Winning the West: The Army in the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

Winning The West: The Army In The Indian Wars

The Southern Plains

The Army during the Indian Wars was habitually unable to balance resources with requirements, both because of limited manpower and because of the continental size of the theater of operations. As Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, commanding the Division of the Missouri, put it, "Were I or the department commanders to send guards to every point where they are clamored for, we would need alone on the plains a hundred thousand men, mostly of cavalry. Each spot of every road, and each little settlement along five thousand miles of frontier, wants its regiment of cavalry or infantry to protect it against the combined power of all the Indians, because of the bare possibility of their being attacked by the combined force of all the Indians."

General William T. Sherman

It was the good fortune of both the Army and the citizen in the West that the Indians rarely acted in concert within or between tribes, although had they done so the Army might have been able regularly to employ large units instead of dispersing troops in small detachments all over the frontier, and might also have had better luck in forcing the elusive opponent to stand and fight. But troops and units were at a premium, so much so in 1868 that Major General Philip H. Sheridan decided to try an unusual expedient to carry out his responsibilities in the Department of the Missouri.

Sheridan directed Major George A. Forsyth to "employ fifty first-class hardy frontiersmen, to be used as scouts against the hostile Indians, to be commanded by yourself." Recruited at Forts Harker and Hays in Kansas, the command took the field in late August in a region frequented by Comanches, Kiowas, Southern Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, augmented by some Sioux roaming south of the Platte. The tribes were restive. The Kansas Pacific Railroad was advancing through their country, frightening the buffalo -- their source of food, clothing, and shelter -- and attracting white settlement. The Cheyennes were still smoldering over the massacre of some 200 of Black Kettle's band, including women and children, by Colonel John M. Chivington and his Colorado volunteers on Sand Creek in 1864, and had demonstrated their mistrust of the whites when Major General Winfield Scott Hancock penetrated their area with a large and presumably peaceful expedition in 1867.

Forsyth and the Indians collided on the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River at dawn on November 17, 1868, when a combined war party of about 600 Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahoes attacked him in a defensive position on a small island in the river bed. The Indians pressed the fight for three days, wounding Forsyth and upwards of 20 of his scouts and killing his second in command, Lieutenant Frederick H. Beecher, and his surgeon and 3 scouts. Among Indian casualties in this Battle of Beecher Island was the influential Cheyenne leader Roman Nose. The first rescue force on the scene was Captain Louis H. Carpenter's company of Negro troopers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment.

By the late 1860's, the government's policy of removing Indians from desirable areas (graphically represented by the transfer of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast to Oklahoma -- the Cherokees called it the "Trail of Tears" -- had run its course and was succeeded by one of concentrating them on reservations.

The practice of locating tribes in other than native or salubrious surroundings and of joining uncongenial bands led to more than one Indian War. Some bands found it convenient to accept reservation status and government rations during the winter months, returning to the warpath and hunting trail in the milder seasons. Many bands of many tribes refused to accept the treaties offered by a peace commission and resisted the government's attempt to confine them to specific geographical limits; it fell to the Army to force compliance. In his area, General Sheridan now planned to hit the Indians in their permanent winter camps.

While a winter campaign presented serious logistical problems, it offered opportunities for decisive results. If the Indians' shelter, food, and livestock could be destroyed or captured, not only the warriors but their women and children were at the mercy of the Army and the elements, and there was little left but surrender. Here was the technique of total war, a practice that raised certain moral questions for many officers and men that were never satisfactorily resolved.

Philip Sheridan

General Philip Sheridan

Sheridan devised a plan whereby three columns would converge on the wintering grounds of the Indians just east of the Texas Panhandle, one from Fort Lyon in Colorado, one from Fort Bascom in New Mexico, and one from Camp Supply in Oklahoma. The 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer fought the major engagement of the campaign. Custer found the Indians on the Washita River and struck Black Kettle's Cheyenne village with eleven companies from four directions at dawn on November 29, 1868, as the regimental band played "Gerry Owen."

A fierce fight developed which the Indians continued from surrounding terrain. By midmorning Custer learned that this was only one of many villages of Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches extending for miles along the Washita.

Facing such odds, Custer hastened to destroy the village and its supplies and horses, used an offensive maneuver to deceive the enemy, and under cover of darkness withdrew from the field, taking 53 women and children as prisoners. The 7th lost 21 officers and men killed and 13 wounded in the Battle of the Washita; the Indians perhaps 50 killed and as many wounded.

The Kiowas and Comanches did not lightly relinquish their hunting grounds and forsake their way of life. Some lived restlessly on a reservation in Indian Territory around Fort Sill, others held out. Sherman, now Commanding General of the U.S. Army, Sheridan, commanding the Division of the Missouri, and their field commanders were forced into active campaigning before these tribes were subdued. In 1871 reservation Kiowas raided into Texas, killing some teamsters of a government wagon train. General Sherman, visiting at Fort Sill, had the responsible leaders -- Satanta, Satank, and Big Tree -- arrested in a dramatic confrontation on the post between armed Indians and soldiers in which only Sherman's coolness prevented an explosion. Satank was later killed attempting escape, while Satanta and Big Tree were tried and imprisoned for two years. Again in custody in 1876, Satanta took his own life.

There were other incidents on the Southern Plains before the Indians there were subjugated. An Army campaign in 1874, involving about 3,000 troops under Colonel Nelson A. Miles' over-all command, was launched in five columns from bases in Texas, New Mexico, and Indian Territory against the Texas Panhandle refuge of the Plains tribes. On September 24 Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry found the winter camp of the Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes in a last stronghold, the deep Palo Duro Canyon on the Staked Plains. Mackenzie's surprise attack separated the Indians from their horses and belongings, and these were destroyed. With winter coming on the Indians had little alternative to the reservation.

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