The Ute Campaign of 1879:

A Study in the Use

of the Military Instrument

by

Major Russel D. Santala

I lll T D IEIUI NIHH IIfIHV I
FOREWORD

The Ute Campaign of 1879 is a study of linkages. Major Russel D. Santala's

work not only explores the threads of continuity between engagements and

campaigns but also examines the relationship of government policy to one of the

instruments of that policy-the Army. Ten years before the events of this study

occurred, General William T. Sherman made note of this connection. In a

commencement address to the West Point class of 1869, he compared the Army to

the steam engine and warned that it is "held together by an organization and

discipline demanding great knowledge and labor, moved into action by causes

more powerful than steam, and so intimately connected with the whole fabric of

government that ignorance and mismanagement would result in a catastrophe

more fatal than could result from the explosion of any steam engine."

This study chronicles the Army's role in the struggle between two cultures. At

the same time, it serves to illuminate the problems of utilizing the military

instrument in an environment of transitory national policy and competing

national and local interests.

May 1994 RICHARD M. SWAIN

Colonel, Field Artillery

Director, Combat Studies Institute

CSI publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views expressed

herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Department of the

Army or the Department of Defense.
The Ute Campaign of 1879:

A Study in the Use

of the Military Instrument

by

Major Russel D. Santala

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-6900
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Santala, Russel D. (Russel Dale), 1955-

The Ute campaign of 1879: a study in the use of the military

instrument / by Russel D. Santala.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Ute Indians-Wars, 1879. 2. Indians of North America-

-Government relations. 3. United States. Army. Cavalry, 5th-

-History-19th century. 4. Military doctrine-United States-

-History-19th century. 5. Operational art (Military science)

I. Title.

E83.-879.S36 1993

323.1'197073-dc20 93-6459

CIP
CONTENTS

Illustrations............................................ v

Tables ............................................... vi

Acknowledgments ........ .................. ........... 'x

Introduction................................ x

I. The Context of the Ute Campaign...........1

II. Strategic Setting.................. ............... 11

III. The Opponents ............. .... ................ 25

IV. Massacre and Battle .................. ............ 45

V. Aftermath and Conclusions..................... ... 65

Notes..................................75

Bibliography........................................... 83

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1. The strategy process............................... xii

Maps

1. The area of operations.............................. 2

2. Division of the Missouri............................ 27

3. Ute Territory, 1806................................ 38

4. Ute Territory, 1868 ............................... 42

5. Ute Territory, 1873............................... 43

6. Theater railroads, 1878 ............................ 48

7. Cherry's initial advance ............................ 58

8. First contact ..................................... 59

9. Thornburgh's withdrawal........................... 60

TABLES

1. Sample news headlines from the Rocky Mountain News

(1878-79) ....................................... 52

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Colonel Richard M. Swain, Combat Studies

Institute, USACGSC, for his guidance and encouragment and for

helping to bring order out of chaos in this work. I am grateful also to

Major Frederick J. Chiaventone, U.S. Army, Retired, for his thorough

job of editing my initial manuscript and his shared interest in the

Indian campaigns.

In addition, I appreciate the invaluable assistance of the staff of

the Combined Arms Research Library in helping me gather research

materials and monitoring the progress of this project. Mr. Edward J.

Carr, visual information specialist, and Mr. Donald L. Gilmore and

Mrs. Carolyn D. Conway, editors, are to be commended for their

extraordinary efforts in turning a rough manuscript into a polished

product.

Special thanks are reserved for my family, whose shared sacrifice

was an indispensable part of this effort.

INTRODUCTION

"The lance of the mightiest Plains Indian nation was shattered,

and thereafter no Indians retained enough military power to resist the

writ of Washington for long."1 With this remark, Russell F. Weigley

concludes a portion of his book on the American Army's campaigns

against the Indian. These campaigns have been viewed by some

historians as devoid of strategic or operational focus, save for the

Army's continuation of its "war of annihilation" strategy that it had

held since the Civil War. This work, however, examines the Army's

focus-its strategic and operational framework as it related to the

uprising of the Ute Indians of Colorado in 1879. The central question

addressed will be, did the Army of this period have an operational

strategy consistent with national goals?

Before this question can be answered, however, three secondary

questions must be considered:

1. Did a national military strategy exist, and how did it relate to

the conduct of the Indian campaigns?

2. How was the execution of the national military campaign

constrained?

3. And how did operational and tactical plans conform to the

national military strategy?

In addressing these questions, this study will first examine the

Indian policy of this period as it reflected U.S. security strategy in

support of the national objective of Western expansion. The War

Department's evolving military strategy in support of U.S. security

strategy also will be scrutinized.

In addition, the execution of military policy at the operational

(military department) level and tactical (battlefield) level will be

evaluated. This study will examine the process of implementing

strategy as it was executed from the strategic or national level,

through the operational or departmental level, to the tactical or

battlefield level (see figure 1). At the same time, the Army's methods

of implementation will be examined in relation to the constraining

factors acting on them internally and externally. Specifically, this

work will examine the application of military power in support of

government policy as it relates to the Ute campaign.

Before beginning an analysis of the national strategic policy and

its impact on military strategy, this work, in chapter 1, will begin by

providing some background material pertaining to events that were
IN REALITY (CONSTRAINTS)

IN THEORY

r--- - r--------- -..

DOCTRINE i NATIONAL i POLITICS

OBJECTIVES

DECISION NATIONAL ECONOMICS

MAKERS SECURITY

STRATEGY

THREAT --- MILITARY I OTHER

STRATEGY NATIONS

TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONAL ' CULTURE

STRATEGY

PUBLIC OPINON BATTLEFIELD PHYSICAL

STRATEGY L ENVIRONMENT --------------- I.------.

Note: This figure Is adapted from Drew and Snow, Making Strategy

(Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press).

Figure 1. The strategy process

unfolding in Colorado and examine some of the elements of the Ute

crisis. This will assist the reader in focusing on larger strategic and

operational matters and provide insights concerning the Utes and the

violent actions in which they took part.

Chapter 2 considers the national security strategy of the

Rutherford B. Hayes' administration (1877-81) and the corresponding

national military strategy of the War Department. Conflicting views

exist in the current body of literature concerning the impact of the

government on the utilization of military power in relation to Indian

policy. To place this dispute in proper focus, Indian and military policy

in the West from 1865 to 1880 will be analyzed and delineated. The

purpose of this inquiry is to articulate the national Indian policy of this

period as it related to the national military strategy (or doctrine)

required to implement that policy.

Chapter 3 is an analysis of the operational strategy selected to

achieve the goals of the U.S. Indian policy. This chapter focuses on the

operational-level military organizations and nonmilitary government

agencies responsible for the application of armed force to achieve

political goals within the theater of operations. The military

organizations examined are the Division of the Missouri, the
Department of the Missouri, and the Department of the Platte. The

nonmilitary elements within the theater of operations included the

state of Colorado and representatives of the federal government

operating within the state (i.e., agents of the Indian Bureau). It is at

this level that an absence of a clear military strategy is apparent,

largely the result of the personalities of the senior Army officers in

command. (The commanders of the Departments of the Platte and

Missouri, Brigadier Generals George Crook and John Pope, held

significantly different views on the role of the Army and the conduct of

campaigns than did their superiors, Generals William T. Sherman and

Philip Sheridan.) This chapter will conclude with a discussion of the

operational strategy that guided tactical-level commanders within the

departments and provided them with specific guidance for the conduct

of the Ute campaign.

Chapter 4 focuses on the tactical events of the Ute campaign.

These actions included the battle at Milk River and the show of force

executed by Colonel Wesley Merritt that intimidated the Utes into

coming to the bargaining table. Local factors operating as constraints

on the tactical-level commanders during the conduct of the campaign

will be discussed. In addition to the explanation of battlefield events,

the goal of this chapter is to relate tactical events with the operational

considerations influencing them.

Chapter 5 concludes this study by establishing that the Army did

have an Indian policy that was internalized throughout the command

structure. This policy, which provided for the application of military

power (within budgetary and manpower constraints), was a reflection

of the national security objectives of the Hayes administration. If the

military strategy was not mutually supportive throughout the

strategy process model, the likely cause was the differing views of

senior Army leaders at the national and departmental levels.

xiii

I. THE CONTEXT OF THE UTE CAMPAIGN

In September 1879, three troops of the 5th U.S. Cavalry under the

command of Major Thomas T. Thornburgh left Fort Steele, Wyoming,

for the White River Agency in northwest Colorado. Thornburgh was

operating under orders from the commander of the Department of the

Platte, Brigadier General George Crook, to proceed to the agency and

assist the reservation agent, Nathan C. Meeker. Meeker had been

appointed agent to the White River Agency on 18 March 1878 after

actively pursuing the position through political acquaintances, both in

Colorado and in Washington, D.C. Meeker's goal was to transform his

Indian agency into a kind of utopian state that combined his religious

views and the lessons from the Union Colony, a cooperative agrarian

experiment in Greeley, Colorado. (For the location of the White River

Agency, see map 1.)

The appointment of Indian Bureau agents had long been a part of

the political spoils system. With a change in administration, a whole

series of covert and overt appointments were made to reward political

service. This inept system of appointments caused many problems at

the agencies and had become a sore point with the War Department.

Since 1849, the Department of the Interior controlled Indian affairs,

and particularly under the Grant administration, this arrangement

had come under criticism from both the reform movement and senior

officers within the Army who believed they were better qualified at

managing Indian policy for the nation than were mere political

appointees. General Sheridan commented "that it is not the

Government that is managing the Indians, it is the contractors,

traders, and supply interests."1

Shortly before his appointment, Meeker received an encouraging

letter from Colorado Senator Henry M. Teller describing the senator's

discussion with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Edward A; Hayt on

3 January 1878. The letter read:

I went to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and posted your claims for

an agency and designated White River Agency as the one I wanted for you.

Now I think I have a good show. The Commissioner said he was not at all

satisfied with the agent at White River who knows nothing of irrigation or

farming in the west. I am anxious you should have it because I feel you

should do something that would be of benefit to our people and to the

indians. There I believe the indians can be taught to raise cattle and I have

an idea you are the man to do it. Now if you had the place it would pay you

$1,500 a year and you would have a house to live in free, a garden and so

forth. So I think you can save something. It is only 100 miles from the
Battle of Milk

KS

UT

S A Z 1 NM

Note: States and their boundaries and some town names are modern.

Source: Marshall Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River

(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1957).

Map 1. The area of operations
railroad and quite easy. If you accept I will commence work. Let me hear

soon. 2

The Utes took an entirely different view of their new agent.

Largely oblivious to the whites' violations of the treaty of 1873 (which

had secured for the Utes 4,000,000 acres of Colorado), they viewed

themselves as allies to the United States government. As Ouray, the

most prominent of the Ute chiefs expressed: "The army conquered the

Sioux. You can order them around. But we Utes have never disturbed

you whites. So you must wait until we come to your ways of doing

things."3

Both the representative of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs

and the government of the state of Colorado did not provide for the

assimilation of the Ute tribe into mainstream American culture.

Rather, they advocated the isolation of the Utes. Because of this, the

relationship between Meeker and his "charges," the White River Utes,

had deteriorated to the point that Meeker felt his life was in jeopardy.

Finally, Meeker was confronted by the Utes, who suspected him of

direct involvement with the anti-Ute movement in the state.

At this time, articles headlining "The Utes Must Go" were being

prepared by members of the staff of Governor Frederick W. Pitkin.

Pitkin was a former miner who used his wealth (acquired from a gold

mine in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado) to influence the revision

of the Ute treaty in 1873 and to become the first governor of Colorado

on its statehood in 1876. His view of the Utes was an expression of the

statewide view among whites that they were an impediment to the

development of the richest part of the state and should be removed to

the Indian Territories or elsewhere. William Vickers, an adviser to the

governor, wrote in the Denver Tribune:

The Utes are actual, practical Communists and the Government should

be ashamed to foster and encourage them in their idleness and wanton waste

of property. Living off the bounty of a paternal but idiotic Indian Bureau,

they actually become too lazy to draw their rations in the regular way but

insist on taking what they want wherever they find it. Removed to Indian

Territory, the Utes could be fed and clothed for about one half what it now

costs the government.

Honorable N. C. Meeker, the well-known Superintendent of the White

River Agency, was formerly a fast friend and ardent admirer of the Indians.

He went to the Agency in the firm belief that he could manage the Indians

successfully by kind treatment, patient precept and good example. But utter

failure marked his efforts and at last he reluctantly accepted the truth of the

broader truism that the only truly good Indians are dead ones. 4
t1

An early photograph of Chief Ouray shows him wearing a peace medal

from a treaty negotiation

B
Into this situation, Major Thornburgh and his three troops of

cavalry arrived to mediate a dispute that had its roots in the Indian

policy of the previous twenty-five years. Thornburgh's orders gave him

only the broadest instructions. Meeker had requested assistance on 10

September 1879 by sending a telegram to Commissioner Hayt. The

message reached Hayt on 13 September 1879.

The request for troops was seen by Secretary of the Interior Carl

Schurz, Secretary of War George W. McCrary, and ultimately by

General of the Army William T. Sherman. Sherman approved the

request for troops and instructed the commander of the Division of the

Missouri, Major General Philip H. Sheridan, to order "the nearest

military commander" to send troops to White River.5 Following some

confusion at Sheridan's headquarters, the order was sent to Fort Steele

near Rawlins, Wyoming, and then to Thornburgh. While the troops at

Fort Steele were the closest to the White River Agency, they had not

operated in Colorado before, as the Colorado-Wyoming border

delineated the boundary between the Department of the Missouri and

the Department of the Platte. 6 By the conclusion of the campaign,

troops from both departments were committed against the Utes.

The commander of the Department of the Platte, Brigadier

General George Crook, gave the following order to the forces at Fort

Steele: "You will move with a sufficient number of troops to White

River Agency under special instructions." 7 Crook's special instructions

directed Thornburgh to contact the agent on the scene and "develop"

the situation. Thornburgh began his march to the White River Agency

on 22 September 1879 with a total of 153 soldiers and 25 civilians.

By 25 September 1879, they arrived within fifty-three miles of the

agency and camped on the banks of Fortification Creek. Thornburgh

dispatched a letter to Meeker, reporting:

In obedience to instructions from the General of the Army, I am enroute

to your agency, and expect to arrive there on the 29th instant, for the

purpose of affording you any assistance in my power in regulating your

affairs, and to make arrests at your suggestion, and to hold as prisoners such

of your Indians as you desire, until investigations are made by your

department.

I have heard nothing definite from your agency for ten days and do not

know what state of affairs exists, whether the Indians will leave at my

approach or show hostilities. I send this letter by Mr. Lowry, one of my

guides, and desire you to communicate with me as soon as possible, giving

me all the information in your power, in order that I may know what course I

am to pursue. If practical, meet me on the road at the earliest moment.8
After dispatching the letter, Thornburgh continued the march

toward the agency and met a delegation of eleven Utes from the

agency, who denounced Meeker and voiced their concern over the

arrival of troops.9

The consternation of the Utes was understandable, both in light of

their perception of the Army's role in the suppression of the other large

Colorado tribe-the Cheyenne-and in their own previous support of

the Army. The Utes had joined "the rope thrower," Kit Carson, during

his earlier campaigns against the Navajo and had taken a role in

support of the Army against their traditional enemy, the Cheyenne. 10

They had not faced an active U.S. campaign against them in the past,

having relied on their remoteness to protect them from the expansion

of the Western movement.

The Utes had also benefited by having a relatively sophisticated

leader, Chief Ouray. After being invited to Washington by the Indian

Bureau to negotiate the Ute Treaty of 1868, Ouray took his cause to

the Eastern press. Ouray remarked: "The agreement an Indian makes

to a United States treaty is like the agreement a buffalo makes with

his hunters when pierced with arrows. All he can do is lie down and

give-in." 11 Although only a chief of the Uncompahgre branch of the

Utes, Ouray was viewed by both state and federal officials as the de

facto leader of the entire tribe.

The response from Meeker to Major Thornburgh's earlier letter

gave an accurate appraisal of the Indians' mood at the agency. The 27

September 1879 letter stated:

Understanding that you are on the way hither with United States

troops, I send a messenger, Mr. Eskridge, and two Indians, Henry

(interpreter) and John Ayersly, to inform you that the Indians are greatly

excited, and wish you to stop at some convenient camping place, and then

that you and five soldiers of your command come into the Agency, when a

talk and a better understanding can be had.

This I agree to, but I do not propose to order your movements, but it

seems for the best. The Indians seem to consider the advance of the troops as

a declaration of real war. In this I am laboring to undeceive them, and at the

same time to convince them they cannot do whatever they please. The first

object is to allay apprehension.1 2

Upon receipt of this letter, Thornburgh decided to continue

toward the agency and, at some undetermined point, stop the main

body and proceed alone with a small escort.13 But Thornburgh and his

force never reached the agency. The Utes attacked his command at

Milk River, and Thornburgh was killed. For seven days, his command

was besieged by the Utes, until a relieving force under Colonel Wesley
Merritt arrived on the scene. For the next month, the Army played a

cat-and-mouse game with the Utes, attempting to locate their camps,

while the Utes retreated deeper into the mountains.

The Army was walking a tightrope, attempting to cow the Utes by

a show of force with troops from both the Departments of the Platte

and the Missouri, while avoiding a confrontation to safeguard the lives

of the hostages that had been taken from the agency after the battle at

Milk River. While the Army continued to look for the Utes, General

Charles Adams, acting as a special envoy of Secretary of the Interior

Carl Schurz, was negotiating with Chief Ouray and the Uncompahgre

Utes to intercede with the White River band of the tribe to release the

hostages. Adams was well respected by the Utes and trusted by the

state's two most powerful political figures-Teller and Pitkin. Earlier,

Adams had warned Secretary Schurz of the inherent danger of sending

troops to resolve the Ute question. Schurz responded that a "calamity"

on the White River would delight Teller and other Grant Republicans

and provide them with an excuse to dump President Rutherford B.

Hayes from the 1880 presidential ticket. Furthermore, the Army

would be pleased to have a fresh disaster to use as a basis for new

demands to transfer the Indian Bureau to the War Department. 14

Varied constraining factors were at work during this period

affecting Indian policy and military strategy. Most writers on the

subject agree that political, economic, and social factors played a large

role in determining the national Indian policy. They disagree whether

this was an articulated policy or merely an ad hoc expression of the

spirit of Manifest Destiny. Additionally, there exists no consensus on

the impact of either the stated or unstated Indian policy on the

application of military power in support of national goals and

objectives.

Robert Wooster argues in his book, The United States and Indian

Policy: 1865-1903, that post-1865 politics played a clear role in

defining the military strategy that the Army followed. He concludes

that while a wide variety of influences influenced the role of the Army,

lack of concern by national political and military figures precluded the

development of a lasting policy or doctrine.

Russell F. Weigley in The American Way of War attributes our

military strategy in combating the Indians to the experiences of the

Army's senior leadership during the Civil War. As Weigley states: "If

the conduct of the Civil War had prepared the United States Army to

employ a strategy of annihilation, sometimes with frightful

literalness, in its wars against the Indians, the strategy was much in
harmony with post-Civil War national policy."1 5 Weigley says that

Sherman, in the Civil War, practiced a kind of total war that eclipsed

earlier U.S. historical models in terms of terror and destructiveness.

This type of war was to reach a zenith during the winter campaigns

against the Indians.

A balance between the two views seems a more prudent position.

Certainly, General of the Army William T. Sherman carried a

reputation for wars of annihilation with him into his leadership of the

Army in the West, but whether this was the general doctrine of the

Army can be questioned. Nonetheless, Sherman, as a member of the

Peace Commission of 1867, made clear his view to Red Cloud and the

Sioux "that he had little tolerance for their demands. Whatever they

said, they were doomed. The United States, with its expanding

population, its railroads, and its army, was the face of the future."16

One of those who opposed Sherman's view of Army strategy as a

form of Social Darwinism was Brigadier General John Pope. Pope, in

the words of a twentieth-century U.S. politician, favored a "kinder and

gentler" reservation policy. In an address in May 1878, Pope did not

question the displacement of the Indians from their lands, only that it

should be accomplished with the least suffering. He typified the views

of the Army officer thusly:

To the Army officer a state of peace with the Indians is, of all things, the

most desirable, and no man in all the country east or west would do more to

avert an Indian war. To him war with Indians means far more than to

anyone else except the actual victim. He sees its beginning in injustice and

wrong to the Indian, which he has not the power to prevent; he sees the

Indian gradually reach a condition of starvation impossible of longer

endurance and thus forced to take what he can get to save himself from

dying of hunger, and cannot help sympathizing with him for doing so; but

because he does so the officer is ordered to use force against him. With what

spirit a humane, or even a decently civilized man, enters into such a war,

may be easily understood, and yet in nearly every case this is precisely the

feeling with which Army officers begin hostilities with Indians.17

It is with this paradoxical and ambivalent view that this study

will begin an analysis of the strategic and operational framework of

the Army in the context of the Ute campaign of 1879. Is there an

alternative to the Weigley model of the "war of annihilation" strategy?

Or, according to Wooster, was a policy not even necessary, as "no

emergency existed" in the campaign against the Indian.

The conduct of the Ute campaign and subsequent Indian

campaigns may have denoted a shift in United States military policy

that returned the Army to its frontier roots and away from the
9

conventional Army that was created as a result of the Civil War. The

period also marked a transition in Army leadership that would

prepare the Army for the next century. Ultimately, the strategy in the

West was something more than "a series of forlorn hopes."18

_ I= _I__L _I__

II. STRATEGIC SETTING

The relationship between a government's policy and the strategy

of its military is not often clear. The political origins of military

strategy often serve to confound the historian as well as the soldier.

Historian T. Harry Williams states:

Once a government has decided on a policy, it turns to strategy to

achieve its objective. The government, to cite the American experience,

informs the military of the objective and indicates the human and material

resources it can make available. The military then takes over the planning

and execution of a strategy to accomplish the policy; in effect, it takes over

the running of the war. This is the concept of strategy that appeared in early

modern writings on military theory and that prevailed in America's first

wars. There was always, however, a gap between theory and practice.1

From the conclusion of the Civil War through the end of the

Rutherford B. Hayes administration, the national objectives of the

United States were to promote economic development and settlement

in the Western regions. Accomplishment of these objectives required

the federal government to formulate an Indian policy that would deal

with the inevitable conflict of the two cultures. To accomplish these

objectives, three goals were incorporated into Indian policy: first, the

removal of Indians from the major east-west immigration trails where

they were an obstacle to the development of the transcontinental

railroad routes; second, the increase of the reservation system to

reduce contact and conflict between the races; and third, the use of the

reservation system to assimilate the Indians into mainstream

American culture. This Indian policy focused Army operations and

became a cornerstone in national security policy during the period.

In retrospect, this security strategy is readily apparent and

recognizable, but at the time, the strategy was not expressed in an

annually produced document as is the current practice. As General

William T. Sherman prepared to attend the August Peace Commission

of 1867- which was expected to open the plains for settlement and the

railroad-his concern was on defining the Army's role in relation to

government policy. He stated:

I dont [sic] care about interesting myself too far in the fate of the poor

devils of Indians who are doomed from the causes inherent in their nature or

from the natural & persistent hostility of the white race. All I aim to

accomplish is to so clearly define the duties of the Civil & Military agents of

Govt so that we wont [sic] be quarrelling all the time as to whose business it

is to look after them.2

The conclusion of the Civil War brought the focus of the United

States back to national expansion beyond the Western frontier and
into the vast Western interior. Indeed, the "national objective" of the

United States for the last thirty years of the nineteenth century can be

characterized as a "final rush of American energy upon the remaining

wilderness."3 Consequently, the federal government was faced with

the need to develop a security strategy that would support the

movement of industry and immigrants east from California and west

from the second tier of trans-Mississippi states-Iowa, Kansas,

Nebraska, and Minnesota. Challenging the inexorable march of

America's "Manifest Destiny" was the Indian; Indian policy was the

federal government's answer to this challenge.

By 1865, the first prewar attempt at a solution to the "Indian

question" had been overtaken by events and the continuing western

expansion of the nation. This early attempt at physical separation,

using the Western trans-Mississippi River states for Indian territory,

had become untenable. The early security strategy-the westward

transfer of the Eastern Indian tribes, clearing the area east of the

Mississippi River for "civilization"-no longer fulfilled the national

objective of settlement from "sea to shining sea."

The prewar national policy of separation had been created by the

ratification of the Indian Removal Bill on 28 May 1830. Two actions

during this period would affect further relations between the United

States and the Indian. First, the Indians who had supported the United

States during the War of 1812 were stripped of the lands that had been

previously guaranteed them by treaties "as long as the grass shall

grow and the water flow." As Chief John Ross, of the Cherokee nation,

commented:

What a pernicious effort must such a document ... have on the interests

and improvements of the Indians? Who shall expect from the Cherokees a

rapid progress in education, religion, agriculture, and the various arts of

civilized life when resolutions are passed in a civilized and Christian

legislature (whose daily sessions, we are told, commence with a prayer to

Almighty God) to wrest their country from them, and strange to tell, with

the point of the bayonet, if nothing else will do? Is it the nature of things,

that the Cherokees will build good and comfortable houses and make them

great farms, when they know not but their possessions will fall into the

hands of strangers and invaders? How is it possible that they will establish

for themselves good laws, when an attempt is made to crush their first

feeble effort toward it?4

The second outcome of the initial separation policy was the result

of a Supreme Court decision. In 1831, Chief Justice John Marshall and

the court ruled in favor of the Cherokees in the case of Cherokees

versus the State of Georgia. The court's decision stated that the Indians

were not subject to state law. But it also found that they were not an
independent nation. The court defined the Indian's relation to the

federal government by calling him a "domestic dependent nation in a

state of pupilage." 5 Ultimately, these decisions to dispossess the

Indians and consider them dependent "nations" of the federal

government would require the involvement of the Regular Army as

the primary military instrument necessary for enforcing Indian policy

in the West. This role would break with the established American

tradition east of the Mississippi River, which had relied on the

presence of local militias to control the Indian tribes.

The next attempt to control the Indians and allow unimpeded

Western settlement was the reservation or concentration policy. As

early as the 1840s, efforts were begun to use reservations as a tool of

Indian policy. To ensure the security of the area west of the Mississippi

River, the government shifted from the policy of separation to one of

concentration. In 1848, the government discussed the idea of creating

Indian colonies on the Western plains. In February of 1851, Congress

passed the Indian Appropriation Act, mandating the new policy and

providing monies to negotiate treaties.

By 1865, the principal features of U.S. Indian policy were in place.

These features would remain, in various forms, until the end of the

nineteenth century. The policy called for the forced relocation of

Indians and the drastic reduction of areas in which the Indians were

free to practice their culture. Implementation of the reservation

system was at hand and would precipitate the longest and most violent

Indian wars the nation had known.

Following the Civil War, the reservation system was the

paramount means of implementing national policy, as the United

States turned again to resolving the continuing challenge of the

Indians to national security and Western expansion. Secretary of the

Interior James Harlan dispatched two groups of commissioners in

August 1865 to negotiate the new parameters of U.S. Indian policy

with the Indians of Kansas, the Indian Territory, and the Plains

tribes.6

This policy was a hybrid of the separation policy. It sought to

"concentrate" the Indians at several large reservations and remove

them from the immigration and railroad routes. The Indian Territory

would serve as one of the large reservations, with a second reservation

located on the northern plains. From 1865 until 1876, this single policy

served as the foundation for the national security strategy of the

United States in response to the Indians.
This approach became known as the "Peace Policy" during the

Grant administration, as it attempted (at least on the surface) to rely

on diplomatic rather than military means to accomplish its objectives.

The view of the Indians as wards of the federal government was

central to this strategy and ultimately would unhinge it. Even in 1865,

the commissioners dispatched by Secretary Harlan were instructed

that "these treaties might be amended by the Senate and such

amendments would not require the concurrence of the Indians."7

The Peace Policy did not adopt the pure form of the original policy

of concentration. While still focused on the overall national objectives,

treaties were not geared toward displacing the tribes to the large

colonies originally envisioned. Instead, a desire to avert potential

hostilities left negotiators a wide band of options. Political expediency

would determine which tribes were to be left in traditional areas or

were to be removed to the Indian Territory. The result was a

patchwork of reservations throughout the Western area created on an

ad hoc basis.

The notion of dealing with the Indians by diplomatic rather than

military means was debated in both political and military circles.

Senior members of the military establishment actively campaigned for

the control of Indian affairs to be transferred to the War Department

where they believed management of national policy would be more

efficiently served. The Army saw itself removed from the corruption

and inconsistent administration that plagued the Bureau of Indian

Affairs as administered by the Department of the Interior. In 1867, a

bill to return the Department of Interior's Indian Bureau to the War

Department passed the House but failed in the Senate. 8

President Grant led the element opposed to the military's control

of Indian strategy and favored the employment of other means. Grant's

view was a great disappointment to senior Army leaders who had

believed he would strongly advocate Army control of Indian policy. On

4 March 1873, at his second inaugural address, he stated:

My efforts in the future will be directed to the restoration of good feeling

between the different sections of our common country... by a human course,

to bring the aborigines of the country under the benign influences of

education and civilization. It is either this or war of extermination. Wars of

extermination, engaged in by people pursuing commerce and all industrial

pursuits, are expensive even against the weakest people, and are

demoralizing and wicked. Our superiority of strength and advantages of

civilization should make us lenient toward the Indian. The wrong inflicted

upon him should be taken into account and the balance placed to his credit.

The moral view of the question should be considered and the question asked,

Can not the Indian be made a useful and productive member of society by
proper teaching and treatment? If the effort is made in good faith, we will

stand better before the civilized nations of the earth and in our own

consciences for having made it. 9

While sounding a high moral tone, Grant had addressed the

economics of a strategy of extermination, which he saw as the

alternative to the diplomatic solution executed under the auspices of

the Department of the Interior. This economic concern reflected the

growing hostility within the Congress for appropriations toward a

standing Regular Army.

A peacetime political struggle to maintain an Army force

structure to meet security objectives was not a new phenomenon in

American history. Proponents of fiscal conservatism within the

Congress had found allies for a long time among congressmen and

other Americans who questioned both the utility of a standing Army

and feared it might be used for some dark political purpose. The

reduction in force conducted at the end of the Civil War was both rapid

and deep. As historian Edward M. Coffman describes:

The Civil War was over. Some Americans assumed that this meant

elimination of the military. In 1885, when a colonel was introduced to a

cultivated, urban Eastern woman, she was astonished: "What, a colonel of

the Army? Why, I supposed the Army was all disbanded at the close of the

war!" Most of it was. Within six months, 800,000 of the million men in blue

were civilians again. By 1875 the permanent strength had leveled off at

25,000... In comparison with foreign armies, this placed the size of the

American army in the 1880s at slightly less than half that of Belgium's, a

seventh that of Britain's, and a twentieth of the French army's size. 10

It was a period often called the "dark days" of the Army, and it would

shape the Army's planning of a national military and operational

strategy in the West.

Beginning in 1869 and 1870, President Grant initiated the most

well-known aspect of the Indian Peace Policy when he abdicated, to a

large degree, federal control over the Indians to religious and reform

groups that had emerged in the 1850s, primarily under the leadership

of Bishop Henry Whipple of the Episcopal Church. Whipple and other

reformers believed that the rapid adoption of Christianity and the

culture of the white man was the only means to preclude extinction of

the Indian. This view was similar to that held by the proponents of the

reservation system within Grant's administration. Differences in

opinion, however, were expressed over the intended management of

the Indians on the reservations.

Whipple and the reformers believed that the current corruption in

administration of Indian policy had reached such proportions that no
progress could be made in civilizing the Indian. He proposed

establishing an honest administration of Indian reservations by

employing the "Friends of the Indian," as the reformers later became

known. Whipple predicted that if the corruption of the Indian Bureau

was not swept away, "a nation which sowed robbery would reap a

harvest of blood."11

With Grant's approval, churches began to nominate people to

serve as Indian agents. Congress created a Board of Indian

Commissioners to manage the Indian Bureau and act as a watchdog on

corruption within the reservation system. Initially, the board was

controlled by wealthy Protestant philanthropists, but as difficulties

arose over staffing the reservations, many churches lost interest and

left for other missionary adventures. 12 The Peace Policy brought little

improvement, according to Army officers and, in fact, invited disaster:

Indians, being enamored with the warrior mystique, would only

respect other warriors. Statements, such as Colonel Richard Irving

Dodge's, were common: "Christian-appointed agents were a fitting

climax to the preposterous acts which for a century have stultified the

governmental control and management of Indians. To appoint Nathan

Meeker, however faithful, honest, and christian in bearing he might

be, to an agency in charge of a set of wild brigands like the Utes, is

simply to invite massacre." 13

While not well received by the military, the reformers themselves

were perhaps a greater threat to the Indian than the threat of direct

military action. Professing a strong belief in Indian equality with the

white man, reformers felt any shortcomings of the Indians were due to

their arrested cultural development. If the Indians were to be

assimilated, therefore, their cultural heritage must be completely

destroyed. If necessary, the Indians must be forced to this alternative

for their own good. With this religious bent, the reformers were

powerful adversaries in the world of nineteenth-century Indian policy

politics.

The management of Indian reservations by reformers, as a means

to institute a program of forced assimilation, was an abject failure.

Political infighting between religious denominations, the remaining

political appointees, and elected officials failed to produce an

improvement in reservation conditions or a cessation of hostilities

between the Indian tribes and the growing white population. The

failure of this program shifted blame to the reform movement, away

from the Grant administration, while fueling continued demands for
direct control of Indian policy by the Army-a view that was held

almost universally by senior Army officers.

The 1876 inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes brought a subtle

change to national security strategy. In his inaugural address, Hayes

laid a philosophy of "pacification" on the nation's political plate that

sought to bring the reconstruction period to a close. 14 The national

objective, in terms of the Indians, was to be a continuation of the Grant

administration's emphasis on a policy that relied on diplomacy. Hayes'

administration shifted its focus away from the relocation of Indian

tribes to the reservations. Instead, it emphasized assimilation of the

Indian into white culture.

The shift away from the reservation policy did not occur

immediately. The Hayes administration continued the Peace Policy,

using reservations and citing the perceived benefit of protecting and

civilizing the Indians. Meanwhile, the reservation system continued to

be modified, as it had been during the Grant years, away from the

concentration of the Indians in large centralized locations. Instead, the

reservations were smaller entities incorporating the Indians along

loose tribal lines, and this "small reservation approach" was the

cornerstone of the Hayes strategy. As a result, after President Hayes

took office in 1877, "over sixty tribes resettled in the Indian Territory,

while many more were shifted from their homeland to new locales." 15

The reservation system that Hayes inherited was largely created

on an ad hoc basis. As discussed earlier, the two central themes

guiding the institution of the reservation system were separation of

the Indians from the major immigration routes and their removal as

an impediment to the progress of the transcontinental railroad. These

ambitions were further amended to include removal of Indians from

areas that had gained importance due to the discovery of various

natural resources (e.g., gold in the Black Hills). As a result of the

discovery of gold and silver, the treaty between the federal

government and the Utes of Colorado would be revised three times,

accounting for each new mineral discovery.

The task that fell to Hayes and his Army was to develop a security

and military strategy that would address the failure by earlier

policymakers to control the Indian tribes in the long term. The pure

separation policy had been invalidated since the Civil War by the

continued expansion of the country. Meanwhile, the Peace Policy had

not met expectations in terms of assimilating the Indians into white

culture. In fact, the institution of the Peace Policy corresponded with

the beginning of a ten-year period during which some of the most
dramatic conflicts between the races had occurred. At the time, the

Army viewed this as a cause and effect relationship. Improvisation

became the key to the formulation of a new national strategy. As

historian Richard White describes: "American officials, in attempting

to halt conflict between Indians and whites, prevent expensive wars,

and open up lands to white settlement, created reservations the way

survivors of a shipwreck might fashion a raft from the debris of the

sunken vessel. Reservations evolved on an ad hoc basis as a way to

prevent conflict and enforce a separation of the races."1 6

When Hayes inherited the "Indian question" from the Grant

administration, a long series of military campaigns had just been

completed, culminating in the destruction of Custer and his command.

Many throughout the country, including Commanding General of the

Army William T. Sherman, saw the need for a complete revision of the

security strategy or the Indian policy. The religious and philanthropic

groups that Grant had formally promoted to the forefront in his effort

to civilize the Indian on the reservation were challenged by both the

"Westerners" and the Army. Both elements charged that the

management of the Indian by these religious societies and the Indian

Bureau of the Department of the Interior was a total failure. Calls for

the War Department to manage the Indians again reached Congress in

1877.

Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz stated much the same view as

General Sherman when he assumed office. His exposure to Indians

prior to assuming office was limited, and he held a view in keeping

with the popular ethnocentrism of the times. He stated:

The underlying support of this proposition [War Department control]

was the conviction that the Indian could never be civilized and that the only

possible solution of the problem which he embodied was to confine him,

under strict military supervision, on reservations from which all uplifting

contact with white men was barred, till he should become extinct by virtue of

his own incurable barbarism.17

Schurz' views, however, changed as he gained an appreciation of

the issues at hand. While a joint committee of Congress reviewed the

strategy of the Peace Policy, Secretary Schurz issued a statement on 6

December 1877 that reaffirmed that strategy and outlined additional

measures to be undertaken to speed the assimilation of the Indian.18

Schurz' strategy called for continued use of the reservation system

along with a program of guiding the Indians toward self-support. By

training the Indians in "modem" agricultural means, Schurz felt the

Indians would gradually replace their traditional life-style with that of
Commanding General of the Army

William T. Sherman

white culture. In the long term, he saw the "Americanization" of the

Indians as a means to eliminate the need for the maintenance of

federal reservation lands. 19 Eventually, the reservations would wither

away, being replaced by private land held by Indians practicing

agricultural pursuits. Still, in his first annual report in November

1877, he expressed the view that, even with the application of the

modified reservation system, the recurring conflict between the

advancing frontier and the Indians could not be eliminated entirely

because of the proximity of the races. 20 The Army's role in this

strategy was to be limited. Schurz stated:

Such a policy would be the most conducive to peace and the most

economical. It ought to be retained and developed; but the army would be no

proper agency for its execution. Military men and methods were

indispensable for emergencies; the long, slow process of raising the red men

out of barbarism, however, required qualities in those who guided it that the

army could not supply.2 1

The rivalry over the management of Indian affairs had been in

question since the transfer of the Office of Indian Affairs from the War

Department to the Department of the Interior in 1849.22 Schurz did,

however, take direct action on one of the Army's long-standing

complaints against the Department of the Interior by reorganizing the

Indian Bureau. A long-time advocate of civil service reform, he entered

office with a mandate from President Hayes to clean up the

Department of the Interior and, in particular, the Indian Bureau. An

investigation initiated by Schurz into the business practices of the

Indian Bureau was completed in August 1877. The report gained
national prominence when reported by the New York Times and led to

the replacement of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs within a

month. The report focused on the corruption and abuses that plagued

the Indian Bureau. Schurz described his dealings with the bureau as

"a constant fight with sharks."23

The housecleaning proved to be enough to defeat the Army's

attempts to gain control of Indian affairs through a joint congressional

committee in 1878-79. In addition to continuing control of Indian

affairs by the Department of the Interior, the reforms alleviated some

of the grievances held by the Indians and served to reduce the level of

open hostility at some of the reservations. Schurz' efforts in cleaning

up corruption in the Indian Bureau even won admiration in Army

circles. The Division of the Missouri commander, Lieutenant General

Philip H. Sheridan, commented that "the service of Indian affairs was

finally lifted out of the mire of corruption that had long made it a

discredit to our civilization." 24 While a symbolic step in the right

direction, the effect of the Schurz reforms still had not addressed

corruption at the grassroots level or the problems of the management

of reservations by competing religious groups.

Given the political environment addressed above, the Army had

to determine the best means of applying military power in support of

the Indian policy and national objectives. In the spring of 1865, the

Army returned its attention to the security of the West, a role it had

abdicated to state and territorial militias during the Civil War. That

year, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reported the number of

Indians as "civilized, 97,000; semicivilized 125,000; wholly barbarous,

78,000. Of these, 180,000 had treaties with the United States and were

consequently involved in relatively stable and mutually understood

relations with the government; another 40,000 lived on reservations

and were more or less under the control of the Indian agents; about

55,000 were totally uncontrolled." 25

The Army faced additional problems that had developed during

the Regular Army's preoccupation in the East during the Civil War.

The relationship between whites and Indians (in particular the Plains

tribes) had deteriorated because of the increased pace of emigration

and the conduct of operations by territorial militias.

The massacre of Black Kettle's band of Cheyenne at Sand Creek

by the Colorado territorial militia in 1864 was one of the most flagrant

examples of militia excess. In this case, the Cheyennes had gathered at

a point designated by the territorial governor and were using a

prearranged signal denoting them as "not hostile." In spite of
Commander of the Division of the

Missouri, Lieutenant General Philip

H. Sheridan

complying fully with the directive of the governor, including flying an

American flag, they were set upon brutally by the Colorado territorial

militia under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington. During testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Indian

casualty figures were reported as varying between 70 to 450 dead.26

The episode resulted in further reprisals and alienation on both sides.

Sand Creek became the rallying cry for humanitarian groups throughout the country. An investigation of its events discredited the

effectiveness of the Colorado militia, specifically, and the use of militia

troops, in general. Two separate investigations were conducted, one by the U.S. Senate and one by the Army. Neither adjudged any responsibility for the incident or preferred charges, but clearly Chivington was at fault. Ultimately, Chivington fled the state and

returned to his native Ohio. As a result of the chronic mishandling of

Indian affairs by local militias and the established precedent for

treating Indians as "wards" of the federal government, the Regular Army eventually became the military instrument responsible for the

enforcement of U.S. policy in the West.

The movement of people to the Western frontier had increased

during the Civil War years. Migration continued to increase later, as

many sought to find a new start in mining ventures in the West or in

the promise of free land created by the Homestead Act of 1862. The
population west of the Mississippi River grew by one million between

1860 and 1870 and an additional two and one-half million by the end of

the Hayes administration. 27 This increase in population compounded

the Army's dilemma, as it placed greater demands on it for security of

the immigrants but also increased the need for measures to protect the

treaty arrangements guaranteed to the Indians by the federal

government.

As the Army examined the situation west of the Mississippi River

in the spring of 1865, it was confident in its ability to subdue the

Indians as an obstacle to national objectives. As General Sherman

announced in November 1865, "as soon as the Indians see that we have

Regular Cavalry among them they will realize that we are in condition

to punish them for any murders or robberies." 28 This sort of confidence

was perhaps due more to unfamiliarity with the problem at hand than

an accurate assessment of the strategic situation. Nevertheless, as the

forces that had reunited the country took two days to parade before the

reviewing stand in Washington, the Army's leadership prepared for

operations on the frontier.

A few military "giants" dominated the direction of national

military strategy. The office of the commanding general of the Army,

filled by Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan respectively from

the end of the Civil War to 1886, dominated the strategic application of

military power in the West. This is not to imply that the commanding

general was in an all-powerful position to exercise complete executive

power from his office. The Army had yet to institute the reforms of the

general staff system, instead relying on the ten administrative and

technical bureaus established by the Army Act of 1866.29 This system

created two chains of control within the army-the staff and the line.

This division of responsibility split the Army. The bureau chiefs

reported to the Secretary of War and dealt with administrative and

technical matters. Operational command was exercised from the

president through the commanding general. The nature of this

arrangement, at any given time, was largely a measure of the

personalities of the president, Secretary of War, and the commanding

general. Its impact on operational considerations was felt across the

Army. As Robert M. Utley comments:

Although Sherman held the post of commanding general of the amy and

profoundly influenced its character, he did not actually command it. The

army staff-more exactly, the War Department staff-remained resolutely

outside Sherman's army. And the complications that the staff's
independence created for the commanding general in turn made his

authority over the line more nominal than real.3 0

The key uniformed decision makers of the line at the strategic and

operational levels were intimately aware of each others' strengths and

weaknesses. Past associations during the conduct of the Civil War

assisted strategic- and operational-level commanders in the

formulation of a centralized plan for the conduct of Army operations

and campaigns in the West.

In the spring of 1865, General Grant was determined to utilize

available manpower to conduct offensive operations on the Western

plains to gain the strategic initiative. There were two reasons Grant

wished to execute these operations quickly. First, the largest tribes of

Plains Indians-the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho-were raiding

immigrant trains and homesteads in reaction to the previously

discussed militia excesses, and this problem needed to be addressed

expeditiously. Second, although Grant was hopeful of maintaining a

standing force larger than at pre-Civil War levels, he anticipated

congressional troop reductions and a requirement for increased Army

presence to support the reconstruction effort in the South. Secretary of

War Edwin M. Stanton estimated that the standing Regular Army

would be about 50,000 men, only triple the 1860 strength.31 General

Pope advised Grant: "I think the government will find it true economy

to finish this Indian war this season, so it will stay finished. We have

the troops enough now on the plains to do it now better than

hereafter."3 2

An offensive including 12,000 troops was planned to begin in

April 1865 but was delayed until the summer. When the offensive

commenced, troop strength and quality had been so dissipated that the

original objectives were unattainable. Less than 5,000 troops were

employed, and the majority of forces were territorial and state militias

rather than Regular formations.33 Grant's plan to bring the Indian

wars to a decisive conclusion through a strategic offensive failed. The

combined effects of the reduction in Army strength and the demand for

troops in the South, and later on the Mexican frontier, would prevent

further considerations of a general offensive.

The strategic design for the conduct of the Indian wars was

ultimately the product of one man, General William T. Sherman. The

demands of supporting national objectives with severely limited

resources forced Sherman and the Army onto the strategic defensive in

the West. Earlier, Sherman had seen the potential for using the

railroad as a means of promoting the operational offensive. Based on
his Civil War experience, Sherman realized that the Army could

concentrate troops rapidly by using the inherent mobility provided by

the railroad and, at the same time, remain on the strategic defensive.

After viewing progress on two sections of the railroad, Sherman wrote

to the War Department and General Grant in the fall of 1865 on the

importance of the railroads in the West: "I gave both a close and

critical examination .. because I see that each will enter largely into

our military calculations." 3 4 As Sherman employed Army tactical

formations and positioned forts in the West, he would work closely

with the major railroad companies to synchronize the progress on

routes into the proper operational areas.

The Army's strategy in the West benefited from the careful

definition by the nation's leaders of the objective. By understanding

the objective-securing freedom of movement for the expansion of

settlers along the major trails and rail lines-the Army was able to

define its primary area of operations. The national security strategy

called for the removal of the Indian tribes from these critical areas,

thus allowing the Army to deal with the Indians piecemeal-first by

focusing on one tribe and then utilizing the rail network to mass

against subsequent challenges. The strategy that developed from the

stated political objectives was the only course left to the Army based on

its limited resources. The Army had to remain on the strategic

defensive while using its superior organization and technology to gain

the operational and tactical initiative when required.

The military plan that defined the U.S. Army's strategic role in

the West was linked to both the national objectives and the national

security strategy as defined by the federal government's policy toward

the Indian. The Army's role, to a large part, was a result of its absence

from the West during the Civil War. In the meantime, the other

branches of the federal government had established their agendas in

regard to the Indians. By the time the Army returned its focus to the

West, its part was simply to salute and carry out its mission.

I
III. THE OPPONENTS

"For the time and the place they weren't bad-not to compare

with Johnny Reb cavalry or Cardigan's Lights or Scarlett's Heavies or

the Union horse in the Civil War, or Sikhs or Punjabis either, but then

these were all soldiers at war, most of the time, and the 7th weren't."1

So stated the fictional Captain Harry Flashman in assessing the

ability of the 7th Cavalry in 1876. What were the capabilities of this

Army of the West and its opponents? It is the purpose of this chapter,

as Professor Michael Howard would state, to provide the context to the

"conflict of societies," to the struggle between the American and Ute

cultures.2

The predominant mission of the Army after the end of the Civil

War was to subjugate the Indians. Throughout the period, this mission

tested the very limits of the capabilities of the Army. In 1879, the year

of the Ute campaign, 20,300 troops garrisoned the West, representing

66 percent of the total Army strength.3 The demands of the geographic

area and the nature of the mission would largely dictate the means the

Army chose to gain ascendency.

While the organization of the Indian "forces" that the Army

fought was very transitory (if they were organized at all), the system

created by the U.S. Army to contain the Indians reflected the need for

well-defined geographic boundaries and the designation of

responsibilities. The system of geographically defined "divisions" and

"departments" was a continuation of a method dating back to the

reorganization of the Army in 1853.4

On 11 August 1866, the Army reorganized its command structure

into three divisions west of the Mississippi River. This structure would

remain in effect and carry the Army through the Indian wars. This

basic organization would delineate command authority, with minor

modifications, for the next twenty-five years. The Division of the

Missouri was the largest of the three created divisions. It encompassed

the Great Plains area, which would be the focus of military action

against the Indians.

From 1869 to 1883, the Division of the Missouri was further

divided into five departments: Dakota, Platte, Missouri, Texas, and

Gulf (see map 2). The Department of the Gulf remained in the division

from 1875 to 1877.5 With headquarters initially at Fort Leavenworth,

Kansas, and then at Chicago, Illinois, the Division of the Missouri was

commanded, throughout the period, by the second highest-ranking

officer in the Army. Its area of responsibility was vast. As General
Sherman stated in his 1866 annual report (before areas east of the

Mississippi River were incorporated into the division):

In order to [come to] an understanding of the great military problems to

be solved, I must state in general terms that this military division embraces

the vast region from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, of an

average breadth (east to west) of one thousand three hundred and fifty miles

and length (north to south) of over one thousand miles, viz: from the south

border of New Mexico to the British line. On the east are the fertile and

rapidly improving States of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas.

Immediately on the west are the Territories and States of Dakota, Nebraska,

Kansas, and the Indian Territory ... Next in order are the mountainous

Territories of Montana, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Between these

mountainous Territories and those of the river border lie the great plains of

America... [which] can never be cultivated like Illinois, never be filled with

inhabitants capable of self-government and self-defense as against the

Indians and marauders, but at best can become a vast pasture-field, open

and free to all for the rearing of herds of horses, mules, cattle, and sheep. 6

The designation of the departments within the Division of the

Missouri was based on several factors. To facilitate civil-military

cooperation, department boundaries were drawn to equate roughly

with the boundaries of territories and states. In addition, the east-west

orientation of the departments corresponded with the routes of the

major lines of communication (LOC) to the west. Throughout the

period of the Indian wars, the boundaries of the departments and the

placement of the forts internal to the departments shifted with the

changes in the use of immigrant trails and the railroads.

The War Department also believed that the boundaries of the

departments corresponded with the areas controlled by the major

tribes of hostile Indians.7 By defining an area of responsibility that

allegedly incorporated the range of a particular tribe, it was believed

that problems of command and control between departments would not

arise. The actual justification of the number and size of the

departments seemed to be dependent on the Army's force structure

after the Civil War. After 1866, the geographic command structure

was reorganized more to meet the changes in Congressional

appropriations than in response to changes in the Indian situation.8

The two departments involved in the 1879 Ute campaign were the

Departments of the Platte and Missouri. Both reflected an

organization that was focused on protecting the LOCs through their

respective area and on the utilization of these lines as a means to

conduct operations to control the Indians. Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, the Department of the Platte, by 1875, controlled an area

including the state of Iowa; the territories of Nebraska, Wyoming, and
CANADA

m~) -NA'

Scale

miles

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Map 2. Division of the Missouri
Utah; and a portion of Idaho Territory. Initially, the department was

concerned with protecting immigrant trails, such as the Bozeman, but

with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869, the

majority of its troops were detailed to protect this singular national

link.9

The Department of the Missouri had a similar mission. With its

headquarters at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the soldiers of the

department were to protect immigrants along portions of the Santa Fe

and Oregon Trails. By 1870, the department had witnessed the

destruction of the major Indian opposition in its area, largely due to

the work of professional hunters, who, in the course of two years,

removed the great southern buffalo herds upon which the Indians

based their subsistence. 10 The department was responsible for an area

that covered the states of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and part of

Arkansas-as well as the Colorado, New Mexico, and Indian

Territories. The department was well supplied with railroads,

including a line of the Kansas Pacific that connected Denver from the

east and ran north to the Union Pacific line at Cheyenne, Wyoming.11

The manpower afforded Lieutenant General Sheridan and the

Division of the Missouri, however, was hardly sufficient for the area.

In 1879, the aggregate strength of the division was 15,517 officers and

men, who were responsible to garrison seventy-one permanent posts

and twenty-two temporary encampments. This structure provided for

a force ratio of one soldier for every seventy-five square miles in the

Departments of the Platte and the Missouri. 12

The demands of safeguarding rail and other lines of

communication, in addition to the mission of controlling Indians and

protecting them (at least marginally) from white depredations on

reservations and treaty land, led the Army to establish the fort system.

This system positioned small Army contingents, usually of company or

troop size, along the paths of advancing "civilization." As General

Sheridan described:

To thoroughly and effectively perform the duties devolving upon us

compels us many times to overwork our troops, and not unfrequently obliges

us to take the field with small detachments, which have heretofore

occasionally been overmatched and greatly outnumbered by our foes. This is

not as it should be; but so long as our companies are limited to their average

strength (fifty men to a battery of artillery, sixty men to a company of

cavalry, and forty men to a company of infantry), it cannot be avoided...

Compelled as it is to keep in advance of the wave of civilization constantly

flowing westward, and to watch the Northern and Southern borders and

guard them from incursions of savage foes, and also to be in readiness to

repress any outbreaks upon the Indian reservations, to say nothing of
having to make new roads, erect forts, and furnish escorts for surveying and

exploring parties, it is, as I have said, overworked, on account of its

inadequate strength for the service required. 13

Because of both the demands placed on the Army of the West and

its small size, the feature which has come to characterize the Indianfighting Army arose: the fort. Fort Fred Steele, Wyoming, not only

played a key role in the Ute campaign but was characteristic of all

Western forts. Established in June 1868 in the Wyoming Territory at

an intersection of the North Platte River and the Union Pacific line, it

served as part of a system of forts for the protection of the railroad and

the Overland Trail and as a replacement for the abandoned Bozeman

Trail posts. 14

The railroad provided a degree of operational mobility to the fort

system, enabling the Army to overcome any superiority in numbers

the Indians could achieve. By utilizing the railroad and telegraph, the

Army could move troops and equipment to pursue and punish hostile

bands. General Sherman was among the earliest to realize the

potential of the railroad in the Western campaigns, but he was not

alone. The annual reports from both divisional and departmental

commanders included an update on the status of the most recent rail

lines established in their area of responsibility. General Sheridan

commented on the close relationship between the Army and the

railroads in his 1880 Annual Report: "Amongst our strongest allies in

the march of civilization upon the frontier are the various railway

companies who are now constructing their new lines with great

rapidity."15

The advantage gained by technological superiority was not easily

brought to bear in the Indian campaigns. The railroad and its

complementary system, the telegraph, facilitated military

campaigning, but "those miles away from the railroad were still

horseback miles [away from the action]." 16 Moreover, the area that

was the predominant region of operations was on the fringes of

"civilization" and not easily influenced by the explosion of technology

during the nineteenth century. Mobility of men and supplies, in the

tactical sense, still relied primarily upon foot and horse.

Army firepower, furthermore, did not enjoy an advantage over the

Indians on the tactical battlefield. While the cavalry had abandoned

the repeating carbines in the early 1870s in favor of single-shot

breachloaders, the Indians favored the repeaters when they could be

acquired. The single-shot, .45 Springfield rifle was selected by an arms

board in 1872. Headed by General Terry, the board tested over one
hundred types of rifles and carbines to determine the standard model

for U.S. Army service. 17 The tactical effect of this improved weaponry

was the same in the Indian campaigns as it had been in the Civil War:

it conferred the relative advantage to the tactical defense. In fact, the

Indians, because of their long-standing unconventional style of

warfare, adapted to the impact of the "modern" rifle much faster than

did the Army. With sufficient quantities of breachloaders, the Indian

had rendered the charge ineffective-unless the element of surprise

was achieved to a sufficient degree. As historian Thomas W. Dunlay

describes: "In the 1870s the army increasingly fought against enemies

who could not be seen; only the smoke and flash of the concealed

Indian's gun indicated his presence. This was a major reason for the

surprise attacks on Indian camps; it was the only way the soldiers

could make a decisive attack at all."18

The fort system was not the preferred means of operation by the

Army. The predominant view was that the piecemeal allocation of

troops resulted from both the limited size of the Army and the political

demands placed on it. Moreover, the system was seen as a detriment to

decisive action against the Indians, and because its use was politically

and economically sanctioned, it precluded the Army from taking a

more offensive role against the Indians. General Sheridan remarked:

The fact that our army is so small adds greatly to its expense, for

whenever it becomes necessary to use a force of any magnitude whatever

against the Indians, we are compelled to send troops by rail or steamboat

from a large number of small posts, to enable us to take the field with any

prospect of success, and the cost of transportation incurred by these

concentrations becomes a serious item in our annual expenditures. Our

frontier is so extensive that for the present we are compelled to adhere to a

system of small posts, though it is both inconvenient and costly. 19

The alternative being proposed by some within the Army was the

abandonment of a large number of the smaller forts and the

consolidation of the bulk of the Army's combat troops at a few large

posts. This alternative was not given serious weight until 1879-80

because the railroad network in the West had not been developed

sufficiently to support the rapid movement of these "flying columns."

Major General John Pope, commander of the Department of the

Missouri from 1870 to 1883, was a supporter of this proposal. He

remarked:

The abandonment of many of the small posts, and their consolidation

with larger posts, I have recommended so often that I content myself now

with saying that every year which passes more and more makes apparent

the good policy, in every view, of dispensing with the small posts, and

concentrating troops in large garrisons. Economy and efficiency of the
military forces in this department would be greatly promoted by such a

system, and I again respectfully invite attention to my previous

recommendations on this subject. 20

By the outbreak of the Ute uprising in 1879, the Army had a welldefined approach to fighting an Indian campaign. The adoption of

Pope's proposal was still forthcoming, and the central issues became

when to strike the hostiles and how to concentrate sufficient combat

power to defeat them. The employment of the bulk of the Army in the

Western theater astride railroad lines became the answer to the latter

question. The question of the optimum timing of a campaign was

answered through a process of trial and error.

A winter campaign was seen as the best means to subdue the

Indians. This denoted a change in the conduct of campaigning from the

pre-Civil War era in the West and was brought about by the expansion

of the railroad, which could be used in support of operations. The

common experiences of the officers who became senior leaders after the

war also suggested this course. Of the division and department

commanders in the West in 1866, only one had previous command

experience in the theater-General Philip St. George Cooke-and he

was relieved following the Fetterman massacre in December of that

year.21

The capabilities of a modern field army that developed during the

Civil War were in stark contrast to previous Army operations on the

frontier. Historian Paul A. Hutton describes the experiences of

General Sheridan:

Sheridan's first campaign against the Indians was a pathetic affair. A

detachment of 350 regular troops and a regiment of Oregon mounted

volunteers was dispatched under the command of Major Gabriel Rains in

October 1855 against the Yakimas. Although the campaign gave Sheridan

his first look at warriors massed for battle-"a scene of picturesque

barbarism, fascinating but replusive"-it yielded no results . . . Winter

snows ended the campaign, and the officer's conversations quickly

degenerated into recriminations about who was to blame for the failure.2 2

The lessons of the Civil War were not lost on the Army's leaders in

its aftermath. Before the Civil War, the focus had been exclusively on

the destruction of the opposing military's forces. Later, a shift occurred

that incorporated the destruction of all the enemy's war-making

potential in the process. This expansion of the scope of warfare would

be evident on the plains of the West, and the Civil War would be used

as a precedent for the conduct of total war. War became more than a

contest between warring forces; it encompassed a struggle between

opposing societies, between two divergent cultures.
Army leadership was determined to find an answer to the Indian

problem. The Army's very raison d'etre hung in the balance, and the

answer must not rely on the adoption of Indian methods. Instead, the

Army had to select methods that were in keeping with the use of

decisive military force as the primary instrument of national power.

The Army had to find the answer to the Indian problem as a means to

justify its own existence. As Thomas W. Dunlay describes:

In a period when the army believed that it was being starved by the

Congress and ignored or scorned by the nation, the suggestion that it could

not cope with the Indians without Indian aid was especially repugnant.

Officers wanted to believe that they and their men did their best and were

the best soldiers possible under the circumstances. They might dress like

cowboys or mule skinners in the field..., but they took pride in the uniform

and in their regiments. It was painful, therefore, to hear suggestions that

they could not cope with savages. 2 3

It is an oft-heard remark in the modern Army that the character

of a unit is a reflection of the personality of its commander. The Army

that fought the Indians may not have reflected the personalities of its

senior commanders, but the policies and tactics within the respective

divisions and departments certainly did. By 1879, the major playersSheridan, Pope, and Crook-were well tested by the rigors of Indian

campaigns. Their views on the military solution to the Indian riddle

rested on the spread of settlers and the use of "modern" technology. As

one commander commented, "as experience of late years has most

conclusively shown that our cavalry cannot cope with the Indian man

to man."24

The failure of the Army to achieve a decisive victory in the

campaigns against the major Plains Indian tribes had driven the

senior leadership into seeking solace in the familiar glow of technology

and organization. The Army found new confidence in the modern

appliances of war and saw in them a means to counteract the tactical

acumen of the Indian. After listening to a litany of inherent

advantages possessed by the Indian warrior, General Nelson A. Miles

remarked that "though all that said about their skill and enterprise

and energy was true, yet with our superior intelligence and modern

appliances we ought and would be able to counteract, equal, or surpass

all the advantages possessed by the savages."25

By the initiation of the 1879 campaigns, grand strategy had

evolved in the minds of the senior commanders. The combination of the

winter campaign and large converging columns as a means of

achieving a decisive battle with the Indian had been invalidated by the

Army's failure in the Great Sioux War. Ultimately, however, success
would become possible by applying relentless pressure on the Sioux

through the application of harassing tactics.

While the Army had been outmaneuvered in its only attempt at a

conventional campaign, it nonetheless retained both the winter

campaign and the converging columns as a means of initiating a

ruthless, unceasing pressure on any offending Indian bands. As

Sheridan reported to Sherman, "I have never looked on any decisive

battle with these Indians as a settlement of the trouble ... Indians do

not fight such battles; they only fight boldly when they have the

advantage, as in the Custer case, or to cover the movement of their

women and children as in the case of Crook, but Indians have scarcely

ever been punished unless by their own mode of warfare or tactics and

stealing on them [surprising them]."2 6 Success depended on a new

operational paradigm consisting of the combination of the railroad,

organization, and the application of steady, disciplined pursuit.

The nature of campaigning changed in the aftermath of the Sioux

War. Thereafter, the Indians were on the operational defensive, never

able to field a force in sufficient numbers to challenge the Army. The

advance of the Western frontier meant that the Army found itself

occupying forts that ringed the different reservations. From these

forts, soldiers were poised to respond to any Indian outbreaks. As

Sheridan stated in 1879, "Indian troubles that will hereafter occur will

be those which arise upon the different Indian reservations or from

attempts made to reduce the number and size of these reservations by

the concentration of the Indian tribes."27

The execution of Army strategy in support of national objectives

was often colored by the central Army figures on the scene. The three

central commanders involved in the Ute War are interesting studies,

both in their similarities as well as their differences. The conduct of

campaigns and the execution of Army policy in the West was perhaps

more representative of its leaders' personalities than any doctrine or

official policy.

In March 1869, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan was

appointed commander of the Division of the Missouri. His views on the

Indian problem were similar to Sherman's. While at times he appeared

sympathetic to the plight of the Indian in the face of expanding

civilization, he, like Sherman, held the view that the Indians, as an

inferior culture, were doomed. He was a supporter of the reservation

system and a strong advocate for the return of the management of

Indian affairs to the Army. As he stated, "I have the interest of the

Indian at heart as much as anyone, and sympathize with his fading
race, but many years of experiences have taught me that to civilize and

Christianize the wild Indian it is not only necessary to put him on

Reservations but it is also necessary to exercise some strong authority

over him."2 8

Sheridan's conduct of campaigns was shaped from his experiences

in the Civil War and lessons learned in the field against the Indian.

During his tenure as a division commander, he had conducted

successful campaigns against the Cheyennes (1868-69) and the

Comanche in the Red River War (1874-75). He believed earlier

failures to subdue the Indians were due to a preoccupation with

humanitarian concerns. Sheridan made no moral judgments of the

policy that, in his opinion, had predetermined open war with the

tribes. He reported to General Sherman:

In taking the offensive, I have to select that season when I can catch the

fiends; and if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the

responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes

necessitated the attack. During the war did any one hesitate to attack a

village or town occupied by the enemy because women and children were

within its limits? Did we cease to throw shells into Vicksburg or Atlanta

because women and children were there? 29

As previously stated, Sheridan believed that the nature of the

Indian wars had changed by 1879. The requirement for taking the field

in offensive operations had ended with the destruction of the great

Plains tribes. Maintenance of Army forces along the railroads,

positions ready to counter Indian incursions off the reservations,

would be the required remedy.

Sheridan's two principal subordinates, Generals Crook and Pope,

were markedly different from him in their styles of command. Both

were experienced Indian fighters and astute soldier-politicians who

cultivated political favors and supporters. Pope and Crook, however,

possessed different views on the responsibility of department

commanders during the conduct of a campaign. Nonetheless, to a large

degree, they shared similar perceptions and sought the same goals.

Unlike Sherman and Sheridan, both are remembered as

"humanitarian soldiers," moved by the plight of the Indian but

compelled to deal with the problems they presented. Whether Pope and

Crook were truly compassionate or were using this image to gain

support among Eastern politicians is open to discussion. Certainly,

they never offered alternative policies on Indian issues, and in the

conduct of operations, neither instituted tactical changes that would

reflect a higher level of sensitivity to the Indian. Nonetheless, their
General George Crook and his scouts, Fort Bowie, Arizona, 1885

opinions captured the imagination of the Eastern press and won both

men admirers among philanthropic groups and humanitarians.

Crook is often noted as one of the most effective field commanders

the Army had during the period and as a "reluctant" warrior who was

well respected by the Indians.30 On the other hand, his soldiers tended

to view Crook as a publicity-hungry leader more concerned with his

image than fighting Indians. A soldiers' ditty that was popular in

Crooks command went:

I'd like to be a packer,

And pack with George F. Crook

And dressed up in my canvas suit

To be for him mistook.

Id braid my beard in two long tails,

And idle all the day

In whittling sticks and wondering

What the New York papers say. 31

General Pope was equally concerned about his public image but

did not cultivate the image of an active field commander. Pope

preferred to remain at his department headquarters or at a location

that afforded him the use of both the railroad and telegraph. His

command method put him in the position to monitor operations from

afar while maintaining contact with superiors and Eastern political

acquaintances.
The Utes, once an impoverished tribe, flourished and aroused the fear

of their enemies after acquiring horses

The three commanders were not working at cross purposes, but

each conducted operations in relation to his own special circumstances.

This situation was characteristic of officers throughout this period,

and echoes of this orientation can be recognized in the current U.S.

Army.3 2 All three generals practiced the mechanical aspects of Indian

warfare in the manner that characterized Army operations and tactics

of the day: reliance on technology, use of converging columns, winter

campaigns, and a "total war" devoid of rules of engagement or

restrictions on either side.

The origins of warfare, as viewed by the Ute tribe, are

summarized in the legend of their creation:

Once there were no people in any part of the world. Sinawaf, the creator,

began to cut sticks and place them in a large bag. This went on for some time

until, finally, Coyote's curiosity could stand the suspense no longer. One day

while Sinawaf was away Coyote [a figure representing evil or a

troublemaker] opened the bag. Many people came out, all of them speaking

different languages, and scattering in every direction. When Sinawaf

returned there were but a few people left. He was angry with Coyote, for he

had planned to distribute the people equally in the land. The result of

unequal distribution caused by Coyote would be war between the different

peoples, each trying to gain land from his neighbor. Of all the people

remaining in the bag, Sinawaf said, "this small tribe shall be Ute but they

will be very brave and able to defeat the rest."3 3

For centuries, the Utes were successful in defending their

mountain bastion, while ranging to the east and south on forays for

horses and game. The arrival of the U.S. Army on the Ute range was
not, at first, a cause for great concern among the tribe. In the past, the

Utes had been very successful in fighting European-style armies.

Since the expansion of the Spanish empire into the southwest, the Utes

had proven adept at mobile warfare in difficult terrain.

The occupation of New Mexico by Spain in 1598 began the "golden

era" in the Utes' history. As with other Plains tribes, the Utes' culture

experienced a significant change through the acquisition of the horse

from the Spaniards. The Utes' rapid adaptation of the horse greatly

increased their mobility and expanded their hunting range (see map

3). Hunters could now leave the mountains and return with sufficient

buffalo meat and skins to maintain themselves through the winter.

The creation of an economic surplus through more efficient hunting

made it possible for scattered Ute family groups to form larger bands

under more centralized leadership. 3 4

From 1838, with the establishment of Bents Fort along the banks

of the South Platte River, the Utes had regular contact with

"American" culture. The general lack of problems between the Ute

tribe and those expanding the frontier derived from the Indians'

unique geographic position. The Utes benefited from the fact that the

large immigrant trails and efforts of the transcontinental railroad

skirted their mountain home. The one point of friction between the

white and Ute cultures originated with the movement of settlers from

New Mexico into the San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado. The

Army was quick to respond by establishing Fort Massachusetts in

1852 (later relocated and renamed Fort Garland in 1858). Fort

Garland remained a critical location in the relationship between the

Utes and the Army until the ultimate removal of the tribe from the

area in 1883. The fort was garrisoned throughout the period by a

combination of Regular Army and Colorado militia. At the same time,

the post acted as a "leadership laboratory" for future Ute warriors as

they observed and served with the Army in campaigns against the

Navajo, Sioux, and Cheyenne. As it was described in 1870:

Eight thousand feet above sea-level, at the foot of snow-covered

mountains, towering six thousand feet higher, on the western slope of the

Rocky Mountain Range, in about 106 longitude and 37 latitude, a favorite

range for the indomitable Utes, and a favorite haunt for elk, deer, bear,

panther, and beaver, difficult to access from nearly all directions-Fort

Garland, Colorado, though the point of strength and the protecting hope of

many a small settlement and isolated rancho flourishing on those sweet

trout streams, the Trinchero and Sangre de Cristo, has eminent right still to

be called a frontier post.3 5
FotSteele -,Sal % /Fot0 WrY 2 5 ' -- Chyen\ Scl

U'NE

UT'TERRITORY DlenverO CiO

\KS

\ rColorado Sprigs rk Hill

* Is

I I

Qn Jun R. "Fort Garland .'

AZ Legend - - -- -

Ute Territory I-. .," ,,." N

Ute -. hunting range l 1

Note: States and their boundaries and town names are modern. __ TX aR.

Source: Anne M. Smith, Ethnography of the Northern Utes (Albuquerque. I S . ".FC

Museum of New Mexico Press, 1974). Sana e

Map 3. Ute Territory, 1806
ii

Ute hunters (here using stirrups)

Early in the relationship between the United States and the Utes,

the Ute tribe seemed to realize the futility of active resistance and

instead sought to adopt a policy of negotiation. Two campaigns were

conducted against the Utes in Colorado-the Ute War of 1854-55 and

the Ute War of 1879. The first began on 25 December 1854, when a

small band of Mouache Utes, under the leadership of Tierra Blanca,

killed four trappers. The Army gathered a force of twelve companies of

Regulars and militia at Fort Garland to pursue the Utes but quickly

came to the conclusion that winter was not the best season for active

campaigning in the Rockies. The size of the Army force, however,

impressed the Utes, who had avoided contact with the troops by

melting away into the mountains.

A peace was negotiated in the fall of 1855, with two consequences

that would shape the Ute perception of the Army in the future. First,

while the Army could not penetrate the Ute mountain range in the

winter, the continual pressure the Army exerted on the Utes for nine

months made a lasting impression. Second, a young observer of the

conflict was Ouray, who would become chief of the Utes and would
shape Ute policy until his death in 1880. Ouray, who was as politically

adept as many of Colorado's elected leaders, recognized early the

inevitability of white expansion and domination and sought to delay

the loss of Ute lands through alliances with the whites and skillful

negotiations. Ouray is quoted as saying:

I realize the ultimate destiny of my people. They will be extirpated by

the race that overruns, occupies and holds our hunting grounds, whose

numbers and force, with the government and millions behind it will in a few

years remove the last trace of our blood that now remains. We shall fall as

the leaves from the trees when frost or winter comes and the lands which we

have roamed over for countless generations will be given over to the miner

and the plowshare. In place of our humble tepees, the "white man's" towns

and cities will appear and we shall be buried out of sight beneath the

avalanche of the new civilization. This is the destiny of my people. My part is

to protect them and yours as far as I can, from the violence and bloodshed

while I live, and to bring both into friendly relations, so that they may be at

peace with one another. 36

Relations between the Utes and white Americans prior to the War

of 1879 were remarkable in the restraint shown on both sides. In

reviewing records of Army actions from 1860 to 1879 in Colorado, no

incidents involving the Utes were recorded. 3 7 Indeed, the focus of

Army action in Colorado was against the traditional enemies of the

Utes. The Utes proved a steady ally for the Army during this period,

providing men to serve as scouts and auxiliaries against other tribes

on the plains and to the south against the Apaches. 38

The Ute warrior was a valued addition to any Army expedition.

He prided himself on two things: marksmanship and horsemanship.

Ute culture, perhaps because of the highly defensible nature of their

home terrain, emphasized the ability of the sniper and never developed

the concept of "counting coup" or hand-to-hand combat like the Plains

tribes. The wealth of a man was measured by the number and quality

of his horses, but his worth as a warrior was in his marksmanship.3 9

The primary armament of the Ute by 1879 were the Henry or

Winchester repeaters, which were effective for hunting in the

mountains where volume of fire was more useful than range in the

broken terrain. The Utes were pragmatic about the conduct of warfare.

The practice by other tribes of institutionalizing war honors (i.e.,

taking scalps) was not followed by the Utes. The taking of horses or

prisoners was a matter of expediency to the Utes, but they scorned

standing fights. Among their Indian enemies, the Utes had a

reputation as a particularly difficult adversary to kill. The Army

would have to learn the same lesson on its own.

As it served with the U.S. military, the Ute tribe gained an

appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the Army and of
A Ute warrior in war paint

government policy. The massacre at Sand Creek in 1864 and the

winter campaign of 1868 against the Cheyenne would, to a large degree, serve as the framework by which the Utes would understand

the threat to their tribe. The Utes sought to avoid similar results

through negotiation and treaty.

The success of the Utes' policy of negotiation was determined by the "boom or bust" economic cycle that characterized Colorado as a

territory and in its early years of statehood. The revision of existing

agreements between whites and Indians corresponded with each newly discovered mineral bonanza on Ute-controlled territory. The Ute view

of this activity was an acceptance of prospectors and miners, with vain

attempts to limit the development of permanent communities and

farms. The Utes were unprepared for the onslaught that would follow

the discovery of precious minerals.
Scale

SSalt Lake City -MEMO

NE

South Platte

+TERRITORY Dne

I Denver -

+ CO K

toy + sni

0 Colorado Springs

GI

aa~z Juan R.

0 Fort Garland

AZNM OK

Note: States and their boundaries and town names are modern.

Source: Charles TX as S. Marsh, People of the Shining Mountains (Boulder, CO: g Pruett Publishing, 1926).

Map 4. Ute Territory, 1868
Scale

Salt

CO

UT

0 Colorado

AZ J NM

Note: States and their boundaries and town names are modern.

Source: Marshall Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River

(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1957). 0 Santa Fe

Map 5. Ute Territory, 1873

KS
The discovery of gold at Cripple Creek and at Cherry Creek in

1859 would bring about the first definition of Ute lands by the federal

government. The end of the Civil War brought gold seekers and

settlers to Colorado at an unprecedented rate. The federal government,

utilizing the special relationship that Kit Carson held with the tribe,

negotiated a treaty in 1868 that guaranteed the Utes an area of

approximately 16,000,000 acres and "was binding and final forever"40

(see map 4). The federal government designated Ouray as the primary

Ute chief, which served to consolidate his position within the tribe.

"Forever" arrived earlier than anticipated by the Utes. By 1872,

the discovery of silver in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern

Colorado caused the settlers in Colorado to agitate for revision of the

1868 agreement. The Colorado delegation to Congress complained that

this vast amount of land was underutilized by the lazy Ute people.

Ouray, at a meeting of the McCook Commission stated, "We work as

hard as you do. Did you ever try skinning a buffalo?" 41 (The McCook

Commission was a three-member panel convened in 1872 to

renegotiate the boundaries of Ute Territory. McCook was a former

territorial governor appointed by U. S. Grant. McCook is remembered

in Colorado history for his introduction of the spoils system within the

state.) 41

In 1873, the Brunot Treaty was signed, cutting the San Juan

region from the Ute lands (see map 5). The area that the Utes

controlled was still impressive-over 11,000,000 acres for a total

population estimated at between four and six thousand. Ouray was

disappointed, however, by the continued reduction of Ute Territory,

but his tribe was faring better than most Indians in their attempts to

stave off complete destruction. Indeed, the federal government had

intervened twice on behalf of the Utes, sending troops to remove

miners who were in violation of the treaty.

The strategy of negotiation and alliance with the Army was

working for the Utes for the time being. But by 1879, the destruction of

the federal government's major Indian opponents and the continued

pressures of Colorado settlement and industry would unhinge the Ute

strategy. The power of the combined federal and state governments

soon would be brought to bear on the Utes with telling effect.

C
IV. MASSACRE AND BATTLE

"Either they [the Utes] or we go, and we are not going.

Humanitarianism is an idea. Western empire is an inexorable fact. He

who gets in the way of it will be crushed."l Early in 1879, an editorial

in the Denver Times stated what had become obvious to most white

Colorado residents. Since the 1873 Brunot Treaty, pressure had

continued to mount for the removal of the Utes from Colorado. Within

the state, the publication of Hayden's atlas of 1877 supposedly

demonstrated that a large portion of land was still controlled by a

"non-producing, semi-barbarous people." 2 Outside Colorado, Eastern

humanitarians held off legislation introduced by the Colorado

delegation to Congress in 1878 that was designed to remove the Utes

forcibly from Colorado to the Indian Territory. But the Utes had not

yet provided the grounds for military action against them.

The spark that would provoke the war was provided by the Ute

agent, Nathan C. Meeker. In March 1878, Meeker was appointed as

the agent to the White River Agency in northwestern Colorado.

Meeker saw his appointment as an opportunity to continue his version

of social engineering. A deeply religious man, Meeker was determined

to pursue his vision for assimilation of the Utes into white society,

through force if necessary. As Colorado Governor Pitkin would later

state, "A purer and better man than Meeker was never appointed to an

Indian agency." As an afterthought, however, he added, "He did not

understand Indians sufficiently."3

Meeker sought to transform his agency overnight. He saw

agriculture as the means to Ute self-sufficiency. He proposed plowing

grassland and converting it to farmland, although this made no sense

to Indian culture, which measured wealth in horses. Despite strong

resistance to his methods, Meeker remained ever hopeful. He reported

in July of 1878:

These Ute Indians are peaceable, respecters of the right of property, and

with few exceptions amiable and prepossessing in appearance. There are no

quarrelsome outbreaks, no robberies, and perhaps not a half dozen who

pilfer, and these are well known ... On the whole, this agent is impressed

with the idea that if the proper methods can be hit upon they [the Indians]

can be made to develop many useful and manly qualities and be elevated to a

state of absolute independence. 4

Despite Meeker's favorable reports, other elements in the state

were opposed to mediation with the Utes. Beginning in 1877, the

Department of the Missouri had been caught up in the increasing

pressure between the cultures. In August 1877, citizens petitioned
Nathan C. Meeker, Indian agent to

m F the White River Utes

General Pope to station a company of cavalry permanently in the area

of Middle Park to control the Utes, "believing trouble will surely be

averted thereby."5 In the summer of 1879, Pope sent troops-D Company, 9th Cavalry--to stabilize the situation, but with mixed

results. According to Frank Hall, adjutant general of Colorado: "At

length General John Pope sent a single company of colored cavalry to

scout in the Middle Park. Now if there is anything on the face of the

earth that an Indian hates above another it is a negro, and especially a

nigger soldier. Therefore, this movement, instead of quieting their

hostility, merely inflamed it."6

Pope's efforts to defuse the growing crisis went largely unappreciated in the polarized environment of the times. In the

meantime, he found an unlikely ally for his idea of consolidating the

Utes under the control of the Army. Prior to the outbreak of open hostilities, the Army had received support from the Indian Bureau in

its effort to consolidate the tribes to facilitate control by the military. In the case of the Utes, the Indian Bureau, in its annual report of 1878, supported moving them to the Indian Territory. This proposal reflected

the need to centralize the management of the different tribes to better

provide for at least the minimum amount of subsistence for them. The

Utes presented a particularly thorny problem because of the

mountainous nature of the terrain they occupied. The White River

Agency was only accessible two months out of the year by teamster
Chief Colorow, one of several chiefs

who contended for control of the

Northern Utes

wagons. Thus, the Indian Bureau presented its desire to relocate the

tribe as a matter of military and practical expediency. Commissioner

Ezra A. Hayt stated:

The reason I favored it [transfer of the Utes to Indian Territory] is this:

The Indian Territory has enough fertile land to enable those Indians to settle

down comfortably. It has a superabundance of fertile land. Again, the

country is not broken, ridged, and labyrinthine like this region in Colorado;

it is a country where the Army could use artillery; and wherever our troops

can use artillery the Indians know very well that it is useless for them to go

upon the warpath, so that, as a defensive measure, I think it would be wise to

take them out of their fortresses and put them where they will be less

formidable ... I think, then, if we wish to avoid expensive wars and to save

the lives of our soldiers, it is very desirable to put these Indians out of their

fortresses in Colorado.7

On 4 February 1878, the Colorado delegation introduced the first

of three bills designed to remove the Utes to the Indian Territory. The

bills called for the transfer of the Utes and for the revocation of any

title to the Ute lands. House Resolution 351 was typical of the three. It

empowered the Secretary of the Interior to negotiate with the Utes and

"establish by law the extinguishment of title to their lands, removal

from their present locations and consolidation on certain

reservations."8
a as Colorado Springs

i UT

9c, urtR ~l F~~ort Lewis Galn Fort

NM d--

Note: States and their boundaries and town names are modern.

Source: Marshall Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River

(Boston: Little, Brown and Co. , 1957). ISantaFe

Map 6. Theater railroads, 1878
The location of the White River Agency was at the end of the

Army's operational reach. While the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad

had pushed a line past Fort Garland to bring in mining supplies to the

San Juan Mountains, the northwestern portion of the state remained

remote (see placement of theater railroads, map 6). Troops from Fort

Steele, Wyoming Territory, within the Department of the Platte, were

approximately 150 miles from the agency. The closest troops to the

agency, within the state and under the control of the Department of

the Missouri, were at Fort Garland about 176 miles away. The Army

found itself able to contain the Utes away from the population centers

and lines of communication within the state and along the Wyoming

border but not able to control events in the hinterland of Colorado.

Superior operational mobility was not an advantage if containment

was not the objective.

The Army's command and control structure, as delineated by the

departments, may have contributed to the outbreak of hostilities. As

tensions rose and reports of Ute violations of the peace were reported,

citizens of northwestern and northcentral Colorado crossed the state

line and demanded action from the commander at Fort Steele, Major

Thomas T. Thornburgh. Thornburgh did not act for two reasons. First,

he viewed the Ute problem as an issue within the jurisdiction of the

neighboring department. Second, while the Ute range was primarily

in Colorado, the Utes did travel in Wyoming Territory, and he had

received no reports of problems from Wyoming ranchers. Thus, the

commander of Fort Steele solicited reports on Ute conduct from

settlers within 100 miles of the post. All indicated the Utes were wellbehaved. Nonetheless, Thornburgh questioned the stories, since the

Utes were blamed for myriad problems on one side of the border and

none on the other.9

Coordination between Army departments was occurring as

tensions were increasing. Meeker had sent a message to Thornburgh

on 17 July 1879, concerned that a band of White River Utes was

heading north on a raid to acquire weapons and possibly to meet with

Sioux hostiles. By 26 July 1879, the report had been relayed from the

Department of the Platte headquarters at Fort Omaha, Nebraska, to

General Pope at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.lo General Crook,

Department of the Platte commander, reported to General Sheridan on

the incident:

... Major Thornburgh's report with these statements are forwarded

herewith. From these statements it will be seen:

1. That besides killing game the Indians committed no depredations.
.General George Crook

2. That the post commander of Fort Steele, Wyo., did not receive timely information of the presence of the Indians referred to.

I ask attention to the fact that it is impossible for the military, placed as they are at such great distances from the agencies, to prevent Indians from

leaving without authority, unless warning in due time by the Indian

authorities is given. Nor can a post commander force them to return without

running the risk of bringing on a war, for which he would be held

accountable.

For this reason the post commander is required to refer the matter to

higher military authority, which also involves delay. Unless troops are stationed at the agencies they cannot know in time when Indians are absent

by authority; nor can they prevent the occurrence of troubles, for which they are frequently and most unjustly held responsible.11

In addition to problems along the Colorado-Wyoming border, the

Colorado-Utah border added another factor into the equation. The long standing animosity between the federal government and portions of

the Mormon community in Utah had the potential to escalate any Ute

outbreak into a more protracted insurgency. As tensions between the

Utes and the government were rising, unidentified whites from Utah

were arriving at Indian camps inciting the tribe to take action.

Throughout the summer of 1879, events and rumors on both sides

were beginning to take on a life of their own. The unsubstantiated

stories of depredations of whites and Indians were splashed across the
Governor Frederick Pitkin of

Colorado

front pages of Colorado's daily newspapers (see table 1). The Utes were

operating under an agreement, the Brunot Treaty, that had been

signed by President Ulysses S. Grant only four years earlier. The

trustee of this agreement, the Indian Bureau, both at the local and

national levels, was openly suggesting the annulment of the

document. Meanwhile, the state government, led by Governor Pitkin,

was calling for the removal of the Utes.

On 5 July 1879, Governor Pitkin sent the following telegram to

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra A. Hayt:

Reports reach me daily that a band of White River Utes are off the

reservation, destroying forests and game near North and Middle Parks.

They have already burned millions of dollars of timber, and are intimidating

settlers and miners. Have written Agent Meeker, but fear letters have not

reached him. I respectfully request you to have telegraphic order sent troops

at nearest post to remove Indians to their reservation. If general government

does not act promptly the State must. Immense forests are burning

throughout Western Colorado, supposed to have been fired by the Utes. I am

satisfied there is an organized effort on the part of Indians to destroy the

timber of Colorado. The loss will be irreplaceable. These savages should be

removed to the Indian Territory, where they can no longer destroy the finest

forests in this state. 1 2

Pitkin's action, or more specifically his lack of action to defuse the

crisis, was adding to the tension between the Utes and the citizenry of

the state. The request for troops to control the Utes was based on
violations attributed to the Utes, rumors, and the concerns of Agent

Meeker.13 On 20 August 1879, a delegation of Utes from the White

River Agency, led by the chief of that band, Douglas, arrived in Denver

for a meeting with the governor. The Utes assumed that the governor

would take action against Agent Meeker once their grievances were

known. The Utes explained that they no longer had confidence in

Meeker and, to avert trouble, a replacement was needed. At the time of

the meeting, Pitkin had been informed that his earlier request for

troops had been approved by the Indian Bureau and had been turned

over to the War Department.14 The governor took no action.

Table 1. Sample News Headlines from the Rocky Mountain

News (1878-79)

1878

2 January

3 March

5 March

18 April

23 April

28 April

24 May

21 July

3 August

1 September

12 September

1879

1 January

27 June

9 July

16 July

6 August

14 August

"Indian Hostilities"

"Utes on Rampage, Whites Fear Uprising"

"Utes Kill Cattle on Snake River"

"Ute Massacre in Pagosa Springs"

"Rumors of Ute War"

"Utes' Gold Locations Secret from Whites"

"Utes Rebellious Through Neglect of Indian Bureau"

"Movements of Ute Indians"

"Utes Kill Joe McLane, Stockmen Seek Revenge"

"Ute Uprising Feared in Grand County"

"Utes in Trouble over Murder of Settlers"

"Utes Make Trouble in Middle Park"

"Utes Threaten Miners in North Park"

"Ute Hostile Attitude Excites State Officials"

"Shall We Kill or Starve the Indians? [editorial]"

"The Indians Must Go"

"Utes Arrested and Charged with Arson"
10 September Letter to the editor from Meeker complaining of his treatment

by the Utes

Through the summer of 1879, Meeker was becoming aware of the

White River Utes' personal animosity toward him. Nonetheless, he

found solace in the belief that his program would ultimately be

successful. Meeker believed the Indians must be brought down to the

level of basic survival in order to guide them to correct, civilized, and

agrarian lifeways. Meeker had reported to his Senate sponsor, Senator

Teller, "I propose to cut every Indian down to the bare starvation point

if he will not work." Later, he stated, "the most hopeful thing is that

there are several families complaining bitterly of cold, and they want

houses."15

The only agency that appeared to be operating within the

framework of national policy was the Army. While the Army was not a

friend to the Ute, it was attempting to maintain itself above the realm

of partisan politics and experiments in social engineering. General

Pope had one company of cavalry patrolling the Colorado mountains

trying to maintain the peace; he had previously demonstrated that the

Army would intervene on the Utes' behalf in support of existing treaty

arrangements. Pope traveled to the state on 6 August 1879 to meet

with Governor Pitkin and assess the requests for additional troops.

The steady stream of requests from the state and the reports from both

the Departments of the Platte and the Missouri led him to the

conclusion that a crisis was unfolding. Fort Lewis, Colorado, was

established by the summer of 1879 near Pagosa Springs to contain

further violations of Ute lands in the San Juan Mountains area by

whites.16

In 1879, Major Thornburgh had become aware of problems at the

White River Agency. Meeker had written him twice, on 7 and 11 June,

regarding problems at the agency. 17 In addition to official message

traffic, small groups of Utes had traveled to Rawlins, Wyoming, in an

attempt to locate long-delayed supplies for the agency. At Rawlins, the

railhead for the White River Agency, supplies had been awaiting

transportation for as long as one year. Thornburgh had sent a message

to Meeker informing him of this problem and requesting that the

agent resolve the matter through Indian Bureau channels.

Thornburgh did not live to learn of the answer.
The event that finally led to the collision of the competing

interests has been the subject of popular legend in the state of

Colorado. The most widely held belief is that Agent Meeker plowed up

the ground that the Utes used as a racetrack. Regardless of the reason,

on 10 September 1879, Meeker telegraphed the Indian Bureau that he

had been physically assaulted by a Ute and was in fear of his life and

the safety of other agency employees. 18

Meeker's message was received on 14 September 1879 at the

Indian Bureau. By the next day, the War Department had ordered

troops to the scene. On the same day, Commissioner Hayt sent a

message to Meeker that troops had been requested for his protection.

Hayt also instructed Meeker to have "leaders" arrested upon the

arrival of the Army. Meeker responded on 22 September: "Governor

Pitkin writes, 'cavalry on the way. Dispatch of 15th will be obeyed.' "19

By the 15th, Pope had troops moving to resolve the reported

problems at the agency. He had sent orders to Captain Dodge,

Company D, 9th Cavalry, at Sulphur Springs, Colorado, to "settle

matters" at White River.20 The movement of these troops was halted,

however, as Generals Sheridan, Crook, and Pope discussed the best

options to deal with the problem. Sheridan directed Crook to send

troops from the Department of the Platte because of the relative

proximity of Fort Steele and the Union Pacific railhead. His order to

Pope was that the Department of Missouri "need not take any action in

reference thereto."21 With orders issued to Thornburgh's command on

16 September 1879, Sheridan recommended to General Pope: ".. . no

action in so far as the military are concerned, except simply to quell

the existing disturbances and then to await such final decision as may

seem best by the Indian Bureau."22

On 21 September 1879, Major Thornburgh departed Fort Steele

with E Company, 3d Cavalry; D and F Companies, 5th Cavalry; and B

Company from his own 4th Infantry. Included with the column as it

left Rawlins, Wyoming, were thirty-three supply wagons and 220 pack

mules-a line which was strung out over several miles. The force

carried with it rations for thirty days and forage for fifteen days,

which, in the words of a later report by General Sherman, "was

considered by everybody as sufficient for the purpose."23 For the next

seven days, with about 200 men, Thornburgh marched toward the

agency while reporting his progress to General Crook.

The trail to the agency was difficult and progress was slow.

Numerous rivers and streams, plus the Continental Divide, had to be

negotiated en route. After crossing the divide, Thornburgh left the
Major Thomas T. Thornburgh, the

commander of U.S. forces at Milk

Creek, who died in the fighting

infantry company and twenty-five wagons at Fortification Creek to

serve as a supply base for his command. It had taken him until the

24th to arrive at Fortification Creek, where he rested the column and

sent a messenger to the agency with details of his mission.

On the 26th, with no news from the agency, the column resumed

its march. As Thornburgh moved toward the agency, the Utes became

very agitated. Meanwhile, Chief Douglas confronted Meeker about his

role in calling for troops. Meeker denied any knowledge of the troops

but assured Douglas that he would intercede and halt the advance

short of the agency boundary-Milk River. 24 The message dispatched

to Meeker from Thornburgh had already arranged this course of

action. On 26 September 1879, Thornburgh reported from the Bear

River (now known as the Yampa River) to the Department of the

Platte: "Have met some Ute chiefs here. They seem friendly and

promise to go with me to agency. Say Utes don't understand why we

have come. Have tried to explain satisfactorily. Do not anticipate

trouble." 25

The Utes, in the meantime, perceived that the march of the troops

meant that war had been declared on them. Ute emissaries met with

Major Thornburgh twice during his movement, but in spite of his best

efforts, their fears and concerns were not allayed. On 28 September,

I_ _
Thornburgh changed the plan that he had previously communicated to

Meeker. Concerned about the prospect of being separated from his

command if trouble ensued, he decided to push beyond the Milk River

boundary. He wrote Meeker:

I have, after due deliberation, decided to modify my plans as

communicated in my letter of the 27th instant in the following particulars:

I shall move with my entire command to some convenient camp near,

and within striking distance of your agency, reaching such point during the

29th. I shall then halt and encamp the troops and proceed to the agency with

my guide and five soldiers....

Then and there I will be ready to have a conference with you and the

Indians, so that an understanding may be arrived at and my course of action

determined. I have carefully considered whether or not it would be advisable

to have my command at a point as distant as that desired by the Indians who

were in camp last night, and have reached the conclusion that under my

orders, which require me to march this command to the agency, I am not at

liberty to leave it at a point where it would not be available in case of

trouble. You are authorized to say for me to the Indians that my course of

conduct is entirely dependent on them. Our desire is to avoid trouble, and we

have not come for war.26

As the column resumed its march on 29 September, it soon

descended into a small valley that contained the Milk River. As the

troops moved into the valley, soldiers noticed that the grass was

burning along the bottom land. They also noted the presence of a large

number of horse tracks.27 Thornburgh halted the column along the

river long enough to water the stock. As he was now preparing to

violate the agency boundary, the major sent a lieutenant and ten

troopers to scout ahead as the command resumed its movement into

Ute Territory.

The advance guard of the formation, under the command of

Lieutenant S. A. Cherry, crossed the Milk River and took up a position

between one-half to three-quarters of a mile in front of the main body.

Instead of following the dirt track that followed the course of the river

to the agency proper, Cherry began climbing a low ridge to the south of

the track. At the top of the ridge, Cherry saw three Indians disappear

over the next ridgeline. He proceeded down into a small gully and

began to climb the second ridge. Thornburgh's concern for an ambush

heightened, and he led the main body along the advance guard's route,

bypassing the river track. As Cherry now topped the ridge, he

observed:

I discovered the Indians on top of the second ridge, I saw them lying

down with their guns in their hands behind the ridge. I was within a

hundred yards of the Indians, and I could see them lying down, occupying
not more than a yard of space each; was near enough to see that they were

packed as close as they could be, their line extending at least 400 yards.2 8

Upon observing the dismounted force of between 300 to 400 Utes

(see map 7), Cherry turned and rode hell-bent for Thornburgh at the

lead of the main body. As he viewed the frantic ride of his advance

guard, Thornburgh deployed the two lead companies, D and F, 5th

Cavalry, along the first ridgeline. The remaining company was still

near the Milk River with the wagons. The Utes watched the two lead

elements deploy and, based on their previous service with the Army,

immediately assumed that this called for an imminent charge.

The advance guard arrived at Thornburgh's position, and Cherry

made his report. Thornburgh then sent Cherry with orders to the two

lead companies to "dismount and hold fire until he gave the order." 29

Once the orders were delivered to the companies, Cherry and his

advance party were told to advance and attempt to parley with the

Utes. Upon delivering his orders, Cherry rode toward the second ridge

and encountered a small group of Utes (see map 8). As he waved his

hat, he was met by a hail of bullets that cut down a trooper ten feet

from him.30

Cherry's party came tumbling back to the skirmish lines formed

by the two companies, and rifle fire erupted from both sides. Although

Thornburgh had successfully avoided the Ute ambush set for his

command along the river track, he now took a heavy volume of rifle

fire in his current position. Futhermore, as mounted Utes were

attempting to envelop his position, he was in danger of being cut off

from his supplies and his third company along the Milk River.

Thornburgh, therefore, executed a slow dismounted withdrawal back

to the north side of the river to the relative safety of the wagons. At one

point during his withdrawal, he observed Utes concentrating for a

mounted attack and quickly executed a spoiling attack with one of his

companies. 31 As the command was falling back to the river in a

swirling battle of rifle fire, Thornburgh was killed and command

succeeded to Captain J. Scott Payne of the 5th Cavalry (see map 9 for

the route of withdrawal).

Payne assumed command as the three cavalry companies arrived

at the wagons on the north side of the river. Now, the soldiers began

using wagons, grain sacks, dead horses, and dirt to establish

temporary breastworks and a corral for the surviving animals.

Meanwhile, the Utes occupied the high ground north and south of the

river. Using this advantage and the superior range of their rifles, they

kept up a steady pressure on the troops with constant sniping. The roll
UTES "v UTES A

To agency

\ tI Q/Itif 1 11.frI ('I /jg a/II,4f1 1

'/ Jaii < -l t - ' r'tl 1/'' ll /h 1

iP -t tthlu

)For ta5

~00

UTS THC

CHERRY

,lA \ It 1itt i*lr,

4~UTES ,

as Fulton Dawson, The Ute War

ha White River Massacre... - I

Tribune Publishing House, 1879).

Scale

.5 1 mile

Map 7. Cherry's initial advance

Source: Thorn

A History of ti

(Denver, CO:
-i 1 ~ UTES lI 1't" , q UE$ .

To agency ~~0~

UTES

Source: Thomas Fulton Dawson, The (it. War:

A History of the White River Massacre...

(Denver, CO: Tribune Publishing House, 1879).

THORNBURGH

p4,- F1l5

UTS CHERRY r

PAYNE Scale

.5 1 mile r I I

Map 8. First contact

\ 1(d'I rh4/.1tll(I( I,/,/,I l IrtJJ,/,/./ /t(tt,!r/ /4,

f L

/rMl'I 1 I'lI j r1 1'J 1 / pl yq,!'1') q f

' 'ir/q 1 N lthl
UTES~

To agency

-~- M. -o - --

Wagons

IC_3 Ek 1

UTES 0AW0N

- UTES

-el

Source: Thomas Fulton Dawson, The Ut. War:'/"r

A History of the White River Massacre.. .

(Denver, CO: Tribune Publishing House, 1879).

CHERRY

Scale

Map 9. Thornburgh's withdrawal

1

Irlrr/i,/,dt1014q,],( tchIArlIt~ 5-1

UTES

-N-4

a
call on the night of 29 September revealed that twelve of the command

were dead and forty-three wounded, including all but one of the

officers. 32

With the outbreak of fighting, affairs at the agency took a marked

turn for the worse. Ute messengers rode back with news of the

engagement, and the tension that had been building for months burst

forth in a wild orgy of violence that resulted in the murders of eight

white male employees of the agency. Included in this number was

Meeker, who was later found by troops with his skull smashed, a

logging chain around his neck, and a barrel stave driven through his

mouth and skull. 3 3 The four white female residents of the agency were

taken captive. These included Meeker's wife and daughter.

On the night of 29 September, the besieged troops fought off an

attempt to overwhelm their defenses, but their situation still remained

desperate. The Utes, continuing their harassing fire, had succeeded in

killing all of the soldiers' horses and mules. Any movement within the

breastworks drew well-placed fire from the invisible snipers. The

problem of sustaining the defense was compounded by the soldiers'

lack of water. Since the distance from the defensive position to the

river was approximately 200 yards, attempts by the troops to reach the

Milk River during daylight were impossible. Exacerbating the

situation, the Utes moved up to the river at night to interdict resupply,

further compounding the water problems. The Indians next set fire to

the surrounding vegetation, while the troops stood idly by attempting

to conserve their ammunition to ward off more attacks.3 4

At approximately midnight on 29 and 30 September, Payne sent

out four volunteers to go for assistance. 3 5 On 1 October, one courier

met D Company, 9th Cavalry, which was en route to the agency.

Captain Francis Dodge rode with his company toward the besieged

command and sent out messages reporting the situation. Meanwhile,

the troops at Milk River continued to suffer from the effects of the

siege, including attempts by the Indians to draw out foolhardy

soldiers. The Utes had taken up positions along the river bottom and

began taunting the soldiers: "Come out, you sons-of-bitches, and fight

ike men-Utes kill 'oor 'orse and mool and kill oo."3 6

On the morning of 2 October, the spirits of Payne's troops were

raised by the arrival of D Company, 9th Cavalry. Unfortunately, the

additional company did not change the situation, except for bringing

proof that a messenger had succeeded in getting word to the outside

world. Although D Company arrived at the battlefield undetected by

the Utes, it ran the last 600 yards under the gauntlet of heavy fire.
The monument commemorating the Battle of Milk Creek and the

U.S. soldiers who died there

Reaching the breastworks, the company settled into the defense and

awaited further reinforcements.

At noon on 2 October, the relieving force that Payne's command

was waiting for swung into action. From Fort D. A. Russell, Colonel

Wesley Merritt, commanding the 5th Cavalry Regiment, departed for

the Milk River battle with eight companies (a force of about 500

men).37 The rate of Merritt's march stands in sharp contrast to the

march of the original expedition to the White River Agency. Over a

distance of 170 miles, Merritt's force traveled 30 miles on 2 October, 50

miles on 3 October, and, with a nonstop march, completed the last 70

miles on the morning of 5 October 1879.38
At 0500 on the 5th, the weary troops on Milk River heard the

strains of a bugle sounding "Officer's Call," announcing the end of

their ordeal. The advance elements of Merritt's force soon reached the

breastworks. Meanwhile, the Utes had detected Merritt's column and

had retreated south into the confines of Ute Territory. Merritt' s troops

were not the only force riding to the sounds of the guns. General

Sheridan had dispatched troops from the Department of Texas, as well

as troops from the Department of the Missouri, to the scene. Colonel

Merritt soon found himself in control of three converging columns. Six

companies of the 4th Cavalry, under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie

from Fort Clark, Texas, and five additional companies of the 9th

Cavalry, under Colonel Hatch from Forts Garland and Union, were

moving rapidly toward White River. Merritt's combined force would

number over 1,500 men.

The size and speed of the Army's response filled the Utes with

trepidation. The emotions that had driven them to attack their agent

and U.S. Army units were now replaced by fear and apprehension. The

White River Utes retreated deep into the mountains to await the

expected onslaught of the Army.

L

V. AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSIONS

The 5th Cavalry never got the opportunity to directly avenge

their fallen comrades. The campaign was instead concluded through a

negotiated settlement that would lead to the removal of the majority of

the Ute tribe from the state. The culmination of the Ute campaign

illustrates that, in spite of misgivings about the national Indian policy,

the Army had linked the design and conduct of its operational strategy

to this policy. Political reality, patterns of economic development,

limited budget and manpower resources-all served to shape the

conduct of the Ute campaign.

After resting his force and dealing with the dead and wounded,

Colonel Merritt pushed on to the White River Agency. Arriving at the

agency on 11 October 1879, Merritt buried the bodies of the victims of

the massacre and made preparations for a pursuit of the Utes to the

south. While still at White River, reinforcements sent from the

Departments of the Platte and Missouri arrived, bringing Merritt's

strength to about a thousand effectives.1

On 14 October, Merritt began his pursuit to overtake the Utes and

to rescue the female hostages. In addition to Merritt, the 4th Cavalry

under Mackenzie had been reinforced to about 1,500 men and was

preparing to depart Fort Garland, Colorado. 2 Hatch's 9th Cavalry,

with a complement of 450 men, had been ordered to Fort Lewis,

Colorado, near the Southern Ute Agency. 3 The plan was relatively

simple: the 4th and 9th Cavalry Regiments would strike to the west

and north, splitting the White River Utes from the southern Ute

bands. Meanwhile, Merritt's 5th Cavalry would push south, trapping

the Utes against the other columns.

The campaign would be conducted in winter, due to the demands

for immediate action from the state and the advantages winter offered

Army forces. The demand for logistical support of the troops in the

theater would change little, whether they remained as currently

deployed or took the field against the Utes. Because of the limited

access to railroad lines, the rugged area of operations would certainly

challenge the Army's ability to sustain operations. But the Ute's

sustainment problem was drastically more difficult in the winter. The

alternative for the Army-waiting for the snow to melt the following

June and then having to chase a highly mobile force through the

mountains-was far less appealing.

Before Merritt crossed the first range of mountains and as he

climbed out of the valley created by the White River, the columns were
This portrait of Chief Ouray, made in

the late 1870s, shows him in white

Sman's clothes. Later, before his

called to a halt. Upon arriving in Denver, Secretary of the Interior

Carl Schurz had intervened in an attempt to save the hostages and

defuse the crisis. He designated Charles Adams as a special envoy

because he was known and trusted by the Ute's Chief Ouray. Adams

was authorized to negotiate for the release of the hostages. As early as

2 October, Ouray had sent messengers north, urging the White River

band to release the women and to cease fighting.4 On 9 October, Ouray and Agent William M. Stanley of the Southern Ute Agency at Los

Pinos, Colorado, reported to Schurz that the White River band "... will

fight no more unless forced to do so."5

Schurz, sensing an opportunity to avert a costly fight, warned

Ouray that "the troops are now in great force, and resistance would

result in great disaster to the Indians."6 Schurz telegraphed General

Sherman with news of the ongoing efforts to mediate the conflict. On

14 October, Merritt received the following dispatch sent through

General Sheridan from General Sherman:

The honorable Secretary of the Interior has, this 10.30 a.m., called with a dispatch, given length below, which is communicated for your information,

and which should go for what [it] is worth to Generals Crook and Merritt.

The latter, on the spot, can tell if the hostiles have ceased fighting. If so,

General Merritt should go in every event to the agency to ascertain the

actual condition of facts. All Indians who oppose must be cleared out of the

way if they resist. If they surrender their arms and ponies, they should be

held as prisoners, to be disposed of by superior orders.
The Secretary of the Interior will send a special agent at once to Ouray,

who is believed to be honest and our friend. He may prevent the southern

Utes from being involved, and the Interior Department can befriend him

afterward by showing favor to some of his special friends. But the murderers

of the agent and servants must be punished, as also those who fought and

killed Major Thornburgh and men. 7

Merritt returned to the encampment at White River and, along

with the other troops in the state, set about preparing for the onset of

winter while awaiting news of Adams' mission. Emotions within the

state were explosive. Apprehensive at the prospect of a full-scale

Indian war, citizens from areas throughout the state overwhelmed the

governor's office with requests for arms and troops. Two companies of

the Colorado militia were called up to patrol the Uncompahgre valley

near the Southern Ute band. John C. Bell, a member of the Pitkin

Guards from Lake City, Colorado, later recalled: "The Governor called

them into service, and war-order No. 1 was bring in, dead or alive, all

hostile Indians found off the reservation ... consider all Indians off the

reservation hostile, and bring them in, dead or alive, and we will

determine their docility afterward."8

The ultimatum that Adams brought to the White River Utes

consisted of two demands: first, release the hostages unharmed, and

second, surrender the individuals responsible for the murders at the

White River Agency. If the Utes agreed to these conditions, military

action would be forestalled and hearings on Indian grievances would

be held at a later date. On 21 October, Adams returned to Ouray's

camp with the unharmed hostages. 9 Adams reported that the second

condition had not been agreed to by the Utes and that he was

returning for further discussions. On 24 October, Sherman, growing

anxious at the delay, sent the following message to his field

commander:

... Let all preparations proceed, and be ready the moment I give the

word to pitch in. Should Agent Adams fail in his mission I understand that

the civil authorities will stand aside and military will take absolute control

of this whole Ute question and settle it for good and all. Meantime,

humanity to the captive women and the friendly Utes, even of White River,

justifies this seeming waste of time.1 0

Sherman was tiring of the lack of progress in the negotiations. He

saw the situation as the direct result of the lack of Army control in

establishing policy. His view that the management of Indian affairs

should reside in the War Department was the source of his frustration

in handling the Ute problem. As Sherman wrote to Sheridan:

... as the Govt [sic] of the U.S. and if the Christian policy has failed it had

not been for want of effort but because the problem is insoluble-unless the
Chief Jack, leader of the successful

attack on Thornburgh

Indian will change his nature and habits, select his spot on earth, and

become as a white man he is doomed. It is not because the white man is

cruel, inhuman and grasping but because it is the Law of Natural Change

and Development-the wrong began at Plymouth Rock and will end in the

Rocky Mountains. 11

Four days later, on 29 October, Adams reported that the Indians

appeared willing to surrender the guilty parties if the accused would

be afforded the same treatment as whites under similar circumstances.

On 10 November 1879, twenty chiefs of the White River Utes,

including Chiefs Douglas and Jack, accepted the government's

terms.12 A commission was immediately created and began at once to

sort out the details of the events leading up to the uprising.

The commission's hearings lasted for another year and ultimately

failed to address the problems surrounding the events of 1879 to the

satisfaction of Colorado citizens or the Utes. In the meantime, the

Army remained in force in Ute country for the next two years. By July

1880, Merritt's cavalry at White River was replaced by six companies

of the 6th Infantry Regiment. The 4th and 9th Cavalry Regiments

were likewise relieved by companies from the 4th, 7th, 9th, and 14th

Infantry Regiments.13 The infantry regiments established a new series

of forts that tied in with the expanding rail network through Ute

Territory.14 The development of this line of posts, beginning at White

River and extending south to Bayard, New Mexico-with the

corresponding development of the new railroads-was the culmination

of the small fort system in the West. As Department of the Missouri

commander, General Pope, remarked: "This line of military posts
begins to reach the settlements of Utah and Arizona and the extreme

points occupied by the military forces advancing from the west, so that

with the line through Colorado and New Mexico the military system of

defense south of the 40th parallel would appear to be completed." 15

The results of the 1879 campaign were mixed. On the positive

side, the Indian policy changed in emphasis in the years following the

Ute uprising. This change reflected the realization that the

reservation system and the resulting segregation of the Indian was a

bankrupt policy. While a direct correlation between this shift in policy

to the events of the Ute uprising cannot be reasonably deduced, the

personal involvement of Carl Schurz in the events of 1879 and his

subsequent role in shaping a new policy cannot be discounted. The

events surrounding the Ute crisis, coupled with the earlier Nez Perce

uprising, added weight to the arguments of Eastern humanitarians

who favored a new direction in policy. The remaining years of the

Hayes administration saw a new emphasis on the assimilation of

Indians into mainstream white culture. In his 1881 message to

Congress, President Hayes stated that "... the time has come when the

policy should be to place the Indians as rapidly as practical on the

same footing with the other permanent inhabitants of our country."16

The attitude within the state of Colorado, however, took a

decidedly different turn. In the view of Colorado citizens, the events of

1879 proved that the Utes were both dangerous and an impediment to

progress. With the results of Schurz' commission still unresolved,

Governor Pitkin established three military districts associated with

each of the three Ute agencies. Even with the release of the hostages,

Pitkin commented to the press: "It will be impossible for the Indians

and whites to live in peace hereafter... This attack had no provocation

and the whites now understand that they are liable to be attacked in

any part of the state . . . My idea is that, unless removed by the

government they must necessarily be exterminated."17

The Utes, largely through the efforts of Chief Ouray, tried to stop

the momentum toward their removal as best they could. Ouray

managed to halt the proceedings of the commission by successfully

appealing to Schurz that the Utes could not receive a fair hearing

within the state. A second problem that confronted the initial

commission was that Ouray refused to accept the testimony of the only

survivors of the White River massacre because they were women. The

hearings received a change in venue to Washington, D.C., and

concluded with the July 1880 treaty that forced the removal of the

Utes to new areas in Utah. The demands for justice by the whites were

soon mitigated as it became apparent that the Utes would indeed leave
From left to right: Chief Ignacio of the Southern Utes; Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior; Woretsiz; Chief Ouray; General Charles Adams; and Chipeta. This photo was taken in

1880 during treaty negotiations in Washington that forced the Utes to move

to present-day Utah.

the state. Only one Ute, a veteran of Crook's Sioux campaign-Chief Jack-was punished by imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth for a period of one year. On 7 September 1881, escorted by the Army, the last band of Utes crossed the Grand River into Utah Territory. General

Pope wrote of the occasion: ". .. the whites who had collected, in view of

[the Utes] removal were so eager and unrestrained by common decency that it was absolutely necessary to use military force to keep them off the reservation until the Indians were fairly gone..."ai

In the aftermath of the Ute campaign, the Army changed little.

The period of large-scale Indian wars had ended-even before 1879.

The conduct of the campaign followed what had become the standard

operational pattern of the Army. This pattern was not developed as

part of a large centralized plan but came about instead as the result of changing conditions and policies. While it may be judged an ad hoc

strategy that evolved over time, it probably represented the only practical alternative at the time. The lack of clarity and consistency in

the national Indian policy left the Army with the difficult task of formulating strategies in a rapidly changing environment.
The network of forts that were utilized to support Army

operations had been established to support the expansion of the

national objective-the economic development of the West-and to

control white and Indian transgressions. Fort Steele, Wyoming

Territory, represents an example of the former, while Fort Lewis,

Colorado, represents the latter. The employment of troops by Generals

Pope and Crook from these two installations suggests that the military

was serious in its efforts to act as a disinterested mediator in disputes

between whites and Indians (in support of the national Indian policy).

The Army leadership publicly expressed frustration with the

handling of Indian affairs by the Department of the Interior, but the

Army, nevertheless, continued to conduct operations in support of

national policy. This is not to suggest that the national policy was a

singular coherent document; rather, it was vague and disjointed in its

construction and execution. From this amorphous strategic setting,

the Army attempted to bring uniformity and purpose.

In this effort, the Army benefited from the lengthy terms of its

senior leaders. The lack of physical documentation of strategic and

operational plans and goals was offset by the long tenures of the senior

leaders who maintained a central purpose in the conduct of operations.

The views of Sherman and Sheridan would determine the national

military strategy during the period, and the construction of this

strategy would set the framework that produced the operational

design.

The primary goal of the national strategy was the support of the

settlement of the West, with the supplementary goal to support the

national Indian policy. With these as the central themes of national

strategy, the operational strategy to implement these objectives

became the establishment of a series of forts that would quite

naturally be complemented by the construction of adjoining railroads.

Given the political demands for troops throughout the West and

faced with an austere manpower and budget picture; the Army's

operational design quickly evolved toward the creation of a large

series of small garrisons that would be massed for field operations and

were in close proximity to the rail system. The drawback in this

system was the location of the Indians. As the reservation system was

developed, it became a natural result to place them in areas that were

not desirable to whites-namely places that would not likely attract

the development of a railroad. Because of this, the Army was not

always in position to deter outbreaks as they arose but instead was

forced to react to events after the fact.
The alternative of positioning the Army alongside the Indians,

while seemingly attractive, was not feasible on several counts. First, it

was not practical in terms of the size of the Army at the time; second, it

was unlikely that the Army could have successfully constrained all the

bands as the reservation system was then arrayed. In addition, if the

troops had been located at the reservations, they would not have been

in position to defend the centers of white population and economic

development.

The other feature of the Army's operational design that was

central to the conduct of the Indian campaigns, in general, and the Ute

campaign, specifically, was the use of converging columns. The use of

this method owed itself to the relative positioning of troops and to the

nature of the threat. Given the large number of small garrisons

scattered over a large area, the quickest means to get them into the

field was to mass them at several different points and then to

concentrate them at converging points. Also, by doing this, the limited

rail network was not overtaxed in supporting operations from a central

point. The advantage held by the Indians in tactical mobility was

offset by the use of converging columns by the Army. Having

succeeded in using this method on some occasions, the Army

considered it the answer to Indian mobility.19

These methods served as the Army's primary operational tools for

combating the Utes and the other Indian tribes. The Army received

criticism for not formalizing the lessons of the Indian campaigns

through the military education system or other means. As historian

Robert Wooster laments: "Those strategic debates that did occur

almost always concerned conventional warfare more applicable to the

battlefields of Europe than to those of the American West. The absence

of routine meetings, regular correspondence, or open discussion of

military strategy toward Indians also discouraged individual

initiative."20

The arguments expressed by Wooster, however, demonstrate

more his own lack of understanding of a military organization than

they present proof of a failure on the part of the American Army. It is

precisely because of the Army's lack of formal discussions of Indian

tactics that initiative became a survival skill for tactical leaders. Any

attempts by the Army to draw any centralized doctrinal lessons from

the Indian campaigns might have been damaging, as this assumes

that the Army was fighting a common and predictable enemy. It is

likely that such efforts might have produced an outcome similar to

General Crook's fate in his futile attempt to transfer lessons from the

Red River campaign to his Rosebud campaign. The use of a few central
Chief Ignacio of the Southern Utes,

after the Ute War, when he became

a chief of police and eschewed

normal Ute attire

operational methods provided the Army with enough commonality of

intent when fighting a divergent enemy over a wide area to achieve

success.

The Army's focus on fighting a European-style war is largely explainable as its means of preparing for the most dangerous potential threat to the nation. The military view is always to prepare for the

most dangerous enemy, and at no time was the nation seriously challenged by any group or groups of Indians. The scope and intensity of the Indian wars remained limited insofar as the national

government was concerned. Certainly, in the view of many Indians, the policy of the government and its execution by the Army resembled

total war. The initial operations of the Spanish-American War, however, vindicate the U.S. Army's focus on "conventional war." The

Army's attention remained on the defense of the nation, and the Army did not become consumed by what can be categorized as an "economy of

force" mission.

This argument has probably the most enduring value for the

modern officer. As in the Indian-fighting Army, the challenge today is

to sort out priorities during a period of constrained resources. It could

become easy to focus on the smaller, more pressing issues and to lose

sight of the Army's overall purpose: the defense of the nation. The

period between wars has always been characterized by debate about

how best to prepare for the next conflict. While it is always tempting to

be caught up in a transitory "policy du jour," it is essential that the
74

Army strive to maintain central themes that define its purpose and

missions.

It is doubtful that any change in the Indian policy or of the Army's

role in supporting its execution would have made any difference in the

ultimate outcome of the Ute campaign. The primary lesson to be

learned by the Army from this experience is the value of early Army

involvement in the structuring of national strategy and the Army's

continual assessment of the government's commitment to that policy.

If the Army's input, in the end, fails to mediate the views of our

political leaders, it appears that the words of Sherman, as he awaited

the result of Agent Adams' mission to the Utes, may echo again: "...

we are left in the heart of the mountains with our hands tied and the

danger of being snowed in staring us in the face. I am not easily

discouraged, but it looks as though we had been pretty badly sold out

in this business."21

_ I
NOTES

Introduction

1. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Strategy

and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 163.

Chapter 1

1. Paul A. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 1985), 337.

2. Marshall Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River (Boston: Little, Brown and

Co., 1957), 57.

3. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1970),

367.

4. Ibid., 376.

5. Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River, 179.

6. Arthur P. Wade, "The Military Command Structure: The Great Plains, 1853-1891,"

Journal of the West 15 (July 1976):16-19.

7. Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River, 180.

8. Elmer R. Burkey, "The Thornburgh Battle With the Utes on Milk River," The

Colorado Magazine 13 (May 1936):92.

9. Ibid., 92.

10. Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 367.

11. Ibid., 368.

12. Burkey, "The Thornburgh Battle With the Utes on Milk River," 93.

13. U.S. Congress, House, The Committee on Indian Affairs, Testimony in Relation to

the Ute Indian Outbreak, 46th Cong., 2d Session, House Misc. Doc.38, 22 March

1880,203.

14. Sprague, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River, 241.

15. Weigley, The American Way of War, 153.16. John F. Marazalek, Sherman: A

Soldier's Passion for Order (New York: The Free Press, 1993), 390.

17. John Pope, "The Indian Question," delivered to the Social Science Association, 24

May 1878, Cincinnati, Ohio.

18. Thomas C. Leonard, Above the Battle: War-Making in America from Appomattox to

Versailles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 46
Chapter 2

1. T. Harry Williams, ed., The History of American Wars: From 1745 to 1918 (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981), xiv.

2. John F. Marezalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order, 390.

3. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (Tucson: The

University Press of Arizona, 1992), 312.

4. Philip Weeks, Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States,

1820-1890 (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990), 27.

5. Ibid., 29.

6. William T. Hagan, "United States Indian Policies, 1860-1900," Handbook of North

American Indians, vol. 4 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988), 52.

7. Ibid., 53.

8. Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 129.

9. Ulysses S. Grant, in Inaugural Addresses of the United States: From George

Washington, 1789, to John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office, 1961), 133-34.

10. Edward M. Coffnan, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime,

1784-1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 215.

11. Richard White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A History of the American

West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 102.

12. Ibid.,103.

13. Sherry L. Smith, The View from Officers' Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 95.

14. Rutherford B. Hayes, in Inaugural Addresses of the United States: From George

Washington, 1789, to John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office, 1961), 136.

15. Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 205.

16. White, It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own, 91.

17. Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 3 (New York: The McClure Co.,

1908), 385.

18. Ibid., 385.

19. Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 204.

20. Hans L. Trefousse, "Carl Schurz and the Indians," The Great Plains Quarterly 4

(Spring 1984):114.
77

21. Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 3, 385-86.

22. Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 200.

23. Leonard D. White, The Republican Era, 1869-1901 (New York: Macmillan

Company, 1958), 180.

24. Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regullars: The Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 7-8.

25. White, The Republican Era, 1869-1901, 182. The figures leave 25,000 Indians

unaccounted for in the bureau statistics. Perhaps they represent Indians who were

not accounted for by formal treaty but were not hostile to U.S. interests.

26. Duane Schultz, Month of the Freezing Moon: The Sand Creek Massacre, November

1864 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 163.

27. Utley, Frontier Regulars, 2.

28. Robert Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903 (New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 114.

29. Utley, Frontier Regulars, 11.

30. Ibid.,.28.

31. Coffman, The OldArmy, 216.

32. Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903,112.

33. Ibid., 112-13.

34. Robert G. Athearn, "General Sherman and the Western Railroads," Pacific

Historical Review 24 (February 1955):40.

Chapter 3

1. George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman and the Redskins (New York: Plume Books,

1983), 350.

2. Michael Howard, The Causes of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1983), 196.

3. Coffman, The OldArmy, 254.

4. Wade, "The Military Command Structure: The Great Plains, 1853-1891," 7.

5. Ibid.,9.

6. Ibid., 14-15.

7. Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1985), 29.
8. Wade, "The Military Command Structure: The Great Plains, 1853-1891," 20.

9. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 121.

10. Ibid., 120.

11. Ibid., 120-21.

12. War Department, "Report of Lieutenant-General Sheridan," in Annual Report of the

Secretary of War (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880), 42.

13. War Department, "Report of Lieutenant-General Sheridan," 53.

14. Robert W. Frazer, Forts of the West: Military Forts and Presidios and Posts

Commonly Called Forts West of the Mississippi River to 1898 (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1965), 186.

15. Sheridan, "Report of Lieutenant-General Sheridan," 53.

16. Thomas W. Dunlay, Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with

the United States Army, 1860-1890 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982),

71.

17. Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-

1891 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1923),

18. Ibid., 73.

19. Sheridan, "Report of Lieutenant-General Sheridan," 53.

20. War Department, "Report of General John Pope," in Annual Report of the Secretary

of War (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880), 92.

21. Wade, The Military Command Structure, 20.

22. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 8.

23. Dunlay, Wolves for the Blue Soldiers, 66.

24. Thomas C. Leonard, "The Relutant Conquerors," American Heritage 27 (August

1976):36.

25. Nelson A. Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A.

Miles, vol. 2 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 481.

26. Paul Andrew Hutton, ed., "Philip H. Sheridan," in Soldiers West: Biographies from

the Military Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 92.

27. Ibid., 93.

28. Ibid., 85.

29. Ibid., 87.
30. Revisionist historians attribute the favorable view of Crook to the adoption of his

biography by his long-standing adjutant as the definitive work on the subject. John

G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971).

31. James T. King, "Needed: A Re-evaluation of General George Crook," Nebraska

History Magazine 65 (September 1964):229.

32. The currying of political favor was a continuation of a tradition that reached its

peak during the Civil War. In 1879, Crook held the ultimate political trump card as President Hayes had served under him in the Civil War. Moreover, Hayes reputedly

had a portrait of Crook hanging in his office in the White House. Coffman, in The

Old Army, provides an excellent survey of this phenomenon.

33. Jan Pettit, Utes: The Mountain People (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1990), 5.

34. Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and David McComb, Colorado: A History of the

Centennial State (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1982), 26.

35. John H. Nankivell, "Fort Garland, Colorado," The Colorado Magazine 16 (January

1939):13.

36. P. David Smith, Ouray: Chief of the Utes (Salt Lake City: Wayfinder Press, 1986),

12-13. Although Ouray was an articulate spokesman for his tribe, these words are probably the work of an Eastern reporter. The quote captures Ouray's philosophy,

but the language is too flowery to be directly attributed to Ouray. Ouray was a

masterful politician and realized that the Indian had a large sympathetic audience

in the East. During his three trips to Washington, D.C., he actively sought to bring

the issues at hand into the public eye.

37. George W. Webb, Chronological List of Engagements Between the Regular Army of

the United States and Various Tribes of Hostile Indians which Occurred during the

Years, 1790-1898, Inclusive (St. Joseph, MO: Wing Printing and Publishing

Company, 1939), 21-90.

38. Dunlay, Wolves for the Blue Soldiers, 89-90,162.

39. Anne M. Smith, Ethnography of the Northern Utes (Albuquerque: Museum of New

Mexico Press, 1974), 237.

40. Charles S. Marsh, People of the Shining Mountains (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing,

1926), 68.

41. Virginia Irving Armstrong, ed., I Have Spoken: American History Through the

Voices of the Indians (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1971), 96. See also Marshall Sprague,

Massacre: The Tragedy at White River (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1957),

94-95.

Chapter 4

1. Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith, A Colorado History (Boulder,

CO: Pruett Publishing, 1988), 190.

2. Ibid., 187.
80

3. Forbes Parkhill, "The Meeker Massacre," A Colorado Reader (Boulder: Pruett

Publishing, 1962), 234.

4. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office, 1878), 19.

5. U.S. Congress, House, The Committee on Indian Affairs, Testimony in Relation to

the Ute Indian Outbreak, 102.

6. Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado, vol. 2 (Chicago: The Blakely Printing

Company, 1890), 498. While this was written twenty-one years after the event, it is

worth considering as a prevalent view among Colorado officials. At the time of the

Meeker massacre, Hall was the adjutant general of Colorado.

7. U.s. Congress, House, The Committee on Indian Affairs, Testimony in Relation to

the Ute Indian Outbreak, 60.

8. U.S. Congress, House, Extinguishment of Indian Title, 46th Cong., 1st sess.,

Congressional Record, vol. 9, pt. 1, 21 April 1870, 615.

9. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office, 1879), xx.

10. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880), 8.

11. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior(1879), xxii-xxiii.

12. Ibid., xxi.

13. Parkhill, "The Meeker Massacre," 239.

14. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to

the Secretary of the Interior (1879), xxi.

15. Parkhill, "The Meeker Massacre," 235.

16. Frazer, Forts of the West, 38.

17. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to

the Secretary of the Interior (1879), xxi-xxii.

18. Ibi., xxx.

19. Ibid.

20. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(1880), 8.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 8-9.
23. Ibid., 9.

24. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to

the Secretary of the Interior (1879), xxxi.

25. Ibid.

26. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(1880), 10.

27. Fred H. Werner, Meeker: The Story of the Meeker Massacre and Thornburgh Battle,

September 29, 1879 (Greeley, CO: Werner Publications, 1985), 50.

28. U.S. Congress, House, The Committee on Indian Affairs, Testimony in Relation to

the Ute Indian Outbreak (1880), 64.

29. Ibid., 65.

30. Ibid. The signal of "waving the hat' is contentious. The Utes later testified that

Cherry's action was to signal his troops to begin firing, while Cherry insists that it

was an attempt to arrange a parley with the Indians.

31. Thomas Fulton Dawson, The Ute War: A History of the White River Massacre and the

Privations and Hardships of the Captive White Women Among the Hostiles on Grand

River (Denver, CO: Tribune Publishing House, 1879), 23-24.

32. Ibid., 27-28.

33. George K. Lisk, "Letters to the Editor," Winners of the West 3 (February 1925): 2.

34. Congress, House, The Committee on Indian Affairs, Testimony in Relation to the Ute

Indian Outbreak (1880), 66.

35. Ibid.

36. Werner, Meeker, 47.

37. "The Milk River Campaign," Winners of the West 2 (May 1933): 1.

38. Ibid., 4.

Chapter 5

1. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(1880), 11.

2. Ibid., 12.

3. Ibid.

4. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior(1879), xxxiv.

5. Ibid.
82

6. Ibid.

7. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(1880), 11.

8. John H. Nankivell, History of the Military Organizations of the State of Colorado:

1860-1935 (Denver, CO: W. H. Kistler Company, 1935), 61.9.

9. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs (1879), xxxv. The condition of the women returning from captivity

was not dwelt upon by the authorities. It was believed that reports of the violation of

these women would inflame the issue. Concern about the women's reputations led

inquiries to avoid the subject.

10. War Department, General of the Army, Annual Report of the Secretary of War

(1880), 12.

11. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order, 399-400.

12. Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau, Annual Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs (1879), xxxv.

13. War Department, "Report of General John Pope" (1880), 84.

14. War Department, "Report of Lieutenant-General Sheridan" (1880), 55.

15. War Department, "Report of General John Pope" (1880), 84.

16. Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 218.

17. Pettit, Utes: The Mountain People, 124.

18. P. David Smith, Ouray: Chief of the Utes, 192.

19. The alternative means to combat the advantages of Indian mobility was the use of

Indian scouts or auxiliaries. Records were used, with varying degrees of success, but

this expedient was not largely accepted because it implied the Army proper was

incapable of dealing with the problem.

20. Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy: 1865-1903,207.

21. Ibid., 180.
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*U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1994-555-001/82136
-- Major Russel D. Santala

Major Russel D. Santala is an air

defense artillery officer who has served

in units in the United States and

Europe. Commissioned in 1980, he holds

a bachelor's degree in history from the

University of Colorado at Boulder and a

Master of Military Art and Science

degree from the U.S. Army Command

and General Staff College (USACGSC).

In 1991, he served as an operations

analyst for the Center of Military

History's Operation Desert Storm

History Project. He was awarded the

1993 Arter-Darby Military History

Writing Award upon graduation from

CGSC. Major Santala is currently a

student at the School of Advanced

Military Studies, USACGSC, Fort

Leavenworth, Kansas.

COMBAT STUDIES INSTITUTE

Missions

The Combat Studies Institute was established on 18 June 1979 as a

department-level activity within the U.S. Army Command and General Staff

College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. CSI has the following missions:

* Prepare and present instruction in military history at USACGSC and assist

other USACGSC departments in integrating military history into their

instruction.

* Publish works in a variety of formats for the Active Army and Reserve

Components on historical topics pertinent to the doctrinal concerns of the

Army.
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

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