Porcupine

Porcupine (c. 1848 – 1929) was a Cheyenne chief and medicine man. He is best known for bringing the Ghost Dance religion to the Cheyenne. Raised with the Sioux of a Cheyenne mother, he married a Cheyenne himself and became a warrior in the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. Porcupine fought against the US in Hancock's War in 1867 in which the Cheyenne resisted moving to a reservation. Porcupine's group was pursued by the 7th Cavalry from Kansas to Nebraska. In Nebraska he succeeded in derailing and wrecking a train, the first time this had been done by Indians. At the conclusion of the Great Sioux War of 1876, the Cheyenne surrendered and were deported to Oklahoma. Porcupine took part in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus in which a part of the starving tribe fought their way back to their homeland in Montana. Porcupine was one of a group of Cheyennes who were subsequently arrested on charges of murdering settlers as the Cheyennes crossed Kansas. After spending most of 1879 in prison, the charges were dismissed without a full trial taking place. In 1889, Porcupine undertook a long journey to visit Wovoka in Nevada. Wovoka was the prophet of the new Ghost Dance religion. Porcupine believed that Wovoka was the Messiah who would save the Indians and rid the continent of the white men. Porcupine returned to preach the new religion to the Cheyennes and began baptising converts into his church. The Ghost Dance spread throughout the plains tribes. Fear of it led to it being suppressed by the US army. While the Cheyenne did not suffer tragedy on the scale of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, Porcupine could only perform the dance in secret from 1890 onwards. In 1900 he was imprisoned for attempting to revive the religion. Porcupine, like Wovoka, preached peace and took no part in the violence associated with the Ghost Dance elsewhere. He was a chief representing the Cheyenne in several treaty councils with the US, including leading a delegation to Washington.

Porcupine was born c. 1848 and was raised with the Sioux. His father was Sioux and his mother was Cheyenne. He married a Cheyenne and became a member of the Cheyenne tribe. It was the normal custom for a husband to live amongst the band of his wife's family, usually in a lodge adjacent to her parents. Like virtually all Cheyenne young men, Porcupine joined a warrior society, in his case, the Dog Soldiers.

General Winfield Scott Hancock

At the end of the Civil War, the US attempted to persuade the Plains Indians to live on reservations. A number of simultaneous military expeditions were launched in pursuit of this policy under the overall control of General Grant. General Winfield Scott Hancock commanded one such enterprise in West Kansas. Its chief, but not only, target was the Southern Cheyenne in the Smoky Hills region. In April 1867, Hancock moved a large force to Fort Larned and demanded that Indian leaders meet him there. The idea was to intimidate the Indians with a show of force. He was warned by Edward W. Wynkoop, the Indian agent for the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho, that this would be seen by the Indians as an aggressive act and was inappropriate for peace negotiations. Hancock ignored this advice.

The Indians were wary of approaching the fort. A joint camp of Southern Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux was established thirty miles away at Pawnee Fork. A handful of Indians entered the fort, including Tall Bull, leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. Hancock threatened them with war if they did not agree to his terms, but they responded by returning to their camp. Angered that many Indian leaders had not met him, Hancock declared that if the Indians would not come to him, he would go to them and prepared to move his whole force to Pawnee Fork. The Indian agents again warned him that this would be seen as aggression and was not a good idea. The Indians attempted to stop Hancock approaching the camp by setting fire to the prairie but this failed. Outside the camp there was a confrontation with the Cheyenne leader Roman Nose. Hancock spoke harshly to Roman Nose who then told his companion, Bull Bear, to ride away because he intended to kill Hancock in front of his soldiers and did not want Bull Bear to be killed in the inevitable hail of bullets that would follow. Instead Bull Bear led Roman Nose away. Hancock then ordered the camp to be captured, but on entering, it was found to be deserted. The Indians, fearing a repeat of the Sand Creek massacre, had already left and scattered.

Hancock ordered George Armstrong Custer to take the 7th Cavalry in pursuit. This was Custer's first action in the Indian wars. It was not very successful, the scattered Indians were hard to follow and when Custer stopped at Fort Hays for forage for his horses he found there was none to be had and he became stuck there. On 19 April Hancock ordered the camp at Pawnee Fork to be destroyed in retaliation and sparked an Indian war, unnecessarily so according to many commentators both contemporary and modern. One of the Indians being pursued by Custer from Pawnee Fork was the nineteen-year-old Porcupine.

Train attack

Union Pacific train, 1866, near the location of Porcupine's attack

Porcupine fled northward from Custer with a companion, Red Wolf. By the time they reached the Union Pacific Railroad near North Platte, Nebraska, they had joined a band of Cheyenne led by Turkey Leg and Spotted Wolf. Porcupine had the idea of attempting to stop or damage a train. On 6 August 1867 Porcupine and Red Wolf placed a railroad tie across the track at a point three miles west of Plum Creek (now Lexington) and tied it down with wire removed from the lineside telegraph line. They lit a fire at sunset. Two men, Pat Handerhan and William Thompson, were sent out on a handcar to investigate the failed telegraph line. Distracted by the fire, they let the handcar hit the obstruction. Porcupine and Red Wolf drove off the men with rifle fire but they were pursued and Handerhan was killed. Thompson was wounded but played dead, even as he was being scalped, and survived. Porcupine and Red Wolf found two Spencer carbines in the handcar. These were breech-loading weapons which they did not understand, being familiar only with muzzle-loading rifles. On discovering that the rifles would swivel apart they discarded them as broken.

Encouraged by this success, the Indians then tried to do some more substantial damage to the track. The rails were unfastened, lifted, bent aside and a more substantial barricade built. Late into the night, early 7 August, two freight trains approached. Some of the Indians came out of hiding and pursued the first train on horseback. They fired at it and even attempted to stop it by lassoing the engine. This did not work of course, but it did have the effect of causing the train engineer, Brooks Bower, to apply full throttle to escape the Indians. The train hit the damaged track at full speed. Bower was thrown through the cab window and died. The fireman, George Hendershot, was poised at the open door of the firebox with shovel in hand ready to throw in more coal. He was thrown inside the firebox and burnt to death. The survivors of the train wreck retreated back to the second train, along with Thompson, who came out of hiding carrying his own scalp. The train backed up to Plum Creek Station, picked up the residents there, and evacuated them to Elm Creek. There was a failed attempt to reattach Thompson's scalp in Omaha and it is now in the public library there.

In the morning the train was thoroughly looted and then burned. Bolts of calico from the train were tied to the tails of the warrior's ponies so that they unrolled into colourful flags. These were taken back to their camp for the women there. Porcupine's actions that day had resulted in the first train derailment by Indians.

Following the Indian surrender at the end of the Great Sioux War of 1876, the Cheyennes were forcibly deported to reservations in Oklahoma. There they found that the hunting grounds they had been allocated were devoid of the large game they needed to survive, and the supplies promised by the US government failed to arrive, or were stolen by the Indian agents. Facing starvation, chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf in 1878 led the Northern Cheyenne on an epic fighting journey back to their homeland in Montana, more than a thousand miles away. Porcupine took part in this Northern Cheyenne Exodus. Dull Knife surrendered at Fort Robinson in Nebraska. His band was imprisoned there and denied food and heating (with temperature well below freezing) for not agreeing to return to Oklahoma. Nearly half were killed (but not Dull Knife himself) in a desperate escape from Fort Robinson. Little Wolf surrendered in March 1879 at Fort Keogh in Montana. Little Wolf's band was permitted to stay and Dull Knife then joined them there.

Porcupine (second from right) as a prisoner in Kansas 1879

A number of Kansas settlers had been killed during the Indians' journey north. There were calls to put the whole band of Cheyenne on trial as a group, but this had dubious legal standing. As a compromise, the military sent seven Indians, Wild Hog, a war chief of the Northern Cheyenne Elk warrior society, Porcupine, and five others (Old Crow, Tangled Hair, Blacksmith, Noisy Walker, and Strong Left Hand) for trial in a civilian court for these killings. A number of items taken from homes in Kansas had been found in the Indians' possession. They were sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas at the beginning of 1879 to await trial. They were to be tried in Dodge City and were escorted there by lawman Bat Masterson. It was not an easy journey; large, sometimes unruly, crowds turned out to view the Indians. In Lawrence, Masterson found it necessary to hit the city marshal to keep order. The trial began in Dodge City on 24 June. The defence lawyer successfully argued that local prejudice would prevent a fair trial in Dodge City and requested the trial be moved to Lawrence, a request that was granted. The defence built a case intended to expose the iniquities of the reservation system. They intended to embarrass Washington, and had issued subpoenas for, amongst others, General Nelson Miles, General John Pope, and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz. Meanwhile, the prosecution was having problems persuading witnesses to make the long journey to Lawrence. When the chief prosecutor failed to turn up on 13 October, all charges were dismissed.

The Ghost Dance religion was founded by its prophet Wovoka in Nevada, a Paiute Indian who had a vision on 1 January 1889 during a solar eclipse. In this vision, he was taken up to heaven and given a dance (the Ghost Dance) to pass on to the Indians to ensure their place in heaven. Wovoka's religion was heavily influenced by Christianity. He predicted that a Messiah figure, identified with the Christian Jesus, would come to Earth and resurrect all the Indian dead. All the whites would be removed from Earth and the buffalo would return. Wovoka predicted that this would happen in Spring 1891. In the meantime, according to Wovoka's preaching, the Indians were not to fight the whites, but were to perform the Ghost Dance.

Arapahoes performing the Ghost Dance, 1900, based on photographs by James Mooney

In November 1889 Porcupine led a Cheyenne mission to visit the Arapahoes in Wyoming. His companions were Grasshopper, and a younger third Indian. In Wyoming, Porcupine repurposed the enterprise and went on to Nevada to see Wovoka. They stayed over the winter and returned in the spring of 1890. Porcupine's report to the tribal council of chiefs took five days to deliver. At the end of that time he was given permission to promulgate Wovoka's teaching amongst the tribe. Thus, Porcupine became the main apostle of the Ghost Dance amongst the Cheyennes. Porcupine preached that Wovoka was the Messiah and a Christ figure.

Porcupine describes the visit to Wovoka as a fortuitous side benefit of the visit to the Arapahoes. He mentions only the Cheyenne delegation as if they came alone. However, James Mooney, an ethnologist tasked by the US government with investigating the Ghost Dance and who travelled far and wide to interview all the principals in the tribes concerned, including Wovoka himself, tells a different story. Porcupine's delegation was part of a larger, organised mission, perhaps a dozen people, sent out by a conference of chiefs at Fort Washakie in Wyoming with the explicit purpose of obtaining information about the new religion. The mission included delegates from the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Shoshoni. It seems likely that the Arapahoe visit was a cover story to make easier obtaining permission from the Indian agent to leave the reservation. US soldiers guarding the reservation were under orders to stop anyone from leaving without a permit. Porcupine, however, travelled without a permit until he reached Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho where he was given one by the Indian agent there. At Fort Hall, more Shoshoni and Bannock Indians joined them. The Indian agent at Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation in Nevada reported that the strength of the party was thirty-four as they passed through. Porcupine says that all the Indians they met after Fort Hall were already performing the Ghost Dance, and that many whites (these would be mostly Mormons in Nevada) were also dancing.

White reaction

Burying the dead after the Wounded Knee Massacre

The Ghost Dance religion was not limited to the Cheyennes. It spread throughout the plains tribes. Settlers living close to reservations became concerned that it would lead to a new Indian uprising and called on the army to intervene. Indian dances had been made illegal by the Indian Religious Crimes Code, 1883, and remained so until 1934. White fear of the movement resulted in confrontation between the army and the Sioux and led to the killing of the Hunkpapa Sioux chief Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890. At Porcupine's location on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, reinforcements were sent from Fort Keogh to the Lame Deer agency. The army sent Sgt. Willis Rowland, a mixed-blood Cheyenne-white scout, to gather intelligence on Porcupine's preaching. Rowland joined Porcupine's church and was baptised into it. Rowland disliked the deceitfulness of his mission; "I hated to do this, but it seemed like it was the best way." After three days, he reported back to his superiors that Porcupine's preaching was entirely peaceful and that nobody was talking about fighting whites. Nevertheless, the Ghost Dance was stopped by the government. The Northern Cheyenne sometimes succeeded in holding an illegal Ghost Dance by convincing soldiers trying to break it up that it was some different dance.

Some time after the Ghost Dance was stopped, Porcupine moved to the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Sioux and Cheyennes had always been on friendly terms and had been allies in battle before the Cheyenne surrender. Porcupine himself was half Sioux. However, after Wounded Knee Porcupine and sixty others were temporarily moved to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation; many Cheyenne were in the army as scouts and it was felt they would not be safe at Pine Ridge. They became caught in a bureaucratic trap there. Porcupine believed that they should have been paid their share of the money from the enforced sale of reservation land in South Dakota to the government in 1889. They did not get it because they were no longer on the roll at Pine Ridge, even though their move was only supposed to be temporary ("a visit" as Cheyenne tribal historian John Stands in Timber puts it). Some of them were paid after a wait of a year.

The Ghost Dance religion faded when the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead failed to appear as predicted. It did not, however, die completely and a rump remains into the present day. Porcupine tried to revive the religion in 1900. Indian agent James C. Clifford gathered a petition from Northern Cheyennes demanding that he be imprisoned. Porcupine was arrested in October and given hard labour at Fort Keogh. He was released on 28 February 1901 on promising to behave. In 1918 there was a Messianic inspired attempt to organise a revolt on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. Whites at the agency were afraid enough to carry guns at all times and stockpile ammunition. However, the attempt was nipped in the bud with strongly worded threats to the Indians. Porcupine took no part in this, or any other, Messiah-connected attempted rebellions. He remained peaceful throughout the period.

Porcupine was a chief of the Northern Cheyenne but never recognised as such by the US government, probably because of his connection to the Ghost Dance. He was also a powerful medicine man; according to Marquis he had more influence than the highest status medicine man in the tribe, the Keeper of the Sacred Tepee. He was involved in four separate treaty councils with the US. He says that all four treaties had later been abrogated by the US. The most troubling of these was the US reneging on the treaty agreement over the Black Hills after gold was discovered there. The dispute over the Black Hills was the cause of the 1876 war. Porcupine was the spokesman for a Cheyenne delegation to Washington during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893). The purpose was to seek reparations for treaty violations.

Porcupine in his preaching phase was clearly a very different person to the young warrior. Historian Thomas B. Marquis who met and wrote about Porcupine said,

As a "bad Indian" he was of the most gentle type. The high regard for him was not restricted to his own people ... Even the missionaries liked him, their only condemnation being that he was an apostle of paganism.

— Thomas B. Marquis

Porcupine had two sons. Both died of tubercolosis, a common disease amongst the Cheyenne of the reservation period, for which they had little resistance. Porcupine died in 1929.