Tall Bull
(ca. 1830–July 11, 1869)
Cheyenne Warrior
TALLBULL
T
all Bull was the last chief of the famous
Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, a skillful expo-
nent of raiding and mounted warfare.
His death at Summit Springs spelled the end
of this fierce military society and its domi-
nance of the Southern Plains.
Tall Bull, also called Hotoakhihoois, was
born on the Southern Plains around 1830 into
the Southern Cheyenne nation. His name was
apparently a hereditary one, for at least four
other members of the tribe carried it, but he
was the most famous. As a young man Tall
Bull excelled as a warrior and was inducted
into the militant society known as the Dog
Soldiers. This group was then starting to
emerge from a combination of ambitious
young warriors and social outcasts who
banded together for the sheer exhilaration of
fighting. Many within the Cheyenne tribe re-
garded them as lawless, but in battle they had
few peers among the Plains Indians. Their
fighting skills were honed through years of
sporadic warfare against neighboring tribes,
but after 1860 their attention became more
and more occupied by conflict with white set-
tlers approaching their lands. Around this
time Tall Bull had risen to war chief of the
Dog Soldiers and thus wielded considerable
authority over the tribe in matters of war and
peace. Not surprisingly, he was a friend and
confidant of Roman Nose, another influential
warrior.
The fragile peace between the Cheyennes
and whites was shattered in November 1864
following the brutal attack upon peace chief
Black Kettle’s camp at Sand Creek. There-
after, hordes of vengeful tribesmen, Cheyenne
and Sioux alike, roamed the plains in pursuit
of vengeance. Undoubtedly, Tall Bull was
foremost in assembling his Dog Soldiers for a
retaliatory strike upon the village of Jules-
burg, Colorado Territory, on January 7, 1865.
On that occasion as many as 1,000 Sioux and
Cheyenne were deployed in ambush while a
smaller party deceptively enticed the garrison
at nearby Fort Rankin to pursue them. A com-
pany of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry took the
bait, but before Tall Bull and others could
strike decisively, a party of younger warriors
prematurely sprang the trap and the soldiers
escaped. Denied of victory, the angry Dog Sol-
diers then plundered and burned the aban-
doned town while its inhabitants watched
helplessly from the fort. On February 2, 1865,
Tall Bull led another raid on Julesburg with
similar results. These events underscored In-
dian anger over the Sand Creek Massacre.
After two years of fighting, both sides wea-
ried of conflict, and Gen. Winfield Scott Han-
cock arranged a general peace council at Fort
Larned, Kansas. In October 1867, many tribes
signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge with the
United States, whereby they abandoned their
traditional hunting ranges for new homes on
reservations in Oklahoma. However, Tall Bull
was among a handful of militant chiefs who
rejected the notion of relocating. Moreover,
many took inspiration from Red Cloud’s suc-
cesses in his war along the Bozeman Trail.
Tall Bull’s band then resumed hunting buffalo
and raiding white settlements. A new Indian
war developed in 1868, and Tall Bull played a
conspicuous role at the Battle of Beecher’s Is-
land, in Colorado Territory. Unfortunately, not
only were 600 warriors unable to dislodge 50
white scouts from a spit of sand in the Repub-
lican River, they counted the famous Roman
Nose among their dead. Apparently, it was
Tall Bull and his impatient Dog Soldiers that
urged the noted warrior to delay performing
his elaborate purification ritual. Thus,
Roman’s Nose’s warbonnet could no longer
protect him against the white man’s bullets.
Angered by this personal loss, Tall Bull
mauled a detachment of U.S. Cavalry under
Col. W. B. Royall in October and skillfully