Content provided in partnership with
'WE BELONG TO THE NORTH': THE FLIGHTS OF THE NORTHERN INDIANS FROM THE WHITE RIVER AGENCIES, 1877-1878
Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer 2005 by Bray, Kingsley M
DURING THE FALL AND WINTER OF 1877-1878 almost seventeen hundred recently surrendered Lakotas broke away from the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies and fled five hundred miles northward to join relatives who had sought refuge across the international boundary in Canada. The military campaigns of the Great Sioux War were over, but the flight demonstrated that the spirit of Lakota resistance to enforced reservation life still lived. The rich documentary record of these flights, much of it derived from contemporary Indian statements, permits us to penetrate the surface of events and to explore the dynamics of Lakota leadership as the coalition that had defeated Crook and Custer fragmented and, under intolerable pressures, sought ways to regroup in a transformed world of military domination.1
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
In spring 1877 a year of war had taken its toll on the alliance of nontreaty Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes. A decade of mounting tension between the Lakotas and the Americans had exploded after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the rejection of U.S. demands for the sale of this heart of the Lakota domain. Lakota victories, first over General George Crook at Rosebud and. scarcely one week later, over lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn in June 1876, demonstrated the valor, conviction, and ability of Indian fighters united behind a common cause and superb tactical leaders. Inevitably, however, winter privations favored the U.S. Army, a situation exploited in vigorous campaigns prosecuted by Crook and Colonel Nelson A. Miles. A minority of Lakotas. chiefly drawn from the Hunkpapa tribal division and led by the charismatic holy man Sitting Bull, withdrew across the forty-ninth parallel. In "Grandmother's Land," the British possessions of Queen Victoria, they invoked colonialperiod alliances in a bid to secure a homeland free of interference. By May 1877 this congregation of irreconcilables counted some three hundred lodges, equivalent to approximately eighteen hundred people.
The majority of the nontreaty coalition, however, remained in the war zone south of the Yellowstone River. Made up of Lakotas drawn from the Oglala, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, and Brulé divisions, with their Northern Cheyenne allies, they totaled about seven hundred Iodges. The Oglala war chief Crazy Horse, thirtysix years old, a mystic inscrutable even to his own people but possessed of unsurpassed courage and battlefield ability, was their most influential leader. Crazy Horse was reluctant to follow his comrade Sitting Bull into Canadian exile. Wholly committed by political and personal imperatives to preserve his people's Yellowstone Valley hunting grounds, Crazy Horse was yet forced to concede that a second year of war was not an option for his ragged, hungry followers. When reservation Lakota leaders arrived in the nontreaty camps offering surrender terms from Department of the Platte commander General George Crook, Crazy Horse's following began to fragment.
Since the signing of the Fort Laramie Treatv of 1868, upwards of two-thirds of the Lakota population had settled near the agencies of the Great Sioux Reservation: it was peace-talkers from the Spotted Tail and Red Cloud Agencies, located on the White River in northwestern Nebraska and serving the Brulés and the Oglalas respectively, who gradually convinced Crazy Horse's people to give up the armed struggle. Key concessions focused on two issues: ponies given up by surrendering Indians would be turned over to enlisted Indian scouts for redistribution-many back to their original owners; and General Crook promised to recommend to the army high command that, once the surrender process was complete, the nontreaty bands should receive a new reservation in their Yellowstone Valley hunting grounds.
Throughout spring 1877 some 1,372 nontreaty Lakotas -known at the White River agencies as "Northern Indians"-surrendered at Spotted Tail Agency, their village organization coordinated by four chiefs (Wakicunze, or Deciders) temporarily empowered with coercive authority: Touch the Clouds and Roman Nose (Miniconjous) and Red Bear and High Bear (Sans Arcs).2
Forty miles to the west, Red Cloud Agency was the scene of similar surrenders. One thousand one hundred sixty-seven Lakotas plus 901 Northern Cheyennes chose to surrender at Red Cloud, climaxing in the May 6 capitulation of Crazy Horse himself. True to Crook's concessions, at both agencies surrender terms were relaxed. As Red Cloud agent Lieutenant Charles A. Johnson noted, surrendering Oglalas "turned over to the Military their Arms and horses, the latter being returned to them."3 When Crazy Horse and other Northern leaders agreed to enlist as army scouts, they were once more armed and mounted.4
On the White River the scout system proved popular, with duties defined as preserving order in camp and service as envoys in negotiating the surrender of Lame Deer's village, the last of the nontreaty bands remaining in the hunting grounds. These were the traditional functions of the akicita, the warrior societies that served as village police under the direction of the council and the Deciders.5 lieutenant William P. Clark, second Cavalry, commanded the scouts, and in July he extended the system to create five companies. Company C was organized around the leadership of the Crazy Horse village. The war chief himself served as first sergeant, while the four Northern Oglala Deciders-Little Big Man, Big Road, Little Hawk, and Iron Crow-were enlisted sergeants. Iron Hawk, He Dog, Four Crows, and No Water, all akicita leaders, served as corporals, with thirty-seven privates completing the roll.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »