The Lakota Sioux, of which Gall was a proud member, consisted of seven different tribes: Hunkpapa, Blackfoot, Oglala, Brule, Two Kettle, Sans Are and the Miniconjous. They had originally, before Gall’s time, come from the headwaters of the Great River, but they were pushed out of that land by the Chippewa in the late eighteenth century. It wasn’t that the Chippewa were necessarily better fighters, but more a logistical event. The Chippewa were to the east of the Sioux and came into contact with the white man first. Thus, they were armed with muskets while the Sioux were still relying on the bow and arrow and the spear. So the Sioux moved west. First to the Missouri River area. Where the Dakota, or Eastern Sioux had been overwhelmed, then past it to the land of the Yellowstone River and its four main tributaries: the Powder, Tongue. Rosebud. And Bighorn. Gall knew that if they went any farther west they would be in the inhospitable terrain of the Rocky Mountains. This was as far as they could go.
The Cheyenne were also pressed west by better-armed tribes and the white man. They settled around the Platte River and split into two major groups. The Southern Cheyenne lived between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers. The Northern, as the name implied, drifted above the Platte, which brought them into conflict with the Sioux.
Of course, when the Sioux and Cheyenne moved west, the land wasn’t empty. The Crow, some of whom Gall knew rode with Custer, were displaced. And it was against the Crow, and their allies the blue coats, that the Sioux and Cheyenne, former enemies, were now joining forces to fight, not because of any great love for each other, but because there was no more land to displace to.
The other option was to accept the white man’s edict and move onto the reservation. Gall would rather die than do that. Many of those who had heeded Sitting Bull’s call to come here had slipped off the reservation. The stories they told were not pleasant ones. Poverty, disease, lying agents and above all the lack of freedom to go where one wanted to and live off the bounty of the land-these were the curse of the reservation.
Gall leaned against a tree. It wasn’t just about food. It was about living, about freedom. About a way of life.
Gall knew-the Crow wouldn’t attack this camp. But the blue coats, the blue coats didn’t make any sense, and that is what scared him the most, because how could he fight an enemy whom he couldn’t predict?
Gall’s youngest daughter came out of the lodge, laughing at something. Gall felt his heart relax. They might be surrounded by enemies, but in this great encampment surely they would be allowed some days of peace and happiness. Gall gathered up his daughter and easily lifted her over his head and swung her about. After a few minutes of play, he · put her back down so she could help her mother.
The sun was up now, casting long shadows from the cottonwoods lining the Greasy Grass. At least today would be a quiet day, Gall thought as he smelled breakfast cooking. If the blue coats didn’t attack at dawn, then they wouldn’t attack. That was the way it had always been. Tomorrow, well, tomorrow he would worry about tomorrow.
“We’ll get through them in one day,” Custer said.
Bloody Knife kept his face still. He understood what Long Hair said. He had just handed Custer the note Varnum had written. He also knew that the new scout, Bouyer, had advised Custer about the extensive signs that all had been seeing for the past several days, particularly the massive trail they’d come across the previous day coming out of the Rosebud pointed straight toward the Little Big Horn River twenty miles away. The trail was more than a mile wide. The entire width looked like it had been plowed like the white man’s fields, so tom up was the ground by horses’ hooves and the ends of travois. Even Custer had to have seen that.
After seeing the trail, Bloody Knife had not even tried to sleep during this halt. There would be plenty of time for sleep later. There was also the added concern of the strange object he had been given by Bouyer. It was obviously a powerful talisman, the likes of which Bloody Knife had never seen, even when he had traveled east to the white man’s cities.
In this country, trees only grew in the low ground where there was water to feed the roots. There were some pines on the higher hills, but mostly the terrain was grassland with high ridges and some mountains interspersed here and there. Bloody Knife knew the open spaces were deadly in their deceptiveness. A man could think he saw everything for miles when there was so much hidden in the folds of the land that he couldn’t see until he rode right on top of it.
The trail they had come across bothered Bloody Knife. He’d tried explaining why to Lieutenant Varnum the previous day using sign language, but the officer was more concerned about what Custer thought than about what really lay ahead. The main Indian trail out of the Rosebud was indeed large; that in itself should have been enough to cause concern. It was also fresh, so fresh that Bloody Knife tried to convey his concerns to Varnum again this morning.
The original trail had been made about four days ago. Laid on top of that first trail were the signs of more pony herds, travois being dragged, and moccasined feet. Those were the marks of the others joining Sitting Bull from the reservations. None of the white men seemed to understand what Bloody Knife and the other scouts were coming to appreciate. This just wasn’t a few rogue tribes camped together. Yes, there were those Indians the soldiers were sent to corral-the ones who had ignored the government’s order to come onto the reservations. But there were also large numbers of reservation Indians whom the agents had told Custer were still sitting on the reservation, eating agency meat. It was one trail leading into the Little Big Horn, but actually one trail that many were following, and they couldn’t impress that idea on the white men.
Bloody Knife didn’t know the exact number of Indians that were camped ahead. He didn’t have to. He knew the number was sufficient to handle the Seventh Cavalry, no matter what Long Hair believed.
He could tell Custer was agitated and trying to hide it with his boastful words. Scouts had already reported several band of Sioux in the area, feeding the general’s fears that the Indians would run before he had a chance for a fight.
Custer sat taller in the saddle and addressed the officers gathered around. “Well, men, we’ve found them. As I suspected, they’re on the Little Big Horn.”
That wasn’t a surprise to Bloody Knife. If they weren’t on the Rosebud; and they weren’t on the Yellowstone, that left only the Little Big Horn. The only question had been where exactly on the river the Sioux were camped. Someplace with a lot of grass, that was for sure. Bloody Knife estimated that there must be at least ten thousand ponies, probably more, with this camp. That meant the herd would go through grass at a ferocious rate. No camp that size could last. Maybe a week at most. Then it would have to break up so the ponies could get grass and the hunters could find game. Bloody Knife had also tried to tell Custer this the other day, but Long Hair’s response had been the opposite of what Bloody Knife had hoped for: “By God, then we’ll get them all at once. Save us quite a bit of time campaigning, won’t it?”
It was all bad omens to Bloody Knife. Too many chance happenings converging. Custer splitting from Terry. Reno disobeying his orders dung reconnaissance and crossing the disobeying his orders during reconnaissance and crossing the Rosebud on the seventeenth and finding the main trail when he should have still been looking in the Tongue and Powder {alleys. It was strange how the same thing meant two radically differently things, depending on one’s perspective. To Bloody Knife, Reno’s discovery was disastrous, while to Custer it was one of the most fortunate breaks of his military career.