The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  Crook had to dig the Chiricahuas out of the Sierra Madre, so he once again assumed the role of a field general.33 When the governors and military authorities of Sonora and Chihuahua proved receptive to American troops crossing into Mexico, Crook assembled a formidable expedition reflecting his mode of Indian campaigning: one troop of cavalry 40 strong, 193 Apache scouts, and 350 pack mules managed by 76 packers. The march, begun on May 1, 1883, lasted a month and a half and involved incredible hardships in ascending the rugged ridges and peaks of the Sierra Madre. The Apache scouts proved their worth daily and finally forced Geronimo into a conference with Crook, where Geronimo and other Apache leaders agreed to return to San Carlos.

  Even before the Chiricahuas reached the reservation—indeed, Geronimo did not arrive for another eight months—Crook confronted a major crisis: the civilian authorities did not want the Chiricahuas back at San Carlos, fearing that they would cause trouble with the other Apaches. Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller backed the local agent, Philip P. Wilcox. Crook journeyed to Washington for an interagency meeting that produced a Memorandum of Agreement in July 1883. The Chiricahuas would be subject to War Department control on the White Mountain Reservation. Likewise, Crook would exercise “police control” over San Carlos and White Mountain, while the civilian agent would manage the Indians. Captain Emmet Crawford would be Crook’s policeman at San Carlos. The memorandum was intended as a civilian-military compromise but instead ensured conflict.34

  Rancorous feuding between Crawford and the San Carlos agent continued month after month. Crook tried to resign but was denied. Crawford at length requested to be relieved, which Crook granted. Less trouble prevailed in the north, because the Chiricahuas were under the exclusive control of the military, overseen by Lieutenant Britton Davis. Here, however, Geronimo proved a festering sore. On May 15, 1885, he tricked the other chiefs into joining him in a major break for Mexico. Once more Crook took the field to round up the Apaches.

  Apache scouts once again were a mainstay of Crook’s operation. He stoutly believed that the only Apaches could conquer other Apaches. Crook therefore fielded two expeditions consisting of a troop of cavalry and a large number of Apache scouts. As in 1872–73 and 1883, they performed superbly. Although they did not contest Crook’s reputation as the preeminent authority on Indian warfare, a number of highly placed officials regarded the scouts as unreliable, remembering a time in 1881 when they had mutinied rather than attack an Apache medicine man. None distrusted scouts more than the commanding general of the army, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan, who had inherited the post when Sherman retired in 1883. As Sheridan declared, “it became a belief in mind that the Indian scouts could not be wholly depended upon to fight and kill their own people. I think they were faithful so far as to try to capture or to induce the surrender of the hostiles, but they had no wish to kill their own kindred.”35 Crook had seen what scouts could do: “Apache scouts, for this class of warfare, are as worthy of trust as any soldiers in the world, and in all the experience I have had with them they have proved themselves energetic, reliable, truthful, and honest.”36 The dispute had greater consequences. Apart from military operations, the conflicting opinions about Apache scouts strained Sheridan and Crook’s relationship.

  Month after month Crook’s columns ranged the peaks and canyons of Mexico, breaking down men, horses, and mules. Many of the mules slipped off canyon trails and fell to their deaths. Although inconclusive, the few skirmishes that occurred demonstrated to the fugitives that they had to keep on the run or be discovered and attacked. Finally, worn out, they allowed themselves to be coaxed into a meeting with General Crook. It took place on March 25, 1886, in a wooded glen named Cañon de los Embudos, twenty-five miles south of the border. Crook confronted Geronimo with harsh words that offended the Apache leader. He ended the conference by fixing Geronimo with a scowl and declaring: “If you stay out I’ll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes fifty years.”37 The Apaches did not agree to give up for two days, at the price of exile in the East for two years.

  Leaving Lieutenant Marion P. Maus to escort the Indians back to Fort Bowie, Crook hastened to the fort to wire Sheridan about the agreement with the chiefs. En route with Maus, however, the Apaches obtained whiskey from an itinerant trader, got uproariously drunk, and bolted for the mountains. Before learning of this event Crook received a wire from Sheridan declaring that the president had ruled the surrender terms unacceptable. Crook was to reopen negotiations and demand unconditional surrender, only sparing the Indians’ lives. In Crook’s mind this would not only involve breaking faith with the Apaches but also stampede them back to the mountains.

  When he learned they had already gone to the mountains, Crook considered heading for the mountains himself, with his ever-reliable Apache scouts. Instead he addressed another wire to Sheridan on April 1, 1886: “I believe that the plan upon which I have conducted operations is the one most likely to prove successful in the end. It may be, however, that I am too wedded to my own views in this matter, and as I have spent nearly eight years of the hardest work of my life in this Department, I respectfully request that I may be now relieved from its command.” On the very same day, orders reached Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, directing Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles to assume command of the Department of Arizona.38

  Nelson Miles campaigned strenuously for four months, hiding the role of Apache scouts and highlighting the operations of regular troops. Geronimo finally surrendered on August 26, 1886, but only through the effort of Apache scouts, which he carefully obscured. Miles had the prisoners escorted to confinement in Florida. Even the Apache scouts who had engineered the surrender went as prisoners. He directed all the glory to his unit commanders.

  Except for the Civil War years, Crook had passed his entire service in the U.S. Army preoccupied with Indians, whether Paiutes, Apaches, Sioux, or Poncas. Now his relief by General Miles freed him from such responsibilities but not from concern. Tucked away once more in the now-quiet Department of the Platte, he pursued the routine duties of department command. He also worried about the fate of the Chiricahua Apaches exiled to Florida and then to Alabama, with no hope of return to Arizona.

  When Major General Alfred Terry retired in spring 1889, Crook, now the senior brigadier general in the army, was promoted to major general and assigned to Terry’s former command, the Military Division of the Missouri in Chicago. Almost immediately Crook was asked to join a commission to persuade the Sioux to accept a land deal that would drastically reduce the Great Sioux Reservation. He was the only member conversant with Indians and readily maneuvered the chiefs into leading their people to sign. Ever since the Sioux wars of 1876–77, the Sioux leaders had harbored a trust for General Crook that aided him in achieving this result.

  In Chicago George and Mary Crook enjoyed the attractions and the social attentions of the city’s prominent citizens. They traveled for pleasure and otherwise enjoyed life, but his pace slowed as his health began to decline.

  The condition of the Apaches in Alabama, however, motivated Crook to work in their behalf. Allied with the Indian Rights Association and other reformers, as well as General Oliver O. Howard, he worked with members of Congress and others of influence. General Miles opposed these efforts as a negative reflection on his stature. Returning the Apaches to their beloved Arizona homeland proved politically impossible, but in 1894 they were moved to a more congenial environment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

  George Crook did not live to see this culmination of the long battle concerning justice for the Chiricahuas. On March 21, 1890, in his suite at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago, heart failure struck him dead at the age at sixty-one. He was buried first in Maryland, but his body was ultimately moved to Arlington National Cemetery.

  General Crook emerges from his last conflict as a martyr, defeated by three top officials who possessed no understanding of the Apaches: President Grover Cleveland, Secretary of War William C. Endicott, and Lieutenant General Ph
ilip H. Sheridan. Crook doubtless valued that image. It bolstered an ego long kept hidden from the public and kept intact his reputation, both before the public and to himself, as the ultimate authority on Apaches.

  A closer look at the last decisive week, however, suggests that Crook failed to handle the issue with his usual acumen. First, he left the surrender site immediately and was therefore absent when the Apaches went on the spree that fueled their breakaway. Lieutenant Maus was a fine officer, but Crook’s presence could well have headed off the binge. Second, the key to the final capitulation of Geronimo and the other headmen was an Apache named Kayatena. He had made trouble on the reservation and been sent to Alcatraz Prison. The experience led him to embrace the white man’s way, and Crook believed that he might help persuade the Chiricahuas to surrender. He did, but Crook waited too long to summon him from San Francisco, which delayed Crook’s departure for the final surrender talks. Meanwhile the Apaches launched their drunken party. Finally, and most critical, Crook had been unequivocally ordered not to promise the Apaches that they could return to Arizona. He explained that this was the only way he could get them to surrender—true, but hardly sufficient to override a bedrock principle of policy.39

  If Crook did not merit martyrdom, he did merit the distinguished image that he left to history. He knew Indians, whatever the tribe, and understood their minds. He was one of the few so-called humanitarian generals who sympathized with the plight of the Indians and exerted every effort to lighten their ordeal. He was also a field general, always leading troops in the field rather than directing subordinates from his department headquarters. He was a fighter as well as a peacemaker, pursuing his strategy of first whipping enemies, then treating them with kindness as well as firm authority. In an era when most army officers, and even the curriculum at West Point, embraced the tenets of orthodox warfare, Crook was an innovative thinker. Mules, rather than wagons, moved supplies rapidly into terrain unsuited to wagons. Recruiting Indians to fight other Indians set him apart from most other Indian Wars officers. Small mobile units, composed of regular cavalry and Indian scouts and supplied by pack mules, adhered to his dictum to get on the trail and never stop until overtaking the enemy. This tactic stood in vivid contrast to the usual offensive of large columns of regulars bound to slow-moving wagon trains.

  In short, only one other Indian-fighting general, Nelson A. Miles, could match Crook’s record as a frontier army leader. Personal idiosyncrasies set him apart from other generals and offended some while amusing others. His reticence and unwillingness to share opinions or even plans frustrated aides and others with whom he had to cooperate. His unconventional attire, usually supplanting a uniform, combined with his messing and sleeping with his mule packers, irritated many colleagues. Whether these idiosyncrasies were deliberately cultivated or were simply features of his persona, Crook failed to recognize the damage that they did to his relations with officers whom he needed to cultivate.

  General George Crook does not deserve the exalted view that history accords him. But he does deserve to be remembered as one of the great generals of the frontier army.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OLIVER O. HOWARD

  The army knew Oliver Otis Howard as the “Christian General,” and so history remembers him. Howard was much more, but his abiding piety tended to obscure other qualities. He deeply believed that God oversaw his every thought and move and ordained the result of every action. To maintain his purity, fight off ambition, and beseech the Lord for guidance, he constantly buried himself in prayer. In the presence of others, even his fellow generals, he wore his sobriquet “Christian General” as conspicuously as the empty right sleeve tied to his belt or a brass button on the front of his uniform. He eschewed profanity, strong drink, and tobacco, a rarity in a military society. Howard did nothing to suppress his feelings when among his peers—so much so that they made fun of him, sometimes in his presence. When offended, he simply walked away.

  Although it was obscured by the Christian image, Howard displayed qualities of military leadership, developed by experience in the Civil War. He learned from his mistakes and rarely repeated them and was personally courageous in battle. He was loyal to superiors and considerate of subordinates. Howard cared for his men and did all he could, consistent with military imperatives, to ease their burden, avoid casualties, and keep them well fed and well clothed. Despite his Christian principles, he sometimes engaged in the intrigue that roiled the top command and was highly sensitive to the prerogatives of rank. Howard cultivated political friends who worked for his promotion. Even so, he learned how to command brigades, divisions, corps, and finally an army in combat. Two controversial combat actions, however, stigmatized his reputation. He lessened the stigma in his last operations of the war, when he demonstrated his competence. Howard emerged from the war among the second tier of Union generals, a brevet major general and brigadier general in the Regular Army.1

  Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, commanding Department of the Columbia, 1874–1878; Department of the Platte, 1882–1886.

  Oregon Historical Society.

  Born on November 8, 1830, in Leeds, Maine, Howard attended Bowdoin College for four years, leaving in 1850 to enter West Point Military Academy. Graduating fourth in his class of forty-six in 1854, he was commissioned in the Ordnance Corps, testimony to his class standing and guarantee of an easier life than in one of the combat arms. Such were his tours at Watervliet and Kennebeck arsenals in New York and as chief ordnance officer during hostilities with the Seminole Indians of Florida in 1857. From 1857 to 1861 he taught mathematics at the military academy at West Point. When the Civil War broke out, therefore, First Lieutenant Howard could point only to seven years of staff duty. Nevertheless, he gained the support of Maine politicians and in May 1861 took command of the Third Maine Infantry with the rank of Colonel of Volunteers.

  CIVIL WAR

  At First Bull Run (or Manassas) the former ordnance officer commanded a brigade of four regiments, three from Maine and one from Vermont. Together with most of the rest of the Union Army, his brigade fled the field in disorder. Even so, in September he was appointed brigadier general of Volunteers. Commanding a brigade, Howard participated in General George B. McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign. On June 1, 1862, the second day of the Battle of Fair Oaks, Howard led his brigade in a charge against Confederate lines. A bullet hit his right elbow, another felled his horse, and a third penetrated his forearm near the first. In a field hospital, the attending surgeon concluded that the arm had to be amputated and did so late in the afternoon. Howard returned to Maine to recuperate.

  After convalescing, Howard returned to the Army of the Potomac at the end of August 1862, in time to lead his brigade in the Battle of Antietam on September 16–17, 1862. During a disastrous assault on the Confederate left, Howard’s division commander, John Sedgwick, was wounded. By virtue of rank, Howard assumed command of the division and presided over its repulse and retreat.

  Because General Robert E. Lee surrendered the battlefield to McClellan, Antietam was considered a Union victory, but McClellan’s pursued the retreating Confederate army half-heartedly, prompting President Lincoln to relieve him from command. At the same time, on November 29, 1862, Howard gained promotion to major general of Volunteers, thanks largely to the Maine political leadership’s lobbying in his behalf.

  On December 13, 1862, Howard led his division in General Ambrose Burnside’s suicidal attack on the heights above Fredericksburg, Virginia. Together with all the other units of the army, Howard’s division was thrown back with heavy casualties.

  When spring 1863 thawed the Virginia countryside, the Army of the Potomac sprang to life. General Burnside had given way to General Joseph Hooker, who reorganized the army, naming Major General Daniel Sickles to command the Third Corps, which included Howard’s division. Howard ranked Sickles and at once protested to Hooker, who made amends by turning over the Eleventh Corps to Howard. This was largely a German-American corps, recentl
y commanded by the German Franz Sigel. The troops received their new leader with a touch of resentment and generally behaved unresponsively. The mix was not good, as became painfully apparent at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2–4, 1863.

  Howard’s corps held the extreme right flank of the Union army facing Lee’s army. His own right extended to the edge of heavy timber. He ensured that defenses were erected to protect the flank in case of an attack. But Hooker was convinced that Lee’s army was retreating, and Howard accepted his view. Although evidence accumulated during the day that Lee was maneuvering in front of the Union line instead of withdrawing, Hooker still failed to take alarm. After nightfall the maneuvering became apparent when Stonewall Jackson’s corps of 26,000 men burst from the timber and stormed the Eleventh Corps defenses. Hearing the firing, Howard rushed to the scene. Some units stood and fought but had to give way as Howard tried in vain to stem the panicked flight. During the assault, Jackson was accidentally shot and mortally wounded by his own men. Even though Hooker badly mismanaged the battle, Howard and his Germans bore the brunt of the criticism and were widely regarded as pariahs in the Army of the Potomac.

  While Howard traveled to Washington to defend his role in the Battle of Chancellorsville to Lincoln, Secretary Stanton, and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, Lee prepared to march again into Maryland and on to Pennsylvania. Departing from Washington uncensured, Howard resumed command of Eleventh Corps, which with two other corps formed the left wing of the Army of the Potomac, now under General George G. Meade. When Howard reached Gettysburg on July 1, the battle was already raging. General John F. Reynolds, commanding the left wing, was conducting the Union forces in the fight. When word reached Howard that Reynolds had been killed, he became the senior officer on the field.