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

At Fort Buford, Thomas became a clerk for Charles Larpenteur’s Northwest Company. Here they traded with the Yanktonais and some of the Lakota bands. The Sioux bands were a haughty, standoffish people who wanted nothing to do with the Jackson boys. Yet there were a few Arikara who camped near the fort. In fact, William and Robert became best friends with an older boy who was, like them, a half-breed. While his father was Sioux, his mother was Arikara—the two of them had married years before when the two tribes were enjoying a rare period of peace between them. With the coming of the white man, hostilities resumed between the tribes, so the woman returned to her own people and taught her son the Ankara’s hatred of the Lakota.

This night at his tiny fire, with the cold stars like pinpricks in the black curtain overhead, William remembered his good friend, the Arikara named Bloody Knife. Remembered how for three summers he boasted of being Custer’s favorite scout. So this night William thought on how Bloody Knife had died with Custer at the hands of his father’s people—the Lakota—there in the valley of the Greasy Grass. Killed not that many months ago by these same warriors who followed Sitting Bull north in search of the buffalo herds.

Bloody Knife had been a good friend, warning them almost from that first day about the Lakota—how the Lakota made enemies all too easily and would never get along with the white man. From him and other Rees, the brothers learned the Arikara language that summer of 1871.

Two summers later at Fort Buford they learned that the railroad would be coming west.

“This will be the beginning of a real war,” Bloody Knife had warned them. “The Lakota, the Cheyenne—now they will do everything they can to keep the white man out of their last buffalo ground.”

No matter, both Robert and William were eager to become army scouts. When they told their parents they had enlisted, Thomas frowned and bellowed that he would not have it.

“Thomas,” their mother intervened in that gentle way of hers, “the wild blood that is in these boys—the blood of Hugh Monroe and his fighting Scotch ancestors, the blood of many generations of Pikuni warriors—that blood cannot be denied. They are warriors. They must follow their hearts.”

“Well, then,” Thomas replied after some thought, “you always have your way.”

Tonight William fondly remembered that afternoon three years before. How they had left their quarters with their father so that he could give his blessing before the post commander. He remembered how his mother’s voice had risen plaintively as soon as they left the room: that high-pitched, mournful song, calling on the spirits, calling on the power of the Ancient Coyote, the sacred helper to watch over her sons as they rode into battle. As they chose to face death.

That summer they went downriver on a steamer for the first time with Bloody Knife and other Ree scouts. At Fort Lincoln they joined Custer’s cavalry and the men who were mapping the route for the new railroad that would follow the Yellowstone west. The Sioux found them, harassed them time and again that summer before the soldiers finally turned back. William knew it would not be the last time he would face and fight Lakota warriors.

Nor would Custer shrink from returning—to fight them again, and eventually fall at the Greasy Grass.

Then the next summer—1874—the Jackson boys joined Custer once more, this time on a scout into the Black Hills.

Bloody Knife told them, “You know this is sacred ground to the Lakota. They watch us every day, wanting our scalps, but we are too strong for them. They will wait—and one day they will be too strong for Custer.”

William remembered the look on Bloody Knife’s face, remembered how they knew it would come to pass one day: this big fight when many of the scouts, and many soldiers, would be killed. And Custer would fall.

The past spring as the Jackson boys prepared to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln with General Alfred Terry’s column, bound for the Sioux country, Bloody Knife came to speak to the Arikara.

“I have just come from a talk with the Long Hair Custer. He says that his woman is terribly low of heart, and that the women of the other officers are also. So when we leave in the morning, Long Hair wants us to parade past the fort, to show the women that we are many and strong, to quiet their fears. We, my friends—we Indian scouts—are to lead this parade. It is truly a great honor.”

As Bloody Knife and Charlie Reynolds led them away from the fort the next morning, the Ree women sang a sad song that chilled William’s heart. Tonight he remembered the day he rode into the valley of the Greasy Grass with Reno’s men. He watched as Bloody Knife and Charlie Reynolds fell to the Lakota. He would always remember how the scouts had warned Long Hair that the Sioux were too many.

Tonight William wondered if there were too many for them to fight tomorrow.