War in the West

The morning of May 23, 1865, saw the nation's capital thronged with citizens and soldiers. Campaign-toughened Union troops, school children, convalescent soldiers and sailors from the hospitals, and eager civilians filled Washington's main thoroughfares, parks, and public buildings. It was the first of two days that men would talk about for years to come, two glorious days focused on national pride and thanksgiving. The war was over, and the victorious armies of the Potomac, of Tennessee, and of Georgia were about to pass in review before President Andrew Johnson and the people.

At nine o'clock General Meade's Army of the Potomac began its march down Capitol Hill toward Pennsylvania Avenue, where the presidential party waited in the reviewing stand erected in front of the White House. Flags and banners fluttered all along the line of march. School children sang and cheered. The crash of blaring bands accompanied the cobble-clatter of mounted officers and the stamp of serried ranks of veteran infantry as the troops moved down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the presidential stand festooned with star-spangled bunting bearing the terrible names of "Vicksburg," "Antietam," "Gettysburg," and others.

The second day of the Grand Review witnessed the passage of Sherman's far-ranging army. Little Phil Sheridan could not be present to lead his cavalry brigades, but Generals Custer and Merritt headed up the mounted column in his place. Custer would ride to defeat and immortality eleven years later at the Little Bighorn, but on this warm day in May, 1865, few Americans, in or out of the army, were much concerned with the potential problems of the Indian military frontier. This was the Grand Review of two hundred thousand victorious Union soldiers. Newspapers and magazines throughout the nation printed columns describing this proud, awesome display of the nation in arms, and universally voiced the prayer that never again would the land be torn by war.

Not all of the federal forces, by any means, could be assembled in Washington for the review, and reporters mentioned in passing that many deserving units of the army were necessarily occupied with garrison and routine duties elsewhere. Where these units were and what they were doing in actuality were not important to those who stood and watched the events connected with the Great Peace. For hours the troops, afoot and mounted, moved smartly in review. The issues between the two sections of a divided nation had been settled on the battlefields. Soldiers seasoned by four years of war could now return to the pursuits of peace, and the nation to the tasks of unity, reconstruction, and agricultural and industrial prosperity.

But this was only the moment of the Great Peace. The reality was of another character. The country had never really been bisectional, north and south: it had three parts after 1803, and there had not been a condition of entire peace in its western domain, which by 1865 extended to the far-away Pacific. There was another race there, and many tongues, those of the Indians, and they knew a great deal about warfare.

As the veterans of the Civil War passed in review, the men of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry and the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, serving in Colorado and Dakota Territories, were spread thinly, garrisoning posts in eastern Colorado and along the Overland Trail in what is now southern Wyoming. The truth is, these volunteers did not know that the war was over, as powerful hordes of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors descended on settlements, posts, and trail traffic in the spring and summer of 1865. However, most of the wartime volunteer and state troops, from Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and California, were withdrawn from the Indian frontier in the Southwest, from Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Dakota, late in 1865. Active service for the volunteers ended when they were replaced by hastily reorganized regiments of the Regular Army.

At the end of the Civil War, the plains, deserts, and mountains of the West flamed with savage warfare. Another generation would pass before the power of the western tribes was broken. During most of the quarter-century after 1865 the Regular Army was virtually a stepchild of the Republic. National attention was usually absorbed by such compelling developments as President Johnson's struggle with the Radical Republican Congress and the agonies of reconstruction; possibilities of involvement with France over the Mexican question; financial panics and massive labor violence, and the growing pains of a wildly expanding economy. Only the most sensational Indian campaigns received much notice in the older, more settled sections of the nation.

Fairly quiet when the Civil War began, Indian warfare reemerged in August, 1862, when the Santee Sioux broke out violently in Minnesota. The Santees were finally driven west into Dakota Territory, where their western Sioux kinsmen took up their cause. Troops sent against the Sioux in 1863–64 campaigned deep into Dakota Territory, removing the Indian threat to the border settlements, but leaving all the Sioux ready for large-scale warfare, where before only the eastern Sioux had been serious enemies. By 1865, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho war parties scourged through most of Dakota Territory, much of Nebraska, Kansas, eastern Colorado, and what is now Wyoming.

On the southern plains the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches, and Kiowas fought Union and Confederate troops alike during the Civil War. Desiring at least an interval of peace in 1864, the Southern Cheyennes negotiated for terms and went into winter camp on Sand Creek, near Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado. Infuriated, vengeful Colorado volunteer troops tried to exterminate Black Kettle's Southern Cheyennes at their Sand Creek camp November 29, 1864. Already burning brightly, Chivington's Colorado Volunteers had turned the flame of plains warfare into a searing blast, as news of the Sand Creek tragedy spread to the Northern Cheyennes and the Sioux. Indian retaliation was not slow. Raids occurred with ever increasing devastation and frequency. In February, 1865, a combined Sioux, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho war party captured, sacked, and burned the settlement of Julesburg in northeastern Colorado.

The Apaches and Navahos of the southwestern deserts and mountains had also been at war with the whites from 1861 to 1864. Kit Carson, leading Union troops as a colonel of Volunteers, quelled the Mescalero Apaches of southern New Mexico, and forced the Navahos to surrender at Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, January 6, 1864. The...