: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

After they were beaten by the soldiers, after suffering the loss of everything they owned, but especially after being rebuffed by no less than Crazy Horse himself, some of the Ohmeseheso decided to go into the reservation. Other small bands began to send in runners to the agency, saying they would come in when they were able to—impoverished of weapons and horses, lodges, and clothing—so poor were they. And many of those runners mentioned the inhospitable reception they got from the Crazy Horse people, sending word to the reservation agents that they would be willing to go out with the army and hunt down the Oglalla leader.

In fact, more than one of the Northern Cheyenne war chiefs specifically stated as a condition of his surrender that he be “allowed to send his warriors with the white soldiers to fight Crazy Horse.”

To this day, this is a continuing controversy between the former allies once considered so close as to be “cousins.” While the Crazy Horse faction among the Oglalla Lakota deny the war chief’s rejection of the Morning Star people at worst, and play it down as inconsequential at best—the Northern Cheyenne still harbor a resentment against the man, a resentment against the Lakota band who refused them help in that awful winter.

Once Crazy Horse turned his back on the Ohmeseheso, there was no other hope for them. No other choice for many a man but to take his family in to be fed at the agency, and there to offer his services to the army desperately seeking to capture the elusive Oglalla war chief.

Unlike their former allies, the Northern Arapaho were able to establish a good relationship with their longtime enemies—the Shoshone. Beginning from that council Crook held with his allies at Reno Cantonment in the days prior to the Dull Knife Battle, the Arapaho fostered good relations with the Shoshone, who eventually invited the Arapaho to settle on the Wind River Reservation—thereby avoiding exile to Indian Territory—what would be the final humiliation and punishment for the Northern Cheyenne … but that is another story for us to tell through the eyes of Seamus Donegan in the years to come.

In those weeks leading up to the battle, we see the beginning of the erosion of those traditional powers of the Cheyenne chiefs. Last Bull’s success in blunting the orders of Old-Man Chiefs first to pick up and flee, then to build defensive breastworks, would be paid out in a heavy cost for many years to come. At the beginning of the reservation period more and more of the Cheyenne saw that nothing remained for them in practicing their traditional ways, so adopted the white culture. As well, Indian Bureau officials were quick to play upon this weakening of the traditional Cheyenne way of governing, acerbating the intratribal, intrasocietal frictions for their own benefit and to keep matters on the “civilizing pathway.”

Through the next few winters there were some traditionalists among the Ohmeseheso who watched from the wings and found good reason to believe in the old ways.

You will recall how Black Hairy Dog performed his ritual curse against the soldiers and those scouts who led the ve-ho-e against the Morning Star village. Even Old Crow, one of those scouts, recognized the gravity of what was going on and went to offer cartridges to the warriors and priests in the rocks.

“I must fight against you, but I am leaving a lot of ammunition on this hill,” he shouted to the priest, hoping to mollify the spirits.

Despite finding the bullets where Old Crow said he would leave them, for many years afterward the Cheyenne scorned their chief, Old Crow—openly declaring that he had betrayed his own.

In his research while writing Sweet Medicine, Father Peter Powell states, “Many of the Old Ones, alive during the 1950’s and 1960’s, declared that all the Cheyennes who scouted for the soldiers died not long after this fighting [at the Dull Knife Battle]. They were killed by the power of Maahotse, when the Sacred Arrow points were turned against them.”

And tribal historian John Stands in Timber agrees in his book compiled by Margot Liberty, saying that all of Mackenzie’s Cheyenne scouts were dead by 1885 because the Sacred Arrows were turned against them that day in the Red Fork valley.

The Sacred Buffalo Hat remains not only a spiritual object, but a pawn in the struggles between warring factions in the Northern Cheyenne here on their Montana reservation. As recently as November 11, 1994, the traditionalists “kidnapped” the Hat from its Sacred Lodge near Lame Deer. For nearly three months the lines were clearly drawn between those who are traditional and those who are more willing to accommodate white culture on the reservation. And then, even after Cheyenne U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell came west to mediate unsuccessfully, the two sides agreed at least to talk.

Eventually, as one would turn over a hostage, the Sacred Hat Bundle was peacefully turned over to the Sun Dance Priest, Francis Kills Night, although Bureau of Indian Affairs police were on hand in the event matters got out of hand. It was agreed that the tribe’s traditional warrior societies would now discuss and decide upon who would become the new Keeper of the Hat. They stated it was far better to solve their religious differences among themselves than allow the interference of outside forces including the Indian Bureau and the FBI.

So it was that at three minutes till noon on Friday, January 27, 1995—Sun Dance Priest Kills Night trudged through the mud and a misting rain with the sacred bundle on his back. He entered its Sacred Lodge. Esevone had come home to her people.

On the Northern Cheyenne Reservation there are three people I have called upon to help in explaining culture and religion to this ve-ho-e writer, hoping that I would get it right, praying I would capture the spirit of those people, the true spirit of that time. First of all, I want to thank Josephine Sootkis and her daughter Ruby, of the Dull Knife Memorial College, both of whom are direct descendants of Morning Star. And I appreciate the help of Ted Rising Sun, another direct descendant of the chief known to the white man as Dull Knife. Their stories and heartfelt scholarship have proved invaluable to me in expressing the horror of this tragic conflict. Ruby herself is busy at work on a screenplay dealing with the 1879 outbreak of the Dull Knife forces from Fort Robinson. In addition, Bill Tall Bull, tribal historian, always makes himself available to answer questions, however minute, no matter how ignorant those questions may sound coming from the mouth of a white man.

Disappointed and cold, Crook and Mackenzie sat on the banks of the Belle Fourche as long as they could in that December. Then on the twentieth they received a terse telegram from Phil Sheridan with the information that their transportation bill for the campaign was sixty thousand dollars per month, while the allowance was a mere twenty-eight thousand dollars. “Those few words,” John Bourke noted in his diary, “mean that this campaign must terminate speedily.”

The commanders were forced at last to turn the expedition back to Fort Fetterman, where within weeks the campaign was disbanded.

Headquarters Powder River

Expedition

Cheyenne, W.T., January 8, 1877

General Orders

No. 10

The Brigadier General Commanding announces the close of the Powder River Expedition, and avails himself of the opportunity to thank the officers and men composing it, for the ability, courage, endurance and zeal exhibited by them during its progress.

With the mercury indicating such extreme degrees of cold as to make life well nigh unbearable, even when surrounded by the comforts of civilization, you have endured, with uncomplaining fortitude, the rigors of the weather from which you had less to protect you than an Indian is usually provided with.

The disintegration of many of the hostile bands of savages against whom you have been operating attests the success of the brilliant fight made by the Cavalry with the Cheyennes on the North Fork, and your toilsome marches along the Powder River and Belle Fourche.

It is a matter for solemn regret that you have to mourn the loss of the distinguished and brilliant young Cavalry officer, First Lieutenant John A. McKinney, 4th Cavalry, and the gallant enlisted men who fell with him in the lonely gorges of the Big Horn Mountains …

By Command of Brigadier-General Crook

(signed) John G. Bourke