1O

The Search for Sitting Bull

“Our warriors in the Sioux country have sense enough to leave their feathers and gold lace at home. General Terry wears a pair of corduroy pants, an old blouse and a stained, weather beaten, Panama hat. General Gibbon dresses even plainer, and General Brisbin covers himself with a suit of blue overalls.”—News clipping, Daily Colorado Chieftain, August 22, 1876

“Everybody has grown dissatisfied with what they claim to be the continued mismanagement of the officers, and criticize the conduct of officers severely, and frankly express their disgust at having anything to do with a campaign, which is evidently based upon false theories.”—Unknown correspondent, Terry's camp on the Yellowstone River, August 26, 1876, Weekly Rocky Mountain News, September 6, 1876

“Terry and Crook are much exercised over the newspaper attacks which pour in upon them with each mail, and are already bending their shoulders under the weight of public condemnation. All they say in reply is, ‘I have done my best.’”—Unknown correspondent, Terry's camp on the Yellowstone River, August 26, 1876, Weekly Rocky Mountain News, September 6, 1876

“So innumerable and contradictory have been the rumors and statements, the orders and counter-orders, the movements and counter-movements up here during the past ten days that your correspondent confesses himself utterly bewildered by them and almost despairing of being able to narrate with any degree of satisfaction the news, doings and results of that period. It has been a period of anxious waiting-for-something-to-turn-up and of uncertainty of movement, painful to experience and yet inevitable in such a campaign as the present one.”—James Joseph Talbot, Mouth of Powder River, September 1, 1876, New York World, September 17, 1876

“Poor Terry appeared to me more and more like a big, good-natured schoolboy—totally ignorant of the distracting conditions of Indian warfare; wanting to do something for his country, but not knowing, of himself, how to go about it.”—Joe Wasson, Crook's Camp on Little Missouri River, September 4, 1876, Daily Alta California, September 17, 1876

“For a certain period, during which Gen. Crook's command was doomed to linger by the Yellowstone last month, there seemed to be a painful presence of a superfluity of brigadiers, and time proved the correctness of this view.”—Joe Wasson, Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, September 25, 1876, New York Tribune, October 2, 1876

 

What is the matter with Crook?” So reads one of the subheadings inside James J. O'Kelly's August 15 dispatch to the New York Herald. O'Kelly then goes on to criticize Crook for not coming forward to meet and greet General Terry when the two commands crossed paths five days earlier. After all, Terry was the senior officer, and Crook, having marched into Montana Territory, was now in Terry's military department.1 O'Kelly wrote:

Some four miles from the point where we formed the line of battle General Crook was found encamped. He did not leave his camp to meet General Terry, a circumstance that caused no little comment. The conduct of this officer through the campaign has been, to say the least, peculiar. On consultation General Terry learned that Crook had been following for several days a heavy trail, supposed to be leading in the direction of Powder River.²

O'Kelly considered this last item another point of contention. Why had not Crook sent a courier to Terry alerting him of the movement of the Indians? If he had, Terry “could have easily moved down” from his position on the Yellowstone to “cut off the Indians' retreat northward.”³ Then O'Kelly suggested the reason behind Crook's behavior: “The fact that General Terry is a volunteer general and not a West Pointer, may, perhaps, have something to do with it.”⁴

Whether or not these statements represented O'Kelly's opinions or reflected the views of Terry's staff was unstated.

Avoiding the issue of Crook's snub altogether, Cuthbert Mills focused on the visual aspect of the two generals' first conference:

Endless amusement was created in camp by an illustrated journal of New York, which contained a graphic picture of the meeting of Gens. Crook and Terry, wherein these two gentlemen appeared in full Brigadier Generals' uniform, with all their staff in full dress, and several Indian chiefs in gorgeous costume thrown in to give a picturesque effect to the whole. If any one ever saw Gen. Crook in the field wearing anything but a suit of ragged clothes, which might, boots and all, fetch $5 in a second-hand store, that person is unknown in this command.5 Gen. Terry pays more attention to his personal appearance; but had the imaginative artist really seen the meeting of the two Generals he might have given the public a very vivid idea of the rough style in which we have lived this summer. He would have seen Gen. Terry and his staff dismounting in a patch of sage brush, near a clump of brush where stood Gen. Crook and staff, all as rough-looking and battered as their chief. Around them lay several small bundles of blankets which formed their beds, and a few yards off were scattered some tin plates, cups of the same material, a frying pan full of frizzling bacon, a pot of steaming coffee, and in the centre of the gorgeous layout a pile of hard tack. This was the dinner to which Gen. Terry was invited, but it did not seem that he or his staff were blessed that day with very vigorous appetites.⁶

With the two commands now together some thirty miles south of the Yellowstone and plans to follow the Indian trail that Crook had been following since the eighth, Terry realized a major error in his strategy. Other than the small force under Captain Sanger at “Fort Beans,” the Yellowstone was virtually devoid of a military presence. What was to keep the Indians from crossing over and escaping into the British Possessions, assuming they had not already done so? To help remedy the situation, four companies of the Fifth Infantry—B, E, G, and H⁷—under Colonel Miles performed an about face:

At five p.m. the Fifth Infantry [with two Rodman guns] began its return march over a road cut up by the passage of a heavy train during the day and though the men were fatigued and worn out by the long day's march, it did not halt until some sixteen miles had been gone over. Here a short halt was made for a few hours, when the march was resumed. At ten o'clock in the morning [August 11] the head of the column reached Rosebud Creek.⁸

Miles was ordered to patrol the Yellowstone between the Tongue and Powder rivers from the deck of the Far West, “using the steamer as a kind of gunboat,”⁹ and to place detachments on the north side of the river at those same points (and others) to keep the Indians from crossing over.¹⁰

On August 11, Terry and Crook crossed “the rough divide between the Rosebud and Tongue Rivers,”¹¹ a distance at that point of about twelve miles. To the dismay of those under Terry, Crook's method of campaigning was now their method of campaigning. In other words, when they marched out of camp that morning, it was good-bye to the ponderous and slow-moving wagon train and hello to frugal living. In the few hours they were together, Crook had managed to influence Terry on the proper way to chase Indians. Captain Burt wrote: “[By the night of the tenth] General Terry, taking a leaf out of General Crook's book, had stripped down from wagons to pack mules, from tents to bivouac, from luxuries to bacon and hardtack.”¹²

O'Kelly, having had about two weeks to let the matter stew, and apparently distressed over the drastic change in his comfort level (in which he could not have been alone), let loose on Crook:

[General Crook, the] “distinguished Indian fighter” has a theory that if we want to fight Indians we must live like Indians. He does not permit his soldiers to carry their shelter tents, which are the most useful and important part of their equipment, and, in order to cap the climax of absurdity, he compels the men of his command to leave their cooking utensils behind, except one small tin cup. The result of this patent humbug campaigning is that the soldiers, exposed to the rapid atmospheric changes of this climate, and unable to cook properly the miserably insufficient food supplied to them by a generous government, are rendered incapable of supporting the fatigues incident to an Indian campaign in these deserts. General Terry unfortunately allowed Crook to influence him on this point and issued similar orders to his column. Fortunately the old Indian campaigners found means to partially evade the ill-considered order, much to the satisfaction of the good-natured General who, desirous of showing a good example, left his tent equipage at the Rosebud with the train, and as a result enjoyed sleeping in terrestrial rains for six nights. In the future operations this absurd order will be quietly disregarded and general and soldiers, abandoning theatrical campaigning, will sleep under canvas and cook their food, convinced that sound health and a well ordered stomach are no obstacles to the rapid marching of an army.13

Crook's biggest admirer, Reuben Davenport, also had quite a bit to say about the general's parsimonious method of Indian campaigning, calling him out for alleged duplicity:

A fact which I must not omit is characteristic of the leader of the expedition. It shows that the Spartan simplicity for which he had been celebrated by his sycophantic subalterns is wholly a miserable affectation. The soldier was expected to carry all of his bedding and shelter and subsistence for four days on his horse. The Brigadier General was ostentatiously lauded by his creatures for setting an example of self-denial. But it was observed that each evening, on making camp, a mule packer moved over to the headquarters with his arms loaded with hospital blankets and a wide tarpaulin, which contributed to the comfort of the terror of the Apaches. In the meantime bedding for the sick could not be carried by the pack train, which was mainly laden with ammunition, bacon and hard bread. The soldiers' fare was restricted to the four articles which I have before enumerated—bacon, hard bread, coffee and sugar; but the mule packers, exercising a sort of usurped prerogative, winked at by the general commanding, were supplied with flour, beans, tea, rice &c., on which they remained sleek, saucy and fat while the soldier[s] dwindled. The reader has probably guessed that the Spartan Indian fighter was often beholden to the civility of the packers for fare superior to that which his military subordinates must be content. General Crook invariably established his headquarters near the pack trains and lived a double life—one exhibited to his soldiers with calm vanity, but in which each one detected shams and flaws, and the other to his familiars and toadies, which was a consistent mirror of selfishness.¹⁴

In a newspaper interview in late October, Crook had a chance to respond to Davenport's accusations, not just on this charge, but others as well:

Every officer and man in the command knows the statement [by Davenport] to be untrue. I did not take a meal with the packers during the entire trip, principally because I was not invited to do so. Not that I think there would be anything improper in it…. The correspondents who accompanied the expedition were, with the exception of the Herald man, so far as I know, fair and thoughtful in their statements of its operations, but the representative of the Herald, for what reason I am unable to say, persisted to the last in misrepresenting it, and stating as facts things that never occurred or were utterly distorted and untrue.15

The grand combination continued down the valley of the Tongue River until August 14, when the trail turned east toward the Powder River, about five miles from a location Davenport referred to as “Tongue River buttes.”¹⁶ The fifteenth was spent navigating the terrain between the Tongue and Powder rivers, described by Davenport as “a rough and difficult country, the chief features of which were rolling hills, clad with pine trees and deep valleys, which rendered the march very fatiguing.”¹⁷ After a trek of twenty miles, they struck the Powder River about forty-three miles from its mouth. Two days later, on the seventeenth, within about ten to fifteen miles of the Yellowstone, the Indian trail yet again turned to the east. Clearly, the Indians wanted to avoid contact with the troops patrolling the river. Voicing what must have been the talk of the officers, Davenport commented:

[The trail leads in] the direction of the Little Missouri River, where the bands of Sitting Bull are in the habit of wintering. It is thought that they will try to escape from the troops either by crossing the Yellowstone and going north or by breaking into small bands and sneaking back to their reservations. They have burned the grass behind them so as to stop pursuit and the want of forage will render this measure very effective against our cavalry horses, which are already very much worn out. The scouts say the main trail is at least nine days old.¹⁸

With the grass burned off, the Indian trail estimated at more than one week old,¹⁹ and the command in such close proximity to the Yellowstone, Terry deemed it best to continue on to the mouth of the Powder River to rest and refit, not just for the men, but for the horses too.

Wasson's pointed comments about the state of affairs at this time no doubt reflected Crook's feelings as well. The following is from Wasson's August 18 dispatch to the Daily Alta California:

When Terry cut loose from his elegant wagon camp [on August 11], he was in a miserable plight, and his shoulder-strapped equipage became a severe impediment to all concerned. It has caused a delay already in the pursuit of at least five days, while a succession of rainstorms has so completely obliterated the trail that it is altogether aggravating. To complete the picture of delay and disgust, after following the trail east over to Powder River and down that stream to within fifteen miles of its mouth, Terry insisted on moving the whole force down here, where he has a steamboat landing, and where we will lie at least today, and how much longer remains to be seen. Crook is hugely disgusted, and throughout his command there is a similar feeling…. [Crook's meeting up with Terry] came about accidentally, and, as it now appears, very unfortunately.20

Later in the same communication, Wasson came up with one of his wittiest lines; referring to the snail's pace speed of Crook and Terry's joint operations, he called it “the funeral procession in search of Sitting Bull.”

For the next week, the two commands convalesced and waited for supplies to arrive, at the junction of the Powder and Yellowstone rivers. Davenport quipped that “General Crook's soldiers enjoyed needed repose, but meanwhile the great Sioux trail grew no younger.” After three to four days of inactivity, Crook's “friendly Snakes and Utes had grown impatient of the absence of any achievement by the great white chief whom they had followed all the summer, and…departed toward their home.” About the same time Terry's Crow scouts left too.²¹

Writing for the New York World, correspondent James Joseph Talbot voiced his opinion on the Indian scouts:

The first incident of importance that occurred…was the departure of the Indians for home on the 21st inst. Several small parties of them had left on various pretexts before, but as they were generally old men on worn-out ponies, or young “fortune hunters,” who joined the expedition in hopes of plunder, and not finding any left in disgust, their departure was not regretted in the least. The remaining Indians, numbering 250 or 300 Utes, Snakes, Rees, Crows and Shoshones, finding that they had only long marches, short rations and a hard time generally, with very little prospect of anything better in the future, finally became discontented with what was to them the unprofitable monotony of the campaign, and, after holding several “pow-wows” among themselves, resolved to return to their reservations, the resolve taking practical effect on the 21st, as before stated. And it might be said with equal truth in their case that their departure was not regretted. Contrary to the popular belief, they are of little value in a campaign. One or two dozen of them are always desired, and are invaluable as scouts, but a large number is only a nuisance.²²

Adding his two cents on the scouts, Mills declared:

Over two hundred Snakes and Crows gave up the chase in despair and left us at the Yellowstone. They have been having an easy time of it compared with us, for they had their houses with them, and always killed enough game to make them independent of ration bacon. But they could not stand the everlasting march after an enemy who cannot be found, so they had a final war dance and howling match, and then went home, leaving the white men to continue the search.²³

About the Crows in particular, Talbot added:

The Crow Indians are generally acknowledged to be the best and bravest Indians now on the plains. In an even fight, or with small odds against them, they have always whipped the Sioux, and it is only by their overpowering numbers that the latter have succeeded in driving the former out of this region, which rightfully belongs to them. Naturally, therefore, the two are, as they always have been, the bitterest enemies.²⁴

It did not take long for the correspondents to take note of the marked contrast between the two commands. Davenport observed:

While idling in camp near the mouth of the Powder River the two armies exchanged civilities with a zest sharpened by the hardship undergone by one and the enthusiasm of the other. Terry's soldiers enjoyed comforts which seemed to Crook's weather-beaten veterans like Oriental luxuries…. Terry's legions…were ensconced in tents and attended by an immense train of wagons, loaded with supplies.25

As for Crook's command, Davenport wrote:

Since leaving Goose Creek no one in the southern column had been sheltered by canvas, unless in disobedience to strict orders. No man was supposed to have more than a single blanket to wrap about him when he slumbered. The food which was to afford the vigor requisite to sustain bitter hardships and the brunt of battle was simply bacon, hard bread, coffee and sugar.²⁶

Wasson, too, noted the dissimilarity between the two commands, extending the comparison to the Indian scouts as well:

There was no comparison—it was all contrast…. Crook's ship was trimmed down to fast-sailing condition—every man's outfit complete in itself, and the pack-train on the Pacific Coast plan, better organized still…. Terry's scouting force is of no account whatever, while Crook's scouts have worn out their animals in keeping track of the trails, and so the case stands.²⁷

If Wasson had a problem with Terry's skills as a commander, O'Kelly was equally displeased with Crook. His dispatch from the Powder River on August 24 takes Crook to task for what O'Kelly considered to be the general's farcical method of Indian campaigning:

Only that Crook happened to meet General Terry he would long since have been compelled to turn back to Goose Creek, where he left his wagon train in accordance with the clever system of campaigning adopted on the Plains, which resembles nothing so much as a Chinese stage battle, where the combatants are constantly rushing in an excited manner after invisible enemies they never seem to catch, but who now and then manage to catch the pursuers.

To illustrate the system it is only necessary to suppose that General Crook left Goose Creek with twenty days' rations. This would enable him to march in pursuit of the Indians for ten days. At the end of that time Crook would have been compelled to march ten days back in order not to die of starvation, for this country is absolutely incapable of furnishing food to an army of white men. Having reached his supply train and refitted the General would have to march ten days to reach the point from which he first retreated, having thus lost twenty days, tired out his men and horses, accomplished nothing, and given the Indians twenty days to rest themselves and graze their ponies. It requires no special military education to know that a campaign conducted on such principles is little more than a farce, even if the General does sleep without a tent and grows fat on hard tack and alkali water.

That a man possesses an exceptional constitution and an ostrich-like stomach does not constitute him a great general, and the mere fact that soldiers sleep in the rain and get dysentery and rheumatism will not make them better Indian fighters. The sooner this sensational campaigning is put an end to the better it will be for the health of the army and the purse of the nation. If we cannot fight Indians as civilized men, let us adopt the essentials of Indian warfare, not the theatrical effects merely. If it is necessary to take away the soldier's tent why not take away his overcoat and blanket, which are less useful, and give him merely a breech-clout and war paint; but at the same time give him two or three ponies to ride, give him fresh buffalo meat and game to eat, but above all discharge the Brumagem [pretend] Indian chiefs, and give the command to real savages, who will not spend their time marching up hill and then down again, but will establish their supply camps or caches where it is possible to pick them up conveniently, while the chiefs go after their enemies with real, and not simulated, war whoops.28

Davenport also weighed in on the subject of Crook's tactics, more specifically his use of the wagon train. On August 18 he wrote:

General Crook has left his supply train entrenched on Goose Creek, where it is now practically useless. It is not always practicable to have the supply train accompany the column, but there is no good reason why it should not follow at some distance in the rear.²⁹

By the time “Terry and Crook's cooperative society”³⁰ reached the Yellowstone, the men were so desperate for something to eat other than hardtack that when a trader's Mackinaw boat arrived from Fort Ellis on the seventeenth, loaded with goods, the men stampeded toward the water. Davenport captured the “ludicrous” scene:

No sooner had the Mackinaw come into sight than there was a grand rush of officers and soldiers to the water's edge, and confused shoutings assailed the ears of the boatmen. Before touching the bank, they were surrounded by horsemen who rode into the water…. Rank and degree were forgotten in the expression and attainment of a multiplicity of desires, which were burlesqued in the earnestness of the pleading. One individual wanted a “frying pan,” another a “coffee pot,” and everyone asked for canned fruits, with an avidity which met only with disappointment. This scene, which I have not attempted to describe, but merely to hint at, was repeated on the arrival of other boats. The privation of the troops was depicted in the contrast between their browned and wrinkled faces, overgrown with beards, and the smooth, well-content lineaments of the river traders who sold them a few of the most meagre necessities at enormous prices.³¹

Several days into their temporary stopover at the mouth of Powder River, Captain Burt of the Ninth Infantry jotted down the latest camp talk, half-joking that the troops would sooner be fighting hunger than Indians. Little did he know just how true that statement would soon prove to be:

The general impression is that we are to have no fight, that the Indians have gone to the agencies, and there is nothing to do but be getting nearer our quarters and something good to eat. “Belly battles” are the only ones seemingly in store for us, judging from the interesting campfire gossip.³²

On August 23, having just returned from a trip upriver to the mouth of the Rosebud on the Far West, Mills wrote:

A thousand rumors are in circulation as to what the Indians are doing, what we shall do, and the probability of a fight. Cody leaves the command at this place. He declares that there is no chance of a fight so long as the forces in the field are kept together. It is too large a body for the enemy to make a stand against.33

Cody was right; there was not much chance of a fight if the two commands stayed together; the Indians would just avoid them. It was Wasson's opinion, dating back to his August 18 dispatch to the Daily Alta California, that Crook, having been reinforced by the Fifth Cavalry, “had all the force necessary to cope with the enemy,” and that he should “cut loose from Terry” and try to “strike the enemy in the Little Missouri, where the trail appears plainly to lead.”³⁴ Conversely, Wasson pointed out Terry's belief that most of the Sioux were already north of the Yellowstone:

Terry and his outfit, on the other hand, have insisted that the Sioux have crossed the Yellowstone toward the British Possessions, and yet there is not the slightest evidence of it. He has sent his steamboat, with a six-pound cannon, down the river to see what he can see. All this big outfit needs to perfect it is half a dozen brass bands and Herald correspondents. Perhaps James Gordon Bennett's fleet of yachts would be necessary.³⁵

Whether the Indians had retreated north, south, or divided up between the two, one thing was for certain: the summer was quickly drawing to a close and with it the current military campaign. As things stood now, in late August, Terry and Crook had accomplished next to nothing, and Terry, short on supplies, planned to wrap things up by mid-September. Crook, too, had limited supplies and would have to trek back to Fort Fetterman or Fort Laramie before too long. In all probability, nothing decisive was going to occur in the next few weeks to prevent the necessity of another frigid winter expedition. Presenting to his readers what would likely be the government's last-ditch effort to salvage the predominately ineffective campaign, O'Kelly declared:

In case the great trail breaks up on the Little Missouri, as many believe it will, and that any considerable trail leads toward the agencies, General Terry will move his column along it and on arriving at the agencies will proceed to disarm the Indians and take away their ponies, if so instructed by the government. If this were done it would render a renewal of the war next spring impossible, for no matter what lying Indian agents may say, the warriors who slaughtered Custer and his men were chiefly the young bucks from the agencies…. There is not the slightest hope that the Indians can be forced to fight this year unless they choose to do so themselves, and they certainly will not fight unless they are in numbers so overwhelmingly superior that they may hope to destroy our column as they did Custer's. This is not probable, and the only chance of obtaining some adequate results for the fatigues undergone by the troops and the expenses incurred by the government is in adopting the policy of disarming the agency Indians, who are Sitting Bull's active reserves. With the disarmament of the young bucks of the Standing Rock, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies all danger of a renewal of a war next spring would be at an end. The spirit of the Sioux nation would be broken, and it would be possible to inaugurate a policy looking to the civilizing of these savages.36

As much as the Indians were refusing to make an appearance before the troops, the rain had other ideas. From the pen of Cuthbert Mills:

It rained before we got to the Yellowstone; it rained nearly every night while the command was camped there; it has rained nearly every night since. The suffering the men have undergone from this cause has begun to tell seriously on their health. Dysentery and diarrhea have become alarmingly prevalent, while the provision for the sick is of the scantiest description. Ambulances we have none, and of medicines an extremely limited stock. Such infantrymen as have become too sick to walk are mounted upon mules; the sick cavalryman has to stick to his saddle. Since leaving the Yellowstone only one man, to my knowledge, has gone so far as to have to be carried on the rude mule litters, of which two or three have been provided. That the general health of the command is as good as it is rather surprises our doctors, who have been expecting a much worse state of affairs from the poor food and bad weather we have had.

Quite a number of sick men and officers were sent away on the boats from our Yellowstone camp, and some few gentlemen who had accompanied the expedition as volunteers went with them. A dinner on the boat, a sight of the comfortable sleeping quarters there, and then a look at the wet camp on the hills, and the thought of bacon and hard tack, was more than their courage could stand. They fairly gave out and left us for home. Perhaps a great many more would have gone had they been free to do so, for the weather was terrible.

The evening before we started away [August 23] I had occasion to visit Gen. Crook's headquarters. It was raining, as usual, and pushing through the wet bushes on the bottom land drenched me completely. An immense fire of logs was hissing under the cottonwoods, where the little red and white flag indicated the commanding officer was to be found. The General stood under the trees, wrapped in his army overcoat; but some yards away was a large canvas shelter made out of an old hospital fly. This was a significant novelty. The rain had at last washed the enthusiasm out of the staff officers. I hope I do these gentlemen no injustice, but it had seemed to me there had been just a little tinge of ostentation in the extreme primitiveness of their style of living. It would have been as easy to carry half a dozen tin plates, forks, and spoons, as to carry one solitary specimen of each of them and pass it around the mess. In fact no mess was worse provided than the headquarters mess, and assuredly there was no absolute necessity for it. Other things were in the same style, but between using hard tack for plates and one fork for six people, and getting drenched out of one's blankets every night for weeks together, there is a vast difference. The solitary fork was from choice; the continuous rain was not, and under it the enthusiasm for simplicity had slightly washed out. So the pack train had been searched and this piece of canvas found. The General, however, had not surrendered yet.

We stood talking for some few minutes under the tree, and the rain poured down harder every moment. At last, as if the thought had just struck him, the General said:

“Why don't you get under the shelter, Mr. ——?”

“I had scarcely thought it worthwhile, General. A mere shower.” (Indifferently.)

He was silent for a time, until a sudden gust of wind shook the tree, and it poured a perfect deluge on us. This brought a surrender.

“The rain is increasing. I think we had better get under cover,” said the General, and he made tracks for the canvas lively, and I followed him. We bundled in among the officers who were crowded there, all heads and tails, each one trying to dodge the particular stream of water which made for him from above or below, for the canvas was not new and the ground was sloping. It was nearly dark, the rain showed no signs of abating, and it was kindly suggested that I should “bunk” in there. I thought of the mile-and-a-half walk to my quarters over the hill, the dreary night, the soaking blankets spread upon the muddy ground, the poor prospect for sleep under that pelting storm, and the welcome shelter offered here. Sore was the temptation to accept the General's offer. But no! Should it be said that I, a civilian, wilted in the presence of men of such Spartan severity of outfit? I started for “home,” found a place to sleep under a fragment of canvas which Capt. Hayes37 had rigged up on a carbine and a stick, and went to sleep. Both of us slept soundly while we did sleep, but were frequently wakened. Once the carbine fell down and hit the Captain on the nose. He gave a violent kick, which landed on me; but, luckily, it is his habit to sleep with his boots off. The kick did not disturb me, but the observations which the Captain made in refixing the carbine did. They were comprehensive and vigorous.

But we forgot our own sufferings in the sight of the misery of the men. By the number of the dark figures one could see outlined against the camp fires it seemed that few, if any, could be lying down at all. I believe the majority of the men sat up the whole night long. Then the wood gave out, and numbers of the poor fellows went off down to the river bank, a mile or so away, and built fires there where drift wood was abundant. Those who did not, gave way to exhausted nature, and toward morning stretched themselves beside the expiring embers of their fires, and slept from utter weariness. Still there is a comic element in such a misery. Long and weary as were the hours, they did not pass without an occasional laugh being heard, and more than once Capt. Hayes and I woke together and sat laughing at the utter wretchedness of our situation. At the first sign of day I was once more awakened, this time by someone whistling a tune. The Captain was sitting up and cheerfully whistling over our sea of troubles. The rain had ceased, but a heavy mass of clouds covered the sky, threatening more. “Get up, old fellow,” said he, “don't you hear the little birds singing their praises.” I got up and shook off the water, while the Captain inspected a small bundle carefully wrapped up in a corner of the canvas, and observed, with much satisfaction, that “the grub was all right.” The three days' rations drawn the night before were stored in that bundle. While we sat there, uncertain what to do, another officer crawled out of a “wickyup” he had built, looking so utterly bedraggled, woebegone, and drenched, that to refrain from laughing was impossible. But it was no laughing matter to this unfortunate man. His night's experience put him on the sick list, and the only wonder was that dozens more were not put there. Altogether it was an awful sight, and, be it remembered, it was only the worst of many bad ones.³⁸

After six days of idleness and Terry still waiting for additional supplies to arrive via steamer, Crook rationed his command for fifteen days with the usual hardtack, coffee, and bacon, and then backtracked up the Powder River on the morning of August 24, apparently without giving prior notice to Terry, his superior officer.39 Soon he would turn east, hoping to catch up with at least some part of the Sioux. Terry followed along in the sodden earth the next morning, and after a march of seventeen miles was going into camp when “Buffalo Bill” Cody arrived with dispatches and news: two steamers, the Josephine and Yellowstone, were approaching the Powder River with additional supplies and troops on board (one of whom, Private Dennis Shields, Sixth Infantry, had been killed two days earlier when Indians fired on the latter boat), a supply base was to be constructed near the mouth of Tongue River to house troops during the winter,⁴⁰ and a large band of Indians had skirmished with soldiers at Glendive Creek. If that last item was true, Crook was headed away from the action. Taking Cody and a small cavalry escort, Terry rode ahead about eight miles to Crook's bivouac to discuss the situation. Davenport, O'Kelly, and Captain Burt each recorded the episode:

(Davenport:) [I]ntelligence was brought [to Terry] by Buffalo Bill that the Sioux, 300 in number, had appeared on the south bank of the Yellowstone, with the apparent intention of crossing, and had been engaged by one company of infantry under Lieutenant Rice.⁴¹ They had also fired into the steamer Josephine, which was bound for the mouth of the Powder River. On receipt of this news and a conference with General Crook, General Terry made a countermarch to the Yellowstone, and we saw his banners no more.⁴²

(O'Kelly:) After consultation with General Crook it was decided that General Crook's force should move down the divide between the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers toward Glendive River, while the chief body of the troops of General Terry's column, under the command of Colonel Gibbon, should return to the Yellowstone, passing by way of O'Fallon's Creek—a stream midway between the Powder River and Glendive Creek—to clear the country of any Indians that might try to escape from General Crook's advance. General Terry's whole command will cross the Yellowstone at some point below the Powder River and try to head off the Indians, who are supposed to be going north.⁴³

(Captain Burt:) On August 25 we [Crook's command] moved still further up Powder River…. In the afternoon, General Terry came to our camp with two of his staff, and we learned that Indians had made their appearance on the Yellowstone and had fired on the boats coming up. Here was a difficult question to decide. The Indians there—did it mean the whole village, or a party on a raid or a ruse de guerre [ruse of war] to cover a crossing of a few Indians going north with their families, stealing away from the main camp? General Crook, still being under General Terry's orders, could only suggest that the commands separate, one to keep the main trail and run it to a definite conclusion, and the other to go down the Yellowstone and engage any force of the enemy that might cross. This was accepted as the plan, and to us was given the difficult and arduous task of striking off eastward on the trail into a country with which, saving Frank Grouard, our guide, not one of the column was familiar.44

On August 27, at O'Fallon's Creek, the steamers Carroll and Yellowstone ferried Terry's troops to the north side of the Yellowstone River. Three days later, after some fruitless marching, O'Kelly wrote:

The expedition to the north bank of the Yellowstone in so far as the finding of hostile Indians is concerned has proved a failure. Trails have been found of small hunting parties, but apparently no large band of Indians have crossed the river, unless they have crossed at a point further east.⁴⁵

On the same day, an unidentified correspondent recorded:

No Indians yet, and no prospect of finding any…. Notwithstanding the marvelous accounts of Sioux to be found by the thousand on this side of the river, we have not come across the track of even one, and consider it a foregone conclusion that further attempts to catch the wily savages will be useless for this year. Terry is considerably annoyed about some dispatches received from Sheridan concerning the new posts, on account of the peremptory tone and style that is used toward a Brigadier General. In one of them he is ordered to establish a winter camp at the mouth of Tongue River, where the regiments selected will halt until spring, when the work of building proper quarters at that place and the mouth of the Big Horn will be commenced at the earliest opportunity…. What our next move will be after reaching Glendive is unknown, and is really of little importance, as it can result in nothing.⁴⁶

Admitting that the campaign was all but over, O'Kelly's thoughts turned to the proposed Tongue River Cantonment, an important structure in a region where winter comes early and often hits hard:

It will be imperatively necessary for the troops who have been designated to remain in the cantonment during the winter to set to work preparing winter quarters, as the severity of the winter months renders living under canvas absolutely impossible. In this climate the mercury falls to 30 degrees below zero and a column caught in a severe winter storm would be almost certain to perish.⁴⁷

On the morning of August 31, Terry received word about a “fresh trail” that had been discovered “of an Indian war party supposed to number 150 warriors.” He ordered Reno to take the Seventh Cavalry, recently reorganized into eight companies, together with a few Indian scouts, and “make a circuit of forty miles to a point designated on the Yellowstone, with the object of determining whether any large body of Indians had crossed to the north bank of the Yellowstone.” The next morning Terry learned the result of Reno's scout from a courier: there was no sign of Indians.⁴⁸

Following this episode, another correspondent commented: “The whereabouts of any hostile band is a greater mystery today than at any previous time during the year, and in their endeavors to elude pursuit, they are exhibiting the marked superiority over our troops that has been shown throughout the campaign.”49

Late on September 3, two Arikara Indians from Crook's command arrived in Terry's camp near Glendive Creek. Their news was dated only one day previous. O'Kelly reported:

Crook's command had reached the head waters of Beaver Creek, and was continuing its march in the direction of Sentinel Butte, near the Little Missouri. The heavy Indian trail which had been followed from the Powder River divided up near Beaver Creek, some of the minor trails going in the direction of the southern agencies, while the larger number led eastward. Although the trails indicate that the large band had broken up the bands may come together again before the [Little] Missouri is reached. General Crook is following up a fresh trail, which shows some 150 lodge poles.50

Two days later, September 5, the Irish-born journalist jotted down the finishing touches to the Dakota column's disappointing and lackluster summer:

General Terry this morning issued an order dissolving his operating column. Colonel Gibbon, with the Montana troops, leaves in the morning for Fort Ellis. Major Reno, with the Seventh Cavalry, and Major [Orlando] Moore's battalion of the Sixth Infantry will patrol the north bank of the Yellowstone, in order to prevent any band of hostile Sioux, that may be retreating before General Crook, crossing the river. Colonel Otis, with the Twenty-second Infantry, will remain at this point in charge of a subsidiary depot. General Terry and staff proceed to Buford by steamboat. The General will give his whole attention to the forwarding of supplies to the new post on Tongue River. The campaign may be regarded as virtually at an end, so far as General Terry's column is concerned. Everybody in camp is delighted, as it has been evident for a long time that we were not likely to accomplish much good by remaining in the field.⁵¹

On the following day, an unknown correspondent from the New York Times likewise wrapped up events: Colonel Miles and ten companies of the Fifth Infantry were then on the way to Tongue River where “vigorous work will be required from them to build shelter before the severe storms of this region will have closed in upon them.” He also stated that Miles was going to employ a number of experienced white scouts through the winter, keeping them “always on the go” and “further stimulating them by a reward of $500 if they find an Indian village.” Lieutenant Colonel Otis was stationed with six companies of the Twenty-second Infantry at the supply depot at Glendive Creek.⁵² They were living in “shelter-tents” and “cutting logs for huts.” With the water level dropping at this time of year, Glendive was now the end of the line for the heavy steamers carrying tons of supplies up the Yellowstone. From now until next spring, all freight would have to be hauled in wagons from Glendive to the Tongue River Cantonment, about seventy-five miles west as the eagle flies.⁵³

On the morning of September 8, aboard the steamer Josephine, Terry arrived at Fort Buford, at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. It was expected that by the fifteenth, all of his troops “will have been withdrawn from the northern country except the Twenty-second Infantry [at the Glendive depot] and the Fifth Infantry [at the Tongue River Cantonment], containing 400 men.”54 Gibbon's men, “in the field since March” and “poorly clad for cold weather and fierce storms,” must have been particularly thrilled to be going home.⁵⁵

No doubt the Seventh Cavalry was also relieved to be heading home. However, as luck would have it, the men still had one more mission to run. Terry, hoping that Crook's presence south of the Yellowstone would flush some of the Sioux to the north, had ordered the Seventh Cavalry under Reno, and a battalion of the Sixth Infantry under Moore, to scout the north bank of the Yellowstone on their march back to Fort Buford (from which point the Seventh would return to Fort Lincoln). On the morning of September 10, Reno received a dispatch from Terry informing him that a large number of Indians were crossing at Wolf Point on the Missouri, about eighty-five miles west of Fort Buford. If Reno hurried north, there might be time for one last shot at the Sioux. A dispatch from an anonymous officer of the Sixth Infantry, under date of September 12, stated: “The Seventh Cavalry and five companies of the Sixth Infantry are en route to intercept the Indians and it is possible the troops may engage them before their crossing is completed or before they have moved so far north as to make pursuit useless.”⁵⁶

O'Kelly, who chose to stay with Reno when Terry left for Fort Buford, brings the Wolf Point detour to its conclusion in his dispatch of September 20:

Our sudden expedition to Wolf's Point was caused by a report that Long Dog, with some 150 followers, had crossed the Missouri and that the river bank for a mile was covered with Indians. [We] reached Wolf's Point…on the afternoon of the 13th without encountering any signs that would indicate the presence of an Indian force. On examination it turned out that Long Dog and his followers had crossed the river and endeavored to procure ammunition from the agent, Major Mitchell,⁵⁷ who held a long conference with the chief, trying to persuade him to surrender. This he declined to do, stating that Sitting Bull was on his way to Fort Peck, and would compel the agent to issue ammunition to his warriors. Long Dog's party stated that at one time they were surrounded by the soldiers, and had to abandon their tepees and other property in order to escape. They were under the impression that the soldiers were in pursuit of them, although our column had no suspicion of their presence. On finding they could obtain no ammunition at the agency they continued their march and are supposed to have gone into the Canadian dominions [sixty miles to the north]. Pursuit was impossible, as the Missouri at Wolf Point is not fordable.⁵⁸

Terry showed up two days later, the fifteenth, on the steamer John M. Chambers, and “learning the exact state of affairs, answered officially that the campaign was at an end. Next morning the return march [to Fort Buford] began.”⁵⁹

Although the Sioux campaign had not yet produced the results expected, so far as defeating the Indians in battle and clearing the contested territory of all the “hostiles” was concerned, still, the multipronged military assault did have its value, especially upon the morale of the Indians. Unable to sustain itself en masse for any length of time, the Indian alliance was now scattered into smaller groups that could not hope to successfully fight the troops. Further, and more importantly, the military now had a foothold in their backyard, keeping them anxious and making it hard for them to rest or hunt. In Long Dog's case, it was easier to just get out of the country. Plus, he would be able to trade more freely in Canada.60 The following statement by a Sioux Indian named Medicine Cloud, who returned to Fort Peck about the first of August, clearly reflected the situation that existed one month later: “The Sioux are living on meat, which they find it very difficult to procure, owing to the close proximity of the whites…. The Indians are in a constant state of alarm. There is no sleep in camp.”⁶¹

For Terry's Dakota Column, the war was over, and Crook's Wyoming Column was on its last legs. Still on the trail of the Sioux, they were soon to learn the meaning of that old mountain man expression, “meat's meat.”

We close this chapter with the words of an unknown officer who declared his disappointment that the soldiers did not get to even the score with Sitting Bull:

No one seems to know where Sitting Bull is. Some of the officers are inclined to think that he has disbanded his forces, and others are of the opinion that he is somewhere in the British Possessions with the best fighters of his army. The troops feel very much disappointed in not having met the slippery Indian on this last tramp, so that they could have had an opportunity to avenge Custer.⁶²