soldier was reading off our names from a paper he had in his hands.
“The same six are to go and scout again,” he said.
Another Cheyenne was added to us. The seven of us got our horses. We
were about to go when an Ogallala rode into camp. He had come from
the agency. We wondered what was his errand. We waited to find out.
He went to Long Yellow Neck’s tent. Pretty soon everybody was saying:
“All of the scouts and soldiers go back to Pine Ridge.”
I do not know how the others felt, but my own heart fluttered in
pleasure. I did not want then to fight any Sioux. We were only a
short time in getting all of the camp ready to move. When we were
about to start on our way, Long Yellow Neck said: “Now, I want
someone to stay behind and watch, to see if any of the Sioux are
following us.” He asked if I would stay. I said, “No, I do not want
to stay behind.” He asked Bad Horses, Foolish Man, White Bird, Sweet
Grass and others. Some Ogallalas were asked. Everybody asked said,
“No.” While this was going on, three of the Ogallalas slipped away
afoot, leaving their three horses. Long Yellow Neck told us he had
thought all of us were brave men, but he had learned now that we were
not brave. Finally I said: “I will stay behind and watch.” Little
Thunder, an Ogallala, then said he would stay with me.
We two caught the three horses left by the Ogallalas who had run away
afoot. Little Thunder said: “I am hungry.” I too was hungry, but
we had no food. We drove the three horses ahead of us and hurried
forward. Soon we caught up with the scouts and soldiers. “Give us
something to eat,” we asked. A soldier took a big box of crackers
from a pack mule and gave it to us. He gave us also plenty of bread.
We ate until we were full up, and then we put what was left upon one
of the three horses we had been driving. We led the three now and
followed on far behind the other people.
The three Ogallalas afoot came to us. They asked us for bread and
crackers. “If you will stay with us we will give you some,” we told
them. They agreed. We gave them all they wanted. We let them have
their horses. They rode with us all of the remainder of the way to
the agency, helping us in watching back to see if any Sioux were
following. We kept ourselves far behind. None of us saw any of the
bad Indians anywhere along the way. When we rode into the agency
camp, all of the soldiers and scouts were already there. We told Long
Yellow Neck that we had not seen any Sioux following us. He said:
“Good. Now you may sleep.”
During the time we were scouting for the soldiers at Pine Ridge I got
a Sioux head dress. It was a cap of some kind of skin having at its
front a buffalo horn. I got it while the soldiers and scouts were
camped on lower Wounded Knee creek. I was wearing it as I rode into
camp. A soldier Sergeant said to me: “I wish you would give that to
me.” “What would you give to me?” I asked him. “Five dollars,” he
said. He gave me the five dollars and I gave him the buffalo horn
head dress.
About four hundred Cheyennes came with us when we left Pine Ridge to
return to Fort Keogh. These were people of ours who had fled from the
South with Little Wolf and Dull Knife, and who had been staying since
then among the Ogallalas on the Pine Ridge reservation. But now they
were allowed to come and join the main body of Cheyennes in Montana.
A few Cheyennes still remained with the Ogallalas, but this movement
of the big band brought together what was considered to be the entire
Northern Cheyenne tribe. An officer known to us as Small Chief[56]
brought us back.
Cheyenne visitors from the Rosebud and Tongue river lands were camped
at all times near Fort Keogh. We scouts who had families kept lodges
for them among the visiting campers. Relatives and friends were
shifting constantly to or from the fort, Miles City and our Cheyenne
country seventy miles south of us. I had my food with the other
scouts, from the soldier supplies and at our eating room at the fort.
But I spent much of my time at the home lodge. One day I saw the old
man Little Wolf at the camp. I said to my wife:
“I see Little Wolf. He is my relative. One of his wives is a sister
of my father. I think I ought to invite him to eat at our lodge.”
“I am glad to hear you say that,” she answered me. “Tell him to come
now.” Right away she began to prepare bread and meat and coffee.
When I brought Little Wolf I found he was partly drunk. He fumbled
the food as he sat and ate. He ate freely, as though he were very
hungry. He kept quiet and kept looking downward during all of the
time. When he was done eating, I told him of my sympathy with him in
his great trouble. He then told me all about the affair. “I loved the
young man and all of his people,” he said. “I was crazy when I shot
him.” At this time of conversation, Little Wolf was about seventy
years old.
This man gave away all of his horses after he had been put out of
his position as our greatest chief. After that, all of his traveling
was done afoot. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes one or both of
his wives accompanied him. They took along whatever packs they could
carry, and they slept in temporary shelters or with no shelter. He
went at times to visit the Crows. He visited also the Arapahoes, in
Wyoming, walking two hundred miles or more and back again. He died in
1904, at the age of eighty-three years. His wives and close friends
stood his dead body upright on a high hill overlooking the Rosebud
valley, where many Cheyennes had their reservation homes. A great
heap of stones was built up to enclose him thus standing upright.
Twenty-four years later, his bones were brought to the agency
cemetery and put into a grave there. Bird,[57] the old-time Indian
story white man who lives in New York, had a stone put at the head of
this agency grave.
Even the nearest relatives of Famished Elk never kept bad hearts
against Little Wolf. At different times I have heard talk of him from
Bald Eagle, a brother of the young man killed. Bald Eagle said:
“Little Wolf did not kill my brother. It was the white man whisky
that did it.”
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Lieutenant Casey.
[56] Lieutenant McEniney.
[57] Dr. George Bird Grinnell, the author.
XV
_A Tamed Old Man._
Thirty years after the great battle against Custer, there was a
gathering of Indians and white people at the Little Bighorn. Besides
a few of our people, there were Crows, Sioux, Arapahoes, Shoshones,
Nez Perces, Kiowas, Piegans, Gros Ventres and Paiutes, these last
known to us as Fish-Eaters.
All Cheyennes who had fought in the battle were asked to come and
join the other Indians and the white people in a peace feast. The
place is only two short days of wagon traveling from our Lame Deer
agency. But only a few Cheyennes would go there for the gathering.
Among us there was much of such talk as: “Soldiers will be there.
Seeing us might anger them so much as to make them want to kill
us.”[58] Seven of us decided to go. These were the younger Chief
Little Wolf, White Elk, Bobtail Horse, Two Moons, Buffalo Calf,
myself Wooden Leg, and Brave Bear, a Southern Cheyenne. Four of the
seven men took along their wives and their lodges.
In a big council lodge of the Crows a white man medicine doctor[59]
asked different ones to tell something of the great battle. He said
he had heard the white people say that Two Moons was a great warrior
there, and he asked Two Moons to make a speech. This Cheyenne stood
up and talked a long time. He said he had been the big chief of all
the Cheyennes during the fight. He filled the ears of his hearers
with lots of other lies, while the rest of us laughed among ourselves
about what he was saying. Other Cheyennes and Sioux were asked to get
up and talk, but none of them would do so.
The medicine doctor looked at my cousin, the younger Chief Little
Wolf, and asked him:
“Were you at the Custer battle?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in the first fight above the camps?”
“No.”
“Who took the soldier horses?”
“The Sioux took most of them. The Cheyennes got a few. There were
many Sioux and only a few Cheyennes in the fight.”
“Who took the soldier guns?”
“The same--the Sioux got many, the Cheyennes got a few.”
“Did you see Custer, either before or after he was killed?”
“I do not know. Nobody knew anything about Custer.”
“Our soldiers afterward could not find the bodies of all the white
men killed. What became of them?”
“I do not know.”
“Were any of them taken away and hidden?”
“I think not, but I do not know.”
“Were any of them, either dead or alive, taken to the camps?”
“I think not. I never heard of any taken there.”
“Tell me all about what you saw and what you did at the battle.”
But Little Wolf would not tell. I said to him: “Go on, tell the
truth, but do not talk like Two Moons did.” He was afraid, though.
There were many white people and soldiers all around us, and he
feared they might become angry.
White Elk, Bobtail Horse, Two Moons, Brave Bear, Buffalo Calf and the
Sioux men all answered the same kind of questions in the same way.
But none of them except Two Moons would say anything further about
the fight. Bobtail Horse was either nervous or scared, so he got
tangled a little. The doctor asked him the same kind of questions.
Then he asked:
“How old are you?”
Bobtail Horse sat there as though he did not understand what was
being asked. Pretty soon he began to count on his fingers. He counted
them over and over. Finally he said: “I do not know.” All of us knew
exactly one another’s age, but none of us interfered to help him
in answering the question. The doctor did not ask him any further
questions.
In my turn at the talking I was asked the same kind of questions:
“Wooden Leg, were you in the Custer battle?”
“Yes, I was there.”
“Were you in the first fight up above the camps?”
“Yes.”
“Good. How old were you at that time?”
“Eighteen winters.”
“How old are you now?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Good. Tell me where you were during all of the time. Tell me what
you saw and what you did.”
I told him. It happened I was the only Indian at this gathering who
had been in the first fight with what the white people call the
Reno soldiers. It began with my brother and I being awakened by the
shooting and our running to get our horses. I followed my own doings
up the valley and into the chase after the soldiers through the river
and up the hill. I showed how I had taken a rifle from a soldier. I
described the killing of the Corn Indian and my taking his gun. The
doctor wrote on a piece of paper as I talked. My cousin Little Wolf
interrupted me: “You tell too much. Stop talking.”
But I did not stop. It appeared none of the soldiers nor other white
people listening to me were angry. This medicine doctor looked to
me like a good man, one who understood that we had killed soldiers
who had come to kill us. I described to him the way I had helped
to kill the soldier getting water at the river. I told about the
Indians surrounding the Custer soldiers on the long ridge and about
many things that happened there. The doctor still was writing on the
paper. He broke in with some questions and I answered each one as
straight as I knew how to answer it. Little Wolf said to me: “Tell
him Custer killed himself, and see if he becomes angry.” But I did
not say anything about that. Other Indians, at other times, had tried
to tell of the soldiers killing themselves, but the white people
listening always became angry and said the Indians were liars, so I
thought it best to keep quiet. Other questions came:
“Did you see Custer?”
“I suppose I did, but I do not know. I think that no Indians there
knew anything about him being with the soldiers.”
“Did you see soldiers having special marks on the shoulders of their
coats?”
“Yes, I noticed some of them.”
“Did you know they were chiefs among the soldiers?”
“I did not know then, but I know now.”
“How many soldiers did you see having the markings on the shoulders?”
“I do not know. When we were fighting them they all looked alike to
us, the same as a herd of buffalo.”
“How many Indians were killed?”
I told him the number of dead Cheyennes, Uncpapas and others.
“Good,” he said, and he wrote the numbers on his paper.
The Cheyennes and some other Indians went with a few soldiers to Fort
Custer, not far from the place where had been the great battle. The
soldier officers at the fort shook hands with all of us. We gathered
together, and some friendly speeches were made by officers and by
Indians. All I said there was: “A long time ago we were enemies.
Today we are friends.” The medicine doctor rode beside me as we were
going to and from the fort. We made sign-talk together along the way.
I showed him the only place where the Cheyenne tribe ever camped west
of the Bighorn river. From the top of the Fort Custer hill we could
see the place, just across from the mouth of the Little Bighorn.
Many pictures were made of Cheyennes, Sioux, Nez Perces and Crows.
Some were made on the valley and by the river where had been the
first fight, others were made on the battle ridge and at its northern
side. Pictures were made at night when the Indians were dancing. The
bright flashes scared some of the Indians, but soon it was learned
what was being done.
Wagons came loaded with rations. We were given plenty of beef, bacon,
bread, crackers, coffee, sugar, meat in cans, and other food. We were
on the valley by the river, where had been the fight with the Reno
soldiers. A soldier officer rode about, saying:
“All Indians who were in the Custer battle get rations. No others are
to be given any food.”
But when the distribution began, lots of Crows came running. They
crowded forward saying:
“Oh, meat! Give some to us.”
Their actions made me angry. I let loose my tongue:
“You--Crows--you are like children. All Crows are babies. You are not
brave. You never helped us to fight against the white people. You
helped them in fighting against us. You were afraid, so you joined
yourselves to the soldiers. You are not Indians.”
Bobtail Horse said to me: “Ssh, keep your temper.” My cousin Little
Wolf said: “You are doing right. Tell them what we think of them.”
The Crows stopped asking for the rations. All of them went back and
kept quiet.
Besides the rations given to us every day, each of us was paid three
dollars at the end of each day, for four days. When the gathering
ended and we were getting ready to go back to our reservation, we
were given plenty of extra food to eat along the way. Some of it was
eaten by ourselves and our friends after we arrived home.
Another great gathering of whites and Indians assembled there fifty
years after the battle. All of the Cheyennes, particularly the men
who had been in the battle, were invited to go. Many lodges of our
people traveled over the divide to that place and camped there, but
I stayed at my home. Two times I was called to our Ashland district
telephone for a talk from the agency. “We want you to go to the
great peace celebration,” I was told. At each time of this talking
I made reply: “I will think about it.” The more I thought about it,
the more I felt like staying away. The battlefield is on the present
Crow Indian reservation. I do not want to go upon their lands. I
have made up my mind never again to go to any place where I might be
called upon to shake hands with a Crow.
The younger Chief Little Wolf, my cousin, had the boyhood name Thorny
Tree. His mother was a sister of my father and of the older Little
Wolf’s first wife. The young nephew Thorny Tree showed special
bravery at a battle with the Shoshones. The old chief was so pleased
at this manly conduct of his wife’s relative that he told the young
warrior:
“I give you my name. From this day on you shall be Little Wolf.”
This younger man stayed with the Cheyennes at the Pine Ridge
reservation, after the peaceful times came. Among them he was made a
tribal chief. When the band of them were moved to our Tongue River
reservation he was made a chief of the entire tribe. A few years
later he was accepted as the principal old man chief. He told me that
during the years he was living at Pine Ridge he often was mistaken
for the same Little Wolf who led the Cheyennes in their flight from
the South. In fact, he was with that band of fleeing Cheyennes, but
he joined that group of them who went to Pine Ridge. The older Little
Wolf and his last followers came to Powder river and on to Fort
Keogh. The old chief never was at Pine Ridge after that time.
My cousin told me that white people often embarrassed him also in
supposing him to have been famed as Chief Little Wolf at the Custer
battle. In this case, the older man was not in the fight, he and a
small band of Cheyennes having followed on the trail of the soldiers
and having arrived at the camps after the white men all had been
killed. The younger Little Wolf was already there with the great
tribal assemblage. The family lodge of his father, Big Left Hand, was
near to my own father’s family lodge. This last Chief Little Wolf, my
cousin, died in 1927, at the age of 76 years.
I visited the Arapahoes and the Shoshones, in Wyoming, several years
ago. Eight Cheyenne men, some of us with our wives and our tepees
went on this trip. I had a Custer gun, borrowed from a Cheyenne
who kept it in hiding. We saw a big band of elk in a valley of the
Bighorn mountains. I was chosen to lead the hunters in getting
ourselves close to them. I said: “Yes, I will lead, but you others
must stay back until I tell you it is time for all to show themselves
and begin to shoot.” As we got well toward the elk band they suddenly
ran away into a forest. I soon learned that one of our men had pushed
on ahead and frightened them. “You are foolish,” was all I could say
to him. We saw trails of other elk, plenty of them, but we did not
see any others of the elk themselves.
High up on the top of a rocky bluff we saw a bighorn, what the white
people call a mountain sheep. Different ones of us shot at it and
missed it. Another man and I then shot, at the same moment. The
animal tumbled down the mountain. When we got to it we found that
both of our bullets had struck the front part of its body. We enjoyed
that meat. It was the first bighorn meat I had eaten for several
years.
Nine sleeps we made on our way to the reservation where we were
going. We stopped with the Arapahoes, good friends of the Cheyennes
all during the old times. There had been friendly intermarriages
between our people and theirs. There was much of inquiring about
Arapahoes living among us on our reservation. These people made gifts
to us. They could not give much, because they were as poor as the
Cheyennes.
We moved camp for a visit with the Shoshones. In the old times they
and the Cheyennes were constantly on terms of enmity. But now they
received us cordially. From all sides came, “How,” “How,” “How.”
An old chief of theirs went riding among them and calling out:
“Everybody come and shake hands with our guests, the Cheyennes. Let
them know we are glad they came to visit us.”
Men, women, old people, boys, girls, all moved along past our group
and greeted us with handshakes. They brought food. There were big
piles of all kinds of things the Indians like to eat. After a while,
they began to bring horses. One after another they kept giving these
to us. Every Cheyenne among us had more horses than he could lead,
when we parted from the Shoshones. I had nine of them presented to
me. When we got back among our own people at home we were the richest
Indians in our tribe. We had horses to give away to our friends. All
of the Cheyennes agreed that the Shoshones have good hearts, that
they are a good people.
An Arickaree Indian visited me at my place on Tongue river a few
years ago. We talked of the Custer battle. He told me one of their
chiefs had been killed there. He described him. The special features
of his war clothing were a fine buckskin shirt and a necklace made of
bear claws. I described to him the Arickaree I had helped to kill.
This one had on a buckskin shirt. An eagle feather stood up from his
back hair. A red string tied his hair together behind. If he had
a bear-claw necklace I did not see it. I did not see this kind of
necklace on any of the three Arickarees I saw dead. It may be one of
the other two had one and it had been taken from him before I saw the
dead body.
I went to Washington when I was fifty-five years old. Little Wolf,
Two Moons and Black Wolf were old men with me as delegates to speak
for our tribe. Three younger men who could talk the white man
language went with us. They were Willis Rowland, Ben Shoulderblade
and Milton Little White Man. At a meeting with white men, there were
some speeches made. Two Moons did most of the talking for us. The
rest of us did not care to make any long talks. Two Moons told these
people he was a big chief leading all of the Cheyennes at the Custer
battle. None of us said anything in dispute of him at the meeting,
but when we got away to ourselves Black Wolf said to him: “You are
the biggest liar in the whole Cheyenne tribe.” Two Moons laughed and
replied: “I think it is not wrong to tell lies to white people.”
The same white man medicine doctor who had been at the gathering by
the Little Bighorn was in Washington. He was good to us, helping us
to see the strange sights in the big city. He could make good signs,
so he and I talked much together. We went up to the top of a very
tall stone he said was Washington’s monument. We rode up to the top
and walked a long and winding stairway to the bottom.
[Illustration: Photo by Hogan
WOODEN LEG, HIS WIFE AND THEIR DAUGHTER, IN 1914]
A big ship took us Cheyennes out upon the great water. All of us
became sick and vomited. “It is the same as whisky,” we said to each
other. The ship took us to New York. There we visited our friend
Bird, the old-time Indian story white man. The white man medicine
doctor was traveling with us. He went with us on to Philadelphia,
where we visited the biggest trader store I ever saw. In a theater
in this city we sat upon a platform before a great crowd of white
people. I was asked to make a speech. I talked, but only for a short
time. One of our interpreters repeated to them what I said. This
visit to the great cities was at some time during the spring (1913),
in March or April, I believe.
I lied to one man in New York. He asked me many questions. For a
while I answered them as best I could. But it began to appear he was
trying to show the old-time Indians as being low and mean people. I
had told him a great deal about the fighting, about the taking of
horses and saddles and guns, about other matters of this kind. I
found I did not like him, so I decided to end our talk.
“What time of day was it when all of the Custer soldiers had been
killed?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered him.
“Did the Indians keep the money they took from the soldiers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you get any of it?”
“I don’t know.”
After these answers he quit talking to me and went away.
The medicine doctor friend came several years afterward from
Washington to our Lame Deer agency. I saw and talked with him here. I
still keep a big flag he gave to me. I liked him. He was a good man,
one having a heart good toward Indians.
The guns taken by Cheyennes from the Custer soldiers were given up or
had been thrown away by those of our people who surrendered at the
White River agency. I think that all of the Sioux also had to give
their guns of all kinds to the soldiers chiefs at their reservations.
But at Fort Keogh General Miles was good to the Cheyennes. He allowed
them to keep their guns. I suppose that many Indians threw away their
Custer guns, for fear of being found out and punished for having
killed those soldiers. But the Fort Keogh Cheyennes kept theirs
hidden. A few of these have been buried with the owners who died. But
even to this day, I know of several of the Custer rifle guns hidden
among the people on our reservation. White Elk and Spotted Wolf used
to have Custer soldier six-shooters. These two men are dead. I do
not know what became of their six-shooters. The Cheyennes also have
yet some of the Custer soldier ammunition belts and saddle-bags. They
do not like to tell of having these captured war things, because
there are some white people who become angry when they talk of the
old times of warfare between the whites and the Indians.[60]