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

At long last the chief spoke again, this time not to Grouard. But to his own people. Although the Irishman did not understand Red Cloud’s tongue, it was plain that his voice rang strong, confident, filled with uncompromising pride. And when the Oglalla leader had finished, his people visibly seemed to sag collectively before turning as one, returning to their lodges where they went about doing what they had been ordered by the soldier chief.

In the process Mackenzie’s men counted over 120 men of fighting age among some 240 of Red Cloud’s people in that village, yet from those warriors they confiscated no more than fifty serviceable rifles. Outside camp the Pawnee finished rounding up 755 ponies after firing a few shots over the head of one brave herder, a young boy who attempted to save a bunch of the horses by driving them off. While the soldiers allowed the women to select enough of those captured ponies to drag their travois for the return trip to the agency, only the old and the infirm, those too young or simply too feeble, were allowed ponies to ride on the journey. The rest were forced to walk on the fringes of their travois animals, completely surrounded by a slow-moving procession of soldiers dressed in their long, thick blue-wool caped coats.

A few miles down the trail Mackenzie rendezvoused with Major Gordon’s battalion come from capturing the Brule camp of Red Leaf, chief of the Wazhazha Lakota for more than ten summers. Together the two villages accounted for more than three hundred lodges and some four hundred people being driven in under the muzzle of those army rifles.

Red Cloud himself likely suffered the heaviest personal loss: four family lodges, in addition to seven prized horses and one light wagon—gifts presented him during his recent visit to see the Great Father in Washington City. Clearly the old chief was coming to learn that what the Great Father gave, the Great Father could take away.

At sundown that Monday, Mackenzie determined that he would again divide his forces. After a brief halt Major Gordon was given charge of a battalion of four companies who would hurry on to Camp Robinson with the captured men of fighting age. Meanwhile, the colonel’s battalion would follow at a slower pace, escorting the women, children, and the infirm, intending to reach their destination by the following noon.

Gordon’s sad cavalcade returned to Red Cloud Agency a little after eleven P.M. beneath a lowering sky which threatened snow. While the warriors were immediately housed in a large warehouse building, Red Cloud and Red Leaf were both escorted to the guardhouse, there to be held until Crook would determine their status as prisoners of war.

The troopers hadn’t eaten a meal or had a cup of hot coffee in more than twenty-four hours, and their horses had been pushed close to their endurance in completing last night’s lightning march and the return journey—a round trip of just over fifty miles.

Yet those troopers, a full half of which were raw, green recruits, had succeeded in capturing the two villages—without a single casualty.

“Now,” Mackenzie declared to his scouts and those officers riding near the van of their march back to Camp Robinson with the women and children, “all we need to do is bring in Crazy Horse!”

* Fetterman Massacre, Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory, Sioux Dawn, Vol. 1, The Plainsmen Series.

† Wagonbox Fight, Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory, Red Cloud’s Revenge

, Vol. 2, The Plainsmen Series.

Chapter 14

25–26 October 1876

General Crook Rounds up Red

Cloud & Co.

Disarms Them, and Puts

Spotted Tail in Command.

WYOMING

Important Indian Movement.