43. Principal sources for Crook’s operations are J. W. Vaughn, With Crook at the Rosebud (Harrisburg, Pa., 1956); Vaughn, Indian Fights, chap. 4; Bourke, On the Border with Crook, chaps. 17–19; Anson Mills, My Story (Washington, D.C., 1918), pp. 394–412; Finerty, War-Path and Bivouac. Official reports are in SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 442–43, 502–3.
44. SW, Annual Report (1876), pp. 30, 35. See also Sheridan in ibid., pp. 441, 445, for the charge that Indian agents suppressed the number of absentees in order to continue drawing rations for them.
45. Maj. M. A. Reno (Fort Lincoln) to Asst. Adj. Gen. Dept. Dak., April 27, 1876, House Ex. Docs., 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 184, p. 52. This telegram was forwarded from Terry’s headquarters to Sheridan’s and thence to the War Department.
46. Quoted in ibid., p. 54. For further cogent evidence, see Hughes, pp. 15–17; and T. M. Coughlan, “The Battle of the Little Big Horn: A Tactical Study,” Cavalry Journal, 43 (1934), 13.
47. The clearest account of Indian movements is Wooden Leg’s in Marquis, A Warrior Who Fought Custer, chaps. 5–7. See also Peter J. Powell, Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of the Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History (2 vols., Norman, Okla., 1969), 1, chap. 7; Kate Big Head’s story, “She Watched Custer’s Last Battle,” in Marquis, Custer on the Little Bighorn (p. p. 1967), Sec. 6; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, chap. 25; James McLaughlin, My Friend the Indian (Boston, 1910), chaps. 9–10; Godfrey, “Custer’s Last Battle”; Vestal, chaps. 20–23; Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse, Strange Man of the Oglalas (New York, 1942), pp. 302–334. For good indications that the hostile force was not as large as generally assumed, see Hughes, pp. 15–18; and Harry H. Anderson, “Cheyennes at the Little Big Horn—A Study of Statistics,” North Dakota Historical Quarterly, 27 (1960), 81–94.
48. The controversy and evidence are discussed in Vaughn, With Crook at the Rosebud, pp. 65–67.
49. Gibbon, “Last Summer’s Expedition,” p. 22.
50. Reno’s report, July 5, 1876, SW, Annual Report (1876), p. 477.
51. Custer’s first biographer charged Reno with responsibility for the disaster, and Reno demanded a court of inquiry. The voluminous testimony taken by the court in 1879 is a prime source for study of the battle. It led the court to a finding that exonerated Reno while mildly criticising him. Personal scandal lost him his commission and pursued him to an early grave. See my Custer and the Great Controversy, chap. 3.
52. Sherman to Sheridan, Feb. 17, 1877, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, LC.
The Conquest of the Sioux, 1876–81
ON JUNE 28, 1876, the Seventh Cavalry buried its dead on the battlefield of the Little Bighorn. Gibbon’s men prepared mule litters to move Major Reno’s wounded troopers. A laborious march brought them, in the predawn black of June 30, to the mouth of the Little Bighorn. Capt. Grant Marsh had pushed the Far West up the swollen Bighorn to this point. With the wounded bedded down on the deck, Marsh piloted the steamer back down the Bighorn. Gibbon’s command and Reno’s remnant of the Seventh Cavalry followed by land. On July 3 Marsh ferried them to the north bank of the Yellowstone, then cast off with his cargo of wounded for the historic dash to the Fort Lincoln hospital. Fifty-four hours and 710 miles later, draped in black and showing her flag at half-mast, the Far West nosed into the Bismarck landing. It was 11 P.M. on July 5. Before midnight the telegraph key clicked out the first of 15,000 words: “Bismarck, D.T., July 5, 1876:—General Custer attacked the Indians June 25, and he, with every officer and man in five companies, were killed….’1
The news from Bismarck stunned and horrified Americans engrossed in celebrating the centennial of the nation’s birth and squaring off for the contest to determine who would succeed Ulysses S. Grant in the White House. Congress promptly voted funds to build the two forts on the Yellowstone that Sheridan had been promoting for three years.2 Also, after acrimonious debate over the comparative merits of Volunteers and Regulars, Congress lifted the ceiling on army strength to permit the enlistment of an additional 2,500 cavalry privates.3 On July 26 the Secretary of the Interior bowed to Sheridan’s insistence on military control of the Sioux agencies.4 By rail and river steamer, fresh troops hastened to the seat of war. Terry and Gibbon waited patiently on the Yellowstone. Crook and his officers rested beside streams teeming with trout and stalked deer, elk, and bear in the Bighorn Mountains.
Specifically, Crook awaited the Fifth Cavalry, which in June had been moved from Kansas, under Lt. Col. Eugene A. Carr, to the upper Cheyenne River to interrupt traffic between Red Cloud Agency and the hostile camps. After receiving news of the Custer disaster on July 10, Crook summoned the Fifth. A new colonel, youthful, baby-faced Wesley Merritt, had assumed command on July 1. He delayed the march to join Crook upon learning that 800 Cheyenne warriors were leaving Red Cloud Agency for the Powder River country. A forced march placed the Fifth across the main trail at War Bonnet, or Hat, Creek, twenty-five miles northwest of the agency. Here, on the morning of July 17, Merritt intercepted the vanguard of the Cheyenne force. The “Battle” of War Bonnett Creek consisted of the celebrated “duel” between “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Yellow Hand, or Yellow Hair, a subchief, and a bloodless chase of several dozen Cheyennes back toward Red Cloud Agency. However many Cheyennes may have been following, they gave up the plan of joining their brethren in the north. Even though the action on the War Bonnet was thus of considerable consequence, Merritt endured Crook’s displeasure over the delay it caused. Not until August 3 did the regiment reach his base camp on Goose Creek.5
Once more, on August 5, Crook cut loose from his wagon train, which he sent back to Fort Fetterman, and aimed for the head of the Rosebud. His command now numbered a formidable 2,000—twenty-five troops of the Second, Third, and Fifth Cavalry organized in a brigade of five squadrons under Colonel Merritt; ten infantry companies of the Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Regiments under Maj. Alexander Chambers; 213 Shoshoni warriors under Chief Washakie; and the ubiquitous pack train, organized in five divisions and carrying provisions for fifteen days. Before the expiration of this time, Crook expected to meet Terry and attach his command to the Yellowstone supply line.
Terry, meanwhile, had moved down river to the mouth of the Rosebud. Steamers brought reinforcements. On August 1 Lt. Col. Elwell S. Otis landed with six companies of the Twenty-second Infantry. The next day six companies of the Fifth Infantry debarked under Col. Nelson A. Miles, who had urgently pressed his wife’s uncle, General Sherman, for an opportunity to try his hand against the Sioux.6
Leaving his Rosebud supply depot defended by artillery and an infantry company, Terry marched up the Rosebud on August 8. Gibbon commanded a brigade of four infantry battalions formed from the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Twenty-second Regiments. Major Brisbin led the cavalry, his own four troops of the Second and Reno’s Seventh, now reorganized in eight troops. The column numbered about 1,700.
Surprised to confront each other, Crook and Terry met on August 10 in the Rosebud Valley at a point where the trail of the Indians turned eastward. The two generals decided to combine their commands and follow. Anxious to thwart any attempt at escape to the north, where Canada offered refuge, Terry dispatched Colonel Miles and his infantrymen to hold the main fording places of the Yellowstone and to patrol the river by steamer. The wagons were also returned to the Yellowstone. For a week the army toiled ponderously eastward to the Powder as cold rains and heavy mud tormented men and animals alike. At the mouth of the Powder, the expedition lay in a soggy, cheerless bivouac for another week while supplies were boated down from the Rosebud depot. Prospects of overtaking the quarry seemed so remote that the Shoshonis went home in disgust. “Buffalo Bill,” pleading theatrical commitments, also took his departure. Lieutenant Colonel Carr, ever the carping critic, grumbled about continuing a futile campaign simply “because two fools do not know their business.”7 After some further fumbling, the two generals decided to part company, Terry to return to the Yellowstone,
Crook to stay on the Indian trail.
In the opening days of September, therefore, Terry’s army lay in camp at the mouth of Glendive Creek while the general pondered what to do next. He had received orders from Sheridan on August 26 to establish a temporary cantonment at the mouth of Tongue River and to leave Colonel Miles, with his entire regiment and Otis’ six companies, to hold the Yellowstone Valley during the winter. Stockpiling enough supplies to last such a command all winter became an urgent task, especially since the Yellowstone was falling and three loaded steamers were already aground below Glendive Creek. Moreover, on September 3, word came from Crook, on Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Little Missouri, that the Indian trail had given out; the tribes had scattered. Terry’s army could now hope to accomplish little more than use up supplies needed by Miles during the winter. On September 5, therefore, Terry disbanded the expedition, sending Gibbon’s infantry and Brisbin’s cavalry back to Forts Ellis and Shaw, Moore’s infantry battalion to Fort Buford, and the Seventh Cavalry to Fort Lincoln. Under Colonel Miles, the remaining infantry labored to transport supplies upriver to the Tongue River cantonment.
After losing the Indian trail, Crook dropped into the Little Missouri valley and marched eastward to the head of Heart River on the trail made by Terry outbound the previous May. Rain and mud continued to plague the command, which Lieutenant Bourke characterized as the “brigade of drowned rats.” Small parties of Indians testified to the proximity of at least some of the enemy. A comparatively fresh trail pointed south, toward the Black Hills. On September 5, with rations remaining for scarcely more than two days, and even though only about four days’ march from Fort Lincoln, Crook decided to turn south on the trail. Scouts carried dispatches to Fort Lincoln asking Sheridan to have provisions rushed to meet the column at Custer City, in the Black Hills. The memorable trek that followed has come down in history as the “Mud March” and the “Horsemeat March.” Constant rains drenched the column. Sodden prairie slowed the advance. Horses and mules dropped by the score. Rations gave out and the men subsisted on horsemeat. Although discovering abundant Indian signs, the troops were no longer able to pursue. The chase turned into a struggle for survival.
On September 7, on the north fork of Grand River, Crook ordered Capt. Anson Mills to push forward to the Black Hills mining town of Deadwood, more than 100 miles to the southwest, to procure food. Mills selected 150 Third Cavalrymen who still had serviceable mounts, 4 officers, and 61 pack mules. Frank Grouard went along as guide. In the rainy dawn light of September 9, near some rock formations known as Slim Buttes, Mills charged into a Sioux camp of thirty-seven lodges, drove the occupants into the hills, and promptly came under a harassing fire that lasted until Crook arrived with the main column shortly before noon. About fifteen men and women had been trapped in a gulch near the village. They inflicted several casualties on the troops and took heavy losses themselves before finally being persuaded to surrender. Among them, mortally wounded in the stomach, was Chief American Horse. Late in the afternoon more than 200 warriors, said by the captives to be from Crazy Horse’s camp, attacked the command but were driven off. After appropriating a supply of dried meat for rations, the troops destroyed the village and its contents. Next morning, as they marched away, Sioux attacked the rear guard but were repulsed. Casualties in the Battle of Slim Buttes were three killed and twelve wounded. Among the latter was Lt. Adolphus H. von Leuttwitz, whose leg had to be amputated.1
Charles Schreyvogel ranked second only to Frederic Remington as delineator of the Indian-fighting army. A Sharp Encounter (above) and The Skirmish Line (below) depict scenes typical of frontier combat. (Library of Congress)
I’d like to be a packer And pack with George F. Crook And dressed up in my canvas suit To be for him mistook.
I’d braid my beard in two long tails, And idle all the day In whittling sticks and wondering What the New York papers say.
This soldiers’ doggerel made fun of Crook’s inaction after the Battle of the Rosebud, 1876, but also captured something of the affection they felt for the reticent, unpretentious campaigner who more than any other general understood the special conditions and requirements of Indian warfare. This picture was taken at Fort Bowie, Arizona, in 1885. (Arizona Historical Society)
“The adult Apache is an embodiment of physical endurance—lean, well proportioned, medium sized, with sinews like steel, insensible to hunger, fatigue, or physical pains.” So wrote General Crook of the typical warrior. This one is Mescalero. (Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, N.M.)
In fighting Apaches, said General Crook, “regular troops are as helpless as a whale attacked by a school of swordfish,” and “the only hope of success lies in using their own methods.” This meant pitting Apache against Apache. With Apache scouts, Crook, and later Miles, subjugated the “renegades.” Above is a typical scout unit at Fort Grant, Arizona, in 1886. (Arizona Historical Society) Below is the adversary—Geronimo (right) and warriors photographed during the historic conference with Crook in the Sierra Madre in March 1886. (Smithsonian Institution)
An eccentric, hard-driving combat officer, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie made the Fourth Cavalry the best of the ten mounted regiments. Insanity forced his early retirement in 1884. (National Archives)
Nelson A. Miles—“Bear’s Coat” to the Sioux and Cheyennes. Insatiable ambition made him one of the frontier’s most innovative, energetic, and successful commanders but also drove him to seek recognition and advancement by means that have left his reputation badly stained. He is shown here as colonel of the Fifth Infantry on the Yellowstone about 1877. (Montana Historical Society)
Military columns had to carry almost all supplies with them. The Indians, by contrast, lived off the country. Time and again logistical problems ruined an offensive movement. General Crook owed his success in large part to the mobility afforded by pack mules. Most officers, however, continued to rely on wagons. This is Custer’s train in the Black Hills in 1874. (National Archives)
The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry were composed of black enlisted men and white officers. The black regiments consistently displayed low desertion and high reenlistment rates and also compiled notable combat records on the frontier. Above, in Captain Dodge’s Colored Troopers to the Rescue, Frederic Remington depicts the relief of the besieged force on Milk Creek, Colorado, during the Ute uprising of 1879. (Century Magazine, October 1891) On the following page are the enlisted men of a company of the Twenty-fifth Infantry at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, about 1885. Service stripes mark most as veterans. (National Archives)
Before the Little Bighorn. Officers of the Seventh Cavalry and Sixth and Seventeenth Infantry pose with their ladies on the steps of the Custers’ quarters at Fort Abraham Lincoln, D.T., 1875. (An asterisk indicates killed at the Little Bighorn.) Lt. Nelson Bronson, Lt. George D. Wallace, Lt. Col. George A. Custer,* Lt. Benjamin H. Hodgson,* Mrs. Custer, Mrs. McDougall, Lt. Thomas M. McDougall, Lt. William Badger, Mrs. Yates, Capt. George W. Yates,* Charles Thompson, Mrs. Calhoun (Margaret Custer), Miss Agnes Wellington, Capt. John S. Poland, Lt. Charles A. Varnum, Lt. Col. William P. Carlin, Mrs. Moylan, Capt. Thomas W. Custer,* Capt. William Thompson, Lt. James Calhoun,* Mrs. McIntosh, Capt. Myles Moylan, Lt. Donald McIntosh.* (National Park Service, Custer Battlefield National Monument)
Many great chiefs led the Sioux against the white man, but two stand out from all the others. Red Cloud won his fight for the Bozeman Trail in 1866–68, and Sitting Bull held together the powerful coalition that crushed Custer in 1876. These portraits are from oil paintings by Henry Raschen. (Collection of David Blumberg)
Artillery occasionally figured importantly in engagements against the Indians. The small-caliber, rapid-fire Hotchkiss mountain rifle was by all odds the favorite with commanders because of its mobility. Above is one of the guns that caused such havoc at Wounded Knee in 1890. Less satisfactory was the Gatling gun, forerunner of the machine gun. Below, pictured at Fort Lincoln, Dakota, is the battery th
at Custer declined to take with him to the Little Bighorn in 1876. (Library of Congress; Custer Battlefield National Monument)
Edward O. C. Ord. A vigorous old campaigner, his aggressive Mexican policies while holding the Texas command, 1875—81, lost him the confidence of Sherman and Sheridan. His forced retirement in 1881, however, to open a general’s billet for Nelson A. Miles, scandalized many high-ranking officers. (National Archives)
One of the three major generals, John M. Schofield served ably as a division commander and succeeded Sheridan in 1888 as commanding general of the army. He possessed superior intellectual qualities and, more than other generals, sensed the needed organizational reforms. (National Archives)
The Ghost Dance outbreak and the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890 marked the close of the Indian Wars and the passing of the frontier. Above is the field of Wounded Knee after the fighting, with the medicine man Yellow Bird in the foreground. (Smithsonian Institution) On the following page, General Miles and his staff view the great Sioux encampment at Pine Ridge Agency on January 16, 1891, the day after the surrender. (Library of Congress)
Frontier Regulars Page 35