Part 18

There was some dissatisfaction among the Cheyennes on account of talk of them being taken to the South. The agent and the soldier chiefs had said we ought to go there and be joined as one tribe with the Southern Cheyennes. Our people did not like this talk. All of us wanted to stay in this country near the Black Hills. But we had one big chief, Standing Elk, who kept saying it would be better if we should go there. I think there were not as many as ten Cheyennes in our whole tribe who agreed with him. There was a feeling that he was talking this way only to make himself a big Indian among the white people. The white men chiefs would not talk much to any Cheyenne chief but him. They gave him extra presents and treated him as if he were the only chief in the tribe, when he was but one of our forty tribal big chiefs. One day he went about telling everybody:

“All get ready to move. The soldiers are going to take us from here tomorrow.”

Lots of Cheyennes were angry. We had understood that when we surrendered we were to live on our same White River reservation. We had given up our guns and our horses and had quit fighting because of this promise. Now, after we had put ourselves at this great disadvantage, the promise was to be broken. But we could not do anything except obey him. So, three sleeps after my small band had come to what we thought was to be our home, the whole tribe was on its way to what we now call Oklahoma.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Bruyère, a Frenchman-Sioux scout for Miles.

[50] The Cheyenne name for General Miles.

[51] Fort Keogh, at the mouth of Tongue river.

[52] White River agency, Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

[53] Lieutenant W. P. Clark, who wrote a book on sign language.

XIII

_Taken to the South._

The soldier leader of our movement to the South was known to us as Tall White Man. He was a good man, always kind to the Indians. We had to do whatever he said we must do, but he talked good to our chiefs, so all of us were pleased to have him guiding us. He had with him a band of soldiers. I do not know how many, but I think there may have been almost a hundred of them.

Our horses that had been taken away from us at the agency were now returned to us. Still, many Cheyennes did not own any. Old people who had no animal to ride were provided with them from the soldier herd. Or, very old or sick people were allowed to ride in the soldier wagons. Young men who owned no horses had to walk or borrow from friends. I owned four. I had three of them loaned out most of the time.

Soldier tents were used by the Indians as well as by the soldiers. I think the Indians had a few canvas cone tepees, but I do not remember seeing among us any buffalo skin lodges. We had not killed for a long time enough buffaloes to renew the old dwelling shelters we liked so well. Wagons were used to haul the tents. Other wagons were loaded with bread, crackers, coffee, sugar and other food. Every day, rations were issued to all of the soldiers and all of the Indians.[54]

A drove of cattle was kept moving along behind us. Some of them were butchered every day for meat. This was good, but the Indians liked better the wild meat when it could be found. Our chiefs talked to Tall White Man about this. He listened to their talk. He said it was good. He told them how it would be arranged for some of the Indians to hunt along the way.

Thirty men, ten from each of the three warrior societies, were chosen by our warrior chiefs to do the hunting. Each of these thirty was given a rifle. At every time of hunting, each of them was allowed to have five cartridges for his gun. Other Indians were allowed also to hunt, but they had to use the bows and arrows or whatever else they might have for use. A few took out guns they had kept hidden when we had surrendered at the agency, but they had to be sly about this so the soldiers would not find out about them.

We traveled slowly and camped often, so there was plenty of time for hunting at distances from the moving people. The soldiers went always ahead. The Indians followed them. The wagons came behind the Indians. The drove of cattle were last. We kept mostly along the old trails of the Cheyennes as they had gone back and forth between the Black Hills and the South. These were across the high lands at the headwaters of the rivers. Not yet were many white people living here.

Buffalo and antelope were plentiful. There were a few deer, but no elk. I rode out at times with the hunters, but I had neither gun nor bow and arrows. I could do nothing but look on and wish I could do some killing. I knew of one certain Cheyenne who had a rifle hidden. One night in camp I said to him:

“I see every day lots of antelope. Let me take your gun tomorrow.”

I killed a buffalo the next day with his gun. I killed also two antelope. I gave him half of the meat. Both of us had plenty to distribute among our friends. The soldiers never knew anything about it. Or, none of them said anything to me.

Soldiers hunted with the Indians. All of the soldiers were friendly and good to us. They were good shooters and they killed lots of game. They gave us most of the meat. I became specially friendly with two or three of them. I liked to be with them, and they appeared to like me. I went at times to their camp in the evening and visited with them. When we were about half along our journey I asked one of them:

“Let me take your gun tomorrow.”

“Yes, you may take it,” he told me.

He let me have five cartridges when I got the gun the next morning. Oh, how good I felt--on horseback, having a good rifle, and after buffalo! I killed one and brought in the best parts of its meat. I gave the soldier his choice of it and all he wanted, when I returned his gun that night in camp.

Either a rifle or a six shooter was loaned to me for a day at other later times. Each time, with the rifle came five cartridges. Each time, with the six shooter came six loads for it. Each time, I returned the borrowed gun at the night camp and gave the friendly soldier whatever meat he might want. Most of them did not want much of it, so I had at all times plenty of the food we liked most, for our family group and for our friends who might need it.

We camped near one certain big town far along on our journey. None of us were allowed to go into the town, but I went walking all about the outside of it to look at it. As I walked I found a big piece of wood that I wanted. I had seen at past times this same kind of wood, and I knew its usefulness to us. It was the heavy piece that lays across the necks of cattle when they draw a wagon. The Indians liked to get these, because they made the best kind of bows and arrows. I picked it up and lifted it over a shoulder. I went right away to my home tent lodge.

I made a good bow. My mother had in her packs some dried sinew from buffalo back tendons. This I used to string my bow. I made then ten arrows. I got here and there some pieces of metal for the points. My mother made a pouch for the bow and arrows. She made it of a calfskin she had tanned as we were moving. I was glad now, with the full pouch slung from my shoulder and dangling at my left side. Two days I spent most of our camping time at this work.

On the first day out with my new bow and arrows I killed a buffalo. I could have killed more, but I did not want any more. There were not so many of them here as we had found farther north, but we still were finding a few. There were yet plenty of antelope feeding out on the rolling hills and level lands. An antelope, though, is hard to hit with arrows. It can run fast and can dodge quickly. Still, if one be chased a long time it becomes tired. Any ordinary horse then can catch up with it. It is easy enough then to shoot arrows into its body. One arrow often is enough to kill it. I killed several of them, as many as I wanted to kill, while we were going on our way. I killed also a few more buffalo.

One sleep before we got to the Southern Cheyenne agency we had some special doings. The agent there came out to see us. He had with him a half-breed Cheyenne as interpreter. They went to every tent of the Indians. At each place the interpreter asked the names and he wrote them on paper. We were in camp beside a soldier fort. That evening I saw some of the soldiers there trying to rope loose horses. I went to them and asked them to let me try it. They did. I could loop the lariat noose over a running horse almost every time I tried. The soldiers cheered. They were very friendly to me.

The thirty Cheyennes who had been allowed to have soldier guns for hunting were told now they must give back these guns. But Little Wolf and Standing Elk talked to Tall White Man about this. They said: “Let us keep these guns for hunting, or we might need them for protecting ourselves.” But the good soldier chief replied: “No, I cannot do that. They must be returned to us.” Others of our chiefs joined Little Wolf and Standing Elk. Tall White Man sat in a long council with them. Finally, he agreed:

“Yes, the Cheyennes may keep the few guns they have.”

I learned in the South the white man name of Long Hair, the soldier big chief we had killed on the Little Bighorn. I was told he was called General Custer. I had heard this name spoken at the White River agency, but I did not understand clearly who was meant by it. The Southern Cheyennes knew of him because of his having fought against them before he had come into our northern country. They had surrendered to him.

A few of our Northern Cheyennes had not yet joined us before we left the White River agency, at the North. Or, some of these fled from us as soon as it was decided we must go to the South. My brother Yellow Hair had not yet come in to surrender. He stayed hunting or he went to the Ogallalas. Not long after we became settled in the new home the news came to us that he had been killed. He was hunting on Crow creek, a stream flowing into the east side of upper Tongue river, when some white men not soldiers shot him. Our family now was made up of my father and mother, myself, my younger sister and the small boy brother.

My first shoes were given to me at the southern agency. They were too big, but I wore them a part of the time. All of my life before this, I had worn only the moccasins made by Indians. I yet liked best the moccasins, but we did not have skins enough to make all of them we needed.

I did some hunting in the southern country. But the hunting was not for the large food game animals. Very few of these got on the reservation, and we were not allowed to go off the reservation for hunting. So, my searching for something to shoot at with bow and arrows or with gun was for whatever small game could be found there.

On one certain bow and arrow hunt I was afoot and alone. The weather was hot. I was tired and sweating. I went to the shade of two big trees. As I rested there, a fluttering noise attracted my attention to the tops of two trees. I looked. There sat an eagle perched high up. I aimed an arrow and shot. No harm done. I drew out another arrow and fitted it to my bowstring. I aimed more carefully this time. In a moment after the second shot, the eagle fluttered and tumbled to the ground out a little distance from the trees. I ran out there. The big bird flopped and hobbled along away from me. Before I could get hold of it the eagle had lifted itself into the air. It flew on and up, farther and higher. I watched it until it was gone entirely from my view.

I learned how to hunt specially for eagles. Their regular sleeping places were at the tops of big trees. I would go out on horseback and locate myself under a big tree just as darkness was about to come. One night I sat under a tree waiting. I had both a rifle and a six shooter. Two eagles came. I shot and killed one with the rifle. I jerked out the six shooter and fired at the other one. It too tumbled down dead. That was good shooting, considering that the light was dim. But always in shooting eagles at night the dark body against the sky made a good enough target.

On another eagle hunt at night, when I shot up into the tree the eagle fell to the ground wounded but not dead. It lay there moving about a little but not much. I ran to it and seized it, to hold it while I might beat it with the handle of my pony whip. It grasped in its two taloned feet my left forearm and my right thigh just above the knee. I struck it with the whip handle, but this only made it sink the talons in more deeply. I had to pry them loose. Then I beat it to death. I still own and make regular use of a fan made from a wing of that eagle.

I shot one certain eagle in a tree above my head one night. Right after I fired the shot it tumbled. But it did not fall to the ground. I looked up among the branches, but I could not see it. I began to look about me on the ground. Just then a heavy thump on top of my head almost knocked me down. The eagle had lodged somewhere and then had fallen. It seized my hat in its talons and bounced off my head to the ground. There I killed it with my six shooter.

One night, as I stood watching under a tree I saw something moving along on a branch high up. It did not appear to be an eagle, but when it stopped on the branch I aimed my rifle and fired. It dropped straight down and plumped hard upon the ground. It was dead. It was to me a strange animal. It looked somewhat like the badgers of the northern country, except this animal I had killed was smaller. I remembered, too, that badgers do not live in trees. When I took it to the home lodge I found out what it was. The white people call this kind of animal a coon. I afterward saw others. I saw also what the white people call possums. We ate these little animals when we could get them.

The tallest Indian I ever saw was a Southern Cheyenne young woman. I first saw her at one of our Omaha dances. I stood beside her, for measurement. The top of my head came just above the level of her shoulders. She was extremely slender and she stood up straight, not stooping. Her name was Slit Eyes. I did not see her father, but I saw her mother. The mother was a short woman. This very tall young woman died when she was about twenty years old.

After we had been a year on this reservation, many of our people began to ask to be taken back to the North. There was no game here, we were not allowed to go off the reservation for hunting, and we were not given food as it had been promised we should be given. At times, some of our young men would violate the orders and would slip away from the reservation to get a buffalo or some other animal good to eat. Some white people said the Indians were killing their cattle. I do not know. I did not do this. I stayed all the time on the reservation. But if any Indians did kill the white men cattle they did so because they were very hungry and could not find any wild game. We ate the beef because it was the best we could get. We always liked better the wild game.

There was much sickness among the Northern Cheyennes. To us it was a new kind of sickness. Chills and fever and aching of the bones dragged down most of us to thin and weak bodies. Our people died, died, died, kept following one another out of this world. Finally, Chief Little Wolf declared that he for one was going to move back North, whether the white people consented or not. Others said they would follow him. The agent told them that soldiers would go on their trail and would kill them. They were promised more food. They waited for it, but it did not come. More people flocked to Little Wolf’s side. Dull Knife said he too would go. Late in the summer, more than half of the tribe started out. Little Wolf’s last message to the agent was:

“The soldiers may kill all of us, but they cannot make us stay in this country.”

Soldiers went after them. Other soldiers from other places were sent out to head them off. The Cheyennes were hunted from all directions. They were found many times, but each time the Cheyennes fought off their pursuers and kept on going northward. Many of our people were killed, but the most of them got back to their old home country and were allowed to stay there.

My father and I considered joining Little Wolf. But we had managed in one way and another to keep our family from starving, and we believed that after a while the food would be more plentiful. Some of us had been sick at times, but none of us yet had come near to death. We sympathized fully with our deceived and suffering people, and both of us had a high admiration for Little Wolf. But we settled our minds to stay here and keep out of trouble.

From the Southern Cheyennes I learned a great deal about General Custer’s dealing with them in that country. All of them said he had smoked the peace pipe with them at the time they had surrendered to him, seven years before he was killed. According to the custom among us, this was understood as a promise by him that never again would he fight against the Cheyennes. When they learned that he had been killed by our people and the Sioux, they considered him as having deserved that kind of death, on account of his failure to keep his peace pipe oath.

They told us also about the band of Southern Cheyennes who started out for the North, to join us, during the summer when we fought the great battle. Their medicine man chief was with the band, and he had the tribal medicine arrows and its tepee with him. Soldiers got after them. The medicine man chief and his wife separated themselves in the scattering flight from the soldiers, each of the two taking two of the four sacred arrows. After a few days the band all got together again, on upper Powder river. But there were so many soldiers in the country that they decided to go back to the South.

An assemblage of army officers asked me to tell them about the Custer battle. When they sent for me my heart said thump--thump--thump. I was afraid they might hang me. I went, but I told only a little. They asked for more talk. They assured me their hearts were good toward me. They gave me lots of money, about five dollars, I believe. Good! My heart quit thumping. I told them all they asked, answering many questions. Some things I kept to myself, but all that I told them was true.

I got a wife from the Southern Cheyennes. She was my same age, twenty years old. All of my people and all of her people appeared to be pleased at our marriage. They gave us presents and we set up our own lodge. She had been a girl in the Cheyenne camp at the Washita river when Custer and his soldiers came there and killed many Cheyennes and burned their lodges (November, 1868). Chief Black Pot was one of the killed.

The women and children fled, the same as ours had done at the Powder river. It was winter, and there was at that time a deep snow for that country. Soldiers chased the women and children and killed many of them as well as the men. My wife, at that time a girl, was barefooted, as others also were. They had been surprised early in the morning. She stopped and cut off pieces of buffalo robe to tie about her feet, to keep them warm as she ran. They went to a camp of Snake Indians (Comanches), farther down the river.

My wife told me she also was with the Cheyennes when they surrendered to General Custer (1869) after he had smoked the pipe with their chiefs. When they surrendered, some of the chiefs were put into prison and had chains put upon their ankles. When I heard all of this from my wife, as well from many others of the Southern Cheyennes, it seemed the Great Medicine may have directed Custer to his death, as a punishment for having broken his promise to the Cheyennes.

When I had been six years in the South, the Northern Cheyennes were told they might go back now to their old country. The Little Wolf people had been given lands on the Rosebud and Tongue rivers. We could go to them or back to the White river, where the agency had become known as Pine Ridge.

My father had died while we were in the land of the southern Indians. My wife and myself, my mother and her two remaining children all agreed we would move. A few of our tribal people decided to remain as members of the Southern Cheyenne tribe. We who left them went first to Pine Ridge. After not a very long stay there we were located in a region I always liked, the Tongue river country in Montana.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] The movement to the South began in early May, 1877. Seventy days were spent in the journey.--T. B. M.

XIV

_Home Again on Tongue River._

Many changes had taken place in the affairs of our tribe when I got back among the principal body of them in Montana. Most of the men who had surrendered at Fort Keogh went into service there as scouts for the soldiers of General Miles, whose Indian name was Bear Coat. They had many stories to tell of these experiences. They helped in finding and in fighting some bands of our old friends the Sioux, who remained hunting through the country after we had gone from it. I did not like to hear these stories. I could not help but think these tribesmen of mine had done wrong in this kind of warfare. That was the way the Pawnees, Crows and Shoshones had done in past times, and we had been enemies to them because of their having done so. There came into my heart thoughts that possibly the death of my own brother Yellow Hair had been brought about by reason of some Cheyenne having guided the white men who killed him.

The Nez Perces had come through the country soon after the part of our tribe had surrendered at the Elk river fort. The Cheyennes went with the soldiers to fight these other Indians. They had a battle far to the northward. Most of the Cheyennes were not in special danger during this battle, but two of them were said to have been very brave. These two were White Wolf and All See Him. White Wolf received a bullet wound across his scalp. He was stunned and he fell, but he was not killed. A Sioux scout dragged him into safety. The white soldiers gave money to the Sioux for his action. This was the same White Wolf who shot himself through the left thigh at our battle with the soldiers on the Rosebud and had to lie in his bed while his companion warriors fought the soldiers of Custer. All See Him had been a brave man in the Custer battle. He has another name, John Bighead Man. White Wolf also got another name after the Nez Perces bullet had hit him. His new name was Shot in the Head.

Two Moons and White Moon were two Cheyenne scouts of that time who were not in the Nez Perces fight. They were out with some Cheyennes chasing buffalo as the soldier and Indian army traveled in their hunt for the Nez Perces. In the course of the chase Two Moons accidentally shot White Moon through the body. White Moon was entirely disabled, and Two Moons did not feel then like fighting anybody. He helped in taking care of White Moon, and he paid the Indian doctor a horse for curing him.

People told me all about the journey of Little Wolf’s band from the South, with the soldiers after them all along the way. They had come to Fort Keogh and had surrendered to General Miles. Many of their men also enlisted as scouts. The Cheyennes at this place stayed a part of the time about the fort and a part of the time were allowed to live on the Rosebud and the Tongue rivers, near the fort. These combined Fort Keogh Cheyennes had been the beginning of our Tongue River reservation.