Indian Fighters in the Old West

Indian Fighters in the Old West

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George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) - His classmates would have laughed at the idea that Custer would be a general two years after graduating from West Point. He almost didn't graduate, but the Civil War had begun and junior officers were in short supply. His reckless daring soon caught the eye of the generals, and, in a cavalry shakeup, he was made a brigadier general. At the end of the Civil War, Custer was the Union army's youngest major general, but he was a lieutenant colonel when he was given command of the new Seventh Cavalry.

Custer was sent to the Northern Plains in 1873, where he soon participated in a few small skirmishes with the Lakota in the Yellowstone area. The following year, he led a 1,200 person expedition to the Black Hills, whose possession the United States had guaranteed the Lakota just six years before.

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer

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Court-martialed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for mistreating his troops and leaving his command, he was suspended for a year. In 1874, gold was discovered in Sioux territory in the Black Hills. The Sioux went on the warpath, and the army moved against them.

The original United States plan for defeating the Lakota called for the three forces under the command of Crook, Gibbon, and Custer to trap the bulk of the Lakota and Cheyenne population between them and deal them a crushing defeat. Custer, however, advanced much more quickly than he had been ordered to do, and neared what he thought was a large Indian village on the morning of June 25, 1876. Custer's rapid advance had put him far ahead of Gibbon's slower-moving infantry brigades, and unbeknownst to him, General Crook's forces had been turned back by Crazy Horse and his band at Rosebud Creek.

On the verge of what seemed to him a certain and glorious victory for both the United States and himself, Custer ordered an immediate attack on the Indian village. Contemptuous of Indian military prowess, he split his forces into three parts to ensure that fewer Indians would escape. The attack was one the greatest fiascos of the United States Army, as thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors forced Custer's unit back onto a long, dusty ridge parallel to the Little Bighorn, surrounded them, and killed all 210 of them.

Custer's blunders cost him his life but gained him everlasting fame. His defeat at the Little Bighorn made the life of what would have been an obscure 19th century military figure into the subject of countless songs, books and paintings. His widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, did what she could to further his reputation, writing laudatory accounts of his life that portrayed him as not only a military genius but also a refined and cultivated man, a patron of the arts, and a budding statesman.

Lieutenant General Nelson Appleton Miles (1839-1925) - Born near Westminster, Massachusetts on August 8, 1839, Miles was working in a crockery store when the Civil War broke out. Entering the Union Army in September, 1861 as a volunteer, he fought in a number of crucial battles and became a lieutenant colonel in May, 1862. After the Battle of Antietam, he was promoted to Colonel and continued to advance during his military career. During the Civil War he was wounded four times in battle and fought in the Battle of Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and many more.

Nelson Appleton Miles

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After the Civil War, Miles played a leading role in nearly every phase of the army's campaign against the tribes of the Great Plains. In 1874-1875, he was a field commander in the force that defeated the Kiowa, Comanche and Southern Cheyenne along the Red River. In 1876-1877, he led the winter campaign that scoured the northern Plains after Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn, forcing the Lakota and their allies onto reservations.

Then, in the winter of 1877, he drove his troops on a forced march across Montana to intercept the Nez Perce band led by Chief Joseph that had eluded or defeated every unit sent against it over the course of a 1,500 mile retreat from Oregon to the Canadian border.

Miles earned the scorn of another fellow officer in 1886, when he replaced General George Crook as commander of the campaign against Geronimo in Arizona. Crook had relied heavily on Apache scouts in his efforts to capture the Chiricahua leader, but Miles replaced them with white troops who eventually traveled over three thousand miles trailing Geronimo and his band through the torturous Sierra Madre Mountains.

Finally, Miles sent Apache scouts to help negotiate a surrender, under the terms of which Geronimo and his followers were exiled to confinement on a Florida reservation. Miles exiled his Apache scouts to Florida as well, although they were officially enlisted members of the army, and it was for this betrayal of troops who had served them both loyally that Crook never forgave him.

The 1890 Ghost Dance "uprising" on the Lakota reservations brought Miles back into the field once again. In an effort to restore peace throughout the area, Miles directed troop movements that inadvertently panicked many Lakota bands into leaving their reservations and led both to Sitting Bull's death and to the massacre of Big Foot's band at Wounded Knee. Miles reacted to these developments by working aggressively to implement his longstanding belief that the Lakota should be forcibly disarmed and placed under military control.

In 1895, he was named Commanding General of the U.S. Army, a post he would retain though the Spanish-American War. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant General in 1900 based on his performance in the war. Afterwards, he wrote several books and served on various commissions.

Miles was the only man to have served as a commander in the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War. In his late 70s, he volunteered to serve in the army during World War I as well, but was turned down by President Woodrow Wilson.

Miles died on May 15, 1925 at the age of 85. He was the last full-rank major general of the Civil War.

Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, © April, 2005

ALSO SEE:

Battle of Little Big Horn

Battles of the Indian Wars

Frontier Skirmishes between the Pioneers & the Indians

Indian Wars of the Frontier West

Old West Legends

Native American People

Native American Tribes

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