At the time that I knew him, Little Wolf was a handsome man, with the native dignity and gentleness, musical voice, and pleasant address of so many brave leaders of his people. One day when he was dining with us at our home on the reservation, I asked him, as I had a habit of doing, for some reminiscences of his early life.
He was rather reluctant to speak, but a friend who was present contributed the following: "Perhaps I can tell you why it is that he has been a lucky man all his life. When quite a small boy, the tribe was one winter in want of food, and his good mother had saved a small piece of buffalo meat, which she solemnly brought forth and placed before him with the remark: 'My son must be patient, for when he grows up he will know even harder times than this.
The mother ran after the dog and brought him back for punishment. She tied him to a post and was about to whip him when the boy interfered.
I was told of another kind act of his under trying circumstances. While still a youth, he was caught out with a party of buffalo hunters in a blinding blizzard. They were compelled to lie down side by side in the snowdrifts, and it was a day and a night before they could get out. The weather turned very cold, and when the men arose they were in danger of freezing.
Little Wolf pressed his fine buffalo robe upon an old man who was shaking with a chill and himself took the other's thin blanket. As a full-grown young man, he was attracted by a maiden of his tribe, and according to the custom then in vogue the pair disappeared. When they returned to the camp as man and wife, behold! It was reported in the village that he had openly declared that the young man who defied and insulted him must expect to be punished.
As soon as Little Wolf heard of the threats, he told his father and friends that he had done only what it is every man's privilege to do.
He shall either do this or eat his words. The woman is not his. Her people accepted his gifts against her wishes. Her heart is mine. The chief apologized, and thus avoided the inevitable duel, which would have been a fight to the death. The early life of Little Wolf offered many examples of the dashing bravery characteristic of the Cheyennes, and inspired the younger men to win laurels for themselves.
He was still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, when the most trying crisis in the history of his people came upon them. As I know and as Doctor Grinnell's book amply corroborates, he was the general who largely guided and defended them in that tragic flight from the Indian Territory to their northern home. I will not discuss the justice of their cause: I prefer to quote Doctor Grinnell, lest it appear that I am in any way exaggerating the facts. Indian Territory. They had come from a country where buffalo and other game were still plentiful to a land where the game had been exterminated.
Immediately on their arrival they were attacked by fever and ague, a disease wholly new to them. Food was scanty, and they began to starve. The agent testified before a committee of the Senate that he never received supplies to subsist the Indians for more than nine months in each year. These people were meat-eaters, but the beef furnished them by the government inspectors was no more than skin and bone. The agent in describing their sufferings said: 'They have lived and that is about all.
They left the agency to which they had been sent and started north. Though troops were camped close to them, they attempted no concealment of their purpose.
Instead, they openly announced that they intended to return to their own country. Joseph, but little is remembered of the Dull Knife outbreak and the march to the north led by Little Wolf. The story of the journey has not been told, but in the traditions of the old army this campaign was notable, and old men who were stationed on the plains forty years ago are apt to tell you, if you ask them, that there never was such another journey since the Greeks marched to the sea….
Of the three hundred Indians, sixty or seventy were fighting men -- the rest old men, women, and children. An army officer once told me that thirteen thousand troops were hurrying over the country to capture or kill these few poor people who had left the fever-stricken South, and in the face of every obstacle were steadily marching northward. If troops attacked them, they stopped and fought until they had driven off the soldiers, and then started north again.
Sometimes they did not even stop, but marched along, fighting as they marched. For the most part they tried -- and with success -- to avoid conflicts, and had but four real hard fights, in which they lost half a dozen men killed and about as many wounded. It must not be overlooked that the appeal to justice had first been tried before taking this desperate step. Little Wolf had gone to the agent about the middle of the summer and said to him: "This is not a good country for us, and we wish to return to our home in the mountains where we were always well.
If you have not the power to give permission, let some of us go to Washington and tell them there how it is, or do you write to Washington and get permission for us to go back. Because of this honorary title, he was expected to be above anger, as well as concerned only for his people and not for himself.
He was not present at the Battle of Little Bighorn , but played a part before and after the battle. Some scouts from his camp apparently found some food left behind by Custer 's attack force, and were observed by U. After the battle, Little Wolf arrived and was detained and almost killed by the angry Sioux, who suspected he was scouting for the whites. Only his fierce denial of complicity in the attack and the support of his fellow Northern Cheyenne present during the fighting saved him from harm.
Ranald S. During the journey, they managed to elude the U. The two groups split up after reaching Nebraska, and while Dull Knife's party was eventually forced to surrender near Fort Robinson , Little Wolf's group made their way to Montana where there were finally allowed to remain.
Little Wolf would later become a scout for the U. Army under Gen. Nelson A. He was involved in a dispute regarding one of his daughters, which resulted in the death of Starving Elk. Allegedly, Little Wolf was intoxicated when he shot and killed him at the trading post of Eugene Lamphere on December 12, Little Wolf went into voluntary exile as a result of this disgrace.
In his later years, he lived on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation , where he died in His interment was in Lame Deer 's cemetery. George Bird Grinnell , a close friend and ethnographer who documented Little Wolf's life, called him, "the greatest Indian I have ever known.
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