Wolf Mountain Moon (69 page)

Perhaps it's nothing more than the fact that these eye witnesses are recalling Private Batty's death
before
the battle,
Corporal Rothman's death
during
the battle, and Private McCann's death
after
the battle.

As for the casualties on the Indian side of the fight, we first look at the “body count” given by the officers and enlisted men immediately after the fight. Lieutenant Baldwin wrote in his personal diary that the Indian loss “must have been considerable.” Trumpeter Edwin M. Brown recorded in his journal that “the loss of the Indians was estimated at 15 killed and 25 wounded.”

Another army source noted that ten Indians fell in front of the Casey-Butler-McDonald battalion, in addition to the war chief in the fancy warbonnet (Big Crow). In the subsequent reports submitted to Miles, the officers of the Fifth Infantry noted that as many as twenty-three Indians fell during the battle and were presumed dead. The colonel himself wrote that he believed the enemy's loss to be “about twelve or fifteen killed and twenty five or thirty wounded.”

The belief of these officers that they had taken a great toll on the Crazy Horse warriors was strengthened the following day when they more carefully examined the Indian positions on the ridge, finding much blood on the snow as well as a great deal of blood trails along the escape route upriver.

Yet all of this appears to clash with what are consistent reports from the Indian participants themselves—those who, like Eagle Shield, eventually gave a rendition of the fight through interpreters. Wooden Leg states that Big Crow was the only Cheyenne casualty but goes on to say that two Sioux warriors were killed as well. Red Cloth, a Miniconjou, later testified that in addition to the two Sioux killed in the battle, three more Lakota had been wounded, and two of those had later died. Again and again the Indian reports consistently testify to a much, much smaller casualty count than Miles and his officers had represented.

Considering all the shooting from both sides, especially in light of all the bullets used up by Casey's, Butler's, and McDonald's companies, it is surprising that there were not more Indian casualties. Still, this fact once more points up the true lack of marksmanship on the part of most frontier soldiers. The army supplied ammunition enough to waste in battle but would not provide ammunition to use for target practice at their posts.

In addition to the soldiers killed and wounded, the Indians did take a further toll with their marksmanship (or, some might argue, lack of it): three of the army's horses were killed, and one horse and two mules wounded.

Although we do not have a single written account of Sitting Bull's fight with Baldwin's battalion at Ash Creek in December, we are much more fortunate to have a record in the case of the Battle Butte fight. A handful of stories were made through interpreters in subsequent weeks, as the warrior bands began slipping back in to the agencies. But for the most part, more stories of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain” were related over the next ten years—not a long time at all, considering a culture with an oral tradition. These were people who passed along their history in a precise and unembellished manner. What is shown by the record from Cheyenne renderings to Sioux versions of the fight is that they all generally conform to the military record of the battle (while adding a detail here or there depending upon a particular warrior's individual exploits).

One of the most interesting facets of the warrior tales of the fight is that the warriors of Crazy Horse had again planned on using the tried-and-true decoy technique that had worked for them across the last ten years—ever since the Fetterman massacre in December 1866. Their statements record the fact that they planned to ambush the Bear Coat by using a small decoy party to draw the main body of the soldiers from their bivouac to a point some two miles upstream (between Battle Butte and the mouth of Wall Creek), where the mass of warriors lingered on ground the war chiefs considered favorable for the fight.

Again, as in most cases, the young, eager decoys advanced much too quickly, engaging the soldiers, revealing their positions, and thereby giving away the plan before they could lure the soldiers south. When the first shots were fired and the army engaged, the warriors waiting in ambush had no choice but to hurry north with their Henry and Winchester carbines, along with a few of the Springfields taken as spoils from the Custer dead.

This ruined ambush was but another indication to many of the war chiefs that their people had indeed failed to listen to the Great Mystery's warning not to take the spoils from the
Greasy Grass fight. Not only did their decoy plan not work, but they were forced by a potent winter storm to withdraw—two more acts by
Wakan Tanka
to show the Lakota people his great displeasure with them.

The village, with a population that ranged anywhere between twenty-five to thirty-five hundred people (of which at least a thousand were of “fighting age”), limped away to the south during the storm. While there was renewed talk of resistance, there was also a growing voice among those who recommended surrender at the reservations.

Wooden Leg himself would stay out until the Cheyenne went in after the spring. While the flowers bloomed along the Tongue River, he made the journey back to the rocks where he had carefully buried Big Crow. With the warmth of summer coming, Wooden Leg found the body, still wrapped in its buffalo robe, undisturbed by time and predators. Its location somewhere south of Battle Butte along the eastern rim of the Tongue River Valley remains a secret to this day—as it should. Big Crow continues to be a hero to his people.

The army selected some of their own for hero status following the battle. Private Philip Kennedy and Private Patton G. Whited, both from Captain Edmond Butler's C Company, were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their courage in being the first two men to reach the crest of the ridge in the face of heavy fire from the enemy. For his action in leading the charge, Butler himself was given a Medal of Honor and received a brevet rank of major.

In addition, Captain James Casey and Lieutenant Robert McDonald received Medals of Honor from the army for their heroism that day in the face of the enemy. Lieutenant Frank Baldwin went on to win universal acclaim for his singular act of bravery in bringing that case of ammunition to the battalion, then leading them against the snowy slope.

With so many who had distinguished themselves in the line of duty, it is sad and unfortunate to me that the officers of the Fifth Infantry soon split into rival camps when attempting to assess the results of the “Battle of Wolf Mountain.”

A thin-skinned Butler attempted to minimize Baldwin's role in the charge against the heights—perhaps due to the fact that Baldwin's actions tended to diminish the yard-by-yard bravery exhibited by the Irish captain as well as Butler's readiness
to continue pitching into the warriors despite being low on (or in some cases out of) ammunition for their Spring-fields.

In consequence, other officers far from the bluffs where the hottest fighting took place—men like Lieutenant James Pope and Adjutant George Baird—sought through the record to minimize Butler's gallant courage in the face of the enemy—leading his men in the assault as ordered by Miles.

Sad indeed that these personalities, all officers in one of the finest regiments involved in the Indian Wars, would descend to such petty backbiting and ego baiting. Even Baldwin—hero of McClellan Creek, the hero who held his men together at Bark Creek, and the hero who a few days later routed Sitting Bull at Ash Creek—yes, even Frank Baldwin would later snipe away at his fellow officers by saying:

Now, for those of you who haven't had yourselves enough of this crucial and pivotal month (or “Moon”) in the Wolf Mountain country with our beloved gray-eyed Irishman, I have some suggested reading for you—titles I used in compiling my story of the beginning of the end for the warrior bands that terrible winter.

To the small-minded it seems that great battles must surely have horrendous death tolls. Such niggardly people point to the Alamo, the Fetterman fight, and the Custer battle—none of which had any immediate or lasting effect on the war of which it was a part.

On the other hand, the Battle of the Butte, this “Battle of Wolf Mountain,” was to seal the fate of the winter roamers, those warrior bands who for the better part of a year had stymied, defeated to fight another day, or completely crushed the finest outfits in the frontier army.

After 8 January 1877 the Cheyenne were done. What Mackenzie had begun at the Battle of the Red Fork in November was finished at Battle Butte by the Fifth Infantry. The richest tribe on the northern plains had suffered all they could. They would surrender to Miles or trudge into their agencies that spring … to begin a last and even more tragic chapter in their history at Fort Robinson (a story we will tell in a forthcoming volume).

With so little buffalo and game to feed the camps, with such extreme cold and the constant harrying by soldiers from both the north and the south, the Sioux bands splintered, fractured, never to coalesce again as they had in the spring and summer of 1876—the zenith of their greatness. As the camps fractured into bands, the bands split into clans, and the clans broke apart into family units, there seemed no longer to be any use in trying to stay together in the great camp circles that had greeted Reno's charge that hot June day, the great confederation that had encircled and utterly crushed Custer's five companies.

This terrible winter a man had to worry about his family—feeding them, keeping them warm, keeping them safe
from the wolfish armies prowling their traditional hunting grounds.

After a while this matter of the unceded hunting grounds did not matter. There weren't any buffalo left anyway. If a man could not be a hunter and provide for his family—of what use was he to his people?