On May 15, 1864, the Cheyenne leaders met in council to discuss Bent's report. As expected, the Dog Soldiers argued for war. These attacks by the whites must be avenged. Crow Chief and Raccoon urged restraint, even though their people had suffered most. White Antelope and Old Little Wolf agreed - it was better to negotiate a peace than subject the people to a long war with the soldiers. The wisest course would be to move to the Arkansas and join Black Kettle's Eaters and Lean Bear's Southern Hill people.
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That day, the Dog Soldiers broke off from the main camp and moved north toward the Platte River Road. Whatever the others decided, the Dog Men would attack whites wherever they found them.
George stayed with the Hill band, along with the refugees from Crow Chief and Raccoon's bands, and moved south, away from the soldiers. But hardly had the combined bands begun their journey when news came that Chief Lean Bear, brother of the renowned Dog Soldier chief Bull Bear, had been shot down and killed by bluecoats on Ash Creek. Runners provided the details:
On May 16, the villages of Lean Bear and Black Kettle, 250 lodges in all, had been camped on Ash Creek, only thirty miles south of the Hill people on the Smoky Hill River. That morning Cheyenne hunters reported the approach of one hundred horse soldiers pulling two cannons. Lean Bear and Black Kettle urged their people to remain calm. After all, Lean Bear had led a peace delegation to Washington in 1863 and received a medal from the Great Father, Abraham Lincoln. And both Lean Bear and Black Kettle had wintered near Fort Lamed and enjoyed friendly relations with the traders and soldiers. True, they had heard of the fight at Fremont's Orchard, but the Dog Soldiers were known for their warlike ways and for getting into trouble. Surely the whites knew that the Dog Soldiers were an independent band exiled from the Cheyenne nation. There was no good reason for the army to attack peaceful villages.
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Lean Bear, his silver medal prominent around his neck, rode out to meet the soldiers. He warned his excited warriors to stay back; a show of force might frighten the whites and start a fight. Alone, he rode forward to shake hands with the officer and show him the papers given to him during his peace trip to Washington. As he neared the soldiers, now in line of battle, the officer shouted to his men. Suddenly, the troops opened fire. Lean Bear fell to the ground wounded. While he was on his back, bluecoats swarmed around him, firing. The chief never had a chance. Another Cheyenne leader, Star, also fell wounded. Soldiers rode over him, too, riddling his body with bullets. Then came the heavy boom of cannons. Canister shot kicked up dust in front of the mounted warriors, though the ricocheting balls did little damage. The warriors returned the fire, arcing arrows into the soldier line. Dust and smoke shrouded the battle, allowing small parties of warriors to charge and harass the bunched and confused soldiers. Two bluecoats fell with arrow wounds; five other were killed by pistol and rifle fire.
In the chaos of battle, Black Kettle rode in, shouting, "Don't make war with the whites!" But the fighting went on for hours, until finally the soldiers broke off and retreated to Fort Lamed. Besides Lean Bear and Star, one other warrior died in the fighting and many more were wounded. Despite these losses, the Cheyenne had managed to capture fifteen army horses, complete with saddles, bridles, and saddlebags!
----- September 21 -----
George rejoined the village just as it returned to the Smoky Hill. A few days later, Black Kettle and the chiefs came in with news of their meeting in Denver with Evans and Chivington. Black Kettle could hardly contain his excitement. The whites had agreed to call off the war if his people moved over to Fort Lyon and surrendered to the fort's commander, Major Edward Wynkoop, whom the Cheyennes knew as Tall Chief. He had promised that no troops would harm them there.
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Bull Bear was not convinced, especially since the great village had been attacked even as the chiefs were negotiating peace. In Denver, Bull Bear had offered to join the soldiers and fight the Lakotas or anyone else who had "no ears to listen" to peace. He had said, "I am young and can fight. I have given my word to fight with the whites. My brother (Lean Bear) died in trying to keep peace with the whites. I am willing to die in the same way, and expect to do so."
But now Bull Bear felt betrayed; the white foxes could not be trusted. The Dog Soldiers would never submit to military authority. They would rather take their chances living free in their buffalo-rich home between the Smoky Hill and the Republican. Let the troops try to run the Dog Men like they did the peace bands.
Black Kettle continued to speak for peace, just as he had at Camp Weld. His opening statement there had impressed everyone:
We have come with our eyes shut, following [Wynkoop's] handful of men, like coming through the fire. All we ask is that we may have peace with the whites; we want to hold you by the hand. You are our father; we have been traveling through a cloud; the sky has been dark ever since the war began. These braves who are with me are all willing to do as I say. We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace. I want you to give all the chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies. I have not come here with a little wolf's bark, but have come to talk plain with you. We must live near the buffalo or starve. When we came here we came free, without any apprehension, to see you, and when I go home and tell my people and have taken your hand and the hands of all the chiefs here in Denver, they will feel well, and so will all the different tribes of Indians on the plains, after we have eaten and drunk with them.
----- November 29 -----
The next morning, November 29, just at sunrise, George stirred, still wrapped in a thick buffalo robe. Suddenly, he felt the rumble of hooves. Someone shouted, "Buffalo!" But other voices cried out, "Soldiers!" He jumped up and ran outside, wearing only his breechcloth. The cold morning air bit into his bare flesh, and the frost-covered sand stung his feet. The still half-hidden sun raked a deep orange light across the tipis, casting jagged shadows pointing toward the bluffs west of the village. Fully awake now, George looked southward down the dry creek bed and saw soldiers trotting in columns of four heading straight for the village. The troopers' blue-gray overcoats matched the pale morning sky. They were so close he could see the steam blowing from the horses' nostrils. More soldiers appeared on the bluffs and on the flats to the east. He looked toward Black Kettle's tipi and saw the garrison flag fluttering over his lodge, a small white flag tied beneath it. The chief shouted, "Don't be afraid! There is no danger! The soldiers will not hurt you!" George saw women and children running toward Black Kettle, as if the power of his presence would protect them from the approaching soldiers.
At the same time White Antelope attempted to quiet the frightened women and children, urging them not to run away. Then White Antelope advanced toward the troops, his arms outstretched. He and Black Kettle had brought the Cheyennes to Sand Creek, the people had trusted their judgment, and both had given their word that this was a safe place.
The troops dismounted and opened fire. Bullets ripped through the tipis with a staccato thumping like the sound of hailstones against lodgeskins.
George looked toward White Antelope. The chief shouted, "Soldiers no hurt me - soldiers my friends." Then he folded his arms across his chest and began singing his death song:
Nothing Lives forever,
Only the Earth and the Mountains
The troops fired a crashing volley, and White Antelope fell, cut down in a storm of lead.
George grabbed his weapons and ran for the high bluffs to the west of the village. Anger welled up in him. Black Kettle and White Antelope were peace chiefs. But White Antelope lay dead and Black Kettle stood directly in the path of the soldiers' charge. George thought him as good as dead.
As George ran west toward the bluffs, he joined up with ten men who hoped to find horses on the high ground. They scrambled up the bluffs and headed for the sand hills beyond. From this high point, George looked back toward the village. What he saw and heard horrified him. Soldiers galloped through the camp firing indiscriminately at women and children and those too old to run. Friends and family members ran upstream, many falling from exhaustion or wounds. Others burrowed into the soft sand to protect themselves from the soldiers' bullets. Shells burst above clumps of huddled people. Women screamed, soldiers shouted, bugles sounded, and over all roared the deafening crash of rifle fire and artillery.
Just then he saw soldiers riding hard toward him from the south. Here, on the open prairie away from the creek, there was no cover except for tufts of grass and sage. With the soldiers bearing down on them, his group split. George went with Little Bear, Spotted Horse, Big Bear, and Bear Shield and ran in a northeast direction back toward Dry Creek. There they might make a stand in the ravines and behind the high banks. Running hard, they made the creek just before the soldiers could ride them down. Sheltered by five-foot banks, the warriors turned their guns and bows on the enemy. The soldiers reined in their horses and drew back out of range.
George heard someone shouting. Not far downstream, he saw his friend Red Owl and a group of people digging into the sand. Red Owl called for George and the others to come over and join them; together they might hold off the soldiers. When George reached the trench carved into the creek bed at the base of the bank, he counted nineteen men, women, and children. Only the strongest and fastest had made it this far above the village. Many others, he could see, lay downstream in the sand, dead or wounded. Next to George a man bravely defended his wife and two daughters. George remembered: "He jumped out of the hole and ran towards the troops that were coming upon us, and as he came back into the hole he told me and his wife that he was killed." Blood gushed from the man's mouth and he fell face forward into the pit.
Spotted Horse realized they were all in a death trap. Soldiers were even now approaching from the opposite bank and would soon be in position to fire directly into their pit. George, too, recognized the danger. With Spotted Horse and Bear Shield, he scrambled from the hole. The others remained behind, too frightened to move. The three men ran downstream, dodging bullets as they went. George looked back to see soldiers on the bank pouring a steady fire into the position he had just left. He could hear the screams of the women and children and knew they would be slaughtered.
Then he saw Black Kettle. It seemed impossible, but the old chief was alive. Beneath an overhanging bluff he and others had dug a long trench. It was a strong defensive position. They had used their bare hands to form a protective mound of sand on the exposed side of the dugout.
George ran toward Black Kettle and safety. A few yards from the pit, however, a bullet slammed into his hip, knocking him forward and down into the trench. Stunned, he lay motionless in the dampness of the sand, pain shooting through his leg.
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On the high bluff overlooking the village Colonel John Milton Chivington sat his black horse. Next to him, watching the carnage below, stood Robert Bent. From this vantage point they could plainly see a six-by-twelve-foot American flag above Black Kettle's lodge. Even through the din of battle, Robert could hear the chief shouting for the people to gather around the flag. Then, as the soldiers charged toward the village, he heard Chivington yell, "Remember our wives and children murdered on the Platte and Arkansas!"
Only the day before, Robert and his father had been at the Purgatoire stockade. In mid-afternoon, Chivington and his command sur-prised and surrounded the ranch. Chivington herded the Bents - Mary and Rob Moore, William, and Robert - into the ranch house and placed them under arrest. An armed guard was posted at the doors and around the corral. The Bents were ordered to stay inside; anyone who attempted to leave would be shot. Presently, Chivington called Robert outside. His command needed a guide, one who knew the location of the Cheyenne village on Sand Creek. He had already pressed Jim Beckwourth into service, but now the old mountain man, reluctant to attack peaceful Cheyennes, claimed not to know the way. Chivington did not trust this black man who had lived among the Crows. Robert had no choice. He was already on the Fort Lyon payroll as a guide and interpreter. Chivington would brook no argument. The implication was unmistakable: Robert would guide or he would die.
Now here he was, on a bluff overlooking the village, watching as the soldiers attacked his mother's people and his brothers and sister. Chivington rode off toward the village. He ordered Robert to stay close by. The twenty-five-year-old Bent witnessed horrors he would never forget.
He saw five women run out and tear their clothes off to show their sex. As they begged for mercy, the soldiers shot them down. He saw a woman whose leg had been shattered by a shell fragment hold up her arm as protection from a saber-wielding soldier. The saber blow broke her arm. The woman rolled over and raised her other arm. The saber came down again, breaking that one, too. As she moaned in pain, the soldier looked down impassively, then rode off. He saw a group of women, huddled in a sand pit, send a six-year-old girl with a white flag toward the soldiers. The child had only walked a short way when the soldiers shot her. Then they turned their guns on the women and killed them all. He saw men, women, and children scalped and mutilated. He saw an unborn child cut from her mother's womb and deliberately laid beside her body. He saw infants killed in their mother's arms. He saw two soldiers stumble upon a baby hidden in a mound of sand. They drew their pistols and fired, then, dragging the child by an arm, yanked her out of the hole. He saw White Antelope dead, his genitals and ears cut off, and heard a soldier brag that he would make a tobacco pouch out of his scrotum. And he saw Charley taken prisoner, the soldiers looking for an excuse to shoot him.
When the shooting started early that morning, Little Bear, one of George's close friends, ran from the village to the upper sandpits, where George and Black Kettle had already found refuge. He later told George:
After leaving the others, I started to run up the creek bed in the direction taken by most of the fleeing people, but I had not gone far when a party of about twenty cavalrymen got into the dry bed of the stream behind me. They chased me up the creek for about two miles, very close behind me and firing on me all the time. Nearly all the feathers were shot out of my war bonnet, and some balls passed through my shield; but I was not touched. I passed many women and children, dead and dying, lying in the creek bed. The soldiers had not scalped them yet, as they were busy chasing those that were yet alive. . . . I ran up the creek about two miles and came to the place where a large party of the people had taken refuge in holes dug in the sand up against the sides of the high banks.
George looked up to see Little Bear jump into the pit. His friend looked frightful, his war bonnet in shreds and his shield riddled with bullet holes. But Little Bear had survived. Directly above Black Kettle's trench, soldiers thrust their guns over the bank and fired blindly into the creek bed. Warriors responded by arcing arrows up over the bank.
The soldiers were so close George could hear their orders, even their conversations. God he hated them, laughing as if they were on a hunting party and had cornered the game. All his life he had felt white arrogance, that smug superiority. But these soldiers were treating his people like animals. A bullet plowed into the sand just inches from his face. Enraged and numb to the awful pain in his hip, he jumped up and shouted in English, "Come on, you goddamn white sons of bitches, and kill me if you are a brave man."
Suddenly, high above them, an artillery shell exploded, raining lead balls and shell fragments. The soldiers had moved their cannons upstream. Two mountain howitzers were positioned on the east bank; two more were moved onto the bluffs to the west. George understood this new danger, as he himself had served such guns in the Confederate army. The soldiers, he knew, would now fire spherical case shot, hollow iron balls filled with lead musket balls and a bursting charge of gunpowder. Case shot was designed to inflict fearful damage on people, not things. Fired properly, the balls would burst directly above their targets and shower death below. The soldiers might also fire canister, tin cans filled with more than a hundred lead musket balls. At close range it was deadly. But here, beneath the bluffs and hidden in their trench with its sandy parapet, he thought his group was relatively safe from these shotgunlike charges. He worried more about the bursting shells and case shot. But these horse soldiers, pressed into service as artillerymen, were not well trained. He could see that their shots went wild and they cut their fuses too short. The sun now burned low in the western sky. If the people could hold out until dark, they might survive.
For those who were not well protected by deeply dug pits or who panicked and ran, death was certain. George could see around him the mangled bodies of men, women, and children who had taken shelter in shallow pits or who ran from their positions only to be struck down by the gauntlet of fire coming from both banks.
As night fell, the soldiers drew off. Only a few shots here and there broke the silence. Black Kettle looked about the trench. He could see most of his family. Nine nieces, ten sisters, and many cousins had been with him in the village. Some of them were here with him now, but his wife, Ar-no-ho-wok, Woman Here After, was not.IOI She lay some- where back toward the village, dead. He would go back for her. George wanted to accompany him, but the stiffness in his hip was too great. Black Kettle would have to go alone.
Cautiously, the chief moved downstream. Finding his way by starlight alone, his steps made no sound in the soft sand. He went among the frozen bodies, turning them and feeling their faces. The bodies had been stripped, and many had been scalped and mutilated. The soldiers had cut off fingers and ears to remove rings and other silver ornaments. He went on. As he approached the village, he saw more dark objects on the sand. His hands again moved across the corpses. Near where Ar-no-ho-wok fell, he saw movement. And then, he heard a moan and recognized his wife. She was alive. Blood from nine wounds stained her clothing and body. He gently picked her up and carried her on his back, working his way upstream.
George was waiting for him when he returned. It was time to leave. Black Kettle had seen the soldiers encamped at the village. They had formed a hollow square and built bonfires. Occasionally, nervous sentries fired blindly at sounds in the creek, fearing a counterattack by Cheyenne warriors. But the noises came mostly from Cheyenne rescue parties in search of the wounded. Scavenging coyotes, camp dogs, and wolves also frightened the soldiers, touching off flashes of gunfire.
The survivors slowly moved out of the pits and headed upstream. About half the people were wounded, and many were nearly naked, their clothing left behind as they fled the soldiers. George could walk, for no bones were broken, but he was stiff and sore. After a few miles, they began to meet men who had managed to reach the horse herds at the beginning of the attack. They had driven all the loose horses upstream, away from the fighting, and waited there until the shooting stopped. Then they had moved downstream until they met George and the other survivors. George's cousin was among the herders. The boy apologized for bringing only one horse but said that he had only one lariat. George gladly accepted the pony, but his hip was so painful he could not mount. Several men lifted him onto the animal's back.
The party straggled northeast toward the headwaters of the Smoky Hill, where the Dog Soldiers and other Cheyennes who had not surrendered were encamped. Finally, after about ten miles, they reached a sheltering ravine. They could go no farther. Women and children suffered terribly from their wounds and the cold. George would remember this place and that night:
That was the worst night I ever went through. There we were ... without any shelter whatever and not a stick of wood to build a fire with. Most of us were wounded and half naked; even those who had had time to dress when the attack came, had lost their buffalo robes and blankets during the fight. The men and women who were not wounded worked all through the night, trying to keep the children and the wounded from freezing to death. They gathered grass by the handful, feeding little fires around which the wounded and the children lay; they stripped off their own blankets and clothes to keep us warm, and some of the wounded who could not be provided with other covering were buried under piles of grass which their friends gathered, a handful at a time, and heaped up over them. That night will never be forgotten as long as any of us who went through it are alive. It was bitter cold, the wind had a full sweep over the ground on which we lay, and in spite of everything that was done, no one could keep warm. All through the night the Indians kept hallooing to attract the attention of those who had escaped from the village to the open plain and were wandering about in the dark, lost and freezing. Many who had lost wives, husbands, children, or friends, went back down the creek and crept over the battleground among the naked and mutilated bodies of the dead. Few were found alive, for the soldiers had done their work thoroughly; but now and then during that endless night some man or woman would stagger in among us, carrying some wounded person on their back.
George's group now numbered nearly a hundred. The wounded ones, especially the children, were too weak to even cry. All the people were hungry and cold. At last, with no one able to sleep, Black Kettle gave the word to move on. But some warriors mumbled that the old chief had no right to lead anymore. Still, the people stirred and finally climbed out of the ravine, even though dawn was hours away.
At daybreak, the sun struck their faces, bringing warmth and hope, the endless night finally over. Soon riders came from the Smoky Hill camps, men who had picketed their finest horses near their lodges in Black Kettle's village and had ridden for help soon after the first shots rang out. Now they brought horses loaded with blankets, buffalo robes, and food. George remembered that "people began to join us in little groups and parties. Before long we were all mounted, clothed, and fed, and then we moved at a better pace and with revived hope."
Late in the day, the people saw the first smoke of the Cheyenne villages, their long, tortured journey nearly at an end. As they entered the camps, frantic villagers besieged them, searching for loved ones. Some were joyously reunited. Others had their worst fears confirmed. George later described the terrible scene:
As we rode into that camp. . . everyone was crying, even the warriors and the women and children screaming and wailing. Nearly everyone present had lost some relations or friends, many of them in their grief were gashing themselves with their knives until the blood flowed in streams.
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