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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
At both agencies, officials worked furiously to accomplish removal before cold weather set in. On October 27 the Oglalas started for their new agency located at the junction of Yellow Medicine Creek with the Missouri. The vanguard was formed by Captain Joseph Lawson and Companies E and L, Third Cavalry, followed by Red Cloud and a row of Oglala chiefs riding abreast. Reflecting the integration of the agency and Northern Oglala bands following the death of Crazy Horse, the line included the four Northern Deciders and their agency counterparts, Little Wound, Young Man Afraid of His Horse, American Horse, and Yellow Bear. Scout units reporting to lieutenant Clark patrolled the line of march. Behind the huge caravan of people, travois, and pony herds, some 120 freight wagons carried supplies and indigent Indians. Agent James Irwin and Camp Robinson surgeon Valentine T. McGillycuddy traveled with the wagon train, while, in the rear, cowboys and Indian herders drove a herd of two thousand beef cattle to subsist the projected twenty-fiveday march down the White River Valley.12
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On October 29 the movement got underway at Spotted Tail Agency. The line of march struck east along upcountry trails marking the divide between the White and Niobrara drainages. Some two hundred lodges of Northern Indians-Miniconjous, Sans Arcs, Oglalas, Brulés, and Wazhazhas-refused to join the march. Instead they made a short move to the White River where, on November 1, the vanguard of the Red Cloud column met them. lieutenant Clark rode forward with the Oglala chiefs to parley with the Northern leaders. Clark was dismayed but found it "useless to try and get them to go forward, overtake Spotted Tail and go on with him to his Agency, if forced in this way or if we had refused to take them I was convinced they would have scattered out and gone north."13
The next day agent Irwin repeated Clark's urgings, but the Northern spokesmen remained adamant, asserting that "they belong to the North and not to either Spotted Tail or Red Cloud agency, that their Agency is at present on the Cheyenne river."14
Reluctantly Irwin and Clark permitted the newcomers to join the Red Cloud column, discomfited with the logistics of providing rations for an additional twelve hundred people. At Spotted Tail Agency, Irwin found only one thousand pounds of coffee and two thousand pounds of sugar allocated to feed the newcomers. He chafed that lieutenant Lee had made no provision to transfer essential beef and flour.15
At this point, impeded by bad weather and inadequate transportation, the Red Cloud column's progress slowed to a crawl. Rain mired the White River bottoms before turning to sleet and snow, making "wretched roads." The column was strung out for eight miles, thousands of ponies posing acute pasturage problems. Manv Indians complained of sickness, and since the distribution of treaty annuity goods had been delayed pending arrival at the Missouri, many were cold and poorly clad. Each night a tipi camp three miles long was pitched, and the Indians put on dances late into the night. The Northern newcomers posed special problems for the agent and the small troop escort, being "from the first a hard and difficult element to control." lieutenant Clark found them "wild, stubborn, restless." Irwin characterized them the "Northern/ire eaters." Positioned in the rear of the column, they "burnt the prairie behind us while on the march" and made demonstrations against Captain Lawson's increasingly feeblelooking escort.16
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