6 0 WILD WEST JUNE 2019
March and on the Red Fork of the Powder that November,
and in the post–Little Bighorn clash with soldiers at Warbonnet
Creek that July. Exiled to Indian Territory (present-day Okla-
homa) after the war, they made a desperate return trek north,
only to be bloodied again in 1878 when some broke from im-
prisonment at newly christened Fort Robinson. When the U.S.
government finally opened a reservation for the Northern Chey-
ennes in Montana Territory in 1884, those steadfast allies of
the Lakotas found themselves smack in the midst of the Sioux
war battlefields. The site of the war’s final clash—the May 7, 1877,
Muddy Creek or Lame Deer fight—was almost immediately built
over by the growing community of Lame Deer, tribal head-
quarters of the new reservation.
As had the Crows, the Northern Cheyennes also reckoned
with Sioux war landmarks and battlefields in their very back-
yard. While vestiges of the Muddy Creek fight have all but
disappeared, just north of Lame Deer stand the revered Deer
Medicine Rocks, a site with spiritual significance to the war.
Several miles north is the site of Sitting Bull’s mystical Sun Dance
camp. Both overlook the historically sublime Rosebud Creek,
an otherwise unassuming watercourse that threads its way across
the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation south to north, its
waters bound for the Yellowstone River.
Another postwar phenomenon with lasting resonance were
the many interviews conducted with survivors. With an eye to
preserving history, such interlocutors as Walter Mason Camp,
Eli S. Ricker, Hugh L. Scott, Thomas Bailey Marquis, John
Stands in Timber and others sought out participants and eye-
witnesses—Indian and white alike—and recorded their stories. The
Little Bighorn invariably dominated many accounts, but some
veterans, particularly Indians, could not relate their involvement
in that great fight without first acknowledging earlier episodes,
stretching back to the saga of Northern Cheyenne Chief Old Bear
and the Powder River fight at the outset of the months-long
conflict. Much is owed to the interviewers, interpreters and aged
veterans who so willingly shared their accounts of victory and
defeat. Subsequent generations are forever enriched by their
collaboration. The stories from the Rosebud are illustrative.
As proximity ties the Crows inexorably to the Little Bighorn,
the Northern Cheyennes are similarly linked to the Rosebud,
a sprawling battleground within miles of their reservation’s
southern border. Northern Cheyenne affinity for the Rosebud
has several roots. Around the turn of the 20th century their
ancestors placed rock memorials on the battlefield to commem-
orate memorable encounters. They placed one such cairn in a
feature known as the Gap, on the east side of the field, to honor
a young warrior slain there. As the story goes, the boy’s bereft
brother took a suicide vow in honor of his sibling and was killed
in the fighting on the Little Bighorn eight days later. Unfortu-
nately, the cairn was lost to time when that corner of the Gap
was transformed into a hay meadow.
The Northern Cheyennes also placed stones where Captain
Guy V. Henry was shot in the face, fell from his horse and barely
survived the fight. Henry’s grievous wounding occurred on the
southern shoulder of Kollmar Creek, an intermittent drainage
that slices conspicuously across the battlefield. The Cheyennes
and Sioux nearly destroyed the troops fighting with Henry and
his battalion commander, Lt. Col. William B. Royall, thus the
surviving cairn also serves as a stark memorial to a critical fight
nearly won.
Among other heroic episodes occurring during the Rosebud
battle, none is as dramatic as the moment a sister saved her
brother. Early in the fighting in the Gap three warriors—two Chey-
ennes and a Sioux—were riding through the draw, perhaps as a
test of courage or just as likely seeking to capture cavalry horses
secured behind imposing rocks. The
three faced harsh enemy fire, and
as they turned back, one of them,
a Cheyenne named Chief Comes inSioux Inspiration
Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse exhorts
other warriors on the Rosebud, in
a painting by Olaf Carl Seltzer.Hitting Home
Cheyenne perceptions
are a byproduct of their
proximity to the battlefield.FROM^ TOP
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