WAR AND PEACE ON THE INDIAN FRONTIER

Although some Westerners were calling for the extermination of native peoples, policymakers in 30 the East called for more enlightened and humane Indian policies. The concept of placing Indians on reservations and teaching them to support themselves looked good on paper. In reality, wars had to be fought to enforce reservation life.

Most U.S. Army officers were not trained to fight Indians, and on-the-job training led to mixed results. 40 Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is the This Indian mother and best known of the Indian fighters in the West, but he ranked neither child appeared in Volume at the top nor at the bottom. See the rankings by two experts. III of The North American Indian, by photographer One of the most respected field officers in the Edward S. Curtis. When West was George Crook, best known for subduing peace was broken on the 48 Apaches in Arizona Territory. But earlier, in the Plains, Indian women and Pacific Northwest, Crook had his hands full with some Paiute S I B

R children often suffered

O and Pit River Indians held up in lava beds. In frustration, the C

© more than the warriors. commanding officer declared, “I never wanted dynamite so bad.” BY ROBERT M. UTLEY ON n July 1865, Senator James Rood Doolittle traveled to Denver, Territory, with a joint congressional PAPER committee to investigate the PEACE “condition of the Indian tribes.” Territorial Governor John Evans introduced Doolittle to a capacity crowd ON THE Iat the Denver Opera House, where only six months earlier crowds had wildly applauded the presentation of Indian PLAINS scalps taken during the infamous Sand WAR Creek Massacre, when Colonel John Chivington’s Colorado Volunteers killed about 130 Cheyennes and Arapahos. Impeccable in frock coat and neatly trimmed mustache and beard, Doolittle spoke of the need to end the costly Plains Indian wars and to decide what should be done with the natives. “There suddenly arose,” Doolittle later recalled, “such a shout as is never heard unless upon some battlefield—a shout almost loud enough to raise the roof of

the opera house: S S E R

‘Exterminate them! G N O Exterminate them!’” C F O Y

One of the biggest R A R B I

m i s c o n c e p t i o n s L about the Wild West James R. Doolittle era is that the U.S. government’s solution to what was euphemistically called “the Indian problem” was a deliberate policy of genocide. In fact, Doolittle and other Easterners mustered the political power to overwhelm the scattered Western cries for extermination. Energized by the widespread crusade against slavery, these reform-minded Easterners set out after the CivilWar to promote the cause of enlightened and humane Indian policies. The alternative to extermination put forth by Doolittle and so noisily rejected Brulé Sioux, many wearing by Denver citizens was to place the As far as many Westerners were concerned, war bonnets, ride across Indians on reservations and teach them the plains near Pine Ridge, to support themselves. The concept the only good Indian was a dead Indian, S.D., on December 26, 1907. seemed simple enough to Eastern Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) reformers, who no longer had much but Eastern policy makers spoke of assimilation took this photo 17 years after direct contact with Indians. But given soldiers and Sioux last clashed the shabby realities of life on the reser- and civilization instead of extermination at nearby Wounded Knee. vation, it is small wonder that every major Indian war after the Civil War S I B

R was fought to force Indians either on to O C

© reservations, where they had promised

30 W I L D W E S T O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 S E V I H C R Y A T E L I A C C I O S G O L L A O C I P R O O R T H S I T H N A K L R A O N Y - O I W T E A N N by treaty to live, or back to reservations they had found so Beginning in 1883, States into a continental nation and set off waves of emigra- Above: Quaker agent intolerable as to prompt flight. Senator Henry M. tion. Emigration to the Pacific and, ultimately, settlement of Lawrie Tatum, known Violent encounters between Indians and white Dawes (left), chairman the plains and mountains of the entire West intruded on the by his charges as “Bald marked the trans-Mississippi West from the California Gold of the Committee on Indian heartland and assaulted the Indian way of life. Of the Head Agent,” is seen Rush in 1849 to the Wounded Knee tragedy of 1890. Yet, at the Indian Affairs, was a many motives, including greed, that drew white people across here with Mexican same time these bloody encounters were taking place, U.S. regular at annual the continent, one gave them all the sanction they needed. children who were government officials and religious reformers were intent on meetings of the Indian Christian settlers believed they were following God’s injunc- freed from Kiowa and solving the Indian problem peaceably. These well-intentioned reform establishment. tion: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” Comanche captivity. people wanted the Indians to relinquish their cultures and The gatherings were Thus John L. O’Sullivan, editor of ’s Democratic Tatum’s pacifist views replace them with the cultural values of the dominant “civi- held at the Mohonk Review, in supporting the annexation of Texas in 1845, found were severely tested. lized” society. Some native Americans could accept this, others House on Lake biblical justification of “our manifest destiny to overspread Left: This Navajo S

couldn’t. Mutual misunderstanding was widespread when S Mohonk in New York’s the continent allotted by Providence for the free development toddler could very E S I R B G R the two sides talked treaties or discussed government policy N Catskill Mountains, of our yearly multiplying millions.” Likewise, the subjugation well symbolize the O O C C / N F

and the free-ranging ways of the so-called nonprogressive as seen above in a of Indians in the West became a matter of Manifest Destiny. N poverty and hardship O A Y M R T A Indians. Contact, no matter how good the intentions of men Currier & Ives print. In California, the hordes of Argonauts who overran the Sierra T on reservations. R E B B I © and women on both sides, sometimes took a turn for the L Nevada brushed aside and almost eliminated native groups. worse. Not that any of the resulting conflicts could really they could ostensibly live life their own way, free of whites’ The extermination of California’s mountain Indians, however, ther side understood how the other read the treaty. White change anything; the white people were not going to disap- aggressive land hunger. The tragic removal, under military although condoned by state authorities, represented neither negotiators assumed chiefs could speak for and bind their pear no matter what the leaders of the Ghost Dance preached. prodding, of the Cherokees over the “Trail of Tears” in 1838–39 official policy nor even a deliberate process. tribesmen to compliance, which culturally they could not do. to new homes in Arkansas and (present-day White officials wrote the treaties and explained them in great hites east of the had Oklahoma) resonates to this day in the national memory. y the end of the CivilWar, a reservation system had detail to the chiefs. How much they omitted, how clearly inter- solved their Indian problem before mid- Throughout the 1830s and ’40s, some 50,000 Indians were already embedded itself in the thinking of reform- preters translated and how much of the white man’s legalisms century. Andrew Jackson, a veteran Indian uprooted and forced to trek west, many, like the Cherokees, ers and political leaders. To satisfy humanitarian the Indians understood may be wondered. Regardless, the fighter and the first American president at great cost in suffering, hardship and impoverishment. convictions, however, Indian “title” to traditional Indians often heard what they wanted to hear. fWrom west of the Appalachian Mountains, was at the forefront They yielded 100 million acres of Eastern homeland in return Branges had to be legally “extinguished” before a much smaller At the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty council, for example, gov- of this process. Jackson’s reaction, when the chief justice of for 32 million Western acres and $68 million in annuity reservation could be created. That meant persuading the ernment officials emphasized that the Kiowas, Comanches, the United States ruled against his efforts to force Cherokee pledges. And they crowded into lands already occupied by Indians to give up lands they believed belonged to them. Cheyennes and Arapahos could hunt buffalo south of the Indians to make way for white settlers in Georgia, was blunt: Plains tribes of alien ways and unwelcoming disposition. The instrument for achieving this comfortable legality was Arkansas River so long as the herds grazed and would be “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Meanwhile, the 1845 annexation of Texas, the territorial the treaty. Much has been made of the U.S. government’s issued rations and other presents for years to come. And at Jackson’s signature policy was Indian removal. Eastern acquisitions of the 1846–48 Mexican-American War and the repeated violations of Indian treaties. That Indians bore as the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty council, the Sioux, Cheyennes Indians were pushed beyond the Mississippi to areas where discovery of gold in California in 1848 transformed the United much guilt is rarely noted. The basic explanation is that nei- and Arapahos heard that they had won the war (Red Cloud’s

32 W I L D W E S T O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 W I L D W E S T 33 Whether or not the Quakers accurately recalled the origins the chiefs tried to kill Sherman; Grierson pounced on one and of Grant’s Peace Policy, the new administration did trumpet wrestled him to the floor before cavalrymen ended the melee. a policy based on “conquest by kindness.” Sometimes labeled Severely reprimanded by his Quaker superiors for this the Quaker Policy, it featured the appointment of Indian lapse from nonviolence, Tatum resigned in disgust. Satanta agents nominated by Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, and another chief wound up in the Texas penitentiary at Catholics and other religious denominations (see map, P. 39). Huntsville, until Peace Policy advocates persuaded the The Peace Policy proved more rhetorical than substantive, Texas governor to pardon them. Raiding then resumed, so as two decades of Indian warfare demonstrated. Piety did infuriating Sherman that he won permission to ignore not guarantee administrative efficiency, understanding of alien reservation boundaries. The Red River War of 1874–75 cultures or even the honesty so lacking in political appointees. followed, ending warfare on the southern Plains. Nor did it equip such agents, try at they might, to transform Indians into imitation white people. The Indians resisted civ- he triumph of the reservation system occurred in ilization programs because they wanted to be who they had 1881. After Sitting Bull yielded his Canadian haven once been, not who the government wanted them to be. The and surrendered the last of the Sioux who had agents distributed government rations and issue goods, which, wiped out George A. Custer and his men at the Little when they arrived at all, fell short in quantity and quality of TBighorn five years earlier, reservations effectively imprisoned treaty promises. People went hungry and sometimes starved. the tribes. No longer was there anywhere to flee. No longer Unscrupulous contractors, traders, whiskey peddlers and could they avoid the government’s civilization programs. other types of malefactors preyed on the hapless victims.When Just as white land hunger had led to the reservation system, Indians tried to return to the old way, the Army chased them. white land hunger then demonstrated that even the res- The Kiowa-Comanche Reservation in Indian Territory ervation was not sacrosanct. And again, well-intentioned revealed a fundamental flaw in the Peace Policy. The Kiowas reformers handed land boomers a cloak of legitimacy. and Comanches had for decades raided the Texas frontier to Henry M. Dawes, patrician senator from Massachusetts and the Rio Grande and into Mexico. They had no intention of end- chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, took the lead ing the custom, especially since the government proved so lax in this latest effort to advance the cause of Indian civilization. in fulfilling treaty promises. Such dynamic chiefs as Satanta, Dawes was a regular at annual meetings of the Indian reform Lone Wolf, Big Bow and old Satank led repeated raids. Army establishment hosted by genteel Quaker twins Albert and units could pursue the raiders, but only as far as the reserva- Alfred Smiley in the splendor of Mohonk House, a rambling tion boundary. “City of Refuge,” the officers called Fort Sill. Victorian mansion along the shore of Lake Mohonk in New I H

M Quaker agent Lawrie Tatum, A S U named by his charges “Bald The Carlisle Indian Industrial School student body in the mid-1880s, assembled before the headquarters of founder Richard Pratt. Head Agent,” was a big Iowa Whether or not the Quakers accurately recalled farmer of intelligence, honesty the origins of President Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace War) against the Army for the Bozeman Trail and that the the government. A proviso in the Indian Appropriations Act of and common sense. Lacking ex- guardian forts would be demolished. These tribes could con- March 3, 1871, put an end to the concept of “domestic depend- perience with Indians and suf- Policy, the new administration did trumpet a policy tinue their old way of life in the Powder River country, an area ent nations” and barred the United States from negotiating any fused with Quaker pacifism, he the treaty euphemistically labeled “unceded Indian territory,” more Indian treaties, though existing treaties remained valid. had been handed an impossible based on ‘conquest by kindness’ and they too would receive rations and other goods for years task. Charged with civilizing the to come. At all treaty councils, a tempting stack of presents bandonment of the treaty system was one of Kiowas and Comanches—tribes that exalted warfare and had York’s Catskill Mountains. Beginning in 1883, representatives stood nearby to reward a simple mark on a piece of paper. the hallmarks of Grant’s Indian policy; a more always done as they pleased—Tatum could only persuade. of all the reform organizations, most notably the Indian Rights The Indians failed to recognize that they had, in effect, conspicuous hallmark was church nomination Backing Tatum’s commitment to peace was a military Association, gathered at Mohonk with government policy- agreed to surrender much of their homeland and settle on of Indian agents. Grant, as president-elect, had rarity, the commanding officer at Fort Sill. Colonel Benjamin makers, Protestant church delegates, members of Congress, reservations where they were to become “civilized” and learn to pAassed the four months between his election in November H. Grierson’s sympathetic attitude toward Indians and his humanitarian generals and others dedicated to their version support themselves by farming. What mattered to them in 1868 and his inauguration in March 1869 hosting numerous command of a black cavalry regiment had gained him the of enlightened Indian policy, which in most respects became the short term was that they could continue to live as they had callers pleading special interests. On January 25, 1869, a contempt of many Army officers. Even if Grierson wanted to, official policy. Dawes warmly embraced the Mohonk consen- for generations. The treaty negotiators, for their part, returned delegation of Quakers visited him in his temporary office near however, he could not use his troopers on the reservation sus that the Indians, to become truly self-supporting farmers, to Washington with an array of promises solidly embedded in the Executive Mansion. They had come from their national unless asked by Tatum, which a Quaker could not do. Tatum’s must have individual land allotments, the same as white set- duly signed legal documents. The Medicine Lodge commission convention in , which adopted resolutions advocat- dilemma ultimately led to a rupture in the Peace Policy. tlers. The result was the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. had established the Kiowa-Comanche and Cheyenne-Arapaho ing humane treatment of Indians. Their solution was to name Touring the Texas frontier in May 1871, General of the Army Basically, with some variation for the character of the land reservations in Indian Territory, and the Fort Laramie commis- agents nominated by religious groups such as their own. William Tecumseh Sherman narrowly escaped death when and family status of the applicant, the legislation provided sion had created the Great Sioux Reservation, encompassing Grant replied: “Gentlemen, your advice is good. I accept it. a raiding party let his ambulance and escort pass because of for the usual 160 acres granted to whites in fee simple from all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River. Now give me the names of some Friends [Quakers] for Indian a holy man’s prediction of richer prey to come. He was right. the public domain, but to Indians from land within their By the late 1860s, it was clear to many reformers and military agents, and I will appoint them. If you can make Quakers out When Sherman learned of the Warren Wagon Train Raid own reservation. Title would be held in trust by the govern- leaders alike, as well as to President Ulysses S. Grant, that of the Indians, it will take the fight out of them. Let us have that followed within hours, he stormed into Fort Sill and, with ment for 25 years, however, while the Indian became more treaties did little to end hostilities and gave the Indians a peace.” Before his inauguration, Grant declared, “All Indians Tatum’s acquiescence, demanded the culprits. Satanta boasted civilized. With acceptance of an allotment, the Indian auto- false notion of independence when they were in fact wards of disposed to peace will find the new policy a peace policy.” he had led the party. In a confrontation on Grierson’s porch, matically gained U.S. citizenship and became subject to the

34 W I L D W E S T O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 W I L D W E S T 35 civil and criminal laws of the state or today’s. Whites can be faulted for territory of residence. making a mess of relations with the Hailed by reformers as a great Indians, but not for failing to treat triumph, the law nevertheless con- them as today’s beliefs might dictate. ‘Kill the Indian...Save the Man’ tained some obscure provisions. And how should American Indians Allotments could not begin, of course, have been treated by the U.S. gov- until the Indian reservations were ernment? Did any other nation he most extreme Surrounding settlers grew

surveyed, a process in which the U.S. K embrace a better system? England, form of gov- alarmed, and agents pan- R O government had been notoriously Y France, Germany and other colonial ernment civili- icked as their Indian W E N ,

lax for years. Also, some if not many E powers simply brushed the natives zation programs police failed to stop the C R U

Indians might choose not to apply O aside, conquered them or enlisted Tfor American Indians— dances. Frightened by S E for an allotment. Since the size of a R them as military auxiliaries. Even scarcely less extreme than the bewildering activity at T R A / reservation invariably exceeded the M where homesteaders moved in, such extermination—found Pine Ridge, the incompe- U E S total number of Indian residents quali- U as in South Africa and Rhodesia, they vigorous articulation in tent political hack serving M T R

fying for 160 acres, each reservation A displaced the natives without much the person of Captain as agent finally called for N A C would contain vast tracts of so-called I thought of where they might go. In Richard Henry Pratt, a soldiers. The Army took R E M surplus land. The Dawes Act author- A Mexico, Spaniards warred with natives veteran of the southern control and invaded all N A I ized the return of such land to the N but ultimately merged with them to Plains Indian wars who five Sioux reservations. O S N H O T I public domain and thus provided the I become Mexicans. Australia brutally founded the controversial The denouement came T M C S E L S L

stimulus for congressional and execu- subordinated its aborigines in an S Indian boarding school on December 29, 1890, at O E C R G Y N tive action to open the surplus land Artist George Catlin sketched Pigeon’s Egg apartheid that lasted until the 1960s. at Carlisle Barracks in Wounded Knee Creek in E L O T C U F of certain reservations to white home- Head before and after an 1831 Washington The Canadian example is often eastern Pennsylvania on a fearsome clash that . O M Y T R R A steading even before surveys or allot- visit. Many chiefs visited the U.S. capital. cited as a model. It wasn’t. Canadian November 1, 1879. Blunt, took the lives of many E R B B O I R ments had made much progress. policy toward native people simply L dogmatic and uncompro- warriors and soldiers and Pressured by land-hungry boomers, federal commissions mimicked American policy—with treaties, reservations, Plenty Horses shot an officer. mising, Pratt advocated stampeded those Indians Captain Pratt was dogmatic. intimidated the Indians into relinquishing surplus lands they civilization and government dole, and the North West total immersion of Indian who had kept close to knew were not surplus to their future needs. Dramatizing the Mounted Police enforcing policy as a counterpart of the youth in white culture at Carlisle and other boarding schools. the agencies. Plenty Horses went with them. The generals larger context was the great land rush of 1893 into the U.S. Army. Fewer Canadians than Americans took up homes “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” he enjoined. tried to coax them back without another clash. Cherokee Outlet of what was now called Oklahoma Territory. in the West, and less rapidly, allowing Canadian authorities A Sioux Indian youth named Plenty Horses epitomized In this volatile environment, Lieutenant Edward W. Together with reductions to the Kiowa-Comanche and time to carry out their policies more humanely. the consequences of Pratt’s philosophy. Plenty Horses, like Casey, a highly regarded Army officer who commanded a Cheyenne-Arapaho reservations, Oklahoma Territory merged Americans and their government could have carried out their most of his classmates at Carlisle, eventually returned to his company of Cheyenne Indian scouts, thought he might own policies more humanely without people on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, where convince the chiefs to come in and talk. He ventured near contradicting the attitudes and values of he found himself an alien in two worlds. He was too white their camp. A party of Sioux, including Plenty Horses, Federal commissions intimidated the Indians the people. Reformers would have wel- for the Indians, too Indian for the whites. He could find rode out with word that he should turn back. As Casey into relinquishing surplus lands they knew were comed—indeed, fought for—the elimi- no job for which Carlisle had trained him because all went turned his mount, Plenty Horses raised his Winchester nation of fraud and corruption and the to political appointees. He drifted aimlessly, accepted by and fired. The bullet hit Casey in the back of the head, not surplus to their future needs selection of competent Indian agents no one. A sudden impulse offered Plenty Horses a solution. and he fell to the ground dead. and other officials. They also sought In 1889 the Ghost Dance religion came to the Sioux The Army subsequently arrested Plenty Horses and con- with Indian Territory to the east to form in 1907 the state of sufficient appropriations to fulfill treaty promises and sought reservations as it came to Indians all over the West. The fined him at Fort Meade. Murder charges were brought Oklahoma. Between 1887 and 1934, on reservations through- to tame the perennial conflict between the War and Interior inspiration of a Northern Paiute holy man, the religion against him in civil court, although most Army officers out the West, the purchase of surplus lands and the sale of departments over which was best qualified to manage Indians. blended old spiritual precepts with new borrowings from believed him guilty only of an act of war. Appearing before allotments by owners after the trust period reduced Indian Reformers would not, however, have welcomed any alterna- Christianity. By dancing certain prescribed dances and a grand jury in Deadwood, Plenty Horses readily confessed holdings by 60 percent, from 138 million acres to 55 million. tive to the ultimate goal of “civilization” in their own image. practicing other tenets of the faith, dancers could “die” and his guilt, then explained why he had killed Casey: “I am an Short of the newcomers leaving the entire North American temporarily enter a new realm in which they experienced Indian. Five years I attended Carlisle and was educated in eformers believed individual land ownership continent to the original owners, the Indians were doomed what awaited them: the abundant land whites had taken the ways of the white man. I was lonely. I shot the lieutenant would help transform the Indians into civilized to yield it to the white invaders. from them, teeming with the game of old, inhabited by all so I might make a place for myself among my people. Now citizens as well as make the land blossom. their friends and ancestors who had died, mercifully free of I am one of them. I shall be hung, and the Indians will bury In fact, the Dawes Act did not work—most A former chief historian of the National Park Service and one white people. The Sioux proved especially receptive due to me as a warrior. They will be proud of me. I am satisfied.” RIndians did not become self-sufficient farmers or become of the leading historians of the AmericanWest, Robert M. Utley a recent series of calamities, including breakup of the Great Neither the grand jury nor the trial court had any choice less dependent on federal assistance. Its failure does not has written 16 books on Western subjects, including many Sioux Reservation into five separate reservations, reduced but to indict and convict Plenty Horses of murder. mean its framers and promoters were evil; many had acted prizewinners. For further reading on the Indians of the 19th rations, sickness, crop failures and a host of broken prom- On appeal, however, a federal district judge ruled that altruistically. Too often overlooked is that the values and century, please see Utley’s The Indian Frontier of the American ises. “They made us many promises,” noted one aging the Indian had acted as a combatant during a state of attitudes of people today, regardless of race, ethnicity or West, 1846–1890; The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times warrior, “more than I can remember. But they never kept war and could not be held liable under criminal law. gender, are not those of the late 19th century. For Indians, of Sitting Bull; Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it.” So Plenty Horses went back to the reservation a free man, whites, blacks, Hispanics and others of past generations, Army and the Indian, 1848–1865; and Frontier Regulars: Ghost dances throbbed night and day on several reser- to live in his shadow world until his death in the 1930s. these values were products of their time and place, not The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891. vations as more and more people joined their camps. R.M.U.

36 W I L D W E S T O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 W I L D W E S T 37