Around the Kiowa campfires that winter there was much talk about the white men who were pressing in from all… — Dee Brown
Around the Kiowa campfires that winter there was much talk about the white men who were pressing in from all four directions. Old Satank was grieving for his son, who had been killed that year by the Texans. Satank had brought back his son’s bones and placed them upon a raised platform inside a special tepee, and now he always spoke of his son as sleeping, not as dead, and every day he put food and water near the platforms so that the boy might refresh himself on awakening. In the evenings the old man sat squinting into the campfires, his bony fingers stroking the gray strands of his moustache. He seemed to be waiting for something.
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For more than a decade Three Stars had been fighting Indians, meeting them in councils, making them promises which he could not keep. Grudgingly at first, he admitted admiration for Indian courage; since the surrenders of 1877 he was beginning to feel both respect and sympathy for his old enemies. The treatment of Cheyennes at Fort Robinson during the last few weeks had outraged him. “A very unnecessary act of power to insist upon this particular portion of the band going back to their former reservation,” he bluntly stated in his official report.
Through the crisp dry autumn of 1877, long lines of exiled Indians driven by soldiers marched northeastward toward the barren land. Along the way, several bands slipped away from the column and turned northwestward, determined to escape to Canada and join Sitting Bull. With them went the father and mother of Crazy Horse, carrying the heart and bones of their son. At a place known only to them they buried Crazy Horse somewhere near Chankpe Opi Wakpala, the creek called Wounded Knee.
In the first seconds of violence, the firing of carbines was deafening, filling the air with powder smoke. Among the dying who lay sprawled on the frozen ground was Big Foot. Then there was a brief lull in the rattle of arms, with small groups of Indians and soldiers grappling at close quarters, using knives, clubs, and pistols. As few of the Indians had arms, they soon had to flee, and then the big Hotchkiss guns on the hill opened up on them, firing almost a shell a second, raking the Indian camp, shredding the tepees with flying shrapnel, killing men, women, and children.
