A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

“If we do not fight them here,” Last Bull shouted, “then we will have to fight them somewhere.”

Lowering his head, Morning Star peered furtively at the other five chiefs, each of them as saddened, as chastened, as he. His eyes drooped to his lap.

“We will fight them here!” Last Bull screamed, trembling with emotion. “My warriors—to you falls the duty of assuring that no one leaves this village!”

Shocked by that, the old chiefs gazed up, their faces carved with terror. Struck silent were they—perhaps more scared of Last Bull and his warriors than they were of the soldiers advancing on their village.

“Yes! Be sure to stop anyone who attempts to flee. Cut their cinches! Slash their lodges! Break their poles and smash their kettles! Some of you, begin to bring in wood—much, much wood. We will build us a big, big fire and bring out the drum we captured from our enemy for a dance tomorrow night.”

Last Bull threw out his chest like a puffing sage cock, his face drawn into a sneer.

“And the rest of you, now go among the People and collect the young girls who we will hold prisoner to keep the families here while we dance! To keep everyone here while the soldiers march down into our trap!”

The following day at sunrise Box Elder sought out Morning Star. The old man had seen more than eighty winters come and go, and was now all but blind. Yet no man would doubt the sacred power of Box Elder’s visions.

“This morning, as always, I sat facing the east, my face feeling the first warmth of the sun’s rising,” the old man explained after Morning Star had assisted him inside the chief’s lodge and seated him beside the warm fire.

“Yes, go on.”

Box Elder continued. “As I sat staring at that holiest of directions, I saw a mighty vision of soldiers and their Indian scouts riding toward our camp, moving out of the rising sun into this valley.”

Morning Star swallowed, hesitating to ask for any more revelations from so powerful a mystic. “These soldiers—*

“The soldiers and the Indian scouts charged through our camp and killed many of our people.”

He could see that Box Elder’s rheumy old eyes were tearing now.

The ancient one said, “Now I must go and find my son, Medicine Top, who will call for the camp crier.”

“Yes,” Morning Star agreed, rising beside the old visionary. “Bring the crier to me so that I can tell him to alert the families that this camp will be attacked early tomorrow morning.”

Quickly the chief bent to sweep up one of his warmest blankets before he reached the lodge door, where Box Elder cried out, his face lifted slightly toward the smoke flaps, his cloudy eyes unable to see anything but his fateful vision.

“You must have the women and children go to the ridges and bluffs, into the high cliffs surrounding our camp,” Box Elder explained. “There they must raise up breastworks. There they should stay in hiding. Then they will be saved. See that our people do this—or we will all die.”

By the time the sun had poked its head over the eastern rim of the valley that morning, the camp crier had spread the word and the village pulsated with activity. Ponies were being brought in, the first lodges were being unpinned, stakes torn from the frozen ground, buffalo robes rolled up around important family treasures that would be loaded upon the travois.

While this was happening, Brave Wolf and a handful of other older warriors had gone into the sloping crevices of the ground west and north of the village to locate some places where the women and children could pile up rocks for breastworks—just as Box Elder’s vision had commanded of them. The People could abandon the village for the night and stay in the surrounding hills, where they would be safe.

“You must leave your lodges standing!” the camp crier instructed the People when he learned that the village was being dismantled. “Do not take down your lodges! The soldiers must believe we are still in our beds when they come! Leave your lodges standing!”

The plan might work, Morning Star believed. If the soldiers believed the village deserted, they might not go in search of the women and children in the hills. But if they did, then the warriors could then fight a holding action while their families fled.

Now the camp’s attention turned instead to taking warm clothing, robes, and blankets with them into the hills. There were many newborns, infants, and young children. They would need to be protected from the painful, life-robbing cold that night as they waited for the white man to come sneaking in upon them.

But before any of the women could herd their children into the hills, the Kit Fox Society crier loped through camp, shrilly calling out that Last Bull’s warriors would prevent anyone from leaving the village—just as the angry war chief had commanded yesterday.