l expedition
had been sent to the north of Fort Fetterman in search of the hostile
bands led by that dare-devil Sioux chieftain Crazy Horse. On "Patrick's
Day in the morning," with the thermometer indicating 30 deg. below, and in
the face of a biting wind from the north and a blazing glare from the
sheen of the untrodden snow, the cavalry came in sight of the Indian
encampment down in the valley of Powder River. The fight came off then
and there, and, all things considered, Crazy Horse got the best of it.
He and his people drew away farther north to join other roving bands.
The troops fell back to Fetterman to get a fresh start; and when spring
fairly opened, old "Gray Fox," as the Indians called General Crook,
marched a strong command up to the Big Horn Mountains, determined to
have it out with Crazy Horse and settle the question of supremacy before
the end of the season. Then all the unoccupied Indians in the North
decided to take a hand. All or most of them were bound by treaty
obligations to keep the peace with the government that for years past
had fed, clothed, and protected them. Nine-tenths of those who rushed to
the rescue of Crazy Horse and his people had not the faintest excuse for
their breach of faith; but it requires neither eloquence nor excuse to
persuade the average Indian to take the war-path. The reservations were
beset by vehement old strifemongers preaching a crusade against the
whites, and by early June there must have been five thousand eager young
warriors, under such leaders as Crazy Horse, Gall, Little Big Man, and
all manner of Wolves, Bears, and Bulls, and prominent among the latter
that head-devil, scheming, lying, wire-pulling, big-talker-but-no-fighter,
Sitting Bull,--"Tatanka-e-Yotanka,"--five thousand fierce and eager
Indians, young and old, swarming through the glorious upland between the
Big Horn and the Yellowstone, and more a-coming.

Crook had reached the head-waters of Tongue River with perhaps twelve
hundred cavalry and infantry, and found that something must be done to
shut off the rush of reinforcements from the southeast. Then it was that
we of the Fifth, far away in Kansas, were hurried by rail through Denver
to Cheyenne, marched thence to the Black Hills to cut the trails from
the great reservations of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail to the disputed
ground of the Northwest; and here we had our own little personal tussle
with the Cheyennes, and induced them to postpone their further