Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Crook now gave over the pursuit, and returned to Fort Fetterman to organize a winter campaign. This expedition was one of the best equipped that ever started on an Indian campaign. It contained all arms of the service, with an abundance of everything necessary to success. To follow its marches to the Big Horn Range would reveal little of interest; but late in November it was learned, from a captured Cheyenne, that the principal Cheyenne village was located in a cañon through which flowed one of the main sources of Crazy Woman’s Fork of the Powder River. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was ordered, with the Indian scouts and ten troops of cavalry from the Second, Fourth, and Fifth regiments, to find and destroy the village.

The Cheyennes were not so numerous as the Sioux, and the greater number of their allies has sometimes caused people to minimize the quality of the Cheyennes; but no braver, more magnificent fighters ever lived than this same tribe. They had some of the Homeric qualities of the ancient Greeks. I believe it will generally be admitted that they were the finest of the Plains Indians. They were foemen worthy Mackenzie’s or anybody else’s steel. The battle which ensued was in some respects one of the most terrible in Western history, and in its results exemplified, as few others have done, the horrible character of the war. It was, perhaps, as great a contribution to the downfall of the Sioux as any single incident that occurred.

Mackenzie’s men left the main encampment on the 23d of November. The ground was covered with snow. The weather was arctic in its severity. The scouts and friendly Indians—Pawnees, Crows, Shoshones, the hereditary enemies of the Cheyennes, including certain Cheyennes also who had entered the service of the United States[^[100]]—had located the camp in Willow Creek Cañon. Some of the Indians had kept the camp under observation while Mackenzie brought up his troops. He had seven hundred and fifty cavalrymen and three hundred and fifty Indians. Halting at the mouth of the cañon, which he reached on the night of the 24th, he resolved to await the still hours before the break of day the next morning before delivering his attack.

The cañon was a gloomy gorge in the Big Horn Mountains. A swift, ice-bound river rushed over the rocks between precipitous walls, which soared into the sky for perhaps a thousand feet on either side. Numberless icy brooks poured their contents into the main stream through lateral cañons scarcely less forbidding in their appearance than the main one, and which made the trail of the creek almost impossible. Here and there the cañon widened, and in one of these open places the Cheyennes, under the leadership of Dull Knife, had pitched their camp. They fondly believed the place impregnable—as, indeed, with careful guarding it would have been. The greatest precaution was taken by Mackenzie to prevent his men from making any noise. They stood in ranks by their horses in the snow in that polar cold, waiting for the order for the advance. Presently the moon rose, flooding the recesses of the ravine with silvery light, which sparkled with dazzling brilliancy upon patches of snow here and there on the dark walls.

Mackenzie, calculating that day would be breaking just about the time he would reach the camp from his present position, at last gave order to take up the march. With what relief the benumbed troopers sprang to their saddles and urged their shivering horses forward, can scarcely be imagined by dwellers in peaceful lands around warm firesides. As they struggled up the cañon they could hear the sound of dancing and revelry in the Indian camp, faintly blown back to them by the night wind. They learned afterward that the Cheyennes had just returned from a successful raid on the Shoshones, and that the dance was in celebration of an important victory they had gained. They halted again, therefore, until all was silence, before they once more advanced. Day was beginning to break as they reached the village.

The sleeping Indians in the camp had not the slightest suspicion that the enemy was within a hundred miles. The troops, cheering and shouting, burst upon them like a winter storm. Indians, when not apprehensive of attack, invariably sleep naked. The Cheyennes had just time to seize rifles and cartridge belts, while the women caught hasty blankets about the children, when the soldiers were upon them. Indeed, so quick and sudden was the attack that some of the warriors could not get out of the tepees. With their knives they slashed the wigwams, and from these openings fired upon the soldiers as they galloped through the village. Many were shot dead where a few moments before they had slept in peace.

Most of the pony herd was captured, and the village in a short time was in possession of Mackenzie. The Cheyennes, though overwhelmed, were undismayed. They had retreated headlong up the cañon, but were soon rallied by their subchiefs. Dull Knife, their leader, was found in the village with half a dozen bullets in him. He had fought gallantly in the open until he died.

Presently the Indians came swarming back along the side of the cañon. They occupied points of vantage, and, naked though they were in the frightful weather, with the thermometer ranging from ten to twenty degrees below zero during this campaign, they opened fire upon their opponents. Unless they could be dislodged, Mackenzie’s position was untenable. He sent his Shoshone and other Indian scouts, who, animated with bitter hatred of the Cheyennes, were eager to obey his commands, to the summits of the cliffs to clear the Indians from them.

Meanwhile he directed Lieutenant John A. McKinney, with his troop, to charge and drive the Indians from a rocky eminence where they were concentrating and from which they were pouring a hot fire upon the soldiers. McKinney’s charge was entirely successful, for he drove the Cheyennes back until he was stopped by a ravine. Wheeling his men, he attempted to find a crossing, when he was fired upon by a flanking party of Indians and instantly killed, being hit no less than six times. Six of his troopers were wounded, and a number of horses were shot. The troop was thrown into confusion, and some of the men started to retreat. Mackenzie, observing the situation, immediately ordered Captain John M. Hamilton and Major G. A. Gordon to charge to the rescue. The charge was gallantly made and stubbornly resisted.

The fighting was hand to hand, of the fiercest description; and the Cheyennes, while keeping the rest of Mackenzie’s forces engaged, began concentrating on these two troops, which had been joined by Captain Davis, with his men. There was no reserve; the cavalry were all in, and this detachment might have been wiped out had it not been for the success of the Shoshones and other Indians, who cleared the key to the position on the summit of the plateau above the cañon, and then came to the assistance of the sorely beset soldiers. Twenty Cheyennes were killed here and several of the soldiers.