THE COLUMN IN MOTION—RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF BUFFALOES—THE SIGNAL
CRY OF THE SCOUTS—THE FIGHT ON THE ROSEBUD—HOW THE KILLED WERE
BURIED—SCALP DANCE—BUTCHERING A CHEYENNE—LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER
ARRIVES—SENDING BACK THE WOUNDED.
On the 16th of June, by five o’clock in the morning, our whole command
had broken camp and was on its way westward; we crossed Tongue River,
finding a swift stream, rather muddy from recent rains, with a current
twenty-five yards wide, and four feet deep; the bottom of hard-pan, but
the banks on one side muddy and slippery.
The valley, as we saw it from the bluffs amid which we marched,
presented a most beautiful appearance—green with juicy grasses, and dark
with the foliage of cottonwood and willow. Its sinuosities encircled
many park-like areas of meadow, bounded on the land side by bluffs of
drift. The Indians at first marched on the flank, but soon passed the
column and took the lead, the “medicine men” in front; one of the head
“medicine men” of the Crows kept up a piteous chant, reciting the
cruelties of their enemies and stimulating the young men to deeds of
martial valor. In every possible way these savages reminded me of the
descriptions I had read of the Bedouins.
Our course turned gradually to the northwest, and led us across several
of the tributaries of the Tongue, or “Deje-ajie” as the Crows called it,
each of these of good dimensions, and carrying the unusual flow due to
the rapid melting of snow in the higher elevations. The fine grass seen
close to the Tongue disappeared, and the country was rather more barren,
with many prairie-dog villages. The soil was made up of sandstones, with
a great amount of both clay and lime, shales and lignite, the latter
burnt out. Some of the sandstone had been filled with pyrites, which had
decomposed and left it in a vesicular state. There were a great many
scrub pines in the recesses of the bluffs. The cause for the sudden
disappearance of the grass was soon apparent: the scouts ran in upon a
herd of buffaloes whose cast-off bulls had been the principal factor in
our meat supply for more than a week; the trails ran in every direction,
and the grass had been nipped off more closely than if cut by a scythe.
There was much more cactus than we had seen for some time, and a
reappearance of the sage-brush common nearer to Fort Fetterman.
In the afternoon, messengers from our extreme advance came as fast as
ponies would carry them, with the information that we were upon the
trail of a very great village of the enemy. The cavalry dismounted and
unsaddled, seeking the shelter of all the ravines to await the results
of the examination to be made by a picked detail from the Crows and
Shoshones. The remaining Indians joined in a wild, strange war-dance,
the younger warriors becoming almost frenzied before the exercises
terminated. The young men who had been sent out to spy the land rejoined
us on a full run; from the tops of the hills they yelled like wolves,
the conventional signal among the plains tribes that the enemy has been
sighted. Excitement, among the Indians at least, was at fever heat; many
of the younger members of the party re-echoed the ululation of the
incoming scouts; many others spurred out to meet them and escort them in
with becoming honors. The old chiefs held their bridles while they
dismounted, and the less prominent warriors deferentially formed in a
circle to listen to their narrative. It did not convey much information
to my mind, unaccustomed to the indications so familiar to them. It
simply amounted to this, that the buffaloes were in very large herds
directly ahead of us, and were running away from a Sioux hunting party.
Knowing the unfaltering accuracy of an Indian’s judgment in matters of
this kind, General Crook told the chiefs to arrange their plan of march
according to their own ideas. On occasions like this, as I was told by
our scouts and others, the young men of the Assiniboines and Northern
Sioux were required to hold in each hand a piece of buffalo chip as a
sign that they were telling the truth; nothing of that kind occurred on
the occasion in question. While the above was going on, the Indians were
charging about on their hardy little ponies, to put them out of breath,
so that, when they regained their wind, they would not fail to sustain a
whole day’s battle. A little herb is carried along, to be given to the
ponies in such emergencies, but what virtues are attributed to this
medicine I was unable to ascertain. Much solemnity is attached to the
medicine arrows of the “medicine men,” who seem to possess the power of
arbitrarily stopping a march at almost any moment. As I kept with them,
I had opportunity to observe all that they did, except when every one
was directed to keep well to the rear, as happened upon approaching a
tree—juniper or cedar—in the fork of whose lower branches there was a
buffalo head, before which the principal “medicine man” and his
assistant halted and smoked from their long pipes.
Noon had passed, and the march was resumed to gain the Rosebud, one of
the tributaries of the Yellowstone, marking the ultimate western limit
of our campaign during the previous winter. We moved along over an
elevated, undulating, grassy tableland. Without possessing any very
marked beauty, there was a certain picturesqueness in the country which
was really pleasing. Every few rods a petty rivulet coursed down the
hill-sides to pay its tribute to the Tongue; there was no timber, except
an occasional small cottonwood or willow, to be seen along the banks of
these little water-courses, but wild roses by the thousand laid their
delicate beauties at our feet; a species of phlox, daintily blue in
tint, was there also in great profusion, while in the bushes multitudes
of joyous-voiced singing-birds piped their welcome as the troops filed
by. Yet this lovely country was abandoned to the domination of the
thriftless savage, the buffalo, and the rattlesnake; we could see the
last-named winding along through the tall grass, rattling defiance as
they sneaked away. Buffalo spotted the landscape in every direction, in
squads of ten and twelve and “bunches” of sixty and seventy. These were
not old bulls banished from the society of their mates, to be attacked
and devoured by coyotes, but fine fat cows with calves ambling close
behind them. One young bull calf trotted down close to the column, his
eyes beaming with curiosity and wonder. He was allowed to approach
within a few feet, when our prosaic Crow guides took his life as the
penalty of his temerity. Thirty buffaloes were killed that afternoon,
and the choice pieces—hump, tenderloin, tongue, heart, and rib
steaks—packed upon our horses. The flesh was roasted in the ashes, a
pinch of salt sprinkled over it, and a very savory and juicy addition
made to our scanty supplies. The Indians ate the buffalo liver raw,
sometimes sprinkling a pinch of gall upon it; the warm raw liver alone
is not bad for a hungry man, tasting very much like a raw oyster. The
entrails are also much in favor with the aborigines; they are cleaned,
wound round a ramrod, or something akin to it if a ramrod be not
available, and held in the hot ashes until cooked through; they make a
palatable dish; the buffalo has an intestine shaped like an apple, which
is filled with chyle, and is the _bonne bouche_ of the savages when
prepared in the same manner as the other intestines, excepting that the
contents are left untouched.
While riding alongside of one of our Crow scouts I noticed tears flowing
down his cheeks, and very soon he started a wail or chant of the most
lugubrious tone; I respected his grief until he had wept to his heart’s
content, and then ventured to ask the cause of such deep distress; he
answered that his uncle had been killed a number of years before by the
Sioux, and he was crying for him now and wishing that he might come back
to life to get some of the ponies of the Sioux and Cheyennes. Two
minutes after having discharged the sad duty of wailing for his dead
relative, the young Crow was as lively as any one else in the column.
We bivouacked on the extreme head-waters of the Rosebud, which was at
that point a feeble rivulet of snow water, sweet and palatable enough
when the muddy ooze was not stirred up from the bottom. Wood was found
in plenty for the slight wants of the command, which made small fires
for a few moments to boil coffee, while the animals, pretty well tired
out by the day’s rough march of nearly forty miles, rolled and rolled
again in the matted bunches of succulent pasturage growing at their
feet. Our lines were formed in hollow square, animals inside, and each
man sleeping with his saddle for a pillow and with arms by his side.
Pickets were posted on the bluffs near camp, and, after making what
collation we could, sleep was sought at the same moment the black clouds
above us had begun to patter down rain. A party of scouts returned late
at night, reporting having come across a small gulch in which was a
still burning fire of a band of Sioux hunters, who in the precipitancy
of their flight had left behind a blanket of India-rubber. We came near
having a casualty in the accidental discharge of the revolver of Mr.
John F. Finerty, the bullet burning the saddle and breaking it, but,
fortunately, doing no damage to the rider. By daylight of the next day,
June 17, 1876, we were marching down the Rosebud.
The Crow scouts with whom I was had gone but a short distance when shots
were heard down the valley to the north, followed by the ululation
proclaiming from the hill-tops that the enemy was in force and that we
were in for a fight. Shot after shot followed on the left, and by the
time that two of the Crows reached us, one of them severely wounded and
both crying, “Sioux! Sioux!” it was plain that something out of the
common was to be expected. There was a strong line of pickets out on the
hills on that flank, and this was immediately strengthened by a
respectable force of skirmishers to cover the cavalry horses, which were
down at the bottom of the amphitheatre through which the Rosebud at that
point ran. The Shoshones promptly took position in the hills to the
left, and alongside of them were the companies of the Fourth Infantry,
under Major A. B. Cain, and one or two of the cavalry companies,
dismounted.
The Sioux advanced boldly and in overwhelming force, covering the hills
to the north, and seemingly confident that our command would prove an
easy prey. In one word, the battle of the Rosebud was a trap, and “Crazy
Horse,” the leader in command here as at the Custer massacre a week
later, was satisfied he was going to have everything his own way. He
stated afterwards, when he had surrendered to General Crook at the
agency, that he had no less than six thousand five hundred men in the
fight, and that the first attack was made with fifteen hundred, the
others being concealed behind the bluffs and hills. His plan of battle
was either to lead detachments in pursuit of his people, and turning
quickly cut them to pieces in detail, or draw the whole of Crook’s
forces down into the cañon of the Rosebud, where escape would have been
impossible, as it formed a veritable _cul de sac_, the vertical walls
hemming in the sides, the front being closed by a dam and abatis of
broken timber which gave a depth of ten feet of water and mud, the rear,
of course, to be shut off by thousands of yelling, murderous Sioux and
Cheyennes. That was the Sioux programme as learned that day, or
afterwards at the agencies from the surrendered hostiles in the spring
of the following year.
While this attack was going on on our left and front, a determined
demonstration was made by a large body of the enemy on our right and
rear, to repel which Colonel Royall, Third Cavalry, was sent with a
number of companies, mounted, to charge and drive back. I will restrict
my observations to what I saw, as the battle of the Rosebud has been
several times described in books and any number of times in the
correspondence sent from the command to the journals of those years. The
Sioux and Cheyennes, the latter especially, were extremely bold and
fierce, and showed a disposition to come up and have it out hand to
hand; in all this they were gratified by our troops, both red and white,
who were fully as anxious to meet them face to face and see which were
the better men. At that part of the line the enemy were disconcerted at
a very early hour by the deadly fire of the infantry with their long
rifles. As the hostiles advanced at a full run, they saw nothing in
their front, and imagined that it would be an easy thing for them to
sweep down through the long ravine leading to the amphitheatre, where
they could see numbers of our cavalry horses clumped together. They
advanced in excellent style, yelling and whooping, and glad of the
opportunity of wiping us off the face of the earth. When Cain’s men and
the detachments of the Second Cavalry which were lying down behind a low
range of knolls rose up and delivered a withering fire at less than a
hundred and fifty yards, the Sioux turned and fled as fast as “quirt”
and heel could persuade their ponies to get out of there.
But, in their turn, they re-formed behind a low range not much over
three hundred yards distant, and from that position kept up an annoying
fire upon our men and horses. Becoming bolder, probably on account of
re-enforcements, they again charged, this time upon a weak spot in our
lines a little to Cain’s left; this second advance was gallantly met by
a counter-charge of the Shoshones, who, under their chief “Luishaw,”
took the Sioux and Cheyennes in flank and scattered them before them. I
went in with this charge, and was enabled to see how such things were
conducted by the American savages, fighting according to their own
notions. There was a headlong rush for about two hundred yards, which
drove the enemy back in confusion; then was a sudden halt, and very many
of the Shoshones jumped down from their ponies and began firing from the
ground; the others who remained mounted threw themselves alongside of
their horses’ necks, so that there would be few good marks presented to
the aim of the enemy. Then, in response to some signal or cry which, of
course, I did not understand, we were off again, this time for good, and
right into the midst of the hostiles, who had been halted by a steep
hill directly in their front. Why we did not kill more of them than we
did was because they were dressed so like our own Crows that even our
Shoshones were afraid of mistakes, and in the confusion many of the
Sioux and Cheyennes made their way down the face of the bluffs unharmed.
From this high point there could be seen on Crook’s right and rear a
force of cavalry, some mounted, others dismounted, apparently in the
clutches of the enemy; that is to say, a body of hostiles was engaging
attention in front and at the same time a large mass, numbering not less
than five hundred, was getting ready to pounce upon the rear and flank
of the unsuspecting Americans. I should not forget to say that while the
Shoshones were charging the enemy on one flank, the Crows, led by Major
George M. Randall, were briskly attacking them on the other; the latter
movement had been ordered by Crook in person and executed in such a bold
and decisive manner as to convince the enemy that, no matter what their
numbers were, our troops and scouts were anxious to come to hand-to-hand
encounters with them. This was really the turning-point of the Rosebud
fight for a number of reasons: the main attack had been met and broken,
and we had gained a key-point enabling the holder to survey the whole
field and realize the strength and intentions of the enemy. The loss of
the Sioux at this place was considerable both in warriors and ponies; we
were at one moment close enough to them to hit them with clubs or “coup”
sticks, and to inflict considerable damage, but not strong enough to
keep them from getting away with their dead and wounded. A number of our
own men were also hurt, some of them quite seriously. I may mention a
young trumpeter—Elmer A. Snow, of Company M, Third Cavalry—who went in
on the charge with the Shoshones, one of the few white men with them; he
displayed noticeable gallantry, and was desperately wounded in both
arms, which were crippled for life; his escape from the midst of the
enemy was a remarkable thing.
I did not learn until nightfall that at the same time they made the
charge just spoken of; the enemy had also rushed down through a ravine
on our left and rear, reaching the spring alongside of which I had been
seated with General Crook at the moment the first shots were heard, and
where I had jotted down the first lines of the notes from which the
above condensed account of the fight has been taken. At that spring they
came upon a young Shoshone boy, not yet attained to years of manhood,
and shot him through the back and killed him, taking his scalp from the
nape of the neck to the forehead, leaving his entire skull ghastly and
white. It was the boy’s first battle, and when the skirmishing began in
earnest he asked permission of his chief to go back to the spring and
decorate himself with face-paint, which was already plastered over one
cheek, and his medicine song was half done, when he received the fatal
shot.
Crook sent orders for all troops to fall back until the line should be
complete; some of the detachments had ventured out too far, and our
extended line was too weak to withstand a determined attack in force.
Burt and Burroughs were sent with their companies of the Ninth Infantry
to drive back the force which was congregating in the rear of Royall’s
command, which was the body of troops seen from the hill crest almost
surrounded by the foe. Tom Moore with his sharpshooters from the
pack-train, and several of the Montana miners who had kept along with
the troops for the sake of a row of some kind with the natives, were
ordered to get into a shelf of rocks four hundred yards out on our front
and pick off as many of the hostile chiefs as possible and also to make
the best impression upon the flanks of any charging parties which might
attempt to pass on either side of that promontory. Moore worried the
Indians so much that they tried to cut off him and his insignificant
band. It was one of the ridiculous episodes of the day to watch those
well-meaning young warriors charging at full speed across the open space
commanded by Moore’s position; not a shot was fired, and beyond taking
an extra chew of tobacco, I do not remember that any of the party did
anything to show that he cared a continental whether the enemy came or
stayed. When those deadly rifles, sighted by men who had no idea what
the word “nerves” meant, belched their storm of lead in among the braves
and their ponies, it did not take more than seven seconds for the former
to conclude that home, sweet home was a good enough place for them.
While the infantry were moving down to close the gap on Royall’s right,
and Tom Moore was amusing himself in the rocks, Crook ordered Mills with
five companies to move out on our right and make a demonstration down
stream, intending to get ready for a forward movement with the whole
command. Mills moved out promptly, the enemy falling back on all sides
and keeping just out of fair range. I went with Mills, having returned
from seeing how Tom Moore was getting along, and can recall how deeply
impressed we all were by what we then took to be trails made by
buffaloes going down stream, but which we afterwards learned had been
made by the thousands of ponies belonging to the immense force of the
enemy here assembled. We descended into a measly-looking place: a cañon
with straight walls of sandstone, having on projecting knobs an
occasional scrub pine or cedar; it was the locality where the savages
had planned to entrap the troops, or a large part of them, and wipe them
out by closing in upon their rear. At the head of that column rode two
men who have since made their mark in far different spheres: John F.
Finerty, who has represented one of the Illinois districts in Congress;
and Frederick Schwatka, noted as a bold and successful Arctic explorer.
Crook recalled our party from the cañon before we had gone too far, but
not before Mills had detected the massing of forces to cut him off. Our
return was by another route, across the high hills and rocky places,
which would enable us to hold our own against any numbers until
assistance came. Crook next ordered an advance of our whole line, and
the Sioux fell back and left us in undisputed possession of the field.
Our total loss was fifty-seven, killed or wounded—some of the latter
only slightly. The heaviest punishment had been inflicted upon the Third
Cavalry, in Royall’s column, that regiment meeting with a total loss of
nine killed and fifteen wounded, while the Second Cavalry had two
wounded, and the Fourth Infantry three wounded. In addition to this were
the killed and wounded among the scouts, and a number of wounds which
the men cared for themselves, as they saw that the medical staff was
taxed to the utmost. One of our worst wounded was Colonel Guy V. Henry,
Third Cavalry, who was at first believed to have lost both eyes and to
have been marked for death; but, thanks to good nursing, a wiry frame,
and strong vitality, he has since recovered vision and some part of his
former physical powers. The officers who served on Crook’s staff that
day had close calls, and among others Bubb and Nickerson came very near
falling into the hands of the enemy. Colonel Royall’s staff officers,
Lemly and Foster, were greatly exposed, as were Henry Vroom, Reynolds,
and others of that part of the command. General Crook’s horse was shot
from under him, and there were few, if any, officers or soldiers, facing
the strength of the Sioux and Cheyennes at the Rosebud, who did not have
some incident of a personal nature by which to impress the affair upon
their memories for the rest of their lives.
The enemy’s loss was never known. Our scouts got thirteen scalps, but
the warriors, the moment they were badly wounded, would ride back from
the line or be led away by comrades, so that we then believed that their
total loss was much more severe. The behavior of Shoshones and Crows was
excellent. The chief of the Shoshones appeared to great advantage,
mounted on a fiery pony, he himself naked to the waist and wearing one
of the gorgeous head-dresses of eagle feathers sweeping far along the
ground behind his pony’s tail. The Crow chief, “Medicine Crow,” looked
like a devil in his war-bonnet of feathers, fur, and buffalo horns.
We had pursued the enemy for seven miles, and had held the field of
battle, without the slightest resistance on the side of the Sioux and
Cheyennes. It had been a field of their own choosing, and the attack had
been intended as a surprise and, if possible, to lead into an ambuscade
also; but in all they had been frustrated and driven off, and did not
attempt to return or to annoy us during the night. As we had nothing but
the clothing each wore and the remains of the four days’ rations with
which we had started, we had no other resource but to make our way back
to the wagon trains with the wounded. That night was an unquiet and busy
time for everybody. The Shoshones caterwauled and lamented the death of
the young warrior whose life had been ended and whose bare skull still
gleamed from the side of the spring where he fell. About midnight they
buried him, along with our own dead, for whose sepulture a deep trench
was dug in the bank of the Rosebud near the water line, the bodies laid
in a row, covered with stones, mud, and earth packed down, and a great
fire kindled on top and allowed to burn all night. When we broke camp
the next morning the entire command marched over the graves, so as to
obliterate every trace and prevent prowling savages from exhuming the
corpses and scalping them.
A rough shelter of boughs and branches had been erected for the wounded,
and our medical officers, Hartsuff, Patzki, and Stevens, labored all
night, assisted by Lieutenant Schwatka, who had taken a course of
lectures at Bellevue Hospital, New York. The Shoshones crept out during
the night and cut to pieces the two Sioux bodies within reach; this was
in revenge for their own dead, and because the enemy had cut one of our
men to pieces during the fight, in which they made free use of their
lances, and of a kind of tomahawk, with a handle eight feet long, which
they used on horseback.
June 18, 1876, we were turned out of our blankets at three o’clock in
the morning, and sat down to eat on the ground a breakfast of hard-tack,
coffee, and fried bacon. The sky was an immaculate blue, and the ground
was covered with a hard frost, which made every one shiver. The animals
had rested, and the wounded were reported by Surgeon Hartsuff to be
doing as well “as could be expected.” “Travois” were constructed of
Cottonwood and willow branches, held together by ropes and rawhide, and
to care for each of these six men were detailed. As we were moving off,
our scouts discerned three or four Sioux riding down to the
battle-field, upon reaching which they dismounted, sat down, and bowed
their heads; we could not tell through glasses what they were doing, but
the Shoshones and Crows said that they were weeping for their dead. They
were not fired upon or molested in any way. We pushed up the Rosebud,
keeping mainly on its western bank, and doing our best to select a good
trail along which the wounded might be dragged with least jolting. Crook
wished to keep well to the south so as to get farther into the Big Horn
range, and avoid much of the deep water of the streams flowing into
Tongue River, which might prove too swift and dangerous for the wounded
men in the “travois.” In avoiding Scylla, we ran upon Charybdis: we
escaped much of the deep water, although not all of it, but encountered
much trouble from the countless ravines and gullies which cut the flanks
of the range in every direction.
The column halted for an hour at the conical hill, crested with pine,
which marks the divide between the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass,—a
tributary of the Little Big Horn,—the spot where our Crow guides claimed
that their tribe had whipped and almost exterminated a band of the
Blackfeet Sioux. Our horses were allowed to graze until the rear-guard
had caught up, with the wounded men under its care. The Crows had a
scalp dance, holding aloft on poles and lances the lank, black locks of
the Sioux and Cheyennes killed in the fight of the day before, and one
killed that very morning. It seems that as the Crows were riding along
the trail off to the right of the command, they heard some one calling,
“Mini! Mini!” which is the Dakota term for water; it was a Cheyenne
whose eyes had been shot out in the beginning of the battle, and who had
crawled to a place of concealment in the rocks, and now hearing the
Crows talk as they rode along addressed them in Sioux, thinking them to
be the latter. The Crows cut him limb from limb and ripped off his
scalp. The rear-guard reported having had a hard time getting along with
the wounded on account of the great number of gullies already mentioned;
great assistance had been rendered in this severe duty by Sergeant
Warfield, Troop “F,” Third Cavalry, an old Arizona veteran, as well as
by Tom Moore and his band of packers. So far as scenery was concerned,
the most critical would have been pleased with that section of our
national domain, the elysium of the hunter, the home of the bear, the
elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and buffalo; the carcasses of the
last-named lined the trail, and the skulls and bones whitened the
hill-sides. The march of the day was a little over twenty-two miles, and
ended upon one of the tributaries of the Tongue, where we bivouacked and
passed the night in some discomfort on account of the excessive cold
which drove us from our scanty covering shortly after midnight. The
Crows left during the night, promising to resume the campaign with
others of their tribe, and to meet us somewhere on the Tongue or Goose
Creek.
June 19 found us back at our wagon-train, which Major Furey had
converted into a fortress, placed on a tongue of land, surrounded on
three sides by deep, swift-flowing water, and on the neck by a line of
breastworks commanding all approaches. Ropes and chains had been
stretched from wheel to wheel, so that even if any of the enemy did
succeed in slipping inside, the stock could not be run out. Furey had
not allowed his little garrison to remain inside the intrenchments: he
had insisted upon some of them going out daily to scrutinize the country
and to hunt for fresh meat; the carcasses of six buffaloes and three elk
attested the execution of his orders. Furey’s force consisted of no less
than eighty packers and one hundred and ten teamsters, besides sick and
disabled left behind. One of his assistants was Mr. John Mott MacMahon,
the same man who as a sergeant in the Third Cavalry had been by the side
of Lieutenant Cushing at the moment he was killed by the Chiricahua
Apaches in Arizona. After caring for the wounded and the animals, every
one splashed in the refreshing current; the heat of the afternoon became
almost unbearable, the thermometer indicating 103° Fahrenheit. Lemons,
limes, lime juice, and citric acid, of each of which there was a small
supply, were hunted up and used for making a glass of lemonade for the
people in the rustic hospital.
June 21, Crook sent the wounded back to Fort Fetterman, placing them in
wagons spread with fresh grass; Major Furey was sent back to obtain
additional supplies; the escort, consisting of one company from the
Ninth and one from the Fourth Infantry, was commanded by Colonel
Chambers, with whom were the following officers: Munson and Capron of
the Ninth, Luhn and Seton of the Fourth. Mr. MacMillan, the
correspondent of the _Inter-Ocean_ of Chicago, also accompanied the
party; he had been especially energetic in obtaining all data referring
to the campaign, and had shown that he had as much pluck as any officer
or soldier in the column, but his strength was not equal to the hard
marching and climbing, coupled with the violent alternations of heat and
cold, rain and shine, to which we were subjected. The Shoshones also
left for their own country, going across the Big Horn range due west;
after having a big scalp dance with their own people they would return;
for the same reason, the Crows had rejoined their tribe. Five of the
Shoshones remained in camp, to act in any needed capacity until the
return of their warriors. The care taken of the Shoshone wounded pleased
me very much, and I saw that the “medicine men” knew how to make a fair
article of splint from the twigs of the willow, and that they depended
upon such appliances in cases of fracture fully as much as they did upon
the singing which took up so much of their time, and was so obnoxious to
the unfortunate whites whose tents were nearest.
In going home across the mountains to the Wind River the Crows took one
of their number who had been badly wounded in the thigh. Why he insisted
upon going back to his own home I do not know; perhaps the sufferer
really did not know himself, but disliked being separated from his
comrades. A splint was adjusted to the fractured limb, and the patient
was seated upon an easy cushion instead of a saddle. Everything went
well until after crossing the Big Horn Mountains, when the party ran in
upon a band of Sioux raiders or spies in strong force. The Crows were
hailed by some of the Sioux, but managed to answer a few words in that
language, and then struck out as fast as ponies would carry them to get
beyond reach of their enemies. They were afraid of leaving a trail, and
for that reason followed along the current of all the mountain streams,
swollen at that season by rains and melting snows, fretting into foam
against impeding boulders and crossed and recrossed by interlacing
branches of fallen timber. Through and over or under, as the case might
be, the frightened Crows made their way, indifferent to the agony of the
wounded companion, for whose safety only they cared, but to whose moans
they were utterly irresponsive. This story we learned upon the return of
the Shoshones.
To be obliged to await the train with supplies was a serious annoyance,
but nothing better could be done. We had ceded to the Sioux by the
treaty of 1867 all the country from the Missouri to the Big Horn,
destroying the posts which had afforded protection to the overland route
into Montana, and were now feeling the loss of just such depots of
supply as those posts would have been. It was patent to every one that
not hundreds, as had been reported, but thousands of Sioux and Cheyennes
were in hostility and absent from the agencies, and that, if the war was
to be prosecuted with vigor, some depots must be established at an
eligible location like the head of Tongue River, old Fort Reno, or other
point in that vicinity; another in the Black Hills; and still another at
some favorable point on the Yellowstone, preferably the mouth of Tongue
River. Such, at least, was the recommendation made by General Crook, and
posts at or near all the sites indicated were in time established and
are still maintained. The merits of Tongue River and its tributaries as
great trout streams were not long without proper recognition at the
hands of our anglers. Under the influence of the warm weather the fish
had begun to bite voraciously, in spite of the fact that there were
always squads of men bathing in the limpid waters, or mules slaking
their thirst. The first afternoon ninety-five were caught and brought
into camp, where they were soon broiling on the coals or frying in pans.
None of them were large, but all were “pan” fish, delicious to the
taste. While the sun was shining we were annoyed by swarms of green and
black flies, which disappeared with the coming of night and its
refreshingly cool breezes.
June 23, Lieutenant Schuyler, Fifth Cavalry, reported at headquarters
for duty as aide-de-camp to General Crook. He had been four days making
the trip out from Fort Fetterman, travelling with the two couriers who
brought our mail. At old Fort Reno they had stumbled upon a war party of
Sioux, but were not discovered, and hid in the rocks until the darkness
of night enabled them to resume their journey at a gallop, which never
stopped for more than forty miles. They brought news that the Fifth
Cavalry was at Red Cloud Agency; that five commissioners were to be
appointed to confer with the Sioux; and that Rutherford B. Hayes, of
Ohio, had been nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency. General
Hayes had commanded a brigade under General Crook in the Army of West
Virginia during the War of the Rebellion. Crook spoke of his former
subordinate in the warmest and most affectionate manner, instancing
several battles in which Hayes had displayed exceptional courage, and
proved himself to be, to use Crook’s words, “as brave a man as ever wore
a shoulder-strap.”
My note-books about this time seem to be almost the chronicle of a
sporting club, so filled are they with the numbers of trout brought by
different fishermen into camp; all fishers did not stop at my tent, and
I do not pretend to have preserved accurate figures, much being left
unrecorded. Mills started in with a record of over one hundred caught by
himself and two soldiers in one short afternoon. On the 28th of June the
same party has another record of one hundred and forty-six. On the 29th
of same month Bubb is credited with fifty-five during the afternoon,
while the total brought into camp during the 28th ran over five hundred.
General Crook started out to catch a mess, but met with poor luck. He
saw bear tracks and followed them, bringing in a good-sized “cinnamon,”
so it was agreed not to refer to his small number of trout. Buffalo and
elk meat were both plenty, and with the trout kept the men well fed.
The cavalry companies each morning were exercised at a walk, trot, and
gallop. In the afternoon the soldiers were allowed to roam about the
country in small parties, hunting and seeing what they could see. They
were all the better for the exercise, and acted as so many additional
videttes. The packers organized a mule race, which absorbed all
interest. It was estimated by conservative judges that fully five
dollars had changed hands in ten-cent bets. Up to the end of June no
news of any kind, from any source excepting Crow Indians, had been
received of General Terry and his command, and much comment, not unmixed
with uneasiness, was occasioned thereby.