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In 1866, It Was Supposed That The Indian Wars Were Near An End

The regular army was as woefully neglected during the Civil War as it had been during the previous periods when there were only the Indians to fight. Its increase was one regiment of artillery of twelve companies, making a total of five regiments; one regiment of cavalry of twelve companies making a total of six regiments; and nine regiments of infantry added to the ten in service. The old infantry regiments had ten companies each, with only 52 enlisted men in a company, a regiment consisting of 582 officers and enlisted men. The nine new infantry regiments, however, had twenty-four companies, each divided into three eight-company battalions (the companies lettered from A to H in each battalion). The aggregate strength of such a regiment would have been 2,444, but none of them reached it during the war.

The Regular Army got few recruits in competition with the recruiting for state volunteers, and all regiments dropped far under authorized strength. Had they been full, however, there would have been no officers to command them. Nearly all field officers, and many captains and lieutenants, accepted commissions in the volunteers. They retained their Regular Army commissions and assignments, and were duly promoted in their permanent ranks throughout the war. There was no provision for filling vacancies, and captains commonly commanded Regular Army regiments in battle.

Officers were advanced one grade in brevet (a former type of military commission or promotion: a temporary promotion of a military officer without an increase in pay: to promote a military officer by brevet. In the military, brevet refers to a warrant authorizing a commissioned officer to hold a higher rank temporarily) rank after every battle in which they were recommended "for gallant and meritorious service." Brevet commissions in the volunteers terminated at the end of the war, but a Regular Army brevet was permanent, and had many privileges besides the honor that went with it. By courtesy and custom an officer was addressed in his highest brevet rank, even in official correspondence. He could be called to duty in his brevet rank by special assignment, and he served in his brevet rank when a member of a court-martial or in command of a detachment composed of different corps. In these cases he received the pay and allowances of his brevet rank.

The Regular Army as of 1866 had one general of the army (Ulysses S. Grant), one lieutenant general (William Tecumseh Sherman), five major generals and nineteen brigadier generals, including nine heading such staff departments as quartermaster, subsistence, pay, ordnance and so on. The country was divided into five military divisions-geographical divisions, not divisions in the sense of army units, active or inactive. Within the divisions were departments, and the departments were subdivided into districts. Thus the Military Division of the Missouri included the Department of Missouri, the Department of Arkansas, the Department of the Platte and the Department of Dakota. The District of the Republican was one of the districts of the Department of the Platte.

Each of the former Confederate States became a department under the congressional plan of Reconstruction. Each division, department and district was the proper command of a general officer; there were only sixteen general officers of the line, so considerable employment was available for the 152 brevet major generals and 187 brevet brigadier generals commissioned during the war. In those days regiments rarely saw their colonels, or even lieutenant colonels, except perhaps as brevet generals commanding expeditions "composed of different corps" sent to chastise Indians.

In 1866, however, it was supposed that the Indian wars were near an end. General Curtis, who had wanted no peace until the Indians suffered more, had made a treaty with the Sioux, signed by the chiefs who customarily pitched their tents within hearing of the reveille gun and mess call at army posts. It was recognized that the treaty, opening the Bozeman Trail - a short cut through Sioux country to the mines in Montana - should be signed also by the chiefs who had been at war, and they were summoned to Fort Laramie, in June, 1866, to meet a new peace commission headed by E. B. Taylor of the Indian Bureau.

In May the Second and Third battalions and Company F of the First Battalion, 18th Infantry, were assembled at Fort Kearny, Nebraska, under command of their colonel, Brevet Brigadier General Henry Beebe Carrington. This was the largest gathering of one of the triple-deck regiments ever seen in Indian country, and it was almost immediately dispersed. As Carrington marched westward he sent detachments to garrison Fort Sedgwick at Julesburg, Colorado; Fort Bridger in the southwest corner of Wyoming; Camp Douglas at Salt Lake City; and other posts.

General Carrington himself with the Second Battalion carried orders to march north from the big bend of the Platte to establish three posts along the Bozeman Trail. These orders were based on assurances by the Indian Bureau that the Sioux Nation, meaning the chiefs who had already signed, had consented to the opening of the road, but when Carrington reached Fort Laramie he found the peace commission still negotiating with the chiefs who had been on the warpath. Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horses refused to be coerced into signing the treaty and walked out. Indian Bureau officials brushed this protest aside with assurances that the two chiefs were unimportant and uninfluential. The upshot was that some 2,000 Sioux accepted the treaty and remained at peace, while 4,000 or more took part in Red Cloud's War.

Col. Henry Beebe Carrington was not a professional soldier by training. A Yale-educated and successful lawyer, Carrington rose to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers during the Civil War but spent the bulk of his service as a recruiting officer and military governor. Carrington found that he liked Army life and at war's end was awarded the permanent rank of colonel in the Regular Army and command of the 18th Infantry Regiment. In the winter of 1865-6, he and his family were assigned to Fort Stephen Watts Kearny in Nebraska, and it was there that the fiery Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman informed Carrington that he and the 18th Infantry were to establish three new forts along the recently opened Bozeman Trail that cut through the Powder River area in present-day Wyoming. This route would make it easier for Americans moving west to reach the gold and silver fields and settlements in Oregon. It seemed like a great adventure. Sherman even urged Carrington's beautiful, brilliant wife, Margaret, and her companions to keep journals of the trip and of their adventures in the West.

It was Carrington's misfortune that he and the 18th Regiment were to arrive at Fort Laramie at the height of delicate negotiations between the United States government and the indigenous tribes. One outspoken leader, the Oglala Lakota warrior Red Cloud, was particularly upset: "Great Father sends us presents and wants new road. But White Chief goes with soldiers to steal road before Indian says yes or no!" Red Cloud's closest friend and ally, Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, shouted, "In two moons you will not have a hoof left!" and the pair stormed out of the meetings followed by a crowd of angry warriors. Red Cloud's War had begun.

Carrington was shocked but determined to carry out his mission. He went north to establish forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C.F. Smith along a route that roughly parallels where today's Interstate 90 runs north toward the Little Bighorn. While there were insufficient trees on the site selected for Fort Phil Kearny, a few miles away the slopes of the Big Horns were covered with thick pine forests. Two lumber camps set up there handily provided all the needed construction materials. Almost the stereotype of the frontier fort, Fort Phil Kearny was beautifully laid out, carefully constructed, and surrounded by a sturdy wooden palisade of sharpened logs. The setting was nothing short of idyllic-nestled in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains and along Piney Creek. The intelligent and romantic Margaret Carrington described her new home with breathtaking enthusiasm. But the palisade was there for good reason, and within weeks of the colonel's wife's arrival, Fort Phil Kearny would be described by the War Department as "the single most dangerous post in the country."

The threats uttered by Red Cloud and Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses were serious and deadly: The combined warriors of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho did their utmost to make life along the Bozeman Trail untenable for white men. Animals were run off, woodcutters attacked, couriers ambushed and slaughtered, patrols cut off and assaulted, and small parties of emigrants and gold miners butchered. The tiny plot of ground set aside for a post cemetery began to fill with the horribly mutilated casualties of Red Cloud's War. Margaret Carrington and her fellow Army wives began feeling the strain of being isolated and besieged.

The Bozeman Trail was supposed to make it easier for Americans moving west to reach the gold and silver fields and settlements in Oregon. "Easier" wasn't in the cards - the 1866 Fetterman Massacre was. When Capt. William Judd Fetterman arrived in November of 1866, the garrison at Fort Phil Kearny was almost at the end of its rope. Fetterman, a much-decorated hero of the Civil War who had held the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel of volunteers, was angered and frustrated by the situation he found there. How dare a few Indians hold the U.S. government at bay? Was this not the same Army that had crushed the rebellious Southern states? Much of Fetterman's ire was directed at his commander, whom he deemed timid and overly cautious. As the Lakota and Cheyenne continued to whittle away at Carrington's force and strip the post of virtually all of its livestock, Fetterman became increasingly restive and pugnacious. To the utter disdain of the command's veteran scout-the legendary mountain man Jim Bridger-Fetterman loudly derided the enemy as simple savages and boasted, "With 80 men I could ride through the Sioux Nation!" These were fateful words.

In December of 1866 as the temperatures began to drop precipitously, flurries of wind-driven snow urged Carrington and his command to greater efforts to stockpile wood for the coming harsh winter. By the 21st of December, the last load of firewood was scheduled to be moved the few miles from the Big Horn "pineries" to Fort Phil Kearny. As the ponderous wagons of the wood train trundled down the slopes, a host of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked. Red Cloud knew precisely what he was doing. The wood train was not important-except to bait a trap for the soldiers. Carrington quickly dispatched a relief party consisting mostly of infantry but reinforced by Company C of the 2nd Cavalry. At the last minute, Capt. Fetterman stepped forward to claim seniority and take command of the relief party. Col. Carrington assented but, fearful of an ambush, warned Fetterman not to be lured over Lodge Trail Ridge and thus out of supporting distance from the rest of the command.

Fetterman rushed off to assist the wood trains, and it appears that he hoped to cut off the attacking warriors. It was just what Red Cloud wanted him to do. The attacking Indians fled in front of the relief party drawing them farther and farther from the fort. As the command hesitated on the icy backbone of Lodge Trail Ridge, a daring young warrior turned back to taunt and badger the soldiers. His flamboyance did the trick and lured Fetterman's command, which plunged down the far side in pursuit. Within minutes the snowy, wind-swept slopes were alive with hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. The ensuing fight was short and incredibly brutal. Before Col. Carrington could assemble a relief force from the fort, Capt. Fetterman lay dead with his entire command-exactly 80 men-and most butchered beyond recognition.

As the siege dragged on, the soldiers at Fort Phil Kearny became increasingly isolated and desperate. Red Cloud continued his war, exerting his formidable personality to maintain the fragile alliance of tribes while at the same time keeping the Army besieged and using every opportunity to harass and ambush the troops. In August of the following year, he launched what he hoped would be a devastating assault on a small woodcutting party. What he couldn't have anticipated was that these 31 men were armed with the new breech-loading rifles. The Indian attackers died by the score. But Red Cloud had made his point and the United States government decided to negotiate for peace.

In 1868 the Bozeman Trail, deemed by Congress to be more trouble than it was worth, was officially closed. The forts were abandoned. Red Cloud had won his war. It was the first and only time in history when the United States government would cede every point to a victorious Indian leader. The treaty would not last very long-warfare would again disrupt the region. Ten years later, the young brave who had lured Fetterman's command across Lodge Trail Ridge to its doom would distinguish himself again at the Little Bighorn. The young man's name was Crazy Horse.

Unlike Fort Phil Kearny, Fort C. F. Smith, ninety-one miles farther up the Bozeman Trail, was isolated by hostile Indians. No party entered or left it between November 30, 1866, and June 8, 1867. On August 1 - the day before the Wagon Box Fight - a fatigue party cutting hay for the fort was attacked by 800 Cheyenne. The haymakers had built a corral of logs, which the Indians charged again and again, both mounted and on foot. The Allin alteration Springfields again surprised the Indians, and several civilians did even better with repeating rifles.

The troops, commanded by Second Lieutenant Sigismund Sternberg, who was killed, included detachments from Companies C, D, G and H, 27th Infantry, and Company I, one of two new companies added to complete the 27th. A howitzer firing case shot scattered the Cheyenne. Their known loss was eight killed and thirty wounded. The most optimistic estimate upped this to 150. The defenders had three killed.

After these fights along the Bozeman Trail the peace that followed was of a kind that had become characteristic of United States diplomacy. Red Cloud was allowed to save face by appearing to have won the war - and many have interpreted it that he did. In March, 1868, General Grant ordered abandonment of the Bozeman Trail and its three posts, Forts Phil Kearny, C. F. Smith and Reno. Actually the Bozeman Trail had ceased to be of importance, for the advancing railroad was making other routes to the Montana gold fields more feasible.

After a summer of negotiation, Red Cloud was persuaded to sign a treaty on November 6, 1868. It provided a Sioux reservation that included all of what became South Dakota west of the Missouri River. Most of the Sioux who had been fighting were on lands they were in the process of taking away from the Crows, a tribe generally friendly to the United States. In fact, Ab-sa-ra-ka, meaning "Home of the Crows," was the title of the book about Fort Phil Kearny written by Mrs. Margaret Irvin Carrington, wife of the colonel. It was not Sioux country, but the treaty allowed them hunting rights there, mainly because they were there and there was no practical manner of getting them out - appeasement, if you will, or certainly status quo ante bellum.

And if in Red Cloud's own mind he had won, he nevertheless stayed on the reservation and never again dug up the hatchet. He obviously wanted no more of the kind of battles he had won, or lost. Reports of Indian casualities may have been exaggerated, but there had been many more than he wanted.

-Frederick J. Chiaventone

150 APRIL 2009

COWBOYS & INDIANS 151

Congress Makes a Strong Fighting Army

The strange procedure by which, at a stroke of the pen, the troops at Forts Reno, Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith received a new regimental name on New Year's Day, 1867, was, of course, part of a general reorganization under an act of Congress of 1866 providing for a larger Regular Army than had been ever before in service (not until World War I were there a larger number of regiments). Each of the eight-company battalions in infantry regiments numbered from 11th to 19th became a ten-company regiment, bringing the number of infantry regiments to thirty-seven. Added were four regiments of colored troops and four regiments of the Veteran Reserve Corps, made up of wounded men.

Though the army now reached its greatest strength during any period of Indian wars, it was not because of the Indian troubles that it was given the additional strength. Most of the new infantry units went to the unreconstructed South. However, four new cavalry regiments were added, and while cavalry did garrison the former Confederate States, more of it served on the frontier - notably the 7th Cavalry, organized in 1866 with Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson Smith as its colonel and Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer as its lieutenant colonel. Colonel of the 8th Cavalry was Brevet Brigadier General John Irvin Gregg. The 9th and 10th regiments of cavalry were made up of colored troops, and remained so to the end of both cavalry and segregation in the armed forces.

The Hancock Expedition of 1867

The year 1866 was a comparatively quiet one south of the Platte. The Indians were restive, however, and it was felt that a display of force might awe them, as they had rarely seen soldiers except in small detachments. Therefore, in March, 1867, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commanding the Department of Missouri, assembled at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, an expedition of 1,400 men, including eight companies of the new 7th Cavalry under General Custer, seven of infantry and a battery of light artillery. Indian agents went along to make peace with any awe-struck tribes that might be encountered.

Though parleys were sought from Fort Larned on the Arkansas River with Cheyenne and Sioux encamped some thirty miles away, the Indians refused to come toward the troops, and when the troops moved toward the Indians, they fled, abandoning their village with all its property. When the scattering fugitives raided stage stations along the Overland Trail, killing three men at Lookout Station, west of Fort Hays, Hancock ordered the captured village destroyed.

Custer's 7th Cavalry scouted north and westward. Pawnee Killer's Sioux attacked his camp at dawn on June 24, but were driven off. Later in the day Captain Louis Hamilton's Company A fought its way out of a decoy trap. On June 26 Lieutenant S. M. Robbins and the escort for a wagon train sent to Fort Wallace in western Kansas for supplies fought 500 Indians for three hours. Also on June 26 Lieutenant Lyman Stockwell Kidder, carrying dispatches to Custer, and ten men of the 2nd Cavalry and a Sioux guide with him were all slain.

It was at this time, on July 30, that Congress set up a Peace Commission with three objectives: to end the Indian wars by giving the Indians whatever they wanted; to make peaceful farmers of them; and to get their permission to build railroads across the Plains - three mutually contradictory propositions. By October the commissioners were ready to meet with the southern tribes - Arapaho, Apache, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa - at Medicine Lodge, Kansas. The war-party season had ended and the tribes were quite ready for a winter of peace, especially as there were presents, including arms and ammunition. A treaty was signed, and although the Senate's failure to ratify it delayed some of the promised presents, the peace was kept, more or less - mostly less - until August, 1868. (Army records show forty-two fights with Indians between November 1, 1867, and August 1, 1868, in Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.)

Sheridan Takes the Helm

In March, 1868, Sheridan replaced Hancock as commander of the Department of Missouri. On August 10 a war party of Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho began raids along the Saline and Solomon valleys, killing fifteen settlers and carrying off two children. Kiowa and Comanche joined in, and by the end of September the death toll of citizens was seventy-nine.

Sheridan moved his headquarters to Fort Hays, Kansas, in the heart of the Indian country. Pending arrival of the 5th Cavalry, which was gathered in from posts in the South and sent west in record time, he authorized Brevet Colonel George Alexander Forsyth, a major on his staff, to enlist a company of fifty scouts.

The Beecher Island Fight

Near the end of track on the Kansas Pacific Railroad a wagon train had been attacked and two men killed. Forsyth's scouts followed the trail, and on the morning of September 17, 1868, while encamped on the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River (south of the site of Wray, Colorado) they were attacked by a large party of Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux. "The ground seemed to grow them," said Forsyth; an Indian who fought there told him later that there were 970.

The scouts mounted and crossed to a sand island in the river-called Beecher Island after First Lieutenant Frederick Beecher, killed on the first day. The scouts scooped out shelters in the sand, and used their horses, which were soon killed, to help form a barrier.

The unusual feature of this fight was a massed charge by mounted Indians, with a front of some sixty men, led by Roman Nose of the northern Cheyenne and aided by concealed marksmen. The Indians would not have been so bold had they known the scouts were armed with Spencer repeating rifles - six shots in the magazine and one in the chamber. Seven volleys crashed into the oncoming line before the charge broke and swept around the defenders. Roman Nose was among the killed. A second charge was stopped a hundred yards away.

That night scouts Pierre Trudeau and Jack Stillwell slipped through the surrounding Indians to seek help at Fort Wallace. On their way they hid in a buffalo wallow with Indians close by. When a rattlesnake started toward them, Stillwell, master of an old frontier art, stopped the snake by spitting tobacco juice in the reptile's eye. They got through, as did two scouts sent out two nights later, and a detachment of the 10th Cavalry rode to the rescue. They found Forsyth severely wounded; six more had been killed or died later of wounds, and seventeen others were wounded. Many years later some Cheyenne told George Bird Grinnell that only nine Indians were killed in the fight, and some historians have accepted that figure. Forsyth said, "During the fight I counted thirty-two dead Indians; these I reported officially. My men claimed to have counted far more." Later a Sioux participant told him that seventy-five were killed.

Sheridan's Winter Campaign

On October 1, 1868, seven companies of the 5th Cavalry, only nineteen days after they had been summoned from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee on September 12, marched out of Fort Harker, Kansas, seeking hostile Indians - a remarkably rapid troop movement for that time. Guiding the 5th as chief of scouts was William F. Cody, known as Buffalo Bill. The expedition fought several sharp skirmishes against Tall Bull's Dog Soldiers, a warrior society of the Cheyenne.

The mounted Indians broke off these fights whenever they were endangered; most pursuit of them was futile, and they had all the advantage in their hit-and-run raids. General Sheridan decided on a winter campaign to strike them in their villages, although Jim Bridger who knew the power of blizzards that swept the Plains came especially to Fort Hays to advise Sherician not to attempt it.

Sheridan planned to strike the winter camps with converging columns. Brevet Major General Eugene A. Carr, major of the 5th Cavalry, led seven troops of his regiment from Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory, to join Brevet Brigadier General William H. Penrose, captain of the 3rd Infantry, who was already in the field, along the Cimarron. This column marched through deep snow in bitter cold and encountered no Indians, but its objective was to prevent them from drifting westward.

Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Andrew W. Evans, major of the 3rd Cavalry, with six companies of his regiment and two of infantry, moved down the Canadian River. On Christmas Day this column destroyed a Comanche village. Evans got his brevet as colonel for the victory.

The main column included the 19th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, a regiment raised by Governor Samuel J. Crawford, who took the field as its colonel; five companies of infantry under Brevet Major John H. Page, captain of the 3rd Infantry; and eleven companies of the 7th Cavalry under General Custer. Sheridan accompanied this column, escorted by Forsyth's scouts, now commanded by Lieutenant Silas Pepoon of the 10th Cavalry. A base was established as Camp Supply in western Indian Territory.

A Hair-Raising Experience I was in the Infantry. Custer had command of the troops. There was quite a force of cavalry with us. … Some of the troops had been sent around so as to attack from the other side. The reds were encamped in a sort of valley, and we were within eighty rods of them for half an hour before daybreak. Just in the gray of morning the firing commenced on both sides, and we had it all our own way for a few minutes. … At length they rallied, and we could hear Black Kettle shouting and ordering. The vermin got into holes and behind rocks—anywhere they could find a place, and began to fight back with a will. We fired wherever we could see a top-knot, and shot squaws—there were lots of them—just as quick as Indians. When it was fully daylight we all gave a big yell, and charged right down into camp. … As we ran through the alleys, a big red jumped out at me from behind a tent, and before I could shorten up enough to run him through with my bayonet, a squaw grabbed me around the legs and twisted me down. … When I fell, I went over backward, dropping my gun, and I had just got part way up again, the squaw yanking me by the hair, when the Indian clubbed my gun and struck me across the neck. The blow stunned me. … The Indian stepped one foot on my chest, and with his hand gathered up the hair near the crown of my head. He wasn’t very tender about it, but jerked my head this way and that, like Satan. My eyes were partially open, and I could see the beadwork and trimming on his leggings. Suddenly I felt the awfullest biting, cutting flash go round my head, and then it seemed to me just as if my whole head had been jerked clean off. I never felt such pain in all my life; it was like pulling your brains right out; I didn’t know any more for two or three days, and when I came to I had the sorest head of any human being that ever lived. If the boys killed the viper they didn’t get back my scalp; perhaps it got lost in the snow. I was shipped down to Laramie after a bit, and all the nursing I got Hain’t made the hair grow out on this spot yet. This account, written by an anonymous soldier, appeared m the Army-Navy Journal on June 26, 1869. It is reprinted here through the courtesy of the Armed Forces Journal.

Custer at the Washita, 1868

Just before reaching Camp Supply, Pepoon's scouts struck the trail of a war party returning from a raid in Kansas. Sheridan ordered Custer's 7th Cavalry to follow the trail, guided by California Joe (whose name was Moses B. Milner), Jack Corbin and Osage Indian scouts. The regiment started out next morning, despite a heavy fall of snow during the night and a continuing storm.

The trail was followed for three days. Before dawn on November 27 an Indian village was sighted. Custer ordered an attack from four directions. As the signal for the assault the regimental band played GarryOwen (the spelling preferred in the 7th Cavalry's regimental history) - until their instruments froze. Cheyenne and Arapaho were completely surprised. Black Kettle, the chief who had escaped at Sand Creek, was killed.

Smarting because his leadership had been so mistrusted that Sheridan had requested Custer's return from a court-martial sentence of suspension (Custer, the preceding fall, had taken off on a visit to his wife at Fort Riley without authority), Major Joel H. Elliott raced after a fleeing group of Indians with a shout, "Here goes for a brevet or a coffin." (Elliott had no brevet rank.) He was followed by Sergeant Major Walter Kennedy and eighteen others. Their bodies were found weeks later, two miles from the main battle site.

Captain Louis McLane Hamilton, grandson of Alexander Hamilton, also was killed; three officers and eleven enlisted men were wounded. The Indians lost 103 killed and 53 women and children captured. Despite the surprise and capture of the village, Indian warriors fought desperately. Their resistance increased toward noon, and it was discovered that reinforcements were coming from villages of several thousand Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and other bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho strung out along the Washita River.

Custer ordered the captured village burned and eight hundred Indian ponies killed. Meanwhile he ordered a series of limited attacks to hold off the assembling warriors, and after dark retreated quickly to the supply train left behind. Custer was blamed for not waiting to determine the fate of Elliott. It is probable that Elliott and his party were killed long before they were known to be missing. Custer was also accused of attacking a camp of peaceful Indians. Major Wynkoop continued to insist that Black Kettle was innocent of all wrongdoing. That may be so, although it has been denied, but Custer followed the trail of a raiding party to the village, and during the fight a Mrs. Blinn and a small boy, captives from Kansas, were butchered by Indians before they could be rescued.

Sheridan followed up the Washita victory by marching the entire main column in pursuit of the fleeing tribes. Hemmed in on the other side by the forces of Evans and Carr, the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche agreed during the winter to go on reservations.

Buffalo Bill at Summit Springs, 1869

In May, 1869, General Carr and the 5th Cavalry marched from Fort Lyon to Fort McPherson, Nebraska, again skirmishing with Tall Bull's Cheyenne Dog Soldiers along the way. While the troops were at Fort McPherson the Cheyenne raided settlements along the Solomon, capturing Mrs. Thomas Alderclice, wife of one of Forsyth's scouts of the Beecher Island fight, and Mrs. G. Weichel, after killing Mrs. Alderdice's baby and Mrs. Weichel's husband.

General Carr took to their trail with seven companies of his regiment and three of Pawnee Scouts under Major Frank North. Buffalo Bill Cody, chief of scouts for the 5th Cavalry continuously from 1868 to 1872, is credited with suggesting the maneuver that headed them off at Summit Springs. The Indians were evidently traveling toward the Platte, and Cody's plan, in Carr's words, was "to get around, beyond, and between them and the river" instead of following their trail as the Indians would expect.

At midday on July 11, 1869, Buffalo Bill and the scouts located Tall Bull's camp. Carr charged at once with four mounted companies in line, a bugle sounding the charge. He was joined almost immediately by North's Pawnee Scouts and two more companies under Brevet Colonel William B. Royall.

The attack was a complete surprise - Cheyenne security and information facilities seem never to have reached the standard set for Indians in fiction. Tall Bull and fifty-one of his followers were killed, seventeen women and children were captured, with no loss to the troops. Mrs. Weichel was rescued, wounded; Mrs. Alderdice was tomahawked by a Cheyenne woman just before the troopers could reach her. The victory was a blow from which the Dog Soldiers never recovered.

After the Summit Springs victory there was peace of sorts on the northern Plains. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, taking seriously the treaties that barred white men from the Sioux Reservation, demanded that the Government's Indian agencies be located beyond the reservation boundaries in Nebraska, and they got what they wanted. Both had had their fill of fighting U.S. soldiers, but Spotted Tail had no idea of giving up warfare against tribal enemies, and it was his Brule who attacked a hunting party of Pawnee at Massacre Canyon, Nebraska, on August 5, 1873, slaughtering ten men, thirty-nine women and ten children. A troop of cavalry belatedly dashed to the rescue, and the Sioux fled.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa had signed no treaties - Sitting Bull once told General Miles, "God made me an Indian, but not an Agency Indian." Far out in the Powder River and Bighorn country they were fighting the Crows - on the Crow Reservation. In 1872 and 1873 they attacked Northern Pacific Railroad surveying parties escorted by troops led by Brevet Major General David S. Stanley, colonel of the 22nd Infantry. Custer's 7th Cavalry, a part of the escort in 1873, was attacked by 300 Sioux on August 4. He drove them off by a vigorous mounted charge, and while following their trail was attacked again on August 11, with a similar result.

Custer in the Black Hills, 1874

Some of Custer's detractors have seen his death on the Little Big Horn as just retribution for his invasion of the Black Hills, the "sacred ground" of the Sioux, two years earlier. The connection as a moral judgment is somewhat remote. Custer's exploration of the Black Hills in 1874 was not his own idea; it was ordered by Sheridan. True, the Black Hills were a part of the Great Sioux Reservation, and the Sioux resented any intrusion in the area guaranteed by treaty, but the Black Hills had no ancestral or traditional significance for the Sioux, who only recently chased Cheyenne and Kiowa out - and Bear Butte, at least, was "sacred ground" to the Cheyenne. The Sioux seldom went there, mainly because buffalo did not graze there.

Custer found no Indians in the Black Hills, but the geologists on the expedition verified the presence of gold, and newsmen gave this discovery wide publicity. The government attempted to buy the land from the Sioux, but negotiations broke down when Spotted Tail and Red Cloud upped the price. Meanwhile swarms of prospectors defied the Sioux, the government and the Army by flocking into the Black Hills. Early in 1876 the Gold Rush was in full swing.

Jay Monaghan, (Editor). The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster. 1963.

North American Indian Wars Essays discuss cultural differences between Native Americans and early white settlers, and look at warfare, forced relocation, exploitation, and current attempts at restitution.

The U.S. Cavalry and the Indian Wars European settlers and Native Americans had a long history of conflict that culminated in the Indian Wars. Many lives were lost as each side sought control over important land in the west. Reluctant readers will learn about the history of this conflict and how it affected the growth of the United States.

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