His 1880 crime sent him into exile, but he lived another 24 years.
Although Little Wolf had been a renowned war leader and Sweet Medicine chief of the Cheyennes, he failed to remain a leader on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation following his 1879 surrender. The man who had spearheaded the breakout from Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) and led his followers back to their homeland in Montana Territory never quite assimilated to the ways of the reservation. Alcoholism and chronic depression soon consumed his life.
In 1879 a rivalry and political friction arose between the followers of Two Moon and those of Little Wolf and consequently between their two respective warrior societies, the Kit Foxes and the Elkhorn Scrapers. The command at Fort Keogh bypassed Little Wolf and elevated Two Moon, the Kit Fox headman, to “head chief” at the fort, a move contrary to Cheyenne custom. Perhaps remembering his people’s past hopes, Little Wolf grew increasingly moody, despondent and alienated.
The consequences of Little Wolf ’s depression came down on a warrior named Starving Elk. Little Wolf had once suspected the latter of having kindled more than a passing interest in his wife. By the time of the exodus north Starving Elk had apparently struck up a close friendship with LittleWolf’s daughter, Pretty Walker. As Sweet Medicine chief, Little Wolf was expected to restrain his anger over such gossip.
But the short time living near Fort Keogh had changed LittleWolf. Although he continued a friendship established earlier with Lieutenant William P. “Philo” Clark, Little Wolf, like so many others on the reservation, had acquired a taste for whiskey. On the cold night of December 12, 1880, he stumbled drunk into the trading post of Eugene Lamphere on Two Moon Creek, where many of the Indians had set up winter camp. He spotted a group of men and women in the store gambling for candy. Among them was Pretty Walker and with her Starving Elk. Little Wolf went into a rage. Lamphere and some of the Cheyennes tried to restrain the chief and ease him out of the trading post. “I will kill you!” Little Wolf screamed at Starving Elk.
Little Wolf stumbled out the front door, and the customers thought the matter was over. But Little Wolf soon returned to the store with a rifle, shouldered the weapon and opened fire at point-blank range, killing Starving Elk instantly. The acrid smell of gunpowder, the loud report of the rifle, combined with the sight of the murdered Starving Elk lying on the floor immediately sobered LittleWolf. “I am going up on that hill by the bend of the creek,” he said methodically, in anticipation of revenge by Starving Elk’s family. “If anybody wants me, that is where I will be.” With his wife Little Wolf kept a vigil on the hill for two days.
The U.S. Army, recognizing LittleWolf’s importance among the Cheyennes and consequently fearing trouble, whitewashed the murder. When Captain Joseph N.G. Whistler at Fort Keogh wired Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry as to what course of action to take, Terry, although willing to turn over Little Wolf to civilian authorities if so requested, replied succinctly, “The difficulties surrounding the disposition of Little Wolf, if caught, are so great, [we’d] better not find him.”When Little Wolf turned himself in to Captain Whistler on December 15, the officer simply told him, “You are no longer chief of the Cheyennes.”
“It is true and just,” Little Wolf reportedly replied. Civilian authorities likewise did not seek justice for Little Wolf in civil courts. Friends also persuaded Starving Elk’s family not to seek revenge on the Sweet Medicine chief, although they had already burned his lodge and wagon. Tensions subsided over time. Years later Starving Elk’s brother, Bald Eagle, said: “LittleWolf did not kill my brother. It was the white man whiskey that did it.”
But Little Wolf never forgave himself. Although his people did not formally banish him, as was customary, he exiled himself, along the wilds of Rosebud Creek. In later times he told close friends he had loved Starving Elk as a brother. Few, except for whites, would smoke with him. To earn his keep, he did odd jobs, while his wife washed clothes for settlers. Although other Cheyennes moved in near Little Wolf after the expansion of the reservation in 1884, he remained quiet and aloof. Settlers remembered him as a gentle and dignified old man who loved children, and he became a familiar figure in southern Montana by the turn of the 20th century.
Little Wolf’s time and his vision for his people ended with his surrender and the upheaval of Cheyenne ways and alienation of the reservation.The 1892 renewal of the chiefs’ council, interrupted by the reordering of life on the reservation, was long overdue. Ashamed and embarrassed, LittleWolf did not attend the ceremonies to name his successor and pass down the chief’s bundle containing the holy symbols of the prophet Sweet Medicine. The council sent a runner to Little Wolf, for only he could name a successor.
“I’ve done wrong,” Little Wolf told the runner. “I killed a man, and I don’t think I ought to sit with the chiefs.”
“We need you,” the council replied. “We can’t proceed without you.”
A day later Little Wolf came to the council for the last time to take his place as Sweet Medicine chief. Although he could not smoke the pipe with the other tribal leaders, he named Sun Road as his successor.
Sun Road accepted the office but chose not to accept the actual Sweet Medicine bundle from Little Wolf. “I didn’t want to say it,” Sun Road later admitted, “but he wears that medicine over his shoulder slung under his left arm. I think it has begun to smell.”
The council considered doing away with the Sweet Medicine bundle, but Chief Grasshopper stepped up and accepted the bundle from Little Wolf. At some point Grasshopper may have buried the bundle, because it was long gone by the time he died years later.
In his old age Little Wolf, like many other Cheyenne veterans, continued to denounce the raids younger warriors had made on settlers in Kansas during the exodus north in fall 1878. Some of the Cheyenne men who related their exploits to the whites said the younger warriors had become unruly following the erosion of Dull Knife’s (not Little Wolf’s) influence. After the Cheyenne odyssey, Dull Knife remained embittered until his death in 1883. The next year Little Wolf’s friend and captor, Philo Clark, who had been promoted to captain in 1881, died in Washington, D.C., at age 39. Little Wolf, mostly living apart from the people he had once led, hung on for another two decades.
Originally published in the August 2012 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.