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

The Hunkpapa would never go in to Standing Rock. This was their country and here they would stay. What the white man could do to repay the Lakota for running off the buffalo would be to build a trading post closer to these hunting grounds.

“Tell Sitting Bull that his people can come in to the trading post we will have at Tongue River,” Miles declared.

Bruguier replied, “The chief says his people will go to Fort Peck to trade, as they always do.”

Inside, Nelson burned with resentment. Why, he had even offered to trade with this red-skinned criminal…. Maybe it was true what a lot of the old frontiersmen believed—like that scout Luther Kelly had hired to come along. The one named John Johnston. Old weathered plainsmen the likes of him believed the only thing an Injun understood was force. Nothing more than sheer might, and blood.

Just as they had done yesterday, warriors came and went while the discussion dragged on. But this time Nelson was prepared for their nerve-racking shenanigans. His orders called for a soldier to step up from the forward lines every time one of the Sioux advanced. When that warrior moved back, the soldier was to withdraw in kind. Hour by hour the numbers around the council waxed and waned, constantly shifting—more warriors and soldiers on the periphery, then fewer once more.

It was a time of unmitigated tension during which Nelson realized that the accidental discharge of a weapon on either side might well spell disaster for all in confusion between the two lines.

As the morning grew old, it became abundantly clear to Miles that instead of softening his position, Sitting Bull was growing more adamant in his refusal to budge in the slightest. Just as clear was the fact that a few of the other chiefs appeared ready to bend to reason, especially the Miniconjou chiefs Bull Eagle and Red Skirt. Even John Sans Arc provisionally agreed to give himself over to the soldiers as a hostage as a means of guaranteeing his band’s good-faith compliance in returning to the agency. But it was just their bending which seemed to put all the more steel in Sitting Bull’s backbone that cold autumn day.

Bruguier waited patiently, listening as Sitting Bull talked a long time, nodding occasionally to show he understood the Hunkpapa’s words, then finally sought to translate all that had been dropped into his lap.

“The chief says that the whites hate Indians. And the Indian hates the white man. This is Indian country, so the Hunkpapa will not leave it. They mean to stay here for all time and live upon the buffalo—the way the Lakota people have lived from the time Wakan Tanka put them here, way before the white man ever came. Wakan Tanka gave the Lakota these buffalo plains to wander.”

After a moment of reflection, Nelson replied, “Tell Sitting Bull he would be foolish to refuse to go in to his agency when to refuse will mean that the army will harry and harass his people, and many of them will die. There will be no time for the hunt this winter. My scouts will find your villages. My soldiers will attack those villages. Tell Sitting Bull that he must go in to Standing Rock or his people will be whipped.”

As the half-blood interpreted, Nelson could see how his words stung the Hunkpapa leader. Fire glistened in the defiant chief’s eyes as he glared stoically at Miles.

Finally Bruguier turned to say, “Sitting Bull says if you mean to make war on him, then make your war now. He does not want to live like those who hang around the forts waiting for the white man’s handouts. Spotted Tail and even Red Cloud. Red Cloud!” and the translator laughed. “The war chief who drove the soldiers from the Bozeman Road! Now he is nothing but another old-woman chief who does not have teeth enough to eat buffalo meat. Only the white man’s pig meat.”

Miles wagged his head, saying, “Sitting Bull would rather his people die in war than live in peace at their agency?”

Nodding, the interpreter explained, “Sitting Bull says it is better for him and his people to fight and die than to be trapped at the agency and starve as those agency bands are starving.”

Good Lord, Nelson thought. But try he must—as an officer and a civilized gentleman—if only this one last time. No one would ever fault Nelson Miles for not putting his back into every task. Long ago in his youth when he had decided he would become a professional soldier, no one had ever warned him he would also have to practice diplomacy.

“Tell Sitting Bull that it is unfair of him to answer for the old ones, the little children in that camp, and those who are too sick to last out the cold of this coming winter as the soldiers chase them down.”

When Miles’s words were translated, Sitting Bull’s jaw jutted resolutely, cords of muscle throbbing in his thick neck.