by 1864-1898 Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life;Campaigns in the West
Through two decades up to 1944 following Webb’s assumption of affairs, between twenty-two and forty-four camps variously operated in major cities throughout the country (although some appear to have been paper camps with few if any members; many became defunct within a few years). In 1928, membership was reported to be 1, 300. In addition, there were designated departments at the state level operated by appointed commanders. Within departments, various camps bore such names as Gen. Nelson A. Miles Camp No. 32 (Boston), Gen. George A. Custer Camp No. 4 (San Francisco), and Gen. Philip H. Sheridan Camp No. 20 (Chicago). (Two in New York City, plus those in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Portland, Oregon, contained core membership and were designated “Big Six Camps.”) Abraham Lincoln Camp No. 30, San Antonio, comprised enlisted veterans of the Ninth and Tenth cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth infantry regiments—all-black units known to history as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” St. Joseph became home for Winners of the West Camp No. 11, the so-called headquarters camp, to which members nationwide who were unaffiliated with municipal camps might belong (this camp in 1933 numbered 600 members). Additionally, during the 1930s four ladies’ auxiliary camps existed, including Elizabeth B. Custer Camp No. 3, Los Angeles, and Lorena Jane Webb Camp No. 1, Stockton, California, the last named in honor of George Webb’s wife.15
Delegates’ Convention of the National Indian War Veterans in St. Joseph, Missouri, 1927. George W. Webb is seated in front center, with cane. To his right is his wife and ladies’ auxiliary national leader, Lorena Jane Webb. To his left is NIWV National Adjutant General Albert Fensch. Fensch was a leader in the walkout the next year that led to the founding of the United Indian War Veterans.
An average camp meeting consisted of a formulaic assembly of veterans, probably not unlike that held monthly by the Captain James H. Bradford Camp of San Antonio, Texas. “After the camp is called to order while all the members stand at attention, ‘America’ is sung and the invocation asked by the [camp’s] chaplain. Then follow the salute of the colors, reading of minutes and [consideration of] applications for membership. Each candidate is required to repeat an ‘Obligation of Candidates,’ in which he pledges loyalty to his country and obedience to its laws, defense in time of danger and allegiance to his comrades of the Indian wars. After other business is attended to, the meeting closes with a patriotic song, the salute of the colors, and a benediction.”16
Members of NIWV District of Columbia Camp No. 5 pose with President Calvin Coolidge on the White House lawn, 1928. Left to right, Evan D. Lewis, A. V. Dummel, G. A. Scheader, Jerome Lawler, Paul Schneider, C.W. Crawford, the President, J. J. Murphy, Henry McDonnell, and C. T. Edwards. Editor’s collection.
Membership in the NIWV was “Active,” “Associate,” or “Honorary.” Active members were veterans eligible for invalid pensions based on actual Indian wars service, while Associates were veterans and dependents deemed ineligible for Indian wars pension status. Associate members included Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War veterans who nonetheless supported the ideals of the body. Similarly, Honorary members comprised interested non-veterans who aspired to the ideals of the association. Annual dues were $1.50 for men and $1.00 for women. (To help defray costs, the NIWV permitted dues to be paid in two semi-annual installments of half the total, i.e., 75 or 50 cents, respectively, every six months.) The command hierarchy consisted of both elected and appointed officers from Commander-in-Chief (National Commander) through Vice-Commander down to state and district commanders. There were also honorary positions, like National Chief of Staff, National Adjutant General, National Quartermaster General, and National Grand Marshall. National headquarters of the NIWV was at first located in the home city of the National Commander, although most administrative functions took place in St. Joseph under the guidance of Webb, who was appointed National Chief of Staff in 1925. Throughout most of its existence, the NIWV sponsored annual conventions, usually in the hometown of the National Commander. The assembly of 1924, for example, convened in San Francisco, presided over by National Commander J. F. W. Unfug. Eventually, St. Joseph, Missouri, became permanent National Headquarters City.17
The mother camp of all NIWV chapters remained that in Denver, which enjoyed resurgence in the early 1930s largely because of John F. Farley, who became Colorado state commander for the body in 1931. A former Third cavalryman who had been wounded by Apaches near Fort Bowie, Arizona, in 1871, Farley years later had served as Denver’s chief of police. He single-handedly rejuvenated the membership in flagging Denver Camp No. 1, and served as state commander until his death in 1940.
Through the work of Farley, Webb, and others, the NIWV prospered, affording unity and therefore valuable assistance to veterans who had heretofore perceived their sacrifices as having gone unacknowledged by the federal government. Pension-related objectives of the body continued to lie in the solidarity of its members. Whereas congressional omnibus measures often included individual pension claims for Indian wars service, the NIWV promoted a community of support to seek legislation that would best serve all such veterans. “Congress will do nothing if it is bombarded by hundreds of different claims and appeals,” opined Webb, “and it stands to reason [that] Congress will likely be disgusted and the waste basket is the depository of your writings.”18
Although neither the NIWV nor its collateral bodies could ever boast large memberships, the NIWV nonetheless registered some worthy accomplishments in its lobbying before Congress. In 1924 the group enlisted the aid of former Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, then eighty-five years old and himself a past participant in notable western campaigns. Supporting then-pending legislation on behalf of Indian war veterans, the retired commanding general wrote that these men:
placed their lives between the…unprotected settlements and savage barbarians who were committing atrocities of the most cruel and savage character. They endured the severe and destructive heat of the extreme southern districts of our country, as well as the blizzards and the winter blasts of the extreme north, and by the exposure and hardship of the service the lives of many have been shortened.
Most bills advanced, however, never became law. Beyond the significant 1917 legislation, perhaps the major success to which the NIWV contributed occurred on March 3, 1927, when a measure co-sponsored by Representative Elmer O. Leatherwood and Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, and which superseded all previous Indian wars pension legislation, passed both houses of Congress.
The new law extended the period of requisite Indian wars service from 1817 to 1898 and insured that veterans received a minimum of $20 per month graduated upwards with advancing age to a maximum of $50 (still less, however, than that received by veterans of other wars). Moreover, fully disabled veterans might receive $20 to $50 more per month commensurate with their individual impairment. And for the first time, widows of Indian war veterans would receive $30 per month, besides an allowance of $6 per orphaned child up to age sixteen. Unlike earlier legislation, Leatherwood-Smoot did not enumerate specific Indian campaigns for which service pensions might be granted. Instead, it included provision for service “in the zone of any active Indian hostilities,” wording that proved imprecise and confusing for many veterans.
In addition, the schedule accompanying the law was unduly complex and many veterans perceived inherent inequities in its application. While the act brought legislative success for Indian war veterans, it came only after a long drought following the 1917 Keating legislation. By 1927, many veterans had reached an age where its benefits would be minimal. Nonetheless, passage of Leatherwood-Smoot produced an increase of around one thousand Indian wars pension claimants by 1930.19
Despite overall improvements to Indian war veterans’ lot from the Leatherwood-Smoot measure, the NIWV continued to seek pension increases for its constituents on an equitable par with those granted veterans of other wars. During the 1930s, however, the fight ran counter to national circumstances during the Great Depression, and in March, 1933, while implementing his New Deal r
ecovery program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed a 10% reduction in veterans’ pensions for a period of one year. The NIWV vigorously protested the cuts as being unfair, as George Webb editorialized in Winners of the West. “When the Veteran of Indian Wars…witnesses the Civil War Veteran receiving a pension of $100 per month, the Spanish-American and World War Veteran considered eligible [for] various amounts even in excess of that paid to Civil War Veterans…he begins to question whether or not he is being dealt with by the Government with any spirit of fairness….” Webb’s future successes were limited. In August, 1937, a new pension law increased by $5 (a “magnanimous sum,” he remarked) the monthly stipend to all Indian war veterans, while allowing those totally disabled $72 per month.20
Birthplace of the United Indian War Veterans at 901 Charles Street, St. Joseph, Missouri. Members who bolted the National Indian War Veterans convention in September, 1928, reconvened at this address to organize their own body. Editor’s collection.
By late in the decade, only slightly more than 3, 000 qualified Indian war veterans still lived (including, interestingly enough, 400 who were Indians—former scouts who had enlisted to serve against their kinsmen). Dependents of deceased veterans numbered approximately 4, 500. Yet another pension act passed Congress in March, 1944, providing for graduated raises based upon age and disability, and at last accorded Indian war veterans (those with appropriate service in specified Indian wars or campaigns) certain parity with Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans. This legislation was the last supported by the NIWV as an identifiable body. By then the association had become an untenable enterprise with increasingly mounting deaths in its membership. George Webb had died in 1938, and continuation of Winners of the West rested with the volunteer efforts of interested non-veterans. Shortly after Webb’s death, National Commander Edmund Graham resigned, and many camps with dwindling rolls disbanded altogether. In 1940 a brief revitalization attempt occurred led by the General O. O. Howard Camp in Chicago that resulted in the installation of a new slate of officers.
But the inexorable march of time, hastened by the sudden onset of World War II, ultimately insured the end of the NIWV. (During that conflict Winners of the West carried such incongruous headlines as “Veteran Who is Almost Blind…Would Enjoy Chance at Japs and Nazis with His Old Springfield,” and “[He] Saw Geronimo Fall: Axis Next.”) In 1941 only nine diminishing camps remained active, and three years later, with publication of the final issue of Winners of the West, the National Indian War Veterans Association ceased existence.21
The demise of the NIWV did not close the pension movement for Indian war veterans altogether. Since 1928, a successful rival organization had emerged with headquarters in California whose work paralleled that of the NIWV. Among numerous western camps, a simmering dispute had arisen over George Webb’s domination of the organization as National Commander, and many opposed his re-election to that office.
In 1928, at the eighteenth annual NIWV convention in St. Joseph, Missouri, the rebels took issue with a motion by Webb supporters to dispense with the reading of the officers’ reports because some contained criticism of Webb. On the afternoon of October 10, when the matter was put to a vote and the regulars won, the minority faction of delegates from six camps bolted the meeting to convene nearby where they drafted their own constitution and by-laws and elected officers. Horace B. Mulkey, who had been National Senior Vice President of the NIWV became National Commander of the new United Indian War Veterans of the United States (UIWV).
Attendees at the third annual convention of the United Indian War Veterans stand before the Yavapai County Building, Prescott, Arizona, September 14, 1931. Note the banner at right for the Gen. George Crook Camp No. 1, Los Angeles.
Of the 1, 300 NIWV members scattered in camps throughout the nation, UIWV leadership immediately claimed 542 members in camps in San Francisco; Chicago; Los Angeles; San Antonio; Billings, Montana; and Yountsville, California, and additionally announced that the three independent groups in Kansas, Utah, and Oregon would join with the new national body.
The organization eventually embraced thirteen departments across the country, each under a commander. The UIWV was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on November 5, 1928, and held its first annual convention in September, 1929, at the Disabled Veterans Hall in Los Angeles.22 Oddly enough, by the 1928 rupture, the very unity that the Indian war veterans as a relatively small group had long advocated, and that had been vital to fostering pension reform, became effectively lost as the two national groups, each with declining memberships based on attrition, individually competed for the same objectives.
Following the splintering off of the UIWV, the old San Francisco NIWV camp founded in 1912 became Gen. George A. Custer Camp No. 4, United Indian War Veterans, U. S. A., and became the nucleus around which the new organization evolved. The group’s slogan, “There’s Only a Few of Us Left,” belied the state of the UIWV, which thrived for decades as the last of the Indian wars veteran groups. The primary objectives of the body were:
To cultivate a spirit of harmony and comradeship amongst those whose services in our country were identical or similar in its nature, and to perpetuate the memory of such service in future generations of our descendants, and To use all and every proper means of bringing about recognition by our government, of such services equal to that accorded those who participated in other wars in which our country has been engaged, the results of which were not of greater value than those attained by our own struggles against its foes.
Program for the United Indian War Veterans’ observance of the sixtieth anniversary of the “Custer Massacre” on June 25, 1936, in Balboa Park, San Diego, California. During the exercises, Mrs. Ora McClinton offered a telling of “How My Husband Recovered Custer’s Battle Flag” at the Little Bighorn. Editor’s collection.
During ensuing years the UIWV proliferated along the West Coast with three camps and a like number of associated ladies’ corps units. The bitterness with the NIWV continued, with UIWV National Adjutant General Albert Fensch privately branding Webb “the St. Jo bandit,” and his paper the “Losers of the West.” “I think the Webb outfit is gradually disintegrating,” wrote Fensch in the early 1930s. “His ‘convention’ was a farce, so we heard, and his many ‘strong’ camps are all in his head and in his ‘rag’ of a paper.”
As of 1931, the UIWV claimed twenty-four camps nationwide “of which only about 16 are really active,” with total membership at “between 1400 and 1500.” (It was estimated that of 17, 000 then-surviving Indian war veterans—all of those who had served in the West, 1865-98—less than one-third were on the pension rolls.) 23
Like the NIWV, which it survived by more than twenty years, the UIWV promoted pension legislation favorable to the Indian war veteran class while providing fellowship among its aging constituency. The organization also helped members prepare and file individual pension claims. Officers were elected annually at conventions held usually in Los Angeles or San Francisco, but occasionally at places like Prescott, Arizona, where in 1931 Governor George W. P. Hunt welcomed the body at its banquet and was made an honorary member. A resolution approved at the Arizona meeting sought to raise invalid pensions for “aged and infirm” Indian war veterans from $50 to $100 per month (claiming that disabled Spanish-American and World War veterans received as much as $157.50 per month).
In 1937, the UIWV published a pamphlet of original poems to bring attention to their cause; they dedicated it to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and disseminated it to the congressional membership. In 1936, the camp in San Diego sponsored an observance of the sixtieth anniversary of the “Custer Massacre” at Balboa Park, the program including Seventh Cavalry band selections, the award of prizes for essays on Custer’s life, and a “Black Hawk Indian Whistling Artist.”
After World War II, with its membership falling, the UIWV focused more on fostering such social activities over improving pension benefits. During the 1950s, more than 300 sur
viving Indian war veterans, including many of the UIWV, were contacted for historical information about their service; questionnaires completed during the study are on file at the U. S. Army Military History Institute in Pennsylvania.
The UIWV sponsored its annual meetings into the 1960s, when three camps still functioned. Late in 1962, twenty-nine members assembled in San Francisco for their annual meeting, presided over by National Commander Edward Snider and Ladies Corps Commander Minnie Saunders, age 97. Six years later, only four veterans attended.24
The survival of the UIWV into the second half of the twentieth century was remarkable. By the 1940s, to say nothing of the 1960s, a veteran of frontier service was something of an anachronism. Unlike Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I veterans, those survivors of the Indian campaigns had no single chronological block on which to focus their service for commemorative purposes. Theirs was sandwiched between major wars, did not respond to any particular national emergency, and was generally characterized more by routine activity that spanned several decades of postwar development only sporadically infused with campaigning and combat. Unlike those veterans of the nation’s larger conflicts, the survivors of the Indian wars found it difficult to assemble for purposes of camaraderie, to say nothing of uniting to seek government benefits. That they nonetheless succeeded to some degree in both was due to a tenacity of spirit perhaps acquired years earlier under arduous conditions in forbidding climates during far-flung service on the plains and in the mountains and deserts against the followers of Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Joseph, and Cochise. As one of the old veterans averred in a closing poetic reflection of his time in the West, “And some of these days, it won’t be long, Our names will be called and we’ll all be gone. But so long as it lasts, let us never forget, ‘Tis an honor to be an Indian War vet.”25
