sented him with a brace of pistols. He was sin-
cere in his quest for peace and made additional
land concessions with Governor William Henry
Harrison, who built a house for him on the Eel
River. He also took the white scout William
Wells as his son-in-law and kept the Miamis out
of Tecumseh’s tribal coalition. Little Turtle suc-
cumbed to illness at Fort Wayne on July 14,
1812, and received a military burial.
Bibliography
Blain, Harry S. “Little Turtle’s Watch.” Northwest Ohio
Quarterly37, no. 1 (1965): 17–32; Carter, Harvey. The
Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of
the Wabash.Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1987; Edel, Wilbur. Kekionga! The Worse Defeat in
the History of the United States Army.Westport,
CT: Praeger, 1997; Eid, Leroy V. “American Indian
Leadership: St. Clair’s 1791 Defeat.” Journal of Mili-
tary History57 (1993): 71–88; Nelson, Larry L.
“Never Have They Done So Little: The Battle of Fort
Recovery and the Collapse of the Miami Confedera-
tion.”Northwest Ohio Quarterly64, no. 2 (1992):
43–55; Sword, Wiley. President Washington’s Indian
War: The Struggle for the Old North West,
1790–1794.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1985.LITTLEWOLF
Little Wolf
(ca. 1820–1904)
Cheyenne War Chief
L
ittle Wolf was an architect of the famous
1,500-mile Cheyenne trek from Okla-
homa to Montana. His tenacity and mili-
tary skill evaded all attempts at capturing him
and resulted in a reservation built on tradi-
tional Cheyenne hunting grounds.
Little Wolf (Ohkom Kakit) was born near
the confluence of Montana’s Eel and Blue
Rivers around 1820. Like all Cheyenne youths,
he was exposed to Plains warfare at an early
age and demonstrated both guile and ferocity
against traditional Pawnee and Arapaho ene-
mies. His prowess eventually landed him
membership in the Bow String Soldier Soci-
ety, an elite fighting fraternity. Little Wolf’s
first contact with whites occurred in 1851,
when the Cheyennes signed the Treaty of
Horse Creek, guaranteeing wagon trains the
right to cross tribal lands in peace. Most
Cheyenne, in fact, harbored little ill-will to-
ward their eastern neighbors until 1864, when
word of the dreadful Sand Creek Massacre
and the subsequent death of Black Kettlear-
rived. United in anguish, most Plains tribes-
men took to the warpath, spreading murder
and mayhem across the frontier. The intensity
of hatred and conflict escalated in 1866, when
the Americans began constructing forts along
Montana’s Bozeman Trail. This threatened to
disrupt the hunting of buffalo, essential to the
Indian way of life, and Sioux warriors under
Red Cloudand Crazy Horsefought a suc-
cessful war to evict them. Many Cheyennes
were in complete sympathy, and Little Wolf
was among several notable warriors who dis-
tinguished themselves at the Fetterman Mas-
sacre of 1866. After the Treaty of Fort Laramie
was concluded in 1868, the Americans were
obliged to abandoned Fort Phil Kearney to
the Indians, and Little Wolf repopulated it
with his band. They burned it to the ground
soon after to follow the migrating buffalo
herds.
By 1870, Little Wolf enjoyed a peerless rep-
utation as a warrior, and he also functioned as
a major war chief. He was by then in his late
fifties yet could still outrun all the younger
braves under him. More important, as bearer