A JUNE SUNDAY.
It is a cloudless Sunday morning, the longest Sunday in that month of
longest days, warm, balmy, rose-bearing June. Only a few hours' high is
the blazing god of day, but his beams beat fiercely down on a landscape
wellnigh as arid as the Arizona our troopers knew so well. Not a breath
of air is stirring. Down in the shallow valley to the right, where the
cottonwoods are blistering beside the sandy stream-bed, a faint column
of smoke rises straight as the stem of a pine-tree until it melts into
indistinguishable air. The sandy waste goes twisting and turning in its
fringe of timber southeastward along a broad depression in the face of
the land, until twenty odd miles away it seems brought up standing by a
barrier of rugged hills that dip into the bare surface at the south, and
go rising and falling, rolling and tumbling, higher and raggeder, to the
north. All the intervening stretches are bare, tawny, sun-scorched,
except those fringing cottonwoods. All those tumbling heights are dark
and frowning through their beards of gloomy larch and pine. Black they
stand against the eastern sky, from the jagged summits at the south to
where the northernmost peak,--the Inyan Kara,--the Heengha-Kaaga of the
Sioux, stands sentinel over the sisterhood slumbering at her feet. These
are the Black Hills of Dakota, as we see them from the breaks of the
Mini Pusa, a long day's march to the west. Here to our right,
southeastward, rolls the powdery flood of the South Cheyenne, when
earlier in the season the melting snows go trickling down the
hill-sides. But to-day only in dry and waving ripples of sand can we
trace its course. If you would see the water, dig beneath the surface.
Here behind us rolls another sandy stream, dry as its Dakota name
implies,--Mini Pusa: Dry Water,--and to our right and rear is their
sandy confluence. Southward, almost to the very horizon, in waves and
rolls and ridges, bare of trees, void of color, the earth unfolds before
the eye, while, as though to relieve the strain of gazing over the
expanse so illimitable in its monotony, a blue line of cliffs and crags
stretches across the sky line for many degrees. Beyond that, out of
sight to the southeast, lies the sheltered, fertile valley of the upper
White Earth River; and there are the legal homes of thousands of the
"nation's wards," the bands of the Dakotas--Ogallalla and Brulé, led by
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. There, too, are clothed and fed and cared
for a thousand odd Cheyennes. Just over that ridge at its western end,
where it seems to blend into the general surface of upland prairie, a
faint blue peak leaps up into the heated air,--"Old Rawhide,"--the
landmark of the region. Farther off, southwestward, still another peak
rises blue and pale against the burning distance. 'Tis far across the
Platte, a good hundred miles away. Plainsmen to this day call it Larmie
in that iconoclastic slaughter of every poetic title that is their proud
characteristic. All over our grand continent it is the same. The names,
musical, sonorous, or descriptive, handed down as the heritage of the
French missionaries, the Spanish explorers, or the aboriginal owners,
are all giving way to that democratic intolerance of foreign title which
is the birthright of the free-born American. What name more grandly
descriptive could discoverer have given to the rounded, gloomy crest in
the southern sierras, bald at the crown, fringed with its circling
pines,--what better name than Monte San Matéo--Saint Matthew,--he of the
shaven poll?
Over a century the title held. Adaptive Indian, Catholic Mexican,
acceptive dragoon, one and all respected and believed in it. But then
came the miner and the cowboy, and with them the new vocabulary. Monte
San Matéo slinks in unmerited shame to hide its heralded deformity as
Baldhead Butte. What devilish inspiration impelled the Forty-Niners to
damn Monte San Pablo to go down to eternity as Bill Williams' Mountain?
Who but an iconoclast would rend the sensitive ear with such barbarities
as the _Loss Angglees_ of to-day for the deep-vowelled Los Angeles of
the last century? Who but a Yankee would swap the murky "Purgatoire" for
Picketwire, and make Zumbro River of the Rivière des Ombres of brave old
Père Marquette? And so, too, it goes through all the broad Northwest.
Indian names, beautiful in themselves even though at times
untranslatable, are tossed contemptuously aside to be replaced by the
homeliest of every-day appellations, until the modern geography of
Wyoming, Dakota, Montana, and Idaho bristles with innumerable Sage,
Boxelder, Horse, and Pine Creeks.
Mini Pusa--Dry Water--have the Dakotas called for ages the sandy stream
that twists and turns and glares in the hot sunshine down here in the
vale behind us. "Muggins's Fork," some stockman said he heard it called
a month ago. Far over there to the east--almost under the black shadow
of the hills--we see another slender thread of questionable green;
cottonwoods again, no doubt, for nothing but cottonwoods or sage-brush
or grease-wood--worse yet--will grow down in the alkaline wastes of this
Wyoming valley; and that thread or fringe betokens the existence of a
stream in the spring-time,--one that the Sioux have ever called the
Beaver, after the amphibious rodent who dammed its waters, and thereby
rescued them from a like fate at the hands of modern residents. Far to
the southeast, miles and miles away, dim and hazy through the heatwaves
of the atmosphere one can almost see another twisting string of shade,
the cottonwoods on the banks of the winding War Bonnet; at least so the
Sioux named it, after their gorgeous crown of eagle feathers, but 'twas
too polysyllabic, too poetic for the blunt-spoken frontiersman, who long
since compromised on Hat Creek. We are in the heart of the Indian
country, but the wild romance has fled. We are on dangerous ground, for
there, straight away before our eyes, broad, beaten as a race-course,
prominent as any public highway, descending the slope until lost in the
timber of the South Cheyenne, then reappearing beyond, until far in the
southeast it dwindles in perspective to a mere thread, and so dips into
the valley of the War Bonnet and Indian Creek,--there lies the broad
road from the reservations to the war-path. It is the trail over which
for years the "Wards of the Nation" have borne the paid-up prices of
their good behavior to sustain their brethren renegados in the Powder
River Country far up here to the northwest. Over this road all winter
long, all the spring-tide, and to this very week in June, arms,
ammunition, ponies, bacon, flour, coffee, sugar, clothing, and warriors
have been speeding to the hosts of Sitting Bull. The United States is
sending to-day three or four thousand men at arms, equipped and supplied
by the Department of War, to try conclusions with about twice that
number of trained warriors similarly provided for by the Department of
the Interior. It is odd, but it is a fact. Camping along the banks of
the Rawhide, the first stream on the Indian side of the Platte, the
officer in command of the advance-guard of the --th was surprised to see
a train of wagons and without apparent escort. Galloping down to their
fires, he accosted the wagon-master, who smilingly assured him that he
and his train were in no danger from the Indians,--they were bringing
them supplies. What supplies? Why, metallic cartridges, of course,
Winchester and Henry, for their magazine-rifles, don't you know? Oh,
yes. He understood well enough that they were all going out on the
war-path, but he couldn't help _that_. He was paid so much a month to
haul supplies from Sidney to Red Cloud agency, and if it happened to be
powder and lead, 'tweren't none o' his business. How much had he? Oh,
three or four hundred thousand rounds, he reckoned. To whom consigned?
Why, the trader,--the Indian store at Red Cloud, of course,--Mr. ----'s.
In speechless indignation the officer rides off and reports the matter
to the colonel, and the colonel goes down and interviews the
imperturbable "boss" with similar result, and more; for he comes back
with a shrug of the shoulders and some honest blasphemy, for which may
Heaven forgive him. (The fine inflicted by army regulations has not yet
been collected.) "We can do nothing," he says. "That fellow has his
papers straight from the Interior Department. He has been hauling
cartridges all spring." And now, here is the advance-guard of the --th
again far up on the Mini Pusa, just arrived, and that slender column of
smoke rising from among the cottonwoods tells of a tiny fire where the
men are boiling their coffee, while, miles away to the southwest, the
rising dust-clouds proclaim the coming of the regiment itself. Out on
the distant heights, on either side, other smokes are rising. Indian
signals, that say to lurking warriors far and near, "Be on your guard;
soldiers coming;" and so, here on the breaks of the Mini Pusa on this
scorching Sabbath morn, the vanguard of the --th has reached and tapped
the broad highway of Indian commerce. The laws of the nation they are
sworn to defend prohibit their interfering with the distribution of
ammunition by that same nation to the foes they are ordered to meet. The
nation is impartial: it provides friend and foe alike. The War Office
sends its cartridges to the --th through the ordnance officer,
Lieutenant X. The Indian Bureau looks after its wards through Mr. ----at
Red Cloud. And now the --th is ordered to stop those cartridges from
getting to Sitting Bull up on the Rosebud. That is what brings them here
to the Mini Pusa, and we see them now riding down in long dusty column
into the valley, heedless of the dust they make, for the Indians have
hovered on their flanks, out of sight, out of range, but _seeing_, ever
since they crossed the Platte; and here they are, "old Stannard" and
Billings with the advance, lying prone on their stomachs and searching
through their field-glasses for any signs of Indian coming from the
reservations, while with the column itself, in their battered slouch
hats and rough flannel and buckskin, bristling with cartridges and ugly
beards, burned and blistered and parched with scorching sun and winds
tempered only with alkali dust, ride our Arizona friends,--many of them
at least. Old Bucketts with his green goggles; Turner with his
melancholy face and placid ways; Raymond, stern and swart; Canker,
querulous and "nagging" with his men, but eager for any service;
Stafford, who won his troop _vice_ the noble-hearted Tanner whom we lost
among the Apaches; Wayne, who is loquacity itself whenever he can find a
listener, and who talks his patient subaltern almost deaf through the
long day marches; and Crane and Wilkins, who are a good deal together at
every halt, and consort more with Canker than other captains; and then
there is the jolly element that ever clusters around Blake, whose
spirits defy adversity, and whose merry quips and jests and boundless
distortions of fact or fancy are the joy of the regiment. With Blake
one always finds Merrill and Freeman and some of the jovial junior
captains, and, of course, the boys,--Hunter, Dana, Briggs; and here they
are on this blessed Sabbath of the Centennial June, sent up to stop Mr.
----'s cartridges, _after_ they have become the property of "Mr. Lo;"
and once a cartridge becomes Indian property, there is only one way of
stopping it. The wealth of France is inadequate to purchase of Alfred
Krupp a single gun from his shops at Essen, because his love for
Fatherland will not let him place a power in the hands of the hereditary
enemy. It takes enlightened England and free America to supply friends
and foes alike with the means to kill.
Stannard closes his glass with a grunt of dissatisfaction, and turns to
Billings. "None of those cartridges get through here _this_ day anyhow;
but how many do you suppose Mr. ---- has sent up there already?" And he
points as he speaks to the far northwest.
Under that blue dome, cloudless, glaring; under the sentinel peaks of
the Big Horn shimmering there in the distance, over the rolling divide
in that glorious upland that heaves and rolls and tosses between the
Rosebud and the swirling stream in the broad valley farther west,
another regiment--that of which we spoke, whose leader is famed in song
and story--is riding rapidly this still Sunday morning in search of Mr.
----'s cartridges. Some say the tall, blue-eyed, blond-bearded captain
who leads that beautiful troop of bays is Mr. ----'s brother. Odd! yet
how can the Indian Bureau know that Crazy Horse and Two Bears and
Kicking Mule want to buy Mr. ----'s bullets to kill his brother with?
How, indeed, should Mr. ---- know? Army officers, 'tis true, have
warned them time and again; but when were army officers' statements ever
potent in the Interior Department against the unendorsed assertion of
Crazy Horse or Kicking Mule that he only wanted to kill buffalo? Indeed,
is not Mr. ---- himself eager to go bail for the purchaser, since his
profits are so high? Over the divide, hot on the broad, beaten trail
goes the long column. How different are they from our sombre friends of
the --th, who, miles and marches away to the southeast, are dismounting
and unsaddling under the cottonwoods! Years in Arizona have robbed the
latter of all the old love for the pomp and panoply of war. There is not
a bit of finery in the command, there is hardly a vestige of uniform;
but look here, look here at the brilliance of the Seventh. Bright
guidons flutter at the head of every troop; bright chevrons, stripes,
and buttons gleam on the dress of many an officer and man; the steeds,
though worn and jaded with an almost ceaseless trot of thirty-six hours,
are spirited and beautiful; some are gayly decked. Foremost rides their
tried leader, clad from head to foot in beaded buckskin. "The Long Hair"
the Sioux still call him, though now the long hair waves not on the
breeze, and an auburn beard conceals the handsome outline of the face
all troopers know so well. Near him rides his adjutant, dressed like
himself in their favorite buckskin, so too are others among the
officers, though many wear the jaunty fatigue uniform of the cavalry,
and the rank and file are all, or nearly all, in blue. But a short way
back they have come upon the scaffolding sepulchre of Indian warriors
lately slain in battle; but a few miles ahead they see a broad valley
from which, far from south to north, a vast dust-cloud is rising, and
for this there can be but one explanation,--thousands of Indian ponies
in excited motion. Ay, scouts in advance already sight indications of
the near presence of a great Indian community, and the column resolves
itself into three, trotting in parallel lines across the treeless upland
a mile or so apart. With the northernmost, the largest, rides now the
leader of all, while between them gallop couriers carrying rapid orders.
Every face sets eagerly westward. Every heart beats high with the thrill
of coming battle. Some there are who note the immensity of the
dust-cloud, who reason silently that for miles and miles the valley
before them is covered by the scurrying herds; ten thousand ponies at
least must there be to stir up such a volume; then, how many warriors
are there to meet these seven hundred? No matter what one thinks, not a
man falters.
Far to the south the snow peaks glisten over the pine-crested range of
the Big Horn. Nearer at hand deep, dark cañons burrow in towards the
bowels of the mountains. Then from their bases leap the rolling
foot-hills, brown and bare but for the dense growth of the sun-cured
buffalo-grass. Westward, open and undulating sweeps the broad expanse of
almost level valley beyond the bluffs, close under which is curling the
fatal stream,--the "Greasy Grass" of the Dakotas. Far to the north in
the same endless waves the prairie rolls to the horizon, beyond which
lies the shallow river where the transports are toiling up-stream with
comrade soldiery. Behind the column, eastward, dip the sheltered valleys
of the Rosebud and the breaks of the Tongue among the Cheetish
Mountains; and there, not fifty miles away as the crow flies, the
soldiers of the Gray Fox, over two thousand strong, are camped, awaiting
reinforcements before renewing the attempt to advance upon these lurking
bands of Sitting Bull. Not two days' march away, on both flanks, are
four times his numbers in friends and allies; not two miles away, in his
front, are ten times his force in foemen, savage, but skilled; yet all
alone and unsupported, the Long Hair rides dauntlessly to the attack,
even though he and his well know it must be battle to the death, for
Indian warfare knows no mercy.
There be those who say the assault was rash; the speed unauthorized; the
whole effort mad as Lucan's launch of the Light Brigade at Balaclava;
but once there in view of the fatal valley, the sight is one to fire the
brain of any trooper. Galloping to a little mound to the right front,
the broad expanse lies before the leader's eyes, and far as he can see,
out to the west and northwest, the dust-cloud rises heavily over the
prairie; here and there, nearer at hand, are the scurrying ponies and,
close down by the stream, excited bands of Indians tearing down lodge
after lodge and preparing for rapid flight. But one conclusion can he
draw. They are panic-stricken, stampeded. They are "on the run" already,
and unless attacked at once can never be overhauled. They will scatter
over the face of the wild Northwest in an hour's time. He cannot see
what we know so well to-day: that only the northern limits of the great
villages are open to his gaze; that the sheltering bluffs hide from him
all the crowded lodges of the bands farthest to the south, and that
while squaws and children are indeed being hurried off to the west,
hundreds, thousands of exultant young warriors are galloping in from the
western prairies, herding the war-ponies before them. He cannot see the
scores that, rifle in hand, are rushing into the willows and cottonwoods
along the stream, eager and ready to welcome his coming; he sends
hurried orders to the leaders of the little columns on his left: "Push
ahead; cross the stream; gallop northward when you reach the western
bank, and attack that end of the village while I strike from the east."
He never dreams that behind that solid curtain of bluff Ogallalla, Sans
Arc, Uncapapa, and Blackfoot lurk in myriads. "The biggest Indian
village on the continent!" they say, he shouts to the nearest column;
but only the northern limits of it could he see. Far, far away in the
East the church-bells are ringing out their glad welcome to the
God-given day of rest. Mothers, sisters, wives, lift up a prayer for the
loved ones on the savage frontier. Aloft the sun in cloudless splendor
looks down on all. Westward press the comrade columns, until, reaching
the head of a shallow ravine that leads northwestward towards the
stream, the Long Hair spurs to the front,--Oh, those beautiful Kentucky
sorrels! Oh, those gallant, loyal hearts!--and the eager, bearded faces,
the erect, athletic forms, the fluttering guidons, one by one are lost
to view as they wind away down the coulée; one by one they disappear
from sight, from hearing, of the comrades now trotting down the bluffs
to the west. Take the last look upon them, fellows,--five fated
companies. Obedient to their leader's order, loyal, steadfast,
unmurmuring to the bitter end, they vanish once and for all from loving
eyes. Only as gashed, lifeless, mutilated forms will we ever see them
again.
Who has not read the story of the Little Horn? Why repeat it here? Who
that was there will ever forget the sight that burst upon the astonished
eyes of Reno's men when, breaking through the willows along the stream
and reaching the level bench, they saw, not five miles away to the
north, as was the first idea, but here in their very front, only long
rifle-shot away, the southern outskirts of the great Indian metropolis
that stretched away for miles to the north. God of battles! was this a
position, was this a force to be assailed by one regiment? Why linger
over it?--the half-hearted advance of the dismounted skirmish line; the
hesitating rally; then the volley from the willows; the flanking
warriors on the west; the sudden consciousness of their pitiful numbers
as against the hordes now swarming upon them; the mad rush for the
bluffs, with the yelling Indians dragging the rearmost from their steeds
and butchering them as they rode; the Henrys and Winchesters pumping
their bullets into the fleeing mass; the plunge into the seething
waters; the panting scramble up the steep and slippery banks; the
breathless halt at the crest, and then, then the backward glance at the
field and the fallen. Who will forget McIntosh, striving to rally the
rearmost, dragged from the saddle and hacked to death upon the sward?
Who will forget Benny Hodgson's brave young face,--the pet, the pride of
the whole regiment? Even the daring and devotion of his men could not
save him from the hissing lead of those savage marksmen. Then the
strained suspense, the half-hour's listening to the fierce, the awful
volleying to the north that told of a fearful struggle. The flutter of
hope that it might be the stronger battalion fighting its way through to
the relief of theirs, the weak one; the blank faces that gazed one into
another with awe-stricken inquiry as trumpet blare and rallying shout
and rattling volley receded, not approached; died away, not thundered
anew in coming triumph; the pall of certainty that fell on every man
when silence so soon reigned in the distance, and pandemonium broke out
afresh around them. Back from their bloody work, drunk with blood and
victory, came by thousands the savage warriors to swell the forces that
had driven the white soldiers to cover. Up, thank God! not an instant
too soon, came the comrades from the distant left, and Benteen and
MacDougall riding in with four full companies and the needed ammunition
gave them strength to hold out. Through the hours of fierce battle that
followed, through that dread "running the gauntlet" for water that the
wounded craved, through the stern suspense and strain of the day and
night that intervened before the rescuing forces of Terry came
cautiously up the valley, and the Sioux melted away before them, ah! how
many a time was the question asked, "What can have become of Custer?"
Far, far to the east this still Sabbath afternoon, seeking shelter from
the glare of the same blazing sun, seeking sympathy from each other's
words, seeking hope and comfort from Him who alone can aid, a little
group of women gather at the frontier fort on the banks of the Missouri.
They are the wives of the officers who that morning ride "into the
Valley of Death" with their soldier leader. Fair young matrons and
mothers, whose thoughts have little room for the glad jubilee in the
still more distant East, whose world is with that charging column. Only
a few days since there came to them the evil news that the Indians had
forced back the soldiers of the southern Department,--that meant harder
work, fiercer fighting for their own. And this dread anxiety it is that
clusters them here, lifting up sweet voices in their hymn of praise to
the Heavenly Throne, pleading, pleading for the life and safety of those
who are their all in all. Oh, God! there is prophecy in the very words
of their mournful song, though they know it not. Pitying Father, listen,
and be merciful.
"E'en though it be a Cross
That raiseth me."
Vain the trembling hope, vain the tearful pleading. Far out on the
slopes of the Little Horn those for whom these prayers are lifted have
fought their last battle. God has, indeed, asked of these women that
henceforth "they walk on in the shadow and alone."