Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  Under Pratt’s supervision, the prisoners were confined in the damp recesses of the ancient Spanish fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, Florida, which the U.S. Army maintained as Fort Marion. Some of the Indians quickly sickened and died. The rest Pratt treated with kindness and sympathy. They also afforded him the means of experimenting with concepts of Indian education that had begun to form in his mind even before leaving the frontier. When the prisoners were at last freed in 1878 to return to their homes, a handful remained to help carry forward Pratt’s educational work. A year later he opened the Carlisle Indian School, the model for an expanding network of government boarding schools for Indians. Thus, from the wreckage of the Red River War sprang one of the most pervasive—and controversial—institutions of Indian policy during the generations in which its primary goal was extinction of Indian culture.30

  NOTES

  1. The Fitz John Porter case, at last resolved in Porter’s favor in 1886, heavily influenced the army’s internal politics, command relationships, and high-level promotions for two decades. The Sherman Papers, LC, abundantly document this judgment. A history of the controversy is Otto Eisenschiml, The Celebrated Case of Fitz John Porter (Indianapolis and New York, 1950). For Pope’s handling of the Red River operations, see Ellis, General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy, chaps. 9—10.

  2. There is no satisfactory biography of Miles. Virginia Johnson, The Unregimented General: A Biography of Nelson A. Miles (Boston, 1962), is uncritical though valuable because it contains many extracts from Miles’ voluminous correspondence. Miles wrote two autobiographies: Personal Recollections and Observations (Chicago, 1896); and Serving the Republic (New York, 1911).

  3. Taylor, ed., The Indian Campaign on the Staked Plains, pp. 14–16.

  4. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, pp. 474—78. Ernest Wallace, ed., Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1871–1879 (Lubbock, Tex., 1968), chap. 2.

  5. Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom, p. 6.

  6. The best account of this affair is Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 206–10. See also Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Aug. 29, 1874), 38; (Sept. 5, 1874), 56.

  7. Main sources for Miles’ operations are Personal Recollections and Observations, chap. 11; Johnson chaps. 4—5; Baird, “General Miles’s Indian Campaigns,” pp. 351–53; and official reports in Taylor, ed., passim, but especially Miles to Asst. Adj. Gen. Dept. Mo., March 4, 1875, PP. 197–216. Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Oct. 31, 1874), 186–87. Robert C. Carriker, ed., “Thompson McFadden’s Diary of an Indian Campaign, 1874,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 75 (1971), 198–232.

  8. Price’s operations in the first phase of the campaign are covered in detail in Price to Williams, Sept. 23, 1874, in Taylor, ed., pp. 46–55.

  9. Davidson to Asst. Adj. Gen. Dept. Tex., Oct. 10, 1874, in Taylor, ed., pp. 69–73. Davidson had six troops of the Tenth Cavalry and three companies of the Eleventh Infantry, together with forty-four Tonkawa scouts under Lt. Richard H. Pratt and a section of howitzers. Buell commanded four troops of the Ninth Cavalry and two of the Tenth. Two companies of the Eleventh Infantry guarded his train. Buell counted about 300, Davidson about 400 officers and men. For the organization of Davidson’s command, see Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Sept. 19, 1874), 85.

  10. Known as “Anderson’s Fort” in honor of the infantry commander Maj. Thomas M. Anderson, the supply base was on the site of Mackenzie’s base camp in 1872. The Freshwater Fork of the Brazos is also known as Catfish Creek and White River.

  11. Mackenzie was notorious for the infrequency and brevity of his official reports. Private correspondence is almost nonexistent. Most accounts of this expedition rest on Carter. See also Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, chap. 8; Wallace, ed., Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–1879, chap. 2; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 221—25; and Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier, pp. 213–26.

  12. Buell’s movements are detailed in Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers, pp. 125–30. See also documents in Taylor, ed., pp. 79–83; and Army and Navy Journal 12 (Oct. 31, 1874), 180.

  13. W. C. Brown, “General Baldwin’s Rescue of the Germain Sisters,” in Alice Baldwin, Memoirs of the Late Frank D. Baldwin, pp. 70–78. Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Nov. 21, 1874), 228.

  14. Miles to Asst. Adj. Gen. Dept. Mo., March 4, 1875, in Taylor, ed., p. 203. See also pp. 102–6. Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Nov. 14, 1874), 212–13. After resting and refitting for eleven days, Davidson had left Fort Sill for his second expedition on October si.

  15. Davidson’s movements are detailed in Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers, pp. 130–33; and by Pratt, chap. 8. See also Davidson’s reports in Taylor, ed., pp. 108–9, 121–26, 139–40.

  16. Johnson, pp. 66–67. “I have placed the little gentleman in arrest,” Miles wrote his wife on Nov. 16, “ordered him to Camp Supply and shall prefer charges against him.” Later, Pope wrote Miles a “beseeching letter” to drop the charges and let the matter die quietly. Miles to Shrman, Dec. 27, 1874, Sherman Papers, vol. 37, LC.

  17. Miles’ report in Taylor, ed., pp. 129, 204. Berthrong, p. 396.

  18. Quoted in Johnson, p. 6g; See also Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Feb. 27, 1875), 453–54; (March 20, 1875), 506.

  19. The debate over this issue is contained in correspondence printed in Taylor, ed., pp. 90–102, 130–133, i78~7g, 181–87. Sheridan’s views, Oct. 5, Nov. 11, and Nov. 17, 1874, are on pp. 91, 102, 96; Sherman’s, Feb. 26 and 27, March 1, 1875, on pp. 179, 183–84.

  20. Pratt, chap. 9. Berthrong, pp. 3g6~403. Taylor, ed., pp. ig4-g6. Pratt discloses how he obtained the cooperation of Kicking Bird in this inglorious process by seeming to support the pretensions of a rival, Dangerous Eagle, to his chieftainship. On May 4, 1875, Kicking Bird died following a mysterious seizure. Poison was suspected, but never proved.

  21. Berthrong, pp. 401–2. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers, pp. 135–40. Neill’s report, April 7, 1875, in SW, Annual Report (1875), pp. 86–88. Neill’s report gave high praise to the troop of the Sixth Cavalry but condemned the two troops of the Tenth, part of Davidson’s command from Fort Sill. The report set off a long controversy in which the Tenth’s officers plausibly defended the behavior of their men and criticised Neill. The dispute may be viewed against the backdrop of a feud between Neill and Davidson that Sherman settled in favor of Davidson. See Taylor, ed., pp. 144, 175—77

  22. Henely’s report, April 26, 1875, n SW, Annual Report (1875), pp. 88–94. See also documents in Taylor, ed., pp. 221–33; and Homer W. Wheeler, Buffalo Days: Forty Years in the Old West (New York and Chicago, 1923), chap. 14.

  23. Miles’ letters to his wife, in Johnson, pp. 55–66. Miles to Sherman, Sept. 27, 1874, Sherman Papers, vol. 37, LC. At the request of the Secretary of War, Pope spent about ten days at West Point studying the curriculum. Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Oct. 10, 1874), 134.

  24. For Mackenzie’s complaints, see Wallace, ed., Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–1879, pp. 105, 150–51, 157, 160. For Miles’ complaints, see Johnson, pp. 59, 66; Taylor, ed., pp. 197–216.

  25. Pope to Belknap, Jan. 23, 1875, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 4og-i7, LC. The supply problem is well treated in Robert C. Carriker, Fort Supply, Indian Territory: Frontier Outpost on the Plains (Norman, Okla., ig7o), chap. 4.

  26. Oct. 10, 1874, in Taylor, ed., p. 72.

  27. Sept. 18, 1874, in ibid., pp. 41–42.

  28. Pope to Drum, Feb. 15, 1874, in ibid., pp. 174–75. Sheridan to Augur, Dec. 1, 1874, in Wallace, ed., pp. 177–78.

  29. Pratt, chap. 10. Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa, pp. 214–16.

  30. Pratt, chaps. 11–20.

  Sitting Bull, 1870–76

  HE HAD A BIG BRAIN and a good one, a strong heart and a generous one,” recalled an old warrior of Sitting Bull. “No man in the Sioux nation was braver than Sitting Bull,” said Frank Grouard, who lived with him for five years before becoming an army scout; and he added,
“Sitting Bull’s name was a ‘tipi word’ for all that was generous and great.”1 Of compelling countenance and commanding demeanor, quick of thought and emphatic in judgments, he enjoyed the rare distinction of exerting leadership not only as war and political chief but as religious functionary as well. His influence extended beyond his own tribe, the Hunkpapa Sioux, to the Blackfoot and other Sioux groups with which the Hunkpapas ranged the lower Yellowstone and up the Missouri to Fort Peck. Moreover, when these tribes came together with their Oglala, Brule, Miniconjou, and Sans Arc kinsmen to the south, in the Powder and Bighorn country, Sitting Bull’s counsel commanded still wider attention and respect. Even the Northern Cheyennes and Northern Arapahoes, who often traveled with the Sioux, responded to his leadership.

  Hatred of white people and anger over their continued encroachment on Indian lands fueled a determination in Sitting Bull not to yield or compromise or even to negotiate. Whites had heard of him as early as 1865, when he prevented the Hunkpapas from talking peace with General Sully and led a vigorous assault on the Missouri River bastion of Fort Rice.2 Ranging to the north and east of the Bozeman Trail, he had taken no part in Red Cloud’s War of 1866–68 or in the far-reaching treaty that ended it. But after Red Cloud abandoned the warpath and made his mark on the Fort Laramie Treaty, Sitting Bull’s name began to appear with growing frequency in the white man’s newspapers as leader of the nontreaty Sioux. Other chiefs also figured prominently in the “hostile” leadership—Black Moon, No Neck, Black Twin, Four Horns—and, too, there were warriors of rising stature such as Crazy Horse of the Oglalas and Gall and Rain-in-the-Face of the Hunkpapas. But to the whites, Sitting Bull emerged in the early 1870s as the embodiment of Sioux hostility. And so far as the Indian political structure permitted such a distinction, it is probable that the Sioux themselves came close to viewing him in this role.

  Sitting Bull’s rise did not throw Red Cloud into eclipse. He remained the most powerful Oglala chief, in peace as in war seemingly possessed of infinite capacity for tormenting white officialdom. Mainly at issue was a fundamental objective of government policy toward the Sioux—to lure them onto a reservation and subserve them to the apparatus of Indian administration. The groundwork had been laid in the Treaty of 1868, which defined the Great Sioux Reservation—roughly present South Dakota west of the Missouri River—and promised free rations and other presents to those who would affiliate with an agency (see p. 135). Success of the reservation program, however, depended in large measure on firmly attaching Red Cloud’s Oglalas and Spotted Tail’s Brulés to an agency. As the government’s best Indian negotiators discovered, these two chiefs were as formidable in diplomacy as in war.

  A treaty stipulation of central importance to policy makers was that the Sioux agencies be built on the Missouri River. Supplies could then be forwarded quickly and cheaply by river steamer, and military surveillance would be facilitated. Because Congress had entrusted expenditure of the 1868 appropriation for feeding the Plains Indians to General Sherman (see pp. 136–37), the organization of the Great Sioux Reservation fell to the army. Sherman chose retired Gen. William S. Harney for the mission, and during the summer of 1868 he established the Missouri River agencies—Grand River Agency (moved and renamed Standing Rock Agency in 1875) for Hunkpapas, Blackfoot, and Yanktonais; Cheyenne River Agency for Miniconjous, Sans Arcs, Blackfeet, and Two Kettles; and Whetstone Agency for Brules and Oglalas. Crow Creek and Lower Brulé Agencies served Lower Brulé, Yanktonais, and Two Kettles.3

  But Red Cloud and Spotted Tail had no desire to go to the Missouri River. They and their followers preferred more familiar and congenial haunts. For years they had hunted the Powder and upper Republican country and traded at Fort Laramie. They intended to continue this way of life. Despite the treaty, whose contents had been badly explained if not deliberately misrepresented to them, they insisted on picking up their rations and presents at an agency located somewhere near Fort Laramie.

  For almost five years Red Cloud and his more polished rival, Spotted Tail, pursued a course of intransigence and obstructionism. They visited Washington, conferred with Great Father Grant and his lieutenants, and in turn received a procession of emissaries from the capital. To the disgust of the generals, step by step the government gave in. Finally, late in 1873, after several interim locations, agencies for the two tribes were fixed on the upper reaches of White River. The sites fell in Nebraska rather than the Great Sioux Reservation and were so distant from both the Missouri and the Platte as to make supply expensive and military oversight difficult. But by this time almost any location seemed preferable to further disputation.4

  According to possibly inflated official figures, some 9,000 Oglalas, 2,000 Northern Cheyennes, and 1,500 Northern Arapahoes drew rations at Red Cloud Agency, and about 8,000 Brulés at nearby Spotted Tail Agency. On the Missouri River, about 7,000 Indians attached themselves to Grand River Agency and roughly the same number to Cheyenne River Agency. Some 3,000 were at Crow Creek and Lower Brule. Whetstone never attracted more than 1,000 or 2,000, chiefly “Laramie Loafers,” and was abandoned after establishment of the White River agencies.5

  Agency Indians such as the Laramie Loafers felt the sting of Sitting Bull’s taunt: “Look at me—see if I am poor, or my people either…. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee.”6 And in fact only a small number of these thousands of Sioux and Cheyennes could be counted as confirmed “agency Indians.” For most, the lure of the old hunting life proved as strong as the lure of the white man’s hardtack and coffee. Nothing prevented them from sampling both. Back and forth they shuttled between the agencies and the camps of Sitting Bull and other nontreaty chiefs.

  Not surprisingly, therefore, the agencies often played host to large numbers of Indians of volatile disposition. These people, observed Col. David S. Stanley, passed “half their time at these agencies and half in the hostile camps. They abuse the agents, threaten their lives, kill their cattle at night, and do anything they can to oppose the civilizing movement, but eat all the provisions they can get.”7 Because soldiers were regarded as a corrupting influence, the Sioux agencies were not located at the Missouri River posts: Grand River was 100 miles below Fort Rice, Cheyenne River 12 miles above Fort Sully, and Whetstone 30 miles above Fort Randall. But continuing disorders made military help imperative, and in the spring of 1870 General Hancock, Department of Dakota commander, stationed two infantry companies each at Grand River and Cheyenne River and one each at Crow Creek, Lower Brule, and Whetstone. He judged this arrangement unsatisfactory because the troops were too few to compel respect for government authority, but his recommendation that the agencies be moved to the forts went unheeded.8

  Five years of turmoil at the Missouri River agencies might have been taken as a hint of the fate in store for government personnel at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies, which were seventy-five miles from the nearest soldiers at Fort Laramie. As the winter of 1873–74 approached, thousands of turbulent Indians from the north descended on these agencies and made them nightmares of anarchy. There were several killings, including the chief clerk at Red Cloud and an army officer, Lt. Levi Robinson. Both agents, their lives constantly in jeopardy and all semblance of control lost, called urgently for help. Despite misgivings in the Indian Bureau, early in March 1874, on General Sherman’s authority, Col. John E. Smith led a formidable expedition of nearly 1,000 cavalry and infantry from Fort Laramie in a punishing winter march to White River. The troublemakers stampeded back to the Powder River camps and the crisis passed. Near Red Cloud Agency Smith established a post that he named in honor of the slain Lieutenant Robinson. It was destined to become a key military base in the war shaping up with the Sioux. Camp Sheridan guarded Spotted Tail Agency.9

  Not only the turmoil at the agencies prompted the confident military forecast of general war with the Sioux. Friction with bands off the reservation grew yearly more ominous. They committed occasional depredations i
n Nebraska, harassed the Sweetwater mining camps around South Pass, and raided settlements in Montana’s Gallatin Valley. Also, they tormented the Crows in their reservation homeland along the upper Yellowstone and the Shoshonis of Wind River.10

  To those who suffered from these aggressions, white and Indian alike, the fluidity between agency and raiding Sioux added insult to injury. As General Hancock complained in 1872, the Sioux obtained arms and ammunition from traders at the Missouri River agencies and at private trading posts such as Forts Peck, Belknap, and Browning. Often leaving their women, children, and old people to be fed and cared for at the agency, they joined the nomads in raids, then came back to the agency to draw rations, boast openly of their deeds, and subject agency personnel to such abuse that troops had to be kept in residence for their protection.11 Government policies that permitted such conditions aroused bitter protest in the West.

  To meet the Sioux incursions, General Augur and his successor, General Ord, disposed most of the troops in the Department of the Platte to protect the Union Pacific Railroad and sent patrols each summer into threatened areas of western Nabraska. In 1870 Augur established Camp Stambaugh near South Pass to guard the Sweetwater miners and Camp Brown (renamed Fort Washakie in 1878) to keep the hostiles away from the Shoshoni Agency on Wind River. In the Department of Dakota, Fort Ellis gave a military presence to the exposed Gallatin Valley but failed to discourage Sioux raids. The Crows defended themselves as best they could while their agent complained of the ineptitude of the Fort Ellis garrison.12

  The raids of the Sioux and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies went considerably beyond the limits of the hunting grounds guaranteed them by the Treaty of 1868. The definition of the unceded territory was imprecise, but the Montana, Nebraska, and Sweetwater settlements fell unmistakably outside its most generous interpretation. In fact, the Indians no more than the whites respected treaty boundaries—even when clearly defined and understood—if contrary to their interests or inclinations. And to the Indians, quite apart from the usual raiding instinct, white violations of reservation and unceded lands furnished ample provocation and justification. Two provocations in particular made a test of arms almost inevitable.