The Battle of Little Big Sheep was a battle that showed the superiority of the multiple-shot weapon over the single-shot one. However, the Battle of the Black Hills was also a war that confirmed one very important military rule: "the enemy of your enemy is your friend!"
Well, the beginning of these events was laid by the "Black Hills gold rush", when the number of gold diggers in He-Zapa or in the Black Hills exceeded fifteen thousand people and continued to grow every day. As a result, the situation in the area escalated to the limit and individual attacks by the Indians on them escalated into a real war, called by the whites "The War for the Black Hills."
At first, the US government tried to simply buy Indian lands, but it was not possible to agree, since most of the Indians did not hide their indignation. It got to the point that one of the Dakotas named Little Big Man, who represented the leader, pounded Mad Horse, during negotiations with the Winchester in his hands, stepped forward and shouted that he would kill all the pale-faced if they tried to steal his land. His words greatly aroused the Sioux, and only the intervention of the Young Man Fearing His Horses prevented the bloodshed. However, negotiations with the Indians were thwarted. The Chiefs of Spotted Tail and Red Cloud visited Washington again and refused to sell the Black Hills for the money they were offered, that is, for six million dollars with payment of the entire amount over fifteen years, and offered their own price. Chieftain Red Cloud demanded that the next seven generations of Dakotas be supplied with livestock, food, and even "pepper for the elderly." Then he demanded a light horse-drawn cart and a team of six working oxen for every adult male. In turn, Spotted Tail demanded that all of this be supplied to the Indians "as long as the Sioux exist." Although the two chiefs were in constant rivalry with each other, when it came to tribal interests, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail always stood together and, if they wanted something, they stood their ground. It turned out that the red-skinned savages offered to pay them no less than forty million dollars! Whereas the entire territory of the Wild West, from the east of the Mississippi and Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, the United States bought from Napoleon in 1803 for only fifteen million! And then, in general, an insignificant plot of already paid land and suddenly such prices ?!
Then, on December 6, 1875, the US government issued an ultimatum to the Indians, which expired on January 31, 1876. According to it, they had to first register, and then go to the reservations prepared for them. Otherwise, they were declared enemies, to whom it was allowed to use forceful methods of influence. Messengers were dispatched to the Indians' winter camps. But it was impossible to roam in the cold, so only a few obeyed the order, and most of the Sioux and Cheyenne did not budge. It turned out that the Indians simply ignored the government's ultimatum, so Washington decided to force them to accept it by force. On January 18, a ban was issued to sell weapons and ammunition to the Indians. And already on February 8, the troops on the border received an order from the military department to prepare for a military campaign.
However, the punitive expedition, which began in the spring of 1876, could not achieve its goals, since the soldiers failed to overtake the Indians. Therefore, the whole calculation was for the summer campaign, which was planned in a much more serious way. On Indian territory, the army had to advance in three large columns, from different directions, in order to defeat the Indians once and for all and force them to move to the reservations. Colonel John Gibbon came from the west, General Alfred Terry from the east, and General George Crook from the south.
The essence of the war was that the US troops pursued Indian tribes, moving along with women and children. Moreover, they tried to attack small camps and did not disdain to kill women and children, which caused a massive retreat of the Indians of different tribes, involuntarily united into one large nomad camp in the south of Montana, led by the High Priest of the Dakota Tatanka-Iyotake.
However, many of the Prairie Indians in this confrontation supported not the Indians, but the whites. So several Shoshone tribal leaders, led by the leader Wasaki, decided that it was better to submit to the whites than to fight against them. Urai, the chief of the Utes, stated bluntly that he liked the way the pale-faced people lived. A hospitable man, he did not hesitate to treat guests to drinks and cigars. Back in 1872, he sold a significant portion of his land to the US government and was now receiving an annual pension of $ 1,000 from him.
Guadeloupe, the leader of the Caddo tribe, suddenly also felt a great attraction to civilization. He supplied the United States army with scout scouts, because he believed that it was not so much the reds with the pale faces that they were fighting, but the nomads and sedentary people (what a wise man, however, he understood the essence of the conflict of cultures and civilizations!). And since his Kaddo tribe belonged to the culture of farmers, this automatically brought him closer to the people of the white race and made him hate nomads.
The Crow also supplied an army of excellent scouts, but their motive was different: an old feud with the Dakota, for the sake of defeating which they were even ready to curry favor with the palefaces.
Their leader, Many Feats, advised his soldiers to help the whites in their war against the Sioux, because "When the war is over, the leaders of the soldiers will remember the help that we will now provide them!"
The Pawnees supplied white scouts for the same reasons as the Crow, but it cost them dearly. In 1873, a group of Pawnee Indians was taken by surprise by a large squad of Sioux while hunting. White soldiers rushed to the aid of their allies, but were late: they had already lost only 150 people killed, and the Indians killed their leader himself. The same Vasaki also suffered from the Sioux. Back in 1865, 200 Sioux raided his summer camp on the Sweet Water River and stole about 400 horses. Wasaki led a detachment to repulse them, but the Shoshone lost this battle. And the eldest son Vasaki Sioux was killed and scalped right in front of him.
All these mutual strife only played into the hands of General Crook, who never dreamed of successfully conducting this campaign with only white soldiers, since, based on his experience, he knew very well that only Indians could track down Indians on the prairie. No white man is capable of doing what an Indian could do and pursuing animals and people so magnificently.
After all, an Indian scout, by the dust remaining in the air, could determine whether it was left by a herd of buffalo or an enemy combat detachment. By the obscure prints of hooves and moccasins on the grass, he could establish both the intentions and the number of the enemy detachment, as well as long ago he went on a campaign, and where he was going. By imitating the singing of birds or the cries of animals, they warned each other about danger. In addition, the scouts were a full-fledged fighting squad and masters of swift attacks and stealing of enemy horses.
Therefore, as soon as General Crook received the order to speak, he immediately turned to the Shoshone for support and immediately received it. Meanwhile, the commander of the third squadron, Colonel John Gibbon, with only 450 soldiers, moved east from Fort Ellis in southern Montana, but first met with the Crow leaders at the agency on the Yellowstone River, and delivered the following speech to them: “I came here that would start a war with the Sioux. The Sioux are our common enemies, they have killed both whites and Crow for a long time. And so I came to punish them. If the Crow want a war with the Sioux, then the time has come. If the Crow want the Sioux to no longer send their military units to their lands, if they want them not to kill more of their men, then now is the time for that. If they want to avenge the murdered Crow, then the time has come! Naturally, the young Crow were inspired by this speech and thirty people immediately joined Gibbon, while the rest promised to approach General Crook in two months.
Already in early June, Crook set up camp and built an ammunition depot on Goose Creek, a tributary of the Language River near the Wyoming-Montana border. It was there that he received a warning from the Sioux leader Tachunko Vitko: "Any soldier who crosses the River of Languages and moves north will be killed."
Such a warning had to be taken into account, but now General Crook knew exactly where to look for these elusive Sioux, and decided to cross the river as soon as the Indian scouts approached him. And on June 14, 176 Crow warriors arrived at his camp at once, along with the leaders of the Magic Crow, Old Crow and Kind Heart. And after another day, a replenishment of 86 Shoshone came to him, along with the leader Washaki and his two sons.
One of the officers who served under General Crook later said: “Long rows of gleaming spears and well-groomed firearms heralded the arrival of our long-awaited Shoshone allies. The Shoshone galloped towards the main headquarters, then turned around and, surprising everyone with their skillful dressage of horses, moved forward. No warriors of civilized armies moved so beautifully. With exclamations of surprise and delight, this barbaric platoon of harsh warriors greeted their former enemies, and today's friends - the Crow. Our general rode ahead to look at them in all their ceremonial regalia of eagle feathers, brass plaques and beads. And when they were ordered to move one by one to the right, they moved like a precise clockwork, and with the dignity of real veterans."
Its forces now numbered 1,302 men: 201 infantry, 839 cavalry, and 262 Indian scouts. On the same evening, he arranged a council with the officers and Indian leaders. Washaki and his Crow allies asked permission to be allowed to do their own thing in this war with the Sioux, and the general willingly gave them complete leeway.
This meeting soon ended, as the whites decided that the Shoshone warriors had traveled 60 miles, and therefore they needed a rest. But they decided to prepare for war in their usual way, which meant that they would dance at night!
The “dance vigil” began with a monotonous howl of shouts and screams, all of which were accompanied by pierced ears and booming drum beats. This attracted soldiers and officers from all over the camp to their camp, who were free from guard duty and came running to watch such an amazing action. And they saw Indians sitting near small fires, and they swayed from side to side with their leader and sang monotonously. It was impossible to distinguish individual words in these singing, but the impression it produced was mesmerizing, as was their swaying itself. The "night of dancing" ended only at dawn, when Crook and his sleepy soldiers and Indian allies together withdrew from the camp, crossed the River of Languages and headed northwest, into Sioux territory. The Indian scouts drove forward and came back shortly after noon and said that they had found traces of a large Sioux camp and another large herd of buffalo, which the Sioux had frightened off.
Meanwhile, Crook's detachment stopped at the Rosebud River, where he made a halt in a large lowland, similar to an antique amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by hills, and on the fourth by a stream. The soldiers were ordered to unsaddle the horses and let them graze, waiting for the approach of the lagging part of the column. Some of the soldiers were stationed on one side of the stream, and the other on the opposite. To the north, a ridge of low cliffs rose, further there was a chain of low mountains, leading to the dining hill. From the plain, what was happening at these heights and beyond them, of course, it was impossible to see. Chief Washaki and the other Crow chiefs were convinced that this was where the enemies were hiding, while Crook's people, suspecting nothing, rested on a completely open plain, and even separated by a stream. The general himself believed that the Sioux camp was somewhere nearby, and he only needed to find and destroy it. However, his Native American allies told him that Crazy Horse was too experienced a warrior to make a target out of his camp and that he most likely wanted to lure the whites into a trap. So the Washaki and the Crow chiefs ordered their warriors to take up positions on the mountains to the north, and sent scouts over the hills to see if any enemies were hiding there. Less than half an hour later, they galloped back, shouting: “Siu! Sioux! Many Sioux!”, And one soldier was seriously wounded. Shots rang out as the vanguard of the Sioux galloping after them stumbled upon the army outposts. Then the Indians, as if out of the ground, arose both on the western and northern hills, and they galloped, hiding behind the groats of their horses.
It turned out that only part of Crook's army was ready to join the battle, and those were the Shoshone and Crow warriors. They were not afraid of the numerical superiority of the Sioux, and immediately launched a counterattack. Meanwhile, in the first attack alone, fifteen hundred Sioux participated, while Mad Horse kept about two and a half thousand warriors in reserve, who hid behind the hills to strike at the disorganized and then pursue the retreating ones. But it so happened that the Shoshone and Crow managed to stop his warriors five hundred yards from the main forces of Crook, and held them back until he organized a strong enough defense. Then he sent his units forward to support the Indian allies, and placed all the other soldiers in favorable positions. As for Washaki, he not only skillfully commanded his warriors, but also saved Captain Guy Henry, wounded in the face by a bullet and lying on the ground unconscious. Sioux galloped to him to remove the scalp from him. But then Washaki came to the officer's aid and, together with a Shoshone named Little Tail and his other warriors, defended Captain Henry until the soldiers reached them and carried him to the camp.
Sioux attacks followed one after another and each time the scouts beat them off. Some of them dismounted and fired at them. Others, on the other hand, rushed into the thick of the battle, where the Indians fought the Indians with tomahawks, spears and knives, so that all the bushes of wild roses that covered the entire valley were trampled and stained in mud and blood. Many Crow and Shoshone were so carried away in pursuit of the enemy that they were too far away from their main forces and began to return, and the Sioux, in turn, began to pursue them.
Meanwhile, General Crook, apparently unaware of the great superiority of the enemy, shortly after noon ordered Captain Mills to direct his main forces north up the Rosebud River to attack the Sioux camp, which he believed was only a few miles away. Crook hoped that this would distract the attention of the Indians, and then he would send help to Mills and the battle would be won. However, contrary to his expectations, the enemy not only did not leave positions, but, on the contrary, attacked its center, weakened by the departure of Mills' soldiers. Crook quickly realized his mistake and sent messengers to bring him back. Fortunately, Mills quickly figured out what to do, and, leading his people out of the canyon, described a semicircle along the plain located on a hill, after which, returning to the battlefield, attacked the main forces of the Sioux from the rear, taking them by surprise. Seeing that they were surrounded, the Sioux Indians galloped into the prairie, leaving the white people in confusion at this strange manner of their so lightning crumble and disappear.
The general could have celebrated the victory, since the battlefield remained with him, but in reality this battle was his defeat, because the tired and wounded soldiers of Crook were not able to continue the battle, much less to pursue the Indians. They were scattered over a large area, used up almost twenty-five thousand rounds, but at the battle site they found only the corpses of thirteen killed Sioux! Crook himself had irrecoverable losses of 28 people, including Indian scouts, and 56 people seriously wounded. All this forced him to return to his base camp at Goose Creek, which he did the next day, that is, he finished the whole thing where he started! And it should be noted that if it were not for the Indian allies of the pale-faced, then … this clash could have turned out to be an even more difficult defeat for him than what was expected of General Custer a few days later!
And in this case, the Americans made the right conclusion from the experience of this war and actively attracted to their side those who, for some reason, are ready to fight for their interests with their own people! However, both the British and the Germans in Europe and on the territory of the USSR did this, in a word, this is a worldwide and very effective practice, which no one should forget today!
