Jerome A. Greene
Page 2
Much of the GAR’s purpose was to provide for the well-being of members and their families, objectives espoused by the Republican Party in the final decades of the nineteenth century, and the organization, which became sizable (400, 000 members by 1890) came to register significant political clout. In time, the GAR’s rolls gradually fell, and its influence waned during the early decades of the twentieth century; the last annual encampment took place in 1949.
A group formed to promote similar interests for its constituency was the United Spanish War Veterans, which shared ideals of the GAR as applied to officers and enlisted men who had served in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Philippine Insurrection that followed, and the China Relief Expedition of 1900. Like the GAR, the USWV resulted from the merger of kindred bodies between 1904 and 1908. The goals of the GAR, meantime, inspired the birth of organizations of similar spirit dedicated to the interests of soldiers and sailors whose service postdated the Civil War. In 1888-90, from several such fledgling groups, the Regular Army and Navy Union was founded, mainly by veterans of duty in the postwar West, to provide like needs for soldiers, sailors, and marines without Civil War service, including those yet serving or retired from active duty. In the late 1880s and through the 1890s, garrisons or camps of the Regular Army and Navy Union flourished in cities around the country, as well as at various active army posts.2
Inspired by these various groups, and desirous of coming together for collateral purposes based upon their shared background and experiences, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the ex-soldiers of the so-called Indian wars period (ca. 1865-1891) began organizing into several bodies reflective of their common service. With their small and ever-decreasing base, however, they never attained the political strength of the GAR, whose large membership influenced pension legislation as well as the outcome of congressional and presidential elections from the 1870s well into the twentieth century. (Much the same was true of similar bodies of Spanish-American War and World War I veterans.) Beset by limited numbers and resources, the Indian war veterans shared fellowship, longevity, and perseverance, and played much the role of other veterans’ groups in sharing reminiscences of their army life, seeking to improve government benefits (albeit with considerably less success), promoting patriotism, and otherwise ensuring that citizens did not lose sight of their contributions to the nation.
The first organization of Indian war veterans was hereditary and fraternal, consisting of retired officers and select enlisted personnel who had shared experiences on the frontier and whose meetings reflected collegiality and an interest in preserving the history of the Indian wars of the trans-Mississippi West for future generations. On April 23, 1896, a group of active and retired army officers convened at the United Service Club in Philadelphia to organize the Society of Veterans of Indian Wars of the United States. Its constitution designated three classes of members consisting of First Class (“Commissioned officers…who have actually served or may hereafter serve in the Army during an Indian War…[including] any officer of a State National Guard or Militia meeting the above requirements….”); Second Class (“Lineal male descendants of members of the first class,” or male descendants of officers who were eligible “but who died without such membership”); and Third Class (Non-commissioned officers and soldiers who have received the Medal of Honor or Certificate of Merit from the United States Government…or who have been proffered, or recommended for, a commission, or who have been specially mentioned in orders by the War Department or their immediate commanding officer for services rendered against hostile Indians….” Charter members of the society included William F. (“Buffalo Bill”) Cody, who was a colonel in the Nebraska National Guard, and retired Captain Charles King, the army novelist who had campaigned against the Apaches and Lakotas under Brigadier General George Crook.3
For reasons not altogether clear, the Society of Veterans of Indian Wars almost immediately evolved into the Order of Indian Wars of the United States, under which title it functioned for nearly fifty years. Chartered in Illinois just months after the Philadelphia meeting, the stated purpose of the group was “to perpetuate the memory of the services rendered by the American Military forces in their conflicts and wars within the territory of the United States, and to collect and secure for publication historical data relating to the instances of brave deeds and personal devotion by which Indian warfare has been illustrated.” Membership was restricted to “commissioned officers and honorably discharged commissioned officers of the U. S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and of State and Territorial Military Organizations…who have been, or who hereafter may be engaged in the service of the United States…in conflicts, battles or actual field service against hostile Indians within the jurisdiction of the United States….” The organization also accommodated inclusion of male descendants and provided for honorary and associate memberships.
On January 14, 1897, a meeting of the Order in Chicago elected the first national officers, including as commander retired Ninth Cavalry Lieutenant Colonel Reuben F. Bernard. Later commanders included such formerly prominent retired Indian wars officers as Brigadier General Anson Mills, Brigadier General Leonard Wood, Brigadier General Edward S. Godfrey, Major General Hugh L. Scott, and Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles. During its half century of existence, the Order of Indian Wars performed valuable commemorative and historical services through its annual dinner meetings, usually held at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D. C. At a standard gathering, members discussed the Order’s business then listened as a companion presented a formal paper on an aspect of Indian wars history based largely on his service. The proceedings were generally published and today constitute important historical data of the organization and the era it memorialized. Among the trappings of the society were vellum membership certificates signed by the commander. They bore an elaborate engraving of troops attacking an Indian village, as well as an elitist-sounding sentiment honoring members for “maintaining the supremacy of the United States.”
Pension certificate granted in 1887 to former private Francis G. Barnes, Company I, Fourth Infantry. Barnes’s pension was for “Injury to left hand and resulting contraction of muscles of second, third and fourth fingers,” for which he was awarded fourteen dollars per month. Barnes died in 1921 in Hamburg, New York.
The Order of Indian Wars was most active during the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s. Membership peaked at 376 in 1933. By the 1940s, death rapidly took its toll. During World War II Commander Charles D. Rhodes recorded that “we have a difficulty in keeping up interest in the organization…. The generation fighting this present war never heard of an Indian war.” Staying true to its precepts, however, the Order remained active until 1947, when dwindling membership forced its affiliation with the American Military Institute. During its existence, however, members of the Order of Indian Wars and their descendants accumulated a wealth of historical material that is presently deposited in the research collections of the U. S. Army Military History Institute, Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.4
Despite its focus on fraternity and history throughout its existence, the Order of Indian Wars frequently supported the causes of several other Indian war veteran groups that existed contemporaneously with it and which were more interested in improving matters respecting the welfare of members and their families. These groups, while likewise bonded by their service fraternity, were driven more by bread-and-butter issues regarding pensions. (Since 2001, a revival group of hereditary companions retaining the title The Order of Indian Wars of the United States has convened annually in Washington, D.C. to partake in the tradition of the annual dinner meetings of the original Order; this group presently members nearly 200 members.)5
Early in the twentieth century, federal invalid pensions for Indian wars service were given to disabled individuals who qualified under a few antiquated laws. That of July, 1892, for example (which was the first designated specifically for Indian wars service), had provided $8
per month to disabled veterans and to widows and children of veterans disabled during Indian wars occurring between 1832 and 1842 (“known as the Black Hawk [Sac and Fox] war, the Creek war, Cherokee disturbances and the Seminole war”). Amendments in 1902 and 1908 extended pension coverage to veterans whose service fell between 1817 and 1860. A 1908 amendment raised widows’ pensions to $12 per month, while another in 1913 increased those for invalid veterans under the 1892 act to $20 per month. Surprisingly, at this late date a soldier’s participation in Indian warfare between 1860 and 1891 was not yet recognized for attaining pensionable status.6 In effect, disabled survivors of the Sioux and Apache troubles of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s went without pensions, even though the War Department had acknowledged their service with authorization of a campaign badge in 1907.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in efforts to come to grips with the pension question for Indian wars service, several regional groups organized to improve opportunities for those veterans. The Indian War Veterans of the North Pacific Coast organized by 1889 and commemorated the service of soldiers, mostly militia, during the Indian warfare in the Northwest during the 1840s-1850s. Likewise, the Utah Indian War Veterans Association, composed largely of former Mormon militia soldiers who had fought in that territory’s Black Hawk War, organized at Springville, Utah, in 1893, to work for federal pension recognition for their service. In Kansas in the early 1920s, a regional group called the National Indian War Veterans sought to promote pension legislation, but in 1925 changed its name to the Cantonments of the National Indian War Veterans of the United States of America to differentiate from a larger body then-current called the National Indian War Veterans Association (see below).7
While these regional groups fostered fraternal objectives, their primary focus lay in enhancing the well-being of their constituents. They lacked sufficient numbers and direction, however, to successfully accomplish that end, and remained largely fraternal in character until most of their members ultimately merged with a single unified national body.
The preeminent national association that coexisted with these regional bodies through much of their own histories was first called the National Indian War Veterans Organization when founded in Denver, Colorado, in April 1909 (it incorporated under the laws of Colorado on April 17, 1911).8 Later its name changed to the National Indian War Veterans Association. The NIWV proved an activist body, chartered for the purpose of improving the lot of ex-soldiers whose service in the West and its attendant sacrifices had seemingly been forgotten by the government. More precisely, as the group evolved through ensuing years its stated mission became:
to seek out veterans of the Regular Army eligible in either the “Indian Wars” or “Regular Establishment” [pension] class; and all State Troops eligible to pension in the Indian Wars class, and bind them together into one common fraternal brotherhood and comradeship, cooperating together for their common good, especially in the matter of obtaining just recognition from the Congress of the United States by the enactment of equitable pension laws.9
Many of these veterans, opined an exponent of the organization,
spent the best years of their life [sic] protecting our frontier. Their gallantry and bravery, the endurance of…terrible hardships and fearlessness of the most horrible of deaths, made possible the opening and populating of the Great American Desert, which is now the backbone of the greatest and wealthiest nation on the face of the earth. Even though some of the men who enlisted for the Indian wars were not in actual combat, they helped to keep down uprisings among the savages and endured the terrible hardships of hunger and weather, which were [often] a great deal worse than the actual fighting, and were there ready and willing to fight when called upon. Many of them fell victims of disease, storms, hunger, and thirst, and of those who survived through sheer hardihood, many are cripples from frozen limbs or disease.10
Organization of the NIWV in Denver occurred under the leadership of Charles R. Hauser, a Fifth Cavalry veteran who assembled local ex-solders with Indian wars service to seek pension benefits. The seal of the incorporated body read: “NIWV,” encircled by “The Men Who Protected the Frontier.” Seeking to improve the pensionable status of members and their families, the Denver leaders, together with those of camps established in 1912 in San Francisco and St. Louis, campaigned to change existing laws to include veterans with post-Civil War Indian campaign service in the West. Over six years, the members of the Denver, St. Louis, and San Francisco camps joined with those camps founded in Philadelphia, Washington, D. C., and Newark to promote new and more broadly encompassing legislation.
As a result of lobbying efforts by nearly 500 members of the NIWV and collateral groups, a law enacted on March 4, 1917, extended previous legislation regarding veterans of the early Indian wars, fixed age for pension eligibility at 62, and for the first time specified campaigns between 1866 and 1891 for which service would be recognized for pension claims. Under provisions of the Keating measure (named for Representative Edward Keating of Colorado), pensions of $20 per month would be allotted to qualified ex-soldiers of the later Indian campaigns, while widows of such veterans might qualify to receive the standard $12 per month.11
Members of General Custer Camp No. 4, United Indian War Veterans, at their Los Angeles convention in 1929.
The significant Keating law additionally provided for invalid pensions for qualifying individuals who served in specified state and territorial militia organizations that campaigned against Indians in Texas, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Colorado, and Nebraska from 1859 to 1868. Further, as sanctioned by the War Department, pensionable Regular Army service was at last recognized in the following campaigns:
Campaign in southern Oregon and Idaho and northern parts of California and Nevada, 1865-1868.
Campaign against the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, in Kansas, Colorado, and the Indian Territory, 1867, 1868, and 1869, inclusive.
Modoc War in 1872 and 1873.
Campaign against the Apaches of Arizona in 1873.
Campaign against the Kiowas, Comanches, and Cheyennes, in Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Indian Territory, and New Mexico, 1874 and 1875.
Campaign against the Northern Cheyennes and Sioux, 1876-1877.
Nez Perce War, 1877.
Bannock War, 1878.
Campaign against the Northern Cheyennes, 1878 and 1879.
Campaign against the Ute Indians in Colorado and Utah, September, 1879, to November, 1880.
Campaign against Apache Indians in Arizona and New Mexico, 1885 and 1886.
Campaign against the Sioux Indians in South Dakota, November, 1890, to January, 1891.12
Despite the success of the Denver-based NIWV in pursuing pension benefits for Indians wars veterans, the organization headquarters in that city waned in the years after World War I. As Denver Camp No. 1 dissolved, the San Francisco chapter became increasingly active, soon assuming a national role in the organization and promoting the establishment of several smaller West Coast chapters of the group. Few further improvements to veterans’ benefits occurred, however, until 1923. The revival of the national NIWV at that time was due to the dedication of George W. Webb of St. Joseph, Missouri. Webb had served with the Third Infantry during its 1870s campaigns on the southern plains, and he brought organizational talent to the languishing group (and in 1927-29 served as National Commander of the NIWV). He prepared a petition to Congress regarding Indian war veterans’ pension needs and distributed it among seven thousand veterans and widows for signatures to be forwarded to Congress. His primary innovation, however, was to design, edit, and publish a monthly (briefly bi-monthly) newspaper entitled Winners of the West. The tabloid, which highlighted pension matters and kept its members abreast of related legislative developments, also offered members an outlet for writing about historical events from their service. Winners of the West was roundly applauded and contributed to the acceleration of NIWV membership nationwide.
13
One of Webb’s missions lay in convincing the smaller regional bodies of Indian wars veteran organizations to join together in the larger national group to create a unified lobby. The motto of the NIWV became “One for All, All for One.” As Webb put it: “It behooves every comrade, every widow, and every friend of our cause to stand shoulder to shoulder and present a solid front of effort in their own behalf. Thousands of comrades have kept their names off of the rolls of all such organizations because they do not propose to be drawn into a scrap with their comrades because [of their] belonging to separate organizations….” Webb especially targeted the Kansas group with its sizable membership. Both the NIWV and the Kansas organization held conventions in September, 1926, and Webb urged members of both groups to see the folly of their ways. “These two conventions…have it within their hands to put a stop to this foolishness forever. Elect only comrades to office who will be willing to co-operate to bury the differences which now separate them as organizations…. Let us…get together in one mighty effort before the last one of our aged veterans and widows are laid beneath the sod, beyond any possibility of earthly help.” Webb’s message was clear, but the Kansas veterans remained remote. The NIWV expanded in membership during the 1920s, and in 1931 the association obtained a perpetual charter from the State of Colorado.14