Sitting Bull was one of the ablest chiefs and fighters the Sioux nation ever produced. He got his name from the fact that once when he had shot a buffalo he sprang astride of it to skin it, and the wounded bull rose on its haunches with the Indian on its back. He combined native Indian cunning with the strategy and finesse needed to make a great general, and his ability as a leader was conceded alike by red and white man. A dangerous man at best, the wrongs his people had suffered roused all his Indian cruelty, vindictiveness, hatred, and thirst for revenge.
The Sioux war of 1876 had its origin, like most of its predecessors and successors, in an act of injustice on the part of the United States government and a violation of treaty rights.
In 1868 a treaty had been made with the Sioux, by which the Black Hills country was reserved for their exclusive use, no settling by white men to be allowed. In 1874 gold was discovered, and the usual gold fever was followed by a rush of whites into the Indian country. The Sioux naturally resented the intrusion, and instead of attempting to placate them, to the end that the treaty might be revised, the government sent General Custer into the Black Hills with instructions to intimidate the Indians into submission. But Custer was too wise, too familiar with Indian nature, to adhere to his instructions to the letter. Under cover of a flag of truce a council was arranged. At this gathering coffee, sugar, and bacon were distributed among the Indians, and along with those commodities Custer handed around some advice. This was to the effect that it would be to the advantage of the Sioux if they permitted the miners to occupy the gold country. The coffee, sugar, and bacon were accepted thankfully by Lo, but no nation, tribe, or individual since the world began has ever welcomed advice. It was thrown away on Lo. He received it with such an air of indifference and in such a stoical silence that General Custer had no hope his mission had succeeded.
In 1875 General Crook was sent into the Hills to make a farcical demonstration of the government's desire to maintain good faith, but no one was deceived, the Indians least of all. In August Custer City was laid out, and in two weeks its population numbered six hundred. General Crook drove out the inhabitants, and as he marched triumphantly out of one end of the village the people marched in again at the other.
The result of this continued bad faith was inevitable; everywhere the Sioux rose in arms. Strange as it might seem to one who has not followed the government's remarkable Indian policy, it had dispensed firearms to the Indians with a generous hand. The government's Indian policy, condensed, was to stock the red man with rifles and cartridges, and then provide him with a first-class reason for using them against the whites. During May, June, and July of that year the Sioux had received 1,120 Remington and Winchester rifles and 13,000 rounds of patent ammunition. During that year they received several thousand stands of arms and more than a million rounds of ammunition, and for three years before that they had been regularly supplied with weapons. The Sioux uprising of 1876 was expensive for the government. One does not have to go far to find the explanation.
Will expected to join General Crook, but on reaching Chicago he found that General Carr was still in command of the Fifth Cavalry, and had sent a request that Will return to his old regiment. Carr was at Cheyenne; thither Will hastened at once. He was met at the station by Captain Charles King, the well-known author, and later serving as brigadier-general at Manila, then adjutant of the regiment. As the pair rode into camp the cry went up, "Here comes Buffalo Bill!" Three ringing cheers expressed the delight of the troopers over his return to his old command, and Will was equally delighted to meet his quondam companions. He was appointed guide and chief of scouts, and the regiment proceeded to Laramie. From there they were ordered into the Black Hills country, and Colonel Merritt replaced General Carr.
The incidents of Custer's fight and fall are so well known that it is not necessary to repeat them here. It was a better fight than the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, for not one of the three hundred came forth from the "jaws of death." As at Balaklava, "some one had blundered," not once, but many times, and Custer's command discharged the entire debt with their lifeblood.
When the news of the tragedy reached the main army, preparations were made to move against the Indians in force. The Fifth Cavalry was instructed to cut off, if possible, eight hundred Cheyenne warriors on their way to join the Sioux, and Colonel Wesley Merritt, with five hundred men, hastened to Hat, or War-Bonnet, Creek, purposing to reach the trail before the Indians could do so. The creek was reached on the 17th of July, and at daylight the following morning Will rode forth to ascertain whether the Cheyennes had crossed the trail. They had not, but that very day the scout discerned the warriors coming up from the south.
Colonel Merritt ordered his men to mount their horses, but to remain out of sight, while he, with his adjutant, Charles King, accompanied Will on a tour of observation. The Cheyennes came directly toward the troops, and presently fifteen or twenty of them dashed off to the west along the trail the army had followed the night before. Through his glass Colonel Merritt remarked two soldiers on the trail, doubtless couriers with dispatches, and these the Indians manifestly designed to cut off. Will suggested that it would be well to wait until the warriors were on the point of charging the couriers, when, if the colonel were willing, he would take a party of picked men and cut off the hostile delegation from the main body, which was just coming over the divide.
The colonel acquiesced, and Will, galloping back to camp, returned with fifteen men. The couriers were some four hundred yards away, and their Indian pursuers two hundred behind them. Colonel Merritt gave the word to charge, and Will and his men skurried toward the redskins.