Sheridan Replaced Hancock

The strange procedure by which, at a stroke of the pen, the troops at Forts Reno, Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith received a new regimental name on New Year's Day, 1867, was, of course, part of a general reorganization under an act of Congress of 1866 providing for a larger Regular Army than had been ever before in service (not until World War I were there a larger number of regiments). Each of the eight-company battalions in infantry regiments numbered from 11th to 19th became a ten-company regiment, bringing the number of infantry regiments to thirty-seven. Added were four regiments of colored troops and four regiments of the Veteran Reserve Corps, made up of wounded men.

Though the army now reached its greatest strength during any period of Indian wars, it was not because of the Indian troubles that it was given the additional strength. Most of the new infantry units went to the unreconstructed South. However, four new cavalry regiments were added, and while cavalry did garrison the former Confederate States, more of it served on the frontier - notably the 7th Cavalry, organized in 1866 with Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson Smith as its colonel and Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer as its lieutenant colonel. Colonel of the 8th Cavalry was Brevet Brigadier General John Irvin Gregg. The 9th and 10th regiments of cavalry were made up of colored troops, and remained so to the end of both cavalry and segregation in the armed forces.

The year 1866 was a comparatively quiet one south of the Platte. The Indians were restive, however, and it was felt that a display of force might awe them, as they had rarely seen soldiers except in small detachments. Therefore, in March, 1867, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commanding the Department of Missouri, assembled at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, an expedition of 1,400 men, including eight companies of the new 7th Cavalry under General Custer, seven of infantry and a battery of light artillery. Indian agents went along to make peace with any awe-struck tribes that might be encountered.

Though parleys were sought from Fort Larned on the Arkansas River with Cheyenne and Sioux encamped some thirty miles away, the Indians refused to come toward the troops, and when the troops moved toward the Indians, they fled, abandoning their village with all its property. When the scattering fugitives raided stage stations along the Overland Trail, killing three men at Lookout Station, west of Fort Hays, Hancock ordered the captured village destroyed.

Custer's 7th Cavalry scouted north and westward. Pawnee Killer's Sioux attacked his camp at dawn on June 24, but were driven off. Later in the day Captain Louis Hamilton's Company A fought its way out of a decoy trap. On June 26 Lieutenant S. M. Robbins and the escort for a wagon train sent to Fort Wallace in western Kansas for supplies fought 500 Indians for three hours. Also on June 26 Lieutenant Lyman Stockwell Kidder, carrying dispatches to Custer, and ten men of the 2nd Cavalry and a Sioux guide with him were all slain.

It was at this time, on July 30, that Congress set up a Peace Commission with three objectives: to end the Indian wars by giving the Indians whatever they wanted; to make peaceful farmers of them; and to get their permission to build railroads across the Plains - three mutually contradictory propositions. By October the commissioners were ready to meet with the southern tribes - Arapaho, Apache, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa - at Medicine Lodge, Kansas. The war-party season had ended and the tribes were quite ready for a winter of peace, especially as there were presents, including arms and ammunition. A treaty was signed, and although the Senate's failure to ratify it delayed some of the promised presents, the peace was kept, more or less - mostly less - until August, 1868. (Army records show forty-two fights with Indians between November 1, 1867, and August 1, 1868, in Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.)

In March, 1868, Sheridan replaced Hancock as commander of the Department of Missouri. On August 10 a war party of Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho began raids along the Saline and Solomon valleys, killing fifteen settlers and carrying off two children. Kiowa and Comanche joined in, and by the end of September the death toll of citizens was seventy-nine.

Sheridan moved his headquarters to Fort Hays, Kansas, in the heart of the Indian country. Pending arrival of the 5th Cavalry, which was gathered in from posts in the South and sent west in record time, he authorized Brevet Colonel George Alexander Forsyth, a major on his staff, to enlist a company of fifty scouts.

Near the end of track on the Kansas Pacific Railroad a wagon train had been attacked and two men killed. Forsyth's scouts followed the trail, and on the morning of September 17, 1868, while encamped on the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River (south of the site of Wray, Colorado) they were attacked by a large party of Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux. "The ground seemed to grow them," said Forsyth; an Indian who fought there told him later that there were 970.

The scouts mounted and crossed to a sand island in the river-called Beecher Island after First Lieutenant Frederick Beecher, killed on the first day. The scouts scooped out shelters in the sand, and used their horses, which were soon killed, to help form a barrier.

The unusual feature of this fight was a massed charge by mounted Indians, with a front of some sixty men, led by Roman Nose of the northern Cheyenne and aided by concealed marksmen. The Indians would not have been so bold had they known the scouts were armed with Spencer repeating rifles - six shots in the magazine and one in the chamber. Seven volleys crashed into the oncoming line before the charge broke and swept around the defenders. Roman Nose was among the killed. A second charge was stopped a hundred yards away.

That night scouts Pierre Trudeau and Jack Stillwell slipped through the surrounding Indians to seek help at Fort Wallace. On their way they hid in a buffalo wallow with Indians close by. When a rattlesnake started toward them, Stillwell, master of an old frontier art, stopped the snake by spitting tobacco juice in the reptile's eye. They got through, as did two scouts sent out two nights later, and a detachment of the 10th Cavalry rode to the rescue. They found Forsyth severely wounded; six more had been killed or died later of wounds, and seventeen others were wounded. Many years later some Cheyenne told George Bird Grinnell that only nine Indians were killed in the fight, and some historians have accepted that figure. Forsyth said, "During the fight I counted thirty-two dead Indians; these I reported officially. My men claimed to have counted far more." Later a Sioux participant told him that seventy-five were killed.

On October 1, 1868, seven companies of the 5th Cavalry, only nineteen days after they had been summoned from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee on September 12, marched out of Fort Harker, Kansas, seeking hostile Indians - a remarkably rapid troop movement for that time. Guiding the 5th as chief of scouts was William F. Cody, known as Buffalo Bill. The expedition fought several sharp skirmishes against Tall Bull's Dog Soldiers, a warrior society of the Cheyenne.

The mounted Indians broke off these fights whenever they were endangered; most pursuit of them was futile, and they had all the advantage in their hit-and-run raids. General Sheridan decided on a winter campaign to strike them in their villages, although Jim Bridger who knew the power of blizzards that swept the Plains came especially to Fort Hays to advise Sherician not to attempt it.

Sheridan planned to strike the winter camps with converging columns. Brevet Major General Eugene A. Carr, major of the 5th Cavalry, led seven troops of his regiment from Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory, to join Brevet Brigadier General William H. Penrose, captain of the 3rd Infantry, who was already in the field, along the Cimarron. This column marched through deep snow in bitter cold and encountered no Indians, but its objective was to prevent them from drifting westward.

Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Andrew W. Evans, major of the 3rd Cavalry, with six companies of his regiment and two of infantry, moved down the Canadian River. On Christmas Day this column destroyed a Comanche village. Evans got his brevet as colonel for the victory.

The main column included the 19th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, a regiment raised by Governor Samuel J. Crawford, who took the field as its colonel; five companies of infantry under Brevet Major John H. Page, captain of the 3rd Infantry; and eleven companies of the 7th Cavalry under General Custer. Sheridan accompanied this column, escorted by Forsyth's scouts, now commanded by Lieutenant Silas Pepoon of the 10th Cavalry. A base was established as Camp Supply in western Indian Territory.

A Hair-Raising Experience I was in the Infantry. Custer had command of the troops. There was quite a force of cavalry with us. … Some of the troops had been sent around so as to attack from the other side. The reds were encamped in a sort of valley, and we were within eighty rods of them for half an hour before daybreak. Just in the gray of morning the firing commenced on both sides, and we had it all our own way for a few minutes. … At length they rallied, and we could hear Black Kettle shouting and ordering. The vermin got into holes and behind rocks—anywhere they could find a place, and began to fight back with a will. We fired wherever we could see a top-knot, and shot squaws—there were lots of them—just as quick as Indians. When it was fully daylight we all gave a big yell, and charged right down into camp. … As we ran through the alleys, a big red jumped out at me from behind a tent, and before I could shorten up enough to run him through with my bayonet, a squaw grabbed me around the legs and twisted me down. … When I fell, I went over backward, dropping my gun, and I had just got part way up again, the squaw yanking me by the hair, when the Indian clubbed my gun and struck me across the neck. The blow stunned me. … The Indian stepped one foot on my chest, and with his hand gathered up the hair near the crown of my head. He wasn’t very tender about it, but jerked my head this way and that, like Satan. My eyes were partially open, and I could see the beadwork and trimming on his leggings. Suddenly I felt the awfullest biting, cutting flash go round my head, and then it seemed to me just as if my whole head had been jerked clean off. I never felt such pain in all my life; it was like pulling your brains right out; I didn’t know any more for two or three days, and when I came to I had the sorest head of any human being that ever lived. If the boys killed the viper they didn’t get back my scalp; perhaps it got lost in the snow. I was shipped down to Laramie after a bit, and all the nursing I got Hain’t made the hair grow out on this spot yet. This account, written by an anonymous soldier, appeared m the Army-Navy Journal on June 26, 1869. It is reprinted here through the courtesy of the Armed Forces Journal.

Just before reaching Camp Supply, Pepoon's scouts struck the trail of a war party returning from a raid in Kansas. Sheridan ordered Custer's 7th Cavalry to follow the trail, guided by California Joe (whose name was Moses B. Milner), Jack Corbin and Osage Indian scouts. The regiment started out next morning, despite a heavy fall of snow during the night and a continuing storm.

The trail was followed for three days. Before dawn on November 27 an Indian village was sighted. Custer ordered an attack from four directions. As the signal for the assault the regimental band played GarryOwen (the spelling preferred in the 7th Cavalry's regimental history) - until their instruments froze. Cheyenne and Arapaho were completely surprised. Black Kettle, the chief who had escaped at Sand Creek, was killed.

Smarting because his leadership had been so mistrusted that Sheridan had requested Custer's return from a court-martial sentence of suspension (Custer, the preceding fall, had taken off on a visit to his wife at Fort Riley without authority), Major Joel H. Elliott raced after a fleeing group of Indians with a shout, "Here goes for a brevet or a coffin." (Elliott had no brevet rank.) He was followed by Sergeant Major Walter Kennedy and eighteen others. Their bodies were found weeks later, two miles from the main battle site.

Captain Louis McLane Hamilton, grandson of Alexander Hamilton, also was killed; three officers and eleven enlisted men were wounded. The Indians lost 103 killed and 53 women and children captured. Despite the surprise and capture of the village, Indian warriors fought desperately. Their resistance increased toward noon, and it was discovered that reinforcements were coming from villages of several thousand Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and other bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho strung out along the Washita River.

Custer ordered the captured village burned and eight hundred Indian ponies killed. Meanwhile he ordered a series of limited attacks to hold off the assembling warriors, and after dark retreated quickly to the supply train left behind. Custer was blamed for not waiting to determine the fate of Elliott. It is probable that Elliott and his party were killed long before they were known to be missing. Custer was also accused of attacking a camp of peaceful Indians. Major Wynkoop continued to insist that Black Kettle was innocent of all wrongdoing. That may be so, although it has been denied, but Custer followed the trail of a raiding party to the village, and during the fight a Mrs. Blinn and a small boy, captives from Kansas, were butchered by Indians before they could be rescued.

Sheridan followed up the Washita victory by marching the entire main column in pursuit of the fleeing tribes. Hemmed in on the other side by the forces of Evans and Carr, the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche agreed during the winter to go on reservations.

In May, 1869, General Carr and the 5th Cavalry marched from Fort Lyon to Fort McPherson, Nebraska, again skirmishing with Tall Bull's Cheyenne Dog Soldiers along the way. While the troops were at Fort McPherson the Cheyenne raided settlements along the Solomon, capturing Mrs. Thomas Alderclice, wife of one of Forsyth's scouts of the Beecher Island fight, and Mrs. G. Weichel, after killing Mrs. Alderdice's baby and Mrs. Weichel's husband.

General Carr took to their trail with seven companies of his regiment and three of Pawnee Scouts under Major Frank North. Buffalo Bill Cody, chief of scouts for the 5th Cavalry continuously from 1868 to 1872, is credited with suggesting the maneuver that headed them off at Summit Springs. The Indians were evidently traveling toward the Platte, and Cody's plan, in Carr's words, was "to get around, beyond, and between them and the river" instead of following their trail as the Indians would expect.

At midday on July 11, 1869, Buffalo Bill and the scouts located Tall Bull's camp. Carr charged at once with four mounted companies in line, a bugle sounding the charge. He was joined almost immediately by North's Pawnee Scouts and two more companies under Brevet Colonel William B. Royall.

The attack was a complete surprise - Cheyenne security and information facilities seem never to have reached the standard set for Indians in fiction. Tall Bull and fifty-one of his followers were killed, seventeen women and children were captured, with no loss to the troops. Mrs. Weichel was rescued, wounded; Mrs. Alderdice was tomahawked by a Cheyenne woman just before the troopers could reach her. The victory was a blow from which the Dog Soldiers never recovered.

After the Summit Springs victory there was peace of sorts on the northern Plains. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, taking seriously the treaties that barred white men from the Sioux Reservation, demanded that the Government's Indian agencies be located beyond the reservation boundaries in Nebraska, and they got what they wanted. Both had had their fill of fighting U.S. soldiers, but Spotted Tail had no idea of giving up warfare against tribal enemies, and it was his Brule who attacked a hunting party of Pawnee at Massacre Canyon, Nebraska, on August 5, 1873, slaughtering ten men, thirty-nine women and ten children. A troop of cavalry belatedly dashed to the rescue, and the Sioux fled.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa had signed no treaties - Sitting Bull once told General Miles, "God made me an Indian, but not an Agency Indian." Far out in the Powder River and Bighorn country they were fighting the Crows - on the Crow Reservation. In 1872 and 1873 they attacked Northern Pacific Railroad surveying parties escorted by troops led by Brevet Major General David S. Stanley, colonel of the 22nd Infantry. Custer's 7th Cavalry, a part of the escort in 1873, was attacked by 300 Sioux on August 4. He drove them off by a vigorous mounted charge, and while following their trail was attacked again on August 11, with a similar result.

Some of Custer's detractors have seen his death on the Little Big Horn as just retribution for his invasion of the Black Hills, the "sacred ground" of the Sioux, two years earlier. The connection as a moral judgment is somewhat remote. Custer's exploration of the Black Hills in 1874 was not his own idea; it was ordered by Sheridan. True, the Black Hills were a part of the Great Sioux Reservation, and the Sioux resented any intrusion in the area guaranteed by treaty, but the Black Hills had no ancestral or traditional significance for the Sioux, who only recently chased Cheyenne and Kiowa out - and Bear Butte, at least, was "sacred ground" to the Cheyenne. The Sioux seldom went there, mainly because buffalo did not graze there.

Custer found no Indians in the Black Hills, but the geologists on the expedition verified the presence of gold, and newsmen gave this discovery wide publicity. The government attempted to buy the land from the Sioux, but negotiations broke down when Spotted Tail and Red Cloud upped the price. Meanwhile swarms of prospectors defied the Sioux, the government and the Army by flocking into the Black Hills. Early in 1876 the Gold Rush was in full swing.

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