https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobo

“We have to have one mind for the Four Directions. Until we reach that one mind, we cannot be filled with understanding…. The Creator will not answer until you have just one mind, just like if you have one person.” –Grandfather William Commanda, ALGONQUIN

The Elders have taught us to balance our lives emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. If I am out of control emotionally, I get angry, doubtful or erratic, I am out of balance. If I trigger bad mental pictures of my brothers and sisters, I am out of balance. If I get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, I am out of balance physically. If I don’t pray and talk to the Creator daily, I am out of balance spiritually. To be centered, I must be in balance. The Creator talks to me in the quiet and still place. So if I get angry, what I should do first is to pause and get still so I can hear the guidance of the Grandfathers.

Oh Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, protect and keep me safe today – hear my prayers.

By: Don Coyhis

“Telling about our lives is important for those who come after as, for those who will see our experience as part of their own historical struggle.” 

Howard Terpning Art

The Last Stand of Crazy Horse

By Kenneth W. Hayden

On the afternoon of September 9, 1876, 600 to 800 Lakota warriors led by Oglala leader Crazy Horse rode to the crests of some hills overlooking a broad depression near the Slim Buttes range of western Dakota Territory. What they saw below must have turned their stomachs. The village of Minneconjou Lakota leader American Horse lay in ruin. Most of the 40 lodges had been demolished, with dead ponies and personal belongings scattered about. Soldiers were everywhere, far more than Crazy Horse had expected to see. They were not shooting their guns now–there was no need to. No Indians were in sight.

Crazy Horse and his warriors had been called from their village some 10 miles away. The bluecoats had attacked and must be driven off. But Crazy Horse had been told there were no more than 150 soldiers, fewer than the number killed earlier that summer along the Greasy Grass in Montana Territory. Crazy Horse had been there, too, and before that on the Rosebud battlefield. He knew how to fight soldiers. Before him now, though, were more than 1,000 bluecoats. Captain Anson Mills and 150 cavalrymen had made the initial attack on American Horse’s village that morning, but they had since been reinforced by many more of Brig. Gen. George Crook’s troops. Most of the Indians from the village had fled to the south, and some women and children were captured. American Horse himself had surrendered after he was mortally wounded. Crook’s men had found a number of relics from the Greasy Grass fight, better known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, including a swallow-tailed guidon of the 7th Cavalry.

From their positions atop the hills, Crazy Horse’s warriors opened fire on the troops. Crook immediately had his men form a defensive line around the horses and mules, while other soldiers went ahead and set the Indian village ablaze. The general then ordered some of his troops into skirmish lines to advance toward the warriors. Four companies of infantry led the way, with dismounted troopers from three cavalry regiments following. As the troops came within range, the Indians rained gunfire down on them, but the troops answered with a furious volume of fire and kept on coming. After 45 minutes of steady fighting, the troops drove most of the warriors from their positions on the hills. But some of the Lakotas held their ground, and at one point they charged Lt. Col. William Royall’s 3rd Cavalry, on the perimeter of Crook’s line. It took a well-aimed fusillade to drive them away.

The battle cost the lives of two cavalrymen and one of Crook’s scouts, Charles ‘Buffalo Chips’ White, but the outnumbered Indians, who had an estimated 10 killed, could not defeat the soldiers. That night, Crook’s men ate well while camping near the smoldering ruin that had once been American Horse’s village. When the bluecoats pulled out on September 10 and headed toward the Black Hills, Crazy Horse had his warriors keep up a running fight. On September 15, Crook finally reached a supply column in the Black Hills and was no doubt glad to have Crazy Horse out of his hair.

The September 9 Battle of Slim Buttes (fought near present-day Reva, S.D.) marked the first time since the late June fight at the Little Bighorn that Crazy Horse had fought soldiers in large numbers. During those couple of months in between, avoiding a fight with the bluecoats had not been difficult. After learning of Lt. Col. George Custer’s shocking defeat, Generals Crook and Alfred Terry had been unwilling to take on the Lakotas until reinforcements had arrived. Meanwhile, the Lakotas had kept on the move, traveling mostly east and burning the grass behind them to deny forage to the horses of any soldiers who might follow.

Crazy Horse had too few warriors to attack the soldiers in force, but he did all he could to resist the white intruders in Paha Sapa, the sacred Black Hills. Alone or with a few friends, he attacked miners and others, and then brought the spoils home to his people. One time he returned to his village with mules loaded with goods, and another time he brought sacks of raisins that the Indian children happily gobbled up. What he could not obtain enough of, though, was ammunition.

After the Battle of Slim Buttes, Crazy Horse and his people went west to the Tongue River. They settled in for the winter near Hanging Woman Creek. ‘It snowed much; game was hard to find, and it was a hungry time for us,’ recalled Oglala holy man Black Elk, who was Crazy Horse’s cousin through marriage and just a teenager in 1876. ‘Ponies died, and we ate them. They died because the snow froze hard and they could not find enough grass that was left in the valleys and there was not enough cottonwood to feed them all. There had been thousands of us together that summer, but there were not two thousand now.’

Meanwhile, General Crook, having retreated to Fort Laramie on the Bozeman Trail, outfitted for a winter campaign against Crazy Horse. He had 2,200 soldiers and more than 400 Indian scouts, including 60 Sioux from the agencies. His cavalry was commanded by Colonel Ranald Mackenzie and his infantry by Lt. Col. Richard Dodge.The soldiers left Fort Laramie on November 5, 1876, and followed the Bozeman Trail to Fort Fetterman and then to Fort Reno. There, Crook learned that some Indians had gone to warn Crazy Horse of his approach. At that point, the general changed his plan, sending Mackenzie and the cavalry to attack the Northern Cheyenne village of Dull Knife and Wild Hog, some 37 miles away on the Red Fork of the Powder River.

Mackenzie hit the village at dawn on November 25 and destroyed it. Although the village had been warned of Mackenzie’s approach, the attack was a surprise. Some 40 Cheyenne men, women and children were killed. The rest escaped, but only with the clothes on their backs. For two weeks they trudged northward through the snow and subfreezing temperatures to reach their only source of help, the village of Crazy Horse. Several people, mostly children, died along the way. Crazy Horse took in the surviving refugees, feeding, clothing and sheltering them as best he could. But Crazy Horse’s own people could not keep up such support for long; they themselves were suffering. Some of the Northern Cheyennes left the village to surrender to the whites at Camp Robinson.

Mackenzie’s attack on Dull Knife’s village and the lack of game that winter convinced many of the Lakota leaders on the Tongue River to pursue peace. Crazy Horse, whose following at the time consisted of about 250 lodges, struggled with that concept and, according to Black Elk, began to act even queerer than usual. ‘He hardly ever stayed in camp,’ Black Elk said. ‘People would find him out alone in the cold, and they would ask him to come home with them. He would not come, but sometimes he would tell the people what to do. People wondered if he ate anything at all. Once my father found him out alone like that, and he said to my father: `Uncle, you have noticed the way I act. But do not worry; there are caves and holes for me to live in and out here the spirits may help me. I am making plans for the good of my people.”

Crazy Horse knew not only of Crook but also of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, who had established a cantonment at the mouth of the Tongue River (and would soon build Fort Keogh nearby). Miles, a veteran of the Red River War in Texas, had effectively campaigned against Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Lakotas in October and November. By mid-December, Crazy Horse had come to agree with those Lakota leaders who said it was in their best interests to talk peace with Miles. A delegation of 25 Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes made the trip. As they drew close to Cantonment Tongue River, five of them went ahead, carrying two white flags of truce. To reach Miles’ headquarters, the peacemakers had to pass through a camp of Crow scouts. The Crows greeted the Lakotas, shaking their hands, but then, without warning, one of the Crows pulled a pistol and shot the Minneconjou Gets Fat With Beef. The Crows surrounded the others and killed them too.

The murders did not sit well with Miles, who ordered the remaining Crows disarmed and their horses seized. He sent the Lakotas the guns and the horses and a letter of apology, assuring them that the white men had nothing to do with the killings. Crazy Horse did not buy it. Clearly, the whites still could not be trusted, and he wanted revenge. Most of the other Indian leaders agreed with him. They held a council and decided to send a decoy party to draw the soldiers away from the post and into an ambush by the main body of warriors. A similar Lakota tactic at Fort Phil Kearney in 1866 had enabled Crazy Horse and friends to annihilate Captain William Fetterman’s force in the Fetterman Fight (also known as the Fetterman Massacre).

The decoy party struck the post on December 26, 1876, stealing nearly 250 head of cattle and driving them south. Miles immediately sent Companies C and F, 22nd Infantry, and Company D, 5th Infantry, all under the command of Captain Charles Dickey, in pursuit. The next day, Lieutenant Mason Carter’s Company K, 5th Infantry, followed. On December 28, Miles himself set out with three companies (A, C and E) of the 5th Infantry, eight scouts, a 12-pounder Napoleon cannon and a 3-inch rifled Rodman gun. In all, Miles had 436 men in the field. The decoy party allowed Miles to follow it southwest through the Tongue River valley, engaging in small-scale skirmishes with his rear guard on January 1 and 3, 1877. The deep snow and freezing temperatures made conditions difficult for everyone, but the soldiers were better prepared. They wore buffalo coats over layers of clothing, as well as fur caps, rubber overshoes and warm mittens. ‘Bear Coat’ Miles, relentlessly eager to find Crazy Horse’s village, was playing right into the hands of the Lakotas. The decoy party was leading him to a spot near Prairie Dog Creek, where the ambush was supposed to take place.

On January 7, Miles’ scouts, led by Luther ‘Yellowstone’ Kelly, captured nine Northern Cheyenne women and children who were trying to reach Crazy Horse’s village. Miles now knew that Crazy Horse was close. But a Northern Cheyenne warrior, Big Horse, had seen the soldiers seize the others, and he immediately went off to warn Crazy Horse that the troops were coming. Instead of waiting for Miles’ attack, the Oglala leader would go on the offensive. Half of the warriors would strike from south of the soldiers’ camp, and the other half, under Crazy Horse, would attack from the west. Things did not work out as planned because the element of surprise was lost when the decoy party, fearing the nine captives might be killed by the soldiers, sprang the ambush early.Instead of waiting for the main war party to arrive, 40 or 50 warriors attacked Yellowstone Kelly’s scouting party. The gunfire brought a company of Miles’ foot soldiers and mounted infantry to the scene. By the time these bluecoats arrived, more than 100 Indians were in the fight. Small-arms fire was exchanged for more than an hour before the soldiers opened up with an artillery piece that forced the warriors to retreat into the rocky hills to the south.

Miles’ camp was in a fairly good defensive position in a grove of trees on the south bank of the Tongue River. The camp was east of the Wolf Mountains, some 115 miles south of Tongue River Cantonment. To the northwest and southeast of camp rose rugged hills, and about a half mile to the south was a high, cone-shaped butte that came to be called Battle Butte.

Crazy Horse and some 400 warriors arrived on the scene early on the morning of January 8, unaware of the decoy party’s attack the night before and still expecting to spring an ambush. In the falling snow, they maneuvered their way to the hills northwest of the camp. At about 7 a.m., Indians showed themselves on the northwest heights. Some of them yelled that the soldiers would ‘eat no more fat meats.’ With piercing war cries, Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors charged on foot down the hills toward a company-strong line of infantry under Lieutenant Carter, whom Miles had ordered to the north side of the Tongue River. The attackers were driven back by rifle fire and a few well-placed rounds of artillery. The Indians regrouped and charged again and again, but each time they were repulsed. Despite the intensity of fire, nobody was killed on either side.

While the gunfire continued in the valley west of Miles’ camp, Crazy Horse led some of his men across the river to the bluffs southeast of the camp. They provided cover for warriors under Northern Cheyenne leader Medicine Bear, who crossed the river southwest of the camp and headed to the hills south of Battle Butte. Another group of Northern Cheyennes, under medicine man Big Crow, and warriors from the decoy party came up from the south and took positions on three ridges between Crazy Horse and Medicine Bear. Seeing this threat, Miles ordered Company A, 5th Infantry, under Captain James Casey, to advance through the deep snow toward the ridges. Before long, the company took fire from Medicine Bear’s warriors, but nobody was hit. Casey proceeded to capture the first, and lowest, of the ridges. When he tried to move to the higher ridges, Indian resistance stiffened and his attack stalled.

Miles then sent Company D, under Lieutenant Robert McDonald, to help out. After crossing the valley in Company A’s tracks, McDonald’s men managed to climb up the second ridge and push the Indians back. Meanwhile, Big Crow tried to inspire his warriors by dancing along the summit of the third ridge, daring anyone to shoot him. His dancing and taunting went on for some time as bullets whizzed past him from 100 soldiers in the valley below. Finally, two soldiers from Company D, firing from the second ridge, dropped the daring Big Crow. His death discouraged some of the Northern Cheyennes, but other kinsmen fought on, as did the Lakotas.

Blowing on an eagle-bone whistle, Crazy Horse led a charge of some 300 warriors on foot from the third hill toward the commands of Casey and McDonald. They closed to within 50 yards of the soldiers, but the firing by both sides–perhaps because of the falling snow, poor visibility and intense cold–was inaccurate. Fearing the other two companies would be overrun, Miles sent a third company, Company C under Captain Edmund Butler, into the fight. Butler and his men charged up the hill at Crazy Horse, who fell back at first but then took up a strong defensive position behind rocks and fallen trees near the top of the third ridge.

Miles needed more help, so he called in the field artillery, and the shells fired from the valley forced Crazy Horse and his men to abandon their positions. They did not flee in panic, however. As they fell back, they continued to fire at the soldiers, who pursued them for nearly a mile, until the snow fell too heavily to continue. The blizzard also covered the retreat of the warriors who had remained to fight from the hills northwest of the Tongue River. The five-hour Battle of Wolf Mountains (also known as the Battle Butte Fight) was over. Amazingly enough, the soldiers had suffered only a few casualties, one dead and eight wounded. One of the wounded would die the next day. The Indians’ losses were apparently also light–three killed, including the daring Big Crow–though Miles reported seeing pools of blood on the snow where the Indians had fought. Crazy Horse obviously still had enough healthy bodies to fight on, but he had used up most of his ammunition, which could not be replaced. He led his people back up the Tongue and then over to the Little Powder.

On January 9, Miles began his march back to his post at the mouth of the Tongue River. Although the battle had been a draw, the colonel had demonstrated to the nonagency Lakotas and Cheyennes that the soldiers could find them and fight them any time, anywhere. Talk of surrender resurfaced. It didn’t help that Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull showed up in camp and announced that he was taking his people to safety across the Canadian border. Crazy Horse declined to join him; he knew it was even colder in Canada. But further resistance did seem futile to many of Crazy Horse’s followers. Colonel Miles and General Crook sent messengers to Crazy Horse’s camp with food and tobacco and promises of fair treatment. Each commander wanted to get credit for the great Oglala warrior’s surrender.

In early February 1877, Crook persuaded Spotted Tail, an uncle of Crazy Horse’s and the designated (by Crook) chief of all agency Lakotas, to march for peace. He was to go to Crazy Horse with 250 Bruls and a pack train of gifts and promise him his own agency in the Powder River country if he would surrender to Crook. Spotted Tail left his agency near Camp Sheridan in western Nebraska on February 13 and eventually found Crazy Horse’s camp on the Powder River. Crazy Horse was out on a solo hunt, but Spotted Tail told those present that unless they surrendered, Crook would attack them with the help of not only Crow and Shoshone scouts but also other Lakotas and Cheyennes. Negotiations began without Crazy Horse participating. The elusive Oglala did send word through his father, Worm, that he would soon bring his camp of Oglalas and Northern Cheyennes, about 400 lodges, to the Red Cloud Agency. Red Cloud had once been chief of all the agency Lakotas, but Crook had stripped him of the title and given it to Spotted Tail.On April 5 at Camp Sheridan, Spotted Tail reported the news of Crazy Horse’s imminent surrender, and the general naturally was delighted. Still smarting from his failure to defeat Crazy Horse at the Rosebud and jealous of Colonel Miles, Crook agreed when Red Cloud volunteered to go out and hurry the Oglala leader along. Red Cloud was allowed to take cattle and other provisions so that Crazy Horse and his followers would not have to stop to hunt on their way to the agency in western Nebraska.

Red Cloud found Crazy Horse on the trail to the Red Cloud Agency on April 27. ‘All is well, have no fear,’ Red Cloud told him. ‘Come on in.’ Without hesitation, Crazy Horse laid out his blanket for Red Cloud to sit on and gave the older man his shirt as a symbol of surrender to him. Turning himself in, though, must have been agonizingly difficult for Crazy Horse, who had always lived as a free man in the traditional Lakota manner. Now, he would have to take handouts and obey the white man. But he was determined to do what was best for his people.

On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse and 889 other Oglalas appeared outside Camp Robinson, near the Red Cloud Agency. They were the last major group of Lakota holdouts on American soil to surrender. The Great Sioux War was finally over, and Crazy Horse told his escort, Lieutenant William Philo Clark of the 2nd Infantry: ‘Friend, I shake with this hand, because my heart is on this side….I want this peace to last forever.’ As a token of surrender, Crazy Horse’s longtime friend He Dog gave Clark his war bonnet and shirt. Crazy Horse gave nothing, saying, ‘I have given all I have to Red Cloud.’

Crazy Horse carried a Winchester rifle across his saddle as he rode to the fort. He wore a single hawk’s feather in his hair. His braids, wrapped in fur, fell across his buckskin shirt. He Dog and another old friend, Little Big Man, rode on either side of him. The procession stretched for two miles. Crazy Horse’s loyal followers and the agency Indians alike began singing and cheering for Crazy Horse. ‘By God,’ said an Army officer who witnessed the event, ‘this is a triumphal march, not a surrender.’ The reception was a clear sign that Crazy Horse was a hero, even among many agency Indians who had not spent time with him in years.

Lieutenant Clark informed Crazy Horse that he could be chief of all the Lakotas if he visited President Rutherford B. Hayes in Washington, D.C. But Crazy Horse wasn’t interested, even after Clark made him a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Indian Scouts on May 15. Crazy Horse did say he wanted the agency that had been promised him. He wanted it to be at a grassy spot on Beaver Creek where he had camped many times (in what is now northeast Wyoming). Clark and Crazy Horse soon came to an impasse. Crazy Horse wouldn’t be going to Washington, but he wouldn’t be getting his own agency (or become the big chief), either. Crazy Horse was also worried that the U.S. government would relocate all the Lakotas along the Missouri River. Just as Crazy Horse was suspicious of the Army and government, Clark and many others were suspicious of the popular new prisoner. Clark later described the Oglala as ‘remarkably brave, generous and reticent, a pillar of strength for good or evil.’

Crazy Horse was apparently not suspicious of scout-interpreter Frank Grouard, but he should have been. Grouard had lived with the Lakotas for a time, and Crazy Horse regarded him as a friend. Back in March 1876, however, Grouard had guided Colonel Joseph Reynolds when Reynolds attacked a Cheyenne village that Grouard believed was Crazy Horse’s camp. Grouard greeted Crazy Horse at Camp Robinson like a long-lost buddy, but he no doubt feared that the Oglala would learn the truth. As interpreter Louis Bordeaux later noted, Grouard had reason for wanting to get rid of Crazy Horse.

Not all the Lakotas supported Crazy Horse, either. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, whose agencies were about 40 miles apart, were jealous of the young hero. They and their cohorts began spreading rumors that Crazy Horse intended to break out and renew his fight against the whites. Eventually, Crazy Horse softened his stance on the Washington trip. In July, he decided he would go. At a council on July 27, Lieutenant Clark read a message from Crook that said 18 of the best and strongest Lakotas, including Crazy Horse, would make the trip to the nation’s capital. The general also promised that the Lakotas could go on a buffalo hunt. Crazy Horse was all for it, but Red Cloud was not, fearing that such a hunt would add to Crazy Horse’s stature. At the close of the council, Young Man Afraid of His Horses suggested that the customary council feast be held at Crazy Horse’s camp. Red Cloud and his followers promptly left the council in protest, and that night warned Indian agents Benjamin Shopp and James Irwin that Crazy Horse could not be trusted. To Crazy Horse’s chagrin, the sale of ammunition to the Lakotas was halted on August 4, and the next day the buffalo hunt was postponed. Furthermore, Red Cloud had his friends tell Crazy Horse that the trip to Washington was a ruse, and that if he went along he would be shipped off to prison in the Dry Tortugas, off the coast of Florida, where the worst Indians were put. Crazy Horse listened to the talk and, over the objections of He Dog, told the Army authorities he would not be going to Washington after all.

When Chief Joseph and other Nez Perces left their reservation in Idaho Territory and fled into Montana Territory in August 1877, Crook wanted to use Lakota warriors to subdue them. Crazy Horse refused, even though Clark offered him a horse, a uniform and a new repeating rifle. ‘I came here in peace,’ Crazy Horse told the lieutenant. ‘No matter if my own relatives pointed a gun at my head and ordered me to change that word, I would not change it.’

Clark persisted. On August 30, Crazy Horse said, with exasperation, that despite his promise to the Great Spirit to fight no more, he would go north with the soldiers and fight until there wasn’t a Nez Perce left. Interpreter Grouard, seizing the moment, translated it as ‘go north and fight until not a white man is left.’ Bordeaux caught the willful misinterpretation, and the Minneconjou leader Touch the Clouds later accused Grouard of lying. But many white authorities at Camp Robinson and elsewhere seemed to want to believe Grouard’s lie. Crook was fast losing faith in Crazy Horse, but he didn’t want to make a mistake on the matter. On September 2, he left the Red Cloud Agency for a council on White Clay Creek with Crazy Horse and other Lakota leaders; he planned to discuss the fight with the Nez Perces. On the trail to the council, Crook’s party was met by Woman’s Dress, a nephew of Red Cloud, who told Crook that Crazy Horse intended to kill him at the council. Crook took the rumor seriously and turned back, sending orders for the agency chiefs to report to him at Camp Robinson.

On September 3, the friendly Lakota leaders all came, including Red Cloud, Spotted Tail and No Water, who had once shot Crazy Horse in a dispute over Black Buffalo Woman (see ‘Western Lore,’ P. 70). Crook told them that he wanted Crazy Horse arrested. Red Cloud and the others said that Crazy Horse was a desperate man and would fight if anyone tried to arrest him. It would be better, they said, to kill him. Crook said he could not condone murder, but he wanted Crazy Horse arrested and would provide cavalry to assist their warriors. After the Lakota leaders left, Crook gave orders to Colonel Luther Bradley, commander of Camp Robinson, to arrest Crazy Horse and put him on a train to Omaha. From there he would be taken to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

The next morning, September 4, the chiefs rode out of Camp Robinson with 400 agency warriors and eight companies of the 3rd Cavalry to arrest Crazy Horse. When they reached his camp, about six miles away, they found he had fled, along with his wife Black Shawl, who was suffering from tuberculosis, to the Spotted Tail Agency in the hopes of finding a more peaceful existence. At the Spotted Tail Agency, he was met by Touch the Clouds and other friendly warriors. They escorted him to Camp Sheridan, where he intended to tell the authorities about his move. Spotted Tail appeared with a crowd of his warriors and told Crazy Horse that he must listen to and obey him. Crazy Horse, Spotted Tail and Touch the Clouds then all went to the office of Captain Daniel Burke, commander of Camp Sheridan. According to Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee, acting Indian agent at the Spotted Tail Agency, Crazy Horse looked like a frightened animal as he explained that he never intended to go north and kill whites or to murder Crook. He had come to the Spotted Tail Agency, he said, because of all the bad talk at the Red Cloud Agency. He asked Lee to go to Camp Robinson with him to help explain the situation. Burke and Lee promised Crazy Horse that the Army did not wish to harm him and would listen to his side of the story.

On the morning of September 5, Crazy Horse took the trail toward Camp Robinson, along with Lee, Bordeaux, Touch the Clouds and other Indians–some of whom were friends of Crazy Horse and some of whom Lee found trustworthy. After traveling about 15 miles, the party was joined by a group of Spotted Tail’s warriors. At that point Crazy Horse, according to Lee’s account, realized that he was practically a prisoner. Still, he retained his spirit. Later on, he raced his horse ahead over a hill, where he met a Lakota family. When Spotted Tail’s warriors caught up with him, Crazy Horse told them he had gone ahead to water his horse. Lee, though, thought the family had given him a knife. Crazy Horse was ordered to ride at the rear of Lee’s ambulance the rest of the way.

When the party reached Camp Robinson at dusk, thousands of Lakotas were waiting to see Crazy Horse. Not all were friendly, but they parted to allow him to pass through. He Dog rode up, shook his hand and said: ‘Look out–watch your step. You are going into a dangerous place.’ Little Big Man, now an Indian policeman, came up to Crazy Horse as he dismounted and stayed close to him as his old friend walked across the parade ground. When a warrior shouted that he was a coward, Crazy Horse lunged at him, but Little Big Man held Crazy Horse back.

Lee immediately went to the office of Colonel Bradley but had little luck smoothing things over. Bradley told him that his orders could not be changed; he was shipping Crazy Horse off to prison in the morning and there was no point discussing the matter. Before leaving, Lee asked if Bradley was willing to listen to Crazy Horse in the morning. Bradley hesitated, and then replied, ‘Tell him to go with the officer of the day, and not a hair on his head should be harmed.’ Informed of what Bradley had said, Crazy Horse apparently believed he would be allowed to meet with the commander in the morning. The Oglala warrior expressed his joy and shook the hand of the officer of the day, Captain James Kennington.

Kennington, with two soldiers and Little Big Man, then took Crazy Horse to the nearby guardhouse. It was Little Big Man who stepped up and led Crazy Horse inside. Perhaps this turn of events was a surprise to Crazy Horse, and he suddenly realized he was going to be locked up. Or perhaps he knew where he was going, but the sight of the cells and the men inside wearing balls and chains set something off inside him. In any case, he moved fast, wrenching his arm free of Little Big Man, pulling a knife and springing for the door. Little Big Man reacted quickly, too, grabbing Crazy Horse’s arms. ‘Let me go, let me go; you won’t allow me to hurt anyone!’ Crazy Horse said as he dragged Little Big Man outside. Crazy Horse freed a hand just enough to slash Little Big Man’s wrist. At that point, Kennington yelled ‘Stab the son of a bitch! Stab the son of a bitch!’ or something similar. Guardhouse sentry William Gentles followed orders. He lunged with his bayonet, stabbing Crazy Horse in the back, near the left kidney. ‘He has killed me now,’ Crazy Horse announced as he fell to the ground. The wounded Little Big Man and some soldiers tried to grab his arms again, but he told them: ‘Let me go, my friends. You have got me hurt enough.’

Kennington wanted to carry the mortally wounded Crazy Horse to the guardhouse, but Touch the Clouds said, ‘He was a great chief and cannot be put in a prison.’ Other Indians on the scene agreed. Camp doctor Valentine T. McGillycuddy went to Bradley and convinced him that there would be more killing if Kennington went ahead and put Crazy Horse in a cell. Instead, Touch the Clouds carried his friend into the adjutant’s office. There, Crazy Horse refused to be put on a bed, saying he wanted to lie on the floor, closer to the earth.

Touch the Clouds was still there at just before midnight when Crazy Horse died. Also on hand was Crazy Horse’s father, Worm; Captain Kennington; Lieutenant Henry R. Lemley, officer of the guard; interpreter John Provost; and McGillycuddy. What Crazy Horse’s last words were is not known. At some point he reportedly told Worm: ‘ah, my father, I am hurt bad. Tell the people it is no use to depend on me any more.’

In the morning, Crazy Horse’s parents took his body, wrapped in a red blanket, on a travois to the Spotted Tail Agency. About half a mile from Camp Sheridan, they placed the body on a small scaffold. Eventually a coffin was built and placed on the scaffold, and a crude fence was constructed to keep the cattle out. His parents mourned there for days. Worm finally buried his son somewhere in the Pine Ridge country of Dakota territory. A cousin of Crazy Horse named Chips said in 1910 that the location was near the head of the creek called Wounded Knee, but that he himself had reburied the remains several times after that, the last time in 1883. Crazy Horse’s final resting place is not known.

Chiricahua Chief Cochise
By Edwin R. Sweeney
In the summer of 1872 a truly extraordinary development took place in our nation’s capital. President Ulysses S. Grant, hoping to bring an end to the Apache war in southeastern Arizona, dispatched Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard to Arizona to make peace with Cochise, the celebrated leader of the Chokonen band of Chiricahua Apaches. That his activities occupied the thoughts of America’s military and civil leaders would have come as a surprise to the aging chieftain, who was provincial and unpretentious by nature. Yet, Cochise’s reputation had convinced the top officials in Washington that he was the key to obtaining a lasting peace with the Chiricahua Apaches. At that time–except perhaps for Red Cloud, the great Lakota chief–Cochise may have been the most famous Indian in the West.
That designation would not have flattered him. After 12 years of war against the Americans–a bloody, merciless conflict that had begun after American troops had betrayed him in 1861–Cochise had come to the conclusion that he must make peace to ensure the survival of his people. Age was beginning to take its toll, his health was deteriorating, and the long war that he had waged against Mexico and the United States had taken the lives of many of his people. Accordingly, when General Howard rode into Cochise’s camp in the Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona, accompanied by his aide, Lieutenant Joseph A. Sladen, and by Thomas J. Jeffords, a frontiersman trusted by Cochise, they found the chief ready to make peace.
Cochise and his Chokonen band ranged throughout southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Mexico. Born about 1810, he had matured during a relatively peaceful period of Apache-Mexican affairs. In 1831, however, relations deteriorated sharply, and treachery and war replaced harmony and tranquility. This precarious state of affairs with Mexico would continue throughout Cochise’s life, although truces and armistices occasionally interrupted hostilities. From time to time, Mexican officials, unable to defeat the Chiricahuas in combat, turned to mercenaries and scalp hunters to exterminate the Apaches. The infamous Johnson and Kirker massacres of 1837 and 1846, in which mercenaries slaughtered some 175 Chiricahuas, left indelible impressions on Cochise. He lost his father, an important band leader, in one of those premeditated massacres, probably during Kirker’s slaughter. Naturally, such chicanery and deceit served only to exacerbate hostilities, for revenge was an important factor in Chiricahua warfare.
In 1856 Cochise became the principal war leader of the Chokonen band after the death of its chief, Miguel Narbona. Two years later he experienced his first contact with Americans at Apache Pass (in present-day Arizona), where he met Apache Agent Michael Steck. He had no reason to act militarily against these newcomers, who had done nothing to earn his contempt and were then not a significant force in southern Arizona. Relations became strained in 1860 because of a few Chiricahua stock raids–raids that the Apaches did not consider to be warlike.
In February 1861, war between the Chiricahua Apaches and Americans erupted in a senseless and violent encounter at Apache Pass. First Lieutenant George N. Bascom, with a detachment of soldiers, arrived at Apache Pass and requested a parley with Cochise. Bascom, seeking a boy recently captured by Western Apaches, believed that Cochise’s people were responsible. Bascom ordered his soldiers to surround the tent when Cochise and his family came in to parley. Cochise, discovering that he was a prisoner, cut his way out of the tent to freedom (the Chiricahuas would forever refer to this incident as ‘Cut the Tent’). But five members of Cochise’s family were unable to escape. A few days later, Cochise captured a stage employee and soon after attacked a freighter train, killing all the Mexicans with the train and capturing three Americans. He offered to exchange the hostages for his relatives, but Bascom refused to budge unless Cochise returned the boy. Frustrated, Cochise tortured his prisoners to death. Bascom retaliated by hanging Cochise’s brother and two of his nephews. Later, Bascom released Cochise’s wife and son.
The execution of his relatives aroused in Cochise a passionate hatred of Americans and touched off the fierce conflict that was to last throughout the 1860s. It mattered little that only a few Americans had betrayed him; he hated them all. Initially he raided and killed for revenge; later, even as his rage abated, he continued to wage war, for the conflict had evolved into a bloody cycle of revenge–American counterstrikes and Apache retaliation. Cochise assumed an aggressive posture for the first five years of the war as he enlisted the aid of other Chiricahua bands, notably the Bedonkohes and Chihennes under his father-in-law, the 6-foot 5-inch statesman Mangas Coloradas (whom Americans had also driven to war).
During the summer of 1861, the Chiricahuas ambushed several parties at Cooke’s Canyon in New Mexico Territory and, on September 27, 1861, openly assaulted the mining town of Pinos Altos, N.M., but the miners repulsed their attack. By that time most Anglos had abandoned southern Arizona, leaving it virtually uninhabited by whites except those living in Tucson and at a few isolated mines. Cochise naturally concluded that his people had driven the Americans from his country. ‘At last your soldiers did me a great wrong, and I and my whole tribe went to war with them,’ he said. ‘At first we were successful, and your soldiers were driven away and your people killed, and we again possessed our land.’
In June 1862 the California Column under Brig. Gen. James Carleton halted at Tucson before resuming its journey east to drive the Confederate forces back to Texas. The column’s route lay through Apache Pass. Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, believing that the troops had come to punish them, prepared an ambush, hoping to prevent the whites from obtaining water at Apache Springs. Captain Thomas Roberts led an advance detachment that clashed with the Chiricahuas on July 15-16, 1862. Cochise had positioned most of his men on the hills overlooking both sides of the spring. The Americans finally drove the Indians from their breastworks when Roberts unleashed two mountain howitzers that lobbed several shells near the Indian positions. Both sides fought hard, and both lost men.
Cochise’s fury was ignited again in January 1863 when Americans duped Mangas Coloradas into a parley and executed him–which, to the Chiricahuas, ‘was the greatest of wrongs.’ For Cochise, the loss of his father-in-law and fighting ally was a deep and unquenchable grief. Mangas’ execution reminded Cochise that he could not trust Americans, especially soldiers.
In early 1865 the Chihenne band in New Mexico, under Victorio, discussed terms with Americans, but Cochise refused, declaring that he would never make peace. He still feared Anglo treachery. In fact, 1865 was destined to be one of his most active years in Arizona. He attacked ranches, travelers and troops on both sides of the border. Yet with the Civil War winding down, military affairs in Arizona were changing, and Cochise soon learned that American troops and citizens were more determined and better armed than their counterparts below the border. Therefore, from 1866 through 1868 he was forced to adopt guerilla warfare against Americans and Mexicans. By late 1868, however, Mexican campaigns had pushed him northward into Arizona, and now, for the first time, he reluctantly considered the prospect of making peace with the Americans.
Over the next four years (1869­1872), Cochise came to understand clearly the inevitability of peace. Yet he was fighting his own inner battle. He had never been a reservation Indian, and he still distrusted Americans. His first meeting with Americans since the Bascom Affair occurred in his beloved Dragoon Mountains in early February 1869. He wanted peace, but he refused to go near a military post to consummate a treaty. That fall his people fought two major battles in the Chiricahua Mountains against troops from Fort Bowie that cost the lives of several Chokonens. Soon after, Cochise sent word to the Apache Indian agent in New Mexico that he would discuss a truce once he was convinced of the Americans’ good faith.
In the summer of 1870 he visited Camp Mogollon in Arizona and admitted to an American officer there that he had killed ‘about as many as he had lost’ and that he was now ‘about even.’ Two months later he joined his Chihenne relatives at Cañada Alamosa, near today’s Monticello, and held talks with William Arny, special Indian agent for New Mexico. Cochise reiterated his desire for a truce with the Americans, declaring, ‘If the government talks straight I want a good peace.’ Yet he also revealed his contempt for reservation life by declaring his people’s desire ‘to run around like a coyote; they don’t want to be put in a corral.’ The idea of a reservation, with its inherent restrictions, was completely alien to an Apache warrior’s view of his universe.
After remaining a month, Cochise left Cañada Alamosa in November 1870, ostensibly to round up more members of his band. However, while he was absent, Washington assigned a new agent, and Cochise heard rumors that officials were planning to consolidate the Chiricahuas with the Mescaleros east of the Rio Grande. He therefore remained in Arizona, where, during the spring and summer of 1871, the troops allowed him, in his words, ‘no rest, no peace.’ In late September he returned to Cañada Alamosa and stayed until late March 1872, when the government relocated the agency to Tularosa, north of the Mogollons. At that point he returned to the Dragoon Mountains in Arizona, where in October 1872 General Howard met him and consummated a treaty, one that Cochise kept until his death in those same Dragoon Mountains on June 8, 1874.
In his day, Cochise embodied the essence of Apache warfare. But he was more than just a warrior–much more. He was an Indian who so loved his family, his people and the mountains in which he was reared that he would fight fiercely to protect and preserve all that was Apache. There can be no question that he was capable of unspeakable cruelties and violent acts of revenge upon innocent whites. The fact that Cochise was terribly wronged and misunderstood and forced to witness the disappearance of his homeland and his people perhaps cannot, in the view of history, justify everything that he did. Still he represents, probably as well as any single figure, a people’s natural resistance to the invasion of their land.
The warrior known as Cochise will enjoy forever a giant place in the history of the American Southwest. In consistently heroic fashion, he occupied his place at the head of his threatened people through the violent years. His physical skills were so extraordinary that those skills alone would have conducted him to the head of his Chokonen band. One American frontiersman who knew him well insisted that Cochise ‘never met his equal with a lance'; another frontiersman claimed that no Apache ‘can draw an arrow to the head and send it farther with more ease than him.’ And we have many eyewitness accounts to testify to Cochise’s prowess as a horseman. During one furious encounter on horseback, an American scout tried over and over again to dispatch Cochise, but his efforts were all in vain, for the Indian ‘would slip over to the side of his horse, hanging on the horse’s neck.’
Yet it was more than his strength and physical skills that inspired the warriors of Cochise. The Chiricahua chief had often expressed his great regard for those who displayed two attributes: courage and devotion to the truth. Nobody exhibited both more persistently and dramatically than did Cochise himself. His courage in skirmishes and battles is now legendary. He always led his men into combat and was frequently the central figure throughout the fight. One American officer reported that ‘many efforts were made to kill Cochise who [led] his mounted warriors’ in several charges.
Always during an engagement, no matter how chaotic and confused, Cochise managed complete control of his men. ‘A private soldier would as soon think of disobeying a direct order of the President as would a Chiricahua Apache a command of Cochise,’ one observer declared.
The warrior-chief also respected and much admired bravery when it appeared in his enemies. One reason that his friendship with General Howard and Lieutenant Sladen developed so quickly and so firmly was that they had the ‘courage to visit him when to do so [might] have caused their death.’
And Cochise scorned a liar. He held to a simple philosophy about the truth: ‘A man has only one mouth and if he won’t tell the truth he [should be] put out of
the way.’ He clearly had a great instinct for the truth and a keen capacity for distinguishing deceit and falsehood. All Americans, with but a few notable exceptions, he distrusted out of both instinct and experience. This distrust of Americans prevented him from revealing much of his career to inquisitive whites. He remained honest to his creed as he steadfastly refused to discuss the past. If pressured, he would simply say, ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
In the end, Cochise came to the best terms ever really possible for him. His last years were a time of peace in America, the kind of peace that came only because the struggle was over. He obtained a reservation in his ancestral homeland, an agent in whom he could repose absolute and complete trust, and the promise of freedom from military interference. Today, he enjoys a hallowed place in the history of the great American Southwest: Cochise, the Chiricahua Apache, the leader of his people.
This article was written by Edwin R. Sweeney and originally appeared Wild West magazine.

Artwork of Kirby Sattler

Each one must learn for himself
the highest wisdom. It cannot
be taught in words.
-SMOWHALA, WANAPUM

Did You Know?
Most Native nations have two or more
names for their tribe. One was given to
them by Europeans, while the second is
the people's original tribal name, which
had a specific meaning. Here are a few
tribal names and their meanings:

Apache: Enemy
Cayuga: People at the mucky land
Cherokee: People of different speech
Fox: Red Earth People
Hopi: Peaceful Ones
Lakota: Friend
Omaha: Upstream people or people
going against the current
Powhatan: Falls in a current of water
Yuki: Stranger

By: Terri Jean

Sitting Bull and the Mounties

By Ian Anderson

The Canadian Mounties, originally called the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), were less than 3 years old when Sitting Bull’s Sioux killed or wounded more than half of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment near Montana Territory’s Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876. Sitting Bull had not played a significant role in the actual fighting—it was not his place to fight like one of the young braves, and chiefs did not direct the movements of warriors—but the defiant Hunkpapa chief was well-known as a wise and powerful leader who wanted to be free to roam and hunt buffalo. By the following summer, Sitting Bull was lodged in Canada, where the scarlet-clad lawmen would have a close and occasionally dangerous association with him for about four years.

On May 7, 1877, some 11 months after Custer’s bloody disaster, 34-year-old NWMP Major James M. Walsh, a sergeant and three troopers followed an Indian trail to the dun-colored hills and ravines of Pinto Horse Butte, some 280 miles north of the Little Bighorn. The trail led up from the Montana border, about 50 miles to the south. A good-sized band had passed over this ground. The Indians had crossed into Canada’s North-West Territories close to where the White Mud—or Frenchman’s—River flowed down into Montana. According to Walsh’s two Métis (mixed-blood) scouts, this was Sitting Bull’s trail. If so, the NWMP, especially the 90-odd men Walsh commanded at Fort Walsh, would have no small task preserving law and order in the border country south and east of the Cypress Hills, in what would become the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Even before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Walsh and the other Mounties had realized that the U.S. military operations against the Sioux and Cheyenne were likely to drive hostile Indians north across the border. It had only been a matter of time before Sitting Bull and his followers crossed into Canada. Still, it was one thing to expect their arrival but another to actually deal with them.

Around noon on the 7th, Walsh’s scouts spotted mounted Indians sitting motionless on hilltops, watching them—a sign that an Indian camp was nearby. As they rode on, they saw more and more Indians on the hills, until the small patrol was surrounded. None of the Indians, however, made any attempt to stop the scouts.

Moments later, Walsh and his men rounded a hill to find a large camp spread before them. Reining in, they sat in their saddles while a group of Indians rode toward them. Spotted Eagle, war chief of the Sans Arc Sioux, told them they were the first white men to dare approach Sitting Bull’s camp so unconcernedly. Walsh asked to meet Sitting Bull. Shortly, the Hunkpapa chief, at the head of a retinue of lesser chiefs, approached.

Walsh studied the chief, who was in his 40s (his exact birthdate in the 1830s is not certain), about 5 feet 10, with a muscular build. He had alert, crow-like eyes, a broad, pockmarked face, a prominent, hooked nose and a firm mouth; two long black braids hung down over his shoulders. He was bowlegged and walked with a limp.

Sitting Bull must have been just as curious about Walsh and his Mounties. Walsh, almost as tall as Sitting Bull, held himself straight as a lance. Wiry as a mountain lion, he had intense brown eyes set in a weathered face, a full mustache, whiskers below his bottom lip and wavy brown hair beneath a blue and gold cap.

Walsh and Sitting Bull shook hands. At first Sitting Bull treated the redcoats with cautious reserve, but he gradually warmed up to them. They all retired to the camp and sat down for a conference that lasted the remainder of the day. Walsh asked them why they had come to the White Mother’s (Queen Victoria’s) country. To find peace, they replied. The Sioux claimed they had suffered greatly at the hands of the blue-clad Long Knives, that they had been fighting on the defensive for years. They hoped the White Mother, or Grandmother (the term preferred by the Sioux), would give them sanctuary in her land. Spotted Eagle said they had been forced to cross the medicine line (the border—the Sioux also called it ‘the big road’) to protect their women and children from the Long Knives. John Peter Turner, historian for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (that name didn’t come until 1920), wrote in Volume 1 of The North-West Mounted Police 1873­-1893: "Sitting Bull said, in effect, ‘Yesterday I was fleeing from white men, cursing them as I went. Today they erect their lodges by the side of mine and defy me. The White Forehead Chief (Walsh) walks to my lodge alone and unarmed. He gives me the hand of peace. Have I fallen? Am I at the end?’ ”

Walsh explained that the purpose of his visit was to find out their intentions and to tell the Sioux about the White Mother’s laws, which everyone, white men and red men alike, must obey. They must not make war against other tribes and must not steal horses or anything else. They must not kill or injure any other person. They must not use the White Mother’s country as a refuge from which to strike back across the border at the American soldiers. They could not remain in her country if they would not obey her laws, Walsh told them. Sitting Bull said he and his people would obey the laws, adding that he had ‘buried’ his weapons before crossing into the White Mother’s land.

Sitting Bull liked what Walsh told him about the White Mother’s laws, especially the principle of justice for all, regardless of race. He showed Walsh medals King George III had given his grandfather for service to the British Crown during the War of 1812. His grandfather had fought alongside the red-coated soldiers of the Shaganosh (British) king. They were good men, Sitting Bull’s grandfather had said, adding, "If you should ever wish to find peace, go north to the land of redcoats."

Sitting Bull asked for ammunition for his people to hunt buffalo. He said they had used up all their bullets fighting off the Long Knives. Walsh agreed to allow them enough bullets to hunt meat, but he warned that no bullets were to be used for warfare across the border. Walsh and his men spent the night in the Sioux camp. The next morning, May 8, they were preparing to leave when three Assiniboines from below the border rode into camp herding five horses. One of Walsh’s scouts recognized three of the horses as the property of a Roman Catholic priest who had been in the Cypress Hills a short time before. Walsh stepped over to White Dog, leader of the three Assiniboines, and arrested him for theft.

White Dog looked around at the Sioux warriors who had gathered about him, confident they wouldn’t allow these red-coated wasichus (white men) to take him. But Walsh was undeterred. The law had been broken. Dangling a pair of leg irons in front of White Dog, Walsh said, "Tell me where you got these horses, how you got them, and what you intend doing with them, or I’ll clap these irons on you and take you away."

Silence fell over the camp. All eyes were on the redcoat and White Dog. The Sioux were dumbfounded by the Mountie’s courage. Some were ready to fight for their Assiniboine brother, some stood confused, others waited to see if the redcoat would carry out his threat.

Seeing the hesitation on the surrounding Sioux faces, White Dog mumbled that when traveling across the prairie east of the Cypress Hills, he saw the horses wandering loose and took them. He added that he hadn’t known it was wrong to do so, as south of the medicine line it was customary to take any horses wandering loose and return them only if their owner called upon the Indians to do so. Walsh didn’t believe him, but he gave him the benefit of the doubt. The law was explicit, but in instances where ignorance of the law was a factor, the Mounties exercised leniency. Stealing horses was, as R.C. Macleod of the Department of History, University of Alberta, wrote in his book The North-West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement 1873-1905, "in the nature of a sport among the plains tribes. The police only gradually introduced the idea that it was a crime, preferring to return them [the horses] with a warning to the thieves rather than make arrests." Walsh released White Dog, but he seized the horses so he could return them on his way back to Fort Walsh, 110 miles to the west. He then gave White Dog a lecture on obeying the law in the White Mother’s country.

Sitting Bull and the Sioux, or Lakotas, had witnessed an example of the enforcement of Canadian law. It was the sort of example Walsh wanted to set. He had not backed down. That was the way the 300 Mounties enforced the law among their own Indians–two or three scarlet-coated men riding calmly into large camps of armed Indians and making arrests or letting offenders off with stern warnings. Not backing down and never showing fear was perhaps the reason they—a mere handful of resolute men—were so successful in their dealings with the Indians. The Indians admired courage, perhaps above all else. Walsh had given Sitting Bull something to think about.

Sitting Bull and his 1,000 or so followers were not the only Sioux to have crossed into Canada. The previous December, Black Moon, a Hunkpapa chief and cousin of Sitting Bull, had arrived with 52 lodges and settled with many other Hunkpapas, Minneconjous, Ogalalas, Sans Arcs and Two Kettles. In March 1877, Sitting Bull’s uncle Chief Four Horns had led another large band across the medicine line. Now, in May, with the arrival of Sitting Bull’s band, the Sioux in Canada numbered about 4,000. The Sioux all promised to obey Canadian law, but no one knew whether they really meant it. Ottawa wasn’t taking any chances; the Canadian government wanted the Sioux out of its territory.

At Ottawa’s request, in August 1877, some three months after Sitting Bull’s arrival up north, the U.S. government appointed a peace commission to meet with the Sioux. The commission’s mission supposedly was to persuade the Indians to return to the United States and surrender to the Army in exchange for a full pardon. Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, commander of the military force that had marched on the Sioux at the Little Bighorn the previous year, headed the commission. At first Sitting Bull refused to meet with Terry, but Walsh convinced the chief to journey from the Sioux village near Pine Horse Butte to Fort Walsh and hear out the Americans. The meeting took place October 17, with predictable results. Sitting Bull did not trust Terry, the man who had sent Custer, and the Sioux refused to go back. Sitting Bull biographer Robert Utley has suggested that the United States did not really want Sitting Bull back, and that it put pressure on Canada to adopt Sitting Bull and his people as ‘Canadian Indians.’

Sitting Bull’s distrust was intensified by his awareness that Colonel Nelson A. ‘Bear Coat’ Miles was hovering just below the border, having defeated Chief Joseph and other Nez Perces at Montana’s Bear Paw Mountains two weeks earlier. One of the Nez Perce chiefs, White Bird, and 98 Nez Perce men, 50 women and about 50 children had escaped Miles’ forces at the Bear Paws and reached Sitting Bull’s camp on October 8.

Even before the U.S. peace commission meeting at Fort Walsh, newspapers on both sides of the border warned their readers of troubles to come from the Sioux, as detailed by Canadian historian Grant MacEwan in his 1973 book Sitting Bull: The Years in Canada. The Montreal Witness of August 16, 1877, reported that Sitting Bull had asked his hereditary enemies the Canadian Blackfeet "to join him in the conflict with the hated American Government, after which he would help them with any conflict they might have with the Canadian Government." The Fort Benton Record (Montana) ran a story headlined ‘Sitting Bull Preparing For Spring Campaign’ that said the Assiniboines, Gros Ventres, Crows and Piegans would join the Sioux chief. The Toronto Globe of September 25, 1877, warned its readers that Wood Mountain, a Métis settlement near Pinto Horse Butte, "could erupt at any time." The Globe said a report from Helena, Mont., alleged that Sitting Bull was on the verge of leading all the northern tribes against the U.S. forces, adding that "Sitting Bull is amply supplied with ammunition."

The stories persisted, especially after the failure of the peace commission meeting in October. The Fort Benton Record of April 5, 1878, reported that Bloods, Northern Blackfeet, Crees, North Assiniboines, Piegans, Kootenais, Sarcees (all Canadian tribes) and Gros Ventres had been approached by Sitting Bull, who was "sparing no effort to form a league among these congregated tribes….He appeared with 30 of his best warriors dressed in the clothing of soldiers killed in the Custer Massacre, and called upon assembled Indians to witness how he had treated the soldiers and how easy [it would be] to clean out all the whites and have the country among ourselves….Mr. Thomas O’Halloran, in charge of Fort Belknap [on the Milk River in northern Montana, near the Bear Paw Mountains], considers the situation critical."

Two weeks later, on April 19, the Fort Benton Record reported that residents of the Canadian settlement of Battleford, on the North Saskatchewan River, were "greatly excited" over an account that Sitting Bull had formed an alliance of Sioux, Blackfoot and Stoney tribes and had made overtures to the Cree. The alliance’s apparent intentions were to carry out widespread raiding. "A camp of seven hundred lodges of Sioux at the Sand Hills, sixty-five miles from Fort Walsh, [was] growing with new arrivals hourly…four wagon loads of cartridges arrived at camp [in one day]….The Nez Perce [and] the Blackfeet have all formed a treaty with Sitting Bull [and] the Blackfeet are on the Belly River [near Fort Macleod] in force….It is supposed that the attack is to be made on the Cypress Hills [Fort Walsh] and Fort Macleod."

The Mounties investigated these stories but found they had little real substance. Powerful Blackfoot Chief Crow Foot confirmed that Sitting Bull had made overtures to him. Crow Foot said that in the spring of 1876, before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had asked him to join the Sioux in a mighty war against the Americans, but he had refused. Sitting Bull had been in contact with him again in the summer of 1877, when they met during a buffalo hunt, but the subject of an alliance had not been mentioned.

When Walsh traveled to and from Ottawa by rail via the northern United States in early 1878 and in the latter part of May (Canada’s nation-spanning railroad—the Canadian Pacific—wasn’t completed until November 1885), he often was questioned by journalists. The man the American press dubbed ‘Sitting Bull’s Boss’ dismissed rumors of a grand alliance under Sitting Bull. He stated emphatically that Sitting Bull’s Sioux—now numbering about 5,000, including some of the followers of Oglala Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, who had been killed by a soldier’s bayonet on September 5, 1877—were not part of any such plan. In his opinion, traders often passed on such stories to Army scouts hungry for news to report to their superiors. When, in May 1878, Walsh was asked by a journalist of the Chicago Times about the possibility of a confederation of all the tribes north of the border, he answered, "It is not natural to suppose that the Sioux and the Blackfoot could become allies." As for stories of the Sioux having ample supplies of ammunition, Walsh pointed out that his men rigidly enforced government restrictions allowing the Sioux only enough bullets for hunting. He added that the Mounties regularly patrolled all smugglers’ routes into the country occupied by the Sioux.

Rumors that Louis Riel, exiled leader of a Métis insurrection in Manitoba in 1869-70, was attempting to form an Indian-Métis alliance were, however, another matter. Riel, living in Montana, tried throughout 1878 to form an alliance of all the "Indian blood…between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri" to rise up against the whites and reclaim the prairies, which he maintained rightly belonged to them. His actual objectives were vaguely stated. He was capitalizing on Indian unrest over their changing way of life, especially the growing shortage of buffalo, but he was really more concerned with seizing control of Canada’s North-West Territories than he was with the American side of the border, as was evidenced by his part in the abortive North-West Rebellion of Métis and some Indians in 1885.

The Assiniboines of northern Montana were the first to join Riel. As soon as Walsh learned of Riel’s activities, he rode down to Wolf Point, along the Missouri River, where the Assiniboine camp was located, and talked them out of Riel’s alliance. Then he rode back north across the border and into the camps of Sitting Bull and the other Sioux chiefs, reminding them of their promises to obey the Queen’s law and to keep the peace. Walsh placed great store in a man’s word, as did Sitting Bull and the Sioux. He sent word to the Indian agents in Montana on whose agencies Riel and his Métis agitators and allies camped. The agents, in turn, informed the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Army was ordered to take action. Before winter snows swept across the northern Plains in 1878, soldiers, U.S. marshals and customs officers swooped onto the reserves and dispersed the Métis, seizing their weapons and ammunition, moving those who admitted to being Canadian back across the border and the others to more southerly regions of Montana. This action effectively broke up Riel’s alliance.

In the fall of 1878, Sitting Bull warned Walsh of the impending arrival of a group of Cheyennes in Canada. He had similarly warned Walsh of the coming of the Nez Perce the previous year. But this time he was wrong; the U.S. Army stopped the Cheyennes from getting that far north. Although Sitting Bull might well have dreamed of welding the Cheyennes and other northern tribes into a mighty confederation and striking back at the Americans, he constantly expressed hope that the White Mother would give him a reservation in Canada, as she had given the Sioux who fled north following the Minnesota Uprising in 1862.

The presence of 5,000 Sioux in Canada was making drastic inroads into the numbers of buffalo–the Plains Indians’ principal food source–and each year there were fewer and fewer of them. In 1876, the Canadian government had estimated that there were enough buffalo to feed its western Indians for at least another five years. But since the arrival of the Sioux, the government had had to drastically revise that estimate. The Canadian tribes realized the buffalo were becoming fewer, and they blamed the Sioux. The danger of inter-tribal conflicts grew, calling for greater vigilance by the North-West Mounted Police. The government did not want to burden itself with the cost of feeding the Sioux. Canada’s fundamental policy remained unchanged. The Sioux would have to eventually go back to their own country. Some of Sitting Bull’s young warriors became restive. If no food or reserve were forthcoming, they would simply take what they wanted. Inhabitants of the Wood Mountain region–the Métis–began to lose horses. That Sioux indulgence in one of the Plains tribes’ most cherished activities tried the patience of Walsh and his men. It caused them no end of additional police work, patrolling and hours in the saddle.

Early in the summer of 1879, a party of young Sioux warriors ran off 50 or more horses belonging to a Métis named Poitras, who went to their camp and demanded them back. The Sioux laughed at him. He was perhaps fortunate they did nothing more than laugh. He then rode to the NWMP post at the Métis settlement at Wood Mountain, where Walsh had relocated his headquarters to be closer to the Sioux camps, and complained. Walsh, one of his men and a Métis scout set out with Poitras to look for the horses. Unsuccessful, Walsh called on Sitting Bull, bluntly telling him he wanted the horses, that if he didn’t get them he’d invite Nelson Miles–for whom he had a great admiration–to cross the border and force the Sioux back to their own country. Sitting Bull bristled, but the bluff worked. He felt the stakes were too high to allow defiance by his young men. The horses were turned over.

"A few weeks later," wrote John Peter Turner, "Sitting Bull returned to [the Wood Mountain settlement] with a big retinue, including the chiefs Four Horns and Black Moon." Buffalo hunting hadn’t been very good, and they were feeling the pangs of hunger. They rode up in front of Walsh’s quarters, one of several log cabins comprising the Mounted Police post. Sliding down from their ponies, they stepped into the cabin and shook hands solemnly with the Mountie officer. Walsh sent for his Métis interpreter, Cajou Morin. After talking with them, Morin turned to Walsh: "They want provisions, Major, especially tea and tobacco." Sitting Bull had more to say. He complained about the White Mother’s lack of compassion for the Sioux, the Canadian government’s niggardly attitude toward providing food, even though the Mounties often gave them food from their own supplies. Walsh listened to Sitting Bull’s thinly veiled threats of what would happen if provisions were not forthcoming.

This was too much for Walsh, who was well known for his blunt language. "Who do you think you are? Have you forgotten that you’re American Indians? You haven’t any right to be in Canada. You’ve caused us police any amount of trouble. You’ve stolen horses. You’ve been a goddamn nuisance. You seem to think all white men are afraid of you. Well, you’re wrong. Get your goddamn provisions at the trading post. If you keep on making trouble, I’ll put the whole damn lot of you in jail!"

"Be careful, Wahonkeza [Walsh’s Sioux name]," Sitting Bull replied. "You’re talking to the head of the mighty Sioux Nation."

"I know who I’m talking to. What I said still stands. And if there’s any more horse stealing, I’ll put irons on you, too!"

Sitting Bull fumed. Shaking a finger at Walsh, he said, "No man can talk to me like that!" He reached for a revolver on his belt, but Walsh grabbed him and threw him out of the cabin. Sitting Bull landed on the ground. When he tried to get up, Walsh kicked him in the buttocks.

Furious, Sitting Bull climbed to his feet, again reaching for his revolver, but one of the other chiefs grabbed and restrained him. After a struggle, Sitting Bull tired and slumped to the ground, and the other chief released him. A moment later the Hunkpapa chief got up and stalked away.

Walsh ran over to the adjacent barracks. "Get ready, men," he shouted. "There may be trouble." Mounties tumbled out of the barracks, holding their rifles at the ready, and formed themselves into a line behind him. Up the street, the Indians gathered in a noisy mob in front of the trading post. A few minutes later they headed toward the Mounted Police post, Sitting Bull leading them on his cream-colored pony. Walsh ordered Morin to pull out two long poles from the hay corral and lay them on the ground out in front of the post. "Tell them not to cross those poles. The first one who does will be sorry." When the oncoming Sioux got closer, Morin shouted Walsh’s warning to them.

Sitting Bull’s smoldering eyes were locked onto Walsh as he rode toward him. Walsh stood in front of his men, staring back at the Sioux chief. Then, just before he reached the poles on the ground, Sitting Bull yanked on his pony’s reins. The pony stopped suddenly. Sitting Bull’s Sioux bunched up behind him. Walsh and Sitting Bull continued staring back at each other. Finally, Sitting Bull wheeled his pony and rode off. In small bunches the others did the same, heading toward their camp.

Sitting Bull had been poised to stab his dagger into the hearts of the White Mother’s redcoats, but in the end he could not do it. Walsh was the only white man to stand before him—practically alone—and defy him, but Walsh was also the only white man he could trust, the only white man he could rely on.

The Sioux slipped back across the border from time to time, not to make war on the Americans but to hunt buffalo. On July 17, 1879, a hunting party that included Sitting Bull ventured south of the Milk River and exchanged shots with Bear Coat Miles’ soldiers and Crow scouts. Sitting Bull was said to have bested Magpie, one of the Crows, after being challenged to personal combat during the battle. Miles’ howitzers eventually forced the Sioux to withdraw to defensive positions north of the border. This skirmish near the Milk River strengthened Sitting Bull’s resolve not to surrender to the Army. He was convinced they were waiting for him to do so and would then punish him for what had happened at the Little Bighorn. But empty bellies rumbled loudly, and many Sioux eyes turned southward. In early August, Sitting Bull told Walsh that he would take his warriors back across the line to meet Miles’ soldiers in battle, adding that none of his soldiers would live to tell the tale. Walsh took this to be a mere boast, but he told Sitting Bull that such an action would be unwise, for eventually he must return to his own country, that the Americans would not forgive any more casualties among their soldiers.

Continuing slaughter of the buffalo herds in the United States by both Indians and whites had reduced their numbers to such an extent by 1878 that the large herds were no longer migrating north; only small scattered herds crossed the border. Not only the Sioux but also Canadian Indians were close to starving. The Canadian government was obliged by various treaties to feed its own Indians, but it had no such obligation to the Sioux. Despite the reluctance of most Sioux to put themselves at the mercy of the American government, the thought that food might be more readily obtainable drove small bands of them (about 200 to 300 lodges) back over the medicine line in July 1879 to surrender to military authorities at Fort Keogh, at the mouth of the Tongue River on the Yellowstone. In November, 25 more lodges returned. Others watched from the safety of Canadian soil and followed when they were assured their brothers were being treated reasonably. By the summer of 1880, an estimated 3,700 Sioux had returned to their own country. Sitting Bull, though, was a holdout, still refusing to trust the Americans.

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, who had launched the Mounted Police in 1873 and played a major role in the development of the Canadian West, had become convinced that Walsh was being too sympathetic to Sitting Bull, that his sympathy was encouraging the Sioux chief to remain in Canada. According to R.C. Macleod, Macdonald believed "Walsh was deliberately keeping the Sioux in Canada because he enjoyed the publicity his association with Sitting Bull brought him. In November 1879, Macdonald confided his suspicion to the Governor General." The following year, Macdonald had Walsh transferred from Wood Mountain to Fort Qu’Appelle, a longtime Hudson’s Bay Company trading post and a growing farming community 160 trail miles northeast. Sitting Bull was devastated when he learned that Walsh would be leaving. The chief presented him with his eagle feather war bonnet, telling him: "Take this, my friend. I hope I never need it again. Every feather symbolizes a deed of courage when the Lakota were strong." Walsh was deeply touched. He and Sitting Bull had had a few differences, but, despite these, a deep friendship existed between them.

Before Walsh left Wood Mountain in July 1880, Sitting Bull asked him if he would plead with the White Mother to give him and his people a reserve in Canada. Walsh replied that it would be useless for him to do this, that "Bull" and his people would have to eventually return to the United States. Sitting Bull then asked Walsh if he would go to Washington to speak to the White House on his behalf. Walsh had some leave coming, and he told Sitting Bull that if the prime minister permitted him, he would go to Washington. Sitting Bull wanted to be assured that he and his people would be treated fairly if they went back, that they would not be singled out for punishment for their victory over Custer.

After taking command of the enlarged Mountie post at Fort Qu’Appelle, Walsh went on leave to Ontario via Winnipeg, St. Paul and Chicago. After reaching his hometown of Brockville, Ontario, not far from Ottawa, he obtained an interview with Prime Minister Macdonald. They discussed the Sitting Bull matter, but Macdonald refused to give Walsh permission to go to Washington.

Walsh’s successor at Wood Mountain was Inspector Lief N.F. (‘Paddy’) Crozier, whose instructions were to persuade Sitting Bull and the remaining Sioux to return to their own country. Although an experienced and capable officer, Crozier had an officious manner, and he was unable to gain Sitting Bull’s confidence. Besides, Sitting Bull still had his mind set on obtaining a reservation in Canada, and he hoped that his old friend might still be able to do something for him. At the end of April 1881, Sitting Bull took the remnants of his band—about 200 to 400 people—and went to Fort Qu’Appelle looking for Walsh. Macdonald, foreseeing the possibility of something like this, had given Walsh extra leave to keep him in Ontario.

Although Macdonald had forbidden Walsh to go to Washington, the prime minister apparently hadn’t said anything about Chicago. Walsh had a senior Indian Bureau friend there who was familiar with the Sioux situation. Walsh went to see him, and his friend promised he would contact influential friends in cabinet positions in Washington who would intercede on Sitting Bull’s behalf.

"Walsh resolved to send a message to [Sitting Bull]," wrote Grant MacEwan. "He wanted to avoid official channels." Walsh sent word to Sitting Bull through a trusted Métis, Louis Daniels, who had served as a scout under him. "Daniels carried out his instructions faithfully,’ MacEwan added. "Sitting Bull had heard similar assurances from other people but was not convinced. If Walsh said it, however, it was all the Sioux leader needed. He would take his remaining followers to Fort Buford [Dakota Territory]."

Jean Louis Legaré, a French-Canadian trader who operated a trading store at Wood Mountain, had befriended many Sioux in Canada. He had already assisted some Sioux with provisions and accompanied them to Fort Buford—at the mouth of the Yellowstone River on the Missouri—where they had surrendered. He decided to do the same for Sitting Bull. Accompanied by Legaré and Inspector Alexander A. Macdonnell of the Mounted Police, Sitting Bull and his followers surrendered to military authorities at Fort Buford on July 19, 1881 (a formal surrender was held the next day). Sitting Bull became a prisoner of war and was held at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory. In May 1883, he was transferred to the Standing Rock Agency, near Fort Yates on the Missouri River (present-day North Dakota). The next year he took up residence along the Grand River (present-day South Dakota). The famous chief was killed there in a fight with tribal police on December 15, 1890.

According to Grant MacEwan, Major Walsh wrote of Sitting Bull the day after the chief’s death: "I am glad to hear that Bull is relieved of his miseries, even if it took the bullet to do it. A man who wielded such power as Bull once did, that of a King, and over a wild spirited people, cannot endure abject poverty…without suffering great mental pain, and death is a relief. I regret now that I had not gone to Standing Rock and seen him. Bull had been misrepresented. He was not the bloodthirsty man reports made him out to be. He asked for nothing but justice. He was not a cruel man. He was kind of heart. He was not dishonest. He was truthful. He loved his people and was glad to give his hand in friendship to any man who was honest with him."

As for James Walsh, his service with the NWMP did not last much longer. "By 1881, Macdonald had convinced himself that Walsh was wholly responsible for the Canadian government’s embarrassment over Sitting Bull," R.C. Macleod wrote. "Walsh was given extended leave to remove him from the scene…Macdonald had found a scapegoat and Walsh…was forced to resign in 1883." Upon leaving the North-West Mounted Police, Walsh established the Dominion Coal, Coke and Transportation Company and helped open coal mining in the Souris District of Manitoba. He died at Brockville, Ontario, July 25, 1905, at age 62.

This article was written by Ian Anderson and originally appeared in the February 1998 issue of Wild West.