The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  The Battle of the Rosebud was a vicious six-hour combat, in which both sides sustained casualties. Both cavalry and auxiliaries fought valiantly against equally valiant charging Sioux. Crook sought to control the action but exerted little influence. His main contribution was to attempt to draw some of the men from the line to charge down a box canyon toward where he believed the Sioux village to be. His belief was erroneous, and his fear that his men would be ambushed from the canyon rims caused a withdrawal of the units creeping tentatively into the gorge. By this time, late in the afternoon, the attackers had broken off the fight and turned back to their village.23

  Badly battered, the command limped back to the base camp on Goose Creek. Crook withdrew, he explained to Sheridan, because he carried only four days’ rations and had to care for his wounded. Moreover, he stoutly boasted, he had won the battle, because the enemy had left him in possession of the battlefield. In fact, the Sioux had won the battle. Crook had forced his own withdrawal by taking only four days’ rations, and his wounded could have been cared for without falling back to Goose Creek. To compound the flaws in his generalship, Crook dawdled at Goose Creek, awaiting reinforcements from June 20 to August 5 before again taking the field. In the meantime the Sioux village lay across a mountainous divide to the west, on a tributary of the Little Bighorn River. By June 25 it was sprawled down the valley of the Little Bighorn. On that day, as Crook relaxed hunting in the Bighorn Mountains, Custer and his cavalry attacked, with the catastrophic result that has resonated in history. Had Crook continued his northward march down the Rosebud after the battle of June 17, he would have met Custer and changed the course of history.

  The hesitant, plodding general of the Sioux campaign stood in marked contrast to the aggressive, innovative general of the Apache campaign.

  Reinforced by a regiment of cavalry, on August 5 Crook’s expedition broke camp and headed north, down the Rosebud. The command now numbered 2,000: 25 troops of cavalry, 10 companies of infantry, and 213 Shoshone auxiliaries under Chief Washakie. Crook’s mission was to unite with Terry and follow the trail of the Sioux who had overwhelmed Custer on the Little Bighorn. Marching down the Rosebud, on August 10 Crook met Terry en route upstream. Terry led 12 troops of cavalry and 12 companies of infantry, 1,700 strong. Now nearly 4,000 in number, the combined force was so ponderous as to be unlikely to overtake the mobile aggregation of approximately 2,500 warriors (albeit encumbered with their families) even in ideal weather. Instead rain and mud bogged down the troops, making any movement at all extremely difficult. To compound the problem, the huge expedition consumed more supplies than could readily be brought up the Missouri River by steamboat. Early in September, camped in cold rain on the Yellowstone, Crook and Terry differed on what to do next. Terry favored operating from a Yellowstone depot. Crook favored a direct probe east, following the Indian trail. The two generals parted, each to follow his own plan. Crook had not gone far before mud swallowed the trail. He continued to struggle east until discovering a faint trail headed south. Although within marching distance of Fort Lincoln—in Terry’s department, where the more senior Terry would command—Crook resolved to turn south on the trail. Sending couriers to Lincoln to wire Sheridan to send provisions to the Black Hills, he began what came to be known as the “Mud March” and the “Horsemeat March.” Rain and mud continued to break down the troops, whose rations soon became so diminished that horsemeat furnished the only food. On September 7 Crook sent a detachment mounted on the strongest horses to hasten to the Black Hills and hurry rations to the column. En route, the detachment discovered a small Sioux village and attacked. The Battle of Slim Buttes proved a victory but also caused a delay, especially when a force of warriors under Crazy Horse opened fire from surrounding bluffs. Gaining a slight measure of strength from dried meat in the captured village, the troops struggled on south in the mud, weakened by hunger and exhaustion.24 On September 13 they finally reached the Belle Fourche River and were greeted by a herd of beef cattle advancing on their front.

  Thus, ingloriously, ended the Sioux campaign of 1876. Terry had already called a halt and returned to his St. Paul headquarters. Slim Buttes had proved the only victory of the entire operation. As Sheridan summarized for Sherman, “The fact of the case is, the operations of Genls. 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.”25

  During the spring and summer of 1876, both Crook and Terry had proved poor field generals. It remained to Colonel Nelson A. Miles and his Fifth Infantry, about five hundred strong, to reverse the loss of the two field generals. Terry had left Miles and his regiment on the Yellowstone River to erect two forts. In early October Sitting Bull and his followers crossed the Yellowstone from the south side and confronted Miles and his “walk-a-heaps” (as the Indians called the infantry). The colonel first negotiated with Sitting Bull for surrender, then engaged him in a two-day running battle that drove him back across the Yellowstone on October 24. The chief did not remain, however, but hurried back north as far as the Missouri River. Miles followed and throughout December skirmished with the elusive Sioux on the Missouri. He vowed to stay out all winter if necessary to trounce the enemy, which included Crazy Horse in the Powder River country south of the Yellowstone. Miles would validate Crook’s hope that military campaigns could be waged in winter.

  In the meantime, far to the south at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, Crook prepared to launch his own winter campaign. Again, the expedition was huge: 2,200 men in 11 troops of cavalry and 15 companies of infantry, 400 Arapaho, Bannock, Shoshone, and Pawnee allies, 300 civilians manning 168 supply wagons and 400 pack mules. Still haunted by the ghosts of the Rosebud and Little Bighorn, Crook could not shed his fear of not having enough strength to confront the enemy. Colonel Miles had demonstrated what could be accomplished with less than one-fourth Crook’s strength.

  Among Crook’s fresh reinforcements was Ranald S. Mackenzie, hard-bitten colonel of the Fourth Cavalry. A veteran Indian fighter and Civil War hero, Mackenzie could be expected to confront the Indians with the same zeal as Colonel Miles did. Crook’s expedition shoved off on November 14, pushing north toward Crazy Horse country. A blizzard immobilized the column for three days. Diverting attention from Crazy Horse, scouts brought word of a large camp of Cheyennes nestled in a canyon of the Bighorn Mountains to the west. Crook sent Mackenzie with ten troops of cavalry and all the Indian auxiliaries to find and attack the village. Mackenzie succeeded, and at dawn of November 25 he fell on about two hundred lodges of the Cheyenne chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf. Surprised, the Indians ran from their lodges with only the clothes on their backs and took refuge in the surrounding bluffs. Mackenzie scored about thirty dead but inflicted a disaster far beyond casualties. Thrown into bitter cold without food, clothing, or shelter, many of the Cheyennes froze or starved to death before the others found relief with Crazy Horse to the north.

  Crook had his own struggle with weather. In a reprise of the storm-battered advance toward the Battle of Powder River in March 1876, his force suffered repeated blizzards and freezing temperatures, aggravated by the near impossibility of keeping his expansive force supplied. Late in December he surrendered to adversity and called off the campaign. Units returned to their home stations.

  In his annual report Crook dealt with the so-called Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition in one brief, uninformative paragraph and relegated Mackenzie’s victory to two bland sentences.26 He no doubt failed to appreciate the irony of those two sentences in light of his years-long bitterness toward Sheridan for slighting him in his reports of the Shenandoah battles.

  After disbanding the Powder River expedition, Crook lingered at Camps Robinson and Sheridan, Nebraska, near the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies. The government had resolved to move these two chiefs and their people to the Missouri River, where they would be more readily supplied. The Indians did not want to go and
sought Crook’s support to stave off the move.

  Crook’s objective now was to secure the surrender of Crazy Horse and his people. To the north, Colonel Miles had campaigned all winter and fought one major battle in a raging blizzard. The ambitious Miles worked to gain the surrender of Crazy Horse and thus earn the laurels of ending the war. Crook as badly wanted the surrender to be to him. Miles and Crook waged a long-distance competition for the prize.

  Seeking to use Chief Spotted Tail as a peace emissary, Crook promised to help Spotted Tail and Red Cloud avoid the move to the Missouri River. As Spotted Tail knew, Crook held influence with the Great Father, President Rutherford B. Hayes. Crook knew it too and hoped to persuade the president to intervene. Thus he violated one of his basic precepts: make no promises that you are not certain can be kept.

  Preceding Spotted Tail, George Sword, a nephew of Red Cloud, rode north as a peace emissary. Spotted Tail and a large contingent bearing gifts followed. Much to Miles’s anger, they prevailed. Throughout early spring of 1877 contingents of Crazy Horse’s followers drifted into the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies. At last, on May 6, Crazy Horse and his immediate followers rode into Red Cloud Agency and threw their rifles on the ground. With Sitting Bull beyond reach in Canada, the Great Sioux War had sputtered to a conclusion.

  For Crazy Horse, the war ended with a mortal finality. Some reservation chiefs considered him a threat, and rumors circulated that he intended to break away. While soldiers were attempting to confine Crazy Horse to the guardhouse, a soldier’s bayonet ended his life.

  Crook’s problems had not ended. The Sioux chiefs insisted that his promise to fend off the dreaded move to the Missouri be honored. The months following the surrender of Crazy Horse were packed with much maneuvering, including an unrewarding visit to Washington by Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. But not even Crook’s friendship with the president could overpower the entrenched Washington bureaucracy. He won some concessions, including a commitment that the move would be temporary, but had to acquiesce in an immediate move. Oppressed in addition by the killing of Crazy Horse, the Sioux plodded dejectedly to their new homes to the east. Crook reported the events, but so briefly and guardedly that no onus fell on him.27

  To Spotted Tail and Red Cloud, Crook had at least implied a promise that he only partly kept, although President Hayes had granted one major concession. After a year on the Missouri, where rations were already stockpiled, the Sioux could move west again. In 1878 Red Cloud and his people settled on the Pine Ridge Reservation and Spotted Tail and his people on the Rosebud Reservation.

  Not so fortunate were the Northern Cheyennes. Smashed by Ranald Mackenzie in their Bighorn Mountain canyon in November 1876, they had fled to Crazy Horse’s camp farther north, then surrendered with the Sioux at Camp Robinson in April 1877. Their new homes were in the south, in the Indian Territory, where the Southern Cheyennes occupied reservations. Mountain dwellers, the Northern Cheyennes failed to adapt to the lower, humid environment. Plagued by disease, fevers, and hunger, many died. In September 1878 Little Wolf and Dull Knife led their people in a desperate breakout. Traveling in two separate bodies (one led by Dull Knife and the other by Little Wolf), they fought off army attempts to stop them until Dull Knife was forced to surrender near Camp Robinson. Little Wolf continued the flight northward. With winter advancing, Dull Knife’s people were confined to unheated empty barracks in the fort.

  Uncharacteristically, Crook did not confront this crisis in the field but remained in his Omaha office. He clearly sympathized with the Cheyennes, but he had orders, dictated largely by the Indian Bureau, to return them to the Indian Territory. He passed down the orders but left the issue largely to the local commander, Captain Henry W. Wessells. Confronted with 150 defiant men, women, and children who vowed to die fighting rather than return to gradual death in the south, Wessells concluded that he had but one choice. Temperatures ranged between zero and forty below, and snow drifts piled up around the barracks. Early in January 1879, after failing to persuade the women and children to emerge, he cut off rations. On January 9, after a week of hunger, thirst, and deadly temperatures, the Cheyennes surged from broken windows, shot their guards with a few firearms hidden at the time of surrender, and raced from the fort. The garrison gave chase and ultimately shot down nearly half the fugitives, including women and children.

  The tragedy gained Dull Knife’s people a reprieve. They settled with the Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Dull Knife and his people had surrendered farther north. They too gained a reservation near the Yellowstone River.

  How Crook might have handled Little Wolf’s Cheyennes had he gone to Camp Robinson is unknown. Orders were to move the Indians, and negotiation had proved futile, as did being placed in a freezing barracks and withdrawal of water and rations. All he could have done was try to talk the Cheyennes into moving south peaceably. What he did instead was to lay out his sentiments bluntly and unequivocally in his annual report. Even that got sharply undercut by General Sheridan’s ruthless characterization of the Cheyennes as deserving their fate.28

  A similar issue struck Crook at nearly the same time. A mistake in the Treaty of 1868 had included the Ponca Indian homeland within the Great Sioux Reservation. The Sioux wanted the Poncas out and frequently roughed them up. The government decided to solve the problem by moving the Poncas to the Indian Territory. In 1877 they went, inconsolably, suffering disease and death en route and after they settled in their new homes. Chief Standing Bear lost five members of his family, including his only son. Determined that his son should be buried in his homeland, Standing Bear, accompanied by thirty tribesmen, returned to Nebraska in early 1879. Crook received orders to return them to Indian Territory. An Omaha newsman, Thomas H. Tibbles, intervened, however, and publicized the story. Standing Bear made his case in Crook’s office, but Crook replied that he had no choice but to send the Poncas back. At the same time, he let Tibbles know that he sided with the Poncas. Tibbles’s agitated report gained nationwide sympathy for the Poncas and in April 1879 led to a suit in U.S. District Court, Standing Bear v. Crook. After Standing Bear’s eloquent and moving testimony, the judge ruled that Crook had to free the Poncas.

  The litigation failed to end the controversy. On the contrary, it set off a groundswell of contention over the condition of the Indian people. A decade of advocacy by Indian rights organizations and prominent humanitarians led to court decisions and legislation that redefined the status of American Indians.29

  On July 14, 1882, War Department orders ended George Crook’s tenure as commanding general of the Department of the Platte. Apache turmoil again wracked Arizona, and Crook again assumed command of the department.

  Crook’s Arizona exploits in the 1870s had been exemplary. They were brief but brilliant, the height of his long career. His command of the Department of the Platte from 1875 to 1882 represented the depth of his career. He did almost nothing right. In 1879 Sheridan wrote to Sherman: “Writing confidentially, I am sorry to say, that very few things have been well done in that Department since Crook came in command of it.” It was a fair judgment.30

  ARIZONA AGAIN

  In all their dealings with the Indians officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them may not cause an outbreak. Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be like embers that smolder and eventually break into flame.31

  Thus General Crook in 1882 expressed a philosophy for dealing with Indians that took root when he was a second lieutenant before the Civil War. No other frontier general articulated such a thoughtful and humane approach to his mission. Crook had applied this doctrine during his first tour in Arizona. It tended to fade during his field service in the Department of the Platte. He would try to give it full force in his final Arizona service.

  Crook began his mission in Arizona as he had before: a
council with the White Mountain Apaches, not at Camp Apache but at San Carlos, the central agency at that time for most Apaches. He told them that they had made no progress since he had been there eight years before. Now he wanted them to scatter over the White Mountain Reservation to the north in bands beholden to their headmen. They should adopt farming and so far as possible livestock raising. Apache scouts would be enlisted and placed among the bands to keep order. The brewing of tizwin, the potent native intoxicant that lay deep in Apache culture, had to cease. “When I was here before I tried to break up this tizwin business, and told you to put all your money in cattle and brood mares; you paid no attention to me, and let all your brains run down in your stomachs.”32 Crook’s effort to eradicating tizwin would fail.

  Crook’s most vexing problem lay not with the White Mountain Apaches but with the Chiricahuas. In the early 1870s General O. O. Howard had made peace with Cochise and established him on his own reservation. That forced Crook to abort his plans to campaign against the Chiricahuas. Circumstances had now changed. Cochise was dead, and in 1876 the Chiricahuas had been moved to the San Carlos Reservation. Some of them lost no time in breaking free and following a fierce warrior named Geronimo, ensconcing themselves in Mexico’s towering Sierra Madre. From Mexico they could raid with impunity across the border into New Mexico and Arizona, then return to Mexico, with the international boundary shielding them from pursuit.