An Ultimatum
After the failure to secure an agreement to buy or lease the Black Hills, President Ulysses Grant met on November 3 to discuss the issue with a number of prominent government officials, including Secretary of the Interior Zachariah Chandler, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Edward P. Smith, Secretary of War William W. Belknap, and Generals Philip Sheridan and George Crook. Grant came to two major decisions. First, he would retain the prohibition on miners moving into the Black Hills but would not enforce the edict. Second, he authorized the use of force to make the hunting bands yield the unceded land (a clear violation of the 1868 treaty) and settle on the reservation. Implicit within these decisions was the transfer of responsibility for the hostile bands from Indian Affairs to the military, a position that Commanding General of the U. S. Army William Tecumseh Sherman and General Sheridan had been urging.
Grant, either at the same November 3 meeting or later, ordered or at least approved giving the tribes a deadline to enter the reservation, after which they would be considered hostile and be subject to military force to compel their acquiescence. The date chosen was January 31, 1876. On December 6, Commissioner Smith directed the Sioux agents to send runners out to inform the various villages of this directive.
The messengers were sent out during a particularly harsh winter. Thus, obeying the order, even if the tribes had wished to do so, would have been physically impossible. The message reached some bands at least as late as December 22; some villages, in fact, were never informed. To comply would have meant a forced march over hundreds of miles through blizzards and deep snow with women, children, and hungry, weakened horses. In addition, even if Sitting Bull and the other Lakotas had reached the agencies, they would have found little or no food there, as famine caused in part by failure to secure the necessary beef herds had hit most agencies by the middle of the winter. As a consequence, January 31, 1876—the deadline for hostile Indian bands to report to government agencies—passed with Sitting Bull still cherishing his freedom.
From his headquarters in Chicago, General Sheridan commanded the Military Division of the Missouri, which included all of the Plains. He wired General Crook and General Alfred Terry on February 8 that the War Department had ordered military action against hostile Indians. Sheridan envisioned a multipronged action. Crook would move from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming against Crazy Horse, who was believed to be in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Bighorn, Powder, Rosebud, and Tongue Rivers in north-central Wyoming. Terry’s forces would converge from the east and west, with one column under Colonel John Gibbon moving eastward from Fort Ellis in Montana, and a second column under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer departing Fort Abraham Lincoln in northern Dakota Territory and moving toward the west. These three forces would encircle the recalcitrant Lakotas and Cheyennes and crush them.
The bitter winter weather that would have precluded compliance with the January 31 directive also prevented Terry from moving forward with this plan. His troops were inadequately provisioned for the lengthy march that would be required to reach Sitting Bull and would have to await a spring thaw to permit more supplies to arrive by train on the Northern Pacific Railroad or by steamship.9
Gathering of a Great Force
As spring arrived, increasing numbers of hunting bands migrated to join Sitting Bull. Meanwhile, as the U. S. military prepared for what it hoped would be the final victory over Sitting Bull and the Plains Indians, the hunting bands gathered around their greatest leader.
Somewhere between May 21 and 24, while camped on the Rosebud, Sitting Bull felt an unseen force pulling him to a nearby butte. When he reached the top, he prepared through prayer and meditation to receive a message from Wakantanka. Then he fell asleep and dreamed of a dust storm rushing toward a white cloud. The cloud he recognized as a Lakota village near a snow-covered mountain, and behind the storm he saw soldiers. As the storm hit the cloud, lightning streaked through the sky and rain poured down. Yet after the storm had vanished, the cloud remained unscathed and drifted off beyond his sight.
Returning to his village, Sitting Bull recalled the dream for the other chiefs and interpreted it according to the wisdom he had received from Wakantanka. The cloud represented his village, which soldiers would attack. The soldiers would be defeated, however. Accordingly, directions were given to the scouts, also known as wolves, to watch carefully for the soldiers who Sitting Bull was certain would soon come.
The Great Sun Dance and Sitting Bull's Vision
Perhaps a week later, near the end of May, Sitting Bull asked his nephew White Bull, his adopted brother Jumping Bull, and a son of his friend Chief Black Moon to accompany him to the top of a hill. There Sitting Bull, having
Prepared by loosening the braids of his hair, removing his feathers, and washing off the red paint he often wore on his face, prayed. He asked that Wakantanka provide sufficient food for his people during the coming winter and inspire the Lakota bands to get along well together. In return, Sitting Bull would offer a whole buffalo and dance the Sun Dance. Sitting Bull and his three companions then performed a pipe-smoking ceremony.
Sitting Bull immediately set about fulfilling his promises. In addition to shooting three buffalo and offering the fattest one to Wakantanka, he began organizing a Sun Dance with Black Moon presiding and Sitting Bull himself as the chief dancer. Only Hunkpapas would participate in this dance, but members of the other bands were permitted to observe.
The usual preparatory ceremonies began about June 4. Once they were completed, Sitting Bull was ready to make a special offering of 100 pieces of his flesh. He sat with his back against the sacred Sun Dance pole while Jumping Bull knelt beside him. Starting near one of Sitting Bull’s wrists and working his way up to near the shoulder, Jumping Bull 50 times inserted a small awl under the skin, lifted the skin flap, and cut off a piece of flesh with his knife. Then Jumping Bull repeated the process 50 times on Sitting Bull’s other arm. The pain must have been excruciating for Sitting Bull, and his arms, covered in blood, began to swell badly.
For the rest of the day and that night, and into the next day, Sitting Bull danced, staring into the sun during daylight hours. Finally, he stopped, appearing to have passed out on his feet. Hunkpapas gently lowered him to the ground and brought him water.
When Sitting Bull regained consciousness, he told Black Moon of the vision he had received, and Black Moon shared it with the rest of the assembly. Sitting Bull had seen large numbers of soldiers, as thick as grasshoppers, descending from the sky into his camp, but they and their horses were falling upside down. The voice that Sitting Bull heard in his vision announced that the soldiers had no ears, meaning that they failed to hear what Sitting Bull had been saying about leaving his people alone. The upside-down image meant that the soldiers would be killed, but the victors were cautioned in the vision not to take any plunder. Some Indians also appeared upside down, indicating that Sitting Bull and his people would also suffer fatalities. However, the battle would be a great victory for Sitting Bull and his warriors.
The vision would soon prove prophetic, but it also helped pave the way for victory. Sitting Bull’s vision increased the Indians’ confidence regarding the impending battle. Coupled with his remarkable demonstration of self-sacrifice during the Sun Dance, it must have erased any doubts about Sitting Bull’s leadership.
Battle of the Rosebud
As Sitting Bull was inspiring his followers with his historic vision, General George Crook was preparing to move north from the Sheridan, Wyoming, area in search of hostiles. By June 15, Crook had received reports that a large
Village was approximately 45 miles away from his present location. Believing that the expedition would be short, Crook decided to take only four days’ worth of rations and leave his pack train behind.10
Crook departed early in the morning of June 16 with 100 soldiers, 85 volunteers in support roles, and 262 Shoshone, Crow, and Arikara (Ree) allies. The following morning, Crook reached the main branch of the Rosebud in Montana. By 8:00 a. m. on June 17, Crook had ordered his men to stop. The troopers unsaddled their mounts, and Crook and some of his officers played whist while his men drank coffee.
Suddenly, shooting could be heard beyond the bluffs to the north. Some 750 warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had encountered a party of Crook’s scouts. The remaining scouts rushed to engage the attackers. The soldiers quickly organized themselves and entered the fray.
The fighting raged furiously, first between the two sets of Indians, then between Sitting Bull’s warriors and Crook’s entire force. The Sioux and Cheyennes attacked, withdrew, and then counterattacked when the enemy forces spread apart in pursuit.
Early in the afternoon, Sitting Bull’s men withdrew, leaving 9 soldiers dead and at least 23 wounded, and likely even more with slight wounds. Crook’s Indian scouts suffered 1 death, with 7 being severely wounded. Sitting Bull’s attackers had suffered approximately 20 fatalities.
The battle was a major victory for Sitting Bull’s men. The Sioux and Cheyenne forces had attacked when they wished, withdrawn when they wished, kept Crook from advancing toward their village, and driven him away to the south where he was of little immediate threat. Sitting Bull’s warriors returned that night to sleep comfortably in their lodges. In contrast, Crook, in an effort to establish the appearance of victory, required his men to lie out on the dark and dangerous battlefield where they had more than met their match. The next day Crook withdrew and headed toward his base camp in Wyoming.
World History
