The Last American Frontier :: CHAPTER XVI THE SIOUX WAR

CHAPTER XVI THE SIOUX WAR

The struggle for the possession of the plains worked the displacement of the Indian tribes. At the beginning, the invasion of Kansas had undone the work accomplished in erecting the Indian frontier. The occupation of Minnesota led surely to the downfall and transportation of the Sioux of the Mississippi. Gold in Colorado attracted multitudes who made peace impossible for the Indians of the southern plains. The Sioux of the northern plains came within the influence of the overland march in the same years with similar results.

The northern Sioux, commonly known as the Sioux of the plains, and distinguished from their relatives the Sioux of the Mississippi, had participated in the treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, had granted rights of transit to the whites, and had been recognized themselves as nomadic bands occupying the plains north of the Platte River. Heretofore they had had no treaty relations with the United States, being far beyond the frontier. Their people, 16,000 perhaps, were grouped roughly in various bands: BrulÉ, Yankton, Yanktonai, Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Sans Arcs, and Miniconjou. Their dependence on the chase made them more dependent on the annuities provided them at Laramie. As the game diminished the annuity increased in relative importance, and scarcely made a fair equivalent for what they lost. Yet on the whole, they imitated their neighbors, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and kept the peace.

Almost the only time that the pledge was broken was in the autumn of 1854. Continual trains of immigrants passing through the Sioux country made it nearly impossible to prevent friction between the races in which the blame was quite likely to fall upon the timorous homeseekers. On August 17, 1854, a cow strayed away from a band of Mormons encamped a few miles from Fort Laramie. Some have it that the cow was lame, and therefore abandoned; but whatever the cause, the cow was found, killed, and eaten by a small band of hungry Miniconjou Sioux. The charge of theft was brought into camp at Laramie, not by the Mormons, but by The Bear, chief of the BrulÉ, and Lieutenant Grattan with an escort of twenty-nine men, a twelve-pounder and a mountain howitzer, was sent out the next day to arrest the Indian who had slaughtered the animal. At the Indian village the culprit was not forthcoming, Grattan's drunken interpreter roughened a diplomacy which at best was none too tactful, and at last the troops fired into the lodge which was said to contain the offender. No one of the troops got away from the enraged Sioux, who, after their anger had led them to retaliate, followed it up by plundering the near-by post of the fur company. Commissioner Manypenny believed that this action by the troops was illegal and unnecessary from the start, since the Mormons could legally have been reimbursed from the Indian funds by the agent.

No general war followed this outbreak. A few braves went on the war-path and rumors of great things reached the East, but General Harney, sent out with three regiments to end the Sioux war in 1855, found little opposition and fought only one important battle. On the Little Blue Water, in September, 1855, he fell upon Little Thunder's band of BrulÉ Sioux and killed or wounded nearly a hundred of them. There is some doubt whether this band had anything to do with the Grattan episode, or whether it was even at war, but the defeat was, as Agent Twiss described it, "a thunderclap to them." For the first time they learned the mighty power of the United States, and General Harney made good use of this object lesson in the peace council which he held with them in March, 1856. The treaty here agreed upon was never legalized, and remained only a sort of modus vivendi for the following years. The Sioux tribes were so loosely organized that the authority of the chiefs had little weight; young braves did as they pleased regardless of engagements supposed to bind the tribes. But the lesson of the defeat lasted long in the memory of the plains tribes, so that they gave little trouble until the wars of 1864 broke out. Meanwhile Chouteau's old Fort Pierre on the Missouri was bought by the United States and made a military post for the control of these upper tribes.

Before the plains Sioux broke out again, the Minnesota uprising had led the Mississippi Sioux to their defeat. Some were executed in the fall of 1862, others were transported to the Missouri Valley; still others got away to the Northwest, there to continue a profitless war that kept up fighting for several years. Meanwhile came the plains war of 1864 in which the tribes south of the Platte were chiefly concerned, and in which men at the centre of the line thought there were evidences of an alliance between northern and southern tribes. Thus Governor Evans wrote of "information furnished me, through various sources, of an alliance of the Cheyenne and a part of the Arapahoe tribes with the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Indians of the south, and the great family of the Sioux Indians of the north upon the plains," and the Indian Commissioner accepted the notion. But, like the question of intrigue, this was a matter of belief rather than of proof; while local causes to account for the disorder are easily found. Yet it is true that during 1864 and 1865 the northern Sioux became uneasy.

During 1865, though the causes likely to lead to hostilities were in no wise changed, efforts were made to reach agreements with the plains tribes. The Cheyenne, humbled at Sand Creek, were readily handled at the Little Arkansas treaty in October. They there surrendered to the United States all their reserve in Colorado and accepted a new one, which they never actually received, south of the Arkansas, and bound themselves not to camp within ten miles of the route to Santa FÉ. On the other side, "to heal the wounds caused by the Chivington affair," special appropriations were made by the United States to the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. The Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche joined in similar treaties. During the same week, in 1865, a special commission made treaties of peace with nine of the Sioux tribes, including the remnants of the Mississippi bands. "These treaties were made," commented the Commissioner, "and the Indians, in spite of the great suffering from cold and want of food endured during the very severe winter of 1865–66, and consequent temptation to plunder to procure the absolute necessaries of life, faithfully kept the peace."

In September, 1865, the steamer Calypso struggled up the shallow Missouri River, carrying a party of commissioners to Fort Sully, there to make these treaties with the Sioux. Congress had provided $20,000 for a special negotiation before adjourning in March, 1865, and General Sully, who was yet conducting the prolonged Sioux War, had pointed out the place most suitable for the conference. The first council was held on October 6.

The military authorities were far from eager to hold this council. Already the breach between the military power responsible for policing the plains and the civilian department which managed the tribes was wide. Thus General Pope, commanding the Department of the Missouri, grumbled to Grant in June that whenever Indian hostilities occurred, the Indian Department, which was really responsible, blamed the soldiers for causing them. He complained of the divided jurisdiction and of the policy of buying treaties from the tribes by presents made at the councils. In reference to this special treaty he had "only to say that the Sioux Indians have been attacking everybody in their region of country; and only lately ... attacked in heavy force Fort Rice, on the upper Missouri, well fortified and garrisoned by four companies of infantry with artillery. If these things show any desire for peace, I confess I am not able to perceive it."

In future years this breach was to become wider yet. At Sand Creek the military authorities had justified the attack against the criticism of the local Indian agents and Eastern philanthropists. There was indeed plenty of evidence of misconduct on both sides. If the troops were guilty on the charge of being over-ready to fight—and here the words of Governor Evans were prophetic, "Now the war ... is nearly through, and the Great Father will not know what to do with all his soldiers, except to send them after the Indians on the plains,"—the Indian agents often succumbed to the opportunity for petty thieving. The case of one of the agents of the Yankton Sioux illustrates this. It was his custom each year to have the chiefs of his tribe sign general receipts for everything sent to the agency. Thus at the end of the year he could turn in Indians' vouchers and report nothing on hand. But the receipt did not mean that the Indian had got the goods; although signed for, these were left in the hands of the agent to be given out as needed. The inference is strong that many of the supplies intended for and signed for by the Indians went into the pocket of the agent. During the third quarter of 1863 this agent claimed to have issued to his charges: "One pair of bay horses, 7 years old; ... 1 dozen 17-inch mill files; ... 6 dozen Seidlitz powders; 6 pounds compound syrup of squills; 6 dozen Ayer's pills; ... 3 bottles of rose water; ... 1 pound of wax; ... 1 ream of vouchers; ... ½ M 6434 8½-inch official envelopes; ... 4 bottles 8-ounce mucilage." So great was this particular agent's power that it was nearly impossible to get evidence against him. "If I do, he will fix it so I'll never get anything in the world and he will drive me out of the country," was typical of the attitude of his neighbors.

With jurisdiction divided, and with claimants for it quarrelling, it is no wonder that the charges suffered. But the ill results came more from the impossible situation than from abuse on either side. It needs often to be reiterated that the heart of the Indian question was in the infiltration of greedy, timorous, enterprising, land-hungry whites who could not be restrained by any process known to American government. In the conflict between two civilizations, the lower must succumb. Neither the War Department nor the Indian Office was responsible for most of the troubles; yet of the two, the former, through readiness to fight and to hold the savage to a standard of warfare which he could not understand, was the greater offender. It was not so great an offender, however, as the selfish interests of those engaged in trading with the Indians would make it out to be.

The Fort Sully conference, terminating in a treaty signed on October 10, 1865, was distinctly unsatisfactory. Many of the western Sioux did not come at all. Even the eastern were only partially represented. And among tribes in which the central authority of the chiefs was weak, full representation was necessary to secure a binding peace. The commissioners, after most pacific efforts, were "unable to ascertain the existence of any really amicable feeling among these people towards the government." The chiefs were sullen and complaining, and the treaty which resulted did little more than repeat the terms of the treaty of 1851, binding the Indians to permit roads to be opened through their country and to keep away from the trails.

It is difficult to show that the northern Sioux were bound by the treaty of Fort Sully. The Laramie treaty of 1851 had never had full force of law because the Senate had added amendments to it, which all the signatory Indians had not accepted. Although Congress had appropriated the annuities specified in the treaty the binding force of the document was not great on savages. The Fort Sully treaty was deficient in that it did not represent all of the interested tribes. In making Indian treaties at all, the United States acted upon a convenient fiction that the Indians had authorities with power to bind; whereas the leaders had little control over their followers and after nearly every treaty there were many bands that could claim to have been left out altogether. Yet such as they were, the treaties existed, and the United States proceeded in 1865 and 1866 to use its specified rights in opening roads through the hunting-grounds of the Sioux.

The mines of Montana and Idaho, which had attracted notice and emigration in the early sixties, were still the objective points of a large traffic. They were somewhat off the beaten routes, being accessible by the Missouri River and Fort Benton, or by the Platte trail and a northern branch from near Fort Hall to Virginia City. To bring them into more direct connection with the East an available route from Fort Laramie was undertaken in 1865. The new trail left the main road near Fort Laramie, crossed to the north side of the Platte, and ran off to the northwest. Shortly after leaving the Platte the road got into the charming foothill country where the slopes "are all covered with a fine growth of grass, and in every valley there is either a rushing stream or some quiet babbling brook of pure, clear snow-water filled with trout, the banks lined with trees—wild cherry, quaking asp, some birch, willow, and cottonwood." To the left, and not far distant, were the Big Horn Mountains. To the right could sometimes be seen in the distance the shadowy billows of the Black Hills. Running to the north and draining the valley were the Powder and Tongue rivers, both tributaries of the Yellowstone. Here were water, timber, and forage, coal and oil and game. It was the garden spot of the Indians, "the very heart of their hunting-grounds." In a single day's ride were seen "bear, buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, rabbits, and sage-hens." With little exaggeration it was described as a "natural source of recuperation and supply to moving, hunting, and roving bands of all tribes, and their lodge trails cross it in great numbers from north to south." Through this land, keeping east of the Big Horn Mountains and running around their northern end into the Yellowstone Valley, was to run the new Powder River road to Montana. The Sioux treaties were to have their severest testing in the selection of choice hunting-grounds for an emigrant road, for it was one of the certainties in the opening of new roads that game vanished in the face of emigration.

While the commissioners were negotiating their treaty at Fort Sully, the first Powder River expedition, in its attempt to open this new road by the short and direct route from Fort Laramie to Bozeman and the Montana mines, was undoing their work. In the summer of 1865 General Patrick E. Connor, with a miscellaneous force of 1600, including a detachment of ex-Confederate troops who had enlisted in the United States army to fight Indians, started from Fort Laramie for the mouth of the Rosebuds on the Yellowstone, by way of the Powder River. Old Jim Bridger, the incarnation of this country, led them, swearing mightily at "these damn paper-collar soldiers," who knew so little of the Indians. There was plenty of fighting as Connor pushed into the Yellowstone, but he was relieved from command in September and the troops were drawn back, so that there were no definitive results of the expedition of 1865.

In 1866, in spite of the fact that the Sioux of this region, through their leader Red Cloud, had refused to yield the ground or even to treat concerning it, Colonel Henry B. Carrington was ordered by General Pope to command the Mountain District, Department of the Platte, and to erect and garrison posts for the control of the Powder River road. On December 21 of this year, Captain W.J. Fetterman, of his command, and seventy-eight officers and men were killed near Fort Philip Kearney in a fight whose merits aroused nearly as much acrimonious discussion as the Sand Creek massacre.

Red Cloud and Professor Marsh

From a cut lent by Professor Warren K. Moorehead, of Andover, Mass.

The events leading up to the catastrophe at Fort Philip Kearney, a catastrophe so complete that none of its white participants escaped to tell what happened, were connected with Carrington's work in building forts. He had been detailed for the work in the spring, and after a conference at Fort Kearney, Nebraska, with General Sherman, had marched his men in nineteen days to Fort Laramie. He reached Fort Reno, which became his headquarters, on June 28. On the march, if his orders were obeyed, his soldiers were scrupulous in their regard for the Indians. His orders issued for the control of emigrants passing along the Powder River route were equally careful. Thirty men were to constitute the minimum single party; these were to travel with a military pass, which was to be scrutinized by the commanding officer of each post. The trains were ordered to hold together and were warned that "nearly all danger from Indians lies in the recklessness of travellers. A small party, when separated, either sell whiskey to or fire upon scattering Indians, or get into disputes with them, and somebody is hurt. An insult to an Indian is resented by the Indians against the first white men they meet, and innocent travellers suffer."

Carrington's orders were to garrison Fort Reno and build new forts on the Powder, Big Horn, and Yellowstone rivers, and cover the road. The last-named fort was later cut away because of his insufficient force, but Fort Philip Kearney and Fort C.F. Smith were located during July and August. The former stood on a little plateau formed between the two Pineys as they emerge from the Big Horn Mountains. Its site was surveyed and occupied on July 15. Already Carrington was complaining that he had too few men for his work. With eight companies of eighty men each, and most of these new recruits, he had to garrison his long line, all the while building and protecting his stockades and fortifications. "I am my own engineer, draughtsman, and visit my pickets and guards nightly, with scarcely a day or night without attempts to steal stock." Worse than this, his military equipment was inadequate. Only his band, specially armed for the expedition, had Spencer carbines and enough ammunition. His main force, still armed with Springfield rifles, had under fifty rounds to the man.

The Indians, Cheyenne and Sioux, were, all through the summer, showing no sign of accepting the invasion of the hunting-grounds without a fight. Yet Carrington reported on August 29 that he was holding them off; that Fort C.F. Smith on the Big Horn had been occupied; that parties of fifty well-armed men could get through safely if they were careful. The Indians, he said, "are bent on robbery; they only fight when assured of personal security and remunerative stealings; they are divided among themselves."

With the sites for forts C.F. Smith and Philip Kearney selected, the work of construction proceeded during the autumn. A sawmill, sent out from the states, was kept hard at work. Wood was cut on the adjacent hills and speedily converted into cabins and palisades which approached completion before winter set in. It was construction during a state of siege, however. Instead of pacifying the valley the construction of the forts aggravated the Sioux hostility so that constant watchfulness was needed. That the trains sent out to gather wood were not seriously injured was due to rigorous discipline. The wagons moved twenty or more at a time, with guards, and in two parallel columns. At first sight of Indians they drove into corral and signalled back to the lookouts at the fort for help. Occasionally men were indeed cut out by the Indians, who in turn suffered considerable loss; but Carrington reduced his own losses to a minimum. Friendly Indians were rarely seen. They were allowed to come to the fort, by the main road and with a white flag, but few availed themselves of the privilege. The Sioux were up in arms, and in large numbers hung about the Tongue and Powder river valleys waiting for their chance.

Early in December occurred an incident revealing the danger of annihilation which threatened Carrington's command. At one o'clock on the afternoon of the sixth a messenger reported to the garrison at Fort Philip Kearney that the wood train was attacked by Indians four miles away. Carrington immediately had every horse at the post mounted. For the main relief he sent out a column under Brevet Lieutenant-colonel Fetterman, who had just arrived at the fort, while he led in person a flanking party to cut off the Indians' retreat. The mercury was below zero. Carrington was thrown into the water of Peno Creek when his horse stumbled through breaking ice. Fetterman's party found the wood train in corral and standing off the attack with success. The savages retreated as the relief approached and were pursued for five miles, when they turned and offered battle. Just as the fighting began, most of the cavalry broke away from Fetterman, leaving him and some fourteen others surrounded by Indians and attacked on three sides. He held them off, however, until Carrington came in sight and the Indians fled. Why Lieutenant Bingham retreated with his cavalry and left Fetterman in such danger was never explained, for the Indians killed him and one of his non-commissioned officers, while several other privates were wounded. The Indians, once the fight was over, disappeared among the hills, and Carrington had no force with which to follow them. In reporting the battle that night he renewed his requests for men and officers. He had but six officers for the six companies at Fort Philip Kearney. He was totally unable to take the aggressive because of the defences which had constantly to be maintained.

In this fashion the fall advanced in the Powder River Valley. The forts were finished. The Indian hostilities increased. The little, overworked force of Carrington, chopping, building, guarding, and fighting, struggled to fulfil its orders. If one should criticise Carrington, the attack would be chiefly that he looked to defensive measures in the Indian war. He did indeed ask for troops, officers, and equipment, but his despatches and his own vindication show little evidence that he realized the need for large reËnforcements for the specific purpose of a punitive campaign. More skilful Indian fighters knew that the Indians could and would keep up indefinitely this sort of filibustering against the forts, and that a vigorous move against their own villages was the surest means to secure peace. In Indian warfare, even more perhaps than in civilized, it is advantageous to destroy the enemy's base of supplies.

The wood train was again attacked on December 21. About eleven o'clock that morning the pickets reported the train "corralled and threatened by Indians on Sullivant Hills, a mile and a half from the fort." The usual relief party was at once organized and sent out under Fetterman, who claimed the right to command it by seniority, and who was not highest in the confidence of Colonel Carrington. He had but recently joined the command, was full of enthusiasm and desire to hunt Indians, and needed the admonition with which he left the fort: that he was "fighting brave and desperate enemies who sought to make up by cunning and deceit all the advantage which the white man gains by intelligence and better arms." He was ordered to support and bring in the wood train, this being all Carrington believed himself strong enough to do and keep on doing. Any one could have had a fight at any time, and Carrington was wise to issue the "peremptory and explicit" orders to avoid pursuit beyond the summit of Lodge Trail Ridge, as needless and unduly dangerous. Three times this order was given to Fetterman; and after that, "fearing still that the spirit of ambition might override prudence," says Carrington, "I crossed the parade and from a sentry platform halted the cavalry and again repeated my precise orders."

With these admonitions, Fetterman started for the relief, leading a party of eighty-one officers and men, picked and all well armed. He crossed the Lodge Trail Ridge as soon as he was out of sight of the fort and disappeared. No one of his command came back alive. The wood train, before twelve o'clock, broke corral and moved on in safety, while shots were heard beyond the ridge. For half an hour there was a constant volleying; then all was still. Meanwhile Carrington, nervous at the lack of news from Fetterman, had sent a second column, and two wagons to relieve him, under Captain Ten Eyck. The latter, moving along cautiously, with large bands of Sioux retreating before him, came finally upon forty-nine bodies, including that of Fetterman. The evidence of arrows, spears, and the position of bodies was that they had been surrounded, surprised, and overwhelmed in their defeat. The next day the rest of the bodies were reached and brought back. Naked, dismembered, slashed, visited with indescribable indignities, they were buried in two great graves; seventy-nine soldiers and two civilians.

The Fetterman massacre raised a storm in the East similar in volume to that following Sand Creek, two years before. Who was at fault, and why, were the questions indignantly asked. Judicious persons were well aware, wrote the Nation, that "our whole Indian policy is a system of mismanagement, and in many parts one of gigantic abuse." The military authorities tried to place the blame on Carrington, as plausible, energetic, and industrious, but unable to maintain discipline or inspire his officers with confidence. Unquestionably a part of this was true, yet the letter which made the charge admitted that often the Indians were better armed than the troops, and the critic himself, General Cooke, had ordered Carrington: "You can only defend yourself and trains, and emigrants, the best you can." The Indian Commissioner charged it on the bad disposition of the troops, always anxious to fight.

The issue broke over the number of Indians involved. Current reports from Fort Philip Kearney indicated from 3000 to 5000 hostile warriors, chiefly Sioux and led by Red Cloud of the Oglala tribe. The Commissioner pointed out that such a force must imply from 21,000 to 35,000 Indians in all—a number that could not possibly have been in the Powder River country. It is reasonable to believe that Fetterman was not overwhelmed by any multitude like this, but that his own rash disobedience led to ambush and defeat by a force well below 3000. Upon him fell the immediate responsibility; above him, the War Department was negligent in detailing so few men for so large a task; and ultimately there was the impossibility of expecting savage Sioux to give up their best hunting-grounds as a result of a treaty signed by others than themselves.

The fight at Fort Philip Kearney marked a point of transition in Indian warfare. Even here the Indians were mostly armed with bows and arrows, and were relying upon their superior numbers for victory. Yet a change in Indian armament was under way, which in a few years was to convert the Indian from a savage warrior into the "finest natural soldier in the world." He was being armed with rifles. As the game diminished the tribes found that the old methods of hunting were inadequate and began the pressure upon the Indian Department for better weapons. The department justified itself in issuing rifles and ammunition, on the ground that the laws of the United States expected the Indians to live chiefly upon game, which they could not now procure by the older means. Hence came the anomalous situation in which one department of the United States armed and equipped the tribes for warfare against another. If arms were cut down, the tribes were in danger of extinction; if they were issued, hostilities often resulted. After the Fetterman massacre the Indian Office asserted that the hostile Sioux were merely hungry, because the War Department had caused the issuing of guns to be stopped. It was all an unsolvable problem, with bad temper and suspicion on both sides.

A few months after the Fetterman affair Red Cloud tried again to wreck a wood train near Fort Philip Kearney. But this time the escort erected a barricade with the iron, bullet-proof bodies of a new variety of army wagon, and though deserted by most of his men, Major James Powell, with one other officer, twenty-six privates, and four citizens, lay behind their fortification and repelled charge after charge from some 800 Sioux and Cheyenne. With little loss to himself he inflicted upon the savages a lesson that lasted many years.

The Sioux and Cheyenne wars were links in the chain of Indian outbreaks that stretched across the path of the westward movement, the overland traffic and the continental railways. The Pacific railways had been chartered just as the overland telegraph had been opened to the Pacific coast. With this last, perhaps from reverence for the nearly supernatural, the Indians rarely meddled. But as the railway advanced, increasing compression and repression stirred the tribes to a series of hostilities. The first treaties which granted transit—meaning chiefly wagon transit—broke down. A new series of conferences and a new policy were the direct result of these wars.

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