A Winter Campaign in Wyoming and Montana, Commonly Known as the "Dull Knife Fight," November 25-26, 1876

By the Late Captain John G. Dourke, 3rd Cavalry, U. S. A. in U. S. Army Recruiting News.

(Continued from last issue)

The grim bosom of the Big Horn Mountains parted to admit the column into a deep canyon whose vertical walls had been carved into turrets and battlements by erosion and the elements. Hidden by these lofty pinnacles, the coquettish moon played hide and seek, now bathing the carbine barrels and the metal work of bridles in an effulgence of light, and then deserting us in darkness so opaque that the gentler glitter of kindly stars seemed greatly magnified. All night long we groped our way, floundering, slipping and struggling over smooth knolls of glassy surface, making very slow progress but still advancing.

No word was spoken above a whisper, nor a match lighted; the soldier's faithful friend, his pipe, was not allowed to leave the saddle bags. Most stringent orders were given that the columns should keep closed up, and as fast as each company had worked its way across an unusually difficult ravine, it passed word to the front, and the location of the company next behind it. The Indian scouts manifested much greater anxiety than the white troops, probably because they better understood the gravity of the situation.

They had calculated that the march to the hostile village could readily be made during the night, but none knew better than they that not a moment was to be wasted. If our attack could be made in the earliest hour of the morning, taking the enemy completely by surprise, the smaller loss would be on our side. But should we be delayed and coming daylight disclose our approach to vigilant and awakened savages, the percentage of loss to be reasonably expected would be reckoned only by the amount of ammunition the hostile Cheyennes could expend in the contest.

Our attention was so closely given to the task of working a way across the precipitous ravines that seamed and gashed the bottom of the canyon, down which the waters of the stream rippled along its rocky bedcalled as best we could determine, Willow Creekand which on accounut of the rippling was not frozen into solid ice, that our dull ears did not hear the ominous thumping of the Cheyenne war drums faithfully but feebly re-echoed by the towering walls which hemmed us in. The faces of the Indian scouts remained stolid and impassive, but every movement of muscle and sinew betrayed a frenzy of suppressed excitement.

Nudging me with his elbow, one of them pointed with his lips up the canyon in a way peculiar to savages;

there was no doubt of his meaning. We were within gunshot of our quarry not asleep as we hoped to find them, but in full possession of their senses and dancing a great war dance in celebration of some recent victory. Throwing ourselves on the ground, we heard with startling distinctness the thumping of the drums, the sleepy intonations of the tired-out medicine men and warriors, and the patter of languid feet; the dance was almost over, but dawn had nearly come.

There we lay, breathing softly lest a cough or sneeze should betray our presence dreading the impatient champing of tired, almost frozen horses, or an echo awakened by the carbine of some clumsy soldier falling to the ground. Sharp Nose, the Arapaho chief, with flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, moved nervously on his wiry pony from point to point, looking the incarnation of the spirit of war. All the discontent and disquietude engendered during that cold and anxious night came to a head at that moment; our eyes nervously scanned the battlements behind which hostile sharpshooters might soon be taking position and it might be our misfortune to fight our way back.

Then came a low Hist ! from the front where the Indian scouts had massed, impatiently waiting the signal to dash forward not long in coming. The rear-most company was reported up, every man in his place, every horse pressing on the bit. Anything was preferable to another moment of suspense; the noise of the Cheyenne drums had ceased, and Gallop was the order. I heard nothing more all was rush, clamor and shock of organized, pitiless war; it was the rush of a mighty river, the roar of a giant engine, but each drop of water knew its destined channel, and every part of the machine the function it had to perform.

Back from the walls of the canyon, repeated many-fold by the echo, sounded the sharp words of command, the neighing and plunging of excited steeds, the clatter and clangor of arms, ear-piercing shrieks and yells of savage allies, their blood-curdling war songs and the weird croon of the flageolets of the Pawnee medicine men riding boldly at the head of their people. The Shoshones followed Tom Cosgrove and Lieutenant Schuyler; Frank North led the Pawnees, two detachments on the right and left flanks, while down the center thundered the solid column of Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos under Lieutenant William Philo Clark, a brave and brilliant cavalry leader, and Lieutenant Hayden DeLany, who participated in many pitched battles before gaining his cadetship, yielding the palm of valor and coolness to no man in the grand old Army of the Tennessee even when U. S. Grant was its commander.

Within a couple of hundred yards the canyon widened to form an amphitheatre, making room for our battalions to gallop front into line before sweeping across a small plateau alongside the village, whose scores of lodges hugged the shelter of the stream bed. As our soldiers, red and white, rushed in at one end of the village, the frightened Cheyenneshalf naked from their beds, with nothing in their hands but rifles and belts of ammunitionwere escaping from the other. In the exultation of the moment our men forgot the cold, sleeplessness, and hunger of the two previous days; and the rocks resounded with their cheers and shouts of derision.

Without answering a word, the Cheyennes hurried their women and children to places of comparative safety farther up the flanks of the mountains, then crawling into sheltered nooks and crevices, awakened the echoes with the sharp crack of rifles and the ominous ping of bullets seeking their victims. Under cover of this fire, they arranged for the safety of their households, but reserved further demonstrations until a few bold youngsters stealthily creeping back through the early morning mist, could attempt to drive out of our clutches the herd of several thousand ponies, hundreds of which were already enveloped by our lines.

Several of their warriors had already been killed or wounded trying to save this precious stock; one of the most vividly remembered episodes of the whole fight is the balking of my horse at the stark and stiffening body of a dying Cheyenne boy who lay directly across my path, shot through the neck while bravely trying to stampede the ponies in the very teeth of our scouts. His lariat was wound closely around his neck; no doubt he had slept with it around or beside him, ready to spring out of his bed and rope the first pony he might encounter in an emergency like this, yielding up his young life to a sense of duty worthy of any Spartan.
 

Crawling in behind rocks and bluffs, dodging from tree to tree and sneaking back among the tepees of the village, the bold, cunning Cheyennes were making ready to fight for their herds and drive us back down the canyon. The mist had lifted and the morning light was filtering down the canyon, when the enemy's movements were detected; and General Mackenzie, realizing that not a moment was to be lost, ordered Lieutenant John A. McKinney, with his Company M, 4th cavalry, to charge into the place where they appeared to be concentrating. Never faltering an instant, that brave young officer charged across the plateau and down upon the Cheyennes, until he came to a gully with cut banks which completely checked his advance.

As his little command was wheeling by fours to the right to pass this obstacle, a small body of hostile sharpshooters concealed in and around the gully, and almost under the bellies of their horses, opened a murderous fire; McKinney fell struck by six bullets, six of his men were wounded and a number of horses shot. The company was thrown into confusion and several of the sets of fours turned in retreat. Observing the critical turn of affairs, and Captain John M. Hamilton's company of the 5th cavalry being at hand, he ordered it to the rescue, Major G. A. Gordon 5th cavalry, accompanying this charge with some of the 4th and 5th not belonging to Hamilton.

The Cheyennes were unprepared for this second onslaught which, vigorously pressed, drove them back in confusion. Captain Wirt Davis, 4th cavalry, coming up on Hamilton's flank, followed in after the Cheyennes, boldly attacking them in the rocks and gullies where they tried to make a stand. This was the hottest part of the conflict, both Davis' and Hamilton's men having hand-to-hand fights; twenty of the bravest Cheyenne warriors were killed, eight of their bodies falling into our hands. From all sides the enemy began closing in upon Davis, and would certainly have wiped out both him and Hamilton, except for the masterly judgment shown by Lieutenant W. S. Schuyler, 5th cavalry, who ordered his Shoshone scouts to make their way to the summit of a very steep crag which commanded the village and plateau, and was the key point to the whole position.

Exultant yells from the Shoshones proved that they recognized the importance of their success; and about half of them began a demoniacal dance of triumph to the music of the Cheyenne war drum captured on the ground where it lay just outside the village. Shrieks of joy almost drowned the roar of the volleys which their more sagacious but not more bloodthirsty allies were pouring in upon the discomfitted Cheyennes. Mackenzie realized that the day was won, but promptly took every measure necessary to secure the full results of the victory.

Captain William C. Hemphill, 4th cavalry, and Hamilton, of the 5th, were ordered to seize and hold two high knolls on our right, to prevent any portion of the enemy from slipping in behind that flank and annoying us by a cross-fire from the rear. Captain A. B. Taylor and Lieutenant Homer W. Wheeler, 5th cavalry, made a gallant charge lengthwise through the village, forcing out the last lurking sharpshooter and occupying the small fringe of timber just beyond the village, while Frank North and the Pawnees darted in under cover of Taylor's movement and filled the village itself. Captain Gerald Russell and Henry W. Wessells, with their companies of the 3rd cavalry, covered the line between Hamilton and Taylor, while clusters of Arapaho and Sioux marksmen held every clump of bushes, each projecting rock and all eminences along our whole front. Three companies of the 4th cavalry, one of them McKinney's were held in reserve behind projecting knolls a short distance in the rear.

No one saw better than the Cheyennes that they had lost the fight; and that to retire from our immediate front with their women and children would precipitate an attack and entail further loss. So they held onto their natural fortification in the high rocks, from which we could not dislodge them, until nightfall, and then withdrew with their families, their dead and wounded to some locality considered impregnable to assault. Our men were preemptorily ordered to lie down under cover and waste no ammunition; occasional volleys from both sides resulted in only trifling losses. There was no great danger to the troops, shelter being adequate except in cases of aides-de-camp, orderlies and officers reporting for instructions, who in moving from one flank to the other, if not protected by the cover of a favorable ravine, were compelled to ride full tilt, exposed to a more generous share of leaden attentions from Cheyenne sharpshooters.

Disregarding orders, one of our soldiers lifted his head and shoulders above cover; and had hardly done so before a Cheyenne rifleman drew bead and put a bullet through his jaws. Knocked senseless by the blow he fell forward, still remaining on his feet against the bank in front of him; blood from the wound poured down his throat, choking him to death. Had he fallen head downward, the blood would have flowed out of the wound and his life probably saved, as the wound was not necessarily fatal.
 

To dispel the monotony, numbers of Cheyennes rode out under the fire of our Shoshones and others, hurling contempt and defiance at them and then returned to their own lines. There was something peculiarly irritating in this to the Shoshones, between whom and the Cheyennes, special hatred seemed to exist. The canyon became a perfect bedlam with the echoing and reechoing of rifle volleys and the yells and counter yells of exasperated savages; but through it all, the Cheyennes would dash about on their war horses, chanting their songs and bearing charmed lives, whose frail threads the fickle fates disdained to cut.
(To be continued)