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Light Calvary

Plains Indians

Much has been written to explain how the Plains Indians acquired horses, but very little to explain why some groups adopted the horse so eagerly as to change their entire way of life, while others were comparatively indifferent to it. Eastern Algonquian, Iroquoian and Muskhogean peoples undoubtedly stole horses from English and French settlers, but made little use of them, yet Delawares, Kickapoo, Choctaw, and Sauk and Foxes became horsemen after they crossed the Mississippi. Horses came to the Indians almost entirely from Mexico through the Southwest, spreading northward and eastward during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Why, then, did such tough, fighting men as the Apache, living closest to the source of supply, make so little use of the horse in warfare? Why did the Sioux, who were farthest away, take immediate advantage of the horse to become conquerors of the northern Plains?

The Sioux

The name Sioux is commonly applied to the Teton branch of the Dakota wing of the Siouan language group. By 1841, they had become a dominant warrior power and after the Civil War were the principals in the so-called Sioux Wars which plagued the next generation. Comparative newcomers to the Plains in 1800, after centuries of harassment by powerful neighbors and near starvation in the inhospitable north woods country, they changed readily to horse Indians. Abandoning such agriculture as they had ever practiced, they prospered hunting buffalo. The migration from north woods to Plains was led by the Teton in two major divisions, the Brules, or Burnt Thighs (whose later great chief was Spotted Tail), and the Oglala (whose famous men of the future were Red Cloud and Crazy Horse). They found the White River country of central South Dakota a virtual Indian paradise, teeming with game, but by 1835 they had exhausted it and pushed westward. The Teton were beginning to feel their oats-or more specifically their all-meat diet of buffalo. They battled the Ankara along the upper reaches of White River and chased Kiowa, Prairie Apache and Cheyenne out of the Black Hills. They began slaughtering the Pawnee who lived in permanent villages south of the Platte River, raised crops and were more interested in horse stealing than in other war honors.

Happily for the Sioux, as they pushed westward, white men's illnesses proved effective allies. The sedentary Indians, with their corn patches along the rivers, were peculiarly susceptible to contagious diseases. Arikara power was broken by smallpox. Cholera, measles and other epidemics cut the fighting strength of Assiniboin, Mandan, Hidatsa and Crows. Because the buffalo-chasing Sioux had less contact with white men, their population continued to grow.

The Brule and Oglala, joined by bands of Saone or Sanona, and perhaps other Siouan groups, expanded into five more tribes - the Hunkpapa (Sitting Bull's people), the Miniconjou, the Sans Arcs, the Two Kettles and the Blackfoot Sioux (not to be confused with the Blackfeet, an Algonquian tribe that fought trappers in the Rocky Mountains).

These five and the original two became the "Seven Council Fires of the Sioux." Their council fires were rarely lighted at the same time for any common purpose, and at no time did all of these people go to war against white men or any other enemy. Nevertheless, the United States government called this loose federation the Sioux Nation.

Grattan Massacre

Seldom does a wagon train get very far in movies or television without being attacked by Indians. In 1849, the first year of an endless procession of wagon trains along the Oregon Trail, not one was attacked by Indians. This same year the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, which Congress had authorized in 1846 for the trail's protection, began its lawful business, after having fought on foot in Mexico. The Riflemen garrisoned Fort Kearny and took over Fort Laramie and Fort Hall from the fur companies. Even when the Sioux moved into Pawnee hunting grounds south of the Platte and were athwart the Oregon Trail, they stayed out of trouble with immigrants until 1854.

But in midsummer of that year High Forehead, a Miniconjou, took a wanton pot shot at a sore-footed cow belonging to a Mormon immigrant. The Mormon lodged a complaint at Fort Laramie. At that time the army was spread so thin guarding the trail that the commanding officer at Laramie was Second Lieutenant Hugh Brady Fleming of the 6th Infantry, two years out of West Point.

Fleming brushed aside attempts made to settle the dispute by Brave Bear, also called Conquering Bear, a Brule who had been recognized as chief of all the Sioux by the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851. Fleming's subordinate, Brevet Second Lieutenant James Lawrence Grattan, asked for the assignment to arrest High Forehead.

Grattan on August 19, 1854, marched twenty-nine soldiers into the Sioux camp. Apparently he had no plan of action in case of resistance. It mattered little, as he was among the first killed when the shooting started. The troops fired one volley and got off one shot apiece from a mountain howitzer and a twelve-pounder without effect. The leaderless soldiers panicked at first, then rallied and retreated in good order, holding the Indians at a distance with rifle fire until they reached open ground, where Sioux horsemen rode them down. One wounded man got back to the fort, but died of his injuries two days later. Brave Bear, "chief of all the Sioux," was among the dead.

Now the Sioux were on the "warpath." In November a raiding party led by a brother of Brave Bear killed three men and plundered a mail wagon of $20,000. In the spring there were a number of horse-stealing expeditions. Still, the Sioux were taking their war against the United States no more seriously than their customary desultory fighting with the Pawnee.

The government, however, took the war seriously. Brevet Brigadier General William Selby Harney, colonel of the 2nd Dragoons, was recalled from leave in Paris to lead an expedition to punish the perpetrators of the Grattan massacre. Indian agent Thomas S. Twiss was sent to warn all friendly bands to move south of the Platte and report to him at Fort Laramie; eventually 400 of the 700 lodges of the Sioux were assembled in that vicinity. General Harney marched out of Fort Kearny up the Platte toward Fort Laramie with 600 soldiers, including two companies of the 2nd Dragoons, one of the 4th Artillery, five of the 6th Infantry and one of the 10th Infantry.

Little Thunder, a chief of the Brules, in camp at Ash Hollow above the forks of the Platte, was warned by a trader that troops were approaching, but did nothing about it. His camp was surprised by Harney's infantry on the morning of September 3, 1855. Little Thunder, Spotted Tail and Iron Shell rode out for a parley, but Harney's orders stated that all negotiating had been taken care of by agent Twiss, so he kept advancing. The dragoons cut off the retreating Sioux in the rear; Indian losses were eighty-six killed, seventy women and children captured.

When Harney arrived at Fort Laramie, he demanded that the Sioux there surrender Spotted Tail and Red Leaf, the leaders in the attack on Grattan and the raid on the mail wagon. Both had been in the hostile camp at Ash Hollow. They were taken to Fort Leavenworth to be hanged but eventually were pardoned. Meanwhile, Spotted Tail had made friends among the officers; he had seen something of the might of United States forces and was convinced that it was futile to fight them. He later became a powerful chief of the Brule Sioux and kept his following at peace with the army. But, by masterly diplomacy, during the rest of his life (until 1881) he continued to upset Indian Bureau plans to civilize them.

The Fighting Cheyenne

George Bird Grinnell, who knew Indians intimately in their wild days, wrote that the Cheyenne tribe was "a fighting and a fearless people ... almost constantly at war with its neighbors, but until 1856 was friendly to the whites." The break occurred over a minor matter concerning four stolen horses at Upper Platte Bridge (the site of Casper, Wyoming). When a Cheyenne was killed bolting an arrest, his tribesmen took to the warpath, and in five small raids against travelers along the Platte River killed eight men, two women and one child and captured two women and a child, following which they made peace with the Indian Bureau for the winter. In the spring they resumed raiding, and the army took action.

Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner of the 1st Cavalry, with six companies of his regiment, three of the 6th Infantry and two pieces of artillery, marched from Fort Leavenworth. On July 29, 1857, at Solomon's Fork of the Kansas River, he came upon 300 Cheyenne, "drawn up in battle array." Without waiting for infantry or guns, Sumner ordered his six troops to draw saber and charge. As we have seen, Lieutenant Hood and Captain Ord used sabers against the Comanche and Yakima, but such weapons seldom proved effective against Indians. However, when Sumner charged the Cheyenne broke and fled; they were pursued seven miles and nine were killed. The cavalry had two killed and nine wounded; one of the wounded was First Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. Sumner's second in command was Major John Sedgwick, a Civil War major general of volunteers who was killed at Spotsylvania.

Jay Monaghan. Horsemen of the Plains. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

The Indian Wars Examines the battles and treaties between native peoples and early European settlers of what was to become the United States, from the early 1600s to the late 1800s.

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