ment, and the inevitable violence it spawned,
led to continuous warfare with the United
States. In January 1876, the famous Sioux up-
rising commenced, and Dull Knife’s band of
warriors was inevitably drawn into the con-
flict. Despite many threats against his life, he
nonetheless advocated peace. Many of his
braves were present during the June 1876
Rosebud victory against Crook and Custer,
and his son Medicine Lodge was apparently
slain at Little Bighorn, but Dull Knife—true to
his word—did not participate. Nonetheless,
retaliation was swift in coming, and on No-
vember 25, 1876, a column of U.S. cavalry
under Col. Randall S. Mackenzie stormed into
the Cheyenne encampment along the Powder
River. Dull Knife’s band was routed, losing
their village and all supplies and clothing.
Throughout the winter, U.S. military forces
routinely harassed and attacked the surviving
bands in zero-degree temperatures. Faced
with the prospect of freezing to death, the
Cheyennes had little recourse but to surrender
to American authorities at Fort Robinson, Ne-
braska, which they did in the spring of 1877.
While at Fort Robinson, Dull Knife was
told that his band of 937 men, women, and
children were destined to be relocated to new
homes in Oklahoma. However, the Cheyennes
were unable to make the transition smoothly.
As nomads, they were unwilling to take up
farming; worse yet, the warm weather occa-
sioned much disease and death among their
already depleted ranks. Moreover, they were
forced to compete for scare resources with
large bodies of Southern Cheyennes, already
present, who were implacably hostile to their
kinsmen. Having buried 50 children, Dull
Knife curtly informed the Indian agency that
he would move his remaining 353 Cheyennes
back to their ancestral homeland. The author-
ities scoffed at him, but on September 9, 1877,
Dull Knife’s band made an early-morning exo-
dus for freedom. The ensuing pursuit by army
units ultimately involved 13,000 men from
three different military departments.
Dull Knife, accompanied by Little Wolf,
followed the Texas Cattle Trail through
Kansas, skirmishing with soldiers along the
way. The chiefs tried to restrain their young
braves from violence, but at one point 40
white settlers were massacred, which only
spurred the military to greater efforts. Once
the Cheyennes reached Nebraska, Dull Knife
and Little Wolf parted company, the former
heading for the Cheyennes’ traditional home-
stead in northern Montana, the latter striving
to reach the Red Cloud Agency at Fort Robin-
son. On October 23, 1877, Dull Knife’s band
was surrounded by American soldiers in a
blizzard and forced to surrender. The fugitives
were then taken to Fort Robinson, where they
were told to return to Oklahoma. When Dull
Knife and other leaders flatly refused, the gar-
rison commander, Col. Henry Wessells, had
the entire band imprisoned in a cavalry bar-
racks without food or heat. Unperturbed by
confinement, the Indians began secretly arm-
ing themselves for a mass breakout. Six days
later, in the early morning darkness of Janu-
ary 3, 1878, the braves began firing as a diver-
sion, while women and children pushed them-
selves out into the winds and snow. The
soldiers responded in kind, killing many Indi-
ans, but death could not impede the tribe’s
chance for freedom. A small party of
Cheyennes under Dull Knife resumed their
march, until being caught by cavalry again
about 40 miles from the fort. Many more were
killed or captured in the ensuing fight, but
Dull Knife and his family escaped and re-
mained hidden in crevices. For 18 days they
braved frigid weather and survived by eating
their own moccasins. At length Dull Knife’s
emaciated party reached Pine Ridge, where
they were hidden by some Sioux families en-
camped there.
The stoicism and determination displayed
by the Cheyennes on this 1,500-mile exodus is
legendary and evoked great national sympathy
for them and their plight. It was a performance
rivaling the Nez Percé flight under Chief
Joseph. In March 1878, Gen. Nelson A. Miles
arranged for Dull Knife and the remaining In-
dians to transfer back to better homes in Mon-
tana’s Rosebud Valley. The old chief lived outDULLKNIFE