Frontier Regulars
Page 19
The war had been in progress for two months when the peace commission convened in Chicago on October 7, 1868. All were present except Senator Henderson, and General Grant, now Republican candidate for President, sat in on the meeting. For a time the seeming success of the commission had softened Sherman’s opinion of the “peace doctrine.” Now the Cheyenne outbreak stiffened his attitude and also made it politically more marketable. The two-day meeting was a heated struggle between Sherman on the one hand and Taylor and Tappan on the other. Sherman, commanding the votes of Harney, Terry, and Augur, won on every issue. The resolutions, made public on October 9, called for abrogating the provision of the Medicine Lodge treaties permitting the Indians to hunt outside the reservation boundaries and for using military force to compel them to move to their new homes. On larger policy matters, the resolutions urged that the government no longer recognize Indian tribes as “domestic dependent nations” and that, consistent with existing treaties, all Indians be held individually subject to U.S. laws. And finally, the Indian Bureau ought to be transferred to the War Department.27
With this resounding affirmation of a forceful Indian policy, the peace commission adjourned, never to meet again. The Red Cloud problem had not been finally mastered at this time, and the southern Plains tribes with which peace had been concluded were now once more at war. The peace commission was, therefore, widely viewed as a failure. Yet it left a legacy of large consequence. Some of the fundamental principles of its January report persisted in the thinking of policy makers and formed the bedrock of President Grant’s celebrated Peace Policy. Concentration, education, “civilization,” and agricultural self-support would all be major features of that policy. But the principle of force planted in the October record of the peace commission by Sherman and his colleagues would also emerge as a feature of Grant’s policy. As stated by Sherman in his annual report for 1868, the true concentration policy involved a “double process of peace within their reservations and war without.”28 Whether Commissioner Taylor and his associates in Washington liked it or not, this was the policy Sherman’s columns were even then applying in the war that had flared on the Saline and Solomon in August.
NOTES
1. Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West, p. 160.
2. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 57–60, 87–88, 111–14.
3. For analyses of the concentration policy, see Loring B. Priest, Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren: The Reformation of United States Indian Policy, 1865–1887 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1942), chap. 1; and Henry E. Fritz, The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860–1890 (Philadelphia, 1963), chap. 3.
4. SW, Annual Report (1866), p. 20. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 17–18. House Ex. Docs., 39th Cong., 2d sess., No. 71, pp. 12–13.
5. The Senate apparently withheld confirmation of Bogy as part of the conflict building between Congress and President Johnson. Secretary Browning regarded it as a calamity. He urged Henry H. Sibley of Minnesota as Bogy’s successor but had to defer to the President’s insistence on Taylor, whom he viewed as unqualified. “I now have a Methodist preacher at the head of the Bureau,” he wrote. “I will do the best I can with him.” The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2, 136 (March 12, 1867), 141 (April 1).
6. Sanborn, May 18, 1867, and Buford, June 6, Senate Ex, Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 57–60, 111–14.
7. In a lengthy policy analysis, July 1, 1867, replying to General Buford’s letter of June 6, SW, Annual Report (1867), p. 67.
8. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, pp. 1–6.
9. 15 Stat. 17–18 (July 20, 1867). For the debates on S. 136, see Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 655 (July 15, 1867), 667–73 (July 16), 678–90 (July 17), 702–15 (July 18), 753–57 (July 20).
10. From Fort McPherson, July 17, Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 1st sess., No. 13, p. 121.
11. Harney had been brought out of retirement to help negotiate the Little Arkansas treaties of 1865 and now was again tapped for a peace mission. The Sioux had three names for Harney that summarize his prewar reputation as an Indian-fighter: “The Butcher,” “The Hornet,” and “The Big Chief Who Swears.” Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, p. 119.
12. For excellent character sketches of the commissioners see Army and Navy Journal, 5 (Dec. 7, 1867), 251.
13. Omaha Weekly Herald, Aug. 22, 1867, quoted in Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, p. 63 n.
14. The peace commission report, Jan. 7, 1868, is in House Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 2d sess., No. 97, and is also printed in CIA, Annual Report (1868), pp. 26–50. For a detailed account of the commission’s activities, see Douglas C. Jones, The Treaty of Medicine Lodge: The Story of the Great Treaty Council as Told by Eyewitnesses (Norman, Okla., 1966). Sherman was brought to Washington as a move in President Johnson’s battle with Congressional Radicals over Reconstruction policy. The War Department had become a battleground of the conflict, and Johnson, unable to win Grant to his cause, hoped to make Sherman Secretary of War. Sherman declined to take sides or in any way compromise his relations with Grant. Athearn, p. 183. Rachel Sherman Thorndike, ed., The Sherman Letters: Correspondence between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891 (New York, 1894), pp. 296–300.
15. In addition to sources cited in n. 14, see Berthrong, The Southern Cheyennes, pp. 289–300; Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa, pp. 183–86; Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, pp. 105–12; and Hyde, Life of George Bent, pp. 281–85.
16. The treaties are in Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 2, 977–89. These treaties were signed by a more representative group of chiefs than most. Among the Kiowas were Satank, Satanta, Kicking Bird, Woman’s Heart, and Stumbling Bear. Comanches included Ten Bears, Tosawi (Silver Brooch), Horse’s Back, and Iron Mountain. Important Cheyennes included Bull Bear, Black Kettle, Spotted Elk, Gray Beard, and Tall Bull. Little Raven and Storm were among the Arapahoes.
17. The full text of Grant’s order is in Olson, pp. 71–72.
18. Ibid., pp. 62, 70–72. Athearn, p. 198. SW, Annual Report (1867), pp. 58–59, 65–66; (1868), pp. 3, 23.
19. The text is in Kappler, a, 998–1007. The unceded territory was defined as “north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains.” The eastern boundary, of course, coincided with the western boundary of the reservation, but no northern limits were set.
20. For the activities at Fort Laramie, see Olson, pp. 71–78. For DeSmet’s activities, see Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux (2d ed., Norman, Okla., 1957), chap. 15. There is confusion in the records over whether Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse signed on May 25 or later, when Red Cloud finally signed. See Olson, p. 75 n., 79 n.
21. Olson, pp. 75–82. SW, Annual Report (1868), pp. 22–23, 30–31. For a firsthand account of the withdrawal from the Bozeman Trail forts, see Mattes, Indians, Infants, and Infantry, pp. 163–71.
22. CIA, Annual Report (1868), pp. 52–62.
23. 15 Stat. 222 (July 27, 1868). For the debates see Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 2614–21, 2637–43, 2682–86, 2707–12 (May 27–30, 1868), 4271–75, 4303–6 (July 21, 1868). Rep. Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, led the opposition to turning the funds over to the Indian Bureau and, as senior House manager on the conference committee, substituted the provision for its expenditure by Sherman. See debates above cited and Athearn, pp. 209–10. The United States Indian Commission of New York, a citizens’ pressure group boasting a galaxy of big-name philanthropists, took credit for originating the formula and inducing Butler to promote it. CIA, Annual Report (1869), pp. 7 95–96-Mardock, The Reformers and the American Indian, pp. 34–35.
24. SW, Annual Report (1868), pp. 8–9.
25. House Misc. Docs., 41st Cong., 2d sess., No. 139, pp. 1–8. Senate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 3d sess., No. 13, pp. 2–9, 16–17, 30. CIA, Annual Report (1868), pp. 64–66. Berthrong, pp. 299–305.
26. Se
nate Ex. Docs., 40th Cong., 3d sess., No. 13, pp. 18–20. SW, Annual Report (1868), pp. 10–16. Berthrong, pp. 305–6. Leckie, Military Conquest of the Southern Plains, pp. 71–72. Nye, pp. 119–20. P. H. Sheridan, Record of Engagements with Hostile Indians within the Military Division of the Missouri from 1868 to 1882 (Washington, D.C., 1882), pp. 7–8, in Joseph P. Peters, comp., Indian Battles and Skirmishes on the American Frontier, 1790–1898 (New York, 1966).
27. The resolutions are in CIA, Annual Report (1868), pp. 271–72. See also Athearn, pp. 226–28.
28. SW, Annual Report (1868), p. 1.
Operations on the Southern Plains, 1868–69
GENERAL HANCOCK WAS NOT THE ONLY OFFICER whose actions in 1867 embarrassed the Johnson Administration. Harshly applying the new Reconstruction Laws in Louisiana, the commanding general of the Fifth Military District had gratified Congressional Radicals, but infuriated President Johnson. In August 1867 orders originated with the President for the two generals to exchange commands.1
Maj. Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan lacked the gentlemanly polish of Hancock. A short, stout Irishman with piercing eyes and black mustache, thirty-six and a bachelor, he combined pugnacity in official intercourse with reserve in all but intimate social intercourse. In the latter he could be witty and fun-loving. An English nobleman found him “a delightful man, with the one peculiarity of using the most astounding swear words quite calmly and dispassionately in ordinary conversation.”2 Scarcely less revered by his troops than Sherman, “Little Phil” was a brilliant combat leader, attentive to the wants of his men and in a fight always in the front. He gloried in a Civil War record that left him excelled in popular affection only by Grant and Sherman. Alert, observant, and energetic, he owed his repeated battlefield triumphs, thought a West Point classmate, to audacity coupled with “a perfect indifference as to how many of his men were killed if he only carried his point.”3 He identified the objective and went for it by the most direct means and without much respect for the conventions of “civilized” warfare. With Sherman, he subscribed to the doctrine of total war—of subjecting a whole enemy population to the horrors of war and thereby undermining the will to resist.4
William Tecumseh Sherman headed the army from 1869 to 1883. A public posture of heroic proportions and a powerful personality overcame the limitations on the commanding general’s authority and gave him an influence that made the army distinctively “Sherman’s Own” even after his term of office. (National Archives)
Lt. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan commanded the Division of the Missouri from headquarters in Chicago from 1869 to 1883, then succeeded Sherman as commanding general of the army. A tough-minded realist with emphatic opinions and elastic ethics, he administered the vast Great Plains region during the final years of warfare with the buffalo-hunting tribes. He is shown here with some of his favorite officers at Topeka, Kansas, in 1872. Seated left to right: Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Seventh Cavalry; Sheridan; Maj. Nelson B. Sweitzer, Second Cavalry; Lt. Col. James W. Forsyth, aide-de-camp. Standing left to right: Lt. Col. George A. Forsyth, military secretary; Maj. Morris J. Asch, surgeon; Lt. Col. Michael V. Sheridan, aide-de-camp and brother of General Sheridan. (National Park Service, Custer Battlefield National Monument)
While the cavalry sought out the enemy, the “web-feet” of the infantry had to content themselves with such unglamorous tasks as guarding supply bases and escorting wagon trains, as depicted here by Frederic Remington. (Denver Public Library Western Collection)
Frederic Remington’s
The Trooper
Prussian influence replaced French in dress uniforms adopted in 1871. On the left, H. Charles McBarron represents a signal sergeant, cavalry officer, and enlisted troopers of one of the black regiments. (Department of the Army) Below, in undress and fatigue uniforms, the kepi headgear still reflected the French model. This is a company of the Third Infantry at Fort Meade, South Dakota, in 1890. (Library of Congress) On the opposite page, campaign attire remained serviceable and highly individual, as Frederic Remington suggests in these two drawings from Century Magazine.
On the plains, where Indians rarely attacked a military installation, the typical fort was not the log stockade usually depicted in motion pictures. It consisted instead of barracks, officers’ quarters, and utility buildings grouped around a parade ground. Above is Fort Custer, Montana, and left is Fort Davis, Texas, both shown in the middle 1880s. (National Archives and National Park Service)
Leaders of the Kiowa war faction, Satanta (above), Satank (top right), and Big Tree (bottom right) were arrested at Fort Sill in 1871 after a dramatic confrontation with General Sherman. Satank was shot down while trying to escape, but Satanta and Big Tree served time in the Texas penitentiary. Released, they resumed old habits and, after the Red River War of 1874–75, were again sent to prison. All three were photographed at Fort Sill in 1870 by William S. Soule. (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology)
Capt. William J. Fetterman discovered that eighty men could not, as he had boasted, ride through the entire Sioux nation. Montana artist Charles M. Russell depicts the annihilation of Fetterman’s command near Fort Phil Kearny on December 21, 1866. (Whitney Gallery of Western Art, Cody, Wyoming)
Group of Oglala Sioux warriors at Pine Ridge Agency, 1892. (Smithsonian Institution)
Typical village of the Plains tribes. This is Sitting Bull’s camp on the Missouri-River near Fort Yates, Dakota, about 1883. (Denver Public Library Western Collection)
From “Captain Jack’s Stronghold” in the heart of northern California’s rugged lava beds, a handful of Indians held off a besieging army in the Modoc War of 1872–73. Here pickets watch for enemy movements. (National Archives)
Edward R. S. Canby. His assassination during a peace conference with Modocs in 1873 made him the only regular general killed by Indians in U.S. history. (Library of Congress)
In these scenes Frederic Remington portrayed closing episodes of the Nez Perce flight from Idaho across Montana to within fifty miles of sanctuary in Canada. Fighting Over the Captured Herd (above) represents one phase of the Battle of Bear Paw Mountain, September 30, 1877. The Surrender of Chief Joseph (below) depicts the dramatic moment when, facing Colonel Miles, the Nez Perce leader uttered the memorable words, “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.” (National Archives)
With unostentatious but superior competence, Brig. Gen. Christopher C. Augur commanded the Department of the Platte (1867–71), Department of Texas (1872–75)1 and Department of the Missouri (1881—83). (National Archives)
John Pope was a controversialist and never used one word where ten would do, but he proved to be a capable administrator as commander of the Department of the Missouri from 1870 to 1883. (National Archives)
Alfred H. Terry. Long-time commander of the Department of Dakota, Terry is best remembered as Custer’s superior in the Little Bighorn campaign of 1876. He spoke several languages, appreciated art and literature, studied for the law but did so well as a volunteer general that he earned a star in the postwar Regular Army. Wealthy, a bachelor, he enjoyed wide respect and affection in the Army. (National Park Service, Custer Battlefield National Monument)
Oliver Otis Howard. The one-armed “praying general” inflicted sermons and hymns on garrisons he inspected, but the Indian’s religion eluded his comprehension. He made peace with Cochise in 1872 and pursued Chief Joseph across Idaho and Montana in 1877. (Oregon Historical Society)
Sheridan and his military colleagues viewed the Cheyenne raids of August 1868 as the basest kind of perfidy.5 Top officials of the Indian Bureau, usually quick to explain an outbreak in terms of military provocation, conceded that the government had met its commitments under the Medicine Lodge treaties and had given no just cause for offense.6 Only Agent Wynkoop excused the Cheyennes, stoutly maintaining that the war found its origins in the failure of Congress to appropriate funds for liberal food issues and in the decision to withhold arms and ammunition.7
The tr
uth is that, despite the sincere professions of peace chiefs such as Black Kettle, most Cheyennes were not ready to abide by the white man’s rules. They had only the dimmest understanding of the contents of the Medicine Lodge treaties—in fact were concerned with treaties and treaty councils mainly as a means of getting presents, especially arms and ammunition. Although not averse to receiving annuity issues on the reservation, or even to living there during the hard winter months, few were prepared to settle permanently within arbitrary lines marked out by the white man.8 Also, they were no less reconciled in 1868 than in 1867 to yielding the buffalo ranges of western Kansas. Further aggravating this resentment, the railroad now approached the Colorado boundary, drawing fingers of settlement up the Smoky Hill, Solomon, Saline, and Republican valleys into the heart of the buffalo country.9 And finally, the innate raiding impulse of the Plains warrior had yet to be checked either by events or by the influence of the peace chiefs.
Thus, while the peace elements of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes crossed the Arkansas and headed south to escape the predictable military reaction to the August raids, many of their young men joined the war factions in the haunts of the perennially hostile Dog Soldiers to the north and west. In this country, too, roamed large numbers of Southern Brulés and Oglalas and Northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes, many from as far distant as the Powder River country. Perhaps numbering a thousand lodges, they drew supplies at Fort Laramie and at the Upper Platte Agency at North Platte, Nebraska.10 Besides helping their brethren fight the whites, they fueled the aggressive propensities of the southerners by pointing out that the whites might be made to give up the Smoky Hill by the same means that had brought them to abandon the Bozeman Trail.11 From August through October, raiders from these bands struck repeatedly at farms, ranches, way stations, and travelers in a broad swath extending from the Saline and Solomon settlements almost to Denver and Fort Lyon. Besides stealing countless heads of stock and other plunder, they killed seventy-nine settlers and wounded nine more.12