Little Wolf
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Little Wolf (c. 1820 – 1904) was a warchief of the northern Cheyenne Indians during the Indian Wars of the mid-nineteenth century. He is also thought to have been involved in the 1866 Fetterman massacre and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Born in present day Montana, by the mid-1850s Little Wolf had become a prominent chieftain of the northern Cheyenne, leading a group of warriors called the "Elk Horn Scrapers" during the Northern Plains Wars. He fought in Red Cloud's War, the war for the Bozeman Trail, which lasted from 1866 to 1868. As chief, he signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. He was chosen one of the "Old Man" chiefs among the Council of Forty-Four, a high honor in traditional Cheyenne culture. He was also chosen as Sweet Medicine Chief, bearer of the spiritual incarnation of Sweet Medicine, a hero of the Cheyennes. Because of this honorary title he was expected to be above anger, as well as concerned only for his people and not for himself.
Following the defeat of Morning Star (Dull Knife) by Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie in November 1876, Little Wolf was forced onto a reservation in Oklahoma's Indian Territory. Around 1878, he and Dull Knife led almost 300 Cheyenne from their reservation near Fort Reno, Oklahoma, through Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory into the Montana Territory, their ancestral home. During the journey, they eluded the U.S. cavalry, which was trying to capture them. The two groups split up after reaching Nebraska, and while Dull Knife's party was eventually forced to surrender near Fort Robinson, Little Wolf's group eventually made their way to Montana where there were eventually allowed to remain.
Little Wolf would later become a scout for the U.S. Army under Gen. Nelson A. Miles. He was involved in a dispute regarding one of his daughters, which resulted in the death of Starving Elk. Allegedly, Little Wolf was intoxicated when he shot and killed him at the trading post of Eugene Lamphere on December 12, 1880. Little Wolf shamefully went into self-exile as a result of this incident.
In his later years, he lived on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, where he died in 1904. George Bird Grinnell, a close friend and ethnographer who documented Little Wolf's life, called him, "the greatest Indian I have ever known."
Timeline
- 1820 (circa) Birth
- 1866 Start of Red Cloud's War
- 1868 End of Red Cloud's War
- 1878 Return to Montana
- 1904 Death
References
- Britannica Student Encyclopedia
External links
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