^
1876 Custer, 264 soldiers
of his 7th Cavalry, and some Indian warriors
In the worst defeat of the US
Army in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans,
Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Calvary is annihilated
by a larger Sioux force at the Battle
of Little Bighorn.
In 1868, the US government
signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux, Cheyenne, and
Arapaho, granting the three tribes permanent possession of a
large region to the west of the northern Missouri River. However,
in 1872, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, located along
the border of South Dakota and Wyoming, and white prospectors
began moving into the Sioux territory. In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel
Custer, who had distinguished himself as the youngest Union
general of the Civil War, led his Seventh Calvary into the region
and confirmed the gold strike. Over the next few months, thousands
of miners rushed into the Black Hills.
In September of 1875, representatives
of the US government met with Sioux and other tribal leaders,
and offered to purchase the land. The Indians refused, so in
December, US authorities ordered all Sioux raiding and hunting
parties to report to a reservation agency by January 31, 1876,
or consider themselves at war with the United States. In response,
thousands of Sioux left the reservations to join Sitting Bull,
Crazy Horse, and other war leaders meeting along the Powder
River in present-day Wyoming. They were joined by the Arapaho,
the northern Cheyenne, and warriors from other scattered tribes.
Meanwhile, US General Philip
H. Sheridan organized three powerful Army columns to suppress
the Indians. In March, General George Crook’s column fought
an indecisive battle with the Sioux along the Powder River,
and in June, Crook defeated a Sioux force at the Battle of Rosebud
Creek. In the same month, the two other Army columns, under
the command of General Alfred H. Terry and Colonel John Gibbon,
met up at the mouth of Rosebud Creek and prepared to attack
a large Sioux camp reported on Little Bighorn River to the southwest.
General Terry ordered Custer to lead his Seventh Calvary down
the valley and flush the Sioux out toward the two Army columns,
which were to block the Indians’ southern retreat route. On
June 22, Custer set out with some six hundred men for Little
Bighorn.
On 25 June, at dawn, his scouts
spotted the Indian camp, and at noon, Custer commenced his attack.
As the village appeared to be only moderately sized, apparently
without a large force of defenders, he divided his command into
four parts, two of which were to attack the village, one of
which was to remain behind as a supply column, and another which
was to scout to the south. It was a fatal mistake. Across the
river lay hidden a Sioux and Cheyenne force of nearly 2000 warriors
under Crazy Horse, Two Moon, and Gall.
The 175-man detachment under
US Major Marcus Reno was the first to attack the village,
but encountering the large Indian force they retreated back
across the river with moderate loss of life. Meanwhile, Custer,
who had intended to attack the village from the north, was cut
off in rough ground with 210 men. Suddenly, Custer was assaulted
by Indians pouring across the river both north and south of
him. What became known as “Custer’s Last Stand” lasted less
than an hour, and not one of his 210 men survived the Indian
attack.
Upstream, the two scouting and
supply detachments met up with Reno’s force, and over the next
twenty-four hours succeeded in holding off repeated Indian assaults
at the cost of forty-seven killed and fifty-three wounded. On
June 26, with the large Army columns of Terry and Gibbon approaching,
the villagers retreated, followed several hours later by the
warriors, who set the prairie grass afire to cover their retreat.
The Battle of Little Bighorn was one of the most infamous military
disasters in US history, and cost 265 members of the Seventh
Cavalry. With the exception of Custer, whose remains were later
reinterred at West Point, the bodies of the slain men are still
buried on the battlefield, now a national monument in Montana.
^
Le Chef sioux de la tribu Oglala, Ta-Sunko-Witko, que les soldats
des armées nord-américaines appelaient Crazy Horse, se fait
remarquer comme jeune chef dès 1865. Il refuse les plans établis
par Washington pour ménager aux pionniers une route d’accès
aux champs de prospection aurifère du Montana ; sa tribu vivait
dans le nord des Grandes Plaines (lui-même était probablement
né dans l’actuel Dakota du Sud) et les territoires de chasse
devaient servir de lieu de passage aux Blancs en route vers
l’Ouest.
En 1866, Crazy Horse fait partie
du groupe d’Indiens qui anéantit la compagnie du capitaine William
J. Fetterman, qui avait longtemps demandé qu’on lui donne la
possibilité de s’attaquer avec seulement quatre-vingts hommes
aux groupes de guerriers sioux et de démontrer l’efficacité
tactique des troupes régulières nord-américaines. Mais comme
ses hommes disposaient de fusils dont la recharge demandait
plusieurs opérations manuelles, ils furent anéantis par les
flèches de leurs adversaires.
Refusant de se maintenir dans
les réserves imposées aux Sioux, Crazy Horse mène ses hommes
dans les régions de chasse des tribus sioux, guerroyant à l’occasion
contre les détachements de troupes régulières et leurs auxiliaires
indiens. La découverte d’or sur le territoire du Dakota en 1874
fit que les prospecteurs ignorèrent les traités signés entre
les Sioux et le gouvernement nord-américain et envahirent leur
réserve ; au lieu de contenir les chercheurs d’or, le général
Crook contraignit Crazy Horse à évacuer ses campements d’hiver
pour installer ceux-ci près des rivières au Montana.
Échappant au contrôle des troupes
de Washington, Crazy Horse et les siens se réfugièrent dans
les collines, joignirent les Cheyennes et, le 17 juin 1876,
contraignirent le corps d’armée de Crook à la retraite. Crazy
Horse fit ensuite jonction avec la plus grande partie de la
nation sioux, réunie autour de Sitting Bull sur les bords de
la Little Bighorn River (25 juin 1876). La bataille fut féroce.
Les troupes de Custer subirent de nombreuses pertes.
Les tribus alors se séparèrent.
Réfugiés dans les collines, harcelés par les troupes américaines
qui voulaient les contraindre à s’établir dans les "agences"
créées pour recevoir les Indiens, les hommes de Crazy Horse
succombèrent au froid et à la faim ; en 1877, Crazy Horse et
les siens se rendaient au général Crook. Retenu au fort Robinson,
le chef indien, torturé et humilié, tenta quelques mois plus
tard de s’échapper, mais il fut assassiné par des agents du
gouvernement fédéral dans la confusion générale que provoqua
son évasion
Argument
that the accepted story of Custer's Last Stand reflects a cover-up
by surviving officers in charge of sepate detachments. These
would have failed to support a theorized attack by Custer's
unit on the Indian tent village (where it would have been killing
women and children).
^
From the Amerindians' point of view:
In 1874, George Armstrong Custer, who six years before had slaughtered
Black Kettle's Southern Cheyennes on the Washita River, brought
all the western Sioux face-to-face with another crisis. Ignoring
the Treaty of 1868, which guaranteed the Sioux the western half
of present-day South Dakota as a reservation for their perpetual
and exclusive use, General Sheridan sent Custer and a large
reconnaissance expedition into the Black Hills, in the heart
of the reservation, to locate a site for a new fort.
The intrusion was a violation of the treaty, which read,
"No white person or persons, shall be permitted to settle
upon or occupy any portion of the territory, without the
consent of the Indians.... and to pass through the same."
To the Sioux, the sacred Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, were
the spiritual center of their world, where their people withdrew
from the hot plains to fast and pray, to cry for a vision,
establish communion with the supernatural world, and, at
the springs and among the cool, pine-covered hills, renew
their strength and spiritual well-being. Compounding the
affront to the Indians, Custer turned the illegal invasion
into a gold-seeking expedition. When he found gold and trumpeted
the news to the world, the results were predictable. Thousands
of miners, entrepreneurs, and adventurers overran the Black
Hills and the sacred sites of the Sioux, throwing up mining
camps and towns, cutting down the woods, polluting the streams,
and resisting successfully the army's halfhearted attemps
to eject them. United in their outrage, the Sioux threatened
war against the invaders, who, in turn, raised an outcry
for the removal of the Sioux from what, in fact, was still
the Indians' country.
The government's solution, overlooking the sacred nature
of the Black Hills and regarding them as just another piece
of real estate, was to try to buy them from the Indians.
Red Cloud and a number of agency chiefs were summoned to
Washington and, although bullied and threatened, insisted
that all of the Sioux would have to be consulted. In September
1875, a special government commission finally met at the
Red Cloud agency with some twenty thousand Sioux, most of
them were from the agencies, but others representing the
different "hostile" bands in the north. One after another,
tribal spokesmen condemned the government. Typical were the
remarks of a Lower Yanktonai chief, Wanigi Ska (White Ghost):
You have driven away our game and our means of livelihood
out of the country, until now we have nothing left that is
valuable except the hills that you ask us to give up.....
The earth is full of minerals of all kinds, and on the earth
the ground is covered with forests of heavy pine, and when
we give these up to the Great Father we know that we give
up the last thing that is valuable either to us or the white
people.
Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull, a great warrior and also
a spritiual leader with strong powers, was not there, but
Hunkpapas conveyed his warning: We want no white men
here. The Black Hills belong to me. If the whites try to
take them, I WILL fight..
Red Cloud, trying to reassert his authority to speak for
all, demanded six hundred million dollars for the Black Hills.
The commisioners offered six hundred million dollars, and
the council broke up without accomplishing anything. In November,
at the instigation of President Grant, the government ordered
all "hostile" bands to come into the Sioux agencies by January
31 or be driven in by troops. The belief was that once the
militant Indians had been brought under control at the agencies,
they could be induced to sell the Black Hills on the government's
terms. But January 31 came and went, and the "hostile" hunting
bands in the north either would not or could not come in,
on such short notice in the dead or the Great Plains winter.
In February 1876, as Uniter States prepared to celebrate
the contennial of it's own freedom, General Sheridan set
plans in motion for a three-pronged spring campaign to force
the free bands to come to the agencies. But the Sioux nations
would not be bullied. As the weather warmed, hundreds of
warriors left the agencies and swelled the ranks of the fighting
bands in the north. On June 17, at Montana's Rosebud River,
a thousand Sioux warriors, led by Crazy Horse, stopped the
first prong of thirteen hundred troops, commanded by General
George Cook and accomplished by Crow and Shoshoni scouts,
and forced their withdrawal to a base camp in the south.
From the Rosebud, Crazy Horse's force crossed to the valley
of the Little Bighorn River, known to the Indians as the
Greasy Grass, and joined an enormous village of seven to
ten thousand Lakotasm Yanktonais, Santees, Northern Arapaho,
and Northern Cheyennes, whose camp circles stretched for
almost three miles along the river. Farther north, the other
two prongs of the ary's campaign-one coming from the west
in Montana, the other from the Missouri River in the east-met
and turned south, hoping to trap the "hostile" bands. Advancing
ahead of the main body, the 7th Calvary, led by Custer-the
man who had massacred Black Kettle's Cheyennes and had thought
nothing of starting a gold rush into the Sioux's sacred country,
sighted and prepared to attack the huge camp on the Little
BigHorn. Feeling secure in their own country, the Sioux and
their allies had taken no precautions to guard against a
surprise attack, and it was not until the dust of the approaching
cavalrymen rose from the ridges east of the river that they
were aware of danger. Wooden Leg, a young Northern Cheyenne
warrior, recalled the scene among the Cheyenne tipis, the
northenmost in the line of camps:
Women were screaming and men were letting out war cries.
Through it all we could hear old men calling," Soldiers are
here! Young men, go out and fight them."
On the hills above the river, Custer divided his command,
Some of the soldiers crossed the Little Bighorn south of
the camps, turned north and opened battle by charging toward
the Hunkpapa village, the southernmost of the Indian camps.
As the soldiers came toward them, Sitting Bull rallied his
men to protect the women and children. Runs-the-Enemy, a
Cut Head Yanktonai Sioux with the Hunkpapas, remembered hearing
him:
Sitting Bull....said..."A bird, when it is on it's nest,
spreads it's wings over the nest and eggs and protests them....
We are here to protect our wives and children, and we must
not let the soldiers get them." He was on a buckskin horse,
and he rode from one end of the line to the other, calling
out: "Make a brave fight!"
In the camps, the Indian women, and children and old people
could hear sounds of battle among the hills and coulees across
the river, but in the smoke and dust they could not see which
side was winning. Led by Gall, the Hunkpapas broke off the
fight on top of the bluffs where they had chased the first
troops that had attacked them and, turning north, fell on
the soldiers with Custer. At the same time, other Indians
plunged across the river to attack Custer's men from the
west. Among them were the Cheyennes under Two Moons. "We
circled all around them swirling like water round a stone,"
He said later... Meanwhile, in the Oglala camp, Crazy Horse
mounted his horse and called for his Oglala warriors to follow
him. "Come on, Lakotas! It's a good day to die," He yelled.
Crossing the river, they flanked Custer's men on the north
and east, tightening the Indian circle around the soliers.
Black Elk, a thirteen year old girl Oglala, watched the fighting
village, "A big dust was whirling on the hill, and then the
horses began coming out of it with empty saddles." he said.
The fight against the men with Custer was all over in less
than half an hour. "The shots quit coming from the soliders,"
Wooden leg recalled.. Sitting Bull's nephew, White Bull,
was one of the several who thought he had killed Custer:
On the hill top, I met my uncle....He had been around Fort
Abraham Lincoln and knew Custer by sight. When he came to
the tall soldier lying on his back... he pointed him out
and said,"Long hair thought he was the greatest man in the
world. Now he lies there."
Throughout the rest of the day and that night, the Indians
besieged the first troops who had attacked the Hunkpapa camp
and whom they had chased back across the river and the bluffs.
On the following day, Sitting Bulls scouts sighted a second
army coming up the valley of the Little Bighorn. Firing the
grass as a smoke screen, the Indian forces broke camp and
headed toward the Big Horn Mountains. News of the battle
reached the outside world on July 4th, 1876, casting a pall
over the nation's celebration of it's hundredth anniversary
of Independence.
|
On
a June 25:
