Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/455

 Rosebud down, and then went over to Bluestone Creek. We had the fight on Rosebud first, and seven days after, this fight. When we got down to Bluestone, the band broke up."

From the bands surrendering at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies, many relics of the Custer tragedy were obtained. Among other things secured was a heavy gold ring, surmounted with a bloodstone seal, engraved with a griffin, which had formerly belonged to Lieutenant Reilly of the Seventh Cavalry, who perished on that day. This interesting relic was returned to his mother in Washington.

The total number of Indians surrendering at these agencies (Red Cloud and Spotted Tail) was not quite four thousand five hundred, who made no secret of the fact that they had yielded because they saw that it was impossible to stand out against the coalition made by General Crook between the white soldiers and their own people; the terrible disaster happening to the Cheyenne village had opened their ears to the counsels of their brethren still in those agencies, and the alliance between the Cheyennes and the whites proved to them that further resistance would be useless. They surrendered, and they surrendered for good; there has never been another battle with the tribes of the northern plains as such; work of a most arduous and perilous character has been from time to time performed, in which many officers and brave soldiers have laid down their lives at the behest of duty, but the statement here made cannot be gainsaid, and will never be questioned by the honest and truthful investigator, that the destruction of the village of "Dull Knife," and the subsequent enlistment of the whole of the northern Cheyennes as scouts in the military service, sounded the death-knell of Indian supremacy for Nebraska, Wyoming, both the Dakotas, and Montana.

Crook took up the tangled threads of Indian affairs at the agencies with his accustomed energy, intelligence, coolness, patience, and foresight gained in an experience of almost twenty-five years. The new surrenders were ignorant, timid, sullen, distrustful, suspicious, revengeful, and with the departure of the Cheyennes for the Indian Territory, which took place almost immediately after, began to reflect more upon the glories of the fight with Custer than upon the disaster of November. This was the normal state of affairs, but it was intensified by the