name was Airs [sic].”18 Lieutenant John Bourke’s diary entry for the day was especially vivid: “One poor wretch, shot in arm and thigh, fell alive into the hands of the enemy and was scalped before the eyes of a comrade.” Bourke drew the incident all the more vividly in his 1891 reminiscence: “We fell back at such a rate that our dead were left in the hands of the Indians, and, as was whispered among the men, one of our poor soldiers fell alive into the enemy’s hands and was cut from limb to limb.”19 Writing in camp on the Powder on March 18, the newsman Robert Strahorn wrote vividly: “The leaving of the bodies of the dead and one wounded man upon the field to fall into the hands of the red monsters, who, no doubt, immediately swept over it after our departure, seems utterly inexcusable.”20 Indeed the Ayers episode was utterly inexcusable, especially when it could have played out in so many other ways. Accepting the possibility or even inevitability of soldiers being abandoned during Mills’s withdrawal from an extended and difficult line in no way justifies the actions of those involved. If hospital steward William Bryan could carry out one man on his back alone, it would seem entirely possible for three able-bodied soldiers to bear away a comrade and still maintain some semblance of defense. But when Glawinski and then Maitland departed, carrying away a wounded soldier while maintaining any sort of defensive fire went from improbable to impossible. Reynolds’s and Mills’s responses are no more easily understood. Abandonments would have been learned of in due course, whether through reports, a roll call, or simply a bunky crying out that his pal was not present. Mills learned of Ayers by way of a report

ABANDONING PRIVATE AYERS

193

from Glawinski, and his reaction was exceedingly puzzling. Accepting Noyes’s view that it was a “general principle of warfare . . . for each organization to take care of its own wounded,” it is baffling that Mills did not organize immediate relief on his own volition. A squad or two of soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Paul or a sergeant could have made their way through the village to Ayers’s rescue. Men from Company M in fact volunteered for such a quest, and so did Lieutenant Morton, the column’s adjutant. Instead Mills sought out Reynolds and asked for permission to make such a sortie, just as he had asked for permission to retrieve his company’s overcoats. But Mills did not need permission: by seeking it and then receiving a brusque “no” he stifled all opportunity. Mills’s judgment seems to have been fogged. On the preceding day Crook chose Reynolds to command the attack force, not Mills. This morning Reynolds unhorsed Company M and ordered it to a supporting role behind Moore, which in turn led to Mills’s verbal altercation with Moore on the mountaintop and then to his taking a different position on that hillside, but only after securing a note of explanation for Reynolds. In the village Mills fought valiantly and at a considerable cost to his company, but he also bickered ceaselessly with Reynolds over whether to save or burn meat and robes, whether to spend the night in the village or decamp, and whether or not he was supported properly on his own line or on the right and left. Ayers’s wounds in and of themselves might have been serious enough to be fatal, but it seems unconscionable that he fell into the hands of the enemy. Responsibility for that falls squarely first on the shoulders of Captain Anson Mills. He failed the young private that day. As events played out, he knew it.

9 ✧✧✧✧

Withdrawal

C

olonel Reynolds’s withdrawal from the Powder River Indian village was orchestrated in the proximity of Noyes’s bivouac at the base of the promontory beyond Thompson Creek, about onehalf mile south of the smoldering camp. Reynolds had ridden there early in the afternoon in anticipation of the movement and quickly returned, after having been drawn north during the Ayers fracas. In that immediate vicinity was the pony herd, west of the river, corralled by scouts and a few detailees from Noyes’s company; Munn’s transitory hospital (also west of the river and actually consisting of little more than several already burdened horses and travois held for the journey south and two of the dead); and Noyes’s hobbled horses east of the river, watched over by a few horse holders. Downstream Reynolds could follow the general commotion as army horses were brought forward to the companies and prepared for the long ride. Mounted companies, with Moore’s and Mills’s in the fore, came toward him. Beyond lay the ruined village, with all but one of its tipis toppled, a few still in flames, and the smudge of scorched and burned debris casting a smoky pall over the scene. Reynolds’s destination that afternoon was the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek, thought to be some fifteen miles up the valley, where he was supposed to rendezvous with General Crook. In actuality the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek was fully twenty-one miles away. This long 194

WITHDRAWAL

195

day of continuous adrenaline-stirring action (actually begun at 5 a.m. on March 16 on the Tongue River) was far from over. Reynolds had no intention of transporting the two dead soldiers at Munn’s hospital or allowing any time for their proper burial. Two of the battle’s fatalities, McCannon and Ayers, already lay abandoned in the village, while at the promontory lay the bodies of Schneider and Dowty, delivered there by comrades from the first hospital at the corner. Captain Egan remembered that they had no implements at hand to bury the dead (although there were “plenty with the pack train”), but Munn possessed an axe. Whether at his direction or owing to the inspiration of his attendants, Schneider and Dowty were given a due “soldier’s burial.” This euphemism covered an array of field internments, here meaning burial in the river, as Private Oliver C. C. Pollock of Company M, Third Cavalry, explained: “A hole was cut in the ice, which was two feet thick, and they were given a cold bath, head on.” Another trooper, Sergeant Hugh K. McGrath of Company I, Second Cavalry, recalled it similarly: “The dead found graves in the flowing water of the Powder River under its thick roof of crystal ice.” Other soldiers and civilians also remembered the unique river burial.1 After the Rosebud, Slim Buttes, and Red Fork battles and on the Yellowstone soldier casualties of these Great Sioux War engagements would invariably be interred on the field, deep in the ground, and the graves obliterated to lessen the chances of intentional or incidental unearthing. This was not possible here, and the chosen action did not please everyone or maybe anyone. Captain Egan, for one, complained openly at the Reynolds court: “The dead men were left on the field. They could have been taken off and their bodies decently buried.” Egan was especially saddened by the abandonment of George Schneider of his own company. “By whose order was it left there?” the judge advocate inquired. “My first sergeant . . . took the body off, and I asked him where it was, and he said Colonel Reynolds ordered the body left there. I said that was all right if it was Colonel Reynolds[’s] order.” Reynolds’s seeming indifference at Powder River now touched even the dead.2 The always conscientious Egan had obtained Reynolds’s consent to remain at the southern end of the village until Noyes withdrew

H

oo

Gr ou nd

d

Gr ound

Fl

ig h

ek

High

Cre

ian Infiltr a

tion

WDER

Th

PO

Ayers Killing

o

m ps Cr

ee

k

Morto Horsehon & lders

I2

Ind

on

I2

Indian Pony Herd

K2 E2 F3 E3 M3

on ati l cu spita o

I2 Ev Ha

Withdrawal

RI

VE

R

Gr

ah

am

Creek

N

W

0

E

S ½

1

MILE

Withdrawal, Powder River battle, 1:30 p.m., March 17, 1876. Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.

196

WITHDRAWAL

197

from his forward line and saddled up. When Noyes reached the village, he hailed Reynolds and reminded him that later he would need an opportunity to saddle his horses. Egan overheard the exchange, rode over to Reynolds, and offered to cover Noyes’s retirement and saddling. His withdrawal otherwise would have provided the Indians a chance to “play some mischief,” Egan thought. Noyes’s company was the other half of Egan’s battalion and Noyes was its commander, and the two had other common bonds. Reynolds replied, “Certainly” and was “glad for the suggestion.”3 At the promontory Reynolds grew impatient. Adjutant Morton recalled his saying repeatedly through the day: “Now Crook expects me to meet him at Lodge Pole at a certain time, and I must be there.” By then company commanders were fully aware of Reynolds’s intention of riding to Lodge Pole that day. Some officers, including Mills, Bourke, Stanton, and Noyes, still found merit in holding the village or camping nearby and summoning Crook. But there was no consensus on the matter. Rawolle thought that the village was a very bad camp, with no more grazing than the site where the Indians had placed their own ponies, which was presently vulnerable because the Indians held advantageous ground nearly all around. But for now the debate was over: orders were orders. When Mills’s battalion came up, the march to Lodge Pole began, with Reynolds, Morton, Drew, and others of the headquarters detachment and Grouard and some of the scouts all in the fore. It was now about 2 p.m.4 Since the start of the Big Horn Expedition at Fort Fetterman, the daily march had followed the same procedure that held even when the column was encumbered by an Indian pony herd and wounded soldiers on travois. Each day’s march featured lead and trailing battalions. The previous day’s lead always became the following day’s trail, with the next battalion advancing to the front. Moore’s battalion had led and Noyes’s trailed on the ride from Otter Creek. Now Mills’s battalion led, with his own Company M leading the column, followed by Johnson’s Company E.5 Reynolds’s departure occurred in a confounding blur for some. Major Stanton, having made his way to the scouts and pony herd as the general withdrawal was organizing, was particularly perplexed

198

THE BATTLE

because Reynolds had left no orders pertaining to the ponies. He asked officers passing by whether they had any orders about the herd, but they had none. He then sent an orderly to the head of the withdrawing column (already a mile or more upriver) to inquire. This prompted a discussion between Reynolds and Grouard, who asked the colonel for soldiers to drive the ponies along. Reynolds responded: “No, the scouts will have to drive them.” When Grouard suggested that there were too many ponies for the few scouts remaining behind, Reynolds said: “If they can’t drive them, shoot them.” Grouard then blurted that the scouts did not have enough ammunition to shoot the ponies. Reynolds replied: “What they can’t kill, let go.”6 The courier returned to Stanton without any orders, informing him only that Reynolds said that he could kill as many ponies as he pleased. “He had taken all of my scouts but five and we had but about ten rounds of ammunition [each] and could not kill many,” bemoaned Stanton.7 With the few scouts at hand, Stanton started pushing the Indian herd at first east across the iced-over Powder and then upriver. He quickly discovered that driving Indian ponies was uniquely challenging, especially at the onset. Some would break and head back toward the village, some kept up while others fell behind, and still others strayed off into ravines and onto the hillsides. Those ponies that could not be turned or managed were indeed shot. Meanwhile the herders came under fire from warriors lurking on the promontory that they had infiltrated during the course of the battle. “Soon the troops all passed me,” Stanton wrote, and “I whooped things up, very lively” and pressed onward toward Lodge Pole.8 Covering these movements were Rawolle and Company E, Second Cavalry, the second unit of Moore’s battalion and what was known in the parlance as the rear guard proper. While Egan covered Noyes as his company saddled at the promontory, a quarter of a mile upriver, Rawolle dismounted two sets of fours and a noncommissioned officer, Sergeant William Land, and formed a skirmish line east of the river. The wounded soldiers and pony herd were well ahead by then, and Noyes and Egan were coming on. Land remembered eyeing a number of Indians watching it all from the

WITHDRAWAL

199

bluff as the last of the troops rode upriver, away from the Northern Cheyenne village.9 After Noyes and Egan passed Rawolle’s skirmish line, Company E mounted and began its own ride southward. Barely had they rounded another bend of the river when they came upon one of Munn’s travois, turned topsy-turvy as its horse struggled to cross a ravine. The predicament caught the eye of some of the Indians too. Sergeant Land hurriedly dismounted several squads and reformed the skirmish line to get that travois “out of a fix.” “[A]n Indian came after us,” Land recalled. “I fired at him, and did not see him anymore. I believe I killed him.” Rawolle remembered the episode too and at first thought that the Indian was one of the army scouts. The men on the line were sure that it was a warrior from the village and were allowed to fire. They believed that he was hit. For a while thereafter Rawolle kept his skirmish line dismounted. The men retired slowly until they gained confidence that they were not being followed any longer.10 Rawolle’s progress toward Lodge Pole Creek was slow, chiefly governed by the movement of Stanton and the pony herd ahead, which sometimes was near and sometimes out of sight. After dismounting to cover the upset travois and its wounded soldier, Rawolle mostly kept his men in a column of twos and at a slow walk. He had occasional opportunities to survey the herd in front of him. As he described it to the Reynolds court, they were mostly ordinary Indian ponies, with some American horses and mules among them and a great many colts, perhaps one-fourth of the total. “I remember seeing a mule colt that ran through my company several times.” No other incidents occurred on the afternoon and evening ride.11 Ahead, Moore’s Company F also encountered Stanton and the pony herd. An exchange occurred between the two that seemed incongruous in light of their blistering confrontation on the mountaintop before the fight began. “He had a lot of half-breeds with him, and . . . seemed pleased with the success of the day,” Moore told the Reynolds court. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘won’t I send a flaming dispatch to the Tribune about this business.’” In

200

THE BATTLE

light of events, Stanton’s comment could be construed to reflect a damning view of the day. Certainly what he wrote in the coming weeks was indeed so. But Moore’s matter-of-fact telling suggests that he understood the comment otherwise, especially in light of what Stanton said next. According to Moore, the paymaster added: “When we get into camp I will give you the best drink of brandy you ever had.” When the judge advocate asked: “Where did he say he was going to get it?” Moore replied: “From the pack train when General Crook came in.”12 While they were riding together, Moore remembered, Stanton complained that he was tired and could go no farther. He “asked me to halt my battalion and stay with him and the ponies under a bluff. I said no. I was going into camp with Colonel Reynolds.” Stanton’s recollection of the same exchange, also offered at the Reynolds court-martial, differed: “I asked Captain Moore, commanding the rear battalion, for assistance to get the herd along, but he refused it.” On the trail a while later Egan also encountered Stanton. While they were riding together the major again asked for help in moving the ponies along, as he was sure he did not have enough men. Egan offered the assistance of Company K and then joined in driving the ponies until they came within sight of the fires of the evening camp.13 Pauses on the ride to Lodge Pole allowed the scattered command to close up somewhat, although Stanton and the ponies never overtook the column and Rawolle consistently brought up the rear, sometimes at quite a distance. Grouard disbursed guides among the battalions to ensure that they maintained the trail, especially as darkness came on. On one occasion Mills and Noyes rode together. Bits of their conversation proved revealing, if not shocking. At the Reynolds court-martial Noyes presented his version of the Ayers episode, explaining that he had not attempted to get the wounded man off the field because he believed that Mills had done so. He then recounted that Mills had blurted out to him during the withdrawal: “Noyes, I have done a wrong thing.” Having no idea what Mills was referring to, and not suspecting that it related to Ayers because he believed that the man had been safely taken off, Noyes replied: “What is it?” Mills then told him: “I left a wounded man

WITHDRAWAL

201

on the field.” Noyes said that he was shocked and speechless and could only keep quiet. “That was the first intimation I had that the man had actually been left,” Noyes finished. Mills had also expressed remorse over the tragic episode earlier on the ride when he and Adjutant Morton rode together two or three miles south of the village. Mills’s remorse was palpable, and rightly so. He would confront having abandoned Ayers several more times in the immediate days and weeks ahead, as he prepared for Crook’s summer campaign, yet again at the Reynolds court-martial, and at least one more time in a surprising action that defies reason.14 Reynolds and Grouard set a steady pace for Lodge Pole Creek. At first Bourke and Strahorn attempted to catch up and ride with the colonel. Reflecting on the chase later, Bourke said: “When I moved off I thought I was moving off with the command, at a moderate pace, but when I got out in the road I saw it was a very rapid movement.” He wrote: “Altho [sic] I went at a brisk trot the whole distance, I never caught up with his column.” Bourke and the newsman then rode with Stanton and the scouts for the remainder of the day, just as they had done when coming over the divide from Otter Creek, and continued with them until they delivered the ponies to the evening camp.15 The trail to Lodge Pole was much longer and more fatiguing than expected, Reynolds remarked, “our guide’s idea of miles being very vague.” Grouard had presumed a distance of perhaps fifteen miles, when in fact it was twenty or twenty-one miles from start to finish, this in addition to the fifty-mile-long trail from Tongue River endured the preceding day and night. Remarkably, Reynolds was in the saddle nearly all the while. He rarely dismounted during the course of the battle. He rode back and forth through the village and dismounted no more than any of the others on the ride to Lodge Pole Creek, despite being encumbered by the heavy truss that restrained his hernia. Though wearied by the long and continuous hours, everyone’s “spirits were buoyed,” Reynolds recalled, by the “fervent expectation of finding at its termination, the other column, [and] also the pack train with our blankets and rations.” To Reynolds’s dismay, Crook was not there, and they “had a cold night . . . without supper or blankets.” Perhaps only then did

202

THE BATTLE

Reynolds regret (if only privately) not retaining some of the meats and robes scattered beyond count in the Indian village.16 Reynolds, his headquarters detachment, and Mills’s battalion reached the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek at sundown. The Powder River/Lodge Pole confluence area was then (as now) a broad expanse of mostly open ground dotted with occasional cottonwood trees and at the time deeply covered with snow. The creek joined the Powder from the southwest, draining from the Big Horn Mountains. Crook was not at hand. Concerned, Reynolds immediately dispatched Grouard to find him. The scout rode west in the Lodge Pole Valley and likely also a distance up Beaver Creek, a major Lodge Pole branch, scouring for any trace of the general or his scouts. He found nothing. Back in the camp Mills, as officer of the day, dispersed the arriving companies in no particular order beyond ensuring suitable space for each unit, because on this night company horses were hobbled and lariated close at hand. Wood and water were available and welcomed, and the grounds were soon alight with campfires, affording a measure of warmth especially appreciated by the men of Company M, who no longer possessed their greatcoats. Fortunately the temperature was not as bitterly cold as it had been the night before. The modest heat from the campfires proved to be the place’s only redeeming virtue, particularly since little food was available to assuage the hunger in the command. The troopers had no more than the few cracker crumbs and bacon bits remaining in each soldier’s kit or the few scraps of meat surreptitiously spirited out of the village. The sum, as Bourke remembered, amounted to a “miserable apology for supper.” The soldiers called the place “Camp Inhospitality.”17 Munn, Bryan, and the men in their care arrived after dark. The two most seriously wounded, Eagan of Company K and Lang of Company E, rode in travois, and three more came from the battlefield on horseback. One observer feared for the “freezing, painfully wounded, dragged on travois for miles & miles,” an observation far more realistic than implied in Munn’s report, filled with its expressions of wonder at the conveyances’ comforts. At the Lodge Pole camp the wounded were laid against trees or upon buffalo robes on the ground “and slept as best they could on so cold a night.”

WITHDRAWAL

203

Private Lang, his right ankle shattered, put the best face on their predicament: “I, with other wounded, received such aid as was available, and [was] made as comfortable as a campfire, bloodsoaked blanket, and hot coffee would afford. Thus ended March 17, 1876.” After securing his charges, Munn visited several of the fires, including Reynolds’s and Bourke’s, located barely fifteen feet apart, and reported on the day’s casualties: “four killed and five or six wounded, two of them seriously.”18 Captains Egan and Moore reached the camp shortly before 9 p.m. and were directed to their respective camping places. Egan joined Noyes, his battalion commander, and unsaddled for the night. Egan’s arrival was barely ahead of Stanton’s arrival with the Indian ponies. Their appearance came, as Mills recalled, “with great noise and confusion.” Apart from Noyes’s company, all mounts in the command had been under saddle since departing Otter Creek.19 Unquestionably the greatest prize of the day was the pony herd. While the Powder River fight would provide commissioned and enlisted participants (as well as battle aficionados and historians) much to ponder, debate, and criticize, the seizure of the ponies represented a prize of such magnitude that it almost wholly balanced the mistakes made during the day. A sizable Indian village had been thoroughly destroyed, and its greatest asset, these ponies, remained safe in army hands. Alerted to Stanton’s approach, Lieutenant George Drew, the expedition’s quartermaster, came forward from the camp and hailed the paymaster. Drew asked if Stanton had the ponies and directed them to be driven alongside the camp to the right and onto the flats just upstream of the soldiers. “I drove them there as directed,” recalled the major, and then “supposed my duty was through.”20 As the animals were still arriving, several in the camp quickly descended on Reynolds’s fire seeking the colonel’s orders as to their disposition. Grouard, for one, came over after meeting with the scouts who had driven the herd. They wanted to know whether any guard was to be put over them. Reynolds’s response was a quick “No.” He said that the boys were tired and that he did not think the herd would stray off. Quartermaster Drew overheard the conversation and remembered how Grouard had afforded Reynolds

204

THE BATTLE

some assurance in this regard, identifying a place where the ponies would be safe, motioning upriver, and telling Reynolds that there would be no danger from the Indians that night, “as they had all they could do to attend to their families.” He also assured Reynolds that if the ponies were somehow inclined to move downriver, they would have to go right through the camp, which the pickets would prevent. Grouard returned to the scouts, telling them to tie up their own horses, take what they wanted from the herd, and turn the rest loose. Mills also came over to Reynolds’s fire and asked about posting a herd guard, asserting that the Indians would get the ponies if they were not carefully watched. Reynolds insisted that the Indian horses were not worth anything to the government and thus no guard was needed. Mills countered sarcastically, suggesting that “they might be worth something to the Indians.”21 In Reynolds’s lengthy official report on the campaign written at Fort D. A. Russell on April 15, he glossed over the matter of the ponies with careful rationalizations that only partly reflected the facts. Expecting an attack from Indians that night[,] I did not deem it prudent to herd the captured ponies in among the cavalry horses. I consulted Frank Gruard [sic] and he assured me that he knew many of the ponies, that they were accustomed to graze along the river in that vicinity and that they would be found in the morning grazing up beyond our horses. Under these circumstances and to spare the men from two consecutive nights without sleep in addition to their other exertions, the herd was guarded only by the picket line which would have been quite sufficient if these guards had been ordinarily vigilant. From sheer exhaustion they were probably not so.22 Rawolle’s arrival at the Lodge Pole Creek camp at about 9:30 p.m. ended the story of the long ride from the Powder River battlefield. When he and his men saw campfires ahead they hurried forward, passing through willows and even some of the ponies, and sought out Moore’s camp, where they built their own fires and

WITHDRAWAL

205

settled in for the night. Aside from their time in the Indian village, these men had been longest in the saddle: nearly thirty-six continuous hours.23 Securing the camp, if not the ponies, did concern Reynolds. In his written defense offered at his court-martial, he described the condition of the command in realistic terms. “The limit of human endurance had been reached. We were all, men and horses, completely worn out. Orders might be given and men might be posted as sentinels but the demands of nature would assert themselves and sleep would take possession of every one regardless of orders or anything else.” To compensate for the thoroughly exhausted condition of his command, Reynolds ordered a running guard utilizing entire companies, one after another, and pickets scattered to the far margins of the camp, all changed with greater frequency than under normal circumstances. “Such disposition . . . would enable the men to get some rest,” he said, and would also have “someone moving around all the time.” Grouard noted that any ponies would have to run through the picket line if somehow anyone dared to run off the herd. But the idea of running off the ponies was simply incomprehensible to most of the soldiers camped on the Powder River at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek in the dying hours of that long and exasperating day: Friday, March 17.24

10 ✧✧✧✧

“I See My Horse”

S

ome Northern Cheyenne and Lakota Indians present at Powder River later told their stories to white people, and history has been measurably enriched with an array of remarkable accounts of surprise, flight, resistance, and valor that help round out the story of that day. These Indian accounts have unique warmth and are very personal. That they exist at all is a tribute to ardent investigators, skillful interpreters, and willing storytellers. In the instance of Indian narratives detailing this or any other aspect of the Great Sioux War, intrigue with the Little Big Horn battle and Custer largely drove the questioning as individuals like Walter Camp, Thomas Marquis, Hugh Scott, and a few others sought to record the Indian side of the story. While their curiosity about “all things Custer” typically motivated these opportunistic explorations, in some instances interrogators could not delve into the Little Big Horn story without confronting one of its important antecedents, the Powder River fight of March 17, 1876. The Powder River episode also surfaced when individuals like Eli Ricker, George Bird Grinnell, George Hyde, Eleanor Hinman, and Stanley Vestal collected primary accounts of tribal and biographical history. Whatever the motive, these interrogators cultivated friendships on the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne reservations and, through interpreters, posed questions and recorded answers and stories. 206

“I SEE MY HORSE”

207

The Indians had understandably few practical alternatives to preserving their story. After Powder River (or Little Big Horn, or the killing of Crazy Horse, for that matter), with the rarest of exceptions, no warriors sought out interpreters, reporters, or interested third parties to tell (and thus conventionally preserve) their tales of horror, valor, contemplation, and war. Nor did anyone write things down in the regular sense. Yet, before all of the nineteenthcentury Indian warriors and witnesses were gone, conversations and interviews of the most compelling sort occurred that provided, among other things, a glimpse at the other side of the Powder River story.1

✧✧✧✧ The Northern Cheyenne and Sioux people in the Powder River village on March 17, 1876, were keenly aware that soldiers were in the field hunting them. They had been warned no fewer than five times that they must submit at an agency together with all the northern people very quickly in the waning winter or face the army in war. A government courier from the Red Cloud Agency had told these Northern Cheyennes as much in mid-winter. Last Bull, a young Northern Cheyenne Kit Fox Society chief, had told these villagers the same thing only fifteen or twenty days before the fight. Spotted Wolf, Medicine Wolf, and Twin, Northern Cheyennes who had gone north after wintering near Red Cloud Agency, repeated the message barely seven or eight days before Reynolds attacked. There were similar interactions between the agency Sioux and their fellow Lakotas in the village as well. Crawler (the Oglala, not the better-known Hunkpapa friend of Sitting Bull) carried a message from Chief Red Cloud urging He Dog and his followers to come in. Little Wolf, an Old Man Chief and the Northern Cheyenne Sweet Medicine Chief, came to the camp barely a day or two before the fight, repeated the dire warning, and then got caught up in the action.2 These warnings had the people on edge. In the days before the battle Wooden Leg and his older brother, Yellow Hair, had been out scouting from Old Bear’s village and in the dark of night chanced

208

THE BATTLE

upon an abandoned soldier camp in the Tongue River valley. As they poked about its smoldering fires, shots rang out. They were able to discern a rider but could not tell if it was a white man, a Cheyenne, or some other Indian. They concluded that it was a soldier and hastened to return to their own camp, then located on the Powder River near the confluence with the Little Powder. There the two were summoned to a council of the old men, along with some other young warriors who had also been scouting. As stories were pieced together, it turned out that the shots were exchanged between Cheyennes and that the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. Yet the reality of soldiers in the Tongue River valley was not misunderstood. The council of old men decided that they should stay away from the soldiers and not try to fight them and sent a crier through the village proclaiming that “soldiers have been seen. We think they are looking for us.” The next day the village moved upstream to where Frank Grouard found it in the early morning hours of March 17.3 Other Cheyennes saw soldiers too. Black Eagle, a council chief, remembered the growing anxiety in the village when several young men out hunting antelope at the head of Otter Creek returned to the camp with news that many soldiers had been seen going up that valley. In all likelihood these were the very same hunters that Grouard had spotted coming down Otter Creek. The young men had pushed their horses so hard in returning to the village that they thoroughly exhausted the mounts and finished their return on foot. When the hunters told their news, the council of old men sent out six others (Wooden Leg said ten) to find these soldiers and learn who they were. Black Eagle remembered, however, that these wolves went in too far below (meaning downriver of the village) and missed the soldiers, whose own trail had taken them nearer to the headwaters of Otter Creek and from there cross-country to the Powder River valley. It was a fateful miss.4 Although today the village is principally identified as having belonged to Old Bear, a Northern Cheyenne Old Man Chief of quiet renown, Indian accounts personalized the identification in ways that tended to relate it to the interrogators. Wooden Leg, whose account of Northern Cheyenne history is one of the most

“I SEE MY HORSE”

209

vivid and important in the literature, identified the camp as belonging to Old Bear, who was the chief of Wooden Leg’s band. Others, including Cheyennes surrendering at Camp Robinson in 1877, made this clear too. But Black Eagle, a Northern Cheyenne council chief, identified the camp as his own in a conversation with George Bird Grinnell in 1907, and indeed his band was present. George Bent, quoting Tall Sioux, who was in the fight on March 17, said the camp belonged to Maple Tree (meaning Box Elder), whose band was there as well. Short Bull (Short Buffalo), an Oglala Sioux, said that Little Wolf and Ice (White Bull) were the leading Cheyenne chiefs there. Bull Hump, one of Dull Knife’s sons, identified the camp as belonging to Willow Bushes (meaning Box Elder/ Maple Tree) and Two Moon, a point partially affirmed by Young Two Moon, the chief’s nephew. Of course, the village was also reported as belonging to Crazy Horse, a confusion discussed elsewhere and shown to be false, although with a clear basis for the misidentification. What is certain is that Old Bear, an Old Man Chief, and Box Elder and Black Eagle, both council chiefs, were the principal leaders of the Northern Cheyennes present and that He Dog was principal leader of the Sioux. Old Bear, by virtue of his unique standing in the tribe, was clearly the most prominent band leader present.5 Wooden Leg remembered that the village felt safe and slept securely on the night preceding the battle. Wolves (scouts) were in the countryside searching for soldiers. Most in the camp had eaten and the sun was well up as hell erupted with the barest of warnings. An old man had gone to a nearby knoll to observe or pray, “as old men were in the habit of doing.” He had been there only moments when he began shouting toward the camp: “The soldiers are right here! The soldiers are right here!” This might well have been the cry that Grouard heard, “as plain as could be,” he recalled. A different cry from a young man resonated at the southern end of the camp at almost the same time. “Get your guns! The soldiers are charging us!” Soldiers remembered this cry too. Bourke, charging the village with Egan, recalled passing an Indian boy who for a moment demonstrated great stoicism and silence but then began “shouting the war-whoop to alarm the village.”6

210

THE BATTLE

The attack was a complete surprise. Men, women, and children rushed frantically from their tipis, many slashing their way out the back sides with knives. Women struggled, burdened with packs of precious belongings and some dragging or carrying their children. Old people hobbled to get out of the reach of Egan’s pistols and then Mills’s carbines as soldier bullets ripped through the lodges. Many shrieked in fright. Wooden Leg remembered coming upon a woman who had a pack on her back, one little girl under an arm, and an older girl clinging to her free right hand. “She was crying, both of the girls were crying, and all three of them were almost exhausted.” It was Last Bull’s wife and their two daughters.7 When the attack began, Wooden Leg’s first reaction was to grab a weapon. But the best weapon he owned, a cap and ball revolver, had been lent to his cousin, Star, who was among the scouts sent out the night before. Star in turn gave Wooden Leg a bow and some arrows that he had borrowed from Puffed Cheek. Grabbing them, Wooden Leg skirted around the camp to get to his horse. The first animal he chanced upon belonged to Old Bear, and “just now it became my war pony.” A few other warriors did the same and joined the fight mounted, but most remained on foot. Wooden Leg fired several arrows at the soldiers as he began working his way back to his lodge. “I wanted my shield, my other medicine objects, and whatever else I might be able to carry away,” he remembered, and it was then when he came upon Last Bull’s wife and daughters. “Let me take one of the children,” he offered. The older girl, about ten, was lifted up behind him. Moments later he also picked up an eight-year-old boy struggling to follow a mother carrying a baby on her back and two other children under her arms. Wooden Leg’s horse was excited by the tumult and shied and plunged, but he succeeded in getting the two children out of danger.8 In attempting to escape the soldiers’ charge, even before comprehending the full scale of the attack, villagers scattered in nearly every direction. Some fled northeast through the willows and across the river, others into the ravines adjoining the declivity on the west side of the camp. Most, however, fled directly north in the opposite direction from the initial attack, through tipis and cottonwoods and onto the frozen river until they reached the mouth of today’s

“I SEE MY HORSE”

211

Flood Creek. There they turned west and scrambled for safety, exposed to only light fire from Stanton’s small squad perched temporarily high above the creek. “The soldiers got between our camp and our horse herd, so all of us had to run away afoot,” remembered Antelope Woman, sister of White Bull and later called Kate Big Head by whites.9 While most of the people fled as soon as the shooting began, not everyone did so. Black Eagle, whose lodge was at the south end of the village, had heard a young boy’s cry as the attack began. He remained in his tipi briefly with his wife, Elbow Woman, and her father, the revered Box Elder, who was blind and did not want to leave the lodge. Black Eagle picked up his rifle, told his wife to take her father away, and then started toward the soldiers. He later told anthropologist George Bird Grinnell: “The way the bullets struck around him was like the patter of raindrops in a hard storm.” He and four other young men followed the soldiers as they passed through the tipis and until they came to the bank along the river, where they dismounted. The soldiers rode gray horses. Black Eagle got behind a tree and shot at them and then moved to the riverbank and kept shooting. Meanwhile Elbow Woman and Box Elder finally made their way to safety at a place called the breastworks, a defensive nook in the declivity slightly below the village.10 The people there asked Black Eagle’s wife if her man was still alive. When she said “Yes,” she was urged to go down and get him. She sent her brother, Little Creek, who went into the village, found Black Eagle along the riverbank, and led him to the stony breastworks. Black Eagle could see that this was a good place from which to fight, but no haven for women, children, and old people. At his urging, his wife, Box Elder (who was now mounted), and Black Eagle’s mother, who had joined them during the flight, moved northward again. Black Eagle led his father-in-law’s horse, with the others following along as they made their way via the cut banks to safety beyond the sight of the soldiers. When he knew his family was secure, Black Eagle went back to the breastworks, where many of the men had gathered.11 The day’s fighting was marked by countless acts of bravery, some happening on individual initiative and others through the actions

212

THE BATTLE

of small clutches of warriors. Little Wolf, who had come to the village only a day or so beforehand to visit Box Elder, hurried from his lodge when the shooting began, helped women, children, and the elderly flee, and then turned his attention to the soldiers, firing and rallying the warriors. Cheyenne informants remembered that Little Wolf’s voice could often be heard above the din, exhorting warriors to be strong and fight like men. Soldier accounts recall such exhortations. Lieutenant Bourke remembered: “Those of our men who were on the skirmish line under Mills saw an Indian chief in full war costume, riding and running up and down among his men on the cliffs, haranguing them and animating their valor. We conjured this to be Crazy Horse.” In truth, it might have been Little Wolf, who was largely unknown to whites in the early days of the Great Sioux War, while Crazy Horse was every soldier’s bogeyman.12 Others also demonstrated extreme valor. Correspondent Robert Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain News recalled observing: a small band of ponies on our right that had been overlooked by the men detailed to gather them in. The main body of Indians was then on our left, and we were amazed to see a gaudily dressed warrior, well mounted, emerge from behind a clump of bushes, tauntingly brandish his weapons, and start with break-neck speed toward the ponies, with the evident intention of making off with them. To accomplish this he was compelled to ride within two hundred yards of fifteen or twenty of us, and just before reaching the goal, faithful horse and reckless rider fell riddled with bullets.13 Powder Face, a Cheyenne warrior, later told an informant that he shot a “soldier chief,” before he, Yellow Eagle, and Bull Coming Behind all counted coup on the individual. Powder Face in fact may well be the slayer of Private McCannon, whose death occurred later in the fight and whose body was among the two abandoned by Reynolds in the camp.14 The killing of another soldier in the village is well remembered too. After Wooden Leg helped take young children to the safety

“I SEE MY HORSE”

213

of the ravines of Flood Creek, he returned to the fight and for a while was among those gathered in the rocks above the declivity in a position that changed hands during the battle. He remembered firing down on the soldiers below him. Later in the day Wooden Leg joined his friends Two Moon and Bear Walks on a Ridge as the three skirted their way east across the iced-over river. By now the battle was nearing its end, and the soldiers were withdrawing. The three warriors spotted one vulnerable man, wounded and struggling in the snow. The soldier had comrades around him, who ran off one by one. Wooden Leg recollected Two Moon firing at the soldier but missing and then Bear Walks on a Ridge firing and hitting the man in the back of the head. The three rushed forward and beat and stabbed the soldier to death before distributing his belongings among themselves and one other Cheyenne warrior who had come along. Wooden Leg remembered taking the man’s blue coat. In every likelihood this soldier was Private Lorenzo Ayers.15 Near the end of the fighting Black Eagle’s attention was drawn to the movement of two bunches of horses being held by soldiers. He joined some other Cheyenne warriors in making their way along the rocks at the far side of the bench and creeping in as close as they could before shooting at the herders. The herders gathered up their bunches and drove them off. Black Eagle and his followers returned to the other warriors and soon watched the soldier herders drive the horses back to where the battle was and the soldiers mount and leave.16 Observing the village being torched was a great torment for the people. From protected places high in the hills they watched the soldiers topple and then set fire to the lodges. As the tipis burned, some would flare up with the explosions of gunpowder. The popping sound of cartridges ignited by the flames occasionally came from some of them. Aside from what some women carried off when the shooting began, all of the people’s possessions—their finery, robes and clothing, and rawhide parfleches filled with wasna (a mix of dried meat and animal fat)—were lost to the fires. “The Cheyennes were rendered very poor,” Wooden Leg remembered. “I had nothing but the clothing I had on, with the soldier coat added. My eagle wing bone flute, my medicine pipe, my rifle, everything

214

THE BATTLE

else of mine, were gone.” The loss of the horses was comparably devastating. Virtually every family lost animals. The Oglala He Dog personally lost seven prized ponies.17

✧✧✧✧ The shock of the destruction and loss became all the more vivid and painful when the people returned to the camp later in the day. Black Eagle remembered that after the soldiers went away the young men began to yell and started back into the village. The stench of burned buffalo skin lodges, leather clothing, robes, meats, and furs overwhelmed the senses. Everything was reduced to black piles of rubble smoldering against the melting snow. Only one lodge remained standing. “We went to it,” remembered Wooden Leg. “There was the missing old blind woman. Her tipi and herself had been left entirely unharmed.”18 The people tended to their casualties first. Antelope Woman remembered that “not many of our people were killed, but our tipis and everything that was in them were burned.” Wooden Leg told his biographer that one Cheyenne warrior had been killed, another had his forearm badly shattered, and yet another, Braided Locks, had the skin of one cheek furrowed by a bullet. The Oglala He Dog mentioned three casualties: a boy or young man, probably Sioux, who had been tending horses; an old Cheyenne woman; and a Cheyenne man shot through the abdomen from a great distance away. According to He Dog, the affair came to be known in some circles as “[t]he massacre of the two Cheyennes on Powder River.”19 One Cheyenne source identified the deceased warrior as Whirlwind, but White Eagle and Starving Woman, both of Black Eagle’s band, identified him as Chief Eagle, brother of White Hawk and a member of the Elkhorn Scrapers Society. Chief Eagle may have been the valiant, taunting warrior that reporter Strahorn remembered being shot down while attempting to intercept and run off some ponies. White Eagle and Starving Woman witnessed Chief Eagle’s mourning and burial along the side stream where the women and children had fled early in the attack. His body was placed in a stony niche beneath a shelf of ledge rock after being dressed by

“I SEE MY HORSE”

215

relatives in his war shirt, beaded leggings, and moccasins, swaddled in a red blanket, covered with a long blue soldier overcoat, and wrapped in a buffalo robe. Beside him were placed his sacred bundle and rattle. The overcoat may well have been one of those stashed and ultimately abandoned along Thompson Creek by Mills’s Company M, Third Cavalry.20 Black Eagle remembered that the returning Cheyennes also saw dead soldiers, several in the camp and several more “at the bank.” That he mentioned dead soldiers at the bank suggests the general ineffectiveness of the army’s so-called ice burial, implying that the river occasionally flowed open as it ran the length of the camp, allowing the bodies of Schneider and Dowty to surface. Black Eagle was not particularly interested in them, however. The talk of the camp had turned to the coming and going of Cheyenne scouts. The wolves sent out the day before by the council of old men had intercepted the soldiers’ trail and followed it carefully, attempting to catch up, but it only led them straight to the ashes of their own village. Now the chiefs were preparing to send scouts out again, this time on the trail of the soldiers as they marched up the Powder. The six returning wolves and four others with horses were sent, Wooden Leg and three Sioux, including Short Bull (Grant Short Bull, cousin to the Short Bull of the Ghost Dance time) and his brother Running Eagle. Before they departed, Black Eagle told them to “follow them up. They cannot sleep with our horses to watch them.”21 The people did not move far that night, mostly camping north of but near the destroyed village, and continued to poke about its ruins salvaging anything of value from the tipis and campsites. Melted snow ran everywhere and soaked the people’s moccasins, chilling their feet in the night. Half-clothed women and children suffered terribly. “Our hearts were bad when our babies and children cried from the cold,” remembered Two Moon. In the camp that evening Box Elder, the eighty-one-year-old blind council chief and holy man, spent time in prayer. He was the keeper of Ox’zem, a Cheyenne sacred wheel lance possessing great supernatural power, including the ability to conceal the presence of the Cheyennes from their enemy. After the Reynolds attack the blind priest, with

216

THE BATTLE

tears streaming down his cheeks, invoked the wheel lance’s concealing power to cover the movements of the Cheyenne wolves as they trailed Reynolds’s column in anticipation of recapturing their horses.22 The villagers also spent time searching for food. Small morsels were pulled from some of the smoldering lodges, barely enough to sustain the seven hundred people who fled when Egan attacked. A remarkable story survives, told by White Bull, the prominent Miniconjou leader and close friend of Sitting Bull.23 White Bull was not present at Powder River, but his friend Little Shield, one of He Dog’s brothers, was there and related the following incident: After the soldiers had pulled out, some of the Indians came back to the burned camp to look for something to eat. Most of them had had no breakfast. When Little Shield arrived, he found three Cheyennes roasting fresh meat over a hot fire. Little Shield stood by the fire for a while, warming himself. Close by on a big platter were several pieces of raw meat awaiting their turn at the blaze. Little Shield was hungry; he thought the meat looked very appetizing that cold morning. He could not speak Cheyenne, so after a while he just went over and helped himself to a piece of meat and began to cook it for his breakfast. The Cheyennes watched him take it, but made no objection. They began to talk among themselves. When Little Shield’s meat was done to a turn, he began to eat it. He had swallowed half a dozen juicy morsels when one of the Cheyennes came over and talked to him in the sign language. Said he, “We found a dead fat soldier lying over yonder. We cut him up. That meat you are eating is part of him. That is soldier meat.” The Cheyenne spoke seriously. Little Shield did not know the Cheyennes very well; he did not know but what their customs permitted cannibalism. Yet, being a Sioux, he was horrified; the Sioux never ate human flesh.

“I SEE MY HORSE”

217

But it was too late. Little Shield could not get the meat up again. Probably the Cheyennes were playing a joke on Little Shield because he had helped himself to their meat. But some of the Sioux believe to this day that the Cheyennes ate the dead soldier. Little Shield says it tasted pretty good, at that.24 We can accept this horrific story at face value or dismiss it as a disturbing prank. Today it is interpreted both ways. The bodies of Michael McCannon, killed on Mills’s line in the mid-morning, and Lorenzo Ayers, killed on that same line by Cheyennes at midday, lay close together at the northern end of the camp. It seems a rash story simply to make up, notwithstanding the nature of Indian humor and teasing. That morning Old Bear, Box Elder, and Black Eagle led their people north, following He Dog, who knew the way to Crazy Horse’s village. A few young men on horseback remained behind to guard the others as they got away. Most everyone walked, the women carrying what they could. The people nearly reached the Little Powder River that day, though hunger gnawed at their stomachs and melting snow and mud added to the difficulty of the trail. Now the people were without shelter. Only a few had robes, and the nights remained terribly cold. Their path continued north and east onto the benchland beyond the Little Powder, in search of the Oglala camp.25

✧✧✧✧ Meanwhile the soldier trail south of the village was wide, and the wolves followed it with cunning and ease. After chasing away warriors threatening one of Doctor Munn’s overturned travois just south of the promontory, neither Reynolds’s rearguard nor the mixed-blood scouts driving the ponies reported Indians on their trail. The soldiers were convinced that they had gotten away. But the wolves were always close, shadowing their route and likely

218

THE BATTLE

wincing in anger as ponies were occasionally shot. When the herd reached the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek after dark, it was driven beyond the army camp. The area where Lodge Pole Creek met the Powder was broad and accommodating. The Powder curved widely there, sweeping south and east. The creek intersected the river upstream of where the soldiers encamped.26 Wooden Leg was there. He and the wolves were hidden on the high ground west of the Powder even before the last soldiers had hobbled their horses and joined the camp. Beneath them was their herd, seemingly unguarded. As the Cheyennes crept closer, their excitement and anticipation grew. “One Cheyenne would whisper, ‘I see my horse.’ Another would say, ‘There is mine.’”27 The wolves waited until the middle of the night and then slipped down among the ponies and slowly started pushing them upriver, maneuvering carefully to draw as little attention to themselves and their theft as possible. “I got my favorite animal,” Wooden Leg remembered. “We made some effort then to steal some of the horses of the white men. But they shot at us, so we went away with the part of our own herd that we could manage.”28 Wooden Leg’s account compresses some details. It was now almost daybreak. There is no record of any of the soldier pickets or mixed-bloods shooting at the Cheyennes until the ponies were well beyond the camp and several miles away, and in any case it was a half-hearted reaction. For the Cheyennes, this retaking of nearly two-thirds of their pony herd at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek was a brash undertaking accomplished with ease. The Cheyenne and Sioux wolves drove the ponies in a wide circle around the soldier camp, first up Lodge Pole Creek and then up a succession of northerly branches until they crossed a divide and returned to the Powder River. While pushing the animals down the Powder, the herders encountered a second challenge when (some ten miles into their ride) they unsuspectingly met another column of soldiers. The wolves had no comprehension that other soldiers were downriver. Yet now these two parties ran headlong into each other. The wolves did their best to sneak the horses out of sight, but the herd divided. Some horses fell into soldier hands. After grasping the spectacle playing out before them, the surprised soldiers

“I SEE MY HORSE”

219

fired on the Indians. This may in fact be the instance that Wooden Leg referred to when he told his biographer that “they shot at us” and “we went away with that part of our own herd that we could manage.” (In a way that had also been true at the Powder River camp.) One soldier account suggests that an Indian herder was wounded or killed in this chance encounter, but no Indian informant confirms this. The herd was diminished by about fifty animals, but these troops and the confrontation were soon put behind as the wolves continued their push north after circumventing the soldiers.29 The scouts and ponies reached the Cheyenne camp on the second night after the Powder River fight. The news of their coming had been announced: Black Eagle recalled that “a young man came in and said that the horses were now getting close.” Then a cry arose in the camp when someone, likely one of the heralds, hollered: “All get up and be happy. We have recovered all our horses.”30 The return of the ponies brought great joy to the people. Black Eagle remembered that each person “got back his horses.” That exuberance was tempered by the quick comprehension that, while each warrior received a horse, “from three to seven of the best horses were gone out of each bunch.” Still, the returned animals were a boon that allowed some of the women and old people to ride. Upon returning to camp, Wooden Leg sought out Chief Old Bear and gave him back the horse that he had taken when the soldiers first attacked. Old Bear replied: “Thank you, my friend.” He gave the animal to his woman while he kept on afoot.31 Early on the fourth day He Dog and his Oglala followers, leading the long string of uprooted Cheyennes, found the camp of Oglala Sioux that they were seeking located up a small branch of the Little Powder River. It was Crazy Horse’s village. Crazy Horse came out, briefly conferred with He Dog, and learned the essence of what had occurred up the Powder. Meanwhile his people streamed out of the village to greet the cold, gaunt, and half-clothed refugees. The Oglalas welcomed the people, calling out: “Cheyennes, come and eat here.” Soon in every tipi women were roasting fresh meat or boiling nutritious broths while families distributed clothing, blankets, and robes. “The Oglalas received us hospitably, as we knew they would,”

220

THE BATTLE

remembered Wooden Leg. In truth, the Oglalas had little to spare, but this was no time for parsimony.32 That evening Crazy Horse hosted a council of headmen and listened to stories of Cheyenne distress brought on at Powder River. Crazy Horse said, “I am glad you are come. We are going to fight the white man again.” Doubtless many Cheyenne headmen responded, but we know what the Kit Fox Society chief Two Moon said: “All right. I am ready to fight. I have fought already. My people have been killed, my horses stolen; I am satisfied to fight.” Less than one week earlier these same Northern Cheyennes (a sizable alliance of Old Bear’s, Box Elder’s, and Black Eagle’s followers numbering some six hundred people) had decided to heed the government’s call to come into the agencies instead of facing a war. They had been making their way to Nebraska. Now they were consciously, if cautiously, turning to war. They and the Oglalas came to understand that what they faced collectively, and what they had experienced at Powder River, was no longer a defense of hunting grounds but the defense of a way of life.33 At the council, the Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes agreed that their combined bands did not possess enough food, weaponry, and munitions to withstand another attack by the soldiers and that they must now travel together to Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa village, to achieve a much larger and more sustained alliance. Two days later they started, with the Cheyennes leading and the Oglalas following. Crazy Horse’s people continued their support, including the loan of horses so that no one walked. The travelers located Sitting Bull’s village several days later on Blue Earth Creek (today’s Spring Creek), another Powder River tributary a few miles north of the Chalk Buttes. There, as at the Oglala camp, the people were warmly welcomed. The Hunkpapa village was sizable; Wooden Leg remembered that there were “more of them than of Cheyennes and Oglalas combined.” And they were almost all committed nontreaty, nonreservation people, with “plenty of food, plenty of robes, plenty of everything needed by Indians.” Sitting Bull directed that two very large tipis be set up in the center of his camp circle, one for Cheyenne men and the other for Cheyenne women. Hunkpapa

“I SEE MY HORSE”

221

women brought them steaming kettles of food, coming repeatedly with “more and more meat.” Then began the distribution of blankets, robes, lodgeskins and poles, horses, saddles, ammunition, and even smoking pipes. Wooden Leg remembered: “Oh, what good hearts they had! I can never forget the generosity of Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa Sioux on that day.”34 The feasting and recovery lasted a week, but the everyday joy was tempered in the evening councils, where the prospects of war dominated all discussion. The soldier attack on the Powder River village had stunned not just the Cheyennes but all the northern bands. News from the agencies foretold other troop movements either planned or underway. For anyone who had misunderstood or dismissed the government’s ultimatum, the realities of war had become more apparent and galvanizing. Two Moon, already hardened to the prospect of war, repeated his harangue. Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapas needed little convincing. Crazy Horse and the Oglalas had also come to this foreboding realization. Skeptical Cheyennes stiffened. After fully considering the predicament, the bands agreed to align and cooperate fully. Within another day or two they traveled together, the Cheyennes again leading, the Oglalas following, and the Hunkpapas trailing, as the great assemblage headed for Tongue River and an even larger council involving even more Lakota bands.35 Many years after the Powder River fight Short Bull, the Oglala warrior in He Dog’s circle who was among the wolves who recaptured the camp’s ponies, offered an entirely different perspective on the March 17 event. It was a “turning point,” he told Eleanor Hinman in 1930. “Had it not been for that attack by Crook on Powder River, we would have come in to the agency that spring and there would have been no Sioux war.” Short Bull’s belief had some validity, as least as he grasped it in another day and time. Old Bear’s and He Dog’s followers were bound for an agency, coming in as directed until fate trapped them on the Powder. Yet, of course, a larger reality was at work in 1876. While these seven hundred Cheyennes and Sioux were heeding the government’s call, Sitting Bull’s and Crazy Horse’s followers were not. At the start, as at the

222

THE BATTLE

end, this war was all about those people, most emblematically with those chiefs. The Great Sioux War was inevitable. It also appears inevitable that it ensnared the Northern Cheyennes.36 He Dog remembered the event too in an honoring song that venerated the Cheyenne and Sioux heroes of the Reynolds fight: The soldiers charged our village, my friends cried, soldiers and Sioux charge, and my friends cried.37

11 ✧✧✧✧

Lodge Pole Creek

T

he darkness enveloping the soldier camp at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek was a deceiving screen. After hobbling and staking weary horses, presuming that they would be able to graze on grasses beneath the snow cover, the soldiers of Reynolds’s command sought out comrades, built small fires, and got desperately needed sleep, at least until they were summoned to rotating guard or picket duty. A few of the men had buffalo robes carried along from the Indian village, but everyone else rolled into greatcoats, blankets, and shelter halves, garnering a bit of extra warmth from the flickering campfires. The men of Mills’s Company M were an exception, enduring the night and the remainder of the campaign without greatcoats and other heavy winter overgarments. The command was a “jaded” bunch, Bourke remembered, “and the horses very much more so. I should say the horses were tired out.”1 As early-morning sunlight cracked the eastern horizon on March 18, the truth of the scene became apparent when the command caught its first glimpses of the meager camp and surroundings. Instead of forage grasses beneath the snow cover, as they had wishfully presumed, the men discovered sandy, burnt-over ground, unnoticed in the darkness. The place had meager firewood, much of the normal cottonwood downfall having been consumed in the burn-over. With wood scrounged from the ground or pulled from 223

224

THE BATTLE

trees, campfires were renewed and men huddled around, shoving tin cups into embers in the ritualistic making of army coffee. But then the “monster hunger” returned. The ever-sharp-tongued diarist and critic Corporal John Slough of Company I, Second Cavalry, observed that “hunger, fatigue and loss of sleep levels rank and station, [putting] officers, packers, half breeds and soggers on a level.” Those were “cheerless, deathlike, sickly, camp fires.”2 Around the morning fires the talk centered on the fight. Everyone had an opinion or some experience to share, with much to learn and plenty to criticize. News of the battle’s fatalities and the wounded man left behind soon spread throughout the camp and was a bitter pill. At the officers’ fires conversations ranged from the congratulatory to the worrisome, with fears especially about the well-being and whereabouts of General Crook and the pack train. Perhaps he and his command had been “worsted,” some officers fretted. Bourke recalled praising Reynolds for having done so well on March 17 “under the circumstances” but confessed at the colonel’s court-martial that he had not yet heard about the wounded man and fatalities left behind. At Egan’s campfire the normally nonplussed captain complained about not having been supported in the attack, reflecting aloud on his exposure in the opening moments of the charge and having so quickly suffered one killed and three wounded. Captain Noyes shared the same fire, and Major Stanton joined them. Stanton heard Egan grousing and urged him to file a complaint when Crook arrived. Noyes was astonished by the suggestion and counseled otherwise, declaring: “Captain Egan, don’t you do anything of the kind. If your charge was not properly supported you will have an opportunity to speak of it when you make your report, and you will probably be called on for a special report if that is the case.” Stanton continued to hound Egan, while Noyes worked to dissuade him.3 The issue of reports was already making the campfire rounds. Early that morning Reynolds sent word to every company commander to prepare what he called a “memorandum report,” meaning simply a brief synopsis of the previous day’s action, for guidance in making his own official report. He did not want to neglect the action or accomplishments of any company, he declared. Battle

LODGE POLE CREEK

225

and action reports were commonplace and well defined in Army Regulations, so no officer present was unfamiliar with the requirement. Regulations also prescribed special reports of the sort that Noyes was referring to in his conversation with Egan, typically directed at officers or soldiers and pertaining to matters of conduct in action. Some captains responded to Reynolds by asking for a delay in preparing their reports because they had no “facilities for making them.” Reynolds consented, but with the understanding that he wanted all reports in hand, if possible, by the time the command reached Fort Reno, several days hence. The officers’ reports were slow in coming. Reynolds later complained, but in the end there was no lack of reports or of the acrimony that could arise from such documents.4 Some men sought opportunities to visit with Doctor Munn. Many had suffered terribly from the cold since leaving Otter Creek on March 16. Nips of frostbite and frozen toes, noses, and fingers were so commonplace that they were impractical to record, Munn noted. Bourke remembered sixty-six cases tended by Munn and hospital steward Bryan that morning, including his own frozen toes. Most cases were generally treated with tincture of iodine. Munn also treated two cases of inflammatory rheumatism, which Bourke described as almost as serious and debilitating as the afflictions of the wounded men.5 Reynolds continued to fixate on the whereabouts of General Crook and sought out Grouard to discuss renewing the search for him that morning. By his own recollection at his court-martial, he also expressed concern for the safety of the pony herd. Grouard assured the colonel, Reynolds claimed, that the herd was “all right.” Reynolds then directed Grouard to get up a party of scouts to start out in search of the general. There was a good deal of delay in getting that party ready, Reynolds remembered.6 Although this day broke with a calm, commotion at about 9 a.m. changed the Powder River battle’s outcome forevermore. The officers at Noyes’s campfire were among the first to discern that the ponies were being driven off by Indians. That word was initially received with skepticism and dismissed. Lieutenant Rawolle of Company E, Second Cavalry, had come over from Moore’s camp

226

THE BATTLE

to converse with others of his regiment. While sitting at Noyes’s fire, Rawolle recollected a sergeant telling Noyes that he had just been out to look at the ponies and that they were grazing upstream. With no measure of alarm at what he had just heard, Noyes casually dismissed the man. Moments later, however, several of the scouts (including John Provost) came over and told Stanton, who was still at Noyes’s fire, that Indians had driven off the herd. Noyes overheard the report. Having just received word from one of his own men that the horses were quietly grazing, he interjected: “How do you know?” The scouts explained what they had just seen and specifically mentioned observing a pony trailing off with a cavalry lariat around its neck. One of the men of Noyes’s company had attempted to cut out one of ponies the day before when the herd was starting from the village, but it had escaped capture and ran off trailing that lariat. This pony had been regularly observed as the herd was pushed southward to Lodge Pole Creek. Stanton immediately sent scouts to confirm what was occurring, who “came back and reported that as a fact.”7 Mills received the startling report at almost the same time. He was still officer of the day and had just finished a short conversation with Reynolds, who expressed his fear that the camp might be attacked by Indians and warned Mills to “be on the lookout.” Mills assured him that there was no danger of attack but noted that the Indian ponies were “stirring” and should be rounded up or the “Indians would round them up for us.” Reynolds asked in which direction the ponies were moving. When Mills said “upriver,” the colonel responded that the command was marching in that direction anyway, so “let them go.” In fact, of course, the ponies were not just stirring but being driven, a reality that nearly every officer quickly comprehended.8 Lieutenant Sibley of Rawolle’s company rushed up and reported to Mills that the ponies were getting away but were still in sight. Mills had him report this to Reynolds, because the colonel had expressed confidence that there was no need for concern about the ponies. Meanwhile Mills returned to his company and ordered a sergeant to send some men to secure the herd. He walked over

RI V

ER

Cr.

ce

ER

n Fe

PO

W

D

Army Camp Pony Herd

Cr. W

R

RIVE

R

Cr.

½

DE

E

W

0

PO

Lodge Pole

Cr.

N

Fort Reno

S

1

2

MILES

Lodge Pole Creek Camp, 8 a.m., March 18, 1876. Copyright © 2016 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.

227

228

THE BATTLE

to Reynolds’s fire, located at the lower end of the camp. There the conversation turned almost immediately to the failure of General Crook to arrive at Lodge Pole Creek as he had said he would. Reynolds’s focus on Crook’s absence and his lack of concern about the ponies seemed obsessive. He voiced the panicky belief that Crook would never come and had gone straight for the wagons. Mills said that he “hooted at the idea.” By then others had joined the conversation, including Captains Moore, Noyes, and Egan and Lieutenant Drew, and the talk momentarily shifted to what the command should do next. They were without provisions and blankets, so Moore suggested that they should move. Reynolds listened intently and then concurred. He ordered a general movement at 1:30 p.m. In his mind, the retaking of the ponies by the Indians was still inconceivable; other matters seemed far more pressing anyway.9 By now nearly everyone realized that a great many of the ponies, perhaps more than five hundred, had indeed been driven off by the Indians. The matter was again called to the attention of the officers at Reynolds’s campfire, this time by one of the scouts. Reynolds remained doubtful and told the scout to report to Stanton. Mills was still present and warned Reynolds that “if he let that herd get away he had lost the battle.” Reynolds repeated that he had little or no concern for the animals, telling Mills that he would rather have one company of horses than all the ponies there. Mills’s tone turned sharper: “General Crook would rather lose all the horses in the Third Cavalry than that pony herd. We could buy more horses and the Indians could not.” Mills offered to send a detail of men to recapture the animals, as did Egan and Noyes, but Reynolds would not permit it and turned silent, seemingly withdrawing from the situation at a time when the challenges of command demanded clear thought and logic. Reynolds did summon Grouard then or shortly afterward. The party being organized to search for Crook had not yet departed, so he told Grouard to have the scouts trail the ponies and send back information “if any could be obtained.” Reynolds’s indecisive handling of this crisis did nothing to assuage the anger welling up among his officers. Losing the horses would prove to be the complete undoing of Reynolds and this campaign.10

LODGE POLE CREEK

229

Sitting at his fire that morning, pencil and notebook in hand, Crook’s trusted aide Bourke quietly summarized the indictment rising against Reynolds, carefully noting the litany of criticisms that he and other Crook cronies reminded themselves of, particularly in light of this new situation: To the surprise of all, General Reynolds declined sending any detachment to attempt [the] recapture [of the ponies]. Great dissatisfaction now arose among all: several of the officers vented their ill-feeling in splenetic criticism and openly charged Reynolds with incapacity. This exhibition of incompetency was the last link needed to fastening the chain of popular obloquy to the reputation of our Commanding Officer. It was remembered that no guard had been placed over the cattle-herd the Sioux had stampeded near Fort Fetterman[,] that our vidette system had been neglected until General Crook had interfered and caused it to be instituted; that in yesterday’s fight our troops had been badly handled, the heights overlooking the enemy’s position not seized upon as a single glance of the eye would have suggested; that our men were now suffering for food and covering, while everything they could desire had been consumed before their eyes in the village, and worst shame and disgrace of all, our dead and dying had been abandoned like carrion to the torture and mutilation of the Indian’s scalping knife. The favorable impression General Reynolds’ affable manners had made upon his subordinates has been very rudely and completely effaced. I cannot use a better term than to say we look upon him as a sort of General Braddock, good enough to follow out instructions in a plan of battle conducted according to stereotyped rules, but having nothing of that originality of thought, fertility of conception and promptness of execution which is the characteristic of great military men. Reynolds’ imbecility is a very painful revelation to many of us. All in camp look forward to General Crook’s arrival with feelings of impatience and anxious expectancy.11

230

THE BATTLE

✧✧✧✧ No military account suggests that the Indians pushed the ponies directly downriver. Had that occurred, they would have passed Reynolds’s camp in a very visible and exposed way, just as Grouard had foretold. Instead, as Mills first reported to Reynolds, the ponies were moving upriver. Almost certainly they were “stirring,” because by then they were being quietly pushed by Indian wolves. They were driven only a short distance upriver and then across the Powder River and up Lodge Pole Creek, where they soon disappeared from sight. The wolves knew the local trails, of which there were many, according to Louis Richard, the scout then guiding the Crook contingent. The pony herd was not in the Lodge Pole Valley long before being turned onto Squaw Creek, an intermittent branch oriented to the northwest, and then onto one of several other northward branches, allowing the wolves to swing widely around the army camp as they pushed the ponies back to the Powder.12 Responding to Reynolds’s request that the ponies be trailed, Grouard asked for volunteers. Four men stepped forward from the scouting contingent: Louie Shangrau, John Shangrau, Buckskin Jack Russell, and Little Bat Garnier. Grouard and his small coterie rode up Lodge Pole Creek and then the sequential branches, easily following the pony trail in the snow. Grouard presumed that Crook was coming from this direction anyway. Surely the general and his four companies, the wolves and their reclaimed ponies, and Grouard and the scouts would run into each other. Grouard’s men overtook the Indians about two miles from Reynolds’s camp and began a halfhearted running fight that persisted on and off into the early afternoon, capturing bunches of ponies and then losing them along the way. Grouard seemed confident that he was pushing the Indians headlong into Crook’s hands. In a final exchange of gunfire near the offside of the headwaters of Otter Creek, one of the wolves shot Little Bat’s horse out from beneath him. That ended the chase, although Grouard coyly allowed that the Indians “left us alone.” In the end there were simply too many of them, he recollected, doubtless referring to warriors and ponies.13

LODGE POLE CREEK

231

The scout estimated that the chase had covered some twenty miles. When Grouard’s party failed to meet Crook along the way, and with Little Bat having to ride double, they started back. Yet even then they ran into horses. After dark the scouts heard a commotion ahead. They secreted themselves and watched yet another party of Indians driving animals their way. Grouard divided his men, directing two of them to fire into the Indians while he and the other two captured and drove off the ponies. The ambush was a success and recovered eleven American horses later identified as having been stolen from the George Harris ranch in the North Platte Valley. Those Indians had been completely unaware of the presence of troops and were headed, Grouard presumed, for Crazy Horse’s camp. After Little Bat took a horse, the rest were driven back to Reynolds’s camp.14

✧✧✧✧ The concern in Reynolds’s camp for the whereabouts and wellbeing of General Crook’s battalion and the pack train was wholly unfounded. Reynolds’s fixation on the matter speaks only to his own narrow view and self-doubt. Reynolds and Crook had agreed to rendezvous at Lodge Pole Creek on the evening March 17, a journey thought to be within easy reach of both columns. It seemed reasonable at the time that Crook would cut out and reserve for himself four companies of cavalry instead of including some or all in the attacking force and that he imagined the complete independence of the two columns. Certainly, he believed, the pack train was vulnerable and would hinder any rapid movement toward the enemy. In any case Reynolds’s independence, and the sure victory that he would doubtless achieve, would work to restore a tarnished reputation. Such things mattered in the small, almost fraternal, Regular Army and sometimes distilled just that simply. Crook spent the remainder of March 16 at the Otter Creek separation camp, throwing out pickets to guard the men and stock. His troops endured the same intense cold and occasional snow that hampered Reynolds’s column on its night march to Powder River, though Crook and his men wore protective winter garb and had the added advantage of nighttime campfires and sleep.15

232

THE BATTLE

Crook took up the trail at about 7 a.m. on March 17, following Reynolds’s plainly visible trail up Otter Creek. He had in tow the Expedition’s Second and Fourth Battalions, an equal mix of Second and Third Cavalry, and the mule train. Its load was lightened as the rations and grain that it carried were nearly exhausted, but it was fully prepared to take on any foodstuffs recovered in the Indian village should Reynolds indeed strike one. A single travois bearing the frail Corporal John Moore, mangled when his horse fell on Prairie Dog Creek on March 9 and now in the care of contract surgeon Charles Stephens, accompanied the column. Crook rode in the lead, accompanied by his friend Ben Clark and the half-contingent of scouts led by Louis Richard.16 After traveling up Otter Creek some ten miles, Crook saw where Reynolds’s column had turned left and commenced its departure from the valley. From that juncture Crook’s column continued along the creek in a southeasterly direction for another eight or ten miles, slowly ascending the valley to within half a mile of the summit separating the Otter Creek headwaters and Powder River valley. There Crook halted the command and deliberately held it perfectly still for some while, as he and the scouts listened intently. Many in the command had heard gunfire that morning and occasional shots throughout the day and were fully aware that a fight had occurred somewhere in the Powder River valley, now just to the east of them. Crook and Richard also had seen an Indian on the Powder River side.17 Not wanting to be discovered, Crook countermarched the column about one and a half miles to a place on Otter Creek where they had earlier paused and watered stock. There he put out pickets and camped for the night. At that point Crook’s four companies were some twelve miles from the smoldering ruins of the Powder River village and nearly ten miles from the river itself and the trail made by Reynolds’s column as it headed for the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek. In his official report written on May 7, as well as in his memoir written the late 1880s, Crook offered no explanation for not having proceeded any farther than the head of Otter Creek, after having earlier agreed to a rendezvous that evening at Lodge Pole Creek (which was still some twenty-two miles away by way

LODGE POLE CREEK

233

of a dogleg turn on the Powder, as known only in hindsight). Charles Morton, the expedition’s adjutant, called the matter a “puzzle” and said that “they never did find out.” Crook did feebly acknowledge to the judge advocate at the Reynolds court-martial that the actual timing of the rendezvous was “controlled by the circumstances surrounding each column.”18 Crook resumed the trail at about seven the next morning, crossing the heavily timbered Otter Creek headwaters in a southeastern direction and descending into the Powder River valley. When he reached the river bottom, Reynolds’s trail from the Indian village became clear. Captain Thomas Dewees, commanding Company A, Second Cavalry, recalled that the trail was often exceedingly wide, from a hundred to two hundred yards in some places, and well marked with the prints of shod and unshod horses in the snow and mud.19 Barely had Crook’s column reached the river when Richard, traveling in the van with the other scouts, spotted Indians and ponies one-half mile ahead and coming on rapidly. When he hurried back to Crook and reported the sighting, the two returned to the front. Richard was sure that the five or six Indians herding the ponies were unaware of the troops traveling the valley ahead. He and Crook advanced unseen, dismounted, and took a firing position on a hillside. Crook mentioned little of this in his autobiography, but the encounter quickly became common news among all in the expedition. Crook and his cohorts seemed fully aware that these were Sioux running off ponies from Reynolds’s bivouac, particularly because they were traveling the same route that the colonel had used in withdrawing to Lodge Pole. This ominous sign that something had gone wrong troubled the general. As the wolves came on, Crook drew a bead on one of them and fired. The Indian fell from his horse, wounded, Crook presumed, and was carried off by his comrades. Indian accounts do not distinguish this particular episode from Grouard’s chase earlier in the day, and none suggest the wounding or killing of a herder. Still, the rider’s pony, saddle, buffalo robe, and blanket fell into soldier hands. The valley was wide there. At Crook’s shot the Indian herders immediately pushed the ponies eastward into the bluffs on that side of the river and escaped

234

THE BATTLE

with most of the herd, though Crook and his scouts reclaimed about fifty of them.20 Crook’s shot also triggered considerable commotion among his four companies. Soon after striking Powder River, First Lieutenant Joseph Lawson, commanding Company A, Third Cavalry, the rear company that day, remembered the excitement at the head of the column and among troops moving up rapidly. Presuming that a fight was breaking, he too started his company forward, “driving everything before it” (meaning pushing the mule trains and lone travois). “I wanted my company to take part in it,” he recollected. But nearing the front “there was nothing but some Indian ponies that had been captured in advance of the column.” At Reynolds’s court-martial the judge advocate and lead defense attorney both inquired about this encounter, particularly wondering why a greater effort was not made to recapture the herd in light of the importance given to the loss in the charges and trial. Lawson was asked whether the Indians had been followed. “I was in command of the rear guard, and had orders to keep everything closed up, and I saw no party to the right or left. I kept a good lookout and saw no one out following Indians or anything else.”21 Captain Dewees was similarly questioned. After Dewees explained that the Indians were driven into the bluffs by the scouts, Reynolds’s attorney asked what part of the command went after them. “No part,” Dewees replied. Scout Louis Richard was questioned too. In answer to a rhetorical question from the judge advocate about the difficulty of getting four or five Indians out of the hills, Richard replied: “There were enough of us I guess to do it.”22 But in fact Crook moved on. By mid-morning the general was gravely concerned. The shots that had been heard the day before, the Indians seen then and coming along now, and the pony tracks in the snow and the animals just recovered were clear signs that Reynolds had indeed struck a village but that things were amiss. The time had come to learn details, which could only be obtained at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek.

Part III ✧✧✧✧

Aftermath

12 ✧✧✧✧

The Rancor Begins

B

y mid-morning on March 18 Colonel Reynolds was tired of the burdens of the deplorable Lodge Pole Creek camp, just as the day before he had come to have his fill of the adrenaline-charged commotion in the Powder River Indian village. Lodge Pole Creek was a lousy, barren camp. The men were hungry, and the horses needed grazing. Now most of the Indian ponies had been stolen, leaving only perhaps 150 behind. The carping of the officers added to the cacophony, although the most important officer of all, General Crook, had not yet joined them as promised. Frantic to do something, anything, “to save ourselves,” as Reynolds put it, he ordered the command to move toward Fort Reno. Yet even that order was given in confusion. Adjutant Morton first passed word that the command would move at 11 a.m., “if General Crook did not come by that time.” As he made the rounds, Morton quietly groused about this to confidants, expressing his displeasure and allowing that they “ought to wait for General Crook.” Then the departure time was changed to 1:30 p.m. Mills again sought out Reynolds and urged him not to move at all. The colonel’s response was a simple “we could not stay here.” Mills assured Reynolds that Crook would be along before 1:30. He got out his field glass, climbed a nearby hill that offered a long view down the valley, “and saw him coming.”1

237

238

AFTERMATH

Crook’s arrival at noon was received with “unfeigned joy,” wrote newsman Strahorn. It provided its own source of commotion: the general’s scouts pushed forty or fifty Indian ponies with the command and added them to the remaining herd; the jingle of the bell mares announced the arrival of the pack train and foodstuffs, limited as those stores were by then; and four companies of cavalry arrived, glad for the reunion but more urgently anticipating an opportunity to water and rest their horses. The Second and Fourth Battalions had already ridden more than twenty miles since their start at 7 a.m.2 Crook immediately sought out Reynolds, who offered a summation of events since their separation on Otter Creek. The embarrassing loss of the pony herd that morning topped everything. “How long after you arrived there before you learned of the loss of the ponies?” the judge advocate asked Crook at Reynolds’s court-martial. “I expect it was not over two minutes. I am not sure whether Colonel Reynolds told me about it or not,” the general replied. “Who were [your] informers?” the questioning continued. “I don’t recollect them all now,” said Crook. “I think Major Stanton was one, and I am not sure, but Captain Egan, and Captain Mills, and Lieutenant Bourke, and perhaps some others,” he added.3 Crook’s elation over a presumptive great victory over the Sioux soured almost immediately. (It was some while before he learned that the village belonged mostly to Northern Cheyennes and in the story’s contemporary repetition it always appeared easier to finger the Sioux.) Although “much pleased to learn of our having encountered the Sioux and taken their village, he [Crook] seemed annoyed and chagrined upon being told that we had left our dead upon the ground and that our ponies had been recaptured through our own carelessness,” Bourke confided to the privacy of his journal.4 Having heard Reynolds out, Crook went from fire to fire throughout the camp congratulating company officers on the general results of the day before. As he did so, the rest of the Powder River story poured out, although the degrees of frankness and complaint in the conversations varied greatly. The cautious Captain Noyes recalled that Crook spent only a few minutes with him and Egan, discussing

THE RANCOR BEGINS

239

not much more than the topic of the ponies. At other fires officers showed less restraint, and Crook collected a troubling story with too many disturbing questions. Why had Indians managed to escape when the soldiers had the advantage of surprise? Why had soldiers fired on other soldiers? Why was dried meat in the village destroyed when this command was so desperately short of foodstuffs? Why were Indian blankets and buffalo robes burned when soldiers were suffering from the bitter cold? Why had Reynolds abandoned the village so abruptly when his troops were in firm control and not summoned Crook instead? Why were some men making coffee when others were fighting desperately? Why had the dead—and, worse, a living soldier—been abandoned on the field? Why had the Indian ponies not been secured the night before, preventing their loss? The questions were many and perplexing. They all pointed not to a victory at all but rather to a great catastrophe.5 At first, according to Bourke, Crook “said nothing, keeping within his own breast the thoughts that moved him.” For Crook, it was first things first. The pressing need at noon was the relocation of the camp. Lodge Pole offered nothing but barren ground and acrimony. Reynolds recalled that he and Crook were together no more than five minutes before agreeing to a move, validating the obvious and in small measure responding to the accusatory tones of some officers’ complaints about the colonel’s frantic desire simply to get away from there, before Crook’s arrival. Crook understood the predicament and much more. Whatever the gains achieved by the attack on the Powder River Indian village and this campaign, ephemeral as they now seemed, the Big Horn Expedition was spent. The troops and their horses were done in. Ration and grain stocks were used up. Ammunition was depleted. Sick and wounded soldiers encumbered any movement. Facing it all, Crook saw no recourse but to return to Fort Fetterman and start over.6 That afternoon the troops moved eight miles up the valley to a site offering ample wood, water, and grass. It was slow going, and even many of the Indian ponies gave out. The scouts now pushed some two hundred, shooting the weak and slow ones on the trail. Bourke remembered enjoying a warm dinner at the new camp and a drink of brandy offered by “one of the doctors” (surely Curtis

240

AFTERMATH

Munn). He also remembered Indians lurking on the distant hills and exchanging gunfire with the videttes. The Indians were anxious, he was sure, not to resume the fight but to steal back more of their ponies. Noyes recalled the gunfire too and “balls whistling through the brush.” But Crook was at hand: as Bourke wrote, “his presence was equal to a force of a thousand men: so our men felt.” At sundown the men endured yet another snowstorm and bitterly cold night, emblematic of this forlorn campaign.7 Having lost so many ponies already and not wanting to prolong the attraction that they represented to skulking Indians, that night Crook ordered the destruction of the rest of the herd: about one hundred ponies not claimed by officers or scouts for their personal use. Fifty horses were immediately singled out, and the scouts went about striking them on the heads with the blunt end of axes and slitting their throats. Crook did not want the command endangered by stray gunfire. Yet to horsemen, even those duly hardened to the toll of battle, this grisly business proved disturbing. Wrote Bourke: “It was pathetic to hear the dismal trumpeting (I can find no other word to express the meaning) of the dying creatures, as the breath of life rushed through severed windpipes.” The Indians on the bluffs recognized the wretched cries too and were well aware of what was happening: with “one yell of defiance and a parting volley, they left us alone for the rest of the night.”8 For some the ponies meant fresh meat, and all the guides and many officers and men overcame any scruples that they might have had and pounced on the slaughtered animals for cuts of steak, which were promptly roasted and consumed without prejudice. “The meat is sweet and nourishing,” wrote Bourke, and “not inferior to much of the stringy beef that used to find its way to our markets.” No one could imagine it, but the consumption of horsemeat was soon destined to become an unseemly hallmark of a Crook campaign on the northern plains. The scouts finished the slaughter the next morning before the column broke camp, shooting fifty more horses, mostly colts and broodmares. One veteran of the campaign remembered: “Buck Indians followed the troops for four days and succeeded in re-capturing many of their ponies and would have

THE RANCOR BEGINS

241

gotten them all only that the colonel ordered them shot.” Crook was more calculating: “They were of no use to us.”9 The Big Horn Expedition spent three more days making its way to Fort Reno, covering twenty-one miles on March 19, twentytwo on the twentieth, and thirty on the twenty-first. Indians had ceased harassing the camps, but springtime conditions made travel agonizing for the already exhausted command. Daily temperatures rose sufficiently to melt the snow and turn Wyoming’s prairie into a slippery “plastic, with a viscous mud oozing out from the tracks made by the horses’ feet.” Despite additional snowfall on several of the evenings, the camps featured abundant wood and grass and the river ice was thinning. Still, the horses and mules, without grain since March 16 and pushed hard these last five days, were playing out. Some at the last had to be led rather than ridden. On March 20 Reynolds forwarded a note to Captain Edwin Coates, Fourth Infantry, the commander of the battalion at Fort Reno, alerting him to the cavalry’s approach and advising him to relocate his camp to the Fetterman side of the Powder River and stand ready.10

✧✧✧✧ Captain Coates’s infantry camp at Fort Reno had been quiet since his battalion returned there on March 9 from Camp Separation. He had settled in on the open plain south of the fort on the west side of the Powder in a place offering the essentials, most importantly some relief from the blustery wind. The ruins of the old Bozeman Trail post stood on a higher bench where exposures were legendarily harsh. Aside from guarding the expedition’s wagon train and surviving stores and protecting two wounded men in the care of Doctor Ridgely, Coates’s principal accomplishment in the interim was maintaining a courier service with Fort Fetterman. He had not had anything to forward from Crook’s column since coming to this camp but had collected a substantial number of incoming dispatches and telegrams that now awaited the commander’s return. Indians had not been much of a problem in Crook’s

242

AFTERMATH

absence, although Coates acknowledged to Strahorn that several of his hunters had discovered a spot in some nearby high ground where “a number of the redskins had lain for days watching the movements of the little band of infantry.” Faithful to Reynolds’s order, on March 21 Coates moved the camp and its wagons and tentage to the east side of the river in preparation for receiving the cavalry column.11 Crook’s troops reached Fort Reno at 4 p.m. on March 21. The officers present—Coates, Captain Samuel Ferris, and Second Lieutenant Charles Mason (all of the Fourth Infantry)—welcomed the beleaguered column’s return. From the surviving quartermaster stores in the wagons, weakened horses drew their first grain ration in days. The men received “a good square meal,” amounting to coffee, bacon, and beans. The only disgruntled voice was that of Doctor Munn, who, for the last several days on the arduous trail, had comforted his pained charges with repeated assurances of the luxuries awaiting them at Reno. Yet all Munn found upon arriving was a lone pitched hospital tent, its interior wet, with no stove or fire and only one bed, on which lay James Wright, the civilian herder wounded by Indians on the third day of the campaign and now barely surviving in frail condition. Munn was livid and lit into Ridgely, charging indifference and incompetency and commencing a war of words that far outlasted the campaign. He then took his scathing complaint straight to Crook. Of Ridgely, Munn concluded: “I believe him of very little value as a doctor of medicine, or as a Medical Officer.” Munn soon procured stoves and tents for his wounded patients, and “after two or three hours[’] hard work,” they were made comfortable.12 Provided at last with tentage, heat, lamps, and candles, many of the officers commenced writing dispatches and reports. Crook, anxious to communicate with General Sheridan in Chicago, penned his own telegraphic summary of his movements since cutting loose from the wagons on March 7, focusing particularly on Reynolds’s attack on Crazy Horse’s village. As he carefully noted, “a perfect magazine of ammunition, war material and general supplies” was destroyed. A detailed report would follow, he added. Crook was perfectly circumspect. There was no reason at the moment to say

THE RANCOR BEGINS

243

or write anything that tarnished the affair, although he knew full well that certain officers had acquitted themselves poorly, not least Colonel Reynolds himself, and that Moore had acted in the most cowardly manner. Crook may have found Moore’s conduct in disobeying an order to take a specifically assigned position in support of the attack eerily reminiscent of the captain’s action in southern Arizona in 1871. There he had ignored an order in the pursuit of Apaches. Stanton, Mills, and Bourke had set the stage well, and in the coming days Crook would vent his rage fully, but not here.13 Major Stanton took to writing too, though not for Reynolds (for whom he wrote nothing) but for the New York Tribune. The attack on the Powder River village was breaking news. Stanton first prepared a summation that could be sent by telegraph from Fort Fetterman. A courier rode to the fort the next day, and Stanton’s summary appeared in the Tribune on March 27 and was reprinted elsewhere, including in the Army and Navy Journal, an independent weekly newspaper devoted to the professional interests of America’s armed forces. Stanton also wrote a longer dispatch describing the campaign’s final march to Fort Reno that he used as a cover piece for a series of sketches that he had written about the campaign since March 7. The assembled dispatch had a diary-like quality that provided Tribune readers on April 4 with an insider’s view of this first campaign against the Sioux. Stanton’s telegraphic summary was nonjudgmental, but not so these sketches. The one penned on March 18 covering the fight on the Powder River pulled no punches. Stanton pounced on Moore and Reynolds, because of whom the Powder River fight was less than a complete success in his estimation. Stanton’s lengthy consolidated dispatch, completed at Fort Reno, was forwarded to the Tribune by mail when the command reached Fort Fetterman. While naming names and pointing fingers, it was still tame compared with the invective that came from his pen a few days later. Apparently Reynolds saw none of this coming (or so he declared in his written court-martial defense), but surely Moore must have already felt the slights.14 At Fort Reno Robert Strahorn, the “Alter Ego” correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and other newspapers,

244

AFTERMATH

had also prepared a telegraphic report informing his readers of the attack and total destruction of the Powder River village. He then finished assembling his own collection of longer sketches that, like Stanton’s, had been written on the trail since March 7. This package also went forward from Fort Fetterman by mail. The final sketch in his “Big Horn Expedition” series was penned at the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek on March 18. There he seized the opportunity to criticize Moore and Reynolds, plus an additional unnamed officer who allowed his command to “unsaddle its animals, make coffee, and partake of lunch in the very sight of the battle field.” To what degree and exactly when Captain Noyes’s conduct at Powder River became the object of scorn is unclear, although he surely understood the unseemliness of his action, if not yet the grim consequence looming at Fort Fetterman a few days hence.15 This was a day in American journalism when copy sharing and wholesale outright reprinting of stories was commonplace, as newspapers sought to broadcast news and fill column space. Crook, Stanton, and Strahorn were the only known individuals reporting on the fight at this early juncture. (Crook did not write for a newspaper, of course, but likely understood that his report would be fed to journalists without delay, which indeed occurred in Chicago few days hence.) But one other individual may also have been submitting news. The earliest significant report of the battle appeared in the New York Times on March 26, bearing the concealing byline “Special Dispatch to the New York Times.” The report (which appeared with a copy of Crook’s telegraphic report to Sheridan) was short, but personalized with highlights of the engagement that could only have come from someone who was there. Later on in the Sioux war Strahorn wrote openly for the Times, but whether he did so here is unclear. All of these initial accounts, whether bylined or written anonymously, were sent by courier from Fort Reno to Fort Fetterman on March 22 and were submitted to the telegraph beginning on March 23, with Crook’s official report transmitted first, by protocol.16 Meanwhile Crook’s weary troops enjoyed a welcome layover at Fort Reno on March 22. Horses and mules grazed the increasingly snow-free hillsides while packers and teamsters distributed

THE RANCOR BEGINS

245

and stowed remaining munitions and stores among the wagons in preparation for the general withdrawal to Fort Fetterman. The campaign was all but over. Crook told Sheridan that he intended to return the troops of the Big Horn Expedition to their home posts for recuperation as soon as possible.17 The march to Fort Fetterman commenced on March 23. The pack mules were fully unloaded and any remaining cargo placed in the wagons, the wounded were secured in ambulances, and nearly every cavalryman lightened his personal load by transferring weighty articles to a vehicle. The trail was soft and gooey but familiar and monotonous enough for Bourke to note simply: “nothing to narrate but the diurnal progress of the column and the variations of climate.” The weather ranged from intermittent rainfall on the twenty-fourth to another trail-obliterating snowfall on the twentyfifth. The horses again took the worst of it as they had almost from the start, enduring a plague of arctic cold, invariably poor grazing, the exhaustion of grain stocks, and, at the last, the Wyoming gumbo that incessantly “balled” the animal’s hooves. The toll on army beasts was a lesson of this campaign, with a full reckoning yet to come. Reynolds recollected that nearly one hundred horses and mules had been lost to exhaustion to this point.18 Private Phineas Towne of F Company, Third Cavalry, of Alexander “Rocky” Moore’s company (the origin of that nickname is unknown), wrote a stark commentary on the suffering of his own and his company’s horses throughout the campaign that personifies the pathetic scene: “On this expedition I rode four extra horses and one Indian pony, besides the horse which had been issued to me at Fort Russell when the expedition started out. These horses were completely played out and had to be killed as they were too weak to travel because we had used up all of our forage and there was no grazing for them on account of deep snow.”19 In fact the shooting of played-out cavalry horses continued until the troopers reached their home posts, for some as distant as Fort D. A. Russell on the Union Pacific Railroad, another 125 miles beyond Fort Fetterman. Crook and a small cadre of unnamed associates, almost certainly including Grouard and Ben Clark though apparently not

246

AFTERMATH

Stanton and Bourke, pushed ahead on March 24 and reached Fort Fetterman on the twenty-fifth. Behind them that day, at the camp on the South Cheyenne River, there occured the first outward display of the bitter recrimination brewing in the column. The increasingly cantankerous Mills openly sparred with Reynolds over the nature of the reports requested by the colonel, because what was asked for and what the captain wanted to write were strikingly different. In this and a prior exchange Reynolds had told Mills that he wanted only a memorandum report, meaning a superficial summary, amounting to little more than a list of casualties. Mills wanted to write a circumstantial report, reflecting on the fight, especially the appalling conduct of Captain Moore, with whom he had squabbled on the mountaintop and who had fired on him as Company M crossed the bench west of the village. He also wanted to describe how Moore, in Mills’s opinion, only marginally supported the fight on an almost always unregulated line on the west side of the village. Reynolds, who regarded his officers with fatherly protectiveness, could barely cope with the developing angst and told Mills not to write that kind of report. The matter, he said, would be “fixed up.” He further admonished Mills to see the fight as a success: “and we should so report it.” In the end, Mills wrote the report his way, and it was scathing.20 In his written court-martial defense, Exhibit P in the trial, Reynolds pointed to this altercation with Mills as the first intimation he had of a complaint against Moore. But this statement was disingenuous at best. Reynolds knew that a tempest was brewing. He remembered watching Mills in conversation with Stanton at the Cheyenne River camp, after which Mills had frankly told Reynolds in the presence of Lieutenant Johnson that Mills had asked Stanton whether he had said anything disparaging against him in his letters. Stanton replied that he had not said anything against Mills but had against others. No names were given, Reynolds said. “This made an impression on me,” he wrote, and he determined then to obtain a statement from Mills once they arrived at Fort Fetterman and take it to General Crook for “consultation.” In fact, of course, everyone was talking and knew this fight to be a botched affair.21

THE RANCOR BEGINS

247

✧✧✧✧ The ill-starred Big Horn Expedition reached Fort Fetterman on the afternoon of March 26. Bourke and a number of officers rode forward from the column and arrived at about noon, while and the wagons and mules came in between 3 and 4 p.m. Major Alexander Chambers welcomed everyone home and oversaw the dispositions, with most of the cavalry corps again encamping along La Prele Creek, the resident Second Cavalry and Fourth Infantry companies returning to their respective barracks in the post, and many of the officers securing accommodations with friends and colleagues in the officer quarters. Meanwhile the sick and wounded were ushered to beds in the hospital and put under the care of assistant surgeon Joseph Gibson. They “seemed to enjoy the change,” thought Bourke. When overseeing the placements, however, Munn learned from Gibson that the surgeon had recently ministered to several soldiers infected with erysipelas, a highly contagious disease later understood to be a streptococcal infection, and had not fared well. This put the hospital in a “suspicious state,” thought Munn, who immediately arranged for the removal of his wounded to the Fort D. A. Russell hospital, except for the herder James Wright, who had come from Fetterman. Doctor Charles Stephens, who had come from Fort McPherson, east of Cheyenne, tended the transfers over the next several days.22 Reporter Strahorn recorded the Big Horn Expedition closing as it had begun, under the curse of yet another heavy snow and wind. He was sure that the men “had good cause to heartily thank their propitious stars that General Crook’s first winter campaign in the north was ended.” Amidst the gaiety in the camp and post that night on the eve of the campaign’s end occurred a burst of kindness reflecting well on one soldier whose conduct at Powder River was above reproach. In the post trader’s quarters Grouard told stories from the campaign to a circle of soldiers and citizens, including several local ranchers, with even an occasional officer elbowing through to tend business. One who was absent, but whose presence was conspicuously followed on the fort grounds at that very moment, was Captain James Egan, tending to affairs at one of the officer

248

AFTERMATH

quarters. While skirting through the post after concluding his business, Egan chanced to pass the trader’s quarters and was corralled by several scouts and ushered inside. Without further ado one of the men stepped forward and crowned the captain with a magnificent Indian feather bonnet, adding these words: “Captain, for fighting like the devil on the 17th of March, as well as for your great kindness to us on different occasions, I, in the name of General Crook’s scouts, present you with this relic from the village of the chief Crazy Horse.” Egan was speechless, a rare moment for the otherwise effervescent Irishman, and only responded with a heartfelt thanks. For nearly everyone in the gathering (plus those encamped along La Prele Creek) and the other campaign veterans scattered throughout the post, March 26 ended well. Yet, foreseen by many, a storm of another sort awaited on the morrow. Reynolds and Moore probably slept fitfully.23

✧✧✧✧ Colonel Reynolds dissolved the Big Horn Expedition in General Orders No. 3 on the morning of March 27, which included an expression of thanks from the department commander and himself as immediate commander of troops and an acknowledgment of the cheerfulness and fortitude exhibited in a campaign of twentysix days in an inclement season when temperatures dropped to twenty-eight below zero. The men often were without shelter and on short rations, especially during the cold night march of thirtyfive miles culminating in the attack on the village. The troops were therewith ordered to return to their posts by way of easy marches and under their respective company commanders. The closing order was perfunctory. What occupied Reynolds for the remainder of the day was hardly so.24 Easily the most pressing issue attended to by Crook upon returning to Fort Fetterman on March 25 was the preparation of draft court-martial charges against Colonel Reynolds for what had become a litany of troubling conduct in the Powder River fight and its aftermath. To Crook, Reynolds’s failings were too extensive to ignore, having cost the fruits of the entire campaign. Crook observed and

THE RANCOR BEGINS

249

collected much of this information himself as early as the surprise encounter with the Indian ponies and their herders on the morning of March 18 and in what he learned from subsequent interviews at Reynolds’s camp and on the trail to Fort Reno. The battle had been a fiasco, despite the rosy claims offered in his telegram to Sheridan. Someone needed to be held accountable, and it would not be himself. It was Reynolds, after all, who had allowed meat and materiel to be destroyed. It was Reynolds who allowed the Indian pony herd to be retaken and made no effort to recapture them. Formal charges against the colonel evolved in the weeks to come, but this was a damning enough start. Preparing them was a painful duty, Crook recollected, but one he felt obliged to perform.25 Crook showed the draft charges to Bourke after the lieutenant arrived at Fort Fetterman on March 26. The young officer was both the general’s aide-de-camp and his intimate confidant, so this openness was only natural. In their conversation Crook revealed other criticisms for which explanations were demanded and consequences were probable. He acknowledged that Moore’s behavior troubled him deeply, especially in light of the assertions of the captain’s cowardice by others. Crook recalled his own dustup with Moore in Arizona in 1871, a matter now strengthening his view. Reynolds had apparently not yet investigated these allegations as Crook thought he should, which deepened the acrimony. Crook was also troubled by Noyes’s questionable actions on the battlefield, a point soon driven home to him during an encounter with Reynolds.26 Over breakfast on March 27 Crook, lodging with Alexander Chambers, forewarned the major that he would soon be discussing court-martial charges with Colonel Reynolds. He wanted Chambers to stay close and bear witness to the exchange. Bourke was at hand too and received the draft charges with an order to deliver them to Lieutenant Morton, still functioning as the expedition’s adjutant. Morton in turn was to hand them to Reynolds, then quartering in the home of Captain Coates. These exchanges proceeded quickly and caught Reynolds unaware, or so he recollected. Precisely as anticipated, he marched directly to Chambers’s quarters on Fort Fetterman’s east row, at the southeast corner of the parade ground.

250

AFTERMATH

Chambers met Reynolds at the door and ushered him in, directing him to the room occupied by Crook and then following him there.27 The face-to-face encounter was awkward. The fifty-fouryear-old, physically weakened, and now utterly distressed colonel expressed his exasperation and chagrin. Crook, nine years Reynolds’s junior, in contrast, was the picture of vigorous health and steely reserve. Reynolds was utterly astonished to receive the papers, he told Crook, believing that he had done righteous and faithful duty. He called the charges wholly groundless and was sure that Crook would agree if only he could be afforded the time to explain himself. Crook politely expressed his willingness to talk, but Reynolds’s next utterance was simply a request that the charges against him be withdrawn. He was an old man, he declared, and this was the first time in his life in the military service that he had ever been charged. Crook declined the appeal without hesitation and proceeded to explain the case as he saw it. The expedition had been a failure, he said, a failure through misconduct.28 Crook continued without letup. He admonished Reynolds for burning the saddles and meat that he had been ordered to keep. He accused Reynolds of making Moore his advisor. He had spent too much time with the captain, Crook challenged, and had tried to hush up rumors running around the camp that were prejudicial to him. Reynolds turned immediately on the defensive and denied it all. He was indeed a good deal with Moore, he explained, but only because he messed with him and Reynolds’s son, a lieutenant in Moore’s company. The cooking arrangement had not been intended, he said, but came about only when a prospect with one of the pack trains fell through and Moore invited him in. He denied hushing up rumors against Moore, declaring that he had heard nothing against him until Mills’s confrontation several nights before. Reynolds’s rebuttal, of course, conveniently ignored all that he had observed of Moore’s conduct on the battlefield—the shots fired from the mountaintop that he certainly had heard and that Morton had objected to, Moore’s failure to take his assigned position before the attack, his braggadocio and erratic gesturing, and Munn’s and Mills’s objections to Moore’s conduct in the village. Of course by

THE RANCOR BEGINS

251

now Crook was aware of this misconduct, having heard about it from Stanton, Mills, and Bourke.29 Reynolds then expressed regrets that Crook had not consulted with him about Moore’s conduct. He had just learned of it, he repeated, and was awaiting Mills’s report and intended to come to the general himself to consult. Crook deflected the colonel’s argument, telling him that he had indeed waited for him, but he had not come. He then repeated that the campaign had been a failure, that the allegations against Moore should have been investigated, and that he held Reynolds responsible. As much as he disliked bringing charges against him, Crook saw it as his duty and plainly told him so.30 Reynolds’s pleadings got him nowhere, and Crook continued to press his case. In addition to the indictment against Reynolds, he clearly envisioned charges being brought against Moore and Noyes and saw this as the colonel’s responsibility. Reynolds again objected. He acknowledged that Noyes had indeed “gone into camp” (army slang for unsaddling) and made coffee during the battle, which was a mistake on Noyes’s part. But no harm had come of it, so Reynolds did not believe that charges should be preferred against Noyes. As for bringing charges against Moore, Reynolds insisted that he had no information or personal knowledge on which charges could be drawn. Crook persisted in declaring that this was Reynolds’s duty. When the colonel again asked where he might find information upon which to take action, Crook referred him to Stanton and Mills. The face-off in Chambers’s quarters concluded on an especially sour note. Crook related his understanding that Reynolds had intended on abandoning the Lodge Pole Creek camp and withdrawing immediately to Fort Reno, abandoning Crook in Indian country with the four companies and the impedimenta of the command while the other battalions marched away. The now despondent Reynolds “replied that such an idea never entered his head, that he would have put his hand in the fire and burn[ed] it off before thinking of any such thing.” On that discordant note Reynolds stepped out. “That which was as dear to me as life itself, my reputation,” was ruined, he declared.31

252

AFTERMATH

Reynolds did succeed in having Crook delay the issuance of formal charges, doubtless clinging to the hope that his commander might have a change of heart. While unwilling to withdraw the charges, Crook allowed Reynolds the opportunity to investigate matters, including the allegations against the two captains. The general later remembered carrying a copy of the draft charges with him when he returned to Omaha and holding them as he awaited Reynolds’s “statements.” Those statements, mostly field reports, came a week or so later by mail, along with sets of charges against Captains Moore and Noyes. The reports changed nothing. Formal printed court-martial charges were brought against Reynolds under the original date when the colonel first saw them at Fort Fetterman: March 27.32 Joseph Reynolds’s ugly morning was hardly over. Soon after leaving Chambers’s quarters and returning to Coates’s home, he summoned Bourke and pitched into him on the allegations that he made slandering Reynolds’s conduct in the battle and afterward. Bourke carefully defended himself but was also frank about his views. Although Bourke was detached from the Third Cavalry to duty as aide-de-camp to General Crook, Reynolds was, after all, his regimental commander. Reynolds was especially irate at Bourke for having told Crook that he had intended to bolt from the Lodge Pole Creek camp and abandon him. Bourke denied saying this, but Reynolds affirmed that Crook had said as much. When Crook and Bourke both later denied saying this, Reynolds allowed that he was perhaps mistaken in this particular understanding as to who said what.33 Reynolds then summoned Captain Noyes, with whom he had no special relationship and who was from a different regiment, just one more officer in Crook’s sights. He explained to Noyes that he was “in trouble,” telling him that General Crook “was very much displeased at some things that had taken place.” Noyes was surprised and asked: “Trouble? How?” Reynolds then handed him the set of charges preferred against the colonel by Crook. After reading them, Reynolds added that Crook also held him personally responsible for the captain’s having unsaddled his company. Noyes assured him that that should not trouble him at all because

THE RANCOR BEGINS

253

it was done on his own accord, “without your knowledge or consent.” He then offered to visit Crook and explain this, to which Reynolds replied: “I wish you would.”34 With a personal court-martial hanging in the balance, Noyes proceeded directly to Crook and did his best to explain himself, repeating what he had said to Reynolds. Crook heard him out and offered a puzzling reply, telling Noyes that the unsaddling “was a minor affair. The trouble was the loss of the ponies.” Though Crook seemed to minimize the affair, a court-martial still hung in the balance, never a trivial matter for an officer of the United States Army.35 The record is unclear about whether Reynolds held a similar meeting that day with Captain Moore, although it seems entirely probable that he did. He did acknowledge meeting with Stanton “in person” and requested a written memorandum of what he had discussed with General Crook in reference to Captain Moore. Stanton provided a “memorandum” later that day detailing the substance. He recounted in frank, almost brutal detail his encounters with the captain on the day of the battle in a two-page report, in addition to others he would prepare later. Stanton’s memorandum was damning.36 Later that day Reynolds also received Mills’s anticipated written report, exhaustively recounting his battalion’s actions in the fight. The captain was candid about the Ayers episode, a great embarrassment for him, and equally frank about his altercations with Moore on March 17. Although both were captains, they were not equals: Mills was the regiment’s senior captain and Moore its sixth-ranking company commander. Mills had been commissioned in the regular service since 1861, while Moore had only gained his regular commission in 1867 after volunteer service. Such matters counted much in the Regular Army, especially when an officer’s service was checkered. Furthermore, Mills was familiar with the Moore episode in Arizona.37 That evening Reynolds returned to Chambers’s quarters and again met with Crook. He had in hand a draft of his own report and a sketch map of the country where the fight occurred and offered an explanation of the engagement, how the ponies were lost, and

254

AFTERMATH

why he chose not to recapture them. After detailing it all, he again asked that the charges be withdrawn, but again Crook declined doing so. Crook did grant Reynolds an opportunity to investigate allegations more fully, and Reynolds’s final report and those of the other officers were subsequently forwarded to Crook in Omaha. They left Reynolds with no recourse but to prefer charges against Moore and Noyes as Crook had demanded, and copies of the courtmartial papers went to Omaha as well. For Crook these papers were explanation enough in the cases of the two captains and the charges were a matter of duty served for Reynolds. This changed nothing in the case against the colonel.38 Acrimony of other sorts also clouded Fort Fetterman during these closing moments of the winter campaign. Robert Strahorn’s open disgust over the campaign’s outcome was well recognized by most of the senior officers. He was by then merely sharing opinions expressed by others like Stanton, Mills, Bourke, and Egan, some of whom were his close associates on the expedition. Strahorn, however, held the power of the press. Every officer there understood that stories in newspapers could make or break reputations and careers. As the blame for a botched campaign increasingly focused on Reynolds, Charles Morton (Reynolds’s campaign adjutant) found occasion to attack Strahorn at Fort Fetterman, as Bourke put it, with “ill-judged criticisms.” He should have known, of course, that a newspaperman was not to be dallied with. Strahorn, cognizant of the slights, “boldly avers” that “he is going to publish the truth in spite of all the Reynolds[es] and Mortons in the Army,” Bourke wrote. As it played out, however, Strahorn’s parting criticisms in the Rocky Mountain News were mild compared with the piercing blasts that soon appeared in the New York Tribune and Washington Chronicle under Stanton’s direct or indirect byline.39 Captain James Egan fired a salvo at Colonel Reynolds too. At the Lodge Pole Creek camp on the morning of March 18, in the presence of Stanton and Henry Noyes, he had expressed his displeasure over certain circumstances of the day before. Stanton had urged him to express himself openly, while Noyes spoke against his doing so. At Fort Fetterman, with Stanton’s help, Egan filed a set of “Additional Charges” against Reynolds, including a charge of

THE RANCOR BEGINS

255

disobedience of orders for destroying materials in the village that would have alleviated suffering among the troops; a charge of misbehavior before the enemy for abandoning the bodies of the deceased and allowing a wounded man to fall into the enemy’s hands alive; and a charge of general failure to support Company K early in the fight and again later in the engagement when Noyes had unsaddled and was slow in reaching the village after being called.40 The Egan filing had complications beyond its simple audacity. The four pages of the original filing were penned not by Egan but by Stanton, although Egan signed the document. The judge advocate at the Reynolds court-martial was curious about this and asked how it was possible. Said Egan: “When I got into Fort Fetterman this thing was discussed, and I felt that there was some redress due me, in my opinion. I am not much posted in drawing charges and drew up a rough set of charges and took this rough set and debated two days whether I should sign them or not.” Although Egan did not quite say so, Stanton apparently was his editor and scribe, so the document appeared in the major’s hand. When Reynolds asked for the benefit of the court: “Did you serve them?” Egan replied: “I did not serve the charges on the accused. They went to General Crook’s headquarters at Fort Fetterman.” This perhaps explains why Egan was crossing the parade ground after dark on March 26, likely coming from a meeting with Crook at Chambers’s quarters when corralled by scouts and delivered to the trader’s quarters to receive the feather bonnet. Egan’s aspersions against Noyes, his battalion commander, Second Cavalry peer, fellow Fort Laramie resident, and an officer now in Crook’s crosshairs, were doubtless a political and social mire of yet another sort. In this regard the record ever after appears silent, but circumstances (or more likely Crook’s direct intervention) kept the two officers widely separated through the remainder of 1876 and for much of the remainder of their careers.41 On March 27 Reynolds also received the written report of First Lieutenant John Johnson, commanding Company E, Third Cavalry, which was likely submitted with Mills’s report, as the captain was his battalion commander. At Fort Reno Reynolds had already received the reports from Henry Noyes, Alexander Moore, and

256

AFTERMATH

William Rawolle. For unknown reasons, Egan seems not to have prepared a written report; nor did any of the officers traveling with Crook. Outward tension or perhaps fear about what they might say may have kept Reynolds from pressing Egan and Stanton for the requested summaries, although the paymaster eventually wrote two, one to the paymaster general in Washington and another to the assistant adjutant general, Department of the Platte. Doctor Munn also eventually delivered a report, directed to the Department of the Platte’s medical director. In due course Mills, Noyes, and Bourke produced (or had produced) detailed maps of their actions at Powder River, in addition to a general map of the campaign and a specific map of the battle prepared by Adjutant Morton and yet another summary map produced in Omaha by Captain William S. Stanton, the Platte Department engineer. The map legacy of the Big Horn Expedition quickly became one of its hallmarks. On March 27 the surviving Indian ponies were distributed among the scouts and coveting officers, bringing to a close the troubled saga of the Powder River ponies. Reynolds provided the final tally: “In all we killed 110 captured ponies and brought into Fetterman 96.”42 On March 28 the expedition began dispersing. Crook, Bourke, Stanton, Strahorn, Thomas Moore, and Ben Clark left Fort Fetterman for Cheyenne early that morning. They spent four days traveling the 155 miles, experiencing snow and rain nearly the entire way. They traveled the cutoff road, the more direct route between the fort and Cheyenne that bypassed Fort Laramie. When the cutoff intersected again with the main road, Crook and his companions passed scores of citizens en route to Fort Laramie and the Black Hills, the main avenue to the gold fields. By now the rush had gained unstoppable momentum, despite the lingering wintery conditions. Bourke learned that 68 of these adventurers had taken supper at Portugee Phillips’s ranch on Chugwater Creek in one day alone, while at the Fagan ranch nearer Cheyenne some 250 slept in the kitchen, stables, and outbuildings during the storm of March 26–27. The vigor of this human tide was stunning.43 Reynolds undertook one final item of business on March 28 before departing for Fort Laramie with the post’s two Second Cavalry companies, besides Morton, Drew, Munn, and his son Bainbridge.

THE RANCOR BEGINS

257

He made application by telegram to the adjutant general in the War Department, requesting that the “President, through the Honorable Secretary of War, order a Court of Inquiry to investigate the whole matter.” This was a dire time. The colonel was in a fix unlike anything he had experienced before, yet he had a personal powerful trump card to play. President Grant was his West Point classmate. The bonds of loyalty and trust formed at the academy had already proven timeless and useful and perhaps could again. Reynolds was circumspect enough to say also that he made “this application without intending the least disrespect to General Crook believing the ends of justice will be better attained by the course proposed.” That was a callow half-truth. Every officer in the army, even the lowest second lieutenant, appreciated clearly the jeopardy in sidestepping the sacrosanct chain of command. While Grant may have been Reynolds’s friend, the colonel surely must have questioned the support of Sherman and most everyone else down the line. He was an old cavalry colonel with an uneven past, and the army had grown weary of such men.44 Major Chambers comprehended this predicament too. By way of fair warning to a colleague down the road, he telegraphed Lieutenant Colonel Luther Bradley, Ninth Infantry, commanding Fort Laramie, advising him that Crook had departed for Cheyenne at 6 a.m., traveling the cutoff route, that General Reynolds was coming his way and had charges preferred against him for disobedience of orders and cowardice, and that others were “in the same boat.” The expedition accomplished nothing that it could and should have, Chambers added, and “you will hear it all soon.” When Reynolds later learned of this message, he was angered. In his defense Chambers declared this a private dispatch of the sort frequently exchanged between these two post commanders and said that its substance was based on “current rumor.”45 The Fort Laramie–bound caravan that left Fort Fetterman on March 28 had an air of medical mercy about it. Doctor Munn accompanied and ministered to Colonel Reynolds and five enlisted men from Company K, all traveling in ambulances. Reynolds had suffered greatly, though quietly, on the campaign. His inguinal hernia, adhesions of the testicles, and chafing from his truss often nearly

258

AFTERMATH

incapacitated him. He told a Retirement Board in 1877 that if propriety had allowed it he would have taken an ambulance from Fort Reno to Fort Fetterman, but “I persisted in riding on horse back as long as the troops were in the field.” The transported enlisted men had all suffered greatly, including the wounded soldiers John Droege and Edward Eagan, while the other three were variously afflicted with diarrhea, dyspepsia, and frostbite. The enlisted patients were admitted to the Fort Laramie hospital upon arrival on March 31. Interestingly, the two Second Cavalry companies separated along the way, perhaps because Egan’s company was escorting the ambulances and traveling slower but possibly also because of a frostiness between the two captains. Noyes’s Company I reached Fort Laramie on the evening of March 30, half a day ahead of Company K, and was welcomed back by yet another disagreeable snow that deposited ten inches on the level.46 Reynolds, Morton, Drew, and young Reynolds, probably having come this way to avoid the embarrassment of the Third Cavalry colonel now riding in a carriage instead of on horseback, continued to Cheyenne on the morning of April 1. They reached Fort D. A. Russell on the evening of the second, a Sunday. Over the next several days they generally supervised the return of that post’s own Third Cavalry companies, the two from the Second Cavalry, and a motley parade of wagons and mules. These elements of the expedition had left Fort Fetterman on March 29 and spent a week or more returning, with companies separating along the way, suffering from snow and the sorry condition of their horses. By April 7 the last of the Third Cavalry companies had returned to garrison. Companies A and B, Second Cavalry, originally from Fort Sanders, were retained at Fort Russell and put into camp. For them the prospect of joining the next campaign became ominously real. These men aside, the troops of the Big Horn Expedition were now all at their originating stations and in the early stages of recovery. Around them, however, the turmoil associated with a failed campaign was gaining steam.47

✧✧✧✧ The Big Horn Expedition reaped its first public notoriety on April 1 when Crook, Stanton, and Strahorn welcomed personal friends to

THE RANCOR BEGINS

259

an 11 a.m. dinner at Cheyenne’s Inter-Ocean Hotel. Crook and his party had returned to the city the day before, and he and Bourke continued on for Omaha after the dinner gathering. While Crook demonstrated his usual characteristic reserve, Stanton and Strahorn spoke freely to an audience that included local reporters. Already one of them had met the day before with a reporter from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, because on April 1 the paper featured a long account titled “The Big Horn Expedition.” The story was mostly neutral in tone except for one hint of battlefield impropriety. While Captain Egan had charged the village valiantly, expecting reinforcements at the proper juncture, “there were none to be seen,” the paper reported. The matter of Egan’s lack of support was one of Stanton’s standard criticisms of Reynolds and Moore, but it was also one of the core observations of Strahorn, who added a Noyes connection. Elsewhere in the Leader was a notice that George Jones, proprietor of another Cheyenne hotel, the Railroad House, had received a large number of Indian trophies captured in the fight with Crazy Horse. The public was invited to view them before they were sent for display at the nation’s Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.48 Cheyenne’s two newspapers, the Daily Leader and Daily Sun, had vested interests in the Powder River story because Stanton and Reynolds were both residents of nearby Fort D. A. Russell and so many of the participating cavalry officers and companies had originated there. The papers, often joined by the Laramie Daily Sentinel, were understandably competitive and often took opposing views. The Daily Sun was the first to break the news locally that General Reynolds (in the newspapers he was always referred to by his volunteer rank) was to be court-martialed for his conduct during the recent campaign, because, said its source (in this instance the Chicago Inter-Ocean), he had turned loose seven hundred captured ponies, contrary to orders.49 On April 5 the Daily Leader featured a page-length column headed “Crook’s Chagrin” that offered demonizing reasons for the court-martial. “General Crook evinced dissatisfaction with his command when leaving here,” said the paper. Although “Crazy Horse was surrounded and completely surprised,” Reynolds’s “disobedience and incompetency characterized the actions . . . , covered

260

AFTERMATH

himself with disgrace, and filled his superior’s heart with such chagrin as only the brave soldier can feel when he himself is doing his duty, but from force of circumstances can neither prevent the mismanagement nor retrieve the errors of others upon whose success and devotion his own efforts and achievements depend.” It added: “Had there been no disobedience of orders . . . , in our opinion, the Sioux question would have been settled, or very nearly so, by this time.” Instead, the story continued, another expedition was now being organized, and “there will be no more ‘foolishness’ about the business.” The language was the newspaper’s, not Stanton’s, but the paymaster’s imprint is plainly evident. Doubtless Reynolds and Moore saw the paper and could not have been heartened to read in yet another column: “The officers who disgraced themselves and their country by the exhibition of such gross incompetence, and may we even say cowardice, in the Big Horn expedition, are, we are glad to state, to be immediately courtmartialed and punished as they deserve.”50 Almost immediately the Daily Sun took umbrage and printed its own page-length column titled “Crook’s Expedition” that sought to rebut many of the Leader’s “so-called ‘facts.’” Egan was in fact reinforced, a village was destroyed, and Indian ponies were captured and taken twenty miles away. The Sun scorned the Leader’s source, an unnamed scout, and naturally was silent about its own source or sources (perhaps Morton or even Moore). The Sun’s version of events was hazy about certain facts, saying nothing, for instance, about the loss of those ponies after having been “taken twenty miles away.” The paper closed its account by challenging an insult cast by the rival paper upon the Third Cavalry. Indeed, the Leader had said that Crook would soon form another expedition and “take only experienced officers and men—from the 2nd and 5th cavalry regiments.” This, the Sun wrote, “is an uncalled-for slur upon the 3rd regiment which accompanied the last expedition, and which the General told an old friend would go with the next.”51 On April 7 the Laramie Daily Sentinel also chimed in. Its principal source appears to have been First Lieutenant William Rawolle, nominally from nearby Fort Sanders and still on detached service at D. A. Russell, commanding Company E, Second Cavalry. While

THE RANCOR BEGINS

261

coyly acknowledging that this troubled story had two sides, the Sentinel twisted its own facts, allowing that Moore and Rawolle had “carried out their part of the programme just as ordered . . . though it is true the Indians, for some reason, when driven from their village, did not escape by the route which was expected, but fled up another ravine from the one which Captain Moore had been directed to occupy.” Moreover, said the Sentinel, “Capt. Moore and Capt. Rawolle joined in the fight, as is proved by the fact that they lost two men, and Capt. Rawolle himself was wounded, being the only officer wounded in the engagement.” To its credit, the Sentinel wagged a finger at itself, allowing that “we know nothing of the affair except what is told us, but amid so many conflicting rumors, and in view of the fact that the affair will be subjected to a rigid investigation by a court-martial, it certainly seems proper that public judgment should be suspended until the facts are better known.”52 By early April the Big Horn Expedition and its various controversies had become national news. The tone in the nation’s newspapers was nearly universally unfavorable. Since returning to his home in Cheyenne on March 31, Thaddeus Stanton’s pen was rarely dry, and much of the acrimony about the affair can be attributed directly to him. On April 1 he composed the first of several official reports recounting his actions during the campaign and in the fight at Powder River. This initial version became the template for much that followed. His six handwritten pages, carefully labeled “Personal,” were directed to the army’s paymaster general, Brigadier General Benjamin Alvord, in Washington. In writing and submitting it, Stanton fulfilled a duty required of an officer associated with one of the Washington staff bureaus. The report is carefully and insightfully detailed and adds considerably to an understanding of the campaign, but Stanton also pointed fingers and placed blame, and his choice of language was often blunt. Moore had failed in his duty completely. Reynolds had “lost his head,” destroyed property he was told to save, abandoned the dead and a wounded man on the field, and lost the ponies, the “best fruits of our victory.” Crook, meanwhile, “was very much disgusted with the terrible blunders R. had made, and I [Stanton] told him so.”53

262

AFTERMATH

The New York Tribune, for which Stanton had written during the campaign, ran his lengthy diary-like collection of stories from the field in its April 4 issue. Stanton also pointed fingers in these pieces. Had Moore taken his assigned position, “scarcely an Indian would have escaped.” The dead were left on the field. “How this occurred is not fully explained and may be the subject of an investigation.” The ponies were lost, and Reynolds “positively declined to send a man or horse to recapture them, thus allowing the most substantial fruits of the victory to be taken away.” If these actions were the “result of incompetency and inefficiency[,] it should be known.” With Stanton serving as its nameless reporter, the Tribune, whose stories were widely reprinted throughout the land, had published a report of a failed campaign and helped place the blame directly at the feet of Reynolds and Moore.54 Thus far Stanton’s reports and news copy pointed fingers but lacked fire, a shortcoming that he soon rectified. After finishing his formal report for General Alvord on April 1, he wrote a final report for the New York Tribune that supplied details and drew conclusions that demonstrated his increasingly emotional bias. Again identified only as coming “From a Special Correspondent of the Tribune,” the story focused almost exclusively on the failings of the expedition. In assigning to Reynolds the force sent to attack and destroy the Indian camp on the Powder River, Crook had “acted generously, and gave his subordinate officer an opportunity which many an officer might serve a lifetime and not get.” But “Gen. Reynolds failed to do his work.” He burned meats that would have allowed the campaign to continue and even end the war. He permitted the ponies to escape and made no effort to recapture them. He learned of a wounded man being left on the field, “but would not order anything to be done about the matter.” The grievous blunders “completely frustrate[d] Gen. Crook’s plans for bolder movements.” Moore was also shamed by his failure to cover the rear of the village, thus jeopardizing “needlessly the lives of the members of the company that made the charge under Capt. Egan.” And “Reynolds failed to call this officer to account for his noncompliance with orders.”55

THE RANCOR BEGINS

263

Readers today are left to ponder the sequence and motivation of Stanton’s ultimate shot, which was not written for the Tribune but privately in a letter to an unnamed friend or associate in Washington that subsequently appeared in the Washington Chronicle on Sunday, April 9, and was quickly reprinted elsewhere. In the letter Stanton’s rage ran unchecked. The account, datelined Cheyenne, April 3, variously interjects Stanton in the first and third person, perhaps reflecting the recipient’s or the newspaper’s hamhanded attempt at masking the writer’s identity. In the letter the litany of Reynolds’s and Moore’s leadership failings is presented in Stanton’s inimitable way of repeating them, but here the Indians escaped through “Moore’s cowardice,” and Reynolds “lost his head” and “disobeyed Crook’s orders.” Stanton wrote: “We beat the Indians badly, but nothing like we should have done if it had not been for the imbecility of Reynolds, to call it by no worse name.” The story was reprinted word for word in the Omaha Daily Herald on April 13, “imbecility” and all. The army’s matchless, headstrong “Fighting Paymaster” had effectively and consciously stirred up a hornet’s nest. He saw incompetency, faint-heartedness, callousness, and willful neglect at Powder River, and turned against the offenders. Stanton’s writings served their purpose, but in the end his bellicose tone also had a cost for himself and for General Crook.56

“Stirring, Spirited Battle with Crazy Horse and His Bands” This illustration by E. W. Deming in General Charles King’s 1905 army novel The Medal of Honor aptly captures the wintery scene of Egan’s charge on Old Bear’s village. While King’s story scrambles certain Sioux War details, the image survives as one of only two contemporary depictions of the wintery Powder River fight of March 17. Thomas Buecker Collection.

264

Captain Henry Noyes Noyes, seen here as a lieutenant colonel in the 1890s, joined Egan to open the Powder River fight on March 17. He was later court-martialed for questionable conduct in the battle. Although reprimanded by Crook, he joined the general’s summer expedition and fought valiantly at Rosebud Creek and Slim Buttes. Noyes was a dependable officer who eventually commanded the Second Cavalry regiment and served in Cuba during the Spanish American War. History Colorado, 10044650.

265

Second Lieutenant Bainbridge Reynolds Lieutenant Reynolds, son of the troubled Third Cavalry colonel, graduated from West Point in 1873 and was assigned to the Third Cavalry. He served the Third faithfully, including as regimental adjutant from 1879 to 1883, until resigning his commission in 1891. Reynolds died of cancer in Washington, D.C., in 1901 and is buried in Arlington. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute. 266

Second Lieutenant Charles Morton Lieutenant Morton, seen here at the time of his graduation from West Point in 1869, was the Big Horn Expedition’s adjutant. In the Powder River fight he notably attempted to call off Moore’s firing from the mountaintop and later commanded a response when Indians attempted to intercept cavalry horses. Remembered as a versatile officer, Morton had long and diverse experience in the Civil War, against Apaches in Arizona, with the Dodge Expedition in the Black Hills, and throughout the Great Sioux War. He served twice in the Philippines and commanded the Department of the Missouri at the time of his retirement in 1910. Morton died in 1914 and is buried in Arlington. U.S. Military Academy. 267

Wooden Leg Wooden Leg, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Elkhorn Scrapers warrior society, was eighteen years old at the time of the Powder River fight. He fought valiantly there and that night joined other wolves in the retaking of the village’s ponies. Beginning in 1903, Wooden Leg’s varied recollections were gathered by Thomas Marquis, a Northern Cheyenne agency physician, and ultimately preserved in the book A Warrior Who Fought Custer, a compelling narrative of Northern Cheyenne life in the late nineteenth century. Wooden Leg died in 1940. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Thomas Marquis Collection, PN.165.1.48. 268

Little Wolf, 1873 Little Wolf was one of four Northern Cheyenne Old Man Chiefs and also the tribe’s Sweet Medicine chief, obligingly presiding at major councils of the chieftains. He fought heroically at Powder River but is better remembered for leading (with Dull Knife) followers northward from the Indian Territory to the northern plains in 1878. Alexander Gardner photograph. Smithsonian Institution Archives; Wikimedia Commons. 269

He Dog, 1877 A close ally of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Lakota leader He Dog and his followers joined Old Bear’s Northern Cheyennes in late winter 1876, apparently intent on returning to Red Cloud Agency. When their camp was struck by Reynolds’s troops, he joined in the defense and then led refugees to Crazy Horse’s village, where they aligned and adopted a war course. After Crazy Horse was killed in 1877, He Dog led many of their followers to Canada. In later life he was a prominent resident of the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he died in 1936. D. S. Mitchell photograph. Nebraska State Historical Society, RG2955-PH-0–7.

270

Two Moon The skilled warrior Two Moon, a Northern Cheyenne Kit Fox Society little chief, was thirty-four years old at the time of the Powder River fight. No stranger to tumult on the northern plains, Two Moon was a veteran of many intertribal clashes with Pawnees and Crows in the early 1860s and the Fetterman fight in 1866 and later fought courageously in the Little Big Horn and Red Fork battles. John H. Fouch photograph. Glen Swanson Collection. 271

Major Alexander Chambers An 1853 West Point graduate, Chambers was a veteran infantry officer with long experience in the West before and after the Civil War. He commanded Fort Fetterman at the time of the March campaign and found himself unwittingly enmeshed in the expedition’s political squabbles. That summer Chambers commanded the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition’s sizable infantry battalion. A gallant officer, Chambers was respected by his peers as one who was always ready and at the front. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute.

272

273

The officers occupying these quarters hosted many comrades and classmates during the coming and going of the Big Horn Expedition. Major Chambers’s quarters at front right drew inordinate attention. He hosted General Crook before and after the campaign, and his home was the scene of intense squabbling when Reynolds received draft court-martial charges for alleged failings in the field. Private Charles Howard photograph. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Officers Row, Fort Fetterman, 1877

Major Horace B. Burnham Burnham, judge advocate of the Noyes court-martial, was an attorney in Pennsylvania before the Civil War. Patriotic fervor led him to organize a three-year regiment of volunteers early in the conflict. He served as its lieutenant colonel until the unit was mustered out in 1863. Burnham later was commissioned as a judge-advocate in the Regular Army and subsequently served in the District of Columbia, Atlanta, and San Antonio, before assignment to the Department of the Platte in 1872. Burnham retired in 1888, died in 1894, and was buried in Arlington. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute. 274

Colonel John E. Smith, 1877 John Smith, president of the Noyes court-martial and a senior juror on the Reynolds and Moore trials, was a long-time resident of Galena, Illinois, where he befriended Ulysses Grant. Smith enjoyed an illustrious army career, rising during the Civil War to brigade command and the rank of brigadier general of volunteers and afterward securing appointments in the Twenty-Seventh and Fourteenth Infantry. Duty in the West took Smith to the Bozeman Trail and Fort Laramie, to agency squabbles with the Sioux, and to Idaho during the Bannock War. He retired in 1881, died in 1897, and was buried in Galena. D. S. Mitchell photograph. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute. 275

Inter-Ocean Hotel At the time of the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial, the Inter-Ocean Hotel was Cheyenne’s newest hostelry. Lavishly appointed with wall to wall carpeting and velvet curtains, the hotel was also Crook’s preferred overnight accommodation whenever he visited the city. The property was destroyed by fire in 1916. Wyoming State Archives, Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources.

276

John J. Jenkins Jenkins was U.S. attorney for Wyoming Territory when Reynolds engaged him to command his legal defense in 1877. In 1879 Jenkins resumed a private practice in his hometown of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, later served seven terms in Congress, and died in Chippewa Falls in 1911 at the age of sixty-seven. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi-26073.

277

First Lieutenant Christopher T. Hall, 1868 Hall, seen here at the time of his West Point graduation, was Captain Noyes’s lone subaltern on the Big Horn Expedition. He was one of the army’s young renaissance men, with widely ranging interests, including the study of the law. In 1875 he was admitted to the Wyoming bar. In 1877 Hall was one of three attorneys defending Reynolds during his court-martial. He resigned his commission in 1880 and died in obscurity in 1887. U.S. Military Academy.

278

General John Pope and officers of the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial, 1877 On January 13, 1877, Cheyenne photographer D. S. Mitchell posed the assembled officers of the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial for several group photographs. Seated, left to right, are Colonel George Sykes, Twentieth Infantry; Colonel Jefferson C. Davis, Twenty-Third Infantry; Colonel John H. King, Ninth Infantry; Brigadier General John Pope, Department of the Missouri, court president; Colonel John Gibbon, Seventh Infantry; Colonel John E. Smith, Fourteenth Infantry; and Colonel Franklin F. Flint, Fourth Infantry. Standing, left to right, are Major David G. Swaim, Department of the Missouri, judge advocate; Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Huston Jr., Sixth Infantry; Lieutenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley, Ninth Infantry; Lieutenant Colonel Pinkney Lugenbeel, First Infantry; Lieutenant Colonel Amos Beckwith, assistant commissary general of subsistence; and Major George D. Ruggles, assistant adjutant general, Department of Dakota. Author’s collection. 279

Brigadier General William McKee Dunn General Dunn was the army’s judge advocate general from 1875 until retiring in 1881. He reviewed Reynolds’s and Moore’s courts-martial proceedings, findings, and sentences before forwarding them to the secretary of war and president. In both instances he found the sentences fair and lenient. MOLLUS Mass and Civil War Photo Collections, United States Army Heritage and Education Center, Military History Institute.

280

281

The Powder River battle of March 17, 1876, played across this sweeping landscape in southeastern Montana. Troops approached from the broken ground on the left. Two companies occupied the high prominence at left-center (the “mountaintop”). As the battle opened, Indian ponies grazed the grassy bench at the center. Old Bear’s village was nestled on the floodplain on the near side of the trees on the distant right. The day was sunny but cold, and the landscape fully white with snow. Author’s photograph.

Powder River Battlefield today

Northern Cheyenne marker, Powder River Battlefield Local ranchers and the Northern Cheyenne tribe recognize the Powder River Battlefield as hallowed ground and in recent years marked the field with the tribe’s distinctive Morning Star flag, painted on a tumbled crag of jagged rock. Author’s photograph.

282

Monument, Powder River Battlefield In 1934 the Gillette, Wyoming, American Legion Post erected this pyramidal monument on the Powder River battlefield. Inset in the cobblestones are four marble government grave markers acknowledging the soldiers killed there whose remains were never recovered. The monument was placed in the midst of the rocky prominence on the battlefield’s most heavily contested position, successively occupied on March 17 by soldiers and Indians alike. Author’s photograph.

283

13 ✧✧✧✧

Misplaced Justice

T

haddeus Stanton, the army’s headstrong “Fighting Paymaster” with unbending scruples and a knife’s-edge exactitude, had a disciple. His friend Robert E. Strahorn, the amiable young reporter for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, had been welcomed into a tight knot of associates: Crook, Stanton, and Bourke. Strahorn not only shared with them the hardships of the long, cold march and the adrenalin charge and dangers of the battlefield but fully embraced their view of the events at Powder River. In a true reporter’s mold, he had seen it all for himself, of course. He participated in Egan’s charge, prowled tipis filled with finery, robes, and an astonishing abundance of food, witnessed the abandonment of the dead, and watched the next day as Indians reclaimed nearly all of their ponies, with no effort made to recapture them. Moreover, on April 1 he was among the attendees at Crook’s luncheon in Cheyenne, where others reinforced his own impressions. Strahorn had joined Stanton in pointing fingers. His dispatches, written principally for the Denver paper, mostly had a reporter’s evenhandedness about them. Collectively his long accounts of the trail, the night march, and the fight are classic renderings, not just of this campaign but of the whole Great Sioux War. Yet this youthful, battle-tempered reporter knew how to render judgment too, and why not? His allegiance was foremost to the news and his editor 284

MISPLACED JUSTICE

285

and readers. Strahorn’s last report from the field was written the day after the battle and published on April 12 as part of his consolidated campaign narrative. The collection of essays resembled Stanton’s in many respects. Like the paymaster’s accounts, his final field dispatch penned on March 18 included open criticisms of Moore and Reynolds. Stanton’s and Strahorn’s litanies of specifics were nearly identical, but the young reporter leveled one additional charge that was quite different. Grave as conditions on the battlefield had become, they were made worse by “the fact that during the latter part of the engagement, one battalion or squadron was permitted to unsaddle its animals, make coffee, and partake of lunch in the very sight of the battle field.”1 Stanton had been cautious in his reproach of Henry Noyes, and his own writings were silent about the unsaddling and coffee episode. Privately his criticism in this regard focused on Reynolds for having permitted it, which Stanton viewed as yet another example of the colonel’s lack of control on the battlefield. Furthermore, nearly everyone could see that Noyes’s action amounted to a regrettable lapse of judgment and not much more. Stanton might well have been sympathetic to Noyes, who had followed orders precisely, if too precisely, and was otherwise an officer of good standing in his regiment and on this campaign. But Egan had complained about support, and that issue reached not just Moore in the opening sequences of the battle but also others later on. Stanton needed Egan’s corroboration on the larger issue of the allegations and charges against Reynolds and Moore and had gone so far as to help the captain prepare the papers he delivered to Crook at Fort Fetterman. In making his case Egan pushed the unsaddling and coffee episode. Strahorn, if not Stanton, echoed this. Ultimately the whole mire became inseparable, and Noyes simply could not escape it. Crook and Bourke reached Omaha late on April 1. As in Cheyenne and elsewhere, news of the recent campaign filled columns in the local newspapers. The city’s Herald, Bee, and Republican variously cribbed parts of Strahorn’s and Stanton’s writings or the unnamed New York Times correspondent’s reports and sometimes reprinted them in their near entirety. At the moment neither Crook nor Bourke provided anything newsworthy for local editors. Crook

286

AFTERMATH

had turned his attention to organizing the spring campaign and was devoting little time to the recent failure. On April 5 he traveled to Chicago to consult with Sheridan. The substance of their meeting is not recorded, but surely Crook put forth his best spin on the recent campaign. Despite its many shortcomings, it had resulted in the destruction of an Indian village. He certainly justified the looming courts-martial and carefully reviewed his plans for a second a campaign against Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, which he hoped to begin by mid-May.2 By the time Crook returned from Chicago, Reynolds’s anticipated papers had arrived from Fort D. A. Russell, including copies of the courts-martial charges preferred against Moore and Noyes. Crook would let a court decide the merits of Noyes’s charge and had already offered the captain his opinion on the matter, telling him at Fort Fetterman that it “was a minor affair. The trouble was the loss of the ponies.” Crook could already see that the timing of the courts-martial would potentially conflict with the resumption of the Sioux campaign. While that was of less consequence in the cases of Reynolds and Moore, aside from addressing morale issues, he needed Noyes leading his company in the field when operations resumed soon. The Noyes court-martial needed to be convened and concluded over the next several weeks.3

✧✧✧✧ In the realm of military jurisprudence, there were four types of courts-martial at the time: general, garrison, summary, and regimental, according to the authority convening the proceedings, the nature of the offense or offenses being weighed, and the potential punishment meted out, with a general court-martial being the most serious. Crook ordered Noyes’s general court-martial on April 13 in Department of the Platte special orders, appointing a panel of eleven commissioned officers to be presided over by Colonel John E. Smith, commanding the Fourteenth Infantry at Camp Douglas, Utah, and to be convened at headquarters, Fort D. A. Russell, as soon as practicable. In addition to Smith, Crook also ordered to the

MISPLACED JUSTICE

287

court Colonel Franklin F. Flint, commanding the Fourth Infantry at Fort Bridger; Lieutenant Colonel Luther Bradley and Major Edwin F. Townsend, both of the Ninth Infantry at Fort Laramie; Majors Nathan A. M. Dudley and Andrew W. Evans, of the Third Cavalry, at Forts McPherson and D. A. Russell, respectively; Major Alexander Chambers of Fort Fetterman; Major Alexander J. Dallas, of the Twenty-Third Infantry at Omaha Barracks; and three captains drawn from the Fourth and Twenty-Third Infantry. Major Horace B. Burnham, the department’s judge advocate, was named judge advocate of the court. Noyes was placed under arrest at Fort Laramie as of the date of the order and confined to quarters. He was not allowed to conduct any business, was not allowed to visit his commanding officer or other superior officers unless directed to do so, and had to make applications and requests of every nature in writing.4 While distinguished field-grade officers were assigned to the court, the central figure in the coming event was Major Burnham, the judge advocate. In military legal proceedings the judge advocate had the unique dual role of prosecuting the case in the name of the United States and also counseling the accused in matters of legal form. The accused was certainly welcome to have independent counsel. But if he chose not to (and often that was the case with respect to company-grade officers and lower) the judge advocate was the lone advisor on the legalities of defense. While not serving as defense counsel per se, he ensured that the rights of the accused were upheld. During the trial the judge advocate conducted the day-to-day proceedings, swore in the members of the court and witnesses, arraigned the accused, examined the witnesses, and kept (or superintended the keeping) of an accurate record. The judge advocate was also legal counsel to the officers of the court.5 Burnham, lean, bearded, white-haired, and fifty one years old, had been admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania in 1844 and practiced law in that state until the coming of the Civil War. From 1861 until November 1864 he served as a field-grade officer in a Pennsylvania infantry regiment and was engaged across the Eastern Theater. He then joined the Bureau of Military Justice and served

288

AFTERMATH

in a variety of assignments in Virginia, Kentucky, and Texas before coming to Omaha in November 1872. It is entirely probable that Burnham knew Noyes and every officer on the court, at least casually.6 Meanwhile the president of the court conducted its business, spoke for the court when a rule of action was prescribed, authenticated by his signature the court’s acts, orders, and proceedings, and was always the highest-ranking officer present. Sixty-year-old silver-haired and bearded Colonel John Eugene Smith presided. He was a widely experienced Civil War brigadier general of volunteers and an intimate of Grant. After the war he accepted a Regular Army commission as colonel of the Twenty-Seventh Infantry, saw duty on the Bozeman Trail in the wake of the Fetterman Massacre, and commanded Fort Phil Kearny at the time of the Wagon Box Fight. Smith was assigned to the Fourteenth Infantry in 1870 and commanded Fort Laramie during the troublesome years following the treaty signings there. He led the hurriedly organized expedition in 1874 that eased tensions at the Red Cloud Agency and then located and built Camp Robinson. Smith was thoroughly familiar with the wiles of the Oglala and Brulé Sioux and Northern Cheyennes and the landscape visited by the Big Horn Expedition.7 As time for Noyes’s proceedings drew near, two officers appointed to the panel were excused: Major Dudley, for reasons not recorded, and Lieutenant Colonel Bradley, detailed by a superior order to duty at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Five witnesses were summoned, including Crook and Reynolds. The court convened on Monday, April 24, acknowledged the absences of the two jurors and also Noyes (still en route from Fort Laramie), and promptly adjourned. With Noyes present on April 25, however, the proceedings officially commenced, almost one month to the day after the disbanding of the Big Horn Expedition. Major Burnham called Noyes forward, read him the orders convening the court, and asked whether he objected to any of the members mentioned. The captain replied simply, “No.” The officers and court reporter were then formally sworn in. Noyes was arraigned on a single charge and specification, the charge being a violation of the Sixty-Second Article of War, “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline,” based on the specification that

MISPLACED JUSTICE

289

he unsaddled his company, thereby limiting his ability to respond promptly to an order to move at once, and endangering the safety of his horses to an unnecessary degree. Noyes pleaded “Not Guilty” to the charge and specification.8 Burnham then called his first witness, Joseph Reynolds, administered the oath, and invited him to tell the court about Noyes’s actions on the Powder River battlefield. Reynolds’s story was simple. Noyes’s company was assigned to drive out the Indian ponies, guard them, and retain possession of them, “which duty he performed to my entire satisfaction and a good part of the time under my personal observation.” Later while guarding the animals, Reynolds continued, “I had occasion to send for him and his company dismounted to join me.” Noyes had replied in substance that he had unsaddled his company but would promptly respond to the call. “I repeated the summons by the messenger and he appeared upon the ground in due season.”9 Burnham pushed the issue of readiness, asking Reynolds whether Noyes’s unsaddling affected his ability to come up immediately or to repel an attack directly. Reynolds replied that if Noyes had been summoned mounted he would not have been able to respond promptly. Burnham pressed: was it not probable to expect a move at any moment? It was, Reynolds replied. Burnham asked whether any notice had been taken of the alleged offense (the unsaddling) at the time “I expressed surprise,” Reynolds said, but “no other notice was taken of the occurrence at the time.”10 Noyes, acting as his own counsel, interrogated Reynolds: “How long after the affair before you sent me a copy of the charge?” “About fifteen days,” said Reynolds. Noyes responded: “If my conduct on that occasion merited charges, why was I kept on duty about fifteen days thereafter?” Reynolds replied: “Captain Noyes’ conduct on that occasion, in my judgment, did not merit charges. The unsaddling was, under the circumstances, blameworthy, but as no evil came of it and his general conduct was so entirely satisfactory and praiseworthy no notice was taken at that time of the unsaddling.”11 Noyes then launched into the issue of who was the real accuser, Colonel Reynolds or the department commander. At first the judge advocate objected, since the question did not appear to him to

290

AFTERMATH

constitute cross-examination of the witness. But the jurors did not sustain his objection after deliberating the issue in closed session. Reynolds then proceeded to explain the matter as he saw it. Crook thought that Noyes’s unsaddling warranted the preferring of charges and that Reynolds was held responsible for doing so. Noyes asked if the colonel was ordered to do so. “I do not say that I was directed, in express terms, to make these charges, but I do say that I was given to understand, in very plain terms, that General Crook thought these charges should be preferred, and, as he held me responsible if I did not prefer them, charges would be preferred against me for neglect.” The exchange continued. Noyes viewed this as central to his case, because Reynolds had seen no harm in the unsaddling and yet preferred charges simply because the saddling had occurred and had drawn attention. The matter interested the jurors too, but the court adjourned for the day with the issue hanging in the air.12 Day three of the trial, April 26, opened with the reading and approval of the previous day’s proceedings and the recall of Colonel Reynolds, who was again questioned on the issue of who was Noyes’s real accuser. Reynolds repeated his previous testimony. Noyes then objected, claiming that the present court was not properly convened. As he saw it, the real accuser and the one who convened the court was not the one who had preferred the charges. Reynolds only did so because he was threatened with charges himself if he did not act. If this reasoning held and the department commander was the real accuser, then this court was illegal, Noyes charged. It would be a manifest injustice and could even lead to a retrial for the same offense. The court was cleared to allow the jurors to discuss the point, but ultimately Noyes’s argument was not sustained. The trial continued, though wrangling over this particular issue filled the remainder of the day.13 Major Alexander Chambers was the opening witness on day four of the trial, April 27. He was asked by Burnham to recount the conversation that he witnessed between Crook and Reynolds in his quarters and particularly whether he remembered Reynolds being told that charges would be preferred against him if he did not prefer charges against Noyes. Chambers’s response was brief and

MISPLACED JUSTICE

291

telling: “To my mind there was nothing separating the subject of Captain Noyes conduct, from that of the other subjects discussed during the interview.” Furthermore, Chambers twice told the court that Crook told Reynolds that Reynolds was responsible for the conduct of the expedition and that Crook did not hold him “responsible in any other connection.” Noyes was silent throughout the testimony, which refocused the issue of responsibility. He had no questions for the major, who was excused. The court then adjourned early to await the arrival of “an important witness.”14 Noyes’s trial reconvened at 1:30 p.m. on April 28, calling General Crook to the stand. After inviting a description of his meeting with Reynolds in Chambers’s quarters at Fort Fetterman, which Crook detailed rather carefully, Burnham probed directly into the issue of Noyes’s conduct and whether the witness had threatened to add an additional charge against Reynolds if he did not prefer charges against Noyes. Crook replied emphatically: “I did not.” Burnham asked again: “Did you or did you not give Colonel Reynolds any orders, use any words, or expressions, at that interview, conveying such direction or intimation, concerning the accused?” Crook again said, “I did not.” Crook then proceeded to put the notion of responsibility in a different light, telling the court that “if I had not preferred charges against him (Colonel Reynolds) I would be held responsible and I did not propose to take the responsibility,” meaning, of course, responsibility for the failures of the campaign. When Burnham probed on the responsibility issue one final time, Crook again took the conversation in a completely different direction, replying: “The whole conversation I had with him (Colonel Reynolds) was about his responsibility for letting the captured animals escape.” By now the witnesses and accused were talking on different planes. Responsibility rained everywhere, and personal perceptions colored everything. When the court reached 3 p.m., the customary time to close proceedings for the day, it adjourned after serving notice that it would reconvene at the Laramie County Courthouse in Cheyenne the next day instead of at the fort and would henceforth function without regard for time. The change in venue was because travel to and from hotels in the city was unnecessarily inconveniencing the jurors and witnesses.15

292

AFTERMATH

On April 29 Crook was recalled on the presumption that there might be further questions for him. But he was excused when none were presented by either the accused or the judge advocate. Before calling another witness, Burnham announced to the court that he did not desire to present any further testimony concerning Noyes’s objection to the validity of the convening order. The court therewith asserted that it indeed had been properly convened and directed Burnham to proceed.16 Burnham then called to the stand First Lieutenant Christopher Hall of Company I, Second Cavalry, Noyes’s lone subaltern at Powder River. Burnham probed carefully on the unsaddling episode, wondering whether it might have delayed the company’s ability to move for any emergency. “Under certain circumstances it might have, for a few moments,” replied Hall. Did it endanger the safety of Noyes’s horses if the enemy dashed to stampede them? “I don’t think it did,” said Hall. Did it endanger the security of the captured herd? “I don’t think it did.” Did it delay or embarrass the company in the execution of any orders either to take part in the action or take up the retiring line? “It did not delay or embarrass the company in taking part in the action or retiring from the village, but it probably embarrassed them some in leaving the place where they had unsaddled,” Hall admitted.17 The questioning then continued on other matters of the company’s deployment during the fight, with Noyes and the court particularly focusing on the general condition of the company’s horses that day and the company’s response to Reynolds’s summons to the village. “At the time you left the village and just before the company unsaddled, was there a lively skirmish going on or not?” asked Noyes. “I think not. My impression was that some men were firing more than was necessary,” replied Hall. Were you present when Reynolds’s message was received? “I was present and heard the message delivered,” answered the lieutenant. “What were the orders received?” a member of the court asked. “The order was to leave the pony herd and bring his company to the village on foot,” said Hall. Questioning turned to issues

MISPLACED JUSTICE

293

related to the timing of Noyes’s response to Reynolds’s order and the distance between Company I’s position with the pony herd and the village, which Hall answered easily. Then Burnham closed the case for the prosecution. Hall’s testimony seemed to strengthen Noyes’s case that the entire unsaddling matter was of small consequence, aside from the embarrassment that it brought, and did nothing to delay the captain’s ability to respond to Reynolds’s summons or endanger the company’s horses. Whether or not Noyes’s action had been of consequence, in order to prove the specification in the charges it was only necessary to prove that he had in fact directly or indirectly permitted his company to unsaddle. Burnham had presented a sufficient case that he had.18 Noyes called one witness in his defense, First Sergeant William Skinner of Company I, who testified on such details as the number of men remaining with the Indian ponies (nineteen, and all saddled) and that the company’s horses were hobbled and picketed and thus secure. “Did the company have anything to do on the 17th of March that was not well done?” Noyes asked. “No sir, they did not,” Skinner replied.19 Ending on that note, Noyes told the court that he had no other evidence to submit. He then asked for a short allowance of time to prepare a written statement and map, which was granted. At 6 p.m. he presented that statement to the members of court, reading it in their presence. In it he attempted to rebut the charge and specification. As he had assessed the fight from afar, the gunfire had nearly ceased by the time of his summons. When he received Reynolds’s call to come forward, he “expected to go up and count the gory corpses of the dead warriors; and was more than surprised when I found that my company was wanted to hold the skirmish line, while the three companies then there were getting to their horses, and that instead of a number of dead warriors, only a squaw or two had been killed.” Without comment, the court accepted Noyes’s statement as Exhibit C.20 The courtroom was then cleared and closed. The jury commenced a very brief deliberation and after having “maturely considered the pleadings and evidence” reopened the room and announced

294

AFTERMATH

its findings. On the specification Noyes was found guilty. He had permitted the unsaddling of his horses and thus to a degree was unable to respond promptly to an order that might at any moment have been expected. Having found Noyes guilty of the specification, the court could only find him guilty of the charge. It then sentenced him “to be reprimanded by the Department Commander in General Orders.” Crook issued those orders on May 2, regretting that Noyes’s error of judgment merited the court’s censure. It was a light sentence. No consequence had flowed from his action. The captain was immediately released from arrest and returned to duty.21 In this lamentable case, with the clarity of hindsight, the charges brought against Noyes should never have been preferred. This courtmartial should never have occurred. When common sense was afterward called for, especially in light of the much larger issues emanating from the Powder River battlefield, none was shown by Stanton, Egan, Strahorn, or Crook. This trial may indeed have been a good-natured farce, as a later-day lawyer-turned-historian labeled it, but the unfortunate blemish trailed Henry Noyes for the remainder of his career. Courts-martial were not trivial matters, and this one still unnecessarily colors any telling of the Powder River fight.22

✧✧✧✧ The Cheyenne newspapers paid little heed to the Noyes trial, barely noting the coming and going of some of the officers involved and quipping at one point that “it is understood that the captain’s defense is that he was only obeying Gen. Reynolds’ orders.” The affair had not been particularly newsworthy in Omaha either, supplanted by reports of the next campaign. Crook had avoided Omaha reporters all along, until finally consenting to an interview with the Daily Herald on April 14. He would not comment on the looming Reynolds and Moore courts-martial, not wanting to “prejudice the case of the officers involved in the affair,” but he did express regret that the results of the recent campaign were not as he had hoped, especially the loss of the Indian ponies, “which at one time we had

MISPLACED JUSTICE

295

in our hands.” By now, of course, Stanton’s scathing letter, appearing first in the Washington Chronicle and reprinted fully in the Daily Herald, had raised eyebrows and elicited a written response from the paymaster. The letter was probably meant to mollify Crook and Department of the Platte headquarters staff more than other Omaha readers. Of the recent Crazy Horse fight, he wrote, “allow me to state that I never wrote a line to the Washington Chronicle on the subject.”23 Meanwhile Colonel Reynolds was twisting in the wind. Stunned by what he continued to believe was an unjust assault on his reputation, as early as March 28 at Fort Fetterman he had written to the adjutant general, requesting that a court of inquiry be convened to investigate affairs at Powder River. He renewed his request on April 5 from Fort Russell. Such an investigation required the endorsement of General Crook, Reynolds’s line commander. The colonel soon learned that his requests had not been endorsed and forwarded. Meanwhile Reynolds wrote another letter to the adjutant general on April 3, requesting that he be ordered before a retiring board with a view to being placed on the army’s retired list. He was not yet of retirement age but described in the letter an array of physical infirmities that disqualified him from future field service, in his own and his attending surgeon’s estimation. This was a brutal lesson learned on the recent expedition. Reynolds’s communication was duly forwarded from Omaha, and the adjutant general was actually sympathetic to the request. But Reynolds withdrew it before it could be acted upon. Puzzled, the adjutant general telegrammed Reynolds, asking for an explanation. Reynolds responded by telegram, elaborating in a letter that, as other courts-martial from this campaign were pending, his retirement might be construed as a desire to avoid an investigation into his own conduct. “I have full explanations for all the charges made against me,” he wrote. He wanted the satisfaction of an investigation.24 In the meantime Sheridan and Sherman both weighed in. On May 4 Sheridan wrote Sherman that papers associated with the courts-martial of Reynolds and Moore, and Reynolds’s request for a court of inquiry, had been forwarded to him from Omaha. At the moment he acknowledged that he knew nothing more of the charges

296

AFTERMATH

“further than the representations of General Crook.” But if the charges were entertained, “and Crook says it is very necessary,” the court should be ordered at once in order to avoid interfering with the new expedition, which would start from Fort Fetterman in a matter of weeks. At Sherman’s direction lists of officers for the Reynolds court were prepared. A short list was drawn up that envisioned Brigadier General John Pope, commander of the Military Department of the Missouri, as president, eight colonels among the jurors, and Major Burnham again serving as judge advocate, with the proceedings to convene in Omaha on July 15.25 General Sheridan studied the assembled Reynolds and Big Horn Expedition papers for nearly two weeks, carefully reading the various reports from the field commanders along with Crook’s covering report of May 7, which was exceedingly critical of Reynolds. He drew his own conclusions, including a scathing endorsement that he laid atop the file when it was forwarded to Washington: Too much attention was paid to the destruction of the Indian village, and not enough to the destruction of the Indians. Col. Reynolds had a force three or four times greater than the Indians could bring against him, as the number of lodges, 105, would not on the most liberal calculation furnish more than 105 warriors, and these warriors had the old, the lame, the blind and the women and children to take care of. Not the slightest effort was made to follow them up. This perhaps is accounted for by the opportunity offered them to escape. There were too many giving orders, there was too great a desire to receive orders, there was too much of a desire to be supported, when there was no necessity for support. The affair is shamefully disgraceful.26 In Washington General Sherman studied the papers carefully too and drew a comparably damning assessment, despite the sympathetic tone of his opening line: I have carefully read the reports of Generals Crook and Reynolds, with those of the subordinate Battalion and Company

MISPLACED JUSTICE

297

commanders, and do not feel disposed to condemn the parties as severely as General Sheridan does. In the conduct of this expedition there have been mistakes made, incident to the nature of the country, and the severity of the weather. . . . I think General Crook erred in dividing his command Mch. 16, and that he should have approached the village as near as consistent with the necessity for concealment, with his whole force, and attacked and pursued the Indian Warriors, Women and Children, till all were killed or captured, and then destroyed as much of the captured property as he had no use for. Of course he had a perfect right to detach Genl. Reynolds with his six companies, and Genl. Reynolds is responsible for the use he made of them. He, in like manner, should have used his entire force first to destroy his enemy, before pausing to destroy the village. This is the first Rule in all Wars. A command “halted” to destroy property, always becomes more or less demoralized, confused and disordered, and this case well illustrates the principle. In as much as this case must become the subject of a trial by Court Martial, I advise that this report be simply placed on file for the present.27

✧✧✧✧ By now, of course, Sherman, Sheridan, and Crook were grappling with the realities of the season and the demands of the Sioux war. Crook returned to the field on May 29, personally leading a greatly enlarged Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition north from Fort Fetterman into the Powder River country for the second of his three field movements in 1876. Nine of the cavalry companies with him in March again took the field. In the rather conventional juggling of assignments and commitments, many of the officers leading those companies now were different, although Captain Noyes again commanded Company I, Second Cavalry, plus an entire battalion of Second Cavalry, and young Second Lieutenant Bainbridge Reynolds

298

AFTERMATH

now commanded Company F, Third Cavalry, with Captain Moore remaining behind at Fort Russell under arrest. Many of the companies had taken on a new character too. Desertions in April and May were rampant in the Big Horn Expedition companies, troopers rebelliously declaring that they would not fight under men who would leave their dead and dying to fall into the enemy’s hands (see chapter 15). Major Alexander Chambers, unwittingly a central character in the Reynolds drama, also went afield with Crook in command of an enlarged infantry battalion. Stanton did not, however, at least at first. He returned to his paymaster duties until late June, though eventually marching north with a different cavalry column that in turn united with Crook in August.28 All the while Reynolds continued to seethe at Fort D. A. Russell. His ability to attend to the preparations associated with the Third Cavalry’s looming deployment in Crook’s next operation was greatly limited. Those duties were now largely overseen by others, including the regiment’s lieutenant colonel, William B. Royall, who most recently was overseeing the purchase of horses for the Second and Third Cavalry regiments. On May 5 Reynolds again wrote the adjutant general, this time requesting that he be ordered to Washington for a personal conference with the General of the Army. He intended to pause in Chicago en route to confer with Sheridan and in both Chicago and Washington to discuss the recent Big Horn Expedition and the accusations made against him. Washington denied the request. Crook, returning to Cheyenne in mid-May en route to the Red Cloud Agency in preparation for the campaign, learned of the demoralization at Fort Russell. Desertions were rampant, including some of the most important witnesses against Reynolds and Moore. An impression prevailed that neither Reynolds nor Moore would be brought to trial, because they had sufficient influence in Washington to prevent it. Crook acted preemptively, immediately depriving both officers of their commands and ordering their arrest. Royall had the unpleasant duty of serving Reynolds’s arrest notice, which he did in person on May 18. The colonel was confined to the Fort D. A. Russell military reservation. Its boundaries did not extend to Cheyenne, although he was twice permitted to travel east for medical treatment as far as his family’s

MISPLACED JUSTICE

299

home in Lafayette, Indiana. Meanwhile other matters related to the continuation of the Great Sioux War captured the army’s and public’s attention. The war’s battles and skirmishes—Rosebud, Little Big Horn, Warbonnet Creek, Slim Buttes—provided abundant and sometimes shocking newspaper copy in the coming months. Reynolds and Moore were almost forgotten, their courts-martial delayed as the campaigns continued.29

✧✧✧✧ After returning from the summer-long and almost equally illstarred Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, Crook presided at a field headquarters variously located at Fort Laramie, Camp Robinson, and Fort Fetterman before embarking on yet a third campaign, the Powder River Expedition, which left Fort Fetterman on November 14. Between the second and third expeditions Bourke returned to Omaha and assisted Crook’s other aide-de-camp, Captain Azor Nickerson, and department staff with an array of administrative and organizational matters, including the prompting of the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial. Crook had telegrammed Sheridan on November 6 informing him that he would not withdraw charges against Reynolds and requesting that the court be ordered as soon as practicable. Sheridan bucked the communication to the War Department, which in turn advised Crook to detain at Fort Laramie any campaign-bound officers or others material to the proceedings. With Bourke, Grouard, Egan, and Crook himself attached to the new expedition, that proved difficult, although the general assured Sheridan that he would make such individuals available as soon as requested. Managing the case had become Washington’s business. A well-connected colonel of the United States Army was being charged with violating certain articles of war. On November 22 Sherman requested a new list of officers for the trial. On November 25, by direction of the president and secretary of war, the War Department issued Special Orders No. 244, directing the general court-martial of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds and Captain Alexander Moore, Third Cavalry, to convene in Cheyenne on December 15 or as soon thereafter as possible.30

300

AFTERMATH

The slate of individuals ordered to the court was once again stellar. From a list of fifty-three field-grade officers drawn up by the Adjutant General’s Office (mostly colonels and lieutenant colonels posted throughout the country) the secretary of war detailed fourteen, with Brigadier General John Pope, commander of the Military Department of the Missouri at Fort Leavenworth, as president. The panel counted seven colonels, four lieutenant colonels, and two majors: George D. Ruggles, assistant adjutant general of the Department of Dakota, and David G. Swaim, judge advocate of Pope’s department, who was named judge advocate of the court. Nearly all of the assigned officers had ties of one sort or another to the Sioux war, with Colonels John H. King of the Ninth Infantry, John Gibbon of the Seventh Infantry, Jefferson C. Davis of the Twenty-Third Infantry, John Smith of the Fourteenth Infantry, George Sykes of the Twentieth Infantry, and Franklin Flint of the Fourth Infantry, who commanded garrisons within the Platte and Dakota departments and having provided troops to Crook’s and Alfred Terry’s varied campaigns. Only one of the fourteen, Colonel Gibbon, had actually taken the field in the war like Reynolds. Smith and Flint were veterans of another sort, both having been impaneled for Noyes’s court-martial in April, at which Smith presided.31 David Gaskill Swaim, judge advocate, would prosecute the case, just as Major Burnham had done in the Noyes trial. At stake were violations of the articles of war, the army’s governing rules and regulations codified and subscribed to by every soldier in uniform. Swaim understood that code intimately. Among the youngest of the very small corps of judge advocates (merely eight in the entire army), the dapper and self-possessed forty-four-year-old Ohioan was admitted to the bar in his home state in 1859. He saw active service throughout the Civil War and was engaged in the battles of Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga (where he was wounded), and Missionary Ridge. Swaim accepted a position in the Regular Army’s Thirty-Fourth Infantry after the war and joined the Judge Advocate-General’s Department in 1869. His skill as a lawyer was highly respected. The Cheyenne Daily Sun reported that he was noted for good judgment and practical common sense and possessed

MISPLACED JUSTICE

301

an “unfailing good temper in argument or discussion.” Swaim’s patience would be challenged often in the coming weeks.32 Presiding over the court was Brigadier General Pope, a courtly but sometimes contentious officer. An 1844 graduate of the Military Academy, Pope had served actively in the Mexican War and had gained considerable notoriety on the Great Plains both before and after the Civil War. After blundering at Second Bull Run in 1862, Pope credibly commanded the Department of the Northwest in Saint Paul and ruthlessly campaigned against the Sioux in Dakota in the wake of the Minnesota Uprising. He had commanded the Department of the Missouri since 1870 and knew Reynolds casually, an acquaintance dating to their times of parallel administrative service late in the Civil War. The Daily Sun described Pope, now fifty-four, as solidly built, an inveterate smoker, a wearer of eyeglasses, and a fluent talker but gentle in manner. Moreover, Pope dressed with great taste and “may well be regarded, as to appearance, the Beau Brummell of the court.”33 As with the Noyes court-martial, several officers ordered to the panel requested relief from duty almost as quickly as they were named. Colonel Alfred Sully of the Twenty-First Infantry, at the time on leave in Philadelphia, was the first, writing to the adjutant general on November 28, pleading the serious illness of his wife, who was on the verge of being confined for mental illness. Lieutenant Colonel Amos Beckwith, assistant commissary general of subsistence in Saint Louis and a friend of Sherman’s from the days of the great “March to the Sea,” also asked to be excused, writing to the adjutant general on November 30 to explain the imperative duties of a heavy disbursing and purchasing officer and his fear of the disruptions caused by a potentially long court session. The army’s commissary-general, Robert Macfeely, indorsed Beckwith’s request. In the end only Sully was excused.34 General Pope sought an indulgence too, recommending to the adjutant general that the venue for the trials be changed from Cheyenne to Fort Leavenworth, citing economy and convenience at Leavenworth, with available public quarters for the court, the accused, and all witnesses. Of course, the real convenience of holding

302

AFTERMATH

the trials at his headquarters accrued to Pope and Swaim. Washington was not moved, informing Pope that it was “more important the court should sit near the great body of witnesses.”35 Pope also prompted an exchange between Sheridan and Sherman on the timing of the trial. With Crook, the first and foremost witness, still in the field, the proceedings ought to be postponed, he urged. Sherman carried the point to Secretary of War James D. Cameron, who a day later, “by the direction of the President,” approved a postponement until January 5, 1877. It was so ordered by the Adjutant General’s Office.36 Major Swaim traveled to Cheyenne on December 24 and over the next several days set about securing a venue for the trial and accommodations for General Pope, staff, and key witnesses. Swaim selected the Inter-Ocean Hotel, Cheyenne’s largest, with first-class amenities and ample space in its lobby and parlors for transformation into courtrooms. The hotel was already well known to many and was Crook’s and Bourke’s choice for lodging when they were in the city.37 Joseph Reynolds returned to Cheyenne from sick leave on Christmas Day and took a room at the Railroad House, the city’s other first-class hotel, across the street from the depot and around the corner from the Inter-Ocean. Reynolds immediately engaged John J. Jenkins as his lead counsel, to be assisted by Edward P. Johnson and First Lieutenant Christopher Hall of Noyes’s Company I, Second Cavalry. Jenkins and Johnson were both from Cheyenne, while Hall was temporarily detained at Fort Russell while transferring from Fort Laramie to Fort Fred Steele. Jenkins and Johnson were each thirty-two years old and already respected and experienced attorneys known for their untiring advocacy for their clients. Johnson had come to Cheyenne in 1867 at about the time of the city’s founding and in the mid-1870s served as U.S. attorney for Wyoming Territory, having been appointed by President Grant. Jenkins succeeded Johnson as Wyoming’s U.S. attorney in March 1876, also having been appointed by Grant and having come west for health reasons after enjoying a successful practice in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Twenty-eight-year-old Hall was an 1868 West Point graduate and among the army’s young renaissance men, who

MISPLACED JUSTICE

303

studied the law in his leisure time. He was admitted to the bar in Wyoming in 1875 and practiced as opportunity permitted. Swaim, it seemed, would have not one but three lawyers opposing him in the ensuing trial.38 As the year drew to a close the varied elements of the looming court session were nearly in place. Bourke remembered receiving mail in the wilds of northern Wyoming, summoning Crook, himself, and others as witnesses for the session. The start date was fast approaching and would not again be postponed. Crook and Bourke arrived in the city on January 3 and took lodging at the Inter-Ocean, having come directly from the Powder River Expedition, a campaign noted for a stirring victory over the Northern Indians. The campaign’s success was achieved by a cavalry column operating independently of General Crook, once more led by a cavalry colonel, Ranald S. Mackenzie, and the Indians attacked were again Northern Cheyennes, circumstances eerily similar to those of the March fight (though whether that was appreciated at the time cannot be known). Meanwhile Cheyenne was filling up with officers, nearly one hundred called to the trials from far and wide.39 Among the last of the court’s members to arrive were General Pope, Major Swaim, and Colonel Jefferson Davis, who reached Cheyenne on January 5, the designated start date. Due to late arrivals, Pope convened and immediately adjourned the trial until the next morning, January 6. Although no formal business was recorded, he thereby met the obligation of the enabling order. The day of reckoning for Powder River had indeed arrived.40

14 ✧✧✧✧

Justice Served

T

he general court-martial impaneling a Regular Army brigadier general and a host of field-grade officers gathered to judge a fatherly, if now thoroughly embittered, veteran cavalry colonel quickly became political and military theater of a nearly unprecedented sort. Joseph Jones Reynolds had failed miserably in the first great battle of the Sioux war and was being held accountable. Accountability in the eyes of some was in short supply this season. By then this Great Sioux War had run a long course and involved other monumental failings, most particularly at the Little Big Horn, where the conduct of at least two Seventh Cavalry officers, Major Marcus A. Reno and Captain Frederick W. Benteen, had roused its own tempest.1 Little Big Horn finger-pointing, in fact, filled newspaper columns almost from the day that news first broke across the land. Throughout the summer and fall news of that defeat had also dominated the pages of the Army and Navy Journal, the influential weekly organ devoted to the interests of America’s armed forces. Moreover, one of the Journal’s own staff writers, Frederick Whittaker, had just published a fawning biography of Custer, A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer, wherein he laid the blame for that officer’s death directly at the feet of the major and captain, scorning “Reno’s incapacity and Benteen’s disobedience.” The book was reviewed 304

JUSTICE SERVED

305

in the Journal in the late December 1876 issue that officers likely carried with them to Cheyenne as they turned out for the Reynolds and Moore courts-martial. Even while debate over the Little Big Horn raged on, accountability for actions on another Sioux war battlefield was being reckoned with. Reno and Benteen would escape the ignominy of conviction by courts-martial, but not Reynolds.2 The pomp of the trial was truly magnificent. Convention obliged members of any court-martial to appear in full dress uniform, with white gloves and swords. Only the judge advocate, here Major Swaim, was permitted to wear an undress uniform, without a sidearm. The accused officers, Reynolds first and then Captain Alexander Moore, also appeared in full dress, as did all military witnesses. The setting was equally impressive. The layout of the improvised courtrooms in the Inter-Ocean Hotel was prescribed in regulations. Members were seated at aligned tables, with Brigadier General Pope, the court’s president, at the center and other members to his right and left, seated by rank and seniority descending from the center. Swaim sat at his own table (facing the panel) and was joined there by an assistant, Joseph McDonald, acknowledged in the Cheyenne Daily Sun as a mere clerk but in fact a well-respected civilian attorney with a successful practice in Leavenworth, who was present to assist Swaim with the preparation and prosecution of the cases. The accused and his counsel sat at another table, also facing the panel. A chair for witnesses was placed near Swaim in a position that allowed them to be seen and heard by all. The court’s reporter, the stenographer H. C. Hollister of Leavenworth, and several assistants transcribed the proceedings from yet another table.3 Courts functioned in open and closed sessions. Open sessions were accessible to the public to the extent of limited seating. Witnesses were not admitted as spectators, however. Until called for, they crowded anterooms and the Inter-Ocean lobby. The drama in Cheyenne attracted a long list of summoned witnesses, eighteen officers, eight enlisted men, and three civilians in the Reynolds trial alone, with fifteen of them required by the government, twenty by the defense, and a handful taking the stand for both prosecution and defense. One additional witness was summoned but never testified. There likely were others. The local newspapers carefully

306

AFTERMATH

followed the proceedings, filling their pages with news and chatter and interesting biographical sketches of the distinguished brassbuttoned soldiers swarming the town. Cheyenne and the army were in the limelight whether welcomed or not.4

✧✧✧✧ General Pope called the Reynolds court-martial to order pursuant to Special Orders No. 244 from the Adjutant General’s Office in Washington, at 10 a.m. on Saturday, January 6, 1877. After calling roll and thereby acknowledging each member’s presence and Colonel Alfred Sully’s absence, court reporter Hollister was duly sworn by Swaim “to a faithful performance of his duty.” Colonel Reynolds was then asked whether he objected to any of the appointed members. He objected to no one, and the members of the court were “severally [individually] duly sworn” by Swaim. Swaim himself was then duly sworn by Pope. Reynolds then introduced his counsel, John Jenkins, Edward Johnson, and Christopher Hall.5 Reynolds was arraigned on four charges, which Swaim carefully read from four foolscap pages. The charges and specifications had evolved considerably since that morning when the colonel first had read them in draft at Fort Fetterman the previous March. By then most were certainly quite familiar—the willful disobedience of orders regarding the destruction of meats and saddles, abandoning the dead and wounded, permitting a company to unsaddle and “remain idle spectators” during a fierce struggle, and losing the captured ponies. But Crook had not sidestepped the specter of Reynolds’s preferring charges against Noyes and the colonel’s seeming impugning and even perjuring statements at the captain’s courtmartial in April. Crook added additional charges addressing those allegations. Reynolds pleaded “Not Guilty” to everything. The challenge of conviction now rested with Swaim and the eventual judgment of the twelve officers of the Reynolds court.6 Swaim invited General Crook, the first witness called, to review the circumstances of the March campaign and particularly the charges. Swaim certainly knew that other witnesses would have much more to say about Reynolds’s conduct on March 17, but the

JUSTICE SERVED

307

charges were uniquely Crook’s. He explained it all very carefully. During the testimony Swaim introduced into evidence the proceedings of the Noyes court-martial, wherein lay the basis for Reynolds’s alleged perjury. In Jenkins’s cross-examination Crook repeated his narrative with responses that were direct and unvarying. Jenkins particularly asked Crook how it was that he knew of the actions at Powder River, as he had not been present. The general explained that he commonly heard things as camp rumor but also had many informants, specifically mentioning Major Stanton, Captain Egan, Captain Mills, and Lieutenant Bourke. Crook’s questioning consumed half the day. Jenkins and Swaim engaged in a robust give and take, and the court also asked questions. Crook’s responses were almost always damaging to Reynolds.7 While Crook’s testimony was rather stiff and almost perfunctory, such was not the case with Swaim’s next witness, Major Thaddeus Stanton. By then Stanton’s beliefs and reasonings were well honed. In fact many of the preferred charges rested on his outspoken and widely repeated criticism. In direct questioning Swaim led the paymaster through episodes of the battle. Stanton recounted the dividing of the command, the specific directions given to each of the battalion commanders, Moore’s failure to take his properly assigned position, Stanton’s foray with a handful of men to Moore’s assigned position before the shooting began, Reynolds’s befuddlement over abandoning the camp and driving away the ponies from the village, and his disinterest in recapturing them after they were taken back by the Indians.8 Jenkins’s cross-examination took Stanton’s story back to Cheyenne before the campaign began, wondering aloud for the court’s benefit how it was that a paymaster joined this campaign and came to be chief of scouts. Jenkins used that opening to probe into how Stanton communicated with newspapers and which papers he wrote for. Only the New York Tribune, Stanton replied. Jenkins pushed: what other papers? “None other,” said Stanton. “Did you write a written account of it to a gentleman in Washington, the letter afterwards appearing in the Washington Chronicle?” Jenkins asked.

308

AFTERMATH

“Not as I wrote it. I wrote a letter to a man in Washington that was afterwards changed and published there without my knowledge or consent,” acknowledged Stanton. Jenkins would not let the matter go. He was referring to the “imbecility” letter, of course, and sought a public admission from Stanton that the contents were somehow false. “You have told us all the papers you wrote for, the New York Tribune and this letter that appeared in the Washington Chronicle.” “I did not write for the Washington Chronicle,” snapped Stanton. Still Jenkins would not relent. “Have you given all the papers you wrote for?” “I wrote to no other paper but the New York Tribune,” Stanton repeated.9 Jenkins’s cross-examination continued through the remainder of the day, probing into nuances of the paymaster’s contacts with Reynolds and his interactions with others. Often Jenkins asked Stanton for the “exact language used” when Reynolds spoke or gave orders or what authority Stanton had exercised. As a staff officer, beyond directing civilian scouts, Stanton of course had no authority whatsoever other than the sway of his personality, and Jenkins seemed to relish reminding the court of this. Certainly these officers understood the fact, but Stanton nevertheless addressed the point. In one exchange, as he related the story of his leading the small squad of men to the position above Flood Creek, he told the court that he had moved on his own. “They were not obliged to obey my order,” he said. At another point, Jenkins’s questioning unwittingly provided Stanton with an opportunity to speak to the destruction of the meat and other foodstuffs encountered in the village. The paymaster testified that “there were all kinds of provisions. Thousands of pounds. I should say there was enough provisions for the command certainly for three or four days.” Jenkins wondered: could it have been carried away? “There were plenty of pack saddles burned. We might have saddled animals in the herd and carried it away,” Stanton said. Realizing that his line of questioning was affirming one of the

JUSTICE SERVED

309

specifications against his client, Jenkins abruptly changed the subject. He was not yet finished with the paymaster, however, but on that note the court adjourned for the day.10 Elsewhere in the city that Saturday, a curious observer, Lieutenant Colonel Richard I. Dodge of the Twenty-Third Infantry, recently arrived from the Powder River Expedition, captured in his diary a sense of the mood in Cheyenne at the start of the courtmartial. “The town is full of officers,” he wrote, with “more rank than I have seen together since the war. Pope, Crook, King, Gibbon, Sykes, Flint & lots of others too numerous to mention.” Dodge determined to see them all and spent Saturday evening mostly in Pope’s room, “where there was quite a crowd. Mrs. Crook is here looking fat & jolly as ever, & the Genl himself was more cordial than he ever was to me before. Jeff Davis is on the Court, & he & Crook spent the evening in Pope’s room, both very quiet” (Davis was Dodge’s regimental commander). Dodge spent the night at the Railroad House where Reynolds was lodging and continued his visit on Sunday morning, “gassing with the old fellows,” before continuing to Omaha.11 The court reconvened on Monday, January 9. After taking roll and reading and approving Saturday’s proceedings, Stanton was recalled and Jenkins resumed his questioning, now focusing primarily on Egan’s opening attack and the timeliness of others coming to the village. In the midst of questions about Egan Jenkins abruptly blurted: “You say you did not write that letter for the Washington Chronicle?” “I did not,” exclaimed Stanton. “Give the name of the man you wrote the letter to,” Jenkins demanded.12 Before Stanton could reply, Swaim objected and the question was withdrawn. Jenkins’s cross-examination ended on a peculiar note: “State whether you entertain any feelings of hostility towards Colonel Reynolds.” “On the contrary I have the highest respect and regard for him. I have no ill feelings whatever,” replied the stalwart paymaster. Ultimately, Stanton was questioned longer than any other witness

310

AFTERMATH

testifying before this court. His testimony spanned forty-two handwritten pages. He proved an imperturbable witness for the prosecution, although Jenkins’s questions about his corresponding for newspapers, whether directly or indirectly, had captured the court’s attention. The questioning would return to that point at a later time.13 Swaim then called Alexander Chambers, recently promoted to lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-First Infantry and presently detailed to the General Recruiting Service at Fort Columbus on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. Swaim prompted Chambers to recollect the conversation between Reynolds and Crook in his quarters at Fort Fetterman. The former Fourth Infantry officer was brief at first, delivering a short statement that he characterized as “the substance of the conversation.” Swaim snapped back: “I don’t want the substance, I want the conversation actually as it occurred as near as you recollect it.” Chambers then offered a nonstop narrative spanning three recorded pages, recalling Reynolds’s arrival at his quarters that morning, the colonel’s repeated sparring with Crook over the matter of withdrawing the charges, and Crook detailing the many faults he found with his performance and his description of the expedition as a failure, primarily because of the colonel’s misconduct. Jenkins’s cross-examination was brief and challenged none of Chambers’s testimony.14 If nothing else, Swaim’s sharp riposte cemented a tone that colored the remaining proceedings. He wanted all of the facts, repeatedly offered, that in his view supported the government’s case that Reynolds had indeed abandoned valuable property, abandoned the dead and a wounded man, given up the ponies and then failed to recapture them, and perjured himself in the Noyes courtmartial. As witness after witness stepped forward Swaim ground away at those points, piling up direct and corroborating testimony that made his case. Often the testimony was riveting. Anson Mills, called on the court’s third day, related events that were both gripping and filled with acrimony. After being summoned by Reynolds in the dawn light of March 17 and apprised of the attack plan, Mills told how he was held in reserve while Egan moved to charge the village

JUSTICE SERVED

311

because he possessed pistols. Everyone else had assigned duties except himself. Mills told how he debated the plan with Reynolds. But the colonel held firm and only belatedly directed him to lead M Company in support of Moore, while Johnson’s company escorted the commander to the field. Mills told of arguing with Moore when he realized that the captain intended to hold his battalion on the mountaintop and advance no farther and of struggling to obtain Moore’s promise not to fire from there. After finally gaining the village, and being fired upon by Moore, Mills recalled sparring with Reynolds yet again about burning everything, urging instead that meat, saddles, and robes be saved. He told plainly of the death of Private Dowty of Johnson’s company and of his repeated requests to Reynolds for support as Company M held the northern line. “We were in a pretty tight place,” he declared to the court.15 Mills’s most graphic testimony concerned the dead and wounded, describing how Reynolds at one point late in the morning coldly ordered a seriously wounded man of Company K (actually Company F) to be dropped where he was. And he related the Ayers story as he knew it, from the moment he first learned that a man from his own company had been left in the village. He told how Reynolds would not permit him to go back and retrieve the soldier, how others volunteered to do so, and how he heard later, while marching away, that “Ayers was scalped.” It was damaging testimony, incriminating to Reynolds and painful for Mills.16 Jenkins’s cross-examination was feeble, a telling point that affirmed Mills’s authority as a witness. The sum of his testimony on cross filled only four pages of the record (whereas Swaim’s examination of Mills filled twenty-four pages). Mills responded to innocuous questions about abandoning his overcoats and the relative timing of companies reaching the village. Finally, after recalling Mills’s recommendation to Colonel Reynolds that he dismount in the village because he was an opportune target for some Indian, Jenkins asked: “Did he dismount in accordance with your suggestion?” “No sir,” said Mills. “Did he act on any suggestion you made?” “No sir.”17

312

AFTERMATH

Near the end of his case Swaim called Captain James Egan to the stand. Although asked about the general deployment that morning, Egan spoke only of his own company’s actions, testifying about the opening of the battle at 9 a.m. and the difficulty of passing through the tree and deadfall-strewn village. He also told of the richness of the camp, including the large quantities of meat, all destroyed on Colonel Reynolds’s order. “Could it have been taken away?” Swaim asked. “It could have been taken away on packs. It could have been put on travois in the village and taken away, or it could have been put on pack saddles on the mules and taken away, with the means we had with us and the means we found in the village.” Egan’s testimony was confidently offered.18 In Jenkins’s cross the counselor repeatedly focused on the word “retreat” that Egan had used in describing the withdrawal from the village. Asked to explain, Egan more carefully allowed that “I would not take it as a retreat. I looked upon it that the troops were moving out of the village in unnecessary haste.” “That is all you are complaining of, the haste with which it was done?” Jenkins challenged. “I don’t complain,” replied Egan. But Jenkins would not let the matter rest and in pushing the issue unwittingly scored a point for the prosecution. “Was it not well conducted a far as your knowledge extended?” Jenkins asked. “I think not,” Egan replied. “In what respect?” “In respect that the dead men were left on the field. They could have been taken off and their bodies decently buried. And there was a wounded man left on the field who could have been taken off,” Egan finished. It was as if Swaim was asking the questions, not the lead defense counselor.19 The newspapers in the city and in Laramie were paying careful heed to the proceedings. The Daily Leader in its January 9 edition quipped that “the Reynolds court martial is ‘making haste slowly.’” It “gives promise of being one of the most thorough-going and exhaustive trials on the records of the army,” the paper said. “Major

JUSTICE SERVED

313

Levaine [sic], Judge Advocate, literally pumps every witness dry, and Gen. Jenkins, counsel for Gen. Reynolds, makes the most of every opportunity to gain a point for his client.” In truth, of course, prosecutor and defense attorneys were both scoring points for their clients.20 Near the end of his case Swaim called three enlisted men in quick succession to address the issue of abandoning Lorenzo Ayers on the battlefield. Each trooper offered brief and sometimes mesmerizing testimony. In hindsight Swaim’s questioning was perplexing. The prosecutor was seemingly content to make the point simply that an M Company man was abandoned in the village but otherwise never pressed the witnesses—Jeremiah Murphy, Albert Glawinski, and George Maitland—beyond establishing that they remained with the soldier in the northern end of the camp until circumstances forced their deserting him one by one. Murphy, the last to leave, testified that he paused, looked back, and saw the Indians swarm and kill the hapless soldier. Latter-day inquisitors are left to wonder why three able-bodied soldiers could not themselves carry off the wounded man (two men shouldering the wretch and the third providing covering fire) or why two soldiers could not have done so after Glawinski ran; or what came of Maitland, the second man to abandon Ayers, bound presumably for Captain Egan and his comrades of Company K. Egan apparently never said a word about this (that was recorded anyway), maybe because Maitland never in fact came to him. Then again, Swaim never asked. Swaim and Jenkins posed simple questions to these men, received simple responses, and were apparently content to agree on the point that a desperately wounded man was abandoned in the village and killed by Indians. These soldiers were not on trial, of course.21 Swain had called fourteen different witnesses for the prosecution in testimony spanning four full days. Satisfied with his effort, he announced on January 10 that the government’s case was closed, subject to the right to examine two witnesses for the prosecution who had not yet arrived. Jenkins in turn asked for one day to prepare his defense. Pope granted the requests and adjourned the trial until Friday, January 12.22

314

AFTERMATH

✧✧✧✧ John Jenkins faced a considerable challenge when conceiving and presenting a meaningful and, he hoped, opinion-altering defense that rationalized and justified his client’s actions on March 17 and 18. Reynolds may have burned the meats, abandoned the dead, and lost the ponies. But surely there were mitigating factors or extenuating circumstances explaining why that and every other act had occurred. Also germane was his client’s reputation as a soldier, a man whose sensible judgment and long service could cast doubt on his culpability. In the prosecution’s case Swaim offered the court an array of indisputable facts testified to and corroborated by reputable witnesses. In the days to come Jenkins would invite twenty men forward and through them do his best to obfuscate the painfully obvious. Perhaps the charges could yet be explained away. On January 12 attention turned fully to Jenkins, who called his first witness, First Lieutenant William Rawolle, commander of Company E, Second Cavalry. On the counselor’s lead, Rawolle told his story, explaining at the start that he was not privy to any of the orders given to the battalion officers regarding the attack and only got his orders from Moore, his battalion commander. In relating to the court his role in the early moments of the fight, he relied on a map that he had drawn the previous April for use in Moore’s court-martial, which many had presumed would occur that spring. Using this, he pointed to positions on the mountaintop and down the slope to the north where Stanton urged him to go and where the paymaster ultimately did go. He dismissed his own disinclination to venture there by explaining simply that had he done so he and his company would have been discovered. Jenkins did not push the issue. The defense attorney then asked questions about supplies in the village, pack saddles, and meats. Rawolle consistently replied that he had not gone exploring and did not know what was there, although he did offer the opinion that it would have been quite impractical to have loaded and carried off any captured provisions. That was the business of the pack train and “practical men,” he stated.23

JUSTICE SERVED

315

On cross-examination Swaim tried repeatedly to induce Rawolle more fully to justify remaining on the mountaintop during the initial attack. Yet the veteran lieutenant would only repeat that if he and his company had moved any closer they would have exposed themselves to the Indians and betrayed the attack. Anyway, “if troops had been there the Indians would have crossed on the other side and scattered. There was a wider flat on the other side before they got to the bluffs than on the side [where] we were.” Furthermore, he repeated, he was under Moore’s orders to remain where he was, even telling Stanton that if he found fault with that position he could take it to the captain and discuss it with him. Rawolle’s testimony was often evasive and ultimately neither hurtful to Reynolds nor helpful to Swaim.24 One of Jenkins’s most effective witnesses was Captain Henry Noyes, called to the stand on January 13. Like others before him Noyes was invited to reflect on the attack as he experienced it. “Suppose there had been a large amount of meat, provisions, and pack saddles, would it have been practicable, under all the circumstances, to have loaded it on those animals?” Jenkins asked. “Not if we were to get to the mouth of Clear Fork that night,” Noyes replied. “Were the Indian ponies wild?” Jenkins asked. “Like all Indian ponies when white men come around them, they don’t smell what they are used to, and it would be difficult to get them up,” Noyes responded. “Would it be difficult to catch them and saddle them?” “Yes, sir. I know that I had two of them lariated for myself, and they bolted into the middle of the herd as soon the rope went over their head,” the captain said. (These were the lariats often commented upon by Stanton’s scouts as the pony herd was driven to Lodge Pole Creek.)25 Before adjourning that day General Pope directed the jurors’ attention to D. S. Mitchell, a local photographer recently returned from the Black Hills, who sought to pose the group for several photographs on the boardwalk fronting the Inter-Ocean. Pope endorsed the effort. Draped behind the men was a massive American flag, a regulation-size army storm flag likely brought to town

316

AFTERMATH

from Fort D. A. Russell. Pope sat front and center, eyes focused sternly to the left, flanked on either side by the bearded, gray- and white-haired colonels of the jury and backed by its four lieutenant colonels and two majors, including the trim judge advocate Swaim. In his studio Mitchell also individually photographed most of the officers of the court and many witnesses, even posing General Crook alone and then with his wife, Mary. Most of these Great Sioux War images survive, serving as yet another testimonial to the significance of these proceedings underway in Cheyenne.26 Among the most telling witnesses in Reynolds’s defense was Captain Alexander Moore, who soon would stand trial for his own actions at Powder River. Moore was the eighteenth witness called on Reynolds’s behalf and was invited to tell the court about various conversations and encounters on March 17 and 18. “Did you see Mills?” Jenkins asked. “Yes, while “asking for reinforcements,” Moore replied. “Colonel Reynolds came to me,” he continued, “and I told him Captain Mills had been asking for reinforcements. He told me not to mind him.” “Did you see Colonel Reynolds at any time during the fight in the Indian village?” Jenkins probed. “I saw him all the time at short intervals. He passed me very frequently,” answered Moore. “What was Colonel Reynolds’ behavior under fire that day?” Jenkins asked. “I think he was very cool,” replied the captain. At that point a member of the court interjected with a question about the captain’s position on the mountaintop. “Did Major Stanton say to you or in your hearing you might as well be at Cheyenne as at the position you occupied, for all the harm you could do the Indians?” “No sir,” replied Moore, “he did not say that to me. I recollect saying that myself when Grouard first took me where I dismounted. I said that to Grouard.” Moore’s prevarication was momentarily ignored. In any case he was referring to two widely separate locations.27 The final witness that particular morning was Lieutenant John Johnson, questioned by Jenkins about the colonel’s behavior on the

JUSTICE SERVED

317

battlefield. Johnson replied unhesitatingly that Reynolds was “cool and courageous.” Jenkins then announced to the court that the defense had no other witnesses present at that time. Pope therewith adjourned the Reynolds court, subject to recall, and proceeded to other business: the general court-martial of Captain Alexander Moore, Third Cavalry.28

✧✧✧✧ Since April Moore’s pretrial anguish had mirrored Reynolds’s. Both officers had wished for early courts-martial. Moore, like Reynolds, viewed the charges against him as a smear on his character as a soldier. The needs of the Sioux war precluded early trials, because key witnesses were absent, campaigning with General Crook throughout the summer. The length of field service for some was then prolonged in the fall with the nearly immediate commencement of Crook’s third campaign. So much time elapsed, in fact, that Moore was released from his summer-long arrest and returned to the command of Company F, then stationed at Fort Laramie at the conclusion of Crook’s second deployment. But the charges stood, and on November 2, 1876, Crook asked the assistant adjutant general of the Division of the Missouri to proceed with the captain’s trial. Within weeks the Adjutant General’s Office in Washington directed that the trial be held in conjunction with Reynolds’s courtmartial. The officers of the court, including its president, Brigadier General Pope, and judge advocate, Major Swaim, would serve in their same capacities.29 The opening preliminaries paralleled those of Reynolds’s trial. Pope in this instance convened the court at 1 p.m. on January 16 and called roll. When Moore was asked whether he objected to any of the members, he responded “No.” The members and stenographer were duly sworn. Moore then introduced his three-member defense team, the familiar John Jenkins, Captain J. Scott Payne of the Fifth Cavalry, and First Lieutenant Rawolle of the Second Cavalry. At the time Payne was stationed with his company at Fort D. A. Russell, elements of the Fifth Cavalry having replaced the Third there in October at the conclusion of the Big Horn and

318

AFTERMATH

Yellowstone Expedition. Like Christopher Hall of Reynolds’s defense team, the thirty-two-year-old Payne had also read in the law. He was an 1866 Military Academy graduate who resigned his commission in 1868 to practice law in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he also served as a commissioner for the United States Circuit Court. In 1873, at his own request, he was reappointed a second lieutenant in the Sixth Cavalry and then transferred to the Fifth Cavalry in time to participate in the Sioux war, notably at Warbonnet Creek and Slim Buttes. Payne knew officers like Stanton, Mills, and Noyes well, having campaigned with them that summer. It is unclear whether he had any previous association with Moore beyond a casual one.30 The inclusion of Rawolle on Moore’s defense team has never been explained. He had no known legal training and was the lead defense witness in the Reynolds trial, where he had offered mostly evasive testimony. As commander of the second company in Moore’s battalion, he may well have been a witness coveted by both the prosecution and defense, but as a member of the defense panel he was recused. With opening protocols attended to, Moore was arraigned on two charges: the disobedience of the lawful commands of his superior officer and violations of the Forty-Second Article of War, “Misbehavior before the Enemy.” The first charge had a single specification, Moore’s alleged willful disobedience in the attack on a village of Indians. The second charge carried two specifications: first, that Moore remained at the outset so far from the point of attack as to render his command of little or no service; second, that he had failed to maintain the position taken by his battalion during the destruction of the village and was unwilling to cooperate with the first battalion of the expedition, even when requested to do so. Moore pleaded “Not Guilty” to the specifications and charges.31 Colonel Reynolds was the first witness called. Swaim’s direct questioning was brief and limited to the orders that the colonel had given Moore. Reynolds said: “He was ordered to proceed to a convenient place on the mountain and there dismount his battalion, descend the mountain on foot, and take up a position as near to the

JUSTICE SERVED

319

village as possible, without discovering himself to the Indians. He was there to assist the charge by the mounted company and immediately advance with his battalion upon the village to aid the charge, and do all the damage possible to the Indians—intercept them if possible, or kill them as they went out or do whatever damage could be done.” The orders seemed clear enough. “State whether the accused carried out your instructions in reference to attacking the village,” Swaim asked. “He did do so,” Reynolds replied.32 Swaim did not endeavor to elicit Reynolds’s analysis of the landscape or Moore’s positions on it, the central issue in determining whether he properly supported the attack. Not doing so may have been an oversight or more likely a conscious decision based on Reynolds’s evident demeanor. Yet, to what must have been Swaim’s delight, Jenkins raised the subject almost immediately. When Jenkins asked Reynolds in his cross-examination whether Moore had cooperated with the attack, the colonel again responded affirmatively: “He obeyed my orders and instructions,” and “cooperated by rushing on the village with his battalion as soon as the charge was commenced by the mounted company.” “State whether or not he remained so far distant from the point of attack as to render the services of his command of little use or service in the capture and destruction of the village,” Jenkins continued. “He did not,” Reynolds acknowledged.33 Swaim pushed the point in his redirect, inviting Reynolds to “state whether in passing down from your position on the bluff, or about that time, you passed the position occupied by Captain Moore on the ridge or bluff, and there stated that Captain Moore was 1000 or 1500 yards away, and might as well be in Texas, or words to that effect, stating it in the presence of Lieutenant Morton.” “I might have made some such statement where Captain Moore’s battalion was up on the mountain, where they were dismounted. I made no such statement referring to his subsequent position,” Reynolds replied. Swaim, of course, was asking about Moore’s pause on the mountaintop, while Reynolds persisted in

320

AFTERMATH

referring to his later position in the valley. He would focus on that point in his interrogation of the next witness, Thaddeus Stanton. Reynolds was then dismissed as a witness.34 Swaim opened his questioning of the paymaster by asking whether he had heard the orders given to Captain Moore and if so to describe them. “Yes sir. I heard the orders. Captain Moore was to take a position covering the rear of the village,” Stanton replied. “What do you mean by the rear of the village?” Swaim asked. “That portion of the village lower down the river as we approached it,” Stanton replied. “State whether or not those instructions were carried out by the accused,” Swaim continued. “They were not,” said Stanton. “State if you know how far distant the command of the accused was from the village during the attack,” Swaim pushed. “It was variously estimated at from 1000 to 1500 yards. I called it about 1000 yards,” answered Stanton. Swaim knew that he had identified a key point and sharpened his focus. “You state that he failed to obey the orders given him by Colonel Reynolds. State in what respect he failed to obey them.” Stanton replied: “He failed to obey them by not going to the position he was ordered to take up to prevent the escape of the Indians.” “Could he have gone there?” Swaim asked. “Yes sir. I went there with a small party,” replied the assertive major. Swaim was not yet finished with his questioning, but by then the court had already had a full day, with Reynolds’s trial that morning and the Moore case commencing in the afternoon. General Pope recessed the session, to resume on Wednesday, January 17.35 The second day of Moore’s trial opened with Swaim and Jenkins arguing rules of evidence. In his opening that morning Swaim had asked Stanton where it was that Moore took position. Jenkins immediately objected, arguing that the first witness (Reynolds) had testified to the orders Moore had received and that the accused had obeyed those orders and acted all the while to the full satisfaction

JUSTICE SERVED

321

of the commander. Jenkins maintained that Swaim was now trying to prove that Reynolds gave different orders and that the prosecution must be bound by that original testimony. Jenkins cited Simon Greenleaf’s classic legal tome A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, Section 442. It generally declared that a party who offers a witness as proof of his cause is not later permitted to impeach his own witness. Swaim was quick to rebut Jenkins’s contention, also citing Greenleaf, Sections 443 and 444, which described exceptions to the general rule. His witness had surprised the prosecution by testifying contrary to Swaim’s expectation, so he therefore was “not precluded from proving the myth of any particular fact by any other competent testimony.” The courtroom was cleared for mature deliberation. When the session reconvened, Pope announced that Jenkins’s objection was overruled.36 Stanton was now allowed to respond to the question of where Moore had taken his first position. “He took position as near as I remember about 1000 yards from the village, perhaps farther, from the position he should have gone to.” Stanton then explained how he had argued with Moore on the mountaintop, asserting that that was not the rightful position for his battalion, and how he himself had taken the position intended by Reynolds and fired into the retreating Indians.37 Stanton’s direct testimony, brief as it was, was confidently offered and struck directly at the heart of Moore’s defense. Jenkins knew this too, and his cross-examination was a withering flurry of questions aimed at impugning the paymaster’s recollections in any way possible. Who was present when Reynolds gave his orders? How far were you from Colonel Reynolds? Where was Captain Moore? Was he nearer to Reynolds than you? What was the weather at the time? Had you been to bed the night before? Stanton responded consistently with clear and precise answers, but still the barrage continued. How many yards from the village was the captain’s position? “There was nothing said about that,” replied Stanton. “I understand you said he was 1000 yards away from the position he should have gone to,” countered Jenkins. “He was not going in the direction of it,” asserted Stanton.

322

AFTERMATH

“How many yards was he away from the position he was to occupy?” counsel continued. “1000 yards. I think the village was nearer than the point he was to occupy,” responded Stanton. Did not the village come between? “No sir.” How far out of the way was it? Would he not have had to cross the river? “How could the accused have gone from the position he did occupy to the position he should have occupied without discovering himself to the Indians?” “I only know from my own experience. I went there without doing it,” Stanton replied near the last. The major was unflappable.38 Swaim called nine witnesses, eliciting testimony that introduced and corroborated details that were brutally damning to Moore. Satisfied with his effort, by midday on Thursday, January 18, Swaim announced to the court that the prosecution’s case was closed. Without pause Pope turned the continuation of the trial over to Jenkins; Moore’s defense commenced immediately. Like Swaim, Jenkins opened his case by calling Colonel Reynolds to the stand. Reynolds testified about the several hospitals on the field, one at “the corner,” as that landmark was called, and another where Noyes herded the ponies; frequently seeing Moore on the line; the continuous fire on the lines; and his general satisfaction with Moore’s conduct that day. Jenkins specifically addressed the issue of Moore’s behavior. “State if you noticed anything during that fight in regard to the conduct of Captain Moore that would in any manner reflect on him,” Jenkins said. “Nothing whatever,” Reynolds replied. “State if at any time during the day you had a conversation with Captain Mills in reference to the conduct of Captain Moore in which Captain Mills told you that Captain Moore was misbehaving himself, or anything of that kind,” Jenkins continued. “Nothing of that kind occurred,” Reynolds responded. “I do not recollect that Captain Mills spoke to me on that subject himself at all, though it is possible he may have done so.” “Was Captain Mills excited at any time during the fight?” Jenkins asked.

JUSTICE SERVED

323

“Yes sir, he was a good deal excited from my first interview with him throughout the day. He sent to me many times for reinforcements, commencing soon after Captain Egan’s men were withdrawn. I gave him all of Captain Egan’s men I could spare, and I had to reply to him afterwards that I had no more men to give him,” Reynolds said. “Was there any more danger facing Captain Mills’s line than that of any other officer engaged there?” Jenkins prodded. “I don’t think there was. There might be a little more firing at his line from the Indians on the bluff, firing at Captain Moore’s men, and the bullets flying over their heads and going in among the men on Captain Mills’s left flank,” Reynolds replied.39 Jenkins worked particularly hard to neutralize testimony about Moore firing blindly from the mountaintop. “State if on the field when approaching the village, or about that time, you heard firing on your left, on the mountain side,” he said. “I don’t recollect now that I did,” Reynolds replied. “State if at that time you sent Lieutenant Morton out to have the firing stopped for the reason that the firing party were firing in your troops,” Jenkins continued. “No sir, not for any such reason. I sent Lieutenant Morton I think twice to caution officers to fire carefully, and not too often, and for them to caution the men to fire quietly; when they saw an Indian to get him, they were firing too much and wasting their ammunition,” Reynolds explained. “Was Lieutenant Morton with you all the time till you reached the village?” Jenkins asked. “I think he was,” Reynolds replied.40 In his cross-examination Swaim directly challenged Reynolds’s assessment of the mountaintop firing. “Do you say Lieutenant Morton did not leave you and ride out on the mesa as you were approaching the village?” he asked. Reynolds responded: “I don’t recollect that he did. I am not positive. He might have done so. I remember that he was very near me when I received the note from Captain Mills.” Swaim asked again: “After that, when near the village?” “He might have done so. I don’t recollect.”

324

AFTERMATH

Swaim turned bellicose: “Do you recollect hearing a volley fired from the spur of the mountain back to your rear?” “I don’t recollect,” replied Reynolds. “Might it have been so and you not recollect it?” Swaim challenged. “Yes sir. It might be so,” Reynolds conceded. “My attention was directed at the time to the front and right.”41 Jenkins closed his case on April 19 after introducing two character witnesses and a sheaf of commendations collected by Moore over the years. On redirect Swaim was brief, calling only Crook and Major Burnham, judge advocate of the Department of the Platte, to affirm administrative issues related to the charges brought against the captain. Neither testimony was consequential. Jenkins asked for time until Monday morning, January 22, to prepare a written statement. Pope granted the request, adjourned the trial until then, and proceeded to other business.42

✧✧✧✧ The suspended Reynolds trial reconvened at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, after having been adjourned on January 16, awaiting the arrival of additional defense witnesses. Jenkins had the floor and called Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall, Third Cavalry, inviting him to tell of his role in arresting Reynolds at Fort D. A. Russell in mid-May. Swaim did not question Royall, and the brief story seemed intended only to highlight the embarrassment suffered by Reynolds since the end of the campaign. Jenkins then recalled Lieutenant Colonel Chambers and confronted him with a copy of a telegram dated February 28, 1876, that he had sent from Fort Fetterman to Lieutenant Colonel Bradley at Fort Laramie. Jenkins questioned carefully because Bradley sat among the jurors at the head table, and he knew that besmirching a juror could hardly benefit his case. Jenkins asked Chambers whom he was alluding to when referring to “others in the same boat.” Chambers hesitated for a moment and then recalled the names of Johnson, Mills, Moore, and Noyes.

JUSTICE SERVED

325

“Was it General Crook who mentioned these names?” Jenkins inquired. “I think not. I had but very little conversation with him about the campaign,” Chambers replied. Jenkins posed several final questions to Captain Noyes about the provisions captured and packed on Indian ponies at Slim Buttes. Noyes conceded that that had occurred but said that troops had not packed that meat. It “was packed by citizen employees—regular packers who did it rapidly, being skilled packers,” said the captain. On that note Jenkins rested Reynolds’s defense.43 Swaim called several rebuttal witnesses, including Major Burnham, judge advocate of the Noyes court-martial. Reynolds had repeatedly claimed that charges in the Noyes case and his own were changed in hurtful ways. Burnham allowed that charges were indeed “corrected,” implying that the changes were editorial but hardly hurtful. Burnham’s testimony wholly negated Reynolds’s contention. Swaim then announced to the court that he had concluded his rebuttal presentation. It was 2:30 p.m., and Pope adjourned the trial for the day.44 The Reynolds court-martial convened for its tenth day on Saturday, January 20. Colonel Reynolds stood before General Pope and the panel and asked for time until Monday morning to prepare a written statement in his defense. Pope granted the request and adjourned the court until 10 a.m., Monday.45

✧✧✧✧ The fates of Colonel Joseph Reynolds and Captain Alexander Moore would soon be in the jurors’ hands. The two courts-martial had lasted a combined thirteen days, spanning nearly two and one-half weeks. Twenty-nine different witnesses were called in Reynolds’s trial and sixteen in Moore’s. An entirely unrelated court-martial (the Edward Lieb trial) would soon reconvene in Cheyenne, important now only in that it brought even more officers to the city and drew its jury in part from the Reynolds-Moore panel. Bourke had noted that the city was full of officers, as many as one hundred drawn

326

AFTERMATH

for these various courts as jurors, witnesses, prosecuting and defense attorneys, and accused. The city’s newspapers had followed the proceedings closely too and nearly every day offered something for readers. As the sessions neared their end they gushed compliments. “Maj. Swaim is proving himself a most able and expert advocate,” observed the Daily Leader, “while in Judge Jenkins he is pleased to find a foeman ‘worthy of his steel.’” Stenographer H. C. Hollister and his clerks earned praise from the Daily Sun: “Mr. McDonald, the able assistant of Judge Advocate Swaim, says the amount of verbal and documentary evidence taken is simply astonishing considering the short length of time the court has been in session. The assistant and clerks [Hollister and his crew] have worked almost day and night in order to keep up with the proceedings, and certainly deserve great credit.”46 The members of the court about to adjudicate these cases had much in common with each other and with Reynolds. All were senior officers in the army and more nearly at retirement age than mid-career. Six were colonels and regimental commanders like Reynolds, while Pope commanded a department. Eight were West Pointers like Reynolds. All were veterans of the Civil War, in which seven had worn general’s stars, as had Reynolds. All except Franklin Flint and Pinkney Lugenbeel had been brevetted for gallant and meritorious service, the army’s recognition of valor in combat, in some of the war’s bloodiest engagements—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga. In fact service at Chickamauga was a hallmark, with Reynolds, John King, Jefferson Davis, and Luther Bradley having served there, some with distinction. Ironically, George Crook was also a Chickamauga veteran, as was David Swaim, who was wounded there. By any measure service in the Civil War and brevets for gallantry were dimensions of army brotherhood, common bonds in the small and exceedingly proud Old Army.47 Army brotherhood was apparent in other ways as well. All summer long the Army and Navy Journal had filled its columns with news of this Indian war. Powder River and the next great battle of the war, Rosebud Creek (on June 17), consumed deserved column space. These were not glorious fights. In early July both

JUSTICE SERVED

327

were eclipsed by the exhaustive reportage on Custer, the Seventh Cavalry, and Little Big Horn, generally considered another smear on the reputation of the Old Army. Biographical sketches of the Seventh’s deceased officers, the immediate campaigns to erect a monument to Custer and assist bereaved widows and orphans, stories of survivors, and the War Department’s chagrin over an almost unfathomable battlefield failure both pained and captivated readers. Such coverage may have also inspired readers and perhaps even the twelve jurors empaneled to render judgment on two officers who had failed in this war first and had sullied the reputation of the brotherhood. It is impossible to know to what degree, or if at all, the injured pride of the Old Army factored into this panel’s thinking and deliberation. But jurors and witnesses alike were prideful soldiers in a proud army whose luster had indeed been tarnished at Powder River. The senior officer of the accused pair had ignominiously abandoned his dead to the enemy and surrendered the only prize retained from the field—those Indian ponies—and then cavalierly dismissed any notion of taking them back. The close of these courts-martial suggests that this panel not only understood its challenge but was fully prepared to right an insult to the army family.48

✧✧✧✧ At 10 a.m. on Monday, January 22, General Pope reconvened the Moore court-martial. Captain Moore stood and announced to the court that he had no statement to make in his defense, even though on Friday Jenkins had asked for time to prepare one. Swaim submitted the case to the court without remark. The courtroom was then closed for deliberation. Pope and the eleven jurors “maturely considered the evidence” and voted on specifications and charges, one by one, with Major George Ruggles, the junior-most officer, rendering a decision first and Pope, the ranking officer, last. The record is silent on the length of the deliberation, usually a telling detail in jury proceedings. They then rendered their verdicts as follows: “Not Guilty” of the specification to the first charge (willful disobedience of a lawful command) and “Not Guilty” of the

328

AFTERMATH

first charge. “Guilty” of the first specification to the second charge (misbehavior before the enemy). “Not Guilty” of the second specification to the second charge (failure to support the attack) and “Not Guilty” of the second charge. But “Guilty” of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.49 In rendering its verdict on the second charge, the court embraced a procedure unique in military jurisprudence. Normally an accused found guilty of a specification or even parts of a specification is also found guilty of the charge. But here the court was allowed to find otherwise. Moore was charged with a specific offense. The material allegations were proved, evidenced by the court’s finding of guilty for a specification. But the court did not believe that the findings in the specification, though proved, fully sustained the charge as laid. Yet the facts clearly established a breach of military discipline. In such a case “the accused may properly be found guilty of a specification and not guilty of the charge, but guilty of ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.’”50 Such findings were rather common in military tribunals. After rendering the verdicts, the court sentenced Moore to be suspended from command for six months and confined to the limits of his post for that same period. General Pope signed the proceedings, making the findings and sentence official pending the review and approval of the War Department.51 At 12:30 p.m. Pope convened the Reynolds court-martial for its eleventh day. Reynolds was acknowledged, stood before the court, and read a handwritten statement (fifty-six pages of foolscap) explaining and frequently rationalizing his actions during the campaign, particularly on March 17 and 18. While at times greatly informative, Reynolds seized appropriate opportunities to criticize others, especially Crook. The command should not have been divided, he argued. An attack by the whole command, instead of three-fifths of it, would have produced results much more satisfying to the general. Furthermore, Crook retained the packers and mules, and “put it out of my power to comply with any order” to take away village property. Reynolds said that he “strained every nerve to re-unite the columns,” but Crook did not. And “I never

JUSTICE SERVED

329

gave an order to leave any dead man on the field.” He added that he did say “leave the body here for the present and report to your company commander,” supposing that “company commanders would look after their own dead.” In regard to the unfortunate Ayers episode, the government’s case “shows that I could in no wise be responsible for it,” despite Captain Mills’s “endeavors to shift the responsibility upon me.” Anyway “[I] did not feel like bringing on an engagement and risking more lives, when I felt certain that the man must have been dead for some time.” As for recapturing the Indian ponies at Lodge Pole Creek when the command was without rations and forage and was encumbered by wounded men, “I thought, and think now, that I had no right to divide the command, that a portion of them might go on a ‘wild goose chase.’”52 Reynolds saved his harshest criticism for Major Stanton, upon whom he heaped the most strident rebuke that he and his legal advisors could possibly conjure. “Here, with perfect confidence, I place my case in the hands of the court,” he wrote, continuing: The United States Army is entitled to know whether a noncombatant paymaster can be taken from his legitimate duties, to act as a newspaper correspondent on an Indian campaign, and, giving strength to his statements by his official position, can, under the smiles and encouragement of a Department Commander, denounce in the public prints, as cowards and imbeciles his fellow officers, both his superiors and inferiors in rank, and not even have his conduct inquired into—nay more, he has been openly and defiantly continued on a duty, out of his proper sphere and for which he is not qualified. Those whom he had vilified have not received so much as a respectful answer to repeated and urgent application for a Court of Inquiry, on the contrary they have been in the harshest manner placed in arrest with restricted limits and there suffered to remain until an authority superior to the Department Commander interfered and the laws of the land finally released them.53

330

AFTERMATH

The reading of Reynolds’s written defense took nearly all afternoon. The court accepted his statement without remark, marking it as Exhibit P, and adjourned for the day, to meet at 9:30 a.m. on January 23.54 Upon reconvening on the trial’s twelfth day, Judge Advocate Swaim stood and presented his reply, reading a twenty-three-page “Statement of the Case by the Judge Advocate.” Swaim minced no words. “The offenses alleged against the accused in this case are based upon the conduct of an expedition commanded by him.” He added: “He was instructed . . . to preserve and keep such meats and property as might be captured.” “The attack . . . on the village was of such a disconnected character that one company was in the village sometimes without proper support while other troops of the command were not engaged at all.” He abandoned “in the village the dead (unburied) and one at least of the wounded.” No guard was appointed to look after the safety of the pony herd and it “was recaptured in the morning of the next day by a small force of Indians.” Swaim was forceful, mentioning name by name the witnesses attesting to the facts of the specifications and charges and then explaining the evidence in the case. All of it, he concluded, amounted to “misbehavior before the enemy and a running away, as contemplated in the 42 Article of War,” declaring: “It is shown in evidence.” Swain also addressed the many personal attacks in Reynolds’s statement: The accused “traveled out of his line of defense to criticize the official conduct of his Department Commander and therefore . . . introduce matters wholly foreign to the issues . . . alleged against him. Accused also animadverts severely on the conduct of Major Stanton, a witness who he says published the names of officers . . . as cowards and imbeciles. While Major Stanton was not justified in making any publication of such matters . . . the newspaper articles attributed to him are shown to contain truthful statements of the facts and fully corroborated by the evidence.” Swaim concluded by hammering the point that Reynolds “offers nothing to disprove the offenses alleged against him and fully

JUSTICE SERVED

331

established by competent evidence.” The court accepted Swaim’s concluding statement and marked it as Exhibit Q.55 Pope then cleared the room, and the court commenced its deliberation. As with the Moore case, the record does not reveal the length of time consumed in deliberation. Many more charges and specifications were at issue than in the other trial. Swaim was not in the room—this was not the place for the judge advocate, only the twelve jurors. Upon reconvening after having “maturely considered the evidence,” the court found Reynolds “Not Guilty” of the first specification of the first charge (fleeing the battlefield), “Guilty” of the second specification of the first charge (failure to save valuable property), and “Guilty” of the first charge. The court found Reynolds “Guilty” of the specification of the second charge (abandoning the dead and wounded) and “Not Guilty” of the second charge but “Guilty” of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. The court found Reynolds “Not Guilty” of the first specification of the third charge (losing the ponies), “Guilty” of the second specification of the third charge (failure to recapture the ponies), and “Not Guilty” of the third specification of the third charge (failure fully to support the attack). In regard to the fourth and fifth specifications of the third charge (offering perjured testimony in the Noyes court-martial and offering additional perjured testimony in the Noyes court-martial, respectively) the court found “the facts but attach no criminality thereto.” The court found Reynolds “Guilty” of the third charge. Finally, it found him “Not Guilty” of the first and second specifications of the fourth charge (preferring charges against Noyes and running away from the Lodge Pole Camp, respectively) and “Not Guilty” of the fourth charge.56 As with the Moore case, the court embraced procedures allowed for in regulation. In the instance of the second charge it found the accused guilty of specifications to the charge but not guilty of the charge itself, and instead guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. In the instance of the third charge, where the term “guilty” was considered inappropriate, the court instead used an acknowledged expression: “find the facts but attach no criminality thereto.” In all, however, Reynolds was judged guilty of three charges and sentenced to be suspended from rank and

332

AFTERMATH

command for the period of one year. The judgment was devastating to the colonel, though others, on review, thought it mild.57 Pope signed the proceedings, making the findings and sentence official pending the customary approval of the War Department and in this case the prospective review by higher authorities. But he was not yet finished and appended this admonishment to the final two pages of the proceedings: In terminating this case the court deems it both proper and necessary to invite the attention of the President of the United States to the fact that a commissioned officer of the army in violation of long standing orders and regulations, was not only permitted to write and publish criticisms upon the military operations then going on but that he accompanied the expedition with the knowledge and by the authority of his commanding officer, knowing that he was engaged as a correspondent. This court cannot but regard such a practice pernicious in the extreme and condemns it as unsoldierly and detrimental to the efficiency and best interests of the service.58 Swaim objected to Pope’s reproach and added a renunciation: “The foregoing remarks of the court following the sentence were made a part of this record against my advice.” General Pope had the last word. “There being no further business before it, the court adjourned sine-die.”59

15 ✧✧✧✧

Loose Ends

S

o it was over, or so it seemed. The papers associated with both trials, Reynolds’s 396-page transcript and seventeen mostly unpaginated exhibits and Moore’s 163-page transcript and additional thirteen exhibits, were immediately forwarded by Judge Advocate David Swaim to the War Department in Washington. The members of the court and witnesses scattered to other duties or went home. The findings were deliberately withheld from the public pending the necessary reviews, although at the close of each respective session Moore and Reynolds stood before the members and listened as Pope delivered verdicts and sentences. It seems unlikely that these outcomes remained in close confidence for very long, though the Cheyenne newspapers printed nothing about the trials for days. The Bureau of Military Justice in Washington commenced a careful review of both cases. These were verdicts and sentences destined for scrutiny by the secretary of war and the president, a protocol plainly anticipated. Moore’s case was handled first. On February 12 Brigadier General William McKee Dunn, judge advocate general of the army, signed a review of Moore’s folio, a 28-page report carefully summarizing the proceedings, findings, and sentence, which he found “regular.” Dunn noted several peculiarities, however, including the fact that the testimony of the commanding 333

334

AFTERMATH

officer was controverted by all other witnesses and that the court in the main accepted the statements of those witnesses in preference to those of their superior and commander. Dunn had the Reynolds folio at hand while reviewing Moore’s case and in several instances found that the testimony of certain witnesses was further explained by their testimony in the other trial. Often Dunn’s words were harsh. At one point he wrote that “whatever be the conclusion as to this point, it can, in my opinion, scarcely be doubted that the accused unreasonably delayed his movement, executing it in a shy and faint-hearted manner, and allowing the critical moment of the attack to pass without cooperating in it.” Dunn noted that at the close of Moore’s trial he made no argument or address to the court but filed certain testimonials in which his services were very highly commended. Dunn thought that Moore’s sentence, imposed by a “court of marked dignity and authority,” was so mild a punishment that he could scarcely do otherwise than recommend its approval.1 Five days later, on February 17, General Sherman added his endorsement. “I have carefully read the foregoing, and such parts of the Proceedings of the General Court Martial as are essential in the trial of Captain Alexander Moore, 3rd Cavalry, and am convinced that he failed to do his whole duty as an officer in the attack of Crazy Horse’s village on Powder River, March 17, 1876, and that the sentence of the court is very mild, but should be carried into effect.”2 By March 1 the review was complete. In General Court-Martial Orders No, 29 issued by the Adjutant General’s Office on that date President Grant approved the proceedings and findings and then, in consideration of the honorable and gallant record of Captain Moore’s previous military service, remitted the sentence. Marked with the conviction of a general court-martial for weakness in a Great Sioux War battle, Moore returned to duty, rejoining his company at Fort Laramie.3 The same day that Sherman endorsed his review of Moore’s conviction, General Dunn signed his review of Reynolds’s folio. Like Moore’s, his 37-page report on the colonel’s case likewise summarized the proceedings, findings, and sentence. All was again found to be “regular.” At the outset, however, Dunn took exception to

LOOSE ENDS

335

the “admission of immaterial evidence,” focusing particularly on the questions regarding Stanton’s newspaper work that had moved Pope to add his admonishment to the record. He especially chastised Swaim for scolding the court for its criticisms of Stanton’s conduct, labeling it “uncalled for.” Dunn concluded, however, that such irregularities did not affect the validity of the judgment.4 Dunn was blunt in his review. While Crook’s instructions to secure the meat and ponies and take some prisoners “were not in the form of positive formal orders, they clearly and intelligibly expressed the wishes of the commander of the expedition.” Despite having ponies, packing harness, and a force available and having remained in the camp for upward of four hours, Reynolds made no attempt whatsoever to carry out those instructions. He also criticized Reynolds for abandoning four casualties in the village, which can hardly be doubted, despite Reynolds’s emphatic denial in his address to the court of having given an order to leave any dead man on the field. Dunn saw Reynolds’s allowing the Indians to recapture the ponies as another clear neglect of duty. In Dunn’s view these were grave errors. “The main facts found by the court, that the property was destroyed instead of being preserved, that the dead were left on the field, and that no attempt was made to recapture the herd of ponies, are all admitted by the defense, and, in my judgment, the circumstances relied upon as excusing them were quite insufficient for the purpose.” The judgment, Dunn concluded, was not only fair and correct but also indulgent, and the sentence imposed a just and moderate punishment.5 Dunn let stand the court’s reprimand of Thaddeus Stanton. He found it acceptable that Stanton had accompanied the expedition as a correspondent for the New York Tribune. But Stanton’s use of defamatory language in characterizing a fellow officer of the United States Army was inexcusable or, as the Pope court expressed it, “unsoldierly and detrimental to the efficiency and best interests of the service.” The testimony “sufficiently explains the remarks of the court,” snapped Dunn.6 As everyone anticipated, President Grant took a special interest in Reynolds’s case because the colonel was a valued old friend. On the day of the verdict in Cheyenne (February 22) Sherman

336

AFTERMATH

telegraphed Reynolds, advising him that the president would place him on the Retired List if he cared to reapply. On March 2 Grant sent word to Sherman that he had no intention of taking action in Reynolds’s case, even while he was remitting Moore’s sentence. On March 8 Grant wrote Sherman again, hoping that the secretary of war “will take the same action in the case of Gen. Reynolds that was taken in the case of Maj. Moore.” Sherman added his own postscript to the bottom of Grant’s note: “I heartily concur.” The exchanges suggest the quiet but purposeful posturing of the president, secretary of war, and general of the army. The president needed only to wish for an outcome, not specifically to order it, to see a desired result played out in its final course.7 On February 17 Sherman added his review to Dunn’s report. The members of the eminent court, all officers of rank and experience, gave every possible weight, he wrote, to the peculiar circumstances involving that command on Powder River. Their findings were sustained by the best testimony, and the sentence was moderate and just. “Feeling profound sympathy for the officer charged for his great intelligence and worth by reason of past national service, yet in the interest of discipline I must approve the sentence and recommend its execution.” On March 8 the Adjutant General’s Office issued General Court-Martial Orders No. 30 confirming the proceedings and findings of Reynolds’s court-martial, adding: “In view, however, of the long, distinguished, and faithful service of Colonel Reynolds, the President has been pleased to remit the sentence.”8

✧✧✧✧ Comity was hardly the watchword in Moore’s quarters or in Reynolds’s room in the Railroad House in Cheyenne or his family’s residence in Lafayette, Indiana, in the days and weeks following the verdicts. Both officers spent inordinate time drafting bitter and vengeful court-martial charges against colleagues and subordinates or seeking to reinstate charges preferred the preceding April and May, when formal charges had been brought against each of them. Reynolds’s ire was directed at George Crook, Thaddeus Stanton,

LOOSE ENDS

337

Anson Mills, James Egan, and Alexander Chambers, each for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” and “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline,” with specifications detailing alleged slights and battlefield misconduct. Moore directed his indignation at Crook, Bourke, and Stanton. As these filings poured into Omaha, the department tabled some and passed others to Division Headquarters in Chicago, which in turn forwarded Crook’s paperwork to the Adjutant General’s Office in Washington. Sheridan added an endorsement speculating whether these charges were preferred in the interest of public service or due to ill-will. The army presumed the latter, of course, and that this was a manifestation of a mind-set already well addressed in Dunn’s review of Reynolds’s proceedings: he regretted the colonel’s “severe reflections upon his Department Commander” but suggested that “such reflections frequently and naturally occur in the arguments of officers on trial . . . and are scarcely warranted by the facts.” On March 13 Adjutant General Edward D. Townsend advised Reynolds that in his judgment the interests of the service would not justify a trial and that he would not order a prosecution.9 But Reynolds was a scorned man and unwilling to allow the matter to rest. On March 14 he wrote to the adjutant general again. In fairness to himself, he declared, he wanted the charges against Crook referred to the secretary of war for his consideration and action. By then Sherman had had enough. He covered Reynolds’s letter with his own lengthy admonishment, severely criticizing the request. The president had already treated Reynolds liberally, he wrote, in remitting a penalty imposed by a strong court after a long and impartial trial. Moreover, “Crook has been, is now, and will be for a year personally & actively employed in actual war, and it is simply impossible to suspend operations in order to gratify Col. Reynolds.” Secretary of War George McCrary agreed. “I concur with General Sherman that the public interests require that this controversy should now cease. The charges against Gen. Crook will not be prosecuted.” On April 10 Townsend informed Reynolds that his request had been accommodated and his papers indeed had been laid before the secretary of war but that McCrary concurred with Sherman that “public interests require that this controversy

338

AFTERMATH

should now cease, and decides that the charges against General Crook will not be prosecuted.”10 Even as Reynolds’s campaign of retaliation against Crook and others was playing out, his retirement prospects brightened. In late February Sherman had encouraged him to apply to the Retirement Board. Reynolds had followed through on the day of his verdict. Wasting no time, on February 23 the Adjutant General’s Office ordered him to appear immediately in Chicago. Grant had offered the retirement option, and the army desperately wanted it. A board was hurriedly convened in Chicago consisting of five senior officers presided over by Colonel Delos B. Sacket, inspector general of the Division of the Missouri, and two surgeons, with Lieutenant Colonel Michael V. Sheridan, General Sheridan’s brother, serving as recorder. On February 26–27, in formal proceedings not unlike those of his court-martial, the board received into evidence statements from several of Reynolds’s personal physicians and questioned him openly about his afflictions and the physical ordeal of the recent Big Horn Expedition. The surgeons conducted a careful physical examination. The results were most perplexing. Instead of finding Reynolds unfit for service, the board found a reasonably fit and capable fifty-five-year-old. He admitted as much himself, at one point telling the board: “My general health is pretty nearly as good as usual, the affection (paresis) referred to in the certificate before the Board still exists but not so severely as it did last fall.” That, of course, was the wrong statement at the wrong time to the wrong examining body. After “maturely weighing the evidence laid before it,” the board concluded that Reynolds was not incapacitated for active service. It could hardly do otherwise.11 Official Washington was dumbstruck but wasted no time in addressing the issue again. This time the adjutant general ordered Reynolds’s sympathetic Fort D. A. Russell surgeon, Major John F. Randolph, to the board. In April 1876 Randolph had signed several excruciatingly detailed letters describing the colonel’s afflictions and had previously advised him against participating in the Big Horn Expedition, calling it “almost suicidal on his part.” The new board convening in Washington on March 3 included other sympathetic members besides Randolph: Colonels Thomas L. Crittenden of the

LOOSE ENDS

339

Seventeenth Infantry and Orlando M. Poe of Sherman’s personal staff. Crittenden, like Reynolds, was a veteran of the Battle of Chickamauga and Poe of Sherman’s March to the Sea. This time the statement produced by the doctors declared an array of physical infirmities disqualifying Reynolds from active duty, and the colonel offered only a simple written statement affirming his various ruptures. He was not questioned about his present health; in fact no questions were asked of anyone. After weighing the evidence, the board found that Reynolds was “incapacitated from active service, and that said ‘incapacity’ is an incident of service.”12 Joseph Reynolds’s retirement was several months in coming, as the army awaited a vacancy on its Retired List. When one appeared, his retirement was ordered by the Headquarters of the Army on June 25, 1877, and made effective on that date. That this occurred on the one-year anniversary of Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn may or may not have resonated in Washington, but General Sheridan, Custer’s friend and patron, surely would have noted that small symbolism even as he clearly saw the larger benefit in allowing the colonel’s retirement. Writing privately to Sherman from Chicago, he declared: “I deem his retirement of the greatest importance in the settlement of many regimental troubles which are very detrimental to the public service and which you can well realize cannot be overcome except by a new colonel.” Sherman was of like mind, telling Sheridan “that of all things[,] we need young colonels of cavalry.” The goat of Powder River was gone, although in the coming years he made himself impossible to forget.13

✧✧✧✧ Upon the completion of the courts-martial, Crook wasted no time in returning to the field, bound directly for the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies on the White River to determine the disposition of the northern Indians and make plans accordingly. Crook, Sheridan, and others presumed that this Indian war was a long way from over and that yet another campaign was probable. The general traveled in good company, accompanied or joined by Bourke, Stanton, and others, including Strahorn. Strahorn was again a dutiful recorder,

340

AFTERMATH

although this time not for a newspaper but in a finely detailed private letter to Mary Crook. The topic of the common chatter on the outing, according to Strahorn, was less the state of Indian affairs than the mushrooming fallout from the courts-martial. “About every mail brings a fresh invoice of charges against the General and Colonel Stanton,” he confided, while Lieut. Bourke and Colonel Mills have to be content with receiving only about one set per week. They [Reynolds and Moore] display more cheek and arrogance than the most accomplished book-peddler or life-insurance agent. Of course Capt. Egan will be charged with capturing an Indian village single-handedly against orders. As for me the General says they will be content with cutting me to pieces for doing a soldier[’]s duty when I was nothing but a timid newspaper correspondent. The general only laughs at these things and says the more they stir up this affair the worse it will be for them if a higher investigation is made. To make matters worse, a Cheyenne man—believed to be Posey Wilson—has just written a letter to the “Omaha Herald” scorching Colonel Stanton for his “vaingloriousness” and throwing dark hints at others on our side, while Reynolds and Moore are all at once remembered to have performed most brilliant service.14 Posey S. Wilson, a Cheyenne merchant and banker, had indeed just written a scathing letter to the Omaha Daily Herald, anonymously signed “Christian.” He attempted to expose and challenge Stanton for his slanderous attacks on Reynolds and Moore that first appeared in the Washington Chronicle, a radical newspaper whose editor, he declared, was a friend of Stanton’s for whom the paymaster had written before. Wilson’s vitriol was ignored, but his grudge against Stanton, very personal in nature and seemingly grounded in more than a friendship with Reynolds, would surface again in another attack a few decades hence. Meanwhile Crook counseled calm, urging that nothing be said or done.15

LOOSE ENDS

341

One of the more puzzling undertakings in the months following the verdicts was not of Reynolds’s doing but of Captain Moore’s, or more likely a relative operating on his behalf. Someone published Moore’s complete court-martial proceedings and added an interesting “Synopsis and Examination of the Foregoing Testimony, &c., &c.” The most probable backer and publisher was Moore’s father-in-law, retired Major General Daniel Tyler of Montgomery, Alabama, where the 127-page book was published. Tyler, an 1819 graduate of the Military Academy, had resigned from the army in 1834 and engaged in several lucrative business enterprises until the coming of the Civil War, when he returned to uniform and served in the federal army until 1864. He is largely remembered for a poor showing at First Manassas. After the war Tyler moved to Alabama and founded an iron manufacturing firm, was president of the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad, and acquired extensive landholdings in Guadalupe County, Texas, just east of San Antonio.16 General Tyler took a keen interest in his son-in-law’s troubles and may have authored (or more likely co-authored with him) the “Synopsis and Examination,” a carefully worded, self-serving interpretation of the captain’s actions at Powder River. Moore was depicted as blameless for all that happened there, but not so Mills. In the writer’s view Mills perhaps ought to have remained with Moore on the mountaintop, with the result that “more Indians might have remained in the village and greater destruction [been] accomplished by the command.” Instead Mills got into the village early, “which probably helped to drive the Indians out of it prematurely.” The logic was convoluted throughout, and the “Synopsis” added nothing to the story, aside from its mere existence as an unusual apologia. But the captain doubtless shared the trim little publication with anyone who asked about Powder River, a controversy that clouded the brief remainder of his career. Mills’s immediate or later reaction to the pamphlet is unknown, but he was afforded nearly the last word on the battle, writing in his wellregarded autobiography, My Story, in 1918 that the Reynolds attack was a lamentable failure, and that it “is perhaps better not to go

342

AFTERMATH

into details . . . further than to say that several officers were tried for misconduct.” All things considered, Mills exhibited remarkable post–Powder River decorum.17

✧✧✧✧ Courts-martial and dreary personnel squabbles have unduly muddied the wake of the Powder River battle as if they were the sole consequences of a great fight in an extraordinary Indian war. In truth, of course, the impacts of that battle rippled through the lives and legacies of common soldiers, entire cavalry regiments, and Indians and altered the progression of the war itself. Certainly the battle tipped the Northern Cheyenne people fully toward war. Old Bear and his followers had been making their way to Red Cloud Agency when their village was struck by Reynolds’s soldiers. The brutal reality of that day propelled them instead into an alliance with Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and further emboldened those already headstrong traditionalists. The alliance of northerners continued to swell throughout the spring as agency people fled westward and others rallied to the cause. In previous years the fairly routine seasonal migration from the agencies when the grass greened occurred around the time of the annual spring buffalo hunt, mixed as always with the spiritual and cultural renewal of the Sun Dance. This year, however, especially in the shadows of Powder River, no one doubted that the unprecedented numbers of spring departures chiefly served the purposes of making bold and defiant war. Other disaffected Indians joined the burgeoning camp, even the venerable old patriot (renegade in the eyes of whites) Inkpaduta, a Santee Sioux who had played a leading role in Indian strife and resistance in Iowa and Minnesota as early as 1857. He led a small band of followers to Sitting Bull’s camp that spring. By mid-June the massing Indians numbered nearly twelve hundred lodges and wickiups and upward of seven thousand people, of whom nearly two thousand were men of fighting age. Still more were en route, including other Northern Cheyennes from Red Cloud Agency. This ascendant Indian coalition easily checked Crook at Rosebud Creek

LOOSE ENDS

343

on June 17 and defeated Custer when he attacked their huge village on the Little Big Horn River eight days later. The legacy of army defeat arced from that tragic start on March 17 to Little Big Horn, and through it all Sheridan, Crook, and Terry could only puzzle over what had gone wrong.18 The Powder River fight had other consequences as well. In the Second and Third Cavalry regiments, the returning horse stock of the participating companies was universally exhausted, some of it beyond recovery. The monthly reports from the two regiments told the story, as horses, like firearms, saddles, and soldier accoutrements, were accountable property. All but one of the ten companies reported horses lost in the field, with individual tallies in the nine companies varying from two to fourteen horses per outfit and referring specifically to animals “lost in action,” meaning that they had “died” or were “abandoned on the march.” Collectively the nine companies lost seventy horses in this manner (nearly 12 percent of the cavalry stock on the campaign). This wreckage had another dimension too. After the campaign concluded, every company commander reported “unserviceable” horses varying from one to twenty animals per company, collectively numbering another eighty horses that had somehow returned to their originating posts but were condemned afterward and disposed of or relegated to draft work (the sort of horses that pulled Terry’s and Custer’s controversial Gatling guns on their deployment). In all, nearly 25 percent of the cavalry horses on the campaign were consumed by the movement. Replacing horse stock was a never-ending chore for cavalry regiments anyway, now greatly exacerbated by such horrendous losses. It was while performing this duty of procuring horses in May 1876 that Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall, Third Cavalry, chanced upon General Crook and was ordered to serve Reynolds’s arrest order at Fort D. A. Russell.19 Reynolds’s abandoning the battle’s fatalities on the field led to a backlash of another sort. Captain Egan was right to complain at the colonel’s court-martial that the dead men “could have been taken off and their bodies decently buried.” Reynolds weaseled an explanation for his action, suggesting that this was a company commander’s responsibility, when in truth he ordered it. As

344

AFTERMATH

common soldiers are wont to do, the troops fixated on this and complained bitterly among themselves. An inordinate number did something about it by deserting. Desertion was a plague in the Old Army caused by many factors, including the actions of bad officers. Reynolds’s disrespect for the dead had crossed the line. A deserter captured in Cheyenne told a newspaper that “men left their colors because it is reported among them that in the event of a battle and defeat the wounded are left in the hands of the Indians.” Bourke expressed the matter similarly, in mid-May confiding privately to his diary that “the troops of the 3d Cavalry and some of the 2d, engaged in the recent expedition are very badly demoralized and many are deserting . . . saying they would not fight under men who would leave their dead and dying to fall into the hands of a savage foe.”20 The tallies of desertion in the ten participating cavalry companies were striking, with five men of the Second Cavalry deserting in April and forty-four men in May, eighteen of them from Noyes’s Company I alone. The numbers were nearly as pronounced in the Third Cavalry, with six men deserting in April and thirty-seven in May (Moore’s Company F and Mills’s Company M each suffering ten of those desertions). Noyes decried the desertions occurring in his company and was fully cognizant of the demoralization underlying it. But he was then under arrest at Fort Laramie and relatively powerless to do anything about it aside from complaining in writing to his commanding officer. Noyes’s subalterns were on detached service, and the company was commanded by an officer detached from another unit, which compounded the situation. In all 96 men “left their colors,” as the soldier expressed it, from a general command of some 630 enlisted cavalrymen in the ten companies, a rate of 15 percent of the detailed force. By comparison, these same ten companies recorded only twenty-one desertions in the comparable period a year earlier, a rate of barely 3 percent.21

✧✧✧✧ Criticism of Crook’s orthodoxy in orchestrating the Big Horn Expedition was surprisingly limited. The premise of mustering an

LOOSE ENDS

345

elaborate mule train in support of a column of mobile cavalry— not infantry—ranging deeply into Indian country, using an astute corps of Indian trackers as guides, and timed in the most difficult of seasons made perfect sense at first glance. Supplies carried on mules extended the range of the column well beyond the range of its wagons, whether in winter or summer, and Crook embraced this mode of transport skillfully and to the limits of its capability. One army officer likened a typical army expedition of the day to a dog fastened by a chain, “within the length of chain irresistible, beyond it powerless. The chain was its wagon train and supplies.” The notion is apt. Crook’s mule train extended the links of that chain. The lone known contrarian, predictably, was Colonel Reynolds, who bemoaned in a note to Sherman that “winter campaigns in this latitude should be prohibited. Cruelty is no name for them. The month of March has told on me more than any five years in my life.”22 In hindsight, certainly, it can be seen that Crook faced one vast critical difference on the northern plains than in Arizona, where his tactics were honed and served him so remarkably well. The difference had nothing to do with astute packers, sturdy mules, Indian trackers, or the weather and everything to do with the extreme dimensions of the geography. The great expanse of Sioux Country, spanning the breadth of the northern plains, was a landscape more than thrice the size of Apachería; its distances were simply daunting. While Crook was seemingly mobile enough when leaving his wagon train at Crazy Woman’s Fork on the evening of March 7, his perfectly orchestrated mule train still could not carry sufficient food and grain north to sustain his column for more than several weeks as he searched out an elusive enemy. His logisticians had worked the math and computed rations and grain per man and animal per day. Their calculations, and Crook’s, had presumed grass on the range and meaningful grazing for the stock (corn was only meant to augment the grass), but instead the command encountered snow thoroughly obscuring the range. In summer the daunting distances and elusive enemy would be the same, and the range still confoundingly limited. By then Crook would encounter vast burnt-over areas, endless grazed-over landscapes (particularly in

346

AFTERMATH

the Rosebud Valley), and the parched bleakness of the late-season grasses. The distances made it imperative that the captured food stocks of an enemy village be preserved to sustain the troops, while the horses and mules were forced to survive (or not) on their own. By the time Grouard spotted Indians on Otter Creek on March 16, Crook’s food and grain stocks were nearly depleted. Had the Powder River battle not prolonged the campaign by several days, Crook would have been bound for Fort Reno soon enough anyway for the simple want of forage and rations. Notions of the presumed extension of the chain drove Crook’s mule-train strategy as he embarked on his Sioux war campaigns, but in the end he was no better served in March than in August and September. Supply caches were always too far away, whether wagons corralled in the lee of the Big Horn Mountains, depots on the Yellowstone River, or provender purchased on the open markets of Crook City and Deadwood in the Black Hills. This was not Arizona and some hundreds of Apaches, as dismal and challenging as those campaigns were. These were the boundless northern plains, familiar ground to the Sioux and Cheyennes, plagued with the same southwestern-type heat in summer and perverse arctic blasts in winter, where forts and civilization existed only on the distant margins of an extreme land, in a world truly apart from Arizona.

✧✧✧✧ The story of the abandonment and killing of Private Lorenzo Ayers of Mills’s Company M, Third Cavalry, had not reached its end yet either. At Camp Sheridan, Nebraska, on October 16, 1877, Privates Albert Glawinski and Jeremiah J. Murphy received Medals of Honor for their actions (their heroism) at Powder River. The citations were brief, as they so often were in the nineteenth century. Glawinski’s read simply: “During a retreat he selected exposed positions, he was a part of the rear guard” and Murphy’s: “For distinguished bravery in the fight in Crazy Horse’s village, Powder River, Montana, March 17th 1876, in endeavoring to carry off a wounded man, as the main command was leaving the field.” Anson Mills likely initiated the medals and wrote the justifications, although he and

LOOSE ENDS

347

First Lieutenant Augustus Paul were on leave in October when the medals were presented by Second Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, who then commanded the company.23 We can read much into this action. Glawinski and Murphy were two of the last three soldiers to see Ayers alive. History is silent about the third, Private George H. Maitland of Egan’s Company K, Second Cavalry. Maitland left the army in 1878 upon expiration of his service. He was then a sergeant, with his character noted as excellent. None of the three saved Ayers; instead they abandoned him alive, one after the other. Each soldier related portions of his role in the affair at Reynolds’s court-martial. History might have wished that judge advocate Swaim had asked additional questions of the three, but he did not. Yet having to revisit the episode in January 1877 may have reopened a sore. Mills testified to the matter too, and his guilt over having abandoned a man in the village was evident and likely never forgotten. Were these medals meant to assuage psychological wounds, including the captain’s? Were they rightly merited? Glawinski and Murphy were not involved in any other heroics on the field. Did these awards bring peace to the men of Company M? The criteria for awarding Medals of Honor was different at the time, when no alternative recognition existed, aside from the Certificate of Merit. Glawinski and Murphy lived into the twentieth century. In 1917 Murphy proudly proclaimed: “I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery, March 17, 1876.” But how do we measure distinguished action? When is not enough enough?24 Ironically, from the grave Lorenzo Ayers had the final word on his pathetic death and its perplexing aftermath, or at least his father did. In October 1894 Richard Ayers was seventy-five years old, a widower since 1865, once a shipwright on Cape Cod but now long unemployed and destitute. He applied for a “Father’s” pension based on his son’s army service. He was not initially diligent in following through when confronted by the maze of paperwork associated with his application. In the lack of response, the case was suspended by the Bureau of Pensions, until reopened at his request in May 1901. This time Ayers secured help in working through the welter of declarations and affidavits affirming his marriage,

348

AFTERMATH

Lorenzo’s mother’s death, Lorenzo’s birth and middle name, Richard’s other children, his work history, physical condition, extended residence in the Falmouth Poor House, and that Lorenzo provided money from time to time for his father’s support. The case was clinched by a statement from the War Department confirming that Lorenzo, a private of Troop M, Third Cavalry, was killed in action, March 17, 1876. The review and approval took an agonizingly long while and was only completed in August 1903 after a senior examiner, having briefed the file, berated a subordinate for the delay and demanded its immediate completion. Richard ultimately received $12 per month, but the old man’s relief (he was then eighty-three) was sadly short-lived. He died at Nashua, New Hampshire, on August 2, 1904.25 Hospital steward William C. Bryan eventually received a Medal of Honor too. His case was quite different from Glawinski’s and Murphy’s. Bryan was discharged from the army in 1878, with his character noted as excellent. He then commenced a long and varied career as a miner in Leadville, Colorado; reporter for the Sporting Times magazine; track and football coach at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; track coach at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden; and owner of a gymnasium in Santa Barbara, California, where he died in 1933. Bryan was commissioned a captain in the national guard in Illinois in 1898, served during the Spanish American War, and was ever after known as Captain or Cap Bryan. On his own initiation in 1898, he applied for a Medal of Honor for distinguished gallantry at Powder River, providing the War Department with a sheaf of affidavits, including his own long, richly detailed narrative of service on the Big Horn Expedition and in the battle, with accompanying warm endorsements from Henry Noyes, then colonel of the Second Cavalry; Thaddeus Stanton, newly retired brigadier general of the Paymaster Department; and Major Curtis Munn, the campaign’s medical director. On June 15, 1899, the Adjutant General’s Office announced that Bryan would receive the medal. His citation read: “For distinguished gallantry in action on the Powder River, W.T., March 17, 1876, when, having his horse shot and killed under him, he voluntarily continued to fight on foot, and during the action under a severe fire from the

LOOSE ENDS

349

Indians, and alone, succeeded in conveying two wounded soldiers to places of safety, thereby saving them from capture by the enemy.” Time had not obscured Bryan’s memory or his story. In their own writings Bourke and Strahorn had said much the same thing about the young hospital steward in words of the warmest praise.26 By the time Thaddeus Stanton endorsed Bryan’s application for a medal, he was an aged soldier. Spurred by his enthusiasm for Indian campaigning, he returned to the field in 1876, joining Lieutenant Colonel Eugene A. Carr’s movement of Fifth Cavalry north of Fort Laramie in late June and July and then Crook’s advance from Goose Creek in August, participating in the fight at Slim Buttes, Dakota, and the infamous “Starvation March.” Stanton was later brevetted lieutenant colonel for gallant service at Powder River. Not one to miss an Indian campaign, he also went afield with Colonel John Smith (of the Powder River courts-martial) in the Bannack War of 1878, during the troubles with Utes in 1879 and 1885, and during the Wounded Knee campaign of 1890–91, less as a campaigner in each instance than as an overly curious paymasterobserver. Stanton faithfully served as a paymaster in Salt Lake City, Omaha, and Chicago from 1895 until his retirement in 1899 as paymaster general of the army in Washington, having earned the rank of brigadier general.27 While Stanton’s service record was varied and distinguished, an examination of his personnel file suggests that he considered his actions at Powder River his foremost legacy as a soldier. His voluminous file contains dozens of documents and letters pertaining to the fight, many of which are wonderfully helpful in understanding his action there. Personnel files sometimes contain adverse letters too, and Stanton’s is no different. In 1898 Posey Wilson, the cantankerous Cheyenne businessman then residing in Washington who had excoriated Stanton in a letter to the Omaha Herald in 1877, did so again in a letter to the General of the Army, decrying Stanton’s public effort to retire as a major general. His “military record is ‘padded’ and even false,” charged Wilson. “When I lived in the Department of the Platte he sought command of scouts in 1876, at which he was a wretched failure. After the attack on Crazy Horse’s village he preferred charges of cowardice against

350

AFTERMATH

true and tried officers of rank, like General Joseph J. Reynolds and Col. Alex Moore.” Wilson’s letter was ignored by the army, although Stanton did not retire as a major general. Reynolds by then was also living in Washington, and it seems worthwhile pondering any Wilson-Reynolds connection in this regard. Stanton died in Omaha on January 23, 1900, seven days shy of his sixty-fifth birthday and was buried several days later in Arlington National Cemetery in stately Section One on the hilltop surrounding the Custis-Lee Mansion. Today his imposing granite grave marker sits on a slight rise barely one hundred feet from Joseph Reynolds’s grave, also in Section One. We can almost imagine the two still twisting and mutually pointing fingers.28 Of the three officers tainted by Powder River, Henry Noyes recovered rather well. His services as a campaigner were valued by Crook, whom he rejoined immediately. He served with distinction at Rosebud Creek and Slim Buttes. Promoted to the Fourth Cavalry in 1879 and the Fifth Cavalry in 1892, Noyes’s duties took him to posts throughout the West. In 1892 he returned to his old regiment, the Second Cavalry, as its colonel, serving with it until he retired in 1901 due to age. Noyes was remembered at the time as “growler and hair-splitter,” or so Bourke recorded. Such quirks in part perhaps explain his stridency at Powder River and the next day at the Lodge Pole Creek camp. He lived a long life and was a gracious correspondent with Sioux War researcher Walter Camp, with whom he carried on an extensive exchange of considerable worth today. Noyes died in Berkeley, California, in 1919, at the age of seventy-nine and is buried in the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio.29 Alexander Moore’s life ended reasonably well too. He resigned from the army in 1879. If a Powder River stigma affected his final years in uniform it is not apparent, although he endured several isolated field assignments in the late 1870s, including one as commander of the army’s remote Camp Hat Creek, a dusty little onecompany outpost north of Fort Laramie on the Black Hills Road. In retirement he oversaw the development of his father-in-law’s vast ranch holdings in Texas and acquired substantial property of his own, becoming a wealthy man noted for improving cattle

LOOSE ENDS

351

stock. His son, Dan Tyler Moore, was a career army officer too, an aide to President Theodore Roosevelt, and a founder of the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill. Alexander Moore died in 1910 at the age of eighty and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.30 Joseph Reynolds’s post–Powder River life was not nearly as emotionally carefree or productive as Noyes’s and Moore’s, and he never ceased being a thorn to the army. He repeatedly requested from the War Department copies of what he called the judge advocate general’s “endorsement,” meaning Dunn’s summary review of his trial, and also asked that the secretary of war reopen his case. They were parallel but quite different issues. On the question of reexamining his case, the answer from the War Department was a consistent “No.” On one occasion Secretary of War McCrary reminded Reynolds that he had already been exhaustively tried, that every material witness had been fully heard, and that neither military discipline nor justice would be served by such an action. Reynolds had heard it all before. His attorney, John Jenkins, having returned to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, soon after the conclusion of the court-martial, took up the same cause and received similar dismissals from the department.31 Reynolds’s wish to examine the judge advocate general’s report on the case was a much thornier issue. Inasmuch as the report expressed the army’s views of sensitive internal matters (motives, accusations, the workings of the court, the merits of the case and judgment) it was consistently viewed as confidential, and a copy was never provided to the colonel. At one point Reynolds told the adjutant general that he wished to publish his own statement and other pertinent reports, including the “endorsement,” much as Moore had, for “circulation among my friends and for their information in the premises.” The notion horrified the War Department, which only wanted the old case forgotten. Ironically, in the mid1880s several of the Bureau of Military Justice’s internal responses to Reynolds’s pestering requests were signed by Brigadier General David Swaim, who in 1881 succeeded Dunn as judge advocate general of the army.32 Reynolds lived out his life in Washington, D.C., having acquired a home on S Street Northwest in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.

352

AFTERMATH

He and his wife, Mary, were joined there by their son, Bainbridge, who resigned his own commission in 1891. Reynolds died on February 25, 1899, at the age of seventy-seven and was buried in Arlington, with his remains escorted from home to the cemetery by an army caisson, body bearers, and band. Mary joined him there in 1913.33 Of the many key figures who played a part on that stark day in March 1876, history says the least about Old Bear, who then and forever after was a shadowy figure in the long struggle of the Northern Cheyennes. It is undisputed that he was an Old Man Chief and that the Powder River village was largely composed of his followers. It is also acknowledged that he was later present in the Cheyenne camp circle at Little Big Horn and in the village on the Red Fork of the Powder when it was attacked by Ranald Mackenzie’s troops in November 1876. Accounts place him among the five hundred Northern Cheyennes who surrendered at Camp Robinson in April 1877, among those transferred to the Indian Territory that summer, and with those returning north with Morning Star (Dull Knife) and Little Wolf in 1878. At that point a thin record goes blank until 1886 when he is counted on the census rolls of the Pine Ridge Agency in Dakota. His presence there suggests that he had accompanied Morning Star to Fort Robinson in 1878, somehow survived the horrendous breakout from there, and made it safely to Pine Ridge Agency, home of steadfast Oglala Sioux friends in the long tradition of the Northern Cheyenne–Oglala alliance. Old Bear, his wife, Long Teeth, and several children are counted in Pine Ridge censuses each year from 1886 to 1890. In 1889 he was among the Northern Cheyenne adult males who signed the controversial land cession accord that finally tore apart the Great Sioux Reservation.34 Old Bear’s name was not listed with those Northern Cheyennes transferred from the Pine Ridge Reservation to Tongue River in October 1891, although his wife and children were, suggesting that he met his end in South Dakota at about the age of sixty-nine. No photographs of Old Bear are known, no interviews seem to have occurred, and he is rarely if at all mentioned by contemporaries in their own interviews. A sage scholar of the Northern Cheyennes

LOOSE ENDS

353

once remarked that “sometimes we just don’t know anything about these old guys,” which about sums it up. Yet we do know that Old Bear was the patriarch of the Powder River village and helped guide his people to safety after Reynolds’s attack, which is perhaps recognition and honor enough for a circumspect old traditionalist.35

✧✧✧✧ Finally, there’s the Powder River battlefield itself, just north of the nearly vanished hamlet of Moorhead, Montana, in the remote southeastern corner of the state. The Powder River crosses the battlefield floodplain on a slightly different course today than it did then, and some trees are missing, but for the most part the site of Joseph Reynolds’s fight with Old Bear’s Northern Cheyennes remains timeless. In that day Old Bear’s village was nestled in a long, wide stand of imposing cottonwoods that filled the floodplain between the river and adjacent western bench. As late as the turn of the twentieth century, tipi poles from the burnt-out village still littered the ground, but they are long gone. Most of the trees were cut down in the early 1950s by local ranchers opening a hay meadow. Fortunately, a stand of these magnificent prairie monarchs still adjoins the village site just to the north. Staring into them produces powerful impressions of the old condition. The river’s edge is still marked with willows and chokecherry bushes. To the west the deep, dry watercourses of Thompson Creek and Flood Creek plainly define the southern and northern margins of the place, just as the wide grassy bench twenty feet above the bottomland, with its pronounced corner, distinctly imposes itself between the floodplain and rising hillsides. The dominant aspects of the scene, the rocky, crevassed, cedar-strewn hillsides and crowning ridge on the western horizon (the mountaintop), survive virtually unchanged from March 17, 1876. Of course, most visitors today see the battlefield in one of the warm seasons; all that’s really missing is the snow and cold.36 In 1934 the Gillette, Wyoming, American Legion Post and retired Brigadier General William Carey Brown of Denver dedicated a monument on the battlefield, a distinctive pyramid of river rock inset

354

AFTERMATH

with white marble government grave markers recognizing the four soldier casualties abandoned on the field that day.37 More recently a local rancher and Northern Cheyennes from the nearby reservation have honored the place too, dressing a large tumbled stone with a painting of the Northern Cheyennes’ distinctive blue and white Morning Star flag. The battlefield is a profoundly beautiful place, and remembering and protecting it is both a great honor and challenge. The lives of the men, women, and children of Old Bear’s village that were so abruptly shattered there and the actions of Egan, Mills, Noyes, and even Reynolds and Moore, whose legacies rose or fell there, deserve no less.

Appendix A ✧✧✧✧

Big Horn Expedition Order of Battle March 1–27, 1876 Brig. Gen. George Crook, Department of the Platte Col. Joseph J. Reynolds, Third Cavalry, Commanding Expedition Second Lt. Charles Morton, Third Cavalry, Expedition Adjutant (det. from Co. A) First Lt. George A. Drew, Third Cavalry, RQM, AAQM and ACS Second Lt. John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, ADC (det. from Co. D) Maj. Thaddeus H. Stanton, Pay Department, Chief of Scouts Asst. Surg. and Capt. Curtis E. Munn AAS John V. Ridgely AAS Charles R. Stephens Thomas Moore, Master of Transportation FIRST BATTALION Co. M, Third Cavalry, Capt. Anson Mills, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Augustus C. Paul Co. E, Third Cavalry, First Lt. John B. Johnson, Regimental Adjutant (det.) SECOND BATTALION Co. A, Third Cavalry, Capt. William Hawley, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Joseph Lawson 355

356

APPENDIX A

Co. D, Third Cavalry, Second Lt. William W. Robinson, Jr. (det. from Co. H) THIRD BATTALION Co. I, Second Cavalry, Capt. Henry E. Noyes, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Christopher T. Hall Co. K, Second Cavalry, Capt. James Egan FOURTH BATTALION Co. A, Second Cavalry, Capt Thomas B. Dewees, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Martin E. O’Brien Second Lt. Daniel C. Pearson Co. B, Second Cavalry, Capt. James T. Peale Second Lt. Frank U. Robinson FIFTH BATTALION Co. F, Third Cavalry, Capt. Alexander Moore, Commanding Battalion and Co. Second Lt. Bainbridge Reynolds Co. E, Second Cavalry, 1st Lt. William C. Rawolle (det. from Co. B) First Lt. Frederick W. Sibley SIXTH BATTALION Co. C, Fourth Infantry, Capt. Edwin M. Coates, Commanding Battalion and Co. Co. I, Fourth Infantry, Capt. Samuel P. Ferris Second Lt. Charles W. Mason

Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 78–80; Reynolds Report, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 203–204.

Appendix B ✧✧✧✧

Powder River Order of Battle March 16–18, 1876 Col. Joseph J. Reynolds, Third Cavalry, Commanding Second Lt. Charles Morton, Third Cavalry, Expedition Adjutant First Lt. George A. Drew, Third Cavalry, RQM, AAQM and ACS Maj. Thaddeus H. Stanton, Pay Department, Chief of Scouts Second Lt. John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry Asst. Surg. and Capt. Curtis E. Munn FIRST BATTALION Co. M, Third Cavalry, Capt. Anson Mills, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Augustus C. Paul Co. E, Third Cavalry, First Lt. John B. Johnson, Regimental Adjutant THIRD BATTALION Co. I, Second Cavalry, Capt. Henry E. Noyes, Commanding Battalion and Co. First Lt. Christopher T. Hall Co. K, Second Cavalry, Capt. James Egan FIFTH BATTALION Co. F, Third Cavalry, Capt. Alexander Moore, Commanding Battalion and Co.

357

358

APPENDIX B

Second Lt. Bainbridge Reynolds Co. E, Second Cavalry, 1st Lt. William C. Rawolle (WIA) Second Lt. Frederick W. Sibley

Appendix C ✧✧✧✧

Big Horn Expedition Killed and Wounded MARCH 3, 1876, SOUTH FORK CHEYENNE RIVER Wright, James

Herder, QM Employee

Penetrating wound, right lung

MARCH 3, 1876, POWDER RIVER Slavey, James

Pvt., Co. I, 4th Infantry

Right cheek

MARCH 17, 1876, POWDER RIVER Killed Ayers, Lorenzo Dowdy, Peter McCannon, Michael Schneider, George

Pvt., Co. M, 3rd Cavalry Pvt., Co. E, 3rd Cavalry Pvt., Co. F, 3rd Cavalry Pvt., Co. K, 2nd Cavalry

Gunshot, thigh, hand, arm Gunshot, head Gunshot, unknown Gunshot, neck

Wounded Droege, John Eagan, Edward Goings, Patrick Kaminski, Charles Lang, John Rawolle, William

Pvt., Co. K, 2nd Cavalry Pvt., Co. K, 2nd Cavalry Art., Co. K, 2nd Cavalry Sgt., Co. M, 3rd Cavalry Corp., Co. E, 2nd Cavalry 1st. Lt., Co. E, 2nd Cavalry

Left humerus Through body, right side Top of left shoulder Left knee Right ankle Contusion, thigh

“List of Killed and Wounded in the Detachment of 2nd and 3rd Cavy and 4th Infantry Accompanying Big Horn Expedition,” Munn Report, NA; Rawolle Report, April 19, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 228. 359

Appendix D ✧✧✧✧

Henry E. Noyes General Court-Martial Orders HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE Assistant Adjutant General’s Office Omaha, Nebraska, May 2, 1876. General Court Martial Orders No. 29. I . . . Before a General Court-Martial which convened at Fort D. A. Russell, W.T., pursuant to Special Orders Nos. 44, and 47, current series, from these Headquarters, and of which Colonel John E. Smith, 14th Infantry, is President, was arraigned and tried: Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry. CHARGE.—Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. SPECIFICATION.—In that, the said Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry, being in command of his company, I, 2d Cavalry, and in charge of a herd of animals captured in the vicinity of the village of the Indian chief “Crazy Horse,” during the actual engagement between the Indians and a portion of the troops of the Big Horn Expedition, did order the horses of his company to be unsaddled, and they were unsaddled, thus rendering him, in a degree, unable to respond promptly to an order which might at any moment have been expected for this company to move at once, and also, endangering, 361

362

APPENDIX D

to an unwarranted and wholly unnecessary degree, the safety of his horses, from a dash of the enemy to stampede them, or recover the captured herd. This at or near the village of the Indian Chief “Crazy Horse,” on Powder River, Montana, on the 17th March, 1876. PLEAS.—Not Guilty. FINDINGS.—Of the specification—Guilty, except the words, “wholly unnecessary,” and of the excepted words—Not Guilty. Of the charge—Guilty. SENTENCE.—“To be reprimanded, by the Department Commander, in General Orders.” The proceedings, findings, and sentence, in the case of Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry, are approved. Referring to the sentence, in the foregoing case, the Department Commander deems it proper to remark that Captain Noyes’ reputation during the late war, supported as it is by the evidence adduced, is ample assurance that in unsaddling his horses, at the time and place he did, he simply committed an error in judgment, and that he was not actuated by a desire to evade or shirk any duty that he might be called upon to perform. In the opinion of the Department Commander, no terms that he can use, will add to the punishment of a soldier of Captain Noyes’ sensibilities, more than that of the opinion of a Court, composed of his fellow officers, that his error merits their censure; as expressed in the sentence. Captain Noyes, 2d Cavalry, will be released from arrest and restored to duty. BY COMMAND OF BRIGADIER-GENERAL CROOK. Robert Williams, Assistant Adjutant General.

GCM of Noyes, NA.

Appendix E ✧✧✧✧

Alexander Moore General Court-Martial Orders HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY Adjutant General’s Office Washington, March 1, 1877 General Court-Martial Orders No. 29. I . . . Before a General Court-Martial which convened at Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, January 16, 1877, pursuant to Special Orders No. 244, dated November 25, and No. 254, dated December 8, 1876, Headquarters of the Army, Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, D.C., and of which Brigadier General John Pope, U.S. Army, is President, was arraigned and tried— Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry. CHARGE I.—“Disobedience to the lawful commands of his superior officer.” Specification—“In that Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Regiment of U.S. Cavalry, being in command of two companies of Cavalry, on an expedition operating against hostile Indians, and having been ordered by his superior and commanding officer, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, to co-operate with his said command in an attack upon a band or village of said Indians, did willfully disobey said lawful command, and did not co-operate or attack as ordered. 363

364

APPENDIX E

This at or near Powder River, Montana, on the 17th day of March, 1876.” CHARGE II.—“Violation of the 42d Article of War.” Specification 1st—“In that Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Regiment of U.S. Cavalry, being in command of two companies of Cavalry, on an expedition operating against hostile Indians, enemies of the United States, and having been directed by his superior and commanding officer, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, to co-operate and assist in an attack with his said command against a band or village of said Indians, did misbehave himself before the said Indians, enemies as aforesaid, and tardily, timorously, and cowardly, fail to cooperate in said attack as ordered and instructed, and did remain so far from said point of attack against said hostile Indians as to render the services of his command of little or no service in the capture or destruction of said band or village of Indians. This at or near Powder River, Montana, on or about the 17th day of March, 1876.” Specification 2d—“In this: that Captain Alexander Moore, 3d U.S. Cavalry, being in command of the Fifth Battalion of the Big Horn Expedition, and having been ordered by his commanding officer, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, to maintain the position held by his battalion during the engagement with the Indians and the destruction of the village of the Indian chief ‘Crazy Horse,’ and until dispositions could thereafter be made for withdrawing the command, did withdraw his command from the position then occupied so as to be unable, with them, to co-operate effectively with the First Battalion of aforesaid expedition, commanded by Captain Anson Mills, 3d Cavalry, in maintaining possession of the Indian village aforesaid and in capturing and destroying the same, and when remonstrated with by Captain Anson Mills, 3d Cavalry, and requested to assume his proper position with this command, did fail in regard said remonstrance and utterly neglect and refuse to assume his proper position, and did thereby utterly fail to render proper and efficient support to the troops serving in the action in accordance with the spirit and meaning of the instructions and orders for the performance of his duty in the premises. All this at

ALEXANDER MOORE GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL ORDERS

365

village of the Indian chief ‘Crazy Horse,’ on Powder River, Montana, on the 17th of March, 1876.” To which charges and specifications the accused, Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry, pleaded “Not Guilty.” FINDING. The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry, as follows:— CHARGE I. Of the Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the CHARGE, “Not Guilty.” CHARGE II. Of the 1st Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘misbehave himself before said Indians, enemies as aforesaid, and’; and the words ‘and cowardly fail to’; and the words ‘or destruction.’” Of the 2d Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the CHARGE, “Not Guilty, but Guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” SENTENCE. And the Court does therefore sentence him, Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry, “To be suspended from command for six months, and to be confined to the limits of his post for the same period.”

✧✧✧✧ II . . . The proceedings, findings, and sentence of General CourtMartial in the foregoing case of Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry, are approved by the President, who is pleased to remit the sentence, in consideration of the very honorable and gallant record of Captain Moore’s previous military career, both during the rebellion and in operations against hostile Indians. BY COMMAND OF GENERAL SHERMAN: E. D. Townsend, Adjutant General.

Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series), NA.

Appendix F ✧✧✧✧

Joseph J. Reynolds General Court-Martial Orders HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY Adjutant General’s Office Washington, March 3, 1877. General Court-Martial Orders No. 30. I . . . Before a General Court-Martial which convened at Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, January 6, 1877, pursuant to Special Orders No. 244, dated November 25, and No. 254, dated December 8, 1876, Headquarters of the Army, Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, D.C., and of which Brigadier General John Pope, U.S. Army, is President, was arraigned and tried— Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry. CHARGE I.—“Disobedience to the lawful commands of his superior officer, in violation of the 21st Article of War.” Specification 1st—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of a body of troops of the United States in an expedition operating against hostile Indians, and having been ordered by his superior and commanding officer, Brigadier General George Crook, U.S. Army, commanding Military Department of the Platte, to unite and join the troops then under command of said Colonel Reynolds with the 367

368

APPENDIX F

troops being then under the command of his said superior and commanding officer, Brigadier General George Crook, did purposefully and willfully issue orders to march his said body of troops away, thereby intending to prevent said contemplated junction of his said command as ordered. This at or near Lodge Pole Creek, Montana Territory, on or about the 18th day of March, 1876.” Specification 2d—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of a body of troops of the United States in an expedition operating against hostile Indians, and having been ordered by his superior and commanding officer, Brigadier General George Crook, U.S. Army, commanding Military Department of the Platte, to save from destruction any property that might be captured from said hostile Indians by the troops under the command of said Colonel Reynolds, and that such property should be reserved for the use of the United States, did willfully disobey said lawful command, in that the troops under command of said Colonel Reynolds, having captured, from said Indians, a large quantity of saddles and equipments and meats, property and provisions suitable for the use of the United States, did order, cause and permit said saddles and equipments and meats to be destroyed in disobedience to the said orders of his said superior and commanding officer. This at or near Powder River, Montana, on or about the 17th day of March, 1876.” CHARGE II.—“Violation of the 42d Article of War.” Specification—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of a body of troops of the United States in an expedition operating against hostile Indians, enemies of the United States, in an engagement or battle fought with said Indians at or near Powder River, Montana Territory, on or about the 17th day of March, 1876, did misbehave himself before the said hostile Indians, enemies as aforesaid, and run away with his said command, and abandon and leave the dead and wounded thereof on the field in the hands of said hostile Indians.” CHARGE III.—“Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” Specification 1st—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of a body of

JOSEPH J. REYNOLDS GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL ORDERS

369

troops of the United States in an expedition operating against hostile Indians, and having captured a large herd of ponies and mules from said hostile Indians for the benefit of the United States, did neglect his duty and permit said hostile Indians to recapture about 700 head of said herd of ponies and mules so captured by him from said Indians—the said Colonel Reynolds having a sufficient force under his command to prevent such recapture. This at or near Lodge Pole Creek, Montana Territory, on or about March 17, 1876.” Specifications 2d—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of a body of troops of the United States in an expedition operating against hostile Indians, and knowing that a small force of such Indians was engaged in his immediate vicinity in driving off the ponies and mules recaptured from him, as described in the 1st Specification to this charge, and the said ponies and mules, being so driven, being in plain view of said Colonel Reynolds and his command, and having a sufficient force at his command to recapture and recover the said ponies and mules, did, notwithstanding, neglect his duty and fail to make any effort to recapture and recover the said ponies and mules, defeating, by such neglect and tardiness to recover said ponies and mules, any further operations at the time against said hostile Indians. This at or near Lodge Pole Creek, Montana Territory, on or about the 18th day of March, 1876.” Specification 3d—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in command of six companies of United States Cavalry operating against hostile Indians, having detached one of said companies for the purpose of charging and attacking a hostile Indian village, and the said company so detached having charged and attacked said village, and although the hostile Indians inhabiting said village being in large numbers and capable of overpowering said charging and attacking company, did fail and neglect to support said charging and attacking company with the remaining five companies of troops under his command, but did permit one of said five companies to remove away from the point of attack about a mile distant, there unsaddle its horses and remain idle spectators of the charging and attacking company struggling with the hostile Indians in said village, and its safety thereby greatly

370

APPENDIX F

jeopardized for want of proper support. This near Powder River, Montana, on or about March 17th, 1876.” Specification 4th—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, having assaulted the official reputation of Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2nd Cavalry, by preparing, signing, and forwarding to the Department Commander a charge and specification against said Captain Noyes, thereby subjecting him to the annoyance and mortification of a trial by court-martial upon said charge and specification, and said Colonel Reynolds having been called, as the principal witness for the prosecution, to substantiate said charges preferred by him, did solemnly declare under oath that he was neither the accuser or prosecutor of the said Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2nd Cavalry. This at or near Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming Territory, on or about April 2d and April 26th, 1876.” Specification 5th—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, having preferred a charge against Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry, did fail to observe the requirements of paragraph 1, General Orders No. 2, series of 1873, from Headquarters Department of the Platte, and did forward said charge to Department Headquarters without causing inquiry to be made into the merits of the case, as required by said order, and being the principle witness for the prosecution at the trial, did declare under oath that the conduct of the said Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry, on the occasion specified, did not merit charges. All this at or near Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming Territory, on or about April 2d and 26th, 1876.” CHARGE IV.—“Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” Specification—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d United States Cavalry, being a witness before a duly constituted General Court-Martial, appointed by Special Orders No. 44, dated April 13, 1876, from Headquarters Department of the Platte, and having been duly sworn as such witness by Major H. B. Burnham, Judge Advocate, U.S. Army, Judge Advocate of said General Court-Martial, a person duly qualified to administer oaths in the case of the United States vs. Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2nd U.S. Cavalry, that the evidence he should give in said case then in hearing should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, did, when so testifying

JOSEPH J. REYNOLDS GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL ORDERS

371

in said cause under the sanctity of said oath so administered in a matter material to the just determination thereof, falsely, corruptly, knowingly, willfully, and maliciously make the answers to the questions as follows, namely:— “Question by accused—Was the preferring of the charges a voluntary act on your part, or not? “Answer—No. On the 27th of March * * * , I had an interview with the Department Commander, General Crook, in which the unsaddling by Captain Noyes was referred to, and in which the Department Commander expressed himself very emphatically that charges ought to be preferred against Captain Noyes, and that he held me responsible for it. “Question by accused—By whose order or advice was the charge preferred?“Answer—I cannot say there was any positive order, in express words, to prefer the charges. They would not have been preferred but for the interview referred to, and I understood from it that charges would be preferred against me unless I preferred them against Captain Noyes. “Question by the Judge Advocate—Do you say that you drew and made the charges against Captain Noyes because you were directed to do so by General Crook? “Answer—I do not say that I was directed in express terms to make these charges, but I do say that I was given to understand, in very plain terms, that General Crook thought these charges should be preferred; and as he held me responsible if I did not prefer them, charges would be preferred against me for neglect. “Question by the Judge Advocate—State the conversation alluded to in your answer, and give as near as possible the words used by him, with the time and place where it occurred, and who, if any person besides yourself and General Crook, were present? “Answer—The conversation (between General Crook and Colonel Reynolds) occurred on the morning of the 27th of March last, in the quarters of the commanding officer at Fort Fetterman. I will not after this lapse of time pretend to repeat the precise words of the conversation, but as near as I can recall them now, they were to this effect: General Crook said: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that charges ought to be preferred against Captain Noyes. Somebody

372

APPENDIX F

must take the responsibility. I won’t do it; and as you had the immediate command of the troops, I hold you responsible.’ Major Chambers, 4th Infantry, commanding Fort Fetterman, was present when I entered the room and commenced this interview with General Crook. I am not positive whether he remained throughout the interview.” Whereas, in truth and in fact, the said General Crook never made any suggestions or gave any directions or orders whatever to said Colonel Reynolds touching or concerning the said charges preferred against Captain Henry E. Noyes, 2d Cavalry, as stated in said answers; and this the said Colonel Reynolds well knew at the time he had said answers. This at Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming Territory, on the 25th day of April, 1876. Specification 2d—“In that Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Regiment of United States Cavalry, being in immediate command of a body of troops operating against hostile Indians, and having arranged to meet, await, and unite at a point known as Lodge Pole Creek, Montana, his said body of troops with the troops then being under the immediate command of his commanding officer, Brigadier General George Crook, U.S. Army, commanding the Department of the Platte, the said Colonel Reynolds, notwithstanding said arrangement with his said commanding officer to so unite and join his command as aforesaid, did order his said body of troops to leave such place of meeting and rendezvous as arranged, and when interrogated by his said commanding officer on the subject of this intention to leave without even investigating the cause of the delay of said General Crook in coming up with his command to the place of meeting, did reply that he did not intend to fail to do so, but that he intended only to move his camp where he could get grass for his animals, which said reply the said Colonel Reynolds well knew to be false, in that he intended to leave said place of meeting as arranged, and to march his said command away therefrom whether his said commanding officer or his command reached said place of meeting or not, and to continue his said march to Old Fort Reno, a point about eighty miles distant from said place of meeting as arranged. This at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming Territory, on the 27th day of March, 1876.”

JOSEPH J. REYNOLDS GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL ORDERS

373

To which charges and specifications the accused, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, pleaded “Not Guilty.” FINDING. The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, as follows:— CHARGE I. Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the 2d Specification, “Guilty.” Of the CHARGE, “Guilty.” CHARGE II. Of the Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘misbehave himself before the said Indians, enemies as aforesaid, and run away with his said command and,’ and the words ‘and wounded.’” Of the CHARGE, “Not Guilty, but guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” CHARGE III. Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the 2d Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘said Colonel Reynolds and,’ and the words ‘defeating, by such neglect and tardiness to recover said ponies and mules, any further operations at the time against said hostile Indians.’” Of the 3d Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the 4th Specification, “Find the facts, but attach no criminality thereto.” Of the 5th Specification, “Find the facts, but attach no criminality thereto.” Of the CHARGE, “Guilty.” CHARGE IV. Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the 2d Specification, “Not Guilty.” Of the CHARGE, “Not Guilty.” SENTENCE. And the Court does therefore sentence him, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, “To be suspended from rank and command for the period of one year.”

374

APPENDIX F

————— II .  .  . The proceedings of the General Court-Martial in the foregoing case of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, having been submitted to the President, the following are his orders:— The foregoing proceedings and the findings, except as to the second specification of the 1st charge and that charge, are confirmed. In view, however, of the long, distinguished, and faithful service of Colonel Reynolds, the President has been pleased to remit the sentence. III . . . The General Court-Martial of which Brigadier General John Pope, U.S. Army, is President is, by order of the President of the United States, hereby dissolved. BY COMMAND OF GENERAL SHERMAN: E. D. Townsend Adjutant General

Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series), NA.

Notes

Abbreviations ACP AGO AGO LR BYU DPL FLNHS GCM MHS NA RCIA RSW

Appointment, Commission, Personal Adjutant General’s Office Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series) Brigham Young University Denver Public Library Fort Laramie National Historic Site General Court-Martial Montana Historical Society National Archives Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Report of the Secretary of War

Chapter 1. The Long Road to an Inevitable Sioux War

1. Webb, The Great Plains, 3–9; Frazier, The Great Plains, 7. 2. Fenneman, Physiography of the Western United States, 1–25. 3. Ibid., 16–25. 4. Cain, The Cottonwood Tree, 23–24. 5. Webb, The Great Plains, 22–23. 6. Ibid., 22–26 (quotation on 25). 7. Johnsgard, Prairie Dog Empire, 1–20; West, The Way to the West, 52–53; Hedren, After Custer, 92, 95–96. 8. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count, 9, 20, 31, 33, 54, 64. 9. Ibid., 105, 267–70, 307. 375

376

NOTES TO PAGES 9–17

10. Ibid., 275, 276 (quotation). 11. DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850,” 718, 719 (quotation), 722–25. 12. Ibid., 727; White, “The Winning of the West,” 321–25. 13. DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850,” 731–32; DeMallie, “Teton,” 794; Denig, Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, xxiii, 16–28; Hedren, After Custer, 8; Ewers, “The Influence of the Fur Trade upon the Indians of the Northern Plains,” in Ewers, Plains Indian History and Culture, 42–45. 14. Moore, Liberty, and Straus, “Cheyenne,” 863; West, “Called-Out People,” in West, The Essential West, 58–59; Leiker and Powers, The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, 23. 15. Moore, Liberty, and Straus, “Cheyenne,” 865; West, “Called-Out People,” 63; Leiker and Powers, The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, 28. 16. Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” 841–42, 859–61; Ewers, “Intertribal Warfare as the Precursor of IndianWhite Warfare on the Northern Great Plains”; White, “The Winning of the West,” 331–35. 17. “Treaty with the Teton, 1815,” “Treaty with the Teton, Etc., Sioux, 1825,” “Treaty with the Sioune and Oglala Tribes, 1825,” “Treaty with the Cheyenne Tribe, 1825,” “Treaty with the Hunkpapa Band of the Sioux Tribe, 1825,” and “Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux, Etc., 1851,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 112–13, 227–36, 594–96. The Sioune or Saone tribe noted here was a fourth Teton tribe in the early nineteenth century; by midcentury it had broken into four separate Lakota tribes: Sans Arc, Two Kettle, Blackfeet, and Hunkpapa. DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850,” 757. 18. “Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux, Etc., 1851,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 594–96; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 59–60. 19. Essential sources on this escalating warfare include Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chapters 7 and 13; McChristian, Fort Laramie, chapter 20; Paul, Blue Water Creek and the First Sioux War; Chaky, Terrible Justice; Berg, 38 Nooses; Michno, Dakota Dawn; and Greene and Scott, Finding Sand Creek. 20. For these episodes and their context, see Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chapters 13–14; McDermott, Circle of Fire; and Vaughn, The Battle of Platte Bridge. 21. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chapter 15; McDermott, Circle of Fire, 110–16; Wagner, Patrick Connor’s War. 22. Total war in Indian campaigning is fully discussed in Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 34–40, with references to these 1860s campaigns in Dakota and Wyoming. 23. Warren, Preliminary Report of Explorations in Nebraska and Dakota, 30 (gold); Hayden, Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers; McLaird and Turchen, “Exploring the Black

NOTES TO PAGES 18–24

377

Hills,” 192 (quotation: Hayden mentioned gold in an address to the Dakota Historical Society in 1866); Raynolds, Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River, 14 (gold). 24. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 111–13, 140–41; Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 283–84. 25. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 307–308; White, Ho! For the Gold Fields; Madsen and Madsen, North to Montana! 26. McDermott, Frontier Crossroads, 35–36. 27. The thoughts developed here are drawn from parallel expressions in Berg, 38 Nooses, xi-xii, 9–10. Regarding Sawyers’s Niobrara–Virginia City Wagon Road, see McDermott, Circle of Fire, 120–28; and Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 326–27. 28. Larson, Red Cloud, 92. 29. Cooley, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1866, 4–5 (these reports are hereinafter given as RCIA, with date); Taylor, “Northern Superintendency,” in RCIA, 1866, 210–13; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 265–69; Larson, Red Cloud, 93; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:61–67. The treaties of 1865 were brief and had common language throughout. See, for example, “Treaty with the Sioux—Sans Arc Band, 1865,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 899–901. 30. Sources on the Bozeman Trail War aka Red Cloud’s War are substantial. Hebard and Brininstool’s two-volume The Bozeman Trail is a classic still worth consulting. McDermott’s two-volume Red Cloud’s War is definitive, with exhaustive annotations and a 72-page bibliography. 31. DeMallie and Deloria, Proceedings of the Great Peace Commission of 1867–1868, 57–65, 79–82; Mix, “Annual Report on Indian Affairs, by the Acting Commissioner,” RCIA, 1867, 2–4, 21; Taylor, “Report to the President by the Indian Peace Commission,” in RCIA, 1868, 30–32; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:444–49; Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 280–81; “Treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, 1867,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 984–89. 32. “Treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, 1867,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 987; Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 279–80. 33. Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 280; Unrau, “Nathaniel Green Taylor,” 115–19; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:364–68. 34. Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad, 154, 160, 299–301. 35. Madsen and Madsen, North to Montana!, xviii, 1, 171. 36. “Report of Lieutenant General W. T. Sherman,” in Report of the Secretary of War, 1868, 3 (these reports are hereinafter cited as RSW, with date); McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:483–85. 37. Papers Relating to Talks and Councils Held with the Indians in Dakota and Montana Territories in the Years 1866–1869, 86–87; DeMallie

378

NOTES TO PAGES 25–32

and Deloria, Proceedings of the Great Peace Commission of 1867–1868, 103–19; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:495–96. 38. “Treaty with the Sioux—Brulé, Oglala, Miniconjou, Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Cuthead, Two Kettle, Sans Arc, and Santee—and Arapaho, 1868,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 998–999. Despite the Arapahos named in the official title, this treaty did not concern them, and none of that tribe signed the accord. In 1992 Samuel Tappan’s working copy of this treaty was catalogued for sale by a Massachusetts bookseller and was examined by the author at that year’s annual Western History Association Conference in New Haven, Connecticut. The treaty sold to David Karpeles and remains in the holdings of the Karpeles Manuscript Library, where it is occasionally exhibited. Item 193, “A Contemporary Working Copy of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.” 39. Kappler, Indian Treaties, 999. 40. Ibid., 1001–1002 (quotations); “Report of Lieut. Gen. P. H. Sheridan, RSW, 1874, 24; Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri, 38. When Custer explored the Black Hills in 1874, his legal cover was this sixth clause of article 11, the commonly proclaimed purpose of his expedition being the siting of a new military post, a variant “work of utility.” 41. Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1002–1003. For a cogent discussion of the northern limits of the unceded territory, see Anderson, “A Challenge to Brown’s Sioux Indian Wars Thesis,” 42–43. 42. Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1003–1007; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 306–11; Larson, Gall, 70–71; Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 282–83. 43. “Treaty with the Crows, 1868,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1008–1011; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:501–502. 44. “Treaty with the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho, 1868,” in Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1012–1015. 45. Buecker, Fort Robinson and the American West, 155; Fowler, “Arapaho,” 842–43; Hedren, After Custer, 136–43. 46. Burbank, “Dakota Superintendency,” in RCIA, 1870, 206. 47. Mix, “Annual Report on Indian Affairs, by the Acting Commissioner,” in RCIA, 1868, 1. 48. Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” and Poole, “Whetstone Agency,” in RCIA, 1870, 28, 315–18; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 100, 130–33; Clow, “The Whetstone Indian Agency, 295–98; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 19–21, 233. 49. Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1876, xiv-xv; Koues, “Cheyenne River,” in RCIA, 1872, 262; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 95; Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 187; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 208. 50. Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk, 187; King, Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life, 16 (quotation); Hedren, “Garrisoning the Black Hills Road,” 2–7; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 54, 217.

NOTES TO PAGES 32–37

379

51. McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 2:504; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 174–81; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 96–114; Larson, Red Cloud, 124–36. 52. Cree, “Report of a Visit to Red Cloud and Chiefs of the Ogallala Sioux,” in RCIA, 1871, 22–29; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 139–48; Larson, Red Cloud, 139–47. 53. Washburn, “Whetstone Agency,” in RCIA, 1871, 527; Daniels, “Red Cloud Agency,” in RCIA, 1872, 267–69; Daniels, “Red Cloud Agency,” in RCIA, 1873, 243–44; Howard, “Spotted Tail Agency,” in RCIA, 1875, 253–55; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 148–58; Larson, Red Cloud, 148–55. The many movements of the Whetstone/Spotted Tail Agency are documented in an untitled report by James Potter, Nebraska State Historical Society (copy in author’s collection). 54. Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1873, 5–6; Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri, 25, 27, 33–35, 39; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 341–47; Buecker, Fort Robinson and the American West, 5–17. 55. Brown, “A New Focus on the Sioux War,” 31–32; Hedren, After Custer, 72–74; Lubetkin, Jay Cooke’s Gamble, 135–43, 242–50, 256–65. The Poker Flat Fight in 1872 has been carefully investigated. See Eckroth and Hagen, “Baker’s Battle on the Yellowstone.” 56. Anderson, “A Challenge to Brown’s Sioux Indian Wars Thesis.” The story of the American West’s gold rushes is well surveyed in Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West. The lingering rumors of Black Hills gold are surveyed by Parker, Gold in the Black Hills, 3–22; and Hedren, Ho! For the Black Hills, 1–14. 57. The Yankton and Sioux City promotional efforts are chronicled by Anderson, “Wake Up Yankton!,” 211–38; Eriksson, “Sioux City and the Black Hills Gold Rush”; and Conard, “Charles Collins.” 58. Chicago Inter-Ocean, August 27, 1874, in Krause and Olson, Prelude to Glory, 126. 59. “Report of Gen. Sheridan,” in RSW, 1873, 42. 60. Hedren, After Custer, 50–55. 61. Parker, Gold in the Black Hills, 28–37; letter, Grant to the Senate, March 17, 1875, in Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 26, 84; Parker, “The Report of Captain John Mix of a Scout to the Black Hills”; Parker, “The Majors and the Miners”; McDermott, “The Military Problem and the Black Hills,” in Gold Rush, 12–17; Franklin, “Black Hills and Bloodshed”; Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1002 (quotation). 62. Jenney, “Report of Geological Survey of the Black Hills,” in RCIA, 1875, 181–83; Jenney, The Mineral Wealth, Climate and Rain-Fall, and Natural Resources of the Black Hills of Dakota; Turchen and McLaird, The Black Hills Expedition of 1875, 15, 24, 86; Parker, Gold in the Black Hills, 64–65; Hedren, Ho! For the Black Hills, 8–9.

380

NOTES TO PAGES 37–43

63. Turchen and McLaird, The Black Hills Expedition of 1875, 19; Schmitt, General George Crook, 188. 64. Crook recounts the story of the arrow wound in his autobiography. Schmitt, General George Crook, 40–41. Sea also Magid, George Crook, 78–80. 65. In addition to the biographical insights provided by Magid, two useful character sketches of Crook are Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 9; and Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 125–36. 66. “A Vain Search for Gold,” New York Times, April 30, 1876, in Abrams, Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, 110; Schmitt, General George Crook, 188–89; letter, Columbus Delano to Ulysses Grant, September 14, 1875, in Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 26, 163; Hedren, Ho! For the Black Hills, 11–12, 32–34; Parker, Gold in the Black Hills, 65–67. 67. Allison, Report of the Commission Appointed to Treat with the Sioux Indians for the Relinquishment of the Black Hills, 184–201; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, 204–13; Hedren, Fort Laramie in 1876, 15–16; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 113–20; Davenport, “The Black Hills Negotiations,” New York Herald, September 16, 1876, in Abrams, Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 340 (quotation). 68. Franklin, “Black Hills and Bloodshed,” 36 (quotation), citing a communication from Sheridan to Terry dated September 3, 1874; Parker, “The Majors and the Miners,” 104–105; Parker, “The Report of Captain John Mix of a Scout to the Black Hills”; Camp G. H. Collins Special Orders No. 10, September 12, 1875, No. 17, October 6, 1875, No. 18, October 13, 1875, and No. 20, October 20, 1875, in RG 393, Entry 3749, Department of the Platte General Orders, Orders, and Special Orders Issued by Expeditions, 1874–79, National Archives (hereinafter cited as NA). 69. Utley, Frontier Regulars, 246. Chapter 2. Pointing the Gun 1. Letters, Sheridan to Terry, November 9, 1876 (quotation), and Sheridan to Sherman, November 13, 1876, Philip Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress; Robinson, The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke, Vol. One, 272–73 (hereinafter cited as Diaries of Bourke); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 287; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 25–26. Newspapers in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Omaha were scanned: their mentions of the meeting were nearly identical, giving names and broadly noting the discussion of the Indian question while providing no other particulars. 2. “The Demands of the Indians,” in Allison, Report of the Commission Appointed to Treat with the Sioux Indians for the Relinquishment of the Black Hills, 7–9; Albers, The Home of the Bison, 1:279 (quotation)– 81, 2:443–53.

NOTES TO PAGES 44–49

381

3. “Report of Brig. Gen. George Crook,” in RSW, 1875, 69–70; Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1875, 7–8; letter, Sheridan to Terry, November 9, 1876, Philip Sheridan Papers; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 360; Department of the Platte Telegram Sent, November 8, 1875, NA; Hedren, Ho! For the Black Hills, 12–14. 4. Diaries of Bourke, 273; Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1876, xiv, xv (quotation); Chandler letter, December 3, 1875, Smith letter, December 6, 1875, in “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Relation to the Present Situation of Indian Disturbances in the Sioux Reservation, April 19, 1876,” Senate Ex. Doc. No. 53, 44th Congress, 1st Session, in Carroll, General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 7–8. 5. Diaries of Bourke, 273 (quotation) Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 289–300; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 25. A synopsis of the Red River War, critical in many ways to the Great Sioux War, is provided in Utley, Frontier Regulars, 218–33. 6. Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1876, 5. 7. Smith letter, January 21, 1876, in Carroll, General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 10–11; Manypenny, “Report of the Commission Appointed to Obtain Certain Concessions from the Sioux,” in RCIA, 1876, 342; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 251; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:934. 8. Hare, “Report of the Sioux Commission,” in RCIA, 1874, 88–89, 96–97; Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” in RCIA, 1875, 5–6; Manypenny, “Report of the Commission Appointed to Obtain Certain Concessions from the Sioux,” 342; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 128–29; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 322. 9. Smith letter, January 21, 1876, Chandler letter, February 1, 1876, in Carroll, General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 10, 11 (quotations). 10. Svingen, The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, 5; Marquis, The Cheyennes of Montana, 251; Kappler, Indian Treaties, 1012 (quotation). 11. Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 122–23 (quotation); Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 251; Anderson, “Cheyennes at the Little Big Horn,” 6. 12. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 155–56; “Two Moons Interview,” in Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, 131; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:934. The Fort Pease story is told by McLemore, “Fort Pease.” 13. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 254; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 128–29; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 231–32; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 156–57.

382

NOTES TO PAGES 49–55

14. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 159 (quotation), 160; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:937–38; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 129; Marquis, “Forcing of Tribe from Black Hills Country Provoked Trouble,” unidentified newspaper clipping dated July 17, 1932, Jerome A. Greene Collection. 15. Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 77–78; “The Siege of Fort Pease,” New York Herald, March 8, 1876, in Abrams, Last Stand, unpaginated; Stewart, “Major Brisbin’s Relief of Fort Pease.” 16. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 161; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:938–39; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 129; “Two Moons Narrative,” in Hardorff, Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 108; Dickson, “Reconstructing the Indian Village on the Little Bighorn,” 4, 9; Anderson, “Cheyennes at the Little Big Horn,” 5–6; “Black Eagle Account,” in Greene, Lakota and Cheyenne, 8; “Interview with Short Buffalo (Short Bull),” in Hinman, “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse,” 35. The estimate of two hundred warriors is given by Anson Mills, who was among the attackers. Mills testimony, Reynolds General Court Martial, NA, 161. 17. Roberts, “The Shame of Little Wolf,” 38–39. 18. Monnett, Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed, 54–55; Woodward, “Some Experiences with the Cheyennes,” 189–90; Millbrook, “The Jordan Massacre,” 220, 229; Lindmier, Drybone, 71–72; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:927, 930, 1419; Report of the Special Commission Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of the Red Cloud Agency, 375–80 (quotation on 378). 19. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 161. 20. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:939; Powell, Sweet Medicine, 1:92–93; Hedren, After Custer, 139–40; “Two Moons Interview,” in Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, 131, 132 (quotation). Margot Liberty offers an entirely different view of this Indian war from the perspective of the Northern Cheyennes, arguing carefully in “Cheyenne Primacy” that this dire conflict was really all about the Northern Cheyennes and much less about the Sioux. Her thoughts are interesting and well reasoned, even though I do not support her general conclusion, which flies in the face of the enormous whirlwind directly descending upon the Sioux. Chapter 3. Organizing a Campaign 1. Crook’s innovations in Indian campaigning have been well studied. See Greene, “George Crook,” 120–21; and Magid, The Gray Fox, 80–81, 105, 107. 2. “Roster of Troops Serving in the Department of the Platte, February, 1876,” filed with Department of the Platte General Orders, 1876, NA.

NOTES TO PAGES 56–61

383

3. “Roster of Troops Serving in the Department of the Platte, August, 1875,” filed with Department of the Platte General Orders, 1875, NA; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 270. Fine biographies of Nickerson and Bourke exist: Juarez, The Tarnished Saber, for Nickerson; and Porter, Paper Medicine Man, for Bourke. See also the Nickerson and Bourke sketches in Thrapp, Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, 2:1054, 1:144–45, respectively. 4. Watkins letter, November 9, 1875, in Carroll, General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 5–7. John Gray carefully dissected Watkins’s letter, found it curiously irregular, and suggested that it was the nefarious handiwork of the hawkish Sheridan himself. The evidence is imperfect, but the letter was every bit as explosive as presented. Gray, Centennial Campaign, 27–30. 5. “Report of Lieut. Gen. P. H. Sheridan,” in RSW, 1876, 440–42. 6. Telegrams Sent, December 1875 through February 1876, Department of the Platte Press Copies of Telegrams Sent, 1875–76, NA. 7. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 150; Schmitt, General George Crook, 5–6; Essin, Shavetails & Bell Sharps, 3–4; Magid, The Gray Fox, 25–27. 8. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 150 (quotation), 151; Daly, “The War Path,” 16; Breckons, “The Army Pack Train Service,” in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, 99–100; Spring, “Prince of Packers”; Moore, untitled 26-page publication datelined Camp Robinson, Nebraska, May 20, 1877, Bourke Collection, Great Plains Art Museum; Diaries of Bourke, 242. Moore’s study was edited and reprinted as Instructions for Using the Aparejo, or Spanish Pack Saddle. 9. Mears, “Campaigning against Crazy Horse,” 68–69; Daly, “Following the Bell,” 113; Department of the Platte Telegrams Sent, February 1876, NA. 10. Chandler letter, February 1, 1876, and Belknap letter, February 3, 1876, in Carroll, General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 11–12; “Report of the General of the Army,” in RSW, 1876, 28 (quotation). 11. Hedren, Fort Laramie in 1876, 52–53. 12. Exhibit P, General Court-Martial of Joseph J. Reynolds (hereinafter cited as GCM of Reynolds), NA, 1. 13. Urwin, “Reynolds,” 9–10; Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 379; Self, “Court-Martial of J. J. Reynolds,” 52. 14. Urwin, “Reynolds,” 10–11; Cozzens, This Terrible Sound, 176, 178 (quotation); Kapaun, “Major General Joseph J. Reynolds and His Division at Chickamauga,” 15, 77, 82, 87–89, 92. Kapaun’s view of Reynolds at Chickamauga is consistently disparaging, while Cozzens is nuanced and less critical and Urwin offers praise. 15. Third Cavalry Regimental Return, November 1871, NA; Self, “Court-Martial of J. J. Reynolds,” 52–53; Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His

384

NOTES TO PAGES 62–67

Army, 237, 303; Barnett, “Powder River,” 4; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 270 (quotation). 16. Reynolds affidavit, February 26, 1877, Randolph affidavit, April 3, 1876 (first quotation), Norris-Randolph affidavit, undated, and “Proceedings of a Board to Retire Disabled Officers, February 26–27, 1877” (second quotation), in Joseph J. Reynolds Appointment, Commission, Personal (hereinafter ACP) File NA; Welsh, Medical Histories of Union Generals, 275–76. 17. Munn Report, NA; Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 57; Department of the Platte Personal History of Surgeons Serving in the Department, NA. 18. Diaries of Bourke, 206–207, 220–21; letter, Headquarters, Camp Supply, to Clark, February 11, 1876, Ben Clark Collection, University of Oklahoma Libraries. 19. “The Indian Question” and “Important Events Foreshadowed,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 18, 1876 (quotations); “An Interview with Gen. Crook,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 22, 1876; “General Crook,” Omaha Republican, February 23, 1876. 20. Diaries of Bourke, 207–208; “Military Movements,” Omaha Republican, February 27, 1876. 21. “The Signs of the Times,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, February 20, 1876; “Military Movements,” Omaha Republican, February 27, 1876. 22. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 247 (first quotation), 248 (second quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 207–208; Edwin A. Curley, Edwin A. Curley’s Guide to the Black Hills, 20. 23. Diaries of Bourke, 208; Hedren, Fort Laramie in 1876, 46, 58; McDermott, “John ‘Portugee’ Phillips,” 126–28; “Itinerary of distances from Ft. Fetterman to Old Ft. C. F. Smith given by John (Portugee) Phillips,” and Fort Laramie Scouting Reports, Fort Laramie National Historic Site (hereinafter cited as FLNHS); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 247. 24. Diaries of Bourke, 208–209; Fort Laramie Medical History, February 18, 1876, and Noyes report of scout, February 18, 1876, Egan report of scout, February 22, 1876, Fort Laramie Scouting Reports, FLNHS (quotation). 25. Munn Report, NA (quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 208. 26. Diaries of Bourke, 208–209; “John Shangrau’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 256; Gilbert, Big Bat Pourier, 45. 27. McDermott, “John Baptiste Richard”; Diaries of Bourke, 209; Jones, “Those Wild Reshaw Boys,” 32–36; Glass, Reshaw, 209, 223, 227; “Alter Ego” [Robert E. Strahorn], “The Big Horn Expedition,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, in Abrams, Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, 38 (hereinafter, unless otherwise noted, all references to the Rocky Mountain News are from this source, with page number provided); Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 94, 105–106.

NOTES TO PAGES 68–73

385

28. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 87–88; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 255; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 61, 123–24; Gray, “Frank Grouard.” 29. Mattes, Indians, Infants and Infantry, 209, 211 (quotation). 30. Diaries of Bourke, 209; Fort Laramie Medical History, February 25, 1876. 31. Lindmier, Drybone, 31–33; “Itinerary of distances from Ft. Fetterman to Old Ft. C. F. Smith given by John (Portugee) Phillips.” 32. Third Cavalry Regimental Return, February, 1876, NA. 33. Diaries of Bourke, 209–11; [Strahorn], “Reporting at Headquarters,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, 38. Pearson, Morton, and Bourke entered West Point together in 1865. Morton and Bourke graduated in 1869, Pearson a year later. 34. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 250; Diaries of Bourke, 210; Trenholm, The Arapahoes, 256–57; Glass, Reshaw, 224–25, 241; [Thaddeus Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, March 9, 1876, 43; Crook to Custer, February 27, 1876, Crook Papers, University of Oregon (quotation). Custer’s presumptive responses to Crook’s several missives could not be located. 35. Diaries of Bourke, 210; Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 50, 76–77; [Strahorn], “Reporting at Headquarters,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, 38. The “Fighting Paymaster” sobriquet is noted in the Omaha Daily Bee on November 28, 1882, and again on January 24, 1900, on the occasion of Stanton’s death. Charles King, an officer with the Fifth Cavalry, called Stanton the “bloodthirsty paymaster” and “the only one of his corps, who would rather undergo the privations of such a campaign and take actual part in its engagements than sit at a comfortable desk at home and criticize its movements.” King, Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life, 55, 68. In addition to the various campaigns against the Sioux in the 1870s, Stanton also went afield during difficulties with the Utes in 1879 and 1886 and paid troops in the field in Dakota during the Wounded Knee campaign of 1890–91. “Record of Colonel T. H. Stanton, Ass’t Paymaster General, U.S. Army,” Thaddeus H. Stanton ACP File, NA. 36. “Paymaster Stanton,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 31, 1877; “Record of Colonel T. H. Stanton, Ass’t Paymaster General, U.S. Army”; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 346–47. 37. [Strahorn], “Reporting at Headquarters,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, 38. 38. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 258; Diaries of Bourke, 224, 227; “Cookery and Poker,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 18, 1877 (first quotation); “Not a Hero,” Omaha Republican, April 9, 1876 (second quotation). 39. Strahorn, “Ninety Years of Boyhood, 1942,” College of Idaho, 97, 113, 116; Knight, “Robert E. Strahorn,” 33–34; Knight, Following the Indian Wars, 169–71.

386

NOTES TO PAGES 73–100

40. [Stanton], “Gen. Crook’s Expedition,” New York Tribune, February 28, 1876; Magid, The Gray Fox, 170–71. 41. [Strahorn], “The Big Horn Expedition,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, 39–40; Diaries of Bourke, 213, 216. 42. [Strahorn], “Reporting at Headquarters,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 8, 1876, 38; Fort Fetterman Post Return, February 1876, NA; Diaries of Bourke, 213–14. 43. Fort Fetterman Special Order No. 21, February 29, 1876, Thomas Lindmier Collection; Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 13, 74; “Curtis Munn,” “Charles R. Stephens,” “John Ridgely,” Department of the Platte Personal History of Surgeons Serving in the Department, NA; John Ridgely Medical Officer File, NA. The story of the army’s acting assistant surgeons in the Indian wars is widely misunderstood. For insight, see Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 15–18; and Hedren, “The Sioux War Adventures of Dr. Charles V. Petteys.” 44. Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 186–208; Drew letter and endorsements, May 1, 1864, George A. Drew ACP File, NA. 45. Diaries of Bourke, 216; Crook report, May 7, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 201; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 247. 46. Diaries of Bourke, 216–17; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 251; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 295–96. 47. Diaries of Bourke, 217–18; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 252–53; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 296. AGO General Orders No. 13, January 27, 1873, detailed winter gear for certain named posts in the Department of the Platte, including Fort D. A. Russell (original in the author’s collection). See also McChristian, The U.S. Army in the West, 69–70. 48. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 10; Reynolds Report, April 15, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 203 (quotation). Chapter 4. The Trail North 1. Diaries of Bourke, 219; “Alter Ego” [Robert E. Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 56 (quotation). 2. Towne, “Fighting at Powder River and Rosebud Creek, 1876,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 108 (quotation); [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 56; Diaries of Bourke, 219; Lindmier, Drybone, 24, 43. 3. Reynolds, “Official Report of Captain Joseph J. Reynolds,” April 15, 1876, 204 (hereinafter cited as Reynolds Report); [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 56; Diaries of Bourke, 216–17; Mears, “Campaigning against Crazy Horse,” 69. There is considerable variance in the numbers. Reynolds reported eighty-five wagons; John

NOTES TO PAGES 101–7

387

Slough, eighty-two (Slough Diary, March 1, 1876, John P. Slough Papers, Montana Historical Society (hereinafter cited as MHS); and Bourke, eightysix plus three or four ambulances (On the Border with Crook, 254). The Omaha Republican on April 4, 1876, citing an unnamed participant in the campaign, reported 80 six-mule wagons and 375 pack mules, while Reynolds and Bourke both reported 400 pack mules. Mears recollected eight pack trains and about a hundred wagons. The Reynolds figures are used here. 4. Diaries of Bourke, 216–17; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 252–53, 257; McChristian, The U.S. Army in the West, 69–72. 5. Reynolds Report, 204; [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 56; Diaries of Bourke, 219–20. As with other numbers, the sources differ on the daily mileage reports. The Reynolds figures are used here: his measurements for the most part were recorded with an odometer. 6. Sickles letter of recommendation, November 12, 1866 (first quotation), Moore to Adjutant General, May 2, 1874, Alexander Moore ACP File, NA; Barnett, “Power River,” 6–7; Schmitt, General George Crook, 164–65 (second quotation). 7. [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 56–57; Diaries of Bourke, 220; Munn Report, NA; Reynolds Report, 204. 8. Diaries of Bourke, 222–23; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 256–57 (first quotation); [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, 57 (second quotation); Slough Diary, March 4, 1876, MHS; “Names of Troops in the Campaign,” in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 193; “Alter Ego” [Robert E. Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 79. 9. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 293–94 (quotations), 311. 10. Diaries of Bourke, 222–23; [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 79–80. 11. “John Shangrau’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 257; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 89; [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 80; Diaries of Bourke, 224–25; Munn Report, NA; Fourth Infantry Regimental Return, March 1876, NA; Slough Diary, March 5, 1876, MHS (quotation). Grouard reported that Crook dispatched six scouts, including John Shangrau. Shangrau named the same five scouts as Grouard did but said that he himself remained in the army camp. 12. “John Shangrau’s Interview,” 257; Diaries of Bourke, 226. 13. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 259; Diaries of Bourke, 228–29; Reynolds Report, April 15, 1876, 205.

388

NOTES TO PAGES 108–15

14. Diaries of Bourke, 229–30; Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 23; [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 81–82; Peale testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 343 (quotation). 15. Diaries of Bourke, 230; [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876; Munn Report. 16. Slough Diary, March 7, 1876 (first quotation), MHS; Diaries of Bourke, 231 (second quotation), 232; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 90; Reynolds Report, 205; Pearson, “Military Notes, 1876,” 296 (Pearson quotations). An earlier version was published in a slightly less edited form as Pearson, The Platte-Dakota Campaign of 1876. 17. Diaries of Bourke, 232. 18. [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 212; Diaries of Bourke, 233; Slough Diary, March 8, 1876, MHS (quotation). 19. Fourth Infantry Regimental Return, March 1876; Stanton to Paymaster General, April 1, 1876, Quartermaster General Consolidated Correspondence, NA, with this copy provided by John McDermott. 20. “West,” Omaha Daily Bee, March 18, 1876; “Savage Sioux,” Omaha Republican, March 18, 1876; “News from Northern Wyoming,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, March 22, 1876 (quotations). The complete identity of the courier Fielding has not been determined. Contemporary Indian country sources also mention a William (Bill) Fielder and a John Fields. 21. Slough Diary, March 9, 1876, MHS. 22. [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 213 (quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 234–35; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 262; Reynolds Report, 205; Munn Report, NA. 23. Diaries of Bourke, 234–35; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 262–63; [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 213; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, April 4, 1876, 61. 24. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 263; [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 214; Diaries of Bourke, 235–36. 25. [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 214; Diaries of Bourke, 238–39; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 265; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” 62; Reynolds Report, 206; Slough Diary, March 12–13, 1876, MHS. 26. [Strahorn], Rocky Mountain News, April 4, 1876, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 214; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” 62 (quotations). 27. Diaries of Bourke, 242–43.

NOTES TO PAGES 116–25

389

28. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 90, 91 (quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 240; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” 62–63. 29. Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861, 244; Diaries of Bourke, 239, 244; Slough Diary, March 15, 1876, MHS (quotation). 30. Reynolds Report; Diaries of Bourke, 243–44; Slough Diary, March 14, 1876, MHS; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” 63; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 91–92; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 139–40. 31. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 91, 92 (quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 244; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” 63. 32. Diaries of Bourke, 245. 33. Reynolds Report, 207; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 92–93. 34. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 93, 94 (quotation). Chapter 5. Hot Pursuit on a Frigid Night 1. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 2. 2. Bourke to Adjutant General, September 9, 1894, Stanton ACP File, NA; “John Shangrau’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 258. 3. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 3–5 (first quotation 5, second quotation 4). 4. Anson Mills interview notes, Walter M. Camp Papers, Denver Public Library (DPL); Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 21, 22 (quotation); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 270. 5. Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 189–208; Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 39; Schmitt, General George Crook, 191 (quotation); Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 11–12. 6. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 6. 7. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 14–15, 21, 23; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 5; Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 117; Strahorn testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 175; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 94. 8. Reynolds Report, 207; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 235; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 288, 296, 297 (quotation). 9. Diaries of Bourke, 245; Reynolds Report, 207; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 288 (first quotation); Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 22; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 94; Munn Report, NA (second quotation). 10. Stanton to Paymaster General, April 1, 1876, Quartermaster General Consolidated Correspondence, NA; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 94 (quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 142–43; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 211.

390

NOTES TO PAGES 126–30

11. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 113; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 271; Diaries of Bourke, 246 (quotation). 12. Diaries of Bourke, 246 (first quotation); [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 85 (second quotation); Reynolds Report, 207; Slough Diary, March 16, 1876, MHS (third quotation). 13. Diaries of Bourke, 239, 246 (first quotation); DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 95; [Stanton], “The Battle of Powder River,” New York Times, April 4, 1876, 64 (second quotation); Morton interview, October 14, 1914 (third quotation), Walter Mason Camp Papers, Brigham Young University (BYU). 14. Diaries of Bourke, 249–50. 15. Reynolds Report, 207; “The Cheyenne Letter,” Omaha Daily Herald, April 13, 1876; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 85 (first quotation); Morton interview, Camp Papers, BYU; Lang, “Attacking the Cheyennes at Powder River in 1876,” Winners of the West (February 1925), in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 109 (second quotation); McGrath to Slough, Oct. 26, 1921 (third quotation), John P. Slough Papers, Montana Historical Society (MHS); Noyes to Camp, Feb. 8, 1911, Camp Papers, BYU; Pollock, “Veteran Recalls Hardships of Indian Fighting in West”; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 271. 16. Diaries of Bourke, 248 (quotations); Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 117–18; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 95; Glass, Reshaw, 151, 158n24; Noyes to Camp, Feb. 8, 1911, Walter Mason Camp Papers, BYU. 17. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 95 (quotations); Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 118. 18. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 211. 19. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 8 (first quotation); Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 118 (second and third quotations); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 40 (fourth quotation); Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 369 (fifth quotation). 20. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 40; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 96 (first and second quotations); Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 9 (third quotation). 21. Egan was designated the charging company “because he had pistols,” which reveals a unique circumstance on this expedition that flies counter to conventional understandings of a duly outfitted U.S. Cavalry company on a western campaign. As noted, on the Big Horn Expedition only one of the ten participating mounted companies is known to have carried pistols, the cavalry’s standard and revered .45 caliber, six-shot, 7.5-inch barrel Colt sidearm. Like sabers, revolvers were close-quarter weapons. And also like sabers, revolvers were occasionally left behind when troops went to the field, especially on winter campaigns, when heavy overclothing and gloves

NOTES TO PAGES 131–35

391

or mittens were essential but encumbering wear. At Fort D.  A. Russell before the start of the campaign, Reynolds and Mills agreed that any fighting would be done with carbines. All five Third Cavalry companies originated there, and the two Fort Sanders Second Cavalry companies passed through and finished outfitting there, so those seven units received and complied with the directive straight-up. Egan’s company originated at Fort Laramie, and it is unknown why he led his unit to the field additionally armed with revolvers. Noyes originated at Fort Laramie too, and soldiers in his company did not carry theirs. Captain Thomas Dewees’s Second Cavalry company originated at Fort Fetterman and may or may not have carried this sidearm, but in any case Dewees now marched with Crook. Of all the company commanders participating in this campaign, Egan was easily the wiliest and most experienced in Indian combat. Perhaps that experience suggested the probable need for sidearms, despite encumbering overclothing and gloves or mittens. Egan’s decision, however grounded, now put him at the very epicenter of the entire attack plan. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 143 (quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 75–76; Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 120. 22. Reynolds Report, 208; Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 179–80; Mills Report, March 27, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 215. 23. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 143 (quotation), 144. 24. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 88 (first and second quotations); Diaries of Bourke, 249 (third and fourth quotations). 25. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 399; Vaughn, “Captain James Egan,” 1, 2 (quotation). 26. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 399; Scott, Bleed, and Damm, Custer, Cody, and Grand Duke Alexis, 52–53; Vaughn, “Captain James Egan,” 3; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 143 (quotation). 27. Strahorn, “Ninety Years of Boyhood,” College of Idaho, 124. 28. William C. Bryan Medal of Honor Application, June 7, 1898, with C. E. Munn Endorsement, June 3, 1899, William C. Bryan Medal of Honor File, NA, copy furnished by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. 29. [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 86; Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 90; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 300, 310; Slough Diary, March 16 [sic: 17], 1876, MHS. 30. Diaries of Bourke, 250. 31. Noyes Report, March 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 222–23. 32. Reynolds testimony, General Court-Martial of Captain Alexander Moore, NA, 125 (hereinafter cited as GCM of Moore). 33. Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds GCM, 369; [Stanton], “The Battle of Powder River,” New York Times, April 4, 1876, 64.

392

NOTES TO PAGES 135–49

34. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 214. 35. Ibid., 240–41. 36. Stanton, Memorandum, March 27, 1876, Exhibit L, GCM of Reynolds; Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 54, 55 (first quotation), 56 (second and third quotations). 37. Rawolle Report, March 22, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 226; Moore Report, March 22, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 225. 38. Gilbert testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 274–75; Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 256–57. Company E’s captain, Elijah R. Wells, and first lieutenant, Randolph Norwood, were both absent (sick). Second Cavalry Regimental Return, March 1876, NA. 39. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 56–57. 40. Mills Report, 215–16; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 144– 45, 166–67. 41. Mills Report, 216; Paul testimony, GCM of Moore, 36 (quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 79–80. 42. Mills Report, 216; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 145, 146 (first quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 81 (second quotation). 43. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 12 (second quotation), 119 (first quotation); Reynolds Report, 208–209. Of Company E’s normal complement of officers, Captain Alexander Sutorius was at Fort D. A. Russell in arrest, and First Lieutenant George E. Ford and Second Lieutenant Henry R. Lemly were absent with leave. Third Cavalry Regimental Returns, March 1876, NA. Chapter 6. Egan’s Charge 1. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 90; Diaries of Bourke, 250; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 283; Noyes Report, March 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 222–23 (declivity noted on 223). 2. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 275, 276 (first quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 250 (second and third quotations); Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 91; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 86 (fourth quotation). 3. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 273–74; James N. Connely, “Combatting Cheyennes at Powder River and the Red Fork, 1876,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 118 (first quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 250–51; Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 181 (second quotation). 4. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 274, 275 (quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 251; “List of Killed and Wounded,” Munn Report, NA. 5. Diaries of Bourke, 251; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 87; [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29,

NOTES TO PAGES 149–56

393

1876, 58; Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 182; Bourke to Adjutant General, September 9, 1894, Thaddeus H. Stanton ACP File, NA; Connely, “Combatting Cheyennes at Powder River and the Red Fork, 1876,” 118; Slough Diary, March 16 [sic: 17], 1876, MHS. 6. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 181–82; Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 92–93. Company K’s first lieutenant, Colon Augur, served as an aide-de-camp to his father, Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur, commander of the Military Department of the Gulf in New Orleans. Its second lieutenant, James N. Allison, was on extended leave. Second Cavalry Regimental Return, February 1876, NA. 7. Noyes Report, 223; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 284 (quotation). 8. Noyes Report, 223; Diaries of Bourke, 251. 9. Mills Report, March 27, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 216 (first quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 81–82, 83 (second and third quotations); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 147. 10. Mills Report, 216–17; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 149; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 88. 11. Bryan Medal of Honor Application, June 7, 1898, William C. Bryan Medal of Honor File, NA, copy furnished by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 88; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 112 (“corner”); Munn testimony, GCM of Moore, 109; Munn Report, NA. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 97, also relates this episode, but Grouard (or more likely his biographer) confuses Captain James Egan and Private Edward Eagan. 12. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 93. 13. Gilbert testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 279–80; Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 58; Stanton testimony, GCM of Moore, 21 (first quotation); Stanton to Paymaster General, April 1, 1876, NA (second quotation). 14. Stanton to Adjutant General, July 25, 1896, Frederick W. Sibley ACP File, NA. Sibley was genuinely gallant in 1876, but too many corroborating witnesses were deceased by 1896 for the War Department to endorse his application. 15. Stanton Report, April 29, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 229 (first quotation); Strahorn, Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, 4 (second quotation). In his book Vaughn mistakenly attributes the Stanton report of April 29, 1876, to Moore. Innumerable transcriptions were made of the official reports of this campaign and perhaps he examined one that somehow had this error, although an original error is not particularly probable. This is rightly Stanton’s report, as confirmed in Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series) (hereinafter cited as AGO LR), 1871–1880, NA. 16. Bainbridge Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 148–49.

394

NOTES TO PAGES 156–62

17. Ibid., 149. The army’s Description and Rules for the Management of the Springfield Rifle, Carbine, and Army Revolvers contains charts detailing matters such as elevation, accuracy, drift, trajectory, penetration in white pine, and dangerous space. In the discussion and calculations of dangerous space (31–33) the manual notes that “men should be habituated in firing with the sight fixed at the nearest mark—that of 300 yards.” With a carbine the maximum dangerous space against infantry was 204 yards, with a further dangerous space beyond the object of 52 yards; and against cavalry 230 yards, with a further dangerous space beyond the object of 70 yards. This was the soldiers’ norm, and they were introduced to these variables, if casually, on the target range. Using the weapon’s sight to advantage understandably increased its range. 18. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 97. 19. Morton testimony, GCM of Moore, 58. 20. Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 372; Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 258; Bainbridge Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 149; Rawolle Report, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 226. Rawolle was north and Moore south on this line, as affirmed by Sergeant Gilbert, coming down with Stanton, who encountered his company at the northernmost sector and not Moore’s. Gilbert testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 280. 21. Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 122–23. 22. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 133–34; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 149 (quotations). 23. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 133–34; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 150 (quotation). 24. Reynolds Report, April 15, 1876, 209; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 13. 25. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 151–52. 26. Gilbert testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 280–81; Reynolds Report, 212; Rawolle Report, 228. Rawolle’s ACP File, NA, contains no mention of his having been wounded. 27. Himmelsbaugh testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 195; Rickey and Sheire, The Cavalry Barracks Fort Laramie Furnishing Study, 8–9; American Decorations, 48. 28. Diaries of Bourke, 252; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 276. 29. For marvelous, well-illustrated examples of Plains Indian cultural splendor relatively contemporary with Powder River, see Hanson, Spirits in the Art from the Plains and Southwest Indian Cultures; Hanson, Little Chief’s Gatherings; and Markoe, Vestiges of a Proud Nation. 30. Diaries of Bourke, 252–53 (first quotations); Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 125 (second quotation). 31. The story of Powder River plunder has a curious modern-day twist. In the mid-1990s at the Baltimore Antique Arms Show I viewed a unique

NOTES TO PAGES 165–68

395

group of mementos from an 1870s Third Cavalryman, including the soldier’s vellum discharge from the army, a tintype of the individual dressed in his fatigue uniform, and a colorfully beaded Indian knife sheath and hunting knife bearing an aged tag noting that they had been collected from the Powder River battlefield of March 17, 1876. The soldier’s discharge featured an ornate handwritten overscript above the printed eagle customarily embellishing these documents, recording this soldier’s participation in the Indian fights at Powder River, Tongue River Heights, Rosebud Creek, and Slim Buttes, all critical episodes of the Great Sioux War. The group was priced at $1,200. I viewed the lot almost immediately after entering the show and, while intrigued, sought to examine more of the show’s thousand tables before committing to such a purchase. Regrettably, when I returned to the table an hour or so later, intent on closing the deal, the lot had been sold. Unfortunately, I did not record the soldier’s name. Chapter 7. Destroying Old Bear’s Village 1. Reynolds Report, 213; Mills Report, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 217; Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 125 (first quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 64 (second quotation); Morton interview, October 14, 1914, Camp Papers, BYU. 2. Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 273; Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 193 (quotations). 3. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 61; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 250; Mills Report, 217–18 (quotations). 4. Johnson Report, March 27, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 221; Reynolds Report, 209. 5. Mills Report, 217; Johnson Report, 221; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 88. 6. Studies of Civil War combat are telling in a parallel way. In the following excerpt, read “Model 1873 Springfield carbine” instead of “Model 1861 Springfield rifle” and appreciate a simplified firing routine. The point being made is virtually the same: “None of the rifle’s much-vaunted improvements was sufficient to trump the volunteer soldier’s mediocre training, his amateur officers, the cumbersome nine-step loading sequence, or the inevitable palls of powder smoke. ‘What precision of aim or direction can be expected,’ asked one British officer, when ‘one man is priming; another coming to the present; a third taking, what is called, aim; a fourth ramming down his cartridge,’ and all the while ‘the whole body are closely enveloped in smoke, and the enemy totally invisible.’” The answer, of course, was not much. Whether in the person of Moore on the ridgetop firing a pointless volley, Bainbridge Reynolds offering the enlisted men in his charge no guidance on sighting or range, or Theodore Gouget on the line in the valley expending

396

NOTES TO PAGES 168–76

nearly two-thirds of his ammunition allotment, this was an American army desperately lacking in marksmanship. Guelzo, Gettysburg, 278–79. 7. Reynolds Report, 210 (first quotation); Mills Report, 217–18 (second quotation). 8. Reynolds Report, 210 (quotation); Morton testimony, GCM of Moore, 62; [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 89. 9. Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 262–63; Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 85; Foley testimony, GCM of Moore, 153–54; Foley testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 345, 346 (quotation). Foley named the six men with him: Privates Michael Brannon, William Schubert, Daniel Akley, Henry Burton, Benjamin Slater, and Charles Cunningham, all of Company E, Third Cavalry. 10. Mills Report, 218; Bryan Medal of Honor Application, June 7, 1898, Bryan Medal of Honor File, NA, copy furnished by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society (quotation); “List of Killed and Wounded,” Munn Report, NA. Bryan was confident that Bourke’s shots killed the two Indians. But that is not corroborated by other sources or Indian testimony, and Bourke himself makes no mention of it. 11. Mills Report, 218; Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 86–87; Johnson Report, 221; Morton testimony, GCM of Moore, 74; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 113–14. 12. Mills Report, 219; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 155; Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 94; Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 367 (quotation). 13. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 225; Diaries of Bourke, 253 (first quotation); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 275, 276 (second quotation). 14. Strahorn, “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” 89. 15. Diaries of Bourke, 255; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 276–77; “Crook’s Campaign,” Omaha Republican, April 4, 1876; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 98 (quotations). 16. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1362n10; Blish and Bad Heart Bull, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 392; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 69; Noyes to Camp, Feb. 8, 1911, Camp Papers, BYU; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 98 (quotations); “Crook’s Campaign,” Omaha Republican, April 4, 1876. 17. Diaries of Bourke, 255 (first quotation); Mills Report, 219; Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 87; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 155 (second quotation). 18. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 95. 19. Munn Report, NA. 20. Munn testimony, GCM of Moore, 111. 21. Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 88 (quotations); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 155–56; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 245;

NOTES TO PAGES 176–86

397

Mills Report, 218. Mills told the Reynolds court that this face-to-face conversation with Moore occurred at about 2 o’clock; Rawolle said about 11 o’clock. More likely the confrontation occurred around noon. 22. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 156. 23. Ibid (first quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 89 (second quotation). 24. Noyes Report, March 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 223; Noyes testimony, GCM of Moore, 142; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 286. 25. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 206 (first quotation); Hall testimony, General Court-Martial of Captain Henry E. Noyes, NA, 52, 54 (second quotation). 26. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 206; Skinner testimony, GCM of Noyes, 60; Hall testimony, GCM of Noyes, 47, 48 (quotation). 27. Noyes Report, 223; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Noyes, 6, (quotation); Hall testimony, GCM of Noyes, 57. 28. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 13; Morton interview, Camp Papers, BYU; Johnson Report, March 27, 1876, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 222; Mills interview notes, Camp Papers, DPL; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 278 (first quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 150 (second quotation). 29. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 14; Reynolds Report, 210; Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 271. 30. Reynolds Report, 210; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 14; Noyes Report, 223. 31. Munn testimony, GCM of Moore, 110; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 112–13; Munn Report; Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 190; Himmelsbaugh testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 195. 32. Reynolds Report, 210–11; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 15–16 (quotation). Chapter 8. Abandoning Private Ayers 1. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 157 (quotation); Johnson Report, March 27, 1876, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 222. 2. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 311. 3. Hall testimony, GCM of Noyes, 51; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 157, 158 (quotation); Glawinski testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 200. 4. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 158. 5. Morton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 382. 6. Ibid. (quotations); Mills Report, March 27, 1876, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 219. 7. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 158–59 (quotation); Giles testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 347–50.

398

NOTES TO PAGES 187–97

8. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 298, 309 (Noyes quotations); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 159 (final quotation). 9. Glawinski testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 201; Murphy testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 196; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 159 (quotation); Maitland testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 203. 10. Glawinski testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 201 (first quotation); Maitland testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 203 (second quotation). 11. Murphy testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 196 (first quotation); Glawinski testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 200 (other quotations). 12. Maitland testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 203. 13. Murphy testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 197 (quotations); “John Shangrau’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 259. 14. Murphy testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 197–98. 15. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 1; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:943. 16. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 167. Wooden Leg’s story also possibly ties to another man wounded in the head (McCannon), but the context and other actions—stabbing the soldier, taking his coat—more directly tie to a killing at the end of the fight (Ayers). 17. “John Shangrau’s Interview,” 259. 18. Miller, “Record of events while serving in the Army of the United States,” FLNHS. 19. Diaries of Bourke, 254 (first quotation); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 278–79 (second quotation). 20. [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 89. Chapter 9. Withdrawal 1. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 190 (first quotation); Pollock, “Veteran Recalls Hardships of Indian Fighting in West” (second and third quotations); McGrath to Slough, October 26, 1921, Slough Papers, MHS (fourth quotation). Pollock, who enlisted under the alias of John E. Douglas, provided two different accounts of his service in the West. Each is slightly different, and both informed this episode. See also Pollock, “With the Third Cavalry in 1876,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 103–107. Other mentions of the river burial include Glawinski’s testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 199; Miller, “Record of events while serving in the Army of the United States,” FLNHS; and “William H. Taylor’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Settler and Soldier Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 340. 2. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 190. 3. Ibid., 183, 184 (quotations). 4. Morton interview, Camp Papers, BYU (quotation); Mills interview notes, Camp Papers, DPL; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 278; Noyes

NOTES TO PAGES 197–203

399

testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 313; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 250–51; Stanton Report, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 229. 5. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 246. 6. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 45; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 98–99 (quotations). 7. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 45 (quotation); Stanton Report, 229–30. 8. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 69; Morton interview, Camp Papers, BYU; Stanton to Paymaster General, John D. McDermott Collection (quotation). 9. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 187; Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 370; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 227–28; Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 264–65. 10. Land testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 264–65 (quotations); Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 228. 11. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 229, 234 (quotation). 12. Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 370. 13. Ibid. (first quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 46 (second quotation); Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 187; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 99. 14. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 99; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 298–99 (quotations); Morton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 382–83. Bourke asserted that the command never halted on the long ride from the village to Lodge Pole Creek (On the Border with Crook, 279); for the sake of the horses a standard march had cavalry alternately walking and trotting and also dismounting and walking. There is no indication in the sources that this routine was altered, although progress had to have flagged owing to the worn condition of the stock, probably with little if any trotting. 15. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 102 (first quotation); Bourke to Adjutant General, September 9, 1894, Stanton ACP File, NA (second quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 67. 16. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 16. 17. Ibid., 15; Mills interview notes, DPL; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 289; Diaries of Bourke, 254, 255 (quotations). 18. McGrath to Slough, October 26, 1921, Slough Papers, MHS (first quotation); Munn Report, NA; [Stanton], “The Battle of Powder River,” New York Tribune, April 4, 1876, 65 (second quotation); Lang, “Attacking the Cheyennes at Powder River in 1876,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 109 (third quotation); Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 103; Diaries of Bourke, 255 (fourth quotation). Rawolle’s contusion made six wounded, though at the lieutenant’s insistence he was not included on Munn’s official tally.

400

NOTES TO PAGES 203–10

19. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 187; Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 161 (quotation). 20. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 46 (quotation), 69. 21. Grouard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 139; Drew testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 330 (first quotation); Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 17; DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 99; Mills interview notes, Camp Papers, DPL (second quotation). 22. Reynolds Report, 211. 23. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 229–30; [Stanton], “The Battle of Powder River,” 65. 24. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 17 (quotations); Reynolds Report, 211; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 279; Diaries of Bourke, 255; Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 102. Chapter 10. “I See My Horse” 1. The challenges of obtaining and utilizing Indian testimony in constructing an Indian wars narrative is thoughtfully discussed by Greene, “The Great Sioux War and Indian Testimony,” in Lakota and Cheyenne, xviii-xxv; and Michno, “Preface,” in Lakota Noon, ix-xiii. The possibilities and dramatic effectiveness of Indian sources are no better demonstrated than in Greene’s account of Wounded Knee, with chapter 12 expressly devoted to the Indians’ view of the massacre in their own words: Greene, American Carnage, 271–88. 2. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 251; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 159–61; Hinman, “Interview with Short Buffalo (Short Bull),” in “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse,” 34. 3. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 161–63; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:940 (quotation). 4. “Black Eagle Account,” in Greene, Lakota and Cheyenne, 8–9; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 164. 5. The many identifications of this village are thoughtfully explored by Powell in People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1361; but see also Clark to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, September 14, 1877, in Buecker, “Lt. William Philo Clark’s Sioux War Report and Little Big Horn Map”; and “The Bull Hump and White Bird Interview,” in Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories of the Custer Fight, 84. 6. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 164 (first and second quotations); DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 95 (third quotation); “Black Eagle Account,” 9 (fourth quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 250 (fifth quotation). 7. Buecker, “Lt. William Philo Clark’s Sioux War Report and Little Big Horn Map,” 16; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 165, 166 (quotation).

NOTES TO PAGES 210–15

401

8. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 165 (first quotation), 166 (second quotation). 9. Blish and Bad Heart Bull, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 391–92; Noyes to Camp, Feb. 8, 1911, Camp Papers, BYU; Marquis, She Watched Custer’s Last Battle, [2] (quotation); Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:1009. 10. “Black Eagle Account,” 9 (quotation); Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:941; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 166; Bent to Hyde, April 2, 1914, Bent Papers, DPL. 11. “Black Eagle Account,” 10; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:941–42. 12. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:941; Diaries of Bourke, 255 (quotation). 13. [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, 88. 14. Bent to Hyde, April 18, 1914, Bent Letters, Yale University; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:943 (quotation). Military accounts are quite specific about those individuals wounded and killed in the fight and make no mention, aside from Ayers, of warriors advancing on a casualty. Ayers’s death is linked to other Indians. Accepting Powder Face’s account at face value, it more likely ties to McCannon, with the coup taking place simultaneously with or slightly after the soldiers’ withdrawal. 15. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:943; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 167. 16. “Black Eagle Account,” 11; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:941. 17. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:943; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 149; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 167, 168 (quotation); “The He Dog Interview,” in Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, 78. 18. “Black Eagle Account,” 11; Powell, Sweet Medicine, 1:98–99; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 168 (quotation). 19. Marquis, She Watched Custer’s Last Battle, [2] (first quotation); Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 167; Blish and Bad Heart Bull, A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 392 (second quotation). 20. Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 148, 491–92n5; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:944, 2:1362n33. Powers speculates that the “one Sioux and one squaw” reportedly killed may have been later fatalities attributable to Powder River. Powell adds to the story (2:1362n33), citing a statement collected by George Bird Grinnell reposing today in the Grinnell Collection in the Southwest Museum/Autry National Center: “About 1921, a body, apparently Chief Eagle’s mummified remains, was discovered by white men, and until recently was exhibited in a museum in Hastings,

402

NOTES TO PAGES 215–18

Nebraska, where it was identified as the body of High Back Wolf III, killed in fighting at Platte River Bridge in 1865.” A description of this discovery and a discussion of its identity are provided by Sheldon, “A Revenant Cheyenne.” In Sheldon’s account these remains were elaborately swaddled, just as described by White Eagle and Starving Woman, including “a cavalry officer’s heavy storm coat with high collar.” These remains are no longer displayed. In 1999 representatives from the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology studied this partially mummified American Indian male, aged thirty-five to forty-four years, and many associated artifacts. Among the wrappings were cotton textiles, a buffalo robe, and a portion of a buffalo skin tipi cover, with plainly visible stitching. A caped military coat with federal eagle buttons of several sizes was also plainly evident. The individual’s traumatic death could be seen in the presence of dried blood and evidence of extensive bleeding in the upper arm region and left chest. There was no evidence of facial trauma, which undermines the long-held initial identification of these remains as High Back Wolf. Owsley, Hunt, Kardash, and Clark, “48J09001-HM-9211, Mummified Remains, Barnum, Johnson County, WY, Hastings Museum Skeletal Collection, Hastings, Nebraska,” Smithsonian Institution. For all the certainty associated with these remains—the swaddling in textiles, skins, and a brass-buttoned soldier greatcoat—uncertainly clouds them too. The discoverer, a rancher named Adam Keith, declared that he found the grouping twelve (or twenty) miles west of Kaycee. Grinnell’s statement, however, citing another apparently knowledgeable contemporary witness of the discovery, declared that the body and associated funerary remains were found on the Powder “only a short distance” from the Reynolds fight site. The point of discovery may never be confirmed, but in the end the unique swaddling, including a brass-buttoned army coat, seems most telling, indicating a unique association with the Powder River fight of March 17, 1876. 21. “Black Eagle Account,” 11 (quotations); Buecker, “Lt. William Philo Clark’s Sioux War Report and Little Big Horn Map,” 16; Colhoff to Balmer, February 9, 1949, Kingsley Bray Collection. 22. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:944–45; “The Two Moons Interview,” in Hardorff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, 132 (quotation); Powell, “Ox’zem,” 34–36. 23. White Bull’s narrative formed a classic biography titled Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull, by Stanley Vestal (aka Walter S. Campbell). 24. Vestal, Warpath, 180–81 (quotation); Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 32. 25. Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 2:945; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 168–69; “Black Eagle Account,” 11. 26. Reynolds Report, 211. 27. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 169.

NOTES TO PAGES 218–26

403

28. Ibid. (quotation); “Black Eagle Account,” 11; “Hamlin Garland’s Interview with Two Moons,” in Hardorff, Cheyenne Memories of the Custer Fight, 99. Garland’s interview with Two Moon initially appeared in McClure’s Magazine (September 1898) and was also reprinted in Graham, The Custer Myth, 101–103. 29. “Black Eagle Account,” 12; Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 169 (quotations). 30. “Black Eagle Account,” 12. 31. Ibid. (first quotations); Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 169 (second quotation). 32. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 169, 170. 33. “Hamlin Garland’s Interview with Two Moons,” 100 (Crazy Horse and Two Moon quotations); Bray, Crazy Horse, 200; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 323. 34. Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, 170 (first quotation), 171 (third quotation), 172 (fourth quotation); Marquis, The Cheyennes of Montana, 252 (second quotation); Bray, Crazy Horse, 200; Gray, Centennial Campaign, 325; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 130. 35. Bray, Crazy Horse, 200; Marquis, The Cheyennes of Montana, 252; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, 130; Colhoff to Balmer, April 7, 1952, Kingsley Bray Collection. 36. Hinman, “Interview with Short Buffalo (Short Bull),” 34. 37. Colhoff to Balmer, April 7, 1952, Kingsley Bray Collection. Chapter 11. Lodge Pole Creek 1. Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 115. 2. Morton interview, October 14, 1914, Camp Papers, BYU; Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 235; Slough Diary, March 16, 1876, MHS (quotations). 3. Rawolle, testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 234; Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 14 (first quotation); Bourke testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 112–13 (second quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 75; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 315–16 (third quotation). 4. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 115–16; Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861, 107 (quotations). Mills was of the belief that the request for reports was made only of the battalion commanders. Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 98. 5. Diaries of Bourke, 256; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 279–80; Munn Report, NA. 6. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 18. 7. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 235, 236 (first quotation); Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 162; Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 72 (second quotation).

404

NOTES TO PAGES 226–38

8. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 162. 9. Ibid., 162, 163 (quotation); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 71; Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 368. 10. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 169–70 (first and second quotations); Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 47, 72–73; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 18 (third quotation). 11. Diaries of Bourke, 256–57, 257n6. Charles Robinson, editor of the Bourke diary series, explained the Braddock reference: “Major General Edward Braddock led a British force against French-held Fort Duquesne, Pennsylvania, in 1755. Trained in the linear tactics of European warfare, he was unable to adjust to the wilderness fighting of North America. The column was attacked by a large French force with Indian auxiliaries, and thrown back with heavy losses. Braddock was killed in the fight.” 12. Richard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 358. 13. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 99, 100 (quotation); “John Shangrau’s Interview,” in Jensen, The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 259. 14. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 100. The George Harris ranch was located along La Prele Creek, southwest of Fort Fetterman. Flannery, John Hunton’s Diary, 50–51. 15. Dewees testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 339–40. 16. Ibid., 339; Lawson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 333–34. 17. Lawson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 334–35; Richard testimony, GCM of Reynolds GCM, 356; Morton interview, October 14, 1914, Camp Papers, BYU. 18. Lawson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 334–35; Morton interview, October 14, 1914, Camp Papers, BYU (quotations); Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 36 (final quotation). 19. Lawson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 337; Dewees testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 341; Richard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 357. 20. Richard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 359; Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 36; Diaries of Bourke, 257–58; Schmitt, General George Crook, 192; Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 150. 21. Lawson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 336–37. 22. Dewees testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 341 (first quotation); Richard testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 359 (second quotation). Chapter 12. The Rancor Begins 1. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 163–66. 2. [Strahorn], “Matters Pertaining to the Close of General Crook’s Campaign,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 19, 1876, 96. 3. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 30–31.

NOTES TO PAGES 238–44

405

4. Reynolds Report, 212; Diaries of Bourke, 257 (quotation). 5. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 310. 6. Diaries of Bourke, 257 (quotation); Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 47; Miller, “Record of events while serving in the Army of the United States,” FLNHS. 7. Drew testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 331; Diaries of Bourke, 258 (first and third quotations); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 280; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 136 (second quotation). Noyes suggested that this Indian gunfire occurred at the Lodge Pole Creek camp, but he is almost certainly referring to the March 18 camp eight miles upriver. 8. Schmitt, General George Crook, 192; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 281 (quotations). While researching his book The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, Vaughn located the site of the pony killing. He noted that early settler George Linn found forty to fifty horse skulls on the east side of the Powder River opposite Linn Draw, about a mile south of Joe Creek. No iron horseshoes were found among the bones, which were gone by Vaughn’s time. In characteristic fashion Vaughn metal-detected the site but found nothing and presumed that the big flood of 1923 washed everything away (154n7). 9. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 281 (first and second quotations); Diaries of Bourke, 258; Connely, “Combatting Cheyennes at Powder River and the Red Fork,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 118 (third quotation); Schmitt, General George Crook, 192 (fourth quotation). 10. Reynolds Report, 213–14; Diaries of Bourke, 258, 259 (quotation); Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 236. 11. [Strahorn], “Matters Pertaining to the Close of General Crook’s Campaign”; Fourth Infantry Regimental Return, March 1876, NA. 12. Diaries of Bourke, 259 (first quotation); Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 281; Munn Report, NA (Munn quotations). 13. Crook to Sheridan, March 22, 1876, Department of the Platte Press Copies of Telegrams Sent, NA. 14. [Stanton], “Destruction of a Sioux War Camp,” New York Tribune, March 27, 1876, 54; Hutchings, The Army and Navy Journal on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Related Matters, 18–19; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, April 4, 1876, 60–66; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 24–25. 15. [Strahorn], “The Indian War,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1876, reprinted in the Laramie Weekly Sentinel, April 3, 1876; [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” “The Big Horn Expedition,” and “The Fight With Crazy Horse,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876 (quotation). 16. “A Fight with the Sioux,” New York Times, March 26, 1876, in Abrams, Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, 53.

406

NOTES TO PAGES 245–54

17. Crook to Sheridan, March 22, 1876. 18. Diaries of Bourke, 260 (quotation); Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 25. 19. Towne, “Fighting at Powder River and Rosebud Creek,” in Greene, Indian War Veterans, 108. 20. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 25–26; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 115–17; Mills testimony, GCM of Moore, 98 (Mills quotations). 21. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 25–26 (quotations); Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 152. 22. Diaries of Bourke, 261 (first quotation); Munn Report, NA (second quotation); Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 74. 23. [Strahorn], “Matters Pertaining to the Close of General Crook’s Campaign,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 19, 1876, 96. Strahorn further described the bonnet: “composed of eagle feathers artistically set in bands of scarlet cloth and sweeps from the head of the wearer to the ground. I am informed that the kind donors had been offered $150 for it.” 24. Diaries of Bourke, 263–64. 25. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 16, 29. 26. Diaries of Bourke, 261; Schmitt, General George Crook, 164, 192. 27. Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 81–82; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 27; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 127; Lindmier, Drybone, 121. 28. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 27; Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 83. 29. Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 83; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 27–28. 30. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 28–29; Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 83. 31. Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 83, 84 (first quotation); Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 29, 30 (second quotation). 32. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 16 (quotation); “Charges and Specifications thereto against Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d U.S. Cavalry,” GCM of Reynolds, 5–8. 33. Diaries of Bourke, 261. 34. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 300–301. 35. Ibid., 301. 36. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 29 (quotations); Stanton Memorandum, March 27, 1876, Exhibit L, GCM of Reynolds. 37. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 29–30; Mills Report, in Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, March 27, 1876, 215–20; Official Army Register for January, 1876, 53–54; McDermott, “Introduction” to My Story, ix-xii. 38. Crook testimony, GCM of Noyes, 35–36; Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 127.

NOTES TO PAGES 254–57

407

39. Diaries of Bourke, 262 (quotations); Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse, 152. The referenced newspaper stories are [Strahorn], “The Fight with Crazy Horse, “Rocky Mountain News April 7, 1876, reprinted in the Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 84–89; [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, April 7, 1876, 76–77; and [Stanton], “General Crook’s Pursuit of the Sioux Indians,” Washington Chronicle, April 9, 1876, reprinted as “The Cheyenne Letter,” Omaha Daily Herald, April 13, 1876. 40. Diaries of Bourke, 262; “Additional Charges and Specifications preferred against Joseph J. Reynolds,” Exhibit J, GCM of Reynolds. 41. Exhibit J, GCM of Reynolds (quotations). Egan spent the summer of 1876 at Fort Laramie and then returned to the field that fall with Crook and his Powder River Expedition, where he and Company K served as the expedition’s provost guard. Noyes spent the summer in the field with Crook on his Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition and returned not to Fort Laramie but to Fort D. A. Russell, where he paused from November 1876 to mid-January 1877 (to the conclusion of the Reynolds-Moore courts-martial) and then took station at Fort Fred Steele, Wyoming, from mid-January to late-September 1877. By then Egan’s company had been transferred to Fort Fred Steele as well. When the Wyoming portion of the Second Cavalry transferred to Montana in October 1877, Egan was assigned to Fort Custer and Noyes to Fort Keogh. Egan retired from the army in 1879, incapacitated by hard service, and died in 1883. He was forty-five years old. His wife, Mary, died three days before him. Both are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. See Cullum, “Henry E. Noyes,” in Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., 830; “Captain James Egan,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 21, 1877; and Vaughn, “Captain James Egan.” 42. See Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, Appendix B, for several of the reports, with identifications necessarily corrected in specific notes in the present book. These corrections are summarized in note 26 of chapter 13. Also Stanton to Paymaster General, Quartermaster General Consolidated Correspondence, NA; and Munn Report, NA; Diaries of Bourke, 262; Reynolds Report, 212 (quotation). See the bibliography for a full detailing of the expedition’s maps. 43. Diaries of Bourke, 262; Hedren, Fort Laramie in 1876, 26–27; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 281–82. 44. Reynolds Report, 214; “Military Affairs,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, April 4, 1876; Reynolds to Adjutant General, April 5, 1876, making reference to a communication of March 28, 1876, in Joseph J. Reynolds ACP File, NA (quotations). The unique nature of the West Point brotherhood is nicely explained by O’Connell in Fierce Patriot, 12–13.

408

NOTES TO PAGES 257–87

45. Exhibit O, GCM of Reynolds (first and second quotation); Chambers to Adjutant General, February 2, 1877, Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series), NA (third quotation). 46. “Proceedings of a Board to Retire Disabled Officers, February 26–27, 1877,” Reynolds ACP File (quotation); Fort Laramie Register of Sick and Wounded; and Fort Laramie Medical History, March 30–31, 1876, FLNHS. 47. Fort Laramie Medical History, March 31, 1876; Reynolds Report, 214; “Military Affairs,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, April 4, 1876; Fort D.  A. Russell Post Return, April 1876, NA. 48. Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 1, 1876. 49. “Military Affairs,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, April 4, 1876; reprinted verbatim in the Laramie Daily Sentinel, April 5, 1876. 50. “Crook’s Chagrin,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 5, 1876. The story was reprinted verbatim in the Army and Navy Journal on April 29. Hutchings, The Army and Navy Journal on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Related Matters, 20. 51. “Crook’s Expedition,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, April 7, 1876. 52. “Crook’s Indian Expedition,” Laramie Daily Sentinel, April 7, 1876. 53. Stanton to Paymaster General, Quartermaster General Consolidated Correspondence, NA. 54. [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, April 4, 1876, 60–66; reprinted in part in the Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 9, 11, 12, 1876. 55. [Stanton], “The Big Horn Expedition,” New York Tribune, April 7, 1876, 76–77; reprinted in part as “What Was Not Accomplished by the Big Horn Expedition,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 13, 1876. 56. “General Crook’s Pursuit of the Sioux Indians,” Washington Chronicle, April 9, 1876; “The Cheyenne Letter,” Omaha Daily Herald, April 13, 1876. The Chronicle story was clipped and included as Exhibit H in the Reynolds court-martial transcript and is also reprinted in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 232–34. Chapter 13. Misplaced Justice 1. [Strahorn], “Northwestern Wyoming,” Weekly Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1876, 79–88, 89 (quotation). 2. Omaha Republican, April 2, 4, 6, 1876; Diaries of Bourke, 257. 3. Crook testimony, GCM of Noyes, 36; Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 301 (quotation). 4. Wilhelm, A Military Dictionary and Gazetteer, 119; Special Orders No. 44, April 13, 1876, GCM of Noyes, 1; Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861, 124–25; A Manual for Courts-Martial, 7, 11, 20–21. While a soldier was under arrest, extended limits could be granted by a commanding officer.

NOTES TO PAGES 287–96

409

5. A Manual for Courts-Martial, 21–23. 6. Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 15. 7. A Manual for Courts-Martial, 21; “The General Court-Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 14, 1877; “John Eugene Smith,” in Warner, Generals in Blue, 459; Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 380; McDermott, Red Cloud’s War, 370–71, 408–10; McChristian, Fort Laramie, 328–29. 8. GCM of Noyes, 2–4, and Exhibit A therein. “Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline” was article 62 of the revised Articles of War adopted on December 1, 1873. This previously had been article 99 in the army’s revised regulations of 1863, which otherwise still generally guided the army’s day-to-day operations. 9. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Noyes, 5–6. 10. Ibid., 7–8. 11. Ibid., 8–9. 12. Ibid., 9–10 13. Ibid., 17–19. Expressed another way, the issue was that under military law the officer who brings charges cannot convene the court-martial. If Crook was really the officer who brought the charges, and Reynolds merely his front, Noyes’s court-martial was in violation of military law and must necessarily have been dismissed, conceivably to be retried later. 14. Chambers testimony, GCM of Noyes, 29–30, 32. 15. Crook testimony, GCM of Noyes, 34–36, 37 (first quotation), 37–38 (second quotation), 38–39 (third quotation); “Doings of the CourtMartial,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 30, 1876. 16. Noyes GCM of, 44–45. 17. Hall testimony, GCM of Noyes, 47–48. 18. Ibid., 53, 58. 19. Skinner testimony, GCM of Noyes, 59–60, 62. 20. Exhibit C, GCM of Noyes, 62. 21. GCM of Noyes, 62, [63] (quotations); Department of the Platte General Court Martial Orders No. 29, May 2, 1876, NA. 22. Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 169. 23. “Personal Paragraphs” and “Doings of the Court-Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 25, 28 (first quotation), 30, 1876; “The Indians” and “Col. Stanton ‘All Right,’” Omaha Daily Herald, April 15 (second quotation), April 26 (third quotation), 1876. 24. All referenced letters including those of April 20 and 22 (quotation), 1876, are found in the Reynolds ACP File. 25. Sheridan to Townsend, May 4, “Members of the Gen. Reynolds Court,” May 6, 1876, AGO LR. 26. The referenced papers and Sheridan’s endorsement dated May 17, 1876, are assembled as “Transcript,” 2440 AGO 1876, AGO LR. The referenced field reports enumerated therein confirm my identity corrections

410

NOTES TO PAGES 297–302

of Vaughn’s Appendix B, “Official Reports of the Battle,” in The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River, 200–230, to wit: Noyes, March 1876; Moore, March 22; Rawolle, March 22; Johnson, March 27; Mills, March 27; Reynolds, April 15; Rawolle, April 19; and Stanton, April 29. 27. Sherman endorsement, March 29, 1876, AGO LR. 28. The officers and companies participating in the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition and Stanton’s next movement are detailed in Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 100–104, 105–107; and Diaries of Bourke, 265. 29. Third Cavalry Regimental Return, March 1876, NA; Reynolds to AG, May 5, 1876, and Townsend’s reply, May 13, 1876, Reynolds ACP File; Crook to Sheridan, May 1876, Walter S. Schuyler Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library; Williams to Reynolds, May 15, 1876, Appendix N, GCM of Reynolds; Royall testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 378–79; Ingersoll certificate, July 3, 1876, Mary E. Reynolds Widow’s Pension file, NA; Cheyenne Daily Leader, November 5, 1876. 30. Robinson, The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke, Vol. Two, 144, 151–56 (hereinafter cited as Diaries of Bourke 2); Sheridan to Sherman, and Sherman to Sheridan, November 6, 1876, Sheridan to Sherman, November 18, 1876, Sherman to Adjutant General’s Office (hereinafter cited as AGO), November 22, 1876, Secretary of War to AGO, November 25, 1876, all in AGO LR; Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 143–44; AGO Special Orders No. 244, November 25, 1876. For Crook’s summer campaign, see Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 100–104, 111–17; and Greene, Slim Buttes. 31. AGO Special Orders No. 244, November 25, 1876. 32. The Army Lawyer, 71–76; Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 14–15; “The General Court-Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 14, 1877 (quotation). 33. Cozzens, General John Pope, 3, 249, 300; “John Pope,” in Warner, Generals in Blue, 376–77; Records of Living Officers of the United States Army, 7–8; “The General Court-Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 14, 1877 (quotation). Beau Brummell was an iconic figure in Regency England and an arbiter of men’s fashion, bringing to favor perfectly fitting and tailored clothing, including men’s suits worn with a necktie. To him accrues the original notion of a fashion dandy. 34. Sully to AG, November 28, 1876, and Beckwith to AG, November 30, 1876, AGO LR; O’Connell, Fierce Patriot, 156. 35. Telegrams, Pope to AGO, November 30, and AGO to Pope, December 1, 1876, AGO LR. 36. Telegram, Sheridan to Sherman, December 4, Sherman note, December 5, Cameron letter, December 7, 1876 (quotation), AGO Special Orders No. 254, December 8, 1876, all in AGO LR.

NOTES TO PAGES 302–9

411

37. Cheyenne Daily Leader, December 26, 1876. 38. “Personal Paragraphs,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, December 26, 1876; Cheyenne Daily Sun, March 28, 1876; “Cemeteries and Memorial Sites of Politicians in Chippewa County,” politicalgraveyard.com; “The Late Hon. E. P. Johnson,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, October 4, 1879; Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 14, 1877; Fowler, “Christopher T. Hall.” 39. Diaries of Bourke 2, 234, 236–37. On the Powder River Expedition and Mackenzie’s fight on the Red Fork, see Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 141–47; and Greene, Morning Star Dawn. 40. “Personal Paragraphs,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, January 6, 1877; “The Reynolds Court Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, January 7, 1877; “The Military Court,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 6, 1877. Chapter 14. Justice Served 1. Hedren, After Custer, 188–89. 2. Hutchings, The Army and Navy Journal on the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Related Matters, 121–23; Donovan, A Terrible Glory, 346–50; Whittaker, A Complete Life of General George A. Custer, 584–90, 591 (quotation; emphasis in the original). 3. A Manual for Courts-Martial, 19–20, 23, 31, 38; “The Court Martial” and “Joseph McDonald, Esq.,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 20 and 23, 1877, respectively. Interestingly, stenographer H. C. Hollister later figured in the second great legal proceeding stemming from the Great Sioux War, the Reno Court of Inquiry convened in Chicago in January 1879, where he again served as the court’s official reporter. Donovan, A Terrible Glory, 359. 4. Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents, 161, 188; “Reynolds CourtMartial Witness List,” Paul L. Hedren Collection. Examples of summonses to this court-martial (“summons” being the military term of the day rather than subpoena) survive in First Lieutenant William Rawolle’s ACP file as telegram, AGO to Rawolle, December 29, 1876, NA; and in the Ben Clark papers: Fort Reno, I. T., Special Orders No. 4, January 5, 1877, Ben Clark Collection, University of Oklahoma Libraries. Clark was summoned, attended, but not called as a witness and was released by Swaim on January 19, 1877. 5. GCM of Reynolds, 2–4. 6. “Charges and Specifications thereto against Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 3d U. S. Cavalry,” GCM of Reynolds, 5–9. 7. Crook testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 9–38. 8. Stanton testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 38–49. 9. Stanton cross-examination, GCM of Reynolds, 49–50, 51 (quotations). 10. Ibid., 52-53, 54 (first quotation), 55, 56 (second quotation), 57–60, 61 (third quotation), 62–63 (fourth quotation).

412

NOTES TO PAGES 309–16

11. Kime, The Powder River Expedition Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, 168–69 (quotations); Kime, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, 264. 12. One of the unique and unanswered puzzles from the Powder River imbroglio is the identity of the man who received Stanton’s scathing private letter that in course found its way onto the pages of the Washington Chronicle. Stanton was a gregarious individual with an enormous circle of friends. Inside of the army in Washington this letter may have been written to his ultimate superior, Brigadier General Benjamin Alvord, paymaster general of the army, for whom he wrote an official separate report. Perhaps the letter was written to Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs, quartermaster general of the army, who for no explained reason also received a copy of Stanton’s official report through channels. In each instance Stanton might have meant the letter as the rest of the story. Posey Wilson of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a harsh critic of Stanton, suggested someone else. In his own letter of rebuke Wilson dropped the name “Pious Jeems Harlan,” likely meaning the Reverend James Harlan, a friend of Stanton’s in Washington who was once directly affiliated with the Chronicle. Stanton was publicly silent on the matter, and the recipient remains unknown today. “The Reynolds Court-Martial,” Omaha Daily Herald, January 31, 1877. 13. Stanton cross-examination, GCM of Reynolds, 74, 75 (first quotation), 76 (second quotation). 14. “Record of Service,” Alexander Chambers ACP File, NA; Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 80–86 (quotations). 15. Mills testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 141–54, 155 (quotation). 16. Ibid., 155–58, 159 (quotations), 160. 17. Mills cross-examination, GCM of Reynolds, 165–67, 168–69 (quotations). 18. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 178–84, 185 (quotations). 19. Egan cross-examination, GCM of Reynolds, 189–90. 20. Cheyenne Daily Leader, January 9, 1877. 21. Murphy testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 195–98; Glawinski testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 198–201; Maitland testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 201–204. 22. GCM of Reynolds, 206–207. 23. Rawolle testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 212, 218, 225, 231, 233 (quotation). Rawolle’s map is not among the known Powder River battlefield maps, and its whereabouts today is unknown. 24. Ibid., 237–41, 248 (quotation). 25. Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 286 (first set of questions), 287 (second set of questions). 26. “Court Martial Pictures,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, Jan. 14, 1877. In addition to the well-known group photograph reproduced in this book, and a parallel image with each of the men wearing their hats, Mitchell also

NOTES TO PAGES 316–26

413

produced a composite image, reproducing individual photographs of each member of the court: The Army Lawyer, 75. 27. Moore testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 377 (quotation about Mills), 371 (quotations about Reynolds), 374 (quotations about Stanton and Grouard). 28. Johnson testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 375. 29. Moore to Adjutant General, May 11, 1876, Crook to Assistant Adjutant General, Military Division of the Missouri, November 2, 1876, AGO Special Orders No. 244, November 25, 1876, AGO Special Orders No. 254, December 8, 1876, all filed with GCM of Moore. 30. GCM of Moore, 2–4; Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, 449–50. 31. “Charges and Specifications thereto against Captain Alexander Moore, 3d U. S. Cavalry,” GCM of Moore, 5–7. 32. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 9–10. 33. Reynolds cross-examination, GCM of Moore, 10–11. 34. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 12. 35. Stanton testimony, GCM of Moore, 14, 15–17 (quotations). 36. Stanton testimony, GCM of Moore, 19, 20 (quotation). Greenleaf, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, 489–91. The Redfield edition was specifically noted in the proceedings. 37. Stanton testimony, GCM of Moore, 20 (quotation), 21. 38. Stanton cross-examination, GCM of Moore, 22–23, 24 (first quotations), 25, 26 (second quotations), 27–31. 39. Reynolds testimony, GCM of Moore, 112 (first quotation), 113–21, 122–23 (second quotations), 123–24 (third quotations). 40. Ibid., 130–31. 41. Reynolds cross-examination, GCM of Moore, 131–32. 42. GCM of Moore, 158–61. 43. GCM of Reynolds, 377; Royall testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 378–79; Chambers testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 379–80 (first quotations); Noyes testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 381 (second quotation). 44. Burnham testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 386–87. 45. GCM of Reynolds, 389. 46. “Reynolds Court-Martial Witness List” and “Moore Court-Martial Witness List,” Paul L. Hedren Collection; Diaries of Bourke 2, 237; “The Reynolds Court Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, January 18, 1877 (first quotation); “The Court Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 20, 1877 (second quotation). The reconvening trial was the Edward Lieb court-martial, presided over by Colonel Wesley Merritt, Fifth Cavalry, and including as members King, Smith, Flint, and Bradley of the Reynolds-Moore panel. “Military Items,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, Jan. 23, 1877; and Department of the Platte Special Orders No. 169, December 15, 1876, AGO LR.

414

NOTES TO PAGES 326–37

47. “Military Items” and “The General Court-Martial,” Cheyenne Daily Sun, January 14, 1877. 48. This reportage in the Army and Navy Journal is comprehensively transcribed in Hutchings, The Army and Navy Journal on the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Related Matters. 49. GCM of Moore, 162–63. 50. A Manual for Courts-Martial, 39–40 (emphasis in the original). 51. Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents, 413–14. 52. GCM of Reynolds, 390–91; Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 23, 24 (second quotations), 37 (first quotation), 41 (third and fourth quotations), 42 (fifth quotation), 43 (sixth quotations), 45 (seventh quotation). 53. Exhibit P, GCM of Reynolds, 55–56. 54. GCM of Reynolds, 391. 55. Ibid., 392; “Statement of the Case by the Judge Advocate,” Exhibit Q, GCM of Reynolds, 1 (first quotations), 2–3 (second quotation), 3 (third quotation), 4 (fourth quotation), 10 (fifth quotation), 19 (sixth quotation), 22–23 (seventh and eighth quotations). 56. GCM of Reynolds, 393–94. 57. A Manual for Courts-Martial, 40; GCM of Reynolds, 394 (quotation). 58. GCM of Reynolds, 394–95. 59. Ibid., 395. Chapter 15. Loose Ends 1. Dunn, “Report in the Case of Captain Alexander Moore, 3d Cavalry, February 12, 1877,” filed with GCM of Moore, 30 unnumbered pages, with the quotations on [4], [24], and [27], respectively. 2. Ibid., [28]. 3. Enclosures, GCM of Moore. 4. “Report upon the Record of Trial of Col. J. J. Reynolds, 3d U.S. Cavalry,” Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series), 37 unnumbered pages, with the quotations on [8–9]. 5. Ibid., [11–12] (first quotation), [20, 23], [33 (second quotation)]. 6. GCM of Reynolds, 395 (first quotation); “Report upon the Record of Trial of Col. J. J. Reynolds, 3d U.S. Cavalry,” [35–36, 37 (second quotation)]. 7. Telegram, Sherman to Reynolds, February 22, 1877, Reynolds ACP File; Grant to Sherman, March 8, 1877 (quotations), AGO LR; also in Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 28, 516. 8. Sherman endorsement, February 17, 1877 (first quotation), and AGO, General Court-Martial Orders No. 30, March 8, 1877 (second quotation), AGO LR. 9. Reynolds’s preferred charges, Moore’s charges, Sheridan’s questions, Dunn’s observations, and the army’s response are in AGO LR, generally appearing by date.

NOTES TO PAGES 338–44

415

10. Reynolds to AG, March 14, 1877; Sherman forward, March 16, 1877 (first quotation), McCrary undated response (second quotation), Townsend to Reynolds, April 10, 1877 (third quotation), AGO LR. 11. “Proceedings of a Board to Retire Disabled Officers. Case: Colonel J. J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry,” February 26–27, 1877, Reynolds ACP. 12. Randolph telegram, March 1, 1877, “Proceedings of the Army Retiring Board,” March 3, 1877, Reynolds ACP. 13. Adjutant General’s Office Special Orders No. 138, June 25, 1877; telegram, Sheridan to Sherman, May 13, 1877 (first quotation), Reynolds ACP; Sherman to Sheridan, March 4, 1877 (second quotation) Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 28, 516. Army regulations limited the number of officers on the Retired List to three hundred; vacancies occurred only upon death. In 1878 that number was increased to four hundred. Regulations of the Army of the United States, 1881, 315. 14. Strahorn to Mary Crook, February 4, 1877, Crook Papers, University of Oregon (quotation); Diaries of Bourke 2, 242–43. 15. “Christian” [Posey S. Wilson], “The Reynolds Court-Martial,” Omaha Daily Herald, January 31, 1877; Stanton to Mary Crook, undated, Crook Papers, University of Oregon. 16. Testimony, &c., Taken before a General Court Martial Convened at Cheyenne, W. T., for the Trial of Capt. Alexander Moore, 3d U.S. Cavalry, with the “Synopsis and Examination of the Foregoing Testimony, &c., &c.” on 115–23; Warner, “Daniel Tyler,” in Generals in Blue, 514–15. 17. The author of the “Synopsis and Examination” is not given, but Moore was on absent with leave in May 1877 in Montgomery, Alabama. Testimony, 96 (first and second quotations); Moore to Adjutant General, May 17, 1877, Moore ACP File; Mills, My Story, 166–67 (third quotation on 163 in the 1921 second edition). 18. Gray, Centennial Campaign, 335–37; Donovan, A Terrible Glory, 84–85, 187. On the remarkable Inkpaduta, see Beck, Inkpaduta. For an overview of the Great Sioux War from Powder River through Little Big Horn, see Hedren, Great Sioux War Orders of Battle, 45–54. 19. The noted terms appear as printed column headers on the monthly returns form, with the details drawn from Second Cavalry Regimental Returns, March and April 1876, and Third Cavalry Regimental Returns, March and April 1876. 20. Egan testimony, GCM of Reynolds, 190 (first quotation); Rickey, Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, 144–47; “Facing the Foe,” Chicago Times, May 20, 1876, in Abrams, Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, 147 (second quotation); Diaries of Bourke, 265 (third quotation). 21. Second Cavalry Regimental Returns, March, April, May 1875 and March, April, May 1876; Third Cavalry Regimental Returns, March, April, May 1875 and March, April, May 1876; Noyes to Post Adjutant, May 11, 1876, Fort Laramie Letters Received, FLNHS.

416

NOTES TO PAGES 345–51

22. Utley, Frontier Regulars, 48, quoting Great Sioux War veteran George W. Baird, Fifth Infantry; Utley, “A Chained Dog”; Reynolds to Sherman, April 11, 1876, Sherman Papers, Library of Congress, in Kime, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, 550–51n73 (Reynolds quotation). 23. Albert Glawinski Medal of Honor File, NA (first quotation); and “Jeremiah Murphy Medal of Honor Certificate No. 345,” Jeremiah J. Murphy Medal of Honor File, NA (second quotation); copies furnished by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; Third Cavalry Regimental Return, October 1877. 24. Murphy statement, August 7, 1917, Murphy Medal of Honor File (quotation); Helen Glawinski statement, September 11, 1924, Glawinski Medal of Honor File. Glawinski abandoned his family in Iowa in 1900 in search of work and was last heard from in 1907, writing from New Orleans. Murphy died in Detroit on May 12, 1932. Other sources on Glawinski and Murphy include American Decorations, 38, 76, where Glawinski’s citation is given as “Gallantry in action” and Murphy’s as “Bravery in action with Sioux”; and Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 2:205–207, where the heroics of Murphy and “Glavinski” are embellished beyond the pale. For context on the issuance of Medals of Honor in association with the Great Sioux War (for which seventy-six were issued), see Hedren, “‘Three Cool, Determined Men’”; and Scott, Custer’s Heroes. See also the insightful discussion of Medals of Honor associated with Wounded Knee in Greene, American Carnage, 355–57. 25. Richard Ayers “Father’s” Claim No. 603,172, Certificate No. 558,365, Bureau of Pensions, NA (with an acknowledgment and thanks to Ephriam Dickson of Burke, Virginia, for drawing this to my attention and providing a copy). 26. William C. Bryan Medal of Honor File, NA (quotation), copy furnished by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; American Decorations, 13. 27. “Record of Colonel T.  H. Stanton, Ass’t Paymaster General, U.S. Army” and “Memorandum No. 207, January 18, 1895,” Stanton ACP File, NA. 28. Wilson to Schofield, December 20, 1898, Stanton ACP File, NA (quotation); “Death of General Stanton,” Omaha Daily Bee, January 24, 1900; “General Stanton’s Funeral,” Omaha Daily Bee, January 25, 1900. 29. Thrapp, “Henry Erastus Noyes,” in Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, 2:1064–65; Diaries of Bourke 2, 79 (quotation); Noyes Correspondence, Camp Papers, BYU. 30. Hedren, “Garrisoning the Black Hills Road,” 37; “Guide to the Alexander Moore Papers, 1876–1898,” Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo; Altshuler, Cavalry Yellow & Infantry Blue, 235–36. 31. McCrary to Reynolds, May 14, 1877, Reynolds ACP File; Winthrop, Bureau of Military Justice Internal Re-examination of the J. J. Reynolds

NOTES TO PAGES 351–54

417

Case, February 12, 1881, Reynolds to AGO, April 5, 1882 (quotation), Swaim to Adjutant General, April 21, 1882, AGO LR. Jenkins resumed his law practice in Chippewa Falls, went on to serve fourteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives (where his path in Washington surely crossed Reynolds’s), and died on June 10, 1911. “Death of Hon. John J. Jenkins,” Chippewa Falls Sunday Independent, June 11, 1911. 32. Reynolds to Adjutant General, March 27, 1877, April 28, 1877, Reynolds ACP File; Reynolds to Adjutant General, April 5, 1882 (quotation), Swaim to Adjutant General, April 21, 1882, Adjutant General to Reynolds, May 17, 1882, Reynolds to Adjutant General, May 21, 1882, Reynolds to Adjutant General, November 29, 1887, Adjutant General to Reynolds, December 10, 1887, AGO LR; The Army Lawyer, 76. 33. B. Reynolds to Adjutant General, February 25, 1899, Assistant Adjutant General to Commanding Officer, Washington Barracks, February 27, 1899, Reynolds ACP File. 34. Diaries of Bourke 2, 187; Greene, Morning Star Dawn, 92, 122, 189; Buecker, Fort Robinson and the American West, 93–94; Buecker and Paul, The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger, 59; Hedren, After Custer, 142–43; “U.S. Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940, Pine Ridge (Sioux and Cheyenne Indians),” www.ancestry.com; Greene, American Carnage, 62; U.S. Congress, Senate, “Reports Relative to the Proposed Division of the Great Sioux Reservation, and Recommending Certain Legislation,” 267. 35. “Cheyenne transferred to Tongue River from Pine Ridge, 3 Oct. 1891,” www.american-tribes.com; Margot Liberty, personal communication, July 11, 2014 (quotation). The Northern Cheyenne census of 1913 (www.ancestry.com) acknowledges a Nellie Old Bear, a widow, age sixtyfive. This perhaps is Long Teeth, although the age does not quite comport with the Pine Ridge Census records. Nellie Old Bear could also be an entirely different individual of course. Grinnell mentions an Old Bear living on the Tongue River Reservation in 1915, implying the Old Bear. But he would then be about ninety-three. More likely this is a son or simply another man. Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 353. 36. Vestal, New Sources of Indian History, 178–79. 37. Brown, “Reynolds’ Attack on Crazy Horse’s Village on Powder River”; “Legion to Mark Site of Battle,” Gillette News-Record (Wyoming), May 17, 1934.

Bibliography

Manuscript Materials and Collections

Bray, Kingsley, Collection, Manchester, England Brigham Young University (BYU), Provo, Utah Camp, Walter Mason, Papers, MSS 57 College of Idaho, Strahorn Library, Caldwell, Idaho Strahorn, Robert E., “Ninety Years of Boyhood, 1942,” TMS Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina Bryan, William C., Medal of Honor File Glawinski, Albert, Medal of Honor File Murphy, Jeremiah J., Medal of Honor File Denver Public Library (DPL), Western History Collection, Denver, Colorado Bent, George, Papers, WH1704 Camp, Walter M., Papers, WH1702 Dickson, Ephriam, III, Collection, Burke, Virginia Fort Laramie National Historic Site (FLNHS), Library, Fort Laramie, Wyoming Fort Laramie Letters Received, 1876 Fort Laramie Medical History, 1876 Fort Laramie Register of Sick and Wounded, 1876 Fort Laramie Scouting Reports, 1876 “Itinerary of distances from Ft. Fetterman to Old Ft. C. F. Smith given by John (Portugee) Phillips, Chugwater, Laramie County, Wyo., March, 1876” Miller, William. “Record of events while serving in the Army of the United States, November 12, 1910,” TMS

419

420

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska Bourke Collection Greene, Jerome A., Collection, Denver, Colorado Hedren, Paul L., Collection, Omaha, Nebraska Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California Schuyler, Walter S., Papers LaPointe, Eric J., Collection, Chubbuck, Idaho Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Sheridan, Philip, Papers Lindmier, Thomas, Collection, Hulett, Wyoming McDermott, John D., Collection, Rapid City, South Dakota Montana Historical Society (MHS), Helena, Montana Slough, John P., Papers, SC 1694 National Archives (NA), Washington, D.C. Adjutant General’s Office Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–80, Microcopy No. 666, Roll 238 Ayers, Richard, “Father’s” Claim, No. 603,172, Bureau of Pensions Chambers, Alexander, Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 5006 ACP 1874, Record Group 94 Coates, Edwin M., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 16 ACP 1894*, Record Group 94 Department of the Platte General Court Martial Orders, 1876, Record Group 393, Entry 3740 Department of the Platte General Orders, 1875, 1876, Record Group 393, Entry 3740 Department of the Platte General Orders, Orders, and Special Orders Issued by Expeditions, 1874–79, Camp G. H. Collins Special Orders, 1875. Record Group 393, Entry 3749 Department of the Platte Letters Received, 1877, Record Group 393, Entry 3731 Department of the Platte Personal History of Surgeons Serving in the Department, 1866–1902, Record Group 393, Entry 3931 Department of the Platte Press Copies of Telegrams Sent, 1875–76, Record Group 393, Entry 3726 Drew, George A., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 5755 ACP 1872*, Record Group 94 Fort D. A. Russell Post Returns, 1876, Microcopy 617, Roll 1051 Fort Fetterman Post Returns, 1876, Microcopy 617, Roll 365 Fourth Infantry Regimental Returns, 1876, Microcopy No. 665, Roll 47 General Court-Martial of Captain Alexander Moore, GCM QQ 27, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Record Group 153

BIBLIOGRAPHY

421

General Court-Martial of Captain Henry E. Noyes, GCM PP 5473, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Record Group 153 General Court-Martial of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, GCM QQ 26, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Record Group 153 Hall, Christopher T., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 4662 ACP 1874, Record Group 94 Moore, Alexander, Appointment, Commission, Personal File, M53 CB 1867*, Record Group 94, Microfilm Publication M1064, Roll 350 Munn, Curtis E., Report 461, April 12, 1876, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Reports of Surgeons Accompanying Expeditions, Record Group 94, Entry 624, File F Quartermaster General Consolidated Correspondence, Special Files, “Sioux,” Record Group 92, Entry 225 Rawolle, William C., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 516 ACP 1877*, Record Group 94 Reynolds, Bainbridge, Appointment, Commission, Personal File (ACP), 1231 ACP 1879, Record Group 94 Reynolds, Joseph J., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 1295 ACP 1871, Record Group 94, Microfiche Publication M1395 Reynolds, Mary E., Widow’s Pension, No. 692,886, Bureau of Pensions Ridgely, John, Medical Officer File, RG 94, Entry 561 Second Cavalry Regimental Returns, 1875–76, Microcopy No. 744, Roll 19 Sibley, Frederick W., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 4922 ACP 1881*, Record Group 94 Stanton, Thaddeus H., Appointment, Commission, Personal File, 869 ACP 1893*, Record Group 94 Third Cavalry Regimental Returns, 1871, 1875, Microcopy No. 744, Roll 30 Third Cavalry Regimental Returns, 1876–77, Microcopy No. 744, Roll 31 Swanson, Glenwood J., Collection, Agua Dulce, California University of Oklahoma, Libraries, Western History Collections, Norman, Oklahoma Campbell, Walter Stanley, Collection Clark, Ben (Benjamin H.), Collection University of Oregon, Knight Library, Special Collections, Eugene, Oregon Crook Papers Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Western Americana Collection, New Haven, Connecticut Bent, George, Letters

422

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Government Publications Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) Special Orders, 1876. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877. Adjutant General’s Office Special Orders, 1877. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1878. Allison, W.  B. Report of the Commission Appointed to Treat with the Sioux Indians for the Relinquishment of the Black Hills. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875. American Decorations: A List of Awards of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished-Service Cross, and the DistinguishedService Medal. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927. The Army Lawyer: A History of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, 1775–1975. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, [1976]. Decorations, United States Army, 1862–1926. Washington, D.C.: War Department, Office of The Adjutant General, 1927. DeMallie, Raymond J. “Sioux until 1850.” In Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, vol. 13, part 2, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 718–60. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. ———. “Teton.” In Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, vol. 13, part 2, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 794–820. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Description and Rules for the Management of the Springfield Rifle, Carbine, and Army Revolvers. Springfield, Mass.: National Armory, 1874; reprint ed., Philadelphia: Ray Riling, 1960. Fowler, Loretta. “Arapaho.” In Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, vol. 13, part 2, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 840–62. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Gillett, Mary C. The Army Medical Department, 1865–1917. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1995. Hayden, F.  V. Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, 1859–’60. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1869. Heitman, Francis B. Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903; reprint ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. Jenney, Walter P. The Mineral Wealth, Climate and Rain-Fall, and Natural Resources of the Black Hills of Dakota. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876. A Manual for Courts-Martial, and of Procedure under Military Law. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1898. Moore, John H., Margot P. Liberty, and A. Terry Straus. “Cheyenne.” In Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, vol. 13, part 2, ed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

423

Raymond J. DeMallie, 863–85. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Official Army Register for January, 1876. Washington, D.C.: Adjutant General’s Office, 1876. Papers Relating to Talks and Councils Held with the Indians in Dakota and Montana Territories in the Years 1866–1869. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910. Raynolds, W.  F. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868. Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882; facsimile ed., Belleview, Neb.: Old Army Press, 1969. Regulations of the Army of the United States, 1881. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1881. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1866. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1867. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1868. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1869. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1870. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1871. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1872. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1873. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1874. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1875. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875. Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1876. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876. Report of the Secretary of War, 1868. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868. Report of the Secretary of War, 1873. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873. Report of the Secretary of War, 1874. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874. Report of the Secretary of War, 1875. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875.

424

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Report of the Secretary of War, 1876. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876. Report of the Special Commission Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of the Red Cloud Agency, July, 1875. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875. Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863. Rickey, Don, Jr., and James W. Sheire. The Cavalry Barracks Fort Laramie Furnishing Study. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, Division of History, 1968. U.S. Congress, Senate. “Reports Relative to the Proposed Division of the Great Sioux Reservation, and Recommending Certain Legislation.” Senate Ex. Doc. 51, 51st Congress, 1st Session, 1890. Warren, G. K. Preliminary Report of Explorations in Nebraska and Dakota, in the Years 1855–’56–’57. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875. Winthrop, William. Military Law and Precedents. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920. Books and Articles Abrams, Marc H., ed. Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 4, 1874–1875. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Abrams Publications, 2010. ———, ed. Newspaper Chronicle of the Indian Wars, Vol. 5, Jan. 1, 1876June 12, 1876. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Abrams Publications 2010. ———, ed. “The Siege of Fort Pease.” New York Herald, March 8, 1876. Last Stand 1 (November 2008): unpaginated. Altshuler, Constance Wynn. Cavalry Yellow & Infantry Blue: Army Officers in Arizona between 1851 and 1886. Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1991. Anderson, Harry H. “A Challenge to Brown’s Sioux Indian Wars Thesis.” In The Great Sioux War 1876–77: The Best from Montana The Magazine of Western History, ed. Paul L. Hedren, 39–52. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1991. ———. “Cheyennes at the Little Big Horn: A Study of Statistics.” Offprint from North Dakota Historical Society Quarterly 2 (Spring 1960). ———. “Wake Up Yankton!: Community Efforts to Promote Travel to the Black Hills Gold Fields.” South Dakota History 31 (Fall/Winter 2001): 211–38. Barnett, Louise. “Powder River.” Greasy Grass 16 (May 2000): 2–9, 11–12. Beck, Paul N. Inkpaduta: Dakota Leader. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

425

Berg, Scott W. 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier’s End. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Beyer, W.  F., and O.  F. Keydel. Deeds of Valor. 2 vols. Detroit: PerreinKeydel Company, 1906. Blish, Helen H., and Amos Bad Heart Bull. A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967. Bourke, John G. On the Border with Crook. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891. Bray, Kingsley M. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. Brown, Mark H. “A New Focus on the Sioux War.” In The Great Sioux War 1876–77: The Best from Montana The Magazine of Western History, ed. Paul L. Hedren, 25–37. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1991. Brown, W. C. “Reynolds’ Attack on Crazy Horse’s Village on Powder River, March 17, 1876.” Winners of the West, April 30, 1934. Buecker, Thomas R. Fort Robinson and the American West, 1874–1899. Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1999. ———. “Lt. William Philo Clark’s Sioux War Report and Little Big Horn Map.” Greasy Grass 7 (May 1991): 11–21. Buecker, Thomas R., and R. Eli Paul, eds. The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger. Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1994. Cain, Kathleen. The Cottonwood Tree: An American Champion. Boulder, Colo.: Johnson Books, 2007. Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Carroll, John M., ed. General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn: The Federal View. New Brunswick, N.J.: Garry Owen Press, 1976. Chaky, Doreen. Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1854–1868. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. Clow, Richmond L. “The Whetstone Indian Agency, 1868–1872.” South Dakota History 7 (Summer 1977): 291–308. Conard, Jane. “Charles Collins: The Sioux City Promotion of the Black Hills.” South Dakota History 2 (Spring 1972): 131–71. Cozzens, Peter, ed. Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890, Vol. 4, The Long War for the Northern Plains. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2004. ———, ed. Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890, Vol. 5, The Army and the Indian. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2005. ———. General John Pope: A Life for the Nation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ———. This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

426

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cullum, George W. Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891. Curley, Edwin A. Edwin A. Curley’s Guide to the Black Hills. Chicago: by the author, 1877; facsimile edition, Mitchell, S.Dak.: Dakota Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Daly, Henry W. “Following the Bell.” American Veteran, February 1928, 111–18. ———. “The War Path.” American Legion Monthly, April 1927, 16–19, 52, 54, 56. DeBarthe, Joe. Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard. St. Joseph, Mo.: Combe Printing Co., 1894; reprint edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958. DeMallie, Raymond, and Vine Deloria Jr., eds. Proceedings of the Great Peace Commission of 1867–1868. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Development of Indian Law, 1975. Denig, Erwin Thompson. Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri. Edited by John C. Ewers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. Dickson, Ephriam D., III. “Capturing the Lakota Spirit: Photographers at the Red Cloud & Spotted Tail Agencies.” Nebraska History 88 (Summer 2007): 2–25. ———. “Reconstructing the Indian Village on the Little Bighorn: The Cankahuhan or Soreback Band, Oglala.” Greasy Grass 22 (May 2006): 2–14. ———. “Soldier with a Camera: Private Charles Howard’s Photographic Journey through Eastern Wyoming, 1877.” Annals of Wyoming 77 (Autumn 2005): 22–32. Donovan, James. A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn, The Last Great Battle of the American West. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Eriksson, Erik M. “Sioux City and the Black Hills Gold Rush, 1874–1877.” Iowa Journal of History and Politics 20 (July 1922): 319–47. Essin, Emmett M. Shavetails & Bell Sharps: The History of the U.S. Army Mule. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Ewers, John C. “Intertribal Warfare as the Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains.” Western Historical Quarterly 6 (October 1975): 397–410. ———. Plains Indian History and Culture: Essays on Continuity and Change. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Fenneman, Nevin M. Physiography of the Western United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931. Flannery, L. G. (Pat). John Hunton’s Diary, Vol. 3, 1878–79. Lingle, Wyo.: Guide-Review, 1960.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

427

Fowler, J. L. “Christopher T. Hall.” In Eighteenth Annual Reunion of the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy, 61–62. East Saginaw, Mich.: Evening News Printing and Binding House, 1887. Franklin, Catharine. “Black Hills and Bloodshed: The U.S. Army and the Invasion of Lakota Land, 1868–1876.” Montana The Magazine of Western History 63 (Summer 2013): 26–41. Frazier, Ian. The Great Plains. New York: Farrar/Straus/Giroux, 1989. Galloway, John Debo. The First Transcontinental Railroad: Central Pacific, Union Pacific. New York: Simmons Boardman Publishing, 1950. Gilbert, Hila. Big Bat Pourier. Sheridan, Wyo.: Mills Company, 1968. Glass, Jefferson. Reshaw: The Life and Times of John Baptiste Richard. Glendo, Wyo.: High Plains Press, 2014. Graham, William A. The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana. Harrisburg, Penn.: Stackpole Company, 1953. Gray, John S. Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876. Fort Collins, Colo.: Old Army Press, 1976. ———. “Frank Grouard: Kanaka Scout or Mulatto Renegade?” Westerners (Chicago) Brand Book 16 (October 1959): 57–59, 62–64. Greene, Jerome A. American Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. ———. “George Crook.” In Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier, ed. Paul Andrew Hutton, 115–36. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. ———, ed. Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life and Campaigns in the West, 1864–1898. New York: Savas Beatie, 2007. ———, ed. Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. ———. Morning Star Dawn: The Powder River Expedition and the Northern Cheyennes, 1876. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. ———. Slim Buttes, 1876: An Episode of the Great Sioux War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Greene, Jerome A., and Douglas D. Scott. Finding Sand Creek: History, Archeology, and the 1864 Massacre Site. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Greenleaf, Simon. A Treatise on the Law of Evidence. Vol. 1. Edited by Isaac F. Redfield. 12th ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1866. Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956. Guelzo, Allen C. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Hämäläinen, Pekka. “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures.” Journal of American History 90 (December 2003): 833–62.

428

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hanson, James A. Little Chief’s Gatherings: The Smithsonian Institution’s G. K. Warren 1855–1856 Plains Indian Collection and the New York State Library’s 1855–1857 Warren Expeditions Journals. Crawford, Neb.: Fur Press, 1996. ———. Spirits in the Art from the Plains and Southwest Indian Cultures. Kansas City: Lowell Press, 1994. Hardorff, Richard G., ed. Cheyenne Memories of the Custer Fight: A Source Book. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1995. ———, ed. Indian Views of the Custer Fight. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2004. ———, ed. Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1991. Hebard, Grace Raymond, and E. A. Brininstool. The Bozeman Trail: Historical Accounts of the Blazing of the Overland Routes into the Northwest, and the Fights with Red Cloud’s Warriors. 2 vols. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1922. Hedren, Paul L. After Custer: Loss and Transformation in Sioux Country. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. ———. Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. ———. “Garrisoning the Black Hills Road: The United States Army’s Camps on Sage Creek and Mouth of Red Canyon, 1876–1877.” South Dakota History 37 (Spring 2007): 1–45. ———. Great Sioux War Orders of Battle: How the United States Army Waged War on the Northern Plains, 1876–1877. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2011. ———, ed. Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2012. ———. “The Sioux War Adventures of Dr. Charles V. Petteys, Acting Assistant Surgeon.” Journal of the West 32 (April 1993): 27–37. ———. “‘Three Cool, Determined Men’: The Sioux War Heroism of Privates Evans, Stewart, and Bell.” Montana The Magazine of Western History 41 (Winter 1991): 14–27. Hinman, Eleanor H., ed. “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse.” Nebraska History 57 (Spring 1976): 1–51. Hutchings, James S., ed. The Army and Navy Journal on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Related Matters, 1876–1881. El Segundo, Calif.: Upton and Sons, Publishers, 2003. Hutton, Paul Andrew. Phil Sheridan and His Army. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. Hyde, George E. Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

429

———. Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. Jensen, Richard E., ed. The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903–1919, Voices of the American West, Volume 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. ———, ed. The Settler and Soldier Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903–1919, Voices of the American West, Volume 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Johnsgard, Paul A. Prairie Dog Empire: A Saga of the Shortgrass Prairie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Jones, Brian. “Those Wild Reshaw Boys.” In Sidelights of the Sioux Wars, ed. Francis B. Taunton, 5–46. London: English Westerner’s Society, 1967. Juarez, Angelo D. The Tarnished Saber: Major Azor Howett Nickerson, U.S.A., His Life and Times. Chatham, Mass.: Nickerson Family Association, 2001. Kappler, Charles J., comp. and ed. Indian Treaties, 1778–1883. Mattituck, N.Y.: Amereon House, 1972. Kime, Wayne R. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge: The Life and Times of a Career Army Officer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. ———. The Powder River Expedition Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. King, Charles. Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1890. Knight, Oliver. Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents among the Indian Campaigners. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. ———. “Robert E. Strahorn, Propagandist for the West.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 59 (January 1968): 33–45. Krause, Herbert, and Gary D. Olson. Prelude to Glory: A Newspaper Accounting of Custer’s 1874 Expedition to the Black Hills. Sioux Falls, S.Dak.: Brevet Press, 1974. Larson, Robert W. Gall: Lakota War Chief. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. ———. Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Leiker, James N., and Ramon Powers. The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. Lindmier, Tom. Drybone: A History of Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Glendo, Wyo.: High Plains Press, 2002. Lubetkin, M. John. Jay Cooke’s Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.

430

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Madsen, Betty M., and Brigham D. Madsen. North to Montana!: Jehus, Bullwhackers, and Mule Skinners on the Montana Trail. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980. Magid, Paul. George Crook: From the Redwoods to Appomattox. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. ———. The Gray Fox: George Crook and the Indian Wars. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Markoe, Glenn E. ed. Vestiges of a Proud Nation: The Ogden B. Read Northern Plains Indian Collection. Burlington, Vt.: Robert Hull Fleming Museum, 1986. Marquis, Thomas B. The Cheyennes of Montana. Algonac, Mich.: Reference Publications, 1978. ———. She Watched Custer’s Last Battle. Hardin, Mont.: Hardin TribuneHerald, 1933. ———. A Warrior Who Fought Custer. Minneapolis: Midwest Company, 1931. Mattes, Merrill. Indians, Infants and Infantry: Andrew and Elizabeth Burt on the Frontier. Denver: Old West Publishing Company, 1960. McChristian, Douglas C. Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008. ———. The U.S. Army in the West, 1870–1880: Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. McDermott, John D. Circle of Fire: The Indian War of 1865. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2003. ———. Frontier Crossroads: The History of Fort Caspar and the Upper Platte Crossing. Casper, Wyo.: City of Casper, 1997. ———, ed. Gold Rush: The Black Hills Story. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2001. ———. “Introduction” to My Story, by Anson Mills. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2003. ———. “John Baptiste Richard.” In The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume II, ed. LeRoy R. Hafen, 289–303. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1965. ———. “John ‘Portugee’ Phillips.” In Portraits of Fort Phil Kearny, 126–29. Banner, Wyo.: Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trail Association, 1993. ———. Red Cloud’s War: The Bozeman Trail, 1866–1868. 2 vols. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2010. McLaird, James D., and Lesta V. Turchen. “Exploring the Black Hills, 1855– 1875: Reports of the Government Expeditions—The Scientist in Western Exploration: Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden.” South Dakota History 4 (Spring 1974): 160–97. McLemore, Clyde. “Fort Pease: The First Attempted Settlement in Yellowstone Valley.” Montana The Magazine of Western History 2 (January 1952): 17–31.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

431

Mears, David T. “Campaigning against Crazy Horse.” In Proceedings and Collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, 68–77. Vol. 15. Lincoln, Neb.: Jacob North and Company, 1907. Michno, Gregory F. Dakota Dawn: The Decisive First Week of the Sioux Uprising, August 17–24, 1862. Eldorado Hills, Calif.: Savas Beatie, 2011. ———. Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer’s Defeat. Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1997. Millbrook, Minnie Dubbs. “The Jordan Massacre.” Kansas History 2 (Winter 1979): 219–30. Mills, Anson. My Story. Washington, D.C.: Press of Byron S. Adams, 1918. Monnett, John H. Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Moore, Thomas. Instructions for Using the Aparejo, or Spanish Pack Saddle. Chicago: Jameson and Moore, Printers, 1878. O’Connell, Robert L. Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman. New York: Random House, 2014. Olson, James C. Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Parker, Watson. Gold in the Black Hills. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. ———. “The Majors and the Miners: The Role of the U.S. Army in the Black Hills Gold Rush.” Journal of the West 11 (January 1972): 99–113. ———, ed. “The Report of Captain John Mix of a Scout to the Black Hills, March-April 1875.” South Dakota History 7 (Fall 1977): 385–401. Paul, R. Eli. Blue Water Creek and the First Sioux War, 1854–1856. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Paul, Rodman W. Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1880. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963. Pearson, Daniel C. “Military Notes, 1876.” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 12 (March 1899): 295–312. ———. The Platte-Dakota Campaign of 1876. New York: Republic Press, 1896. Pollock, O. C. C. “Veteran Recalls Hardships of Indian Fighting in West.” National Tribune, October 3, 1940. Porter, Joseph C. Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and His American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Powell, Peter J. “Ox’zem: Box Elder and His Sacred Wheel Lance.” Montana The Magazine of Western History 20 (April 1970): 30–41. ———. People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warriors Societies, 1830–1879, With an Epilogue 1969–1974. 2 vols. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1981.

432

BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History. 2 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969. Powers, Thomas. The Killing of Crazy Horse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Price, George F. Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry. New York: D. Van Nostrand, Publisher, 1883; reprint, New York: Antiquarian Press, 1959. Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Records of Living Officers of the United States Army. Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersley and Company, 1884. Reynolds, Joseph J. “Official Report of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, April 15, 1876.” In The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River by J. W. Vaughn, 203–15. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. Rickey, Don, Jr. Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian Wars. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. Roberts, Gary L. “The Shame of Little Wolf.” Montana The Magazine of Western History 28 (July 1978): 36–47. Robinson, Charles M., III, ed. The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke, Vol. One, November 20, 1872-July 28, 1876. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2003. ———, ed. The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke, Vol. Two, July 29, 1876April 7, 1878. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2005. Schmitt, Martin F., ed. General George Crook: His Autobiography. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Scott, Douglas D. Custer’s Heroes: The Little Bighorn Medals of Honor. Wake Forest, S.C.: AST Press, 2007. Scott, Douglas D., Peter Bleed, and Stephen Damm. Custer, Cody, and Grand Duke Alexis: Historical Archaeology of the Royal Buffalo Hunt. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Self, Zenobia. “Court-Martial of J. J. Reynolds.” Military Affairs 37 (April 1973): 52–56. Sheldon, Addison E. “A Revenant Cheyenne.” Nebraska History 4 (OctoberDecember 1921): 61–64. Simon, John Y., ed. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 26: 1875. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. ———, ed. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 28: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Spring, Agnes Wright. “Prince of Packers.” True West, September-October 1970, 24–25, 42–46.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

433

Stewart, Edgar I. “Major Brisbin’s Relief of Fort Pease.” In The Great Sioux War 1876–77: The Best from Montana The Magazine of Western History, ed. Paul L. Hedren, 115–21. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1991. Strahorn, Carrie Adell. Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage. New York: G. O. Putnam’s Sons, 1911. Svingen, Orlan J. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, 1877–1900. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993. Testimony, &c., Taken before a General Court Martial Convened at Cheyenne, W. T., for the Trial of Capt. Alexander Moore, 3d U.S. Cavalry. Montgomery, Ala.: Smith and Allred, Printers, 1877. Thrapp, Dan L. Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography. 3 vols. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1988. Trenholm, Virginia Cole. The Arapahoes, Our People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. Turchen, Lesta V., and James D. McLaird. The Black Hills Expedition of 1875. Mitchell, S.Dak.: Dakota Wesleyan University Press, 1975. Unrau, William E. “Nathaniel Green Taylor, 1867–1869.” In The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824–1977, ed. Robert M. Kvasnicka and Herman J. Viola, 115–22. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. Urwin, Gregory J. W. “Reynolds: A Complex, Respected Officer with [a] Distinguished Career.” Greasy Grass 16 (May 2000): 9–11. Utley, Robert M. “A Chained Dog: The Indian Fighting Army.” American West 10 (July 1973): 18–24, 61. ———. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866– 1890. New York: Macmillan, 1973. ———. Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865. New York: Macmillan, 1967. ———. The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993. Vaughn, J. W. The Battle of Platte Bridge. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. ———. “Captain James Egan.” Westerners New York Posse Brand Book 13, no. 1 (1966): 1–3, 6–7, 18. ———. The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. Vestal, Stanley. New Sources of Indian History, 1850–1891. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934. ———. Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934. Wagner, David E. Patrick Connor’s War: The 1865 Powder River Expedition. Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2010.

434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1931. Welsh, Jack D. Medical Histories of Union Generals. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996. West, Elliott. The Essential West: Collected Essays. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ———. The Way to the West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. White, Helen McCann, ed. Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1966. White, Richard. “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of American History 65 (September 1978): 319–43. Whittaker, Frederick. A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1876. Wilhelm, Thomas. A Military Dictionary and Gazetteer. Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersley and Co., 1881. Woodward, George A. “Some Experiences with the Cheyennes.” United Service 1 (April 1879): 184–95. Special Reports, Theses, Communications, Catalogs Albers, Patricia C. The Home of the Bison: An Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Study of Traditional Cultural Affiliations to Wind Cave National Park. 2 vols. N.p.: National Park Service and Department of Indian Studies, University of Minnesota, 2003. “A Contemporary Working Copy of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.” In A Catalog of Western Americana, Manuscripts, Documents, and Ephemera from the Herbert S. Auerbach Collection. Northampton, Mass.: L & T Respess Books, 1992. Eckroth, David, and Harold Hagen. “Baker’s Battle on the Yellowstone, August 14, 1872, ‘The Battle of Poker Flat.’” Special report. Sheridan, Wyo.: Frontier Heritage Alliance for the American Battlefield Protection Program, 2004. “Guide to the Alexander Moore Papers, 1876–1898.” Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas. “Important Archive of Thaddeus Stanton, The ‘Fighting Paymaster.’” In Cowan’s Historic Americana Catalog: The West, December 6, 2007, 202–17. Cincinnati: Cowan’s, 2007. Kapaun, David M., Jr. “Major General Joseph J. Reynolds and His Division at Chickamauga: A Historical Analysis.” MMAS thesis, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1999.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

435

Liberty, Margot. “Cheyenne Primacy: The Tribe’s Perspective as Opposed to That of the United States Army, a Possible Alternative to the ‘Great Sioux War of 1876.’” Typescript. Owsley, D., D. Hunt, R. Kardash, and C. Clark. “48J09001-HM-9211, Mummified Remains, Barnum, Johnson County, WY, Hastings Museum Skeletal Collection, Hastings, Nebraska,” 1999, TMS. Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Newspapers Cheyenne Daily Leader (Wyoming), 1876–77, 1879. Cheyenne Daily Sun (Wyoming), 1876–77. Chippewa Falls Sunday Independent (Wisconsin), 1911. Gillette News-Record (Wyoming), 1934. Laramie Daily Sentinel (Wyoming), 1876. Laramie Weekly Sentinel (Wyoming), 1876. Omaha Daily Bee (Nebraska), 1876, 1882, 1900. Omaha Daily Herald (Nebraska), 1876–77. Omaha Republican (Nebraska), 1876. Washington Chronicle (District of Columbia), 1876. Map Resources Bourke, J. G. “Rough Sketch of the Action on Powder River, March 17th, 1876.” Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials Received, 1868–1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. Mills, Anson. “Map of the Battle of Powder River between Companies E, I, K, 2nd Cavalry, E, F & M, 3rd Cavalry, under the Command of Colonel J. J. Reynolds, 3rd Cav., and the Hostile Bands of Ogallala Sioux under Crazy Horse, March 17th, 1876.” Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials Received, 1868–1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. Morton, Chas. “Map of the Route of the Big Horn Expedition, Commanded by Brig. General George Crook, March 1st to 26th, 1876.” Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials

436

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Received, 1868–1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. ———. “Sketch of Crazy-Horse’s Village and Vicinity.” Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials Received, 1868–1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. Noyes, Henry E. “Topographical Sketch of Vicinity of Crazy Horse’s Village, Powder River, M. T., March 17th, 1876.” General Court-Martial of Captain Henry E. Noyes, GCM PP 5473, Record Group 153, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General. National Archives, Washington, D.C. “Sketch Map, Crook & Reynolds Campaign Mch 1–26, 1876, and Attack on Two Moon’s Village Mch 17 1876.” W. S. Campbell Collection, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma. “Sketch to Accompany Memo Report of Operations of Company I, 2nd Cavalry, March 17, 1876.” Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials Received, 1868–1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. Stanton, William S. “Plan of Attack by Force under Col. J. J. Reynolds, 3d Cavalry, on Village of Hostile Sioux Indians under Crazy Horse, on Powder River, Montana Ty., March 17th 1876.” Engineer Office, H’d’qrs, Dept. of the Platte, January 4, 1876 [sic]. Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Chicago District, Records of Topographical Engineer Departments, Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, Letters, Reports, and Graphic Materials Received, 1868– 1903. National Archives, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. Internet Sources Crook letter to Ben Clark. April 10, 1877. http://www.liveauctioneers.com /item/2120211. The Home of the Bison: An Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Study of Traditional Cultural Affiliations to Wind Cave National Park. http://www.nps.gov/wica/historyculture/index.htm. Jenkins, John. http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/WI/CH-buried.html. Old Bear. www.ancestry.com. Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940. Old Bear’s Wife, Long Teeth. http://amertribes.proboards.com/thread/1491.

Index

References to illustrations appear in italics. Adair, Lewis, 33 Adjutant General’s Office: and Bryan’s Medal of Honor, 348–49; and Moore court-martial, 317, 363; and Reynolds, 337; and Reynolds court-martial, 302, 306, 338, 367. See also U.S. Army Akley, Daniel, 396n9 Alder Gulch, 17 Allison, James, 393n6 Allison, William, 39 Allison Commission, 39–40, 43 Alvord, Benjamin, 261–62, 412n12 American Fur Company, 10–11 American Horse, 26 Antelope Woman (Kate Big Head), 211, 214 Arapaho Indians, 70, 101; and Bozeman Trail, 20; and Colorado gold rush, 17; and Connor, 16, 19; and Sand Creek, 15 Arkansas River, 12–14, 21 Army and Navy Journal: and Great Sioux War, 304, 326–27; review of Complete Life of Gen. G. A. Custer, 305; and Stanton’s reports, 243

Augur, Christopher, 23, 79 Augur, Colon, 393n6 Ayers, Lorenzo, 183, 187–88, 217, 359; abandoned, 195; and father, Richard, 347–48; and Medals of Honor, 346–47; wounded, 185 Ayers, Richard, 347–48 Bear Butte, 11, 48 Bear’s Rib, 27 Bear Who Walks on a Ridge, 191, 213 Beaver Creek, 173, 202 Beckwith, Amos, 279, 301 Belknap, William, 42, 47 Belle Fourche River, 69 Benteen, Frederick, 304–305 Benton, Henry, 396n9 Big Foot. See Spotted Elk Big Head, Kate. See Antelope Woman Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 272, 317–18, 407n41; conclusion, 299; horses for, 298 Big Horn Expedition, 78, 81, 83–84, 99, 102, 107, 109–10, 117, 119, 122, 162, 197, 202, 239, 241–42,

437

438

INDEX

Big Horn Expedition (continued) 244, 247, 258–59, 261, 338, 361; battalions, 121–22, 124, 150; battle maps, 256; Crook’s strategy, 344–46; desertions afterward, 298; horses, 245, 258; impedimenta, 122; Indians spotted, 119; Indian trophies, 259; loss of cattle, 102–103; marching order, 100; medical staff, 75, 85; and Noyes court-martial, 288; Orders of Battle, 355–58; organization, 73–77, 100, 103, 105; pistols, 130, 390n21; rations reduced, 111–12, 116; soldiers killed and wounded, 202, 247, 359; stores, 100; wagons and mules, 387n3; weaponry, 156; winter clothing, 77, 94, 100–101; winter weather, 113, 126–27 Big Horn Mountains, 16, 18, 26, 107, 109, 202, 346 Big Horn River, 17, 20, 48 Big Mouth, 21 Big Open (Mont.), 6, 12, 29 Big Road, 20 Black Coal, 21, 70 Black Eagle, 50–51, 208–209, 211, 213–15, 217, 219–20 Black Hills, 6, 14, 37, 80, 101, 346; and gold, 17, 25, 35–36; survey of 1875, 37; and White House conference, 43 Blue Earth Creek, 220 Blue Water Creek, 15, 19, 23 Bourke, John, 57–58, 62, 64–66, 70, 72–73, 76, 81, 100–101, 109, 113, 116, 127, 212, 239, 243, 245, 256, 259, 337, 355, 357; and Ayers, 191; battle map, 256; and Bryan, 170, 349; and Crook, 55, 114–15, 249, 339; and Egan, 131, 146–49; and frostbite, 161, 175, 225; and Grouard, 115; and Indian camps,

162, 197; ink bottle freezes, 126; and Moore, 83; and Noyes, 350; and Reynolds, 61, 83, 125, 131, 224, 229, 252, 299, 303, 340; and Strahorn, 133, 254 Box Elder, 50–52, 209, 211–12; and Crazy Horse, 217; and Ox’zem, 215–16; and Sioux alliance, 220 Bozeman Trail, 18–19, 288; abandoned, 24, 69; occupied, 20; and Sioux Indians, 19–20; soldier veterans of, 76; and Union Pacific Railroad, 23. See also Montana Road Bozeman Trail War, 28–29; and Old Bear, 51. See also Red Cloud’s War Brackett, Albert, 60 Bradley, Luther, 66, 257, 279, 288, 413n46; and Chickamauga battle, 326 Braided Locks, 214 Brannan, Michael, 396n9 Brisbin, James, 49 Brown, William, 353 Bryan, William, 75, 124–25, 202; and Egan, 133, 157–58, 161; horse shot, 148; Medal of Honor, 348–48; and Munn, 181; tends casualties, 153–54, 161, 169–70 buffalo, 7, 9, 12, 21 Bull Bend, 68 Bull Coming Behind, 212 Bull Hump, 209 Bureau of Military Justice: and Reynolds, 351; reviews Reynolds and Moore trials, 333 Bureau of Pensions, 347 Burnham, Horace, 55, 247; career, 287; and Noyes court-martial, 288–93; and Reynolds court-martial, 296, 325; and Reynolds General Court-Martial Orders, 370

INDEX

Burt, Andrew, 68, 73 Burt, Elizabeth, 68 Cameron, James, 302 Camp, Walter, 165, 179; and Indian narratives, 206; and Noyes, 350 Camp Douglas, 268 Camp G. H. Collins, 40 Camp Hat Creek, 350 Camp Inhospitality, 202 Camp Robinson, 58, 62, 66–67, 75; and Black Hills, 37; and Crazy Horse, 85; and Crook, 299; established, 34; and Indian surrenders, 209, 352; and Smith, 288. See also Fort Robinson Camp Separation, 108–109, 126 Camp Sheridan, 34, 37, 75, 346 Camp Stambaugh, 33 Carr, Eugene, 349 Carrington, Henry, 20 Chalk Buttes, 220 Chambers, Alexander, 70–71, 74–75, 247, 253, 272, 337; and Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 298; and Bradley, 257, 324; and Crook, 249; and Noyes court-martial, 287, 290–91; quarters at Fort Fetterman, 273; and Reynolds, 250; and Reynolds court-martial, 310, 324–25, 372 Chandler, Zachariah, 42, 44, 47 Cheyenne, Wyo., 56, 64, 308; and campaign, 63; and courts-martial, 302, 306, 325–26, 363, 367 Cheyenne-Black Hills Road, 65, 256 Cheyenne Daily Leader, 63, 72, 111; campaign reports, 259–60; and courts-martial, 312–13, 326 Cheyenne Daily Sun, 259–60, 300–301, 306 Cheyenne Depot, 57, 63

439

Cheyenne Indians, 17; and Black Hills, 11; and Fort Laramie Treaty (1851), 14; and horses, 8, 11–12; and Sand Creek Massacre, 15 Cheyenne River, 10, 29, 101 Cheyenne River Agency, 44, 46 Chicago Inter-Ocean, 259 Chicago Tribune, 63, 73 Chickamauga battle, 300, 326, 339 Chief Eagle, 214–15, 401–402n20 Chippewa Falls, Wisc., 277, 351 Chugwater Creek, 65, 256 Clark, Ben, 63, 86, 114, 174, 232, 256, 411n4 Clark, Jefferson, 72 Clear Fork, 107, 109–10. See also Lodge Pole Creek Cloud Peak, 107 Coates, Edwin, 70, 95, 100, 106, 110–11, 252, 356; at Fort Reno, 241–42; and Reynolds, 249 Cody, William, 63; and Egan, 132 Coleman, James, 34 Collins, Caspar, 15–16 Collins, John, 65 Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer (Whittaker), 304 Connely, James, 147 Connor, Patrick, 16, 19 courts-martial: pageantry, 304–305; role of judge advocate, 287; role of president, 288; types, 286 Cowan, Benjamin, 42 Cox, Jacob, 32 Crawler (Oglala Sioux), 50, 207 Crazy Horse, 20, 30, 76, 119, 130, 161, 173, 209, 286; and Cheyenne Indians, 217, 219–20; and He Dog, 50; joins Sitting Bull, 220–21; and Old Bear, 342; and Red Cloud’s War, 29 Crazy Horse Expedition, 99

440

INDEX

Crazy Woman’s Fork, 105–107, 111, 116, 126, 345 Crittenden, Thomas, 338 Crook, George, 61, 63–66, 69–70, 81, 97, 100–101, 117–18, 125, 163, 233, 238–39, 242, 256, 259, 303, 325, 336–38, 355; arrow wound, 38; background, 38, 53; and Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 286, 298; and Big Horn Expedition, 56–59, 62, 76–77, 107–108; and Black Hills, 37, 39, 53; campaign strategies, 53–54, 119–20, 344–46; and Cheyenne Daily Leader, 63; and Chickamauga battle, 326; and Clark, 245; and Custer, 64, 70, 385n34; department headquarters, 82; described, 114–15; and Dodge, 309; and Egan, 238, 255; and foul weather, 99; and Grant, 53–64; and Great Sioux War, 297, 343; and Grouard, 67, 115, 245; and hunting, 38; impedimenta, 122; and Indian culture, 39; and Lodge Pole Creek, 163, 231, 238; and Louis Richard, 88; and Mills, 238; and Moore, 102–103, 243, 249, 251; and Moore court-martial, 317; and mules, 57–58; and newspapermen, 63, 73; and Noyes, 238, 251, 294; and Noyes court-martial, 291–92, 362; on Otter Creek, 120–21, 231–33; and pistols, 391n21; and Powder River Expedition, 299; and Powder River ponies, 177, 233–34, 238, 240, 405n8; and Red Cloud Agency, 298, 339; and Reynolds, 61, 121–22, 243; and Reynolds court-martial, 248, 250–51, 254, 286, 306, 367–68, 371; and Reynolds’s instructions, 122–23; and scouts, 66–67, 112;

and Sheridan, 38, 64, 286; and Sherman, 64; and Stanton, 92, 238; and White House conference, 42–45 Crook, Mary, 309, 316, 340 Crook City, 346 Crow Indians, 28, 117–18; and Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 27; and Montana gold rush, 18 Crow Reservation, 27, 48 Cunningham, Charles, 396n9 Custer, George, 34, 70, 76, 327, 339, 343; and Black Hills, 36, 378n40; and Clark, 63; and Crook, 54 Custer City, 39–40, 44; and Egan, 97 Dakota (Minnesota) Uprising, 27 Dakota Sioux Indians, 9 Dallas, Alexander, 287 Dare, D. D., 95 Davis, Jefferson, 279, 300, 303, 309; and Chickamauga battle, 326 Deadwood, 346 Deadwood Creek, 37 Dear, J. W., 67 DeBarthe, Joe, 68, 123 Deming, E. W., 264 Department of Dakota, 23, 42–44, 62, 70, 279, 300; and Second Cavalry, 54 Department of the Missouri, 279, 296, 300 Department of the Platte, 23, 37, 43–44, 61–62, 69, 71, 75, 95, 256, 300, 367; and Black Hills, 53; and Burnham, 274, 324; and Lieb court-martial, 413n46; and Noyes court-martial, 286, 294, 361; Omaha headquarters, 82; and Second Cavalry, 70; staff officers, 55–57; and Thomas Moore, 58; troops in, 54–55; and Wilson, 349 De Smet, Pierre, 27

INDEX

Dewees, Thomas, 76, 121, 356; and ponies, 234; and pistols, 391n21; and Powder River Trail, 233 District of the Plains, 16 Division of the Atlantic, 62 Division of the Missouri, 23, 35, 44 Dodge, Richard, 60, 309 Dowty, Peter, 215, 311, 359; ice burial, 195; killed, 169 Drew, George, 66, 73, 122, 140, 197, 256, 258, 355, 357; and Crook, 228; and Custer, 76; hires scouts, 67; and ponies, 203–204; and Reynolds, 158 Droege, John, 148, 258, 359 Droninburg, Vernon, 148 Dry Creek, 111 Dry Fork of the Powder, 103, 105 Dudley, Nathan, 287–88 Dull Knife, 20, 209, 269. See also Morning Star Dunn, William, 280, 337, 351; reviews Moore’s trial, 333–34; reviews Reynolds’s trial, 334–35; and Stanton, 335 Eagan, Edward, 153–54, 258, 359; medical treatment, 175 Eagle (Arapaho), 21 Eaton, E. L., 92 Egan, James, 65, 67–68, 97, 122, 125, 134, 136, 146–47, 153, 157–58, 160, 167, 170, 203, 224, 258–60, 299, 310, 337, 354, 356–57; and Ayers, 313; career, 132–33, 407n41; and casualties, 148, 343; as charging company, 130, 147–49, 154–55; and Cody, 132; and Crook, 228, 255, 285; and Custer, 132; and Deming painting, 264; and Indian bonnet, 247–48, 406n23; and Maitland, 187, 189, 347; and McCannon, 174–75; and Noyes,

441

197, 255, 294; and pistols, 131, 390–91n21; and Reynolds, 133, 254–55, 340; and Reynolds court-martial, 311; and Sheridan, 132; and soldier burials, 195; and Stanton, 254–55; and Strahorn, 133; and tipi burning, 166 Eighteenth Infantry, 20 Elbow Woman, 211 Evans, Andrew, 287 Fagan ranch, 256 Farnham, John, 66 Ferris, Samuel, 76, 242, 356 Fetterman Massacre, 21, 65, 112 Fielding (courier), 111, 388n20 Fifth Cavalry, 317, 350, 413n46 Fifth Infantry, 100 Fisk, James 18 Flint, Franklin, 279, 287, 300, 309, 326, 413n26 Flood Creek, 136, 154, 211, 213, 353 Foley, Jeremiah, 169, 396n9 Ford, George, 392n43 Fort Benton, 18, 34 Fort Buford, 27 Fort C. F. Smith, 20–21, 27 Fort Columbus, 310 Fort Connor, 16, 20 Fort Custer, 407n41 Fort D. A. Russell, 57, 59, 61–64, 66, 69, 73, 100, 112, 204, 245, 258–60, 287, 295, 302, 316, 324, 370, 391–92, 407n41; and hospital, 247; and Noyes court-martial, 286, 361; and Randolph, 338 Fort Ellis, 34, 49 Fort Fetterman, 28, 33, 54, 59, 64, 66, 68, 70–71, 74–75, 78, 91, 99–103, 114, 126, 197, 229, 243, 245, 255, 258, 285, 295, 299, 306, 310, 372; and Bozeman Trail, 21; and Chambers, 272, 291, 324;

442

INDEX

Fort Fetterman (continued) couriers, 108, 111, 241; described, 69; hospita1, 247; officers row, 273; and Old Bear, 51 Fort Fred Steele, 302, 407n41 Fort Hall, 18 Fort Kearny, 20 Fort Keogh, 100, 407n41 Fort Laramie, 16, 20, 27, 29–30, 34, 59, 62, 64, 68, 71, 87, 97, 257, 287, 302, 350, 391, 407n41; and Black Hills, 37; and Bradley, 324; and Collins’s store, 65; and Crook, 299; and Grattan Massacre, 15; and mixed-blood residents, 67; and Montana gold rush, 18; and Platte River bridge, 65; and Red Cloud, 32–33; and Red Cloud’s War, 21; and Smith, 275, 288 Fort Laramie Treaty (1851), 13–14 Fort Laramie Treaty (1866), 20 Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 22, 24–25, 28–29, 34, 44, 51; and Black Hills, 36, 39, 43; failures of, 33, 35; and hunting rights, 25–26; interpreters, 67; nonsigners, 30; severance clause, 36; Sioux reservation defined, 24–25; unceded territory defined, 26 Fort Leavenworth, 301 Fort McKeen, 34 Fort McPherson, 75, 247, 287 Fort Pease, 48–49 Fort Phil Kearny, 20–21, 27, 65, 288 Fort Pierre, 10 Fort Randall, 24, 30, 37 Fort Reno, 27, 62, 69–70, 105, 108, 110, 225, 237, 243–44, 251, 258, 346; and Coats’s battalion, 241–42; and courier service, 241; and field hospital, 109; nighttime attack, 106; and river crossing, 107 Fort Reno Road, 100–101

Fort Rice, 15, 27 Fort Robinson, 352. See also Camp Robinson Fort Sanders, 59–60, 63, 66, 74, 137, 260, 391 Fort Sill, 351 Fort Stevenson, 27 Fort Sully, 20 Fort Union (Dak. Terr.), 10, 18 Fort William (Laramie), 10, 12 Fourteenth Cavalry, 98 Fourteenth Infantry, 34, 51, 60, 279, 286, 300; and Smith, 275, 288 Fourth Cavalry, 132, 350 Fourth Infantry, 59–60, 70, 74, 95, 106, 279, 300; and Crook, 38, 54 French Creek, 36, 39 Gardner, Alexander, 79, 88, 269 Garnier, Baptiste, 64, 66, 89, 106, 126, 230–31 Gettysburg battle, 30, 55, 76, 326 Gibbon, John, 279, 300, 309 Gibson, Joseph, 75, 247 Gilbert, Lewis, 137, 154–55, 160, 394n20 Giles, Dennis, 186–87 Glawinski, Albert, 348; and Ayers, 187–89, 192, 347; and Medal of Honor, 346; and Mills, 185–86; and Noyes, 1887; and Reynolds court-martial, 313 Goings, Patrick, 359 Goose Creek, 112 Gouget, Theodore, 167–68, 188, 395n6 Graham Creek, 127–31, 133, 140, 167, 180 Grand River, 25, 29 Grant, Ulysses, 23; and Black Hills, 35–37, 43–44; and Bozeman Trail, 24; and Crook, 53; and Reynolds, 60, 335–36; and Sioux Indians,

INDEX

443

40, 44; and Smith, 275, 288; and White House conference, 42–45 Grasshopper Creek, 17 Grattan Massacre, 15, 19 Great Plains: and buffalo, 7–9; defined, 5–7; and Indians, 7–9; vegetation, 6; weather, 6–7 Great Sioux Reservation, 35–36, 352 Great Sioux War, 44; and Crazy Horse, 212; failings and consequences, 304–305; and Indian narratives, 206–207; and Little Big Horn, 206; and Mitchell’s photographs, 316; and soldier burials, 195; and summer battles, 299; and total war, 16 Greenleaf, Simon, 321 Grinnell, George, 206, 209, 211 Grouard, Frank, 90, 106, 114–15, 117–18, 120, 122, 125–30, 158, 162–63, 173–74, 202, 204, 208, 228, 231, 247, 299; and Crook, 67, 90, 117, 123, 202, 225; and He Dog, 174; and Indians, 118–19; and Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 68; and Moore, 134, 140, 154, 156–57; and number of lodges, 165; and ponies, 198, 203–204, 230–31; and Richard, 117

Hay Field Fight, 21 Heart River, 14, 33–34 He Dog, 207, 209, 214, 216, 221, 270; and Crazy Horse, 50, 174, 219; and Powder River honoring song, 222 Henderson, John, 22 Henno, William, 133 High Back Bone, 20 High Back Wolf III, 402n20 Himmelsbaugh, Michael, 161 Hinman, Eleanor, 206, 221 Hinman, Samuel, 27, 39 Hollister, H. C., 305, 326; and Reno Court of Inquiry, 411n3 Horse Creek Treaty (1851), 17, 27. See also Fort Laramie Treaty (1851) Horseshoe Creek, 33 Howard, Charles, 87, 91, 273 Huston, Daniel, Jr., 279 Hyde, George, 206

Hall, Christopher, 150, 161, 177, 185, 278, 302, 306, 356–57; and Noyes court-martial, 292–93; and unsaddling episode, 178–79 Harlan, James, 412n12 Harney, William, 15, 19, 23, 79 Harpers Weekly, 80 Harris ranch, 231 Hastings, James, 48 Hawkins, John, 57 Hawley, William, 121, 355 Hayden, Ferdinand, 17, 19, 35

Janis, Charlie, 6, 106, 133 Jenkins, John, 105, 277, 306, 312–13, 320–21, 351; and Bradley, 324; career, 302, 417n31; and Chambers, 310, 324–25; defense strategy, 314; and Indian ponies, 315; and Johnson, 316–17; and Mills, 311; and Moore court-martial, 316–17; and Noyes, 315, 325; and Rawolle, 314; and Reynolds, 302, 322–24; and Royall, 324; and Stanton,

Indian Creek, 125 Indian Peace Commission, 24, 28, 31, 79; members of, 22 Inkpaduta, 342 Inter-Ocean Hotel, 63, 259, 276; and Mitchell’s photographs, 315–16; and Reynolds court-martial, 302, 305

444

INDEX

Jenkins, John (continued) 307–10, 321–22; and Washington Chronicle, 307–309 Jenney, Walter, 37 Joe Creek, 405n8 Johnson, Edward, 302, 306 Johnson, John, 122, 140, 167–70, 184, 197, 246, 311, 324, 355, 357; battle report, 255; and ponies, 158, 167, 177; and Reynolds, 138, 140, 172; and Reynolds court-martial, 316–17 Jones, George, 259 Julesburg, Colo., 15 Kaminski, Charles, 169, 175, 359 Killdeer Mountain battle, 15, 19 King, Charles, 264 King, John, 279, 300, 309, 413n46; and Chickamauga battle, 326 Kingsley, William, 137 LaBonte Creek, 51 Lame Deer, 30 Land, William, 137, 165, 169, 198–99 Lang, John, 127, 176, 203, 359 La Prele Creek, 69–70, 74, 91, 99, 247–48 Laramie County Courthouse, 291 Laramie Daily Sentinel, 259–61 Laramie Mountains, 65, 69 Laramie Peak, 34, 69, 101, 132 Laramie River, 10, 12 Last Bull, 49, 51, 207, 210 Last Chance Gulch, 18 Lawson, Joseph, 234, 356 Lemly, Henry, 392n43 Lieb, Edward, 325, 413n46 Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, 68 Linn Draw, Wyo., 405n8 Little Big Horn battle, 304, 327, 339, 342, 352

Little Big Horn River, 115, 117 Little Big Man, 76 Little Creek (Cheyenne), 211 Little Missouri River, 6, 29 Little Powder River, 50, 208 Little Shield, 216–17 Little Wolf, 20, 51–52, 207, 209, 212, 269, 352 Lodge Pole Creek, 107, 123–24, 158–59, 163, 194, 201–202, 223, 244, 368–69; and ponies, 218–19 Lone Horn, 30 Long Teeth, 352, 417n37 Ludington, Marshall, 55, 57 Lugenbeel, Pinkney, 279, 326 Macey, Robert, 301 Mackenzie, Ranald, 61, 303, 352 Maitland, George: and Ayers, 187–89, 192; discharged, 347; and Reynolds court-martial, 313 Man Afraid of His Horses, 20, 26 Maple Tree. See Box Elder Marquis, Thomas, 191, 206, 268 Mason, Charles, 242, 356 McCannon, Michael, 174–75, 184, 186, 195, 212, 217, 359 McCrary, George, 337 McDonald, Joseph, 305 McGillycuddy, Valentine, 85 McGrath, Hugh, 127, 195 McIntyre, L. B., 132 Mears, David, 58 Medals of Honor, 161, 183; and Bryan, 348–49; and Glawinski and Murphy, 346–47 Medicine Bow, 100 Medicine Lodge Treaty, 28 Medicine Wolf, 51, 207 Meigs, Montgomery, 412n12 Merritt, Wesley, 413n46 Miles, Nelson, 100 Miller, William 191

INDEX

Mills, Anson, 76, 96, 122, 125, 130–31, 141, 149–51, 153, 157–58, 160, 163, 168–70, 176, 180, 184–85, 190, 193, 197, 202, 237, 243, 251, 322–24, 337, 342, 354–55, 357; and Ayers, 183, 185, 192–93, 201, 311, 346; battle map, 256; battle report, 246, 253, 255, 403n4; and Egan, 172; and greatcoats, 138, 185, 215, 223; and Medals of Honor, 346–47; and Moore, 138–39, 150–51, 156, 172, 176, 184, 193, 246, 311, 341; and Moore court-martial, 364; and My Story, 341; and pistols, 391n21; and ponies, 204, 226–28; and plundering, 166–68; and Reynolds, 121, 158, 246, 340; and Reynolds court-martial, 310–11; seniority, 253; and tipi burning, 159, 166, 179 Missouri River, 5–6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20, 24, 27, 32; and Montana gold rush, 18; and Whetstone Agency, 33 Mitchell, D. S., 81, 90, 97, 270, 275, 279; and court-martial photographs, 315–16, 412–13n26 Montana gold rush, 17–18 Montana Road (Trail), 18, 24, 105, 109–10 Moore, Alexander, 76, 101, 121–22, 125, 130, 133–34, 154, 165–66, 180, 225, 245, 259–61, 234, 315, 316, 337, 350, 354–37, 394n20; in Arizona, 102, 243; arrested, 298, 315; battle report, 255; braggadocio, 131, 139; career, 102, 350–51; and Crook, 102–103, 228; and Mills, 138–39, 151, 172; on mountaintop, 135–37, 140–41, 145; and Munn, 175–76; and pony herd, 199; published court-martial

445

proceedings, 341; and volley, 150–51, 155–57 Moore (Alexander) court-martial, 280, 305, 317–18; arraignment, 318; and Burnham, 324; charges, 252; Crook testimony, 324; General Court-Martial Orders, 363–65; Reynolds testimony, 318–20, 322–24; Stanton testimony, 320–22; transcripts and exhibits, 333; verdict, 327–28; witnesses, 325 Moore, John, 112, 124, 175, 232 Moore, Thomas, 58, 63, 73, 256 Morning Star, 51, 352. See also Dull Knife Morton, Charles, 66, 70, 73, 76, 122, 127, 130, 137, 157, 160, 179, 181, 233, 237, 249, 256, 258, 260, 267, 319, 355, 357; and Ayers, 186, 193; battle map, 256; challenges Strahorn, 254; and Mills, 131, 138; and Reynolds, 158, 168, 197; tipi count, 165 Mullarkey, James, 51 Munn, Curtis, 62, 65–66, 68, 73, 75, 81, 100, 108, 122, 124, 133, 140, 195, 199, 203, 217, 239–40, 256–57, 355, 357; and Bryan, 157, 348; and fatalities, 161, 169; and hospital, 153–54, 179, 181; at Lodge Pole Creek, 202–203; and Moore, 175–76, 180; and Ridgely, 242; tends wounded, 103, 161, 170, 175, 225 Murphy, Jeremiah, 169; and Ayers, 187–90, 347–48; and Medal of Honor, 346; and Reynolds court-martial, 313 My Story (Mills), 341 Nakota Sioux Indians, 9 Newton, Henry, 37 Newton-Jenney Expedition, 73

446

INDEX

New York Times, 244, 285 New York Tribune, 199, 243, 254, 263, 335; and Stanton, 73, 262 Nickerson, Azor, 55, 64, 66, 299 Ninth Infantry, 40, 60, 66, 68, 73, 257, 279, 287, 300 Northern Arapaho Indians, and Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 27–28 Northern Cheyenne Indians, 16, 19, 29–30, 34, 47–50, 52, 115, 207, 342, 352; and Ayers killing, 190–91; and Black Hills, 43; and Bozeman Trail, 20–21; Elkhorn Scrapers Society, 49, 214, 268; and Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 27–28, 47–48; join Sitting Bull, 220–21; Kit Fox Society, 49, 241; Margot Liberty and Cheyenne Primacy, 382n20; Old Man Chiefs, 50–52, 269; and Otter Creek, 128–29; and Powder River battle, 167–68, 206–207, 213–14, 354; Powder River honoring song, 222; Powder River marker, 282; and Powder River ponies, 218–19, 230–31; Powder River village, 145–46, 161–62; and Red Fork battle, 303; and sacred wheel lance, 215–16; and Sioux Indians, 47–48; and soldier meat, 216–17; Sweet Medicine Chief, 52, 269 Northern Pacific Railroad, 34–35, 40 North Platte, Nebr., 21 North Platte Agency, 32 North Platte River, 5–6, 14, 21, 25–26, 65, 68–70, 91, 99, 101; and Montana gold rush, 18–19; and Sod Agency, 32 North Platte Valley, 33; Harris ranch, 231 Norwood, Randolph, 392n38 Noyes, Henry, 65, 68, 76, 103, 105, 110, 121–22, 124–25, 127–28, 130, 133–34, 141, 146, 151, 161,

172, 174, 179, 181, 183–84, 197, 203, 258–59, 265, 324, 354, 356–57, 405n7; arrested, 287; and Ayers, 186–87, 193, 200–201; battle map, 256; battle report, 255; and Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 297; and Bryan’s Medal of Honor, 348; career, 350, 407n41; and Crook, 228, 238, 253, 350; and Custer, 178; death, 350; and Egan, 197, 224, 285; and Hall, 278; and ponies, 149–50, 158, 167, 177–78, 226; and Reynolds court-martial, 315, 325, 370; and Rosebud and Slim Buttes battles, 265; unsaddling the company, 178–79 Noyes court-martial, 294, 325; arraignment, 288; and Burnham, 274; Chambers testimony, 290–91; charges, 252, 286; Crook testimony, 291–92; findings and sentence, 293–94; General Court-Martial Orders, 361–62; Hall testimony, 292–93; map, 293; Reynolds testimony, 289–90; Skinner testimony, 293 O’Brien, Martin, 356 O’Dell Creek, 116 Old Army: brotherhood, 326–27; desertion problem, 344. See also U.S. Army Old Bear, 20, 49–50, 145–46, 174, 207–10, 220–21, 264, 342, 354, 417n35; background, 51; and Crazy Horse’s camp, 217; later life, 352–53; and Long Teeth, 352; Old Man Chief, 50–51; and Wooden Leg, 219 Old Bear, Nellie, 417n35 Omaha, Nebr., 23; and Department of the Platte, 37, 82; and Montana gold rush, 18

INDEX

Omaha Barracks, 287 Omaha Daily Bee, 285 Omaha Daily Herald, 263, 285, 294; Stanton’s letter, 295; Wilson’s letter, 340, 349 Omaha Republican, 63, 73, 285 On the Border with Crook (Bourke), 55, 61, 72, 83 Ord, E. O. C., 55 Oregon Trail, 12, 17. See also Platte River Road Otter Creek, 48, 117, 120, 123–29, 140, 146, 160, 166, 177, 203, 230, 346; headwaters, 232–33; Indians on, 118–19, 208; separation camp, 121 Palmer, Innis, 60, 63–64 Panther Mountains, 117 Paul, Augustus, 138–39, 159, 355, 357; and Ayers, 193; and plundering, 167–68 Pawnee Killer, 21 Payne, J. Scott, 317–18 Peake, James, 108, 356 Pearson, Daniel, 70, 109, 356 Pine Ridge Escarpment, 6 Pine Ridge Reservation, 352 Piney Creek, 110–11, 116 Phillips, John, 65, 256 Platte Bridge fight, 15, 402n20 Platte Bridge Station, 15–16, 18 Platte River, 5, 12–14, 16–17, 29, 32, 48, 69–70, 101, 105, 118, 125, 145, 220, 353 Platte River Road, 12–13, 18 Poe, Orlando, 339 Poker Flat fight, 34 Poland, Martin, 57 Pole Creek. See Lodge Pole Creek Pollock, Edwin, 40, 44 Pollock, Oliver C. C., 195 Pope, John, 279, 302–303, 326; career, 301; and Dodge, 309; and

447

Mitchell, 315–16; and Moore court-martial, 317, 320, 322, 324, 327, 363; and Reynolds courtmartial, 296, 305–306, 313, 331– 32, 367, 374; and Stanton, 332 Pourier, Baptiste, 64, 66, 89, 106, 133–34, 146 Powder Face, 212, 401n14 Powder River, 16, 117; winter camps on, 115 Powder River battle: casualties, 169, 359; “the corner,” 154; “the declivity,” 146; expenditure of ammunition, 168; hospital, 153–54, 169; ice burials, 195; Indian flight, 154; Indian ponies, 177, 256, 405n8; Indian retaliation, 168–69, 180–81; and Medals of Honor, 161, 183, 346–49; mountaintop, 135; plunder, 394–95n31; and Second and Third Cavalries, 357–58; troop withdrawal, 194. See also Powder River village Powder River battlefield, 281; monument, 283, 353–54; Northern Cheyenne marker, 282 Powder River Expedition, 299, 309 Powder River honoring song, 222 Powder River Trail, 31 Powder River village, 50–52, 141, 145, 208–209; cultural splendor within, 160–62; destruction, 166; and dogs, 172–73; exploding tipis, 173; foodstuffs within, 166; identity, 174, 208–209; number of lodges, 165; and old woman, 173; pony herd, 150, 167 Prairie Dog Creek, 111–13, 175, 232 Provost, John, 66, 226 Puffed Cheek, 210 Pumpkin Buttes, 101 Pumpkin Creek, 116

448

INDEX

Rabb, George, 139–40 Railroad House, 259, 309, 336 Randall, George, 94 Randolph, John, 62, 338 Rawhide Buttes, 32, 65 Rawolle, William, 122, 125, 127, 129, 154, 157, 160, 165–66, 168–70, 172, 192, 197, 204, 225–26, 261, 356, 358–59, 394n20; battle map, 314, 412n23; battle report, 256; and Laramie Daily Sentinel, 260; and Moore court-martial, 317–18; and Moore’s volley, 155–56; and mountaintop, 135–37; and rearguard, 198–200; and Reynolds court-martial, 314–15; and Stanton, 136; wounded, 160–61, 359 Raynolds, William, 17, 19, 35 Red Buttes, 14, 18 Red Clay Creek, 116–17 Red Cloud, 19, 25, 32–33, 65, 88, 207; and Allison Commission, 39; and Fetterman Massacre, 21; and Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 23, 26–27; and Sod Agency, 32; and Whetstone Agency, 29 Red Cloud Agency, 33–34, 44, 48–50, 64, 67, 71, 132, 173–74, 207, 270, 298, 342; and Crook, 339; and Old Bear, 51; and Powder River Trail, 31; and Smith, 288 Red Cloud’s War, 20–21, 28–29. See also Bozeman Trail War Red Cloud Trail, 31 Red Fork battle: and Old Bear, 352; soldier burials, 195 Red Leaf, 20, 26 Red River War, 44 Reid, Whitelaw, 73 Reno, Marcus, 304–305 Republican River, 12, 26, 40

Reynolds, Bainbridge, 76, 122, 256, 258, 266, 352, 356, 358; and Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 297; and Moore’s volley, 156; and sighting carbines, 395n6 Reynolds, Joseph, 55, 59–61, 63, 66, 69, 76, 84, 101, 105–106, 113, 119–21, 123–25, 127, 137–40, 158, 160, 163–64, 168, 179–80, 241, 252, 259–60, 298–99, 304, 345, 355, 357; army service, 60–61; arrest, 324; attack plan, 129–31; and Ayers, 183, 186, 192, 194, 329; and battle reports, 204, 224–25, 246, 253, 255–56; and Big Horn Expedition, 73–74, 77, 100, 248; bitterness, 336–37; charges against, 249–51, 254; and Chickamauga battle, 61, 326; and court of inquiry, 256–57, 295; and Crook, 122–24, 163, 228, 246, 253, 257, 328; death, 352; described, 60, 68; and Dodge, 309; and Egan, 131–32, 172, 391n21; and fatalities, 169, 175, 195, 343; at Fort Fetterman, 70, 75, 248–58; and Grant, 60, 257; inexperience, 122; infirmities, 61–62, 163, 201, 257–58; later life, 351–52; and Lodge Pole Creek, 202, 205, 225, 228, 237–38, 251, 329; loses cattle herd, 103; and Mackenzie, 61; and Mills, 138, 246, 329; and Mills’s overcoats, 185; and Moore, 140, 154, 159, 250–51, 253; and Moore court-martial, 318–20, 322–24, 363–64; and Noyes, 172, 179, 251–52; and Noyes court-martial, 289–93; and plundering, 168; and ponies, 198, 203–204, 225–28, 256, 329; retirement, 338–39; and Sherman, 257; and Stanton, 246,

INDEX

329; and village, 158–59, 162–63, 165, 180; and Wilson, 340, 350; withdraws from battlefield, 181–82, 194 Reynolds court-martial, 305, 324; arraignment, 306; and Ayers episode, 311, 313; Burnham testimony, 325; Chambers testimony, 310, 324–25; charges and pleadings, 306; counsel, 302; Crook testimony, 307–307; Dunn review, 280; Egan testimony, 312; General Court-Martial Orders, 367–74; and Hall, 279; and Jenkins, 277; Johnson testimony, 316–17; jurors, 300, 326–27; Mills testimony, 310–11; and Mitchell photographs, 279, 315–16; Moore testimony, 316; Noyes testimony, 325; and Pope, 300; Rawolle testimony, 314–15; Royall testimony, 324; Stanton testimony, 307–10; and stenographer Hollister, 326; and Swaim, 300; transcript and exhibits, 333; verdict and sentence, 331–32; witnesses, 305, 325; written defense, 328–30 Richard, Charlie, 66, 120 Richard, Louis, 64, 88, 89, 106, 114, 117, 119, 230, 232–33; background, 67; and Crook, 88; and Grouard, 117; on Otter Creek, 120; and ponies, 234 Ricker, Eli, 206 Ridgely, John, 75, 109, 241, 355 Riley, William, 103 Robinson, Frank, 356 Robinson, Levi, 34, 132 Robinson, William, 76, 356 Rocky Mountain News, 72–73, 93, 99, 108, 123, 173, 243, 254, 284 Rosebud battle, 98, 326, 342–43, 350, 395n31; and soldier burials, 195

449

Rosebud Creek, 113, 116–17, 346; and Sun Dance (1875), 48 Royall, William, 60, 325; arrests Reynolds, 298, 343 Ruggles, George, 279, 300, 327 Running Eagle, 215 Russell, Jack, 66, 126, 128–29, 133, 230 Sackett, Delos, 338 Sage Creek, 101 Sanborn, John, 22, 79 Sand Creek Massacre, 15, 17, 19, 22 Santee Sioux Indians, 342 Santee Sioux Uprising, 15 Sawyers, James, 19 Schneider, George, 148, 161, 169, 215, 359; ice burial, 195 Schubert, William, 396n9 Schwatka, Frederick, 347 Scott, Hugh, 206 Second Cavalry, 33–34, 54, 59–60, 64–65, 67–70, 74, 103, 106, 108–10, 121, 125–27, 130, 135, 137, 146–49, 151, 154, 161, 347, 350; and Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, 297; and Big Horn Expedition, 356; and Company K, 97; desertions, 344; and Fort Pease relief, 49; horse stock, 343; killed and wounded, 359; and Montana Battalion, 54; and pistols, 391n21 Seminole, Mitch, 66 Seventh Cavalry, 34, 70, 304, 327 Seventeenth Infantry, 33, 339 Seventh Infantry, 279, 300 Shangrau, John, 66, 120, 230; and Ayers, 191 Shangrau, Louie, 66, 230 Sheridan, Michael, 338 Sheridan, Philip, 44, 46–47, 56, 77, 242; and Allison Commission,

450

INDEX

Sheridan, Philip (continued) 39–40; and Black Hills, 35–37, 40, 44; and Clark, 63; critical of Reynolds, 296–97; and Crook, 38, 53, 296; and Great Sioux War, 59, 297, 343; and Reynolds court of inquiry, 295; and Reynolds court-martial, 299, 302; and Reynolds’s bitterness, 337; and Reynolds’s retirement, 339; and Sioux Country, 36; and Watkins letter, 56, 393n4; and White House conference, 42 Sherman, William Tecumseh: and Bozeman Trail, 24; critical of Crook, 297; critical of Reynolds, 296–97; and Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), 22, 79; and Great Sioux War, 59, 297; and Moore court-martial, 334, 365; and Reynolds court-martial, 295–96, 302, 336, 374; and Reynolds’s bitterness, 337; and Reynolds’s retirement, 339; and total war, 16 Shore, Alexander, 172 Short Bull, 209, 215, 221 Sibley, Frederick, 98, 137, 141, 155–56, 226, 356, 358; Medal of Honor application, 155 Sioux Country, 5–7, 14–16, 19, 35–36; and Bozeman Trail War, 29; and Manifest Destiny, 29–30; and Montana gold rush, 17–18; and traditionalists, 31 Sioux Indians, 9–10, 12–13, 15–16, 19, 44–47, 50, 206–207; and Black Hills, 40, 43; and Blue Water Creek, 15; and Bozeman Trail, 19–21; and Bozeman Trail War, 29; Cheyenne alliance, 220; and expedition’s cattle, 102; and fur traders, 10–11; and Fort Laramie treaties, 14, 20, 24–27; and Fort

Pease, 48; and Manifest Destiny, 29–30; and Northern Pacific Railroad, 34; and Poker Flat fight, 34; and Powder River honoring song, 222; and Sod Agency, 32; and soldier meat, 216–17; traditionalists, 30–31; winter camps, 115 Sitting Bull, 29–30, 48, 56, 67, 76, 119, 130, 173–74, 206, 286, 342; and Fort Laramie Treaty, 26 Sixth Infantry, 279 Skinner, William, 293 Slater, Benjamin, 396n9 Slavey, James, 106, 359 Slim Buttes fight, 98, 318, 325, 349–50, 395n31; and soldier burials, 195 Slough, John, 106, 110, 112–13, 116, 126, 224 Smith, Edward, 42, 44, 47 Smith, John E., 67, 71, 275, 279, 413n46; career, 288; and Noyes court-martial, 286, 361; and Reynolds court-martial, 300; and Stanton, 349 Smith, John Q., 47, 56 Sod Agency, 65 South Fork Cheyenne River, 69, 246, 359 Spotted Elk (Big Foot), 26–27 Spotted Tail, 19, 21, 25–26, 88; and Allison Commission, 39; and Egan, 132; and Whetstone Agency, 33 Spotted Tail Agency, 33–34, 44, 49, 64; and Crook, 339; and Powder River Trail, 31 Spotted Wolf, 51, 207 Spring Creek, 220 Squaw Creek, 230 Stagner, Speed, 70 Standing Rock Agency, 46

INDEX

Stanton, Thaddeus, 63, 70, 92, 94, 113, 118, 122, 125, 127, 129–30, 135–37, 154–55, 166, 197–200, 203, 224, 226, 243, 246, 251, 256, 259, 262, 285, 294, 336–37, 349, 355, 357; and Bryan’s Medal of Honor, 348; career, 71, 349; and Crook, 55–56, 72, 339; death, 350; “Fighting Paymaster” sobriquet, 385n35; and Jefferson Clark, 72; and Moore, 136, 155, 199–200, 261–63; and Moore court-martial, 320–22; and New York Tribune, 73, 243, 307–308, 335; reports, 253, 256, 261; and Reynolds, 261–63; and Reynolds court-martial, 307–10; and Sibley, 154–55; and Strahorn, 72, 133 284; and Washington Chronicle, 263, 295, 307–309, 412n12; and Wilson, 340, 349 Stanton, William, campaign map, 246 Star (Cheyenne), 210 Starvation March, 349 Starving Woman, 214, 402n20 Stephens, Charles, 75, 124, 232, 247, 355 Strahorn, Robert, 72–73, 93, 99, 108, 111, 114, 125–26, 173, 191, 212, 242–44, 247, 254, 256, 259, 285; and Bourke, 284; and Bryan, 349; and Crook, 284, 339–40; and Crook’s orders, 123; and Egan, 133, 284, 406n23; and Moore, 244, 285; and Noyes, 244, 285, 294; and Reynolds, 244, 285; and Stanton, 284, 340 Sully, Alfred, 301, 306 Summers, John, 55 Sutorius, Alexander, 392n43

451

Swaim, David, 279, 300–303, 305, 313, 326; and Ayers episode, 313, 347; background, 300; and Burnham, 325; and Chambers, 310; and Chickamauga battle, 326; court transcripts and exhibits, 333; and Crook, 324; and Egan, 312; and Noyes court-martial, 307; and Rawolle, 315; and Reynolds, 318–30, 351; rules of evidence, 321; and Stanton, 320–22, 330; “statement” in Reynolds case, 330–31 Sykes, George, 279, 300, 309 Tall Sioux, 209 Tappan, Samuel, 22, 79, 378n78 Taylor, Nathaniel, 22 Terry, Alfred, 42, 56, 79; and Allison Commission, 39; and Great Sioux War, 59, 343; and Indian Peace Commission, 23 Third Cavalry, 55, 59–61, 63, 66, 69, 74, 76, 96, 101–102, 112, 121, 126, 135, 138, 140, 149–50, 157–58, 253, 287, 355–56; Ayers backlash, 346, 348; desertions, 344; horse stock, 343; killed and wounded, 359; and pistols, 391n21 Thirtieth Infantry, 279, 300 Thirty-Eighth Infantry, 102 Thirty-Fourth Infantry, 300 Thompson Creek, 128, 134, 140, 157, 167, 177, 180, 184, 353 Tongue River, 16, 29, 48, 50, 117, 120, 127, 208; Indian camps on, 112–16 Tongue River Heights encounter, 395n21 Towne, Phineas, 245 Townsend, Edward, 337, 365, 374 Townsend, Edwin, 287 Treatise on the Law of Evidence (Greenleaf), 321

452

INDEX

Twelfth Infantry, 95 Twenty-Fifth Infantry, 61 Twenty-First Infantry, 301, 310 Twenty-Second Infantry, 33 Twenty-Seventh Infantry, 288 Twenty-Sixth Infantry, 61 Twenty-Third Infantry, 55, 60, 94, 279, 287, 300, 309; and Crook, 38, 54 Twin (Cheyenne), 51, 207 Two Moon, 52, 209, 215, 220, 271; and Ayers, 191, 213 Tyler, Dan, 341 Unceded territory, 40 Union Pacific Railroad, 23, 56–57, 63, 100, 245 U.S. Army: Bureau of Military Justice, 333; Judge Advocate General’s Department, 300; notions of brotherhood, 326–27; Retired List, 339, 415n13; and total war, 16. See also Adjutant General’s Office; War Department Utah Northern Railroad, 24 Van Vliet, Frederick, 63 Vestal, Stanley, 206 Virginia City, 17–18 Wagon Box fight, 21 Warbonnet Creek skirmish, 318 War Department, 299, 327; and Bryan’s Medal of Honor, 348; review of Moore’s trial, 328; review of

Reynolds’s trial, 332; and Reynolds, 351 Warfield, John, 157 Warrior Who Fought Custer (Marquis), 268 Washington Chronicle, 254, 263, 295, 340 Watkins, Erwin, 56, 59, 383n4 Wells, Elijah, 392n38 Whetstone Agency, 30, 33 Whetstone Creek, 24, 29 White Bull, 209, 211, 216 White Eagle, 214, 402n20 White Hawk, 214 White House conference, 42–45, 53 White River, 6, 14, 47, 51; agencies on, 33, 66, 88 Whitestone Hill battle, 15, 19 Whitewood Creek, 37 Whittaker, Frederick, 304 Williams, Robert, 55, 362 Willow Bushes. See Box Elder Wilson, Posey, 340, 349, 412n12 Wooden Leg, 49, 207–10, 212, 214, 220–21, 268, 396n16; and Ayers, 191, 213; and ponies, 215, 218–19 Wright, James, 102, 109, 242, 247, 359 Yankton, 35, 40 Yellow Eagle, 212 Yellow Hair, 207 Yellowstone River, 6, 11–13, 18, 28–29, 48–49, 346 Young Two Moon, 209