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

Jackson started to interpret as best he could with sign when the half-breed translator from the day before came loping up on horseback. He came to a halt beside the chief. Only now did Sitting Bull allow the buffalo robe to slip back from his head, clutching it around his shoulders. Again this day he refused to wear feathers or adornment, and definitely none of the war regalia displayed by the others who moved about on the soldiers’ front.

“Sitting Bull wants to talk with you again,” the half-breed announced as his small pony pranced between the two leaders.

“You’re the one who did all the talking for the chief yesterday,” Miles said sourly. “You’re named Bur-gaire?”

“Bruguier. Johnny’s my first name.”

“And you’d be a half-blood?”

The swarthy interpreter smiled. “How’d you guess, soldier chief?”

Leaning back stiffly, Miles replied, “So what’s Sitting Bull got to say for the fact that we were supposed to talk this morning, but instead—I find him running off.”

The half-breed shrugged. “This village moves all the time.”

“Not when we agreed we would talk this morning,” Nelson answered, his eyes flicking back and forth across the faces of those chiefs nearest him. As well he kept an eye on the movements of the village and the warriors swarming across the open ground between the soldiers and the Hunkpapa camp. They held their weapons high, screamed out oaths, and kicked their ponies savagely into short sprints, giving the animals their second wind.

“Sitting Bull says you did not keep your word, soldier,” Bruguier declared. “Your soldiers sneaked around our village last night. And you made your camp where you would be right on our trail when we started marching north.”

“That’s why Sitting Bull is heading south now?”

When the half-breed had listened to the chief’s answer, he said, “Your soldiers scare away all the buffalo up that way. So he will take his people to hunt buffalo somewhere else.”

“I think it wise for Sitting Bull to talk with me some more.”

It was a few moments before the half-breed turned away from the Hunkpapa chief, addressing Miles. “The chief says maybeso it is a good idea to talk some more with you. He says you did not hear him too good yesterday.”

“Maybe we will both hear each other good today,” Nelson responded, his eyes moving past the nearby warriors, down the sloping ground of the dry ravines in their front, back up the far side. “There,” he said, pointing. “That knoll right up there. Tell Sitting Bull we’ll meet there to talk.”

At the crest of that flat-topped promontory minutes later, Nelson waited with several of his officers and a few scouts while Sitting Bull and some twelve Sioux briefly conferred, then walked abreast up to the conference site in a broad line. Accompanying the chief today was White Bull, as well as many new faces who had not taken part in yesterday’s long and protracted discussions: Black Eagle, Gall, John Sans Arc, Rising Sun, Small Bear, Red Skirt, the Miniconjou chief Bull Eagle, Standing Bear, Spotted Elk, Pretty Bear, and Yellow Eagle. As the delegation reached the top of the knoll, Miles signaled his adjutant and a color bearer to bring forward a pair of buffalo robes the soldiers quickly spread on the ground. It pleased the colonel to read the look of surprise that crossed Sitting Bull’s face as Nelson seized the initiative in these subtleties of diplomacy.

It brought him even greater satisfaction when the Hunkpapa chief refused to sit on the offered robe, much as Nelson had done the day before.

The half-breed translated for Sitting Bull: “Yesterday I spread a robe for you to sit on and you refused. I shall have to refuse now to sit on your robe.”

Despite the chief’s steadfast refusal, within moments the other Lakota took their seats on the ground with Miles and his men leaving Sitting Bull to stand alone. For a few uneasy minutes he paced behind the others, embarrassed before this auspicious assembly, his face clearly showing the anger boiling beneath the surface, then finally took a seat and pulled his robe tightly about him as the wind stiffened on that high ground.

From the robe Sitting Bull once again pulled his pipe, filled, and lit it, saying his prayer through Bruguier, “Have mercy upon your people, Great Mystery. Allow nothing to be said here on either side but the truth. See into our hearts and make us do what is right. If any man who smokes this pipe with me today fails to keep his promises, I hope that he may not live to walk upon the ground—but that he may lay down and die.”

With those solemn formalities out of the way, what talk Miles and Sitting Bull shared was little more than a rewarming of what both sides had had to say the day before. Try as he might, Miles could not find a better way to tell Sitting Bull that his people would have to come in to surrender, or bring suffering down upon their heads.