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

By the time the expedition had reached Reno Cantonment, many of the Indian scouts had sorted out for themselves who were some of the more powerful soldiers. Clearly Crook, Mackenzie, and Dodge, along with those men nominally placed over the auxiliaries … but to the warriors’ way of thinking, one of the soldier chiefs with the biggest medicine was Lieutenant Charles Rockwell, commissary officer for the Fourth Cavalry. After all, it was he who had unquestioned authority and control over such immense stores of the coveted bacon, sugar, and coffee! But try as they might to get Rockwell to trade items of clothing and beadwork for heaps of rations, the young lieutenant remained steadfast in his duty and played no favorites as he and his men kept a lock on the valuable foodstuffs.

With the arrival of the paymaster that night, a spontaneous celebration erupted among the cold men as there was at least a cramped log trading store close by the cantonment where the soldiers could fritter away their meager month’s wages on the sutler’s crude whiskey.

Dawn of the nineteenth found the sky lowering and a new storm approaching out of the west over the mountains. As soon as the wind quartered out of the north, the temperature seemed to fall ever farther. While most men continued throwing away their pay on wild debauchery, a few in each outfit pooled their money and purchased tinned tomatoes, potatoes, and other delicacies, making for a brief change in their drab and monotonous diet. For miles up and down the Powder River, infantry soldiers and cavalry troopers, teamsters, packers, and scouts caroused noisily.

“If Crazy Horse had any doubt the army’s coming after him,” John Bourke said as half a hundred men hurried to watch a fistfight broken out a few yards away, “that red bastard will be able to hear this bunch all the way to the slopes of the Big Horns!”

Seamus chuckled, sipping at his steaming coffee. He was content and relaxed, lounging on his saddle blanket, his back against a downed cottonwood trunk, feet to the fire. “I know for damned certain this isn’t where the devil was born, but from the sounds of it, Johnny—this seems like the place the devil was sure as hell raised up!”

The lieutenant stood, tossing the last dregs of his coffee onto the snowy ground as dusty flakes tumbled all about them. “You’re coming over to the council?”

“Is it that time already?”

Stuffing his big turnip watch back inside his wool vest, Bourke replied, “Soon enough. I should try to be there before the warrior groups show up.”

After taking another drink of his coffee, Donegan asked, “This council really has to do with the Sioux complaining to Crook?”

Nodding, the lieutenant said, “When the general had Three Bears come to his tent last night to enlist some warriors to go scout the foot of the mountains—the Sioux war chief seized the opportunity to complain to Crook that the Pawnee hadn’t been treating them all that kindly.”

“Kindly!” Donegan shrieked. “Mother of God, but they’re blood enemies—by the saints! Back to their grandfather’s grandfather!”

“C’mon, Irishman—this ought to prove interesting to watch.”

Seamus stood, bringing his pint tin of coffee steaming in his hand. “How right you are, Johnny. Here I been thinking Crook was making himself a reputation as an Injin-fighter … and now he’s got to go and play diplomat between his own bleeming Injins!”

Crook’s primary purpose in holding this council with the leaders of his four hundred Indian auxiliaries was to have them eventually come to understand his ground rules for the fight that was sure to come.

While the Sioux had come to complain they were being snubbed by their traditional enemies, for the general there were clearly bigger fish to fry. Yet as the Pawnee showed up arrayed in their full uniforms, and the Shoshone arrived wearing their native dress mixed with some white man’s clothing garnered over the decades of friendly relations, the Sioux and their allies came to the meeting in their war paint and scalp shirts. Frank North and Tom Cosgrove hurried to call the open provocation to the general’s attention. John Bourke watched as Crook quickly dispensed with this matter of Indian dress by waving it off with a hand and going to seat himself near the center of the great crescent gathered just outside Captain Pollock’s tiny quarters at Reno Cantonment.

When all had fallen quiet, the general told the Indians, “A new day has come to this land. You, as well as ourselves, are servants of the Great Father in Washington, and we all ought to dress in the uniform of the soldier, and for the time being we all ought to be brothers.”