MACKENZIE'S LAST FIGHT WITH THE CHEYENNES

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

By the late Captain John G. Bourke, 3rd Cavalry, USA, in US Army Recruiting News.
(continued from last issue)

Anzi, a Shoshone, was shot through the intestines; our surgeons said there was no hope of saving him - all that could be done was to give him as much whiskey as he wanted, with a trifle of morphine. His thirst was wonderful - the more given, the more he wanted; the medical panniers were liberally drawn upon for his benefit and to his great satisfaction. Finding no more to come, he rolled out of his travois and was assisted to the back of a pony, which he rode all day. Going back on the doctor's predictions, he returned across the mountains to his people, nearly 200 miles of travel; when I was at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877, he was still living, though his friends told me by no means as well as before the terrible wound.

The remainder of the march back to the supply camp was almost featureless. One of our wounded, a brave soldier, Alexander McFarland, died November 28th, and the same day we had to face another rather stiff snowstorm with the usual polar breeze. General Crook, Colonel Dodge and Colonel E.F. Townsend of the infantry and artillery, had made a forced march to join us, overcoming every obstacle of cutting wind, driving snow and frozen trail, marching almost continuously night and day, until the head of our column was sighted, when they took the back train to the supply camp.

The commanding general's telegram to the War Department announcing Mackenzie's fight contains the following paragraph:

"I cannot too highly commend his brilliant achievements and the gallantry of the troops of his command. This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as those Cheyennes were not only their bravest warriors, but have been the head and front of most of the raids and deviltry committed in this (part of the) country."

In his reply, Lieutenant General P. H. Sheridan said:

"It gives me great pleasure to transmit to you the following dispatch from the General of the Army (William T. Sherman), to which I add my own congratulations.

"Please convey to Generals Crook and Mackenzie my congratulations, and assure them that we highly appreciate the services of our brave officers and men now fighting the hostiles in the most inhospitable regions of our continent. I hope that their efforts this winter will result in complete success, and that our troops will hereafter be spared the necessity of these hard winter campaigns."

(Editor's note: These telegrams do not seem to be in the printed records; but Captain Bourke evidently had access to and probably made copies of them. They agree with the well-known sentiments of Sherman, Sheridan and Crook at that time.)

Thanksgiving Day, November 30, 1876, was devoted to the mortuary services of all our dead except Lieutenant McKinney, whose body was enclosed in a pine box and forwarded in charge of Lieutenant O.L. Wieting, 23rd Infantry, to Memphis, Tenn. Graves were excavated on the summit of a low terrace and arranged side by side. There was no ritual, chant, peal of organ or sad refrain of cathedral bells; but more tenderly imposing than all these was the funeral procession of over 600 weather-beaten veterans headed by Generals Crook and Mackenzie, Colonels Dodge and Townsend and Major George A. Gordon.

With members of their staffs and hundreds of savage allies, these officers moved with measured tread to the graves, and halted there while extracts from the Book of Common Prayer were read. The usual funeral salute was fired, then the bugles sounded "taps", and our heroes were left to their last sleep undisturbed. The expedition then worked its way over to the Belle Fourche and the country at the extreme head of the Little Missouri. On December 1, Sergeant Patterson, of Captain Hemphill's company, 4th Cavalry, was killed by his horse slipping under him on icy ground, the shock rupturing a blood vessel, causing instant death.

On December 3, after full consultation with Crook, our Shoshone guides decided to return home and look after their people, being still apprehensive that some great disaster had overtaken one of their villages, afterward proven to be the case. Our parting with them was such as would take place between brothers bound together by the ties of dangers overcome and elements defied together. The sick and wounded, with the horses beginning to play out, were ordered back to Fort Fetterman under command of Major George A. Gordon, an officer whose memory will not face among his comrades so long as gallantry shall be held in honor, or general wit and good fellowship be looked upon as worthy qualities in a soldier.

Scenes of distress and discomfort were frequent along the line of march. Almost every day a fierce blizzard paid its respects to us, and nearly every night saw us bivouac in some poor spot where water was scarce, alkaline and muddy; fuel scanty and poor - often nothing but greasewood and sagebrush. As a precaution we boiled the water taken from water holes, but made as little use of it as possible. There was no lack of food as the pack trains carried sufficient rations, and more ample supplies were always back with the wagon trains.

Our principal anxiety was forage for the animals; even with all the wounded and every broken-down horse culled out and 100 Shoshones ordered back to their homes, grain - 30,000 pounds a day - was needed, as the ground was covered with snow, and grass not always accessible. About 500,000 pounds had been accumulated at Fort Fetterman, as much at Cantonment Reno, and 300,000 pounds were to move every fortnight from the railroad to Fetterman, awaiting such orders as might be sent; but dispatches received early in December from Major Calch H. Carlton, 3rd Cavalry, commanding fort Fetterman, were decidedly discouraging. Severe snow and windstorms had blocked the Union Pacific Railroad, filled Medicine Bow Cap and made wagon travel almost impossible.

The cavalry companies left at Fetterman were dismounted and the horses put in carts, wagons and every kind of wheeled vehicles to hurry forage to the front; yet the supply was inadequate, and it seemed as if the bones of many of our houses might be left along the trail. Our men had no cause for complaint; my notes record that on December 9th, 75 elk, deer, antelope and big jack rabbits were killed - there were occasional references to porcupine, altogether enough to make toothsome additions to the components of the army ration. Frank Grouard, Ben Rowland and others helped me as much as possible in gathering vocabularies of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Pawnee and Sioux languages.

I do not credit the story set afloat by Richard F. Burton, the English traveler, to the effect that the Arapaho dialect was so meager that for purposes of conversation members of that tribe had to rely on the sign language. That statement was quoted by E.B. Tylor in his Early History of Mankind, a work I had with me; this is therefore, a proper time to refute it. A very brief examination satisfied me that the Arapaho tongue was copious, and except for its guttural and nasal modulation, would not be without beauty and softness.

Following upon our trail, the Cheyennes made two attacks upon careless parties of miners; in the first instance no harm was done, but the results in the second were more serious. With a false sense of security because of their near proximity to our camp, 11 miners went to sleep without posting sentinels at the coal measure where Major Furey's blacksmiths had been at work during the day shoeing the wagon train mules. The attacking party of five Cheyennes was bold in its onslaught; a volley was poured in among the sleeping miners, none of whom was hurt except one brained with his own ax, but all horses, blankets, guns, ammunition and provisions left behind by the miners in their flight, fell into the hands of the Cheyennes. [ to be continued ]