by 1864-1898 Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life;Campaigns in the West
September 23rd—Marched to Custer City on French Creek. A large mining city partly deserted. They are houses enough for 3000 inhabitants. Another train up from Red Cloud.
September 25th—Moved up French Creek 2 miles. Rumor is that 600 Indians had been disarmed at the Agency, the rest gone on the warpath. They say our train left Fort Laramie yesterday for here. Wild Bill [James Butler Hickok] was killed some 20 days ago at Deadwood City.
September 26th—Rumor is Indians want peace. One man of “B” Co. 2nd Cav. died today in hospital.
October 1st—Went out looking for new camp on Red Cloud road. We have made 752 miles since leaving wagon train the 5th of August.
Arrived at Fort Saunders [Sanders] Nov. 5th after being out 8 months and 19 days, and in the saddle 2600 miles, a pretty fair summer campaign.
Combatting Cheyennes at Powder River and the Red Fork, 1876 (By James N. Connely, formerly of Troop K, Second U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, July 30, 1928)
I first enlisted in 1866 in the Fourth U. S. Infantry and served three years, then in 1869 I enlisted in Troop K, Second U. S. Cavalry under Captain James Egan at Omaha, Nebraska. My first experience in Indian warfare was shortly after my enlistment in Troop K. It seems that a large war party of Sioux Indians had attacked the Pawnee Indian Agency on the Loup River in Nebraska and my troop was ordered out to capture the Sioux and defend the Pawnees. It was an intensively hot day and after riding rapidly for more than twenty miles, many of our horses were overheated and died. We did not catch any of the Sioux, but we protected the Pawnees.
From Pawnee Agency we went to Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, in 1872, where our chief duties were escorting a wagon train out to Laramie Peak after timber for government use at the post, a distance of forty-five miles. We generally had an escort of thirty-five men under the command of a commissioned officer. On one of these trips, [on February 9, 1874, ] First Lieutenant Levi H. Robinson [Fourteenth U. S. Infantry] and Corporal John C. Coleman [Company K, Second U. S. Cavalry] took a short cut from the wood camp to the post and were ambushed by a large war party of Sioux Indians and both killed. The wagon train and escort under the charge of Sergeant Charles Dahlgreen saw many an Indian but were not attacked by them. We camped at Cottonwood Springs that night about twenty-five miles from Fort Laramie, thinking the Indians would attack us in the morning. I volunteered to ride to the fort for reinforcements and left the camp at nine o’clock at night on a good horse and had not gone far when I ran into the Indian camp, but by making a detour I managed to escape the Indians and reach the post. I returned to Cottonwood Springs that same night with reinforcements and we went out to find the bodies of Lieutenant Robinson and Corporal Coleman. There were fourteen arrows in the lieutenant’s body but neither of them were badly mutilated.
During the summer of 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills in the Sioux Indian Reservation which was held by the Indians as sacred ground. Consequently, the Indians made strong resistance against any invasion on their ground and many prospectors and others were killed. The government took the matter up and made a treaty with the Indians for relinquishment of the Black Hills, and my Troop K and Troop I of the Second U. S. Cavalry were detailed an escort for this commission. A peace conference was held with the Indians on the White River about ten miles below the Red Cloud Agency, where about 15, 000 Sioux Indians were in attendance, all mounted and most armed with repeating rifles. The young warriors were violently opposed to relinquishing any of their land and only for the great influence of Chief Spotted Tail and other chiefs, the commission and the troops would all have been massacred. The outcome of this treaty was that many of the sub-chiefs and their tribes left the reservation and went on the warpath against the whites, which ended in the Custer massacre on the banks of the Little Big Horn River in June, 1876.
During the winter of 1875 and’76 my troop and Troop I of the Second U. S. Cavalry joined the Third U. S. Cavalry under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds at Fort Fetterman the first of December and scouted the upper Powder River around old Fort Phil Kearny and in March we found the village of Chief Crazy Horse [sic—the village was that of the Northern Cheyenne chief, Old Bear] at the mouth of Powder River. My troop and Troop I were ordered to charge the village at daylight. The Indians were taken completely by surprise. Captain James Egan led the charge with Troop K, and Troop I was to capture the Indian ponies. Troop K, numbering about sixty men, charged down through the Indian village about a half mile long through a dense growth of cottonwood trees and rallied at a point just below the village, reformed and all of the number fours remained mounted. The Indians, thinking there was only a file of soldiers, came out of their tepees like mad hornets, most of them armed with repeating rifles, their first volley killed or wounded all of our number fours and one trumpeter. Many of the cottonwood trees had fallen down, which made an excellent protection to the men on foot, otherwise they would all have been wiped out.
Captain Egan and Troop K got high praise for the brave manner for which they charged the village and stood off the Indians until reinforcements came up. The Third Cavalry that was to bring up the line had difficulty in crossing a deep ravine. The Indians numbering over a thousand were completely routed. The location of the Indian village was in the bend of the river running against a high bluff that was covered densely by pine trees, which made an excellent hideout for the redskins. The troops burned up all of the tepees, dried meats, buffalo robes, and took about 15, 000 Indian ponies, leaving the Indians without food, shelter, or means of transportation. On our return to Fort Fetterman, the buck Indians followed the troops for four days and succeeded in re-capturing many of their ponies and would have gotten them all only that the colonel [Reynolds] ordered them shot.
We arrived at Fort Laramie about May 1st and did scout duty from Fort Laramie to Deadwood City in the Black Hills during the summer of 1876 where we saw many pilgrims that had been killed by the Indians. In November, 1876, my troop was detailed as a body guard of General Crook, who was commanding an expedition against the hostile Sioux under the leadership of Chief Dull Knife on the headwaters of Tongue [Powder] River near where Fort McHenry [McKinney] now stands. This expedition was made up of the Fourth U. S. Cavalry under command of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. The Indians were located and [the village was] captured [on November 25, 1876.] [In] the latter part of January, 1877 [sic—December, 1876]…the expedition returned to Fort Fetterman and disbanded.
These two campaigns against hostile Indians were waged in the midst of much cold weather and under the endurance of much hunger. Hardtack and bacon was the only ration and much of the time but little of that. Many of the men had their fingers and toes frozen and it was no unusual thing for horses to be frozen stiff while tied to the picket line. During the summer of 1877, I served with my troop at Omaha in the midst of the railroad riot that was causing so much destruction of property at that time. From the scene of these riots, our whole regiment of the Second Cavalry under command of Lieutenant Colonel Albert G. Brackett was ordered to take charge of Fort Custer, Montana, located on the banks of the Big Horn River, just east of the [present] city of Hardin, Montana. Was discharged from the army in the fall of 1879, taking my residence in civil life at Coulson, Montana, on the Yellowstone River near where the city of Billings now stands….
Campaigning with the Seventh Infantry in 1876 (By George C. Berry, formerly of Company E, Seventh U. S. Infantry. From Winners of the West, September 28, 1942)
All of the Seventh Infantry was stationed in Montana in 1876—six companies at Fort Shaw, one company at Fort Benton, one company at Fort Ellis, and two companies at Camp Baker. The latter post was renamed Fort Logan later after Captain William A. Logan, who was killed at the Battle of the Big Hole in 1877 by Nez Perces under Chief Joseph. Colonel John Gibbon was in command of the regiment at this time, and early in 1876 six companies of his regiment started down the Yellowstone River. Company E left Camp Baker about the middle of March and I know that the first [day?] out we sho
veled fully two feet of snow off the ground to put up our tent, which was of the common “A” type and supposed to hold four men, but we had lots of bedding as my bunkie was an old campaigner and knew what to expect. Our route at this time was across the Belt Mountains to the Missouri River, which we crossed the next day at the Edmundson Ferry, and then up the river to Fort Ellis, which was near Bozeman. At Fort Ellis our company met a wagon train that was loaded for the Crow agency, and [we] escorted it to its destination. The agency at that time was on a little creek on the south side of the Yellowstone River and quite a way back from that stream. As it seems to me now, we made at least one camp after crossing the Yellowstone before we reached the agency. (Agency then located southwest of Columbus at present site of Absarokee.) When we did get to the agency, we camped just outside of the stockade by the main gate, and as there was a large empty building that was also outside, we used it for a cookhouse. Our company was to stay at the agency until the rest of the Montana troops caught up.
Someone brought us a load of cordwood, and shortly afterwards a couple of young Crow squaws going past asked for a couple of axes and soon had the wood ready for the cook stove a lot quicker than we would have done it ourselves. We offered to pay them for the work, but they only asked for some soap which we supplied them with. While the squaws were chopping and splitting this wood, one of the agency employees went by and spoke to one of them in English and said: “Why, Em, what are you doing here?” And she replied in the same language: “We are just cutting this wood for these soldiers.” This was the same woman who lived with Major Reed at Reed’s Fort near where Lewistown stands. She was a French halfbreed, but the Indian predominated in her so much that anyone could be mistaken in her—that is, take her for an Indian. She afterwards sat beside me in the stockade that surrounds the buildings of the agency and interpreted a speech that Chief Iron Bull was making to the Indians there assembled for one of their dances.
Recruit David L. Brainard joined the army in the fall of 1876 to fight the Sioux and Cheyennes who had defeated Custer at the Little Bighorn. As a Second Cavalryman, Brainard took part in Colonel Nelson A. Miles’s engagement with Chief Lame Deer’s Minneconjous at Muddy Creek, Montana, in May, 1877. Later commissioned in the army, he became a noted polar explorer. Editor’s collection
This Chief Iron Bull was a big man and a sensible one, too, and was recognized by the government as chief of the Crows. He had been to Washington. His talk as Emma Shane gave it to me was along the line of taking up ranches—that is, he advised the Indians to do that, and said that he expected to locate one that summer and turn farmer, do as the white men were doing. Of course, all of these doings were inside of the stockade and were mostly for the benefit of the white men and women of the agency, as we were given to understand that the Indians engaged in this dance had been to other places and gone through the same performance. One of the things I remember quite well was the invitation by our company cooks to Iron Bull and squaw to have dinner at our cook house on a certain day. Well, about noon on the day set, he and his squaw showed up, and from somewhere she produced a table cloth and spread it on the cook house floor and both seated themselves by it and as their dinner was all ready it was served to them, but they never touched a thing until one of the cooks handed them knives and forks. Now the soldiers engaged in serving this dinner would never think of the table cloth for Indians, but these two did.
We were at the agency about two weeks as I recollect now, when one morning some of our regiment appeared and told us that the rest of the command was down on the Yellowstone, so in a day or two we struck camp and moved down to them and found that Colonel Gibbon had added the four companies of cavalry that were stationed at Fort Ellis to his command. The wagon train that we escorted to the agency had the supplies which the expedition was to use until we met the steamboats that were to meet us later, and a change in plans was the cause of our going to the agency at all, as the stuff we had stored there was moved to our new camp right away and taken down the river with us. Colonel Gibbon also engaged a number of the Crow Indians to act as scouts, and among that number was Emma Shane with several other squaws. The next time we made a camp to stay any length of time was at Fort Pease, which is nearly opposite the mouth of the Big Horn River, we of course being on the north side of the Yellowstone. This Fort Pease it seems hadn’t been built very long, and was used mostly as a wolfer’s camp—that is, the inhabitants had killed buffalos and other game and inoculated the carcasses with strychnine and left these bodies around on the prairie. After a time, they skinned up the wolves and other varmints that had eaten of this bait. But the Indians got so bad the winter before at this place that the men sent one or two of their number up to Fort Ellis for help, and when the troops got down there the outfit packed up and went back to civilization with them. We found, too, four or five newly made graves at this post which no doubt were made for the bodies of men killed by the Indians.
Before we got to Pease we had forded the Yellowstone on account of rough hills and country ahead of us. Now we had three pieces of artillery with us—two Gatling guns and a twelve-pounder. There was one of the boys, a young fellow of German extraction, who was just learning to talk English, who sat next to me when we had just forded the river to the south side, and as most of our men were over, the teamsters were starting to bring our artillery and the wagons across. Now a Gatling gun doesn’t stand very high, and as the first one went under the water my German friend exclaimed, “Himmel, der gose the doodlesock.” On another occasion, this young fellow was found asleep on the picket line, and when told that Sitting Bull might catch him that way some time, wanted to know “who that sucking Bull” was, anyway.
In fording streams like the Yellowstone, Colonel Gibbon usually sent part of the cavalry ahead and had one of the cavalrymen lead about three horses back, so that in that way we infantrymen got over dry shod. Of course, the river was low at this time of the year, but we always crossed at a good ford and I think it was mostly on account of the supplies in the wagons. As soon as we passed the hills and rough country on the north side of the river, we crossed again. Will say, too, that Colonel Gibbon on his way down the Yellowstone took along with him four companies of the Second Cavalry under Major [James S.] Brisbin that were stationed at Fort Ellis, so that his command consisted of the cavalry, six companies of the Seventh U. S. Infantry, and the Crow Indians. I don’t remember where we picked up the white men scouts we had along, of whom there were several, but Muggins Taylor, George Herendeen, and Mitch Boyer are the only ones whose names I can now recall. We also had some packers along, but I will tell you of them later, and we had Matt Carroll along with some of the teams that I think still belonged to the Diamond R outfit, which at that time was the biggest freighting outfit in the then territory. This Matt Carroll is the same that the town of Carroll is named after, which town was situated on the Missouri River, the company to which he belonged at that time having built a road from Helena by way of White Sulphur Springs and the Judith Basin to the Missouri River. [First] Lieutenant [James H.] Bradley was in charge of the scouts. We also found at Fort Pease some rowboats that the men who were there the fall and winter before had left there, and it fell to the lot of the company to which I belonged to take them on down the river. We were supposed to camp with the command every night and keep them in fresh meat as game was more plentiful along the river than it was back a ways, so we took it slowly in the morning and I don’t recall but one night that we camped away from the main outfit.
Our next permanent camp was on the north side of the river, and as near as I can say now was above the Rosebud, which comes in from the south. One thing that I do remember, though, was that on the last of May or the first of June it snowed all day, but it was a soft wet snow that melted as fast as it fell. But one of the boys had a letter from Camp Baker shortly after this and the writer stated that some of the boys went sleighing at that place in two feet of snow. This was the camp, too, that our scouts [traveled from and] found the
big camp of Indians on the Little Big Horn River that afterwards did up the Custer command. It was the camp, too, where a hunting party was killed by the Indians. It was made up of two soldiers of the Second Cavalry and one civilian, and if I remember rightly, the latter was one of the teamsters of the Diamond R. Anyhow, it was in the morning and I have an idea that the Indians were laying for our herd, but this hunting party walked into them. Our camp herd at that time contained most of the cavalry horses and all of the freight mules, besides quite a number of others, and would have made quite a haul for the hostiles if they could have gotten them across the river. But I have serious doubt of that, as Colonel Gibbon tried that when the scouts first found their camp, but the American horses of the cavalry drowned too easily.
It was shortly after this that the steamboat Far West put in an appearance, and so did General Terry and the Seventh Cavalry, but the latter regiment was below us and on the south side of the Yellowstone, so we didn’t get to see them until after the battle. Things moved pretty fast from this on. General Terry, Colonel Gibbon, and Colonel Custer met and formed a plan of battle, but I do know that we gave at least five of our scouts to Custer and they were George Herendeen, Mitch Boyer, Curley, Half Yellow Face, and Fighting Lion. This last Indian is not mentioned in any of the histories I have read of this battle, at least not by that name, but I speak of him as I knew him for the further reason that he was wounded in the charge down the river with Major Marcus A. Reno. Our command went back up the river to the mouth of the Big Horn, and General Terry accompanied us. He was a brigadier general at this time, and in command of the Department of Dakota, which at that time included Minnesota, Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. We camped on the north side of the Yellowstone if I remember right, the first night, and it was the next morning that I saw our packers at work for the first time, as we were to change and use a pack outfit from here up the Big Horn River. The mules used were the same ones that had so far hauled our wagons, and as most of them had never had a pack on, most anyone can imagine what a time the packers had. It was fun for everyone but the packers and, of course, the mules, but Jack Bean, who was head packer, understood his business and made a better job of breaking these mules to pack than seemed possible. One of the infantry companies was left in charge of our camp on the Yellowstone, as all of the wagons, harness, and a good deal of camp equipment was left behind, but I don’t remember now which company it was.