After the Battle of Slim Buttes, Crazy Horse and his people went west to the Tongue River. They settled in for the winter near Hanging Woman Creek. ‘It snowed much; game was hard to find, and it was a hungry time for us,’ recalled Oglala holy man Black Elk, who was Crazy Horse’s cousin through marriage and just a teenager in 1876. ‘Ponies died, and we ate them. They died because the snow froze hard and they could not find enough grass that was left in the valleys and there was not enough cottonwood to feed them all. There had been thousands of us together that summer, but there were not two thousand now.’

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Meanwhile, General Crook, having retreated to Fort Laramie on the Bozeman Trail, outfitted for a winter campaign against Crazy Horse. He had 2,200 soldiers and more than 400 Indian scouts, including 60 Sioux from the agencies. His cavalry was commanded by Colonel Ranald Mackenzie and his infantry by Lt. Col. Richard Dodge.The soldiers left Fort Laramie on November 5, 1876, and followed the Bozeman Trail to Fort Fetterman and then to Fort Reno. There, Crook learned that some Indians had gone to warn Crazy Horse of his approach. At that point, the general changed his plan, sending Mackenzie and the cavalry to attack the Northern Cheyenne village of Dull Knife and Wild Hog, some 37 miles away on the Red Fork of the Powder River.

Mackenzie hit the village at dawn on November 25 and destroyed it. Although the village had been warned of Mackenzie’s approach, the attack was a surprise. Some 40 Cheyenne men, women and children were killed. The rest escaped, but only with the clothes on their backs. For two weeks they trudged northward through the snow and subfreezing temperatures to reach their only source of help, the village of Crazy Horse. Several people, mostly children, died along the way. Crazy Horse took in the surviving refugees, feeding, clothing and sheltering them as best he could. But Crazy Horse’s own people could not keep up such support for long; they themselves were suffering. Some of the Northern Cheyennes left the village to surrender to the whites at Camp Robinson.

Mackenzie’s attack on Dull Knife’s village and the lack of game that winter convinced many of the Lakota leaders on the Tongue River to pursue peace. Crazy Horse, whose following at the time consisted of about 250 lodges, struggled with that concept and, according to Black Elk, began to act even queerer than usual. ‘He hardly ever stayed in camp,’ Black Elk said. ‘People would find him out alone in the cold, and they would ask him to come home with them. He would not come, but sometimes he would tell the people what to do. People wondered if he ate anything at all. Once my father found him out alone like that, and he said to my father: `Uncle, you have noticed the way I act. But do not worry; there are caves and holes for me to live in and out here the spirits may help me. I am making plans for the good of my people.”

Crazy Horse knew not only of Crook but also of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, who had established a cantonment at the mouth of the Tongue River (and would soon build Fort Keogh nearby). Miles, a veteran of the Red River War in Texas, had effectively campaigned against Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Lakotas in October and November. By mid-December, Crazy Horse had come to agree with those Lakota leaders who said it was in their best interests to talk peace with Miles. A delegation of 25 Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes made the trip. As they drew close to Cantonment Tongue River, five of them went ahead, carrying two white flags of truce. To reach Miles’ headquarters, the peacemakers had to pass through a camp of Crow scouts. The Crows greeted the Lakotas, shaking their hands, but then, without warning, one of the Crows pulled a pistol and shot the Minneconjou Gets Fat With Beef. The Crows surrounded the others and killed them too.

The murders did not sit well with Miles, who ordered the remaining Crows disarmed and their horses seized. He sent the Lakotas the guns and the horses and a letter of apology, assuring them that the white men had nothing to do with the killings. Crazy Horse did not buy it. Clearly, the whites still could not be trusted, and he wanted revenge. Most of the other Indian leaders agreed with him. They held a council and decided to send a decoy party to draw the soldiers away from the post and into an ambush by the main body of warriors. A similar Lakota tactic at Fort Phil Kearney in 1866 had enabled Crazy Horse and friends to annihilate Captain William Fetterman’s force in the Fetterman Fight (also known as the Fetterman Massacre).

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to