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First Stage Of The Indian Wars

In The New Possessions

From almost any reasonable point of view, the Indian wars of the last half of the nineteenth century were more spectacular than important. Never did they halt, or threaten to halt, westward expansion. Indian fights were numerous, small scale, sporadic and widely scattered over the West. Some tribes fought and quit, some rebelled frequently, but none carried on warfare continuously. Yet each year had its quota of fighting.

The Pueblo Rebellion

In 1847, during the war between the United States and Mexico, an insurrection broke out among the usually peaceful Pueblo Indians of Taos, during which William Bent, newly appointed military governor of the New Mexico Territory, was killed.

Colonel Sterling Price - later a Confederate major general - attacked Taos with Missouri volunteers and mountain men, and when artillery failed against the adobe walls, volunteers stormed the pueblo, killing 150, Captured ringleaders were hanged.

Two years later the newly organized Department of the Interior sent its first Indian agent, the able and realistic James S. Calhoun, to New Mexico. Calhoun, who later became territorial governor, negotiated permanent peace with the Pueblo Indians, an act of the territorial legislature making each pueblo a corporate body with perpetual title to its lands.

Navajo Raiders

The Navajo, known primarily as silversmiths, sheep raisers and rug weavers, nevertheless had an unsavory record under the Mexican regime as persistent plunderers of peaceful New Mexican villages and Indian pueblos. In 1849 Brevet Lieutenant Colonel John M. Washington, major of the 3rd Artillery, escorted agent Calhoun on a peacemaking expedition into Navajo land. But although a treaty was signed, the raids continued.

In 1851 Calhoun tried again, this time with a strong expedition under the command of Brevet Colonel Edwin V. Sumner of the 1st Dragoons. Once more, a treaty was signed, reinforced this time by Fort Defiance, which was established by Colonel Sumner in the heart of Navajo country (the extreme northeast corner of present Arizona). Still the Navajo continued their plundering.

Six years later Lieutenant Colonel D. S. Miles and Major Electus Backus, both of the 3rd Infantry, led columns in an effort to overawe the hostiles. But in 1860 a Navajo band attacked Fort Defiance. They quit after killing one man of the garrison, and though the damage was not too serious, the incident provoked the army into decisive action.

Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, major of the 10th Infantry, assembled fifteen companies at Fort Defiance. Moving out on October 11, 1860, he attacked Navajo village after village in a month of continuous action. A total of thirty-four were killed and hundreds of horses and thousands of sheep captured. Survivors scampered into the desert hills. By March, 1861, Canby had induced some chiefs to sue for peace. But the Navajo had many chiefs and many braves who would follow only those chiefs who took the warpath.

A month later, however, the Civil War began, and Canby, promoted to colonel of the new 19th Infantry, had to turn his attention to a Confederate invasion of New Mexico. After repulsing it, he was called east as brigadier general of volunteers, leaving the Navajo problem to Brigadier General James Henry Carleton, who had force-marched his California column across mountains and deserts to aid Canby.

Carleton's first act was to send Colonel Christopher (Kit) Carson, with the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Infantry, 736 strong, into Navajo country with clear-cut orders: kill all hostiles and move all prisoners to Bosque Redondo (the circular forest) on the Pecos River. Here Carson established Fort Sumner, New Mexico, with a garrison to police the Indians.

Carson's regiment killed only 50 Navajo, but by the end of 1863 had rounded up 8,500, most of the tribe. For five years they were held at Bosque Redondo before being allowed to return home to the reservation they have since occupied. They never again took the warpath, and within a century their number increased tenfold.

The Dreaded Apache

There never was a time when all Apache, or even any considerable number, acted together against U.S. troops, for Apache included a varying number of tribes, commonly, but perhaps inaccurately, called subtribes - Mescalero, Jicarilla, Mimbreno, Lipan, Chiricahua, Coyotero, Tonto, Pinal, Arivaipa - who fought everyone and occasionally each other. Like their relatives, the Navajo, they were mainly raiders for pleasure.

As a warrior the Apache was treacherous and guilty of some of the most sadistic tortures ever devised. Warfare was the principal Apache vocation and they gloried in it, but not for them the dashing attack to count a coup or take a scalp. They were more apt to eat their horses than ride them, and never fought on horseback. They wore no war bonnets to record their deeds. They fought from behind rocks and were adept at concealing themselves in almost any kind of terrain. Many a soldier fought Apache all day without seeing one. When pressed hard, the Apache vanished; he could usually outrun a horse, as many a trooper learned in a chase through the mountains.

On March 30, 1854, Jicarilla Apache attacked a mail coach and its escort of sixty troopers of Companies F and I, 1st Dragoons, at Cienequilla, twenty-five miles southeast of Taos. In a bitter three-hour fight twenty-three soldiers were killed. Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke pursued with a mixed command from the 2nd Artillery and 2nd Dragoons, Taos Pueblo Indian scouts and Kit Carson as guide. Brought to bay in a deep canyon of the Ojo Caliente (hot hole), the Jicarilla were held down by the rifle fire of the scouts and artillery acting as infantry, while mounted dragoons charged through the skirmish line and routed them. Four or five Jicarilla were killed and their camp destroyed. One trooper was killed.

The Mescalero Apache, occasional allies of the Jicarilla, ambushed Company B, 1st Dragoons, on the Penasco River, New Mexico, on January 19, 1855, killing Captain Henry Whiting Stanton and two privates. In reprisal Captain Richard S. Ewell (later a Confederate lieutenant general) was sent with Company G to punish the hostiles. On February 24, he destroyed a Mescalero village near the White Mountains. Ewell and others after him continued to harry the Mescalero until they agreed to settle on a reservation between the White Mountains and the Pecos River. Fort Stanton, named for the slain captain, was established nearby.

During the Civil War the fort was occupied by Confederates. The Mescalero made a treaty of friendship with them, then ambushed and killed to the last man a Confederate party of sixteen. When they demonstrated their neutrality by slaughtering forty men and six children of a loyal Union settlement, General Carleton sent Colonel Kit Carson against them. Carson rounded up the Mescalero at Bosque Redondo (prior to his bringing the Navajo there). Mescalero and Navajo quarreled continuously - until the night of November 3, 1865, when the Mescalero disappeared into the darkness and scattered. No definite trace of them was found for seven years.

The most widely known Apache in the 1850's was Mangas Coloradas of the Mimbreno who lived and raided in the Gila River country. During the Mexican War he rode to meet General Kearny on his march to California and expressed friendship for Americans. But Mangas Coloradas proved a difficult ally. When the United States signed its treaty of peace with Mexico, Mangas Coloradas refused to recognize it or to free his Mexican prisoners or even to promise an end to his raiding in Mexico.

Now Mangas Coloradas turned against the Americans and for a decade or more led hornet bands to raid and pillage on both sides of the border. Finally in January, 1863, he came to Brigadier General of Volunteers Joseph R. West, commander of the column sent against him, and offered to negotiate a treaty. General West, however, did not negotiate. Instead he ordered Mangas Coloraclas held as a hostage. That night he was killed by guards who reported that he had attempted to escape. According to a fairly well substantiated story, however, the guards had goaded him with red-hot bayonets until he tried to break loose.

The Unconquerable Comanche

In its years as an independent republic, Texas sought to drive all Indians from its borders but failed to stop raids by Lipan Apache from Mexico and Comanche from the Plains, who had been the scourge of Texas while it was still a Mexican province. Comanche loot was so considerable that unscrupulous white men, called Comancheros, set up trading posts to deal in Comanche plunder and arrange for the ransom of captives - or their sale as slaves.

Under pressure from Texans, the federal government in 1855 sent its new 2nd Cavalry to take the offensive against the Comanche. This regiment, renumbered 5th Cavalry in 1861, continued in service and saw action both in World War II and in the Korean conflict. When first organized it had a notable group of officers: Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, Major William J. Harclee, Captain Earl Van Dorn and Second Lieutenant John B. Hood, all of whom became Confederate generals; and Major George H. Thomas, Captain Innis N. Palmer and Captain George Stoneman, Jr., all of whom served as Union generals.

During its first two years in Texas, the 2nd Cavalry fought twenty-five engagements with Indians. One of these involved some unusual features that illustrate the character of Comanche warfare. At the headwaters of Devil's River on July 20, 1857, Lieutenant Hood with twenty-five troopers of Company G and an Indian guide saw red men waving a white cloth. Hood had been told that friendly Tonkawa would use such a signal. However, he was cautious and advanced in line of battle, leaving behind eight men whose horses were in need of rest.

The Indians moved forward as if to parley, then suddenly dropped their white cloth and began shooting. At the same instant concealed redskins fired heaps of dry grass and charged, some on horseback with fluttering lances. In the frenzied melee, each trooper fired his single shot carbine, then drew his Colt navy revolver. The fighting was at such close quarters that an Indian stole a carbine from a trooper's saddle hook while the trooper was busy with his six-gun. Though only a few of the troopers had sabers, they used them so effectively that thereafter Hood never allowed his troopers to leave that arm behind.

Before the revolvers were empty, Hood ordered a charge, followed by a quick withdrawal to dismount and reload. This pause gave the Indians a chance to count their dead; of a hundred Comanche and Lipan Apache, nineteen were killed. Howls of grief convinced Hood that the attack would not be renewed. The cavalry loss was two killed and five wounded, including the lieutenant, whose hand was pinned to his bridle by an arrow. He broke off the point and jerked out the shaft.

Pacific Coast Wars

Along the Pacific numerous tribes and bands of Indians, speaking a wide variety of languages and generally not warlike, lived in isolated communities. Commissioners negotiated eighteen treaties with 139 tribes or bands of California Indians during 1851-52, every single one of which was rejected by the United States Senate. These Indians were left with no rights that could be enforced against lawless gold seekers who swarmed over the region staking claims.

Lieutenant George Crook, later a major general, stated the situation simply: "When they [the Indians] were pushed beyond endurance and would go on the war path we had to fight when our sympathies were with the Indians." In one such small-scale war, James D. Savage, a trader called the Blond King of the Tularenos because of his influence with that tribe, led a battalion of volunteers against the Yosemites. The pursuit led Savage's force into Yosemite Valley, on March 25, 1851, and their accounts of its grandeur resulted in further exploration, which ultimately made the valley one of California's show places.

For the most part, California's Indian wars were a dismal series of minor skirmishes, with an occasional bloody encounter. These included the Klamath War of 1854-55; the Kern River War of 1856; the war against the Wintoons, 1858-59; the Pit River War of 1859; the Indian Island massacre of 1860; the Hupa War of 1863-65; and expeditions against Shoshoni. By 1865 most Pacific Coast Indians were living on reservations.

Oregon Territory was the scene of a brief uprising in 1847. Dr. Marcus Whitman, famed for his winter overland ride to save his mission at Waiilatpu, near Walla Walla, was killed there with his wife Narcissa by Cayuse Indians on November 29, 1847. Although the territory had only a provisional government, a volunteer regiment was raised. Colonel Cornelius Gilliam, Lieutenant Colonel James Waters and Major H. A. G. Lee showed rare leadership by confining the outbreak to the one tribe. The Cayuse surrendered the five slayers, who were hanged on June 3, 1849.

The Yakima Wars

With the creation of the Washington Territory in 1853, Isarmyac Ingalls Stevens was appointed governor and superintendant of Indian affairs (Stevens later became a major general in the Civil War and was killed in the Battle of Chantilly).

Stevens held a series of councils with the territory's Indians and was successful in negotiating treaties of peace with many. One, however, a Yakima named Kamiakin, objected to the terms and persuaded several bands to join in what was called the Yakima War.

Major Granville O. Haller, stationed at The Dalles, marched north with a hundred-man detachment from the 4th Infantry to round up the dissidents, but they rounded him up in the evergreen forest along Toppenish Creek, a tributary of the Yakima River. The date was October 6, 1854. After a three-day fight, with five men killed and seventeen wounded, the major and his men slipped away.

With the victorious Indians on the warpath, all settlements were in danger. Volunteer companies were hastily organized, but Kamiakin eluded them all, and on March 26, 1856, he attacked a village located at the Cascades of the Columbia River and defended by only nine men in a blockhouse, who nevertheless held the Indian force at bay.

To the rescue came Second Lieutenant Philip H. Sheridan - who rose to Civil War fame - with forty dragoons and a borrowed saluting gun mounted on a Hudson's Bay Company bateau. Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Steptoe arrived with a larger force, and between them they drove off the attackers, killing three. Nine Cascade Indians who had been friendly with the hostiles were captured and hanged for the murders of settlers.

But the war dragged on, and trouble lay ahead for Steptoe. Two years later he was sent to investigate a report that two men had been killed by Indians who stole thirteen head of cattle. He marched from Fort Walla Walla with 158 men - three companies of the 1st Dragoons and one of the 9th Infantry - and two mountain howitzers. At the village of To-ho-to-nim-me (near present Rosalia, south of Spokane) Steptoe tried to question some Indians. They showed signs of hostility, and on May 17, 1858, when he ordered a withdrawal, he was attacked by 1,200 Palouse, Spokane and Coeur d'Alene Indians. Steptoe had no advantage in arms to overcome the great disadvantage in numbers: Two of his dragoon companies had smoothbore musketoons, the original arm of that branch of service, and the third had Mississippi Yager rifles, too long to be muzzle-loaded while in the saddle. In the fight eight of Steptoe's men were killed and three wounded; several Indians, including three chiefs, were killed. When the troops took up a defensive position on a hill - still called Steptoe's Butte - the Indians showed no inclination to close in, and after dark the troops stole away, abandoning the howitzers and pack train.

The army command had not pushed any vigorous campaign, hoping the desultory raiding would cease if the Indians were not provoked; but their attack on Steptoe showed they regarded forbearance as weakness, and decisive action was now necessary. At Fort Walla Walla Colonel George Wright, commanding the 9th Infantry, assembled two companies of his regiment, five of the 1st Dragoons and five of the 3rd Artillery. Except for one section which manned two howitzers, the artillerymen were armed to fight as infantry.

Meanwhile First Lieutenant John Mullan of the 3rd Artillery interrupted his work on the laying out of the route which, as the Mullan Road, was to become one of the most famous trails in the Northwest, and took command of thirty Nez Perce allies, uniformed to distinguish them from hostiles.

Wright's troops were armed with the new model 1855 rifle-musket that proved a decisive factor in outshooting the Hudson's Bay guns used by the Indians. Left behind were the uniform coats and "flowerpot" hats prescribed for the well-dressed soldier of the period. These troops wore the blue-flannel shirts and slouch felt hats that became the familiar garb of the Indian fighters painted by Frederic Remington.

On September 1, 1858, at Four Lakes, thirteen miles from present downtown Spokane, hostile Indians attempted an ambush. Colonel Wright pretended to be falling into the trap, but instead sent a company of dragoons to ambush the ambushers. Captain Edward Ortho Cresap Ord - who became a Civil War major general - led Companies E and M of the dragoons in a saber charge that drove the Indians into a wood where they were shelled by the howitzers. The infantry and the artillery acting as infantry, commanded by Captain Erasmus Darwin Keyes - who also became a Civil War general - routed the Indians out of the wood to a plain where they were ambushed by the dragoons. The infantry and howitzers then joined in a final drive that forced the Indians to flee.

Four days later Wright struck again at Spokane Plains. Again Indians took cover in a wood, setting grass afire in front of it. Howitzers routed them from the wood, while the troops charged through the flames. The Indians retreated, hoping to catch the soldiers as they scattered in the chase, but Colonel Wright alternated his infantry and dragoons in a disciplined pursuit, of twenty-five miles, fourteen miles of which were a running fight.

On September 8 the dragoons captured 800 of the Indians' horses, which Wright ordered shot. This took the heart out of the Indians. They sued for peace. The terms were severe: those found guilty of murders were hanged and hostages taken to ensure future good conduct. Through the entire campaign only one man was wounded. Two died of eating poisonous roots.

During the Civil War, Colonel Wright and the 9th Infantry remained on the Pacific Coast, policing minor Indian disturbances. (Wright became brigadier general of volunteers and brevet brigadier general, but was drowned on July 30, 1865, in the wreck of the coastal steamer Brother Jonathan near Crescent City, California).

Wars in the Great Basin

The Book of Mormon taught that the Indians were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and Brigham Young decreed that they be treated fairly. Consequently there was no Indian trouble in Utah until 1853, when Walkara (commonly called Walker) of the Ute objected to Mormon interference with his customary slave trading and horse stealing. From behind defensive walls at Manti, Springville, Pleasant Creek and Nephi, alert Mormon militia drove off his raiders. His war a failure, Walkara reluctantly made peace.

During the "Walker War," however, a party of immigrants had fired into a band of previously peaceful Pahvants, killing their chief. Retaliation came when the Pahvants ambushed and killed Captain John W. Gunnison of the Corps of Topographical Engineers and seven of his party surveying one of the possible routes for a Pacific railroad.

Although along the Oregon Trail attacks on wagon trains were not as common as motion pictures and television would lead one to think, still they did occur from time to time. One of the bloodiest took place on September 13, 1860, when Bannock or Shoshoni attacked the Otter train of forty-four persons west of Fort Hall (in present Idaho). After a two-day fight only fifteen escaped, and they suffered such privation that some resorted to cannibalism before being rescued.

Nevada also had its share of Indian troubles. Discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859 had caused a stampede which resulted, within four years, in the creation of that state. The arrival of these miners of the Washoe stirred up the Paiute - normally peaceful desert dwellers who dug roots and trapped small animals for a scanty living.

Probably in retaliation for their upheaval, the Paiute disrupted the short-lived Pony Express. A hastily organized and undisciplined company of volunteers, enlisted to protect the Pony Express, was ambushed at Pyramid Lake. Forty-six of its total 105 were killed; the rest ran.

To retaliate, Colonel Jack Hays took the field with a regiment of volunteers, reinforced by two companies of the 6th Infantry, parts of two companies of the 1st Dragoons and a detachment of the 3rd Artillery manning howitzers they never had a chance to use. Hays was an experienced fighter, one of the heroes of the Texas Rangers. Using mounted troopers as decoys, he routed the Paiute on June a, 1860, on the Truckee, near the site of the Pyramid Lake massacre.

A result of the Paiute War was the establishment of Fort Churchill, a story-and-a-half adobe structure, east of Lake Tahoe, which during the Civil War became headquarters for the Military District of Utah. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, 3rd California Infantry, assumed command there on August 6, 1862. His special charge was to defend the Overland Trail, frequently raided by Shoshoni and Bannock. On January 29, 1863, in a winter campaign, Connor surprised their camp on Bear River and in a four-hour fight killed 224 of them. He lost 14 killed and 53 wounded, but 79 were disabled by the bitter cold.

Jay Monaghan. Early Day Wars in the New Territories. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

To Live and Die in the West : The American Indian Wars, 1860-1890 The wars which took place between 1860 and 1890 in the American West were among the most tragic ever fought. One civilization was pitted against another, vying for dominance of a continent in which the vanquished stood to lose their way of life forever. This volume details the civilizations of the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Apache, and of their implacable foe, the US Cavalry. It allows us to see their military techniques and arms, as well as the daily routines which made up their lives, providing an invaluable guide to the cultures and attitudes of those troubled times.

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