Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  During July both forts had received reinforcements and new commanders. Col. John E. Smith, Twenty-seventh Infantry, commanded Fort Phil Kearny, while his lieutenant colonel, Luther P. Bradley, took over Fort C. F. Smith. Although the post on the Bighorn now sheltered almost 400 defenders, Fort Phil Kearny, with less than 300, was actually weaker than it had been under Carrington. Of large significance in the coming contests, Smith and Bradley had brought new breech-loading Springfield rifles and metallic cartridges to substitute for the old muzzle-loaders. Neither fort stood in much jeopardy from the forces descending on them. But each had an exposed outpost. At Fort C. F. Smith it was a hay-mowing camp in a creek bottom two and one-half miles to the northeast. A corral of logs and willow boughs woven on pole stringers, about 100 feet on each side, had been erected as a refuge in case of attack. At Fort Phil Kearny woodcutters still worked at the old pinery of Carrington’s time. About five miles west of the post, fourteen wagon boxes had been removed from their running gear and formed into a corral in which to pen mules at night. On these two outposts the Sioux and Cheyenne assaults fell.

  The warriors who chose Fort C. F. Smith as the objective had only twenty miles to ride from the Little Bighorn and they reached their destination early on August 1. Twelve civilians worked the mowing machines that morning, while Lt. Sigismund Sternberg and nineteen soldiers stood guard. The Indians gave ample warning of their presence, and their concerted rush on the corral found the whites well posted behind its foundation logs—all but Lieutenant Sternberg, whose notions of proper combat behavior did not include officers in the prone position. A withering fire from the new Springfields threw back the assailants, but not before a bullet punched into the lieutenant’s brain. Al Colvin, one of the civilians, took charge. His leadership proved of high order, and his Henry repeater swelled the firepower of the defenders. Until late in the day the warriors kept the corral under continuous fire, mostly showers of arrows. Three more times they tried to overrun it, twice mounted and once on foot. Each time firepower shattered the assault short of the objective. The battle site could not be seen from the fort, and not until late in the afternoon did Colonel Bradley send out a relief force. By that time the Indians had all but given up; exploding case shot from a howitzer hastened their withdrawal. Outnumbered at least twenty to one, Colvin and his men had held their position for more than six hours, sustaining casualties of three killed and two wounded.41

  The Wagon Box Fight at Fort Phil Kearny the next day bore remarkable similarity to the Hayfield Fight. Veteran Capt. James W. Powell, a contemporary of Fetterman, and his company of the Twenty-seventh Infantry guarded the woodcutters. The Sioux attack, which began with seizure of a mule herd, caught the whites dispersed in several parties. Some made it to the fort, while others took refuge in the wagon-box corral. Powell counted thirty-two defenders—Lt. John C. Jenness, twenty-six soldiers, four civilians, and himself. The tribesmen used the same tactics as at Fort C. F. Smith, alternating sniping fire with massed charges that carried almost to the wagon boxes before collapsing. Again the breech-loading rifles did heavy execution and saved the day. Lieutenant Jenness caught a bullet in the head and died. Five privates were killed and two were wounded. Powell, a cool observer, estimated Indian casualties at no less than 60 killed and 120 wounded. The battle lasted for four and one-half hours before a relief force from Fort Phil Kearny reached the scene and sent the Indians scampering with howitzer fire.42

  The Wagon Box and Hayfield Fights seemed to have no unsettling effect on the Indians. Even though they had suffered greater casualties than customary, they had gained much stock and felt no sense of defeat. For the morale of the Bozeman Trail’s defenders, on the other hand, the engagements worked wonders. They showed that the Sioux and Cheyennes were not invincible and that Fetterman’s fate did not necessarily await men surrounded by many times their number of Indians if they were properly armed and resolute. On the strategic level, however, a cogent question increasingly nagged policy makers: how could so large a commitment of manpower and expense to the Bozeman Trail defenses be justified if the Indians were still powerful enough to deny the route to all but military traffic? Red Cloud and his fellow chiefs gave no sign of relenting in their demand for abandonment of the Bozeman Trail forts as the price of a peace treaty. On the other side, there were signs that the government, if not the army, might indeed be brought to pay Red Cloud’s price.

  NOTES

  1. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, p. 27.

  2. John B. Sanborn, late brigadier general of Volunteers, one of the commissioners investigating the Fetterman affair, found that “Army officers of high grade openly proclaim their intentions to shoot down any Indian they see, and say that they instruct their men to do likewise.” In time of war military posts used to afford refuge to neutral or friendly tribesmen. Now “Inlians flee from them as from a pestilence.” From Fort Laramie, May 18, 1867, ibid., pp. 111–14.

  3. See Athearn, Sherman and the Settlement of the West, chaps. 7 and 8.

  4. Reported an inspecting officer, Lt. Col. Orville E. Babcock, from Denver in May 1866: “Speculators and men wishing the presence of troops are greater enemies and need more watching than the Indians.” House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 20, p. 5.

  5. House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 88.

  6. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 7–11, 18–20, 23–24, 40–42, 52–55. Ibid., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 16, p. 8. House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240, pp. 41–43, 46–48. The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2, 137–38.

  7. To Browning, Feb. 4, 1867. He voiced similar views on Jan. 23 and 31. See House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., ad sess., No. 71, pp. 3, 11. Curiously, Cooke’s order of July 31 purported simply to extend to army officers a policy already communicated by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs—Bogy’s predecessor—to western Indian agents.

  8. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 2d sess., p. 1108 (Feb. 9, 1867). Pope had delivered himself of detailed policy recommendations in the 1850s, but the latest round began with a long letter to Secretary of War Stanton on Feb. 6, 1864, when Pope commanded the Department of the Northwest. It was published in the Army and Navy Journal, April 26, 1864, and later in his report to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. A succession of policy declarations followed. For his and Parker’s justifications, see Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 45–52. For the recommendations of Grant and Sherman see SW, Annual Report (1866), pp. 18, 20; Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 40–41; and Athearn, pp. 110–11. Sen. James F. Wilson stated that Parker drafted the transfer bill. Cong Globe, 39th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 1677 (Feb. si, 1867). For Pope’s frontier career see Richard N. Ellis, General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy (Albuquerque, N.M., 1970.)

  9. Senate Reports, 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 156. For the travels of this committee in 1865, see Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 312–15.

  10. Debates on the transfer issue centered not on the bill drafted by Colonel Parker nor on a similar one that had been introduced in the House on January 9, but rather on an amendment to a bill the Senate had passed in the first session of the 39th Congress providing for a system of inspections of the Indian Service recommended by the Doolittle Committee. An amendment in the House substituted the transfer measure for the body of the original bill as passed by the Senate. The House passed the amended bill, the Senate rejected the House amendment, and the conferees could not agree before the session ended on March 3. For these debates, see Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 843–44 (Jan. 29, 1867), 878–82 (Jan. 30), 891–99 (Jan. 31), 1623–24 (Fjeb. 20), 1679–84 (Feb. 21), 1712–20 (Feb. 22), 1790 (March 2), 1923–24 (March 1), 1988 (March 2). Sherman’s words were quoted by Sen. Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, p. 1624.

  11. For Browning’s arguments in Cabinet meetings, see The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2, 126 (Jan. 25, 1867), 128 (Feb. 5), 135 (March 8). Browning’s instructions to the commissioners, Feb. 18, 1867, are in S
enate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 55–56.

  12. Sully had led campaigns against the Sioux of Dakota in 1863, 1864, and 1865. See Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chaps. 13–15. He was now lieutenant colonel of the Third Infantry but was serving in his brevet grade of brigadier general. Other commission members were John B. Sanborn and Napoleon B. Buford (both wartime volunteer generals, recently mustered out), Col. Ely S. Parker, Judge J. F. Kinney, and G. P. Beauvais.

  13. Sherman to Asst. Adj. Gen. Hq. of the Army, March 13, 1867, Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 7, pp. 1–3.

  14. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, ed. E. B. Long (Cleveland and New York, 1952), p. 58s.

  15. Donald J. Berthrong, The Southern Cheyennes (Norman, Okla., 1963), pp. 259–65. Wilbur S. Nye, Plains Indian Raiders: The Final Phases of Warfare from the Arkansas to the Red River (Norman, Okla., 1968), pp. 47—51, 66–67. The Dog Soldiers originated as one of the soldier societies common to the Plains tribes. Warrior societies filled social and military purposes and also acted as camp police. The Dog Soldiers formed the most militant and elite of the Cheyenne soldier societies. Beginning about 1837 it transformed itself into a separate Cheyenne band that became the nucleus for the most courageous and skilled warriors and that won renown for its warlike deeds. In the Plains wars of 1864–69, the Dog Soldiers consistently resisted the efforts of the peace chiefs to reach an accommodation with the whites. See George E. Hyde, Life of George Bent, Written from His Letters, ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman, Okla., 1967), pp. 337–38.

  16. Feb. 16, 1867, Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 81–82.

  17. Ibid., pp. 50–54, 79, 101–2. House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240, pp. 41–42, 48–49. Nye, pp. 64–67. For the situation among the Kiowas at this time, see James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, 17th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, D.C., 1898), pp. 180–81, 313–20.

  18. The principal documented charge was the Box atrocity. In August 1866 a war party under Satanta had murdered James Box in Montague County, Texas, and carried his wife and four children into captivity. An infant died, but the mother and three children were ransomed by officers at Fort Dodge in October. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 99–100. The Peace Commission of 1867, which included three generals, later exonerated the Kiowas of other depredation charges on which Hancock’s campaign had been premised. House Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 2d sess., No. 97, p. 13. But in truth both Kiowas and Comanches had been raiding extensively in Texas.

  19. March 14, 1867, reducing to writing the conclusions of a conference between Sherman and Hancock in St. Louis on March 8. House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240, pp. 98–99.

  20. Ibid., pp. 16–17, 92–94.

  21. Hancock’s General Field Order No. 1, Fort Riley, March 26, 1867, ibid., pp. 12–13.

  22. Biographical treatments of Custer range from the adulation of Frederick Whittaker’s Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer (New York, 1876) to the almost pathological hostility of Frederick F. Van de Water’s Glory Hunter: A Life of General Custer (Indianapolis, Ind., 1934). The most balanced is Jay Monaghan’s Custer: Life of General George Armstrong Custer (Boston, 1959).

  23. Hancock’s expedition is voluminously documented by official records published in House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240; Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13; and CIA, Annual Report (1867), pp. 310–14. Accounts of participants are Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (2 vols., New York, 1905), 1, 11–60 [Stanley, who later found Livingston in Africa, reported the expedition for the Missouri Democrat]; Theodore Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 36 (February 1868), 292–307; and George A. Custer, My Life on the Plains, ed. Milo M. Quaife (Lakeside Classics edition, Chicago, 1952), chap. 2. Reliable secondary accounts are Berthrong, pp. 271–82; William H. Leckie, The Military Conquest of the Southern Plains (Norman, Okla., 1963), pp. 39–47; Nye, chap. 8; Hyde, Life of George Bent, chap. 9; Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, “The West Breaks in General Custer,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 36 (1970), 113–48.

  24. Hancock’s final report, May 22, 1867, House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240, pp. 78–92.

  25. For Indian raids see Marvin H. Garfield, “Defense of the Kansas Frontier, 1866–67,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 1 (1931–32), pp. 330–32; sources cited in n. 23.above; and Mrs. Frank C. Montgomery, “Fort Wallace and Its Relation to the Frontier,” Kansas Historical Collections, 77 (1926–28), 189–282.

  26. Custer describes the campaign in graphic detail in My Life on the Plains, chaps. 5–7, as does Davis, “A Summer on the Plains,” pp. 299–307. See especially, however, the careful reconstruction in Lawrence A. Frost, The Court-Martial of General George Armstrong Custer (Norman, Okla., 1968), chaps. 3–8. From Fort Wallace Custer and a small detachment hastened to Fort Hays for supplies. Then Custer went on to Fort Harker, saw General Smith briefly, and took the train to Fort Riley, where his wife was staying. For this trip and for harsh punitive measures against deserters, he was court-martialed and sentenced to a year’s suspension from rank and pay. The court-martial proceedings form chaps. 9–11 of Frost’s book.

  27. House Ex. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 240, pp. 25–26, 35, 111–18.

  28. Athearn, p. 147. Sherman’s difficulties with the governors are detailed on pp. 144–48, 155–58, 163–66, 169–70.

  29. James L. Thane, Jr., “The Montana ‘Indian War’ of 1867,” Arizona and the West, jo (1968), 153–70. Athearn, pp. 133–43 ff.

  30. Athearn, pp. 169–70. Garfield, pp. 338–40. Samuel J. Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties (Chicago, 1911), pp. 251–62.

  31. Armes, Ups and Downs of an Army Officer, pp. 231–56. George B. Jenness, “The Battle of Beaver Creek,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 9 (1905–06), 443–52. Jenness commanded the Kansas cavalry. Nye, chap. 11.

  32. See troop distribution tables in SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 39–42. All the contemporary literature deals with the terror and death wrought by the cholera at all the Plains posts. Desertions from the army between Oct. 1, 1866, and Sept. 20, 1867, totaled 13,608. The Seventh Cavalry alone sustained 512. Ibid., p. 475.

  33. Athearn, pp. 129–31, 149–52. SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 32, 65–66. House Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., ist sess., No. 240, pp. 58–60.

  34. SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 49–52. Frazer, Forts of the West, pp. 80, 83–84, 110–11, 113–15. Ray H. Mattison, “The Military Frontier on the Upper Missouri,” Nebraska History, 57 (1956), pp. 168–72.

  35. Frazer, pp. 90, 181, 184–86.

  36. SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 38—42, 59.

  37. Robert G. Athearn, Forts of the Upper Missouri (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), chaps. 13 and 14. SW, Annual Report (1869), pp. 58–59. Army and Navy Journal, 7 (April 23, 1870), 563. A graphic and literate view of army life on the upper Missouri at this time is De Trobriand, Military Life in Dakota. The author, colonel of the Thirty-first Infantry, commanded the military district, with headquarters at Fort Stevenson.

  38. SW, Annual Report (1867), p. 59. See also Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway (Philadelphia and London, 1919), pp. 236–40; George B. Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes (2d ed., Norman, Okla., 1956), pp. 263–68; and Danker, Man of the Plains, pp. 58–61. Luther North, subject of the last work, was a captain in the Pawnee Scout battalion commanded by his brother, Frank.

  39. SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 58–59, 436–39. Conditions at Fort C. F. Smith are well set forth in Mattes, Indians, Infants, and Infantry, chaps. 6–8; at Fort Phil Kearny in Murray, Military Posts in the Powder River Country, pp. 86–101.

  40. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, pp. 158–59. Mattes, pp. 132–34, citing official reports from Fort C. F. Smith. Officers here got their information about the Sioux from the friendly Crows, who lived nearby.

  41. Roy E. Appleman, “The Hayfield Fight,” in Potomac Westerne
rs, Great Western Indian Fights, chap. 11. Mattes, pp. 134–38. Vaughn, Indian Fights j chap. 3. Internal evidence in contemporary sources suggests that this estimate of Indian losses is too low, but other firsthand estimates are wildly high. Whether Colonel Bradley knew of the peril to the hay party and elected to sacrifice it rather than risk a relief column is a matter of dispute. Bradley’s record is otherwise highly creditable.

  42. Appleman, “The Wagon Box Fight,” in Potomac Westerners, Great Western Indian Fights, chap. 12. Robert A. Murray, “The Wagon Box Fight: A Centennial Appraisal,” in The War on Powder River (Bellevue, Neb., 1969), pp. 27–30. Again, estimates of the number of Indians and their losses vary widely. Most contemporary white estimates of the total force range from 1,500 to 4,000. Powell is the only white to place casualties lower than 400, and some go as high as 1,000. By contrast, Indian estimates, as recorded by Hyde (Red Cloud’s Folk, p. 159) are 1,000 participants, of whom six were killed and six wounded. Hyde’s first figure seems the more probable, while his second is as absurdly low as white estimates are high. Powell’s estimate of Indian loss seems most credible.

  The Peace Commission of 1867

  GENERAL HANCOCK HAD PRESENTED the peace advocates with a powerful weapon. In “Hancock’s War,” with all of its overtones of what Sherman labeled “the Chivington process,”1 they found dramatic confirmation of their contention that heavy-handed military policies provoked most Indian wars. Even Generals Sully, Buford, and Sanborn condemned Hancock’s actions; shock waves from the Kansas hostilities had rolled northward and disrupted their “friendly talks” with the Sioux.2 Had Hancock not bullied the Cheyennes and burned the Pawnee Fork village, they may well have embarked on a summer of bloodletting anyway. The lid was off the powder keg and other incidents could easily have produced sparks. But it was Hancock who ignited the powder and thereby so weakened the army’s arguments, despite vociferous western support, that cooperation in a peace venture became politically necessary.