Massacre of Eagles

MASSACRE OF EAGLES

William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SAVAGE TEXAS

Copyright Page

Notes

Following the Custer fight at Little Big Horn, the Northern Cheyenne were sent to Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory. The Cheyenne were not accustomed to the hot conditions of Oklahoma and they began dying in great numbers. In desperation, a small band left the reservation and headed north, settling in the Tongue River watershed in Montana Territory. Here, they established homesteads in the northern edge of the Big Horn River Basin, which they considered their natural home. And, because their settlement was peaceful, President Arthur, by executive order, established the Tongue River Reservation, making it legal for them to stay there.

PROLOGUE

Tongue River Reservation, Montana Territory

One of the residents of the Tongue Reservation was Mean to His Horses, a member of the Crooked Lance Warrior’s Society, and a nephew of the most notable of all Cheyenne warriors, Roman Nose. Mean to His Horses was but a youth when he saw his uncle killed at Beecher Island in September of 1868. Later, Mean to His Horses had been by the side of Crazy Horse in the fight against Custer. Crazy Horse was killed September 5, 1877, at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. He had been told that he was going to a meeting with the white officials to correct a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding was the result of a deliberate misrepresentation of his words by a translator during an earlier conference. Instead Crazy Horse was arrested, and as they attempted to put him into a guard house, he resisted. During the altercation, Crazy Horse was stabbed and killed.

Mean to His Horses was thinking about this when he entered the sweat lodge. Though he was alone, he observed the etiquette that would have been required had there been others in the lodge. He smudged his face with sage, he loaded his sacred pipe with tobacco, he turned in a clockwise circle at the door, then he crawled in through the opening, saying the sacred words Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations). Crawling in a clockwise direction, he completely circumnavigated the tipi, then he poured water over the seven hot stones to produce the steam.

He did not know how long he had been in the sweat lodge when it began. He heard singing and drums, but he had built the sweat lodge far from the village, so he knew there were neither drums nor singing to hear. He could see, in the clouds of steam, a great battle between Cheyenne and white soldiers, and he saw that the Cheyenne were winning because all the soldiers were falling from their horses.

Then the scene of the battle went away, and the drums and the singing stopped, and it was so quiet that he could hear his own blood flowing through his veins. That is when a new vision came to him.

The vision was of a man with long curly hair, not too tall and with a somewhat rounded face. His hair hung to his waist, braided with beaver-pelt covering and with two eagle feathers hanging down on the left. This could be only one person, and yet Mean to His Horses knew this could not be.

He challenged the apparition.

“Are you Crazy Horse?” Mean to His Horses asked. He asked the words with his heart, since speaking aloud would be inappropriate.

“Look,” the apparition said, putting his finger to his left jaw. “What do you see here?”