Notes on Lakota Leader Crazy Horse and the Conflict Between the US and Tribes on the Great Plains

Introduction

• Daniele Boleli introduces a multi-part series dedicated to the life of Lakota leader Crazy Horse and the conflict between the US and tribes on the Great Plains.
• This episode is dedicated to the memory of James Wedel from the Yankton Sioux tribe.

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Following the Sand Creek Massacre

• Following the 1864 Sand Creek massacre, the Lakota and Cheyenne sought revenge.
• Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho living in the Southern Plains rejoined their northern relatives to form a united front against the United States.
• The American army was unable to stop these tribes from joining their northern kin.

Red Cloud War

• Raids began in Wyoming and the Dakotas, marking the start of the Red Cloud War (1865-1868).
• Red Cloud was an important leader in this conflict, though the name "Red Cloud War" may overestimate his importance.
• Red Cloud was born in the early 1820s and was known for his skills as a warrior and his involvement in an intertribal conflict where he killed Bullbear.

Attack on Platte Bridge Station

• In the summer of 1865, Red Cloud and other leaders decided to strike a blow against the Platte Bridge Station near modern-day Casper, Wyoming.
• The garrison had about 100 soldiers guarding the crossing of the North Platte River.
• Soldiers noticed warriors cutting down telegraph wires and knew a supply train was coming with about 25 soldiers.
• Lieutenant Casper Collins led troops to check on the warriors and escort the supply train.
• Collins and his soldiers were led into an ambush by a larger group of Lakota and Cheyenne.
• The Lakota tried to spare Collins, but the Cheyenne warriors killed him and four other soldiers.
• Crazy Horse and other warriors turned toward the supply train to stop it.
• The soldiers set up their wagons in a circle for defense.
• The Lakota and Cheyenne used their horsemanship skills to circle the wagons and make the soldiers waste bullets.
• The Lakota and Cheyenne were skilled horsemen, able to shoot from under the horse's neck while remaining mostly hidden.
• The soldiers ran short of ammunition and made a frontal charge, but were mostly killed. Only two escaped.

US Army Predicament

• Gold was discovered in Montana in 1862, and the Bozeman Trail was discovered in 1863 as a more direct route to the gold fields.
• The Lakota were unhappy because the Bozeman Trail cut through their hunting grounds.
• American citizens wanted to get to the gold fields and asked the government to make the Bozeman Trail safe.
• The government was overstretched due to the Civil War and Reconstruction.
• Radical Republicans wanted a large army to enforce Reconstruction, while Western politicians wanted a large army to protect citizens from native tribes.
• Others wanted to reduce the size of the army to reduce taxes.
• President Johnson favored shrinking the army.
• The discovery of gold in Montana drew American settlers, and Congress felt they had to protect them from Indian attacks.
• Nicholas Black Elk said the wasichus (Lakota term for white people) were crazy for the yellow metal and wanted a road through their country, which would scare the bison away.

General Conor's Operation

• General Conor was ordered to find hostile Indians and kill every male above the age of 12.
• In August 1865, his pony scouts killed about 20 Lakota warriors.
• In early September, the Lakota and Cheyenne were camped together having a Sundance ceremony when they heard Conor's troops were close.
• Warriors went forward to face Conor to protect the main camp and give time for the women and children to escape.
• Crazy Horse allegedly said, "The soldiers like to shoot. I'm going to give them a chance to do all the shooting they want."
• Crazy Horse made three rounds in front of Conor's troops, who all missed him.
• Roman Nose, a Cheyenne leader, also did one run.
• The native side managed to get their camp moving and away from the soldiers.
• Conor scored one victory by attacking an Arapaho camp and killing many people.
• Conor spent a lot of time chasing ghosts around the plains and inflated Indian casualties in his reports.
• Congress was not inspired to open up the purse, and they were angry about how much the 1865 Conor campaign had cost and how little it had accomplished.

Negotiations at Fort Laramie

• By 1866, some Lakota leaders were willing to negotiate with the US government at Fort Laramie.
• Leaders such as Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Manafraid agreed to meet to see what the US government had to offer.
• Spotted Tail had good relations with some of the soldiers at Laramie, and his daughter asked to be buried at Fort Laramie.
• The government wanted the Lakota to allow American citizens to travel to the gold fields in Montana.
• The government made promises in exchange for access to the Bozeman Trail.
• A group of soldiers under an officer named Carrington arrived at the fort, tasked with building forts along the Bozeman Trail.
• The Lakota felt betrayed because the government was already planning to build forts while asking for permission to use the trail.
• Negotiations broke down.
• The Indian affairs superintendent reported a satisfactory treaty, but the vast majority of Lakota and Cheyenne had not signed it and would not honor it.
• Those who signed did not live in the Powder River County where the Bozeman Trail went through.

Colonel Carrington

• Carrington had a law degree from Yale and had been a Republican party organizer and Lincoln's bodyguard.
• He received a political appointment to the army as colonel of the eighteenth infantry.
• He had recruited over 200,000 people during the Civil War, but some officers felt he had enjoyed preferential treatment.
• By summer 1866, the Lakota and Cheyenne started a series of raids along the forts built along the Bozeman Trail.
• Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Young Men Afraid played a prominent role in this raiding.
• Carrington established rules for travelers using the Bozeman Trail, requiring at least 30 armed men (later revised to 40).

Peace Negotiations with the Crows

• Red Cloud and other leaders negotiated a peace with the Crows to gain allies against the US army.
• The Lakotas offered to return some hunting grounds in exchange for help in fighting against the US army.
• Some young Crow warriors were willing to join, but the old leaders of the tribe declined.
• The Crows preferred the US over the Lakota.

Warpipe

• Red Cloud sends a warpipe inviting all camps of the Lakota and Cheyenne to join in the attack.
• Sending a warpipe means inviting people to join in war, and if they agree, they have to smoke the pipe together, swearing on it.
• Crazy Horse's mentor, High Backbone, accepted the pipe for the minna conjo and joined Red Cloud.
• Crazy Horse often sat in the place of honor next to Red Cloud.
• Red Cloud used Crazy Horse's charisma and popularity among the young warriors as a recruiting tool.
• A Lakota warrior named Hans the Enemy said there was no one person in charge of the Indians, but many important leaders who joined forces for the fight.

Fort Phil Kearny

• By July 1866, Carrington was busy with the construction of Fort Phil Kearny, the biggest in a chain of forts to protect the Bosman Trail.
• Carrington struggled with poor weaponry and low morale among his men.
• The war department had not granted the request for repeating rifles, arguing that single shot rifles were better because they would help cut down on wasted ammunition.
• Jim Beckworth, the son of a Virginia slaveholder and his black mistress, was working under Carrington.
• Jim had married two Crow wives and tried to negotiate on behalf of Carrington with the Crow tribe.
• Carrington did not trust the Crows and thought that it would make him look weak if he accepted Indian help.
• Carrington's wife, Margaret, was the mother figure at the fort, universally loved by everyone.
• Carrington also met with Cheyenne leaders where Jim Bridger, a legendary trapper, guide, served as translator.
• The Shayan leaders said, look, we're unhappy about the soldiers coming north, but we have made a commitment to keeping the peace, so we're not gonna fight against you guys.
• Carrington gave some of these leaders letters of safe passage, and their leader Black Horse offered 100 of his warriors to help Carrington fight against the hostile Lakota and Cheyenne. But Carrington rejected the offer.
• They were met by some of the hostile Lakota, the ones who were at war with Carrington. They were quite mad about the fact that Black Horse and his friends had been so cozy with Carrington, so they promptly beat them up.
• Lakota and Cheyenne regularly launched little raids, shooting soldiers and stealing livestock, keeping the soldiers on their toes.
• They would also raid any wagons using the Bosman Trail, stopping almost all of the civilian traffic along the trail.

Lieutenant George Grammond

• By September 17, a new officer joined the ranks of Carrington staff. The 32 year old lieutenant George Grammond arrived along with his 21 year old pregnant wife Francis.
• There were regular complaints about him being drunk. There was a complaint about him shooting a fellow officer, pistol whipping another one, beating up soldiers under him, shooting unarmed civilians. So he was court martialed and was found guilty of shooting an officer and a civilian. However, despite the seriousness of the charge, he was only reprimanded.
• Glover's work in covering Lincoln's funeral procession had convinced the director of the Smithsonian Institute to send Glover out west to document in the rewards the taming of the frontier.
  Glover was out there camping with them, and at one point he had decided to walk back the six miles separating him from the fort completely on his own and an arm because he didn't carry a gun. He had voiced multiple times his beliefs that the Lakota and Cheyenne would not attack him and would not harm him.

Minor Victory

• By September 23, the soldiers at Fort Phil Kearny will score a minor victory.
• Another Curious event. He said that among the Indians he was fighting, he had seen a white man dressed Indian style, was casting at the soldiers in English, but was very much fighting as one of the natives.
• For Brown, however, it was this simple.He boasted numerous times that he was just itching for a chance to take scalps left and right because he felt that he could single handedly take dozens of Indian scalps.
• He really wanted to be the one to take Red Cloud's scalp by himself.

Losing Animals

• On a pretty much daily basis, native warriors were able to steal horses and cows and other livestock from the fort, and Brown was there frustrated, chasing them around, not catching them.
• On September 27, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho had been burning the grass close to the fort, So that meant that the soldiers would have to go forter and forter in order to cut hay for the horses. Not only that, but also they would have to go out and cut trees for firewood and since there weren't any close by to the fort since they had been cut down for defensive purposes, that meant that on a fairly regular basis groups of soldiers should have to go on this woodcutting detail that would often take them several miles away from the fort.

Killing

• On September 27, they attack yet again, and they look for some of the woodcutters that have that got separated from the rest. And in this case, they found one, a soldier by the name of Patrick Smith. They shoot him up full of arrows, scalp him while he's still alive. He managed to break off the arrow shafts so that they wouldn't drag on the ground, and he crawled this way to the timber cutter's blockhouse.
• On that same day, Lakota and Cheyenne killed two more civilian woodcutters.

Peace

• Right about the same time, a group of peaceful Cheyenne stopped by the fort and Captain Brown ran into them just a few miles from the fort, led them back to the fort.
• After the news of Smit's horrible death had spread around. So quite a few soldiers inside the fort decided they wanted to go out and kill the Cheyenne at night.
• Carrington, however, was not swept up in the same wave of bloodlust as some of his men, so he actually pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot anyone who dared attack the friendly Cheyenne.

Celebration

• By the October, the construction at Fort Phil Kernia was completed.
• Carrington declared a holiday to celebrate the completion of the fort, and they had this ceremony where they did the rising of the flag above the fort.
• This was a symbolic gesture reminding them that a land that they claimed as theirs was now being claimed by The United States.

Reinforcements

• Specifically, there were quite a few officers in this group. Namely Fetterman. Who had tried to get into West Point earlier in his life, was not admitted, he had become a businessman, but due to the expansion of the army during the civil war, he got his chance to finally be part of the army.
• He ended up participating in the siege of Corinth in Mississippi, did very well in several battles, fought at Johnsboro, which was the prelude to the fall of Atlanta.
• Some accounts primarily push through Carrington, who will later write about Fetterman in copious details. They seem to portray Fetterman as this boast ful, tough guy.

Ambush

• So what Fetterman, Brown, Grammond, and a few other guys decided to do after receiving Carrington's permission was to, along with about 50 men, they would set up an ambush.
• Lakota Sheikh and Narapa warriors, however, were not stupid and figured out what was up. They understand that there was a trap going on.

Civil Post

• On 12/03/1866, president Johnson delivered State of the Union address. In Johnson's view, everything was fine on the frontier.
• treaties have been concluded with the Indians, who enticed into armed opposition to our government at the outbreak of the rebellion, have unconditionally submitted to our authority and manifested an earnest desire for a renewal of friendly relations.

Tong River

• Just three days later, hundreds of them left their camp by the Tong River, where the majority of them were staying, this was located about 70 miles north of the fort, to mount a major offensive against the fort.
• A column of soldiers under Fatterman and Bingham led the cavalry. About 50 some men left the fort leading cavalry support to the woodcutters. And at the same time, Carrington and Grammoud would lead a few more men trying to get behind the attacking Indians.
• This pincher move does not work the way it was designed to and foremost, because Grandmond disobeys Carrington's orders and just darts forwards with a few men breaking up the line. You know, only a few men remain with Carrington.
  Lieutenant Bingham was killed and scalped
• Carrington decided, well, we can't leave their bodies out there, so we need to go find them. So captain Powell now replaced the dead Bingham as a cavalry commander.

Fights

• Jim Bridger declared that the soldiers don't know anything about fighting Indians.
• On December 21, the Lakota and Shayan decided to try their luck again, this time bringing an even bigger group of warriors so as to be able to deal with any size contingent of soldiers sent after them.
• They sent out a man who was, I guess, can refer to him as a medicine man, to basically pray for success for the day's operation. The man was what the Lakota referred to as a wingtte.

Wingtte

• A wingtte was a man who had received the vision that he was to live his life as a woman. In the culture of the Lakota, as well as in the culture of many other native tribes actually, there were more than two recognized genders.
• This guy in particular was sent out to pray for the success of the day's raid.
• The battle will be known as the hundred in the hand. It's going to be 81, but, you know, close enough.
• White Bull reported later that he went with a bow and 40 arrows plus a spear.

Warriors Attack Wood

• The natives attack the soldiers who are on wood detail, who are out to cut wood.
• So Carrington promptly ordered Powell to lead the relief column.
• Your job is only to provide relief to the wood train. Once the Indians turn away, you are not to follow them on the trail.
  What they did basically was attack the wood train and stay within sight of Fetterman and Grammot so that Fatterman and Grammon would lead their 81 men to chase them.
• All of a sudden they start hearing war whoops all around them, and the ground surrounding them comes alive as hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors spring out from their hiding spots.
• Their confidence turns to panic as they realize that the trap is set, they have fallen in the middle of it, and now they are going to have to fight their way out if they are gonna see the end of this day.

Lakota Warrios

• The Lakota charged mostly against the infantry.
• They see them in front of them, they see them to their left, they see them to their right, they see them behind them.
• There's well over a thousand of them, and that's when they know, that's when the soldiers know that they screwed up. Crazy horse had led them into a trap, and now the trap was sealed.
  Before they move in to hand to hand combat. Turns out that this tactic, it worked because it did kill a lot of soldiers, but it also caused some friendly fire as some of these arrows killed some Lakota and Cheyenne men who had gone further than the others.
  I'm sorry, not a single one of them was alive. Captain Brown's obsession with scalps clearly had not served him well.
  *Here is what happens in the fight, in the words of one of the Lakota warriors who participated in it, a man by the name of Fire Thunder.
  I was young then and quick on my feet, and I was one of the to get in among the soldiers. They got up and fought very hard until not one of them was alive. Fetterman did not meet a much better death.
• Lakota warrior by the name of American Horse charged his own horse into Fetterman's horse, knocking him down, and then jumped off the horse, hit him with a war club. Fatterman was now dazed as American horse pulled out his knife and cut his throat.

Bodies

• Carrington went out and said that missus Grandond, I shall go in person and will bring back to you the remains of your husband.
• This was the same man who had been obsessed about taking lacota scalps.
• They had three days of mourning for the warriors who had died, and then at the end of the three days, they had a big feast to celebrate the victory.
• On December 21, Carrington had paid two civilians to take a report to the Horseshoe Station, which was located a 190 miles away. So these two men by the name of John Phillips and Daniel Dixon had the rather unpleasant task of riding through Indian country for almost 200 miles in freezing weather to bring the news of what happened to the outside world.

Union Pacific

• The Union Pacific transcontinental railroad was being built across Nebraska, and this made the Bosman Trail somewhat irrelevant since people could go around using the the railway stations to reach the goldfields in Montana.
• Because they were running out of money. I'm so many politicians figured that maybe there was a better way to go about it. Now the army considered the politicians corrupt.
• The politicians considered the army bloodthirsty and ineffective.
• So eventually, whence Ulysses Grant became president in 1868, he decided to remove control of Indian reservation from the military and give it instead to churches.

Indian Peace Commission

• The government in 1867 created what was known as the Indian Peace Commission to find out the causes of Indian hostility, which is to give into Indian demands.
• One of the things that happened is that the people in charge of the commissions were trying to convince Lakota and Shayan leaders to sign, they are going to only translate those parts of the treaty that sound very appealing that the natives would be happy with and these are so we could raise our children.
• On the mountains and the forts. When we see the soldiers moving away and the forts abandoned, then I will come down and talk.
  These were all the abandoned what they wanted.

Notes on Sources

• The podcast series, originally planned as three episodes, will now consist of at least four parts.
• Native people have expressed support for the work, including family members of Jim Weddell.
• Historical podcast