Several bands of Ute occupied a bountiful reservation along the White River in Colorado Territory, but silver prospectors wanted their land. Colorado statehood in 1876 fired a desire among the armed citizenry to join in the call: “The Utes Must Go!” Thereafter, agent Nathan Meeker attempted to stop the Indians from gambling by plowing up their racetrack. He fell among the initial casualties of the Ute War, which began in 1879.
On September 29, 1879, Major Thomas Thornburgh led three cavalry companies to the White River Reservation at the request of the Indian agency. The Ute warriors, though outnumbered, managed to hold the troops at bay in the Battle of Milk Creek. Thornburgh died along with 13 other soldiers, while more than 40 were wounded. Eventually, over 4,000 soldiers swept through the reservation in a swift counteroffensive. Though a small number of families were permitted to remain in Colorado, the Ute War resulted in mass deportations to desolate reservations in Utah Territory.
As a direct result of the small wars against the Indians, the federal government opened additional tribal lands for mining, farming, ranching, and railroads. While American troops defended the Indian agencies, they conducted long and arduous campaigns that local newspapers trumpeted. Unfortunately, inexperienced officers seldom lived long enough to learn that Indian fighting differed from the diagramed exercises at West Point.
Apache Resistance
Distinguished by their ferocity in war, the Apache of North America resisted conquest for decades. Maps long referred to their homeland as Apacheria, which encompassed millions of acres from the Verde River to the Rio Grande River. The major divisions of the Apache included the Western, Chiricahua, Mescalaro, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa Apache. They subsisted by hunting, gathering, and raiding, although a number planted corn, beans, and pumpkins. To blend into the desert landscape, the warriors rubbed their bodies with clay and sand. They traveled quickly and quietly between water holes, living off wild honey, berries, and cactus fruit. Enhanced by the horses and firearms acquired through raiding, the Apache constituted a resilient guerrilla force.
The first U.S. soldiers arrived in Apacheria to occupy the American Southwest after the Mexican War. Miners and settlers in the region soon complained about the incessant raiding, which prompted military operations against several bands. The Chiricahua largely avoided hostilities with the Americans, because they preferred to focus their raiding almost exclusively on Mexican targets to the south. Their two great leaders, Mangas Coloradas of the Eastern Band and Cochise of the Central Band, resolved to peacefully coexist with the newcomers to the north. However, policymakers in the War and the Interior Departments wanted to subdue all of the Apache. The administration of Indian affairs was handled by federal agents within the latter, while the constabulary forces to provide security received orders from the former. Neither proved successful at developing strategies and tactics to pacify the scattered bands of insurgents.
In 1861, insurgents seized livestock and abducted a boy from a ranch along Sonoita Creek. Lieutenant George N. Bascom and a detachment of the 7th Infantry pursued them to Apache Pass. He took Apache hostages to exchange for the boy, although his senseless actions resulted in more reprisals. Cochise continued to frustrate the blue-clad regiments, but they seized Mangas Coloradas under a flag of truce and murdered him in 1863. His band fragmented into groups led by Nana and Victorio. For more than a decade, the Apache continued to strike ranches, mines, and settlements before escaping to their mountain sanctuaries.
During one of the costliest Indian wars in American history, the Army conducted a series of campaigns that succeeded in inducing most of the Apache to capitulate. From Fort Sumner to Fort Apache, the pacified bands received rations, clothing, and supplies. By the 1870s, troops had forced them onto several reservations in the New Mexico and Arizona Territories. The Indian agents insisted on concentrating the Chiricahua at the San Carlos Reservation on the Gila River, an unhealthy spot for mountain Indians. Because overcrowding, disease, and starvation plagued “Hell's Forty Acres,” a number of the bands returned to raiding settlements and ranches in the area. On April 30, 1871, local vigilantes massacred as many as 150 Apache at Camp Grant. Horrified by the news, President Grant referred to the violence as “purely murder.”
In 1871, Grant dispatched Lieutenant Colonel George Crook to command the Department of Arizona for the Army. Crook discarded standard campaign tactics and devised unconventional ones. He trained his troops to operate with mobility in smaller units. He also relied on Apache scouts, who were desperate to support their families on the reservations and appeared eager to settle old scores with rival bands. The most spectacular clash of his campaign occurred on December 28, 1872, at Skull Cave, where approximately 75 Yavapais perished. By the next spring, most of the remaining Apache had ceased fighting. Consequently, Crook received an advancement in rank to brigadier general, which angered several full colonels next in line for promotion.
On August 30, 1881, Colonel Eugene A. Carr led a force of 85 regulars and 23 Apache scouts to a village on Cibecue Creek. He responded to reports about a medicine man named Nochedelklinne, who hosted sacred ceremonies that involved dancing and the use of hallucinogenic plants. The Apache venerated him as a prophet with the sacred power to initiate a spiritual revitalization among his kinsmen. When Carr arrested him, a firefight erupted that killed Nochedelklinne. Shocked by the death of the medicine man, nearly all of the Apache scouts mutinied in the Battle of Cibecue. Although Carr escaped to Fort Apache, the mutiny confirmed the worst fears of many officers about the reliability of the scouts.
The killing of the medicine man confirmed the worst fears of Geronimo, a popular Chiricahua warrior at San Carlos. Though never a chief, the warrior appeared to possess special powers bestowed upon him by Usen, the Apache god. A month after the Battle of Cibecue, he and the Chiricahua fled the reservation in the night. Thus began their desperate bid for freedom, fighting soldiers on both sides of the Mexican border.
General Crook returned to the Department of Arizona during 1882. He pursued the Chiricahua with 5,000 soldiers and hundreds of Apache scouts, who wore red headbands for identification. The converging columns forced the holdouts to surrender during 1883, although Geronimo delayed his return until the following year. They settled on Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Black River on the Fort Apache Reservation. To the dismay of some, Crook forbade the Apache from brewing an intoxicating drink, tizwin, and from physically abusing their wives. On May 17, 1885, the disgruntled Apache departed for Mexico. Fearing imprisonment and execution, Geronimo joined them during their exodus. They left a trail of plundered ranches and mutilated bodies across the desert.
The Army launched another campaign against the Apache, cooperating with Mexican officials while crossing the international boundary. Crook's campaign in the Sierra Madre Mountains depended largely upon the Apache scouts, who were commanded by experienced officers such as Captain Emmet Crawford, Lieutenant Britton Davis, and Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood. Instead of cavalry horses, they employed pack trains. The scouts knew the secrets of the ranges, making the rugged terrain no longer impassable to the bluecoats. In a ravine, Crook personally met with Geronimo and the Apache on March 25, 1886, saying: “I'll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes 50 years.” Two days later, the Apache agreed to return to the U.S. “Once I moved about like the wind,” announced Geronimo, but “now I surrender to you, and that is all.”
While being escorted back into the U.S., Geronimo changed his mind. Along with 39 Chiricahua, he outmaneuvered his escorts and bolted from custody once again. In April, he eluded patrols along the border and raided as far north as Ojo Caliente. After re-entering Mexico, he attacked and killed hundreds in Sonora. Later, the Chiricahua swore that he sang to delay the dawn, which permitted his band to cross an open basin without detection by his pursuers. When the War Department reprimanded the commander for permitting Geronimo to escape, Crook asked to be relieved.
Following a promotion, General Miles replaced him in co
mmand. A long-time rival of Crook, he refused to use Apache scouts initially. He opined that they performed unreliably and that Crook's extensive use of them represented a mistake. He also established a heliographic communications network – large, movable mirrors that used the sun to flash signals in Morse code. To find Geronimo, he sent Captain Henry W. Lawton with a team of 35 regulars from the 4th Cavalry and 20 more from the 8th Infantry. However, their initial forays during the summer of 1886 forced Miles to change his plans. He reluctantly sent Lieutenant Gatewood and two Apache scouts, Kayitah and Martine. Both scouts were promised a bonus if they found the fugitives, although they never received it.
On September 4, 1886, Geronimo surrendered for the third and final time at Skeleton Canyon. Troops and scouts escorted him on a 60-mile journey to Fort Bowie. Gazing upon the Chiricahua Mountains, he met with more Army officers and heard more promises. Accepting his fate, he boarded a passenger car at the railroad stop for his first ride on the “iron horse.” As the eastbound train departed the station, the soldiers began to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
As part of a plan for wholesale exile, hundreds of men, women, and children departed their homeland and traveled to strange and distant places. Irrespective of their military service in the campaigns, the Apache scouts and their families suffered in exile as well. The Chiricahua endured confinement for 27 years in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma. Following a bout of pneumonia, Geronimo died at Fort Sill in 1909.
Wounded Knee
In spite of the odds against them, the Sioux resisted the U.S. for nearly a half-century. While military actions contributed to the outcome of the long war, the economic development of the North American interior and the virtual extermination of the roaming buffalo herds primarily caused their demise. Consequently, the end of Sioux resistance brought to a close the Army's role in Indian fighting.
Because of disappearing buffalo herds and intense summer droughts, many Sioux faced bleak circumstances while walking the “white man's road.” Bureaucrats in Washington D.C. contributed to their physical deterioration and culture shock. Passed by Congress in 1887, the Dawes Act began the severalty and allotment of remaining Indian lands. Through subdivision, the federal government intended to force them to assimilate. At Standing Rock, Sitting Bull denounced the wrenching measures that opened half of the Sioux holdings to settlement and divided the rest into six separate reservations. “I would rather die an Indian,” he prophetically stated, “than live a white man.” Indeed, he received a vision of a meadowlark telling him that he would die at the hands of his own people.
Meanwhile, the Army recruited “wolves,” that is, indigenous auxiliaries for military service. With a general population estimated at 15,000, Indian scouts in Sioux country numbered more than 2,000 by 1890. Likewise, translators, police, and guides formed an indispensable corps of cultural brokers. They included such prominent individuals as Hump, who donned a uniform as a scout. Driven by a variety of motives, they helped to keep peace at the Indian agencies.
A number of the Sioux joined a rising insurgency, which swept over the American West. Some made pilgrimages to Nevada in order to meet a prophet, who promised to help end the oppressive rule of the Indian Bureau. Wovoka, a Paiute “Messiah,” predicted a great cataclysm in the offing. Cued by hypnotic songs and sacred ceremonies, he promised that the buffalo would soon return with the spirits of ancestors. He began teaching his followers the secrets of what many disciples called the Ghost Dance. Kicking Bear, a Sioux, brought the Ghost Dance to the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Standing Rock reservations, announcing that protective shirts would repel bullets.
During 1890, President Benjamin Harrison ordered the Army into the field to counter the insurgency. With the regiments deployed strategically to protect the agencies, the Indian Bureau banned the Ghost Dance. General Miles, the commander of the Division of the Missouri, hoped to control the Ghost Dancers without an incident. He called for increasing the distribution of rations at the agencies and ordered the soldiers to intercept troublemakers off the reservations. The campaign lasted from November 17, 1890, until January 21, 1891, with multiple columns conducting operations in Nebraska as well as in North and South Dakota. Over 5,500 bluecoats participated in the concerted effort, which produced a handful of skirmishes that resulted in the killing and wounding of several Indians. The troops grew particularly alarmed by the sermon of Short Bull, a “prophet of the Messiah,” who called upon the Sioux to “kill all the soldiers.”
Though skeptical of the “Messiah” at first, Sitting Bull planted a prayer tree outside his cabin at Standing Rock. He began dancing while wearing a shirt with a painted red cross. Agent James McLaughlin, who feared that Sitting Bull would foment an outbreak of violence, demanded his arrest. When entering his cabin on December 15, 1890, a Sioux policeman on the agency payroll shot him in the head. Alas, his final vision came to pass.
Many of Sitting Bull's grieving followers fled in fear and joined a band led by Big Foot, a former Ghost Dancer. Miles instructed his officers to be wary of Big Foot but gave no orders to shoot first. “If he fights,” the general warned, “destroy him.” At the direction of the military, Big Foot's camp paused at Wounded Knee Creek on Pine Ridge. Under Colonel James W. Forsyth, troopers from the 7th Cavalry on December 29 began moving from tipi to tipi in search of weapons. When a shot rang out, the regulars opened fire with rifles, revolvers, and Hotchkiss guns. In the crossfire at Wounded Knee, as many as 300 Sioux were killed or mortally wounded.
Immediately after the fateful day, Miles angrily relieved Forsyth of his command. With 25 soldiers killed in action and 39 wounded, the Battle of Wounded Knee marked the most controversial engagement of the campaign. In 1891, the War Department conducted an investigation that eventually exonerated the regulars. Congress awarded Medals of Honor to 20 of them, though several lacked merit. As a legal matter, a federal court declared that a state of war existed during the outbreak of 1890.
For the remainder of his career, Miles continued to call for recompense to the families of those killed at Wounded Knee. Thanks to a distinguished record of military service, he eventually became the Commanding General of the Army. By the time he retired in 1903, no Indian lived freely in North America.
Conclusion
What had been labeled as the “permanent Indian frontier” in North America was transformed by the armed forces into an archipelago of communities, territories, and states. As the federal government reconstructed the defeated South, the regular Army confronted a series of Indian insurgencies west of the Mississippi River. Mounted warriors posed a formidable challenge to American troops, especially during the centennial campaign of 1876. The wide range of military operations strained the War Department, which tried to promote professionalism throughout the ranks. While pressuring Indians to remain on the reservations, U.S. soldiers campaigned in the coldest winters. They also crisscrossed treacherous borderlands in hot pursuit of wily guerrillas. Though sporadic and localized, the fighting exacted a heavy toll upon noncombatants. Non-state actors struggled to survive on ever-shrinking islands of space surrounded by rushing waves of migrants. The Indian wars ended by 1890 with countless resistance leaders imprisoned, exiled, or dead.
Americans remembered the Indian wars as the finale of an epic to conquer the North American continent. The close encounters in the Trans-Mississippi West contributed to the frontier myth, which inverted historical narratives by frequently depicting the aggressors as the victims of the violence. An expanded railway system enabled the American people to occupy the region, but new technology did not always give one side a decisive advantage over the other. The buffalo herds that sustained many Indians vanished, as starving men, women, and children grew dependent upon the federal government for subsistence. Seeking support for the American military, savvy officers persuaded a handful of young warriors to join their forays. Indian scouts in uniform wore an insignia of crossed arrows, which the first commando units of the Army later appropriated for themselves. Althoug
h sectional tensions subsided during the Gilded Age, there was no road map for peace that provided a homeland for Indians.
The dispossession of the Indians in the American West reflected a process similar to colonization in other regions of the world at the time, whereby settlers moved inland in the effort to occupy territories. With the proliferation of settler societies, they quickly outnumbered and displaced the original inhabitants of the land. The meeting of cultures produced conflict and bloodshed, but the prolonged struggle rarely impacted military doctrines, organization, and planning. During the last half of the nineteenth century, the Army engaged in over 1,200 battles, large and small. Accordingly, more than 1,300 officers and enlisted men were killed or wounded while fighting the Indians. At the same time, more than 2,000 Indians died at the hands of Americans. The lesson of the Indian wars was that military action seldom spread good will, because the Army possessed the means to put down but not to win over foes.
While ensuring compliance with the writs of Washington D.C., the Army operated in threat environments attuned to experimental tactics and advancing technologies. Although troops expressed misgivings about major offensives, they diligently carried out their orders in deserts, mountains, valleys, and plains. Whatever good deeds they performed, the most publicized – and sometimes exaggerated – mistakes tended to overshadow them. All too often, their efforts to pacify and to control Indian people ended in tragedy. Despite the miscalculations and the misunderstandings, they conducted challenging missions deemed essential to the nation's attainment of security and power. As a brotherhood of arms, they developed military bearings appropriate for small units serving cohesively together in difficult circumstances. The constabulary experiences of the American military prepared a cadre of veterans to face the next theater of operations beyond the continental U.S.
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