OCR Text |
Show Qtories of GREAT INDIANS By ELMO SCOTT WATSON CopyrUcbi. lti, Wutitn Newspaper Loiun. RED CLOUD VICTOR IN AN AMERICAN WAR THE average school histories assert that America has been victorious In all of her wars. But they are strangely silent about a conflict In which one man defied the power of the United States and dictated his own terms of peace. That man was Red Cloud (Makplya Luta), chief of the Ogallala4Sloux. . . , When government commissioners sought the right to build forts along I the Bozeman trail to the Moutana gold fields, Red Cloud steadfastly op- posed this encroachment, on the choicest choic-est hunting grounds of the Sioux. In a council of his people he declared : "Dnkotas, I am tor warl" Col. II. B. Carrlngton entered Wyoming, nevertheless, to build the forts and Red Cloud sent hlra this defiant message': "I shall stand In the trail." A war followed In which the Ogallala leader killed 81 soldiers under Colonel Fetterman near Fort Phil Kearney. This loss was avenged the. next year. when Red Cloud lost half of the 3,000 warriors whom he sent against 82 soldiers In a wagon box corral. Despite this reverse Red Cloud remained re-mained master of the situation. In 1SC8 he delivered his ultimatum to a nonCA mmmtKalnn ' Tha trTa mi.o It abandoned and all farther attempts to open the 'Montana road must cease More than that, he fixed the boundaries boun-daries of (he Slomc . country to suit hiniself. -The commissioners agreed to every demand, for the Ogallala chief refused even to meet them until the garrisons had actually been with-dra with-dra wn. Ills victory was complete. From the day he signed the treaty ne kept his promise to live at peace with whites. "Ninety-one years old, blind, almost deaf, he .sits dreaming of the past," writes one who visited him then. -No wonder he Is Irritated by the Idle Information seeker. Who would be called back from the dreams of his youth? Sightless and Infirm, he Is reliving the days of his youth when he sat on his horse as king, the pride of the great Sioux nation. "To his ears must come the roar of the hunt as the countless bison herd, like a tidal wave, rolls by. And again the great day of his Hie, when his red-blanketed band swept down on the hapless Fetterman troop. Even now his heart must seem to stand still as he lives over again that iear-ful iear-ful day of the Wagon Box fight, when he hurled the pick of the Sioux nation na-tion against the rtfleinen." On December 10, 1909, the old man, dreams ended and Red Cloud, the greatest great-est .war chief of the Sioux, died. LAST September United States marines ma-rines marched, skirmished, formed lines of battle, took up and abandoned aban-doned positions, executed strategic movements, and made charges'on the historic fields of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The pop and whiz of Springfield fire, the rlp-rlp of machine guns, the smash of field pieces and the crash of shell and bomb sounded through the shadowy woods, close tangles and across rolling, hilly fields near the Chancellor house, Wilderness Wilder-ness church, Wilderness tavern, Parker's Park-er's store. Dodd's tavern, AIsop's farm, and Bloody Angle, and along the Fredericksburg and Orange turnpike, the I'iank road, the Brock road, and the banks of the Kapldan, and the smaller rivers, Ny and I'o. Here on one of the bloodiest and ghostliest areas of the American Civil war the marines held maneuvers. Four dnys Mere spent in the vicinity of Wilderness Wilder-ness run, and those days were devoted devot-ed to battle exercises and problems. Where Stonewall Jackson Fell. Three miles west of the western limit of Fredericksburg Is Salem church. Five miles west of Salem church Is Chanccllorsvllle. One mile west of Chnncetlorsvllle Is a little monument In the woods by the roadside road-side which marks where Stonewall Jackson received the wound from which he died in a plain little farmhouse farm-house near Guinea station, 11 miles south of Fredericksburg. One mile west of the solemn little monument In Its lonely site Is Wilderness church. About two miles northwest ot the courthouse is a battle area once no strewn with dead and so littered with wounded men that for 50 years It has been called Bloody Angle, and that name will never be effaced from the tragic ground. Something more than a mile from Bloody Angle, at the fork of two old roads that are full of steep and bumpy hills and closely bordered by thick woods, Is a monument that marks where General Sedgwick MaJ. Gen. John Sedgwick, United States Volunteers, commanding the Sixth Army corp" n rps cvimrinriir under un-der Grant, was killed In action on the morning of May 9, 1804. This description points out some of sylvanla battles, said : "The Army of Northern Virginia had gnlned little In numbers during the winter (1SG3-64) (1SG3-64) and had never been so scantily fed and clothed. Equipment as to arms was good, but commissary and quartermaster supplies were scarce and poor." He says that nearly all the soldiers were ragged, barefooted and half-starved, "but the morale of the army was high and Grant knew that It was still a dangerous foe In battle." - Grant's plan of campaign was to put all the armies of the Union, east and west, Into offensive operations at one time. He brought together scattered scat-tered commands and built up the Army of the Potomac to a strength which he believed would overwhelm Lee, who faced him across the Kapldan Kap-ldan astride the Orange and Alexandria Alexan-dria railroad and maintained touch with the Richmond and Fredericksburg Fredericks-burg railroad S3 miles to the east Victory Long In Balance. The fighting eprend along a . front of four or five miles. One side drove the other back, and then was driven back. Hancock's corps was driving Hill's fast. Gregg's Texans, only 8fX strong, rushed against Webb's brlgadt of Hancock's corps, lost half thcll men In killed and wounded, but checked the Union advance in that part of the line, and Longstreet's corps, with Kershaw's division leading, lead-ing, was coming Into line. Long-strett Long-strett sent Mnhone with several brigadesbrigades brig-adesbrigades were pltltfully small then around the Federal left, which had advanced far west of the Brock rond, on w hich it had been marching south from Germanna ford. Mahone brought his men at rlfcht angles to the advancing federal left, attacked It, and It shriveled back to the Brock road. There In the Wilderness the lMid and dotted with dead. Lee's plan had succeeded In part, failed In part. He had Inflicted on Grant much heavier losses than he had sustained, but he had not hurled the Army of the Potomac Into 'cCn- .u sum iliui uiMirUei. Gallant Sedgwick'. Death. On May 8 Sedgwick and War- rpn'a ivtma U'uia thsiu-n nin!.t A. tacked In the morning of the 10th and the attack repulsed. Again, in the afternoon, the Union legions came at it, moving forward between the bodies of the men fallen in the morning. The Blue lines once more recoiled. News came to Lee that Hancock had crossed the To near ShGdy Grove church and was passing to his rear. Mahone and Iltth's division moved fast, attacked Hf-ncock's rear division and drove HaWock back. Again news came that Grant was preparing to make a southward rush to reach the North Anna river first. Lee ordered back much of the artillery that defended the ncrth salient and set the trains in motion. A false alarm. The salient wa again threatened. The men near the top of It went out Into the field and brush before them and brought back muskets and cartridge cart-ridge boxes from the Union dead. Of course they brought back all the food found In the haversacks. Coffee and sugar were priceless luxuries. Bread and bacon were worth risking life for. A pair of shoes from a dead man! Why, the dead man had no use for them and many a soldier In the Array of Northern Virginia '.had nob had shoes on his feet since the Gettysburg campaign the year before! These men bringing back Union muskets and ammunition am-munition from Union dend loaded all the muskets and lay down with perhaps per-haps half a dozen by their side. There were no repeating rifles and not many breech-loaders. Another attack on Bloody Angle was coming. The artillery artil-lery that had been withdrawn was ordered bsck, but the attack came too soon. Some guns got back, but not in time to help much in repelling the attack. There was all the valor on both sides that man can put into fighting. The line at one part of the salient was broken and Hancock', men held the ground. Hand-to-Hand Struggle. General Johnson, twenty guns and 2,800 men,- nearly his whole division, fere captured. Early's division came forward and the Blues were driven back. Another part of the salient was assailed and the line broken. General Perrln was killed. General Daniel 1. 1 1 ) .. .1 T .. - CHIEF'S NAME WAS OLD-MAN-AFRAID-OF-HIS-HORSES DURING the Sioux war of 1806M57 the head chief of the Ogallala. was a man known to Ids people as Tasliunka Koklpapl. Once a careless Interpreter translated this name Into English as Old-Man-Afmid-oMIIs-Horses, and this title, with Its implication impli-cation of cowardice, stuck with ' him through history. Accustomed as the white man wn to curious Indian fames, this one was particularly Interesting and many attempts at-tempts were made to ep!nln It. The literal Interpretation that he feared his own horses was scarcely compll-tnenlory compll-tnenlory to a wnr chief of the Ogaljaia Sioux. Then there wr.s a story that he owned a great many horxea which he was constantly afraid of losing and that once when the Shoshones attacked at-tacked his camp he left his family In the hands of the enemy to run olT hi. horses. More creditable was the Interpretation Interpreta-tion of his beinf such a great chieftain chief-tain that even tl e "1 ;ht of his horses Inspired fear In the hearts of his enemies. ene-mies. The true interpretation of hi. name, as given by hi. son. Toting Man-Alruid-of-iiis-iioist-M, was ''He VVIioh Horse TVy Fear" (literally: Ta. "his"; shunkn, "horse'; koklpapl, "fie tVnr lr"l. Till nrnw from tha fact that he had a vicious pwiy. His English name Is an example not only of the frequent poor translation transla-tion of Indian names by the white, but also of the fact that some In-rilgnitiennt In-rilgnitiennt Incident may he the deciding decid-ing factor In naming a great Indian In-dian wnnhr. Old-Man-Afrald-nf-IIis-llorses retained his position as bend chief of the Ogallala until 1873. At hli death In the late '70s the name passed I on to his son. Young Man-Afraid -of. His-Ilorses, who was prominent dnr-! dnr-! Ing Ghost Pance troubles of 1VK)91. After the troubles were er . Washington newspaper correspondent tvas t;ent to Interview Youii-Mnn-Afraid. The correspondent took an Interpreter with him to the cli!efp t'.'iee. Young-Mnn-AfrulA asked them Hi dinner. They ale. Then wai.tliiB , to do the riht thing but not knnwlng whether It was proper to tip a big Inil'un chief, the newspaper man drooped three silver dollars Into the hand of the chief, wife and had h'l hile'vr' tcr (.ay: "In my country u compliment com-pliment to a man's wife I thn-ight a deut'e compliment." Hie Interpreter repeated the ftate went to YounsMan-Afrnld whe gruuted, rose, left the tepee and rami I beck with four more w!ve I ' j the landmarks, some of the "high spots," a. it were, of a section of that country In which the battle of Fredericksburg Fred-ericksburg was fought In December. 1SC2, In which the battles of Chancel-lorsville Chancel-lorsville and Snlem Church were fought In May, 180.1, and In which the battles tf the Wilderness and Spottsylvania Spott-sylvania Courthouse were fought In May, 1SC4 a little patch of country that has been appropriately called "the cockpit of America." Still the Wilderness. If there are such fing- as ghosts there must be armies of them In this (angle-hind, (or many, many thousands of young men who wore the blue and many, many thousands of other young men who wore the pray were shot mid bayoneted to death ln"this wild country. Much of that country west of t'hancellorsville and northwest of Spotisjlvanla Courthouse, which was called the Wilderness before nnd dur-hg dur-hg the Civil war, Is still "the wilder, ness." The winter of ISWHI was n;ie of great' hardship ami privation for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Vir-ginia, as well as for other Confecter-; Confecter-; ate armies. The w inter of 180 1-115 was I . Valley Fore winter for the south ern troops. Gen. E. M. Law. C. S. A. writing of the Wilderness and Spott- - - ...f"- i""-ii nhii'iini u- der;on nnd Early, and thrown back with heavy loss. The day of the 0th was spent In reconnolterlng, intrenching, intrench-ing, sniping, sharpshooting and small firing here and there along the lines as marching bodies became exposed within range. On the morning of tht nth Sedgwick was killed by a Confederate Confed-erate sharpshooter. The ball struck btaj In the left cheek beneath the eye. He lad, gone to an excised part of the line. Shots were coming ' over now and then. He was warned. "Why," he answered, "they could not hit an elephant at that distance." lie fell dead n minute Inter. The Confederate lines were very Irregular, adopting themselves to the broken contour of the bind. At the' north ei.d of the position, two miles above the courthouse, was a salient that bul;red northward for nearly a mile, nnd In places was half a mile across. From the cast base of that siilicnt the Confederate line ran three miles south to some high land above the I'o river, a quarter of a mile east f Shells bridge. The "Bloody Angle." It was that salient which Grant picked as the place to break Lee's line and pi-rhnps smash the army, and that salient came to be called "Bloody PBle." That point of the line was at- . iC..- '' -' nag nuiKii. vrjntri ui uitiusrur wus wounded. Lee was sending all available avail-able troops and the Confederate line was partly restored and all gaps closed. That was the 12th of May. All day and far into the night the fighting went on." At one part and then at another part of the salient it was hand-to-hand fighting. The Confederates Con-federates constructed a shorter line in the rear of the salient nnd fell back to it on the 13th. Both armies had been marching and fighting since the 4th of May. There was a lull until the 18th, when two corps of Grant', army, the Second and Sixth, attacked agnln, but the Confederate line held and the attack cost Grant many men. On the 10th strange things were happening. Grant was starting south to get between Lee and Richmond. A Confederate force moving around the Union right had got that Information, but It cost theifl about a thousand men In killed nnd wounded to learn it. Hancock was leading the way to the south nnd to Richmond. The North Anna river, fifteen miles south of Spottsylvania was tho Immediate objective ob-jective of both armies. Spottsylvania was left behind and the North Anna river. Cold Harbor, llethesda church nnd then the Chick-homlna Chick-homlna came Into the ml light of the history of tire Civil war 4 |