War Horse

by Louis A. DiMarco

  Weapons and Equipment

  Standard cavalry equipment during most of the Plains Indian Wars was adapted from that of the Civil War. Much of it was surplus Civil War equipment. Horse equipment remained generally unchanged, though in 1874 the cavalry adopted a new, lighter, and simpler version of the McClellan saddle.

  American cavalry remained armed with the saber, revolver, and carbine of the Civil War. They completely embraced the concept of dismounted fighting, and therefore the trooper, if he carried a saber in the field, attached it to the saddle. Often commanders left the sabers behind on campaign. Immediately after the Civil War, cavalry carried one of the two popular proven carbines of the Civil War: the Spencer repeating carbine or the Sharps single-shot. In 1873, after a board evaluated over 100 models, the cavalry converted to a new standard Springfield carbine. The single-shot Springfield carbine fired a .45-caliber metallic cartridge and would remain the standard army carbine until just before the Spanish American War. The primary attribute of the Springfield was its accuracy. Immediately after the Civil War, all pistols were still the Colt or Remington cap-and-ball types. However, in 1872 the army approved the new Colt .45-caliber army model revolver firing metallic cartridges. In 1873 the army bought 13,000 of the single-action “Peacemaker” six-shooters as the standard cavalry sidearm. It continued to buy the revolver at the rate of about 1,000 a year until 1891.20

  The army had significant problems with uniforms on the frontier. Temperature ranges were extreme. Summer temperatures all across plains, but especially in the southern regions, easily topped 100°F for weeks on end. At the other end of the spectrum were the almost arctic winter conditions on the northern plains from November to February. Weather conditions on the plains were volatile and could change dramatically. Storms, both rain and snow, were sudden and violent. Issue clothing, much of it Civil War surplus, was totally inadequate. In response, soldiers discarded much of their issue and substituted subdued civilian hats, shirts, and coats. One of the exceptions to the inadequate Civil War surplus was winter equipment. American cavalry on the frontier frequently campaigned in the dead of extremely cold winters. To protect troopers under these conditions the army issued ankle-length buffalo fur coats and muskrat hats, facemasks, fur mittens, and fur boots.21 The winter issue proved to be effective and popular and contributed to the cavalry’s ability to conduct tactical operations in extreme cold.

  Tactics

  Warfare on the western plains was an operational challenge. The tactical problem was not defeating the enemy—once the cavalry got into the fight with the Indian their unit cohesion and tactical discipline usually could win the day. The tactical problem was finding and fixing the Indians so that they had to fight and couldn’t escape battle. The Indians had no desire to fight unless conditions were of their choosing; in other circumstances they would use their usually superior mobility to break contact and flee.

  The first problem that American cavalry had to surmount was the tremendous distances that characterized the theater of operations. To help find Indian groups the army employed civilian and Indian scouts. The Army Reorganization Act of 1866 authorized the army to formally enlist up to 1,000 Indians to act as scouts, and these scouts became a standard arm of the army. Tribes who were either neutral or enemies of the Indians subject to a particular army campaign provided the scouts. The fieldcraft of scouts gave the army the ability to track large hostile bands of Indians as well as smaller war parties. The more aggressive and mobile the enemy was, the more important the scouts became in the campaign. General August Kautz estimated one company of scouts was worth six companies of regular cavalry.22 Scouts gave the army a superb intelligence capability that understood the culture of the enemy, knew the terrain intimately, were expert trackers, and could question and interrogate noncombatants that might have military information.

  To mitigate the effects of distance, army commanders carefully studied march techniques. The cavalry had to be able to march long distances, relatively quickly, and without destroying their horses. Colonel Wesley Merritt, writing in 1888, maintained that a well-managed mounted unit could sustain a march rate of 25 miles a day, marching six days a week, throughout the term of a campaign. According to Merritt, the beginning of a well-ordered march was completely controlled by six bugle calls. The first two were “reveille,” troops awakened and dressed; and “stables,” troops moved immediately to their horses to groom and feed them. After these actions were completed, soldiers themselves breakfasted. When the supervising commander observed that the troops had finished eating, he ordered the bugler to sound the final four commands: “general,” soldiers packed their personal equipment; “boots and saddles,” horses were saddled and packed, and troops moved to formation; “mount,” troopers mounted their horses; and “forward,” troops moved out on the march by fours. Merritt was insistent that no command be given before the previous action was complete. He asserted that it was better to begin late than to begin a march with unprepared horses or troopers. Company size and larger units always marched in a column of fours. If the unit had multiple companies, then companies maintained some distance between them, to lessen the effects of dust.

  At the end of the first hour of the march, the column halted for 10 to 15 minutes to adjust tack. At this point soldiers or horses with health problems went to the rear to join the support train and ambulances. Once the march commenced again, it stopped every hour for five minutes. At the second halt the command did not rest but rather proceeded forward dismounted leading the horses for 20 minutes. The troopers then remounted and proceeded forward at the trot for 20 minutes. The last 20 minutes of the second hour were completed at the walk. This pattern—lead, trot, walk—was repeated with slight variations for the remaining three hours of the march. Commanders injected short gallops into the march to allow the horses to stretch. In this manner the first hour of the march covered about 4 miles of terrain, and the remaining four hours covered an additional 20 miles or more. The goal of the command was to cover 25 miles in less than 6 hours marching time.

  Merritt insisted that discipline was the key to successful marching without injury to horses or men. He advised commanders to “arrest an officer or confine a trooper who willfully neglects attention to the smallest details of the march so necessary to the endurance of the men and horses.” Thus, a mounted unit could cover 150 miles a week and 600 miles over the course of a month without detriment to its men and horses. Merritt went on to relate that well-conditioned cavalry could march at a rate of 50 miles a day for three to five days in an emergency. One of the most successful forced marches during the Indian campaigns occurred in 1879 when a squadron of the 5th Cavalry marched to the relief of a besieged unit, covering 170 miles in 65.5 hours. This unit sustained a march speed of over 62 miles per day. This march was particularly noteworthy because no horses were lost, no horses were injured, and the command was totally fit for service when it arrived.23

  Using the method described by Colonel Merritt, the army formed mobile columns to pursue the Indians. Multiple columns limited the Indian’s maneuver options and attempted to trap the mobile tribes and bands in a position where they had to fight. Scouts assisted the columns to locate the enemy, and commanders played a constant game of attempting to determine the Indian’s intentions. Columns could only be successful if they could anticipate the Indians actions and gain a marching advantage on them. The telegraph, railroad, steamships, and couriers allowed department, division, and column commanders to remain in touch with each other and coordinate. Columns were somewhat successful, but as the pursuit of the Nez Perce indicated, they were time-consuming, costly, and did not always produce decisive results.

  The army used another tactic based on the strategic lessons of the Civil War. The Civil War taught the army that the most decisive form of warfare was total war. In total war military forces attacked the enemy’s entire society. General William T. Sherman was the army’s most successful Civil War practitioner of total war, and he employed this
same strategic approach against the Indians. The army realized that pursuing the Indians with mobile columns was pitting the army against the Indian’s greatest strength—their mobility on horseback. The entire tribe, not just the warriors, was mobile. A village could pack up and move with only hours notice. In this contest of mobility the army’s conventional organization, mediocre horsemanship, and logistics requirements put them at a disadvantage. The space of the West worked in favor of the Indians. The army determined to overcome the Indians mobility advantage by campaigning in the winter.

  In the winter the Indians had to occupy permanent encampments. This was necessary to ensure adequate forage for the large pony herds. Additionally, moving in the extreme cold of the northern plains winter, though possible, was slow and hazardous. The army determined to take advantage of this vulnerability through large-scale winter campaigns. The focus of the campaigns was not on battling the warriors, but on raiding the villages and capturing the families and pony herds. The army then moved the families under guard to reservations and destroyed or sold the pony herds. The intent was, under the cover of winter, deprive the Indian warriors of their support and mobility. If the Indian warriors stood to defend their villages and herds, army commanders considered that so much the better.

  Once locating the winter camps, commanders had the option of executing a mounted charge. This was usually only practical if the Indians were surprised. Most often, the cavalry dismounted and advanced in skirmish order with the men dispersed using cover, and every fourth man in the rear holding the horses. In most cases, the cavalry’s longer range Springfield carbines and disciplined deployment gave them the advantage over the Indians.

  The combination of summer pursuits and winter attacks on the camps was brutally effective. Over the period of the conflicts, the army systematically shifted units throughout the West and reduced the hostile tribes one by one. In many cases it took several years, but ultimately the American cavalry forced even the most warlike and independent tribes and bands to acknowledge that the group’s only chance for survival was on the army’s terms on the reservations. Thus, between 1866 and 1890 the U.S. cavalry, while suffering numerous tactical setbacks, prevailed in establishing the uncontested dominance of the American government over the western territories.

  Horses and Horsemanship

  Though the American cavalry was dramatically reduced in size after the Civil War, the war left the force with an experienced cadre of leaders. These leaders ensured that the American cavalry were well-mounted, competent riders and understood how to manage the care and health of their horses.

  Horses

  The army quartermaster purchased cavalry horses. Purchasing officers did not consider formal breeding in the selection of remounts. Their most important criteria was health and stamina. The purchasing officers understood well the rigors of campaigning to which the horses would be subject. Cavalryman Frederick C. Kurz of the 8th Cavalry at Fort Clark, Texas, described his troop’s horses in 1885 as “a mixture of Mexican Bronco and American, but [they] made pretty good mounts and stood hard riding after being broken in.”Englishman Archibald Forbes described American cavalry horses of the Indian wars period as “stout, hard, active, and wiry, accustomed to endure hardship and to graze and stand quiet when picketed.”24

  The best known of the American cavalry horses, and one of the best known horses in American history, was Comanche, the mount of Captain Myles W. Keogh, commander of Company I, 7th Cavalry. Comanche’s fame resulted from the horse being the only recovered survivor of Custer’s command after its destruction at the Little Bighorn battle.25 Comanche was severely wounded in the battle, was nursed back to health by the surviving members of the regiment, and became their mascot, carefully maintained for the rest of his life. Because of his notoriety, Comanche’s life was better documented than any other cavalry remount, perhaps in history. Though an officer’s mount, Comanche came to the 7th Cavalry as a regular government-purchased remount in 1868 and thus is representative of the remounts supplied to the cavalry during the plains wars period.

  The history of Comanche before he became a remount is obscure. Comanche was a gelding who stood between 15 and 15.2 hands. He was a bay with a short white sock on his left rear foot, white patches in the saddle area, and a small white star on his forehead. He weighed about 950 pounds. He was not an overly large horse but fit very well within the average range of cavalry remounts.26

  Comanche entered army service in St. Louis, Missouri, where the army quartermaster purchased him for $90 on April 3, 1868. The army then moved him for training to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After he completed basic training, together with a group of 40 remounts, the army assigned Comanche to the 7th Cavalry, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Captain Tom Custer, in charge of retrieving that particular groups of remounts, reported that they “were in good condition. . . . Most of them were looking well and I regard them as a choice lot of horses.”27 Comanche was probably six years old when he arrived in the regiment. The horse came to the attention of Captain Keogh who, since officers provided their own mounts, bought him from the government as his personal mount.

  At the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, Comanche was one of the veteran horses: 14 years old with 8 years service in the field. Some historians report that at this point in his career Comanche had already been wounded in battle on three separate occasions. Unlike Comanche, many of the regiment’s other horses were new and unaccustomed to hard campaigning. In addition, the horses of the regiment entered the battle tired, and many were close to exhaustion—Custer had a reputation for pushing his men and horses hard. The regiment had been riding for weeks prior to the battle. In the 33 hours before the battle the Custer and Reno battalions had covered over 60 miles. On the day of the battle, at least four troopers dropped out of formation because their mounts were too exhausted to continue. Elwood Nye, a twentieth-century American horse cavalryman and veterinarian, and in the 1930s one of the army’s experts on long-distance cavalry marching, came to the definitive conclusion that Custer began the Battle of the Little Bighorn on exhausted horses.28 Certainly there were many circumstances and mistakes that led to the Custer disaster, exhausted horses was one of them and may explain why Custer’s men were incapable of escaping by simply riding away.

  Two days after the battle, General Terry’s command rescued the surviving battalions of Custer’s command. As the army forces surveyed the battlefield where Custer’s battalion had been wiped out, they counted 210 dead soldiers. Hundreds of dead horses also littered the field. As burial parties worked, soldiers discovered a wounded cavalry horse in the riverbed of the Little Bighorn River. Several soldiers disregarded the animal because of its wounds, but Lieutenant Henry Nowlan recognized the horse, Comanche, as Captain Keogh’s mount and organized efforts to save the animal. Reports vary regarding the extent of Comanche’s injuries. He was wounded at least twice, probably more; an official description of him done some years later noted 12 scars caused by wounds. Comanche was nursed back to health, and in 1878 the colonel of the regiment posted a special order declaring that Comanche would never be ridden and would march with the regiment on all parades. In addition, “his kind treatment and comfort should be a matter of special pride and solicitude on the part of the 7th Cavalry, to the end that his life may be prolonged to the utmost limit.”29 Comanche lived a long life, dying in his troop stables in 1891 at the age of 29 years. Comanche’s remains were mounted and remain on display at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.

  Horsemanship

  Upon entering service, cavalry recruits received initial training at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. In the years after the Civil War, training occurred in the regiments, but in later years a recruit might spend several months receiving basic training at the barracks. In the 1880s, cavalry recruits received basic equitation, with and without saddles as part of their entry training.30 Horsemanship was important but exceptional skill was not required. The American cavalryman on the plains was at b
est a work-man-like horseman, as were his superiors.

  Though high-quality formal horsemanship was not a characteristic of American cavalry, a great deal of emphasis was placed on horse care. On the plains, often hundreds of miles from nearest town or ranch, it was obvious to all cavalrymen, soldier to commander, that the trooper’s life might depend on his horse. The Civil War luxury of quickly acquiring remounts did not exist in the army of the West. Thus, units and officers prided themselves on the health and stamina of their mounts. The professional cavalry of the Indian Wars, when compared to the volunteer cavalry of the Civil War, though perhaps not greatly superior riders, were much better horse masters. This was a function of more experience, better leadership, and operational necessity.

  Though from a strategic perspective the outcome of the Plains Indian Wars were inevitable, the wars themselves were hard fought actions in which both sides displayed at times brilliance, and at other times tactical shortcomings. The wars pitted two very competent, but very different, mounted forces against each other. Though the American cavalry were backed by extraordinary strategic resources, the operational and tactical odds were much more even than is generally appreciated. The Indians excelled in horsemanship and the tactical battle. Their knowledge of the terrain and fieldcraft were without peer. The American cavalry were well led, well equipped, and persistent, but limited in size to a few long-serving and often undermanned regiments resourced by a very meager military budget. The American leadership understood the nature of the wars better than the Indian leadership and pursued tactics and strategies which attacked the Indian’s greatest vulnerabilities. The length of the conflict is a testament to the determination and skill of both the army and native horsemen.