'WE BELONG TO THE NORTH': THE FLIGHTS OF THE NORTHERN INDIANS FROM THE WHITE RIVER AGENCIES, 1877-1878

Bray, Kingsley M

DURING THE FALL AND WINTER OF 1877-1878 almost seventeen hundred recently surrendered Lakotas broke away from the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies and fled five hundred miles northward to join relatives who had sought refuge across the international boundary in Canada. The military campaigns of the Great Sioux War were over, but the flight demonstrated that the spirit of Lakota resistance to enforced reservation life still lived. The rich documentary record of these flights, much of it derived from contemporary Indian statements, permits us to penetrate the surface of events and to explore the dynamics of Lakota leadership as the coalition that had defeated Crook and Custer fragmented and, under intolerable pressures, sought ways to regroup in a transformed world of military domination.1

In spring 1877 a year of war had taken its toll on the alliance of nontreaty Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes. A decade of mounting tension between the Lakotas and the Americans had exploded after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the rejection of U.S. demands for the sale of this heart of the Lakota domain. Lakota victories, first over General George Crook at Rosebud and. scarcely one week later, over lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn in June 1876, demonstrated the valor, conviction, and ability of Indian fighters united behind a common cause and superb tactical leaders. Inevitably, however, winter privations favored the U.S. Army, a situation exploited in vigorous campaigns prosecuted by Crook and Colonel Nelson A. Miles. A minority of Lakotas. chiefly drawn from the Hunkpapa tribal division and led by the charismatic holy man Sitting Bull, withdrew across the forty-ninth parallel. In "Grandmother's Land," the British possessions of Queen Victoria, they invoked colonialperiod alliances in a bid to secure a homeland free of interference. By May 1877 this congregation of irreconcilables counted some three hundred lodges, equivalent to approximately eighteen hundred people.

The majority of the nontreaty coalition, however, remained in the war zone south of the Yellowstone River. Made up of Lakotas drawn from the Oglala, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, and Brulé divisions, with their Northern Cheyenne allies, they totaled about seven hundred Iodges. The Oglala war chief Crazy Horse, thirtysix years old, a mystic inscrutable even to his own people but possessed of unsurpassed courage and battlefield ability, was their most influential leader. Crazy Horse was reluctant to follow his comrade Sitting Bull into Canadian exile. Wholly committed by political and personal imperatives to preserve his people's Yellowstone Valley hunting grounds, Crazy Horse was yet forced to concede that a second year of war was not an option for his ragged, hungry followers. When reservation Lakota leaders arrived in the nontreaty camps offering surrender terms from Department of the Platte commander General George Crook, Crazy Horse's following began to fragment.

Since the signing of the Fort Laramie Treatv of 1868, upwards of two-thirds of the Lakota population had settled near the agencies of the Great Sioux Reservation: it was peace-talkers from the Spotted Tail and Red Cloud Agencies, located on the White River in northwestern Nebraska and serving the Brulés and the Oglalas respectively, who gradually convinced Crazy Horse's people to give up the armed struggle. Key concessions focused on two issues: ponies given up by surrendering Indians would be turned over to enlisted Indian scouts for redistribution-many back to their original owners; and General Crook promised to recommend to the army high command that, once the surrender process was complete, the nontreaty bands should receive a new reservation in their Yellowstone Valley hunting grounds.

Throughout spring 1877 some 1,372 nontreaty Lakotas -known at the White River agencies as "Northern Indians"-surrendered at Spotted Tail Agency, their village organization coordinated by four chiefs (Wakicunze, or Deciders) temporarily empowered with coercive authority: Touch the Clouds and Roman Nose (Miniconjous) and Red Bear and High Bear (Sans Arcs).2

Forty miles to the west, Red Cloud Agency was the scene of similar surrenders. One thousand one hundred sixty-seven Lakotas plus 901 Northern Cheyennes chose to surrender at Red Cloud, climaxing in the May 6 capitulation of Crazy Horse himself. True to Crook's concessions, at both agencies surrender terms were relaxed. As Red Cloud agent Lieutenant Charles A. Johnson noted, surrendering Oglalas "turned over to the Military their Arms and horses, the latter being returned to them."3 When Crazy Horse and other Northern leaders agreed to enlist as army scouts, they were once more armed and mounted.4

On the White River the scout system proved popular, with duties defined as preserving order in camp and service as envoys in negotiating the surrender of Lame Deer's village, the last of the nontreaty bands remaining in the hunting grounds. These were the traditional functions of the akicita, the warrior societies that served as village police under the direction of the council and the Deciders.5 lieutenant William P. Clark, second Cavalry, commanded the scouts, and in July he extended the system to create five companies. Company C was organized around the leadership of the Crazy Horse village. The war chief himself served as first sergeant, while the four Northern Oglala Deciders-Little Big Man, Big Road, Little Hawk, and Iron Crow-were enlisted sergeants. Iron Hawk, He Dog, Four Crows, and No Water, all akicita leaders, served as corporals, with thirty-seven privates completing the roll.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The intentions of the Northern Indians in leaving the Spotted Tail column remained enigmatic. Rumors that they intended to flee to Canada were matched by reports that they genuinely wished to settle with the Oglalas. One issue stands out: the majority of Northern Indians had rejected Spotted Tail's bid for a permanent White River agency and agreed with the emerging Oglala consensus for a northern location. Beyond that bottom line, however, a wide range of attitudes existed. Identifying their leaders' positions goes a long way toward understanding the motivations of the various groups of Northern Indians.

Several leaders were early committed to a break for Canada. Significant among these was the Sans Arc Decider Red Bear. Although a delegate to Washington and enlisted as a sergeant in Clark's Company E, Red Bear was disenchanted with his experiment in reservation life. Personal ties to the exiles in Grandmother's Land matched this political disillusionment. His "great friend"-his kola, or pledged comrade-was Spotted Eagle, the Sans Arc war chief who had led part of their Bull Dung tiyospaye (extended-family band) into Canada with Sitting Bull. An able war leader with a reputation as "a desperate sort of fellow," Red Bear had organized a clique of followers well prepared for flight. Since they were all noted as "well armed and mounted," many were probably Red Bear's comrades in the Sans Arc scout contingent.17

Other leaders joined Red Bear in planning a breakaway. After Fast Bull's departure, the remaining leaders of the Lame Deer camp were bitter and intransigent. Lame Deer's younger son, Crazy Heart, held a hereditary claim to leadership, but he was overshadowed by the forceful war leader Low Dog-styled an "upstart" by agency interpreter Billy Garnett. Thirty years old and a precocious warrior for half his life, Low Dog had distinguished himself as a tactical leader in the Custer battle. His kola had been Lame Deer's nephew Iron Star, killed at Muddy Creek along with Lame Deer in the clash with Miles. Although he usually "ran with" the Oyuhpe band of Oglalas. Low Dog had an unusually wide circle of relations. Even in reservation times he moved restlessly between agencies, invoking kin ties among the Hunkpapas, Miniconjous, and Wazhazhas. He lent his considerable force of personality to organizing a concerted breakout.18

Young and dashing, with not a little of Crazy Horse's own charisma, was the war chief's cousin, Black Fox. His father and namesake had been a chief in the Oglala Oyuhpe band, a tiyospaye extensively intermarried with the Miniconjous. Black Fox himself married a kinswoman of Touch the Clouds and had surrendered at Spotted Tail Agency, but he favored a more confrontational response to the agency hierarchy. Distinguishing himself in the Sun Dance as a partisan of Crazy Horse, he joined the letter's village and was invested as a Shirt Wearer, or war chief. After Crazy Horse's death, Black Fox led the "stampede" back to Spotted Tail Agency, where he threatened to kill Camp Sheridan commander Captain Daniel W. Burke for his role in Crazy Horse's arrest. With Red Bear and Low Dog, Black Fox began to forge a Northern consensus for flight northward.19

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

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

Traveling with the Red Cloud column's Northern village was the immediate family of Crazy Horse. They carried with them the body of their son, taken down from the burial scaffold erected on the bluff above Camp Sheridan. Crazy Horse's sixty-six-year-old father, the holy man Worm, was married to two kinswomen of Spotted Tail and so surrendered at the Brulé agency. Worm's small following, the Kapozha tiyospaye, comprised a half-dozen lodges of Oglala men with Brulé wives. His own dpi counted seven people: besides Worm and his wives, Iron between Horns and Kills Enemy, there were Worm's widowed sister Big Woman and Black Shawl, the widow of his famous son, plus two unnamed boys. As the Northern village followed down the White River in the wake of the Red Cloud column, this group traveled at the very rear of the procession, a buckskin horse hauling on a travois the bundle that contained the body of Crazy Horse.23

Northern warriors taunted the Oglalas with the body of the war chief. "They brought with them the remains of Crazy Horse," concluded Agent Irwin, "in order to madden our Indians." "Even as a dead chief [Crazy Horse] exercises an influence for evil," observed lieutenant Clark. Worm himself was uncomfortable with intransigents like Low Dog making political capital out of his son's remains. To judge by his subsequent actions, Worm favored settling with the Brulés but had seemingly been "soldiered" by Northern akicita-compelled under martial law to accompany the march.24

Despite real differences in attitude among the Northern Indians, a consensus emerged that a shift to the Oglalas offered real advantages. Staying with Spotted Tail, the Northern Indians would be confined to a southerly route that would inhibit flight or communication with Cheyenne River. The Oglala line of march offered the possibility of reinforcements and a northerly route close to trails through the badlands, an obvious avenue for flight. Agent Irwin nervously reported on November 5 that more Northern Indians were departing the Spotted Tail column (then laid over at the head of Wounded Knee Creek) "and striking across the country by hundreds to meet us below." Some 50 more lodges departed the Spotted Tail column through the first week of November, bringing the total additions to the Red Cloud column to 250 lodges. Approximately 150 lodges eventually chose to remain with the Brulés, split between a rump "Northern Camp" and rank-and-filers content to be absorbed into the tiyospaye of Brulé kinsfolk.25

Now numbering some 850 lodges, the Red Cloud column entered a difficult stretch of the White River Valley, where pasturage and terrain forced the huge procession to ford the river up to four times a day, over treacherous quicksand and in the face of running ice. A hard snow on November 4 compounded the misery. Captain Lawson viewed the trail ahead with unease. He wished the escort to scout the valley, while Agent Irwin, with an eye on the dwindling beef herd, needed the route ahead confirmed so that fresh cattle could be driven up from the Missouri. Nevertheless, uncertainty over the Northern Indians' intentions forced both Irwin and lieutenant Clark to urge Lawson to "remain as long as possible with the Indians."26

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

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

On November 7 agency butcher Ben Tibbitts made his beef issue in conditions chaotic even by Red Cloud Agency's standards. Hard rains driven by high winds slashed through the three-mile-long tipi camp. The last of the Northern breakaways from Spotted Tail charged in, adding their clamor to the demand for dwindling supplies. One party, too small to be registered, took advantage of weather and uproar to slip past scout and akicita cordons. Worm quietly detached his family and struck across the low hills running southeast.32

Obsession with identifying the burial site of Crazy Horse has obscured the central fact of Worm's departure: he intended to rejoin Spotted Tail. Accounts indicate that Worm's march angled southeastward to the head of Wounded Knee Creek. The itinerary related by Spotted Tail interpreter Louis Bordeaux establishes that the Brulés laid over on upper Wounded Knee from the evening of November l through November 4 before striking eastward for the south fork of the White River, which they descended November 6 through 15.33

Crossing the divide between White clay and Wounded Knee Creeks, the family paused somewhere along the pine ridge that fed these tributaries of the White River. Worm and Horn Chips, a younger holy man who had acted since youth as Crazy Horse's spiritual mentor, shaped a rude wooden coffin and dug a shallow hole for the burial. Already Worm had clipped a lock of his son's hair to preserve his nagila, or spiritual essence, for the Ghost-Owning ceremony. Then the party hurried to overtake the Spotted Tail column.34

Historians, concentrating on the mystic-warrior dimension of Crazy Horse's life, have missed the more pragmatic symbolism of the burial. Overlooking the Wounded Knee Valley, the interment asserted the Lakotas' right to occupy the district. Significantly, it validated Spotted Tail's own selection of Wounded Knee as the permanent home of his people. It was a clear rejection of the claim to a separate reservation in the hunting grounds. Worm saw his future with his brother-in-law's people, the Brulés.

Meanwhile, the Red Cloud column continued down the burnt-over White River Valley, its northern margin hemmed in by a wall of arid badlands. The Northern village dragged the pace, making scarcely fourteen miles to the mouth of Wounded Knee Creek on November 9, slowing to less than six miles on the tenth. The mood was turning sour: "Indians some of them dissatisfied," noted Fanny McGillycuddy, the wife of the agency surgeon, after a layover on the eleventh for "some reason of Mr. Clark[']s," hinting at contentious politicking by the chief of scouts. Although she was resuscitated by Surgeon McGillycuddy, the attempted suicide of a Lakota woman did nothing to alleviate the mood.35

Red Bear's breakout faction made no secret that they were preserving their horses for flight. Every night a few people slipped away into the badlands. Sixty miles to the north, these early departures established a staging camp in the breaks near the forks of the Cheyenne River. Although sporadically monitored by Lakota army scouts operating out of Standing Rock Agency, the camp continued to be used for over two months, transmitting intelligence between the agencies and Canada. Among the first to desert was Wears Earring, a Sans Arc. His family was the very last to surrender at the White River agencies, being enrolled at Spotted Tail on September 20. Departing alone, Wears Earring approached the Belle Fourche Valley in mid-November, only to run into a Standing Rock patrol. Confiscating his gun, the scouts told him "to go back to where he came from." Others, though, got through, for by late November some sixty lodges of travel-gaunt people-including the Fast Bull party-had dragged across the Canadian line into Sitting Bull's village, bringing word of Crazy Horse's death.36

On November 15 the Red Cloud column encamped near the site of modern-day Interior, South Dakota. It laid over on the sixteenth while Ben Tibbitts made another beef issue. According to Billy Garnett, Tibbitts was placed in charge of the camp when Agent Irwin and lieutenant Clark left the camp to reconnoiter with the escort down the valley. Immediately, Red Bear's faction declared they were ready to break away, demanding that the Oglalas join them in flight. Cedar Pass offered a good trail into the badlands, where pursuit would be at a disadvantage and troops from the Missouri River garrisons and White River could not be mobilized in time to intercept the flight.37

Religious sanction was accorded to the flight by an eighteen-year-old girl who had sought a vision on one of the low hills near camp. After a day and a night she returned to warn relatives and holy men that a voice had told her of impending trouble, but that a spirit coyote would guide them safely away. The involvement of the holy men indicates a widening of Red Bear's appeal for support. Most significantly, the militants won over the Sans Arc Elk Head, keeper of the Calf Pipe, holiest of Lakota holies. Elk Head's revered position convinced many waverers to reject the appeals of moderates such as Touch the Clouds.38

As the cold daylight of November 17 dawned, tipis were struck and heralds shouted orders. Women rolled lodge skins, secured packs, and hitched travois. Confusion seized the Northern village as warriors shouted the orders of Red Bear and his blotahunka, contending with the appeals for calm of Touch the Clouds and the orders of the Company E scouts. The chaos spilled into the Oglala village, where the chiefs turned out to harangue the Northern warriors, making "every effort. . . that under the circumstances could have been [made] to prevent these people from leaving us." The Oglala chiefs chose not to deploy the scouts, however, fearing any attempt to "soldier" the breakaways would result in bloodshed, for "these people were crazy and would get them all in trouble."39

Red Bear's people broke for Cedar Pass. Billy Garnett dispatched a rider to alert Agent Irwin. Still close enough to respond quickly, lieutenant Clark hurried back and ordered Touch the Clouds with a detachment of scouts to overtake the flight. Overtaking the fleeing Indians in the badlands, Touch the Clouds was unable to persuade any to return. All he could present to Clark were three army-issue guns and overcoats given up by enlisted scouts.40

Historians have been as puzzled as contemporaries by the exact number and composition of the November 17 flight. Captain Lawson reported only that "quite a large number" fled. In the days that followed, a flurry of contradictory telegrams pitched the figure as high as 1,700 people. lieutenant Clark supplied the best estimate when he stated that of the 250 lodges of Northern Indians that had joined the Red Cloud column, 100 lodges (approximately 600 people) fled. Intelligence received by Colonel Miles helps to identify individual leaders. The largest contingent was the Sans Arcs, approximately 45 lodges led by Red Bear. Elk Head, and Buffalo Rump. Some 30 lodges of Miniconjous followed Black Shield and Crazy Heart. Low Dog and Black Fox led the 25 Oglala lodges, all drawn from the Oyuhpe band stampeders who fled Red Cloud Agency immediately after Crazy Horse's death. The 70 lodges of Northern Oglalas remaining with the Red Cloud column, however, refused to join the flight. Agent Irwin claimed with some satisfaction that the breakaways "could not break up the [Red Cloud Agency] Ogallallahs."41

After the flight, Oglala leaders confided their satisfaction to Captain Lawson. "There seemed to be but little sympathy between these northern Indians and our Agency Indians who seemed glad that they had gone." The worst of the troublemakers had deserted, leaving 150 lodges of Northern Indians to continue the march down White River. Browbeaten by the Oglalas, these Northern Indians resolved to leave the column, recruiting the crucial support of Touch the Clouds. About November 18 or 19 they attempted a second breakaway, but the Oglala scouts deployed in line of battle and told Touch the Clouds "he should not take another lodge away from the camp." Sullenly, the Northern Indians fell back into line.42

With winter impending and the beef herd exhausted, the march picked up tempo. Irwin rejoined the escort, and twenty-five Oglala scouts led by lieutenant Clark pressed on to the Missouri, reaching the Yellow Medicine site on November 25. Moving more slowly, the Lakota column reached the White River forks about November 22. With temperatures plummeting, the Oglala council declared a halt and ordered winter camps to be pitched. Within twenty-four hours another breakout took place, and Irwin telegraphed the Indian Office that "all but about thirty Lodges [of Northern Indians] scattered off and went north."43

What happened at the White River forks? The best indication is from The Small, a Mimconjou in the Northern village who arrived alone at Cheyenne River Agency on November 27. He stated that he left when a large party of Northern Indians staged a second successful breakout on the twenty-third, "going in every direction many of them going north."44 Irwm's figure indicates that upwards of one hundred lodges fled, but his acknowledgement that the party "scattered" indicates that it broke in several directions. Since no substantial numbers followed The Small to Cheyenne River, return to the Spotted Tail column was the most likely plan for those breakaways not heading for Canada.

At that time the Brulés were laid over forty miles southward, ready to start on the last leg to the Missouri. Although no report bearing directly on the issue has surfaced, it is likely that some fifty lodges of Sans Arcs, Wazhazhas, and Oglalas rejoined the Spotted Tail column as it descended the Keya Paha River late in November. Some were absorbed into agency bands; others joined the rump "Northern Camp" now led by Worm and increasingly willing to cooperate with the Brulé leadership. The Brulés and their chastened guests settled into winter camps strung along the lower Niobrara River, maintaining a fastidious distance from the new agency site.45

Of the other breakaways at the White River forks, about forty-five lodges headed north in the wake of Red Bear's party. These seem to have been mainly Brulés led by Bull Dog, a Wazhazha band partisan who had surrendered at Red Cloud in March and would emerge as the ranking leader of the small Brulé contingent in Canada. The Standing Rock scouts noted the Brulés passing through the Cheyenne River forks staging camp early in December. Later in the month traces of their passage were seen at Slim Buttes.46

The two breakaway parties made their separate ways northward. By early December Red Bear's party had gone to ground in the Beaver Creek district of southeast Montana, where they contacted runners from Sitting Bull. After skirmishing with a civilian wagon train on O'Fallon's Creek, they crossed the Yellowstone River two or three days before Christmas. Eluding scouting patrols from Colonel Miles's headquarters at Tongue River Cantonment, they crossed the Missouri six miles below the confluence of the Milk River on January 3, 1878, and made their way to join the Sitting Bull coalition, whose wintering camps were scattered along the Canadian line. Presently they were joined by Bull Dog's party, whose January 12 crossing of the Missouri above Wolf Point was noted in intelligence from Fort Buford.47

The second breakout left the Northern contingent remaining with the Oglalas severely depleted. Irwin believed only thirty lodges remained, welcoming the improved prospects for a peaceful winter. A recheck of all available figures suggests that sixty lodges is about the correct figure, almost all Miniconjous from the bands of Touch the Clouds and Roman Nose, with a few straggling Brulés and Sans Arcs. Irwin's count may reflect that the Northern people, depleted and insecure as they were, were now willing to desert their own chiefs and assimilate to agency bands.

That political marginalization was a real factor for the Northern leaders, including those surrendered Oglalas who had remained at Red Cloud throughout the chaotic fall, is demonstrated by the layout of the winter camps established at the White River forks. The great Oglala village broke up into four camps: the Loafer band, led by American Horse, camped one mile up the south fork; Little Wound's band settled along a small creek emptying opposite the forks; and Red Cloud and Young Man Afraid of His Horse maintained separate villages on the White River two miles above the forks.48

No separate village now existed for either Northern contingent. Seizing on the principle that the Northern Oglala tiyospaye were offshoots of agency parent bands, lieutenant Clark encouraged the reintegration of the bands. With the organizational structures of Deciders and their akicita disbanded for smaller-scale winter operations, the autonomy of the Northern people was undermined. While a minority determined to reintegrate with their agency tribesmen, a growing number brooded over their predicament-one that the recalcitrant Crazy Horse had all too accurately foreseen.

The wintering location, sixty-five miles short of the Missouri, demonstrated that the Oglalas had no intention of locating at their new agency site. Asserting that the Missouri Valley would spell disease and whiskey traders, and citing the president's request to move "as near the supplies [on the Missouri] as you can," the Oglala chiefs refused to go any farther. Red Cloud sent an announcement to Agent Irwin, and to the disgust of Sherman and the War Department hawks, the Indian Office approved the Oglala decision. About December 10 most of the Oglala family heads left the forks to collect the tribe's annuity goods from the Yellow Medicine Agency, a week-long round trip. The weather remained mild well into the new year, and this system continued for the weekly distribution of rations.49

Indicating the realignment of factions, Little Big Man, following the expiry of his status as a Northern Decider, was appointed by the Oglala tribal council to serve as the rationing system coordinator. His responsibilities included transporting goods from Yellow Medicine and working closely with butcher Ben Tibbitts to ensure a smooth distribution of beef throughout the winter. No Water, an akicita leader, joined Little Big Man with about twenty lodges of moderate Northern Oglalas, people willing to integrate themselves into the new life of the reservation. Such assimilation came at a price. Both Little Big Man and No Water had played key roles in the arrest of Crazy Horse, the former receiving promotion to first sergeant of scout Company C. By January both men feared for their safety from Crazy Horse's relatives.50

Little Big Man's following accounted for almost one-third of the remaining Northern contingent of Oglalas. Chiefly drawn from the Bad Face band, whose ranking chief was Red Cloud himself, their loyalties indicated tightening tensions over the issues of integration versus autonomy. Another Bad Face tiyospaye was led by He Dog. As Red Cloud's nephew, He Dog had amalgamated his people into his uncle's parent band during the Crazy Horse crisis. His scout loyalties to lieutenant Clark, General Crook, and the peace process all remained strong, but residual allegiance to the war chief's memory alienated him from the Little Big Man faction.51

The Oyuhpe band was also divided between Northern and agency factions. Half the band had joined the "stampede" to Spotted Tail after the death of Crazy Horse, with Low Dog and Black Fox leading part of that faction in the November 17 breakout. The Oyuhpes remaining at Red Cloud were divided between the Northern tiyospaye of Big Road, a scout sergeant favored by the military as a "moderate, prudent man," and the agency chief Red Dog, whose following constituted part of Red Cloud's wintering camp.52 Although considered the greatest living Oglala orator, Red Dog was treated by Lieutenant Clark as an aging nonentity. Red Dog bitterly resented the chief of scouts and his Lakota favorites. By midwinter these intraband tensions were exacerbated as Big Road's own young men reacted suspiciously to their leader's preferment. They began to feast and consult in private, with divisive agendas. Warriors like Skunk Horse agreed "that they did not wish to eat beef any more, but would prefer to go North, live in a big country, hunt buffalo and be free to do as we pleased. Nothing was said to ... [Big Road] for fear he would not let us go."53

The last of the Northern Oglala tiyospaye was the Hunkpatila, Crazy Horse's own band. The Hunkpatila was an offshoot of Young Man Afraid of His Horse's agency band, and the chief had sincerely attempted to integrate his Northern kinsmen into the smooth running of reservation life. Since the death of Crazy Horse, Hunkpatila leadership devolved to his father's half-brother Little Hawk, a scout sergeant whose loyalties to his nephew's memory deeply conflicted with those to Lieutenant Clark. The festering resentment against Little Big Man focused within the Hunkpatilas. Akicita leader Standing Bull moved toward advocating flight to Canada.54

By New Year 1878 mounting disquiet was undermining the impressive adherence of the Northern Oglalas to the peace process. Continuing uncertainty over the permanent agency location, food shortages, and persistent rumors that troops were about to impound the Oglala pony herds compounded a volatile situation. News that lieutenant Clark, still based at Yellow Medicine Agency, was about to be reassigned to new duties, dismayed many scouts. The announcement that scout numbers were to be deeply cut after the December 31 expiration of service only heightened the fact that a key focus for loyalty was being removed. More than half of Companies A, B, C, and E would lose their scout arms, uniforms, and pay, and, even more importantly, the trust and prestige associated with scout service. Threatened with idleness and reduced autonomy, more Northern warriors grew restless.55

During the first week of January two riders approached the White River forks. They had left Sitting Bull's camp in Canada one month earlier. One of the emissaries, The Leavings, a Cheyenne "that always lived with the Sioux," had played a part in an earlier breakout, probably Fast Bull's. The messengers brought presents of tobacco from Sitting Bull himself, inviting Lakotas "at all the Agencies . . .to join him, and when they all arrived there they would unite and make war upon the American Government. The messenger told them they would be allowed three months to join 'Sitting Bull' in the British Possessions, and that if they were not there by the expiration of that time, they would be considered enemies and would be fought the same as the Whites."56

Agency chiefs were alienated by this plain speaking, but they did not doubt Sitting Bull's intention: Young Man Afraid of His Horse repeatedly warned Agent Irwin that the Hunkpapa leader planned a massive spring offensive against the U.S.57

Coinciding with the arrival of Sitting Bull's emissaries, a large contingent of Oglala leaders started for Yellow Medicine to collect rations and scout pay and to complete the scout reorganization. Representing Company C were sergeants Little Big Man and Big Road, but the remaining officers and many of the privates stayed in camp. Touch the Clouds and most of Company E were also not represented in the reenlistees. In the absence of the chiefs, a dangerous leadership vacuum opened, and The Leavings exploited the opportunity. Counseling with Northern warriors, he assured his listeners of the wealth of buffalo in Grandmother's Land and of the protection afforded by the British Crown. He invoked counterloyalties-to their relatives in Canada and to the memory of their great victories against Crook and Custer-at precisely the time that the fragile affinities established since surrender were coming into question.

Beginning on January 9, a trickle of families struck their tipis and started westward up the White River. A few Brulés and the lodges of Black Eagle, a Sans Arc Shirt Wearer, may have been among these first departures.58 Next to accept Sitting Bull's tobacco was Roman Nose. The Miniconjou leader with deepest links to the Spotted Tail Agency leadership, Roman Nose had nevertheless resisted pressure to assimilate to the reservation bands. His son Charging Eagle, a Company E corporal, was probably key to Roman Nose's decision. On the tenth Ben Tibbitts made a beef issue. Things seemed calm, but that night some twenty Miniconjou lodges broke camp. Even Touch the Clouds's son, Company D private Across the Lodge, joined the flight. In a bid to force Oglala relatives to accompany them, they compelled Big Road's wife and children to join the flight. Convinced by their warriors, Little Hawk's and He Dog's Oglala tiyospaye joined the new "stampede." As one final gesture to superseded loyalties, Little Hawk insisted that scouts leave behind their army-issue firearms and ammunition.59

Piecemeal departures continued through the morning of January 12. In all, some eighty lodges fled, including approximately twenty lodges of Miniconjous, fifty lodges of Oglalas, and ten lodges of straggling Brulés and Sans Arcs. Northern Oglala headmen Iron Crow, leader of a mixed Hunkpatila-Oyuhpe band, and White Twin, a Bad Face leader, fled about the eleventh. Even seventy-eight-year-old Human Finger, a venerable Oyuhpe elder, joined the exodus. The final departures included Big Road's tiyospaye, the warriors driving away their chief's ponies.60

News of the breakout arrived at Yellow Medicine on January 12. Agency leaders promised every assistance. As lieutenant George A. Dodd, Clark's successor as chief of scouts, organized the pursuit, Big Road appeared, "weeping pitifully." Should the report of his family's departure prove true, he advised Dodd, he would seek to reclaim them, but if this proved impossible, "he would be obliged to go and take care of them." As a token of good faith Big Road turned over to the lieutenant his own scout arms and ammunition.61

The scouts hurried up the White River on the trail of the fugitives. Overtaking only four lodges, they followed the trail for sixty miles until, somewhere north of the modern-day reservation community of Wanblee, beside a litter of abandoned tipi poles, it veered north into the badlands. Wary and jaded, the scouts turned back with their prisoners, but Big Road took leave of his comrade Little Big Man "with tears in his eyes." Big Road pressed on alone, finally overtaking the fugitives in the badlands. In a tense parley with his own warriors, Big Road "tried to persuade us to go back, but instead of going back we gave him his choice, either to go with us, or die and be sent back on a stretcher, he cried and begged us to go with him to the Agency, we were firm, and he finally went with us." Reunited with his family, Big Road chose to join the flight, reemerging in Canada as the most influential leader of the exiled Oglalas.62

Scattering, the fugitives hurried northwest, pausing to regroup at the staging camp near the junction of Elk Creek and the south fork of the Cheyenne River. The tipis of stragglers remained on the site, and a few lodges drifted in from other agencies.63 The fugitives reorganized, the council of warriors nominating Little Hawk as the Pipe Owner for the projected flight. A Sun Dance was held to promote the spirit of solidarity. Typically held at the great tribal gatherings during the summer, this ceremony must have been a small-scale affair, with just a handful of pledgers enduring the piercing and hanging from the center pole. They "called to the Great Spirit to protect them, and carry them safely through to the British Possessions."64

Sending ahead nine men and a woman to inform Sitting Bull of their march, the village pressed on. Little Hawk coordinated the journey well, skillfully eluding army patrols to slip over the Canadian line during March and reuniting with the November breakaways in a village estimated at 250 lodges by the Canadian authorities.65

Including the earlier departures, Sitting Bull's alliance had been strengthened by some 280 lodges in spring 1878, almost doubling its numbers. For the next three years, the exiles sought to maintain their independence in Grandmother's Land, but conditions deteriorated rapidly. The buffalo herds, which through the 1870s had contracted northward across Montana Territory, vanished under relentless pressure from the exiles, Canadian Indians and Métis, and American hide hunters. A final series of surrenders followed as hungry Lakota bands capitulated at military posts along the upper Missouri and Yellowstone. In 1881 the interned Lakotas were transported to Standing Rock Agency and held pending transfer to their home agencies. One year later 656 Northern Oglalas were released from custody and, under the leadership of Big Road, Little Hawk, He Dog, and Low Dog, transferred home to their kin at Pine Ridge. At the same time, 172 Northern Brulés led by Bull Dog were returned to the new Brulé agency at Rosebud.66

It remains to outline the fate of those Northern Indians who did not join the breakouts but sought permanent homes on the reservation. Of these, eighty-seven lodges formed the rump Northern Camp at Spotted Tail Agency, with fifty or so lodges already assimilated to the bands of Brulé relatives. At Red Cloud Agency the January flights left another fifty lodges of Northern people, split between the Oglala followers of Little Big Man and No Water and the Mimconjou followers of Touch the Clouds. The Oglalas were willing to integrate with their tribesmen, but the Miniconjous were nervous because their hosts were "as a rule down on the whole northern set, who had given them so much trouble."67

Individual Mmiconjou families were beginning to assimilate to Oglala bands. One group of eleven lodges joined the Oglala Spleen band, led by Yellow Bear. Young Man Afraid of His Horse was feasting Miniconjou warriors in a bid to absorb more defectors. Consequently, when Agent Irwin arrived at the White River forks on January 19, he found Touch the Clouds anxious and his following reduced to 117 people, about twenty lodges. The prospect of political eclipse turned Touch the Clouds's thoughts back to relocation to Cheyenne River Agency. Still wary of pony confiscations there, he conferred with Irwin but was finally persuaded by Bull Eagle, a Miniconjou visiting on a military pass from Cheyenne River. Keen to win the approval of the military, Bull Eagle convinced Touch the Clouds that his fears were misplaced, that pony confiscations would soon be implemented at Red Cloud, and that Touch the Clouds would only save his herd by immediate transfer home.68

Accompanied by Bull Eagle and a detachment of Oglala scouts, Touch the Clouds led homeward a small procession of eleven lodges, seventy-three people, on January 23. Two lodges turned back, choosing to seek a permanent home with the Oglalas. Nine lodges, fifty-three people, followed Touch the Clouds into Cheyenne River Agency on the thirty-first. Briefly interned at the military post, they were dismayed when on February 18 the army impounded seventy-six horses and colts for sale in Yankton, the proceeds to be invested in reservation development schemes. One pony was released for each of the nine families.69

Some forty-four Miniconjous had chosen not to follow Touch the Clouds and were absorbed by the band of Young Man Afraid of his Horse, effectively becoming Oglalas. The Oglala leadership no longer indulged Northern independence, as was vividly demonstrated on January 28 when two Miniconjous, Across the Lodge and Elk Creek, appeared at the White River forks. Disheartened, they had deserted the Little Hawk breakouts at Slim Buttes. Oglala akicita turned out to "soldier" the pair. Scout Company A sergeant Spider declared that "It was no good to take there [sic] Horses so he shot one and then the Ball opened and shooting went on In full bloom till all the Horses was KiId the total number was 4 and then," concluded Ben Tibbitts, "Pease Rains once more."70

On the evening of the twenty-third, just hours after Touch the Clouds's departure, the Oglala tribal council convened to make a final decision on relocation. The agenda reflected agreements hammered out during Irwin's visit, and Ben Tibbitts, attending as the agent's representative, was impressed by the eagerness of the council to close a long-running and contentious chapter in Oglala political history. In the council tipi "every thing, went off Lovely," reported Tibbitts, "all went one way for once." Irwin had assured the Oglalas that a Tongue River location would be entirely unacceptable to the government. Both Red Cloud and Young Man Afraid of His Horse dropped their support for Tongue River and made persuasive speeches backing Little Wound's proposal for a location on White River, within the existing reservation. "Old Red [Cloud] Don well better than I thought He would," Tibbitts summed up.71

Council akicita then issued voting wands "prepared for the purpose" to all adult males with a war record. A unanimous vote was cast in favor of a site on White clay Creek, the westernmost tributary of White River within the reservation. A party led by Red Cloud was deputed to travel to White clay and drive a stake to mark the spot, at the confluence of Wolf Creek, site of modern-day Pine Ridge village. Two months later, on March 21, the Brulés held a similar council, declaring Rosebud Creek, a tributary of the south fork of the White River, as their favored site. Both tribal councils stuck firmly to their decisions and, despite government stalling on the promise of President Hayes, secured the desired locations. Before the onset of winter 1878-1879, the Oglalas and Brulés were settled at their permanent homes, locations that, in 2005, still mark the administrative centers of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations.72

The historian must ask: after the massive surrenders of 1877, what were the causes of the breakouts? Previous writers have tended to stress the irrational nature of the groups "making a wild break for . . . freedom." Some stress the romantic dimension of the flight, as the fugitives carried "the spirit of Crazy Horse" to Canada.73

Yet the motivations of the Northern Indians were not irrational by Lakota standards or ours. Given the existence of the Canadian buffalo range, opting for flight was a logical outcome of their unhappy experience on the Great Sioux Reservation. Certain factors played real but minor parts in causing the breakouts: an inability to adjust to reservation life; bitterness at the killing of Crazy Horse; and an atmosphere of chronic suspicion, reflected in a relentless flow of rumors about arrests, disarmings, and pony confiscations.

Two linked issues stand out as the fundamental causes of the flights: political marginalization and the agency relocation issue. Crook's promise of a separate reservation in the north-however qualified, however magnified by agency peace-talkers-secured the surrenders on White River. Although many of Crook's subordinates supported the scheme, the general's failure to win top-level backing soured the tentative accord built up in the weeks following surrender. As the Northern Lakotas grasped the reality of relocation to the Missouri, the grim sequence of events culminating in Crazy Horse's tragic death was set in motion.

With the illusion of a separate reserve exposed, the Northern Lakotas faced life on White River as increasingly unwelcome guests. After the removal of Crazy Horse, they came under increased pressure to dissolve their village organizations and assimilate to agency bands. This pressure was especially true at the Brulé agency, where Spotted Tail would tolerate no opposition. For some of the rank and file, this change proved acceptable. Families simply shifted over to join agency relatives, accepting the seniority of Brulé chiefs. For the Northern leaders, however, this spelled political eclipse. Significantly, only the controversial Little Big Man settled permanently on the White River. The Northern leaders preferred to lead depleted followings either to Canada or, in the case of Touch the Clouds, back to the home agency at Cheyenne River rather than to accept being overshadowed at Spotted Tail and Red Cloud Agencies.

The breakaway movement represented the last chance for reforming the coalition that had defeated Crook and annihilated Custer. But the extinction of the buffalo in the north ensured that the surrenders of 1880-1881 were final. There was no further opportunity for flight because the mainstay of the old life had gone. From then on, the reservation was no longer one disagreeable option but the non-negotiable central fact of life for all Lakotas.

1. Papers Relating to the Sioux Indians of the United States Who Have Taken Refuge in Canadian Territory, Printed Confidentially for the Use of Ministers of the Crown (Ottawa, 1879), 9-10, 12-13, 16, details Lakota crossings into Canada between November 1876 and May 1877. see also Harry Anderson, "A Sioux Pictorial Account of General Terry's Council at Fort Walsh, October 17,1877,"North Dakota History, 22 (July 1955), 105. For an overview of the Great Sioux War, see John S. Gray. Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876 (Fort Collins, CoIo., 1976). Late phases of the war are best treated by Jerome A. Greene, Yellowstone Command: ColonelNelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877 (Lincoln, 1991). The Lakota or Teton Sioux are made up of seven tribal divisions: the Oglalas, Brulés, Miniconjous. Two Kettles, Sans Arcs, Sihasapas. and Hunkpapas. As a baseline for what follows, the 300 lodges in Canada as of May 1877 roughly break down to 185 lodges Hunkpapas, 45 lodges Sans Arcs, 35 lodges Miniconjous, 20 lodges Sihasapas, and 15 lodges Oglalas and other stragglers. For a population estimate after the 1877-1878 breakaways, see note 65.

2. For numbers surrendering at Spotted Tail Agency, see lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 10, 1877, in "Digest of the Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1877-80," by Will G. Robinson, South Dakota Historical Collections, vol. 32 (Pierre, S. Dak., 1964), 279-81; "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency, 1877," Rosebud Indian Agency File, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75 (hereafter RG 75), National Archives-Central Plains Region, Kansas City, Missouri (hereafter NA, KC). On agency diplomacy and the surrender process, see Kingsley M. Bray, "Crazy Horse and the End of the Great Sioux War," Nebraska History, 79 (Fall 1998); Harry H. Anderson, "Indian Peace-Talkers and the Conclusion of the Sioux War of 1876," Nebraska History, 44 (December 1963); and Oliver Knight, "War or Peace: The Anxious Wait for Crazy Horse," Nebraska History, 54 (Winter 1973).

3. lieutenant diaries A. Johnson to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, June 4.1877, Letters Received from Red Cloud Agency (hereafter Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency), RG 75, National Archives. Washington D.C (hereafter NA, Washington). Surrenders at Red Cloud Agency are enumerated in Thomas R. Buecker and R. Eli Paul, eds., The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger (Lincoln, 1994).

4. U.S. War Department. "Registers of Enlistments in the U.S. Army: Indian Scouts, 1866-77," Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Record Group 94 (hereafter RG 94). NA, Washington, is the principal source for all observations on Indian scout enlistments. I am indebted to Robert "Bob" Lee and Ephriam W. Dickson III for additional information. For Crazy Horse's enlistment, see also Omaha Daily Bee, May 18, 1877; Billy Garnett, interview by Eli S. Ricker, 1907, tablet 1, Eli S. Ricker Collection (hereafter Ricker Collection). Nebraska State Historical Society. Lincoln (hereafter NSHS).

5. James R. Walker, Raymond J. DeMallie, and Elaine A. Jahner, eds., Lakota Society (Lincoln. 1982), 28-34. The Lame Deer village had been routed by Colonel Miles at Muddy Creek on May 7, its chief being killed in the action. Led by Lame Deer's son Fast Bull, the survivors opened prolonged negotiations with the White River agencies, resulting in their piecemeal surrender at Spotted Tail from July 22 to September 11. Five lodges of Hunkpapas chose not to surrender, but to join Sitting Bull in Canada.

6. This reading of the Crazy Horse tragedy is based on Kingsley M. Bray, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life (Norman, in press). The fullest summary accounts are Thomas R. Buecker, Fort Robinson and the American West, 1874-1899 (Lincoln, 1999),chap.5;Jeffrey Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism front Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (Cambridge U.K., 2004), chap. 4. Essential primary sources are collected in Richard G. Hardorff, éd., The Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse: A Source Book abouta Tragic Episode in Lakota History (Spokane, Wash., 1998).

7. lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 17, 1877, Letters Received from Spotted Tail Agency (hereafter Letters Received, Spotted Tail Agency), RG 75, NA, Washington; Bray, Crazy Horse, chap. 30. "List of Indians transferred from other Agencys" in "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency," tallies the additions from the Crazy Horse "stampede" as sixty-six lodges Oglalas, forty lodges Miniconjous, thirty-eight lodges Brulés, twenty-six lodges Sans Arcs. Most of the Oglala stampeders, including the Shirt Wearer Black Fox, belonged to the Oyuhpe band.

8. "Proceedings of Councils in Washington," [September 1877], Letters Received from Dakota Superintendence RG 75, NA. Washington.

9. James Irwin to lieutenant Jesse M. Lee, September 14. 1877, Miscellaneous Letters Sent by the Agents or Superintendents at the Pine Ridge Indian Agency, 1876-1914, RG 75, NA, KC. Family heads of this first band of defectors are listed as Black Elk, Coaxer, Trades for Women. Man That Buggers, Little Bull, and Horse [?] Woman. Several other families were transferred from Red Cloud in the period from September 18 to October 15, but do not appear on the Spotted Tail rolls. They include family heads Dog Doctor and Backbone.

10. Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 30,1877, Rosebud Indian Agency File, RG 75, NA, KC; Bismarck (Dakota Territory) Tri-Weekly Tribune, December 20,1877.

11. Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, October 31, 1877, Letters Received, Spotted Tail Agency, RG 75, NA. Washington. At councils held at Red Cloud Agency on October 15 and at Spotted Tail on October 17, all Indians present protested the necessity of removal but conceded they would go quietly.

12. Captain Joseph Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4,1877, Letters Received from the Department of the Flatte, Records of the U.S. Army Continental Commands, Record Group 393 (hereafter RG 393), microfilm copy at NSHS, Lincoln; James Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 4, 1878, in Robinson, "Digest of the Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," 332. James Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 5, 1877, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington, tallies the procession at 4,526 Oglalas. After excellent military head-counts at Red Cloud. Agent Irwin began a process of inflationary counts. As a roundfigure approximation. I suggest that the Red Cloud Agency Lakota population in October 1877 was 620 lodges, or 3,720 people. The troop escort departed Camp Robinson October 25, but the Lakota march did not begin until October 27. Fanny (Mrs V. T.) McGillycuddy diary, October 25.27,1877. transcript in Fort Robinson Museum, Crawford, Nebraska.

13. lieutenant William P. Clark to secretary of the Interior. November 7,1877. Letters Received, Spotted Tail Agency. RG 75, NA, Washington; Lieutenant William P. Clark to General George Crook, November 2, 1877, Letters Received from the Department of the Flatte. RG 393, copy at NSHS, Lincoln. The Wazhazhas were a Lakota band found among both Oglala and Brulé tribal divisions and significantly represented among the Northern Indians.

14. Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 5,1877. The Cheyenne River Agency located on the Missouri River was the home agency of the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs, who made up the majority of the Spotted Tail contingent of Northern Indians. There the pro-treaty bands of their people had already settled.

15. Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs. November 5,1877; Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4, 1877. Clark, Lawson. and Lee concurred that that about 200 lodges of Northern Indians joined the Red Cloud column on November 2. which would have been approximately 1,200 people. Both Irwin and Clark overcounted in conversion, however, estimating the number of people at over 2,000.

16. Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7, 1877; Lawson to Adjutant General. Department of the Platte, December 4,1877; Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 5,1877; Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4,1877.

17. Lieutenant R. W. Hoyt to Post Adjutant. Cheyenne River Agency, November 27. 1877, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency. RG 75, NA. Washington. Sans Arc scouts who may have fled in the November breakouts include Eagle Dog (Company E corporal), Thunder Hawk (Company E private), Lame Dog and Two Eagles (Company D privates).

18. Low Dog interview, 1881. reprinted in The Ouster Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana, by W. A. Graham (Harrisburg. Pa., 1953), 75-76: Edgar I. Stewart, duster's Luck (Norman, 1955), 436; Garnett interview, tablet 2: DeCost Smith, Red Indian Experiences (London, 1949), 178-82; "List of Indians transferred from other Agencys," in "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency"; Left-Hand Heron statement, in H. Scudder Mekeel, "Field Notes Summer of 1931/White clay District/ Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota," p. 50, typescript. American Museum of Natural History, New York.

19. Garnett interview, tablet 1; lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 2,1877, Letters Received, Spotted Tail Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington; Captain Daniel W. Burke to Colonel Luther P. Bradley, September 7, 1877, box 1, Luther P. Bradley Papers, United States Army Military History Institute, West Point, New York; Amos Charging First, affidavit statement, October 3,1923, South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre; Black Moccasin statement, in Mekeel, "Field Notes Summer of 1931/White clay District," 39; Edward Kadlecek and Mabell Kadlecek. To Kill an Eagle: Indian Views on the Death of Crazy Horse (Boulder, CoIo., 1981), 91-93,143-44.

20. Stanley Vestal, Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull (Rostoa, 1934), 54; Lee to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 2,1877.

21. The 359 "Indian Prisoners" enrolled at Cheyenne River in November 1876 surrendered 625 ponies and were permitted to retain 11. "Register of Indians at Cheyenne River Agency, 1876-77," pp. 124-26, Records of Fort Bennett, vol. 54. U.S. Army Continental Commands. Record Group 54, NA, Washington.

22. On Lone Horn, see Kingsley M. Bray, "Lone Horn's Peace: A New View of Sioux-Crow Relations, 1851-1858," Nebraska History, 66 (Spring 1985). For his role in the Black Hills talks, see statement of Joseph White Bull, in Vestal, Warpath, 269; statement of Lucille Runs After (Lone Horn's great-granddaughter), telephone conversation with the author, February 2, 2004. Interpreter Louis Bordeaux stressed the trust placed in Touch the Clouds by the military at Spotted Tail Agency. see Louis Bordeaux, interview by EH S. Ricker, 1907, tablet 11. Ricker Collection, NSHS, Lincoln. see also E. A. Brininstool, Crazy Horse, the Invincible Sioux Chief (Los Angeles, 1949), 74.

23. Victoria Conroy (née Standing Bear) to Superintendent, Pine Ridge Reservation, December 18,1934, in Hardorff, éd., Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse, 265-67; Red Feather statement, in A Dictionary ofTeton Sioux, Lakota-English, English-Lahota, by Eugene Buechel and Paul Manhart (Pine Ridge, S. Dak., 1983), 288; Black Elk statement, in The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie (Lincoln, 1984), 204; "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency," p. 114. Bray. Crazy Horse, chap, !,analyzes data on Crazy Horse's parentage.

24. Irwm to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 4,1878; Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7,1877.

25. Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 5,1877; "Census Roll of" Indians at Spotted Tail Agency." Agent Lee stated that a total of 1.473 Spotted Tail Agency Northern Indians joined the Red Cloud column. lieutenant Jesse M. Lee to Red Cloud Agent. January 11,1878, photostat copy. Fort Robinson Museum, Crawford, Nebraska. As au approximate breakdown, I suggest that of the Northern Indians who joined the Red Cloud column in the first week of November ninety lodges were Mmiconjous. sixty-five lodges Sans Arcs, sixty lodges Brulés and Wazhazhas, and thirty-five lodges Oglalas.

26. Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7, 1877; Lawsori to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte. December 4,1877; Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 5, 1877; Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 3-6, 1877.

27. Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7,1877.

28. Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4,1877; Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7,1877.

29. Clark to secretary of the Interior, November 7, 1877. For background on Young Man Afraid of His Horse, especially good for the period after the establishment of Pine Ridge Agency, see Joseph Agonito, "Young Man Afraid of His Horses: The Reservation Years" Nebraska History, 79 (Fall 1998).

30. Before the departure from the agencies, Clark had reorganized the scout companies. Company A had been organized around the Northern Arapaho leadership, but with their departure for the Shoshone reservation, Clark had drafted in additional Oglalas, appointing Young Man Afraid of His Horse as first sergeant. His sergeants included his brotherin-law Spider (see note 70) and his "brother" the Miniconjou-Oglala Club Man, who was married to Crazy Horse's older sister.

31. Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 6-8,1877.McGillycuddy's mileages suggest a location on White River due north of the modern reservation community of Oglala. The composition of the blotahunka is indicated in Colonel Nelson A. Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 12,1878, Sioux War Papers Special File 4163 (hereafter Sioux War Papers), Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General, RG 94, NA, Washington. For background, see Walker, Lakota Society, 86-87.

32. Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 7-8, 1877; Conroy to Superintendent, Pine Ridge Reservation, December 18, 1934; Nicholas Black Elk statement; Joseph Eagle Hawk statement, in John Colhoff to Joseph Balmer. April 25, 1951, transcript in author's collection; Chips, interview by Eli S. Ricker, 1907, tablet 18, Ricker Collection, NSHS, Lincoln. The first contemporary record is Omaha Daily Bee, December 3,1877, whose report that Crazy Horse had been buried near the mouth of White clay Creek probably reflects Worm's point-of-departure from the Red Cloud column soon after the beef issue.

33. Bordeaux interview.

34. In addition to references in note 32, see Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux (Boston, 1928), chaps. 8, 9; Horn Chips, interview by Walter Camp, folder 55, Field Notes, Walter M. Camp Papers, Harold B. Lee Library. Brigham Young University, Provo. Eli S. Ricker interviews with Mrs Richard Stirk (tablet 8) and Standing Soldier (tablet 29) Ricker Collection, NSHS, Lincoln, also bear on the burial of Crazy Horse.

35. Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 11, 1877.

36. Garnett interview; The Small statement, in lieutenant R. W. Hoyt to Post Adjutant, Cheyenne River Agency, November 27,1877; Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (New York, 1993), 200.

37. Garnett interview; Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 15-16, 1877.

38. Frank Fools Crow statement, in Fools Crow, by Thomas E. Mails (New York, 1979), 166-67. On Elk Head's involvement, see Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 12, 1878. Before his succession as Calf Pipe Keeper. Elk Head had been a Sans Arc Shirt Wearer. His family is traditionally associated with the Tiyopa Ocanupa, Smokes at the Entrance tiyospaye of Sans Arcs. Statements to the author by Sebastian "Bronco" LeBeau, April 17, 2002; and Lucille Runs After, March 22, 2004.

39. Lawson to Adjutant General. Department of the Flatte, December 4, 1877; Garnett interview; Fanny McGillycuddy diary, November 17, 1877 (indicates November 17 dating).

40. Garnett interview; Omaha Daily Bee, December 3. 1877. Miniconjou scouts who may have joined the November 17 flight include Bear Flies Over the Water (Company C); Chasing Hawk (son of Roman Nose). Chasing the Morning, Packs Prairie Chicken (Company D); Horned Horse (Company E).

41. Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4,1877; lieutenant William P. Clark to J. H. Hammond, November 24. 1877, telegram, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington; Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota. January 12,1878; James Irwinto Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 26/1877, telegram, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington. Black Fox, brother of Ghost Dance leader Kicking Bear, was killed in intertribal warfare in Canada. Low Dog surrendered at Fort Buford, April 11, 1881. Crazy Heart surrendered at Fort Peck, November 1880. Sans Arc headman Iron White Man (Siksicela band?) may have been among the November 17 breakouts.

42. Lawson to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, December 4, 1877; Omaha Daily Bee, December 3, 1877.

43. Omaha Daily Bee, December 3, 1877; Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, November 26, 1877.

44. The Small statement.

45. The census of "Northern Camp," in "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency." lists eighty-seven lodges in December 1877.

46. lieutenant Colonel W. J. Carlin to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, December 14, 1877, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington. The second breakaway group was counted at forty-five lodges when it crossed the Missouri on January 12.1878. Captain W. W. Sanders to Post Adjutant, Fort Buford, January 17,1878, ibid.

47. Captain P. D. Vroom to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 17, 1878, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington: Colonel Nelson A. Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, n.d., ibid.: Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 12,1878: Sanders to Fort Buford Adjutant, January 17, 1878, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington.

48. V. T. McGillycuddy to [Lieutenant Colonel F. D. Grant], December 13, 1877, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington.

49. McGillycuddy to Grant, December 13, 1877; James Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 17, 1877, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency. RG 75. NA, Washington. The exchange of letters between Irwin, the Indian Office, and Generals Sherman and Sheridan can be traced in the Letters Received. Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington; and the Sioux War Papers, RG 94. NA, Washington.

50. Garnett interview; "Pine Ridge Agency Ration Roll, 1879," copy in author's collection, courtesy Brother C. M. Simon, SJ., Red Cloud Indian School. The Little Big Man-No Water camp may have assumed the name Refuse to Move Camp, Iglaka Tehila.

51. Short Bull statement. July 13,1930, in "Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse: Interviews Given to Eleanor H. Hinman," Nebraska History, eel. Paul D. Riley, 57 (Spring 1976), 40. He Dog's brothers Bad Heart Bull and Tall White Man were enlisted as privates in scout Company C, as were tiyospaye members Four Crows, Iron Hawk (corporals), and Good Weasel (private). All joined the January 1878 breakout. He Dog's tiyospaye was known as the Sore-Backs.

52. Lieutenant Colonel L. P. Bradley to Adjutant General, Department of the Flatte, September 7,1877, Special Files of Headquarters, Division of the Missouri, Relating to Military Operations: File 6207, Sioux War, RG 94, NA, Washington.

53. Skunk Horse statement, in V. T. McGillycuddy to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, October 7, 1879, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington. See also W. P. Clark, The Indian Sign Language (repr., Lincoln, 1982), 21. Both Red Dog and his son Kills A Hundred served as Company C privates. Most Oyuhpe "stampeders" remaining at Spotted Tail Agency after October 1877 returned to the Oglalas one year later when Pine Ridge Agency was established. Many then joined the tiyospaye of Red Dog and fellow agency Oyuhpe headman Slow Bull.

54. On Little Hawk and Hunkpatila band composition, see Joseph Eagle Hawk statement. The only Hunkpatila private in Company C was the youth Whirlwind Bear, grandson of band elder Human Finger. Little Hawk surrendered at Fort Keogh with Big Road, September 1880.

55. Garnett interview; lieutenant G. A. Dodd to Commanding Officer, New Red Cloud Agency, March 5,1878, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington. Companies A, B, and C, based at Red Cloud Agency, aggregated some 140 officers and men. Part of Company E, enlisted at Spotted Tail Agency and with Touch the Clouds as first sergeant, had joined the Red Cloud column. According to Billy Garnett, the proposed cutback was to 70 men.

56. Bull Eagle statement, in Major C. G. Bartlett to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 29, 1878, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington. In the following account of the January breakout I have discounted much of Bull Eagle's statement as patently self-serving.

57. James Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, February 20.1878, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington.

58. Black Eagle belonged to the Red Cloth Earring (Sina-luta-oin) band of Sans Arcs. One of Colonel Miles's hostages in October 1876, he had been interned at Cheyenne River Agency, but upon release he joined the rest of his band at Spotted Tail, taking with him three other lodges: those of his brother-in-law White Shield, Red Plum, and Steals the Horse. Not noted in the fall breakouts, Black Eagle's following presumably comprised the small Sans Arc contingent that fled in January. Black Eagle surrendered at Fort Buford, January 21, 1881.

59. James Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 12, 1878, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington; Captain P. D. Vroom to Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, January 12, 1878, Sioux War Papers, RG 94, NA, Washington; V. T. McGillycuddy statement, p. 226, Walter M. Camp Manuscripts, Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington; BenTibbitts to James Irwiri, January 11,1878, Red Cloud Agency, General Correspondence Received, NA, KC. Besides the leaders named, Tibbitts reported that Iron Hawk (Little Hawk's brother-in-law) arid Four Crows (both Company C corporals and headmen in He Dog's tiyospaye) and Standing Bull (akicita leader in Little Hawk's tiyospaye) were involved in the "stampede here last night." Tibbitts remarked that "I saw Litde Hawk yesterday he did not look like leaving," hinting that Hurikpatila warriors compelled the flight. Roman Nose died in Canada in spring 1878. Charging Eagle took over his father's tiyospaye, surrendering at Fort Keogh with Spotted Eagle (Sans Arc) and Rain in the Face (Hunkpapa), October 31,1880. Charging Eagle became one of the founders of Red Scaffold, the modern Cheyenne River Reservation community. On Touch the Clouds's son, see note 70.

60. Iron Crow (also know as Jumping Shield) and White Twin (Badger-Eaters tiyospaye, a subband of the Bad Faces) were not named in contemporary accounts of the breakout, but both were among the Oglalas in Canada, 1878-1880. White Twin, a brother of No Water and of the prominent nontreaty Oglala leader Black Twin (died 1876), died before the Canadian exiles returned to the reservation. He may be the Yellow Twin reported surrendering at Fort Keogh, June 1880. Iron Crow was among the internees at Standing Rock, 1881, but is not named m the tally of Oglalas returned to Pine Ridge the following summer. Human Finger lived in Iron Crow's tiyospaye.

61. Dodd to Commanding Officer, March 5, 1878. see also Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 12, 1878; Vroom to Adjutant General, January 12,1878.

62. Little Big Man to the President of the United States, August 1, 1878, transmitted in James R. O'Beirne to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 27, 1878, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington; Skunk Horse statement. Big Road and forty-four lodges surrendered at Fort Keogh, September 1880.

63. Sans Arc headmen Rising Sun and Foolish Thunder, fellow hostages with Black Eagle (sec note 58), departed Cheyenne River Agency about the end of January, their nominal destination New Red Cloud Agency. Since their arrival there was not noted, flight to Canada with Black Eagle seems the most likely explanation. "Register of Indians at Cheyenne River Agency," 170-71.

64. Bull Eagle statement. A small number of Brulés departed the Spotted Tail Agency village at the time of removal to the new Rosebud site, July 1878, with leaders Good Bird arid Black Yellow Fox. In September 1878 fifteen more lodges fled Rosebud with leaders Red Eagle (Miniconjou-Brulé) and Bad Mustang (Wazhazha). Spotted Eagle {Sans Arc) reported the arrival at Sitting Bull's village of seventeen lodges, probably the same party, of "Ogallalas . . . from a place known as the burnt country, south of the Black Hills," early November 1878. see Papers Relating to the Sioux Indians of the United States, 125.

65. A. G. Irvine to Hon. R. W. Scott, April 2,1878, in Papers Relating to the Sioux Indians of the United States, lib'. Three Canadian reports for the second half of 1878 supply estimates of between 550 and 600 refugee Lakota lodges. I suggest the following round-figure breakdown: 190 lodges Hunkpapas; 125 lodges Miniconjous; 100 lodges Sans Arcs; 95 lodges Oglalas; 50 lodges Brulés and Wazhazhas; 20 lodges Sihasapas, for a total of 580 lodges.

66. Tally of individuals noted as from the "North," in "Pine Ridge Agency Ration Roll, 1882," copy in author's possession, courtesy of Brother C. M. Simon, SJ.; "List of Indians transferred from Standing Rock June 5 [18]82," in "Census Roll of Indians at Spotted Tail Agency," 142-43.

67. James Irwin to Commissioner of'Indian Affairs, January 27.1878, Letters Received, Red Cloud Agency, RG 75, NA, Washington.

68. Bull Eagle statement; Dodd to Commanding Officer, March 5, 1878; Garnett interview. A bloc of Northern lodges is discernible m the Spleen band census taken in mid-1878, made up of the following families: Spotted Hand, Low Bear, Blue Knee, White Bear, Yellow Knife, Burnt Hip, Shits in Lodge, Leader Women, Two Bulls. Bear Jaw, Pistol Owner. "Chas. Jordan./Ogallalla/D.T.," partial Oglala census, Pine Ridge Agency Records, RG 75, NA, KC.

69. Bull Eagle statement; Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 27,1878; Ben Tibbitts to James Irwin, January 24,28,1878, Red Cloud Agency, General Correspondence Received, RG 75, NA, KC; "Register of Indians at Cheyenne River Agency," 166-67,174-75,181. The families of Dog on Butte, Lips Smell Shit, and Lead Bear made up the two lodges returning to the Oglalas. The families enrolled at Cheyenne River included Touch the Clouds, Standing Elk (younger brother of Touch the Clouds), The Bridge (brother-in-law of Touch the Clouds), Talks about Him (younger brother of Touch the Clouds), One Bear (Company E corporal), The Woman They Want, The Dog on the Hill, Steals die Woman and Straight Head (joint heads of one lodge), and Swift Hawk. The two men named Dog on Butte or The Dog on the Hill (Sunka Paha kan Nazin) may have been father and son.

70. Irwin to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 27, 1878; Tibbitts to Irwin, January 28,1878. Across the Lodge was another name for Touch the Clouds's seventeen-year-old son, Amos Charging First. Spider was a half-brother of Red Cloud, married to a sister of Young Man Afraid of His Horse. In 1877-1878 he was the head akicita of the Payabya band.

71. Tibbitts to Irwin, January 24, 1878.

72. Irwm to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 27,1878; Ostler, Plains Sioux, 122. Wands were traditionally issued to invite guests to a feast or headmen to a council. Their use in contentious voting decisions like this one does indicate a conscious attempt to align council procedure with American democratic processes. A similar vote was cast by the Oglala tribal council on August 31, 1877, in adopting measures to take against Crazy Horse. Ostler, Plains Sioux, 122-27, ably documents the negotiations by which the Lakotas secured their new agencies.

73. George E. Hyde, Red Cloud's Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians (Norman, 1957),300; Alvin M. Josephy Jr., The Patriot Chiefs: Studies of Nine Great Leaders of the American Indians (London, 1962), 309.

KINGSLEY M. BRAY is a free-lance historian based in Manchester, England. He has published extensively on Lakota history, and his biography, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2006.

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