Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Chapter 16

8-13 July 1876

THE INDIANS

Another Indian Agent Heard From—

A Piteous Appeal

WASHINGTON, July 14—Indian Inspector Van Derveree reports that at a council with the Indians of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies, June 30, the chiefs and others expressed a willingness to relinquish the Black Hills country on the terms offered by Van Derveree. The chiefs promised to keep their people at home, and to remain about the agencies. They declare, and the evidence here sustains their declaration, that the only Sioux who are absent are the Cheyennes who have committed depredations in the neighborhood and who have gone north to join the hostiles …

Appended to the report is the following statement of Bear Stands Up, an Indian of the Spotted Tail agency, who arrived from Sitting Bull’s camp June 25th … Sitting Bull sends word that he does not intend to molest any one south of the Black Hills, but will fight the whites in that country as long as the question is unsettled and if not settled as long as he lives … He does not want to fight the whites—only steal from them. White men steal, and Indians won’t come to the settlements. Whites kill themselves and make the Black Hills stink with so many dead men … Sitting Bull says if troops come out to him he must fight them, but if they don’t come out he intends to visit this agency and he will counsel his people for peace.

Colonel Wesley Merritt did not choose to march east to the troubled agencies that eighth day of July.

Nor south to Laramie.

Instead he decided on a third option: to stay put right there on Sage Creek, where he felt more mobile, closer to the agencies, and unquestionably closer to the northbound trail used by any hostiles fleeing the reservations. From that stockade he could respond quickly to trouble in either direction—Fort Laramie or Red Cloud.

Through the next four days the regiment sat, fighting the thumb-sized horseflies that tormented man and beast alike. Scouting parties were sent out, but none returned having sighted any war parties or any fresh trails. Then on the evening of 11 July, the night the Fifth drew its first beef ration of the campaign, more orders arrived.

“We’re marching back to Laramie,” King explained to Cody.

On the lieutenant’s face it was plain to see the ardent fervor to get in his licks against the enemy. Ever since learning of the Little Bighorn disaster, that feeling was something tangible and contagious: Bill was himself every bit as eager to get a crack at those who had wiped George Armstrong Custer and half his regiment from the face of the earth.

“From there we’re going north to Fetterman,” King went on to explain Sheridan’s new orders. “Then we can finally be on our way to reinforce Crook camped somewhere near the Big Horns.”

At dawn the next morning, Wednesday, the command marched away from Sage Creek, heading back to the Cardinal’s Chair on the headwaters of the Niobrara River, sixteen miles closer to Fort Laramie. That evening brought exactly the sort of furious thunderstorm that midsummer had made famous on the western plains, complete with deafening thunder and a great display of celestial fireworks, accompanied by a generous, wind-driven mix of rain and hail that painfully pelted the regiment, soaking every soldier to the skin.

Beneath overcast skies on the morning of the thirteenth, the Fifth plodded eighteen more miles and went into camp by another prominent landmark in Wyoming Territory, Rawhide Butte. Sundown brought with it another drenching thundershower.

That very night it was whispered that Merritt had relieved Captain Robert A. Wilson from command of his A Troop under a dark cloud of suspicion. Cody learned from Lieutenant King that Wilson had long been a shirker who had conveniently wrangled himself periods of leave during the regiment’s roughest duty in Arizona during the Apache campaign. But until the long, arduous scouts Merritt had demanded of his men, as well as the soul-crushing news of the Custer disaster, no one had wanted to believe the captain was in reality a coward.

“Surgeon Powell told me in confidence that Wilson gave himself a nosebleed and swallowed the blood,” King declared to the Fifth’s scout after dark that night. “Seems he intended to go on sick call and spit it back up to make the physicians think he was bleeding from the lung.”

“How did the surgeon know Wilson was shamming?”

King whispered, “Powell says blood brought up fresh from the lungs looks a lot different. So on checking him over, they found where Wilson had cut the membranes inside his nose. Found out, he immediately broke down and admitted the ruse.”

No longer considered an officer of the Fifth, Wilson was compelled by Merritt and Carr to resign his commission as soon as the regiment returned to Fort Laramie, one short day’s march to the south—or take his chances with a court-martial. Wilson again chose the coward’s way out.

But instead of marching for Laramie the morning of the fourteenth, at reveille the colonel called his officers together to inform them of the dispatches he had received late the night before. Cody stood nearby, every bit as expectant as any of those veterans in blue.

“I’ve received news from the agencies, via Major Townsend at Laramie. He in turn received word from Major Jordan at Camp Robinson—wired on the eleventh— that states the Indians intend to make a mass break for the north in a matter of days.”

“That means they could be fleeing north any day now, General,” Carr advised.

“Exactly,” Merritt replied.

“With the general’s permission?” Cody said sourly. “Of course the Injuns are going to jump their reservations—I’ll bet they already heard we’ve abandoned their Powder River trail and left the way wide open for them.”

Several of the other officers murmured their agreement with Cody that they should never have marched south, away from the Cheyenne River.

Raising his hand, Merritt quickly quieted them. “I want to break camp on the double this morning. General Carr and I have determined to march southeast rather than directly south toward Laramie.”

“What about our orders to march north to reinforce Crook?” asked a clearly disappointed Captain Julius W. Mason.

“May I answer that, General?” Carr inquired, using Merritt’s Civil War rank. When the colonel nodded, Carr continued. “We’ve discussed this and are both of the same mind. It seems our most pressing urgency is to stop the flow of warriors north, to prevent them from reinforcing the hostile camps that crushed Custer’s Seventh. To do that, in our opinion, takes higher precedence over reaching Crook for the present time.”

“Remember, gentlemen,” Merritt drove home his point in the gray light of dawn, “there are between eight hundred and a thousand Cheyenne warriors still on those two agencies. We could have our hands more than full right here, without having to march north to the Big Horns to join up with Crook for a fight. At the moment, those warriors think their highway is open. I intend to take the Fifth and close the trap on them.” After a minute’s thoughtful pause the colonel concluded, “If there are no further matters to discuss at this time, let’s be marching east.”

By noon the Fifth came upon the place where the Camp Robinson-Fort Laramie Road crossed Rawhide Creek. Merritt immediately dispatched Major Thaddeus Stanton to press on to Camp Jordan, there to determine the present situation at Red Cloud Agency. Captain Emil Adams’s C Troop was to accompany Stanton as far as the trail’s crossing at Running Water Creek, a branch of the Niobrara River, at which point the old German’s men were to begin patrolling along the Robinson-Laramie Road. While awaiting Stanton’s report, the rest of the regiment would remain in bivouac at Rawhide Creek, sixty-five miles southeast of the Red Cloud Agency—ready to ride at a moment’s notice.

How long they would have to wait, no one could say. Some men fished, others caught up on sleep, but just about all debated what should be Merritt’s next move to stem the outgoing tide of warriors from the reservations.

They wouldn’t have to wait long for word that the Cheyenne were coming.

In a matter of hours those troopers of the Fighting Fifth would vault back into their saddles, and they wouldn’t climb back out for something on the order of thirty-six hours.

But waiting was about all they did in Crook’s camp.

Every interminable hour that dragged by seemed to bring renewed grumbling from Crook’s officer corps that the army ever relinquished its three posts along the Bozeman Trail. If Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith were still manned, they argued, chances were Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would have never gained a foothold in this hunting ground. And even if the Sioux had made just such an attempt despite the presence of the army, then any campaign by Crook or Terry would be able to operate that much closer to supply depots.

Now with this Sioux campaign grinding on much longer than any military man would have thought possible, it was abundantly clear at every campfire discussion that the officers of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition believed the army should immediately set about erecting its three posts in the heart of the hostiles’ country: perhaps first to reactivate old Fort Reno or a new post somewhere on the headwaters of the Tongue; another in the Black Hills to protect the miners, settlers, and growing businesses flocking there; and a third somewhere on the lower Yellowstone, ideally at the mouth of the Tongue River.

“If the army did that,” Captain Anson Mills told his compatriots that eleventh day of July, “the army would thereby maintain its presence and military influence over the wild tribes so that no hostile elements on the reservations would ever again seek to flee for what the Indians claim as their land, to recapture what they remember of their old life.”

“Their old life is over!” John Finerty snarled. “This is beautiful land—and emigrants damn well ought to come in and snatch it up, take it away from these savages.”

John Bourke asked the newsman, “You don’t think we can live with the red man if the Indian stayed to his agencies?”

“No,” Finerty said flatly, plainly still suffering from his harrowing escape. “Better if the whole tribe of Indians, friendly and otherwise, were exterminated.”

“Johnny boy,” Seamus said at their noon fire, “you’re sounding just like General Sherman—even Phil Sheridan himself!”

“Damn right I agree with them!” Finerty growled. “And a lot of these men do too, Seamus. We all detest the red race! Don’t you?”

Donegan’s brow knitted as he brooded on that a moment, then pulled the stub of his briar pipe from his lips and said, “It’s true that the red man’s done his best to raise my hair—that much is for sure, Johnny. But to paint them all with that same black brush—why, I’m not about to do it. I’ve seen too much good in some Injins, scouts and trackers and others, to condemn the whole of them. I could have stayed back east in Boston, even your Chicago, and not seen a single Indian for all my life. Maybe some white men brought this on themselves—taking what ain’t theirs.”

“Wait a minute, Irishman,” said Frederick Van Vliet of the Third Cavalry. “So what should become of those good, God-fearing folks who want to come out here to settle, raise a family, and make a new life for themselves?”

Seamus wagged his head. “You’re asking the wrong man, Captain. I’m for sure no politician, and I don’t have any easy answers on the tip of my silver tongue.”

“Then perhaps you should think things over,” Finerty advised, “until you know what you want to believe in.”

“Oh, I know what I believe in, Johnny boy. I damn well know what I believe in,” he replied, his bile rising at the challenge. “Seems to me what should happen to folks who come out to settle on land that belongs to other people should be what happens to any folks who steal something that don’t belong to ’em.”

“What?” Finerty demanded in a shrill voice. “You’re saying white folks should pay those black-hearted savages for the land they want to farm?”

“Can’t you see, Donegan?” Mills jumped into the argument. “That’s exactly what the land commission is doing at this very moment: trying to strike an accord for the purchase of the Black Hills. But the Indians are balking.”

Seamus shook his head in disbelief. “So we don’t get what we want—we’ll take it anyway?”

“I say we were meant to pacify this land from sea to shining sea,” Captain Peter D. Vroom said. “To make it fruitful and we to prosper thereby.”

“But to do that,” Donegan said, “the fighting men on both sides are made victims of the war between the War Department, sent to fight the Indians, and the Interior Department, supposed to watch over the welfare of the Indians.”

Finerty cheered, “I say the Grant administration’s done the right thing: turning the Indians over to the army. Now it’s time to let the army settle this once and for all!”

“Odd, don’t you think, Johnny—that the men on both sides of this war are being killed by government bullets?”

With a snap of his fingers the newsman said, “By the saints—I think you’ve got something there, Seamus. That could well be the germination of a great editorial I could write on the utter insanity of the government giving weapons and bullets to our helpless red wards, who then escape their assigned reservations, using those bullets to kill the soldiers that same government sends to drive the red savages back to their agencies.”

With the correspondent’s last few words, Donegan began to peer to the south over Finerty’s shoulder, his attention drawn to the nearby hills where pickets had been signaling with their semaphores. Suddenly the brow of a distant hill dippled with over two hundred horsemen.

“Johnny boy, looks like you’re gonna get another chance to show just how much you hate all red men,” Seamus said with a grin, “both friendly and otherwise.”

With a start Finerty and some of the others twisted about, stunned to see the tall lances carried by those distant warriors.

“Brazen sons of bitches, ain’t they?” John Bourke said. “To dare venture this close to an armed camp.”

“Those aren’t Sioux, Lieutenant,” Donegan said, as Pourier strode up. “Right, Bat?”

The half-breed replied, “Snake.”

“The Shoshone?” Finerty said. “They’re back?”

“They promised Crook they’d return,” Bourke marveled as he turned to leave. “By damn, the general will want to see this!”

Down from the slopes came that colorful procession of fluttering feathers and streaming scalp locks tied to halters, rifle muzzles, and buffalo-hide shields. Bright-red or dark-blue trade-cloth leggings were shown off by some, while most wore only a breechclout and moccasins under the warmth of that summer sun. They carried rifles and old muzzle-loading fusils, a few even proud to brandish a cap-and-ball revolver. Wolf-hide and puma-skin quivers stuffed with iron-tipped arrows and their sinew-backed horn bows hung at every back.

And at the head of them all rode Tom Cosgrove, that veteran of the Confederate cavalry who had made a new life for himself near Camp Brown on the Wind River Reservation after the war, marrying into the tribe and raising a family of his own, then once more answering the patriot’s call when what he loved most was threatened by the enemy. With his two closest friends, former rebels Nelson Yarnell and Yancy Eckles, Cosgrove had brought eighty-six Shoshone warriors over the mountains last month to answer Three Stars’s plea for scouts and Indian auxiliaries. After the army’s stalemate on the Rosebud, the Snake had abandoned Crook to return home.

Now the three were back, this time bringing 220 warriors.

Yet it was an old, stately warrior who caused the greatest stir as the picturesque parade approached camp: a handsome, wrinkled, and gray-haired war chief who sat proudly erect as he led his tribesmen to the camp of the Three Stars.

“Who is that, Bat?” Seamus asked.

“Only can be Washakie.”

“The old chief himself,” the Irishman replied. “Old Big Throat himself told me Washakie goes back to the first time white men came to these mountains.”

Pourier nodded. “Days of Jim Bridger, Shad Sweete, and Titus Bass—old trappers like them. Why, Washakie’s put some seventy-two or -three winters behind him already. And he still looks strong as a bull in spring! Lookee there, he’s brought his two sons along with him. Those boys right behind Washakie, riding with Yarnell and Eckles.”

“By damn!” Finerty said. “Even back east we’ve heard that year in and year out Washakie has been one of the most loyal allies the army could ever hope to have.”

Donegan turned to the newsman with a grin to ask, “You mean you’re gonna get soft on Injins now, John? Figuring maybe the army shouldn’t go and kill ’em all?”

“Maybe you just oughtta let me be, Irishman!” Finerty snapped. “Say, Bat—who are them two squaws riding behind the old boy? His wives?”

Pourier shook his head. “I don’t figure Washakie to bring his women. They must be the wives of the two Snakes who stayed with us.”

Donegan asked, “That pair of warriors what were too badly wounded for the others to take back to Wind River on travois?”

With a nod Pourier replied, “Yeah. Likely those women come to be with their husbands, help put ’em on the mend.”

Finerty shook a raised fist in the air and cheered, “Hurrah! Hurrah for Washakie’s soldiers! Now Crook can go whip Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse!”

“I don’t think we’ll be going anytime soon,” Anson Mills grumbled. “No matter that the Shoshone have returned, I’ll wager Crook will wait some more, at least until the Fifth gets here.”

“Why tarry so long—if the enemy is all around us?” Robert Strahorn asked.

“I suppose it’s an old military axiom I learned at the academy,” Mills replied. “A commander must never, never underestimate his enemy.”

“With this army made to retreat from the Rosebud, followed only days later by Custer’s regiment being butchered,” said Captain William H. Andrews of the Third Cavalry, “we’ve twice felt the savage, brutal, and bloody power of our enemy.”

“Don’t you fear. When we finally do march,” Mills told them, “it will be to destroy what bands we don’t drive into the agencies. When we march—it will be to end this Sioux War once and for all.”

“You looking for someone, Seamus?” Strahorn inquired.

He said, “Yes. Someone … one of Washakie’s warriors. A fighting man.”

“One of the Snakes?”

His eyes misted over and he blinked them unsuccessfully. “Someone I stood back to back with a few weeks ago—not knowing when I would die with all those Sioux charging in to overrun us … sure only that I was going to die.”^*

After a moment of reflection Strahorn asked quietly, “Then this should be a joyful reunion for you.”

“Goddamn right, Bob!” he said, turning to the newsman with a wide grin creasing his weathered face. “A bloody joyful reunion it will be for two fighting comrades who escaped death by climbing back out of the mouth of hell!”

*The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 9, Reap the Whirlwind.