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'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
Piecemeal departures continued through the morning of January 12. In all, some eighty lodges fled, including approximately twenty lodges of Miniconjous, fifty lodges of Oglalas, and ten lodges of straggling Brulés and Sans Arcs. Northern Oglala headmen Iron Crow, leader of a mixed Hunkpatila-Oyuhpe band, and White Twin, a Bad Face leader, fled about the eleventh. Even seventy-eight-year-old Human Finger, a venerable Oyuhpe elder, joined the exodus. The final departures included Big Road's tiyospaye, the warriors driving away their chief's ponies.60
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News of the breakout arrived at Yellow Medicine on January 12. Agency leaders promised every assistance. As lieutenant George A. Dodd, Clark's successor as chief of scouts, organized the pursuit, Big Road appeared, "weeping pitifully." Should the report of his family's departure prove true, he advised Dodd, he would seek to reclaim them, but if this proved impossible, "he would be obliged to go and take care of them." As a token of good faith Big Road turned over to the lieutenant his own scout arms and ammunition.61
The scouts hurried up the White River on the trail of the fugitives. Overtaking only four lodges, they followed the trail for sixty miles until, somewhere north of the modern-day reservation community of Wanblee, beside a litter of abandoned tipi poles, it veered north into the badlands. Wary and jaded, the scouts turned back with their prisoners, but Big Road took leave of his comrade Little Big Man "with tears in his eyes." Big Road pressed on alone, finally overtaking the fugitives in the badlands. In a tense parley with his own warriors, Big Road "tried to persuade us to go back, but instead of going back we gave him his choice, either to go with us, or die and be sent back on a stretcher, he cried and begged us to go with him to the Agency, we were firm, and he finally went with us." Reunited with his family, Big Road chose to join the flight, reemerging in Canada as the most influential leader of the exiled Oglalas.62
Scattering, the fugitives hurried northwest, pausing to regroup at the staging camp near the junction of Elk Creek and the south fork of the Cheyenne River. The tipis of stragglers remained on the site, and a few lodges drifted in from other agencies.63 The fugitives reorganized, the council of warriors nominating Little Hawk as the Pipe Owner for the projected flight. A Sun Dance was held to promote the spirit of solidarity. Typically held at the great tribal gatherings during the summer, this ceremony must have been a small-scale affair, with just a handful of pledgers enduring the piercing and hanging from the center pole. They "called to the Great Spirit to protect them, and carry them safely through to the British Possessions."64
Sending ahead nine men and a woman to inform Sitting Bull of their march, the village pressed on. Little Hawk coordinated the journey well, skillfully eluding army patrols to slip over the Canadian line during March and reuniting with the November breakaways in a village estimated at 250 lodges by the Canadian authorities.65
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