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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
Miniconjou chief Black Shield, a generation older than the Black Fox cohort, had coordinated tactics in the 1866 Fetterman fight. After the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, he had stayed clear of the agencies even during the winter months when many nontreaty people opted for a season drawing government beef. A key leader during the Great Sioux War, he had been passed over m the selection of Deciders in spring 1877. Politically marginalized, in July he transferred to Crazy Horse's village before being swept up in the rush back to Spotted Tail Agency. Still fretting about his loss of influence, he readily listened to the counsels of the breakaway faction.20
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Hostile counsels weighed least with the Miniconjou Deciders Touch the Clouds and Roman Nose. The latter particularly had long-standing ties to the agency Brulé chiefs Iron Shell and Swift Bear, and he had worked to defuse the Crazy Horse crisis in September. But growing Northern intransigence on the one hand and the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Spotted Tail on the other eroded the authority of such moderates. Increasing Brulé pressure to assimilate to the bands of agency chiefs threatened the autonomy of the Northern leadership.
Forty years old, Touch the Clouds was the son of Lone Horn, the Miniconjou head chief in the period between 1856 and 1876 who had long steered a middle course between the nontreaty and agency factions of his people. An accomplished diplomat, Lone Horn had reluctantly engaged in the Black Hills negotiations-the stress of "shame" leading to his tragic death as the Great Sioux War opened. His tiyospaye, the Wakpokinyan, or Flying River band, had gradually cohered around the leadership of Touch the Clouds. Like his father, Touch the Clouds was inclined to peace, but he would not entertain army confiscation of his band's ponies. He departed Cheyenne River Agency late in September 1876 and joined the victorious Northern Indian coalition.
Close links to the White River agencies and the finessing of the pony issue netted Touch the Cloud's surrender, but of all the Northern leaders he alone seriously considered transfer back to the Cheyenne River Agency. If he wished to claim succession to his father's Miniconjou primacy, such ambitions were best served at the home agency. However, the military's hard line at the Missouri River agencies meant that punitive confiscations of stock and arms had continued through the fall and winter, leaving agency bands with one pony per family-and surrendering "hostiles" with significantly fewer than that.21 By contrast, on the White River the relative leniency of General Crook meant that the dismounting program ordered by Sheridan was never fully implemented.
Surveying his herd, Touch the Clouds retained serious misgivings about seeking relocation. Nevertheless, he had emerged during the summer at Spotted Tail as an able peacetime leader trusted by the agency hierarchy. Although a close friend of his kinsman Crazy Horse, he had risen above the crisis sparked by the leader's death, working to defuse the violent tensions threatening the White River agencies. Before departing Spotted Tail Agency he promised Agent Lee that he would not flee to the north. Flight to Canada and political eclipse by Sitting Bull held little attraction for the heir of Lone Horn.22
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