The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  11. Miles to Sherman, Opposite Fort Peck, Mont., November 18, 1876, Sherman Papers, vol. 45, Library of Congress.

  12. Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, Cantonment at Tongue River, December 17, 1876, RG 393, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands, Special Files, Hq. Division of the Missouri, M1495, Roll 4, Frame 593, NARA.

  13. Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, Hq. Yellowstone Command, Cantonment on Tongue River, January 23, 1877, RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–1880, File 4163, AGO 1876 (Sioux War Papers), M666, Roll 280, Frame 88, NARA.

  14. Miles to Sherman, Cantonment on Yellowstone, January 20, 1877, Sherman Papers, vol. 45, Library of Congress.

  15. Miles to Sherman, Tongue River, March 29, 1877, Sherman Papers, vol. 46, Library of Congress.

  16. The official report is Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakota, Cantonment at Tongue River, May 16, 1877, RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–1880, File 4163, AGO 1876 (Sioux War Papers) M666, Roll 281, Frame 536, NARA. The anonymous participant’s letter is in Army and Navy Journal 14 (June 16, 1877): 723.

  17. Sherman to McCrary, Cantonment on Tongue River, Mont., July 16, 1877, RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–1880, File 4163, AGO 1876 (Sioux War Papers), M666, Roll 282, Frame 184, NARA. In 1867 Canada was a dominion within the British Empire. London conducted foreign affairs on behalf of the dominion, which is why the Sitting Bull negotiations were handled by England. I deal with Sitting Bull’s Canadian episode in The Lance and the Shield, chap. 15.

  18. Miles’s official reports are found in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1877), pp. 74–76 and 514–16. I treat this battle in Frontier Regulars, pp. 311–14.

  19. Sherman to Sheridan, Headquarters of the Army, February 9, 1878, RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–1880, File 4163 AGO 1876 (Sioux War Papers), M666, Roll 284, Frame 190, NARA.

  20. Telegram, Miles to Ruggles (in St. Paul), Fort Keogh, February 24, 1878 (with Sherman endorsement of March 11), RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Letters Received (Main Series), 1871–1880, File 4163, AGO 1876 (Sioux War Papers), M666, Roll 284, Frame 329, NARA.

  21. Telegram (via Fort Buford), Miles to Assistant Adjutant General Department of Dakota, Camp opposite Frenchman’s Creek, July 18, 1879, RG 393, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands: Special Files, Hq. Military Division of the Missouri, M1495, Roll 5, Frame 305 telegram (via Fort Buford), same to same, Camp on Trail immediately south of line, July 24, 1879, RG 393, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands: Special Files, Hq. Military Division of the Missouri, M1495, Roll 5, Frame 346, NARA; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 287.

  22. Telegram, Sherman to Sheridan, July 24, 1879 (Frame 311), and telegram, McCrary to Sheridan, July 23, 1879 (Frame 269), RG 393, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands: Special Files, Hq. Military Division of the Missouri, M1495, Roll 5, NARA.

  23. Telegram, Sheridan to Miles at Fort Leavenworth, April 3, 1886, RG 94, Letters Received, Office of the Adjutant General, 1881–1889, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, Roll 182, NARA. I treat the story of Miles’s Arizona command in Geronimo, chap. 22.

  24. General Order 58, by order of Col. W. B. Royall, Fort Huachuca, May 4, 1886, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1886), pp. 176–77.

  25. Lawton’s official report of his expedition, September 9, 1886, in RG 94, Letters Received, Office of the Adjutant General, 1881–1889, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, Roll 186, NARA. The most detailed accounts of Lawton’s Mexican campaign are in his letters to his wife, Papers of the Order of the Indian Wars, Misc. Coll., Box 1, folder Personal Letters, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.; and Leonard Wood, Chasing Geronimo: The Journal of Leonard Wood, May–September 1886, ed. Jack C. Lane (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970).

  26. Miles to Assistant Adjutant General, Division of the Pacific, Presidio, Fort Apache, June 7, 1886, RG 94, Letters Received, Office of the Adjutant General, 1881–1889, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, Roll 184, NARA.

  27. Louis Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), p. 133; Morris E. Opler, “A Chiricahua Apache’s Account of the Geronimo Campaign of 1886,” New Mexico Historical Review 13 (October 1938): 371–73.

  28. Thompson [Miles’s aide] to Lawton, Fort Bowie, April 29, 1886; Lawton to Miles, San Bernardino, August 30, 1886; and Miles to Lawton, Fort Bowie, August 31, 1866, Miles Papers, Box 3, Folder 6, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Lawton’s state of mind is captured in a letter to his wife, August 26 and 27, 1886, Lawton Papers, Box 3, Folder 6, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

  29. Several eyewitness accounts describe the meeting, although differently. These are cited and discussed in my book Geronimo, p. 310n9.

  30. I treated the story of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee in The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (1963; 2nd ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

  31. The literature on Wounded Knee is immense. I have relied heavily on my own Last Days of the Sioux Nation, chap. 12; and, in my judgment, the most authoritative book: Jerome A. Greene, American Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).

  32. Miles to Forsyth, January 4, 1891, Special Orders, No. 8, Hq. Div. of the Missouri in the field, Pine Ridge, RG 94, Wounded Knee Investigation Report, NARA.

  33. Endorsements by Schofield and Proctor, February 4 and 13, 1891, Microfilm 983, NARA.

  Chapter 6. Edward O. C. Ord

  1. An excellent biography, on which this chapter relies heavily, is Bernarr Cresap, Appomattox Commander: The Story of General E. O. C. Ord (San Diego: A. S. Barnes, 1981).

  2. In addition to ibid., chap. 4, I deal with the Pacific Northwest Indian wars in Frontiersmen in Blue, chap. 9.

  3. General Orders 14, Hq. of the Army, Nov. 13, 1857, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1857), pp. 51–52.

  4. My reconstruction of Ord’s service in the Civil War is drawn mainly from Cresap, Appomattox Commander. See also Warner, Generals in Blue, pp. 349–50.

  5. The hunt is well described in Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 212–16.

  6. Gilbert C. Fite, “The United States Army and Relief to Pioneer Settlers, 1874–1875,” Journal of the West 6 (1967): 99–107.

  7. Sherman to Sheridan, November 29, 1877, Washington, D.C., Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress.

  8. Ord to Sherman, San Antonio, July 6, 1875, Sherman Papers, vol. 39; Sherman to Ord, St. Louis, July 14, 1875, Sherman Papers vol. 40l, Sherman to Sheridan, July 14, 1875, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress; Ord to Sherman, San Antonio, October 5, November 1, 1875, Sherman Papers, vol. 41, Library of Congress.

  9. Testimony of Ord, December 6, 1877, before House Committee on Military Affairs on Texas border problems, in U.S. House Misc. Doc. 64, 45th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 103.

  10. Kenneth W. Porter, “The Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts, 1870–1881,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 55 (1951–52): 358–77.

  11. Testimony of Lt. Col. William R. Shafter before House Committee on Military Affairs on Texas border troubles, January 6, 1878, in U.S. House Misc. Doc. 64, 45th Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 58–59.

  12. Telegram, Col. S. H. Taylor, Assistant Adjutant General Department of Texas, to Ord, Fort Duncan, April 3, 1877, Rec’d 10:30 A.M. in San Antonio, p. 11; Ord to M. M. Morales, Consul of Mexico in San Antonio, Hq. Department of Texas, San Antonio, April 14, 1877, pp. 58–59; Mexican Minister Ignacio Masical to Secretary of State William M. Evarts, Mexican Legation, Washington, D.C., April 28, 1877, pp. 56–57: all in U.S. House Ex. Doc. 13, 45th Cong., 1st sess.

  13. Secretary of War G. W. McCrary to Gen. W. T. Sherman, June 1, 1877, in U.S. House Ex. Doc. 13, 45th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 14–15, transmitted to U.S. Minister in Mexico by secreta
ry of state, June 4, 1877, p. 14. Further explanation of the order of June 1 is contained in Testimony of Secretary of War McCrary before House Committee on Military Affairs investigating Mexican border crossings, November 22, 1877, p. 7; and Testimony of General Ord, December 6, 1877, p. 94: U.S. House Misc. Doc. 64, 45th Cong., 2nd sess.

  14. U.S. Minister Foster to Secretary of State Evarts, Mexico City, May 28, 1877, rec’d June 8, p. 14;. Ord to Sheridan, Fort Clark, June 19, 1877, in Sheridan to Adjutant General E. D. Townsend, June 20, 1877, 159; Treviño to Minister of War, Constitutional Army, Hq. Line of the North, Monterey, June 30, 1877, 264: U.S. House Ex. Doc. 13, 45th Cong., 1st sess.

  15. Ord to Adjutant General, San Antonio, July 16, 1877, pp. 172–73; telegram, Ord to Adjutant General, July 13, 1877, p. 174; Adjutant General T. M. Vincent to Ord, Washington, D.C., July 14, 1877, p. 175: U.S. House Ex. Doc. 13, 45th Cong., 1st sess.

  16. 1st Lt. John L. Bullis to 1st Lt. Helenus Dodt, Post Adjutant Fort Clark, October 12, 1877, Shafter Papers, Stanford University; telegrams, Sheridan to Adjutant General, October 2 and 3, 1877, transmitting telegrams from Ord, pp. 240–41, and Gen. Francisco Naranjo, commanding Río Grande frontier, to Minister of War, Monterey, October 9, 1877, pp. 53–54: U.S. House Ex. Doc. 13, 45th Cong., 1st sess.

  17. Sheridan to Sherman, November 24, 1877, Sherman Papers, vol. 47, Library of Congress.

  18. Sherman to Sheridan, November 29, 1877, Washington, D.C., Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Mackenzie’s report, dated Fort Clark, June 23, 1878, is in Record Group 94, Box 1127, NARA. I treat this episode in Frontiersmen in Blue, 354.

  21. Ord’s annual report, October 1, 1879, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1879), p. 93.

  22. Sheridan to Sherman (confidential), December 12, 1879, Sherman Papers, vol. 51, Library of Congress, pp. 541–66.

  23. Sherman to Terry in St. Paul, December 5, 1880, Sherman Papers, vol. 91, pp. 541–44.

  24. Sherman to Senator S. B. Maxey of Texas, December 17, 1880, Sherman Papers, vol. 91, pp. 562–63, Library of Congress.

  Chapter 7. John Pope

  1. This sketch draws heavily on the excellent biography of Pope by Peter Cozzens, General John Pope: A Life for the Nation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

  2. For Pope’s Civil War career, see Warner, Generals in Blue, 376–77.

  3. Quoted in Cozzens, General John Pope, p. 65.

  4. Quoted in ibid., p. 161.

  5. Stanton to Pope, September 6, 1862, in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (hereinafter OR), ser. 1, vol. 13, p. 617.

  6. Lincoln to Pope, November 10, 1862, OR, ser. 1, vol. 13, p. 787. Governor Alexander Ramsey to Lincoln, in OR, p. 787, and Pope to Lincoln, November 10, 1862, November 11, 1862, in OR, p. 788; Sibley to Brig. Gen. Elliott, December 6, 1862, in OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 815.

  7. Pope to Assistant Adjutant General John C. Kelton, Milwaukee, June 1, 1863, in OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 2, pp. 304–305.

  8. Sibley’s official reports are printed in OR, ser. 1, vol. 33, pt. 1. For Sully, see OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 555–68.

  9. Instructions for conduct of summer campaign, by Maj. Gen. John Pope, March 15, 1864, in OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 2, pp. 622–64.

  10. Expedition against Sioux Indians in Dakota Territory, Reports of Sibley, Sully, and subordinate officers, July 25 to October 8, 1864, in OR, ser. 1, vol. 44, pt. 1, pp. 131–74.

  11. Richard N. Ellis, General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970), chap. 2.

  12. OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 1212, 1295–96; pt. 2, pp. 162–63, 237–38.

  13. I treat the campaigns of 1865 in Frontiersmen in Blue, chap. 15. See also Ellis, General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy, chap. 4.

  14. Pope to Sherman, Fort Union, New Mexico, August 11, 1866, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1866), p. 30.

  15. Annual Report of Bvt. Maj. Gen. John Pope, Pope to Lt. Col. G. L. Hartsuff, Adjutant General, Military Division of the Missouri, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, October 31, 1870, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1870), pp. 6–10.

  16. Ibid., pp. 11–13.

  17. Robert M. Utley, ed., An Army Doctor on the Western Frontier: Journals and Letters of John Vance Lauderdale, 1864–1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014), p. 64.

  18. Annual Report of Brig. Gen. Pope, Pope to Fry at Military Division of the Missouri, Chicago, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, October 2, 1871, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1871), p. 43.

  19. Annual Report of Lt. Gen. Sheridan, Sheridan to Adjutant General, Hq. Military Division of the Missouri, Chicago, November 4, 1871, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1871), p. 24.

  20. Annual Report of Brig. Gen. Pope, Pope to Fry at Military Division of the Missouri, Chicago, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, October 2, 1871, p. 44.

  21. Annual Report of Brig. Gen. Pope, Pope to Fry, Assistant Adjutant General Military Division of the Missouri, Chicago, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, September 28, 1872, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1872), p. 48.

  22. U.S. House Report 384, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., Reduction of the Military Establishment, January 17, 1874, p. 189.

  23. Sheridan to Sherman (ca. November 1872), Sherman Papers, vol. 34, Library of Congress.

  24. Annual Report of Bvt. Maj. Gen. John Pope. Pope to Col. R. C. Drum, Assistant Adjutant General Military Division of the Missouri, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, September 7, 1874, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1874), p. 29.

  25. Pope to Sherman, Fort Leavenworth, September 16, 1874, Sherman Papers, vol. 37, Library of Congress; Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 245–48.

  26. All official reports and correspondence of the Red River War are set forth in Taylor, The Indian Campaign on the Staked Plains. I treat the Red River War in Frontier Regulars, chap. 13.

  27. Pope to Belknap, Fort Leavenworth, January 23, 1875, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 409–18, Library of Congress.

  28. Sherman to Pope, Washington, D.C., April 24, 1876, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 409–18, Library of Congress.

  29. Pope to Judge M. F. Force, Fort Leavenworth, March 13, 1876, quoted in James A. Garfield, “The Army of the United States,” North American Review 136 (1878): 445–48.

  30. Pope to House Committee on Military Affairs, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, January 2, 1878, U.S. House Misc. Doc. No. 56, 45th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 28.

  31. Annual Report of Brig. Gen. John Pope, Pope to Assistant Adjutant General, Military Division of the Missouri, Hq. Department of the Missouri, Fort Leavenworth, September 22, 1881, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1881), pp. 123–24.

  32. Ellis, General Pope and U. S. Indian Policy, chap. 12.

  33. I treat Pope’s involvement in the Geronimo operations in Geronimo, chaps. 22–24.

  Chapter 8. Alfred H. Terry

  1. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York: Century, 1885), p. 540.

  2. For Terry, I draw heavily on Carl W. Marino, “General Alfred Howe Terry: Soldier from Connecticut” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1968). Marino covers Terry’s Civil War years thoroughly but only summarizes his postwar career.

  3. Ibid., p. 192.

  4. Ibid., p. 415. In addition to Marino’s dissertation, see Richard B. McCaslin, The Last Stronghold: The Campaign for Fort Fisher (Abilene, Tex.: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2003).

  5. Annual Report of Bvt. Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry, Hq. Department of Dakota, St. Paul, September 27, 1867, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1867), pp. 49–52. Terry’s postwar career is treated in John W. Bailey, Pacifying the Plains: General Alfred Terry and the Decline of the Sioux, 1866–1880 (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970). I have relied heavily on this work.

  6. I treat
the Peace Commission in The Indian Frontier, 1846–1890 (rev. ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), pp. 106–10. See also chapter 2 in the present book.

  7. Terry’s statement is found in his annual report, Hq. Department of Dakota, St. Paul, September 9, 1874, in U.S. Secretary of War, Annual Report (1874), p. 37. Sheridan’s role is covered in his annual report, Military Division of the Missouri, Chicago, October 3, 1874, in ibid., 22–29. Terry’s legal analysis is laid out in Bailey, Pacifying the Plains, 95–97.

  8. Sheridan’s orders to Terry, September 3, 1874, are set forth in the Army and Navy Journal 12 (September 12, 1874): 70. The excerpt from the New York Tribune is cited in the Army and Navy Journal 12 (April 10, 1875): 555. The report of the Allison Commission is found in U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1875), pp. 184–200.

  9. I recount this story in Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier (rev. ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), chap. 7.

  10. Terry’s field diary briefly describes each day’s march but records little more. Michael J. Koury, ed., The Field Diary of General Alfred H. Terry: The Yellowstone Expedition—1876 (Bellevue Nebr.: Old Army Press, 1970).

  11. Official records of the Sioux war of 1876 are contained in U.S. House Ex. Doc. 184, 44th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 17, 1876: Expedition against the Sioux Indians.

  12. Col. Robert P. Hughes, “The Campaign against the Sioux in 1876,” Journal of the Military Institution of the United States 18 (January 1896): 1–44 (the following orders and quotations on Terry are also from this source). I set forth my own conclusions in Cavalier in Buckskin, chap. 9.

  13. Miles to Sherman, Cantonment on Yellowstone, January 20, 1877, Sherman Papers, vol. 45, Library of Congress.

  14. Sheridan to Sherman (confidential), February. 10, 1877, Sherman Papers, vol. 45, Library of Congress.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Manuscripts and Archival Collections

  Augur, Christopher C., Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago.