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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
Each morning Clark dispatched Oglala scouts to reconnoiter the trail. By November 7, with the column passing the mouth of White clay Creek, reports suggested that the column would have to follow the north side of the valley, for the country below Wounded Knee Creek had been "burnt over" by the latest additions from the Spotted Tail column, clearly to compel the northern route.27
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Through the second week of November, tensions grew between the Northern Indians and the rest of the column. The Northerners resented the troop presence, and, according to Captain Lawson, "had it not been for our friendly Indians and enlisted Indian Scouts I think they would have attempted to inflict some damage on my command." Clark, however, expressed confidence in the loyalty of his three companies of Lakota scouts, including the nontreaty contingent, Company C, with First Sergeant Little Big Man, and he ordered his scouts to monitor developments in the Northern village, reporting that he anticipated "no particular trouble." To effect a piecemeal break-up of the Northern village, Clark urged the Oglala leaders to persuade Northern relatives to join their own bands. He hoped that within "a few days they [the Northern Indians] will be partially absorbed in the other bands and subjected to better influence."28
Critical to Clark's scheme was Young Man Afraid of His Horse, chief of the Oglala Payabya band, to whom Clark paid high praise as a leader "who has great influence with both Agency and Northern Indians and uses it only for good." Northern leaders conceded that Young Man Afraid of His Horse was one of the few Red Cloud Agency chiefs they respected. Although totally committed to peaceful relations with the Americans, he took an independent line on many issues. Besides arguing for a northern reservation from the beginning, Young Man Afraid of His Horse had opposed the Black Hills Agreement of 1876, when agency chiefs were browbeaten into signing away Lakota land rights. He therefore retained a credibility that Northern Indians no longer accorded to Red Cloud himself. Northern headmen now denounced the latter and fellow signatories as "old buffalo bulls who had been driven out of the herd . . . [with] no right or authority to give away what did not belong to them."29
Young Man Afraid of His Horse, promoted by Clark to first sergeant, worked his kinship channels, feasting Northern kinsmen.30 Nevertheless, Northern Indians resisted assimilation. Indications suggest that an alternative leadership was emerging within the Northern village as the peacetime Deciders were sidelined in favor of a war council. Red Bear, as the senior headman in the faction favoring a breakout, invited like-minded friends to form the blotahunka, a council of war leaders. Low Dog, Black Fox, and Crazy Heart were included in the blotahunka, and they invited key elders and ritual leaders to join them, in a bid to neutralize opposition. They recognized Red Bear as their Pipe Owner, the coordinator of strategy for the five-hundred-mile flight they projected. Threatened with marginalization, Touch the Clouds and the other Northern Deciders could only tighten their own village organization against poaching tactics by the Oglala leadership: martial law was effectively in place when the whole column encamped on November 6 for a two-day layover while beef was issued.31
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