The fun part of looking through old newspapers is the stories you just stumble on, and this one in a Jan. 25, 1879 edition of the Ogden "Junction" had an appealing headline:"DESPERATE INDIAN FIGHT" it screamed.
Hey, I'm all about a good fight story. I was brought up watching TV westerns, after all.
But then I saw the subhead:
"A Victory for the Soldiers, with Several "Bucks," Squaws and Papooses Killed."
Say what?
No editor would approve language like that today. It's paternalistic, insulting, demeaning, the sort of thing racists wish they could say these days if only they weren't forced to be "politically correct."
And there it is in a headline, although admittedly one from 140 years ago.
The story reports what is actually a reasonably famous battle, part of a larger campaign that occurred in November of 1878 through February of 1879. Native Americans were struggling against advancing Americans overrunning their lands, part of the larger decades-long "war" between the US Army and Native Americans although the term gives the Native combatants more respect that they got at the time. This was a time when there was serious debate whether Native Americans, like blacks, were even human.
In January of 1879 a band of Northern Cheyenne, led by Dull Knife, which had been forced to a reservation late in the previous year, fled north. Part were captured by the U.S. Army and returned, but a small band, 32 including 18 men and boys and 14 women and children, had to be hunted down.
On Jan. 22 they were found dug in in a ravine near Fort Robinson, Nebraska, by a company of 150 soldiers, led by Capt. Henry Wessells. The soldiers attacked and killed most of the Native Americans.
The story spares no expense to praise the heroism of the soldiers and make it abundantly clear that they are risking death every second against this band of bloodthirsty savages.
Reading through this story, you can get the feeling that 150 soldiers completely surrounding a couple dozen Native Americans in a gully really are engaged in a "desperate fight." Their valor is constantly praised, the savagery of the Native Americans constantly condemned.
The soldiers' massive advantage in manpower and firepower does not mitigate this.
The Indians are dug in in a gully, so the four companies fan around them, surrounding their position and then advance. The Indians open fire and "despite the dreadful volley poured into the troops, they steadily advanced and when within seventy five yards of the savages' position, fire was opened on all sides with dreadful effect."
Colorful adjectives make it clear who the author of this story feels is in the wrong.
Captain Wessells receives "a slight scalp would from a pistol in the hands of one of the bloodthirsty Cheyennes." His lieutenant, seeing the captain fall, carried him to safety and then "dashing to the head of his own company gallantly led them to the very edge of the washout where they fought the enemy with unabated fury."
Wessells came to his senses and tried to stop the firing after seeing the ground littered with dead Indians. "But the latter stubbornly refused, rushing the troops with their formidable hunting knives, having expended all their ammunition and determined to surrender to death only."
The language tells the tale: Soldiers are "gallant," while "savage" Indians attack with "formidable" knives. It sounds more like a turkey shoot today. The dead Indians included 17 "bucks," not men and boys, four "squaws," not women, and two "papooses," not babies. Only three women survived unwounded.
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| "The Pit": Frederick Remington painted the aftermath |
Three soldiers were also killed, and one wounded.
History has taken a different look at this incident. The larger story -- the whole tribe's several-month journey to escape the reservation, cost between 32 and 64 killed, 23 wounded and 78 captured. The Army lost 11 soldiers plus one Indian scout and another 9 wounded.
The incident in the story is called "The Pit," because of the geographical reality that the Indians were stuck in a gully, surrounded, and shot pretty much like fish in a barrel.
A Wikipedia article on the incident reports that General George Crook investigated the massacre. Several Native Americans were charged with murder, and in 1901 the U.S. Supreme Court denied any US Liability but called the "shocking story...one of the most melancholy of Indian Tragedies."
Up to the time the Cheyenne were fired upon, it said, "they had committed no strocity and were in amity with the United States and desired to remain so."
The Indians were struggling against being forced onto reservations by what they saw as an invading army. Who can blame them?
But it was a time of Manifest Destiny, America was spreading across the continent and anyone already there was, obviously, just in the way.
What is now known as "The Northern Cheyenne Exodus" in such books as "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," and "In Dull Knife's Wake: The True Story of the Northern Cheyenne Exodus," was seen, at the time, as just war against savages, nothing more.
When I visited the Little Big Horn a number of years ago it was good to see that, among the many monuments to soldiers of the 7th Cavalry who died, there are now a few, widely scattered, markers that show where Native Americans, too, died.
The soldiers's markers say they died serving their country, as certainly they did.
But the Native American's markers say the man killed there died "defending his homeland and the Sioux Way of Life."
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