12

The Starvation March

“Water and wood were neither plentiful nor convenient, and owing to cold rainstorms which prevailed constantly, camp life on half rations, and with no tents and little bedding, was extremely severe upon the men.” —Joe Wasson, Crook's Camp Near Slim Buttes, Dakota Territory, September 10, 1876, New York Tribune, September 18, 1876

“Consider the wretchedness of the men—so starving that they were eager to eat horse meat.” —Cuthbert Mills, On the Belle Fourche, Dakota Territory, September 13, 1876, New York Times, September 28, 1876

“It was a race against the lean, lank legs of starvation, with the odds against us.”—Reuben B. Davenport, Deadwood City, Black Hills, September 16, 1876, New York Herald, October 2, 1876

“I do not enjoy hardship, horse meat, and starvation more than other men, but when it is necessary to submit to these things, with the prospect of rendering adequate service to the country before me, I am ready to stand my chances.”—George Crook, Red Cloud Agency, October 26, 1876, Chicago Times, November 4, 1876

 

On the sixth of September, Crook's order against hunting had been revoked and the day was marked by the “constant cracking of guns on the flanks” of the column.1 According to Davenport, the men were firing away freely, hoping to obtain antelope steak for dinner. Perhaps sarcastically, he noted, “A horse was thus wounded. But little game was killed, however.”² After a march of thirty-five miles, camp was made “in mist and rain around an isolated lake, on the summit of a wide rolling plain.”³

Describing their unsatisfactory conditions, Davenport noted:

The water was salty and as thick as milk. There was no wood visible, not even a shrub. Some of us cooked a little coffee by building a fire of grass; but most had only raw bacon and brittle crackers for supper. To add to the forlornness of the situation, the commissary issued no bacon or sugar and only a meagre allowance of crackers and coffee. For days we had been unable to dry our clothing and we rolled ourselves up in reeking blankets and tried to sleep. The night winds grew chillier and chillier until morning, when we awoke with numbed and quaking limbs and a nervous sensation as if we had been set upon by a nightmare for ages.4

The few antelope killed were barely enough to stave off hunger, and the men of Crook's command were ravenous for something to eat. When some of the depleted horses were abandoned on the trail on the following day, the famished “soldiers broke from their ranks to kill them, in order to secure the meat.”⁵ Mills and Davenport described the scene:

(Mills:) Some horses dropped by the road utterly worn out. A man cut a piece from one after it was shot, and hung it behind him on his saddle for supper. His example was instantly followed by such a crowd of men that nothing was left of the carcass but the bones. Another horse a short way on suffered the same fate.⁶

(Davenport:) Some of the cavalry when they abandoned their horses shot them and took slices of the meat for their suppers, and men in passing the carcass afterward would fall out of the ranks and silently help themselves until nothing remained of it but the bones.⁷

Davenport would later recall another incident on this day:

In the advance the scouts chased about twenty Indians who appeared to be moving parallel to a tepee trail, over which it is supposed their families had just passed. It seemed a vexatious perversity of fate that we should come so close upon the enemy, while, having exhausted our supplies, we were unable with prudence to engage them.⁸

It quickly became apparent to Crook that traveling en masse to the Black Hills was going to be too slow a process. A better plan would be to send a party ahead on the best horses to the nearest settlement to purchase supplies. In the meantime, the main column would continue limping south. Accordingly, on the night of September 7, on the north fork of the Grand River, at the northern edge of the Great Sioux Reservation, Captain Anson Mills, Third Cavalry, “was ordered to select 150 of the best mounted men of his regiment and start immediately to make a forced ride into the Black Hills, in order to send back relief as soon as possible.”⁹ Accompanying Mills were Lieutenants Emmet Crawford and Adolphus Von Luettwitz, battalion commanders; Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, adjutant; Lieutenant John W. Bubb, Fourth Infantry, chief commissary officer; Thomas Moore, chief packer; Frank Grouard and Jack Crawford, guides; and correspondents Davenport and Strahorn. The pack train consisted of fifteen packers and sixty-one mules.¹⁰

Considering the miserable weather conditions of the past few weeks, it was only fitting that the relief party set out in a “thick mist,” which made it difficult to see where they were going.¹¹ Davenport tagged along hoping to exchange “the privations of the field” for whatever civilization the Black Hills had to offer¹² and graphically described the first night's ride:

The storm had augmented in force since sunset, and the men were mustered in the most intense darkness. There was no danger, however, that any would shirk the duty, as there was an eagerness in the ranks to see a little of civilization again…. The mules brayed and the bell-mare shook her chimes, and there was much bustle and confusion until we started. At eight o'clock Frank Gruard rode out a hundred feet ahead and his figure was just dimly recognizable. The little column was in motion, the pack train carefully guarded to prevent the defection of any of the mules. It was impossible to know which was our proper direction, except by observations of the landscape, which had been made before dark. The mist circumscribed us so that our world seemed very small and beyond it dwelt the terror of the unknown. For two hours we moved in silence, the guide occasionally stopping to look at the compass by the flicker of a match. Suddenly there appeared a rent in the black heavens and the moon and stars looked through. By and by the North Star and the Dipper came forth. We verified our course. As suddenly the curtain was again drawn and the rain fell with fury. The air was more impenetrably black than ever. We rode on in rueful stillness until one o'clock and then halted for a sleep.13

By the morning of the eighth there was one thing that the soldiers wanted to find more than the Sioux, and that was food. Instead, some five weeks after setting out from Goose Creek, Captain Mills's small command finally found the Sioux. In the first of his two reports on the fight at Slim Buttes and the events leading up to it, Davenport simply wrote:

About thirty miles from the main column Gruard discovered indications of the proximity of an Indian village as we were approaching Slim Buttes, and we halted on the table land, concealed behind a knoll. The Indians were watched while they were herding their ponies, of which there were great numbers; but it was doubtful how many braves were in the party.¹⁴

His dispatch from Deadwood, written six days later, offered much more detail:

At daybreak [of September 8], groping through the damp obscurity, we saddled our horses and moved forward. When the light was broad enough to distinguish each other we were astonished at our muddy and haggard appearance. It still rained unrelentingly, and about eight o'clock a.m. we halted again in a small ravine where there was wood and a spring of water, in order to make a pretence of breakfasting. The kindling of a fire consumed an hour, and in another hour, having quaffed some black coffee and eaten a wee bit of venison, I was again mounted like my companions. The day continued gray and miserable. We passed grim and mysterious buttes whose names were unknown to us and whose outlines were but dimly defined in the universal mist. Our horses sank at every step deep into the slippery, slimy mud…and were perceptibly weakening with their constant toil. In the afternoon appeared in front the white forms of the Slim Buttes. We crossed the north branch of the Grand River and entered the foothills of this group of mountains. We had already, in the morning, crossed the trail of a small Sioux hunting party near their camp. Several hours later we found a place where they had again halted, and their trail lay directly in our course.

The mist seemed to close around us more grimly and to cling more coldly but closely to our beards and garments. We were quaking in our saddles about four o'clock, when, observing the conduct of Gruard who was ahead, we halted. He had dismounted just below the crest of a ridge and was kneeling just so that his eyes were on a level with the highest blades of grass. With his field glasses he was watching something beyond. It was a herd of ponies two miles below in the valley. Frank had been riding in advance, when he suddenly espied a white group of lodges behind a ridge, and he had turned and galloped back to concealment as quickly as possible. He had not been seen by anyone in the village. Presently a mounted Indian was seen by those who were peeping over the ridge, riding leisurely toward the herd, and then galloping off to a round bluff which overlooked our position. Our little party was speedily moved into a deeper hollow, and the savage, when he reached the point of observation, looked around with apparent satisfaction and then descended. Captain Mills, Lieutenant Crawford and Lieutenant Schwatka, in consultation with the guide, endeavored in vain by keeping a lookout over the ridge to ascertain the strength of the village. The herd of ponies numbered about 500. Frank believed that they belonged to a small but wealthy band of the Brule tribe, of which Roman Nose was the chief…. Shivering in a shallow hollow, near the summit of a table land, flanked by frowning buttes, the mist still falling and wrapping its clammy folds around us, we stood patiently, or impatiently, for two of the dreariest hours I ever passed. The wind was growing colder and our bodies shook with a horrible ague that seemed also to benumb our hearts. We wiped out the barrels of our guns and brightened our cartridges as best we could with shivering fingers. There seemed to be a common indifference as to whether we advanced or retreated; we were all sick with the suspense and the bitter discomfort of our condition. A dull apprehension of disaster reigned, but none knew what to do to dispel the dread.

It was determined at length to return on our trail about two miles and bivouac in a narrow pocket at the junction of two gorges. Here the animals were hidden so that they could only be observed from the edge of the depression. Fires were built of dead box elder wood, but did not much allay the misery produced by the rain, mist and cold. Supper for the soldiers consisted of a few fragments of hard bread and a few small scraps of bacon. The packers fared better, making an unctuous soup of flour and grease, which warmed while it nourished them. I accepted a little of their hospitality with an eagerness I never before could have conceived of. It was born of hunger and proved once more the philosophical truth that everything within our human knowledge is comparative. Our beds were the softest and most adhesive kind of mud and our covering wet blankets and greasy sheets of canvas, which had been used for months in protecting the cargoes of the mules from the weather. The fires burned sullenly in the canyon, and the glare which was created by the flames produced in the mist grotesque and unreal effects, which I observed and studied before I went to sleep. Hardly, however, were the wild and dreadful phantasies around me replaced by softer dreams, which came at the beck of Morpheus, than they were gone in an instant and I was aware of fierce tramping and snorting over my head. Some mules, bewildered, blinded and demented by the fantastic glare of the fires, had suddenly made a terrible rush, checked only by their lariats, and had nearly crushed me and my bedfellow beneath their hoofs. Once more during the night the same wild sound shook the ground, and my charger, “Nigger,” broke loose and vanished in the black night. I searched for him in a rather desperate mood, and was delighted at last to find him standing passively near the camp. He rubbed his nose against me familiarly when I touched him, as if to declare that he knew it would be very ill-conduct to desert me in such an emergency as then beset me. One other alarm startled us-a shot fired by a picket at a shadow which he mistook for a Sioux. At one o'clock a.m. the camp was aroused by the guards and preparations made for the advance.15

It was then the early morning hours of September 9, and Mills's small command was about to strike out for the Wyoming Column's third substantial encounter with the Sioux since March. Barring any unforeseen complications, the plan was fairly straightforward. Lieutenant Schwatka was to charge through the village at the head of twenty-five mounted men, pistols blazing, and drive off the horses. The remainder of the troops, acting as infantry and divided into two battalions of fifty men each, under Lieutenants Crawford (right flank) and Von Luettwitz (left flank), were to form in skirmish line on either side of the village in order to catch the sleeping Indians in a deadly crossfire. As Wasson expressed it, “The object was to surround the enemy, stampede and capture their stock, and kill as many of the warriors as possible.”¹⁶

Davenport continues as our trail guide, but now we switch to his dispatch written just one day after the figk:

At two o'clock all was in readiness, and the detachment formed ranks. In profound darkness, fog and rain it advanced slowly to the position of the previous evening, and there halting, the guide went forward to find the way to the village. After waiting half an hour he emerged out of the obscurity again, and we again moved. After a second halt the mules and horses, with about thirty men,¹⁷ of whom I was one, remained behind [under charge of Lieutenant Bubb], while the main body advanced. At the first sound of firing we were to advance rapidly, but cautiously, and if the enemy proved too strong we were to secure and hold some favorable point until relieved. There was in these arrangements an anticipation of another disaster like that which befell Custer and his gallant Seventh. The waiting in the chill, wet darkness, straining the ear in vain for the sound of the fray, was full of dread, anxious suspense.

The dawn had not begun when a white soldier, patrolling a hill, espied a horseman coming at full gallop toward us. It at first appeared to be an Indian, but proved to be “Captain” Jack, the scout, who said the fight had begun, and we were to advance as rapidly as possible. We dashed forward through the mist and reached a round top of bluffs, from whence we saw flashes of guns a mile below, while now and again dull detonations reached us against the breeze. Here we met Gruard and a private, who brought an order from Captain Mills to despatch a courier to General Crook immediately, asking for reinforcements.¹⁸ Two men volunteered for this service and galloped off to execute the order. We then advanced into the valley under fire.19

As Davenport and the rest of the command were soon to learn, the attack upon the village, which was “distributed along the edge of a little stream [Gap Creek] running from west to east,”²⁰ had been “accidentally precipitated.”²¹

The success of the attack depended on the completeness of the surprise given the enemy. It was hoped by Captain Mills to place his troops in the best positions that could be selected before a single gun was discharged. He moved forward very cautiously, unable to see more than 100 yards ahead, and did not distinguish the village until he was close upon it. The first objects that were seen were the ponies who had snuffed our approach and were excited. The whole herd gave a bound and dashed straight through the village, only a few lodges of which were visible, the rest being hidden behind a ridge. No time was now to be lost. Frank Gruard called out “Charge!” and Schwatka plunged into the village with his twenty-five men.²²

The setback was that Von Luettwitz was unable to get into position in time “and the effect of a cross fire, therefore, was not gained.”²³ Still, from their position both north and northwest of the village, Crawford and Von Luettwitz “riddled the tepees [with gunfire] before the occupants were fairly awakened.”²⁴ The Sioux, cutting their way out of the lodges,²⁵ turned the troops' failed plan into their avenue of escape, and “were seen scrambling up the steep banks and into the gullies, with yells of dismay.”²⁶ Schwatka, who led the initial charge, reflected, “Many were seen to fall, and in the approaching daylight, it was often hard to tell whether the burdens carried were children or the slain and wounded.” Then he added, “The village was deserted sooner than it takes to relate the fact, and Captain Mills' command then held a large hill west of this place and overlooking it.”²⁷ Wasson, who arrived on the scene later that morning, recorded, “Though the great majority of the Indians had scattered to the bluffs…a small party of them had taken possession of a little narrow ravine within 100 yards of the village.”²⁸ This group of Indians was soon to become the center of attention.

Despite the fact that the Sioux “were completely surprised, and scattered out ‘pell mell,' half naked,” they quickly gained favorable positions on the bluffs south of the creek, where they “secreted themselves”²⁹ and began to fight back. It was at this time or shortly before that Von Luettwitz became one of the first soldier casualties, knocked out of the fight with a bullet to the right knee. Scout Crawford applied a tourniquet, and Sergeant John A. Kirkwood carried the wounded lieutenant from the skirmish line.³⁰

Although Schwatka managed to capture a good part of the pony herd,³¹ the Sioux were still able to retrieve their fair share of mounts, and some of them were seen riding off toward the west. Davenport wrote, “It was surmised they were going to raise the neighboring bands to their assistance, and preparations were strenuously made for a desperate defense of the position commanding the village until General Crook, with the column, should arrive.”32 Other warriors “mounted on such ponies as they had been able to catch made several daring dashes to recover those captured, and all around the ridge, held by our men, the quick flashing of guns was, in the morning twilight, like a festive pyrotechnic display.”³³

According to Davenport, it was about this time that Captain Mills displayed strong signs of uneasiness and wanted to withdraw from the village. Stirring the pot of discord once again, the Herald reporter declared:

Through the weakness of an officer [Mills] a terrible reverse was at one moment imminent, but the firmness of a subordinate and the spirit of his troops saved him…. [Mills] had apprehensions that the Sioux would develop greater strength and attack him. He seemed overpowered by this fear at the inception of the fight, and when the Indians first sent their bullets into our ranks [at which time Von Luettwitz was shot in the knee], he exclaimed, “Retreat, men! Retreat!” They were in no mood for retreat, however, and Lieutenant Crawford seconded their impulse by drawing his pistol and shouting, “I will shoot any man who tries to retreat!” This noble insubordination prevented a disaster.³⁴

Because of Indian gunfire, the soldiers were having a hard time occupying the village. Davenport publicly praised two of the officers for their heroic bravery in helping to repel the Sioux at this time:

 

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Sergeant John A. Kirkwood

 

New York Times, May 13, 1930

 

Hero Of Campaign Against The Sioux Dies At Age Of 79.

Pittsburgh, May 12—Sergeant John A. Kirkwood, United States Army, retired, a former Pittsburgh citizen, to whom was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry during a skirmish with Sioux Indians in Dakota Territory on September 9, 1876, died yesterday at the age of 79 years in the National Soldiers Home in Washington, according to word received here today. He was sergeant of Company M, Third United States Cavalry, and the last survivor of the Allegheny County veterans who held the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The act of gallantry was performed at Slim Buttes. The 150 cavalrymen, dismounted, had been ordered to reform on higher ground. Lieutenant Von Luettwitz had been shot in the kneecap and lay in front of the Indian camp. Sergeant Kirkwood was in the rear guard of the retreating line and heard the lieutenant's cry. Running to the wounded officer, he carried him up the ridge and out of danger.

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Lieutenants Crawford and Schwatka made repeated charges which drove the Sioux from those points from which their fire was annoying. They both made rapid explorations of the hills to gather up stray ponies so that they should not be secured by the Indians. In these they had many pistol encounters with the Indians and forced them to retire repeatedly. The gallantry displayed by both of these officers was splendid.³⁵

“Most of the fighting had ceased when the sun was up,” Davenport wrote, bringing attention to the fact that the fighting thus far had been in the predawn hours with little light. “At four a.m.,” he continued, “a second courier was sent back, mounted on a strong Indian pony, to hasten General Crook.” Mills was anxious that more Indians were on the way and that his small force would be overpowered. Davenport had volunteered to be the courier, but a soldier was selected instead.36

Throughout the morning, the Indians were continually losing real estate around the battlefield. At one point they held a position “behind a crest, from which there came an occasional shot.”³⁷ Captain Mills wanted them silenced.

Lieutenant Crawford was sent with nine cavalrymen to charge them…and while he was making a circuit through a hollow to escape observation they [the Indians] opened conversation with our interpreter [Grouard] by shouting overtures to a truce.³⁸

One of them announced himself as Stabber, a head warrior, well known at the agencies. He said: “I am tired of fighting. I have had enough of it this summer. I want to go back to the agencies.”³⁹

He was still calling out when Crawford's “little band reached the crest with a yell, which was answered by cries of dismay from the Indians. A few hasty pistol shots, by which one of them was wounded or killed, and they fled into the ravines and out of sight. The village was now excellently commanded by our troops, but still an occasional bullet came from the ravine on the west side of the village.”⁴⁰

And one of those bullets shortly struck Private John Wenzel in the head, killing him instantly, when he ventured too close to the edge of the gulch. He was the first trooper killed. Two other men were wounded about this time, Sergeant Kirkwood (a slight flesh wound to the side) and Sergeant Edward Glass (severely wounded in the right arm). Just how many Indians were in the ravine was still a mystery, but as Schwatka noted, “[They] not only held us at bay, but made it unsafe to approach the northern end or head of the village.”⁴¹ For the time being there would be no further attempt to dislodge its inhabitants. That could wait for Crook's arrival.⁴² In the meantime, Mills stationed sharpshooters to cover the area.⁴³

Individual soldiers had been searching the village haphazardly all morning, “tumbling over the contents of the lodges,” which numbered about thirty-five, in their search for food.⁴⁴ By late morning they had found that and a lot more, specifically items that once belonged to Custer's Seventh Cavalry. Davenport, in his September 10 and 16 dispatches, detailed many of the findings, including Custer's regimental guidon, cavalry saddles, the overcoat of a slaughtered Seventh Cavalry officer, ammunition, several thousand pounds of meat and fruits, thousands of “splendid robes,” deer and elk skins, trinkets, feathered war bonnets, moccasins, pieces of flour sacks from Spotted Tail Agency, and various kitchen utensils.

In addition to these items, the soldiers discovered two letters whose purpose was to make it known that their owners were so-called good Indians. One was from Frank C. Boucher, “an illicit trader and brother-in-law of Spotted Tail,” in reference to Stabber, and the other from E. A. Howard, the former Indian agent at Spotted Tail Agency, regarding Charging Crow.

When Crook, who had turned forty-eight the previous day,45 finally arrived sometime between 11 a.m. and noon, it was none too soon for Captain Mills, who did not know whom to expect first—additional troops or an overwhelming force of Sioux seeking vengeance for their fellow tribesmen. As Davenport noted:

[The passing hours] were weighted with suspense, for early in the morning mounted Indians had been observed riding away over the buttes, and it was confidently expected that stronger bands than the one we had dispossessed would come to attack us. Being fully advised of our strength they would, like Indians, seek to overwhelm us with superior force, and certainly would not have much difficulty in succeeding should our reinforcements not arrive in time. The ridge that we held was not adapted for the defense of a small body of men.⁴⁶

Lucky for Mills, the main column was closer than he expected, about fifteen miles back on the trail, and one or more couriers had reached it at 7 a.m. Crook immediately hastened forward with “sections from the cavalry,” about 250 cavalrymen and 17 officers.⁴⁷ One correspondent (possibly Strahorn) noted the general's mixed feelings about the fight: “Crook was very much disappointed because Mills did not report the discovery last night, as there was plenty of time to have got up the entire command, and so effectually surrounded the village that nothing could have escaped; but the General is also pleased, too, all things considered.”⁴⁸

Correspondent Mills added, “If the whole command had been on the ground not one Indian would have escaped from the village.”⁴⁹

One of the first orders of business was the gulch from which bullets had been whizzing throughout the morning, including the slug that killed Private Wenzel.⁵⁰ Davenport wrote:

A parley was first tried and an interpreter [Frank Grouard] shouted in the Dakota tongue to the supposed wounded brave that the white chief would spare his life if he would surrender…. [He] was checked by the loud detonation of a Spencer rifle and a bullet flew within a hair's breadth of his head.⁵¹

Grouard's offer rejected, Lieutenant William Philo Clark, Second Cavalry, “called for [twenty] volunteers to make an end of the enemy.”⁵² However, their firing attracted so much attention from the other soldiers and scouts that soon the twenty men turned into a throng. Wasson wrote: “There was for half an hour a rush of men, mob-like, and a grand fusillade…. With difficulty Lieutenant Clark got the men under discipline.”⁵³

When things calmed down “a second parley was attempted.”54 The response? Another bullet from the ravine. Davenport described the scene that followed:

The fire was renewed and the besiegers drew nearer. Soldiers pressed around and volunteers swelled their ranks, until a dense black crowd stood about the mouth of the ravine. Suddenly there was a volley, followed by rapidly repeated shots sent among them [the soldiers], a tragic fright and a frantic rush from what seemed the gate of death. A soldier remained upon the ground, mortally wounded. It now was realized that the ravine…was a nest of devils bent upon holding off capture or death until assistance should come from some neighbor-ing band…. An unceasing fire was poured into the ravine for half an hour, and sometimes shrill cries of pain were heard.⁵⁵

Davenport assumed that the Indians were refusing to surrender because of their complicity in the battle of the Little Big Horn: “They probably thought that the guilt of Custer's slaughter, proved…by what was found in the village, sealed their fate if they were taken alive, despite the promises of the white chief.”⁵⁶

Earlier Davenport had pointed out the bravery of Lieutenants Crawford and Schwatka in keeping the Sioux at bay. Now he singled out Lieutenant Clark for what can only be called a reckless show of daring:

While the other besiegers crawled forward on their bellies to obtain a view of the figures within at which they were firing, Lieutenant Clarke intrepidly stood up in the ravine and fired his piece as coolly as if he were shooting at a deer, exposing his whole person to the aim of the savages.⁵⁷

If Davenport's pen was true, then Clark was not only brave, but damned lucky, for shortly after this, the scout known as “Buffalo Chips” uttered his last words after foolishly exposing himself to enemy fire coming from the ravine:

A scout known as Buffalo White [sic], who has long been a friend and ardent admirer of Buffalo Bill, was one of the most eager and daring of those who ventured to watch for an opportunity to fire. Suddenly, amid the rapid roar of rifles, a sharp thud was heard by those next to White, and the blood spurted from his breast. He fell backward with the cry, “Oh God, boys! Oh God!” and rolled to the foot of the bank.⁵⁸

According to Cuthbert Mills, this incident was followed by a “furious and continuous” fusillade from the soldiers.⁵⁹ To the contrary, Davenport stated:

The firing for a time ceased and another squaw came out, bearing a wounded papoose. It was then renewed, the Indians replying but seldom.⁶⁰

When Captain Samuel Munson, Ninth Infantry, accidentally “slipped and slid into the middle of the den,” he didn't climb back out empty-handed but had somehow latched onto an old Sioux woman and a baby. Davenport wrote:

The poor woman was whimpering and quaking with indescribable fear as she appeared in the crowd of soldiers. “Kill them,” said a voice; “the squaws would have killed us as well as the bucks.” “No,” was answered in an indignant chorus. “You don't know the American soldier,” and the hardened recruit from a foreign clime hung his head before the manly reproof.61

Another incident of note occurred when Baptiste Pourier shot and scalped an aged warrior just before the latter man was about to fire his own weapon at the scout. When the fight was over, the old man was “unceremoniously hauled up by what hair remained and by a leather belt around the middle. The fatal shot had struck him under the ear, and shattered the whole base of the skull…. His features wore a look of rigid determination.”⁶² Before climbing out of the gulch, Pourier had “found himself suddenly encompassed by the arms of a squaw and her boy, who begged him not to kill them, and he pushed them roughly out of the hell before him.”⁶³

By midafternoon, the survivors in the ravine finally decided to accept Crook's offer of surrender and gave up their weapons, which, according to Cuthbert Mills, included a few carbines that had belonged to the Seventh Cavalry.⁶⁴ Davenport noted that “they seemed to expect immediate death.”⁶⁵ Wasson, Mills, and Davenport all captured the tragic surrender scene:

(Wasson:) The first to take advantage of the terms offered was an old squaw who looked like one of Macbeth's witches in the play. She was very much frightened and clung to the General's arm with a tenacity both amusing and touching. Soon after other squaws came out, bringing with them two children, one a very beautiful girl about four years of age. Altogether about 15 women and children came out, followed finally by three warriors, the chief, American Horse,⁶⁶ being one of them. He was mortally wounded.⁶⁷

(Mills:) The General insisted on getting the women out. Nothing was done for an hour or two except to guard the place, and so rapidly does the interest change in such times as these, that during this space the existence of the Indians [in the ravine] seemed half forgotten by the camp. Excitement rose again when, after another negotiation with Big Bat, they all consented to come up. There was a general rush, but the guard kept the space clear. Up came Iron Shield, a Sans Arc chief, helped by two squaws, and shot mortally in the abdomen; then two bucks wholly unwounded; then some squaws and children. One of the squaws carried a dead child out; another a wounded one. Its foot was shot off, and it soon died. The prisoners were led off under guard, and half a hundred men jumped down to where they had come from, while several hundred lined the sides and top of the ravine.

One of the bodies was at first mistaken to be that of a white man. This was followed by calls for vengeance among the soldiers: “Drag him out!” “Cut him to pieces!”

(Mills:) There was no white man, however. When the body was dragged into the light, it proved to be that of a squaw whitened by death. She was frightfully shot. A bullet had torn half her neck away, three had gone through her breast and shoulder, and two through each limb. Her body and clothing were one mass of mud and coagulated blood. The woman seemed to have been killed instantly, for her face wore a smile of perfect peace. Another squaw was dragged out scarcely less shot up than the other. Both were quite pretty for Indians…. After this came still another squaw, also shot in several places. It seemed that the bodies of the women had been used by the survivors as defenses.

When they were all laid out, and the curiosity of the command had been satisfied by an inspection of an hour or so, an Indian scout came up,68 calmly scalped the unfortunate women, and hung the inglorious trophies at his belt with as much apparent satisfaction as if they had been taken from warriors slain by his own hand. Yet this Indian was a brave man, and had proved himself to be such. The bodies of the slain were left where they had been dragged, and the crowd of soldiers dispersed, most of them to cook the dried buffalo meat which now formed our only food.”⁶⁹

(Davenport:) At length an old squaw volunteered to go into the ravine and advise the bucks to surrender. There remained only three, one of whom was horribly wounded in the abdomen. The errand proved successful, and the ravine was carried. The crowd rushed in and found there the mangled bodies of three dead squaws and one [dead] brave.

Three living braves were brought out, one of them dying, and a dozen squaws and papooses. Altogether the captives numbered twenty-one. They were a pitiable group. The women spoke with fear and the babies sobbed. One of the squaws had a great red furrow in her hand where a bullet had ploughed its way. Another on entering the village ran to the tepee that had been hers and found there the corpse of her dead child, shot in the fight of the morning. The picture of anguish which she presented was too harrowing for the pen, and some soldiers wrapped the babe in blankets and robes and laid it under a wicker shelter to await burial. The aspect of the bucks was stolid as flint. The one who was dying and whom the interpreters recognized as the Northern American Horse or Iron Shield of the Brule band lay half recumbent supported by two squaws. His face had a yellow copperish hue and showed the rigid contraction produced by terrible pain, but no muscular quiver. The eyelids were closed and there seemed no sign of life. His bowels were protruding from the wound and Dr. McGillycuddy⁷⁰ with compassionate skill attempted to replace them but found it impossible. American Horse was told that he must die, but he said nothing. The group composed of the old chief and his women was one as intensely tragic and direfully pathetic as could be wished for by the classic sculptor.

The other bucks, one of whom is called Black Wolf, were conversed with by the interpreters, and said that Crazy Horse's band, with the Southern Cheyennes, were encamped beyond the Slim Buttes, and that those of their people who had escaped had gone to bring back a strong force of warriors to annihilate us. They said that most of the Sioux had determined to go to the agencies for the winter, but that Sitting Bull, with about 100 lodges, had gone across the Yellowstone.⁷¹

Shortly after, in the same dispatch, Davenport added:

One of the most disgusting and horrible spectacles I ever beheld was the ghastly group of dead lying in the ravine after its surrender. General Crook's scouts had used their knives upon the head of each corpse, and the skulls were bare where the scalps had been savagely torn away, and the clothing of the dead squaws was so disarranged as to indecently expose their mangled forms. My faith in the superiority of white humanity received a terrible shock.

While the fight at the ravine was going on, Crook's chief medical officer, Surgeon Bennett A. Clements, whose makeshift hospital consisted of the “largest tepee” found in the village, had determined that Lieutenant Von Luettwitz would have to lose his right leg above the knee. “His system had been too worn down by the hardships of the campaign,” wrote Cuthbert Mills, “to permit anything but amputation, which was done.”72

With the wretched affair at the ravine behind them, the men turned their attention to cooking dinner and sorting through the spoils of war, or as one correspondent expressed it, “The village was thoroughly ransacked.”⁷³ The 150 troopers under Captain Mills who participated in the original attack that morning “received as much booty as they could carry off without difficulty”⁷⁴ and were also granted the captured ponies. Davenport received a horse previously ridden by a member of the Seventh Cavalry. The rest of the men were free to pick through the leftovers. Whatever was not wanted or could not be carried away was set afire, including the thirty-five lodges, which had been “torn to pieces.”⁷⁵ There was so much to burn that it took a dozen huge bonfires. About an hour later, all that remained were “smouldering heaps of embers.”⁷⁶ The bonfires created a large amount of smoke and, as Wasson noted, a quite unpleasant “perfume.”⁷⁷

If the troops thought the day's fighting was over, they were wrong. “Scarcely had the camp plunder been sorted and the order issued to burn the refuse,” Wasson remarked, “when twenty minutes after four [p.m.] lively picket firing began in front of Captain Mason's battalion of the Fifth Cavalry. It soon became apparent that the defeated villagers of the morning had returned to pay off Captain Mills.”78 Cuthbert Mills recorded:

Every man was engaged in his several occupation, mine being to take hasty notes of the events of the day, when half a dozen rapidly succeeding shots were heard off west of the camp, and the cry spread from man to man, “Indians! Indians! We are attacked by Indians.”⁷⁹

Davenport added that, with enemy Indians swarming over the buttes, “the last tribute of regret for Buffalo White [Buffalo Chips] was hastily curtailed.”⁸⁰ This first assault of the Sioux resulted in the wounding of two men, Sergeant Edmund Schreiber, Fifth Cavalry, and Private Augustus Dorn, Third Cavalry.

“It was evident,” Cuthbert Mills declared, “that reinforcements had been obtained from Crazy Horse's village west of us [toward the Little Missouri River], and they had come in expecting to find only the small attacking party of the morning.”⁸¹ Instead they found Crook's entire force, which, despite being as exhausted as it was, responded rather quickly to drive back the Sioux and Cheyennes. As Mills noted, “Hardship and starvation had apparently broken the command until the first hostile shots came in.”⁸²

 

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Black Bear Speaks

Cheyenne Daily Leader, November 1, 1876

The eldest of the Indians captured, called Black Bear,⁸³ says that he belongs to the Brule Sioux, now at Standing Rock Agency, formerly from Spotted Tail Agency. He left there with American Horse (a Brule sub-chief killed in the fight) last summer to trade ammunition with the hostiles in the field. They had just accomplished this, and were on the point of returning, when surprised in the village at Slim Buttes. The Indians who lost their village in this fight were Minneconjous, and not Brules, as heretofore reported, the mistake being due, probably, to American Horse's outfit, the only capture of live Indians made, being Brule. The fact is, in a measure, consolation, as the Minneconjous are, without doubt, the most persistently hostile of the Sioux nation, and, for their numbers, have done more mischief, especially when this nation was reckoned as at peace, than any other sub-tribe in it, unless it might be the cut-off Uncapapas under Sitting Bull himself. Their principal chief is Crazy Horse, and the band defeated [at Slim Buttes] was no doubt a dependency of his, and relied on him in the afternoon to recapture their village, but were sadly disappointed when they ran against the entire command of General Crook, then brought up. The chief's name was Bear Nose, and not Roman Nose, who, by the way, is an important Brule chief and [also] a Minneconjou.

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“[The Indians] first dismounted behind the high points on the west and opened a slow fire,” Davenport observed, “but they were gallantly dislodged” by four companies of infantry “led by Captain A. S. Burt.”84 In another dispatch, he added that these companies “gallantly carried several difficult points of the Buttes, charging the mounted Indians on foot and pouring from the crests which they gained a terrible fire upon them.”⁸⁵ He said “about twenty” Indians were killed in this action, which, on the surface, sounds like an exaggeration.

At the start of the fight, the Indians had tried to cut off a small detachment under Lieutenant Sibley that was bringing up “some dilapidated horses.”⁸⁶ They probably wanted the horses more than they wanted the soldiers, although wiping them out would have been a welcome bonus too. In the end, as Davenport related, it did not matter, because they could not find a way to break through the soldiers' line. “Skirmishers were advanced rapidly and forced the Indians to widen their circuit, so that they were obliged to cross deep gullies and steep banks. When they reached the rear they made a dash…but Lieutenant Sibley reached the camp just in time to escape. The Indians were disappointed.”⁸⁷ It was Sibley's second close call in two months.

Closing out the encounter, Davenport wrote:

They were driven back on every hand, and gradually concentrated their whole strength on the right of our line, where they had first made the attack and could secure the higher ridges. The infantry, however, charged them afoot up the heights at double-quick pace and then poured volleys into them when they were running across the ravines behind. On the right, further toward the rear, the Fifth Cavalry, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Carr,⁸⁸ engaged them warmly…. The last considerable demonstration was made on the right, when the fire of the infantry silenced the Sioux and drove them away from their front. The battle of the afternoon lasted about two hours. The attacking force of Indians was about 500 in number and their loss about forty-five killed and wounded. Four soldiers were wounded. In the darkness the occasional flash of a gun was seen, but the pickets easily guarded the camp.⁸⁹

Wasson differed greatly with Davenport on the number of Indian casualties, declaring, “The troops reported four of the enemy killed and several unhorsed, but of this there is nothing official.”⁹⁰

Regarding the significant role of the infantry, a detail Davenport also recognized, Cuthbert Mills stated:

I think there will be no more sneering at infantry in Indian campaigns, at least if they are all like the infantry we have with us. They have won the admiration of everybody, both in marching and fighting. They went into that little skirmish at the village in admirable style, and their long guns soon cleared the Indians from their front.⁹¹

Crook's column lost two soldiers killed (Wenzel and Kennedy), one scout killed (Buffalo Chips), and fourteen wounded, including Lieutenant Von Luettwitz.⁹² Whatever the Sioux casualties were, one more was added to the list when American Horse died shortly after midnight.

Reflecting on the day's events about two weeks later, Cuthbert Mills wrote:

The general impression in this command is that we have not much to boast of in the way of killing Indians. They kept out of the way so effectually that the only band which was struck was struck by accident, and when, by the subsequent attack upon us, it was discovered that another and much larger village was not far off, the command was in too crippled and broken down a condition from starvation and over-marching to turn the information to any account.93

On the day of the fight, one correspondent (possibly Strahorn) remarked, “It is regretted that other of the larger villages were not surprised and destroyed.” Then he championed Crook's strategy of relentless pursuit: “But this affair demonstrates the good policy of a stern chase after the Indians, even by the foot soldiers.”⁹⁴

 

INTERLUDE

The Brothers Von Luettwitz

On October 25, 1876, the Cheyenne Daily Leader printed the following letter from Lieutenant Adolphus Von Luettwitz to General Crook. Rather than mention the loss of his leg, he defends Crook's decisions in the late campaign.

Cheyenne Daily Leader,
Wednesday, October 25, 1876

 

LETTER FROM A BRAVE OFFICER.

 

HOW A GALLANT SOLDIER SPEAKS OF HIS COMMANDER.

Crook City, D. T., October 3-Lieutenant A. H. Von Luettwitz, Third Cavalry, who was wounded in the battle of Slim Buttes, D. T., Sept. 9, and was compelled to suffer the amputation of his right leg above the knee, writes to General Crook from Crook City, in the Black Hills, where he was left, as follows:

General, I am sorry to leave the army, and especially to be deprived of the pleasure of serving under such an able and energetic officer as yourself. I have been a soldier since my 17th year, having been educated at the Artillery and Engineer School of Berlin. Now it is all over.

Your march from Heart River to the Hills showed both your generalship and your duty as a true soldier. Seeing a large Indian trail going south towards your department, you considered it your duty to follow it and to protect your wards. You feared neither hardships nor privations, but shared both equally with us. Nobody can blame you that our campaign was not crowned with full success. Our forces were too small. The area of country passed over by your command extends from the North Platte to the Yellowstone, and from the Big Horn to the Little Missouri—an area more than twice the size of France. Eight hundred thousand Prussians could not successfully occupy France in 1870. How could 2,000 men be expected to control twice as large a country? Our Indian war will be at an end as soon as traders and speculators are prevented from selling arms and ammunition to the redskins, and as soon as the British government prevents their getting aid from and finding refuge in British North America.

I am, General, with the highest respect, your obedient servant,A. H. Von Luettwitz, First Lieutenant, Third Cavalry.

The following day, the Cheyenne Daily Leader printed a letter from Crook to Von Luettwitz's brother in Germany:

 

Cheyenne Daily Leader,
Thursday, October 26, 1876

 

KINDLY WORDS FROM ONE SOLDIER TO ANOTHER—LETTER OF GENERAL CROOK TO BARON VON LUETTWITZ.

General Crook has written the following letter to a brother of Lieut. Von Luettwitz, Third Cavalry, concerning the manner in which the latter was wounded, September 9, in the battle of Slim Buttes:

Headquarters Dept. of the Platte, in the field Camp Robinson, Nebraska,Oct. 21, 1876.

Gustavus, Baron Von Luettwitz, Major 81st Infantry, Wiesbaden, Germany:

Dear Sir: Your brother, Lieutenant A. H. Von Luettwitz, Third U. S. Cavalry, has communicated to me your address, coupled with the request that I would apprise his family of the manner in which he received the wound from which he now lies disabled. I have, there-fore, the honor to inform you that during our recent campaign against the large tribe of hostile Indians called Sioux, who roam through the country north of this, it became necessary to dispatch a small force of picked men under selected officers to the new mining town of Deadwood City, in the Black Hills, there to obtain supplies for the command. This advance guard encountered a village of the enemy, and in the skirmish ensuing the Lieutenant was so badly wounded in the knee-pan that amputation of the leg became necessary to save [his] life.

In this sad misfortune, incurred in the gallant performance of duty, your brother has the sincere sympathy of myself and all his associates, while we at the same time feel a pride in the distinguished gallantry with which he has sustained himself, not only on this, but other occasions. His conduct attracted my attention at the affair of the Rosebud, June 17. I write freely, knowing that as you are yourself a soldier, my motives will be appreciated.

Accept, my dear sir, the assurances of my regard and consideration.

George Crook, Brigadier General U. S. Army.