“THAT WAS THE BEGINNING of Red Cloud’s War,” Dane said. “For six or seven moons we gave Carrington’s Bluecoats no peace, pestering and tormenting them while they built their fort at the Little Piney crossing of the Bozeman road. Then in the Moon When the Deer Shed Their Horns, Crazy Horse and Swift Eagle and their decoys led a hundred soldiers into our trap along Peno Creek and we killed them all.”
We were seated on flat rocks overhanging the stream across from Dane’s cabin, watching John Bear-in-the-Water driving his wagon down to the corral shed to bring the lodgepoles to Red Bird Woman. She was hunched forward, her white boot-moccasins crossed, resting her chin in one hand. “I remember, I remember,” she said. “What heart-swelling times we lived in then. Two days we rode up Tongue River and never out of sight of tipis. Warriors come from everywhere.”
“Yes,” Dane said. “Camp after camp for forty miles. By that time, many Cheyennes from the south had come to join us, some of Black Kettle’s people who would not let the Bluecoats drive them to Indian Territory. Yellow Woman, William Bent’s Cheyenne wife, came with her half-blood sons. She swore she would never again live with a Veheo, and they renounced the blood of their father.
“Red Cloud would not rest until he brought all the Teton Sioux into war camps along the Tongue. He brought Brules up from the south, and Uncpapas, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettles down from the north. One day he met a hunting party of our old enemies, the Crows. His warriors could have rubbed them out, but Red Cloud escorted the Crows to our camps and invited them to join us in our war on the Bluecoats. The Crows said they would consider the matter, but they must have spent a lot of time considering, because they never came back.
“Red Cloud always treated the war chiefs as equal allies, but in the councils he decided when and where we would strike the Bluecoats, and which chiefs would lead the attacks and ambushes. I remember Sitting Bull of the Uncpapas was always wanting to set traps for soldiers guarding supply trains coming up from Fort Laramie. Oh, we had some great war chiefs—Black Shield and White Bull of the Minneconjous, Black Bear and Sorrel Horse of the Arapahos, Dull Knife of our Northern Cheyenne cousins, Roman Nose, who had brought a band of Dog Soldiers up from the south, Old Two Moon and Iron Crow of our people. Crazy Horse of the Oglalas was only a young boy then, but no one could match him as a decoy leader. Pleasant and Swift Eagle rode with him several times and in camp at night after the chases were over they would tell of Crazy Horse’s daring, how he would badger the Bluecoat cavalrymen by leaping right out into the trail in front of them, shaking his red blanket to frighten their horses, and darting in and out of the brush until they foolishly followed him right into ambush.”
“I remember Swift Eagle got pretty good, too,” Red Bird Woman said, “decoying Bluecoats.”
“We knew the fort was too strong for us,” Dane continued, “but no Veheos could come or go on the Bozeman Trail without fear. Only one time did we let a white traveler go without hindrance. One morning Jim Carrothers rode out of the fort, alone, heading south for Fort Laramie. His shoulders were bent and he looked tired and beaten. We knew that old Jim had his craw full of the foolish White Eagle Chief. Old Jim was more our friend than the Bluecoats’. So we let him go. I heard afterward he went back to Westport and died.
“We were sure that if we could get Colonel Carrington’s Bluecoats outside in the open we could beat them. To do this we had to make them crazy, like buffalo bulls pricked with lances until they run from the herd. Red Cloud chose the day for this to be done, and more than a thousand warriors rode up the Tongue to the fork of the Peno. We camped in three great circles—Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho—no tipis, but saddle-blanket windbreaks and other shelters. Because we had used up most of our gunpowder and lead, and could get no more, most of us were armed with bows and arrows, lances and war clubs. It was very cold, with a fine powdery snow falling.”
“Aho-ya, I remember that cold,” Red Bird Woman said. “Night before battle when I kept you warm in my buffalo robe, our breath made icicles on the hair—” She stopped suddenly, putting both hands over her mouth, her eyes opening wide before she turned her face away from me.
Dane laughed. “She went to the battle camp with the warriors.”
“Some other women, too,” she added quickly. “Some without men like me, and some not long married. I dressed like warrior. Arapahos thought I been changed into he-e-man-eh. But Dane, he knows better.” Her body shook with silent laughter, the little folds of fat around her eyes squeezing them shut.
He shrugged. “Next morning Crazy Horse led one bunch of decoys down Big Piney on the north side of the fort and Swift Eagle took another bunch to the south side. Swift Eagle found a heavily guarded train of wagons going up the Little Piney to cut firewood for the fort. Swift Eagle’s warriors began making feints against the wood train, just enough to anger the soldiers so they would fire their guns. The sound of the guns brought a rescue party of Bluecoats from the fort, and when they galloped out of the gate, Crazy Horse came down the slope of Lodge Trail Ridge and started tantalizing them. Colonel Carrington fired one of his cannons, and Crazy Horse’s boys put on a show, jumping and yelling and darting back and forth on their ponies. Before long the wood train guard was chasing Swift Eagle’s decoys, and another bunch of Bluecoats was after Crazy Horse.
“While all that was going on, our main war party moved up Peno Creek under the screen of Lodge Trail Ridge. The Sioux rode behind some big rocks on the east side of the Bozeman Trail, several remaining mounted, others leaving their horses and concealing themselves in high grass nearby the trail. The Arapahos and we Cheyennes took the west side of the trail. We waited there, about a thousand of us, for the decoys to bring the Bluecoats into our trap.
“The soldiers were cautious at first, firing at our little bunch of darting decoys, their anger rising because so few Indians dared challenge a hundred well-armed soldiers. At last the Bluecoats charged our decoys, chasing them over Lodge Trail Ridge and along both sides of the trail right into our trap. Cheyennes and Arapahos swarmed upon them from one side, Sioux from the other. It was like a buffalo surround. The air was filled with arrows, warriors on foot closing in, pony riders circling. The Bluecoats fought bravely and stubbornly, trying to break out of our ring.
“If we had not gone mad and killed with such fury, very few of us would have gone to the Darkening Land or suffered wounds. But a craziness of desperation came over us. These Bluecoats symbolized death to us. As long as we could remember, the white man’s soldiers had been pushing us always westward, taking our lands whether we resisted or not. Now there was no place left to go. When cavalrymen found cover among some rocks, warriors gave their lives to make certain that no one escaped. Toward the end of the fighting, Cheyennes on one side of the soldiers and Sioux on the other were so close together that Cheyenne arrows were striking Sioux warriors, and Sioux arrows were striking Cheyenne warriors. Then it was all over. Not a soldier was left alive. But we lost many, too.
“Then the scalping began. The Cheyennes who had come up from Sand Creek were the worst. They not only took scalps, they stripped off uniforms and mutilated the bodies of the soldiers in the same way the soldiers mutilated their women and children at Sand Creek.
“We left the battlefield then, believing that if we always fought as one tribe united we could defeat the Bluecoats with our bows and arrows. Many of us were certain that after our great victory Colonel Carrington would take his survivors out of our land and leave us alone. But instead the army took Carrington away because we had beaten his men and sent another soldier chief and more Bluecoats to fight us.
“For several more moons we raided and ambushed as we had done before, and then at last Brule messengers from Fort Laramie began visiting our camps to tell us that a new peace commission had come there to meet with the chiefs. The commissioners wanted to talk about the boundaries of a reservation within which the tribes could live without white interference. All those who signed the new treaty were promised presents, including gunpowder and lead, and the right to trade for them forever. We had heard all that before, of course, and the chiefs held together with Red Cloud, replying that they would not come to Fort Laramie to talk peace until all soldiers were removed from the Powder River country.
“At last, Red Cloud got what he wanted—except for one thing. In the Moon of Red Cherries, the Bluecoats started leaving the fort, with white flags fluttering on their wagons, their long train crawling southward toward Fort Laramie. As soon as the last soldier was gone, Red Cloud led a number of warriors, heroes from all the tribes, down to the abandoned buildings and set them on fire.
“I was with him when he rode triumphantly to Fort Laramie with a thousand warriors to sign the treaty. After I read the treaty carefully, I advised him not to sign, but he would not listen. The boundaries of the promised land included the sacred Black Hills and extended to the Missouri River, but did not include our Powder River hunting paradise. When the commissioners promised him that his people would be given the right to hunt on any lands above the North Platte ‘so long as the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase,’ Red Cloud signed, but I knew that we would soon lose our way of living forever. The boundaries of the Great Reservation were not meant to keep the white man out, but to keep the Indians locked in.”