Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry Read Free Book Online Page B

or because he allowed himself to be lured into a trap by the Cheyenne decoys, the young lieutenant lost his life.
    In 1865 the U.S. government’s Indian policy was at its most schizophrenic. The nation as a whole was war-weary, weighted with grief, and, after President Lincoln’s assassination, a little addled. The nascent peace party wanted to buy off the hostile Indians, give them money and good land—though never much good land—if they would behave; at the same time the military wanted to send a big bunch of soldiers to punish them for their temerity in not immediately accepting the white man’s way. Unable to decide between peace and war, the government tried both at once. They sent out a bunch of soldiers to punish any hostiles they could find, while at the same time hastily convening a peace conference whose aim was to secure something like squatter’s rights to the Platte River country. The large troop of soldiers found no Indians in any numbers and hunted so poorly that they sometimes had to eat their horses, whereas the peaceconference attracted only ration Indians who exercised no control over the Platte River country, or, indeed, any country.
    Back east, though, at least one indubitably good thing had happened: the Civil War ended. Having failed to sign up any hostiles at the little peace conference in 1865, the government tried another in 1866. Gold had been discovered in Montana, and soon a flood of miners were seeking the quickest way to it, which happened to be by a route that became known as the Bozeman Trail.
    Again the government, whether it fully realized it or not, set about pursuing peace and war at once. General Sherman, aggressive as ever, wanted to immediately start building forts along the Bozeman Trail. So far the Sioux had been quiet, even letting most of the miners go through: perhaps Sherman thought he could get away with two or three forts. He sent Colonel Henry Carrington and a sizable force into the Powder River country to get the fort building started. At the same time the Indian Office called a peace conference at Fort Laramie, and this time Red Cloud and some of the other headmen came in to hear what the white men had to offer. Perhaps the peace commissioners hoped that they would have a deal concluded before the Sioux happened to notice Carrington and his troops on the plain by the Powder River, but they were not to be so lucky. A Brulé named Standing Elk ran into Carrington and was casually informed of the plan to build the forts. Standing Elk loped over toFort Laramie to pass on this news, arriving just in time to provoke one of Red Cloud’s most dramatic exits. Neither he nor the other Sioux leaders were pleased with the news that the whites were already preparing to apply the stick when they themselves had just made a long trip to talk about carrots. No signatures were obtained—at least not the right ones—and for the next couple of years the Bozeman Trail was one of the most hotly contested routes in the west. The gold was in Montana, the money to mine it was in the east, and in between were some very angry Indians who by this time had had enough of being pushed around by the whites.
    As a consequence of Sherman’s initiative in fort building, one of the most famous and immediately pertinent comeuppances in Plains Indian warfare was visited on Captain William Fetterman and his unfortunate troop on the twenty-first of December, 1866. Fetterman, by all accounts, was a frustrated young officer who had the misfortune to be stationed at Fort Phil Kearney under the unconcerned, even lackadaisical, command of Colonel Carrington. Fetterman considered Carrington to be what we would now call a wimp or a wuss. Though three forts were to be stuck in the very heart of Sioux country, Carrington showed no inclination to make war on the Indians. No treaties had been signed, no presents exchanged, and there existed no hope of peace along the Bozeman; but it