The objective was to hold.
The Sash Made Courage Visible
Imagine the difference between two statements.
A warrior says that he will stay.
A warrior drives a stake through his sash into the earth where everyone can see it.
The first statement exists in memory.
The second exists in space.
Friends can see the sash.
Enemies may eventually understand that the man is not moving.
The warrior himself can feel its tension as he turns.
If fear arrives, the physical reminder remains.
The promise is no longer abstract.
This is why such traditions could be powerful in combat.
Human beings are not machines.
Fear changes perception.
A person who confidently believes he will stand before a fight begins may feel something very different when horses fall, bullets strike nearby, friends disappear, and an enemy suddenly approaches from a direction nobody expected.
Ritual can help people act according to values established before panic begins.
The stake says that the decision has already been made.
That was the kind of commitment Wolf with Plenty of Hair made at Summit Springs.
To understand why the moment became necessary, however, we need to understand what had happened to the Dog Soldiers during the years before 1869.
American Expansion Was Changing the Central Plains Faster Than Treaties Could Contain It
During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, traffic across the Plains increased dramatically.
Settlers.
Military columns.
Mail routes.
Stage lines.
Railroad construction crews.
Gold seekers.
Freighters.
Surveyors.
Hunters.
Every new road or rail line represented more than transportation.
It represented occupation.
For Indigenous communities dependent on wide seasonal movement, the effect was cumulative.
More people traveled through hunting grounds.
More buffalo were killed.
More forts appeared.
More land was surveyed.
More demands were made for permanent corridors.
Treaties attempted to place borders around societies whose economies and political relationships did not fit neatly into the lines American negotiators wanted to draw.
The United States often treated signatures as permanent surrender of movement and territory.
Indigenous signatories could understand agreements differently, especially when the people supposedly bound by them had not all participated or accepted the same interpretation.
The result was recurring conflict.
One agreement produced another dispute.
One military response produced retaliation.
One attack produced another expedition.
By the 1860s, violence across Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and neighboring areas had become increasingly difficult to separate into clean beginnings and endings.
Everyone carried memories of previous bloodshed.
Those memories shaped the next encounter.
Sand Creek Became One of the Defining Memories
On November 29, 1864, Colorado troops attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek.
Many people in the camp believed they were under some form of protection or were attempting to remain peaceful.
The attack killed large numbers of people, including women and children.
The event became notorious even among Americans at the time.
Congressional investigations condemned aspects of what had happened.
For Cheyenne communities, the consequences could not be contained inside government reports.
Relatives had been killed.
Trust had been shattered.
People who had argued for accommodation with American authorities had been undermined.
The lesson many survivors drew was obvious.
Promises could fail.
Flags could fail.
Negotiation could fail.
A community attempting to avoid war could still be attacked.
The Dog Soldiers already possessed a strong military identity.
After Sand Creek and the violence surrounding it, militant resistance gained additional force.
This does not mean every Cheyenne person reached the same conclusion.
Indigenous societies contained political disagreement just as other societies do.
Some leaders continued seeking accommodation.
Others believed accommodation had become dangerous.
The Dog Soldiers became increasingly identified with the latter position.
That divergence would shape the years leading to Summit Springs.
The Dog Soldiers Became a Community as Well as a Warrior Society
By the later 1860s, the Dog Soldier identity had expanded beyond the structure of a traditional men's society.
Families camped with them.
Political authority developed around leaders who resisted government pressure more aggressively than some other Cheyenne chiefs.
This is why calling Tall Bull's settlement simply a "war camp" can be misleading.
Women were there.
Children were there.
Older people were there.
Warriors lived within communities.
The U.S. Army might view a settlement as a military target because fighting men operated from it.
Families experienced it as home.
This difference explains much of the brutality of Plains warfare.
A mobile village could contain the logistical foundation of resistance.
Horses.
Food.
Lodges.
Weapons.
Families.
Destroy the village and the military force loses resources.
But destroying the village also exposes people who may not be fighting.
The distinction between combat zone and civilian space becomes dangerously thin.
Summit Springs would demonstrate that reality.
Wolf with Plenty of Hair's final stand occurred while the entire social world around him was under attack.
Tall Bull Had Become One of the Important Dog Soldier Leaders
Tall Bull emerged as a significant figure among the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers during the turbulent years following the Civil War.
He belonged to a generation confronting a rapidly narrowing strategic environment.
The buffalo still moved across the Plains in enormous numbers.
Cheyenne horse culture remained powerful.
Warriors could still travel immense distances.
Yet the United States was establishing lines that Indigenous military mobility could not easily erase.
Railroads were especially important.
A fort could be isolated.
A wagon road could become dangerous.
A railroad transformed the speed at which troops, supplies, settlers, and information could move.
It also encouraged permanent towns.
The landscape was being connected to distant centers of power.
A Cheyenne war party might dominate a local encounter while still facing a national system capable of replacing lost soldiers and sending another column.
Tall Bull and other Dog Soldier leaders fought inside that worsening equation.
Raids against settlers and transportation routes continued.
The United States responded with punitive expeditions.
Captives were sometimes taken during raids, adding urgency and emotional intensity to military pursuit.
Each side increasingly saw the other through the memory of previous killings.
By 1869, there was little room for misunderstanding that the campaign against Tall Bull's people would be violent.