Страница 59 из 103
Southwestern Terror
The entire Southwest was racked by violence. The outbreak of the Civil War stripped the U.S. Army’s western outposts of 313 officers—one-third of the entire officer corps—who resigned their commissions to fight on the side of the Confederacy. Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Robert Baylor exploited the Union’s weakened position to take possession of Arizona Territory for the Confederacy. Baylor was able to roll over the greatly diminished Union presence, but he didn’t count on the hostility of the Chiricahua and Mimbreno Apaches, who terrorized the region. Baylor hastily formed the Arizona Rangers in August 1861 and ordered them to “exterminate all hostile Indians.”
In the meantime, hoping to retain New Mexico, Union General Edward R.S. Canby negotiated a treaty with the Navajo, pledging to distribute rations to the Indians. At Fort Fauntleroy, designated site of the distribution, a friendly series of horse races was run between Navajos and a regiment of New Mexico volunteers. The featured event was a race between an army lieutenant and Chief Manuelito (ca. 1818-94). Heavy wagers were laid, and from the begi
The result, by the end of 1863, was total defeat of the Navajo, who were exiled to a desolate reservation called the Bosque Redondo. Eventually, 8,000 Navajo jammed the reservation, under conditions so intolerable that, after the Civil War, in an all-too-rare act of humanity, a U.S. peace commission granted Navajo pleas to be returned to their homelands.
The Great Santee Sioux Massacre
While the Southwest erupted, storm clouds also gathered far to the north. Unlike the Navajo, the Santee Sioux of Mi
Desperate and hungry, the Santee appealed to a local trader, Andrew J. Myrick, on August 5-6. His heartless reply—”let them eat grass”—enraged the warriors, and on August 18, they ambushed Myrick in his store, killed him, and stuffed his mouth with grass. From this point on, raiding became general in and around the town of New Ulm. By the end of August, 2,000 Mi
Through the balance of August and most of September, fighting in Mi
War for the Bozeman Rail
Throughout the Civil War, warfare with the Apaches continued. Wars also broke out with the Shoshoni, Ba
One of the few conflicts from which the Indians emerged victorious broke out just after the end of the Civil War. Military authorities had anticipated that the collapse of the Confederacy would free up many troops for service in the West. What actually happened is that the Union army rushed to demobilize, and the army of the West shrunk rather than expanded. A modest force under Colonel Henry B. Carrington was sent to protect the Bozeman Trail, a major route of western migration through Wyoming and Montana. The trail was being menaced by Oglala Sioux led by Red Cloud, who was determined to resist white invasion of his people’s land. Carrington was not popular with his officers, who felt that he devoted too much time to building forts and not enough to fighting Indians.
One subordinate, Captain William J. Fetterman, boasted that with 80 men, he could ride through the entire Sioux nation. On December 21, 1866, Fetterman was given his chance to make good on the boast. Sent with a detachment of 80, his mission was to relieve a wood-hauling wagon train that was being harassed by Indians. Fetterman found himself Lip against 1,500 to 2,000 warriors led by Crazy Horse, and his command was wiped out in what came to be called the Fetterman Massacre.
A peace commission concluded a treaty with Red Cloud on April 29, 1868, promising (among other things) to abandon the Bozeman Trail—which (the commissioners well knew) was about to be rendered obsolete by the transcontinental railroad.
The Campaigns of Hancock and Sheridan
General William Tecumseh Sherman, in charge of western operations, found the peace with Red Cloud humiliating. Sherman advised army General-in-Chief Grant that “we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” But the mood in Washington drifted toward conciliation, and Sherman continued to prosecute “punitive campaigns” in the West with little support and, ultimately, to little purpose.
From April through July 1867, one of Sherman’s best commanders, Winfield Scott Hancock, fruitlessly pursued the Cheye
The colorful colonel of the 7th Cavalry, George Armstrong Custer, laid claim to the biggest victory of “Sheridan’s Campaign,” when he attacked a peaceful Cheye