Apple Creek Conflict & Burnt Boat Fight
By Dakota Wind
BISMARCK, N.D. – Chances are that if
you have ever visited the North Dakota Heritage Center you may have come across
the works of Hé Núŋpa WaníčA, No Two
Horns. No Two Horns is listed by the State Historical Society of North Dakota
and by Standing Rock Tourism as being Húŋkpapȟa
Lakȟóta.
Like many Plains Indian men, No Two
Horns had another name, Kimímela Ská,
White Butterfly. No Two Horns was said to have been born in 1852, or earlier.
His father was Ištá Sapá, Black Eyes, who was also known as Wasú Šá, Red Hail.
No Two Horns was a master artist of the Plains Indian pictograph and many of
his carvings serve as evidence of a graceful careful hand. By his own account,
he was quite a horse thief in his youth, and a veteran of the Little Bighorn
fight.
In May of 1924, Col. A. B. Welch,
adopted son of John Grass, met with No Two Horns and others ostensibly to talk
about the Burnt Boat Fight between the Lakota and a group of miners who
descended the Missouri River and beached their vessel on a sandbar. One story
has it that the miners caught a mother bathing her child nearby and overcome
with lust, raped her, and then killed her and her little one.
No Two Horns explained to Welch how
the Burnt Boat Fight came about after explaining how his band of people came to
be engaged there the summer following the 1863 Apple Creek Conflict.
Here is an excerpt of Colonel A.B.
Welch’s War Drums (Genuine War Stories From The
Sioux, Mandan, Hidatsa, And Arikara). Only minor edits have been made to the
Lakȟóta text within Welch’s paper:
I have often heard several men of the
Sioux make veiled remarks about this (1864) incident for some years before I
finally succeeded in obtaining a story regarding it. The Indians appeared
to be reticent about discussing it, apparently being afraid that they might be
punished for it even at this late date, after treaties had been signed in which
all acts of hostility had been mutually forgotten and forgiven. However,
when I talked with them regarding the Sibley Expedition, I began to get more of
the facts as the Sioux knew them.
"The Sibley Campaign 1863," by depression era artist Clell Gannon.
There are many men alive today, who
were young me at that time and who were fighting at the Big Mound north of
Tappen, Dead Buffalo Lake north of Dawson, and along the trail from there to
where the Indians were forced across to the west side of the Missouri river, at
Sibley Island. It is from these old men that I have the information as
herein given, as well as stories told to me by several white men and Mandan and
Arikara, who were in a position to know much regarding this affair.
The story of the white boy captive and
his tragic death appears to be authentic, although I have never been able to
get an Indian to tell us positively that it is a fact. Nevertheless, they
will not contradict the statement and many have said that they understood or
had heard about the boy and that he had died soon after the fight. They
intimate that his death was caused by the hysterical demand of the woman, who
cried for revenge to “cover the body” of Ištá
Sapá (Black Eyes, the father of No Two Horns) who was killed in the battle.
I had tried to obtain trace of this boy for years, before I finally was
convinced that, if he was actually taken prisoner, he lost his life in some
strange manner, soon after.
As no one of the white party survived,
it is not possible to obtain any but the Indian account of the actual affair,
but the story of Mr. Larned, as given, indicates that the miners might
still may have been under the influence of their wild time at Fort
Berthold and quite likely had much liquor aboard the craft. Roughly speaking,
it is about one hundred miles from Fort Berthold by river, to the place where
they met disaster and the flow of the current is about seven or eight miles per
hour. If the party were not hung up on some sand bar or did not land to
hunt for meat, it would have taken them some fourteen or sixteen hours to have
reached the mouth of the creek where they were killed. They probably landed for
the night time upon some of the many islands, as there were Sioux upon the
east, or left, band and Mandans, Hidatsa and Arikara upon the west, and it
stands to reason that the miners would not have invited a night attach. Meat
hunting would not have taken much of their time as game was very plentiful and
they had stocked up with trader’s goods at Fort Berthold and would have been
glad to eat “civilized food” again for a time. I believe that they left
Fort Berthold early in the morning; spent that night in the vicinity of the
mouth of the Knife River and were late in the next day.
The party was composed of some
fourteen or fifteen miners, presumably all Montana miners from Alder Gulch
‘diggins’ (Virginia City). Dust worth several millions of dollars was
taken out of this short gulch placer mining district, and the history of the
rough times there is wonderfully told in “The Vigilantes.” Wilder men
never gathered together in any spot, than there. The members of this party had
cleaned up and were returning with their dust to the down-river points in
1864. After their wild debauch at Fort Berthold, and universally holding
the Indian in contempt, it is easily understood how they maliciously fired upon
the Sioux and were overwhelmed by them when their mismanaged craft struck upon
a sand bar on the eastern shore near the Sioux camp. Who they were, or
information regarding their family histories, will never be known, but there
can be little doubt but that this party of wild frontier miners was completely
wiped out by the Sioux, at the first draw north of the present Northern Pacific
Railway Mandan-Bismarck bridge in the fall of 1864.
The map is from an 1890s survey of the Missouri River, about thirty years after the Apple Creek conflict. This reproduces the movements of native civilians & warriors, and Sibley's response.
Hé
Núŋpa WaníčA (No Two Horns),
a Sioux Indian in whom I place much reliance as to historical data concerning
that people, had told me that he was in the fight with the Indians who
confronted Gen. Sibley from Big Mound to Sibley Island. He says that,
after the Indians were safely upon the west banks of the Missouri, his band of Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna followed the Heart river to its
headwaters and passed on into the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, and that a
month or two later they started back with the intention of crossing again to
the east side and spending the winter in their old territory between the
Missouri and the James, known to them as “The Earth Dish of Wa’anáta.”
He states that one of the mouths of
the Heart was north of the present Northern Pacific railway bridge and that
they crossed at that place to the east side and moved up into the first draw,
where there was fresh water and wood and where they camped for a time.
This deep, steep-sided gully was a well-known Sioux camping place, and from it
travois trails led by east stages up to the high lands and thence by good
roads, to the valley of Apple Creek, which they followed up into the Dog Den Butte
country, up into the region of Sibley Butte and as far as “Wagon Wheel Hills,”
north of Steele, at the east end of which the trail divided, the main route
leading along the line of lakes and high choteau (sp?) and into the Čhaŋsása,
or James River valley, and another trail bearing north and east of north toward
the Mníwakaŋ or Devils Lake
regions. This camp site was about a mile south of a well-known Missouri
river ford, where passage might be easily made without bull boats or rafts, and
which was the generally-used ford in the vicinity for all Indian parties. The
west entrance of the ford was just below the United States Government harbor
now known as Rock Haven, and required not more than one hundred yards of
swimming in the main channel. Why this ford was not used by the party of
No Two Horns, at that time, is not known to me.
No Two Horns says: “We were camped in
that place then. There was much water flowing out of the hills and the
feed was good. Our horses would not leave the grass and shade of the trees
along the little stream. There was good wood in the timber there. Many
deer were in the bottom lands and antelope up on the prairie. Down on Apple
Creek there were many elk. We had much meat. We had been chased
across the river by the horse soldiers from the east. We crossed then just
above the mouth of the Little Heart. We got across easy. We killed
some of the enemy there, too. We had been in the Mníwakaŋ country. We were not Little Crow’s people. We
were looking for someone to come and thank us. Inkpáduta (Scarlet Point) and several of his men were in that
camp. When we got to the river, they went north on the east side. We
went across. We went up the Heart River. We went into the Good Horse
Grass country (the Sioux frequently speak of the Bad Lands by that name). When
the Indians who followed the horse soldiers came back, we started back to our
own country. We crossed the Missouri at the mouth of Heart River then. That
was where the railroad bridge is now. We went up to this water-grass
place. My father was with me, too. He was an old man.”
"Mackinaw Boat Under Attack On The Missouri," by William de le Montagne.
“Then we saw a boat coming down the
river. It had white men in it. We wanted to trade for powder, lead,
guns, coffee and cloth. We had some fine otter pelts and other skins to
trade.
We waved our arms and asked them to
come and trade with us. They shot us then. They killed my
father. His name was Ištá Sapá (Black
Eyes). We were mad then. They fired guns at us. They were
working hard at shooting. The boat run on some sand where the little
stream run out. We killed them all then. We set fire to the boat and
it burned to the water. We got their clothes and guns and kettles. Some
yellow earth, we poured out of some little sacks. We did not know it was
worth anything then. But it was gold. We buried my father in a lodge
there. I can show you the place where it stood. We went
away. They shot at us. We were friendly people. The leader of
the horse soldiers did the same thing. He made us fight. The
Government always treated the people who fought the best. It was fall
before the snow came. I don’t remember any more about that time by the
little stream which flowed into the Mníšoše
(Missouri).”
Thaóyate Dúta, His Red Nation (aka Little Crow).
It will be remembered that, at the
time of the Minnesota Massacres (1863) by Little Crow’s Santees, many members
of the Iháŋktȟuŋwan and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna divisions moved away into the Devils
Lake regions, with the expressed purpose of keeping out of the trouble. They
fully expected that the Government would send a messenger to them, to thank
them for that action. They nearly starved during the winter and early in
the spring were in the vicinity of Steele and Dawson, Kidder County, North
Dakota, hunting buffalo when they were surprised by the advance of Sibley’s
column.
Their own story is that they sent
forward several old, honorable men to smoke with Gen. Sibley, and that these
old men were fired upon by Sibley’s men and the fight started. Many of
these friendly Indians were killed in the running engagement, but the troopers
were, to say the least, perfectly satisfied to see the Indians cross the river,
after which the soldiers returned to Minnesota.
Inkpáduta, or Scarlet Point, pictured here, went on to fight at the Little Bighorn.
The hostile renegade, Inkpáduta (Scarlet Point), and about
twelve of his men had joined this hunting party a few days before Sibley found
them, but had already been notified by the camp soldiers, that he must go away
at once. When the Indians neared the Missouri, he, together with his men,
left the main body and slipping through the soldiers guard, succeeded in
passing north along the east bank of the stream and went off into the Devils
Lake region, and north, to be close to the Canadian border. The other
Indians broke up into small parties after the crossing, and went into several
directions, but the camp with which No Two Horns traveled, went into the Bad
Lands, which they reached about August 15th, 1864. No Two Horns argued
that the Government made peace only with those who fought against them, and
that his people should have done so, under the thought that they would have
been treated better if they had.
Thank you for this post.
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