On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

This march bore grievously upon the horses; there were so many little ravines and gullies, dozens of them not more than three or four feet in depth, which gashed the face of nature and intersected the course we were pursuing in so many and such unexpected places, that we were constantly halting to allow of an examination being made to determine the most suitable places for crossing, without running the risk of breaking our own or our horses’ necks. The ground was just as slippery as glass, and so uneven that when on foot we were continually falling, and when on horseback were in dread of being thrown and of having our horses fall upon us, as had already happened in one case on the trip. To stagger and slip, wrenching fetlocks and pasterns, was a strain to which no animals could be subjected for much time without receiving grave injuries. Our horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion, and when the trail was at all decent would press forward on the bit without touch of spur. When Frank Gruard had sighted the bluffs of the Powder, the command halted in a deep ravine, while Frank and a picked detail went out in front some distance to reconnoitre. The intense cold had made the horses impatient, and they were champing on the bits and pawing the ground with their hoofs in a manner calculated to arouse the attention of an enemy, should one happen to be in the vicinity. They were suffering greatly for water; the ice king had set his seal upon all the streams during the past week, and the thickness of the covering seen was from two and a half to three feet. This thirst made them all the more restless and nervous. While we halted in this ravine, many of the men lay down to sleep, much to the alarm of the officers, who, in fear that they would not awaken again, began to shake and kick them back to wakefulness.

By looking up at the “Dipper” we could see that we were travelling almost due east, and when our scouts returned they brought the important information that the two Indians whom we had been following had been members of a hunting party of forty, mounted, whose trail we were now upon. Frank led off at a smart pace, and we moved as fast as we could in rear; the mists and clouds of night were breaking, and a faint sign in the east told the glad news that dawn was coming. Directly in front of us and at a very short distance away, a dense column of smoke betrayed the existence of a village of considerable size, and we were making all due preparations to attack it when, for the second time, Frank returned with the information that the smoke came from one of the burning coal-measures of which Montana and Wyoming were full. Our disappointment was merely temporary; we had not begun fairly to growl at our luck before Frank returned in a most gleeful mood, announcing that the village had been sighted, and that it was a big one at the base of the high cliffs upon which we were standing.

The plan of battle was after this manner: Reynolds had three battalions, commanded respectively by Moore, Mills, and Noyes. Noyes’s battalion was to make the first move, Egan’s company, with its revolvers, charging in upon the village, and Noyes cutting out and driving off the enemy’s herd of ponies. Mills was to move in rear of Noyes, and, after the village had been charged, move into and take possession of it, occupy the plum thicket surrounding it, and destroy all the “tepis” and plunder of all kinds. These battalions were to descend into the valley of the Powder through a ravine on our right flank, while Moore with his two companies was to move to the left and take up a position upon the hills overlooking the village, and receive the flying Indians with a shower of lead when they started to flee from their lodges, and attempted to get positions in the brakes or bluffs to annoy Egan.

Noyes led off with his own and Egan’s companies, and Frank Gruard, “Big Bat,” and others of the scouts showing the path down the ravine; the descent was a work of herculean difficulty for some of the party, as the horses slipped and stumbled over the icy ground, or pressed through the underbrush and fallen rocks and timber. At length we reached the narrow valley of the Powder, and all hands were impatient to begin the charge at once. This, Major Noyes would not allow; he sent Gruard, “Big Bat,” and “Little Bat” to the front to look at the ground and report whether or not it was gashed by any ravines which would render the advance of cavalry difficult. Their report was favorable, nothing being seen to occasion fear that a mounted force could not approach quite close to the lodges. It was a critical moment, as Frank indicated where the Indian boys were getting ready to drive the herds of ponies down to water, which meant that the village would soon be fully aroused. At last we were off, a small band of forty-seven all told, including the brave “Teddy” Egan himself, Mr. Strahorn, the representative of the Rocky Mountain News, a man who displayed plenty of pluck during the entire campaign, Hospital Steward Bryan, and myself. We moved out from the gulch in column of twos, Egan at the head; but upon entering the main valley the command “Left front into line” was given, and the little company formed a beautiful line in less time than it takes to narrate it. We moved at a fast walk, and as soon as the command “Charge” should be given, we were to quicken the gait to a trot, but not move faster on account of the weak condition of our stock. When the end of the village was reached we were to charge at full gallop down through the lines of “tepis,” firing our revolvers at everything in sight; but if unable to storm the village, we were to wheel about and charge back. Just as we approached the edge of the village we came upon a ravine some ten feet in depth and of a varying width, the average being not less than fifty. We got down this deliberately, and at the bottom and behind a stump saw a young boy about fifteen years old driving his ponies. He was not ten feet off. The youngster wrapped his blanket about him and stood like a statue of bronze, waiting for the fatal bullet; his features were as immobile as if cut in stone. The American Indian knows how to die with as much stoicism as the East Indian. I levelled my pistol. “Don’t shoot,” said Egan, “we must make no noise.” We were up on the bench upon which the village stood, and the war-whoop of the youngster was ringing wildly in the winter air, awakening the echoes of the bald-faced bluffs. The lodges were not arranged in any order, but placed where each could secure the greatest amount of protection from the configuration of the coves and nooks amid the rocks. The ponies close to the village trotted off slowly to the right and left as we drew near; the dogs barked and howled and scurried out of sight; a squaw raised the door of her lodge, and seeing the enemy yelled with all her strength, but as yet there had been not one shot fired. We had emerged from the clump of cottonwoods and the thick undergrowth of plum bushes immediately alongside of the nearest “tepis,” when the report of the first Winchester and the zipp of the first bullet notified us that the fun had begun.

The enemy started out from their lodges, running for the rocky bluffs overlooking the valley, there to take position, but turning to let us have the benefit of a shot every moment or so. We could not see much at which to fire, the “tepis” intervening, but we kept on our way through the village, satisfied that the flight of the hostiles would be intercepted by Moore from his place upon the hills. The Indians did not shoot at our men, they knew a trick worth two of that: they fired deliberately at our horses, with the intention of wounding some of them and rendering the whole line unmanageable. The first shot struck the horse of the troop blacksmith in the intestines, and made him rear and plunge and fall over backwards. That meant that both horse and man were hors du combat until the latter could extricate himself, or be extricated from under the dying, terrified animal. The second bullet struck the horse of Steward Bryan in the head, and knocked out both his eyes; as his steed stiffened in death, Bryan, who was riding next to me, called out, “There is something the matter with my horse!” The third missile was aimed at “Teddy” Egan, but missed him and cut the bridle of my old plug as clean as if it had been a piece of tissue paper. From that on the fire became a volley, although the people of the village were retreating to a place of safety for their women and children.

The herd of ponies had been “cut out,” and they were now afoot unless they could manage to recapture them. Two or three boys made an attempt to sneak around on our right flank and run the herd back up among the high bluffs, where they would be practically safe from our hands. This was frustrated by Egan, who covered the line of approach with his fire, and had the herd driven slightly to our rear. The advantages, however, were altogether on the side of the Sioux and Cheyennes, as our promised support did not arrive as soon as expected, and the fire had begun to tell upon us; we had had three men wounded, one in the lower part of the lungs, one in the elbow-joint, and one in the collar-bone or upper part of the chest; six horses had been killed and three wounded, one of the latter being Egan’s own, which had been hit in the neck. The men wounded were not the men on the wounded horses, so that at this early stage of the skirmish we had one-fourth of our strength disabled. We held on to the village as far as the centre, but the Indians, seeing how feeble was our force, rallied, and made a bold attempt to surround and cut us off. At this moment private Schneider was killed. Egan was obliged to dismount the company and take shelter in the plum copse along the border of the ice-locked channel of the Powder, and there defend himself to the best of his ability until the arrival of the promised reënforcements.

Noyes had moved up promptly in our rear and driven off the herd of ponies, which was afterwards found to number over seven hundred; had he charged in echelon on our left, he would have swept the village, and affairs would have had a very different ending, but he complied with his instructions, and did his part as directed by his commander. In the work of securing the herd of ponies, he was assisted by the half-breed scouts.

Colonel Stanton and Lieutenant Sibley, hearing the constant and heavy firing in front, moved up without orders, leading a small party of the scouts, and opened an effective fire on our left. Half an hour had passed, and Moore had not been heard from; the Indians under the fire from Stanton and Sibley on our left, and Egan’s own fire, had retired to the rocks on the other side of the “tepis,” whence they kept plugging away at any one who made himself visible. They were in the very place where it was expected that Moore was to catch them, but not a shot was heard for many minutes; and when they were it was no help to us, but a detriment and a danger, as the battalion upon which we relied so much had occupied an entirely different place—one from which the fight could not be seen at all, and from which the bullets dropped into Egan’s lines.

Mills advanced on foot, passing by Egan’s left, but not joining him, pushed out from among the lodges the scattering parties still lurking there, and held the undergrowth on the far side; after posting his men advantageously, he detailed a strong party to burn and destroy the village. Egan established his men on the right, and sent a party to aid in the work of demolition and destruction. It was then found that a great many of our people had been severely hurt by the intense cold. In order to make the charge as effective as possible, we had disrobed and thrown to one side, upon entering the village, all the heavy or cumbrous wraps with which we could dispense. The disagreeable consequence was that many men had feet and fingers, ears and noses frozen, among them being Lieutenant Hall and myself. Hall had had much previous experience in the polar climate of these northwestern mountains, and showed me how to treat myself to prevent permanent disability.

He found an air-hole in the ice, into which we thrust feet and hands, after which we rubbed them with an old piece of gunny-sack, the roughest thing we could find, to restore circulation. Steward Bryan, who seemed to be full of resources and forethought, had carried along with him a bottle of tincture of iodine for just such emergencies; this he applied liberally to our feet and to all the other frozen limbs, and thus averted several cases of amputation. While Steward Bryan was engaged in his work of mercy, attending to the wounded and the frozen, Mills’s and Egan’s detachments were busy setting fire to the lodges, of elk and buffalo hide and canvas, which numbered over one hundred.