The intentions of the Kiowas and Comanches remained unclear. In February 1868 Agent Leavenworth had gone to the new Kiowa-Comanche Reservation in Indian Territory and established his agency in Eureka Valley, near old Fort Cobb. Several thousand of his charges drifted in seeking food. None had been promised in the Medicine Lodge treaties, and he had none to give. Between raids into Texas, therefore, they terrorized the agent and the peaceful Wichitas whose agency stood nearby. When they burned the Wichita agency in May, Leavenworth took fright and headed east, soon afterward submitting his resignation. Most of the Kiowas and the Yamparika Comanches, about 2,000 in number, then went north to the Arkansas. The balance of the Comanches who had been at Eureka Valley—mainly Nakoni, Penateka, and Kotsoteka—camped on the Canadian River to the north and west.13 Although all continued to raid in Texas, this had never counted against them in Kansas, and how to handle them in the war against the Cheyennes and Arapahoes was one of the many vexing questions that troubled General Sheridan as the summer of 1868 drew to a close.
Sherman and Sheridan were of a single mind on strategy. Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley furnished the precedents. Like Georgians and Virginians four years earlier, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes would suffer total war. “These Indians require to be soundly whipped,” said Sherman on September 26, “and the ringleaders in the present trouble hung, their ponies killed, and such destruction of their property as will make them very poor.”14 With the reservations now clearly defined, for the first time there seemed some hope of separating the innocent from the guilty. General Hazen, charged by Sherman with military responsibility for the southern reservations, would go to abandoned Fort Cobb, on the new Kiowa-Comanche Reservation, and provide food and protection for the innocent. Sheridan would war relentlessly against the guilty. With this approach, thought Sherman, the government could “hold out the olive branch with one hand and the sword in the other.” But Cobb was not to be a refuge for the guilty, and if they sought safety there Sheridan was to follow and mete out “just punishment.”15
Nor was total war to be the only innovative feature of the strategy. Past experience showed that little success could be gained while the season favored Indian movements. During September and October, Sheridan would field as many columns as possible in Kansas. But this would be only a holding operation, aimed at diverting the hostiles from raids on the settlements and nudging them south of the Arkansas. The real offensive would begin when the snow fell. Winter inhibited the Indian’s mobility by weakening his ponies and diminishing his food supply. It dampened his war ardor, dulled his watchfulness, and accordingly made him more vulnerable to surprise attack. Pessimists warned Sheridan that the blizzards and subzero temperatures of a plains winter held perils for an offensive column, too. Actually, Kit Carson had shown in the Navajo campaign of 1863–64 that winter operations were possible and could bring impressive results. Sheridan seems not to have known of this precedent. He regarded his projected undertaking as an experiment to test whether troops could endure and the supply services support a winter campaign. If he succeeded, the enemy at best would be struck a destructive blow and driven to the new reservations; at worst shown that no longer did winter afford respite and security. As early as mid-September Sherman and Sheridan had agreed on a winter offensive, but not until October 9, following Sherman’s victory over Taylor and Tappan at the Chicago meeting of the peace commission (see pp. 138–39), did he authorize Sheridan to proceed.16
Go ahead in your own way [Sherman instructed his subordinate] and I will back you with my whole authority. If it results in the utter annihilation of these Indians, it is but the result of what they have been warned again and again…. I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin and carry out their barbarous warfare on any kind of pretext they may choose to allege. I believe that this winter will afford us the opportunity, and that before the snow falls, these Indians will seek some sort of peace, to be broken next year at their option; but we will not accept their peace, or cease our efforts till all the past acts are both punished and avenged.17
While the generals formulated their plans for a winter campaign, Sheridan’s troops had not been idle. In late August he concentrated the Seventh Cavalry on the Arkansas and dispatched the Tenth Cavalry to the Republican and Smoky Hill. He commissioned his aide, Maj. George A. Forsyth, to enlist a company of fifty frontiersmen and cover the railroad toward Fort Wallace. Appeals for more cavalry won a prompt response. Early in September a seven-troop squadron of the Fifth Cavalry, assembled from Reconstruction stations in the South, reached Kansas and went to the Republican to support the Tenth. Early in October Sherman bowed to Sheridan’s request and secured authority to call out a regiment of Volunteers. Governor Crawford promptly donned a colonel’s uniform and readied the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry to participate in the winter offensive.18
Also late in August, Sheridan turned his attention to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes already south of the Arkansas. Agent Wynkoop protested their peaceable disposition, but Sheridan believed that the scattering of depredations on the Arkansas and along the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail could be laid squarely on these innocents. He assembled some five to six hundred men in eight troops of the Seventh Cavalry and one company of the Third Infantry and sent them south under Bvt. Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully, lieutenant colonel of the Third Infantry and commander of the District of the Upper Arkansas. Sully enjoyed a bright and well-merited reputation as an Indian-fighter, the result of aggressive campaigns against the Sioux in 1863—65. Now, unaccountably, he turned into a cautious, slow-moving general who set the pace in an ambulance rather than on horseback. The column left Fort Dodge on September 7, skirmished halfheartedly with Cheyennes on the Cimarron and the North and South Canadian, and on September 14 turned back to Fort Dodge. Asked why by a lieutenant, Sully replied, “Oh, these sand hills are interminable.”19
Meanwhile, at Fort Hays, Major Forsyth recruited and organized his fifty “first class hardy frontiersmen,” signing them up as quartermaster employees in the absence of other authorization. Many were veterans of the Union or Confederate army, seasoned plainsmen, and average to excellent marksmen. Lightly equipped for rapid movement, by mid-September the company found itself on a warm trail leading up the Arikara fork of the Republican River north of Fort Wallace.
At dawn on September 17 Indians jumped the scouts’ camp. Forsyth hastily disposed his men in a perimeter on a small brushy island in the middle of the dry stream bed. Soon he was surrounded by six to seven hundred warriors—Pawnee Killer’s Oglalas and Cheyenne Dog Soldiers of Bull Bear, Tall Bull, and White Horse. The scouts alternately dug rifle pits and fired at circling Indians. Three times during the day masses of horsemen bore down on the island in frontal charges—a rarity in Indian warfare—only to split at the last moment under the impact of disciplined volley fire from Spencer repeating carbines. But the defenders suffered severely—almost half their number killed or wounded and most of their horses slain. Lt. Frederick Beecher was dead, Surgeon John H. Mooers fatally wounded, and Forsyth himself immobilized with bullets in his leg and thigh. For the next seven days the Indians held the company under close siege. Two pairs of scouts succeeded in slipping through to Fort Wallace, 85 miles away, and on September 25 a column of Tenth Cavalry “Buffalo Soldiers” under Capt. Louis H. Carpenter finally lifted the siege.
In the Battle of Beecher’s Island Forsyth had lost six killed and fifteen wounded. He reported Indian casualties of thirty-five killed and a hundred wounded; Indian sources later conceded but six dead. It had been an action of little consequence, but one that would be long remembered and glorified in the annals of the Indian-fighting army.20
Hoping to relieve the pressure on the settlements until
winter, Sheridan kept columns in the field throughout October. South of the Arkansas the Seventh Cavalry scouted Medicine Lodge Creek and the Big Bend of the Arkansas. (Once more the Seventh followed the energetic Custer, happily freed, by petition of Sully, Sheridan, and Sherman, from the idleness enforced by court-martial in 1867.) But the most actively hostile Indians were still north of the railroad. A column from General Augur’s department under Lt. Col. Luther P. Bradley swept up the Republican. The newly arrived squadron of the Fifth Cavalry scouted the same area and exchanged fire with Tall Bull’s Dog Soldiers on October 14 and 25–26. The most severe encounter of the month occurred on Beaver Creek on the seventeenth, when several hundred Cheyennes fell on a squadron of the Tenth Cavalry escorting Maj. Eugene A. Carr in search of his Fifth Cavalry command. Capt. Louis H. Carpenter kept his black troopers well in hand and held off the attackers for eight hours.21
While his troops fought the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Sioux, Sheridan had sought to keep the Kiowas and Comanches neutral. On September 20 he and General Hazen met with tribal leaders at Fort Larned and made arrangements to escort their people to Fort Cobb. Sheridan would provide rations en route. To give him time to haul in the necessary food, the Kiowas and Comanches went on a buffalo hunt, promising to return in ten days. During this time the hostilities with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes intensified. The Kiowas and Comanches grew suspicious of the army’s intentions and decided to continue to Fort Cobb without benefit of military companionship. When they failed to keep their rendezvous with Hazen at Fort Larned, Sheridan concluded that they had joined the hostiles, and this belief prompted his request for authority to muster the Nineteenth Kansas. While Sheridan made final arrangements to thrust south with the sword, Hazen repaired to Fort Cobb to hold forth the olive branch.22
Actually, Sheridan planned to swing with three swords at the winter camps of the Indians, known to be in the Canadian and Washita valleys. From the District of New Mexico, Bvt. Maj. Gen. George W. Getty was to launch a column eastward down the South Canadian. Composed of six troops of the Third Cavalry, two companies of the Thirty-seventh Infantry, and four mountain howitzers, it numbered 563 men. Maj. Andrew W. “Beans” Evans (whom one observer swore had “registered a vow never to smile”) led it out of Fort Bascom, New Mexico, on November 18. Major Carr (a brevet major general) was to command a second column—his own seven troops of the Fifth Cavalry and another force of four troops of the Tenth Cavalry and one of the Seventh already out under Capt. William H. Penrose of the Third Infantry (a brigadier general by brevet). This represented a combined force of about 650. Carr’s command, which was to operate southward toward Antelope Hills and the head of Red River, left Fort Lyon, Colorado, on December 2 guided by a daredevil young plainsman who had captured Sheridan’s fancy and one day would capture the world’s fancy—“Buffalo Bill” Cody. Not much was expected of Evans and Carr. They were to act as “beaters in” for the third and strongest column. Commanded by Sully and accompanied by Sheridan himself, this force was to consist of eleven troops of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, five infantry companies, and Colonel Crawford’s Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Sully and Custer established a supply depot, Camp Supply, on the North Canadian a hundred miles south of Fort Dodge and were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Crawford’s Kansas when Sheridan appeared on November 21 in the midst of a snow storm.23
On the way in he had crossed a fresh trail, undoubtedly made by a war party heading north toward the Kansas settlements. Although anxious to take advantage of the discovery, first he had to mediate a dispute over rank. Fearful lest Colonel Crawford claim seniority, Lieutenant Colonel Sully had issued an order assuming command in his brevet grade of brigadier general. Lieutenant Colonel Custer had promptly countered with an order assuming command in his brevet grade of major general. Sheridan confirmed Custer and ordered Sully back to his district headquarters. Then, to compound the irony, Sheridan announced that he had decided not to wait any longer for Crawford’s Kansans. Custer would take the trail at once with the Seventh Cavalry.24
More than 800 strong and leading a long string of supply wagons, the regiment marched from Camp Supply early on November 23. Twelve inches of wet snow covered the ground, and a heavy fall piled up more throughout the day. It hid the trail Custer was to follow, but after four cheerless, comfortless days he found the quarry anyway, nestled in their teepees in the Washita River Valley. At dawn on November 27, with no knowledge of enemy strength, he hastened to the attack. Buglers sounded the charge, the band blared “Garryowen”—or as much of it as the musicians could master before their instruments froze—and in four attack groups the cavalry swept into the valley from as many directions.25
The objective turned out to be fifty-one Cheyenne lodges belonging to Black Kettle, champion of peace and hapless victim of a similar dawn attack four years earlier at Sand Creek. Only a week earlier Black Kettle and Little Robe had ridden down to Fort Cobb to grasp General Hazen’s olive branch. But Hazen could not very well make peace with people against whom Sheridan had declared war, and he turned them away with advice to deal with the “big war chief,” Sheridan. In the course of this interview Black Kettle confessed himself powerless to keep his young men from raiding in Kansas. Many of his followers rejoiced at Hazen’s rebuff.26 In fact, it was the trail of a returning war party of one hundred, made after the snow storm, that led Custer to the peace chief’s village, which was found to contain four white captives (two of whom were killed by the Indians at the first attack) and abundant evidence of the romps of his young warriors through the Kansas settlements.
Flushed from their lodges by the dawn attack, Black Kettle’s startled people scattered in a frantic search for cover. The warriors, posting themselves behind trees, fallen logs, and the stream bank, fought desperately to shield the flight of their families. Black Kettle and his wife, mounted on a single pony, were cut down early in the fight. So was Chief Little Rock. Within ten minutes the troops had possession of the village, but throughout the morning, fighting on foot, they labored to wipe out pockets of resistance. Some of the Cheyennes succeeded in escaping down the valley. One such group brought Maj. Joel H. Elliott and about fifteen men in pursuit. A warrior force converged to the rescue, cut off Elliott, and wiped out the detachment to a man. No one knew where Elliott had gone or what had happened to him.
Custer had achieved his triumph by finding the enemy and striking at once, without losing any time in reconnaissance. Now came the penalty. In the middle of the morning fresh warriors, well armed and painted for battle, began to appear on the hillsides. Questioning captive women, Custer learned that the valley for ten miles downstream harbored the winter camps of other Cheyenne bands, as well as Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche. By noon hundreds of horsemen from these camps ringed Black Kettle’s village. Custer established a perimeter defense and met the sorties of warrior groups against his lines with limited counterattacks. At the same time, he destroyed the tepees and all their contents of food, robes, weapons, and utensils, and also—a grievous blow to the Cheyennes—slaughtered most of the 875 ponies captured in the first assault.
The reinforcements from down river probably did not badly outnumber the cavalry and therefore did not raise the deadly peril later dramatized by Custer and Sheridan.27 But they did promise to make the victory considerably more costly to the victors. Custer was encumbered by his wounded and by fifty-three captive women and children. His supply train was back on the trail and exposed to enemy attack. His overcoats and haversacks had been left at the previous night’s camp site. He was ignorant of Elliott’s whereabouts and was prevented by the fighting from conducting a serious search. Hoping to extricate himself without further loss, as dusk gathered Custer mounted the regiment and, with colors flying and band playing, advanced boldly down river as if to attack the other villages. The Indians quickly drew off to defend their homes. As night fell, he suddenly turned and slipped out of the valley. To Sheridan’s acclaim, he proudly led the regiment into Camp Supply on Decembe
r 2.
The Battle of the Washita was a ringing affirmation of Sheridan’s strategy. Custer had lost Major Elliott, Capt. Louis M. Hamilton, and nineteen men killed, and three officers and eleven soldiers wounded. But he had dealt the Cheyennes a devastating blow. He reported 103 warriors slain. Even if exaggerated, as claimed by Indian sources,28 the real impact on the Indians lay in the destruction of their food, shelter, transportation, and other possessions and in the demonstration that troops could seek them out in winter. The triumph was not without its tinge of sourness, however. Humanitarians castigated Custer for slaughtering women and children. In a widely published letter full of tributes to Black Kettle and denunciations of the army, Agent Wynkoop resigned his post.29 Even though it could be shown that Black Kettle’s people were not as pacific as he himself, and that most of the slain noncombatants had been honestly mistaken for warriors, or indeed were themselves fighting as warriors, Custer found himself compared with Chivington and the Washita with Sand Creek. Moreover, his decision to abandon the battlefield without searching for Elliott and his men, of honestly debatable military necessity, clouded his reputation in army circles and opened a wound in the Seventh Cavalry that would not heal as long as he commanded it.
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