A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

NEW YORK, November 29.—a dispatch dated in the field, November 25, via Fort Fetterman the 27th, gives the following additional particulars of General Mackenzie’s fight on the 25th: The hostiles had been having a war dance all night, and were not taken by surprise by the attack which was made at sunrise. The village was located in a canyon running nearly north and south. It contained about 200 lodges, with perhaps five hundred warriors. General Mackenzie’s fighting force numbered nearly one thousand men. Most of the enlisted Indians behaved well at the start but after the first heat of the charge very many of them relapsed into apparent indifference to everything except plundering the abandoned tepees of the Cheyennes, and trying to run off horses. About twenty Indians that can be counted were killed, and doubtless many more have fallen behind the rocks. About five or six of our forces have been killed. The following is a partial list of casualties: Killed—Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry; Corporal Ryan, Company D, and Private Keller, Company E. Wounded—Sergeant Thomas H. Forsyth, Corporal W. J. Lynn, Corporal W. H. Pool, Corporal Dan Cunningham, Jacob Schlafer, privates E. L. Burk, G. H. Stickney, J. E. Talmadge, August Streil, Issac Maguire, Charles Folsom, Joseph Mc Mahon, Edward Fitzgerald, Alexander McFarland, George Kinney, Henry Holden, William B. Smith and David Stevens.

The fight in that red canyon would eventually claim one last victim—its daring cavalry commander.

But for now, ever since returning to the Crazy Woman camp, rumor had it Crook was going to return the troops to winter quarters. There’d be no more god-awful chasing around in the cold and the snow.

For Richard I. Dodge, it was just about the best news he had heard through this whole insufferable campaign.

Then at eleven A.M. that Thursday, 30 November, one of Crook’s men came by to pay a courtesy on the colonel, informing Dodge that the general was dispatching twenty-five of the best men on the strongest horses to follow up the rumor that there was a large band of Cheyenne warriors in the neighborhood under a chief called White Antelope, ready to attack the wagon camp. Earlier that morning Crook had sent out Luther North and four Pawnee to push north through the deep snow to Clear Creek, where they were to look for sign of the fleeing village.

Then at noon what cavalry wasn’t on guard duty turned out to solemnly commit five of their number to the frozen, rock-hard Wyoming ground. Between two long double lines of silent mounted men, the thirty pallbearers trudged with their blanket-wrapped corpses to the common grave. Nearby sat the sad-eyed spectators—Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Shoshone and the others—in all their wild finery as they witnessed this most final of the white man’s rites.

All morning long soldiers had struggled in relays to force open the breast of the earth just enough to admit these five young soldiers. As the hundreds fell silent, two officers read from the Book of Common Prayer, then Crook said a few words over the grave. In the end seven guns were fired in three relays, the last sharp rattle disappearing over the windswept hills before a lone trooper took up the mournful notes of “Taps.” As the quiet returned to the valley of the Crazy Woman, one of the men from the Third played a sad dirge on his tin fife, each plaintive note quickly carried off by the stiffening wind.

Lieutenant McKinney’s body rested in the back of a freight wagon—to be returned east by way of wagon and rail, there to be buried among his people.

Yet for all the excitement of Mackenzie’s return, and later the melancholy of the burial, for once there wasn’t all that much for his infantry to do that afternoon but rotate the guard and watch the cavalry troops grain and water their horses, besides wolfing down their poor Thanksgiving dinner of fried bacon and flapjacks.

Clutching a cup of steaming coffee, Dodge returned to his tent and his diary, where he confided his first intimations of a troubled Ranald Mackenzie, who seemed to be plagued by second thoughts about the success of his Dull Knife fight.

Altogether it has been a very successful affair. It might have been much more so had McKenzie possessed as much administrative and political sagacity as he has gallantry in the field. Still it is no time, nor is there any cause for grumbling. The affair stamps our campaign as a success even if nothing more is accomplished. I only regret that my portion of the command had no share or lot in the affair. All say that had the Doboys been there not an Indian would have escaped. If I had been allowed to go, we would have had a more complete story to tell.