V Off the Reservation.

After we had been driven from the Black Hills and that country was given to the white people my father would not stay on any reservation. He said it was no use trying to make farms as the white people did. In the first place, that was not the Indian way of living. All of our teachings and beliefs were that land was not made to be owned in separate pieces by persons and that the plowing up and destruction of vegetation placed by the Great Medicine and the planting of other vegetation according to the ideas of men was an interference with the plans of the Above. In the second place, it seemed that if the white people could take away from us the Black Hills after that country had been given to us and accepted by us as ours forever, they might take away from us any other lands we should occupy whenever they might want these other lands. In the third place, the last great treaty had allowed us to use all of the country between the Black Hills and the Bighorn river and mountains as hunting grounds so long as we did not resist the traveling of white people through it on their way to or from their lands beyond its borders. My father decided to act upon this agreement to us. He decided we should spend all of our time in the hunting region. We could do this, gaining our own living in this way, or we could be supported by rations given to us at the agency. He chose to stay away from all white people. His family all agreed with him. So, for more than a year before the great battle at the Little Bighorn we were all the time in the hunting lands.

Not all of the dissatisfied Indians stayed away from the reservations. Bands were moving to and from the hunting grounds at all times, even during the winter, but only a few remained here throughout the year. The Indians involved were both Sioux and Cheyennes, but there were many more Sioux than Cheyennes. A band of Uncpapas, led by Sitting Bull, remained entirely away from Dakota. There were at all times a big camp and some smaller camps of Ogallalas. Families or small bands of other Sioux came and went. The Cheyenne camps varied from thirty or forty lodges to two hundred or more. During the winter before the soldiers came after us the Cheyennes and Ogallalas kept near each other much of the time. We spent the earlier part of the cold weather season on Otter creek. Then we moved together over to Tongue river, setting our two camp circles near each other on the west side of the river where now is the home place of John Bigheadman, known also as All See Him.

Sugar, coffee, tobacco, ammunition, everything of that kind, were scarce with us. We were not greatly distressed because of this, but we had learned to use and to like these additions to our old ways, so we were pleased when such things came to us. We liked to get ammunition, as that helped us to kill more game. But, best of all, we liked to get tobacco. We used the plug tobacco that most white people use for chewing. We shaved it off in thin layers, using a board to lay it upon while cutting it. It was mixed with willow bark. This bark we called kinnikinick. It was the dried inside layer.

Red Haired Bear had some tobacco, just a little piece, at one time when a certain very old man came to visit him. The old man was feeble and shaky. He was a good man, so Red Haired Bear determined to give him a treat. The host got out his pipe. “Give me a knife,” he said to his woman. Then, “Get me the tobacco board.” She did as he had asked. He cut off only a little of the tobacco and mixed it with plenty of kinnikinick. He loaded his pipe and lit it. When he had sent puffs to the four directions, to the Above and to the below spirits, he handed the pipe to the guest. The old man drew in and let out one draft. He stopped a moment as if thinking intently about something. Then he drew in another draft. He let out a cloud through his nose.

“Oh, tobacco!” he exclaimed in delight.

He took deep and slow inhalations. He let them out slowly, by the mouth and by the nose. As Red Haired Bear took his turn at the pipe the old man grasped handfuls of the smoke, rubbed together his palms, sniffed them over and over, rubbed his face and his clothing. “Good, good,” he kept saying. When the pipeful had been burned he had Red Haired Bear empty very carefully the ashes, mix some more kinnikinick willow bark with them and fill the pipe with this mixture. They had a third smoke of this kind.

Four men went to the lodge of a certain medicine man. He told them he had some tobacco, and that made their hearts glad. He had a chunk of wood that looked like a plug of tobacco. He put this piece of wood upon the tobacco board and pretended to shave off slices from it to mix with kinnikinick. Even while he was shaving the stick the men were sniffing and saying, “Oh, good tobacco.” They smoked four pipefuls. The ashes were saved carefully. They were mixed then with other kinnikinick and four more pipefuls were smoked. The four men went away praising their host for having given them such fine entertainment.

As Cheyennes came to us from the agency they brought coffee, sugar and tobacco. Other articles were brought, but these were the most desired. The luxuries were distributed among friends, small quantities here and there. Someone and another then would go to the front of his tepee, call out the names of special friends and invite: “I have tobacco. Come and smoke with me.” Or: “I have coffee and sugar. Come and feast with me.” Sioux might make such gifts to Cheyennes or Cheyennes might provide them to the Sioux. Or, members of the two sets of Indians might invite each other to smoke or to eat. Usually, though, the givings and the invitings were within tribal bounds. Yet every Indian who might prosper in any way was expected to hold himself always willing to share and desirous of sharing his prosperity with his fellows, with all friendly people, even with avowed enemies if such should come peaceably and should be in want. A first principle of Indian conduct was: Be generous to all Indians.

Last Bull, leading chief of the Fox warriors, came to us with his family at the last end of the winter.⁠[13] He was the first one to disturb our peace of mind with the announcement:

“Soldiers are coming to fight you.”

He said that the whites would fight all Cheyennes and Sioux who were off the reservations. He did not know from what forts the soldiers would come. He had not heard who would be their chiefs. But this did not matter. He and his family stayed with us. Other Cheyennes came.

We did not believe Last Bull’s report. We thought somebody had told him what was not true. The treaty allowed us to hunt here as we might wish, so long as we did not make war upon the whites. We were not making war upon them. I had not seen any white man for many months. We were not looking for them. We were trying to stay away from all white people, and we wanted them to stay away from us. Our old men said that the reason the white people wanted us to leave off the roaming and hunting was that we should stay near them, so they could sell us more of their goods and their whisky. Our old men ever were urging the young men not to drink the whisky. The advice often was disregarded, but it appeared to be given serious consideration. Up to that time in my life I never had swallowed a drink of it.

Lots of buffalo were feeding on the grass at the upper Tongue and Powder rivers, on all of their branches and on the other lands in this whole region. Lots of elk, deer and antelope could be found almost anywhere the hunter might go to seek them. Lots of colts were being born in our horse herds this spring. We were rich, contented, at peace with the whites so far as we knew. Why should soldiers come out to seek for us and fight us? No, the report seemingly was a mistake.

Spotted Wolf, Medicine Wolf and Twin, three Cheyenne chiefs, came to us as we camped on Powder river. They advised us to go to our agency. “Soldiers will come to fight you,” they assured us. We now believed this to be true. The chiefs in our band had a council. The next day they had another council.

“No, we shall stay here,” they decided. “If soldiers come we shall steal their horses. Then they can not fight us.”

Forty lodges of Cheyennes now were in camp on the west side of Powder river, forty or fifty miles above where Little Powder river flows into it. The report brought by the three chiefs aroused us into watchful activity. Every hunting party was on the lookout for white soldiers or for their trails. The women and old people in the camp kept themselves ever ready for immediate flight.

My older brother Yellow Hair and I went scouting. We mounted our horses at night and went up the Powder river valley. As we were creeping and peeping over a hill our horses got away from us. But we kept on afoot. We saw camp fires in a dry gulch on the east side of Powder river. Some other groups of Cheyennes were scouting in the same vicinity. A figure on horseback showed for a moment on a ridge. White Man? Cheyenne? Other Indian? Must be a white man, a soldier. Somebody off aside from us acted quickly.

“Bang!”

The horse and rider went at once out of sight. My brother and I dropped down and lay quiet a long time. We talked of stealing soldier horses. Our own were gone, and we needed mounts. We crawled along further until we could see a soldier walking to and fro along the line of their horses, between us and the animals. He had a rifle. As we conferred together about what to do, other soldiers came to the horses. They were getting ready to move. Within a few minutes the entire body of them were gone. We went then close to the abandoned camp. We began to poke up the smoldering fires. Suddenly:

“Bang!” The bullet whistled past us.

We ran. Other shots were fired at us. We hurried into a narrow gulch or canyon. As we dodged from hiding place to hiding place up the gulch we could see soldiers on horseback following along the high sides. They were shooting down toward us. But they could not see us. There was a high wind blowing, the weather was of the blustering kind usual at that time of year. We hastened on to where the gulch led to the high bench land. Our pursuers had left us before we reached this broad area. We were tired, very tired. We wanted to stop and rest, but we feared our legs might grow stiff, so we trudged on. At dawn we heard barking of dogs at our camp. That was a welcome sound.

“Waoo-oo-oo-oo,” we wolf-howled from a hilltop before we went into the camp. Our alarm brought out the people. They flocked to our lodge. A council of the old men was called. My brother and I were brought before it. Other young men who had been out also were at the council. “Young men, what do you know?” the chiefs asked us. We told them. We learned that the lone horseman shot during the night before was a Cheyenne. Another Cheyenne had sent the bullet. It had gone in at the wrist and out just below the elbow. The affair was entirely a case of mistaken identity.

The council of old men decided we should keep away from the soldiers, not try to fight them. They sent out an old man herald to proclaim:

“Soldiers have been seen. We think they are looking for us. Today we move camp far down the river.”

Our hunters and scouts kept a lookout for the soldiers. Our camp was moved to a point just above where Little Powder river flows into Powder river and on the west side of the larger stream. The soldiers went over the hills to the headwaters of Hanging Woman creek. They followed this stream down to Tongue river. We felt safe then. Many of our people thought they were not seeking us at all.

But one day some Cheyennes hunting antelope at the head of Otter creek, just over the hills west from our camp, saw the soldiers camped there. The hunters urged their horses back to warn us. Some of the horses became exhausted in the run, so their riders had to come on afoot. A herald notified the people. All was excitement. The council of old men appointed ten young men to go out that night and watch the movements of the soldiers. Others were out scouting or were awake and watching, but these ten had the special duty. Most of the people slept, feeling secure under the protection of the appointed outer sentinels. Early in the morning an old man arose and went to the top of a nearby knoll to observe or to pray, as old men were in the habit of doing. He had been there only a few moments when he began shouting toward the camp:

“The soldiers are right here! The soldiers are right here!”

Already the attacking white men were between the horse herd and the camp. The ten scouts during the hours of darkness and storm had missed meeting the soldiers. They found a trail, this trail going up the creek valley. They turned their horses and whipped them in the effort to get ahead of the invaders. But the tired horses played out. They did not catch up with the soldiers until these had arrived at the camp, or afterward.

Women screamed. Children cried for their mothers. Old people tottered and hobbled away to get out of reach of the bullets singing among the lodges. Braves seized whatever weapons they had and tried to meet the attack. I owned a muzzle-loading rifle, but I had no bullets for it. I owned also a cap-and-ball six shooter, but I had loaned it to Star, a cousin who was one of the ten special scouts of the night before. In turn, he had let me have bow and arrows he had borrowed from Puffed Cheek. My armament then consisted of this bow and arrows belonging to Puffed Cheek.

I skirted around afoot to get at our horse herd. I looped my lariat rope over the neck of the first convenient one. It belonged to Old Bear, the old man chief of our band. But just now it became my war pony. I quickly made a lariat bridle and mounted the recovered animal. A few other Cheyennes did the same as I had done. But most of them remained afoot. I shot arrows at the soldiers. Our people had not much else to shoot. Only a few had guns and also ammunition for them.

All of the soldiers who first appeared had white horses. Another band of them who charged soon afterward from another direction had only bay horses. I started back to try to get to my home lodge. I wanted my shield, my other medicine objects and whatever else I might be able to carry away. Women were struggling along burdened with packs of precious belongings. Some were dragging or carrying their children. All were shrieking in fright. I came upon one woman who had a pack on her back, one little girl under an arm and an older girl clinging to her free right hand. She was crying, both of the girls were crying, and all three of them were almost exhausted. They had just dived into a thicket for a rest when I rode up to them. It was Last Bull’s wife and their two daughters.

“Let me take one of the children,” I proposed.

The older girl, age about ten years, was lifted up behind me. A little further on I picked up also an eight-year-old boy who was trudging along behind a mother carrying on her back a baby and under her arms two other children. The girl behind me clasped her arms about my waist. I wrapped an arm about the boy in front of me. With my free arm and hand I guided my horse as best I could. The animal too was excited by the tumult. It shied and plunged. But I got the two children out of danger. Then I went back to help in the fight.

Two Moons, Bear Walks on a Ridge and myself were together. We centered an attack upon one certain soldier. Two Moons had a repeating rifle. As we stood in concealment he stood it upon end in front of him and passed his hands up and down the barrel, not touching it, while making medicine. Then he said: “My medicine is good; watch me kill that soldier.” He fired, but his bullet missed. Bear Walks on a Ridge then fired his muzzle-loading rifle. His bullet hit the soldier in the back of the head. We rushed upon the man and beat and stabbed him to death. Another Cheyenne joined us to help in the killing. He took the soldier’s rifle. I stripped off the blue coat and kept it. Two Moons and Bear Walks on a Ridge took whatever else he had and they wanted.

One Cheyenne was killed by the soldiers. Another had his forearm badly shattered. Braided Locks, who is yet living, had the skin of one cheek furrowed by a bullet. The Cheyennes were beaten away from the camp. From a distance we saw the destruction of our village. Our tepees were burned, with everything in them except what the soldiers may have taken. Extra flares at times showed the explosion of powder, and there was the occasional pop of a cartridge from the fires. The Cheyennes were rendered very poor. I had nothing left but the clothing I had on, with the soldier coat added. My eagle wing bone flute, my medicine pipe, my rifle, everything else of mine, were gone.

This was in the last part of the winter.⁠[14] Melted snow water was running everywhere. We waded across the Powder river and set off to the eastward. All of the people except some of the warriors were afoot. The few young men on horseback stayed behind to guard the other people as they got away. One old woman, a blind person, was missing. All others were present except the Cheyenne who had been killed.

The soldiers did not follow us. That night we who had horses went back to see what had become of them. At the destroyed camp we saw one lodge still standing. We went to it. There was the missing old blind woman. Her tepee and herself had been left entirely unharmed. We talked about this matter, all agreeing that the act showed the soldiers had good hearts.

We found the soldier camp. We found also our horses they had taken. We crept toward the herd, out a little distance from the camp. One Cheyenne would whisper, “I see my horse.” Another would say, “There is mine.” Some could not see their own, but they took whichever ones they could get. I got my own favorite animal. We made some effort then to steal some of the horses of the white men. But they shot at us, so we went away with the part of our own herd that we could manage. When we returned with them and caught up with our people we let the women and some of the old people ride. I gave then to Chief Old Bear his horse I had captured when the soldiers first attacked us. He said, “Thank you, my friend,” and he gave the horse to his woman while he kept on afoot.

We kept going eastward and northward. We forded the Little Powder river and went upon the benches beyond. Three nights we slept out. Only a few had robes. There was but little food, only a few women having little chunks of dry meat in their small packs. There was hard freezing at night and there was mud and water by day. But nobody appeared to become ill from the exposure. Early on the fourth day we arrived at where we had aimed, a camp of Ogallala Sioux far up a creek east of Powder river. Three or four Ogallala lodges had been beside our Cheyenne camp when the soldiers came. These people traveling with us led us to their main camp.

The Ogallalas received us hospitably, as we knew they would do. Crazy Horse was their principal chief. Heads of lodges all about the camp were calling out to us:

“Cheyennes, come and eat here.”

They fed us to fullness and gave us temporary shelter and robes. At night a council was held by the chiefs of the two bands. At the council our people told about the soldier attack. It was decided that the Ogallalas and the Cheyennes should go together to the Uncpapa Sioux, located northeastward from us. The next forenoon all of us set out in that direction. Horses were loaned to the Cheyennes by the Ogallalas, so none of us had to walk.

Buffalo Bull Sitting Down, known to the white people as Sitting Bull, was the principal chief of the Uncpapas in that camp. There were more of them than of Cheyennes and Ogallalas combined. When we arrived there they set up at once two big special lodges in the center of their camp circle. Our men were placed in one of these lodges, our women in the other. In each lodge sat a circle of Cheyennes about the inner wall. Uncpapa women had set their pots to boiling when first we had been seen. Now they came with meat. They kept on coming, coming, with more and more meat. We were filled up, and we had plenty extra to keep for another day. An Uncpapa herald went riding about the camp and calling out:

“The Cheyennes are very poor. All who have blankets or robes or tepees to spare should give to them.”

Crowds of women and girls came with gifts. A ten-year-old Uncpapa girl put a buffalo robe in front of me and left it there. It was mine now. An Uncpapa man gave my father a medicine pipe to replace his lost one. I did not receive that kind of present, but I was provided with every important comfort. Whoever needed any kind of clothing got it immediately. They flooded us with gifts of everything needful. Crowds of their men and women were going among us to find out and to supply our wants.

“Who needs a blanket?”

“I do.”

“Take this one.”

“Who wants this tepee?”

“Give it to me.”

“It is yours.”

They brought horses—lots of horses.

“Who wants a horse?”

“I.”

“You may have this one.”

Oh, what good hearts they had! I never can forget the generosity of Sitting Bull’s Uncpapa Sioux on that day.

Our women’s backs were burdened and our gift horses were loaded as we went to the nearby place assigned to us for the setting up of our own camp circle. Every household had a lodge, the same as had been the case at our lost camp. Some of the new tepees were small, but they served all necessary purposes until we could get buffalo skins for making larger ones.

This triple camp was fifty or more miles east of Powder river, on east from a big and tall white stone which the white people call Chalk Butte. It was at the headwaters of a stream flowing westward into Powder river. The Cheyennes had been three sleeps on the way to the Ogallalas. One sleep there. Three sleeps of travel by Cheyennes and Ogallalas to the Uncpapa camp. Five or six sleeps the three tribes stayed together at this place.

Various scouting parties went out to find out where were the soldiers. Eight or ten of us Cheyennes went to Tongue river and beyond. At Tongue river we stopped for a daytime rest. Our horses were picketed out to graze. After a while they began to show signs of alarm. A Cheyenne went out to look. He saw a lone white man afoot among the herd. Indian horses were afraid of white people, so they were snorting. The Cheyenne approached the white man and called out:

“How!”

“How,” the white man responded.

They shook hands. The Cheyenne got his own horse, mounted it, and asked the white man to go with him to the other Indians. They set off, the Cheyenne on horseback, the white man afoot. The stranger had a six shooter in a scabbard at his belt, but he made no offer to use it. He appeared friendly. He was thin and hungry-looking. His clothing was very ragged. The other Cheyennes got their horses, and they all gathered about the newcomer. Some of them mounted their horses, others stood afoot holding them.

“Who are you?” a Cheyenne signed.

The white man could make signs, but not very well. He made us understand him, though. He said he had been a soldier, but he got lost from them. He told us he had not fought us, as he had been lost before that time. He said the ragged clothing he had on was taken from a dead Sioux, as he did not want to be seen with soldier clothing. One Cheyenne kept saying, in our language, “Let’s kill him.” But nobody agreed with him. Finally he jerked up his rifle and fired. The white man fell dead. Others then cut him and beat him, so that no one man could have the blame nor receive the honor.

Robbing the body was the next step. About all he had was the six shooter, some cartridges for it, and a little package tied to his belt. It had meat in it. It was horse meat and had been cooked in an open blazing fire. We threw it away.

This man was killed not many miles down the Tongue river from my present home place. The exact spot is on a ranch where now lives a white man named Wolf. The place is on Tongue river below the present town of Ashland, Montana.

HISTORICAL NOTE

A sketch of the military campaign of 1876 against the roaming Sioux and Cheyennes is interposed here for the enlightenment of such readers as may not be familiar with the frontier history of that period. There is nothing new in this sketch; it is simply a synopsis of what heretofore has been accepted and published.

After the Indian troubles during and immediately following our civil war, in 1868 a treaty was made with the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes of the northern plains country. A few of the Sioux, mainly a band of Uncpapas led by Sitting Bull, refused to go into the treaty council. Various reservations in the Dakotas were agreed upon as belonging exclusively to the various tribes of Indians involved. All lands lying westward of these reservations, as far as the Bighorn river and Bighorn mountains, in Montana, were to be hunting grounds for the Indians as long as wild game in abundance remained there.

Bands of these Dakota red people were going out to the hunting grounds and returning again from time to time. Some of them elected to remain most of the time, or all of the time, in the Montana open country. Sitting Bull and a few others like him stayed entirely away from the agencies. They were actuated partly by resentment and partly by a sincere desire to avoid conflict that regularly resulted from prolonged contiguity of Indians and whites.

The Cheyennes and the Ogallala Sioux were assigned to the Black Hills country as their reservation—forever, according to the terms of the treaty. Soon afterward it became apparent that rich gold fields were hidden away somewhere in the lands conceded to them. In 1874, obedient to orders from Washington, General George A. Custer led his Seventh cavalry from Fort Lincoln, Dakota, on an exploratory expedition into the Cheyenne-Ogallala country. They found ample verification of the rumors as to the presence of gold there. The news spread rapidly, and there was a rush of white men fortune-seekers into the midst of these Indian possessions.

The government made a weak effort to restrain the intruders. But the eager migrants flooded in and burst through the flimsy military barriers. The vexing problem was dodged by moving the Indians to other lands. But not all of them went to the designated new reservations. Many of them, angered at what they deemed a wrongful ousting, took their tepees and their families and went to live altogether in the open hunting regions. Indians from other reservations did likewise. That was the beginning of the “Indian uprising” of 1876.

In December, 1875, pursuant to our governmental policy, General Sherman, then commander-in-chief of the United States army, issued an important general order. He proclaimed that all Indians found off their reservations after the last day of January, 1876, would be regarded as hostiles to be fought by the military forces. It being evident that not many of the Dakota roamers in Montana would return to the reservations until they were forced to do so, bodies of soldiers were set in motion for seeking out and driving these wanderers back within their assigned territorial bounds.

The active military field leaders in this campaign were Brigadier-General Terry, Brigadier-General Crook, Colonel Gibbon and Lieutenant-Colonel Custer. Each of these four officers had been brevetted Major-General of Volunteers during the civil war, but the contracting of the army after the war set each of them back to a lower ranking. Terry had infantry from Fort Rice and Custer’s Seventh cavalry, from Fort Lincoln, Dakota. Crook had a force of cavalry and infantry at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Gibbon had infantry from Fort Shaw and cavalry from Fort Ellis, Montana.

From their three basic points—in Dakota, in Wyoming and in Montana—the three bodies of soldiers moved toward a common central area between the Powder and Bighorn rivers, in Montana, where the Indians being sought were roaming. Details of these military movements are too extensive for review here. The most thrilling phase of the campaign began when Custer and his Seventh cavalry set off up the Rosebud valley to follow a recent Indian trail. The result of this subsidiary proceeding was the supreme tragedy in the annals of our American frontier warfare.

The first fight of that 1876 struggle was this attack upon the Cheyenne camp on Powder river, March 17th. There have been published many worthy books recounting the military operations of that year. Reliable edification on this subject may be found in General Godfrey’s magazine articles, in Colonel Graham’s “The Story of the Little Bighorn,” in Grinnell’s “The Fighting Cheyennes,” in Brininstool’s “A Trooper with Custer,” in the diaries of Lieutenants Bradley and McClernand, and in some other published writings.⁠[15] These tell the stirring story of where our soldiers went and what they did during that eventful summer. Wooden Leg tells the equally stirring story of where the Indians went and what they did during that same time.

Thomas B. Marquis.

FOOTNOTES: