January Moon: The Northern Cheyenne Breakout from Fort Robinson, 1878–1879 by Jerome A. Greene (review)

Jerome A. Greene has done it again. A retired National Park Service historian and renowned scholar of western military history, Greene is widely known for his work on the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek Massacre, and related topics. This work follows the complex, bloody, and tragic story of Northern Cheyenne–United States government relations in the 1870s and 1880s. The author discusses the role of the Northern Cheyennes in the Great Sioux War, their removal to Indian Territory, the flight north of Morning Star (known to whites as Dull Knife) and Little Wolf’s people, their confinement and violent attempted escape from incarceration in Nebraska Territory, inquests by the United States military in the breakout’s aftermath, and the reclamation and memorialization of the Northern Cheyenne view of these events. January Moon adds to Greene’s already sterling reputation by providing the most thorough, well-documented account of the Fort Robinson Breakout.

Roughly the first half of Greene’s work recapitulates a story well-known to students of the Great Plains Indian Wars. He begins with a detailed account of early Cheyenne history and their struggles against the United States government, their military defeat in the late autumn of 1876, and the removal of the Northern Cheyennes to a reservation in Indian Territory. After a discussion of the problems they faced in the south—disease, malnutrition, and tensions with their Southern Cheyenne relatives—a brief chapter follows their escape from the reservation, flight north, the surrender of Morning Star’s band, and their subsequent imprisonment at Camp (later Fort) Robinson. Next comes a detailed discussion of the geography and topography of the Pine Ridge country, along with a review of the post’s layout and the road and telegraph networks that connected the garrison to the wider region. Such a spatial understanding is essential to Greene’s treatment of the events of January 1879. The author then discusses the day-to-day life of the people in confinement and their generally good treatment by the soldiers. The decision to send the Northern Cheyennes back to Indian Territory, however, precipitated a dramatic turn in events that resulted in a decision to cut off their food and water until they capitulated to government demands. This, in turn, led to the bloody attempt to escape imprisonment late on the night of January 9, 1879. In the slaughter that resulted over the coming days, sixty-four Northern Cheyennes were killed and seventy-eight recaptured.

It is in the later chapters that Greene makes his most noteworthy contribution to the scholarship of these events. In the wake of the breakout, the government decided to send Morning Star’s people back to Indian Territory. Before that happened, the state of Kansas charged several warriors with murder, but the case fell apart. It was not until the early 1880s that this band was removed to Dakota Territory, before finally making it home to Montana in 1891. Particularly noteworthy is Greene’s analysis of the military inquest of the events which found that officers and soldiers involved were generally blameless for the breakout. Eastern newspaper coverage, however, was largely sympathetic toward the Northern Cheyennes. The last chapter of the book discusses the fruitless archaeo-logical search for the remains of the tribespeople killed during the fighting. An epilogue examines the ways in which Northern Cheyennes have reclaimed the history of the breakout. Through the repatriation of human remains, the establishment of the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spirit Run, and the dedication of a monument in 2016, this community has taken major steps to commemorate the courage and sacrifice of their ancestors.

January Moon is one of the most recent additions to a large body of work on the Northern Cheyennes and their ordeal in 1878–1879. Since the 1950s, works by Mari Sandoz, Stan Hoig, John H. Monnett, James N...