Centennial (63 page)

“They’re promised for September 15. Probably get here by October 15.”

“You’ll dispatch a messenger to Kansas City. Tonight.”

“We’ve done so,” the commissioner said lamely. “Believe me, it was the contractors who are at fault in this dreadful thing. We commissioners know better.”

Mercy went to the window and pointed to the meadows beyond the parade grounds, where Indian tipis were already beginning to appear. “Commissioner,” he said quietly, “they’re beginning to gather. God alone knows how many will be there, but if they don’t have food— Look! We have only a hundred and sixty soldiers in this garrison, with a thousand more on their way ...”

The commissioner coughed. “Major, I’m to advise you on that, too. The War Department has changed its mind. It needs the promised men elsewhere.” He paused and said, “Your thousand men are not coming.”

“How many are?”

“Thirty-three dragoons, Escort for the main negotiators.”

Major Mercy left the window and sat down. “You mean we have thousands of Indians congregating here—most of them braves, eager for a fight—and we have to do with a hundred and sixty men plus a handful of dragoons?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, Jesus!” He stormed from his quarters and ran across the parade ground to the old adobe fort, where Captain Ketchum was meeting with his staff and the mountain men.

Before Mercy could explode, Ketchum asked soberly, “How many Shoshone are coming?”

“One thousand four hundred.”

Ketchum added some figures and reported, “That makes over seven thousand for sure, as of this moment, and we haven’t heard from the Crow, the Assiniboin or the Hidatsa.”

“You mean ten thousand Indians are coming to this fort?” Mercy asked.

“At least. More like eleven thousand ... twelve thousand.”

“And we have a hundred and sixty effectives?”

“Plus the commissioners ... the mountain men ... and the dragoons!”

“Tell me,” said the commissioner, who had followed Mercy across the grounds, “how did this miscalculation occur?”

“You tell him, Zendt,” Ketchum directed, and Levi asked an Oglala chief to join them. The chief said in broken English, “White man always say ‘Chief, do this’ or ‘Chief, make your tribe do that.’ Same like Great White Father. But Indian chief nobody. He my uncle, my cousin. Nobody tell him, ‘Chief, you big man now. You run tribe.’ He run tribe just so long he do what we want. My uncle, he chief and he have some good ideas, some bad. He talk, we listen, we do. He good man, but he nobody.”

“Don’t you choose a chief?” the commission asked “Well, for life?”

The young Oglala laughed. “Chief he lose teeth, he can’t bite buffalo, he finish.”

“What does this have to do with ten thousand Indians?” the commissioner asked.

Zendt replied, “Just this. You can’t go to the Oglala and tell them, ‘Send us your chiefs,’ because if the chiefs are going to talk about something that affects the whole tribe, the whole tribe will come along. A chief is not a senator. Like the brave says, he’s only as good as his teeth. Or as long as he gives sound advice.”

“What will we do?” the commissioner asked Captain Ketchum.

“I don’t know what we’ll do,” Ketchum said. “A handful of men against ten thousand Indians ... no food ... no gifts. But I can tell you what I’m going to do.”

“What?”

“Pray.” And as he looked out from the fort he saw the tribes from the north drifting in, and no chief rode alone. He was accompanied by his entire tribe, including the children, the dogs and especially the horses—thousands of them.

In all previous American history there had been nothing like the gathering at Fort Laramie that summer, and in the decades to follow there could be nothing to equal it, for in those later years the Indians would be dispersed, and they would lack ponies and tipis and eagle feathers for their war bonnets. But in late August of 1851 they stood at the apex of their power, and as they assembled from all points they were majestic.

First the mighty Sioux came from the northeast, the many tribes glistening in paint and feathers. They had small horses and rode them moderately well; their grandeur lay in the terrible intensity with which they pursued an objective, whether peaceful or warlike. They were the powerful Indians, willing to engage eight different enemy tribes at once, and when they came into camp they brought with them an ancient insolence. Each tribe had its special characteristics—Brulé, Oglala, Minniconjou, Hunkpapa—but all were members of the same warlike society. In their center rode their principal chiefs, who bore aloft an American flag awarded them at some earlier treaty.

From the northwest came the Assiniboin, slim men unbelievably attuned to their horses. They rode like centaurs, man and horse united in one flesh, moving together in subtle grace. To see them coming across an open prairie was to see motion and dust and waving grass frozen together for a moment, then dissolving as the procession came closer. These Indians wore no headdresses; their dignity resided in their solemn character, bred in remote canyons far from the white man.

Up the Platte came the Cheyenne, tallest of the tribes and incomparably the noblest in appearance. They rode their horses well, sat like graven images, with their right hands on their hips, and impressed the assembly with the beauty of their headdresses and the-fineness of their garments. They were the nobility of the plains, the men of arrogance and self-assurance. For two hundred years they had defended themselves against any combination, and now they rode as if they possessed the prairies. In war they fought with unparalleled courage, and no other tribe in the Platte region had done more to protect the plains from desecration. Their six leading chiefs—Broken Thumb, Bear’s Feather, White Antelope, Little Chief, Rides-on-Clouds and Lean Bear—created a powerful impression of dignity as they rode into camp, for they were tall, slim, handsomely groomed, and their war bonnets were made of finest eagle feathers set in a stout gold-colored webbing decorated with quills. Each chief, because of his raiment, seemed mightier than he was; they formed a compelling phalanx as the sun struck them from the left, their bronzed faces moving in and out of shadow. Behind them, in strict military array, rode the younger chiefs, some almost naked, some in garb only slightly less imposing than their elders’. In the rear, guarding the folded tipis and the children, came the women, tall and dignified, prepared to support their chieftains in whatever decisions were reached.

From the north came the strangers, the Mandan, the Hidatsa and the Arikara, who had come only because of the assurances given by Father De Smet. They were ill-at-ease, so far south, but they came seeking protection from emigrants who were beginning to traverse their lands. They were shorter than the plains Indians but in some ways more knowing, for they had been in contact with the white man since the days of Lewis and Clark.

From the west came the strangest contingent, a small group of one hundred and eighty-three dark-skinned Shoshone, moving cautiously, each with a loaded rifle across his arms. Their arrival created a storm of excitement, and Joe Strunk shouted to the soldiers, “Watch out for trouble!”

What had happened was this. When the Shoshone left camp in western Wyoming, all fourteen hundred set forth. Their interpreter was Jim Bridger, bravest of the mountain men and one of the most canny; their chief was Washakie, who would play a notable role in subsequent history, and under the leadership of these two men they felt so secure that they traveled for some time in company with a wagon train led by white men, but as they moved eastward, a Cheyenne war party struck from the north, killing a Shoshone chief and his son.

Bridger was appalled at this breaking of an understood truce, and Chief Washakie announced that if there was to be a renewal of ancient Cheyenne-Shoshone warfare, his tribe would refuse to move any farther east. A compromise was struck whereby the women and children were sent back to camp while Washakie led the warriors of his tribe to the meeting, provided military escort were assured from Fort Laramie.

Captain Ketchum, striving desperately to maintain peace, sent Strunk and Mercy to the Cheyenne, exacting from them a solemn promise that they would not further molest the Shoshone, and White Antelope and Broken Thumb gave the assurance, and enforced it. “No war from us,” Broken Thumb promised several times, and in proof of his good will he told Strunk, “When Shoshone reach camp, we will give them a feast ... and make them presents they will treasure.” Mercy shook hands with the Cheyenne chiefs and reported to Ketchum, “With the Cheyenne there will be no trouble. Broken Thumb has said so, and he keeps his word.”

“Go back and assure the Shoshone,” Ketchum directed, so Mercy rode out with Strunk, and in a mountain pass to the west they found the warriors, tense and suspicious. “This is to be a convention of true peace,” Mercy assured Bridger, and when this was translated for Washakie, that great chief said grudgingly, “We will try.” So the Shoshone, led by Washakie on a white horse, with Mercy, Strunk and Bridger at his side, rode cautiously toward the vast encampment, their horses eager to leap forward into battle if necessary, their weapons ready for the command to charge. But when they saw the multitude, and the manner in which Sioux camped by Assiniboin, they relaxed, and in the end they pitched their tipis next to those of their mortal enemy, the Cheyenne.

And from the southwest, when the others had gathered, came the poets of the prairies, the tall, quiet, hesitant Arapaho, less arrogant than the Cheyenne, less imposing than the Sioux. They were handsome men, grave of countenance and stately of mien; they were the philosophers, the artists, the ones who listened when the others spoke, but they were men and women of terrible determination, and if necessary, were willing to hazard their future and the future of their children’s children. They were not a tribe to be trifled with, these Arapaho, for they were men and women gifted with an inner dignity that had never so far been subdued. Their chiefs—Eagle Head, Lost Eagle, White Crow, Cut Nose, Little Owl—were sedate men who had come to reason with the White Father, to advise him of their problems and to seek accommodation.

When the tribes were assembled and the days of adjustment completed, the discussions were about to begin when a scout shouted from the northwest sector, “Here they come! My God, look at ’em.” Riding from the west, with the morning sun striking their faces, came an enormous contingent of three thousand Crow, whom many considered the ideal braves. They were not so dark as some of the other tribes; they were a moody people, vacillating between gravity and exhilaration, and were reported by traders who had dealt with them to be of unusual intelligence. They were a mighty nation, prowling the northern Rockies and holding tenaciously to valleys which had long been theirs.

“They know horses!” the professional soldiers cried admiringly, for although the Crow had ridden eight hundred miles, they now spurred their horses to a canter and they came across the prairie like waves coming to shore. In the forefront rode four chiefs, resplendent in costumes not known among the watching tribes: nine strings of cowries about their necks, long strands of elk bones falling from their temples, breastplates from which dangled scores of ermine tails, and most conspicuous, their hair standing upright in huge pompadours, kept in place by gum from spruce trees.

The four chiefs rode silently, looking straight ahead, but behind them came other braves looking warily from side to side, for they were entering alien land where they might be attacked at any moment. In the center of the horde rode the women, beautifully garbed, while along the flanks, on small black-and-white ponies, rode the boys nine and ten years old, fully prepared to engage the enemy.

At a signal from one of the chiefs, a band of cavalry broke from the rear and thundered to the fore, two hundred men nearly naked, riding their horses savagely. Then, to the surprise of the watchers, each man, keeping one leg wrapped about the saddletree, leaned far down on the right flank of his galloping horse, leaned under the neck and fired a salute from an old flintlock rifle.

Before the crowd could respond, the three thousand reined in their horses, slowed them to a walk, and with the sun exploding on their tired and dusty faces, broke into the song of their nation—a moving chant which told of far mountains—and their voices filled the morning air.

The first decision reached by Ketchum and the commissioners was a sensible one. They convened with Mercy, Zendt, Strunk and Bridger, and asked, “How many Indians have we on our hands?”

“I’d say about fourteen thousand,” Mercy replied.

“And how many horses?”

“Maybe thirty thousand,” Zendt estimated.

“Impossible,” Ketchum growled.

“Couldn’t be less than twenty-seven thousand,” Bridger said.

“We can’t feed that many horses,” Ketchum wailed. “What can we do?”

Mercy told the commissioners, “When I visited the Cheyenne a month ago I found them camped south of Horse Creek. About thirty-five miles down the Platte. Big meadows, good grass.”

The commissioners asked Bridger what he thought of the place, but he had not come that way. Strunk said, “Enough grass down there to feed sixty thousand.” Ketchum looked skeptical.

So the decision was announced that all Indians plus a negotiating team would head southeast along the Platte to more adequate pasturage, and the vast assemblage prepared to make the move, which all approved. One hundred and seventy soldiers would go along, leaving a handful to guard the fort that night. But before they left, there was an auspicious sign. Chiefs Broken Thumb and White Antelope walked on foot to the camp of the suspicious Shoshone, where the former said, “Brothers, we have been at war too long. Our braves did wrong when they killed your people one moon past, and we offer you our friendship.”