9

Advance Along the Rosebud

“If the men could take their choice, they would prefer a short, sharp, and bloody campaign—and good luck to the survivors.” —Cuthbert Mills, Fort Fetterman, July 25, 1876, New York Times, August 6, 1876

“If Crook has one virtue in advance of all others it is patience, and a disposition to bide his time. The trouble in the first place was that the country cared nothing about the Sioux question, and then, when Custer’s folly showed it up seriously, there was a general howl of indignation. This fierce desire of the people for a speedy and crushing revenge on the Sioux is disgusting enough to the men at the front.”—Joe Wasson, Camp on Goose Creek, August 4, 1876, New York Tribune, August 17, 1876

“General Crook is a brave, faithful and competent officer. He has to keep his eye and ear open to every detail which may advance or retard his success, the country holding him responsible for the results of his campaign. If his success is proportionate to his ability and sagacity, the campaign will be a rebuke to his critics.”—Joe Wasson, Camp on Goose Creek, August 4, 1876, New York Tribune, August 17, 1876

“In very hot weather bacon, even with hunger sauce, has not the relish it ought to have…. Gen. Crook’s command is roughing it in the full sense of the term, and as this sort of thing threatens to continue until Sitting Bull is found and thrashed, or thrashes us, most of us are extremely anxious to interview him with the least possible delay.” —Cuthbert Mills, Somewhere on the Rosebud, August 9, 1876, New York Times, August 27, 1876

 

Watching from the top of a small hill on August 3 as ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry filed across the bluffs and down to the river crossing at Goose Creek, General Crook was heard to utter, “Oh, if they had come before—if they had come before.”1 Crook’s somewhat melancholy mood was understandable. His decision to wait for Colonel Wesley Merritt had delayed his forward movement by more than two weeks, not to mention the month of virtual inactivity that preceded the Fifth’s call to service. Then there was the talk, as reported by Joe Wasson back on July 23 (see the end of chapter 7), of a Sioux village at the confluence of Ash Creek and the Little Big Horn, some forty miles north of Crook’s position.2 But without Merritt, the general chose not to act. Scout Louis Richard afterward found this village of about five hundred lodges deserted.³ On top of that, Crook had just received news that another sizable Indian village had been within striking distance until recently. Davenport’s dispatch from Crook’s camp on August 4 supplies further details on this latter circumstance:

On the morning of August 1 Thomas Cosgrove, the white chief of the Snakes, left the camp at the crack of day, with a few of his braves, to make a reconnaissance of the hills and valleys at the base of the mountains. A great pillar of smoke had stood above the horizon north of the camp for more than a week, while eastward signal wreaths had been continually rising, sometimes forming a long mystic colonnade of aerial architecture. Cosgrove directed his course toward this point, and reached it after a ride of fifteen miles. He found the deserted site of a Sioux village, around which the fire, still smouldering, had swept off the grass. The village had evidently contained only part of the Indians who were encountered by Custer, Terry and Gibbon. There were traces of few tepees, but many wicky-ups were standing, and the number of families who had been encamped there were estimated at about 600, containing 2,400 persons. The scouts examined the debris which remained on the ground, and found evidences that the villagers had suffered much from scarcity of food. No bones were found near the fire-holes where they cooked, except those of dogs, which they seldom eat except when destitute of game.⁴

While Crook reflected on lost opportunities and future prospects, some of the correspondents were busy expressing their admiration for Merritt’s chief of scouts, William F. Cody. Wasson wrote that the celebrated scout “will be a command unto himself,”⁵ to which Davenport added:

William Cody, the inimitable “Buffalo Bill,” arrived with Colonel Merritt, and is undoubtedly alone a strong reinforcement of the intelligent efficiency of the force in the field. In the recent scout after the Cheyennes, who were attempting to join Sitting Bull, he displayed all the old bravery and deadly prowess which have made him a hero in the hearts of the worshippers of melodrama and tales of adventure. He and Frank Gruard [Grouard] are probably the finest scouts now in active service.⁶

Turning his attention to the oft-neglected rank and file, Wasson commented:

I have recently seen a published statement that General Crook’s campaign is not likely to end gloriously; that there have been many desertions from the command, which is said to be composed of the riff-raff of the great cities, and cannot therefore be relied on for hard fighting. How easy it is to sit down on easy chairs and dash off such cheerful statements as these!…Today, the average makeup…[of the army] is morally and physically good enough for every purpose required of it. It is almost wholly composed of well-meaning men, not always of the brightest to begin with, but after a few months’ drill fully up to all matters of routine. As to courage, the much-abused fellows take only too readily to the enemy’s fire. The great trouble is to teach them the importance of taking care of themselves, instead of rushing uselessly into danger on every occasion.7

Writing on the same day as Wasson, August 4, Davenport noted the steadfastness of the troops:

The soldiers, on the eve of seeking another battle, with the terrible fate of Custer and his men so fresh in their memories, are by no means as gay as they were when they last started toward the Yellowstone. But there is a grim resolve evinced in their manner and their faces to seek vengeance for the slain of the Little Big Horn. The only question now to be solved is their management by their officers. If that is good they must do well. A nobler body of soldiers never marched to meet a foe.⁸

In a letter to the New York Tribune, one of those noble soldiers with the command remarked on the chances of having another fight with the Sioux:

There is much doubt expressed among the troops as to the probability of having any more fights with the Indians this summer. The Indians have been whipped notwithstanding the Custer massacre…. They have also ceased to molest our camp, and our Snake and Ute allies say that the Sioux are splitting up into small parties…. It is presumed, therefore, that we shall only have a picnic the rest of the summer.⁹

Although this anonymous soldier made no mention of scurvy, he did report that Crook’s command, just like with that of their Yellowstone counterparts, was in need of an improved diet:

We are in excellent health, but feel the want of some vegetables and fresh meat, of which we have been deprived since June 15. The wagon train was so loaded that only a small supply of canned vegetables was sent to us, barely enough for two messes. Were it not for the fish we are able to get here, we should have had a very poor time of it. We have lived on salmon, trout and white fish all summer. There is plenty of game in the country, but so large a command cannot get near it, and small hunting parties are prohibited.¹⁰

With the addition of the Fifth Cavalry, Crook’s strength had been bolstered considerably. He now had an impressive twenty-five companies of cavalry at his disposal: ten each of the Third and Fifth and five of the Second, totaling some 1,350 men. He also had ten companies of infantry drawn from the Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth regiments, and good for an additional four hundred men. The cavalry was under Merritt and the infantry under Major Alexander Chambers. Captain George M. Randall, Twenty-third Infantry, headed some 240 Shoshone and Ute scouts, described as “a gaudily tinted throng,” and Major Thaddeus H. Stanton was in charge of about seventy-five citizen volunteers.11 About this latter group, Davenport noted:

The civilian scouts were marshaled under Major T. H. Stanton, who then and thereafter attempted in vain to make of frontier ruffians soldierly volunteers. They knew no discipline or awe of authority, and straggled along in a very disorganized manner.¹²

The night before setting out, Wasson wrote that “Crook feels confident of meeting the Sioux within three days,” or, at the latest, within the week. If not, then they must have scattered.¹³ He also commented on the eagerness of the troops to meet their Indian foes: “If we have the luck to meet the Indians there will be a hot contest, for every one has ‘blood in his eye,’ and yearns for a chance to revenge his fallen comrades.”¹⁴

Writing a few weeks later from Deadwood, in present-day South Dakota, Davenport dramatically recalled the evening of August 4, which followed a day marked by sprawling prairie fires:

The atmosphere was clouded by dense masses of foul smoke, hanging close to the earth and constantly augmented by the wind, which blew from the prairies, burning along the base of the mountains. The sun glowed like a sullen ember and sunk behind the ghostly peaks of snow in the west. In the strange twilight a score of figures appeared on a bench of land west of the stream. They were mounted and moved in silent order, but on reaching the crest of the eminence they suddenly paused, and turning with startling swiftness galloped away. They appeared to be clothed like soldiers, but their manner of riding was unmistakably Indian. Twice they were again seen on distant ridges and then vanished. A special picket stationed on the west bank of the stream had not observed the strange apparition, but were alarmed after they had first dashed away, by a small shower of bullets pattering on the ground among their horses’ hoofs, probably fired by the red devils while running.¹⁵

When the fire reached the green cottonwoods, they “produced a dense, pungent smoke which oppressed every sense.” That night the “sky was profusely black, like the ebon vaults of chaos, with a blackness which only found expression when relieved by the lurid streams of lightning flashing across the horizon…. Suddenly, near midnight, the rain fell as if the very heavens were dropping.”¹⁶

The command was on the march at 5 a.m., sunrise, August 5. About their immediate destination, Cuthbert Mills, the twenty-eight-year-old New York Times correspondent who had recently arrived with Merritt’s column, wrote:

Where the Indians are now is doubtful, but it is generally supposed the village has gone to the old ground on the Rosebud where the last fight with Gen. Crook took place, and there the orders are for the Army to follow them. It is not probable that the same ground will be fought over again, but perhaps the fight may happen near it.17

Wasson noted that the “campaign will be carried out on Spartan principles.”¹⁸ Specifically, each trooper was allowed one blanket, a change of underclothes, an overcoat, four days’ provisions in the saddlebags (for the cavalry), and 150 rounds of ammunition. The pack train consisted of 300 to 350 mules carrying an additional fifteen days’ of rations.¹⁹ The Shoshones and Utes, in addition to their usual colorful paraphernalia, were wearing small white flags attached to their war bonnets or scalp locks, in order to distinguish them from enemy warriors in case of a battle.²⁰

Left behind once again was the ponderous, slowing-moving wagon train (numbering 150), under guard of Captain Furey, the quartermaster, and two hundred teamsters and citizen volunteers.²¹

On August 7, they crossed from the Tongue to the Rosebud,²² along which, the following day, the Indian scouts discovered a vast trail. In a dispatch to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, Third Cavalry, described the incident:

On the eighth, the command moved down the [Rosebud] river about five miles to good grass and bivouacked, awaiting some definite intelligence from the scouts, who returned about noon, reporting that an immense trail had been found seven miles distant down the river, which, following the river, eight miles farther turned eastward in the direction of the Tongue River. Orders were received to move at 6:00 p.m. and to march as far down the Rosebud as the point where the trail left it—fifteen miles. The trail was about five or six days old.²³

By the ninth, correspondent Mills was starting to think less about Sitting Bull and more about the daily menu:

One spoonful of coffee per day, one spoonful of sugar, eight hard crackers, and enough bacon to be spread out, with great care, through two meals, represents the actual practical total of all the elaborate calculations of fourths, tenths, eighths, and sixteenths of a pound which figure in the make-up of a day’s rations on the commissary return.²⁴

And Mills was clearly missing the fine dining that New York City offered:

We have all heard of people who die for their country, and of other people who live for it, and much credit both classes have received for their several services. But what credit will the individuals of this command get for starving for their country? I will venture to say none; and yet what a strength, depth, height, and breadth of patriotic ardor it requires to fill the vacuum left in one’s internal economy by short rations. How sweet the thought of Delmonico’s, the Café Brunswick, or the Hoffman, when, with a constitution which seems hollow clear down to one’s boots, one sits down to a meal consisting of three small pieces of fried bacon, some fragments of “hard-tack,” and half a pint of poor coffee, and this after a march of twenty-five or thirty miles?25

Davenport noted that the Indians were, in all probability, not eating much better than the troops:

The Sioux seem resolved on abandoning all the region south of the Yellowstone for the present season. The traces of their camps along the Rosebud show that their ponies have nearly starved, and that their own subsistence has been far from plentiful.²⁶

Looking back a few weeks later, he added details about the remains of former Sioux and Cheyenne camping places:

On the 9th a march of eighteen miles was made through a burned region, where there were frequent indications of the former sites of the Sioux village and some of recent war encampments. Where the fire had not come the grass had already been entirely consumed by the ponies of the Sioux. The bones of animals recently eaten were found, excepting those of dogs and horses. Several equine carcasses were seen from which the savages had cut steaks. They are believed, however, to have been killed by Cheyennes, as the Sioux loath horseflesh as food and eat it only in the worst extremity.²⁷

If the troops and the Indians were suffering in the gastronomical department, one group was getting along just fine—the mule packers. Lucky for Mills, he knew a couple of them from an exploring expedition to Colorado the previous year:

When the situation is serious, a council of war is held. We held one, and I was detailed for a foraging expedition to the packers’ camp. There I had a couple of friends with whom I was out last year on the Hayden survey. The packers are noted for knowing how to take care of themselves. They are nearly all old frontiersmen, and up to every dodge for securing personal comforts in the field, which one learns by long living there. So to the packers’ camp I rode, drew aside my old friend Shep Madera, and stated the case to him. We wanted bacon at any cost; $2 a pound would be considered cheap. “You shall have it, old boy,” was the encouraging answer; “you shall have it—but not a cent,” and nothing could shake his determination on this point.²⁸

Mills noted that the extra supply of bacon lasted only two meals, after which “a relapse into semi-starvation followed.”

Besides traversing deserted Indian villages, that day’s march also took Crook’s column through an area teeming with Indian burial sites, including the final resting place of several warriors who died as a result of the Rosebud and Little Big Horn fights. The Indian scouts and soldiers desecrated the graves. Davenport described the scene:

The valley of the Rosebud is a favorite cemetery of the wild Sioux. Many sepulchres loom along the banks of the stream. They are platforms, built of cottonwood poles and crutches, on which the bodies of the dead are placed, well wrapped in their costliest raiment. During our march many freshly occupied were found. The Shoshones desecrated all of them that were visible from the trail. They even pulled down the bodies of dead papooses and scattered half-decomposed fragments on the earth. At some of the oldest sepulchres I found evidence that they had once before been desecrated and that the bones had been afterward collected, tied up in a bag and hung from the upright poles of the platform, perfumed with fragrant herbs. Usually the skulls lay grinning on the grass, finely polished by exposure to the weather. Some corpses were found which were apparently those of Indians who were killed in the Rosebud and Little Horn fights. On one of these Captain Anson Mills found a costly quilt, adorned with beads, and a rich robe. Subsequently a soldier discovered in the same sepulchre a fine revolver, plated with nickel and having a butt of ivory, with a belt containing 100 cartridges. Old Washakie, of the Snakes, said that these tributes to the dead [warrior] indicated that his rank among the living was high. He believed him to have been an important chief.29

Another eyewitness to these Indian burial sites recalled:

While coming down the Rosebud through the deserted Sioux villages, I noticed the remains of a great many sweat or medicine tepees or lodges, which shows that the Sioux must have had a great many wounded in the Rosebud and Little Horn battles. Their treatment for sickness or wounds consists almost entirely in the sweating process, very much like our modern Turkish baths.³⁰

Next, Davenport addressed the difficulty and frustration of trying to follow the Indian trail, even for the Indian scouts:

As we advanced down the valley of the Rosebud the scouts constantly changed their opinions in regard to the age of the trail. It was at first two weeks old, then ten days, then a week and then four days.³¹

On the morning of August 10, the column continued its march north down the Rosebud, and four miles later it came upon “the remnants of an immense Indian village.”³² Schwatka reported:

[The deserted village] was about two miles to two and a half long and probably filled the entire valley, about a mile and a half wide. Near the center of its length were the [remains] of a large amphitheater where the Sioux and Cheyennes had had a Sun Dance during the last spring.³³

Our good friend and oft-quoted correspondent Reuben Davenport brings this chapter to a close:

[A]bout noon, General Crook’s column halted about thirty miles from the mouth of the Rosebud. The scouts reported that the trail, a short distance ahead, diverged from the valley toward the east, spreading out like a fan, as if the Sioux were dispersing. Thirty fresh pony tracks lay above the myriad old ones, and were supposed to have been made by a party of rear spies of the Sioux…. [Shortly afterward dust] was seen toward the north, and Cody, who was the foremost scout returning from the advance, reported that from the top of a hill he had seen a body of troops. We were not sure they were not Sioux, however, until they drew nearer, when it was discovered that General Terry’s command was approaching. Buffalo Bill galloped to meet them and found their whole force elaborately disposed for battle.³⁴

It was a historic moment. Crook. Terry. The Rosebud. Two armies. Several hundred imaginatively decorated Indian scouts. Over three thousand five hundred men. Many came to view it as an unfortunate turn of events.

Aboard the steamer Far West near the mouth of the Powder River on August 15, 1876, James J. O’Kelly, wrote in a piece that would appear in the New York Herald on August 24, 1876, that:

The preparations made by the War Department to carry on operations against the Sioux were ridiculously inadequate and altogether unsuitable to the nature of the country. Huge wagon trains have been sent out that creep over the ground…instead of good mules, which could go anywhere cavalry or infantry could pass without delaying the column in making bridges and roads.35

The Army of the Yellowstone’s first day’s march along the Rosebud was not quite what Terry had hoped for. First, the terrain proved more difficult for the wagons to pass over than was expected, and Lieutenant Edward Maguire, of the Engineer Corps, was kept busy constructing bridges and improving parts of the trail. Second, the men and animals were battling the “overpowering” heat, the temperature rising as high as 116 degrees. The infantry, marching as flankers, “were obliged to sit sometimes for an hour in the sun.” After toiling for ten miles in these conditions, it was “with real satisfaction that the troops received orders to pitch their tents for the night in a broad bottom surrounded by low hills.” James J. O’Kelly made note of the gossip going around the camp that first night: “Some stupid fellows started a rumor that a horse and dead soldier, belonging to Company C of the Seventh Cavalry, had been found by the pickets, but the rumor proved to be wholly groundless.”

The next day, August 9, there was a “heavy downpour” and the temperature dropped by as much as sixty-five degrees. Continuing south, they passed over ground that had previously been home to several Indian villages. O’Kelly noted:

Our march now lay through a succession of abandoned Indian camps, showing that we were on a favorite hunting ground of the Sioux. The bleached bones of buffaloes and now and then the shaggy head of this monarch of the plains, testifying to the recent passage of Indian hunters, were met with from time to time, scattered among wickyups or temporary shelters made of saplings and tree branches, but so far no signs of the hostile Sioux were encountered. [However, our] picturesque but dirty Crow and Ree allies had brought in information of the near approach of the Sioux, and we were in hourly expectation that the savages would appear to dispute our progress.

Excitement followed a little later when the Crow and Arikara scouts came galloping up to the command during a temporary halt, yelling that “heap Sioux” were headed their way:

This our informant expressed clearly in [sign] language showing us the Sioux mounted and coming to cut our throats. The interpreter soon after arrived and confirmed us in our interpretations of the Indian sign language.³⁶

Two companies of the Seventh Cavalry, under Captain French and Lieutenant DeRudio, were “sent forward to support the scouts in case of attack” while the remainder of the column “closed up” and made hasty preparations. Oddly, it turned out to be a false report.

The next morning, at about 11 a.m., the Indian scouts rushed into camp yet again, “uttering their unearthly screams” that the Sioux were coming. This time it was not a false alarm; indeed, indistinct “figures were discovered on the distant bluffs.” O’Kelly described the ensuing action:

By general consent these were pronounced Sioux. The troops were immediately formed in line of battle, and the scene suddenly became animated in the extreme. One battalion of the Seventh Cavalry, under Captain Weir, formed a mounted skirmish line at full gallop, aided by the Second Cavalry, drawn up in column on their flank, under Major Brisbin, and Lieutenant Low’s battery of three [ordnance] guns. The trains were closed up, and the companies of the Fifth Infantry, under Colonel Miles, the Sixth, under Major Moore, and Twenty-second, under [Lieutenant] Colonel Otis, were extended along the flanks, and moved in the rear as supports. For a few moments all was expectation and anxiety.

A single horseman advanced from the timber and there was a muttered exclamation from many mouths, “there they come.” As we strained our ears for the report of the first gun the horseman advanced toward the skirmishers making signs of friendship and was allowed to approach. It proved to be Cody, the scout, better known as Buffalo Bill, dressed in the magnificence of border fashion. He announced that we were in front of General Crook’s command and might put off all bloodthirsty thoughts for that day.

In opposition to the beautiful cavalry charges as generally depicted in the movies, O’Kelly’s description of Captain Weir’s mounted skirmish line is rather astonishing:

It is worthy of note that, though not a shot was fired, Captain Weir’s battalion of the Seventh Cavalry had twelve men dismounted in the gallop to form the skirmish line, and two men of one company had their legs broken. This result is in part due to the system of sending raw recruits, who have, perhaps, never ridden twenty miles in their lives, into active service to fight the best horsemen in the world, and also to the furnishing the cavalry young, unbroken horses, which become unmanageable as soon as a shot is fired. Sending raw recruits and untrained horses to fight mounted Indians is simply sending soldiers to be slaughtered without the power of defending themselves.

Next up, the Terry-Crook cavalcade.