Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  From 1862 to 1865, as U.S. commander in the Southwest, James Henry Carleton conducted one of the Civil War’s noisiest sideshows. A contentious, arbitrary, domineering old dragoon, blessed with monumental certitude and inexhaustible energy, he tormented superiors and terrified subordinates, bullied civil officials and oppressed citizens. But he also warred on the Indians with a ruthlessness and persistence so far unrivaled in the Southwest. Mountain-man Kit Carson, commissioned a volunteer colonel, was his most effective weapon, made so chiefly by drive and direction supplied by Carleton. During the war years Carleton’s California and New Mexico Volunteers conquered the Mescalero Apaches and corralled them on a reservation, Bosque Redondo, on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. They crushed the powerful Navajos, scourge of the Southwest for generations, and conducted 8,000 of them from their homeland across the territory to the sterile flats of Bosque Redondo. They fought Kiowas and Comanches along the Sant Fe Trail, lifeline of the army in the Southwest. They campaigned diligently against Apaches and Yavapais of central and western Arizona, provoked to bitter hostility by a sudden influx of gold seekers to newly discovered diggings around Prescott and along the Colorado River.

  But General Carleton failed to realize his grand design of purging the Southwest of Indians and tapping its mineral wealth. At Bosque Redondo the Navajos browbeat the Mescaleros. In December 1865 all 500 Mescaleros fled the reservation. Comanches from the plains in turn browbeat the Navajos, and disease swept their camps with fatal effect. Farming efforts failed. For four years, at enormous cost, the government subsisted them. “I think we could better send them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel to board,” grumped General Sherman, who finally, as a member of the peace commission of 1867, negotiated a treaty that allowed the stricken people to go back home.11

  So traumatic was the experience at Bosque Redondo that the Navajos never again challenged the whites. No similar trauma inhibited the Apaches. If anything, Carleton’s vigorous and well-publicized campaigning stirred them up even more, and the Southwest continued to rock with Indian warfare into the postwar years. Mescaleros struck at the new farming settlements springing up in their old haunts in the Capitan Mountains, raided along the Rio Grande, and plagued the western stretches of the San Antonio—El Paso Road in Texas. West of the Rio Grande, Gila, Coyotero, Chiricahua, and Pinal Apaches interdicted the road from El Paso to Tucson and California, hit the settlements of the Santa Cruz Valley south of Tucson, and raided in Sonora and Chihuahua. North of the Gila River Yavapais struck back at the Prescott miners with bloody vengeance. Other Yavapais and Walapais menaced the Colorado River mines and made travel on the roads between Prescott and the Colorado a risky venture.12

  The Apache problem thus spanned the Southwest from the Pecos to the Colorado and afflicted West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Carleton, commanding the entire region, had been able to deal with the Apaches as a single problem. Postwar reorganization, however, carved Apacheria into three commands. The Texas forts in the Mescalero range—Stockton, Davis, and Quitman—fell into the Fifth Military District. New Mexico became a district in the Department of the Missouri. Arizona became a district in General McDowell’s Department of California, which was, in turn, a unit of General Halleck’s Division of the Pacific. Geography and distance decreed that, for logistical and communications purposes, Arizona look westward and New Mexico eastward. But the arrangement sacrificed unity of command, and for two decades the Apaches benefited.

  In the postwar Regular Army Carleton received the lieutenant colonelcy of the Fourth Cavalry, but he continued to command the District of New Mexico in his brevet grade of major general until late in 1867, when Bvt. Maj. Gen. George W. Getty (colonel, Thirty-seventh Infantry) replaced him. Regulars of the Third Cavalry and Fifth Infantry relieved the California Volunteers, but for almost three years Carleton resisted Sherman’s pressures to muster out all Volunteers. Until late 1867 a battalion of New Mexico Volunteers and a full regiment of black infantry, the 125th U.S. Colored Troops, supplemented the Regulars and kept the total strength between 1,000 and 1,500.13

  Brig. Gen. John S. Mason, U.S.V., assumed command of the new District of Arizona in the summer of 1865. He made few basic changes in the rudimentary defense system sketched by Carleton in 1862–64. South of the Gila, to protect the California Road and the widely scattered settlements of southern Arizona, Carleton had established Fort Lowell at Tucson and Fort Bowie in Apache Pass of the Chiricahua Mountains. On the lower San Pedro Mason reactivated prewar Fort Breckinridge as Camp Grant, and on the upper San Pedro he laid out Camp Wallen. (It was abandoned in 1869, a year after Camp Crittenden had been built on a hill overlooking the malarial site of prewar Fort Buchanan.) North of the Gila, to guard the growing population of miners, Carleton had founded Fort Whipple at Prescott and Camp Lincoln (renamed Camp Verde in 1868) on the Verde River to the east. He had also planted Camp Goodwin on the middle Gila as a base for his abortive offensive against the Apaches and Yavapais in 1864. In 1865, to bring further pressure on the Indians threatening Prescott, Mason added Fort McDowell on the Verde near its confluence with the Salt. On the Colorado, Forts Yuma and Mojave dated from before the war. Although most of these posts endured, Arizona’s defenses displayed neither the continuity nor the stability that marked New Mexico’s. For the next twenty years posts were established, abandoned, moved, and renamed with bewildering rapidity as the Indian threat shifted or disease appeared or water gave out or supply problems grew critical.14

  Manning these and other stations that came and went as expediency dictated were California and Arizona Volunteers left over from the war. Not until 1867 were they wholly replaced by Regulars—eight cavalry troops (First and Eighth) and twenty infantry companies (Ninth, Fourteenth, Thirty-second). This amounted to about 1,300 officers and men, but by 1869 the assignment of additional companies had raised the level to almost 2,000.15

  Such unity of command as Mason could claim vanished in 1866 when Arizona was broken into four separate districts of the Department of California. General McDowell, the author of this measure, would now direct operations in Arizona from his San Francisco headquarters. Following an inspection tour in the spring of 1867, the division Inspector General, Maj. Roger Jones, turned in a report sharply critical of military dispositions in Arizona. He assailed the command structure, the proliferation of small posts, and the uncoordinated and sporadic scouting that seemed so futile. As remedies he urged a separate Department of Arizona, concentration of troops at a few strategic locations, and the conduct of comprehensive operations.16

  McDowell disagreed on all three counts. In his opinion, the roots of the problem lay in other factors—in the character of Arizona’s geography, in the character of the Apache and Yavapai enemy, and in the character of the troops assigned to fight them. In his rebuttal of Major Jones’ criticism, McDowell stressed all three points. General Halleck concurred in their validity. In somewhat lesser degree, all three applied to New Mexico as well.17

  No region of the American West presented more formidable geographical barriers to military operations than Arizona. The Mogollon Plateau, the San Francisco Peaks, and other high elevations contained inviting climate and scenery. But it was in the scorched, malarial bottoms of the Gila and its tributaries that most of the operations took place. Here were the vast deserts of sand and stone; the. clusters of precipitous, rocky mountains webbed by treacherous canyons; the widely separated and uncertain sources of water; the profusion of vegetation armed with thorns; and the snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and Gila Monsters to be found in every habitation and camp site. Temperatures often reached 100 to 120 degrees. “I defy any one to make his way over this country without the aid of profanity,” summed up an officer in 1868. “Many and many a time … I have come to some confounded cañon of piled-up rocks and slippery precipices, which would have been utterly impassable for myself and men if we had not literally cursed ourselves over.”18

  Furthermore, distance and terrain made logistics almost
a fulltime occupation for everyone. Supplies had to be shipped from San Francisco to Fort Yuma by steamer around the Baja California peninsula. Then they had to be hauled, under heavy escort, great distances to the far-flung posts. The troops, General Mason confessed, “can do little more than hold their posts, and escort their supply trains.”19 Aside from the drain on manpower, the process was enormously expensive. “The cost of the military establishment in Arizona,” declared General Sherman in 1869, “is out of all proportion to its value as part of the public domain.”20 The fighting traits of the Apaches and Yavapais accentuated the difficulties. No other Indians excelled them in cunning, stealth, endurance, perseverance, ruthlessness, fortitude, and fighting skill. They knew the geography of their homeland intimately and had mastered its harsh conditions perfectly. Moreover, one never knew which were hostile and which not. “It might be said of them at any time,” remarked a lieutenant, “they have either just been hostile, are now, or soon will be.”21

  Only troops skilled in guerrilla warfare and as perfectly tuned to the natural environment as the Apaches could hope to master the conditions of enemy and terrain encountered in the Southwest. “It is not so much a large body, but an active one that is wanted,” declared McDowell, “one moving without any baggage, and led by active, zealous officers, who really wish to accomplish something, and who are able to endure fatigue, and willing to undergo great personal privations.” Generals Carleton and Mason had made the same point in similar language. The Regulars acquired such skills slowly or not at all, feared McDowell; worse, many made little effort to learn. Officers had just passed through a great war. Now, when they wanted rest and comfort, they wound, up in exhausting, comfortless Arizona, many with newly acquired families. Too often they viewed their assignment as a punishment, to be endured until the blessed day of transfer to a more congenial clime.22

  Although McDowell’s complaint remained valid for many years, some did indeed meet his standards. One was Capt. George B. Sanford, at Fort McDowell. In November 1866 he led his troop of the First Cavalry high into the rugged recesses of the Sierra Ancha and demonstrated that a ranchería could be surprised and smashed.23 Another was Capt. J. M. Williams of the Eighth Cavalry. In April 1867, with eighty-five troopers out of Fort Whipple, he maneuvered a band of Indians into two fights on the Verde, killed fifty and destroyed their rancheria.24 During the summer of 1868 Maj. William R. Price and his subordinates, particularly Capt. S. B. M. Young and Maj. David R. Clendenin, campaigned tirelessly out of Fort Mojave and beat the Walapais into an uncertain peace.25 At Fort Bowie in 1869–70 Capt. Reuben F. Bernard proved unusually adept at bringing Cochise’s warriors to battle.26 For the years 1866–70 the army recorded 137 small-unit actions with Indians in Arizona and claimed a kill of 649 at a cost of 26 killed and 58 wounded.27 This record seemed to belie McDowell’s pessimism. But the scale of depredations was a more accurate performance indicator than number killed, and year after year depredations continued without letup.

  Friction between army and citizenry resulted. A populace tormented by murder, property loss, and constant insecurity savagely abused its defenders for their poor showing. At the same time, the army viewed the citizens with growing resentment. Too many were avowed exterminationists, and their insistence on classing all Indians as hostile sometimes added unnecessarily to the hostile ranks. The intensity, if not the origins, of both Yavapai and Walapai hostility could be traced to white treachery.28 Furthermore, as the Indians kept the mines from full development, the major business of Arizona came to be the army. McDowell’s successor, Gen. Edward O. C. Ord, put it bluntly in 1869: “Almost the only paying business the white inhabitants have in that Territory is supplying the troops…. If the paymasters and quartermasters of the army were to stop payment in Arizona, a great majority of the white settlers would be compelled to quit it. Hostilities are therefore kept up with a view to protecting inhabitants most of whom are supported by the hostilities.”29 Thus the populace damned the army for lethargy and ineffectiveness, and the army damned the populace for provoking: war, then fattening on the soldiers who had to fight it.

  In adjoining New Mexico General Carleton ceased to enjoy his wartime success—perhaps partly because of less experienced troops, partly because he spent so much time quarreling with critics of his Bosque Redondo program. General Getty, who replaced him in September 1867, did no better. Mescalero raids flashed along the eastern borders of settlement almost as far north as Taos. Gila Apaches continued to trouble the Rio Grande Valley settlements from Albuquerque south to El Paso. Both tribes infested the overland route—the Mescaleros in Texas, the Gilas in southwestern New Mexico. The destruction of mail coaches and slaughter of the passengers became a common tragedy.30 Troops at Forts Stanton, McRae, Selden, Craig, Bayard, and Cummings mounted an occasional scout or pursuit, but with little energy and less effect. In the four years following the war, the army in New Mexico claimed only 33 combats (compared with 137 in Arizona) accounting for an estimated 92 Indian fatalities (compared with 649 in Arizona).31

  In Arizona, junior officers like Sanford, Williams, Price, Bernard, and others had demonstrated that Regulars could surmount the geographical obstacles of the Southwest and occasionally even best the Apaches. Throughout Apacheria, however, it remained for better leadership and greater experience to give the army the energy, skill, and direction needed to overcome the Apaches.

  Long known as a military intellectual, “Old Brains” Halleck marshalled some imposing statistics to demonstrate that the Division of the Pacific did not receive its fair allocation of the nation’s military resources. The division embraced three states and four territories, he pointed out, 1,218,000 square miles, 12,750 miles of coastline, and a population of 700,000 whites and 130,000 Indians. That was one-third of the land area of the United States, more than one-third of the Indians, a coast three times the length of that fronting the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, but a population only one-sixtieth as strong for self-defense as the rest of the country. Yet he commanded only two cavalry regiments, an artillery regiment, and four infantry regiments—about 6,000 officers and enlisted men. That was only one-ninth of the U.S. Army.32

  Understandably, Halleck did not stress that nearly half his square miles and a considerable share of his coastline and Indian population fell in Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867 and a military responsibility only at a few coastal points. Nor did he emphasize that only in Arizona and along the northwestern fringes of the Great Basin did his Indians require active campaigning. Nevertheless, he made a valid point. His division, counting Alaska, was bigger than Sherman’s. Its distances were as vast and its mountain-and-desert terrain far more inhospitable to military operations. In addition, he struggled with logistical problems of greater magnitude than Sherman’s. Although increasingly self-sufficient as California developed her agricultural and mineral potential, the division still drew heavily on eastern depots for many quartermaster and ordnance items. Whether shipped by the Atlantic-Gulf-Isthmus-Pacific route or, before 1869, by the uncompleted transcontinental railroad, the process was costly, time-consuming, and uncertain. Although many posts were accessible by coastal or river steamer, distance and terrain made distribution of supplies to interior posts a formidable operation. Finally, whether hostile or not, Halleck’s Indians still had to be watched, and this, together with the coastal defenses, required about fifty posts, approximately the number that Sherman’s division counted. Yet in 1867 Halleck commanded only one-half the manpower allotted to Sherman, and in 1 868 the proportion dropped to one-fourth.33

  The Department of California contained the States of California and Nevada and the Territory of Arizona. General McDowell commanded until 1868, when he was replaced by Bvt. Maj. Gen. (Brig. Gen.) Edward O. C. Ord. The Department of the Columbia embraced the State of Oregon and the Territories of Washington and Idaho. Bvt. Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele (colonel, Twentieth Infantry) commanded until late 1867, when he was succeeded by Bvt. Maj. Gen. (Brig. Gen.) Lovell H. Rousseau
. Alaska was first attached as a district to the Department of California but in March 1868 was organized as a separate department, a status it held for two years until merged into the Department of the Columbia in July 1870. Bvt. Maj. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis (colonel, Twenty-third Infantry) commanded in Alaska.34

  Halleck’s network of posts underwent some major changes in the postwar period. Although the coastal defenses remained stable, shifting Indian troubles led to the abandonment of old posts and the founding of new ones. In the mountains of northern California the conquest of the Indians by Civil War Volunteers gave every indication of permanence, and the cluster of stations from which they had operated began to be phased out. Likewise in the Coast Range of Oregon and Washington, the forts that had figured in the Rogue River and Puget Sound wars of the middle 1850s proved no longer necessary. In California Fort Gaston remained until 1892, and in Washington Fort Vancouver continued to occupy a strategic stretch of the lower Columbia River.35

  In Nevada the Paiutes had ceased to give much trouble. Fort Churchill was abandoned, but Camp Independence was retained in California’s Owens River Valley, at the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada, to intimidate Mono Paiutes upset over the continued intrusion of miners in this area.36 Fort Halleck was planted near the upper Humboldt River in 1867 to give military support to the Central Pacific Railroad along its line across central Nevada. In the extreme northeastern reaches of the division, the Department of the Columbia maintained Forts Colville and Walla Walla, Washington, and Fort Lapwai, Idaho. These posts supported the Indian Bureau in its work with the formidable but at the moment complaisant Nez Percé tribe.