Chapter 6 5. Invasion of the Powder River

1865 On April 2, the Confederates abandoned Richmond.On April 9, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomatecas, ending the Civil War.On April 14, Booth assassinated President Lincoln; Andrew Johnson became president.On June 13, President Johnson issued a proclamation announcing the restoration of the formerly Confederate states.In October, the United States asked France to recall its troops in Mexico.On December 18, Article 11 of the U.S. Constitution was amended to abolish slavery. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Tolstoy War and Peace were published. Whose voice is loudest in this land?Is only the red man's voice of bow and arrow What I do not want, nor ask, has been done in my land; the white man has passed through my land, and as soon as the white man comes to my land, he leaves a trail of blood behind him I have two big mountains, Black Mountain and Big Horn Mountain, in this land.I ask all the parents not to build roads to pass through these two mountains.I've told it three times; and now I've come here to tell them for the fourth time.

Red Cloud Chief of the Agrale Tribe of the Sioux After the battle at the Platte River Bridge, the Plains Indians returned to the Powder River area and began preparations for the usual summer rituals.The tribes camped close to each other at the mouth of Crazy Girl's Beach on the Powder River, and farther north along this river and the Little Missouri there were some of the Sioux Tita tribe who migrated westward to escape General Suri's attack on Darwin. Kota's army.Also there were the Sitting Bull and Hank Baba tribes, cousin tribes of the Agrale tribe, who sent envoys down to perform a grand sun dance, the annual religious renewal ceremony of the Tita tribe.While the sun dance is in progress, the Sai'an people will hold their dharma arrow ceremony, which will last for four days.The arrow stewards unsealed four secret arrows from their coyote fur pouches, and the men in the clan passed them on one by one, offering their donations and praying to the arrows at the same time.

Black Bear is one of the chiefs of the North Orapaho tribe. He decided to take his tribe to the Tongue River in the west, and also invited some South Orapaho tribesmen who went north after the Sand Creek incident.He said they could build a village on Tongue River, and hunt many times and dance many times before the cold moon came. Therefore, in late August, 1865, the various ethnic groups in the area of ​​Fenhe were scattered from Taijiao Mountain in the west to Black Mountain in the east.They are very sure of the indestructibility of this area.So much so that most people didn't believe it when they first heard that soldiers were marching towards them from four directions.

In May, General Connor, who had fought against the Reds along the Platte River, was transferred from Utah to command three troops.In 1863, Chief Pasing Conor surrounded a camp of the Paiots at Bear River and slaughtered two hundred and seventy-eight of them.For this battle, he was greatly cheered by the white people, calling him a brave general who defended against the red enemy on the frontier. In July 1865, Connor announced that the Indians north of the Platte River must be hunted like a wolf pack; he began to prepare to capture the Powder River area with three troops.A column of Colonel Cole marched from Nebraska to the Black Hills of the Dakotas; a column of Colonel Walker went straight north from Fort Laramie and joined Cole in the Black Hills; a third column was led by Connor himself The command, along the Bozeman old road, went northwest to Montana.General Connor therefore hoped to sweep the Indians out of his column and the combined forces of Cole and Walker.He warned his officers not to accept any peace offer from the Indian side, and issued a firm order: to attack and kill every Indian male over the age of twelve.

The three columns were dispatched in early August, and if all went according to plan, they would meet on September 1 at the Rosebud River, the center of the Indian rebel area. The fourth column, not connected with Connor's expedition, also approached the Powder River from the east.It was formed by a commoner, Soyol, to open a new route across the continent, with the sole purpose of reaching the goldfields of Montana.As Soyol knew he would be passing through Indian treaty territory and anticipating resistance, he got two companies of infantry and escorted them with seventy-two diggers and eighty supply wagons.

Around August 14 or 15, the Sioux and Sai'an camped along the Powder River first learned of the approach of the Soyol convoy.We hunters rode into camp with great excitement, George Burnt later recalled, saying that the soldiers were almost on the river.The man who spread the word in our village was named Xiong Xiong, and he rode his horse and galloped around the camp, yelling loudly that the soldiers were coming.Hongyun ran into the horse herd and rode across the Sioux camp, yelling the same thing at the Sioux.Everyone went to find his own horse. At this time, people used to ride any horse they caught; Everything that belongs to him belongs to the owner of the horse on which he rides.Everyone got on their horses, and we rode back to the upper reaches of the Powder River, twenty-five kilometers away, where we met Soyol's road-building team, a huge immigrant caravan, with soldiers marching on both sides as we advanced .

Some of the trophies brought back by the Indians from the Battle of the Platte River Bridge were Army uniforms and brass trumpets.George Burnt hastily donned an officer's jacket as he left camp, and his brother Charlie carried a bugle.They think that these things may make the soldiers feel mysterious and nervous.There were about 500 Sioux and Sai'an people who went out to fight, Hongyun and Dudao both went.The two chiefs were very angry. These soldiers entered their territory without asking permission. When they first saw the caravan, it was traveling between two hills, with a caravan of about three hundred animals behind it.The Indian soldiers divided into two groups and spread out along the opposite mountain. At a signal, they began to shoot at the escorting soldiers.Within minutes, the convoy had formed a circular formation with the animals in the middle and the wheels of the wagons jammed together.

For two or three hours Indian fighters crawled across the chasm for entertainment, shooting suddenly at very close range.There were a few brave knights galloping up to the caravan, circling the caravan, and then flew out of the shooting range.When the soldier started to fire the two howitzers, the soldiers hid behind a small hill, shouting to kill and cursing the soldier.Charlie Burnt blew his bugle several times and uttered all the English swear words he remembered from his father's trading post. (They yelled at us in the most exasperating manner, one of the besieged gold diggers said afterward: a few of them could really speak English, and they could yell at us any obscenity imaginable.)

The convoy could not move, but the Indians could not attack either.About noon, the chiefs ordered the hoisting of peace flags in an effort to end the stalemate.A few minutes later, a man wearing buckskin clothes appeared in the car formation.Because the Pent brothers could speak English, they were sent down the mountain to meet the envoy.The man was Suzy, a good-natured Mexican, who was surprised by the English the Ponte brothers spoke and the blue jacket George Pont was wearing.Susie knew little English, only gestures, but she managed to make the brothers understand that the convoy commander was willing to negotiate with the Indian chief.

A meeting was quickly arranged, and the Ponte brothers became the interpreters for Red Cloud and Dull Knife at this time. Colonel Soyol and Captain Welf and a small group of escorts came out of the car formation.Soyol's title of colonel was an honorary title, but he thought he was the commander of the convoy; Welfer's title of captain was real, and the soldiers in his two companies were fake Union soldiers, former Confederate prisoners of war.Welfer's nerves were tense, he was not sure of his officers and men, nor of his own authority in the expeditionary force.He stared fiercely at the blue military uniform worn by the second-rotor interpreter, George Burnt.

Red Cloud asked for an explanation as to why the troops were present in Indian territory, and Captain Welver replied that the Indians had previously attacked peaceful whites.Charlie Pent, still haunted by Shaxi's memories, told Welfer that unless the government hanged Colonel Chiveton, the Saiyans would fight all whites.Soyol protested that he was not here to print the Indians, but to find a shortcut to the Montana goldfields, and only to pass by. I translated it to the chiefs, and George Burnt said afterwards: "And the red cloud answered, that if the white men leave his country and drive no roads, all will be all right.The blunt knife said the same thing on behalf of the Sai'an people.Then the two chiefs told the officer (Welfer) to lead the caravan due west from this point, then turn north, and when they passed the Big Horn Mountain, they were out of this country. Soyol protested again that this route would take him too far from his own course; he said he would go north along the Powder River Valley to find a place where General Connor had built Fortress. This is the first time for Hongyun and Dull Dao to hear the news of General Kang Nuo and his intrusion.Surprised and irritated, they had the audacity to build a fort in the center of their hunting grounds.Seeing the growing hostility of the chiefs, Soyol presented them with a wagonload of flour, sugar, coffee, and tobacco; to which Red Cloud proposed adding powder, muskets, Detonator caps, but Captain Welver vehemently objected; in fact, the officer objected to giving anything to the Indians. Finally, the two chiefs agreed to accept the cartload full of flour, sugar, coffee, and tobacco in exchange for permission for the convoy to pass over the Powder River.The officer told me that George Burnt said afterward that if I restrained the Indians to step back from the caravan, he would unload the goods on the ground.He had to continue walking to the river to camp.It was already noon at this time, and when he reached the river and formed the convoy into a circle, another group of Sioux came from the village. They asked for more goods, but the officer refused to give them, so they started shooting at the car formation. This second group of Sioux harassed Soyol and Welfer for several days, but Red Cloud, Dull Knife, and his soldiers did not participate in it.They headed up the valley to see if there was any truth to the rumors that the soldiers were building a fort on the Powder River. During this time, Chief Peixing Connor had already begun to build a stockade about 95 kilometers south of Fenhe Crazy Girl Beach, and named it Fort Connor after himself.In Connor's column, there was a search company with Barney scouts under the command of Captain North.The Barneys, feuds of the Sioux, Sai'an, and Orapaho, were conscripted into the battalion and paid the cavalry regulars for this campaign.While soldiers felled trees to build Connor's fortifications, the Bani scouts patrolled the area, searching for their enemies.On August 16, they found a small group of Sai'an people coming from the south, and one of them was the daughter of Charlie Pent. She and four men rode forward a little bit in front of the group. When she saw the Bani people on a hill for the first time, she thought they were Sai'an or Sioux people.The Bani people used blankets to emit smoke horns, saying that they were friends, and the Sai'an people approached them without any suspicion of any danger.When these Sai'an people approached the hills, the Bani people suddenly attacked them.Therefore, Huang Nu, who left because Peng Te was a Caucasian, died at the hands of mercenaries of the same race.On the day she died, her son Charlie was with the blunt-knife warriors, just a few kilometers to the east, returning from the convoy that had laid siege to Soyol. On August 22, General Connor decided that the fort at Powder River was strong enough to be held by a company of cavalry. Advance to the valley of the Tongue River to search for a large Indian encampment that your scouts might find.If he went up the Powder River, he would find thousands of Indians, gearing up for a fight. Those warriors with red clouds and blunt knives were out searching for Connor's soldiers. About a week after Connor's column left Powder River, a Sai'an warrior named Xiao Ma, with his wife and young son, was passing through this area.Pony's wife is from the Orapaho tribe, and they are going to the Orapaho tribe's camp in Tongue River Black Bear. They will visit their natal family in summer.One day on the road, a load on his wife's horse became loose. When she dismounted to tie it up, she happened to see a mountain ridge behind. On the passage far behind, a long line of riders was coming. look over there!She called Pony. Soldiers!The pony cried out: Hurry up! As soon as they were over the second hill and out of sight of the soldiers, they turned off the road, and the pony cut the towing pole on which the son was sitting, put the boy behind him, and rode straight across the country to Black Bear's Camp Mercedes.They rushed to the village of two hundred and fifty cones erected on the terrace by the river, disturbing the tranquility.That year the Orapaho tribe had a lot of horses, and there were more than 3,000 horses fenced along the river. No one in the Orapaho believed that the soldiers had arrived within a few hundred kilometers; when Mrs. Pony wanted to warn the people of the messenger, he said: "Pony was wrong, all he saw were some Indians coming from the road , and nothing else.Xiao Ma and his wife were certain that the riders were soldiers, so they rushed to see the Yue family members.Brother-in-law Leopard was resting in front of his cone. They told him that the soldiers were coming and he had better move away quickly.Pack what you want, said the pony: We must go tonight. The leopard laughed at the Sai'an uncle.You've been terrified to get it all wrong, he said: You ain't seen nothing but buffalo. Well, said the pony, you don't have to go unless you want to, but we're starting tonight.His wife managed to persuade some relatives to pack their bags, and before dark, they left the village and walked several kilometers down the Tongue River. In the early morning of the next day, Paixing chief Connor's soldiers attacked the Orapaho camp.It was also an opportunity. A soldier led a racehorse out for a practice run, and happened to see cavalry gathering behind a hill.He rushed back to camp at a desperate pace, giving some of the Orapaho a chance to escape into the river. After a while, the cavalry trumpet blew, and a cannon rang. Eighty Bani scouts and two hundred and fifty cavalry under Kang Nuo's command divided into two groups and charged towards the village. The Orapaho horse handlers were desperately trying to disperse the horses into the valley.A few minutes ago, the peaceful village suddenly turned into a scene of terrible chaos. Horses raised their hooves and neighed loudly; There were shouts and curses of soldiers and soldiers. The Orapaho wanted to form a defensive line to cover the escape of the non-combatants, but amid the din of the first musket fire some women and children were already trapped among the warriors and cavalry.The cavalry killed a warrior, said one of Connor's officers, who fell from his horse, leaving behind the two children he had been carrying.When the Indians retreated, they left the children in the middle of the two lines, and neither side could reach them.These children were knocked over and fell down. I was in the village at that time, fighting with Indian warriors and women, and another officer said: because the women in this group are as brave in fighting as their savage men.Unfortunately for women and children, our brethren have no time to target both women and children, and fall like soldiers among the dead and wounded. The Orapaho tribe quickly caught up with the horses, and after getting on the horses, they retreated towards Wolf Creek, followed by the soldiers.With the soldier there was a horse in buckskin, known to some of the older Orapaho men, who had known him many years before, and who had trapped and hunted beasts around the Tongue and Powder rivers, of the same race. A woman here is married.They had thought of him as a friend and called him Blanket, but now Blanket Bridge was a mercenary like the Barneys. That day the Orapaho retreated fifteen kilometers, and when the soldiers' horses tired, the warriors turned and charged at them, shooting the blue uniforms with their bows and arrows, with old guns from the trade.In the afternoon, Black Bear and his soldiers drove Connor's cavalry back to the village, but the artillery placed two howitzers there. The loud guns made the air full of hissing metal fragments. The Rappaho couldn't go any further. While the Orapaho were watching over the hills, the soldiers cut down all the cones, tent poles, tent cloth, buffalo hides, blankets, furs, thirty tons of jerky, Integrate a lot of piles, and then light it up.Everything the Orapaho owned—living, clothing, and food for the winter—was destroyed.Then, the army and the Tanma of the Bani tribe got on their horses and left with the horses they had captured.They captured a thousand horses, one-third of the number of horses kept by the tribe. This afternoon, the Saiyan pony who wanted to warn the Orapaho about the approaching soldiers heard the cannon.As soon as the soldiers left, the couple and their relatives who had heard their warning returned to the burned village.I saw more than fifty Indians dead. Pony's brother-in-law, Leopard, was lying beside a circle of yellow grass, which was where the cone curtain was in the morning.Many people, including Black Bear's son, were seriously injured and died soon after.The Orapaho had nothing left but the horses they had salvaged from the interception, a few old guns, their own bows and arrows, and the clothes the soldiers had worn when they stormed the village.This is the Tongue River battle that happened in Yan'er Luo Maoyue. The next morning some warriors followed the Connor cavalry as they marched north to the Rosebud River.On the same day, the Soyol convoy, which was attacked by the Sai'an and Orapaho groups two weeks ago, also drove through this Orapaho area.The Indians, annoyed by this multitude of intruders, lay in ambush against the soldiers who served as scouts at the front of the convoy, scattered the cattle at the rear, and occasionally cleared away the driver of the cart.Since the Orapaho had spent most of their ammunition fighting Connor's cavalry, they were not strong enough to lay siege to Soyol's convoy.However, they often harassed the gold diggers until they came out of the Big Horn area and into Montana. At this time, Pasing Chief Conor was also marching up the Rosebud River, eagerly searching for more Indian camps to destroy.As he approached the meeting point of the Rosebud River, he sent out scouting horses in every direction to find the other two columns of his expedition, that of Cole and Walker, chief Eagle Eagle.It has been over a week, but the two columns can't find a trace.On September 9 Connor ordered Captain North to lead his Barney scouts to force a march to the Powder River, hoping to stop the two columns.The next day, the Bani mercenaries encountered a heavy rain and snow, and two days later, they discovered the place where Cole and Walker camped not long ago.The ground was full of dead horses, about nine hundred in total.This sign stunned and surprised the Bani people, because they didn't know how these mounts died, and many of the horses had their heads shot through with guns. Nearby were charred remains, and inside they found pieces of metal buckles, stirrups, and rings that had burnt away the saddle harness.Captain North could not determine what caused this evidence of disaster, so he immediately turned back to the Rosebud River and reported to General Connor. On August 18, the two armies of Cole and Walker met in the area of ​​the Mecha River in Montenegro.Morale was low at the two thousand men who had been Civil War volunteers and thought they would be discharged when the war ended in April.Before the departure from Fort Lerime, some soldiers from one of Walker's Kansas regiments mutinied, and would not set out unless artillery accompanied the convoy.By the end of August, the rations of this joint column were short, so they began to kill mules for meat. Many officers and soldiers suffered from scurvy, and their mounts became weaker and weaker due to the lack of water and grass.Under such circumstances, neither Cole nor Walker had any strong ambitions to fight the Indians; their only goal was to reach the Rosebud River and join forces with General Connor. As for the Indians, there are thousands of them in the sacred places of Montenegro.This is summer, and it is the time to talk to the great god, pray for his blessings, and manifest his spirit.People of all ethnic groups participated in these worship ceremonies one by one, or three, three, five, five, in the center of the heaven and the earth.They watched the dust of the two thousand men, horses, and carts, and hated the desecration of Montenegro by the troops, but they did not form a combat team, and the Indians only left this noisy and dusty column. On August 28th, Cole and Walker arrived at the Powder River, and sent scouts to the Tongue River and Rosebud River to find General Connor, but he was still far south on this day, ready to destroy the Orapaho tribe of the black bear. camp.When they returned to the camp after exploring the horses and said they hadn't found any trace of Connor, the two commanders ordered their officers and soldiers to halve the rations, and at the same time decided to head south before starvation brought disaster. During the few days when the soldiers camped in the Powder River, the camp was located at the place where the Powder River bends northward towards the Yellowstone River. Small groups of the Sioux Hank Baba tribe and the Miniconyo tribe followed their tracks out of the Black Mountain.By September 1, the number of fighters following the trail was almost 400.With them was Hank Baba's leader, Sitting Bull, who had been to the camp of the Sandy Tribes at Raven Creek two years ago who had been expelled from Minnesota. Save this buffalo region from the land-mad white man. The Sioux combat team found the soldiers camped in the woods along the Powder River, and a few young men were going to ride in with a white flag to see if they could talk the blue uniforms down and give them tobacco and sugar as a token of peace.Sitting Bull distrusted the whites and objected to this kind of begging; but he stopped and let someone else send a peace party to the camp. The soldiers waited until the Sioux peace team came within easy range of their rifles before firing, killing and wounding several of the Indians before they could escape.On their way back to the main force of the soldiers, they talked with the survivors and abducted a few horses from the large army of horses. Sitting Bull was not surprised that the soldiers treated peaceful Indian visitors in this way.He saw a few scrawny horses from the army's horse herd, and he concluded that four hundred Sioux on fast mustangs were worth two thousand soldiers on these half-starved army horses.Hei Yue, Kuai Xiong, Hong Ye, Hou Gu and most of the fighters agreed with him.Backward had a saber, which he had captured at Dakota from one of General Surrey's men, with which he was going to attack the soldiers. In the hieroglyphs drawn by Sitting Bull later in his autobiography, it shows that he wore beaded leggings, wore a fur hat with ear protection, held a single-shot muzzle gun, a bow, a pot of arrows, and His Thunderbird shield. The Sioux rode up to the camp in single file, surrounded the large army guarding the horses, and began to turn them over one by one, until a company of cavalry rushed towards the bank of the Powder River.The Sioux on their fast horses retreated swiftly, always out of rifle range, until the bony horses in the blue uniforms could no longer run, at which point they turned and charged at the pursuing cavalry, waving their sabers behind them. Taking the lead, he rushed in, cut a soldier off the horse with a knife, and then turned the horse's head and rushed out safely, yelling with joy for this bold assault. A few minutes later, the soldiers assembled again, sounded the horn, and charged towards the Sioux again.Once again the swift mustangs of the Sioux galloped them out of range, and the Indians scattered until the frustrated pawns gave up their pursuit.This time, the Sioux charged at them from all directions, rode into the ranks of soldiers, and knocked them off their horses.Sitting Bull captures a stallion, and later in his autobiography, this part is drawn out. Peacock chiefs Cole and Walker, panicked by the Indian attack, organized their troops and marched southward along the Powder River.During the past few days, the Sioux followed the troops closely, intimidating them by appearing suddenly on the high hills, or making small attacks on the rearguard.Sitting Bull and the other leaders, seeing how terrified the blue army uniform was, they kept huddling together, kept looking back, and always wanted to leave them in a hurry. When the storm and rain and snow came, the Indians hid for two days, and then this morning, they heard sporadic gunshots in the direction the soldiers were going.The next day, they found the camp that had left, and there were dead horses everywhere, and the rainwater on the dead horses had frozen into a layer of ice. The soldiers beat the horses to death, because there was no way to make them go any further. up. Since, by this time, many terrified blue uniforms were on foot, the Sioux decided to keep on following, and drive them mad with fear, never to return to Black Hills.Along the way, these Hanke Baba and Minikonyo tribesmen met Tan Mawu from the Sioux Aglale tribe and the Sai'an tribe. They were still looking for the column of Chief Peixing Connor.Excitement arises in this kind of encounter. Not a few kilometers to the south is a large village of the Sai'an tribe. The leaders of the various tribes were brought together by quick legs, and they began to plan a big ambush against the soldiers. Raid. During this summer, Roma has fasted spells many times, in order to gain special protection against the enemy.Like Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, he was determined to fight for his country, and he was determined to win.Bai Niu, another old magician of the Sai'an tribe, advised him to go to a nearby Fahu Lake alone and live with the water gods.Roman Nose then lay on a wooden raft on the lake without drinking or eating. After four days, he endured the scorching sun during the day and thunderstorm at night.He prayed to the Archmage and also to the Water God.When he got back to the camp, the white bull made him a battle crown to bless him, strung with so many eagle feathers, that it almost dragged to the ground when he mounted his horse. In September, when the Sai'an camp heard for the first time that the soldiers were fleeing southward from the upper reaches of the Powder River, Roma asked him to be allowed to lead a charge against the blue uniforms.A day or two later, the soldiers were camping on a river loop, with high hills and dense forests on both sides.The chiefs decided that this was an excellent position to attack, and they led hundreds of soldiers into positions around the camp.At the beginning of the battle, a small group of people was sent to lure the enemy to lure the soldiers out of the chariot formation, but the soldiers just stood still. Then Rome mounted his white horse, his battle crown trailing behind him, his face painted with the colors of battle.He asked the soldiers not to fight alone as in the past, but to work together as if they were fighting with soldiers.He told them to form a line in the open land between the river and the high hill.The soldiers steered their mounts to form a front line, facing the soldiers; the soldiers also stood in front of the carts to form a line.Roman Nose now galloped back and forth in front of the soldiers, telling them to stand still until he let the soldier's rifles run out of shells.At this time, he patted his mount and galloped like an arrow straight towards one end of the line of soldiers. When he ran very close and could see their faces clearly, he turned his horse's head and quickly walked in front of the line of soldiers. As he galloped by, the soldiers aimed at him all the way and fired all the guns.He galloped to this end, reined in the white horse, and ran back in front of the soldiers. He made three, perhaps four, dashes from one end to the other, when George Burnt said his horse took a hit and went down.When the soldiers saw it, they rushed forward with a cry of killing.They attacked the soldiers along the entire line, but could not break through at any point. Roman's nose broke his mount, but the amulet saved his life.He had learned something from the day's battle with Blue Uniform, as had Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Dull Knife, and the other chiefs.Bravery, strength, and intensive charge If the soldiers' weapons are only bows, arrows, guns, and old guns traded with animal trappers, all of these are useless. (At this point, we were attacked from all sides, front, rear and sides, Colonel Walker reported: but the Indians seem to have very few firearms.) And the GIs were armed with modern rifles from the Civil War, and howitzers support. For several days after this battle the Roman nose will be remembered by the Indians as the Saiyans and Sioux continued to harass and chastise the soldiers.Blue was now barefoot and in rags, and had nothing to eat but his bony horse, which they ate raw because the Indians were too oppressive to light a fire.At last, in the hay month, that is, at the end of September, the returning column of Chief Pesting Connor arrived and rescued the stricken officers and men of Cole and Walker.The whole force encamped around Fort Connor on the Powder River until a message from Fort Larimer arrived, bringing orders to recall the troops. (Only two companies remained at Fort Connor.) The two infantry companies that had been ordered to remain over the winter at Fort Connor (soon to be renamed Fort Leroy) were the fake Union troops that had escorted the Soyol convoy westward to the goldfields.General Connor left six howitzers to these former Confederates to defend the fort.Hong Yun and other leaders inspected the stockade from a distance, they knew that they had enough soldiers to take down the stockade, but too many people would die under the rain of fragments from these cannons.They finally agreed to a brutal strategy of keeping constant watch over the fort and the supply road from Fort Laramie.They can turn these soldiers into prisoners in their own castles and cut off their supplies within a winter. The winter was not over yet, and half of these hapless fake Northern soldiers died or were dying of scurvy, malnutrition, and pneumonia.Many soldiers, bored by the restrictions, slipped out and deserted at the risk of Indians outside. On the Indian side, all but a small contingent of warriors were needed to keep watch over the fort, all went to the Black Hills, where there were sufficient herds of antelope and buffalo to feed them fat in the warmth of their cones.In the long winter night, the chiefs once again discussed in detail the invasion of Paixing Chief Konor.Because of the Orapaho's overconfidence and negligence, they lost a camp, several lives, and part of their bountiful horse herd.The other tribes lost a few men, but no horses or villages.They captured a lot of horses and pack mules branded by the US military, and they also took a lot of lances, saddles, and other equipment from the soldiers.Most importantly, they had gained new confidence in their ability to drive the blue uniformed soldiers from their territory. Hong Yun said: If white people come to my territory again, I will punish them again.But he also knew that unless he managed to get many new guns like the ones he had wrested from the soldiers, and enough ammunition for them, the Indians could never punish the soldiers forever.