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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

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As summer progressed, however, the futility of hopes based on Crook's conditional promises became plain. The military high command, in particular General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman and Division of the Missouri chief Phil Sheridan, was bent on punishing the Lakotas, while a Congress intent on cutting the cost of transporting supplies had determined that the White River agencies would be eliminated. Instead of relocating to the hunting grounds, the Northern Indians would move to selected sites along the Missouri River, within the existing reservation.

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Long cleared of game, the Missouri Valley was an unacceptable location to Crazy Horse and the Northern leadership. Crazy Horse became increasingly alienated from the peace process and sought to concentrate Northern contingents at both agencies into a single village, over the anxious opposition of the agency leaders who were determined to prevent any resumption of war. Further bitterness and crucial misunderstandings were created between the tribal factions and army authorities when the military sought to secure the service of the Lakota scouts in the Nez Perce campaign. At this critical point, rumors circulated that Sitting Bull had recrossed the Canadian line bound for the Yellowstone hunting grounds.

The tangled evidence indicates that Crazy Horse favored a breakout to reunite with Sitting Bull. The Deciders, however, were wary and the majority of Crazy Horse's followers frightened by his intransigence. Most of the village defected to join agency kinsfolk, reducing Crazy Horse's following from 250 to less than 50 lodges by the morning of September 4. Convinced that the war chief intended flight, Crook ordered his arrest. After a fruitless effort to arouse Northern allies at Spotted Tail Agency, Crazy Horse was returned under guard to Camp Robinson, the military post overseeing Red Cloud Agency. Unexpectedly faced with detention in the post guardhouse, Crazy Horse made a desperate break for freedom and received a mortal bayonet wound. Shortly before midnight on September 5, he died on the floor of the Camp Robinson adjutant's office, the victim of a tragic sequence of misunderstandings, army bad faith, and his own political misjudgments.6

Angry and frightened, many of Crazy Horse's followers regrouped and fled from Red Cloud Agency-not to Canada, but to unite with the Northern village at Spotted Tail Agency. The military census there recorded the "stampede" of 170 lodges of Oglalas, Brulés, Miniconjous, and Sans Arcs. The Northern leadership at Spotted Tail had been tractable, but the arrival of more than one thousand panicky Crazy Horse followers, and the simultaneous surrender of the last of the Lame Deer holdouts, tipped the fragile balance. Now as an aggregate of some 400 lodges, the Northern village contained a majority of dangerously bitter and dissatisfied people. At Red Cloud only about 70 lodges of Northern Oglalas remained. Reorganized under the leadership of Big Road, who had won the trust of the officers at Camp Robinson, this contingent was for the moment quiescent, though nervous and uncertain of the future.7

'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

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