: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

Chapter 20

Freezing Moon 1876

A sliver of the old moon still hung in the sky this morning before the sun crept from its bed in the east. With sixty-eight winters behind him, an old man like Morning Star was up and stirring, out to relieve his bladder. It seemed the older he got, the more urgent was this morning mission.

Before too long would come the Big Freezing Moon. And the hard times would begin. As the autumn aged into winter, more and more agency people wandered in to join the great village while the men hunted for the meat the women would dry over smoky fires. Game had been plentiful on the west side of the White Mountains,* but here along the east slope the hunting had become hard. The men were forced to go farther, hunting great distances out onto the plains, among the tortuous tracks of coulees and ravines, the dry washes where the deer and antelope had taken shelter from cold winds. A man of the Ohmeseheso was duty-bound to provide for his family and the village. Survival of the People was more important than earning coups in war or stealing another tribe’s ponies. As the white man tightened his noose around this great country and the game disappeared, Morning Star felt the pull on his inner spirit which all young men must also feel. Usually the snows brought elk and deer down from the high places in these mountains touched this morning with a gentle pink as the sun poked up its head.

Perhaps something else had driven the animals away.

But he did not want to think about that. Morning Star stoically remained faithful in his belief that the Powers would protect the People for all time if they would only resist the white mans seduction, the white man’s destruction.

Yes! Perhaps the Powers would truly guard the People this time, especially now that both sacred objects were here together in their great village.

Morning Star’s people had camped along a small stream at the base of the White Mountains when Black Hairy Dog arrived from the Indian Territory far to the south. There was loud and joyous celebration in the village when the old warrior who had succeeded his dead father, Stone Forehead, as keeper of the Maahotse, the Sacred Medicine Arrows, rode in. Black Hairy Dog’s wife rode on a second pony behind him, carrying the arrows in their kit-fox-skin quiver on her back—in that ancient, reverent way proscribed by Sweet Medicine.

In hurrying from that hot land to the south to reach the Powder River country, the warrior, who had seen fifty-three winters, and his wife had bumped into a wandering soldier patrol in the country off to the southeast, not long after making a wide circle around Red Cloud’s agency. When the soldiers began their chase, the couple divided the arrows and galloped off in different directions. Days later on the upper reaches of the Powder River the two found one another with great rejoicing and happy tears. With the four arrows reunited, the couple continued their journey to search for the great village in the mountains.

At long last both Great Covenants of the People rested in their sacred lodges at the center of the camp crescent, the horns of the semicircle opening, like the lodge doors, toward Noaha-vose, their Sacred Mountain. From its high places flowed endless new life for the People, invigorating both the Sacred Buffalo Hat and the Sacred Medicine Arrows. Now Morning Star could dare to hope once more.

Up till now, everything else had been only prayer.

More than once he had confided to Little Wolf that the People should not associate so closely with their belligerent cousins, the Lakota. Though the scars had faded from his flesh, the deep wound to Morning Star’s pride had never healed in ten long winters. When the soldier chief Carrington had wanted to talk to the Ohmeseheso leaders at the Pine Fort,* Morning Star had joined the other headmen in visiting the soldiers. That night, back in their camp a short distance from the fort, they were surrounded by a large band of Lakota warriors led by Man Afraid of His Horses and a youngster named Crazy Horse, Lakota warriors who beat Morning Star and the others with their bows—humiliating the old Tse-Tsehese chiefs for betraying their alliance by talking to the hated white man.

Ever since, Morning Star had been wary of the Lakota in general, and Crazy Horse in particular. Even Little Wolf, a just and courageous man, tended to distrust the Lakota more with every season this conflict dragged on and on. Unlike most of their people, Little Wolf had refused to learn the Lakota tongue, only one of the increasing symptoms of tension in the tribes’ long alliance.

Morning Star turned upon hearing the shouts and cries from the far north side of camp. On his spindly old legs, the chief hurried with the others brought from their beds to see what had caused the disturbance. By the time he arrived, there were hundreds crowding in on the two Lakota riders who had been visiting the People and two days ago departed to rejoin their own people camped with Crazy Horse on the Sheep River† at the mouth of Box Elder Creek. Now the pair were telling and retelling their story as more and more men and women came up to join that excited throng.

“After sundown the day we left your village, we drew near what we thought was a camp of our people north of here. But something just did not feel right. We stopped short of the village and decided to investigate. Waiting until first light, we finally saw some people coming down to the river to swim. The closer we looked, the more we could tell it was not a Lakota camp.”

“Who was it?” someone cried out from the crowd.

“Were they friends?”

“Were they our enemies?”

“They were Shoshone!” one of the Lakota shouted.

“Enemies!” a woman screeched.

“How many?”

The other Lakota answered, “Not many. We can kill them all!”

“Yes! Kill them all!” was the cry taken up by the young warriors.

In a matter of moments the whole village was abuzz with battle plans and preparation. The various leaders from the warrior societies quickly decided who among them would go to fight, and who would have to be left behind to guard the village while most of the fighting men were absent. Before the sun had climbed off the bare tops of the cottonwood trees, the war party galloped off. Women went about preparing for a great feast when the men would return.

The next day their victorious warriors came home, carrying the many scalps and fingers taken from the enemy dead, as well as the hands of twelve Shoshone babies killed in the fight where they left no survivors— bringing back a lone infant they would raise as one of their own people, taken from the breast of a brave Shoshone woman. But for that victory, the People had paid a heavy price.

Because of the battle casualties, the Tse-Tsehese moved camp down the foot of the mountains, and the village remained in muted mourning that first night. The following day at sunset they began their victory dance. It began snowing again, fat flakes falling so thick that they hissed into the great skunk, that huge bonfire the warrior societies built and lighted for the celebration. Each warrior’s wife brought out the scalps her husband had taken while he recited his battle exploits—telling how the enemy had been packed and ready to move for the day when the warriors attacked; telling how the enemy ran, leaving all their goods and ponies and took to the hills where they could throw up some breastworks of rocks and brush; from there the Shoshone put up a hard fight—Little Shield, Walking Man, Young Spotted Wolf, and Twins were all seriously wounded in the fight, and the Shoshone killed nine Tse-Tsehese warriors in their desperate defense; the fighting raged until sundown, when the last of the enemy was killed. The dancing and feasting continued throughout the night as the stars whirled overhead.

And in the morning, Little Wolf, another of the Old-Man Chiefs, came to tell Morning Star that someone had stolen his ponies overnight while the camp was celebrating.

“Who could have done that?”

“Not the Shoshone,” Little Wolf speculated.

“No, not them. The attack took care of them.”