Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  28. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army, p. 463. House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 384, p. 279. A competent biography of Canby (which, however, does not advance this thesis) is Max L. Heyman, Jr., Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E. R. S. Canby, 1817—1873 (Glendale, Calif., 1959).

  29. Military orders and correspondence covering these events are in House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 122, pp. 32–36, 179–81.

  30. In addition to the followers of Captain Jack and Hooker Jim, the lava beds sheltered the Hot Creek band of Shacknasty Jim. These people had sought to remain neutral. En route to the Klamath Reservation, however, they learned of a lynch party being organized by Linkville citizens inflamed by the Tule Lake killings and stampeded to the lava beds. Murray, pp. 97–100.

  31. The military buildup involved three batteries of the Fourth Artillery serving as infantry, two companies of the Twelfth Infantry, another of the Twenty-first, and another of the First Cavalry.

  32. April 13, 1873, in House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 122, p. 77.

  33. For the army, the tragedy was magnified by the prominence of the officers. Captain Thomas was the son of Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General of the Army from 1861 to 1869. Lt. Thomas F. Wright was the son of Gen. George Wright, for a decade the army’s most distinguished indian fighter on the Pacific Coast, who had drowned in a shipwreck in 1865. Lt. Albion Howe’s father, Bvt. Maj. Gen. Albion P. Howe, was currently major of his son’s regiment, the Fourth Artillery.

  34. May 4, 1873, House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 122, pp. 83–84.

  35. June 7, 1873, p. 85.

  36. Davis seized this occasion, with the scattering of the cavalry, to send Colonel Gillem back to San Francisco. At the same time, in a gesture of exoneration, he summoned Colonel Wheaton back to the front. The force now consisted of five troops of the First Cavalry, two companies of the Twelfth Infantry, five of the Twenty-first Infantry, and six batteries of the Fourth Artillery, for a total of 985 Regulars and 70 Warm Springs Indian scouts.

  37. Annual report, Nov. 1, 1873, House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 122, p. 110.

  38. Ibid., p. 111.

  39. Ibid. Perry recounts the surrender in Brady, p. 304. See also Army and Navy Journal, 12 (Jan. 23, 1875), 375–79.

  40. Sherman Papers, vol. 35, LC.

  41. To Belknap, June 3; to Schofield, June 3. House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 122, pp. 84–86.

  42. The six were Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, Boston Charley, Barncho, and Sloluck. The proceedings of the commission, including testimony by the defendents, are an important source document. Ibid., pp. 133–83

  43. Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West, pp. 300–3. Fritz, The Movement for Indian Assimilation, pp. 170–71.

  44. Quoted in Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 157.

  45. This phase of history is well documented and set forth in several excellent secondary works: Nye, Carbine and Lance, chaps. 6–9; Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, chaps. 16–17; Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, pp. 323–71; Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa, pp. 188—210, 326–38; Leckie, The Military Conquest of the Southern Plains, chaps. 6–8; Berthrong, The Southern Cheyennes, chaps. 14–15; Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, chaps. 3–5. Important primary sources are Wallace, ed., Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1871–1873 (Lubbock, Tex., 1967); Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie; Lawrie Tatum, Our Red Brothers and the Peace Policy of President Ulysses S. Grant (Philadelphia, Pa., 1899); Thomas C. Battey, The Life and Adventures of a Quaker among the Indians (Boston, 1903); Richard H. Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867–1904, ed. Robert M. Utley (New Haven, Conn., 1964), chaps. 5–6.

  46. Leckie, Buffalo Soldiers, p. 54. SW, Annual Report (1870), p. 9. See Leckie, pp. 7–8, for a sketch of Grierson. A music teacher in Illinois at the outbreak of the Civil War, Grierson rose rapidly in the volunteer service and won fame for “Grierson’s Raid” through Mississippi in 1863. His volunteer origins, his lax habits of administration and discipline, and his association with a black regiment contributed to his unpopularity in the Regular Army.

  47. Grant, Memoirs, p. 583.

  48. Besides Wallace, Mackenzie’s character emerges sharply in the following: Carter; Parker, Old Army Memories; Crane, Colonel of Infantry; J. H. Dorst, “Ranald Slidell Mackenzie,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, 10 (1897), 367–82.

  49. Thian, Military Geography of the United States, pp. 99–100. GO 66, War Dept., Nov. 1, 1871, in Joe F. Taylor, ed., The Indian Campaign on the Staked Plains, 1874—1875: Military Correspondence from War Department Adjutant General’s Office File 2815–1874 (Canyon, Tex., 1962), pp. 7–8.

  50. Principal sources for the Jacksboro affair are Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 123–47; Carter, pp. 75–104; Tatum, pp. 115–21; Pratt, pp. 42–48. Sherman’s letters during his trip and extracts from Marcy’s journal are in the Sherman Papers, LC. See also Sherman’s account in House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 395, pp. 270–75. An assessment of the importance of this affair is C. C. Rister, “The Significance of the Jacksboro Indian Affair of 1871,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 29 (1926), 181–200.

  51. CIA, Annual Report (1872), p. 228.

  52. J. Evetts Haley, “The Comanchero Trade,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 38 (1934–35)) 157–76. Charles L. Kenner, A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations (Norman, Okla., 1969).

  53. For Mackenzie’s operations, see especially Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, chaps. 3–5; Wallace ed., Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1871–1873, pp. 36–158; Carter; and W. A. Thompson, “Scouting with Mackenzie,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, 10 (1897), 429–33.

  54. E. Douglas Branch, The Hunting of the Buffalo (New York and London, 1929), p. 169.

  55. These causes are summarized in Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 187–88.

  56. Berthrong, p. 387, summarizes causes of Cheyenne hostility.

  57. CIA, Annual Report (1874), pp. 214–15, 219–22, 232–34. SW, Annual Report (1874), pp. 30, 40. For Adobe Walls, see Rupert N. Richardson, “The Comanche Indians at the Adobe Walls Fight,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, 4 (1931), 24–38; and Nye, Bad. Medicine and Good, chap. 30. Lost Valley is ably chronicled in Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 192–200.

  58. Taylor, ed., pp. 10–12. CIA, Annual Report (1874), pp. 9–10.

  The Red River War, 1874–75

  GENERAL SHERIDAN’S strategy for meeting the Red River uprising closely paralleled his campaign plan of 1868—69, with the important exception that operations were being launched in the summer rather than the winter. Columns would converge from several directions on the Indian haunts in the Texas Panhandle and so wear down the fugitives that they would hasten back to their agencies and submit. Sheridan is generally credited with elaborating this concept into the comprehensive master plan by which the southern Plains tribes were conquered for all time. Instead, it seems to have unfolded mainly under the direction of the two department commanders whose jurisdictions were affected, and without much coordination between them or guidance from above. These were General Augur, commanding Texas and part of Indian Territory, and General Pope, commanding Kansas, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Indian Territory.

  John Pope had commanded the Department of the Missouri from his Fort Leavenworth headquarters for four years. In more than a decade as a top frontier commander, he had shown himself to be an able administrator and a thoughtful if prolix commentator on the Indian problem in both its military and civil aspects. Yet few officers got along well with Pope. The shattering humiliation of Second Manassas in 1862 had tempered his bombast but not his pomposity or vanity. Moreover, the bitter controversy set off by that mismanaged battle, kept painfully alive by Gen. Fitz John Porter’s continuing effort to win vindication, ma
de Pope belligerently sensitive to the slightest implication of criticism. Friction with subordinates and superiors alike inevitably resulted.1

  Command of Pope’s main column fell to an even more temperamental officer. Young, handsome, the proud bearer of an extraordinary war record, happily teamed with an attractive wife whose uncles were General Sherman and Senator Sherman, Col. Nelson A. Miles was destined to become one of a small handful of successful Indian-fighting generals. He was no better liked than Pope. A powerful ambition almost unlimited in its ends as well as in its means spurred him time and again to solid achievement. It also drove him to disparage the achievements and abilities of others, to share laurels with bad grace, and to exploit every influence to advance his fortunes. Coloring the ambition was an acute defensiveness over his lack of formal military education; he had learned by self-study and experience and had risen by merit from the lowly status of Boston crockery clerk to major general and corps commander. The Red River War offered Miles, now colonel of the Fifth Infantry, his first postwar opportunity for distinction.2

  Miles’ command consisted of eight troops of the Sixth Cavalry and four companies of his own Fifth Infantry. Orders of July 27, 1874, from Pope’s headquarters directed these units to rendezvous at Fort Dodge, Kansas, and to operate southward into Indian Territory as Custer had done in 1868. The same orders started a concentration of Eighth Cavalry units in New Mexico to operate eastward, down the Canadian, as had Major Evans in 1868. Ultimately, the New Mexico column consisted of four troops of the Eighth, about 225 officers and enlisted men, under Maj. William R. Price.3

  With Miles and Price striking from north and west, General Augur planned to send three columns against the target area from the south and east. At Sheridan’s suggestion, he moved Colonel Mackenzie and eight troops of the Fourth Cavalry from the Mexican border to Fort Concho. Mackenzie would maneuver from a supply base manned by infantry on the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos. A second column, led by Lt. Col. George P. Buell, Eleventh Infantry, would operate slightly to the north of Mackenzie. The third column would move directly west from Fort Sill under Lt. Col. John W. Davidson, Tenth Cavalry.4 “Black Jack” Davidson had replaced Grierson as Fort Sill comtnander early in 1873. A tough old veteran of the prewar frontier, he applied a discipline as harsh as Grierson’s was lenient. Occasional fits of strange behavior were widely attributed to the lingering effects of sunstroke.5

  In August 1874 Davidson had more immediate concerns than preparing for a campaign on the Staked Plains. As usual on the verge of an offensive, an effort had to be made to separate friendly from hostile Indians. Friendlies were to be enrolled at the agencies and accounted for often enough to ensure their continued neutrality. At Fort Sill the task fell to Davidson, at Darlington to Lt. Col. Thomas H. Neill, Sixth Cavalry, whom Pope had sent with four infantry companies and a cavalry troop to guard the agency. For Neill and Agent Miles, enrollment presented no difficulty. Almost all the Arapahoes submitted quietly, while almost all the Cheyennes remained defiantly absent. At Fort Sill, however, the enrollment was characterized by conflict between Davidson and Agent Haworth, by great excitement among the Kiowas, and by a final tally that included both Kiowas and Comanches of dubious neutrality.

  A handful of Comanche chiefs, veterans of Adobe Walls, asked to sign up after the rolls had been closed. Davidson refused. Big Red Food then led his Nakoni Comanche band to Anadarko, agency for the Wichita and confederated tribes on the Washita River thirty miles north of Fort Sill. Lone Wolf and the Kiowa war faction, most of whom had been enrolled, were camped near here too. The agent saw trouble coming and sent to Fort Sill for help. Davidson and four troops of the Tenth Cavalry arrived on August 22. A demand for the Comanches to lay down their arms and surrender as prisoners of war set off a wild melee in which soldiers and Indians—Kiowas as well as Comanches—exchanged long-range fire for two days. Neither side suffered much damage, but a sizeable force of warriors marked themselves as hostiles.6

  In military eyes, the Anadarko affair cleansed the rolls and produced a more satisfactory division between the combatant and non-combatant elements of the Kiowa and Comanche tribes. It also stampeded some of the enrollees at Fort Sill, but many of these did not flee to the hostile camps and drifted back to the agency during September. By late August, then, the enemy consisted of some 1,800 Cheyennes, 2,000 Comanches, and 1,000 Kiowas, mounting in all perhaps 1,200 fighting men. They moved in large encampments among the twisted breaks surrounding the headwaters of the Washita and the various forks of the Red, in the Texas Panhandle. Toward this area the columns of Miles and Price marched during the final days of August 1874.

  A drouth of unusual severity afflicted the southern Plains. Temperatures soared to 110 degrees and above. Water was scarce and bitterly alkaline. A devastating locust plague, darkening the skies and blanketing the prairies, laid the earth bare of vegetation. Soldiers, Indians, and their animals suffered acutely. At one point Miles’ men opened the veins of their arms and moistened their lips with their own blood.

  South from the Canadian the troops plodded, 744 strong.7 On August 30, as they approached the Staked Plains escarpment, about 200 Cheyenne warriors burst from concealment at the base of the caprock and charged the advance guard. Miles deployed his infantry in the center and a cavalry squadron on each flank. (“Forward,” shouted Capt. Adna R. Chaffee to his troop. “If any man is killed I will make him a corporal.”) For five hours, over twelve miles, the troops drove the warrior force, swollen to nearly 600 by accessions of Comanches and Kiowas, from one line of hills to another. At each point of resistance, Gatling guns and howitzers opened fire and cavalry and infantry charged. Demoralized, the Indians fell back to new positions along the slopes of Tule Canyon. These, too, the troops carried, flushing the adversaries on to the Staked Plains beyond. Miles now had a large portion of the hostiles in his front, but he had exhausted his supplies and could go no farther. Destroying the villages and other property abandoned by the Indians, he turned back on his trail to replenish his provisions.

  On September 7, while Miles tarried on the Prairie Dog Town Fork, the drouth ended abruptly. Storms swept the plains, dropping temperatures, filling streams, and turning the barren prairie into mud. Also on September 7 Miles connected with Major Price and his Eighth Cavalry squadron from New Mexico. Following separate routes, the two columns slogged painfully northward in search of desperately needed supplies. The Indians, also soaked by the storms, long remembered the next few weeks as “The Wrinkled-Hand Chase.”

  As Miles hastened northward to avert a supply crisis, he discovered his supply line suddenly infested with Indians. They were Kiowas and Comanches who had fled westward after the collision with Colonel Davidson at Anadarko and were now searching for the main body of hostiles on the Staked Plains. Among them were Lone Wolf, Mamanti, Satanta, Big Tree, and other noted war leaders. On September 9 about 250 warriors from these bands swooped down on Miles’ supply train, 36 wagons escorted by a company of the Fifth Infantry and a detachment of the Sixth Cavalry under Capt. Wyllys Lyman. For three days, near the Washita, the warriors kept the train under close siege. A scout slipped out and rode to Camp Supply for help. On the twelfth, as a cold rain drenched the battlefield, the Indians drew off.

  This movement was prompted by Major Price approaching from the south in search of his own supply train. As the rain clouds lifted about noon on the twelfth, Price discovered a large force of Indians moving westward across his front. About 150 warriors drew up on a ridge to cover the flight of the women and children. For three hours, over a distance of six or seven miles, the two sides skirmished before the warriors, their families now safe, scattered.

  The next day, as Price’s men paused for lunch, a lone white man made his way on foot into the lines. He was Billy Dixon, a scout for Miles. He told how he and Scout Amos Chapman, accompanied by four cavalrymen, had been carrying dispatches for Miles to Camp Supply. Approaching the Washita on the morning of the twelfth, they had been attacked by about 100
warriors (withdrawing from the Lyman fight) and had sought cover in a shallow buffalo wallow. Four of the six took severe wounds, but all. day they held off the circling Indians. The day’s rain, coupled with sinking temperatures, prompted the Indians to give up the contest. The battered defenders shivered through the night in their muddy, blood-tinted hole. One died. Price provided medical care and sent back to Miles’ command for an ambulance, which arrived that night.8

  The events of September 9–14 unsettled the Anadarko fugitives. If military estimates are accurate, they had lost twenty to thirty fighting men in the skirmishes with Lyman, Price, and the buffalo wallow defenders. Rain, cold, hunger, worn-out ponies, and swarming bluecoats dampened the war spirit. Woman’s Heart led some of the Kiowas, thirty-five men with their families, back to the reservation. Apprehensive of Fort Sill, the at the Darlington Agency early in October. Colonel Neill was astonished to find among them Satanta and Big Tree, who earnestly declared themselves guilty of no offense greater than a “momentary panic” triggered by the Anadarko affair.

  The rest of the Kiowas and Comanches who had tangled with Lyman and Price safely evaded the troops and moved southwest in search of the main body of hostiles. Unable to pursue, Miles fumed over the supply problems that had pulled him back when almost upon the Indians and that now immobilized him on the Canadian. What especially galled him was a fear that one of the other columns advancing on the Staked Plains would find the Indians and reap the glory that logistical troubles had denied him after the action of August 30. Davidson posed no threat. Leaving Fort Sill on September 10, he had scouted Sweetwater and McClellan creeks and had probed the hills along the caprock; but on September 29, his supplies giving out, he turned back toward Fort Sill. Buell, too, seemed unlikely competition. Also organizing at Fort Sill, he did not take the field until September 24. Five days later, as Davidson marched for Sill, Buell laid out a base camp near the mouth of the Salt Fork of Red River.9 By then, Miles’ worst fears had been realized. The aggressive Mackenzie had struck.