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

For the longest time the army believed that they had surprised the Dull Knife village—but the testimony of the Cheyenne participants in later years bring ruin to that myth. Young Two Moon and the others knew not only that the soldiers were coming, but knew they were being led by their friends from the Red Cloud Agency—Lakota and Cheyenne both!

How was it that Last Bull was able to cow the chiefs in that village, as well as the protectors and priests of the Cheyenne peoples’ two great medicines: the Sacred Hat and the Sacred Arrows? How could those chiefs ignore the power of Box Elder’s prophetic vision, when the man had been right time after time before?

Perhaps some clue comes to us in the interclan relationships within the Ohmeseheso in that year of 1876. Clearly, sometime in that spring Last Bull’s Kit Fox Society had gained the ascendancy over all other warrior societies among the Northern Cheyenne. Sherry Smith calls them “not only arrogant but even overbearing.” They were known among their own people as “Wife Stealers,” often called the “Beating-Up Soldiers.” They plainly had most everyone else afraid.

Everyone, except the rival Elk Scrapers Society.

During the previous February the rivalry between the two warrior groups had reached a peak when Last Bull had warned of the proximity of soldiers, but was ignored, even scorned by the Elk Scrapers. Days later when a group of Elk Scraper hunters came in with news of soldiers in the area, their reports were believed. This wound to his pride would fester for nine moons until the new emergency in the Big Freezing Moon allowed him to seize control from those less ruthless than he.

Among the Northern Cheyenne, Last Bull is still strongly blamed for the disaster. He was later deposed as leader of his society. In those years to come during his final days on the reservations, Last Bull chose instead to live with the nearby Crow. Some say the Northern Cheyenne military societies “ran him off.” As a result, his son, Fred Last Bull, grew up speaking Crow in Montana.

Needless to say, Last Bull’s adolescent bravado in the Big Freezing Moon of 1876 cost his people everything.

So when it came time for the cavalry to gallop across the broken ground of the valley, the Northern Cheyenne weren’t ready. Yet some thirty or forty warriors valiantly hurried into the deep ravine and waited for Lieutenant John A. McKinney’s troopers to come charging into point-blank range. But here is where I run up against one of those historical inconsistencies in a trifling detail that just nettles the hell out of me!

There’s a problem in the campaign literature in regard to what company McKinney led in his fateful charge that cold day.

In his carefully researched biography on Mackenzie, Charles M. Robinson states that McKinney rode at the head of A Troop.

But the confusion deepens. Second Lieutenant Harrison G. Otis, who was there to assist with holding McKinney’s men when they were being shot to pieces (and who would later take over command of McKinney’s company) is listed on the military rosters as being in ? Troop. In my list of characters, I’ve arbitrarily placed Otis as second in command in McKinney’s M.

Next we have another esteemed biography of Mackenzie in which the author, Michael D. Pierce, relates that McKinney did in fact lead M Troop into action that day.

No less than John Bourke himself states for the record that McKinney led M Troop toward its fateful encounter at the deep ravine.

So, like Pierce and author Fred Werner, I’ll throw my weight behind the contemporary source, an army officer and adjutant who is accustomed to paying attention to such details.

A most fitting memorial to this fallen officer was the establishment of Fort McKinney in 1877 near the present-day town of Buffalo, Wyoming, after the army abandoned Reno Cantonment.

It never fails. In every battle I have written about in this dramatic and tragic struggle so far, there are Indian and soldier combatants who rise above the rest in the heat of conflict, throwing their bodies into the line of fire, heedless of personal danger as they pull a dead or wounded comrade out of harm’s way, or stand over a fallen comrade as the enemy charges in. And such action never fails to bring tears to my eyes, or my heart to my throat.

Time and again in this battle Cheyenne warriors rode out alone to draw soldier fire that would allow women and children to escape up the narrow canyon and on to the breastworks. Men like Yellow Eagle, who escorted the old and the infirm to safety. Men like Little Wolf, who was wounded six times that day guarding the mouth of the escape ravine. Men like Long Jaw, who repeatedly drew bullets to himself so that the shamans would be better protected. The powerful mystics: Black Hairy Dog; Coal Bear; Box Elder.