Recently the old chief was asked to tell the story of his most thrilling adventure. It was a tale of one man against seven, and the old man’s dim eyes grew bright and his wrinkled face lighted up with a strange light as he told it. A well-known warrior was jealous of Red Cloud, and, together with six of his followers, waylaid the young brave in a lonely spot.
Two of them were armed with rifles, the rest carried only bows and arrows, while Red Cloud had a Winchester. At the first fire Red Cloud fell with a bullet in his thigh, but from where he lay he contrived to kill every one of his assailants.
The skill and courage he displayed on that occasion won for him many admiring followers, and as war after war with the whites broke out and he won fresh laurels his followers increased in numbers. He joined the various secret societies, passed through the terrible agony of the sun dance, and when, in 1866, the chiefs of the tribe signed a “peace paper,” he stood out for and declared war. The fighting men flocked to his standard, and when the awful massacre in which he played so conspicuous a part occurred, he was proclaimed Chief of all the Sioux.
All the prestige he lost at Piney Island he regained upon the abandonment of the forts by the government, a most impolitic and unfortunate move.
[17]. General Rodenbough, in “Sabre and Bayonet.”
[18]. This statement is corroborated by private letter from a veteran soldier in the United States Army, who is one of the few survivors of the battle. Surgeon Horton, who was at the post from its establishment until it was abandoned, also says that the wagon beds were of ordinary boards, without lining or other protection.
[19]. On the same day an attack was made in force on Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn.
[20]. Powell’s official report says nine, although a private letter written some time later makes the hour seven. It isn’t material, anyway: there was ample time for all the fighting both sides cared for before the day was ended.
[21]. “I know that my husband never expected to come out of that fight alive. He has told me that during the fight the Indians came up so close to the corral, that one shot would pass through the Indian in advance and kill or wound the one behind. My husband claimed the honor of killing Red Cloud’s nephew.”—Letter from Mrs. Annie Powell to me. Surgeon Horton states that the men told him on their return to the fort that the Indians were crowded so closely together that the conical bullets from their muskets killed four or five Indians in line behind one another. The Indians came up in solid masses on every side.
[22]. Dr. Horton writes me that when Powell’s men reached the post they were literally crazed with excitement and the nervous strain of the fight. The health of many of them was completely broken. Powell himself never fully recovered from the strain of that awful day, his wife informs me.