Frontier Regulars

by Robert M. Utley

  After Slim Buttes, the regiments were dispersed and the summer campaign of 1876 came to an unheroic conclusion. Fortitude and uncommon endurance had marked the effort to avenge Custer. Shrewd, resolute leadership, however, had been conspicuously lacking. The catastrophies of June 17 and 25 had imbued Terry and Crook with great caution. As a result, they idled away a month awaiting reinforcements while the Indians removed themselves to the east, then scattered. When the armies resumed operations, they were so large as to have virtually no chance of bringing the quarry to battle. In pronouncing judgment, however, one must recognize how profoundly the Little Bighorn affected the minds not only of Crook and Terry but of most of their officers as well.9 An enemy powerful enough to inflict so appalling a disaster seemed at the time to demand heavier armies than had yet been fielded. But once again the campaign demonstrated truths that so often eluded the frontier generals: heavy conventional columns rarely succeeded against the unconventional foe; the logistical requirements of provisioning so many men and horses so far from their bases usually turned such operations into exercises in self-preservation. “The fact of the case is,” General Sheridan confided to Sherman, “the operations of Generals Terry and Crook will not bear criticism, and my only thought has been to let them sleep. I approved what was done, for the sake of the troops, but in doing so, I was not approving much, as you know.”10

  A few hundred Indians slipped back to the agencies during the autumn, but most remained out. Indeed, considerably more Indians left the agencies to join the hostiles than came in to surrender. The Interior Department had acquiesced in military control of the agencies. Hundreds of soldiers—the bulk of the reinforcements sent in from other departments after the Custer disaster—guarded every agency. Reports circulated that the guns and ponies of the agency Indians would be confiscated. To avoid such a calamity, many Sioux and Cheyennes who had spent the summer at the agencies now headed for the hostile camps.

  Among the reinforcements forwarded to Camp Robinson were six troops of the Fourth Cavalry from Fort Sill under Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie. On October 23, as Crook watched, Mackenzie moved swiftly into positions around the camps of Red Cloud and Red Leaf, near Red Cloud Agency, and disarmed and dismounted the occupants. As the ultimate humiliation, Crook informed Red Cloud that the government now recognized Spotted Tail as chief of all the Sioux. At the same time, Terry dispatched Col. Samuel D. Sturgis and the Seventh Cavalry from Fort Lincoln to perform the same mission at the Missouri River agencies. At Standing Rock and Cheyenne River, Sturgis seized more than 2,000 ponies and assorted arms. The ponies were to be sold and cows bought for the Indians with the proceeds.11

  The agency Indians had received other unwelcome visitors that autumn, too—another Black Hills commission. Reacting to the Custer slaughter, Congress decreed, in the annual Indian appropriation act signed on August 15, that no further appropriations would be made for subsisting the Sioux until they had relinquished all claim to the unceded territory and to the Black Hills. A commission headed by George W. Manypenny, former Commissioner of Indian Affairs, came west in September and October to deliver the ultimatum. This year the young men who had wrecked the efforts of the Allison commission of 1875 were absent in the north. Also, this commission settled for the signatures of a few chiefs instead of three-fourths of adult males, as specified in the Treaty of 1868. Amid great confusion and misunderstanding, chiefs at Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and the Missouri River agencies placed their marks on the agreement. In exchange for continued issue of rations, the chiefs bound their tribes to give up the Black Hills and all hunting rights outside the newly defined Great Sioux Reservation.12

  On the Yellowstone River at the mouth of the Tongue, Colonel Miles had been left with his entire regiment, the Fifth Infantry, and Lieutenant Colonel Otis’ six companies of the Twenty-second Infantry. Also, two companies of the Seventeenth Infantry were to help stockpile supplies, then return to Dakota. Otis, with these two companies and four of his own regiment, occupied a camp on the north bank of the Yellowstone opposite the mouth of Glendive Creek. Through the autumn weeks Miles’ men erected huts for the winter at the Tongue River Cantonment site while Otis forwarded supplies unloaded at his camp from steamers unable to reach the Tongue because of low water.13

  Early in October, a large coalition of Hunkpapas, Miniconjous, and Sans Arcs under Sitting Bull, Gall, No Neck, Bull Eagle, Red Skirt, Pretty Bear, and others crossed the Yellowstone between Glendive Creek and Powder River. On October 11, and again on October 15 and 16, 400 to 600 warriors tried to block Otis’ trains between Glendive and the Tongue. Following some sharp skirmishing, emissaries of Sitting Bull parleyed with Otis under a flag of truce. Otis gave them some hard bread and bacon, and shortly afterward the warriors called off the attack.14

  Miles had learned of the Sioux movements and, concerned for the safety of the train, had moved down the Yellowstone with the entire Fifth Infantry, almost 500 strong. After meeting Otis on October 18, on Custer Creek, he marched swiftly to the northeast in search of Sitting Bull. Two days later the column overtook the Sioux near the head of Cedar Creek. An Indian appeared under a truce flag with word that Sitting Bull wanted to talk. On the twentieth and again on the twenty-first the two leaders, confronting each other between the lines, engaged in verbal sparring. Their respective demands—Sitting Bull that the whites get out of his country altogether, Miles that the Sioux give up and go to their agencies—admitted of no compromise. God Almighty had made him an Indian, declared Sitting Bull, and not an agency Indian either. Miles concluded, therefore, “that something more than talk would be required.”

  Breaking off negotiations, Miles drove the Indians from their camps and commenced a two-day running battle. The warriors fought back, firing the grass and counterattacking with a vigor that on one occasion forced their pursuers into a hollow square formation. But, even though outnumbered, the “walk-a-heaps” pushed the pursuit with a steady, well-disciplined persistence, while the artillery, skillfully served, kept the Sioux from pressing their forays too closely. The chase led down Bad Route Creek forty-two miles to the Yellowstone, which the fugitives crossed on October 24. In their flight they abandoned tons of meat, broken-down ponies and captured cavalry mounts, and camp equipage of all kinds.15

  On October 27 a handful of Miniconjou and Sans Arc chiefs conferred with Miles and professed readiness to surrender their people, some 2,000 in number. Miles could not feed this many Indians, so he retained five chiefs as a guarantee that the bands would go to Cheyenne River and surrender. About forty lodges, the immediate following of the five hostages, turned themselves in at the agency on November 30. The rest, however, moved up the Powder and joined the large Oglala and Cheyenne village of Crazy Horse.

  The Hunkpapas under Sitting Bull, Gall, and Pretty Bear had turned in the opposite direction, toward the Missouri, even before the “surrender” of the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs. Col. William B. Hazen and four companies of the Sixth Infantry steamed up the Missouri from Fort Buford to cut them off. At Fort Peck Agency, however, the resident Assinniboines and Yanktonais reported the hostiles, resting about twenty miles to the south, “on the last verge of destitution.” Sure they must soon give up, Hazen left one company at the agency and returned to Fort Buford.16

  Miles was less willing to leave the matter to Sioux discretion. He intended to keep his regiment in the field all winter if necessary to round up the hostiles. Winter clothing had been shipped upriver, and more was improvised. Pausing briefly at Tongue River Cantonment (held in his absence by two companies of the Twenty-second Infantry), Miles marched north again on November 5. For more than a month the Fifth Infantry, operating in three battalions, scoured the Missouri and its tributaries from the Musselshell to the Yellowstone. Blizzards pounded the columns. Temperatures dropped so low that the mercury froze in the thermometers. The battalions led by Miles and Capt. Simon Snyder marched 408 and 308 miles, respectively, before returning to the cantonment early in December. Lt. Frank Baldwin’s battal
ion came in on December 23 after a march of 716 miles. Baldwin had picked up Sitting Bull’s trail and skirmished with his warriors on December 7, then on the eighteenth had captured his camp of 122 lodges near the head of Redwater Creek and scattered the occupants.

  While Miles and his little regiment—never as strong as 500—chased Sitting Bull back and forth across half of Montana, General Crook was at Fort Fetterman assembling another huge army: eleven troops of cavalry from the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Regiments under Colonel Mackenzie and fifteen companies of infantry from the Fourth, Ninth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-fifth Regiments and the Fourth Artillery under Lt. Col. Richard I. Dodge. Four hundred Indian allies—Arapaho, Shoshoni, Bannock, Pawnee, and even Sioux and Cheyenne—went along. Almost 300 civilians manned 168 supply wagons and a pack train of 400 mules. Altogether, there were nearly 2,200 men.17

  Departing Fort Fetterman on November 14, the expedition moved up the old Bozeman Trail to abandoned Fort Reno, which had been temporarily reactivated as a forward supply base. Pausing here four days to let a blizzard spend itself, Crook resumed the march on November 22. The objective, once again, was Crazy Horse, thought to be somewhere near the site of the Rosebud battle of June 17. But a scout brought word of a large Cheyenne village in the Bighorn Mountains not far to the west. Crook ordered Mackenzie with ten cavalry troops and all the Indian scouts to find and attack this camp.

  In the misty dawn of November 25, Mackenzie’s 1,100 horsemen burst into the Cheyenne village of Dull Knife and Little Wolf, about 200 lodges clustered in a canyon of the Red Fork of Powder River. Driven from their tepees with little more than rifles and ammunition belts, the Cheyenne warriors, about 400 in number, herded their families up the bluffs, then took positions among boulders and ravines on the slopes overlooking the camp. Some held one end of the village. A deadly fire kept the soldiers and Indian scouts off balance. In savage fighting, sometimes at point-blank range and even involving hand-to-hand combat, the two sides contended for the village. The Indian scouts fought fiercely and indeed bore the brunt of the battle. By mid-afternoon the village was secured and the battle lapsed into sporadic, long-range firing. Soldiers and Indian allies burned the tepees and their contents of meat, clothing, utensils, ammunition, arts and crafts and other finery, and herded 700 captured ponies. Military equipment bearing Seventh Cavalry markings, including a guidon made into a pillow case, testified to the Cheyenne role in the Little Bighorn.

  Mackenzie had paid for his victory—an officer and five enlisted men killed and twenty-six wounded. The Cheyennes left thirty dead on the field and later admitted to a total loss of forty killed. But their real loss was the food, clothing, and shelter destroyed by Mackenzie. With only such possessions as they had carried from their beds when attacked, the Cheyennes trekked northward in search of Crazy Horse. The night after the battle, the temperature plunged to thirty degrees below zero. Eleven babies froze to death in their mothers’ arms. After three weeks of the most intense suffering, the Cheyennes found succor with Crazy Horse on the upper Tongue River.18

  Crook led his column eastward to the head of the Belle Fourche and down that stream to the head of the Little Missouri. Blizzards battered the troops, and temperatures dropping to forty and fifty degrees below zero made each day a struggle to prevent freezing. Soaring supply and transportation costs brought complaints from Sheridan. At last, late in December, Crook called off the campaign. By the end of the month the components of his command had been returned to their stations.19

  As winter failed to bring a relaxation of military pressure, peace sentiment gained strength in the hostile camps. This was especially true in the Crazy Horse camp on Tongue River, for the wretched condition of the Cheyenne victims of Mackenzie’s assault argued eloquently for peace. This village, swollen by the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs who “surrendered” to Miles on October 27 as well as by Dull Knife’s Cheyennes, numbered 500 to 600 lodges containing about 3,500 people. Although Crazy Horse seems to have remained as uncompromising as ever, a delegation of chiefs set forth to open talks with Miles. On December 16, as they approched the Tongue River Cantonment, they were treacherously set upon by Miles’ Crow scouts and five were slain. The rest escaped. Miles angrily dismounted the Crows and sent their ponies to the Sioux as an apology. But the damage had been done. The peace elements had been discredited.

  The hostiles now began to harass the cantonment with minor raids designed to draw the soldiers up Tongue River into an ambush. Miles eagerly obliged, even though the Fifth Infantry was exhausted by the recent operations against Sitting Bull. With five companies of the Fifth and two of the Twenty-second, about 350 strong, he moved up the snow-drifted Tongue Valley during the last week of December. Artillery consisted of a Napoleon gun and a three-inch Rodman, disguised as supply wagons.

  As so often happened when the Plains tribes attempted the decoy tactic, some warriors sprang the trap prematurely. On the afternoon of January 7, 1877, the scouts captured a small party of Cheyenne women and children, and that evening about 200 warriors vainly tried to recapture them. Then Miles was ready for a major action the next day.

  Fresh snow accumulated during the night. Snow and ice covered the ground to a depth of one to three feet and a leaden sky threatened more as 500 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, led by Crazy Horse and other chiefs, assailed Miles’ command shortly after daybreak on January 8. Throughout the morning, as more snow fell, both sides energetically maneuvered for advantage and expended much ammunition. The artillery bombarded concentrations of warriors. Miles handled his units with great tactical skill. Around noon a blizzard set in and so hampered visibility that the Indians withdrew from the field. Casualties were light on both sides. After the Battle of Wolf Mountain, supply and transportation problems compelled Miles to turn back to Tongue River Cantonment, which he reached on January 18, 1877.20

  Miles was jubilant over his achievements, and he boasted of them in long letters to General Sherman. “Enough has been done,” he declared, “to demonstrate, what can be accomplished by a perfect spy system, a properly organized command, and such energy & management used as enables us to find, follow, and defeat large bodies of these Indians every time and under all circumstances.” He had done all this despite winter storms and supply deficiencies that amounted to “the worst management in the rear” he had ever known. His success was all the more remarkable, he believed, in comparison with General Crook’s campaign, which “accomplished nothing but give the Indians renewed confidence.”

  Because of his triumphs, Miles averred, and because of a deliberate effort in Department of Dakota headquarters to undermine him, he wanted a department all his own. The District of the Yellowstone, created for him the previous autumn, was not enough. Pope could be packed off to New York and Terry sent to replace him at Fort Leavenworth. That would leave two colonels who ranked him—Hazen and Gibbon—“and they have been here so long they would doubtless welcome the opportunity to leave.” “If you will give me this command and one-half the troops now in it, I will end this Sioux war once and forever in four months.”21

  Although his official reports and private correspondence abounded in exaggerated claims, Miles had valid cause for self-congratulation. Mightily exasperated by his shameless self-promotion, Sherman and Sheridan nevertheless recognized the ability, energy, and tenacity with which he had carried out his mission, and by early February 1877 they were laying plans to grant him only slightly less than he had asked for. Sheridan’s scheme was to enlarge the District of the Yellowstone to include the Powder River country from Crook’s department and assign Miles to command it. He would be given two and one-half cavalry regiments, two and one-half infantry regiments, and the Pawnee Indian scouts, together with freedom to ignore all command boundaries in seeking out the hostiles. Mackenzie, meanwhile, would cover the Black Hills and Wyoming and Nebraska settlements and follow any bands that fled eastward from Miles. Significantly, Terry would remain in St. Paul and Crook in Omaha, ostensibly to keep supplies flow
ing.22

  These elaborate plans could not be put into effect until spring opened the rivers. Meanwhile, the peace faction in the Crazy Horse village regained strength. The fiasco at Wolf Mountain was cited as evidence that the soldiers could not be beaten. Moreover, sometime in January, Sitting Bull visited the village and announced that he had decided to call off the war and take the Hunkpapas north to live in the country of the “Great Mother,” Queen Victoria. Finally, runners from Cheyenne River and Red Cloud Agencies brought peace feelers from the government. Like Miles, however, they offered only unconditional surrender. This meant giving up guns and ponies. Also, it probably meant moving the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies back to the Missouri River, or even to Indian Territory. Such prospects fortified the war faction in its resistance. The growing difficulty of feeding so many people, however, led to a decision to break up the Tongue River village. Late in January, as Sitting Bull’s people headed north, the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs scattered in small bands along the Little Missouri, while the Oglalas and Cheyennes went back to the Little Bighorn. A few groups slipped into Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies to give up.23

  Officers at Camp Robinson had attempted since early January to persuade the highly respected Brule chieftain Spotted Tail to undertake a peace mission. Not until Crook softened the unconditional surrender terms did Spotted Tail consent. With 200 warriors he set forth in mid-February authorized to promise the hostiles that General Crook, friend and former commander of the new Great Father, Rutherford B. Hayes, would do all he could to help them stay in their home country, rather than move to the Missouri River. There would have to be a formal surrender of ponies and firearms, but it was understood that they would soon be quietly returned. When Miles learned of these attempts to lure away “his” hostiles, he framed similar terms and sent them with a mixed-blood scout, “Big Leggings” Johnny Brughier, to the camps on the Little Bighorn. One of the Cheyenne women captured on January 7 went along to tell her people how kindly she had been treated by the soldier chief—“Bear’s Coat”—at Tongue River Cantonment.24