MAP OF THE SIOUX COUNTRY.
THE INDIAN WAR.
CHAPTER I.
THE SIOUX TRIBES—CAUSES OF THE WAR.
The scene of the campaign against the hostile Indians in 1876, was the rugged, desolate, and partially unexplored region lying between the Big Horn and Powder Rivers, and extending from the Big Horn Mountains northerly to and beyond the Yellowstone River. This region is the most isolated and inaccessible of any lying east of the Rocky Mountains, and is admirably adapted for Indian warfare and defense. Several rivers, tributaries of the Yellowstone, flow through it, and it abounds in creeks, ravines, and canyons. It is the hereditary country of the Crows, who for generations defended it against marauding tribes of Blackfeet.
A vivid description of the general aspect of the country and of the hardships and perils of our soldiers, has been given by Col. Nelson A. Miles, of the Fifth Infantry, in a letter written from the mouth of the Powder River. "No service," he says, "is more thankless or dangerous than contending against these treacherous savages, and if you will come out and learn the real sentiment of the army, you will find the officers of the army the strongest advocates of any peace policy that shall be just and honorable. You will find us out here, five hundred miles from railroad communication, in as barren, desolate and worthless a country as the sun shines upon—volcanic, broken, and almost impassable—so rugged as to make our granite hills of Vermont and New Hampshire appear in comparison as pleasant parks. Jagged and precipitous cliffs; narrow and deep arroyos filled with massive boulders; alkali water, or for miles and miles none at all; and vegetation of cactus and sage-bushes, will represent to you, feebly indeed, the scene of the present campaign, in which we are contending against the most powerful, warlike, and best-armed body of savages on the American Continent, armed and mounted partly at the expense of the Government, and fully supplied with the most improved magazine guns and tons of metallic ammunition."
"The brave mariner," wrote a newspaper correspondent, "on the trackless ocean without compass, is no more at the mercy of wind and wave than Terry's army, out upon this vast trackless waste, is at the mercy of his guides and scouts. The sun rises in the east, shines all day upon a vast expanse of sage-brush and grass, and, as it sets in the west, casts its dull rays into a thousand ravines that neither man nor beast can cross. The magnet always points north; but whether one can go either north or south can be decided only by personal effort. An insignificant turn to the wrong side of a little knoll or buffalo-wallow ofttimes imperceptibly leads the voyager into ravine after ravine, over bluff after bluff, until at last he stands on the edge of a yawning canyon, hundreds of feet in depth and with perpendicular walls. Nothing is left for him to do but to retrace his steps and find an accessible route."