: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

* Black Sun, Vol. 4, The Plainsmen Series.

* Dying Thunder, Vol. 7, The Plainsmen Series.

Chapter 13

23 October 1876

Trouble at Red Cloud Agency;

CHEYENNE, October 21.—Advices from Red Cloud Agency on the 20th are as follows: Immediately after the commissioners left the agency, recently, the Indians moved and camped about twenty-five miles away, sending in only squaws and a few bucks on issue days to draw rations. They were so far away that no information could be had as to their movements and doings, and doubtless many of them were off on raiding and plundering expeditions. Word was sent to them by Captain Smith, acting United States Indian agent, to come into the agency. To this they paid no attention. Meanwhile General Crook and several of his staff arrived there, and word was immediately sent to these Indians that no more rations would be issued till they came into the agency where they belonged and remained. Yesterday was issue day and very few Indians were present. Red Cloud was present, but none of his band, and he refused to receive rations. The ultimatum sent them will not be receded from in the smallest degree, and unless it is complied with trouble is anticipated. Lieutenant Chase, with 1,000 cavalry, left Fort Russell yesterday to intercept the raiding parties operating in the vicinity of the Chug.

He heard a dog barking, snarling, growling somewhere at the south side of camp, where the pony herd was grazing.

It was black in Red Cloud’s lodge. But looking up to the junction of the eighteen poles, the Oglalla chief could see the paling of the sky. Dawn would come soon. Perhaps the dog had nosed some wild animal out early to find its breakfast.

Then a second dog took up the warning, and quickly a third. Suddenly dogs were barking throughout camp.

Throwing his robes aside as his wife sat up beside him, her eyes wide with fear, Red Cloud yanked on the furry buffalo-hide winter moccasins and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. At the doorway he grabbed a belt of cartridges and looped it over his shoulder, then took into his hand the cold iron of the Winchester repeater that stood ready against a frosty pole.

By the time he ducked his head from the canvas cover and stood upon the old snow that crackled beneath his feet, many of the men in the village were emerging with their weapons. Dogs raced here, then there, as the forms emerged out of the frosty mist hanging like shreds of old, dingy canvas among the leafless trees bordering Chadron Creek.

Men on horseback! Most of them the Scalped Heads—Pawnee. Long had they been wolves for the soldiers.

Behind the Scalped Heads came mounted soldiers, their horses snorting great jets of steam from their nostrils, bobbing their heads, pawing the ground, eyes saucering with fright as the white men fought to maintain control of their animals there among the foreign smells of the village.

A cold rock in his belly told Red Cloud that the Oglalla’s ponies were already in the hands of these Pawnee.

Somewhere among the ring of blue, bundled white soldiers on horseback a voice cried out, answered by more voices barking their wasichu words. The horsemen came to an immediate halt. Everywhere Red Cloud looked, from side to side, turning slowly to gaze behind him, the village was ringed with these silent sentries on their restive, snorting, frost-wreathed horses. Like filmy, disembodied ghosts taking shape out of the coming of day.

Then a voice barked more wasichu words and three men emerged from the soldiers’ noose. One was a soldier. And the other white man Red Cloud knew as Todd Randall—a squaw man with a Lakota wife. The third, clearly a half-blood. The soldier said something, and the dark-skinned one nodded before he shouted to the camp in Lakota.

“You will surrender your camp! You will give over all your ponies to the soldiers. And then your men must give up every gun your people have in this village.”

Red Cloud swallowed hard, hearing the muttering of so many brave men nearby—his friends and relations— as his mind feverishly grappled with what to do now that they were surrounded.

Around him he heard the mad rustle as some of the women scurried into the brush with the children. White men shouted, growling like wolves, forcing the women and children back as their big American horses advanced out of the shreds of frozen fog.

Finally, the chief took a step closer to the half-blood and asked, “If I do not surrender our camp?”

Atop his pawing pony the half-blood shrugged, and without a word he made a slight gesture that was likely lost on even the white man beside him.

“I see,” Red Cloud finally replied. “These soldiers and their wolves will murder our women and children, will butcher the old ones in my village.”

“It is a good thing you understand.”

“Ah,” the chief answered, still grappling with it, his finger still inside the trigger guard of his repeater, arguing with himself on whether to fight and die where he stood, or whether to listen to what this half-blood said about giving over all their ponies and guns.

“Well?” the half-blood snapped impatiently.

With reluctance Red Cloud wagged his head. “If I surrender to these soldiers—what do they offer me in return?”

“Nothing.”

“N-nothing?” he stuttered, feeling the severe chill slip beneath the folds of his blanket for the first time since he had emerged from the warm robes and his wife’s body.

With another shrug of one shoulder, the half-blood scout and interpreter replied, “Perhaps not nothing … at least your people will have your lives in return.”

“I know him!” one of the warriors suddenly growled as he came to stand behind Red Cloud, pointing at the half-blood. “He is a liar and his scalp should be mine!”

“Quiet!” the chief ordered. “It matters not if this half-blood is a liar, for we do not have to trust to his words. With our own eyes we can see he brings many, many of his friends to kill us if we don’t do as he tells us.”

The interpreter gestured with a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Then I can tell the soldier chief that your people will lay down their weapons and turn over their ponies?”

Red Cloud looked left, then right, and behind him once more as if to remind himself that the entire village was ringed with horsemen, their weapons drawn. With a crushing resignation he turned back to the half-blood and nodded. “Yes. Tell your soldier chief his warriors do not need to kill women and children this morning, nor do they need to trample our old ones with the hooves of their horses before the sun rises. We are at peace with the white man—”

“Then tell these others,” the half-blood demanded as he shifted in the saddle uneasily. “Tell them to drop their guns.”

To his warriors Red Cloud shouted his command, explaining that they had no chance to make a fight of it, that they must think of protecting their families rather than spilling their blood on this ground. This, perhaps, was the hardest to say to his friends—most of whom had remained with him for many a winter.

Together they had risen up out of hiding in the snow and swarmed over the Hundred in the Hand near the Pine Fort.*

Together they had fought a day-long battle against the soldiers and their medicine guns the following summer,†

And together they had driven the soldiers from their thieves’ road cutting through the Lakota hunting ground