: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

Chapter 9

20 October 1876

Russia Ready for an Advance

on Turkey

Austria, France and Germany

Remain Neutral

Indians Still Raiding Settlers

In Wyoming

THE INDIANS

More Raiding up North.

CHEYENNE, October 18.—Almost every hour brings news of new depredations by Indians upon ranchmen located west and north of the Chug. On Sunday last Coffey 8c Cunney’s train, near Laramie Peak, was run down to Kent’s, on Laramie River. A saddle blanket and vest belonging to a man named Sullivan, of the independent volunteers, was found near that place, and he is probably killed. Frank Sprague was attacked on his ranch at the old mill near Laramie Peak. He fought the Indians during a whole day, killing two, but they burned his hay and ranch and ran off all his stock. He escaped barefooted to O’Leary’s ranch on Richard Creek before the Indians fired the bushes in which he had been concealed. Kerr, who arrived at the Chug to-day, saw an Indian camp within two miles of Searight’s ranch and men and ammunition left here on his order to-day. A large body of Indians encamped at the head of the North Laramie, distant from Fort Laramie forty miles. A party of volunteers who went in search of Aspenfelter and the mail carrier from Laramie city, who was due at the Chug Monday, returned to-night to that place having discovered no trace of the missing men.

As soon as the soldier chief in the big coat came up and stood by the robe, Johnny Bruguier said, “Soldier chief, Sitting Bull want you to sit while you talk with him.”

“No,” Miles said stiffly, his jaw jutting. “I think better of it. I’ll just stand while we parley.”

Glancing at the Hunkpapa chief a moment, seeing the strain of confusion in Sitting Bull’s eyes, Johnny tried again. “If you want to make war, then stand. If you come to talk peace with these Lakota—then you must sit.”

For several moments Nelson Miles deliberated on that, his eyes looking from the interpreter, to the seated chiefs, to the line of mounted warriors to their rear. Then back to the buffalo robe offered him. At last the wary officer turned and mumbled something to his men, then advanced a few more feet so that he could kneel on the buffalo robe.

“You will not sit to talk?” Johnny asked.

“I will kneel here,” Miles grumbled, clearly vexed. “Now—get on with what Sitting Bull wants to tell me.”

Johnny stepped over so he could sit directly between Sitting Bull and the colonel. The chief reached beneath his robe to pull out a pipe, which Sitting Bull lit by taking a smoldering coal from a small gourd his nephew, White Bull, produced from a pouch he carried over his shoulder. White Bull sat at the chief’s left hand, while the Brule named High Bear sat on the chief’s right, along with Jumping Bull, a Hunkpapa, and Fire-What-Man, a Sans Arc.

This ceremonial smoking and passing the pipe around the circle took much time. Johnny did not smoke. Instead, he watched the faces of those surrounding him in that small circle, both white and red. It had been many months since he had been so vividly reminded how he was a man-in-between. In his veins coursed white blood, and red too. But he was far from truly belonging in either world. While the Hunkpapa had accepted him, he had to admit he shamelessly enjoyed the raucous life of the bawdy frontier towns all the more. He was truly caught in between, one foot snared in either world, able to make a home for himself in neither.

As he looked now at Sitting Bull’s face, for some reason the chief appeared older—the furrow between his brows, those deep clefts running down from the corners of his sharp nose. But mostly the sadness in his eyes. Yes, sadness. For many, many days now the chief had been in mourning. The loss of his child kicked in the head by a mule. Eating nothing, Sitting Bull had fasted, smeared cold ashes on his flesh, slept but little, and wore only his poorest of clothing. At first glance he looked anything but a great visionary and undisputed leader of the Lakota.

But behind those sad eyes burned the smoldering fires of stoic resolve to see his people through this whole struggle with the white man.

Already the Bull had seen many things through, ever since he had first become a warrior of wide repute more than a decade before, a warrior whose name was known not just to his Hunkpapa band, but to the whites as well as the other wandering bands of Lakota. He was one of the few among the many who steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the white man—choosing to avoid him at all costs if possible. And when it was not possible … well, Johnny too had heard the mining camp talk of the Custer “massacre.” That, and the campfire tales wherein the Lakota warriors related their coups and told their battle stories.

Strange, Bruguier thought, that this medicine man was called the chief of all the hostiles by the whites, when he was merely a visionary who possessed the ability to bring together the various Lakota peoples into a cohesive force. He was not a war chief—more so a savvy politician who drew strong people to his cause.

Yes, Johnny decided, Sitting Bull was careful not to let his face show much of anything as he sat in council, just as he did sitting here for the first time with a soldier leader since the great war had begun last winter along the ice-clogged Powder River. Clearly the Hunkpapa leader was a man who deliberated on a matter for some time before coming to his decision.

When the pipe had finished its rounds of the small circle and Sitting Bull held it once again, the Hunkpapa chief spoke.

“I point the stem of my pipe to the Great Spirit. He thinks nothing bad of His people. I believe that He is near us and looking down upon us. We are agreeing to keep the peace and smoke this pipe together with you. The Great Spirit is a witness to this peace, but I am afraid you will break it, Bear Coat. My people, when they make an agreement, shake hands and exchange presents. What have you brought with you? My people expect presents in token of this friendship.”

Johnny translated the soldier chief’s demand for Sitting Bull, “Presents? You ask for gifts when your people have stolen everything you can get your hands on and butchered every white man who comes into this country? No presents. To have peace, you must first give back the mules your warriors stole from my wagon trains and promise you will never attack my wagons again.”

The Bull’s dark face was impassive, not registering the slightest show of emotion as he replied, “Tell the Bear Coat I will return the mules when he returns the buffalo his soldiers and wagons have scared off.”

The officer’s eyes visibly narrowed at that rebuke. He asked, “Does this mean Sitting Bull will not return what he has stolen?”

But instead of answering the question directly, Sitting Bull asked another through Johnny: “Why are your soldiers here?”

“I am here because these warriors attacked my wagons when your Indians should have been back at their agency.”

Johnny wagged his head, working to get the question phrased just so. “No, soldier chief—why aren’t the soldiers staying in their log lodges for the winter and leaving the Lakota be, as the soldiers have always done? Instead, the soldiers went to attack the Cheyenne last winter on the Powder. And now Sitting Bull wants to know why you come to his country to attack his villages. Winter is a time of peace.”

“Yes, peace.” The soldier’s cold eyes flicked from the Hunkpapa to the half-breed. “That’s exactly what we should be talking about. My lieutenant here said you told him Sitting Bull wants to talk about surrender.”

Bruguier translated for the chief, then turned back to Miles. “There will be no talk of surrender today. Sitting Bull want to know why the army is here in Lakota country. Why are the soldiers here, scaring away our buffalo, building their log forts, chasing after our villages of women and children?”

“We are here because you are here,” the soldier replied testily, beginning to show some exasperation as he shifted to another knee. “If Sitting Bull and all his people would go home to their agency, we would have no need of chasing after your villages. We would have peace.”

“This is our country. This is our home. You are the stranger here. Sitting Bull wants you to take your soldiers and go back where you came from.”

For a few moments Miles ruminated on what to say next. “This was once your home. True. But long, long ago. No longer are you free to roam it at will. Now you must return to your agency and surrender.”

“Surrender?” Bruguier asked after Sitting Bull asked the question angrily. “Again you talk of surrender?”

“Yes,” Miles repeated. “You told my man the chief said he was ready to surrender. I can offer you no terms but complete surrender: turning over your weapons and your ponies, then moving on to your agency at Standing Rock—”

“Surrender?” Johnny asked again, trying hard to control his voice, feeling the tension suddenly grow very taut in that small circle. He flicked a glance at the eyes of the Old-Man Chiefs as they tried to make sense of why he was not translating what Miles had said. “Sitting Bull has not talked of surrender.”

“W-wait a goddamned minute here,” Miles stammered, his face turning crimson, his eyes glowering slightly as they shot over to one of his soldiers. “But you told my aide that Sitting Bull wanted to discuss terms of surrender.”

With a wag of his head, Johnny said, “No. Your soldier misunderstand. I told him all of these Old-Man Chiefs wanted to be left alone by the army. Some of them wanted to surrender and go back to their agency for the winter if the army was going to make hunting the buffalo hard to do. They would go in. But Sitting Bull? No. No. He has never said he would surrender to you. Not to any white army soldier chief. No, never.”

For a few minutes the crisp autumn air seemed all the more charged with an unspoken electricity as Miles ground his teeth together, staring at each of the Lakota in turn, but reserving his hardest glare for the impassive Sitting Bull and his translator.

“Tell Sitting Bull we are not leaving this country,” the soldier finally said, his voice even and moderate despite the anger flaring in his eyes. “We are here to protect the roads and the rivers. We will protect white commerce and white settlement. I repeat: the Sioux must return to their agency.”

“Sitting Bull says he has never been to an agency,” Johnny translated. “He cannot go back to where he has never been.”

“Goddammit! You tell him it doesn’t matter that he’s never been to Standing Rock. That’s where his Hunkpapa belong, and that’s where he’s going.”

“Sitting Bull will not go where he does not want to

Miles fumed a moment, then said, “He can go voluntarily, on his own—you explain that to him. Or I can drive him home, like I can drive buffalo out of this valley, on to the next, and on to the next.”

“We will go the next valley, Sitting Bull says. You cannot kill off all the buffalo, and you cannot kill off all the Lakota. You go away and leave us alone. Take your soldiers away from the log lodges at Tongue River. Take all the soldiers away from the big fort at the mouth of Elk River.”*

“I have my orders from your grandfather in Washington City: I am to see that you go back on your reservation.”

Johnny translated, then turned to ask Sitting Bull’s question, “And if we do not go back to this Standing Rock Agency?”

“Those who do not go will be followed, hounded and harried … and perhaps even killed by the soldiers who are coming.”

“There are no soldiers coming. Only you,” Bruguier replied.

“It is winter. Wait until spring. Come spring, there will be more than before. Many more.”

“We killed many of your soldiers this summer. The army did not drive us off of our hunting grounds. You will not drive us out next year.”

“Tell Sitting Bull there are more soldiers coming. And more settlers. More white men than there are blades of grass on this prairie, more than there will be stars in the sky tonight.”

For a few minutes Sitting Bull thought on those words, then stated, “I want only to be left alone. To live as my grandfather lived. I desire only to hunt buffalo. I want to do some trading—mostly to trade for ammunition for my guns so that I can hunt the buffalo. If you take your soldiers … all your soldiers out of our country and never return, we will leave you and your soldiers alone.”

Miles wagged his head in frustration, glancing at the restless warriors on their ponies milling about less than fifty yards behind their chiefs. “You must go in to your agency or there will be war.”

“We have had fighting with your soldiers for many years already.”

“Sitting Bull will not go in to Standing Rock voluntarily?”

Johnny finally shook his head, saying, “Sitting Bull says the Great Mystery above made him a free Indian. He did not make Sitting Bull an agency Indian.”

“Tell the chief he must return to the agency, for the good of his people.”

“Sitting Bull says he does not need to go to the agency for anything. All he needs is here in Lakota country. Plenty of buffalo—”

“Yes,” Miles interrupted curtly. “I know Sitting Bull and his people intend to move north to hunt buffalo on the Big Dry River. Then go on to Fort Peck to trade for guns and ammunition so they can keep making war on white men coming into this land.”

As Johnny translated that statement, Sitting Bull’s impassive face suddenly came alive with rage. The chief demanded, “How does the soldier chief know where I want to take my people? How he does he know we are going to the fort to trade with the métis? Who has spoken of this to the soldier chief?”

Evidently the loud, bellicose tone of Sitting Bull’s voice spurred some activity among the mounted, armed warriors waiting behind the council. They stirred, brandishing their weapons openly, beginning to inch their way toward the conference.

“You better tell those men to stay back,” Miles warned sharply, pointing over Sitting Bull’s shoulder.

Now there was restlessness among the few soldiers with Miles as Johnny turned to look over his shoulder. Most of the mounted warriors were easing up on the conference, converging from two sides.

“Watch for treachery, men,” Miles ordered in a low, clipped voice.

Putting up his hands, Bruguier first spoke in English, suddenly very frightened that events would spill out of control. “There’s no danger here! There’s no danger!”

Then he turned to Sitting Bull to explain why the soldiers were becoming anxious and afraid, keeping their hands near the fronts of their open coats.

“The soldiers will have guns under their coats,” Johnny warned.

Sitting Bull glowered at Miles. “I come without a weapon to talk to the Bear Coat chief. But he brings a gun to talk with me! Does he want to kill me?”

“No, I don’t think he wants to kill you,” Bruguier replied, trying his best to soothe, to calm the tension.

“Why does he bring his guns here?”

“I think he is afraid of the young warriors who come too close, showing their weapons.”

“They hold their guns in plain view, openly,” Sitting Bull protested. “Is this not honorable of a man? It is not an honorable thing to sneak a gun under one’s coat as these soldiers have done. Maybe I should kill this Bear Coat who is not so honorable a man. Do you think I should kill him now, Big Leggings?”

Bruguier gulped, his face turning to Miles. He said, “Soldier chief—”

“You tell Sitting Bull that I am Colonel Nelson A. Miles, Fifth U.S.—”

“Shuddup and listen,” Johnny interrupted. “Sitting Bull just asked me if I figured he ought to kill you his own self.”

The soldier chief’s eyes narrowed into slits. “S-sitting Bull said … said he ought to kill me?”

Johnny tried hard to overhear the whispers of those old men who huddled their heads close to Sitting Bull, snarling angry advice to the chief, whispering their denunciations of the chief’s talk about killing the Bear Coat.

Bruguier started, “He asked me that—”

Miles interrupted, “Get those goddamned warriors back! Now!”

“Sitting Bull asked me if I thought he should kill you, but the others … they talked him out of killing you today.”

“Tell those horsemen to get back, or by Jupiter there will be blood on this ground today!” Miles snapped.

Johnny translated for Sitting Bull, and at long last the chief turned to wave the horsemen back to where they had been waiting when the conference began.

“See there?” Bruguier asked nervously, hoping the fuse had been taken out of the powder keg. “There is no danger now.”

“You tell Sitting Bull that even I entertained the idea of killing him by my own hand here today too. But I—Nelson A. Miles—knew it was not an honorable thing to do under a flag of truce. You tell him that. That I am an honorable man. Had I killed him here, and my men shot the rest of you—the whole civilized world would have denounced the act as barbaric.”

“Sitting Bull does not think the white man truly wants peace with the Hunkpapa,” Johnny said on behalf of the chief.

“I told you: I am an honorable man.”

“But do you want peace with Sitting Bull?”

“Yes,” Miles answered. “But to have peace, I want Sitting Bull and his people to go to the agency where they can live in peace with the white man.”

“You are a soldier,” Johnny translated. “Like Sitting Bull’s warriors. He does not believe you are a man of peace. You have come to make war on his villages, on his women and his children.”

“No,” the soldier chief said quietly. “I want peace as much as Sitting Bull wants peace.”

More whispering hissed among the Lakota warriors at Johnny’s knee. As he watched and listened, he could see Sitting Bull stiffen with resolve. As much as the others might be trying their best to talk him into making some peaceful arrangement with the soldier chief, the Hunkpapa leader once more became resistant. His eyes went cold and his face became impassive for a long time as he listened and considered the words of the others. At long last he held up his hand, signaling the others that now he wished to speak.

“Big Leggings,” he said, his eyes boring into the half-breed’s, “tell the Bear Coat that my people do not intend to surrender. We will never go to the agency. I am born a free Indian and will die a free Indian. The soldiers will never change that. I will use my last breath to see that my people continue hunting buffalo and antelope in this country. You tell this soldier chief that we will continue to trade at the forts when we want to trade with the white man. Otherwise, the Hunkpapa want nothing to do with the white people. And you tell this soldier that we want his word of honor that he will take all the soldiers from our country—never to return!”

Licking his lips nervously, Bruguier began his translation, seeking the words that would show the fire of Sitting Bull’s oration, but not so much heat that it would be like slap across the soldier chief’s face. Even though the Hunkpapa chief might want that, there still existed a very real chance for tragedy and treachery in this small council held in the middle of this great buffalo prairie.

In the end Johnny translated as best he could the full force of Sitting Bull’s declaration, the full impact of Sitting Bull’s deadly warning.

Miles stiffened only slightly with the rebuke, his face becoming set like stone as he listened to Johnny haltingly translate all the thoughts in the chief’s stern oration. Then the colonel considered his reply a few minutes before saying, “If Sitting Bull wants to continue hunting for this final season—to put meat up for this last winter his people are to hunt buffalo—I can understand. But in return for my allowing the Hunkpapa to continue their last hunt, Sitting Bull must leave these three men with me as hostages.”

“H-hostages?” Johnny repeated, scrambling to figure out what he was going to say to the chiefs as a lone warrior dismounted behind the council, shifted his blanket tightly about himself, and moved toward the ring of men squatted on the prairie.

“That’s what I said,” Miles snapped, watching the approach of that lone warrior. “These hostages will guarantee me that Sitting Bull will keep his word.”

The dark, chertlike eyes of all the Lakota leaders glowed with sudden hatred when Johnny translated the soldier chief’s demand.

“No,” Bruguier said when Miles repeated his demand for hostages.

“Sitting Bull says no?”

From the corner of his eye Bruguier saw the lone warrior kneel behind Sitting Bull, carefully parting his blanket so that he could slip a rifle from it. He slid the weapon beneath the buffalo robe the Hunkpapa chief had pulled about him, then rose slowly and moved back to rejoin the other horsemen as they continued to mill about, inching their ponies closer and closer.

Johnny declared, “The chief says he will never turn over his friends to the soldiers to keep while his people hunt. This is their land. These are their buffalo. You and your soldiers are not welcome here.”

“Those warriors!” Miles suddenly growled, rising from his knee and stuffing his hand inside the flaps of his coat. “Tell them to get back—Now!”

Eyes wide with apprehension, Bruguier translated the soldier chief’s warning as more and more of the chiefs began to chatter excitedly as soon as Miles got to his feet. Almost as one, the rest of the soldiers all put their hands beneath their coats.

Furious, Miles said, “You send all these warriors away. Only the chiefs can stay. Only the men who were here when we began the talk. Tell them that! Tell them right now before there is bloodshed!”

Sitting Bull remained cross-legged on the ground, his face refusing to register the tensions simmering around him. Yet in his eyes smoldered the anger Johnny could not fail to recognize.

The chief said, “Tell the Bear Coat soldier that these are my people and I will not send them away. I want the soldiers to leave my country now, leave it for all time.”

As he listened to Bruguier’s translation, Miles shifted his hat on his head nervously. Then, pulling his hand from inside his coat, he slapped his gloved hands down on his thighs and replied stiffly, “That’s just about it, then.” He slowly turned rubbing his knees from having sat so long on the cold ground.

“Where is the white chief going?” Bruguier asked, confused.

“Clearly—there is no more use in our talking,” Miles replied over his shoulder as the other soldiers began to move off with him, all very wary and watchful. “We’ve been at this for many hours. Back and forth, with no good result. You tell Sitting Bull that we can continue our talk tomorrow.”

After asking the Hunkpapa chief for a response, Johnny said, “Sitting Bull says he will talk with you tomorrow.”

“Good,” Miles declared with a gush of finality. “I think it would be wise of you to tell Sitting Bull to consider his remarks overnight. Best for him to think on the sad consequences if he chooses to continue making war.”

By this time the sun had fallen halfway to the horizon from midsky. The day was rapidly growing old as Sitting Bull and the rest got to their feet, took up their blankets and robes, and turned away while Mile’s escort strode back to the soldier lines. When the soldiers turned about and began to march west, back toward Cedar Creek, most of those mounted warriors who had remained close during the parley chose to follow the soldiers at a distance. Along the crest of the nearby ridges the horsemen slowly shadowed the blue column, flanking the soldiers as they countermarched nearly five miles and eventually went into camp for the night.

“Are the soldiers leaving us be?” asked Black Eagle that night as all the Lakota leaders held an angry council.

“No,” declared Rising Sun. “They marched away in that direction so they could be in a better position to charge us when we move north, following the buffalo on our way to Fort Peck.”

“Yes,” Sitting Bull agreed as the council fell quiet. “My heart cannot believe the soldiers are leaving our country as we told them to do. They are not to be trusted.”

“Perhaps we should consider going in to the agency when this hunt is over,” suggested Small Bear.

“The reservation holds nothing for me,” Sitting Bull said. “Only unhappiness and empty bellies. Here … here in the buffalo country is where our men hunt and our women cure the hides that shelter us. We can never do that living at the white man’s agency.”

For a long time that night the leaders argued back and forth on what to do until one of the camp police, the akicita, came in to report that a few of their ponies had broken away, and in going after them some of the young men had discovered that their camp was being watched by many soldiers who had secreted themselves in the surrounding hills and bluffs.

“We must attack those soldiers at early light!” screamed an infuriated Standing Bear.

Other voices took up the call. “These soldiers mean to make war on us!”

Still more urged caution, restraint—reminding the council that their camp no longer possessed the great numbers that had overwhelmed and crushed the soldiers at the Greasy Grass back in the summer moon.

Suddenly Gall arose and waited while the assembly fell to a hush. He looked at Sitting Bull a moment, then said, “If we do not attack first, as Crazy Horse did to Three Stars on the Rosebud, then we can expect the soldiers to attack us.”

Johnny Bruguier turned to watch Sitting Bull’s face. The great Hunkpapa visionary nodded once, nodded slowly, his hand signaling his war chief to continue.

“If we can count on the white man to do anything, we can depend upon him to do what is most dishonorable,” Gall explained. “When the soldier chief says he has come to talk of peace, it is only to make our senses dull, so that we roll over with our bellies to the sky.”

Now Gall’s voice rose an octave, sending a chill down the half-breed’s spine as this barrel-chested, iron-eyed man who had lost so many loved ones to soldiers at the Greasy Grass now laid down his warning to the leaders of that great village.

“Come tomorrow,” he barely whispered in the awful hush of that huge council lodge, “when the soldiers come to attack our women and children … it will be their blood left to soak into this ground.”

“Remember the Rosebud!” one of the younger warriors suddenly cried out from the fringe of the crowd.

“Remember the Greasy Grass!” Gall shrieked, his face contorted in rage, flecks of spittle on his lips.

“Remember the Greasy Grass!”

* Fort Buford, Dakota Territory.