1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  Mitchell gave Bendel a quick glare, followed by a longer one aimed at his assistant.

  “I fail to see the humor, Mr. Stewart. Of course the savages don’t care about the maintenance of proper racial order in the United States. What difference does that make? The Kiowas have agreed to join our campaign against the Confederacy, which is all that matters.”

  There were so many errors in that last sentence that Taylor didn’t know where to begin.

  So he simply started with the subject. “Which Kiowas, Robert?”

  “Ah. Well, two of their chiefs.” Mitchell pronounced two names, neither of which meant anything to Zack. That was assuming that the special commissioner was pronouncing them correctly in the first place, which was about as likely as snow in July.

  “I’m not actually sure which clans they represent,” he admitted.

  “Well, that part’s easy enough,” said Taylor. “They didn’t represent any. The Kiowas aren’t divided into clans.”

  “But…they have to be.”

  Clearly, Zack had contradicted one of Mitchell’s certain pieces of Indian lore. He might as well have said the sun rose in the west. There were two things the special commissioner Knew To Be True. Indian chiefs all wore feather headdresses, and Indians all belonged to clans.

  “Why?” grunted the surgeon. “We’re not divided into clans.”

  “Leaving aside Scotsmen, Baltimore plug-uglies, and opera enthusiasts,” his assistant quipped. The Rhode Islander’s derision for Mitchell, however, was momentarily overridden by simple interest.

  “Is that indeed the case, Colonel?” he asked. “I confess I labored under the same misapprehension as the special commissioner.”

  Bendel answered before Taylor could. Like Zachary, he’d spent years serving on the frontier. “They’re all called Indians. But the truth is, Charles, that’s just a white man’s notion. There’s as much difference between the southern tribes like the Cherokees and the nomads on the plains as there is between a Frenchman and a Mongol. Their languages aren’t remotely similar, their customs are different, their religion is different—native religion, I mean, insofar as the Cherokees still retain it—and the whole way they look at the world is different. There’s no love lost between them, either, believe you me.”

  Taylor chimed in. “The Kiowas don’t reckon descent through the mother, the way the southern tribes do. And, no, they don’t have clans of any kind. They’ve got loosely defined ranks, instead. It’s a nobility of sorts, except a man can move up or down depending on his accomplishments and behavior. The most important divisions, for men at least, are the six military societies. The Dog Soldiers, they’re called.”

  Unable to resist the temptation, he turned back to Mitchell. “So, special commissioner. Which Dog Soldiers may we rely upon to augment our forces? And were these two ‘chiefs’ ranked Onde or Odegupa? It’ll make a difference.”

  Mitchell just stared at him.

  After a few seconds, Taylor gave up the momentary pleasure. “Never mind.”

  The special commissioner rose and headed for the entrance to the tent. Once he had the flap pulled aside, he gave Taylor a cheery look over his shoulder. “I don’t see what difference it could make, Colonel. Once they receive the guns I promised them, they’ll surely rally to our side.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Marvelous,” Bendel muttered. “Just what the world needs. Well-armed Kiowas. Do you know, Zack—just yesterday—the lunatic told me he was planning to pass out arms to the Comanches also. In the event they ‘rallied to our cause,’ of course.”

  “Oh, God help us.”

  “Yup. Comanches. Between whom and the Huns the only difference I can see is that the Huns were less barbaric. Everybody hates Comanches. Even more than they do Kiowas.”

  The assistant surgeon had been looking back and forth between them. “This is a problem, I take it? Forgive my ignorance. I’m from Rhode Island, as you know.”

  Bendel grunted. “Yeah, Charles, you could call it that. ‘A problem.’ Our blessed special commissioner has been making promises to provide guns and ammunition for every tribe of nomads anywhere in the area. The worst of it is, he’ll likely manage to do it, too, with the backing he’s got from Calhoun.”

  “For which,” Taylor growled, “we’ll get practically no help in our campaign against the Confederacy. No direct military help, for sure. The Osage and the Kiowas—certainly the Comanches—will raid outlying Cherokee and Creek settlements. Commit their usual depredations and outrages. That will have the effect of infuriating the southern Indians and making them cleave more tightly to the Arkansans—which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.”

  He ran angry fingers through hair caked with dust and sweat. “Best of all, when the war’s over—which it will be, sooner or later—the idiot will have scattered guns all over the southern plains, putting them in the hands of the worst tribes I can think of. God damn the fucking bastard. The army’ll be putting the pieces back together for years.”

  “Years and years,” the surgeon agreed. “Trust us on this, Charles. A war between the United States and the Confederacy—Cherokees or Arkansas negroes, it really doesn’t matter—will be a pretty civilized business.” He nodded toward the tent entrance. “Which the wars we’ll have with those nomad savages out there for twenty or thirty years afterward will be anything but.”

  Taylor was tempted to add a verbal damnation onto the heads of Henry Clay and John Calhoun, too. But he was a career officer, so he stifled the impulse. That would, after all, technically be insubordination. Even if the chances that either of the medical officers in the tent would report him were about as likely as snow in August.

  Some miles east of the Arkansas River

  Missouri Territory

  JULY 22, 1825

  “It’s him, all right.” Scott Powers lowered his eyeglass. “Now all we gotta do is figure out how to pry him out of there.”

  Lying next to him in the tall grass, Ray Thompson squinted at the distant bandit camp. “Why can’t we just ride in there? You said his cousin was a friend of yours.”

  “Well…he is, in a manner of speaking. But by now he’ll have heard about the reward offer. And, ah…”

  “Right. He might suspect your motives.”

  Powers grinned mirthlessly. “About as likely as a rooster guarding hens, who spots a coyote coming. ‘Well, hello there, my old friend the rooster. I just dropped by to pay a social call.’ ”

  Ray went back to studying the bandit camp some hundred yards away. “Why hasn’t he turned him in for the reward, do you think?”

  Scott shrugged, insofar as a man could manage that gesture while lying prone. “Who knows? Eddie’s another Georgian. You know the type. Walk around calling themselves Southrons and challenging their images in a mirror to a duel because of some slight nobody else noticed. Crazy bastards can find a point of honor in anything. There’s no way he’s going to let us have Andrew Clark without a fight.”

  Ray sucked his teeth. “You know, Scott, you could have maybe mentioned this little problem a few weeks back. Before we added horse stealing and card cheating to our track record.”

  “We let the horses go, and we didn’t get caught cheating,” Powers pointed out, reasonably enough. “And we would have needed the money no matter what. Besides, I got a plan.”

  “A plan. That’ll somehow make it possible for two men—yeah, sure, we’re the most dangerous desperadoes on the frontier—to win a gunfight with eleven bandits. And an assassin, even if we know he can’t shoot straight. You got a plan.”

  The same grin came back to Powers’s face. “Well, of course that’s not the plan. Do I look like an idiot? But why bother? When—”

  He rolled a little sideways to clear his left arm and pointed to the southwest. “When just over yonder we got two regiments of the U.S. Army to do the work for us. Even got artillery.”

  Ray’s eyes widened. “You think—”

  “Hey, look. Zack
Taylor’s in command. He’ll remember us from when he commanded Cantonment Robertson at Baton Rouge.”

  “Sure he will,” Ray said sourly. “He’ll remember we tried to swindle his commissary.”

  “ ‘Swindling’s’ an awful harsh way to put what I prefer to think of as frugal business practices. It’s hard to keep meat from getting wormy in the Delta. Even if you try.”

  “It’s the way he’ll put it. Taylor’s always been unreasonable.”

  Scott shook his head. “Fine. But it’s beside the point. All we have to do is convince him we know where Mrs. Houston’s killer is. For that, our perhaps unsavory reputation will work in our favor. ‘Thieves falling out,’ as they say.”

  Thompson thought about it for a moment. “You think?”

  Scott did that awkward prone shrug again. “Worth a try, the way I see it. It sure beats eleven-to-two odds in a gunfight. Even ten-to-three, figuring that any dang fool who can’t hit a man as big as Houston at point-blank range is likely to shoot one of his own.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Arkansas Post

  JULY 23, 1825

  By the time Sheff ’s 3rd Infantry got close enough to get a good view of Arkansas Post, the fort was already under siege by the United States Army. Had been, in fact, for at least two hours. They’d been able to hear the cannons from miles away.

  Now that Sheff could actually see the Post, he realized that the U.S. forces had begun a mass assault. He’d been puzzled by the fact that the Laird had been moving them so slowly this morning until the quick march of the last two miles. The regiments had needed less than four days to complete the march from New Antrim to their camp upriver the night before. They’d been up and ready by five o’clock this morning and could certainly have reached the Post before the siege had barely gotten under way. Instead, the Laird had taken four hours to cover less than ten miles. For Arkansas regiments, except for the last stretch, that amounted to a leisurely promenade.

  Now, fitting the sight with what he already knew of their battle plan, he understood. Sheff wondered if he’d ever learn to be that cold-blooded and calculating.

  He wasn’t sure. But he’d work on it.

  It all made sense, of course. Half of the U.S. forces would be tangled up in the assault on the Chickasaws forted up in the Post when the Arkansas regiments got within fighting distance. Harrison would have to match an equal number of regiments against his Confederate opponents until he could call off the assault—which was a lot easier said than done. By delaying the march, Driscol had partially nullified the Americans’ numerical advantage.

  It was tough on the Chickasaws, of course. But Sheff didn’t see where the army of Arkansas was under any obligation whatsoever to sustain worse casualties in order to rescue them from their own pigheadedness. And he suspected the Laird’s cold-bloodedness ran still deeper than that. The Chickasaws were notorious all over the frontier for their pugnacity and independence. Sheff was pretty sure the Laird had no problem at all with the idea of bleeding them half dry before letting them into the Confederacy.

  Neither did Sheff, come down to it. The Chickasaws were also notorious—among black people, anyway—for being the one southern Indian tribe that had taken to slavery wholeheartedly. More precisely, they’d traditionally used lots of slaves. The only change in the past few decades was that most of their slaves were now black people purchased on the market instead of other Indians captured in battle.

  With their ingrained warrior culture, much more akin to that of Plains Indians than tribes like the Cherokees or the Choctaws, Chickasaw men didn’t do much work. Except for fighting and hunting, they thought the proper role for a man was to loll about while the women did all the real labor. So it was hardly surprising that Chickasaw women wanted as many slaves as they could get their hands on.

  In short, as far as Sheff was concerned, the Chickasaws were the southern Indian equivalent of South Carolina gentry. Sheff was just about as likely to shed tears over their plight as he was to shed them over the difficulties of men like John Calhoun.

  Let ’em bleed. Better them than the regiments. The Arkansan soldiers would bleed plenty enough before this day was over.

  “Oh, God damn it,” muttered General Harrison. “I didn’t think they’d get here this soon.”

  From his vantage point on one of the artillery berms east of Arkansas Post, he’d just gotten a glimpse of the oncoming Arkansas forces. They were using the well-built military road that followed the north bank of the Arkansas, which placed them on the same side of the river as most of his own army.

  He indulged himself in one of those moments of silent cursing that seemed thus far inseparable from the Arkansas campaign. Curses aimed, this time, at the American legislatures of times past.

  Congress, in its infinite wisdom, had drastically reduced the size of the U.S. Army in 1815 and again in 1820. The reductions had cut infantry and artillery to the bone and had eliminated the cavalry altogether as an independent branch of service. Not even dragoon units had been kept.

  The measure had seemed sensible at the time. Cavalry was expensive to maintain, and neither the War of Independence nor the War of 1812 had seen much in the way of cavalry action. The American military tradition was an infantry and artillery tradition, with cavalry as an afterthought.

  That might be fine and dandy, fighting in the relatively cramped terrain of the eastern seaboard amidst a largely friendly populace. Here, fighting in the Delta across the Mississippi, in a countryside whose population was implacably hostile, Harrison was feeling a desperate need for strong cavalry forces.

  He was blind, damnation! He had no way to determine what might be happening in the surrounding terrain, much farther than his own or his officers’ eyes could see with an eyeglass. He’d learned quickly that sending out the small dragoon units he had in his command was pointless. They’d either get killed within five miles or be sent in hasty retreat.

  The Delta here in Arkansas was still mostly natural wilderness. The thick woods and underbrush seemed to be crawling with Choctaws. They were quite at home in the terrain and were burning for revenge on the Americans who had just driven them out of Mississippi.

  Brown’s Raiders were out there, too, somewhere. Harrison’s soldiers, especially the militiamen who were usually their target, had developed a real dread of the fanatical abolitionist irregulars.

  “Should we call off the assault, sir?” asked Lieutenant Fleming.

  Harrison’s eyes went back to the fort. He’d spent the first two hours after daybreak bombarding the east wall of Arkansas Post with most of his artillery. Field guns, unfortunately, not one of them bigger than twelve-pounders, and only three of those. Still, they’d done an adequate job of clearing a way in for the infantry, once they got past the outer fortifications. The walls were wooden logs, after all, not stonework. Harrison had been able to move his guns up to what amounted to point-blank range for artillery, since there was no counterbattery fire coming from the Post. Either the Chickasaws didn’t know how to use cannons, or—more likely—the Arkansans had taken them out when they’d abandoned the fort. No point leaving the valuable guns in the hands of savages who’d ignore them anyway.

  The infantry assault was now in full steam, with both the 3rd and the 5th Infantries engaged. They’d suffered some casualties, but they’d gotten the fascines in place and were on the verge of storming into the fort through the breaches made by the artillery bombardment.

  That would be bloody fighting, in there, against Chickasaws. But Harrison was quite confident the two regiments could manage the task. He’d had all of his howitzers raining shells into the Post during the artillery bombardment. Between that and the inevitable tendency of Indian forces to disintegrate into small units under pressure, the Chickasaws would not be able to put up a well-organized and centrally directed defense.

  As individual warriors they’d be ferocious enough, as Indians normally were. But it didn’t matter. It
never had and it never would. Harrison couldn’t think of a single battle between coherent and well-led white military forces and Indians in two hundred years that hadn’t ended with a victory for the whites and enormous casualties for the Indians. Leaving aside cases of ambush or surprise, or poor leadership, or completely disproportionate numbers—none of which applied here.

  “No, Lieutenant. We’ll have Arkansas Post within two or three hours. I want that fort. We need a solid base from which to continue the campaign upriver, and it’s far better to seize one of the enemy’s—especially something this well built—than have to construct one of our own.”

  He turned to summon the commanders of the 1st and 7th but saw that Colonels McNeil and Arbuckle were already trotting up.

  “You’ve seen them, I assume?” McNeil and Arbuckle had enjoyed a perch on the next berm over.

  McNeil simply nodded. Arbuckle, as usual, was verbose.

  “Two regiments, I figure, General. They’ll be up to strength better than ours, they being so close to home and us so far away. Call it twelve hundred men to our thousand. But John and I can stand them off, long enough”—here came a sneer and a backward wave of the hand—“for that horde of militiamen to finally work up the nerve to join the fight. After that—”

  Harrison disliked talkative officers in general, and Arbuckle in particular. “Spare me the obvious, please,” he said impatiently. “The militias won’t be much good, but there are three thousand of them. If you and Colonel McNeil can fix the enemy in place, Colonel Arbuckle, I can get the militias up soon enough to simply overwhelm the foe. I’ll give you artillery support, also, once the 3rd and the 5th are into the fort. As much as I can, at any rate, keeping in mind that I need to hold most of the guns by the river in case the Arkansans bring down their steamboats.”

  Arbuckle opened his mouth, but Harrison cut him off. “Be about it, gentlemen. Now.”

  Sheff Parker was attached as a second lieutenant to the leading company of the 3rd Infantry, commanded by Captain Charles Dupont. And the 3rd was leading the march down the road to Arkansas Post, with the 2nd following behind. So he had as good a view as anyone of the evolutions of the American forces as they drew near Arkansas Post. He also had a better angle from which to examine the enemy now, since the military road curved to the north, here, just half a mile from the Post. Most of the American units were no longer out of sight behind the bulk of the fort.