Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (23 page)

Although their friend Tall Chief Wynkoop was there, they were suspicious from the very beginning of Old Man of the Thunder. Instead of waiting until the next day to talk, he summoned them to a night council. They considered this a bad sign, to hold council at night.

“I don’t find many chiefs here,” Hancock complained. “What is the reason? I have a great deal to say to the Indians, but I want to talk to them all together. … Tomorrow I am going to your camp.” The Cheyennes did not like to hear this. Their women and children were back in the camp, many of them survivors of the horrors of Sand Creek three years before. Would Hancock bring his 1,400 soldiers and his thundering guns down upon them again? The chiefs sat in silence, with the light of the campfire playing upon their grave faces, waiting for Hancock to continue. “I have heard that a great many Indians want to fight. Very well, we are here, and are come prepared for war. If you are for peace, you know the conditions. If you are for war, look out for the consequences.” He told them then about the railroad. They had heard rumors of it, the iron track coming out past Fort Riley, heading straight for the Smoky Hill country.

“The white man is coming out here so fast that nothing can stop him,” Hancock boasted. “Coming from the East, and coming from the West, like a prairie on fire in a high wind. Nothing can stop him. The reason for it is, that the whites are a numerous people, and they are spreading out. They require room and cannot help it. Those on one sea in the West wish to communicate with those living on another sea in the East, and that is the reason they are building these roads, these wagon roads and railroads, and telegraphs. … You must not let your young
men stop them; you must keep your men off the roads. … I have no more to say. I will await the end of your council, to see whether you want war or peace.”
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Hancock sat down, his face expectant as the interpreter completed his last remark, but the Cheyennes remained silent, staring across the campfire at the general and his officers. At last Tall Bull lighted a pipe, exhaled smoke, and passed it around the circle. He arose, folded his red-and-black blanket to free his right arm, and offered his hand to the Old Man of the Thunder.

“You sent for us,” Tall Bull said. “We came here. … We never did the white man any harm; we don’t intend to. Our agent, Colonel Wynkoop, told us to meet you here. Whenever you want to go to the Smoky Hill you can go; you can go on any road. When we come on the road, your young men must not shoot us. We are willing to be friends with the white man. … You say you are going to our village tomorrow. If you go, I shall have no more to say to you there than here. I have said all I want to say.”
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The Old Man of the Thunder arose and put on his haughty manner again. “Why is Roman Nose not here?” he asked. The chiefs tried to tell him that although Roman Nose was a mighty warrior he was not a chief, and only the chiefs had been invited to council.

“If Roman Nose will not come to me I will go to see him,” Hancock declared. “I will march my troops to your village tomorrow.”

As soon as the meeting broke up, Tall Bull went to Wynkoop and begged him to stop the Old Man of the Thunder from marching his soldiers to the Cheyenne camp. Tall Bull was afraid that if the Bluecoats came near the camp, there would be trouble between them and the hot-headed young Dog Soldiers.

Wynkoop agreed. “Previous to General Hancock’s departure,” Wynkoop said afterward, “I expressed to him my fears of the result of his marching his troops immediately on to the Indian village; but, notwithstanding, he persisted in doing so.” Hancock’s column consisted of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, “and had as formidable an aspect and presented as warlike an appearance as any that ever marched to meet an enemy on a battlefield.”

On this march toward the Pawnee Fork, some of the chiefs went ahead to warn the Cheyenne warriors that soldiers were coming. Others rode with Wynkoop, who later said they exhibited in various ways “their fear of the result of the expedition—not fearful of their own lives or liberty … but fearful of the panic which they expected to be created among their women and children upon the arrival of the troops.”
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Meanwhile, the Cheyenne camp had learned that the column of soldiers was coming. Messengers reported that the Old Man of the Thunder was angry because Roman Nose had not come to see him at Fort Larned. Roman Nose was flattered, but neither he nor Pawnee Killer (whose Sioux were camped nearby) had any intention of allowing the Old Man of the Thunder to bring his soldiers near their unprotected villages. Gathering about three hundred warriors, Roman Nose and Pawnee Killer led them out to scout the approaching column. All around their villages they set fire to the prairie grass so the soldiers would not find it easy to camp nearby.

During the day Pawnee Killer went ahead to meet the column and parley with Hancock. He told the general that if the soldiers would not camp too near the villages, he and Roman Nose would meet him in council the next morning. About sundown the soldiers halted to camp; they were still several miles from the lodges on Pawnee Fork. This was on the thirteenth day of April, the Moon of the Red Grass Appearing.

That night Pawnee Killer and several of the Cheyenne chiefs left the soldier camp and went on to their villages to hold council and decide what they should do. There was so much disagreement among the chiefs, however, that nothing was done. Roman Nose wanted to dismantle the tepees and start moving northward, scattering so the soldiers could not catch them, but the chiefs who had seen the power of Hancock’s soldiers did not want to provoke them to a merciless pursuit.

Next morning the chiefs tried to persuade Roman Nose to go with them to counsel with Hancock, but the warrior leader suspected a trap. After all, had not the Old Man of the Thunder singled him out, had he not marched an army of soldiers across the plains in search of Roman Nose? As the morning grew late, Bull Bear decided he had better ride to the soldier camp. He
found Hancock in an arrogant mood, demanding to know where Roman Nose was. Bull Bear tried to be diplomatic; he said Roman Nose and the other chiefs had been delayed by a buffalo hunt. This only angered Hancock. He told Bull Bear he was going to march his troops up to the village and camp there until he saw Roman Nose. Bull Bear made no reply; he mounted casually, rode away at a slow pace for a few minutes, and then galloped back to the village as fast as his horse would run.

The news that the soldiers were coming stirred the Indian camp into immediate action. “I will ride out alone and kill this Hancock!” Roman Nose shouted. There was no time to dismantle the lodges or pack anything. They put the women and children on ponies and sent them racing northward. Then all the warriors armed themselves with bows, lances, guns, knives, and clubs. The chiefs named Roman Nose their war leader, but they assigned Bull Bear to ride beside him to make sure that in his anger he did nothing foolish.

Roman Nose put on his officer’s blouse with gold epaulets as shiny as Hancock’s. He thrust a carbine into his dragoon scabbard and two pistols into his belt, and because he had little ammunition he added his bow and quiver. At the last moment he took along a truce flag. He formed his force of three hundred fighters into a line front extending a mile across the plain. With pennanted lances up, bows strung, rifles and pistols at the ready, he led them out slowly to meet the 1,400 soldiers and their big thundering guns.

“This officer they call Hancock,” Roman Nose said to Bull Bear, “is spoiling for a fight. I will kill him in front of his own men and give them something to fight about.”
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Bull Bear replied cautiously, pointing out that the soldiers outnumbered them almost five to one; they were armed with fast-shooting rifles and big guns; the soldiers’ ponies were sleek and fat from grain, while the ponies their women and children were fleeing on were weak after a winter without grass. If there was a fight, the soldiers could catch them and kill all of them.

In a few minutes they saw the column coming, and they knew the soldiers had sighted them, because the troops formed into a line front. Hard Backsides Custer deployed his cavalry for fighting and they came into line at a gallop with sabers drawn.

12. Roman Nose, of the Southern Cheyennes. Either photographed or copied by A. Zeno Shindler in Washington, D.C., 1868. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Roman Nose calmly signaled the warriors to halt. He raised his truce flag. At this the soldiers slowed their pace; they moved up to about a hundred and fifty yards of the Indians and also halted. A high wind made the flags and pennants snap along both lines. After a minute or so the Indians saw Tall Chief Wynkoop riding forward alone. “They surrounded my horse,” Wynkoop said afterward, “expressing their delight at seeing me there, saying that now they knew everything was all right, and they would not be harmed. … I conducted the principal men, and met General Hancock, with his officers and their staffs, nearly midway between the two lines.”
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Roman Nose drew up near the officers; he sat on his horse facing the Old Man of the Thunder and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Do you want peace or war?” Hancock asked sharply.

“We do not want war,” Roman Nose replied. “If we did, we would not come so close to your big guns.”

“Why did you not come to the council at Fort Larned?” Hancock continued.

“My horses are poor,” Roman Nose answered, “and every man that comes to me tells me a different tale about your intentions.”

Tall Bull, Gray Beard, and Bull Bear had gathered close by. They were worried because Roman Nose was acting so calmly. Bull Bear spoke, asking the general not to bring his soldiers any nearer the Indian camp. “We have not been able to hold our women and children,” he said. “They are frightened and have run away and they will not come back. They fear the soldiers.”

“You must get them back,” Hancock ordered harshly, “and I expect you to do so.”

When Bull Bear turned away with a gesture of frustration, Roman Nose spoke softly to him, telling him to take the chiefs back to the Indian line. “I’m going to kill Hancock,” he said. Bull Bear grabbed the bridle of Roman Nose’s horse and led him aside, warning him that this would surely bring death to all the tribe.

The wind had increased, blowing sand and making conversation difficult. After ordering the chiefs to start out immediately to bring back their women and children, Hancock announced that the council was ended.
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Although the chiefs and warriors obediently rode away in the direction their women and children had taken, they did not bring them back. Nor did they return. Hancock waited, his anger rising, for a day or two. Then, after ordering Custer to take the cavalry in pursuit of the Indians, he moved the infantry into the abandoned camp. In a methodical manner the lodges and their contents were inventoried, and then everything was burned—251 tepees, 962 buffalo robes, 436 saddles, hundreds of parfleches, lariats, mats, and articles for cooking, eating, and living. The soldiers destroyed everything these Indians owned except the ponies they were riding and the blankets and clothing on their backs.

The frustrated rage of the Dog Soldiers and their Sioux allies at the burning of their villages exploded across the plains. They raided stage stations, ripped out telegraph lines, attacked railroad workers’ camps, and brought travel to a halt along the Smoky Hill road. The Overland Express issued an order to its agents: “If Indians come within shooting distance, shoot them. Show them no mercy for they will show you none. General Hancock will protect you and our property.”
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The war that Hancock had come to prevent, he had now foolishly precipitated. Custer galloped his Seventh Cavalry from fort to fort, but he found no Indians.

“General Hancock’s expedition, I regret to say, has resulted in no good, but, on the contrary, has been productive of much evil,” wrote Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy to Commissioner Taylor in Washington.

“The operations of General Hancock,” Black Whiskers Sanborn informed the Secretary of the Interior, “have been so disastrous to the public interests, and at the same time seem to me to be so inhuman, that I deem it proper to communicate my views to you on the subject. … For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few straggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, an injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting, that must, sooner or later, bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of Heaven.”

The Great Warrior Sherman took a different view in his report to Secretary of War Stanton: “My opinion is, if fifty Indians are allowed to remain between the Arkansas and the Platte we will
have to guard every stage station, every train, and all railroad working parties. In other words, fifty hostile Indians will checkmate three thousand soldiers. Rather get them out as soon as possible, and it makes little difference whether they be coaxed out by Indian commissioners or killed.”
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