Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  Culturally, the tribes differed markedly from one another. They spoke different languages, were organized according to different political and social forms, and worshipped different deities. The Plains people were highly mobile, counting wealth in great pony herds that enabled them to range over vast distances in pursuit of the buffalo. They hunted other game, too, but from the buffalo they satisfied almost all their needs—food, shelter, clothing, utensils. By contrast, the desert and plateau dwellers were less mobile, lived in brush lodges, traveled largely on foot, subsisted on small game and nuts, and sometimes planted crops. The mountain tribes imbibed of influences from both the Plains and plateau groups and developed special characteristics of their own as well. Religion, though varying in content and form from tribe to tribe, was pervasive, controlling, and ordered almost entirely by the phenomena of nature.

  Despite cultural diversity, the tribes shared certain characteristics that had important military implications. One was this very diversity. People accorded their allegiance to the family, band, and tribe, and only vaguely if at all to the race. They viewed themselves not as Indians but as Sioux or Nez Percé or Apache. They fought one another more often and more violently than they fought the whites. Alliances sometimes brought them together against an enemy, red or white, but not for long. Never did the perception of a fatal threat to the race overcome the traditional rivalry and particularism of tribes to inspire Indian resistance rather than simply tribal resistance.

  Another common strand was a highly democratic political structure. Whatever the precise form of tribal organization, authority usually resided in many leaders instead of few. Decisions affecting a tribe had to be made by a tribal council or similar governing organ that brought together many representatives of the people. Occasionally leaders of great personal stature emerged, but they almost always expressed their influence through the established system. With so many voices of authority, and those sharply limited, decisions came hard or not at all. On large questions of peace and war, tribes often fractionated, with bands and even families pursuing separate courses. Also, because it was never understood by white officialdom, this system created constant confusion and misunderstanding in dealings with the white world; government authorities invariably regarded a “chief” as an absolute ruler and his promises as binding on his people.

  The tribes also shared a long history of warfare and, accordingly, well-developed military traditions and institutions. Above all else, society rewarded the successful warrior. He fought principally for the honors of war, both individual and group, for plunder and revenge, and for defense of home and family against the aggressions of enemy warriors similarly motivated. This war complex largely governed hostilities with whites as well as other Indians. Whites offered opportunities for plunder and honor and sometimes presented a threat to home and family that required defensive action or retaliation. Actually, in the two decades after 1866 the threat was far more grave. At stake were no less than homeland, subsistence, and way of life. Yet only dimly, if at all, did the Indians perceive their final wars with the whites in these apocalyptic terms rather than the traditional terms of glory, plunder, and revenge.

  Exalting war, Indian culture produced a superb warrior. From childhood he received intensive training and indoctrination. Courage, physical strength and endurance, stealth, cunning, horsemanship, and mastery of bow and arrow, lance, and knife marked his fighting qualities. With firearms he attained less skill, but as growing numbers of breech-loading, metallic-cartridge weapons, including repeaters, fell into his hands, he achieved a firepower that made him much more formidable than his forebears. He excelled at guerrilla warfare—at hit-and-run raids, at harassment, at exploitation of the environment for his own advantage and the enemy’s disadvantage. Except when surprised or his family endangered, he fought only on his own terms, when success seemed certain. Man for man, the Indian warrior far surpassed his blue-clad adversary in virtually every test of military proficiency.

  The war complex, rewarding individual exploits, did not encourage teamwork. A war chief or leader of a war party did not “command.” He led through personal influence. Warriors followed his direction only as it suited their inclination. Team discipline often collapsed when opportunities for personal distinction presented themselves. With superior discipline and organization, therefore, a military unit could usually win an open contest with an equal or larger force of warriors. Such contests were rare, however, because Indians rarely allowed themselves to be drawn into open combat.

  By 1866, even though the United States continued to define its Indian relations in treaties, none of the tribes more than remotely resembled the independent sovereignties, masters of their own destiny, implied by the practice. Almost all had treaties with the United States government and agencies at which they drew such issues of goods, and perhaps rations, as were prescribed by treaty. Some tribes had fallen or been forced into virtually total dependence on the government and lived continuously near the agency. Others, not yet dependent, visited their agency periodically. A few broke into “friendly” and “hostile” factions, with the former embracing the agency and the latter, except for infrequent visits, holding aloof. Finally, a small handful of tribes or bands proudly disdained all association with whites. But even they had become accustomed to such useful items of white manufacture as firearms and metal implements and utensils, obtained through less isolationist intermediaries.

  The government organization charged with the conduct of Indian relations was the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a component of the Department of the Interior. The bureau’s field service manned the agencies. In 1866, in the trans-Mississippi West, there were sixty-one agencies grouped in fourteen superintendencies. Presenting attractive opportunities for profiteering at Indian expense, the bureau had become badly tainted by corruption and a victim, too, of patronage politics. Agents had the reputation, often deserved, of being party hacks in quest of a quick fortune in the West and retirement to a more congenial clime. Few, whatever their honesty, possessed qualifications for the difficult task of dealing with Indians.

  “It has been the settled policy of the government,” wrote the Secretary of the Interior in 1866, “to establish the various tribes upon suitable reservations and there protect and subsist them until they can be taught to cultivate the soil and sustain themselves.”10 This goal, of course, was actually only a means to a larger goal: to remove the Indians from the paths of westward expansion and—a consoling legalism—to extinguish Indian “title” to lands on which whites wanted to settle.

  The policy was not wholly cynical. Americans—at least those comfortably distant from the frontier—felt genuine sympathy for the Indian and demanded that government policy be grounded in humanity. Policy makers correctly perceived that, whatever the morality, westering emigrants would not be denied the Indians’ land if it held mineral or agricultural potential. The Indians’ survival depended on moving them out of the way. How much better if they could also be given the great gift of the white man’s civilization and be transformed into self-sufficient citizens. This policy, concluded the Secretary, “is no doubt the best, if not the only policy that can be pursued to preserve them from extinction.” So far, it had proved highly successful in separating the Indian from his homeland but not notably so in transforming him into a white man.

  Behind the Indian Bureau—indeed, sometimes in front of it—stood the U.S. Army. The army had fought and counseled with Indians since the beginning of the republic. It had followed the Indian frontier over the Appalachian Mountains, across the prairies and woodlands of the continent’s heartland, and finally to the plains, mountains, and deserts of the trans-Mississippi West. Now, as the Indian frontier found no further territory in which to recede, the army prepared to play its part in the final extinction of the Indian’s freedom.

  General Sherman’s inspection tour gave him fresh understanding of the crisis confronting the western tribes in 1866. On occasion their plight moved him to sympathy.
Far more engaging, however, was the great work of tapping the resources of the West and peopling it with white Americans. The excitement of advancing the frontier, of subduing the wilderness, of bringing civilization to virgin territories, gripped him no less than his countrymen. Where the Indians interfered with the process, they had to be crushed. With the fraud, deceit, injustice, and debauchery visited on the submissive or the conquered, he had no patience; but this could be blamed on Indian agents and traders. The soldier’s task lay with the unsubmissive, those who resisted the ordained opening of the West. This task he approached with an enthusiasm and a fixity of purpose uncomplicated by sentiment.

  NOTES

  1. There are many biographies of Sherman. The best is Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York, 1932).

  2. Robert G. Athearn, Willian Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West (Norman, Okla., 1956), pp. 4–5 and passim.

  3. These travels are chronicled in ibid., chaps. 1–6. Sherman’s letters from the West are in House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 23.

  4. Included are all states and territories west of the tier anchored by Minnesota on the north and Louisiana on the south. Population rose from 1.3 million in 1860 to 2.3 million in 1870 and to 4.9 million in 1880.

  5. Athearn, p. 56.

  6. House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 23, p. 10.

  7. Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 1st sess., p. 672 (July 16, 1867).

  8. House Ex Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 23, pp. 7, 11.

  9. Commissioner of Indian Affairs (hereafter CIA), Annual Report (1866), pp. 370–72.

  10. Ibid., p. i.

  The Postwar Army: Command, Staff, and Line

  DURING THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1866, as General Sherman poured over his maps and impatiently plotted his summer’s tour, Congress debated long hours over the size and shape of the postwar Regular Army. Radicals bent on harsh treatment of the conquered South demanded a large army to further their plans for Reconstruction. So did western representatives attuned to the needs of the frontier. Supporters of the mild southern policies of President Andrew Johnson joined with guardians of the federal budget to resist a large peacetime army.1 General Grant urged an army of 80,000. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was willing to settle for one of 50,000.2

  Members argued long hours over whether Negro soldiers, who had performed well in the volunteer service during the war, should be incorporated into the Regular Army. Sen. James A. McDougall of California expressed a strong minority opinion when he declared that “this undertaking to place a lower, inferior, different race upon a level with the white man’s race, in arms, is against the laws that lie at the foundation of true republicanism.”3 But Sen. Henry Lane of Indiana touched a more responsive chord by pointing out that a constitutional amendment had just made Negroes American citizens. It was academic whether military service was a burden or a privilege. “If it is either, the colored people are equally bound to bear the burden or equally entitled to participate in the privilege.”4

  The Senate passed its own version of a military bill early in the session, but the House withheld agreement. A flurry of bills emanating from the military committees of both houses recorded every viewpoint and carried the debates through the spring and into the summer.

  The delay worried General Grant. Demobilization had begun promptly after the Confederate surrender. By the late spring of 1866, almost a million volunteers had been mustered out of the service. The Regular Army, last reorganized in 1861, had retained its separate identity during the war; but by 1865, because of the superior attractions of the volunteer regiments, it had dwindled to a mere skeleton. Although recruited to more than 30,000 men by mid-1866, the Regular Army hardly sufficed to meet the demands deluging Grant from the West and South while Congress debated.5

  Finally, on July 28, 1866, President Johnson signed the “Act to increase and fix the Military Peace Establishment of the United States.”6 In the army line, the law increased the cavalry from six to ten regiments and the infantry from nineteen to forty-five regiments. The artillery remained at five regiments. Enlistments were set at five years for the cavalry, three for the infantry. Up to one thousand Indian scouts were authorized as needed on the frontier. Two cavalry and four infantry regiments were to be composed of black enlisted men and white officers, and wounded officers and soldiers were to make up four infantry regiments known as the Veteran Reserve Corps.7

  Cavalry regiments numbered twelve companies (or troops) each, artillery regiments twelve companies (or batteries) each, and infantry regiments ten companies. Each regiment was commanded by a colonel, backed by a lieutenant colonel. To permit a three-battalion (or squadron) employment, cavalry regiments rated three majors. So did artillery. The smaller infantry regiments had only one major. Companies were commanded by a captain, assisted by a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant.8

  The War Department staff, as defined by the act of 1866, consisted of ten administrative and technical bureaus, officially called departments or corps: the Adjutant General’s Department, the medium of orders and commands and the custodian of records and archives; the Inspector General’s Department, charged with inspecting and reporting on the proficiency, discipline, and leadership of the Army, together with its arms, accouterments, clothing, quarters, and other matériel; the Judge Advocate General’s Department (or Bureau of Military Justice), reviewing authority for military courts and source of legal advice for the Secretary of War; the Quartermaster’s Department, responsible for barracks and quarters, transportation of personnel and matériel, and procurement and distribution of most classes of supplies; the Subsistence Department, responsible for the content, procurement, and distribution of rations; the Medical Department, custodian of the health and hygiene of the army; the Pay Department, whose paymasters traveled endlessly to distribute the soldiers’ wages; the Corps of Engineers, charged with mapping and construction; the Ordnance Department, responsible for testing, selecting, procuring or manufacturing, and distributing arms, ammunition, and all related accouterments and equipment; and the Signal Corps, the infant service concerned with communication, particularly flags, torches, and telegraph.9

  The army line would be led in part by regular officers and in part by former volunteer officers given regular army appointments.10 A separate act had revived the grade of general, dormant since George Washington’s death.11 Grant sewed on four stars, while his three as lieutenant general fell to Sherman. The army act provided, in addition, for five major generals and ten brigadier generals of the line. The staff departments were to be headed by brigadier generals, but the Inspector General and the Chief Signal Officer were to be colonels.

  The law did not specify a numerical strength for the army but instead incorporated the principle of expansible units fathered by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun nearly half a century earlier. Companies could be varied from 50 to 100 privates at the President’s discretion. When the War Department fixed company strength at 64 privates, the total paper strength of the army, both staff and line, thus became 54,302 officers and enlisted men.

  An army of 54,000 seemed much more responsive to western needs than the prewar army of 18,000. Now, however, the opening of new areas to settlement and the launching of the transcontinental railroad had dramatically enlarged western needs. Now, too, Reconstruction duties would absorb up to one-third of available manpower. In 1867 the President offset some of the negative consequences of these factors by authorizing one hundred privates to companies on the frontier. This permitted a peak strength of 56,815 in September 1867.12 But thereafter erosion set in.

  In the officer corps, the problem was not to recruit but to sort out competing claims for the limited vacancies. Regular officers who had held high rank in the Volunteers reverted to their regular grades or scrambled for higher ones in the new regiments. Volunteers aspiring to a regular army career applied for the vacancies apportioned them by the army act. Generals became colonels, majors, and sometimes even captains, while colonels
and majors found themselves lieutenants.

  All contended for the brevet grades being generously doled out in recognition of wartime services. Rare was the veteran who could not boast brevets several levels above actual rank; most of the regimental commanders, colonel by actual rank, could be addressed as general, and not a few company commanders, captain by actual rank, cherished brevets of colonel or even general. Brevet appointments were not mere empty honors. Officers could be assigned to commands according to brevet rank. And in the first few years after the war they received such assignments with a frequency that amounted to abuse and that finally called forth reform.13

  In the quest for preferment, whether regular or brevet, candidates marshalled support wherever it could be found, and appointments owed as much to influence of highly placed friends, military or political, as to the professional qualifications of the appointee.

  Meanwhile, a new system of geographical commands, similar to the prewar system, was organized. The West fell into two military divisions, separated roughly by the continental divide. Sherman, now lieutenant general, headed the Division of the Missouri from his St. Louis headquarters, while Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck—“Old Brains”—commanded the Division of the Pacific from San Francisco.

  The divisions in turn were divided into military departments. In the Division of the Missouri, General Sherman judged the huge plains department run by Gen. John Pope for almost a year to be too unwieldly and broke it into three departments. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock took over the Department of the Missouri (Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico), Bvt. Maj. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke the Department of the Platte (Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and part of Dakota and Montana), and Bvt. Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry the Department of Dakota (Minnesota and the rest of Dakota and Montana). Indian Territory also came within Sherman’s division as part of the Department of Arkansas, commanded by Bvt. Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord. Texas, where Reconstruction was to overshadow frontier defense for several years, fell within the Department of the Gulf, which was not part of Sherman’s division. In Halleck’s Pacific Division, Bvt. Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell headed the Department of California (California, Nevada, and Arizona) and Bvt. Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele the Department of the Columbia (Oregon, Washington, and Idaho).14