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What
Chief Turkey Leg of the Cheyenne thought of the white man’s
contraption called a railroad wouldn’t, if translated into
English, be printable. Yet, as much as he hated the iron horse,
he valued with equal intensity the gear and material the white
man’s trains carried.
The
Chief and his braves weren’t the only members of the tribe that
looked with greedy eyes on the things the train carried. Cheyenne
women were, for the first time, wearing orthodox lingerie instead
of pantaloons made from buffalo hides with the hair scraped off.
The underwear, may it be said, had originally been consigned to
fancy white vixens plying their trade in the Western mining
camps. Turkey Leg’s number one wife, who set the social pace of
the tribe, was decked out ins silky ribbons that had come from Belfast
by way of Boston
and with bracelets intended for the doxies of gamblers in such
merry hells of sin as Denver
and Omaha.
Early
in August of 1867, Turkey Leg and his band of warriors staged a
hold-up on a Union Pacific train four miles west of a Nebraska
homesteader settlement called Plum Creek. Since they lacked
pistols and other such weaponry, they did not board the engine and
throw the crew off the train, a method made popular by the James
brothers. Instead, they tore up four miles of track with stout,
sharp poles then waited for the train to arrive.
The
train stopped just short of the spot they had chosen. Warriors
broke down doors with sledge hammers stolen from miners. Though
what happened to the crewmen isn’t exactly clear, the Cheyenne
came away from the heist with enough loot to give each woman of
the Cheyenne Nation a bright bandeau for each of the seven days of
the week, pantaloons, bells and braiding, and bolt after bolt of
gingham fabric.
As an
added bonus, the Cheyenne Warriors found compensation in the piles
of good serviceable wares. There were watches; though the
warriors were not sure what the round metal things were used for,
top hats, wool pants, and a huge stack of Spencer carbine rifles.
The latter was a sight that caused Chief Turkey Leg and his men
to start dreaming. With the white man’s weapon they could drive
out the white man. The buffalo would return and teepees would
again spread out across the prairies replacing the hated towns
where The People were never safe.
However, these dreams were of no concern to the U.S. Cavalry. At
Fort Laramie the concern was that the Cheyenne now had rifles to
go with their hidden caches of ammunition. When an army courier
brought word of the trail derailment, Major Frank North, a
commander of Pawnee scouts, immediately dispatched thirty-five
Pawnee scouts led by Captain James Murie to the junction of Plum
Creek and the Platte River, the very heart of Chief Turkey Leg’s
domain.
Major
North took the first train to Plum Creek as he planned to take
overall command. He arrived at the tiny village and so began one
of the weirdest battles ever fought in the history of Indian
warfare. Pawnee against Cheyenne, an ancient inter-tribal feud,
antedating Columbus, and finding new and cruel forms after the
white man intervened with his ancient game of dividing Indians to
conquer them.
On
August 15th, 1867, Captain Murie and his Pawnees
arrived at the Platte and set up camp near the old Plum Creek
station on the south side of the big river. This was once the
boundary line between the now crumbling Cheyenne and Sioux
Nations. At the Cheyenne camp smoke signals trailed across the
summer skies, and now and then came the distant throb of a drum,
its fast staccato, sometimes mocking.
The
Pawnee were eager to fight in the hopes that the booty from the
freight train might fall into their hands. But, Frank North,
major strategist and soldier, held back the tide of
recklessness. The first days of the campaign went by unmarked by
any clash of rifle butt against tomahawk.
By the
morning of August 17th, the mood was a mood for war.
Major North knew the confrontation between the Pawnee and Cheyenne
could not be postponed much longer. North and Murie dispatched a
reconnoitering party of ten Pawnee horsemen led by Lieutenant
Isaac Davis. A few miles from the bank they encountered the
stretch of prairie and 150 Cheyenne with a sprinkling of Sioux.
The band was led by Chief Turkey Leg himself, who ordered his
tribesmen to not use their new rifles. He stated there was no
reason to waste precious ammunition on an enemy so obviously
outnumbered.
Bows
were lifted and a volley of arrows enveloped the small Pawnee
command. None found a mark. Lt. Davis ordered his men to hold
their fire. The Chief and his band advanced to within fifty yards
then Davis
ordered his men into one of the thickets of wild plum trees wich
gave the creek its name.
The
Cheyenne-Sioux contingent jumped from their horses and crawled on
the ground toward the thicket, firing one arrow after another.
However, under cover of the shielding grove, Davis and the Pawnee
reached a shallow ford in the river and made their way back to
camp.
A
Pawnee bugler blew his instrument for formation. Horses trained
to war pawed at the earth as the line assembled. Pawnees, eager
to meet their enemy, shouted in derisive boasts about what they
planned to do to their foe.
The
tense day exploded in battle. From a ford on a trail that
by-passed the thicket, Chief Turkey Leg and his warriors appeared
in full fighting assemblage. Spears and carbines were lifted.
All might have been lost except for the courage of one man. Frank
North followed on rule of thumb in Indian warfare – that attack
was the best defense. The lesser force was charging before the
Cheyenne Chief could give the command for a descent on the handful
of opponents.
Heading an advance force of ten Pawnee sharpshooters, Major North
sped toward the bed of Plum Creek separating the company of
inexperienced Indians from the experienced ones. Behind him rode
Captain Murie with the remaining 25 scouts. The Pawnee arrived at
the creek first and cross over on a rickety old bridge near an
abandoned stage stop then plunged into the creek’s muddy
channel.
The
fighting went on all day and into the early evening. The Pawnee
captured a pack wagon along with its passengers. In it were
Turkey Leg’s wife and ten-year-old nephew. By that time, not more
than a dozen Cheyenne and Sioux warriors remained in the field.
These rode away after the Chief’s family was captured. They
considered the event a sign of ill omen.
The
mighty Cheyenne and Sioux had lost the battle even though they
out-numbered the Pawnee six to one. When news of this spread
throughout the land and around the council fires, other war bands
cancelled or deferred plan for their raids. White settlers found
a greater will to resist Indian attacks that up to this point had
seemed endless. And, Chief Turkey Leg sued for peace, releasing
five captives in exchange for his wife and nephew. |
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