Let's Talk Wyoming - Embracing the Unexpected: Wyoming's Mellow Winter, Cowboys' Victory, and the Legacy of the Dullknife Fight

Let the mild winds of Wyoming whisk you away as we unravel the effects of a winter that refuses to bite, and the surprising consequences it's having on the natural world and our beloved pastimes. As your host, Mark Hamilton, I invite you to ponder with me why the birds are not heading south and what this means for the months ahead. Join us in the afterglow of the Wyoming Cowboys' exhilarating win, as we look forward to a reinvigorated football season, dreaming of gridiron glory with a fresh coaching crew set to revamp our offensive plays.

Step back in time with me to an era of conflict and courage as we recount the Dullknife Fight of 1876, a pivotal skirmish in the Indian Wars etched in the annals of Northern Cheyenne history. Hear the echoes of a village surprised under a freezing dawn by US troops, and feel the tension of a people torn between the old ways and new impositions. This is a tale of valor, tragedy, and the enduring spirit of the Cheyenne, woven into a narrative that honors their struggle and magnifies the voices from our past that still have much to teach us about resilience and the human condition.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be taking a look at our weather and we'll take a look at some of the benefits, maybe some of the downfalls, of this beautiful weather we're having here on our state of Wyoming. We'll talk Wyoming Cowboy Football, we'll talk about a little of this and a little of that and a lost truck driver and we also will be talking about the fight at Dullknife of 1876. I hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks for joining us today Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the fourth day of January. Happy New Year to everyone, wishing everybody a prosperous new year. In our Wyoming weather we had our snow that hit just before Christmas and it's been really good weather. Since then Our weather has been halfway warm, nothing of any extreme. Gets a little cool at night, but that's normal, but no snow of any type Right now. Today it's in the thirties here in Hot Springs County and it has been that it's almost temperatures up to the forties. There's been some beautiful days in there. I see a little bit of snow forecast off and on the next few days, but nothing of any major consequence. I've seen some potential rumblings of maybe some weather coming later on in January, but right now we'll take every bit of it and it's been a plus here for the state of Wyoming.

Speaker 1: 1:51

The wildlife herds are starting to rebound. It's been good for the mule deer, a lot of our pronghorn antelope, the elk herds. It's really been a big plus. Last winter it was just devastating to our wildlife in the state. A lot of the herds were just really lost, a lot of animals due to the extreme conditions. But this year has been just the exact opposite. So that's a big plus for the state.

Speaker 1: 2:16

And I did see that an article saying birds aren't migrating. For some reason. I didn't say if I read it correctly. I didn't see exact birds, but I noticed there's been a lot of birds still around here that I don't usually see, but with this warm weather they have no reason to leave. So you always go by the animals. They know what's going to happen. They're pretty much in tune, maybe a little bit more than the weatherman. So that may be a sign of things to come on our rest of our winter.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Also, this is a bad winter for anybody that's a skier. Most areas around have not got a lot of snow. In our area and I know in parts of Colorado it doesn't seem like they've got a lot of snow so it's been kind of tough for those people that own those ski runs and all the people that usually show up and spend a lot of money and for the skiers that got a lot of equipment invested and loved to get out on those slopes. It hasn't been a great year but we can get a lot of snow going forward. But it's just amazing when you start seeing that type of stuff when you talk about weather it's good for some people, not so good for other people. So the cattle producers here in the state of Wyoming, or livestock producers it's been great Haven't had the input so much feed into the animals. I notice a lot of hay is still left in the fields which means it hasn't been sold. This time last year people had already been feeding pretty heavily and I read a lot of articles in Montana in places that amount of early input was really putting a herd on their hay crops that they had for their animals and what they usually plant and what they usually feed. So this year it's been a reprieve for all those people and some of your hay producers have hay sitting out in the fields that they haven't been able to sell yet. Again, there's still a lot of winter left, but there's just so many people with the weather when you look at it that are affected. But right now here in the state of Wyoming we'll take every bit of it. It's just gorgeous and we'll see what happens coming up later in the month.

Speaker 1: 4:23

And sports here in the new year in the state of Wyoming. The Wyoming Cowboys were victorious in the Barstool Bowl or the Arizona Bowl 16 to 15. They beat to the Lito Squad from the MAC Conference Rather a different game. I had a hard time even watching it. I tried to get on the CW channel where it was being broadcast and could not get any service. I couldn't get to the game at all. I could not find it, couldn't figure out how to get to it. Finally, towards the end I watched it on the Barstool Sports app and got to take in the last six minutes of the game, got to see the winning kick. John Hoylan got. Kind of a felt. Good for John Hoylan. He had had a kind of a rough patch in the middle of the year where he had quite a few misses, but he was three for three on the day for the Cowboys, back by Toledo and the Barstool Sports. As I said on earlier podcasts, it really wasn't a favorite bowl for me, with all the theatrics, and I saw posts on Facebook of people talking about the announcers and why can't you find ESPN doing the game? And of course it was the Barstool Sports Bowl, so they got to do everything with it. There was breaks in the game where they did a lot of different things that were again sophomoric, but I saw afterwards it looks to me like that the Barstool Sports is going to drop the Arizona Bowl, so hopefully that we may be able to get back to regular football.

Speaker 1: 6:07

I'd like to see the Cowboys not go to the Barstool Sports Bowl or the Arizona Bowl. We're hoping for better things next year. We've got our new coach coming in. They're looking for an offensive coordinator and the coach did say he was looking for somebody with a little bit of a passing attack. They know that they have to be able to pass the ball more efficiently than they have, so that might be an exciting point for the Cowboy fans. We'll see how things shake out. It's going to be a long winter. I did not see anything else on any new transfers coming in to the Cowboys. They signed their high school class and they'll start to prepare for the 2024 season, which will start at the end of August. I think the first home game or not home game, but the first game is away at Tempe, arizona, as they'll take on Arizona State in an interesting matchup to see what the Cowboys are going to have to start their season and other happenings.

Speaker 1: 7:07

I hope everyone had a great holiday. It was a little strange with Mondays being Christmas and New Year's, but made it through it. They had a good holiday season, got a chance to relax, got a chance to take in a good movie that I wanted to share. The movie is called the Blind, as in a duck blind. It's about Phil Robertson from the Duck Dynasty, about his life, and I went in a little apprehensive when I started to watch this or heard about it. I know the Blaze Network was. I heard most of the advertisement through the Blaze and it did come out on video, and so I decided that we would watch that and I'm glad I did. It was a well done show and I'm sitting there looking at the life that Phil had growing up and what he went through and then, when he got married, what he turned into and the issues he had, but he found a way out of it. He found a way out of it accepting, got into his life and it was pretty heartwarming this whole story. So if you need a good show to watch, I tell you that it might make some people think about maybe their lives or stuff that they've gone through, but it is a pretty cool story. But take in the movie the Blind. I give it a five star. It was awesome. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 8:36

And, as you're all certainly aware of, with the news outside of the state of Wyoming and in the world, all we hear on the news right now is about the list. When is the list can be released for Epstein's Island? Who went on the island? Also in the news is talk about the border, that the Republicans want to shut the border down. They sure talk a lot but nothing really seems to happen with that.

Speaker 1: 9:07

And I did see today there was a school shooting in Iowa. So it's just a lot of noise, a lot of craziness out there in the world. And I'm glad right now that I live where I do, in nice and quiet Hot Springs County all 3,000 of us counting the dogs and chickens and finally, in a story that just kind of makes me wonder intriguing story. I'm always one of these mystery person. There was a case in Iowa and I don't know how many people have followed this. I ran across it on a different podcast, but back in November a truck driver went missing and he's been missing since. It was a Tuesday, november 21st of 2023. And he was a truck driver David Schultz. He was age 53. And he was driving his truck in.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Iowa and near Walla Walla no excuse me, walla of Lake Iowa. Walla Walla is in Washington Wall, lake Iowa, and he had picked up a load of piglets and was going to take those to get delivered and he was running late at night and I think I read reports that he picked up the piglets at around 1050, 11 o'clock somewhere late at night and they found his truck the next day.

Speaker 1: 10:38

And it was found abandoned on a county road and it was shut off and sitting in the driver lane. I'd heard in the center of the road that I saw reports in the driver's lane, just parked there with the lights off and such, and it really hadn't been called in till the next afternoon when finally somebody went to investigate. And I'm thinking if I saw a semi pulled over, if I was coming home late at night or going somewhere early in the morning that it was stopped in the lane of traffic, I might call the sheriff's department. I know I wouldn't stop to investigate. I'd be a little bit worried what was going on, but nobody reported it till then. And so they have started the search and they have searched high and low for this gentleman. With the cell phone records they were able to track his truck and I think it shut down at about 1231 o'clock in the morning was the last time that that cell phone moved. And when they found the cell phone and the truck, the cell phone was inside the truck along with his wallet and it had a couple thousand dollars in it, according to his wife that he didn't use credit cards, so he carried a lot of cash just for emergencies and it was still sitting there and I saw reports that his jacket was sitting outside the truck and no sign of him. And so of course I have never been to Iowa that's one state I have not been to but but cornfields and farms everywhere.

Speaker 1: 12:12

And they did a search and they searched high and low and his folks live in that area, they strum around that area. It isn't just like somebody that just happens to be driving through from another state. This is where he works all the time and they have not been able to locate this gentleman. And they've looked and they've looked and they're running down leads and nobody can seem to figure out what happened. There's a lot of conjecture that I saw that maybe he saw something when he picked up these piglets at the processing facility, wherever he picked them up, at this feedlot. That's something he wasn't supposed to see. Other people said he walked away from life, but that surely doesn't make much sense to me. I just can't believe the guy would do that. That. He would think that everything that he had going, that that would be something that he would want to do. So I don't really buy that one. So I don't know. But they have a reward out $2,000 reward.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Another thing, a little strange tidbit on this when they were out searching they did find another gentleman that had committed suicide, someone that had been having some mental issues that they knew about, that this guy had had some problems. They found him but they still have not found David Schultz, 53 years of age, his wife. He has a couple of twin boys and it's really difficult on them. People are looking and people are trying to figure it out, but it just has been a cold case and it's pretty similar to what we talked about last fall here in Wyoming. We had a young girl go missing around Worland that they have not ever found. No sign, no, nothing. She was in her 20s but they searched for her everywhere, could not find her. She had gotten stuck and was about a possible game somebody to come out and pick her up and they found her car abandoned but no sign of her Kind of a strange story, something that you might want to keep an eye on.

Speaker 1: 14:24

These type of situations always make me wonder. There's so many things that could happen, but this one definitely is strange, especially with that country. There they're not like up in the mountains or such. It's flat ground and we'll keep an eye on this, but God needs some help. He needs some help for the family. Prayers to the family. We're thinking of you and those people out in Iowa. Let's find David Schultz Today in our history section.

Speaker 1: 14:58

We want to start out with a story from Wild Historyorg the Dahlknife fight of 1876. Troops attack a Cheyenne village on the Red Fork of the Powder River by Gary Robinson. In 1874, after 20 years of bitter, intermittent warfare between the US Army and the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux tribes, the US government sent Colonel George Custer and 1,000 troops into the Black Hills of Dakota territory to look for gold. They found it, and the already testy relationship between the US government and the tribes changed quickly for the worse, as quickly as gold miners who grabbed their pans. Beginning then and continuing through 1875, prospectors flocked to the hills in such numbers that the conflict with the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota became unavoidable. In an effort to control the situation, the government took action to round up the Northern Romers Chai's people who up to that point had still not moved to the reservations in Nebraska and Dakota territories. That campaign led to Custer's death and the death of 210 of his men in the southern Montana territory at the Little Bighorn River on June 25th of 1876.

Speaker 1: 16:12

After the battle, the large camp that Custer had attacked around 8,000 Lakota, cheyenne and Arapaho people moved south, then east and eventually disbanded. The Cheyenne traveled with Crazy Horse and his Ogallala Lakota for nearly a month before leaving them and heading southwest, traveling along the western foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in northern Wyoming territory. This was the main camp of the Northern Cheyenne. Their numbers have been estimated between 900 and 1200. In November they moved east over the Bighorns and raised 173 lodges at the place they call Willow Creek, since better known as the Red Fork of the Powder River, about 20 miles west of present-day KC Wyoming. Here are two days later, on November 25th 1876, five months to the day after Custer's defeat, us troops found them and burned their villages to the ground.

Speaker 1: 17:06

This little known battle, referred to as the Dallknife Fight or the Red Fork Battle, impacted the Cheyenne people during the Indian Wars even more than did the Little Bighorn Fight, though the Dallknife Fight is the most common name used for this encounter. Little Wolf was by this time the primary leader in the Cheyenne camp. Dallknife was much loved and respected older leader who impressed government officials with statesman-like qualities during the early dealings with the tribe. Later he was a key figure in the Fort Robinson Breakout in Nebraska in 1879. Dallknife Cheyenne name was Morningstar. The name Dallknife was given by the Lakota relatives.

Speaker 1: 17:46

On this excursion, crook has set his sights on locating the camp of Crazy Horse, yogalala, lakota war leader. As a result of his leadership at the Little Bighorn and at a fight a week earlier with Crook's command on Rosbedd Crick, crazy Horse had recently come to a government attention as a prime figure in the native resistance. Crook used Indian spies and scouts to gather intelligence on the location and plans of their kinsmen. As the troops moved north through the Powder River basin, the camp beside Crazy Woman Crick, a Powder River tributary well north of present day KC and east of the Big Whorn Mountains Crook's scouts captured a young Cheyenne who, under questioning, revealed that the main camp of the northern Cheyenne was secluded on the red fork of the Powder River, called by the tribe's Willow Crick, about a two-day ride to the southwest. Another Cheyenne, a spy who had arrived from the Lakota camps in the north, told Crook that Crazy Horse had no doubt her soldiers were in the area and would certainly move his camp farther north, away from the encroaching danger. Seizing this opportunity, crook changed his objective and sent more than half of his troops, under the command of Colonel Bernard S McKenzie, into the Big Whorn Mountains and served to the Cheyenne village.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Mckinsey's forest consists of 700 men and 11 companies of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Calvary Regiments. Argumenting these troops from more than 400 Indian scouts, including about 150 Lakota and Arapah, more than 100 Pawnee and roughly the same number of Shoshone. While all the scouts were promised to share in any horse captured in the maneuver, the Pawnee and Shoshone relish the added incentive of striking one last blow against their traditional enemies. The McKinsey scouts also included 9 worried Northern Cheyenne who knew they might soon be asked to fight against their own tribesmen From their own scouts.

Speaker 1: 19:41

The Cheyenne and the village knew that soldiers were moving through the Powder River Basin. Many wanted to break camp right away and head north to rejoin Craziors. Most of the council of 44, the tribe's governing body, was in the village at the time. This included Little Wolf, dollknife and Old Bear, three of the Old man Chiefs. These chiefs were sometime called and most of the council itself comprised of four representatives from each of the 10 Cheyenne Bands. This body served to oversee most traditional and day-to-day activities, especially during the large gatherings of the tribe.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Last Bull, head chief of the Kit Fox Military Society, which normally took directions from the council, as did all the Cheyenne military societies, felt it was not necessary to leave and declared a type of Cheyenne martial law, yorda's warriors to cut the saddles and travoised clenches on the horses of anyone who tried to leave the camp and called for a scalp dance to celebrate society's recent victory over a small Shoshone village. He intended to fight the soldiers as they came the following morning as a scalp dance concluded, the Kinses troops, who had made their way through a treacherous maze of cricks and crevices in the dark of the night, attacked the village from the east end of the valley. The Kinses plan to quickly surround the village and isolate the horse herd was foiled when a herd sentry shot a Lakota scout who bolted ahead of the main body of soldiers. The scouts who turned fire and the necular of the day mis-exchanged the gunfire opened the ball, alerted to the Calvary's charge, cheyenne women, children and all people fled to the hills west and north of the camp as their men rushed to defend the village and give their loved ones more time to escape. The fighting was brief and intense. The Shoshone scouts climbed a high bluff south of the camp and laid down a heavy barrage of rifle fire, immediately gaining control of all activity in the village. In their haste to escape, many of the camp's inhabitants ran north across the creek and into deep twisting trenches that were eroded by the runoff from the high canyon walls further north. During this, mckinsey sent a detachment that included Cheyenne McKinney to intercept them. The result was the most heated confrontation of the entire assault, when walking whirlwind and several other Cheyenne men rose suddenly from a steep-sided gully where they had been concealed, firing almost point blank into the advancing calvaryment and stopping the charge. Mckinney was killed, as were walking whirlwind and several Cheyenne, while the Cheyenne Managers saved their two most powerful medicine bundles the Four Sacred Arrows and the Sacred Buffalo Hap.

Speaker 1: 22:19

The early morning assault caught many people in bed, forcing them to flee into the mountains wearing little or nothing at all. In addition to their clothing, all their lodges and winter stores, as well as weapons, cooking utensils and other essentials, including most of the horse herd, were left behind. Historical and cultural significant items, such as winter counts which record significant events of each past year, unique items such as sacred erudite of corn with great healing properties, shields, pipes, ceremony dresses and countless other heirlooms All fell into the hands of McKinsey's men, overburned, along with the lodges. Much of a traditional Cheyenne culture was lost as a result. Opposing soldiers were infuriated to find, mixed among the Cheyenne belongings, military trappings and personal effects of dead troops of the Seventh Calvary taken after Custer's ill-fated attack on the combined Cheyenne and Dakota camp the summer before. Army casualties included McKinney and six enlisted men killed, with 22 wounded. The Cheyenne estimate that they lost 40 of their people with twice as many wounded.

Speaker 1: 23:26

However, consequences of the attack continued for them long after the shooting stopped. That night the Cheyenne headed north over the canyon wall and into the Frigian Mountain Heights. The image of their home was being burned in the valley behind them haunted their steps. On front of them, a November blizzard rolled toward them across the range. Eleven babies rose to death the first night.

Speaker 1: 23:48

It took them almost a week to exit the mountains and nearly two weeks to find the camp of crazy horse, located near the east fork of Autocrick in the southeastern Montana Territory, a distance of nearly 150 miles from the battle site. The pitiful state of the Cheyenne filled their Lakota friends and relatives with fear. The Cheyenne, so improvised and badly beaten, convinced many of the Lakotas that their family could not risk the same fate. While traveling into the Lakota village, the Cheyenne in January, took part in a subsequent battle. This one was troops under General Nelson Miles on the Tongue River near present-day Burnie Montana. The fight entered in a draw and served only to support the growing resolve that the dream of driving the white men from their homeland was frugal. My late spring of 1877, northern Cheyenne and even crazy horses people had all surrendered. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. Whisper the code of the west. We ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming. Me Mal, you, you, you, you you.