Part 2

Another soldier fort that was being fought by the Ogallala Sioux and some of the Cheyennes was on what we called Buffalo creek.[3] Little Wolf was then our most important old man chief. Crazy Head was next in importance among us. Red Cloud was the leading old man chief of the Ogallalas, with Crazy Horse as their principal warrior chief. At a time when our whole tribe were in camp on Rosebud creek, just below the mouth of Lame Deer creek, and when the Ogallalas were on Tongue river, just below where Birney, Montana, is now situated, some of their people came over the divide to us and asked the Cheyennes to join them in a great attack on the Buffalo creek fort. Our chiefs considered the matter. It was decided that whatever young men of us might wish to go would be allowed to do so. Our camp then was moved up Lame Deer creek to the base of the divide, a short day’s ride from the Ogallalas on Tongue river. Our great medicine man, Crazy Mule, showed that he could cause bullets shot at him to fall harmless at his feet. A hundred or more of our young men said they could go to fight the soldiers if Crazy Mule would go with them. He agreed to go. Our second chief, Crazy Head, led the band of warriors. Little Wolf stayed in our camp.

My oldest brother, named Strong Wind Blowing, was killed in that midwinter battle with the soldiers.[4] He was about sixteen years old. Chief Little Wolf’s younger brother also was killed. These two were the only Cheyennes who fell that day. I do not know how many Sioux may have been cut down by the soldier bullets, but I believe there were not many. Our returning warriors said that more than a hundred white men lost their lives, that Crazy Mule’s medicine caused them to fall down dead without need for the Indians to kill them.[5] There was rejoicing in our camp on account of the victory. But our family and all relatives of the two dead Cheyennes were in mourning. We wept and prayed for the spirits of our lost ones.

Some time after that battle a half-breed Indian came as a messenger from the soldier fort chief to the Cheyennes. He said, “Come, friends, and let us have peace.” Little Wolf told us we ought to go, so the whole tribe moved near to them. Little Wolf and others of our chiefs had a council with the soldier chiefs. The big chief of the soldiers said to Little Wolf: “We are going away from this country. I give to you all of these soldier houses. Your people may live in them and learn how to cultivate the land.” A separate council of our chiefs was held. They replied, “Yes, we will take the houses.”

The Cheyennes were pleased. “That one will be my house,” some one of them would say, pointing out a certain building. “I want that one,” another would claim, indicating some other structure. But Little Wolf was not satisfied. He meditated and expressed his disapproval. “We can not live here,” he urged. “It is impossible for Indians to live in the same houses all the time and get enough buffalo and other meat to sustain them.” The women especially implored him to change his mind. The question was settled fully one morning when Little Wolf set fire to the fort. He went from building to building, carrying his firebrands. He did not cease his efforts until the entire evidence of white man occupation was in ashes.[6]

Little Wolf had been a big tribal chief, the most influential one, for about two years before that time. In his earlier manhood years he was for a long time chosen over and over again as the leading chief of the Elk warrior society. If during his time any Cheyenne was looked upon as the bravest man of all, he was the man. He never was afraid to speak the truth. The people all believed him. He was a gentle and charitable man, but if insulted to anger he was likely to hurt somebody. In either disturbed or undisturbed mood everybody knew he meant just what he said. He was my uncle by marriage, one of his two wives being a sister of my father. He used to tell me many thrilling stories, both at his lodge and at my father’s lodge. I recall one in particular, when he had a hand-to-hand combat with a Shoshone. Each had a sheathknife. They grappled and wrestled and slashed one another. Finally Little Wolf pinioned the arms of the Shoshone, threw him to the ground, plunged upon him and stabbed him to death. He gave me a great deal of good advice, both as to warfare and as to how to carry myself uprightly as a man among my own people. My conduct all throughout my life has been influenced by his teachings, more than by those of any other preceptor except my own father.

I think my body grew more rapidly than did my mind. By the time I was eighteen years old I was among the tallest men of the tribe. I believe there were but two who stood a little above me. Both of these two were killed in the great battle against the soldiers of Custer. Then remained myself and Tall Bull as the two topmost in stature. We were the same in height, were about the same age, but he was distinctly the heavier. We were close associates during youth and manhood. He died at Lame Deer eight or ten years ago. I do not know by any measurement just what was my height when I was a young man. I think I have grown shorter as old age has crept upon me. My friend the white man doctor measures me now at six feet two inches and weighs me at 235 pounds.

Our tribe during my growing years moved here and there throughout the region between the Black Hills and the Bighorn mountains and Bighorn river. We never went north of the Elk river (the Yellowstone) except on two occasions when some of the tribe went across for only a few days each time. The places of crossing were just above and just below the mouth of the Bighorn. Only one time was the tribal camp circle made west of the Bighorn river. We considered that country as belonging to the Crows. Our war parties went there, but our campings were eastward from this stream. I do not know why we crossed to that side on this occasion. We had been having a series of ceremonial dances at successive camping places, and it may be that this invasion of Crow land was intended as a challenge.

I was about fourteen years old, I believe. The season was what in later life I have come to know as June. It was the time for our usual early-summer religious devotions. A medicine dance had been led by White Horse, an old man, when we were just below where Greasy Grass creek flows into the Little Bighorn. We stayed there five sleeps. Then we moved a few miles down the Little Bighorn, where Crazy Mule led a buffalo dance. Camped there four sleeps. Moved again down the Little Bighorn, this time placing our camp circle on the exact spot where it was located four years later, at the time we killed all of the soldiers. Bear Sits Down gave a buffalo dance at this place. Four sleeps here. The movement was continued on down the Little Bighorn to its mouth, where we crossed the Bighorn and set up our camp circle on its west side. Here Brave Wolf led a Great Medicine or Great Spirit dance, the ceremony known to the white people as a sun dance. Four sleeps we stayed here, then we crossed back to the east side of the Bighorn. That was the only time our people as a tribe ever crossed that river.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] North Platte river.

[2] Fort C. F. Smith.

[3] Fort Phil Kearny, on Little Piney creek.

[4] Fort Phil Kearny fight, December, 1866.

[5] Suicidal acts, to avoid capture alive?--T. B. M.

[6] Autumn, 1868.

II

_Roamers in the Game Lands._

The first agency for our Northern Cheyennes that I heard anything about was said to have been at the mouth of the Cheyenne river, east of the Black Hills. But I never was there. Afterward it was located south of the Black Hills, near the present Pine Ridge agency for the Ogallala Sioux. I have been told the white people called this the Red Cloud agency, but the Cheyennes knew it as the White River agency. I was at this place two times, but only for a few days in each instance. My father’s family was almost all of the time with other Cheyennes moving about over the country between the Black Hills and the Bighorn river. Here we hunted the game and the enemy Crows and Shoshones, and here we lived in every way the life of the plains Indians of those times. It was not an idle existence. We were busy much of the time, fighting our enemies or gathering food and clothing and sheltering skins.

As we were camped on lower Tongue river, when I was about nine years old, one morning a herald startled the people by his cry:

“Our horses all are gone!”

There followed a lively stir among the young men. A party of them, mounted on a few horses that had been overlooked by the raiders, hurried away on the trail. A thin snow helped them. In the late afternoon they caught up with the lost herd, apparently abandoned. But after a search of the vicinity they discovered that somebody was in a canyon cave there. One of the Cheyennes crawled into the cave, in an endeavor to verify the supposition. The verification came in the form of an arrow that hit him in the right eye. He quickly backed out. “Everybody bring wood,” the Cheyenne leader ordered. They built a fire at the cave’s opening. With blankets they fanned the flames and the smoke into the hole. The prisoners fanned outward and thrust sticks at the fire heap to push it away. “Bring more wood,” the leader called. The one-sided contest went on until two Crow Indian men burst out from the cave almost suffocated and in desperation. The first one out was beaten and stabbed to death by the surrounding Cheyennes. The second one got past them, sprang upon one of their horses and dashed away. The Cheyennes pursued him. He happened to mount a slow animal, so it was not long before the chase developed into a beating by pony whip handles. The Crow suddenly jerked his mount to a standstill. At the same moment he flashed out his sheathknife and made a vicious sidewise stab. The blade buried itself in the breast of a Cheyenne, who fell dead. The other Cheyennes rushed upon the Crow. In a twinkling he had received many death blows from various weapons. Somebody scalped him, and then they cut off his feet, hands and head. I was not with this party, but I was in the camp. I heard all about it when they returned.

I saw the killing of another Crow, though, when we were at this same camp on Tongue river. One morning a Cheyenne horse was discovered dragging a rawhide lariat looped about its lower jaw. This was peculiarly the Crow way of bridling a horse, the Sioux and Cheyennes ordinarily making a headstall and mouth bit with the rope. Evidently some Crow had captured our horse and it had escaped from him during the night. There was a scurrying out to inspect and count our herd. Apparently no others were missing. The inquiry was directed then toward an examination of the ground on the outskirts of the area where the ponies were grazing. Three strange horses had come from the hills to the westward and gone away in a gallop. Another trail was of human footprints, these imprinted as if the maker of them had been lame and had been using a stick for support. This trail led to a hillside cliff. There under the shelter of an overhanging stone roof lay a Crow Indian man apparently dead or sound asleep. A Cheyenne leveled his rifle at close range and fired. The Crow partly jumped up to a sitting attitude and then fell back dead. Investigation showed him to have a broken leg and a broken arm. The horse he had captured was not well tamed, and it had bucked him off. Perhaps it first had carried him away from his companions, and perhaps either he or the horse had made a noise that might have alarmed the camp, whereupon the two other marauders had abandoned him and fled. As I now reflect back sixty years, I pity that unfortunate Crow Indian. But at that time I felt no pity.

Nine Crows came and stole a band of our horses at a time when we were camped far up the Tongue river. I then was about sixteen years old. I joined the pursuing party of Cheyennes. We rode fast and far, following the trail over hills and valleys toward the Bighorn river. Some of our horses, including mine, played out. Four of us turned to go back while the others went on after the Crows. Porcupine was the oldest of my returning group of four. Night was coming upon us, so we stopped to sleep and to rest our horses. During the night a sound of moving horses awakened us. We kept quiet, listening and looking. Porcupine saw someone on horseback about a hundred yards distant from us. He called out a challenge: “Cheyenne? Crow?” The rider lashed his mount to dash away. Porcupine fired his rifle in the direction of the fleeing prowler. We learned nothing then of the outcome of this incident. But several months later an Arapaho friend told us of the ending. He had been hunting in this region, and right where we had slept that night he found the dead body of a Crow shot through from back to front.

The others who had gone on after the Crows driving our herd caught up with them just below the old soldier fort on the Bighorn river. My older brother was with them, and he told me what happened there. The horse band was across on the west side, and four Crows were having a playful time at bathing in the river. They were swimming, splashing, joking, laughing. The dozen or more Cheyennes kept themselves hidden and hurriedly dressed themselves for a fight while their horses rested a few minutes. Then they burst into their war-songs and charged into the water upon the surprised and defenseless bathers. Three Crows were killed, one escaped. All of our horses were recovered and three of theirs were added to the band. The third Crow killed was an old man, but he was very active. He dodged, jumped, dived. But the Cheyennes had too many spears jabbing at him and too many bullets flying toward him. My brother’s six-shooter put the fatal blow upon him.

The following year, when our tepees were assembled on the west side of Tongue river just across from the mouth of Hanging Woman creek, my father and I went out one day to get an antelope. He was about to shoot at one when the animal and some others with it suddenly ran away. We were hidden, so it seemed certain their fright came from someone else. We crept and peeped. Pretty soon we saw a group of Indian hunters on horseback.

“They are Crows,” my father excitedly whispered.

Oh, what clever dodging we did! We got to our horses, mounted them, kept them moving through gullies and brushy spots until we reached the home camp. A band of Cheyennes joined us to attack the Crows. At a long distance off we followed them until our horses tired out. By this time we were at the upper branches of the Rosebud. We gave up the chase. Nobody hurt.

Great herds of buffalo west of the Bighorn used to draw the Cheyennes over into that Crow country for the hunt. We camped on the eastern side, but our hunting parties crossed the river and went as far as Shooting at the Bank creek.[7] Each hunter led one or more pack horses to carry the meat and skins taken. Many times I have swam the Bighorn or some other river while holding in my teeth the leading rope of my riding pony. The pack horse rope would be held in the same way or might be tied to the tail of this leader. My clothing would be compressed into a bundle and strapped to the back of my head.

As we were camped on the east side of the Bighorn, about two years before the great Custer battle, three Crows were seen one day chasing antelope on our side of the river. Report of their presence there was brought to our camp. An old man herald mounted his pony and went about the camp circle calling out:

“Crows are after our antelope herds. They may steal our horses.”

Six Cheyenne young men got their war clothing packs, mounted their war ponies and set out to find the bold Crows. I was not with them, but a special friend of mine was one of the pursuing party and he told me of their experience. They crossed the Bighorn river just below where had been the soldier fort. During the course of the pursuit they killed two Crows. The third one was followed on to the main Crow camp beside Shooting at the Bank creek. The six Cheyennes lingered there to spy upon the camp. The lingering was a little too extended, for soon they found themselves engaged in a fight with a much larger band of Crows. A Cheyenne wearing a double tailed warbonnet had his horse shot down, then the man himself was shot through the thigh, this disability rendering him an easy mark for fatal blows that soon fell upon him. A second Cheyenne was killed by arrows or bullets. A third one met death by the same means. The other three escaped and made their way back to our side of the river and to the home camp circle.

During this same summer the Crows made a raid one night on our horse herd. Of course, when daylight revealed the situation a war party of Cheyennes went out for revengeful retaliation. I was not in camp at this time, being on a hunting trip toward the mountains, but Braid told me of what happened. He was one of the band of avenging Cheyennes. The Crows drove all of the horses to their camp on Shooting at the Bank creek. The Cheyennes hid themselves to watch for some opportunity for reprisal. But the crafty Crows evidently discovered them or had planned thus to entrap them. Notice came only when a horde of them charged out for a fight. Two of the Crows were killed and two Cheyennes also met death. Braid’s horse was shot down and he himself was hit by a bullet that broke the bones in the lower part of one of his legs. A companion on horseback took Braid up behind him and the two got away into safety. All of the Cheyennes then fled from the field. Braid is yet alive, at the age of eighty-nine years, his home being on the Rosebud side of this Tongue River reservation. The white people call him Arthur Brady.

About a year before these events just related a big camp of Cheyennes was located on the Little Bighorn a short distance below where Greasy Grass creek empties into it. Fresh footprints of unknown horses near the camp site aroused suspicion. Crows? Shoshones? People conjectured. An old man herald rode about and notified everybody. That night all of the horses were brought into the camp circle and picketed among the lodges. Many watchful people slept lightly or awakened from time to time and peered out from the tepee flaps. Last Bull, asleep in a small tepee with his wife, was startled by the snorting of a mule he had picketed near by. The mule snorted again, then a third time. Last Bull saw a human form crawling along toward his mule. The aroused man had no gun, so he crept under his tepee wall and into the next one, there to borrow a six-shooter from an old woman.

Fire Wolf saw the wriggling form cut the rope and move off leading the mule. He bravely jumped out, without any weapon, and seized the intruder. They grappled and struggled. The stranger had a rifle. During the scuffle it was discharged. The noise aroused the camp. Cheyennes came running. Cries rang out:

“Kill the Crow! Kill the Crow!”

The thief jerked out a sheathknife and stabbed Fire Wolf again and again until the Cheyenne had to let loose his hold. The freed man sprang to his feet and ran, leaving the mule. A shot from Last Bull’s borrowed six-shooter brought him down. A dozen Cheyennes closed in upon him and beat him to death. Fire Wolf had some bad knife wounds, but he recovered. The clothing, the bodily decorations in general and the mode of hair dressing revealed the dead Indian as being not a Crow. He was a Flathead, perhaps a visitor among the Crows or a member of a band visiting and hunting with them.

A battle with the Shoshones was fought near the headwaters of Powder river when I was about fifteen years old (1873). A small band of Cheyennes had their lodges a day’s journey farther up the river from the main body of the tribe. I was with the small band. Four or five Shoshones came at night to our little camp and stole our horses. We walked to the main camp and told of the raid. All were for immediate war against the whole Shoshone tribe. “Kill all of the Shoshones,” was the common cry. The main camp moved on up the river to our small encampment. There preparations were made for the warfare. That very night thirty-two Shoshone warriors came into the view of our night sentinels. Evidently the enemies had planned to wipe out our little band, not knowing of the presence now of the whole tribe.

The sentinels raised an alarm. Yet the Shoshones did not offer to retreat until they found themselves overwhelmed by a great body of our warriors. Their horses were tired from the journey to our camp while ours were just taken from their picket ropes. Perhaps the raiders had been saying, “We shall kill all of the Cheyennes here,” but now they plunged their horses into a long and deep canyon in their effort to get away from us. The Cheyennes strung themselves all along both sides of the canyon. Shooting was kept up during the balance of the night and until an hour or more after daylight. Two of the enemy escaped. Thirty of them were killed in the canyon. Seven of our Cheyennes also lost their lives. We recovered the horses the four had stolen. This fight was on a small creek flowing into the west side of Powder river from the mountains near by.

White Bull was leading a hunting party one time in the Elk river country. I was yet a small boy, so I was not with them. Their scouts observed the distant herds of buffalo excited. Crows? Shoshones? White soldiers? The Cheyennes hid themselves for the night. In the early morning they found moccasin tracks by a creek. The moccasin trail led to a Blackfeet camp. There the Cheyennes stirred up a fight, but I believe nobody was killed. The great warrior Roman Nose rode back and forth in front of the Blackfeet and defied them. All of them were said to have shot at him without a bullet or arrow having harmed him. He had a powerful spirit or medicine protection for himself. White Bull had taught him this medicine.

Soldiers got after a small band of mingled Cheyennes and Sioux near the Black Hills one time. We were running away when a Cheyenne was killed. Two Sioux, another Cheyenne and myself went back to recover his dead body. We got off our horses and crept over a hill. We four took our dead companion by his hands and feet and dragged him over the knoll. There we rolled him into a blanket and we took the four corners. Bullets were whistling all about us. The blanket ripped and the body fell through the opening. We again took hold of the hands and feet, and in this way we got him to our horses and delivered him to his own people.