Indians from escaping in that direction. Battle The village, however, was further north than anticipated, with the result that only Captain James Egan's 2nd Cavalry Company K of 47 men, accompanied by Second Lieutenant John G. Bourke and newspaper reporter Robert Edmund Strahorn, charged into the village from the south, while the other companies were delayed by the distance and rough terrain. According to Captain Egan's watch, the battle began at 9:05 a.m. on the morning of Friday, March 17. The Indians, now identified as Northern Cheyenne and a few Oglala Sioux, were surprised. Wooden Leg, an eighteen-year-old Cheyenne warrior in the village remembered the attack: "Women screamed. Children cried for their mothers. Old people tottered and hobbled away to get out of reach of the bullets singing among the lodges. Braves seized whatever weapons they had and tried to meet the attack." The Cheyennes hurried their women and children to shelter while retreating northward out of the village, then took positions on the bluffs overlooking the village. They then directed fire toward the soldiers now in the village. Several cavalrymen of Company K, 2nd Cavalry were wounded early in the battle and a number of the company's horses were killed or wounded. Captain Egan was reinforced in the village by several more companies. When Colonel Reynolds arrived, the soldiers were still under fire. He ordered everything in the village destroyed, including dried buffalo meat. During this time, Privates Peter Dowdy of Company E, 3rd Cavalry and George Schneider of Company K, 2nd Cavalry were killed. The village and supplies proved difficult to burn, and when fire reached the gunpowder and ammunition stored in the tipis, they exploded. First Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke, General Crook's aide-de-camp, commented on the richness of the goods in the village: "bales of fur, buffalo robes, and hides decorated with porcupine quills". Some soldiers went against orders and took buffalo robes from the village, as they were freezing. Bourke later estimated that 66 men suffered from frostbite, including himself. Throughout the day, soldiers gathered in over 700 Indian ponies. The battle had lasted five hours when, at approximately 2:00 p.m., with the destruction of the village complete, Reynolds ordered his soldiers to withdraw, and the men made their way across to the east side of the frozen Powder River. Private Michael I. McCannon of Company F, 3rd Cavalry was killed around this time. During the