Crow scouts

Crow Scouts

Crow scouts visiting the Little Bighorn battlefield, circa 1913. From left to right; White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin, Curly and Goes Ahead. Joseph Medicine Crow explained the main reason for men like these to enlist. They scouted against a long time Indian enemy, "... who were now in the old Crow country, menacing and often raiding the Crows in their reservation camps."[1]:X
Active 1876 - 1879
Allegiance  United States of America
Branch United States Army
Type Indian scouts
Engagements

Great Sioux War

Commanders
Notable
commanders		 James H. Bradley, George A. Custer, Nelson A. Miles, Charles A. Varnum

Enlisted Crow Scouts were first used by the United States Army in 1876 during the Great Sioux War. Because the Crow tribe was peaceful with the Americans[2]:xi and in particular, because parts of the old Crow country was flooded with hostile Lakotas, Northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes (Northern Arapaho), the army was able to enlist Crow warriors to help track hostile Native Americans. Already in 1873, the Crows had called for U.S. military actions against the Indian invaders in the Crow reservation. They were just waiting to offer their expertise.[3]:106 A small group of Crow scouts witnessed General George A. Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow reservation. Many Crows served against the Nez Percés in 1877,[4]:55–56 and again in the Bannock War the next year.[4]:122 Crow scouts rode along with Assiniboines, Bannocks and Cheyennes during Colonel Nelson A. Miles search for Sitting Bull north of the Missouri in 1879.[4]:125 Some former scouts fought in the Crow War of 1887.[5]

Brief history of Indian allies with the whites

There is a long history of Indians helping the whites against other Indians.[4]:11–24 On the northern plains, Yankton, Yanktonai and Lakota Indians agreed to help the U.S. army during the Arikara War in 1823 as the first Indians of all.[6]:54 Osage scouts found Cheyenne chief Black Kettle's camp at the Washita River in 1868.[4]:61 The need for native scouts was apparent to commanders of the frontier army everywhere.[4]:59

The "Act to increase and fix the Military Peace Establishment of the United States" came into force on August 1, 1866.[4]:44 It allowed the army to enlist Indian scouts, as long as needed. The scouts earned the same as a cavalry soldier.[4]:44

An unused opportunity

The enlistment of Crow scouts could have started in 1866, when 250 Crows were ready to help Colonel Henry Carrington in the Powder River War against the Lakotas.[4]:38 The disputed area west of the Powder was Crow Indian treaty guaranteed land according to the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851),[7]:594 but buffalo hunting Lakotas had seized it and considered it there country.[8]:114 [9]:170 [10]:20–31

The situation of the Crows in the early 1870s

After 1868, the Crow tribe was living in the newly established Crow Indian reservation in the heart of the 1851 treaty area in Montana.[7]:1008 Already in 1870, the Crows objected to Sioux Indians taking horses from reservation camps between Bighorn River and Little Bighorn River.[11] Some Crows reported Lakotas hunting on the Bighorn in November 1871.[12]:43 Following a long conflict with a strong Sioux force at Pryor Creek in 1873, Crow chief Blackfoot declared, "The Sioux want to take our country, but we will not let them have it."[13]:124 He called for U.S. actions to check the Sioux invasion.[3]:106 Indian Agent Dexter E. Clapp reported in the spring of 1876, that the Sioux were in control of the eastern part of the Crow reservation.[3]:108

The Southern Cheyenne George Bent sums up the firm Indian pressure on the Crows in the early 1870s. Attacks on the Crows were carried out time and again, "... both by the Northern Cheyennes and by the Arapahos, as well as the Sioux, and by parties made up from all three tribes."[14]:347

The 1871 Yellowstone Surveying Expedition

Three Crow guides joined the surveying expedition for the Northern Pacific Railway downstream on the northern bank of Yellowstone River in 1871. Major Eugene M. Baker may not have formally enlisted them. The scouts were "Blackfoot, Wolfbow and Pretty Lodge".[12]:41 The first two were old hands at helping the army, if they indeed were the Crow chief Blackfoot[3]:83–84 and the warrior Wolf Bow.[3]:18

Service history

Great Sioux War

Curly, by David F. Barry, circa 1876.

Crow scouts with James H. Bradley

In April 1876 the small Crow tribe was living in the Crow reservation with agency at Crow Agency in Montana. Since the Sioux and Cheyenne were traditional enemies of the Crow and since they were crowding the Crow reservation, several Crow warriors enlisted in the U.S. army at the beginning of the Great Sioux War in 1876. On April 10, Lieutenant James H. Bradley swore 23 Crow scouts in.[15]:163 Each scout received a red armband to wear on the left arm above the elbow, to set him apart from hostile Indians. The Sioux curbed the mobility of the Crows when they got away with all their horses three weeks later, while in camp near the Yellowstone.[15]:184 A few days later Half Yellow Face and Jack Rabbit Bull came back with three Sioux horses, "... proud of their exploit ...".[15]:186 Bradley describes the grief of the Crow scouts after Custer's defeat.[15]:220

Crows with George Crook

Around 170 Crows fought with General George Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud without a legal registration.[4]:116

The battlefield of the Little Bighorn (1876) in the Crow Indian reservation in Montana and two other battlefields (1870s). "The Battle of the Little Bighorn, where the Sioux and Cheyennes had one of their largest gatherings ever, took place on the Crow reservation.[4]:113 In 1873, Crow chief Blackfoot had called for U.S. actions against the Indian intruders following a battle with the Sioux on Pryor Creek. Three Crows took part in the Battle of Wolf Mountains in 1877.

Crows with George Armstrong Custer

Crow scouts guided Custer's long awaited expedition to the Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876. "I now have some Crow scouts with me, as they are familiar with the country." wrote Custer in his second-last letter to his wife.[16]:275 Charles A. Varnum, Custer's chief of scouts, was even more accurate in his reminiscences, "These Crows were in their own country".[17]:60

Six Crow scouts and thirty-nine Arikara scouts witnessed the Battle of the Little Big Horn, from June 25 to 26. Custer, leading over 500 men, intended to crush at least 900 encamped Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho warriors by delivering a three-pronged assault but ultimately the Americans were repulsed, leading to the deaths of over 250 soldiers. Four of the scouts, Curly, Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin and White Man Runs Him rode with Custer's column while two others, Half Yellow Face and White Swan, rode with Major Marcus Reno. Custer's scouts were relieved just before the beginning of the main battle because they changed out of their blue uniforms and put on their tribal wear. The scouts angered Custer and said they wanted to die like warriors, not as soldiers. Seventeen-year-old Curly refused to leave though but through the insistence of Mitch Bouyer, a mixed-blood French and Lakota guide, the young man was convinced to depart with the other three scouts. Curly watched the fight through a spy glass, from the top of a ridge, about a mile and a half away from the battlefield. When the fighting was over he eluded Sioux horsemen for two days until finally reaching the steamboat Far West at the confluence of the Little Bighorn and Bighorn Rivers. Using sign language, Curly was able to communicate the first report of Custer's defeat.[5]

After being relieved, White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, Hair Moccasin and the Arikara scout Strike the Bear joined up with Reno's column and the other two scouts. They were briefly engaged in battle from the top of a ridge, repulsing a Sioux charge. All of them survived and retreated with Major Reno, except White Man Runs Him who continued fighting under Colonel John Gibbon who rescued Reno's men on June 26.

When Goes Ahead came back to his camp at Pryor Creek, the Crow warriors took him for an enemy and attacked. Pretty Shield, his wife, explained later how everybody had looked "exactly like a Lacota" to the Crows during these "days of trouble".[18]:242

Exactly a year after the fight, Hugh Lenox Scott went to the battlefield with all the Crow scouts serving Custer.[19]:48

In 1909, decades after the battle, White Man Runs Him told Joseph K. Dixon how he and Hairy Moccasin had averted Custer's death earlier in the fight by keeping up a brisk fire at the counter-charging Cheyennes.[20]:140

Crows with Nelson A. Miles

When a group of Crow scouts killed a five-man Lakota peace delegation under flag of truce in late December, 1876, the winter impeded fighting in the Yellowstone area flared up again.[21]:57 Once more, Crow scouts aided the army locating enemy camps. Three Crows were in action against both Lakotas in camp with Crazy Horse and Northern Cheyennes in the last battle of the Great Sioux War in the Wolf Mountains on January 8, 1877.[21]:60

Later

In 1887, some former scouts were involved in the brief Crow War (the Sword Bearer uprising) during which the United States Army fought a successful battle against hostile Crows just north of the Little Bighorn battlefield.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Medicine Crow, Joseph (1939): The Effects of European Culture Contacts upon the Economic, Social, and Religious Life of the Crow Indians. A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California.
  2. ↑ Medicine Crow, Joseph (1992): From the Heart of the Crow Country. The Crow Indians' own Stories. New York.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Hoxie, Frederick E. (1995): Parading Through History. The making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935. Cambridge.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Dunlay, Thomas W. (1982): Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860-90. Lincoln and London.
  5. 1 2 3 http://www.bridgestree.org/documents/Custers_Scouts_at_Little_Big_Horn.pdf
  6. ↑ Meyer, Roy W. (1977): The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri. The Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras. Lincoln and London.
  7. 1 2 Kappler, Charles J. (1904). Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Washington. Vol. 2.
  8. ↑ McGinnis, Anthony (1990): Counting Coups and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738-1889. Evergreen.
  9. ↑ Stands In Timber, John and Margot Liberty (1972): Cheyenne Memories. Lincoln and London.
  10. ↑ Utley, Robert M. (2003): The Bozeman Trail before John Bozeman: A busy Land. Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 20-31.
  11. ↑ Serial 1449, 41st Congress, 3rd Session, Vol. 4, House Executive Document No. 1, p.662.
  12. 1 2 Lubetkin, John M. (2002): The Forgotten Yellowstone Surveying Expeditions of 1871. W. Milnor Roberts and the Northern Pacific Railroad in Montana. Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 32-47.
  13. ↑ Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1873. Washington, 1874.
  14. ↑ Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Bradley, James H. (1896): Journal of James H. Bradley. The Sioux Campaign of 1876 under the Command of General John Gibbon. Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana. Helena, pp. 140-227.
  16. ↑ Custer, Elizabeth B. (1968): "Boots and Saddles" or, Life in Dakota with General Custer. Norman.
  17. ↑ Varnum, Charles A. (1987): Custer's Chief of Scouts. The Reminiscences of Charles A. Varnum. Including his Testimony at the Reno Court of Inquiry. Lincoln.
  18. ↑ Linderman, Frank B. (1974): Pretty Shield. Medicine Woman of the Crows. Lincoln and London.
  19. ↑ Scott, Hugh Lenox (1928): Some memories of a Soldier. New York, London.
  20. ↑ Dixon, Joseph K. (1972): The Vanishing Race. The Last Great Indian Council. New York.
  21. 1 2 Pearson, Jeffrey V. (2001): Nelson A. Miles, Crazy Horse, and the Battle of Wolf Mountains. Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 52-67.

Further reading

Harcey, Dénnis W., Brian R. Croone with Joe Medicine Crow (1993): White-Man-Runs-Him. (Crow Scout with Custer). Evanston, Illinois.

Marquis, Thomas (1975): Custer, Cavalry and Crows. The Story of William White as told to Thomas Marquis. Fort Collins.

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