Heroes of the Santa Fe Trail

by Randy D. Smith

  Sanitation was a major problem. During the spring floods, underflow seeped through the walls of the dugouts and a dank, damp, vermin infested welcome greeted tired troopers trying to get some food and rest. The high ground surrounding the post drained through it. During long periods of spring rains and flooding, troopers were subject to malaria, diarrhea, dysentery and pneumonia. The sandy walls not only held moisture but tended to come apart and shift during inclement weather. Soldiers were also sustained almost completely upon flour, dried beans and meat as gardens were slight and did poorly in the sandy soil, resulting in a prevalence of scurvy among the men. During the winter of 1865 an unusually severe series of blizzards raged across the western plains of Kansas. Fort Dodge was isolated from her sister forts for several months. There were few available wagons and timber resources were nearly twelve miles from the fort. The men were without adequate supplies of kindling material for cooking fires that had to be carried by hand or bundled on the backs of the mounts. Rationed cooking fires did little to relieve the men of the constant cold, who shivered in the darkness on most winter evenings. When the spring thaw came, dugout roofs began collapsing as the sandy, moist soil simply could not sustain the weight of the coverings. A major portion of the post’s meager supplies was lost from exposure to the elements. What little first year, above-ground construction took place was devoted to primitive corrals for the mounts.

  In May, 1865, Fort Leavenworth offered a portable saw so the troops could have more access to building and heating supplies, as new supplies began trickling into Fort Dodge. The offer was rejected in place of a field oven so the men would not have to eat gritty bread baked in sod ovens dug into the riverbank. The men also joined volunteer teams to construct a small sod sutler’s store so they could have access to some kind of diversion. By early summer William Ladd was appointed as post sutler but did not remain popular for long. In August, 1866, Captain Andrew Sheridan, post commander, reprimanded Ladd for price gouging and ordered him to reduce prices. Throughout the first year there were no indoor facilities for washing, bathing or shaving. A wooden trough filled from a nearby water barrel was provided near each of the dugouts. The post surgeon complained bitterly to the Office of the Surgeon General that the men were not bathing regularly or properly. The problem lessened somewhat during the summer months but few men were willing to break river ice or trough water during the winter to take a bath. Being dirty was better than being dead from pneumonia.

  The first hospital was constructed in 1865 as a temporary structure of sod material. The roof was made of earth and was almost flat in design resulting in inadequate drainage and leaking during rain. On at least one occasion the sides of the building collapsed before construction was completed. Ceilings and walls were covered with canvas to keep the dirt off the patients as much as possible.

  The building was divided into three rooms with sod walls. The center room was eighteen by fourteen feet and referred to as the ward. It contained four wooden bunks, sacks, blankets and pillow ticks. A second room was utilized as a dispensary and a third was used as the kitchen. A fireplace heated both the dispensary and ward. The wardroom also functioned as a mess room for post officers and later as a dining room for the hospital.

  As time progressed, conditions gradually improved for the troops at Fort Dodge. Desertion rates, which had been unacceptable during the early years of the post, lessened as permanent limestone and timber buildings were constructed, but illnesses continued to plague the soldiers. Post surgeon reports continued to describe high rates of scurvy, frostbite, diarrhea, tuberculosis, alcoholism and pneumonia. A cholera epidemic broke out throughout the trail posts in 1867, interfering with the construction of a new hospital and taking twenty lives at Fort Dodge. A disturbing report from 1872 also tells of sixteen men dying of rabies after having been bitten by skunks. During the first winters high rates of frostbite and accompanying gangrene caused a significant number of amputations to be logged in surgeon records. Long horseback patrols, marches, unsuitable clothing and poor housing on the bitterly cold winter plains took a heavy toll. Although fingers, toes and ears tended to be most common, a few men had to endure amputations of feet in advanced cases. Dr. William S. Tremaine, who served Fort Dodge as a surgeon for ten years, performed several hundred amputations with an 1872 total of seventy such operations being the worst winter tallies. As if rabid skunk bites and frostbite weren’t enough, cases of venereal disease also grew dramatically that year, no doubt in large part because of the increased presence of prostitutes working the booming buffalo trade in newly established Dodge City, five miles to the west.

  A total of sixteen individual physicians were assigned to duty at Fort Dodge either as post surgeon or assistant post surgeon. Ten medical doctors were military and six were contract physicians. The senior medical officer, when more than one physician was attached, was referred to as the post surgeon. He was responsible for the surgical, medical and nursing care given to both military and civilian personnel of the fort and surrounding area. Surgeons were often assigned to accompany troops if hostile encounters or casualties were expected. At no time in the fort’s history did battle casualties ever amount to losses from disease. Enlisted soldiers were generally assigned to work in the hospital as nurses and cooks, generally serving for four weeks. With virtually no training in either function, it is safe to assume that these men were not the best caregivers. Permanent hospital steward positions were established with the beginning of construction of the first permanent hospital in 1866. M. F. O’Leary, the first hospital steward, served in this capacity for two years. When black troops were assigned to the post they were placed in a separate building other than the hospital for treatment. It was a frame building without a finished ceiling or walls and said to be very poorly ventilated.

  Amputees, men with ruptures, chronic venereal disease cases and those suffering through the late stages of tuberculosis were discharged from the service. Extreme cases of alcoholism, insanity or ailments requiring delicate surgery were normally sent east for treatment. Soldiers were not discharged from the service for alcoholism although it was a major problem at all frontier forts. As is the case when most people come in contact with horses over a long period of time, broken bones and back injuries were common in cavalry units. There was also a high number of cases of orchitis (inflammation of testicles), an injury usually associated with riding. Dr. Tremaine was often unhappy with the care soldiers received in the field and the lasting damage of poorly set or unattended wounds.

  Dr. Tremaine also had no sympathy for suspected malingerers. He once completed surgery on a mangled hand of a private without administering an anesthetic because his preliminary examination of the wound convinced him that the trooper had intentionally blown off parts of two of his fingers to obtain a discharge from the service. Doctors often prescribed a diet of tea and toast for suspected slackers. Such treatments were administered “in the best interest of both the government and individuals concerned.”

  In 1878, Dr. Tremaine’s wife, Sarah, died of pneumonia. The loss affected his attitude toward frontier medicine. He completed studies in the law and was admitted to the bar in 1879. He took sick in January, 1880 and was ill in quarters for approximately three months before being given a certificate of disability. Upon his resignation, soldiers, Dodge City citizens, farmers and ranchers honored him for his years of service. He had delivered almost every child in the area during his tour of duty and had rendered aid to almost everyone in the Dodge City community at one time or another. In spite of the honors, Tremaine refused to stay. He had seen and endured enough of the western plains of Kansas. He joined the faculty of the Kansas City College of Physicians and Surgeons, upon his resignation from the service.

  Fort Dodge played a significant role throughout the remaining days of the buffalo trade, Santa Fe Trail and Indian War years. On April 5, 1882, the garrison at Fort Dodge was ordered to abandon the post. By October the task was completed and the fort retired. But unlike so many oth
er frontier posts, fate intervened on behalf of Fort Dodge. For a while the post was used as a temporary boarding and holding facility for the Texas herds coming to Dodge City to sell to the railroad markets. The hospital also served as an isolation ward during a smallpox outbreak in Dodge City in the late 1880s. In 1890, as a result of a critical shortage of facilities for serving Civil War veterans, Fort Dodge was designated as the Kansas State Soldier’s Home and has served in that capacity to this day. It is ironic that a fort infamous for an environment of hardship and sickness in the early years remains in service as source of comfort and security for soldiers almost 140 years later. Dr. Tremaine would, no doubt, be proud of the present function of the fort.

  Trolley tours are available for visitors to Fort Dodge through the Boot Hill Museum, Dodge City, Kansas. Although almost all of the buildings are still in use, visitors can still observe the original building designs and read about their functions on a modern, updated, self-guided walking tour of the fort. Plans are underway for establishment of a museum in one of the original buildings.

  Chapter 17

  Battle Canyon and Squaws’ Den

  Col. William H. Lewis

  Only the wind sings a sad song of confrontation and survival at the lonely site of Battle Canyon and Squaws’ Den.

  On September 28, 1878, a chain of crucial circumstances led to a critical showdown between the wishes of a desperate people and the will of their masters. The resulting conflict would go down in history as the last major Indian battle to take place in Kansas.

  For nineteen days, three hundred thirty eight northern Cheyenne—eighty nine men, one hundred twelve women and one hundred thirty four children—under the leadership of Dull Knife and Little Wolf, had been working their way north toward the Pine Ridge Agency in present-day South Dakota after escaping from the Cheyenne-Arapaho Agency near Fort Reno, Oklahoma. At that time Oklahoma was known as the Indian Nations. The group had already fought one battle with a detachment of troops from Fort Reno in the hills surrounding the Cimarron River at a place called Turkey Springs and had suffered several casualties in another engagement against buffalo hunters and more troops along Bear Creek in southern Kansas.

  Some hunters and cowboys drove the Indians into some canyons along Bear Creek and it was not long before troops arrived. In the ensuing firing, several of the soldiers were wounded and they fell back, allowing the Indians a chance to slip away. The following day, the Indians found two of their advance scouts killed and scalped, the work of some of the cowboys that they had just encountered.

  Dull Knife and Little Wolf

  Many of the younger braves were so embittered from the pursuit and killings that it became impossible for Dull Knife or Little Wolf to control them when they came upon unsuspecting whites. What began as a flight to be in their own homeland became a trail of murder and revenge.

  This story begins in the land of the Yellowstone, where Cheyenne were living with the Sioux. They were led by an old chief, Dull Knife, who as early as 1846 had talked for peace and did little fighting against the whites except in 1865, to avenge the Sand Creek massacre the fall before.

  Dull Knife and another chief, Little Wolf, had gone to Washington after the Sand Creek fighting where they received peace medals. They also asked for an agency for their people in the Black Hills region, but were refused. Dull Knife returned to his people and took them to the north and the buffalo herds of the Crazy Horse Sioux. Little Wolf returned to the Red Cloud Sioux agency in Nebraska, where his people had been placed.

  In 1876, Little Wolf and his people had left the Red Cloud agency on the regular treaty-sanctioned summer hunt. They were making the trek toward the Yellowstone, not knowing that at the same time, Custer and the 7th cavalry were being massacred along the Little Big Horn River. On November 25, Randall Mackenzie attacked Dull Knife’s village as part of an action to avenge the Custer massacre. It made little difference that these people had nothing to do with it.

  Little Wolf and Dull Knife led their peoples in an escape through winter snows until starvation overtook them and they had to submit to the troops and the promise of better treatment at the agency in Nebraska. Upon arriving there, however, they were told that they would receive no food until they agreed to leave for the Cheyenne-Arapaho agency in Indian Territory.

  Neither chief wanted to go but they were told “just go down to see. If you don’t like it you can come back.” The chiefs had to accept the word of the soldiers. At the time their main concern was to keep their people from starving.

  Upon reaching the territory, they found their southern tribesmen dying of malaria with no quinine—such as had been promised—and of dysentery and starvation, because the land was already worn bare by too many Indians. Dull Knife thought about what the whites had told him and he readied his people to return north, at which time he was told he could not leave.

  After months of bondage on the reservation, with his people dying daily, fifty children had died from little or no medical attention, the beleaguered survivors slipped away under the cover of night.

  By September 27, the group was resting in the hills near Big Springs, some forty miles north of the Arkansas River and one hundred fifty miles northwest of Fort Dodge, along the banks of the Ladder Creek. The Indians knew that there were more soldiers approaching and because of the unique geography of the Big Springs area, they also knew that this would be the last place that they could make a decent stand until they reached the breaks of the Pine Ridge standing toward the Black Hills, some five hundred miles to the north.

  In this vast arid region, the bowl shaped canyon around Big Springs had been a natural funnel for wild game for thousands of years. When all other sources of water in the region had turned dry, the springs always flowed. Subsequently, the Indian had used the area as a place of encampment and hunting. Around the depression was a ring of high hills laced with small rock strewn canyons and breaks. The hills served the dual purpose of being a source of water, game and rest, and the perfect location for an ambush and defense.

  Toward this place came a man who had ironically foreshadowed his own fate when he had said at Fort Dodge that he would “capture the Cheyenne or leave his body on the ground.” Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William S. Lewis was leading a contingent of cavalry and his own 19th Infantry in hot pursuit of the Indians.

  Lewis was a 48-year-old career soldier, born in Alabama, yet loyal to the Union through the Rebellion. He had entered the United States Military Academy in 1845 and was an experienced officer who had served almost his entire career in the desolate regions of the American Southwest. He had been an Infantry Captain stationed in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, during the Civil War and had risen to the rank of Major by the War’s end. From 1865 to 1874 he had remained in steady service with only one leave of absence, stationed at outposts in Utah, Wyoming, Montana and Dakota.

  During this time he had earned himself the reputation of being “calm and deliberate in judgment, courteous and refined in bearing, and active, firm and upright.” Finally, in 1874, he had been honored with the post of an officer on the Retiring Board in Washington D. C. But after only a few months, he was recalled to service with the Department of the Missouri by Brevet Major General John Pope because, as he stated in a request to the adjutant general, “It will be difficult for me to administer properly the affairs of this Department—unless some of these officers are required to rejoin their commands. I respectfully request that Lieut. Colonel Lewis, whose services I now require, be relieved from duty on the retiring board and ordered to join his command.”

  Upon learning of this request, Lewis applied for an extension of leave that was denied. His abilities were considered too great and the immediate need for officers of his caliber too important. So, Colonel Lewis returned to the West and duty at Fort Dodge, Kansas, where defense of the Santa Fe Trail and the newly constructed railroads was of primary importance.

  Stories of the so-called great Indian uprising flooded the newspapers, the o
ffice of the governor of Kansas, and the army posts throughout the state. A train of stock cars was readied take five companies of cavalry, two of infantry and fifty cowboys and ranchers up to the crossing at the Arkansas, where they heard Dull Knife and the Cheyenne were heading. When they arrived, however, they could find no Indians and started across the plains south toward Crooked Creek. At that point there was another confrontation with the Cheyenne and the troops had been beaten back. It was then that Colonel Lewis assumed command of the force and began a dogged pursuit of the Indians.

  Early, the morning of Sept. 28, 1878, the women were digging rifle pits along the top of a dome of rock that rose above their encampment, just north of the Ladder Creek. When the soldiers were seen coming, the women and children were hidden in a snake head draw, above the encampment just east of the dome, the steep slope full of fallen rocks. To the west of the dome was an open bowl shaped canyon with steep walls where the Indians set up a mock camp to lure the troops to attack. If all went well, the troops would attack the camp and find themselves in a death trap from which the Indians would pour down fire from the pits where they were concealed.