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

“After sundown the day we left your village, we drew near what we thought was a camp of our people north of here. But something just did not feel right. We stopped short of the village and decided to investigate. Waiting until first light, we finally saw some people coming down to the river to swim. The closer we looked, the more we could tell it was not a Lakota camp.”

“Who was it?” someone cried out from the crowd.

“Were they friends?”

“Were they our enemies?”

“They were Shoshone!” one of the Lakota shouted.

“Enemies!” a woman screeched.

“How many?”

The other Lakota answered, “Not many. We can kill them all!”

“Yes! Kill them all!” was the cry taken up by the young warriors.

In a matter of moments the whole village was abuzz with battle plans and preparation. The various leaders from the warrior societies quickly decided who among them would go to fight, and who would have to be left behind to guard the village while most of the fighting men were absent. Before the sun had climbed off the bare tops of the cottonwood trees, the war party galloped off. Women went about preparing for a great feast when the men would return.

The next day their victorious warriors came home, carrying the many scalps and fingers taken from the enemy dead, as well as the hands of twelve Shoshone babies killed in the fight where they left no survivors—bringing back a lone infant they would raise as one of their own people, taken from the breast of a brave Shoshone woman. But for that victory, the People had paid a heavy price.

Because of the battle casualties, the Tse-Tsehese

moved camp down the foot of the mountains, and the village remained in muted mourning that first night. The following day at sunset they began their victory dance. It began snowing again, fat flakes falling so thick that they hissed into the great skunk, that huge bonfire the warrior societies built and lighted for the celebration. Each warrior’s wife brought out the scalps her husband had taken while he recited his battle exploits—telling how the enemy had been packed and ready to move for the day when the warriors attacked; telling how the enemy ran, leaving all their goods and ponies and took to the hills where they could throw up some breastworks of rocks and brush; from there the Shoshone put up a hard fight—Little Shield, Walking Man, Young Spotted Wolf, and Twins were all seriously wounded in the fight, and the Shoshone killed nine Tse-Tsehese warriors in their desperate defense; the fighting raged until sundown, when the last of the enemy was killed. The dancing and feasting continued throughout the night as the stars whirled overhead.

And in the morning, Little Wolf, another of the Old-Man Chiefs, came to tell Morning Star that someone had stolen his ponies overnight while the camp was celebrating.

“Who could have done that?”

“Not the Shoshone,” Little Wolf speculated.

“No, not them. The attack took care of them.”

“I think the Ooetaneo-o

, the Crow People. From the tracks I followed a ways, the thieves came from the north.”

“Over the mountains?” Morning Star asked.

“Yes, I think so”

“Why would they steal only your ponies?”

Little Wolf wagged his head, as if attempting to sort it out. “Perhaps to lay a trap for one of us, a few of us—whoever will go after those ponies. Not the whole band.”

“Are you going after your horses?”

“No,” Little Wolf said, gesturing with his hands moving outward from his chest. “I give the ponies to the Crow People. I will not go after them.”

Morning Star watched his old friend walk away. It was a strange feeling inside him now. For this was the only time in his long, long memory that the People allowed stolen ponies to go with the thieves without giving chase.

The village moved again that day, to the mouth of Striped Stick Creek on the Powder River. As the women raised the lodges and started the fires, many of the men rode down the Powder hunting for deer and antelope. In the evening when they returned they brought the news of finding many, many tracks of iron-shod American horses tramping through the snow and mud, finding the ruts cut by the white man’s wagon wheels too—all of them moving north by west along the divide south of the Powder River.

“Surely they go to that small soldier camp beside the Powder,” Little Wolf observed that night as the old men and war chiefs gathered to discuss what course of action to take.

“There are always wagons coming and going from that place where the soldiers live in their dirt lodges,” Yellow Eagle said. He was one of the hunters who had seen the tracks for himself. “This was not the same. Too many wagons. Too many horses and walk-a-heaps.”

Last Bull growled, “They are coming to look for us!”

“We do not know that yet,” Morning Star quieted the alarmist.

“We should find out,” Little Wolf decided.