submitted a proposition which embraces an entire revolution in the management of Indian affairs. It makes provisions for extending the laws of the United States over every Indian, giving to him the same status in the courts, conferring upon him the same rights and exacting from him the same duties as belong to any citizen or subject of the United States; abolishing the office of commissioner of Indian affairs, and transferring the entire functions of the Indian bureau to an Indian board or trust, constituted somewhat after the manner of great charitable and educational corporations.… It is the opinion of the committee that some change in the management of Indians affairs is indispensible, and that the transfer of the Indian bureau to the war department would be no improvement on the present management.
“Damn their red hides!” Nelson Miles bellowed again when the soldier huffed into the office to report a third raid on the cantonment’s beef herd in the last two days. “Don’t the Sioux understand they’re cutting their own throats?”
“You can’t blame them, General,” Luther Kelly responded, then looked quickly over to the tall Irishman. “A few days ago the Crazy Horse bands came riding in here under a flag of truce to talk peace with you—and then your Crow scouts went and convinced the Lakota that your word was simply no good.”
“No good!” Miles shrieked. “A day after the murders I sent two of my Yankton scouts up the Tongue with presents to find the villages. As a peace offering, they took twelve of the Crow horses, some sugar, and tobacco too—along with my letter of apology to tell them no white man had a hand in the Crow treachery.”
“But those Yanktons came back in here five days ago, unable to locate the hostiles,” Kelly declared.
Seamus asked both men, “Do you really think those Yanktons of yours made a full-hearted effort to find the Crazy Horse camp?”
Kelly shook his head. “Absolutely not, Donegan. I’ll bet they laid low a little south of here until they figured they could come back in here with their story about not finding the hostile village anywhere close.”
“Considering the foul mood the Crazy Horse people must be in,” Miles explained, “I suppose I can’t blame those Yankton couriers for not making much of an effort. But since they didn’t succeed in getting my message and presents to the chiefs, Crazy Horse and the others have no way of knowing that those murders weren’t the fault of this army. So now the Sioux are raiding and stealing again simply because they don’t think my word is any good?”
Donegan pushed himself away from the log wall and said, “They’ve got nothing else to believe, General.”
“Don’t you think their spies would know that I’ve stripped near all the Crow of their weapons and ponies and sent even the innocent ones back to their agency with their tails tucked between their legs?”
This matter of the Crow ambush was still clearly a sore point with Miles. A day after the murders, the colonel sent a courier to the Crow agency with word that he demanded the arrest of those guilty, then requested the return of at least seventy-five of the innocent Crow warriors to serve as scouts.
“All the Crazy Horse camp knows is that they had five of their chiefs killed,” Kelly repeated. “Which means they’re going to do everything they can to avenge those deaths.”
“If they don’t see fit to trust me,” Miles fumed, “then—by God—they’ll taste my steel until they’re good and ready to surrender!”
“I don’t think surrender’s what they have in mind, General,” Donegan observed.
Miles’s eyes narrowed on the Irishman; then as quickly the furrow in his brow softened, and he replied, “So be it. I’ll be happy to oblige Crazy Horse … and give him the fight he wants.”
Beginning early the day before on Christmas morning, soldiers and scouts had started celebrating with what spirits the post sutler and a pair of whiskey traders could provide: some potato beer, a peach brandy, a heady apple cider, and a little cheap corn mash. By midafternoon the guardhouse was so overcrowded that Miles issued an order forbidding the sale of any more liquor on the post. The sutler and those two savvy entrepreneurs had only to pack up boards, barrels, and tent, then move their saloons a few hundred yards to put themselves beyond the army’s reach—just outside the boundaries of the military reservation.
With what little hard money he had left in his pocket, Seamus had joined Kelly and the old plainsman, John Johnston, for a few drinks. While most of the conversations among the soldiers were consumed with topics of the East and the hotly disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, Seamus and other civilians talked more of hearth and home, of loved ones far, far away from this snowy, frozen land where the Sioux hunted buffalo and scalps.
Their holiday revelry was over all too soon, however, when horse-mounted warriors swept down on the snowy fields south of the cantonment that Christmas afternoon, successfully driving off a few horses and mules before the surprised soldiers gathered enough numbers and with their far-shooting Springfields scattered the fifty- some horsemen. A second attempt was made right at twilight.
From their manner of dress and hair ornamentation, it was plain to Seamus that the Sioux were not alone in that Christmas Day raiding party. “Luther, there’s Cheyenne riding with ’em.”
Kelly came jogging over as the last of the enemy disappeared into the fading light with another half-dozen army mules put out to graze and thereby recoup their strength after Baldwin’s battalion returned from its long, cold march on the twenty-third. “I’ve heard the Cheyenne are particularly close to the Crazy Horse Oglalla. But how can you be so sure?”
“I was with Mackenzie, remember?”
With a nod Kelly said, “I suppose by now a fella like you would be able to tell the difference between a Sioux and a Cheyenne.”
“What this means is that the bunch Mackenzie’s Fourth drove off into the mountains has somehow managed to survive, Luther,” Seamus surmised. “Shows they’ve joined up with the Crazy Horse bands.”
Kelly nodded. “Like they did last winter and spring before they wiped out Custer’s Seventh.”*
“And damn near rubbed out Crook’s army a week before on the Rosebud.”†
“Not a good sign, is it?” Kelly asked.
Donegan wagged his head. “A bloody bad omen, if you’re asking me.”
Then at dawn on the twenty-sixth the half a hundred horsemen were at their serious mischief again. Another strike at the mules and horses working hard to nuzzle the deep snow aside and crop at the autumn-cured grasses in that bottomland south of the post. A second foray near midday netted the warriors more than a dozen animals. Then, late in the afternoon, the Sioux and Cheyenne pulled off their greatest surprise.
This time they sent in about ten of their horse thieves to rustle, once again, more of the cantonment’s riding stock. And after three raids the officers and soldiers performed exactly as the warriors had hoped they would.
As soon as the alarm was raised and the white men came rushing toward the scene of the attack in overwhelming numbers to fend off the decoys, the majority of the Sioux and Cheyenne had already slipped across the frozen Tongue River and at that moment were busy driving off more than 250 head of the white man’s spotted buffalo. By twilight on that Tuesday, Crazy Horse’s fifty warriors were headed south, herding before them more than sixty horses and mules in addition to those beeves.
Many miles and at least four days away on the upper Tongue River the chiefs and the village waited in the cold for their young men to make their way south once they knew for certain that the soldiers were following. More than anything—they wanted the Bear Coat and his men to follow them up the Tongue.
For Miles’s Fifth Infantry the painful, throbbing heads suffered in celebrating their lonely little Christmas with the trader’s grain alcohol was all but forgotten there at the mouth of the Tongue River. With more than a foot of snow on the level before the wind began to drift it, once more the mercury in the surgeon’s thermometers plummeted to thirty-five below zero—and no man stayed out in the wind if he could avoid it.
Besides, it soon became common knowledge that their commander was not about to keep them forted up. That very night after the beef herd disappeared into the bluffs south of the Yellowstone, Miles called together his officers and scouts to begin laying plans for following the thieves.
“Baldwin caught Sitting Bull twice,” he told those gathered in that stuffy, smoke-filled cabin that served as his office. “And now we’ll catch Crazy Horse.”
As soon as Baldwin’s wagons had returned three days ago, the colonel put his men to work using all those tanned buffalo hides the lieutenant’s battalion had captured from Sitting Bull’s camp to fashion heavy coats and leggings. In addition, on Christmas Eve a wagon train of supplies from Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone arrived. Among the cargo was even more winter-survival clothing.
