Washakie

 

What distinguished him physically was a scar on his cheek from an arrow shot by some enemy in a raid on a camp—who and where and when is all lost. That scar had made him look fierce on the battlefield, and fierce he was. Once other raiding bands knew how to identify him, they moved quickly away.

Fierce and smart. He picked up small stones and put them in a buffalo bladder. When that package would dry, he’d created a rattle, a loud one, a big rattle so loud that enemy horses, not familiar with the trick would almost immediately run off, giving the battle to the Shoshone.

Washakie’s life is a long and bodacious collection of adventures. When his people’s welfare was impeded by a fight over land rights necessary for hunting, Washakie determined that the only way to end the paralysis was a fight between the two bands’ headmen, one of whom was Washakie. The fight was long and hard but when it was over Washakie put his enemy’s heart on a lance.

But Washakie was no Crazy Hirse or Black Hawk. He didn’t refuse offers meant to take away rights or land from other tribes in the west. He chose eventually not to fight the whites to the bitter end. Washakie, in fact, enlisted his men and eventually himself in numerous fights with bands of the tribes who had been traditional enemies of the Shoshone and Bannock bands, tribes like Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Ute, and others.

Washakie was so successful in his alliances with the Generals like Crook and even Custer, that he and his Eastern Shoshone people were rewarded with a place of their own, the Wind River Reservation, 2.3 million acres cut out of central Wyoming, a reservation that included land traditionally assumed to be Shoshone homeland.

No, Washakie and his Shoshone warriors were not involved in Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn River. However, they and their Crow friends were immensely helpful in fighting off their more traditional enemies at the Battle of the Rosebud just a week before the massacre Custer and his men of the 7^th Cavalry.

It’s a quirky, but hang on. The Shoshone fought against the Sioux and Arapaho and others the government called hostiles. Their efforts saved the cavalry from a humiliating defeat on the Rosebud River, but that fight meant that Crook’s men were in no shape to carry out their end of the strategy at Little Big Horn. So, while Washakie or his warriors weren’t immediately responsible for the death of Custer or his men, they most certainly bore partial responsibility for the deadly outcome of the memorable battle at the Little Big Horn.

I’m only telling you part of the story, but enough to help you understand why if you visit the University of Wyoming you’ll discover—it’s not hidden—a 24’ tall sculpture of Chief Washakie, complete with his immense eagle feather headdress flowing out behind him.

More likely, perhaps, should you wander through the Statuary at the Capitol in Washington D. C. this summer, be sure to see Standing Bear, the head man from Nebraska’s Poncas and our neighborhood. But don’t miss the other Native honorees—you can’t really, among them Washakie (up top).

Washakie looks almost like a cigar-store Indian, that, well, typical; but like the other Native head man who left their names within our cultural history, his story is as unique as he must have been himself.