Rear Endpaper, Facing Inside Back Cover

The same artist who collaborated with Arrow on Plate 168, closes the record with this solo composition that epitomizes the crisis facing Southern Cheyenne people in 1874-75. Having been overrun in Kansas and Colorado, with nine of their villages and an aggregate of more than 600 lodges destroyed (Powell, 1981: 259-60; 262; 300-309; 462-73; 615-16; 722, 724 & 734), the Southern Cheyennes had signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, and moved south of the Arkansas River, where they were promised they would be left in peace.

Texas cattlemen ignored the treaty, annually trailing vast herds of longhorns north to the Kansas railheads, devastating wide areas of the country, and splitting the remaining Cheyenne buffalo range. Commercial hide hunters also ignored the treaty, invading Cheyenne territory to decimate their buffalo herds, killing hundreds of thousands of animals for their hides alone, and leaving the Cheyenne commissary to rot. European immigrants, too poor to pay the railroads for homestead land the Government had earlier coerced from the Cheyennes, moved south of the Arkansas to stake out illegal homesteads. Professional horse thieves moved into the country at the same time, profitting by raiding Cheyenne herds to supply the draft animals needed by the other invaders.

In November 1873, the Cheyenne chiefs traveled all the way to Washington, D.C., to ask President Ulysses S. Grant to enforce the 1867 treaty. Grant made empty promises, but did nothing. When the Cheyennes tried to enforce the treaty themselves, by attacking the invading hide hunters at Adobe Walls, President Grant ordered the U.S. Army to attack the Cheyennes in retaliation, destroying about thirty lodges at Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, in September 1874, and one hundred and ten lodges at McClellan Creek, Texas, on November 8th (Powell, 1981: 875-81; 883-84). On April 23, 1875, a small group of Southern Cheyennes trying to flee north to join their Montana kinsmen were attacked at Sappa Creek, Kansas. Seven men with twenty women and children were killed (Hyde, 1968: 367-69; Wheeler, 1923: 99-112). Other, smaller engagements occurred also.

Which of these attacks is the one represented here, we do not have sufficient information to discern. Although not in uniform, the fact that this Whiteman has his mule harnessed with a military-issue, S-curb bridle suggests that he is attached to an Army unit, probably as a scout. Many of the buffalo hunters, whose illegal incursions into Cheyenne territory had been a prime cause of the 1874-75 war, immediately became scouts for the Army (Hyde, 1968: 359-60; 368).

One such individual, attached to Col. Ranald Mackenzie's Fourth Cavalry, was named Lemuel Wilson. He dictated a proud memoir of his activities. The day before the attack at Palo Duro Canyon, in the early evening while scouting some miles ahead of the cavalry column, Wilson smelled the smoke of a lone Cheyenne hunter's cookfire, and approached surrepticiously on foot:

"I'd just got two or three feet from the fire when a big, fine-lookin' Indian comes into sight just a few feet away. He had been sittin' behind a big stump whettin' a long butcher knife, and I suppose came out to take a look at th' roast...Just as soon as he saw me he made a jump forward, raisin' his knife and lettin' th' whetstone fall from his hand. And I let him have it, th' bullet hittin' him just above th' chin and comin' out th' back of his head. He dropped in his tracks, never knowin' what struck him. He only kicked once or twice...I took his knife and scalped him, takin' a much bigger hunk of his scalp than Indians usually took, makin' it almost big enough for a wig...It was th' happiest moment of my life...I was like a wild man. I was wavin' th' bloody scalp in one hand, and th' indian's knife in the other. All the hatred I had for them cusses...was turned loose inside of me...

"Th' lieutenant was pretty mad when he saw what I'd done. He was afraid I might start a general attack...When he was through ravin' I says:

" 'Lieutenant, I don't give a damn what you think about it. You can talk all you please about orders! I ain't in th' army! But if I was it wouldn't change me...Whenever I sees a wild Indian I'm goin' to shoot him...And if I can I'm goin' to scalp him...don't you forget that Lieutenant.'

"...while we was chewin' the rag th' friendly Indians...were cuttin' off th' fingers of th' dead buck to get th' brass and silver rings he was wearin'. That boiled me all over. I made a run for them and pushed and kicked 'em away from th' corpse.

" 'Get the hell outta here!', I yelled. 'This is MY Indian!' " (Carriker, 1973: 320).

Lemuel Wilson was by no means an unusual specimen of his times. For a ca. 1864-69 photograph of another ruffian holding the entire scalp of a Cheyenne woman, see Cowdrey, 1999: Fig. 62. A thousand such men, the dregs of the Denver mining camps, had descended on Black Kettle's village at Sand Creek ten years previously. Every year after 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railway dumped thousands more, like-minded "pioneers" into Kansas, where they speedily headed south to expropriate Cheyenne resources.

After the Southern Cheyennes were forced to surrender in the spring of 1875, and were confined to a small and ever-decreasing reservation in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, the military officer placed in charge of them was Col. Richard Irving Dodge. He was a perceptive and fair-minded individual, whose many observations have illuminated this text. This was his military assessment of the historical period depicted by Arrow in this ledger:

"The danger from Indians and the great distance from market had heretofore protected the buffalo from wholesale slaughter by whites, but by 1872 the buffalo region had been penetrated by no less than three great railroads, and the Indians had been forced from their vicinity. About this time too it was discovered that the tough, thick hide of the buffalo made admirable belting for machinery, and the dried skins readily commanded sale at three to four dollars each. The news spread like wild-fire, and soon the Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads swarmed with hunters from all parts of the country, all excited with the prospect of having a buffalo hunt that would pay. By wagon, on horseback and afoot, the pot-hunters poured in, and soon the unfortunate buffalo was without a moment's rest or peace. Though hundreds of thousands of skins were sent to market, they scarcely indicated the slaughter. From want of skill in shooting, and want of knowledge in preserving the hides of those slain, one hide sent to market represented three, four, or even five dead buffalo.

"The merchants of the small towns along the railroads were not slow to take advantage of this new opening. They furnished outfits, arms, ammunition, etc., to needy parties, and established great trades, by which many now ride in their carriages.

"The buffalo melted away like snow before a summer's sun. Congress talked of interferring, but only talked. Winter and summer, in season and out of season, the slaughter went on.

"The fall of 1873 saw an immense accession of hunters, but by this time the local merchants, recognizing its importance, had got the trade pretty much into their own hands. Most of the hunting parties were sent out by them, and were organized for even a greater destruction of buffalo, and with more care for the proper preservation of the hides and meat. Central depots were established in localities where buffalo were plentiful. Parties were sent out from these which every few days brought back their spoil. Houses were built for smoking and corning the meat, and though the waste was still incalculable, the results would be incredible but that the figures are taken from official statistics.

"in 1871-2 there was apparently no limit to the numbers of buffalo.

"In 1872 I was stationed at Fort Dodge, on the Arkansas, and was out on many hunting excursions. Except that one or two would be shot, as occasion required for beef, no attention whatever was paid to buffalo (though our march lay through countless throngs)...our pleasure was actually marred by their numbers, as they interferred with our pursuit of other game.

"In the fall of 1872 I went...over the same ground. Where there were myriads of buffalo the year before, there were now myriads of carcasses. The air was foul with sickening stench, and the vast plain, which only a short twelvemonth before teemed with animal life, was a dead, solitary, putrid desert. We were obliged to travel southeast to the Cimarron, a distance of nearly ninety miles, before we found a respectable herd. Even there we found the inevitable hunter...

"During the three years 1872-73-74, at least five millions of buffalo were slaughtered for their hides. This slaughter was all in violation of law, and in contravention of solemn treaties made with the Indians, but it was the duty of no special person to put a stop to it. The Indian Bureau made a feeble attempt to keep the white hunters out of the Indian Territory, but soon gave it up, and these parties spread all over the country, slaughtering the buffalo under the very noses of the Indians.

"Ten years ago the Plains Indian had an ample supply of food, and could support life comfortably without the assistance of the government. Now everything is gone, and they are reduced to the condition of paupers, without food, shelter, clothing, or any of those necessaries of life which came from the buffalo; and without friends, except the harpies who, under the guise of friendship, feed upon them" (Dodge, 1882: 293-96).

During 1881-82, Col. Dodge was the Aide-de-Camp to General Sherman, Chief of Staff of the Army (Heitman, 1903, I: 377), and Sherman wrote the Introduction to Dodge's memoir. One should not be surprised, therefore, that accurate and honest as the Colonel's assessment is, he fails to put the blame for the Cheyennes' persecution where it so clearly belongs---upon President Grant, and his military commanders. It WAS the duty of those "special persons" to uphold the word and good faith of the United States, and they utterly failed to do so. Worse, they intentionally evaded that duty in service of what they saw as the greater benefit to the Euro-American citizenry of the United States. Judge them and the other political leaders of the 1870's however one will, this much is true: they lied; they conspired in the theft of the Cheyenne homeland; they are culpable in the deaths of hundreds of Cheyenne people; and WE are their inheritors. History, here as elsewhere, does not rest easy.

The Cheyennes have never been a large tribe, commanding respect rather by their courage, than from any surplus of numbers. By 1874, many of their best fighting men had been killed. Sheer survival of the tribe dictated that older boys assume the burdens of manhood, long before their families would otherwise have chosen.

A notable detail of this drawing is that the figure of the Cheyenne is represented significantly smaller than his adversary. This is an unusual circumstance in Cheyenne historical art (compare Plates 5, 13, 19, etc.), and generally is meant to indicate that the protagonist was physically smaller; was in fact a teenage boy.

There are occasionally curious balances in military memoirs, when the quality of a People shines so true that it overawes politics, and prejudice, and history, and death itself. At such moments, thinking back, the foeman pauses with a mental finger halfway to the trigger, and wonders if he might have gone a different way. So mused Captain Charles King, in the passage quoted as the prologue to this commentary. So, too, was Captain Luther North frozen in memory, by the courage of a Cheyenne youth, much like the boy shown here. Captain North, with more than one hundred Pawnee Scouts, led the attack on the Cheyenne Dog Soldier village at Summit Springs, Colorado, in July 1869. Thundering down upon the encampment, the first person they encountered was a youth all alone, at the important job of caring for his family's transportation:

"About half a mile from the village...a Cheyenne boy was herding horses. He was about fifteen years old, and we were very close to him before he saw us. He jumped on his horse, gathered up his herd, and drove them into the village ahead of our men, who were all shooting at him. He was mounted on a very good horse and could easily have gotten away if he had left his herd, but he took them all in ahead of him, then at the edge of the village he turned and joined a band of warriors that was trying to hold us back, while the women and children were getting away, and there he died, like a warrior. No braver man ever lived than that fifteen-year-old boy" (North, 1961: 115).