Wajaje Winter Count 129 FIG. 4 (bottom): Glyph for the year 1876–77—The Soldiers Stole Our Horses. Following its huge defeats at the battles of Rosebud and Little Bighorn, the U.S. Army leadership were concerned that additional young warriors might leave their loose confi nement at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies, where they had been concentrated, and reinforce the Lakota who remained at large in the Powder River and Bighorn Mountains area, under chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. For their part, the agency chiefs Red Cloud (Oglala) and Red Leaf (Wajaje, fi g. 5) wanted to get their people as far away from the U.S. military as possible. They had been close allies since the fi ghting at Powder River in 1866–68, and Red Leaf had never forgiven the soldiers for the murder of his brother, Conquering Bear. Together, they moved their camps about thirty miles south of Red Cloud Agency to the vicinity of Crow Butte, where the Crows had stolen their horses in 1849. The commander of regional military authority at Camp Robinson, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, ordered them to return to the agency. After two weeks of defi ance, Mackenzie decided he must force their return (Hyde, 1961: 257). Eight companies of cavalry and a company of Pawnee scouts approached the camps of Red Cloud and Red Leaf just before dawn on October 24, 1876. At fi rst light, the Pawnee ran off all of the Lakota horses as the cavalry surrounded both camps. Red Leaf, it was found, had gone to the agency to learn what the soldiers were planning. His second, Quick Bear, who was in charge of the village, surrendered. Soldiers inspected each of the lodges, confi scating all weapons and ammunition. The pick of the horse herds was given as a bounty to the Pawnee scouts, which was felt to be a punishment almost worse than death, since the horse was an integral element of the Siouan warrior identity. The Wajaje and Oglala were marched on foot the thirty miles back to Red Cloud Agency. Both Red Cloud and Red Leaf were imprisoned and General Crook had it announced that they were no longer chiefs at the agency, and that Spotted Tail would henceforth be in charge of both his own and Red Cloud’s agency (Paul, 1998: 157–160; Hyde, 1961: 257–58). The magnitude for the Wajaje of this loss of their beloved horses is refl ected in the size of the glyph by which they marked the dark year of 1876–77. Four times larger than many others on their winter count, it chronicles a psychological trauma that required years to heal. Since the glyph depicts a horse, a U.S. soldier, and the Oglala chief Red Cloud (indicated by a band of red clouds below the blue fi rmament), it might be argued that the record would more logically be Oglala. However, the large number of Wajaje family names that appear throughout the chronicle, together with the many years that have no correspondence on other Oglala winter counts, indicate that the creators of this important record could only have been Wajaje.
•TribalPaginaIntera.indd
To see the actual publication please follow the link above