Reap the Whirlwind (64 page)

As soon as I can I will send more word to you by the couriers who will regularly ply the road between this supply depot and Fort Fetterman. The moment I know when I will be coming back to you will be but the span of a heartbeat before I sit down to send you word of my return.

Until then, do not fear for me. Keep up your strength, and your nightly prayers. I so need them here in this wilderness, Sam. I send you my prayers, and beg the angels stay close to both of you while I cannot.

Pray the angels hover at your shoulder, to watch over my family until I can return home to your arms.

Your loving husband,
Seamus

F
or all intent and purpose. Crook’s Battle of the Rosebud
lies in historical obscurity.

Few of those who have more than a speaking acquaintance with the Indian wars of the west really know much about this epic conflict.

Why? my readers might ask at this point, having finished
Reap the Whirlwind.
I would hope that they, like me, now have reason to cry out against this historical injustice that has pitted the Rosebud fight with the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The dubious politics of the “modern” era have caused one battle to suffer in the shadows for more than a hundred years, while the other has reveled in every aspect of our national culture and thereby enjoys worldwide acclaim.

Yet this battle beside the Rosebud has every bit as much of the continuing intrigue and controversy as does that more famous battle against the Sioux which took place eight days later and some thirty miles northwest on what the white man calls the Little Bighorn River. More than a third of a century ago, J. W. Vaughn, the first author to write the in-depth story of Crook’s battle on the Rosebud, aptly stated the case for a more popular—and long overdue
—examination of the duel with Crazy Horse: “One could spend a lifetime in the study of the Rosebud battle and still not cover all of the various angles and details.”

So this first of the great fights against the “hostiles,” the free-roaming warrior bands, taking place in this epic, watershed year during which Sherman and Sheridan’s frontier army waged its “Great Sioux War of 1876,” suffers only from lack of press, perhaps lack of public relations.

There’s no better way to put this: the Battle of the Little Bighorn has enjoyed its place among America’s popular culture, alone as one of the most enduring myths that rest in our national psyche, continuing year after year because of one reason and one reason only: George Armstrong Custer died on that hot, dusty hillside.

Otherwise, the fight the Seventh U.S. Cavalry had with the Sioux and Cheyenne beside the Greasy Grass was itself an inconsequential skirmish that proved nothing for either side, even though it was the
last
time the various warrior bands fought together in such massed strength.

But do not forget! The Battle of the Rosebud was the
first
time those warrior bands fought together—a remarkable event in the era of the Indian Wars.

Little Bighorn aficionados and Custerphiles point out that what you must take into account is that tremendous four-mile distance between Reno’s attack on the Hunkpapa camp and where Custer’s last held out briefly on “Massacre Hill.” But, I caution, you must remember that there were only two concentrations of fighting north of the Reno/ Benteen siege: Calhoun Hill and Massacre Hill, less than a half mile apart.

I can put it no more simply than to state that in the Custer battle there was
no
fighting over a wide territory despite that four-mile separation from Reno’s position to the monument of present day.

At the Battle of the Rosebud, on the other hand, not only did the Sioux and Cheyenne hurl themselves at Crook’s cavalry, infantry, and civilians along a four-mile front, but that battlefield was, in addition, more than two miles wide! All one has to do is walk some of that rugged, vaulting terrain, and he or she will get a clear picture of what the soldiers had to contend with that day, and begin
to grasp just how Crazy Horse so masterfully drove his wedges between the various units, dividing the army into detail (with Crook’s unwitting help), decoying, feinting, sweeping down to overwhelm in massed attacks.

Something the horseback warrior of the high plains had never before done!

While our nation was enjoying its Centennial year, celebrating by showing the latest in technology at the Centennial Exposition that summer in Philadelphia—a Stone Age people were gathering in heretofore-unheard-of numbers, making no pretense that they were preparing to mount their greatest defense of an ancient way of life. After all, total war had been declared on them.

With the opening salvos of that war, you can’t help but be struck with the ignorance with which the military set about its task. One of the most common yet remarkable assets of the frontier army was the reluctance of its officers to recognize they had a tiger by the tail. Time and again in their ten years already on the Plains they had attacked the hostile villages, only to see the warriors fight just long enough for the women and children to flee before they would disappear.

Yet in this “Summer of Seventy-Six” both the hapless Crook and a week later the unfortunate Custer would discover the exception that is said to prove every rule. Both believed that the warriors would stay in character and flee if given the chance. The biggest problem for the army was getting the enemy to stand and fight. It simply wasn’t in the nature of the warrior to initiate a major encounter with a large force of warriors.

But from the first charge Crazy Horse’s warriors made into the valley of the Rosebud, there wasn’t a man serving with George Crook who could say the enemy acted cowardly. The most important factor distinguishing this battle from all the previous fights was that never before had the Indians been so willing to ride into the soldiers’ guns, so willing to stand and fight it out, to give blow for blow, while fighting
in concert.

Because of the military’s long-held mind-set, Crazy Horse gave the pony soldiers a rude shock that summer morning, pulling some tricks from his sleeves—yet he
really did nothing more magical than use some savvy battlefield tactics: these “savages” displayed discipline before the enemy, decoying, drawing the soldiers beyond the point where they could be supported; and when the various companies that had gone in pursuit of the Indians finally turned around to retreat back to their support, they were time and again overwhelmed with not just numbers, but with the sheer ferocity of the hostiles’ disciplined attack.

Again, because of the remarkable nature of the fight, the question is asked: Why is this battle fought on the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill so little known to the general public?

The more you learn, the more the injustice of how this battle has been ignored begins to nag at you for attention.

So the Battle of the Rosebud was a surprise. Remember—it is one of the supreme duties of a field commander to guard against surprise. Crook was surprised by Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley. And more than a decade later he was surprised again. You only have to give yourself a moment to consider just how George Crook was feeling that night after the long battle, as twilight came down on the Rosebud country. Perhaps he had learned his lesson. Perhaps he no longer held the horseback warriors with disdain, no longer underestimating their abilities.

But we won’t really know that until we ride with Three Stars through the rest of that “Summer of the Sioux,” and on into the autumn as the army, wincing in pain and licking its wounds after the Custer Battle, regroups and starts to fight back. We won’t know if Crook, or the army for that matter, learned anything until the year is done.

Another one of the most important factors to make Crook’s fight so remarkable is that the campaign was covered by so many newspaper correspondents. This ran counter to the expressed wishes of General William T. Sherman, who, some will remember, made it clear to Custer that he was not to take any of the press along with him when he marched out of Fort Abraham Lincoln. Yet the lieutenant colonel welcomed Bismarck’s own Mark Kellogg, who was thrilled to have the chance to march with
Custer and the Seventh Cavalry, to ride in for the kill. Kellogg died on Massacre Hill.

Had the newsman survived, Custer might well have suffered some less-than-glowing reports in the national media, just the sort of negative press Crook was to suffer following the disaster of June 17. But more on that to come with Volume 10.

Besides the five newspaper correspondents, representing a total of twelve dailies, there were in fact two artists who that early summer sent their drawings in for publication in some of the nation’s largest magazines. One of those soldiers, who was himself nearly a casualty of Royall’s fight on the left, was Lieutenant James Foster. He kept a journal that was later serially reproduced by the Chicago Tribune. In addition, Foster’s detailed, lively sketches of camp life at Goose Creek, as well as scenes from the campaign trail, enjoyed a wide audience when published late that summer in
Harper’s Weekly.

These artists were not the only ones to bring texture and life to the nonofficial side of the campaign. A remarkable number of officers maintained detailed and illuminating diaries that have proven beneficial to historians studying Crook’s Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition, as well as the battle itself. Much of those diaries later made it into print not only as individual stories of the fight, but as first-person articles adding incendiary fuel to a growing and continuing debate, grist written for the military magazines of the day, such as the
Army and Navy Journal

By now most of my readers should be well aware that John Bourke’s records of the winter and summer campaigns provided the initial framework for the most widely quoted of books dealing with his boss,
On the Border with Crook.
While not as extensive, every bit as important is the work of Captain William Stanton, the campaign’s official itinerist, who, along with infantry officers like Captain Gerhard Luhn and Lieutenant Thaddeus H. Capron, all maintained daily diaries, as well as holding on to their personal correspondence, which contained some very rich and more anecdotal accounts of the march to hostile territory.

All of you who want to learn more about the Battle of
the Rosebud in particular, as well as some of its key players, in addition to immersing yourself in this most Romantic Era, should enjoy reading the following titles I used in writing
Reap the Whirlwind.
I recommend them all.