The Native American Experience

  At the cavalry tent camp on Wounded Knee Creek, the Indians were halted and carefully counted. There were 120 men and 230 women and children. Because of the gathering darkness, Major Whitside decided to wait until morning before disarming his prisoners. He assigned them a camping area immediately to the south of the military camp, issued them rations, and as there was a shortage of tepee covers, he furnished them several tents. Whitside ordered a stove placed in Big Foot’s tent and sent a regimental surgeon to administer to the sick chief. To make certain that none of his prisoners escaped, the major stationed two troops of cavalry as sentinels around the Sioux tepees, and then posted his two Hotchkiss guns on top of a rise overlooking the camp. The barrels of these rifled guns, which could hurl explosive charges for more than two miles, were positioned to rake the length of the Indian lodges.

  Later in the darkness of that December night the remainder of the Seventh Regiment marched in from the east and quietly bivouacked north of Major Whitside’s troops. Colonel James W. Forsyth, commanding Custer’s former regiment, now took charge of operations. He informed Whitside that he had received orders to take Big Foot’s band to the Union Pacific Railroad for shipment to a military prison in Omaha.

  After placing two more Hotchkiss guns on the slope beside the others, Forsyth and his officers settled down for the evening with a keg of whiskey to celebrate the capture of Big Foot.

  The chief lay in his tent, too ill to sleep, barely able to breathe. Even with their protective Ghost Shirts and their belief in the prophecies of the new Messiah, his people were fearful of the pony soldiers camped all around them. Fourteen years before, on the Little Bighorn, some of these warriors had helped defeat some of these soldier chiefs—Moylan, Varnum, Wallace, Godfrey, Edgerly—and the Indians wondered if revenge could still be in their hearts.

  “The following morning there was a bugle call,” said Wasumaza, one of Big Foot’s warriors who years afterward was to change his name to Dewey Beard. “Then I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us. It was announced that all men should come to the center for a talk and that after the talk they were to move on to Pine Ridge agency. Big Foot was brought out of his tepee and sat in front of his tent and the older men were gathered around him and sitting right near him in the center.”

  After issuing hardtack for breakfast rations, Colonel Forsyth informed the Indians that they were now to be disarmed. “They called for guns and arms,” White Lance said, “so all of us gave the guns and they were stacked up in the center.” The soldier chiefs were not satisfied with the number of weapons surrendered, and so they sent details of troopers to search the tepees. “They would go right into the tents and come out with bundles and tear them open,” Dog Chief said. “They brought our axes, knives, and tent stakes and piled them near the guns.” 2

  Still not satisfied, the soldier chiefs ordered the warriors to remove their blankets and submit to searches for weapons. The Indians’ faces showed their anger, but only the medicine man, Yellow Bird, made any overt protest. He danced a few Ghost Dance steps, and chanted one of the holy songs, assuring the warriors that the soldiers’ bullets could not penetrate their sacred garments. “The bullets will not go toward you,” he chanted in Sioux. “The prairie is large and the bullets will not go toward you.” 3

  The troopers found only two rifles, one of them a new Winchester belonging to a young Minneconjou named Black Coyote. Black Coyote raised the Winchester above his head, shouting that he paid much money for the rifle and that it belonged to him. Some years afterward Dewey Beard recalled that Black Coyote was deaf. “If they had left him alone he was going to put his gun down where he should. They grabbed him and spinned him in the east direction. He was still unconcerned even then. He hadn’t his gun pointed at anyone. His intention was to put that gun down. They came on and grabbed the gun that he was going to put down. Right after they spun him around there was the report of a gun, was quite loud. I couldn’t say that anybody was shot, but following that was a crash.”

  48. Big Foot in death. Photographed at the Wounded Knee battlefield. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

  “It sounded much like the sound of tearing canvas, that was the crash,” Rough Feather said. Afraid-of-the-Enemy described it as a “lightning crash.” 4

  Turning Hawk said that Black Coyote “was a crazy man, a young man of very bad influence and in fact a nobody.” He said that Black Coyote fired his gun and that “immediately the soldiers returned fire and indiscriminate killing followed.” 5

  In the first seconds of violence, the firing of carbines was deafening, filling the air with powder smoke. Among the dying who lay sprawled on the frozen ground was Big Foot. Then there was a brief lull in the rattle of arms, with small groups of Indians and soldiers grappling at close quarters, using knives, clubs, and pistols. As few of the Indians had arms, they soon had to flee, and then the big Hotchkiss guns on the hill opened up on them, firing almost a shell a second, raking the Indian camp, shredding the tepees with flying shrapnel, killing men, women, and children.

  “We tried to run,” Louise Weasel Bear said, “but they shot us like we were a buffalo. I know there are some good white people, but the soldiers must be mean to shoot children and women. Indian soldiers would not do that to white children.”

  “I was running away from the place and followed those who were running away,” said Hakiktawin, another of the young women. “My grandfather and grandmother and brother were killed as we crossed the ravine, and then I was shot on the right hip clear through and on my right wrist where I did not go any further as I was not able to walk, and after the soldier picked me up where a little girl came to me and crawled into the blanket.” 6

  When the madness ended, Big Foot and more than half of his people were dead or seriously wounded; 153 were known dead, but many of the wounded crawled away to die afterward. One estimate placed the final total of dead at very nearly three hundred of the original 350 men, women, and children. The soldiers lost twenty-five dead and thirty-nine wounded, most of them struck by their own bullets or shrapnel.

  After the wounded cavalrymen were started for the agency at Pine Ridge, a detail of soldiers went over the Wounded Knee battlefield, gathering up Indians who were still alive and loading them into wagons. As it was apparent by the end of the day that a blizzard was approaching, the dead Indians were left lying where they had fallen. (After the blizzard, when a burial party returned to Wounded Knee, they found the bodies, including Big Foot’s, frozen into grotesque shapes.)

  The wagonloads of wounded Sioux (four men and forty-seven women and children) reached Pine Ridge after dark. Because all available barracks were filled with soldiers, they were left lying in the open wagons in the bitter cold while an inept Army officer searched for shelter. Finally the Episcopal mission was opened, the benches taken out, and hay scattered over the rough flooring.

  It was the fourth day after Christmas in the Year of Our Lord 1890. When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church, those who were conscious could see Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters. Across the chancel front above the pulpit was strung a crudely lettered banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.

  I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream … the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.

  —BLACK ELK

  The old men say the earth only endures.

  You spoke truly.

  You are right.

  49. “They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.” Reproduced from the collection
s of the Library of Congress. Photograph by E. S. Curtis.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER TWO:

  THE LONG WALK OF THE NAVAHOS

  1. U.S. Congress. 49th. 1st session. House of Representatives Executive Document 263, p. 14.

  2. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, p. 314.

  3. Official record. The War of the Rebellion. Series I, Vol. 15, p. 580.

  4. U.S. Interior Dept., Report, 1863, pp. 544­–45; Document published in Kelly, Lawrence C. Navajo Roundup. Boulder, Pruett, 1970; Cremony, John C. Life Among the Apaches. San Francisco, 1868, p. 201.

  5. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, p. 103.

  6. Ibid., pp. 108, 116.

  7. Ibid., pp. 136, 139.

  8. Document in Kelly, Navajo Roundup; Bailey, Lynn R. Long Walk. Los Angeles, Westernlore, 1964, p. 157; Senate Report 156, p. 141.

  9. Senate Report 156, pp. 153–54, 255; Document in Kelly, Navajo Roundup.

  10. U.S. Congress. 49th. 1st session. House of Representatives Executive Document 263, p. 15.

  11. Senate Report 156, pp. 144, 157, 162–67, 174, 179, 183–84, 259–60; Bailey, Long Walk, pp. 164–66; Document in Kelly, Navajo Roundup; Kelleher, William A. Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846–1868. Santa Fe, Rydal Press, 1952, p. 441.

  12. Ibid., pp. 221–22.

  13. Ibid., p. 223.

  14. U.S. Office of Indian Affairs. Report, 1867, p. 190.

  15. U.S. Congress. 49th. 1st session. House of Representatives Executive Document 263, p. 15.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  LITTLE CROW’S WAR

  1. “Big Eagle’s Story of the Sioux Outbreak of 1862.” Minnesota Historical Society, Collections. Vol. VI, 1894, p. 385.

  2. Folwell, William W. A History of Minnesota. St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society, 1924. Vol. II, p. 232.

  3. Ibid., p. 233. Meyer, Roy W. History of the Santee Sioux. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, p. 114.

  4. “Big Eagle’s Story,” p. 389.

  5. “Ta-oya-te-duta Is Not a Coward.” Minnesota History, Vol. 38, 1962, p. 115.

  6. “Big Eagle’s Story,” p. 390.

  7. Carley, Kenneth, ed. “As Red Men Viewed It; Three Indian Accounts of the Uprising.” Minnesota History, Vol. 38, 1962, p. 144.

  8. Ibid., pp. 144–45.

  9. Ibid., pp. 145–46.

  10. Ibid., p. 148.

  11. Ibid., p. 146.

  12. “Big Eagle’s Story,” pp. 394–97.

  13. Heard, Isaac V. D. History of the Sioux War. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1864, p. 147.

  14. Carley, Kenneth. The Sioux Uprising of 1862. St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society, 1961, p. 54.

  15. Heard, pp. 147–48.

  16. Riggs, S. R. “Narrative of Paul Mazakootemane.” Minnesota Historical Society, Collections, Vol. III, 1880, pp. 84–85.

  17. Heard, pp. 151–52.

  18. Ibid., p. 150.

  19. “Big Eagle’s Story,” pp. 398–99. Sibley Order Book 35. Folwell, p. 182.

  20. Oehler, C. M. The Great Sioux Uprising. New York, Oxford University Press, 1959, p. 197.

  21. Riggs, p. 8.

  22. Folwell, pp. 202–05. Oehler, p. 208.

  23. Lincoln to Sibley, December 6, 1963.

  24. Folwell, p. 211.

  25. Heard, p. 284.

  26. “Big Eagle’s Story,” pp. 399–400.

  27. Heard, p. 311.

  28. Ibid., p. 312. Trenerry, Walter N. “The Shooting of Little Crow: Heroism or Murder?” Minnesota History, Vol. 38, 1962, pp. 152–53.

  29. Winks, Robin W. “The British North American West and the Civil War.” North Dakota History, Vol. 24, 1957, pp. 148–51. Folwell, pp. 443–50.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  WAR COMES TO THE CHEYENNES

  1. Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, pp. 145–46. Hyde, George E. Life of George Bent. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, pp. 131–32.

  2. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, pp. 93–94.

  3. Berthrong, Donald J. The Southern Cheyennes. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1963, p. 185.

  4. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, p. 94.

  5. Ibid., pp. 55–56.

  6. U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Report, 1864, pp. 374–75.

  7. Ibid., pp. 374, 377.

  8. Hoig, Stan. The Sand Creek Massacre. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1961, p. 99.

  9. Hyde, p. 142.

  10. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 26, p. 44.

  11. Official record. The War of the Rebellion. Series I, Vol. 41, Pt. 3, p. 462.

  12. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, p. 77.

  13. Ibid., pp. 87–90.

  14. Hyde, p. 146.

  15. Berthrong, p. 213.

  16. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 26, p. 226.

  17. U.S. Congress. 38th. 2nd session. Senate Report 142, p. 18.

  18. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 26, p. 25.

  19. Ibid., p. 47. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, pp. 53, 74.

  20. Ibid., p. 66.

  21. George Bent to George E. Hyde, April 14, 1906 (Coe Collection, Yale University).

  22. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, pp. 66, 73.

  23. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 26, p. 70.

  24. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Report 156, pp. 73, 96.

  25. Ibid., p. 53. Berthrong, p. 220.

  26. Bent, George. “Forty Years with the Cheyennes.” The Frontier, Vol. IV, No. 6, December, 1905, p. 3. Hyde, pp. 152, 158–59.

  27. U.S. Congress. 39th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 26, pp. 73–74.

  28. Hyde, p. 177.

  29. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Report, 1871, p. 439.

  30. U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Report, 1865, pp. 701–11.

  31. Kappler, Charles J. Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties. Vol. 2, pp. 887–88.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  POWDER RIVER INVASION

  1. Official record. The War of the Rebellion. Series I, Vol. 48, Pt. 2, pp. 1048–49.

  2. Bent, George. “Forty Years with the Cheyennes.” The Frontier, Vol. IV, No. 7, January, 1906, p. 4.

  3. Holman, Albert M. Pioneering in the Northwest. Sioux City, Iowa, 1924.

  4. Bent, p. 5.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, pp. 210–11.

  7. Humfreville, J. Lee. Twenty Years Among Our Hostile Indians. New York, Hunter and Co., 1903, p. 356.

  8. Palmer, H. E. “History of the Powder River Indian Expedition of 1865.” Nebraska State Historical Society, Transactions and Reports, Vol. II, p. 216.

  9. Grinnell, George Bird. Two Great Scouts and Their Pawnee Battalion. Cleveland, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1928, p. 117.

  10. Hyde, George E. Life of George Bent. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, pp. 239–40.

  11. Hafen, L. R. and Ann W. Powder River Campaign and Sawyers’ Expedition of 1865. Glendale, Calif., A. H. Clark Co., 1961, p. 97.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  RED CLOUD’S WAR

  1. U.S. Congress. 40th. 2nd session. House Executive Document 97, p. 9.

  2. U.S. Department of the Interior. Report, 1866, pp. 206–07.

  3. Olson, James C. Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1965, p. 31.

  4. U.S. Congress. 50th. 1st session. Senate Executive Document 33, p. 5.

  5. Ibid., p. 18.

  6. Carrington, Frances C. My Army Life and the Fort Phil Kearny Massacre. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1911, pp. 291–92. Carrington, Margaret I. Ab-sa-ra-ka, Land of Massacre. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1878, pp. 79–80.

  7. Carrington, H. B. The Indian Question. Boston, 1909, p. 9.


  8. U.S. Congress. 50th. 1st session. Senate Executive Document 33, pp. 20–21.

  9. John Stands in Timber and Margot Liberty. Cheyenne Memories. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967, p. 172.

  10. Ibid., pp. 174–76. Hyde, George E. Life of George Bent. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, pp. 276–77.

  11. Lockwood, James D. Life and Adventures of a Drummer Boy; or Seven Years a Soldier. Albany, N.Y., 1893, pp. 188–89.

  12. Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1961, p. 17.

  13. Stanley, Henry M. My Early Travels and Adventures. New York, Scribner’s, 1895, Vol. I, pp. 201–16.

  14. Simonin, Louis L. The Rocky Mountain West in 1867. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1966, p. 107.

  15. U.S. Congress. 40th. 2nd session. House Executive Document 97, p. 5. U.S. Congress. 41st. 3rd session. Senate Executive Document 39, pp. 63–66.

  16. Omaha Weekly Herald, June 10, 1868.

  17. U.S. Congress. 44th. 2nd session. Senate Executive Document 9, p. 38.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  “THE ONLY GOOD INDIAN IS A DEAD INDIAN”

  1. Hyde, George E. Life of George Bent. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, p. 253.

  2. Hancock, Winfield Scott. Reports of … upon Indian Affairs. 1867, pp. 45–46, 77.

  3. Ibid., p. 47.

  4. U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Report, 1867, p. 311.

  5. Hyde, p. 259.

  6. U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Report, 1867, p. 312.

  7. Stanley, Henry M. My Early Travels and Adventures. New York, Scribner’s, 1895, Vol. I, pp. 37–38. Grinnell, George B. The Fighting Cheyennes. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1956, pp. 250–52.

  8. U.S. Congress. 40th. 2nd session. House Executive Document 97, p. 12.

  9. U.S. Congress. 40th. 1st session. Senate Executive Document 13, pp. 11–12, 95, 121.