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
Late in September a large delegation from both agencies traveled to Washington D.C. Besides the agency hierarchy led by chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, Big Road, Little Big Man, and He Dog represented the Red Cloud Agency Northern village; Touch the Clouds and Red Bear were their counterparts from Spotted Tail Agency. At the former agency, the crisis following Crazy Horse's death ironically won over key agency leaders to the necessity of securing Crook's promised reservation in the hunting grounds. Both Red Cloud and Young Man Afraid of His Horse backed Northern speakers in urging a location on Tongue River. Other Oglala band leaders argued to retain the existing site. The Spotted Tail party toed a single line. The Brulé head chief favored a site on Wounded Knee Creek, a tributary farther down the White River Valley. Reflecting the increasingly dictatorial nature of Spotted Tail's leadership, other Brulé leaders and the Northern delegates voiced only brief endorsements.8
- 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 »
President Rutherford B. flayes, a Civil War comrade of General Crook's, proved unexpectedly conciliatory. Providing that they removed to the Missouri Valley locations for the winter, he conceded to the Lakotas the right to select their own agency sites the following spring. Moreover, although the boundaries of the existing reservation remained in effect, Hayes did not categorically rule out the Tongue River location-reviving hopes that the promises made to Crazy Horse would finally be honored.
On October 11 the delegates arrived home on White River to convince a suspicious people of the necessity of removal. During their absence, unrest had already resulted in the first breakouts. On September 14 six lodges of Miniconjous had left Red Cloud Agency with official permission to join relatives at Spotted Tail. Issued six day's rations, the little party of thirty-six people appears to have lied; their names do not appear on the Spotted Tail rolls.'1
Suspicious of rumors of arrests and pony confiscations, another group of some sixty lodges of Northern Indians left Spotted Tail Agency about September 20, descending the White River to the old robe-trade landmark of Butte Cache. The group was made up of Miniconjous from the Lame Deer camp led by Fast Bull and Black Bear as well as assorted relatives of Crazy Horse, including his uncle Bull Head and his cousin Black Fox. Whistling Elk, a Miniconjou implicated in the killing of a freighter near Spotted Tail Agency in 1873, also belonged to this party. Brulé chiefs succeeded in persuading Black Fox and approximately twenty lodges to return to the agency, but on the night of September 23 Fast Bull led forty lodges into the badlands. They boldly stated their destination was refuge with Sitting Bull in Canada. Upon arrival there, they claimed that on his deathbed Crazy Horse himself had urged a general flight to Grandmother's Land.10
At Spotted Tail Agency, the Brulés were reluctantly persuaded to move to the newly vacated Ponca Agency (near modern-day Niobrara, Nebraska), on the understanding they would be allowed to permanently locate on Wounded Knee Creek in the spring. Many Northern Indians categorically refused to join the move, however, telling Agent Jesse M. Lee that "they wanted to go down White River and go along with the Red Cloud Indians, asserting that they would afterward join us on the way or after our arrival at destination."11
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Autos
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 »