With the mercury indicating such extreme degrees of cold as to make life well nigh unbearable, even when surrounded by the comforts of civilization, you have endured, with uncomplaining fortitude, the rigors of the weather from which you had less to protect you than an Indian is usually provided with.
The disintegration of many of the hostile bands of savages against whom you have been operating attests the success of the brilliant fight made by the Cavalry with the Cheyennes on the North Fork, and your toilsome marches along the Powder River and Belle Fourche.
It is a matter for solemn regret that you have to mourn the loss of the distinguished and brilliant young Cavalry officer, First Lieutenant John A. McKinney, 4th Cavalry, and the gallant enlisted men who fell with him in the lonely gorges of the Big Horn Mountains …
By Command of Brigadier-General Crook
(signed) John G. Bourke
As Crook disbanded the expedition, he ordered Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry back to Camp Robinson. Not only were many of the animals broken down and almost out of forage in those final weeks, but the endless and severe cold, coupled with that intensely contested battle and their brutal march to the Belle Fourche, had all taken its toll on not just the soldiers but Crook’s officer corps as well.
Most dramatic was the deteriorating mental condition of Ranald Mackenzie himself.
In those weeks leading up to the battle and the days that followed, the colonel’s extreme sensitivity to the most minor slight was exhibited with increasing degrees of paranoia. To the soldiers who had served under him for some time, it seemed they were now serving under a commander who was becoming inconsistent at best, capricious at worst. But in the emotional wake following the Dull Knife Battle, Mackenzie’s fellow officers and his troopers simply believed their leader was suffering from nothing more than self-doubts about his actions during the fight.
Most of those closest to Mackenzie at that time, including Crook and Dodge, merely believed the colonel’s mental state was a result of Mackenzie’s so severely chastising himself for not bringing the battle to a more concrete conclusion, for not pursuing the Cheyenne into the mountains and capturing (if not killing) more of the enemy. Clearly, a supreme opportunity had been laid in his lap, so that over the days following the battle he criticized himself more and more for not fully seizing that opportunity.
There existed such an intense rivalry among the officers serving the frontier army—especially among those few colonels who had their gaze firmly set on the stars: general’s stars. In fact, one of those very human pieces to the puzzle that is the Mackenzie legend has it that one night in bivouac, while campaigning against the Kwahadi Comanche on the Staked Plain of the Texas-panhandle country, the colonel walked some distance from his campfire and stood staring up at the brilliant, crystal-clear night sky dusted with a resplendent display of heaven’s brightest lights twinkling overhead.
The legend goes on to tell us that Mackenzie’s adjutant came up in the dark to stand beside his commander, then said, “Sir, there’s someone between you and that star.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Mackenzie turned to ask.
“His name is Miles, sir.”
Indeed, from the days of that campaign on the southern plains when Miles and his Fifth Infantry were whittling away at the Indians every bit as effectively as was Mackenzie and his Fourth Cavalry—it had become clear to everyone in the army that the three rising stars were Custer, Miles, and Mackenzie. As in any endeavor when the reward is so rich, so great as a general’s star, the feelings of competition had to be extremely keen … the chance for messing up and making a mistake so precarious.
Perhaps his self-doubts about how he could have done better in the Dull Knife fight began to aggravate what had heretofore been nothing but an imbalanced mental state.
Yet here I stand more than a century later, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight knowing what despair Mackenzie was to exhibit in the months and years left him, knowing that his would be a premature death exacerbated by the severe depression he was wallowing in, and from which he could not save himself.
While he was on the return trip to Camp Robinson, Mackenzie received orders to report to Washington, where he was to place himself under no less than the secretary of war. By that time back east the disputed returns from three southern states meant that the outcome of the presidential election was still in question—a situation that with every day was raising more and more passion among the parties on both sides. Many of the more extreme Democrats were threatening to raise their own private armies to force the seating of their candidate, Tilden.
Determined to preserve order, a worried President Grant began to call in troops from the western frontier in the event of a revolt or civil insurrection. He personally selected Ranald Mackenzie to take command of those troops who would be protecting Washington City itself—a remarkable testament of faith in the abilities of this commander who continued to suffer so many self-doubts.
Over the years many of you have written to say just how much you appreciate having me list a bibliography for you to use when you go in search of further sources on each particular campaign. So for those of you who want to do some more digging into Crook’s and Mackenzie’s Powder River Campaign and the Dull Knife Battle, you’ve got some winter reading to do:
Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, by George F. Price.
“A Day With the ‘Fighting Cheyennes’: Stirring Scenes in the Old Northwest, Recalled for Motor Tourists,” Motor Travel Magazine (December 1930, January 1931, February 1931).
Bad Hand—A Biography of General Randal S. Mackenzie, by Charles M. Robinson III.
Bad Hand: The Military Career of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, 1871–1889, by Lessing H. Noel, Jr. (Ph.D. dissertation), Department of History, University of New Mexico, 1962.
Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877—The Military View, edited by Jerome A. Greene.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown.
By Cheyenne Campfires, by George Bird Grinnell.
Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life, by Charles King.
“Campaigning with the 5th Cavalry: Private James B. Frew’s Diary and Letters from the Great Sioux War of 1876,” by Paul L. Hedren. Nebraska History 65 (Winter 1984).
Campaigning with King—Charles King, Chronicler of the Old Army, edited by Paul L. Hedren.
Centennial Campaign—The Sioux War of 1876, by John S. Gray.
Cheyenne (Wyoming) Daily Leader (Aug., Oct., Nov., Dec, 1876).
Cheyenne Memories, by John Stands in Timber and Margot Liberty.
Chronological List of Engagements Between the Regular Army of the United States and Various Tribes of Hostile Indians Which Occurred During the Years 1790 to 1898, Inclusive, by George W. Webb.
Crazy Horse and Custer—The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose.
Crazy Horse—The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz.
Crimsoned Prairie—The Wars Between the United States and the
Plains Indians During the Winning of the West, by S. L. A. Marshall, Brigadier General (Ret.).