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

CHEYENNE, October 18.—Almost every hour brings news of new depredations by Indians upon ranchmen located west and north of the Chug. On Sunday last Coffey 8c Cunney’s train, near Laramie Peak, was run down to Kent’s, on Laramie River. A saddle blanket and vest belonging to a man named Sullivan, of the independent volunteers, was found near that place, and he is probably killed. Frank Sprague was attacked on his ranch at the old mill near Laramie Peak. He fought the Indians during a whole day, killing two, but they burned his hay and ranch and ran off all his stock. He escaped barefooted to O’Leary’s ranch on Richard Creek before the Indians fired the bushes in which he had been concealed. Kerr, who arrived at the Chug to-day, saw an Indian camp within two miles of Searight’s ranch and men and ammunition left here on his order to-day. A large body of Indians encamped at the head of the North Laramie, distant from Fort Laramie forty miles. A party of volunteers who went in search of Aspenfelter and the mail carrier from Laramie city, who was due at the Chug Monday, returned to-night to that place having discovered no trace of the missing men.

As soon as the soldier chief in the big coat came up and stood by the robe, Johnny Bruguier said, “Soldier chief, Sitting Bull want you to sit while you talk with him.”

“No,” Miles said stiffly, his jaw jutting. “I think better of it. I’ll just stand while we parley.”

Glancing at the Hunkpapa chief a moment, seeing the strain of confusion in Sitting Bull’s eyes, Johnny tried again. “If you want to make war, then stand. If you come to talk peace with these Lakota—then you must sit.”

For several moments Nelson Miles deliberated on that, his eyes looking from the interpreter, to the seated chiefs, to the line of mounted warriors to their rear. Then back to the buffalo robe offered him. At last the wary officer turned and mumbled something to his men, then advanced a few more feet so that he could kneel on the buffalo robe.

“You will not sit to talk?” Johnny asked.

“I will kneel here,” Miles grumbled, clearly vexed. “Now—get on with what Sitting Bull wants to tell me.”

Johnny stepped over so he could sit directly between Sitting Bull and the colonel. The chief reached beneath his robe to pull out a pipe, which Sitting Bull lit by taking a smoldering coal from a small gourd his nephew, White Bull, produced from a pouch he carried over his shoulder. White Bull sat at the chief’s left hand, while the Brule named High Bear sat on the chief’s right, along with Jumping Bull, a Hunkpapa, and Fire-What-Man, a Sans Arc.

This ceremonial smoking and passing the pipe around the circle took much time. Johnny did not smoke. Instead, he watched the faces of those surrounding him in that small circle, both white and red. It had been many months since he had been so vividly reminded how he was a man-in-between. In his veins coursed white blood, and red too. But he was far from truly belonging in either world. While the Hunkpapa had accepted him, he had to admit he shamelessly enjoyed the raucous life of the bawdy frontier towns all the more. He was truly caught in between, one foot snared in either world, able to make a home for himself in neither.

As he looked now at Sitting Bull’s face, for some reason the chief appeared older—the furrow between his brows, those deep clefts running down from the corners of his sharp nose. But mostly the sadness in his eyes. Yes, sadness. For many, many days now the chief had been in mourning. The loss of his child kicked in the head by a mule. Eating nothing, Sitting Bull had fasted, smeared cold ashes on his flesh, slept but little, and wore only his poorest of clothing. At first glance he looked anything but a great visionary and undisputed leader of the Lakota.

But behind those sad eyes burned the smoldering fires of stoic resolve to see his people through this whole struggle with the white man.

Already the Bull had seen many things through, ever since he had first become a warrior of wide repute more than a decade before, a warrior whose name was known not just to his Hunkpapa band, but to the whites as well as the other wandering bands of Lakota. He was one of the few among the many who steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the white man—choosing to avoid him at all costs if possible. And when it was not possible … well, Johnny too had heard the mining camp talk of the Custer “massacre.” That, and the campfire tales wherein the Lakota warriors related their coups and told their battle stories.

Strange, Bruguier thought, that this medicine man was called the chief of all the hostiles by the whites, when he was merely a visionary who possessed the ability to bring together the various Lakota peoples into a cohesive force. He was not a war chief—more so a savvy politician who drew strong people to his cause.