A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

Chapter 10

21 October 1876

An Official Report on South

Carolina Troubles.

Why and How the Colored

Troops Fought Nobly

South Carolina

A History of the Late Troubles Near

Charleston.

“You fellas got to listen to this!” exclaimed trader Collins that chilly morning inside his store at Fort Laramie. “There’s been a heap of trouble down in the South.”

Seamus watched Collins smooth out the newspaper with both hands atop the counter cluttered with a shipment of soaps and lilac water directly up from Denver by way of Cheyenne City.

“What’s it say?” asked John Bourke.

“This here’s the official report of R. M. Wallace, United States marshal for South Carolina, addressed to Attorney General Taft—a letter read in the meeting of Grant’s cabinet a couple days back. He writes

‘SIR: I have delayed giving you a report of the recent unfortunate political riot at a place near the town of Clinsey, near this city, until I could get a correct statement of facts. It’s one of the legitimate results of the intimidation policy on the Mississippi plan adopted by the democratic party in opening their campaign for the purpose of breaking down the majority in this state. The first meeting in this country at which the democrats put their shot gun policy in practice, took place over a month ago, on Cooper River … The republicans had called a meeting and the democrats of this city chartered a steamboat and took one hundred and fifty well armed men to the meeting … and demanded that they should have the time for their speeches. The republicans did not relish this kind of peaceful political discussion, but the request was backed up by one hundred and fifty Winchester repeating rifles in the hands of men who know how to use them.’”

Walter S. Schuyler broke in, asking, “Had to be them goddamned Johnny Rebs stirring up the trouble—right, Seamus?”

“Those sentiments go back a long time now, Lieutenant,” Donegan replied to General Crook’s aide. “It’s been many a year since I faced reb guns. All in the past now.”

Trader Collins cleared his throat to resnag everyone’s attention and proceeded with his reading of the news story plastered across the front page of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News.

“… The democrats carried a large force from the city to every meeting, who irritated the republicans by their violent denunciation of their leaders and their party. The meeting at the brick church was called by the republicans … many of them being suspicious of the democrats carried such guns as each man had at his home—muskets—but no militia men went there with state arms and ammunition, as the democrats claim; and the best evidence of that fact is that all the dead were shot with buckshot and not with rifle balls.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” Bourke roared. “You mean the democrats and republicans are shooting at each other down there in the South now?”

“Bound to happen,” declared Captain Wirt Davis, a Virginia-born officer who had nonetheless thrown in with the Union in 1861. He wagged his head with grim resignation.

Captain John Lee, another officer in Mackenzie’s Fourth, agreed. “Like my friend Wirt, here—I am a Tennessee man who loathes the sort of coward who hides behind a bedsheet bringing terror and lynching to my native land. But sooner or later this sort of trouble was bound to happen down there somewhere.”

Collins bent over his paper and pressed on with the story.

“When the colored republicans arrived at the place of meeting, their leading men told them that they were violating the agreement by coming armed, and that they must deposit their arms at some place away from the grounds. The colored men complied with the request … and some guns … were placed in an old dilapidated building some fifty yards from the stand … About one hundred and fifty democrats accompanied their speakers from the city, and soon appeared at the meeting. Soon after W. J. McKennely, colored, commenced, a commotion was observed … next to the dilapidated building and McKennely jumped off the stand and said: ‘There are white men in that house; they have the guns, and are going to shoot.’ The colored men raised a shout, ‘The democrats have seized our guns!’ and made a rush for the other guns. The white men who had secretly slipped into the house and seized the guns then fired, and the first shot killed an old colored man about seventy years old.…

“The colored men returned with their guns very soon and attacked the party. They commenced a general fire on the democrats, who were generally armed with pistols…. Six white men were killed and one colored. Several whites were wounded … and it is not known how many negroes were hurt.”

“Begging Captain Lee’s pardon—but it sounds to me like they’re still fighting that war down there,” Schuyler observed.

“Maybe that’s as good a reason as any to be out here,” John Lee replied as he set his steaming cup of coffee down with a clunk upon the table. “Eh, Mr. Donegan?”

With a wag of his head, Seamus replied, “All this hoopla and upset and bloodshed. I’m bloody well beginning to wonder if there really is anyplace safe for a man to raise his family in peace—or if the whole bleeming country’s gone crazy!”

“Irishman!”

Donegan turned toward the doorway as the old sergeant burst in, his caped wool coat a’swirl with some of the snow falling outside. It seemed the soldier brought all of that wilderness cold in with him.

“Sergeant?”

“Cap’n Wirt,” the sergeant said, coming to an abrupt halt and saluting. “Cap’n Lee, sir. Didn’t know you was here.”

Wirt asked, “What is it, Sergeant Forsyth?”

“The general, Cap’n. He sent me to fetch up the Irishman here.”

“We’re heading back to Camp Robinson already?” Lee asked.

“Yes, sir, Cap’n.”

Outside on the parade, a bugle rasped through the wintry notes of “Boots and Saddles.” As its stirring call faded over Fort Laramie, First Sergeant Thomas H. Forsyth leaned close to Donegan and whispered, “Best get a move on and say your good-byes to the missus.”

Rising slowly, Seamus watched the two cavalry captains hurry out the door as he moved toward the frosted windowpane to gaze out at the bustle of activity on the parade ground. “Sheridan and Crook must really be in a hurry to get their hands on those Sioux guns and ponies, eh?”

“Mackenzie said to tell you you’ve got a quarter of an hour,” the bearded veteran replied with a wink as he turned away, a knowing smile gleaming above his faded chevrons. “Use every minute wisely.”

THE INDIANS

Movements on the Missouri

St. PAUL, October 20.—A Pioneer Press Bismarck special says that General Sturgis with eight companies of cavalry and three of infantry and a section of artillery moved south to-day on the east side of the Missouri, and General Terry with four companies moved south on the west side. Nobody knows where they are going. Whitney and others have arrived from the Black Hills bringing the body of Mr. Dodge, killed by Indians in April. Major Smith has arrived from Tongue River and says the Indians killed the herd of government animals near Glendive.

* * *

Just past dawn on 21 October, William Jackson moved out of the Fifth Infantry’s bivouac with Luther Kelly and most of the other scouts, ordered to probe north along Cedar Creek, throwing outriders along both flanks as the soldiers formed up and began their march that chilly Saturday. At the rear, D Company was assigned to escort the regiment’s supply train.

Miles intended to have his men out in front of the hostiles, blocking their way if Sitting Bull decided to make a sudden dash for the Canadian border.

It was nearing midmorning beneath a cold autumn sun when Jackson and Kelly cautiously reached the crest of a hill on their bellies in advance of the soldiers, scanning the distance for sign of the Sioux.

“They’re making a run for it,” Kelly said with some grim resignation.

“Just like Miles figured they would,” Jackson replied as they both watched the distant village dismantling and setting out—the first of the laden travois and their vast pony herd protectively encircled by a great ring of hundreds of warriors. Horsemen milled about through the bare tripods as throngs of people went about their work like it was a fevered anthill.

Then Jackson added, “But, look. Instead of heading north—I’ll be damned if they’re going south by east.”

“What strikes me is that the village is a lot bigger than we thought at first,” Yellowstone Kelly observed.

“What do you make it? Three, maybe four thousand of em?

The white chief of scouts nodded behind his field glasses. “Could be as many as a thousand warriors.”

“Want me to go tell Miles?” William asked.

Luther Kelly pulled the field glasses from his face as he twisted around to look over his shoulder. “Yeah, you head out. I’ll be along straightaway.”

Jackson started to slide backward on his belly when Kelly put out his arm and stopped him there in that tail, dead, brittle grass rising out of the cold, cold ground as a nervous wind came up.

“See that ground, yonder there?” Kelly declared, pointing. “Tell the general they’re headed into the next valley. Tell him I figure we can catch them if he comes up quick—on the double. Most of the village is still tearing down.”

WASHINGTON

Terry After the Indians.

WASHINGTON, October 20.—Advices have been received at the war department that General Terry will immediately leave Fort Abraham Lincoln in pursuit of the hostile savages.

About the time his scouts came tearing back to tell him that the village was fleeing to the southeast, Miles spotted a dozen warriors dippling the crest of a ridge far in their front.

“They’ll cover the retreat of their village, General!” Captain James S. Casey said.

“Damn right they will, Major,” Miles replied, using Casey’s brevet rank. “Let’s get ready for action! Battle front, by companies! Bring up that goddamned train and alert Lieutenant McDonald that his D Company may soon have his hands full protecting it on the rear! Now, by bloody damn! I don’t want Sitting Bull slipping out of my hands!”

Ten companies of infantry moved out of column and formed up in a matter of moments, their Long Toms, formerly carried at port, now carried at the ready as their sergeants bawled orders and moved them toward the rising ground in their front—where more horsemen appeared against the cold pale-blue skyline. Four of the companies marched along each side of the trail that Nelson A. Miles blazed for them, leading them forward into action. While D Company brought up the rear behind the supply wagons, Captain Simon Snyder and his F Company provided support for the Rodman gun.

They covered no more than three miles when the colonel reached a spot where the ground continued to rise toward that rough country where Cedar Creek flows to the south off the divide separating the Yellowstone drainage from that of the Missouri River. Here he almost gasped at the savage beauty of the ground that lay before him—a tapestry of sharp escarpments and rounded knolls, hills, and wind-sculpted buttes stretching away to the north, east, and south as far as his eye could reach.

There in the foreground Nelson Miles saw more Indians than he had ever witnessed in one gathering—far, far more than he had laid eyes on even the day before.

“Got you, Sitting Bull,” he whispered as he reined his horse about in position and signaled his adjutant. “I knew you couldn’t get away from me.”

Miles deployed his forces for their attack—or for the very-real possibility that those warriors down there, who would be protecting their families, their homes, would attack first.

To that knoll where he sat atop his horse at the extreme right flank of his troops, Miles ordered the gun crew under Captain Snyder to establish an emplacement for their field piece. At the same time he sent Captain James S. Casey and A Company off to the far left flank, to temporarily hold the ground at the foot of the high ridges where more horsemen were beginning to swirl.

There in his front appeared more than two dozen riders emerging from the bristling mass of horsemen. One of the twelve held a white flag overhead. The party continued to advance toward Miles and his headquarters group as if the soldiers presented no danger, until the two sides were intermingled.

“The chief doesn’t like that gun staring down on their women and children,” William Jackson explained as the dozen came to a halt before Miles and the tension tangibly rose.

Miles recognized Sitting Bull among the group but was surprised to see that this morning the chief hung back, his buffalo robe draped over his head so that his face was hardly visible.

“Tell the chief I positioned my artillery there because I don’t trust his warriors,” Nelson replied. “It’s there to protect my men. And you tell him: if he speaks honorably, he and his people have nothing to fear from our cannon.”

Jackson started to interpret as best he could with sign when the half-breed translator from the day before came loping up on horseback. He came to a halt beside the chief. Only now did Sitting Bull allow the buffalo robe to slip back from his head, clutching it around his shoulders. Again this day he refused to wear feathers or adornment, and definitely none of the war regalia displayed by the others who moved about on the soldiers’ front.

“Sitting Bull wants to talk with you again,” the half-breed announced as his small pony pranced between the two leaders.

“You’re the one who did all the talking for the chief yesterday,” Miles said sourly. “You’re named Bur-gaire?”

“Bruguier. Johnny’s my first name.”

“And you’d be a half-blood?”

The swarthy interpreter smiled. “How’d you guess, soldier chief?”

Leaning back stiffly, Miles replied, “So what’s Sitting Bull got to say for the fact that we were supposed to talk this morning, but instead—I find him running off.”

The half-breed shrugged. “This village moves all the time.”

“Not when we agreed we would talk this morning,” Nelson answered, his eyes flicking back and forth across the faces of those chiefs nearest him. As well he kept an eye on the movements of the village and the warriors swarming across the open ground between the soldiers and the Hunkpapa camp. They held their weapons high, screamed out oaths, and kicked their ponies savagely into short sprints, giving the animals their second wind.

“Sitting Bull says you did not keep your word, soldier,” Bruguier declared. “Your soldiers sneaked around our village last night. And you made your camp where you would be right on our trail when we started marching north.”

“That’s why Sitting Bull is heading south now?”

When the half-breed had listened to the chief’s answer, he said, “Your soldiers scare away all the buffalo up that way. So he will take his people to hunt buffalo somewhere else.”

“I think it wise for Sitting Bull to talk with me some more.”

It was a few moments before the half-breed turned away from the Hunkpapa chief, addressing Miles. “The chief says maybeso it is a good idea to talk some more with you. He says you did not hear him too good yesterday.”

“Maybe we will both hear each other good today,” Nelson responded, his eyes moving past the nearby warriors, down the sloping ground of the dry ravines in their front, back up the far side. “There,” he said, pointing. “That knoll right up there. Tell Sitting Bull we’ll meet there to talk.”

At the crest of that flat-topped promontory minutes later, Nelson waited with several of his officers and a few scouts while Sitting Bull and some twelve Sioux briefly conferred, then walked abreast up to the conference site in a broad line. Accompanying the chief today was White Bull, as well as many new faces who had not taken part in yesterday’s long and protracted discussions: Black Eagle, Gall, John Sans Arc, Rising Sun, Small Bear, Red Skirt, the Miniconjou chief Bull Eagle, Standing Bear, Spotted Elk, Pretty Bear, and Yellow Eagle. As the delegation reached the top of the knoll, Miles signaled his adjutant and a color bearer to bring forward a pair of buffalo robes the soldiers quickly spread on the ground. It pleased the colonel to read the look of surprise that crossed Sitting Bull’s face as Nelson seized the initiative in these subtleties of diplomacy.

It brought him even greater satisfaction when the Hunkpapa chief refused to sit on the offered robe, much as Nelson had done the day before.

The half-breed translated for Sitting Bull: “Yesterday I spread a robe for you to sit on and you refused. I shall have to refuse now to sit on your robe.”

Despite the chief’s steadfast refusal, within moments the other Lakota took their seats on the ground with Miles and his men leaving Sitting Bull to stand alone. For a few uneasy minutes he paced behind the others, embarrassed before this auspicious assembly, his face clearly showing the anger boiling beneath the surface, then finally took a seat and pulled his robe tightly about him as the wind stiffened on that high ground.

From the robe Sitting Bull once again pulled his pipe, filled, and lit it, saying his prayer through Bruguier, “Have mercy upon your people, Great Mystery. Allow nothing to be said here on either side but the truth. See into our hearts and make us do what is right. If any man who smokes this pipe with me today fails to keep his promises, I hope that he may not live to walk upon the ground—but that he may lay down and die.”

With those solemn formalities out of the way, what talk Miles and Sitting Bull shared was little more than a rewarming of what both sides had had to say the day before. Try as he might, Miles could not find a better way to tell Sitting Bull that his people would have to come in to surrender, or bring suffering down upon their heads.

The Hunkpapa would never go in to Standing Rock. This was their country and here they would stay. What the white man could do to repay the Lakota for running off the buffalo would be to build a trading post closer to these hunting grounds.

“Tell Sitting Bull that his people can come in to the trading post we will have at Tongue River,” Miles declared.

Bruguier replied, “The chief says his people will go to Fort Peck to trade, as they always do.”

Inside, Nelson burned with resentment. Why, he had even offered to trade with this red-skinned criminal…. Maybe it was true what a lot of the old frontiersmen believed—like that scout Luther Kelly had hired to come along. The one named John Johnston. Old weathered plainsmen the likes of him believed the only thing an Injun understood was force. Nothing more than sheer might, and blood.

Just as they had done yesterday, warriors came and went while the discussion dragged on. But this time Nelson was prepared for their nerve-racking shenanigans. His orders called for a soldier to step up from the forward lines every time one of the Sioux advanced. When that warrior moved back, the soldier was to withdraw in kind. Hour by hour the numbers around the council waxed and waned, constantly shifting—more warriors and soldiers on the periphery, then fewer once more.

It was a time of unmitigated tension during which Nelson realized that the accidental discharge of a weapon on either side might well spell disaster for all in confusion between the two lines.

As the morning grew old, it became abundantly clear to Miles that instead of softening his position, Sitting Bull was growing more adamant in his refusal to budge in the slightest. Just as clear was the fact that a few of the other chiefs appeared ready to bend to reason, especially the Miniconjou chiefs Bull Eagle and Red Skirt. Even John Sans Arc provisionally agreed to give himself over to the soldiers as a hostage as a means of guaranteeing his band’s good-faith compliance in returning to the agency. But it was just their bending which seemed to put all the more steel in Sitting Bull’s backbone that cold autumn day.

Bruguier waited patiently, listening as Sitting Bull talked a long time, nodding occasionally to show he understood the Hunkpapa’s words, then finally sought to translate all that had been dropped into his lap.

“The chief says that the whites hate Indians. And the Indian hates the white man. This is Indian country, so the Hunkpapa will not leave it. They mean to stay here for all time and live upon the buffalo—the way the Lakota people have lived from the time Wakan Tanka put them here, way before the white man ever came. Wakan Tanka gave the Lakota these buffalo plains to wander.”

After a moment of reflection, Nelson replied, “Tell Sitting Bull he would be foolish to refuse to go in to his agency when to refuse will mean that the army will harry and harass his people, and many of them will die. There will be no time for the hunt this winter. My scouts will find your villages. My soldiers will attack those villages. Tell Sitting Bull that he must go in to Standing Rock or his people will be whipped.”

As the half-blood interpreted, Nelson could see how his words stung the Hunkpapa leader. Fire glistened in the defiant chief’s eyes as he glared stoically at Miles.

Finally Bruguier turned to say, “Sitting Bull says if you mean to make war on him, then make your war now. He does not want to live like those who hang around the forts waiting for the white man’s handouts. Spotted Tail and even Red Cloud. Red Cloud!” and the translator laughed. “The war chief who drove the soldiers from the Bozeman Road! Now he is nothing but another old-woman chief who does not have teeth enough to eat buffalo meat. Only the white man’s pig meat.”

Miles wagged his head, saying, “Sitting Bull would rather his people die in war than live in peace at their agency?”

Nodding, the interpreter explained, “Sitting Bull says it is better for him and his people to fight and die than to be trapped at the agency and starve as those agency bands are starving.”

Good Lord, Nelson thought. But try he must—as an officer and a civilized gentleman—if only this one last time. No one would ever fault Nelson Miles for not putting his back into every task. Long ago in his youth when he had decided he would become a professional soldier, no one had ever warned him he would also have to practice diplomacy.

“Tell Sitting Bull that it is unfair of him to answer for the old ones, the little children in that camp, and those who are too sick to last out the cold of this coming winter as the soldiers chase them down.”

When Miles’s words were translated, Sitting Bull’s jaw jutted resolutely, cords of muscle throbbing in his thick neck.

“The chief says the white man is a liar and not to be trusted,” Bruguier translated. “The white man has made many, many treaties with the Lakota … and the white man has turned around and broken every one of them. It’s the only thing the white man can be counted on doing.”

“I will give you my word—”

The half-blood interrupted with a snarl, “In the treaty with Red Cloud, the Black Hills were given to the Lakota for all time, but now the white man comes to take them back.”

Lord knows he had tried, Nelson ruminated as he sat there—stung with having his own personal honor questioned—watching how some of the other dark faces showed disappointment, some showed fear, while Sitting Bull’s remained a plate of cold anger.

“So be it,” Miles finally said when Bruguier was done with Sitting Bull’s long harangue. “You tell the chief that he has fifteen minutes to decide if he will accept my terms for unconditional surrender … or prepare for battle. And if it’s a fight he wants—the whites will keep bringing more and more soldiers into this country until the Sioux are no more.”

The half-breed’s eyes flinched at that, quickly flicking toward the soldiers’ positions, yet he turned and attempted to translate this concept of war beginning in a quarter of an hour—something unfathomable to the Hunkpapa mind.

His thin lips a pressed, colorless line, Sitting Bull exploded to his feet, jerking his buffalo robe about himself as he spat out his words. “So—the Bear Coat has me trapped? You bring me here, an honorable warrior—and tell me you make war on me now?”

Miles looked back and forth between Sitting Bull and the translator as the chief pointed to the dirty white flag that one of his men held at the end of a long coup stick.

For the chief, Bruguier interpreted, “This is the flag an honorable warrior respects. I believed we were safe with this flag over our heads when we come to talk today. You said your soldiers would not fire on us.”

“We will not fire on you,” Miles snapped.

“Those will be the first of your words I pray I can believe,” Sitting Bull growled. He shot Miles one last glare and turned on his heel.

As Miles watched Sitting Bull hurry off, the chief began signaling to the horsemen, shouting his warning to the numerous clusters of armed warriors scattered across the hillsides. They burst into motion, waving, crying out, singing their songs at the top of their lungs.

In the silence the other chiefs watched the Hunkpapa mystic descend the far side of the knoll before they too slowly rose, murmuring among themselves, some shaking their heads, eyes filled with dread.

Nelson flushed with resolve. There was no turning back now. Before him was the man who had crushed Custer. This was the moment. This was his place.

“Mr. Bailey!” Miles turned slightly to call out to his aide-decamp as he rose from that one stiffened knee. “Prepare the units for battle!”