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

Winning The West: The Army In The Indian Wars

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The Northern Plains

All of the elements of the clash of red and white civilizations were present in the events leading to final subjugation of the Indians. The mounted tribes of the Great Plains were astride the main corridors of westward expansion, and this was the area of decision. The treaty of 1868 had set aside the Great Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and the Army had abandoned the Bozeman Trail, leaving the Powder River region as unceded Indian country. The Sioux and their allies were thus north of the main transcontinental artery along the Platte. Although the arrangement worked for several years, it was doomed by the irresistible march of civilization.

The Sioux rejected white overtures for a right-of-way for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and when surveyors went ahead anyway they ran into Indian resistance, which led to the dispatch in 1873 of a large military expedition under Colonel David S. Stanley up the Yellowstone Valley.

Ogalala Sioux at an oasis in the Badlands.

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

The next year General Sheridan sent Custer and the 7th Cavalry on a reconnaissance through the Black Hills, within the Sioux Reservation. When geologists with the expedition found gold, the word spread rapidly and prospectors filtered into the area despite the Army's best efforts to keep them out. Another treaty was broken and, band by band, angry reservation Indians slipped away to join non-treaty recalcitrants in the unceded Powder River region of Wyoming and Montana.

In December, 1875 the Indian bureau notified the Sioux and Cheyenne that they had to return to the reservation by the end of the following month. Since the Indians were in winter quarters in remote areas and would have had little chance against the elements, they did not obey. As the deadline passed, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs appealed to the Army to force compliance. Sheridan, mindful of his success with converging columns against the Southern Plains tribes, determined upon a similar campaign in the north.

Columns were organized to move on the Powder River area from three directions. Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry marched westward from Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory, his principal element the 7th Cavalry under Custer. Colonel John Gibbon moved eastward from Fort Ellis in western Montana with a mixed force of infantry and cavalry, while Brigadier General George Crook moved northward from Fort Fetterman on the North Platte in Wyoming with a force heavily weighted in cavalry. In March 1876 a part of Crook's force under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds had entered the valley of the Powder and surprised a Cheyenne-Sioux camp, but Reynolds had failed to press an initial advantage and had withdrawn without punishing the Indians. In June, with the major campaign under way, Crook made the first contact. The Sioux and Cheyennes learned of his approach along Rosebud Creek, and some 1,500 warriors moved to meet him. Crook had fifteen companies of cavalry and five of infantry, about 1,000 men, plus another 300 friendly Indians and civilians. The two forces met on roughly equal terms on the 17th in heavy fighting. Tactically, neither side carried the field conclusively enough to claim a victory. Strategically, Crook's withdrawal to a supply base to southward gave the Battle of the Rosebud the complexion of a defeat for the Army, especially in view of developments on the Little Bighorn River about fifty miles to northwestward, which his continued advance might have influenced decisively.

While Crook was moving northward to his collision on the Rosebud, Terry and Gibbon, marching from east and west, had joined forces on the Yellowstone River at its confluence with the Powder, where a supply base serviced by river steamer was established. Terry sent out the 7th Cavalry to scout for Indian signs, and Major Marcus A. Reno with six companies (the cavalry "company" was not called a "troop" until 1883) reconnoitered up the Powder, across the Tongue River, and into the valley of the Rosebud.

General George Crook

Here on June 17 Reno found a fresh trail leading west out of the valley and across the Wolf Mountains in the direction of the Little Bighorn. He was unaware, and was thus unable to inform his superiors, that Crook was also in the Rosebud valley and had been engaged and blocked by a large force of Indians not far upstream on this very same day.

Terry held a council of war aboard the steamer Far West to outline his plan. Custer's 7th Cavalry would move south up the Rosebud, cross the Wolf Mountains, and enter the Little Bighorn valley from the south. Gibbon, joined by Terry, would ascend the Bighorn River and its tributary, the Little Bighorn, from the north, trapping the Indians between the two forces.

As it happened, Custer moved at least a day early for the co-operative action envisioned in Terry's plan. On June 25, 1876, the 7th crossed the Wolf Mountains and moved into the valley of the Little Bighorn.

Custer was confident of his capability to handle whatever he ran up against, convinced that the Indians would follow their usual practice of scattering before a show of force, and completely unaware that he was descending upon one of the largest concentrations of Indians ever assembled on the Plains -- perhaps as many as 12,000 to 15,000 Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, with between 3,000 and 4,000 warriors under such leaders as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Gall, Crow King, Lame Deer, Hump, and Two Moon.

Around noon of this Sunday in June, Custer sent Captain Frederick W. Benteen with three companies to scout to the left of the command, not an unusual move for a force still attempting to fix the location of an elusive enemy and expecting him to slip away on contact. About 2:30 p.m., still two miles short of the river, when the upper end of an Indian village came into view, Custer advanced three more companies under Major Reno with instructions to cross the river and charge the Indian camp. With five companies Custer moved off to the right, still screened by a fold of ground from observing the extent of his opposition, perhaps with the thought of hitting the Indians from the flank -- of letting Reno hold the enemy by the nose while he, Custer, kicked him in the seat of the pants. As he progressed, Custer rushed Sergeant Daniel Kanipe to the rear to hurry the pack train and its one-company escort forward, and shortly afterward dispatched Trumpeter John Martin with a last message to Benteen informing him that a "big village" lay ahead and to "be quick -- bring packs."

The main phase of the Battle of the Little Bighorn lasted about two hours. Reno, charging down the river with three companies and some Arikara scouts, ran into hordes of Indians, not retreating, but advancing, perhaps mindful of their creditable performance against Crook the week before, and certainly motivated by a desire to protect their women and children and cover a withdrawal of the villages. Far outnumbered, suffering heavy casualties, and in danger of being overrun, Reno withdrew to the bluffs across the river and dug in.

Custer and his five companies--about 230 strong--moved briskly along the bluffs above the river until, some four miles away, beyond supporting distance and out of sight of the rest of the command, they were brought to bay and overwhelmed by an Indian force that outnumbered them by perhaps 20 to 1. When the last man had fallen and the dead had been plundered, the Indians turned their attention to Reno once again.

While the Indians had been chiefly absorbed on the Custer section of the field, Benteen's battalion and the pack train and its escorting company had moved up and gone into a defensive perimeter with Reno's force. An attempt to move in force in Custer's direction, despite a complete lack of knowledge of his location and situation, failed; the Reno defensive position was reoccupied and remained under attack until dark of the 25th and on through daylight hours of the 26th. The siege was finally lifted with the arrival of the Terry-Gibbon column on June 27th.

The Custer disaster shocked the nation and was the climax of the Indian Wars. The Army poured troops into the Upper Plains and the Indians scattered, some, like Sitting Bull's band, to Canada. But gradually, under Army pressure or seeing the futility of further resistance, the Indians surrendered and returned to the reservation.

The last gasp of the Indian Wars occurred in 1890 and grew out of the fervor of the Ghost Dance religion. The Sioux were particularly susceptible to the emotional excitement and the call of the old way of life represented in these ceremonies, and their wild involvement frightened the agent on the Sioux Reservation into calling for military protection. The 7th Cavalry, now commanded by Colonel James W. Forsyth, moved to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Agency where, on December 29, 1890, the regiment attempted to disarm Big Foot's band. An Indian's rifle was discharged into the air as two soldiers disarmed him, precipitating a battle in which more than 150 Indians, including women and children, were killed and a third as many wounded, while 25 soldiers were killed and another 37 wounded.

The Battle of Wounded Knee was the last Indian engagement to fall in the category of warfare; later incidents were more in the realm of civil disturbance. The nineteenth century was drawing to a close and the frontier was rapidly disappearing. Territories were being replaced by states, and people, settlements, government, and law were spreading across the land. The buffalo were gone and the Indians were confined to reservations and dependent upon the government for subsistence. An expanded rail system was available to move troops quickly to trouble spots, and the Army could now concentrate its forces at the larger and more permanent posts and relinquish numerous smaller installations that had outgrown their usefulness. By 1895 the Army was deployed more or less equally around the country on the basis of regional rather than operational considerations.

In the quarter century of the Indian Wars the Army met the Indian in over a thousand actions, large and small, all across the American West. It fought these wars with peacetime strength and on a peacetime budget, while at the same time it helped shape Indian policy, contributed to the red man's acculturation, and was centrally involved in numerous other activities that were part and parcel of westward expansion and of the nation's attainment of its "manifest destiny." Operations against the Indians seasoned the Army and forged a core of experienced leaders who would serve the republic well as it moved onto the world scene at the turn of the century.

Added April, 2008

Source: US Army Center of Military History

Author Notes:

Winning The West: The Army In The Indian Wars, 1865-1890 is extracted from the book, American Military History, Volume 1, The United States Army and the Forging Of A Nation, 1775-1917; Richard W. Stewart, General Editor; Office Of The Chief Of Military History, United States Army. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC. This article; however, is not verbatim as it has been edited.

ALSO SEE:

Battles, Campaigns and Massacres of the Indian Wars

Indian War List and Timeline

Military Campaigns of the Indian Wars

Three Indian Campaigns

Indian Fighters

Indian Wars of the Frontier West

Winning The West: The Army In The Indian Wars

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