i 

THE AMERICAN MILITARY 

ON THE FRONTIER 

The Proceedings of the 

7th Military History Symposium 

United States Air Force Academy 

30 September-1 October 1976 

E3dited by 

James P. Tate, Major, USAF, 

Air Force Academy 

Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF 

and 

United States Air Force Academy 

Washington: 1978 
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 

Military History Symposium (U.S.), 7th, United States 

Air Force Academy, 1976. 

The American military on the frontier. 

Includes index. 

I. Frontier and pioneer life-The West-Congresses. 2. The 

West-History-Congresses. 3. United States. Army-Military 

life-Congresses. I. Tate, James P. 11. Title. 

F596.M53 1976 978 77- 18 177 
PREFACE 

The Seventh Military History Symposium differed from its predecessors in that its participants and its audience were perhaps more 

heterogenous than in the past The nature of the topic for this symposium brought together military historians, frontier historians, western 

historians, and local historians. Each of these groups addressed the 

topic from a different perspective. Military historians tended to view 

the experience of the American military on the frontier as an interesting but relatively insignificant episode in American military history. 

Frontier historians lended to view the military as one of many forces 

involved in the century-long expansion of the United States across 

the American continent. Western and local historians tended to view 

the military in terms of interest in the trans-Mississippi frontier and 

the plains Indian wars of the late nineteenth century. While military 

and frontier historians were often more interested in campaigns and 

doctrine, the broad sweep of history, western and local historians 

were often more interested in battles and personalities, the rich detail 

of history. The planners of the symposium attempted to address the 

interests of both groups. 

The papers in this volume are those presented at the Air Force 

Academy on September 30 and October I, 1976. They are arranged 

into four sections: ‘“The Frontier and American Military Tradition,” 

“Comparison of Military Frontiers,” “Impact of the Military 

on the Frontier,” and “Military Life on the Frontier.” Papers in the 

first two sections address the broad sweep of the military experience 

on the frontier. These papers help provide perspective and conceptual 

framework within which to fit the more specific studies in the third 

and fourth sections. The fifth section, “The Seventh Military History 

Symposium in Perspective” includes the reactions and commentary of 

three leading military historians. With a few exceptions the papers 

and commentary in this volume are presented in the order in which 

they were delivered at the symposium. 

The Military History Symposium series began in 1%7 as an annual event sponsored by the IJSAF Academy and the Association of 

Graduates. Since 1970, the symposia have been held biennially. The 

purpose of the series is to provide a forum for scholars in military 

iii 
history and related fields, thereby promoting an exchange of ideas and 

information between scholars and military professionals, another link 

between thought and application in military affairs. 

The USAF Academy and the Association of Graduates are indebted to the participants whose individual and collective efforts 

made the Seventh Military History Symposium possible. In addition 

to the participants, a number of other individuals and organizations 

were essential to the success of the symposium. The Superintendent 

of the Academy, Lieutenant General James R. Allen, and the Dean, 

Brigadier General William T. Wood yard, were steadfast in their support of the Symposium Steering Committee which was responsible for 

conceiving, planning, and carrying out the program. The committee, 

chaired by' Colonel Alfred F. Hurley, began plans and preparations 

for the symposium more than 2 years before the first session began. 

The committee is particularly indebted to Mr. Robert M. Utley for 

advice regarding the program and the selection of scholars to present 

papers. Administrative and logistical details were the responsibility of 

the Executive Director of the symposium, Captain David A. Miles, 

who made a very difficult job appear easy. Assisting Captain Miles 

was a secretarial staff of Carol Meredith, Judi Daugherty, Catherine 

Clowry, and Yvonne Proctor, whose diligence and wholehearted cooperation contributed greatly to the smooth operation of the conference. Acknowledgements would not be complete without mention of 

Mrs. Robert Jones, without whose patience and typing skill this volume could not have appeared. 

iv 
THE MILITARY HISTORY SYMPOSIA 

OF THE USAF ACADEMY 

Current Concepts in Military History. (First Military History Symposium, held in May 11967.) Proceedings were not published. 

Command and Commanders in Modern Warfare, 2d, enlarged edition, 

edited by Lt. Col. William Geffen, Washington, GPO, 1971, $1.60, 

stock number 0874-0003. (The Second Military History Symposium, 

held in May 1968.) 

Science, Technology, and Warfare: Proceedings of the Third Military 

History Symposiurn, 8-9 May 1%9, edited by Lt. Col. Monte D. 

Wright and Lawrence J. Paszek, Washington, GPO, 1971, $1.25, 

stock number 0874-0002. 

Soldiers and Statesmen: Proceedings of the Fourth Military History 

Symposium, 22-23 October 1970, edited by Lt. Col. Monte D. Wright 

and Lawrence J. Paszek, Washington, GPO, 1973,- $1.60, stock number 0870-00335. 

The Military and Society: Proceedings of the Fifth Military History 

Symposium, 5-6 Cktober 1972, edited by Major David MacIsaac, 

Washington, GPO, 1975, $1.90, stock number 008-070-00367-8. 

Military History of the American Revolution: Proceedings of the 

Sixth Military History Symposium, 10-11 October 1974, edited by 

Major Stanley J. Underdal, Washington, GPO, 1976, $2.70, stock 

number 008-070-0361-9. 

Views or opinions expressed or implied in this publication are those 

of the authors and are not to be construed as carrying official sanction 

of the Department of the Air Force or of the Air Force Academy. 

V 
Advisory Committee 

to the 

Office of Air Force History 

Dr. I. B. Holley. Jr 

Duke University 

Lt. Gen. James R. Allen 

Superintendent, IJSAF Academy Columbia University 

Dr. Henry F. Graff 

Dr. Robert F. Byrnes 

Indiana University 

Lt. Gen. Albert P. Clark 

USAF (ret.) 

Dr. Forest C. Pogue 

Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower 

Institute for Historical Research 

Lt. Gen. Raymond B. Furlong 

Commander, Air University 

Mr. Jack Stempler 

General Counsel, USAF 

Ofice of Air Force History 

Chief-Maj. Gen. John W. Huston 

Chief Historian-Stanley L. Falk 

Deputy Chief Historian-Max Rosenberg 

Chief, Histories Division-Carl Berger 

Senior Editor-Lawrence J. Paszek 

****************** 

The Military History Symposium is sponsored jointly by the Department of History and the Association of Graduates, United States Air 

Force Academy. 

1976 Military History Symposium Steering Committee: 

Colonel Alfred F. Hurley, Chairman 

Lieutenant Colonel Philip D. Caine 

Lieutenant Colonel David MacIsaac 

Captain David A. Miles, Executive Director 

Major James F. Wheeler, Executive Secretary, Association of 

Graduates 

vi 
OPENING REMARKS 

Lt. General James R. Allen 

Superintendent, United States Air Force Academy 

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Seventh Military History Symposium. 

We chose The American Military on the Frontier as the topic for 

the 1976 symposium primarily because we wanted to join our fellow 

Coloradans in their celebratiori of the centennial of Colorado statehood. The Air Force Academy is located in Colorado for many good 

reasons, not the least of which is the proud record of this state in 

pioneering in many things besides the frontier. For almost a quarter 

of a century, Coloradans have played a significant role in Academy 

affairs, and we are very pleased by means of this symposium to recognize in some small way our indebtedness to a great state. This is 

the second of two symposia coinciding with our Centennial/Bicentennial celebration here in Colorado. The first, in 1974, treated the 

Military History of the American Revolution, the proceedings of 

which were published late in June of 1976 by the Government Printing 

Office in cooperation with the Office of Air Force History. 

In addition to the Colorado Centennial, there are other reasons to 

justify the devotion of this symposium to frontier history. Whereas 

the military’s frontier experience may appear at first glance to have 

little relevance to the mission of an air force in the nuclear age, it was 

nonetheless an experience rich in examples of small unit command, of 

ventures into the unknown, of courage both physical and moral (as 

well as of their opposites), of unconventional warfare, and of civilmilitary relations under trying conditions-all topics of continuing relevance. In addition, it is probably fair to observe, not unlike Frederick Jackson Turner, that the frontier heritage has had an abiding influence on our people in or out of uniform. As a people we are often 

uncritically proud of that heritage, recalling images of courage, endurance, and commitment-traits that we see as necessary for success on 

vii 
the modern frontiers of science, technology, and space. And yet 

much of that heritage is based upon myths fostered by motion pictures, television, and popular literature. Hopefully this symposium 

can contribute to the on-going effort to separate fact from fancy in 

the record of the western frontier. 

viii 
CONTENTS 

Page 

Opening Remarks. 1.t . General James R . Allen ................ vii 

1 

“The Contribution of the Frontier to the American Military 

Tradition. ” Robert M . Utley ........................................ 3 

I1 . A Comparison of Military Frontiers ............................... 15 

“Comparison of U.S./Canadian Military Experience on the 

Frontier. ” Desmond Morton ......................................... 17 

“The Navy on the Frontier. ” Raymond G . O’Connor ....... 37 

Commentary .............................................................. 50 

Comments by Robert G . Athearn ............................ 50 

Comments by Richard A . Preston ............................ 56 

Summary of Discussion ............................................... 67 

I11 . Impact of the Military on the Frontier ............................ 69 

“The Political Role of the Military, ” Richard N . Ellis ....... 71 

“The Socializing Role of the Military, ” Jack D . Foner ...... 85 

“The Military and the Colorado Frontier, ” Marshall 

Sprague ..................................................................... 101 

Commentary .............................................................. 110 

Comments by Roger L . Nichols .............................. 110 

Summary of Discussion ............................................... 116 

“The Enlisted Soldier ton the Frontier, ” Henry P . Walker . 119 

“The Ladies, of the Army-Views of Western Life, ” SanPreface 

I . The Frontier and American Military Tradition ................. 

IV . Military Life on the Frontier ......................................... 117 

dra L . Myres .............................................................. Commentary .............................................................. 

Comments by James T . King .................................. V . The Seventh Military History Symposium in Perspective ... 

Comments by Theodore Ropp ....................................... Comments by Harry L. . Coles ....................................... 

Comments by Reverend Francis Paul Prucha ................... Summary of Discussion ............................................... 

Index .............................................................................. 

Participants ...................................................................... 

135 

155 

155 

164 

165 

168 

174 

178 

180 

191 

ix 

THE AMERICAN MILITARY 

ON THE 

FRONTIER 

I 

THE FRONTIER 

AND 

AMERICAN MILITARY TRADITION 

The first session of the symposium was devoted to the 19th Harmon Memorial Lecture. This lecture series began in 1959 to honor the late Lieutenant General Hubert R. 

Harmon, first Superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy. Each year a committee of internationally known historians and USAF Academy representatives invites an 

outstanding military historian or a leading scholar from a closely allied field to present an 

original lecture on a subject of his choice within the’field of military history. Previous lecturers have been, in the order of their appearance: W. Frank Craven, T. Harry Williams, 

Louis Morton, William R. Emerson, Frank E. Vandiver, Maurice Matloff, Gordon A. 

Craig, Peter Paret, Michael Howard, Forrest C. Pogue, Elting E. Morison, Theodore 

Ropp, Sir John Hackett, Martin Blumenson, Russell F. Weigley, 1. B. Holley, Jr., John 

Shy, and Edward M. Coffman. 

This year’s Harmon lecturer, Robert M. Utley, was introduced by the Acting Head of 

the History Department, United States Air Force Academy, Lieutenant Colonel Philip D. 

Caine. Utley’s topic, “The Contribution of the Frontier to the American Military Tradition,” fitted perfectly as the keynote address for this symposium. He argued that the 

American military has failed to benefit from the lessons of its frontier experience, that 

while the frontier has provided inspiration for movie makers to create heroic images of 

“cavalry to the rescue,” and for reformers to create contrasting images of blue-coated 

troopers brutalizing innocent Indians, it has not inspired enough serious study by military 

strategists and tacticians. The military therefore has failed to learn from a significant episode in its past, an episode which can offer valuable insights into the problems of training 

and organizing conventional forces for unconventional war, into the nature of total war 

between irreconcilable cultures, into the myths behind the American militia tradition, and 

finally into the role of the military in the integration of minorities into American society. 

Utley concluded that: “Today the American military tradition must be responsive to the 

imperatives of nuclear warfare, and nuclear warfare discloses few parallels with the small 

unit Indian combats of forest, plains, and desert. But the tradition must also be responsive to the ‘limited wars’ that the nuclear specter has spawned, and these do disclose parallels with frontier warfare.” 

1 
n 

In these sketches Frederick Remington captured two of the enduring 

images of the American frontier: the savage Indian attacking a wagon 

train and the US Cavalry to the rescue. (Courtesy of Century Magazine) 

2 
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE FRONTIER TO THE 

AMERICAN MILITARY TRADITION 

Robert M. Utley 

It is all a memory now, but what a memory, to cherish!. . . A more thankless task, a more perilous service, a more exacting test of leaderqhip, morale and 

discipline no army in Christendom has ever been called upon to undertake than 

that which for eighty years was the lot of the little fighting force of regulars who 

cleared the way across the continent for the emigrant and settler.’ 

So declared Captain Charles King in an address to Indian War 

veterans after the disappearance of the frontier had indeed made it all 

a memory, In dozens of novels penned after the effects of Apache 

arrows and bullets placed him on the retired list in 1879, King verbalized and reinforced the frontier army’s view of itself. That the images 

he evoked fall somewhat short of historical truth does not exclude 

them from a prominent place in the American military tradition. 

Captain King’s heroic picture contrasts with images evoked by 

bumper stickers proclaiming that Custer died for our sins and by motion pictures such as “Little Big Man” and “Soldier Blue” depicting 

the frontier troopers as brutes rampaging about the west gleefully 

slaughtering peaceable Indians. These images have been intensified 

and popularized in recent years by a national guilt complex that 

would expiate sin by bending history to modern social purposes, but 

they are rooted in the rhetoric of nineteenth century humanitarians. 

“I only know the names of three savages upon the plains,” declared 

the old abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1870, “-Colonel Baker, General Custer, and at the head of all, General Sheridan.” Baker’s assault on a Piegan village in 1870 Inspired a verse that could well have 

been written in the councils of the American Indian Movement a cen- 

‘Quoted in Robet G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie (1935; reprint, New York, 

1961). pp. 46-47. For a sketch of King see Don Russell’s introduction to King’s Campaigning with Crook (Western Frontier Library ed., Norman, OK, 1964). pp. vii-xxii. 

See also Russell’s “Captain Charles King, Chronicler of the Frontier,’’ Westerners 

Brand Book, no. 9 (Chicago, March, 1952). pp. 1-3, 7-8, which lists all 69 of King’s 

books. 

3 
tury later: 

Women and babes shrieking awoke 

To perish ‘mid the battle smoke, 

Murdered, or turned out there to die 

Beneath the stern, gray, wintry sky.’ 

No more than King’s images do these represent historical truth, and 

no less are they too a part of the American military tradition. 

As these contrasting images suggest, I see the American military 

tradition as in part a record-a record as we perceive it today, not 

necessarily as it was in fact-of those people and events of the past 

that we have singled out to provide us with inspiration, edification, 

guidance, and even, as I have intimated, self-reproach. Besides this 

record, I take the American military tradition to be the accumulated 

body of military usage, belief, custom, and practice that has descended to us from the past. It is also policy, doctrine, thought, and institutions as they have evolved by selection, rejection, and modification 

through past generations to today. Let us examine how the frontier, 

which formed so long and prominent a part of the nation’s military 

history, may have contributed-or indeed may have failed to contribute-to some of these aspects of the American military tradition. 

Today’s selective record of our frontier military experience may 

well be the frontier’s most enduring contribution. From this heritage 

we have drawn a congeries of vignettes that loom conspicuously in 

the national memory and thus in the national military tradition. “Mad 

Anthony” Wayne’s Legion sweeps with fixed bayonets through the 

forest debris of Fallen Timbers, routing the Indian defenders and 

planting the roots of the fledgling regular army. Andrew Jackson’s 

infantry storms the fortifications at Horseshoe Bend, slaughtering 

more than 500 Red Sticks and crushing a Creek uprising that threatens the Southwest in the War of 1812. Canby dies by assassination 

during a peace conference in California’s lava beds, the only regular 

army general to lose his life in Indian warfare. The golden-haired 

Custer falls with every man of his immediate command in the bestknown and most controversial of all frontier encounters. To Nelson 

A. Miles, Chief Joseph utters the moving words: “From where the 

sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.” This part of our tradition is one that arouses pride, or at least the thrill of adventure. Its 

symbols are battle and campaign streamers gracing the army’s colors, 

the military art of Frederic Remington, Charles Schreyvogel, and 

Rufus Zogbaum, and the motion picture depiction of the frontier 

army. 

2Quoted in Robert Winston Mardock, The Reformers and the American Indian (Columbia, MO, 1971), p. 69. 

4 
Especially the motion pictures. It is difficult to exaggerate their 

influence. John Ford was the master. In the climactic scene of “Fort 

Apache,” for example, cavalry officer John Wayne philosophizes on 

the courage. stamina, skill. and jocular nature of the r-egul;tI army 

troopers who opened the American west. A cavalry column with banners flying marches in silhouette against a desert sunrise as swelling 

music proclaims the majesty of their part in the epic of America. 

With such stirring scenes Ford shaped a whole generation’s conception of the frontier army. In a television tribute, John Wayne conceded that Ford was not above perpetuating legends, consoling himself 

that if this was not exactly the way it happened, it was the way it 

ought to have happened. 

Darker images form part of the picture too. General Winfield 

Scott’s troops uproot Cherokees and herd them, suffering and dying, 

over the “Trail of Tears” to new homes in the west. “General Jimmy” Carleton’s volunteers conduct Navajos on an eastward “Long 

March” replete with similar tragic scenes to new homes in the sterile 

bottoms of the Pecos River. Chivington’s “hundred-dazers” slaughter 

Black Kettle’s Cheyennes at Sand Creek. Exploding artillery shells 

shatter Big Foot’s Sioux at Wounded Knee. Such scenes, likewise 

reinforced and distorted by motion pictures and television, take their 

place beside the stirring and the heroic in the mosaic of the national 

military tradition. 

What we choose to remember and the way we choose to remember it may unduly flatter or unfairly condemn our military forebears, 

may indeed be more legend than history. Legends thus form a conspicuous part of our military tradition and are often far more influential in shaping our attitudes and beliefs than the complex, contradictory, and ambiguous truth. Our reading of truth, or at least the meaning 

of truth, changes from generation to generation. What is uplifting to 

one may be shameful to the next. We select and portray our heroes 

and villains to meet the needs of the present, just as we formulate 

doctrine, policy, practice, and other aspects of military tradition to 

meet the conditions of the present. The US Army’s frontier heritage, 

replete with stereotypes and legends as well as with genuine historical 

substance, has furnished a galaxy of heroes and villains. 

In the people and events of the military frontier’we have found a 

major source of inspiration, guidance, pride, institutional continuity, 

and, not least, self-depreciation. But several centuries of Indian warfare should have contributed more to the national military tradition 

than a kaleidoscope of images. 

5 
The regular army was almost wholly a creature of the frontier. 

Frontier needs prompted creation of the regular army. Except for two 

foreign wars and one civil war, frontier needs fixed the principal mission and employment of the regular army for a century. Frontier 

needs dictated the periodic enlargements of the regular army in the 

nineteenth century.’ Frontier needs underlay Secretary of War John 

C. Calhoun’s “expansible army” plan of 1820, which, though never 

adopted, contained assumptions that shaped US military policy until 

1917.4 For a century the regulars worked the frontier west. They explored and mapped it. They laid out roads and telegraph lines and 

aided significantly in the advance of the railroads. They campaigned 

against Indians. They guarded travel routes and protected settlers. By 

offering security or the appearance of it, together with a market for 

labor and produce, they encouraged further settlement. As enlistments expired, some stayed to help people the frontier themselves. 

Citizen soldiers also contributed, though less significantly. From 

King Philip’s War to the Ghost Dance, colonial and state militia, territorial and national volunteers, rangers, “minute companies,” spontaneously formed home guards, and other less admirable aggregations 

of fighting men supplemented or altogether supplanted the regulars on 

the frontier. Often, indeed, the two worked at dramatic cross-purposes. 

The contribution of the frontier to American military history was 

of paramount significance, but its contribution to the American military tradition was not of comparable significance. Inviting particular 

attention is the influence of the special conditions and requirements of 

the frontier on military organization, composition, strategy, and especially doctrine. A century of Indian warfare, extending a record of 

such conflicr reaching well back into colonial times, should have 

taught us much about dealing with people who did not fight in conventional ways, and our military tradition might reasonably be expect- 

’The 1st and 2nd Dragoons in 1832 and 1836. the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen in 

1846. the 1st and 2nd Cavalry and 9th and 10th Infantry in 1855. The Army Act of 1866 

expanded the Regular Army to meet both frontier and Reconstruction duty, but the 

subsequent reduction of 1869. as Reconstruction needs diminished, left a net gain of 

four cavalry regiments (7th to 10th) and six infantry regiments (20th to 25th) that may 

be attributed to frontier needs. (All mounted regiments were restyled cavalry in 1861 

and ii 6th Cavalry added that was a response to Civil War needs.) 

“Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study in American Military History (Mentor ed.. 

New York. 1956). p. 73. Calhoun’s plan was an attempt to reconcile the differing needs 

of war and peace. The frontier, of course, made a peacetime army necessary. See also 

Russell F. Weigley, Towards an American Army: Military Thought from Washington to 

Marshall (New York and London, 1962). chap. 3. 

6 
ed to reflect the lessons thus learned. Some were not without relevance in Vietnam. 

In examining the role of the frontier in nineteenth century military history, however, we encounter a paradox. It is that the army’s 

frontier employment unfitted it for orthodox war at the same time that 

its preoccupation with orthodox war unfitted it for its frontier mission. In this paradox we find the theories of Emory Upton and Samuel P. Huntington contradicting what seem to be fairly evident realities. 

Emory Upton first stated the proposition that the army had never 

been ready for a real war because it had been maintained chiefly to 

fight Indians.5 More recently, Samuel P. Huntington enlarged on Upton’s thesis.6 As summed up by Huntington, “the requirements of the 

frontier shaped the strategy and structure of the Army.” Organization, 

composition, command and staff, tactics, weapons, and the system of 

military education were all, in the Upton-Huntington view, decisively 

influenced if not altogether dictated by the frontier mission. 

If so, all these features of military policy proved singularly unresponsive to frontier conditions. A commanding general was supposedly 

needed for the operational direction of an active force on the frontier; 

yet he commanded scarcely more than his personal aides. A staff was 

needed not to plan for the next war but to support the ones currently 

under way on the frontier; yet the staff system contained flaws that 

severely impeded its logistical function. The organization of companies and regiments seems wholly conventional in nineteenth century 

terms; it is difficult to see how they would have been differently organized for conventional war-and in fact they were not basically 

changed when conventional war came. The cavalry arm traced its 

beginnings to frontier needs, but the Mexican War or Civil War would 

surely have prompted the formation of mounted units anyway. The 

“rough and unsavory” rank and file that Huntington sees as well fitted for Indian fighting and road building were not well fitted for much 

of any duty, and the record of federalized volunteer units in the west 

during the Civil War plainly established the superiority of this class of 

troops over the typical peacetime regular. Nor, with the possible exception of the revolving pistol, a response to the frontier only insofar 

as mounted troops found a repeating handgun of great utility, can the 

evolution of military weaponry be linked to frontier needs. ~ 

‘Stephen E. Ambrose. Upton and the Arniy(Baton Rouge, LA, 1964). p. I06 

hS;imuel P. Huntington. “Equilibrium and Disequilibrium in American Military Policy.” 

Poliricnl Science Qurirterly. 76 (December. 1961 ). p. 490. 

7 
So far as a system of border outposts constituted strategy, it was 

of course shaped by the frontier. But these forts represented less a 

deliberate plan than erratic responses to the demands of pioneer 

communities for security and local markets. The forts, incidentally, 

encouraged settlers to move beyond the range of military protection, 

stirred up the Indians, and led to still more forts, many beyond effective logistical support. Secretary of War Peter B. Porter lamented this 

trend toward overextension as early as the 1820s, but it continued for 

the balance of the century.7 

On the operational level, strategy and tactics are clearly not a 

product of frontier conditions. Most army officers recognized their foe 

as a master of guerrilla warfare. Their writings .abound in admiring 

descriptions of his cunning, stealth, horsemanship, ability and endurance, skill with weapons, mobility, and exploitation of the natural 

habitat for military advantage. Yet the army as an institution never 

acted on this recognition. No military school or training program, no 

tactics manual, and very little professional literature provided guidance on how to fight or treat with Indians, although it should be noted 

in minor qualification that Dennis Hart Mahan apparently included in 

one of his courses at West Point a brief discussion of Indian-fighting 

tactics.* 

7Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military 

Strategy and Policy (New York, 1973), p. 69. 

XHad Emory Upton responded to General Sherman’s belief that the British experience 

in India held lessons for the US military frontier, Upton’s The Armies of Asia and 

Europe (New York, 1878) might have ventured into the doctrine of unconventional 

war. In fact, Upton did see some parallels between India and the US frontier. He admired the organization, discipline, and record of native troops led by British officers. 

He likened the native peoples with whom the British dealt to the American Indians in 

their disposition to fight one another more than their colonial rulers, and he attributed 

British success to a policy of mingling in their quarrels and playing off one group against 

another. He declared that the British Iddian army was worthy of US imitation. But 

except for rotation of officers between staff and line, scarcely a reform of special frontier application, he failed to spell out particulars (pp. 75-80). Continuing to Europe, 

Upton forgot about India in his enchantment with the Prussian war machine, and he 

finally concluded (p. 97) that to the armies of Europe the United States must look for 

its models. See also in this connection Weigley, Towards an American Army, pp. 105- 

6. Captain Arthur L. Wagner’s The Service of Security and Information, first published 

in 1893, contained a short chapter on Indian scouting, but it seems almost an afterthought to the substance of the book. 

Mahan’s West Point lecture on Indian warfare is noted in William B. Skelton, “Army 

Officers’ Attitudes Toward Indians, 1830-1860,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 67 (1976), 

pp. 114, 121, citing Thomas E. Griess, “Dennis Hart Mahan: West Point Professor and 

Advocate of Military Professionalism,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1968), 

pp. 300-07. 

8 
Lacking a formal body of doctrine for unconventional war, the 

army waged conventional war against the Indians. Heavy columns of 

infantry and cavalry, locked to slow-moving supply trains, crawled 

about the vast western distances in search of Indians who could scatter and vanish almost instantly. The conventional tactics of the Scott, 

Casey, and Upton manuals sometimes worked, by routing an adversary that had foolishly decided to stand and fight on the white man’s 

terms, by smashing a village whose inhabitants had grown careless, or 

by wearing out a quarry with persistent campaigning that made surrender preferable to constant fatigue and insecurity. But most such 

offensives merely broke down the grain-fed cavalry horses and ended 

with the troops devoting as much effort to keeping themselves supplied as to chasing Indians. The campaign of 1876 following the Custer disaster is a classic example. 

The fact is, military leaders looked upon Indian warfare as a 

fleeting bother. Today’s conflict or tomorrow’s would be the last, and 

to develop a special system for it seemed hardly worthwhile. Lt. 

Henry W. Halleck implied as much in his Elements of Military Art 

and Science, published in 1846, and the thought lay at the heart of 

Emory Upton’s attempted redefinition of the army’s role in the late 

1870s.9 In 1876 General Winfield S. Hancock informed a congressional committee that the army’s Indian mission merited no consideration 

at all in determining its proper strength, organization, and composition.10 In part the generals were motivated by a desire to place the 

army on a more enduring basis than afforded by Indian warfare. But 

in part, too, they were genuinely concerned about national defense. 

Therefore, although the staff was not organized to plan for conventional war, or any other kind for that matter, the generals were preoccupied with it, and the army they fashioned was designed for the next 

conventional war rather than the present unconventional war. 

However orthodox the conduct of Indian wars, the frontier not 

only failed as a training ground for orthodox wars, it positively unfitted the army for orthodox wars, as became painfully evident in 1812, 

1846, 1861, and 1898. Scattered across the continent in little border 

forts, units rarely operated or assembled for practice and instruction 

in more than battalion strength. The company was the basic unit, and 

it defined the social and professional horizons of most line officers. 

Growing old in grade, with energies and ambitions dulled by boredom 

and isolation, the officer corps could well subscribe to General 

gWeigley, American Way of War, pp. 84-85. Ambrose, Upton and the Army, pp. 106-7. 

’OHouse Mix. Docs., 45th Cong., 2 sess., No. 56, p. 5. 

9 
Richard S. Ewell’s observation that on the frontier an officer “learned 

all there was to know about commanding forty dregoons, and forgot 

everything else.”ll 

That the army as an institution never elaborated a doctrine of 

Indian warfare does not mean that it contained no officers capable of 

breaking free of conventional thought. The most original thinker was 

General George Crook, who advocated reliance on mule trains as the 

means of achieving mobility and who saw the conquest of the Indian 

as dependent upon pitting Indian against Indian. Army organization 

provided for Indian scouts, but Crook’s concept went considerably 

beyond their use as guides and trailers. “To polish a diamond there is 

nothing like its own dust,” he explained to a reporter in 1886: 

It is the same with these fellows. Nothing breaks them up like turning their own 

people against them. They don’t fear the white soldiers, whom they easily surpass 

in the peculiar style of warfare which they force upon us, but put upon their trail an 

enemy of their own blood, ;in enemy as tireless, as foxy, and as stealthy and familiar with the country as they themselves, and it breaks them all up. It is not merely 

a question of catching them with Indians, but of a broader and more enduring 

aim-their disintegration.12 

Had the nation’s leaders understood the lessons of General 

Crook’s experience, they would have recognized that the frontier 

army was a conventional military force trying to control, by conventional military methods, a people that did not behave like conventional enemies and, indeed, quite often were not enemies at all. They 

would have recognized that the situation usually did not call for warfare, merely for policing; that is, offending individuals needed to be 

separated from the innocent and punished. They would have recognized that the conventional force was unable to do this and that as a 

result punishment often fell, when it fell at all, on guilty and innocent 

alike. 

Had the nation’s leaders acted on such understandings, the army 

might have played a more significant role in the westward movement-and one less vulnerable to criticism. An Indian auxiliary force 

might have been developed that could differentiate between guilty and 

innocent and, using the Indian’s own fighting style, contend with the 

guilty. Indian units were indeed developed, but never on a scale and 

with a continuity to permit the full effect to be demonstrated. Such an 

“Quoted in Huntington, “Equilibrium and Disequilibrium,” p. 499. 

‘*Charles F. Lummis, General Crook and the Apache Wars (Flagstaff, AZ, 19661, p. 17. 

This is series of articles correspondent Lummis wrote for the Los Angeles Times during the Geronimo campaign of 1886. 

10 
Indian force would have differed from the reservation police, which 

in fact did remarkably well considering their limitations.13 It would 

have been larger, better equipped, and less influenced by the vagaries 

of the patronage politics that afflicted the Indian Bureau. Abovc all. it 

would have been led by a cadre of carefully chosen officers imbued 

with a sense of mission and experienced in Indian relations-the kind 

of officers artist Frederic Remington said were not so much “Indian 

fighters” as “lndian thinkers.”l4 How different might have been the 

history of the westward movement had such a force been created and 

employed in place of the regular army line. How vastly more substantial might have been the contribution of the frontier to our traditions 

of unconventional warfare. 

By contrast, a major aspect of twentieth-century practice owes a 

large debt to the frontier. Total war-warring on whole enemy populations-finds ample precedent in the frontier experience. Russell 

Weigley has pointed out how different the colonial Indian wars were 

from the formal and not very destructive warfare of the European 

pattern. In King Philip’s War of 1675-76, for example, the Indians 

almost wiped out the New England settlements, and the colonists in 

response all but wiped out the Indians. “The logic of a contest for 

survival was always implicit in the Indian wars,” Weigley writes, “as 

it never was in the eighteenth century wars wherein European powers 

competed for possession of fortresses and countries, but always 

shared an awareness of their common participation in one civilization, 

Voltaire’s ‘Republic of Europe.’ ”15 

Examples of total war may be found through subsequent centuries of Indian conflict, notably in the Seminole Wars, but it remained 

for Generals Sherman and Sheridan to sanctify it as deliberate doctrine. With the march across Georgia-and the wasting of the Shenandoah Valley as models, they set forth in the two decades after the 

Civil War to find the enemy in his winter camps, kill or drive him 

from his lodges, destroy his ponies, food, and shelter, and hound him 

mercilessly across a frigid landscape until he gave up. If women and 

children fell victim to such methods, it was regrettable, but justified 

because it resolved the issue quickly and decisively, and thus more 

humanely. Although prosecuted along conventional lines and thus 

usually an exercise in logistical futility, this approach yielded an occaI3See William T. Hagan, Indian Police and Judges (New Haven, CT, 1966). 

14“How an Apache War Was Won,” in Harold McCracken, ed., Frederick Remington’s 

Own West (New York, I%]), p. 49. 

I5American Way of War, p. 19. 

11 
sional triumph such as the Washita and Dull Knife fights that saved it 

from serious challenge. Scarcely a direct inspiration for the leveling 

of whole cities in World War I1 and Vietnam, frontier precedents of 

total war may nevertheless be viewed as part of the historical foundation on which this feature of our military tradition rests.16 

Another area that might be usefully probed is the relationship of 

the frontier to the militia tradition, whose modern expression, after 

generations of modification, is the mass citizen army. Though not exclusively a product of the frontier, the militia owed a great debt to the 

recurring Indian hostilities that brought pioneers together for common 

defense, and it figured prominently enough in the American Revolution for Walter Millis to see it as the principal factor in the “democratization’’ of war that prompted the collapse of the set-piece warfare 

of the eighteenth century.17 So firmly implanted was the militia tradition in the thinking of the Revolutionary generation, together with 

abhorrence of standing armies, that the architects of the nation conceived it as the foundation of the military system, the chief reliance 

for national defense as well as frontier employment. Frontier experience demonstrated how wrong they were. The Indian rout of Harmer 

and St. Clair so dramatically exposed the inadequacies of militia as to 

give birth to the regular army, a contribution of the militia to US military history of no small significance, however negative. The organized 

militia fell apart after 1820, as foreign threats receded, but the militia 

tradition, nourished in part by the Indian frontier, evolved through 

various mutations into the twentieth century. 

A clear and undeniable contribution of the frontier to the national 

military tradition is its large role in the rise of professionalism in the 

army. Albert Gallatin wrote in 1802: “The distribution of our little 

army to distant garrisons where hardly any other inhabitant is to be 

found is the most eligible arrangement of that perhaps necessary evil 

that can be contrived. But I never want to see the face of one in our 

cities and intermixed with the people.”l* And rarely for a century 

except in the Mexican and Civil Wars, were the soldiers intermixed 

with the people. Physically, socially, and at last in attitudes, interests, 

and spirit, the regulars on the frontier remained isolated from the rest 

of the population. This separation, so costly in terms of pubIhThe role of Sherman and Sheridan is discussed in my Frontier Regulars: The United 

States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (New York, 1973), pp. 144-46. 

]’Arms and Men, pp. 19-20, 34. 

I*Quoted in Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 

1809-1829(New York, 1959), p. 214. 

12 
lic and governmental support, had one enduring benefit. Turning inward, the army laid the groundwork for a professionalism that was to 

prove indispensable in the great world wars of the twentieth century. 

The postgraduate military school system, original thought about the 

nature and theory of warfare, and professional associations and publications find their origins in this time of rejection of the soldiers by 

their covntrymen. 19 

A final feature of our military tradition with strong frontier roots 

is the prominent role of minorities.’ The regular army’s black regiments served on the frontier for three decades following their organization in 1866 and wrote some stirring chapters of achievement. They 

saw harder service than the white regiments and, because they afforded continuous and honorable employment in a time when blacks 

found few other opportunities, boasted lower desertion rates and 

higher reenlistment rates. Immigrants, too, found a congenial home in 

the army, as well as a means of learning the English language and 

reaching beyond the teeming port cities of the East where so many 

countrymen suffered in poverty and despair. And not to be overlooked are the Indians themselves, who loyally served the white 

troops as scouts, auxiliaries, and finally, for a brief time in the 1890s, 

in units integral to the regimental organization. 

Today the American military tradition must be responsive to the 

imperatives of nuclear warfare, and nuclear warfare discloses few 

parallels with the small-unit Indian combats of forest, plains, and desert. But the tradition must also be responsive to the “limited wars” 

that the nuclear specter has spawned, and these do disclose parallels 

with frontier warfare. It is a measure of the failure of the Indianfighting generations to understand their task that today’s doctrine does 

not reflect the lessons of that experience. And yet, as we have seen, 

the American military tradition owes a debt of noteworthy magnitude 

to the frontier experience. As Captain King observed, it is all a 

memory now, but a memory to cherish. 

19Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of CivilMilitary Relations (Cambridge, MA, 1957). chap. 9. Utley, Frontier Regulars, chap. 4. 

13 

11 

A COMPARISON 

OF 

MILITARY FRONTIERS 

Two papers were delivered during the symposium on the topic of comparative military history. The first, by Desmond Morton, of the University of Toronto, was delivered 

during the second session which was devoted exclusively to a comparison of Canadian and 

American frontiers. The second paper, by Raymond G. O’Connor, of the University of 

Miami, concerned the United States’ naval frontier and was delivered during the fourth 

session. Commentary on Professor Morton’s paper was presented by Robert G. Athearn 

of the University of Colorado and by Richard A. Preston of Duke University who also 

served as chairman of the second session. 

In his paper, entitled “Comparison of U.S./Canadian Military Experience on the 

Frontier,” Morton noted that Canadian experience with native Americans was considerably less violent, if in the long term no more successful, than the American experience. He 

argued that “friction between white and native people was not simply a function of time or 

numbers, but of law, policy and political philosophy as well.” The Mounted Police arrived 

on the Canadian frontier before settlement and they had fewer Indians and fewer white 

people to deal with than did the United States Army, but they also had fewer restrictions 

on their authority. Unencumbered by American democratic ideology and its concern for 

equality and the rights of the majority, the Mounted Police were free to use almost despotic methods to protect the rights of the Indian minority in the Northwest. 

O’Connor’s paper, “The Navy on the Frontier,” was a brief survey of naval involvement in the exploration, expansion, and pacification of the American frontier. He concentrated on naval activities in the Caribbean and along the Pacific Coast. He argued that the 

United States Navy not only contributed directly to frontier settlement, but that it provided the United States with the freedom to concentrate on its frontier, with “a tangible and 

at times formidable barrier to continued domination and further exploitation” from Europe. 

15 
In these sketches Frederick Remington illustrates the contrast between 

the Canadian Mounties' "police approach" and the U .S. Army's military approach" to the Indian problem. (Courtesy of Century Magazine) 

16 
COMPARISON OF U.S./CANADIAN 

MILITARY EXPERIENCE ON THE FRONTIER 

DESMOND MORTON 

In an article in the Pacific Historical Review in 1955, Paul F. 

Sharp renewed Frederick Jackson Turner’s invitation to test the frontier thesis in other settings. Sharp had done so in his own pioneering 

work on the Canadian-American west, finding the differences more 

significant than the similarities.1 In the article, he went on to contrast relations between the Canadian government and the aboriginal 

people of the northwest with comparable developments in the United 

States and Australia: “Against a background of violence and hatred 

south of the forty-ninth parallel, the Canadian government conceived 

and executed an orderly, well-planned and honorable policy.”2 

The tribute was overly generous. A century of Indian policy has 

left the Canadian native people in much the same state of poverty and 

dependence as their brothers south of the border.3 Sharp’s contrast 

between Canadian order and American violence can be questioned in 

detail although north of the forty-ninth parallel it is established as one 

of those self-congratulatory myths which bind a nation together .4 

While the Americans were reputedly electing their sheriffs, summoning the U.S. cavalry and filling the graves on Boot Hill, Canadians 

were establishing law and order with the aid of a few hundred men of 

‘Paul F. Sharp, whoop-Up Country: The Canadian-American West, 186511885, 2 vols. 

(Minneapolis, 1955). 

2Paul F. Sharp, “Three Frontiers: Some Comparative Studies of Canadian, American 

and Australian Settlement,” Pacific Historical Review, XXIV (1955), p. 373. 

3See Roy W. Meyer, “The Canadian Sioux: Refugees from Minnesota” in The American Indian: Pasr and Present, edited by Roger L. Nichols and George R. Adams, for a 

generous account. On Canadian Indians, see G. F. F. Stanley, “The Indian Background of Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers 

(1952); Heather Robertson, Reservations are for Indians (Toronto, 1970); Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canadian Indians (Edmonton, 1971). 

4See, for example, the essays in Canada: The Peaceable Kingdom, edited by William 

Kilbourn (Toronto, 1971). 

17 
the North West Mounted Police.5 According to Russell F. Weigley, 

there were perhaps 943 engagements in the American west between 

1866 and 1895. In the Canadian northwest there were only six or seven comparable clashes, almost all of them associated with the Northwest Campaign of 1885.6 

Why were the adjacent frontiers apparently so different? Since 

whites, not Indians, are found at the root of most trouble in the west, 

Sharp agreed with most American historians that a 10 year lag in settlement allowed the Canadian tribes and the police to adjust to new 

patterns of existence.7 Robert M. Utley, the major historian of the 

American army during the Indian wars, conceded that police methods 

might sometimes have been more effective than conventional military 

tactics, but he also concluded that the Canadian approach succeeded 

only “because the sparsity of settlement prevented serious competition between whites and Indians for the lands and resources of the 

Northwest Territories.”8 

However, friction between white and native people was not simply a function of time or numbers but of law, policy and political philosophy as we11.9 To quote a young Canadian historian, “The fact 

?See, for example, S. W. Horrall, “Sir John A. Macdonald and the Mounted Police 

Force for the Northwest Territories,” Canadian Historical Review, LIII (1972~ pp. 

179-80. To illustrate, see D. G. Creighton, Dominion of the North, rev. ed. (Toronto, 

1957). p. 360; or Douglas Hill, The Opening of the Canadian West (London, 1967). p. 

133. A perceptive study of one of the most celebrated police-Indian encounters, Inspector James Walsh and Sitting Bull, is C. Frank Turner, Across the Medicine Line (Toronto, 1973). 

6Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York, 1967), p. 267. 

(Canadian engagements would include Duck Lake, Fish Creek, Cut Knife Hill, Batoche 

and Frenchman’s Butte, all in 1885, with perhaps the battle with Almighty Voice in 

1897 as a final conflict.) 

’Sharp, “Three Frontiers,” p. 373. 

sRobert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866- 

1891 (New York, 1973), pp. 55-56. The sparsity was certainly striking. In 1880, the 

Dakotas boasted 133,147 people while the 1881 census found only 6,974 whites and 

Metis in the entire Canadian Northwest. See G. F. G. Stanley, The Birth of Western 

Canada: A History of the Riel Rebellions, rev. ed. (Toronto, 1961), p. 187. The significance of the Metis as a mediating force in white-Indian relations also appears to have 

little United States counterpart. 

9See, for example, President Jackson’s response to the decision in Worcester v. Georgia, 1832. On American Indian policy, see Francis P. Prucha, American Indian Policy 

in the Formative Years (Cambridge, MA, 1962); Lorring Benson Priest, Uncle Sam’s 

Stepchildren (New Brunswick, N.J., 1942; Lincoln, NE, 1969). 

18 
that the Police arrived before settlement is not nearly so significant as 

what they did when they got there.”lo The predominantly conservative political values of post-Confederation Canada allowed the use of 

both law and authoritarian structures to preserve minority rights. In 

his study of the Mounted Police, R. C. MacLeod argued that the 

force succeeded because, in contrast to British and American judicial 

practice, it combined judicial and administrative functions in a kind of 

benevolent despotism moderated, at least until 1905, by the presumption that it would be no more than a temporary expedient.11 

In the United States prevailing interpretations of liberty and 

democracy and a recurrent suspicion of militarism repeatedly undermined the army’s attempts to resume control of Indian policy after 

1849.12 Congress usually preferred the sometimes inept and frequently corrupt agencies of the Department of the Interior. In Canada, one 

finds only the palest reflection of the ideal of possessive individualism 

which, in turn, inspired the doctrine of severalty as the ultimate solution of the Indian problem. For good or ill, Canada produced no 

equivalent to the Dawes Act of 1887.13 Western Indians on Canadian 

reserves continued to hold their land in common. 

Canadian politicians in the Confederation era were preoccupied 

with avoiding what they regarded as “excesses” in the United States 

Constitution.l4 That concern was bipartisan, shared by members of 

both the Liberal and Conservative parties. “Our chiefest care,” insisted Sir Richard Cartwright, a Liberal, “must be to train the majority 

to respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few 

from being trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the 

‘OJohn Jennings, “The Plains Indians and the Law” in Men in Scarlet, edited by Hugh 

A. Dempsey (Calgary [1974]), pp. 50, 54. 

“R. C. MacLeod, The North-West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905 

(Toronto, 1976), pp. 4-6 and passim. 

’*On the U.S. Army officers and Indian-white relations, see, for example, Robert G. 

Athearn, “War Paint against Brass: The Army and the Plains Indians,” Montana: The 

Magazine of Western History, VI (1956); Priest, Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren, ch. 11; 

Robert M. Utley, “The Celebrated Peace Policy of General Grant,” North Dakota History, XX, (July, 1953). 

”On the Dawes Act, see Priest, Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren, chs. XIII-XIX; William T. 

Hagan, American Indians, pp. 139- 148. 

I4On Canadian political attitudes, see, for example, Bruce W. Hodgins, “Democracy 

and the Ontario Fathers of Confederation” in Profiles of a Province (Toronto, 1967). 

pp. 83-91. 

19 
many.”Is That minority could, of course, be the right;lh it could also 

be French Canadians, or Catholics, or English-speaking Protestants in 

Quebec-or it could be the Indians.17 Influential Canadians saw the 

American west as a manifestation of the dangers of democracy and 

materialism; they wished no imitation on their side of the border. Visiting Edmonton in 1895, the feminist virago, Lady Aberdeen, noted 

with satisfaction that most of the newcomers were “heartily glad” to 

become British subjects but” . . . there is a remnant who would like to 

introduce American ideas as to what conduct in the West should be. 

These must be dealt with ruthlessly, and the magistrates and N.W. 

Mounted Police are determined that this shall be the case if they can 

manage it.”l8 

Canadians may explain the contrast between the frontiers by differing ideologies as Americans point to delayed settlement; both, I 

think, must recognize the role of accidents and of defense considerations. The Canadians did not consciously plan a delay between the 

advent of the police force and the arrival of white settlers. The government planned that settlement and policing would advance together.19 It was an error of judgment and an economic downturn that 

separated the two advances. Macdonald and his cabinet endured 

years of well-authenticated reports of murder, violence, and illegal 

whiskey trading in the western territories without displaying any of 

the purported Canadian devotion to law and order. What moved the 

government was a consideration which did not bother his Washington 

counterparts: the threat posed by an expansive and powerful neighbor. 

Canadians of Sir John A. Macdonald’s generation were obsessed 

by the American claim of “Manifest Destiny.” Sir John shared the 

fears and also used them shrewdly foj political advantage. In organizing the North American British federation in 1867, a major goal was 

to safeguard the huge, empty territories of the northwest from AmeriIscited in R. C. Brown, “Canadian Opinion after Confederation” in Canada Views 

the United States: Nineteenth Century Political Attitudes, edited by S. F. Wise and R. 

C. Brown (Seattle, 1967). p. 113. 

16“The rights of the minority must be protected, and the rich are always fewer in number than the poor” (Macdonald’s comment on the proposed Canadian senate, April 6, 

1865, Confederation Debates.) 

”Jennings, “Indians and the Law,” p. 51. 

18Journal of Lady Aberdeen, August 5, 1895, Public Archives of Canada, Aberdeen 

Papers. 

19Horrall, “A Mounted Police Force,” pp. 185-88 

20 
can expansion. If in the process Canadians trampled on the rights of 

Red River settlers in their haste to possess the Hudson’s Bay Company territories in 1869, they remembered how the Company’s weakness 

had cost them the rich Oregon territory in 1846.20 After the Civil 

War, the risk of overt aggression from the United States faded. The 

British military withdrawal of 1869-71, and the treaty of Washington 

of 1871 served notice that Whitehall would never again contemplate a 

rematch of the War of 1812.21 The international boundaries had been 

delineated in principle at all but a few points. By 1872, a joint commission was surveying its location across the prairies. An American 

threat remained only if the young Dominion failed to sustain authority 

in what it purported to be its territory. A breakdown in internal order, 

a movement for secession, a failure to restrain marauding Indian 

bands, might provoke official or unofficial intervention from the United States. Whatever revisionists may claim, most imperial expansion 

in the 19th century owed less to capitalism or to missionaries than to 

disorder or lawlessness on the adjacent frontier. When slave-trading 

flourished, murder went unpunished, and plundering tribesmen found 

easy sanctuary, very few in the Victorian era-British or Americanthought it reprehensible to forcibly extend government and social 

order. As the dominant power in the western hemisphere, the United 

States had shown its willingness to enforce its view of international 

law on Mexico. The Indian wars drew several US military expeditions 

deep into Mexican territory in the 1870s.22 Canadians could expect 

that it might happen to them as well. 

S. W. Horrall, the official historian of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has emphasized Macdonald’s view that Canada also could 

not afford an American-style west: “He feared that a repetition of the 

American experience would involve the Dominion in a series of costly 

Indian wars, retard development in the Northwest and strain the 

country’s resources.”23 Indian wars were costing America and American taxpayers about 14 million dollars a year. The entire Canadian 

%ee, for example, A. C. Gluek, Minnesota and the Manifest Destiny of the CanadIan 

North West (Toronto, 1965). 

210n the implications of the British withdrawal, see C. P. Stacey, Canada and the British Army, 1846-1871, rev. ed. (Toronto, 1963), and J. M. Hitsman, Safeguarding Canada, 1763-1871, ch. X. 

22UtIey, Frontier Regulars, ch. VIII, esp. p. 355. 

23Horrall, “A Mounted Police Force,” pp. 180-81. The twenty million dollars spent annually on Indian wars by Congress was comparable to Canada’s entire federal budget. 

MacLeod, Mounted Police, p. 3. 

21 
federal budget was about 20 million. Just as important, Canadian authority had to be firmly imposed so that Americans or their local 

sympathizers would have no excuse to disrupt the national destiny of 

;I dominion which by its motto declared itself ;I mar; iisqiie ;~d mitre. 

from sea to shining sea. To Edward Watkin, the British railway magnate, Macdonald confessed: “I would be quite willing, personally, to 

leave the whole country a wilderness for the next half-century, but I 

fear if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will. . .”*4 

How could peace and order be imposed on a huge and potentially 

turbulent territory at a cost Canadian taxpayers would endure? The 

Americans had solved the problem almost absent mindedly by deploying their tiny regular army on the forward edge of settlement. The 

19th century saw a growing distinction between police and military 

functions in English-speaking countries. The realization did not come 

all at once or all over the place simultaneously. The Hudson’s Bay 

Company, for example, had joyfully combined police and military 

roles when they occasionally wheedled detachments of British troops 

from the War Office. “If we succeed in getting a garrison established 

at Red River,” wrote Sir George Simpson, governor of Hudson’s Bay 

Territories in 1845, “we shall be able to put down the illicit trade and 

keep the settlers in order.”25 When Canada acquired the northwest, it 

had no standing army apart from the small remaining British garrison, 

and no desire to acquire one. To manage its vast new territories, Ottawa proposed in 1869 to appoint a lieutenant governor and council, 

backed by a 250-man police force. “It seems to me,” Macdonald 

wrote to the man he had chosen as commander, “the best force 

would be Mounted Riflemen, trained to act as cavalry, but also instructed in the Rifle exercises. They would also be instructed, as certain of the Line are, in the use of artillery. This body should not be 

expressly Military, but should be styled Police and have the military 

bearing of the Irish Constabulary.”26 An order-in-council allowing 50 

men to be recruited in eastern Canada (15 of them to be French 

24Cited by P. B. Waite, The Life and Times of Confederation (Toronto, 1962), p. 307. 

The most thorough treatment of defence considerations in Canada’s policy in the 

Northwest remains C. P. Stacey’s “The Military Aspect of Canada’s Winning of the 

West, 1870-1885,” Canadian Historical Review, XXI (1940), pp. 1-24. 

25E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Company, vol. 111, 1821-1870 (Toronto, 1%0), p. 542. See 

also A. S. Morton, A History of the Canadian West to 1870-71, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 

1973), p. 809; A. C. Gluek, “Imperial Protection for the Trading Interests of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1857-1861 ,” Canadian Historical Review, XXXVII (1956), pp. 119- 

140. 

26Horrall, “Mounted Police Force,” p. 181. See also MacLeod, Mounted Police, pp. 8- 

11. 

22 
speaking, the usual proportion) and 200 more in the west, where they 

would reflect the ethnic balance of the population. In short, the prime 

minister conceived of a force capable of anything, from firing a cannon to achieving racial harmony, all for a dollar a day and a 3 year 

enlistment. 

Macdonald’s plan was the genesis for the North West Mounted 

Police, but its realization was postponed by the first Riel rebellion of 

1869-70. In the aftermath of that uprising, Canada felt obliged to grant 

a premature provincial status to Manitoba. For its own peace of 

mind, Canada also felt compelled to maintain what it called a “provisional” garrison,The few hundred men of the Manitoba Force swallowed up appropriations which the government might otherwise have 

spent on policing the rest of the northwest. Constitutionally, Ottawa 

could not station a police force in a province, but it could maintain a 

garrison of troops under federal control.27 

Louis Riel’s challenge to Ottawa and his association with W. B. 

O’Donoghue, Fenian agitator and unofficial US agent, forcibly reminded Canadians of the vulnerability of their northwest to the Americans.28 A British-Canadian expedition under Colonel Garnet Wolseley set out to meet the Riel challenge but was delayed at the So0 by 

American control of the locks.29 

As the winter of 1871 approached, Ottawa again felt compelled to 

send troops hurrying over the Dawson Trail to meet a reported Fenian threat on the Manitoba border .30 The militia detachment arrived 

only to find that the Fenians had been seized at Pembina by a detachment of United States troops. Unfortunately, when Captain Lloyd 

Wheaton also proclaimed that the Little Hudson’s Bay post was on 

American soil, he illustrated the danger of allowing Americans to 

cope with frontier law and order. In due course, the international 

boundary commission restored Pembina to Canada; equally, a Minnesota jury refused to condemn Fenians for looting Canadian property.” 

*’On the Manitoba Force, see Stacey, ‘‘Military Aspect,” pp. 15-18. 

**Stanley, Western Canada, pp. 164-66 

291bid., ch. VI. 

3oSee C. P. Stacey, “The Second Red River Expedition, 1871,” Canadian Defence 

Quarterly (January, 1931), pp. Iff. 

31See Return to Parliament, 1884, Public Archives of Canada, Macdonald Papers, vol. 

329, pp. 148570-72. On the raid, see J. P. Pritchett,“The Origin of the So-called Fenian 

Raid on Manitoba in 1871,” Canadian Historical Review, X (1929); Stacey, “Military 

Aspect,” pp. 12-14. 

23 
The Fenian threat of 1871 was pure comic opera. It also demonstrated the loyalty of the Manitoba half-breeds to the Canadian regime. Nonetheless, a militia garrison remained at Winnipeg, largely 

because winter and the Re-Cambrian Shield left Manitoba isolated 

from the rest of Canada for 6 months of the year. And since the main 

threat seemed to be American, one could hardly save Canada by 

sending troops via an American route. Moreover, as lieutenant governors soon discovered, negotiation of treaties and land surrenders with 

Indian bands went somehow more smoothly in the presence of a military escort .32 

That was no help for the vast regions beyond Manitoba and the 

Northwest Angle. Far from being threatened by crowds of land-hungry settlers, it was their emptiness that brought trouble. Reports in 

1871 by Lieutenant W. F. Butler and in 1873 by the Adjutant-General 

of the Canadian militia, Colonel Patrick Robertson Ross, both emphasized the need for policing, preferably by small bodies of mounted 

troops. Successive governors of Manitoba revived the idea of a 

mounted police.33 But the emptiness of what Butler called the Great 

Lone Land, generated no political pressure. No one was writing letters to their member of Parliament. Only the Prime Minister could 

have acted and, beset by illness, family problems and innumerable 

political crises, Macdonald was unmoved.34 Not until the end of 

March of 1873 did he invite Parliament to pass enabling legislation for 

a mounted police force. “They are to be a purely civil, not a military 

body,” he assured the House of Commons, “with as little gold lace, 

fuss and fine feathers as possible; not a crack cavalry regiment, but 

an efficient police force for the rough and ready-particularly readyenforcement of law and justice.”35 Still they did not exist. 

?*J. L. Taylor, “The Development of an Indian Policy for the Canadian North West, 

1869-79” (Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Kingston, 1976), p. 56 and passim. See 

Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians (Toronto, 1880), p. 32. 

(“Military display has always a great effect on savages, and the presence, even of a 

few troops, will have a good tendency,” in A. G. Archibald’s report on Treaty No. 2). 

33See W. F. Butler, The Great Lone Land (London, 1872); Edward McCourt, Remember Butler: The Story of Sir William Butler (London, 1%7), ch. V1; Colonel Patrick 

Robertson Ross, “Reconnaissance of the North West Provinces and Indian Territories 

of the Dominion of Canada. . .” Canada, Sessional Papers, 1873, no. 9, pp. cvii-cxxvii. 

340n Macdonald in this period, see D. G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Old 

Chieftain (Toronto, 1955). pp. 1 11-179. The Prime Minister’s best known nickname, 

“Old Tomorrow,” was given by Commissioner A. G. lrvine of the N.W.M.P. in 1881. 

See E. B. Biggar, Anecdotal Life of Sir John Macdonald (Toronto, 1891). 

j5Canada, House of Commons, Debates (reported in the Toronto Globe), May 3, 1873. 

See also ibid., March 31, 1873. 

24 
It was Governor Alexander Morris, of Manitoba, backed by sensational reports of the massacre of a party of Assiniboines Indians in 

the Cypress Hills, plus urgings from Hamilton Fish, the American 

Secretary of State, that finally got “Old Tomorrow” to move.36 Although responsibility for the deaths lay with American and Canadian 

wolf hunters from Fort Benton, Montana, Ottawa was left with the 

confused impression that somehow American whiskey traders from 

the notorious Fort Whoop-up were to blame.37 “It would not be well 

for us to take the responsibility of slighting Morris’ repeated and urgent entreaties,” Macdonald advised ~ ths Governor General, Lord 

Dufferin, “If anything went wrong, the blame would lie at our 

door.”38 On this courageous note, the North West Mounted Police 

was born. A draft of 150 recruits was hurriedly assembled and sent 

off by the Dawson Trail to Winnipeg. In the spring of 1874, a second 

contingent travelled by way of Chicago to Fargo, North Dakota, 

where they donned their scarlet tunics, mounted nervous horses, and 

set off on the first leg of what would be the Mounted Police’s epic 

“March West .”39 

At least two popular myths deserve to be exploded. The first is 

that the police wore red coats because the Indians had special confidence in the traditional British uniform. The only British red coats to 

serve in the west were 300 men of the 6th Foot at Fort Garry from 

1846 to 1848. Other British and Canadian troops had worn dark green, 

or, if illustrators are to be trusted, much more bizarre local costumes. 

Most likely even the red coats wore furs, buffalo hides, rags, blankets, and anything else to keep themselves warm most of the year. 

The idea of scarlet tunics came from Governor Morris and, more insistently, from Colonel Robertson Ross, a noted devotee of military 

finery.40 Despite the Prime Minister’s promise to Parliament about no 

fuss and feathers, the Mounted Police in full dress resembled British 

dragoon guards, than whom there were no fussier nor feathery. The 

36Horrall, “Mounted Police Force,” pp. 192-93. 

771bid., pp. 192-94. Taylor, “Indian Policy,” pp. 88-1 14. 

’8Macdonald to Dufferin, September 24, 1873, Public Archives of Canada, Macdonald 

Papers, vol. 523. 

39011 the trek, see S. W. Horrall, “The March West” in Dempsey, Men in Scarlet, pp. 

13-26, reviewing literature. 

400n Robertson Ross, see D. P. Morton, Ministers and Generals: Politics and the Canadian Militia, 1868-1904 (Toronto, 1970), pp. 25-26. See al$o Morris to Macdonald, January 17, 1873, Macdonald Papers, vol. 252. 

25 
uniform was elaborate, expensive and, in the eyes of critics, highly 

unsuitable.41 

A second myth surrounds the alleged alteration of the title of the 

force from Mounted Rifles to Mounted Police, presumably to soothe 

American anxieties about a military expedition along their northern 

border.42 The susceptibilities belonged to Sir John A. Macdonald, not 

the Americans. By 1874, when the N.W.M.P. was at last in existence, 

the Conservative leader was out of office. His successor, Alexander 

Mackenzie, a Liberal, was a dull, honest man who held a major’s 

commission in the militia. Frankly, he would have preferred military 

force and a military expedition. Hewitt Bernard, the deputy minister 

of justice who just happened to be the former prime minister’s brother-in-law, had worked out the detailed scheme for the mounted police 

force and he refused to allow the project to be cavalierly altered. The 

new Minister of Justice, A. A. Dorion, a French Canadian, wanted 

police patronage for his department and, as one of the few experienced members of the new government, he was a formidable ally. The 

“mounted police” concept survived. 

The new Prime Minister also had to be talked out of an even 

more dangerous notion. Any major expedition, Mackenzie argued, 

should be conducted jointly with the Americans. After all, they had 

the experience and the resources. A shocked Lord Dufferin headed 

off any such venture into internationalism. Not only would Canadian 

pride be flattered by a national expedition, he said, but: “in the next 

place, we should appear upon the scene, not as the Americans have 

done, for the purpose of restraining and controlling the Indian tribes, 

but with a view of avenging injuries inflicted on the red man.”43 

Thanks to inexperience and inadequate reconnaissance, the “March 

West” was a near-disaster, but it immediately established the Mounted Police as a Canadian legend. Perhaps more important for its effectiveness in the ensuing 10 years, the N.W.M.P. proved that it was not 

simply another regiment of US cavalry. Scarlet jackets were inappropriate for hard service on the prairies but they did create a symbolic 

distinction between the Mounted Police and the US cavalry in the 

eyes of western Canadians, white and Indian alike. 

41See Middleton to Duke of Cambridge, July 31, 1885, Royal Archives, Windsor, Cambridge, Papers. 

42Horrall “Mounted Police Force,” pp. 198-99. 

43Dufferin to Kirnberley, December 24, 1873, Public Record Office, London, Kirnberley 

Papers. 

26 
Uniforms and names would not have signified much to the plains 

Indians if they had not symbolized more substantive differences in the 

role and outlook of the Mounted Police and their US counterparts. 

American cavalrymen and Canadian policemen had much in common. 

Pay was meagre and often in arrears. Traders at military and police 

posts were equally rapacious. Barracks were often temporary shacks, 

ill-constructed, frigid in winter and unsanitary. Arms and equipment 

were sometimes obsolete and often inappropriate for western conditions. In both countries, political influence pervaded every sphere of 

administration, from forage contracts to promotions. Officers in the 

N.W.M.P. often owed their commissions to party patronage and men 

in the ranks were by no means always the muscular, adventurous paragons of popular imagery.44 In 1885, after a few months in the Northwest, Major General Fred Middleton reported to the Duke of Cambridge: “. . . among them are some of the greatest scamps in the 

country, broken-down gentlemen who in many cases are called here 

inebriates, sent here by their friends because no liquor is admitted in 

these territories.” Since an important duty of the force was prevention of whiskey smuggling, it might be disturbing to learn from Middleton that the force had “by no means a good character for sobriety.”45 

There were excellent officers and men in both the American and 

Canadian forces in the west. Frontier conditions, hardships and danger weeded out misfits and chronic failures. Veterans of the Mounted 

Police played a leading role in many western Canadian communities. 

Their contribution to the economy of the ranching frontier, both as 

police and as ranchers, has only begun to be explored.46 Presumably 

comparable work is under way for officers and men discharged from 

the US Army. The similarity in the strengths and deficiencies in the 

two organizations indicates that the differences cannot be attributed 

to the specially fine quality of the Mounted Police, or the less fine 

qualities sometimes alleged of the American troops. If the Canadian 

and American west developed differently, the sources of the divergence must be found in time, law, and society. 

44Ronald Atkin, Maintain the Right: The Early History of the North West Mounted Police, 1873-1900 (London, 1973). pp. 124-36, 257-269, giving the best review of conditions 

of service. See also J. P. Turner, The North West Mounted Police, 2 vols. (Ottawa, 

1950), passim together with many personal memoirs of service in the Force. On patronage and politics, see MacLeod, Mounted Police, ch. VII. 

45Middleton to Cambridge, July 31, 1885, Cambridge Papers 

%D. H. Breen, “The Mounted Police and the Ranching Frontier” in Dempsey, Men in 

Scarlet, pp. 115-137. 

27 
By the time the North West Mounted Poke was ready to take up 

its station in 1874, the outcome of the Indian struggle was really no 

longer in question. Bravado or gross miscalculation, as at the Little 

Big Horn, would be sharply punished. Able leadership and tactical 

skill would allow Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces to inflict setbacks 

on American military columns. However, most Canadian Indians, 

even the warlike Blackfoot Confederacy, could sense their relative 

safety on the north side of the Medicine Line. The Mounted Police 

was not very successful in capturing white exploiters of the Indiansthey, too, could find immunity across an international frontier-but at 

least the force was eager to chase them away. The development of 

railroads, the concomitant increase in American military effectiveness, and the remorseless annihilation of the buffalo, were settling the 

fate of the native people. By the time the Mounted Police arrived, the 

Indians of the Great Plains were looking for terms, not triumphs. Sent 

to administer and to accommodate, the police did not adopt the aggressive mode normal to soldiers nor did minor clashes inevitably 

produce a warlike response. Proudly military in style, the N.W.M.P. 

was a police force in tactics and attitude.47 

In contrast to the United States, the Canadian political system 

reinforced the power of the Mounted Police to provide satisfactory 

terms to native people. While some American army officers sympathized with the Indians in their plight and sought to offer a paternal 

protection against white traders, ranchers, and land speculators, they 

could count on little support in Washington. The antimilitarism of 

most Americans, both pro- and anti-Indian, almost guaranteed sympathy for any self-professed victim of military tyranny. Far from condemning civilians for the misery inflicted on the Indian, the vocal 

humanitarians of the “Friends of the Indian” organization in the east 

were prone to blame the army. “The soldiers demoralize the Indian 

men by whiskey and cards and debauch-the women,” claimed former 

Indian agent Alfred B. Meacham in his famous series, “Abolish the 

Arrny.”48 

On the relatively rare occasions when Canadian politicians considered Indian affairs in this period, such sentiments might be echoed. 

George Landerkin, an Ontario Liberal, suggested benignly that the 

Indians might soon become civilized “if they were not menaced day 

“See MacLeod, Mounted Police, ch. VIII. 

@See Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., The Civilian and the Military: A History of American AntiMilitarist Tradition (Colorado Springs, 1972), p. 115. See also Francis P. Prucha, Americanizing the American Indian: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian,” 1880-1900 

(Cambridge, MA, 1973). 

28 
by day by the force.”@ He was one of a minority of opposition 

members who kept insisting that the Mounted Police was only a temporary expedient to be disbanded when white settlement began in 

earnest. Significantly, only a very few Canadian politicians and journalists, almost all of them in eastern Canada, ever condemned that 

enormous power confided in the Mounted Police.50 The usual criticism was the annual cost of the force. 

In the United States, eastern humanitarians and western expansionists could at least find common ground in condemning the tyranny 

or inefficiency of the army and its officers. Western interests were 

vehemently argued in state and territorial assemblies and in Congress. 

In Canada, the price of a tranquil west was apparently a benevolent 

police despotism, with the officers of the force sitting in judgment on 

charges laid by their men against white and Indian alike. Not until 

1887 were the first members of an independent judiciary appointed for 

the Territories. In that year, the territorial council was transformed 

into an elected assembly; a further ten years would pass before the 

assembly won the cherished powers of responsible government. Paid 

and administered from Ottawa, the Mounted Police remained largely 

immune from local pressures and, as long as Sir John A. Macdonald 

was alive, it could depend on a powerful guardian against attempts to 

subvert its authority or discipline for political ends.51 Settler hostility 

to the N.W.M.P. as “whiskey police” or, during the 1885 campaign, 

as “gophers” was at least comparable to American criticism of the 

army on the frontier; but it did not substantially influence government 

policy. When Commissioner L. W. Herchmer was under remorseless 

fire from a swarm of angry western newspapers, an earnest suitor for 

his position was assured: “Sir John always stands by and defends an 

‘official’ and makes every allowance for peculiarities of temper and 

disposition-and I may say even unpopularity, provided the official’s 

actions are satisfactory.”52 Herchmer was sustained. 

In the decade between its arrival and the grim years before the 

1885 outbreak, the Mounted Police could help the Indians adjust to 

the constraints of the treaty system with only occasional concern for 

49Canada, House of Commons Debates, September I, 1891, p. 4820. 

5‘k C. MacLeod, “The Mounted Police and Politics” in Dempsey, Men in Scarlet, pp. 

101-5. 

s’Jennings, “Indians and the Law,” pp. 57-65. 

s2Fred White to Colonel W. D. Otter, May 18, 1890, cited in Desmond Morton, The 

Canadian General: Sir William Otter (Toronto, 1974). p. 139. 

29 
the impact of white settlement. The early years, when buffalo were 

still plentiful, the tribal structure still had resilience, and the police 

were sufficiently trusted that a couple of constables could make an 

arrest in the heart of an Indian camp, could not last. While Canadians 

had been suitably apprehensive about the arrival of Sitting Bull and 

his band of Sioux in the aftermath of the Little Big Horn, the ensuing 

relations between the Indians and Superintendent James Walsh rapidly became part of a self-congratulatory mythology for both Canada 

and the Mounted Police.53 

If Ottawa had shown some inventiveness in creating the 

N.W.M.P., other features of its western policy bear a dreary resemblance to American practice. Canadian dealings with Indians, through 

the treaty system, land surrenders, annuities, agents, and land reserves, had a certain family resemblance to American methods, if 

only because both were a heritage of pre-Revolutionary British administration.54 Like the American Indian administration, the Canadian 

department was not immune from political patronage, speculation by 

minor officials, and ill-informed penny-pinching by remote bureaucrats 

like the notorious Lawrence Vankoughnet.55 Faced with the enormous and unfamiliar responsibility of feeding the Indians following 

the failure of the buffalo, Ottawa and most of its officials were unequal to the task. The best of them, Cecil Denny, a former N.W.M.P. 

inspector, resigned in disgust. Pressed to reduce public spending, Ottawa officials found logical economies by reducing rations, substituting bacon for beef on the Blackfoot reserves, dismissing junior employees.56 

It was the era of starvation after 1879 and the civil government’s 

inability to deal with it that cost the Mounted Police its original standing with the native people. Obliged to defend insensitive and sometimes incompetent officials from the wrath of starving Indians, the 

force no longer appeared an even-handed dispenser of justice. The 

influence of the chiefs, which had been enormouslv elevated bv the 

53Turner, Medicine Line, op. cit.; “Sitting Bull Tests the Mettle of the Redcoats” in 

Dempsey, Men in Scarlet, pp. 61-76. See also S. W. Horrall, The Pictorial History of 

the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Toronto, 1973), pp. 70-74; MacLeod, Mounted 

Police, pp. 30-32. 

54Taylor, “Indian Policy,” pp. 19-22; Morris, Treaties, pp. 9-12, 16. 

%ee Stanley, Western Canada, ch. XIII; Hugh A. Dempsey, Crowfoot: Chief of the 

5l;tckfeef (Edmonton. 1972). pp. 108-145. 

%C. E. Denny, The Law Marches West, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 1972), pp. 204-5; Dempsey, 

Crowfoot. pp. 161-62. 

30 
arrival of the police, plummeted with the waning of the buffalo. By 

1883 making an arrest required a small military operation. The arrival 

of the Canadian Pacific Railway and of speculators in the vast grazing 

lands suddenly opened up by the government aggravated a problem 

created by destitution.57 

In 1885 came the explosion. Still, the uprising was a half-breed 

rebellion, not an Indian war. Support for Louis Riel was concentrated 

in the Metis settlements near Prince Albert. Only in the Cree bands of 

Poundmaker and Big Bear were more than a small minority of Indians 

involved. It was the white settlers, panic-stricken by memories of the 

Minnesota massacre or the Sioux wars of the 1870s, who fled to the 

police forts and spread their terror by telegraph as far as Winnipeg. 

Only at Frog Lake, where nine whites and half-breeds were murdered, 

was the terror justified. Few Indians joined Louis Riel at Batoche; 

most of them pillaged whatever the settlers had abandoned and waited nervously for retribution they knew would follow. Within 3 

months of the outbreak, the campaign was over with the loss of about 

80 lives.58 

For the Mounted Police, expanded to 500 men on the eve of the 

only Indian war in Canada, the 1885 operations brought little glory. 

Most of the force, hurriedly concentrated in the troubled district, 

spent the campaign waiting for orders and protecting the white settlement at Prince Albert. At Fort Pitt, Inspector Francis Dickens, a sad 

son of the great author, allowed civilian men, women and children to 

surrender to the Indians and then loaded the remaining policemen on 

a barge and fled downstream. At Battleford, where about 800 ablebodied men, women and children were jammed into a fort facing approximately 120 Indians, Inspector W. S. Morris used his telegraph to 

send piteous appeals for help. More redoubtable officers, like Superintendent Herchmer and Inspector Sam Steele, demonstrated unusual 

fortitude and leadership.59 However, it is hard to disagree with General Middleton, the British officer responsible for ending the campaign 

57Atkins, Maintain the Right, pp. 1%-211. See Settlers and Rebels: Official Reports of 

the Norfh- West Mounted Police, 1882-1885, facsimile edition (Toronto, 1973), passim. 

SsOn the campaign, see Stanley, Western Canada, pp. 327-380; Desmond Morton, The 

Last War Drum: The North West Campaign of 1885 (Toronto, 1972); and, from the 

viewpoint of a contemporary participant, C. A. Boulton, Reminiscences of the NorthWest Rebeh’ons (Toronto, 1886). 

59See Atkin, Maintain the Right, pp. 217-253. 

31 
so quickly, that when good well-trained troops were needed, the 

Mounted Police did not qualify.60 

Middleton’s solution was to transform the force into mounted 

infantry, clad in workmanlike khaki uniforms and firmly under military discipline. Instead, it was as apparent to Canadians as it was to 

Americans that the era of Indian wars was over, and there was no 

need for a military garrison in the northwest. There was discernible 

pressure for the elimination of the Mounted Police, an issue brought 

to a head in 1889 when the government got proposed pensions for 

members of the force.61 At last, with the Indians planted disconsolately on their reserves, the tide of white settlement-began to have 

political consequences for the Mounted Police. Liquor prohibition 

became the bitterest issue until liquor was licensed in 1892. “Why 

any Mounted Police officer should dictate to any Canadian citizen as 

to what and when he should drink is more than any fellow can tell,” 

complained the Fort MacLeod Gazette in 1887;62 most Westerners 

would have agreed. A constable, posted in full uniform to watch a 

notorious Prince Albert saloon, was arrested and fined $25.00 for vagrancy by a locally-appointed magistrate. Another magistrate insisted 

that there was no proof that liquor was an intoxicant and declared 

Calgary a wide-open town.63 Since the force’s own records indicate 

that some of its more senior officers were notoriously heavy drinkers, 

the struggle to keep the Canadian west dry was almost hopeless, at 

least until the triumph of women’s suffrage in 1916 brought a new 

army into the fray.64 

Although the liquor issue provoked continual conflict within the 

Mounted Police and between the force and civilians, the prestige of 

the force grew steadily. Exaggerated accounts of its prowess brought 

recruits from all the corners of the British Empire and it became the 

mOn Middleton and the N.W.M.P. during the 1885 campaign see Middleton to Caron, 

May 2, 1885, Public Archives of Canada, Caron Papers, vol. 199. See also Canada, 

Department of Militia and Defence, Report upon the Suppression of the Rebellion in 

the North-West Territories and Matters in Connection Therewith in 1885 (Canada, Sessional Papers, 1886, no. 6a. p. 5); Telegrams of the North-West Campaign, 188.5 edited 

by Desmond Morton and R. H. Roy (Toronto, 1972), pp. Ixxxi, xcii, 230, 357. 

“Canada, House of Commons, Debates, March 21, 1889; April 15, 1889. See MacLeod, 

“Mounted Police and Politics,” pp. 103-4. 

62Fort MacLeod Gazette, February 21, 1887. 

“Atkins, Maintain the Right, pp. 274-77. 

MOn the later history of the issue and correction of the notion of a quiet, law-abiding 

Canadian west, see .I. H. Gray, Booze: The Impact of Whiskey on the Prairie West 

(Toronto, 1972); and Red Lights on the Prairie (Toronto, 1971). See MacLeod, Mounted Police, ch. X. 

32 
beneficiary of the sentimental adulation that marked the late heyday 

of British imperialism. Commissioner L. W. Herchmer, appointed in 

1886, may have been loathed by officers and men, but he restored 

discipline, improved training, equipment and welfare, and outfought 

most of his critics.65 Of Herchmer’s enemies, the most remorseless 

was Nicholas Flood Davin, an Irish poet, an editor, and Conservative 

member of Parliament for Assiniboia West. Davin’s grievance began 

when Herchmer’s brother fined him $50 for bringing liquor into the 

territoriesph but it easily encompassed the entire Herchmer family 

and reached a climax in a sensational judicial investigation of 137 

separate allegations against the commissioner. Herchmer emerged 

with honor and reputation intact. What is significant about the Davin 

charges is that the editor-politician felt obliged, for the sake of his 

political career, to accompany his assault on Herchmer with the most 

fulsome praise for the N.W.M.P. as a whole. Moreover, despite his 

claim that the commissioner was a tyrant, hated across the west, not 

a single member of Parliament, Westerner or easterner, rose to second 

his allegations.67 One suspects that Davin would have found more 

friends if he had sat in the US Congress. 

The fundamental critics of the force, R. C. Macleod has argued, 

tended to come from western Ontario and to be heirs of the Clear 

Grit tradition with its clear links to American democratic ideology. 

The most articulate of these was David Mills, a former Liberal cabinet minister who attempted in 1877 to negotiate Sitting Bull’s return 

to the United States. Mills’ philosophy was evident when he attacked 

the proposed police pension bill in 1889: “I say that a man who has 

served fifteen years and, much more, twenty-five years in the force, 

would be utterly unfit for any other pursuit in life afterwards. The 

hon. gentlemen know that a man who has served a great many years 

in the idle life of a soldier or policeman becomes, so far as industrial 

pursuits are concerned, a poor member of the community.”68 Later, 

Mills argued that interposing the police between the whites and the 

Indians and providing for their welfare frustrated the natural law of 

the survival of the fittest. The Americans, he insisted, had managed 

their Indians more wisely.@ 

65Atkins, Maintain the Right, pp. 257-273; R. B. Deane, Mounted Police Life in Canada: A Record of Thirty-One Years’ Service, 1883-1914(London, 1916), pp. 30-42. 

660n Davin, see McLeod, “Mounted Police and Politics,” pp. 99-105. 

67The Davin debate may be found in Canada, House of Commons, Debates, March 31, 

1890, pp. 2674-99. 

@Ibid., March 21, 1889, p. 770. 

691bid., May 16, 1892, p. 2688. 

33 
Such commitment to Social Darwinism, common enough in 

American debate on Indian policy, was rare in Canada. Indeed, there 

was relatively little debate in Parliament or elsewhere beyond the 

time-honoured propositions that economies could be made and that 

officials would be more prudent and successful only if they were chosen from the party not currently in power. The Indian as an equal citizen was hardly conceived save by a few idealists or radicals. In 1885, 

as part of an ingenious extension of the franchise, Sir John A. Macdonald proposed to include all the Indians in the electorate. With a 

rebellion about to begin, the proposal could hardly have come at a 

less propitious moment and the absurdity of votes for Indians (as well 

as for certain categories of women, which Macdonald also proposed) 

provided the Oplposition with ammunition for a successful filibuster. 

Of course, Macdonald did not expect the Indians to become independent yeomen voters, assessing each party on its merit. He expected 

them to be marched to the polls under the guidance of dependable 

Conservative Indian agents.70 

When the L,iberals finally returned to power in 1896, both the 

reserves policy and the Mounted Police survived the transition. In an 

aggressive campaign to attract immigrants to the Canadian west from 

the United States, Britain, and Europe, the presence of a firm, kindly, 

authoritarian force became a major Canadian selling point. Older settlers were reassured that the Mounted Police guaranteed that the 

newcomers woulld rapidly appreciate and respect the principles of British justice. Discovery of gold in the Klondike gave the N.W.M.P. a 

new frontier just as the old one was running out. Canadians could 

soon take appralpriate mythological pride in the relative order and 

respectability of Dawson and the Yukon territory in contrast to the 

sordid regime of “Soapy” Smith at Skagway, Alaska.” 

Pressed by jeering Tories in 1897 to state whether power had 

indeed altered hlis party’s attitude to the Mounted Police, the new 

Liberal prime minister rose to the bait. He was, Sir Wilfrid Laurier 

confessed, “inclined to be rather conservative with regard to this 

force.”72 So, indeed, were most Canadians. Perhaps the Mounted 

’OOn the Indian franchise, see J. E. Chamberlin, The Harrowing of Eden: White Attitudes Toward North American Natives (Toronto, 1975). pp. 200-202 and passim; Morris 

Davis and Joseph Krauter, The Other Canadians (Toronto, 1971), pp. 12-14 (The Indian 

franchise was withdrawn by the Liberals in 1898). 

71Atkin, Maintain thie Right, pp. 298-359. A personal account with appropriate flourishes, is s. B. Steele, Forty Years in Canada: Reminiscences of the Great North-West 

(London, 1915). pp. 288-337. 

72Canada, House of Commons, Debates, May 10, 1897, p. 2039. 

34 
Police deserved only incidental credit for avoiding Indian wars in 

Canada: it was after all the US Army that demonstrated the invincibility of white weapons. It was easier to mediate the contact of white 

and Indian when the settlers came in a trickle, not an expected flood. 

Examined closely, there was little to choose between the blue-clad 

soldiers below the border and the red-coated Canadian policemen. 

Both were shabbily treated by the government; both could furnish 

ample evidence of human frailty; both lived at odds with the surrounding communities, white and Indian. 

Many nations are in love with their army; fondness for a police 

force is so rare as to be almost a perversion. For Canadians, the excuse must be that, almost absent-mindedly, they had created a national institution in a country that really has very few of them. By the 

turn of the century, Canadians took extraordinary pride in offering 

the world what they called the “last, best West.” They could be excused for believing that their Mounted Police had made it so.73 

73MacLeod, “Mounted Police and Politics,” p. 113. 

35 
Commander Charles Wilkes, the “naval apostle of Manifest Destitiy.” 

(Courtesy of USAF Academy Library) 

36 
THE NAVY ON THE FRONTIER 

RAYMOND G. O’CONNOR 

The frontier for the United States Navy was both continental and 

global. I The navy opened, and provided means for maintaining relations with countries bordering the seven seas. While the naval frontier 

may not have influenced American institutions to the extent that 

Frederick Jackson Turner claimed for the continental frontier, the 

navy brought oversea frontiers closer to home and provided reciprocal exchange which has broadened and often modified the character 

of societies and civilizations. Most of the western hemisphere ceased 

being a part of the frontier of Europe, as Walter Prescott Webb contended, not simply because of the development of capitalism and 

democracy, but because the US Navy presented a tangible and at 

times formidable barrier to continued domination and further exploitation. Essentially, the navy enabled Americans to choose between insularity from or contiguity with other lands. The impact of this freedom of choice with its long term influence on American thinking may 

have an even more lasting effect on the nation than that evisioned by 

the Turner thesis. 

Aside from the suppression of piracy in the Caribbean, certainly 

a vital American maritime frontier, the navy contributed to the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. Its valiant efforts in the Quasi-War 

with France and against the Barbary Powers helped convince Napoleon that the United States was not a paper tiger. President Thomas 

Jefferson, however ambivalent his views on the navy, was apprehensive that France might close the Mississippi to traffic. He asked for 

and received from Congress on February 28, 1803 authorization to 

build a number of river gunboats to maintain freedom of navigation. 

Bids were invited to construct vessels at Pittsburgh, Marietta, and 

‘President James Monroe said of the Navy, “Capable of moving in any and every 

direction, it possesses tht: faculty, even when remote from our coast, of extending its 

aid to every interest on which the security and welfare of our Union depends.” Message of January 30, 1824 to the House of Representatives, in American Stare Papers: 

Naval Affairs, I (Washington, 1834), p. 907. A convenient summary of the various 

squadron dispositions maLy be found in Robert G. Albion, “Distant Stations,” U.S. 

Naval Institute hoceedin,gs, LXXX (March 1954). pp. 265-73. 

37 
Louisville to provide a naval force on the Ohio-Mississippi channels 

to protect produce and settlers, a force that never materialized as the 

purchase and transfer of the Louisiana Territory was consummated. 

During the War of 1812 the navy performed admirably on the 

frontier. Alfred Thayer Mahan may have been exaggerating when he 

stated that naval victories on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain gave the 

American envoys at Ghent “the preponderance of military argument,” and that “Perry and McDonough averted from the United 

States, without further fighting, a rectification of the frontier.”2 Many 

factors contributed to the British decision to modify their original 

demands. Nevertheless their dropping the sine qua non of an Indian 

buffer area and “revision of the boundary line between the United 

States and the adjacent British colonies” was related, at least to some 

degree, to the military situation resulting from naval successes. Inland 

water victories further demonstrated to the Indians that their cause 

was lost, and helped save the Old Northwest Frontier for American 

pioneers. In the south, an American squadron on Lake Borgne, 

Louisiana, by its presence and determined resistance, delayed the British attack on New Orleans for approximately a week and enabled 

General Andrew Jackson to prepare his defenses. The repulse of the 

British invasion, as Harry L. Coles put it, “settled the future of 

Louisiana and, ultimately, of Florida as well.”3 

A naval station had been established at New Orleans in 1804 to 

protect the lucrative commerce from the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, and within two years some 20 gunboats were engaged and thwarting the designs of freebooters masked as privateers. In 1816, when 

settlers in Georgia were being harrassed by Indian raids from Spanish 

Florida and war with the Creek tribes seemed imminent, the government decided to erect a fort on the Apalachicola River north of the 

Florida line. Army transports were to proceed up the river through 

Florida territory carrying supplies and munitions, and Commodore 

Daniel T. Patterson, at New Orleans, ordered units under his comZA. T. Mahan, Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812, 2 vols. (Boston, 1905), 

11, pp. 100-101. See also Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North 

America, 1815-1908 (Berkeley, 1967). p. 5; and R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: 

Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 vols. (Bloomington, 1951), I, p. 110. 

3Harry L. Coles, The War of 1812 (Chicago, 1%5), p. 236. Jones contended that his 

efforts at Lake Borgne delayed the British advance by ten days. Claim of Master 

Commandant Thomas ap Catesby Jones To a Pension on Account of a Wound Received in Battle, American State Papers: Naval Affairs, 111 (Washington, 1860), pp. 

895-%. John K. Mahon puts the delay at “about six days” in his The War of 1812 

(Gainesville, 1972). p. 356; and a delay of one week is ascribed in U. T. Bradley, 

“Thomas ap Catesby Jones: A Personality of the Days of Sail,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, LXIX (1933), p. 1155. 

38 
mand to provide an escort “up the Appalachicola [sic] and Chatahoochee [rivers], to such point or points as may be required.”4 The trip 

involved passing a former British fort that had been taken over by 

fugitive American Negro slaves and some Indians, who on one occasion attacked a boat’s crew. General Andrew Jackson had determined 

that “this fort must be destroyed,” and he directed Brigadier General 

Edmund P. Gaines to “notify the Governor of Pensacola of your 

advance into his Territory and for the express purpose of destroying 

these lawless Banditti.”s 

Two navy gunboats, under Sailing-Masters Jairus Loomis and 

James Bassett arrived at what was known as Negro Fort and coordinated an assault with an army detachment. On June 27, 1816 in a 

heavy exchange of fire, a hot shot from one of the gunboats struck 

the fort’s magazine, and the resulting explosion destroyed the fort 

and killed some 270 of the 300 defenders.6 Thus what could have 

been a bloody attack by the soldiers was rendered unnecessary, and a 

source of irritation to Americans and Spaniards was eliminated. This 

incident may not illustrate Mahan’s dictum about the decisiveness of 

combat on inland waters, but it made a significant contribution to 

peace on the Georgia-Florida frontier. 

When Jackson invaded Florida in 1818 in pursuit of Indians and 

renegades who had raided American territory and sought refuge on 

Spanish land, he received support from naval vessels out of New Orleans operating along the Florida coast. That Jackson appreciated the 

assistance provided by the navy is revealed in his letter of January 

10, 1820 to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. When Spain delayed 

ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaty, President James Monroe contemplated occupying Florida by force. Jackson, asked by Calhoun for 

a war plan, gave a detailed response that called for “A strong Naval 

escort . . . for the protection of our Transports and [which] may be 

advantageously employed in the reduction of St. Marks and St. Augustine.”7 

4Commodore Patterson to Lieutenant Commandant Crawley, June 19, 1816, American 

State Papers: Foreign Relations, IV, p. 559. 

5Jackson to Gaines, April 8, 1816, edited by John Spencer Bassett, Correspondence of 

Andrew Jackson, 7 vols. (Washington, 1928-1935). 11, p. 239. 

6Report of Sailing-master Jairus Loomis. August 13, 1816, in American State Papers: 

Foreign Relations, IV, pp. 559-560; and Application for Prize Money on the Destruction of a Fort, Communication to the House of Representatives, March 24, 1818, in 

American State Papers: Naval Affairs, I, p. 502. A good account of the incident is John 

Spencer Bassett, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 2nd ed. (New York, 1916), pp. 238-39; 

and Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 1 vol. ed. (Indianapolis, 1938), p. 

275. 

’Jackson to Calhoun, January 10, 1820, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 111, pp. 2- 

6. The quote is on page 4. 

39 
The acquisition of Florida and continued piratical activities in the 

Caribbean prompted the establishment of a West India squadron in 

1822, about the time that Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry, commanding 

officer of the USS Shark, raised the American flag over Key West 

and claimed the territory for the United States. The following year, 

when Captain David Porter assumed command of the squadron, five 

flat bottomed barges were acquired, each equipped with 30 oars. 

Dubbed “the mosquito fleet,” the barges were named the Mosquito, 

the Gnat, the Midge, the Sandfly, and the Gallinipper-“insects,” as 

Maclay put it, “with which their crews were destined to be unpleasantly familiar.”g (While this mosquito fleet was created to combat 

freebooters, the name came to be associated with vessels manned by 

navy crews in the Second Seminole War.) Meanwhile the Florida 

Legislative Council petitioned for a naval depot at Pensacola to “afford a more complete command over the commerce of the Gulph [sic] 

of Mexico” and “in time of war give efficient aid in the defence of 

New Orleans as well as additional security to Louisiana, Mississippi 

and Alabama by presenting a formidable barrier by which inroads 

through West Florida would be checked and prevented.”9 

As the new Florida frontier became more attractive to American 

settlers the government decided to remove the Seminole Indians, and 

in 1835 a naval vessel was assigned to transport the natives to another 

homeland in the west. About the same time an army column under 

Major Francis L. Dade was ambushed and massacred, and a series of 

coordinated Indian attacks revealed a determined effort to resist the 

migration. The acting governor of Florida appealed for naval assistance, and in 1836 received a commitment from the navy which would 

last for some 6 years until the government decided to leave the remaining Seminoles in the Everglades. During this period the navy, 

operating in shallow water craft including canoes, developed through 

tortuous experience a strategy of riverine or inshore warfare, and 

eventually functioned in close cooperation with the army. A diary 

kept by Passed Midshipman George Henry Preble reveals in considerable detail the hardships and frustrations of a naval expedition into 

the Everglades in 1842 led by Lieutenant John Rodgers, whose report 

concluded: “On the 11th of April, we returned to Key Biscayne, having been living in our canoes fifty-eight days, with less rest, fewer 

luxuries, and harder work than fall to the lot of that estimable class 

EEdgar Stanton Maclay, A History of the United States Navy From 1775 to 1898, 2 

vols. (New York, 1898), 11, p. 30. 

9Memorial to the President by the Legislative Council, September 2, 1822, in Clarence 

Edwin Carter, ed., Territorial Papers of the United States, XXII, Horida, 1821-1824 

(Washington, 1956), pp. 521-528. 

40 
of citizens who dig our canals.”IO A typical Preble entry read, “Today officers as well as men have been compelled to wade in the mud, 

saw-grass, and water, and assist the sailors in dragging the canoes.”ll 

It was scarcely the kind of seafaring life envisioned by the crews of 

the vessels from which this “landing force” came, although some of 

the sailors brought this arduous duty on themselves by signing community petitions for naval aid against the Indians in exchange for a 

“glass of grog.”l2 So, again, the navy was directly involved in pacifying the frontier, and performed a task for which the army admitted 

it was unprepared. Meanwhile the West India Squadron was charged 

with preventing Indians from raiding the Florida keys from the mainland (a practice that bothered the Floridians and the federal 

government)l3 and naval officers were accused of interfering in local 

elections in Florida. 14 

In describing the march of Americans across the continent, historians have listed successive frontiers, those of the trapper and trader, the rancher, and the farmer. On the Pacific Coast the navy helped 

create a contiguous “sea frontier.” The first American warship to 

round the Horn and enter the Pacific Ocean was the frigate Essex in 

1813. Pursuing the British Pacific whaling fleet, the Essex, under the 

command of Captain David Porter, cruised as far west as the Marquesas Islands.15 Subsequently naval vessels were dispatched to the Pacific in support of American interests, and, as one historian put it: 

“The realization of Manifest Destiny on the west coast was partly the 

IOQuoted in George Henry Preble, “A Canoe Expedition Into the Everglades in 1842,” 

Tequesta, no. 5 (January 1946), p. 32. 

“Ibid., p. 35. 

I2George E. Buker, Swamp Sailors: Riverine Warfare in the Everglades, 1835-1842 

(Gainesville, 1975), p. 51, footnote 5. This comprehensive account of the navy’s role in 

the Second Seminole War elaborates on strategic and tactical innovations and draws 

some parallels with the Vietnam War. See also John K. Mahon, History of the Second 

Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainesville, 1967), who concludes “The navy also gained 

valuable training” and “played a larger role in this than in any other Indian war,” p. 

322. 

I3The Secretary of War to the Governor of Florida, September 10, 1840, in Carter, 

ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, XXVI, Florida, 1839-184s (Washington, 1962). pp. 213-14. 

I4lbid., p. 325, footnote %. For navy purchases and attempts to purchase timber land 

in Florida and Louisiana see American State Papers: Naval ARairs, 111 (Washington, 

”David F. Long, Nothing Too Daring: A Biography of Commodore David Porter, 1780- 

1843 (Annapolis, 1970), pp. 8off.; Patrick W. Strauss, “Captain David Porter: Pioneer 

Pacific Strategist,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 93 (February 1%7), pp. 158-160. 

1862), pp. 917-958. 

41 
result of these operations. Indeed, investigation has shown clearly the 

intimate relationship between the development and westward expansion of the United States and American utilization of the Cape Horn 

route to the Pacific.”l6 

Warships were first assigned to the Pacific Station on a regular 

basis in 1818. They were placed under a commodore in April 1822. 

During the Van Buren administration American merchants in California petitioned the government to station a warship in California waters for protection from Mexican injustice. In response to this request, the Pacific Squadron was augmented by additional ships, and 

the commodore was ordered to assist Americans in California. In 

June 1840, the sloop St. Louis, under Commander French Forrest, 

proceeded to Monterey and secured legal rights for about 60 American and British citizens who had been arbitrarily imprisoned by the 

local authorities for allegedly plotting an independence movement.17 

Meanwhile, the expedition commanded by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, 

which departed from Hampton Roads on August 18, 1838, reached 

Puget Sound in 1841 and sent a party overland to rendezvous with the 

ships at San Francisco. Much information about the country was 

gathered and its publication stimulated interest in California. 

In 1842 a most notorious American initiative took place with the 

abortive naval seizure of Monterey and the announced occupation of 

Upper California.18 While the incident has its humorous aspects, it 

should be noted that the irrascible Commodore Thomas ap Catesby 

Jones was acting on the basis of information from a variety of 

sources indicating that the United States and Mexico were at war and 

that the British were preparing to attack California. His action was 

consistent with the responsibilities of a naval officer on distant station 

when communications with Washington took months to reach their 

destination, and he would have been derelict in his duty if he had not 

behaved as he did under the circumstances. His indiscretion demonstrated the military weakness of the Mexicans, and may have convinced authorities in London, Washington, and Mexico City that Cali- 

~~ ~ 

I6Raymond A. Rydell, Cape Horn to the Pacific: The Rise and Decline of an Ocean 

Highway (Berkeley, 1952), p. viii. 

”Robert Erwin Johnson, Thence Round Cape Horn: The Story of United States Naval 

Forces on Pacific Station, 1818-1923 (Annapolis, 1%3), p. 57; Dudley W. Knox, A History of tbe United States Navy (New York, 1936), p. 159; Hubert H. Bancroft, The 

History of California (San Francisco, 1884-1890), IV, p. 36. 

IsGeorge M. Brooke, Jr., “The Vest Pocket War of Commodore Jones,” Pacific Historical Review, XXXI (1962). pp. 217-233; James High, “Jones at Monterey, 1842,” 

Journal of the West, V (April 1966), pp. 173-186. 

42 
fornia was ripe for the picking. Jones was relieved of his command 

but neither court martialed nor reprimanded, and in 1845 President 

James Knox Polk wrote him that “there has been no disposition to 

visit you with punishment of any discription for conduct actuated by 

such elevated principles of duty.”l9 

When Commodore John D. Sloat assumed command of the Pacific Squadron his secret orders from Secretary of the Navy George 

Bancroft read: “Should you ascertain beyond a doubt, that the Mexican Government. has declared war against us, you will at once employ 

the force under your command to the best advantage.” In addition, 

the Secretary said, “If you ascertain with certainty that Mexico has 

declared war against the United States, you will at once possess yourself of the port of San Francisco, and blockade or occupy such other 

ports as your force may permit.”zo Arriving at Monterey on July 2, 

1846, 2 weeks after the Bear Flag Republic was declared, Commodore 

Sloat earned the scorn of the leaders of this revolt, of the impetuous 

Captain John C. Fremont, and of historian Allan Nevins. The latter 

castigates Sloat for his “inexcusable timidity” and “preposterously 

belated action” in waiting until July 7 to occupy Monterey and order 

the commanding officer of the USS Portsmouth, in San Francisco 

Bay, to seize Yerba Buena.21 No doubt the Commodore recalled the 

embarrassing experience of Commodore Jones, and had reread his 

instructions to “ascertain beyond a doubt” and “with certainty” that 

Mexico had declared war. According to historian Robert Wilden 

Neeser, Sloat “acted with all the required energy and promptitude. ’ ’22 

In any event, Commodore Sloat began the conquest of California, which was continued and completed under the forthright direction of Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Years later, Secretary of the 

Navy George Bancroft, writing of the acquisition of California, said, 

“As we had a squadron in the North Pacific, but no army, the meas19Quoted in ibid., p. 175. 

20Quoted in Johnson, Thence Round Cape Horn, p. 72. 

z*Allan Nevins, Fremont: Pathmarker offhe West(New York, 1939). p. 272 

**Robert Wilden Neeser, “The Navy’s Part in the Acquisition of California, 1846- 

1848,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings XXIV (1908), p. 268. 

43 
ures for carrying out this design fell to the Navy Department.”23 

Further, it appears that naval activities along the Pacific Coast for 

nearly 30 years helped convince other nations, especially England and 

France, that this area was in effect a United States preserve. 

In some respects the occupation of California following the 

conquest proved more of a challenge to the navy than had the war. 

The first alcalde of San Francisco under the American flag was Lieutenant Washington A. Bartlett, US Navy. But the institution of a new 

system of law and the preservation of order was rendered virtually 

impossible by the explosive gold rush. The crews of warships were 

depleted by desertion to the gold fields, and by the use of the ships’ 

men to control Indians and police settled areas.24 Even the contentious Commodore Jones, now returned to command the squadron, 

was unable to halt the exodus in spite of the most repressive measures. At this time Congress was in the process of enacting legislation 

to prohibit flogging as a punishment in the navy, and Captain Samuel 

F. Du Pont predicted, “As soon as the abolition order was read on 

board any ship in the Pacific, the crews would seize the vessel and 

head for the California gold fields.”25 The Reverend Walter Colton, 

the Alcalde of Monterey, wrote of a breakfast at his home where, 

bereft of servants, “A general of the United States Army, the commander of a man-of-war, and the Alcalde of Monterey, [were] in a 

23Quoted in Nevins, Fremont: Pathmarker of the West, p. 246. One writer concludes, 

“Strangely enough, the conquest of California by the United States could not have 

been accomplished when it was had not these naval forces been present.” Oakah L. 

Jones, Jr., “The Pacific Squadron and the Conquest of California, 184-1847,’’ Journal 

of the West, V (April 1%6), p. 187. Josiah Royce contends that Commander John B. 

Montgomery, commanding the USS Portsmouth, is the unsung hero of the seizure of 

California. Josiah Royce, “Montgomery and Fremont,” Century Magazine, XIX, New 

Series (November 1890 to April 1891), p. 780. The lack of enthusiasm for land operations is revealed by one sailor, who upon return to his ship wrote, “Here we are at last 

and God grant we may never have to go ashore soldiering again.” Joseph T. Downey, 

The Cruise of the Portsmouth, 1845-1847: A Sailor’s View of the Naval Conquest of 

California, edited by Howard Lamar (New Haven, 1%3), p. 235. 

240ne expedition was dispatched to defend Sutter’s Fort from a rumored Indian attack. 

Fred Blackburn Rogers, Montgomery and the Portsmouth (San Francisco, 1958), pp. 

25Harold D. Langley, Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1798-1862 (Urbana, 

1%7), p. 175. Jones himself was not immune from the gold fever or land speculation. 

C. Norman Guice, ed., “The ‘Contentious Commodore’ and San Francisco: Two 1850 

Letters from Thomas ap Catesby Jones,” Pacific Hstorical Review, XXXIV (August 

77-78. 

1%5), pp. 337-342. 

44 
smoking kitchen grinding coffee, toasting a herring, and peeling onions.”*6 

From the time that Commodore Stockton, on August 17, 1846, 

proclaimed himself Commander-in-Chief and Governor of California, 

the navy played a prominent role in domestic affairs.27 The navy assumed primary responsibility for the protection of the territory, participated in its administration, and aided in its development. A naval 

station was established at Monterey in 1847 and a navy yard was authorized at Mare Island in 1852. As Secretary of the Navy Abel Parker Upshur had said, naval expenditures “gave employment to industry, encouragement to enterprise, and patronage to genius.” Warships 

guarded steamers carrying gold, and at the request of San Francisco 

merchants Commander Cadwalader Ringgold conducted surveys of 

the California coast in 1849-50. His findings, published in A Series of 

Charts, with Sailing Directions. . . To the Bay of San Francisco 

(185 l), and Correspondence to Accompany Maps and Charts of California, proved invaluable to mariners, businessmen, and settlers.28 

During the 1850s vigilante committees sprang up in response to lawlessness in California, and in 1856 the governor asked the military 

authorities to intervene. The army commander refused, as did Captain 

David G. Farragut, who claimed it was a matter beyond his jurisdiction. But the captain of the sloop USS John Adam dropped anchor 

off San Francisco and by threat of bombardment secured the release 

of prisoners from the local vigilante group.29 California’s eligibility 

for statehood was hastened by the navy’s efforts, and the continued 

presence of American warships and their crews served as a constant 

reassurance to Californians during these troubled days. 

To the north in the disputed Oregon Territory, the first naval involvement occurred when John Jacob Astor decided to set up a headquarters near the mouth of the Columbia River to pursue the fur 

trade. The expedition by sea left New York on September 8, 1810 in 

a ship commanded by Lieutenant Jonathan Thorn, US Navy, on leave 

for this purpose. He was escorted early in the voyage by the USS 

Constitution to prevent harrassment by the Royal Navy searching for 

26Walter Colton, Three Years in California(New York, 1850). pp. 247-48. excerpt in The 

American West: A Source Book, edited by Clark C. Spence (New York, 1%6), pp. 

165-66. 

27For the impropriety and illegality of Stockton’s establishment of a civil government, 

see K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846-1848(New York, 1974), pp. 168, 174, 176. 

ZAUan Westcott, “Cadwalader Ringgold,” Dictionary of American Biography, edited 

by Dumas Malone, 22 vols. (New York. 1946), XV, p. 617. 

29Johnson, Thence Round Cape Horn, pp. 107-8 

45 
British seamen. Senator Thomas Hart Benton declared that this settlement was “done with the countenance and stipulated approbation of 

the government of the United States,” and that “an officer of the 

United States Navy. . . was allowed to command his [Astor’s] leading 

vessel, in order to impress upon the enterprise the seal of nationality.”30 In 1813, when Astor learned of an impending British attack on 

Fort Astoria, the government ordered the frigate Adam to the mouth 

of the Columbia, only to divert it for other duty. Astor then sold the 

fort to a British firm, but after the war he sought its return, as did the 

United States government. On July‘l8, 1815 secretary of State James 

Monroe notified the British charge that the post would be reoccupied. 

After some two years of delay the sloop-of-war Ontario, James Biddle 

commanding, was ordered in September 1817 to proceed to the Columbia River and reassert American sovereignty over the territory. 

These orders were carried out, and although the matter of returning 

the fort was settled later by negotiation, the Ontario was the first 

American naval vessel to enter the area. Biddle used this opportunity 

to explore portions of the Pacific Coast.31 

The next naval encounter with the Pacific Northwest occurred 

when the expedition commanded by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes spent 

nearly four years-August 18, 1838 to July 6, 1842-exploring the Pacific 

Ocean. Arriving on the northwest coast in April 1841, Wilkes charted 

harbors and the coastline, sent parties into the interior of the Oregon 

territory, and discouraged settlers from seeking independence. In his 

report, Wilkes wrote of “the terrors of the bar of the Columbia,” 

where one of his vessels, the Peacock, was beaten to pieces. By his 

account of the hazards facing mariners attempting to enter the mouth 

of the Columbia River and his glowing descriptions of the harbor at 

Puget Sound and the lush Willamette Valley, Wilkes played a decisive 

role in establishing the northwest boundary at the 49th parallel and in 

popularizing the appeals of this area to settlers. “These shores which 

hitherto were little more than myths in the world’s mind,” said Hubert Howe Bancroft, “were now clothed in reality.”32 Because of the 

impact of Wilkes “praising the agricultural and commercial potential 

30Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years View, 2 vols. (New York, 1854), I, p. 109 

31Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast, 2 vols. (San Francisco, 

1884), I, pp. 143-44, 201-2; 11, pp. 290-94; J. B. McMaster, A History of the People of 

the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War, 8 vols. (New York), IV, pp. 

412-74. 

32Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast, I, p. 684. But Bancroft is critical of 

Wilkes for not making the most of his exploring opportunities. 

46 
of the Willamette Valley,” Geoffrey Smith declared him “a naval 

apostle of Manifest Destiny.”-” 

Mounting interest in this vast but little known area was reflected 

in 1841 when for the first time the geographical mission of vessels on 

the Pacific Station was defined. The squadron was to cover “All the 

west coast of America, and westward from the meridian of Cape 

Horn to the 180th degree of longitude; and southward between those 

meridians to the South Pole.”34 This pronouncement neither extended 

nor restricted-what the ships on the Pacific Station had been doing, 

but it more clearly delineated the area of responsibility, that portion 

of the globe where the commodore could send his vessels without too 

much fear of court martial, and it revealed a specific government 

commitment to the coast and to the Eastern and Central Pacific as far 

west as Midway Island. In 1845, when the dispute over the Oregon 

boundary with Great Britain was approaching the crisis stage, the Pacific Squadron was ordered “to display the flag of the United States 

in the Columbia” and gather more information about the territory. In 

1846, responding to orders from the Secretary of the Navy, Commodore Sloat sent the schooner USS Shark to the Columbia River, 

where it shared the same fate as the Peacock some five years before. 

The Oregon Question was settled through negotiation. 

One of the navy’s more notable contributions in the pacification 

of the frontier occurred during the Indian War of 1855-56 in the new 

territory of Washington. The governor appealed for naval assistance, 

and the sloop-of-war Decatur, anchoring off Seattle on October 4, 

1855, furnished shore parties to seek out and destroy the hostiles and 

garrison the town in anticipation of an attack. The morning of January 26 found some seven or eight hundred armed Indians converging 

on Seattle, and the battle waged for about 6 hours before the attackers were repulsed with heavy casualties. During the following months 

the Decatur, along with the steam powered USS Massachusetts and 

other vessels that appeared subsequently, was employed in bolstering 

33Geoffrey S. Smith, “Charles Wilkes and the Growth of American Naval Diplomacy,” 

in Makers of American Diplomacy, From Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger, edited by Frank J. Merli and Theodore A. Wilson (New York, 1974), p. 148. “Recent 

scholarship. . . has accorded Wilkes a crucial role in determining the 49th parallel as 

our Northwest boundary.” William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Winning of the American West (New York, 1%6), p. 238. See also Geoffrey S. Smith, “The Navy Before Darwinism: Science, Exploration, and Diplomacy in 

Antebellum America,” American Quarterly, XXVIII (Spring 1976), pp. 41-55. Wilkes 

“demonstrated the ‘Pacific consciousness’ that characterized so many antebellum navalists, an attitude that in Wilkes’ words underlined the destiny of ‘this western coast’ 

to ‘fill a large space in the world’s future history.’ ” /bid..p. 45. 

MQuoted in Johnson, Thence Round Cape Horn, p. 58. 

47 
the defenses of Seattle and visiting other settlements and Indian reservations in the territory.35 One writer, with pardonable license, wrote 

that the Decatur “helped in no small way in making the great 

empire of the West and in rendering possible an immigration unequaled in history.”36 A more judicious appraisal would, nevertheless, 

assign the navy a significant role in convincing settlers and immigrants 

that the territories of the Pacific Northwest were reasonably safe for 

exploitation. 

One of the lesser known episodes of the navy’s frontier experience is its participation in the settling of Alaska. Congress made no 

provision for the governance of this huge wilderness occupied by 

Americans, Russians, Indians, and half-breeds, and army troops were 

withdrawn in 1877 as an economy move. In 1879 fear of an Indian 

uprising brought frantic appeals from the white residents for protection, and a British warship responded and remained until it was relieved by the schooner USS Jarnestown, under Commander Lester 

Anthony Beardslee. His somewhat vague orders from the Secretary 

of the Navy basically placed him in the position of a proconsul representing the United States government to maintain order and administer affairs. For 17 months Commander Beardslee, his crew, and a 

handful of Marines, worked closely with local dignitaries, restored 

peaceful relations between the various ethnic groups, prodded settlers 

into establishing local government, reduced crime, suppressed the 

production of a dangerous alcoholic beverage, and sponsored elementary education. Beardslee was succeeded by Commander Henry 

Glass, who continued the policies of his predecessor. Naval administration of Alaska so improved conditions that settlers began to bring 

their wives and children into the territory. With the passage of the 

Organic Act of 1884 the navy was relieved of its role in administering 

35For participant accounts see Gardner W. Allen, ed., The Papers of Francis Gregory 

Dallas, United States Navy: Correspondence and Journal, 1837-1859 (New York, 1917). 

The portion of Dallas’ journal relating to the Decatur’s experience in Washington Territory is on pages 199-211. An account by the then Passed Midshipman Thomas S. 

Phelps is included as an appendix, pages 266-299. 

36John H. Brandt, “The Navy as an Indian Fighter,” US. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

LVI (1930). p. 691. See also Truman Strobridge, “When the Navy Fought the Indians,” ibid., XCI (1%5), pp. 156-58. 

48 
affairs. But the psychological and practical stabilizing impact of its 

presence was not forgotten by the inhabitants of this last American 

frontier in the Northern Hemisphere.37 

This brief and scarcely definitive survey reveals that naval activities were not restricted to a maritime or seafaring frontier. The mobility of naval vessels permitted their dispersion to any existing or anticipated trouble spot that could be reached by yater, and provided the 

government with flexibility that often meant the difference between 

submission to or mastery of circumstances. The navy’s frontiers were 

successive-the unknown, the unexplored, the unsettled, the unpacified. The navy’s westward movement was across the Caribbean to the 

Pacific, where it continued to follow the setting sun and American 

aspirations. It operated on oceans, lakes, rivers, swamps, and dry 

land. It brought order where there had been chaos and civilization 

where there had been barbarism. The highways it traversed led to 

foreign and continental frontiers, and it served as an all purpose instrument for the expansionist urge that propelled thirteen colonies 

huddled on the Atlantic to hemispheric dominance and world supremacy. 

37Ted C. Hinckley, The Americanization of Alaska, 1867-1897 (Palo Alto, 1972). pp. 

131-38; Jeannette Paddock Nichols, Alaska: A History of its Administration, reprint 

(New York, 1%3), pp. 131-38; Henry Glass, “Naval Administration in Alaska,” U.S. 

Naval Institute Proceedings, XVI (January 1890), pp. 1-19; Me1 Crain, “When the 

Navy Ruled Alaska,” ibid., LXXXI (February 1955), pp. 198-203. “This rule,” says 

Crain, “which directly influenced the course of Alaska’s turbulent political history, 

furnishes one of the most unusual chronicles in Navy annals.” Bid., p. 198. 

49 
COMMENTARY 

The commentary in the second session concerned Desmond Morton's paper on 

comparison of Canadian and American frontier experiences. Robert C. Athearn, Professor 

of History at the University of Colorado, commented from the American perspective. Richard A. Preston, W. K. Boyd Professor of History and Director of Canadian Studies at 

Ihke Ilniversity. commented from the Canadian perspective. 

ROBERT C. ATHEARN 

In his paper Professor Morton makes several conclusions, among 

them that different approaches to peace-keeping on the Canadian and 

American frontiers were necessary, in part, because of different rates 

of settlement. He quotes Paul Sharp and Robert Utley on this point. 

Comparative population figures for 1880 and 1881 document his assertion. 

What might be added, from the American point of view, is that 

the Civil War, as well as the political impasse that preceded it, tended 

to dam up the process of westward migrations until that unpleasantness was settled. Despite counter-arguments to the effect that during 

those years the westering tendencies of Americans, especially those 

of military age, kept the movement alive, and that the mining frontier 

continued to have its attractions, the kind of settlement that seriously 

disrupted white-Indian relations did not effectively penetrate the west 

until after the war. In the post-war years, however, capital, both 

domestic and foreign, had a tendency to ignore the wartorn south, 

and to be drawn instead toward the undeveloped west. The 20 years 

that followed the close of the war saw most of the western lines 

emerge and with that development came the agrarian legions. 

It was during this period that the so-called Indian wars occurred, 

a series of police actions undertaken by a post-war army that was not 

trained for that type of duty and usually did not perform it very well. 

General William Tecumseh Sherman, in command of the high plains 

country in the immediate post-war years, admitted this freely, remarking that when the troops were obliged to act as a police force in 

difficulties between Indians and settlers the army usually came in for 

50 
severe criticism, particularly when efforts were made to prevent westerners from slaughtering Indians. Therefore, as he wrote in 1868, he 

had tried hard to avoid war, only to be “abused therefor by citizens 

generally, and even my soldiers felt I did not sympathize with them, 

when I restrained them from resenting insults and murders on them 

and their comrades, by the Indians.”l Phil Sheridan agreed that the 

army’s was a thankless task, commenting that it was almost impossible to satisfy the public in an Indian campaign because the enemy 

refused to stand still long enough to receive a fatal blow. Army men, 

accustomed to an enemy better grounded in the rules of formal warfare, found this kind of duty disconcerting and frustrating.? 

The American army’s problem was made even more difficult by 

the fact that, in a sense, it served as a police force in the west for 

another department of the government, that of Interior. When the 

Indians remained upon reservations managed by that department they 

were good Indians; when they strayed from those confines, or got out 

of hand at the agencies, calls were made for military assistance. In 

commenting upon this situation Professor Morton has said that “In 

the United States, prevailing interpretations of liberty and democracy 

and a recurrent suspicion of militarism repeatedly undermined the 

army’s attempts to resume control of Indian policy after 1849.” 

Perhaps more than a suspicion of militarism-an uneasy feeling 

that has simmered beneath the surface from the early days of the nation until present-it arose from the normal reaction to the military 

immediately following any war and the enthusiastic intervention of 

eastern humanitarians, many of whom were former abolitionists looking for a new cause. The recent attraction of this group to the antislavery issue now easily turned to the plight of the natives whose existence was threatened by the post-war rush into the west. The oldline abolitionists were experienced propagandists and their weight was 

felt among congressmen who were not averse to cutting military expenditures and were glad to have reasons for such actions supplied by 

important complainants. 

In comparing living conditions of the Mounted Police and the 

cavalrymen-the use of the term is somewhat misleading because a 

good many of the western outposts were manned by infantry as opposed to the expensive-to-maintain cavalry-Professor Morton refers 

to the badly constructed, cold and often unsanitary conditions in 

‘Robert G. Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West (Norman, 1956), p. 237. 

21bid., p. 313. See also Robert M. Utley, “The Frontier Army: John Ford or Arthur 

Penn?” in Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox (Washington, 1976), p. 142. 

51 
which men existed and the obsolete arms with which they were expected to combat the hostile plains Indians. While such comparisons 

no doubt are perfectly fair, and it cannot be argued well that these 

conditions did not exist, it should be mentioned that, in general, frontier life meant this kind of an existence for a good many Westerners 

in the early years of their settlements. Nor, until more recent times at 

least, have troops lived under particularly attractive conditions even 

in more settled portions of the country. The habitations of gold miners, for example, often were ‘I. . . temporary shacks, ill-constructed, 

frigid in winter and sometimes unsanitary,” to use Professor Morton’s description of the facilities assigned to the Mounted Police and 

the American troops. That they were regarded as constituting a hardship depended upon who had to endure them; in the case of the miners they lived that way because they accepted it as a part of the 

price they had to pay to pursue their trade. Military men complained 

because complaint was basic to military life, an antidote to the boredom of garrison routine. This does not deny the reports of the Inspectors General who frequently found western military living quarters 

deplorable; it does argue that such situations were not unique in the 

west, generally, or in military barracks elsewhere. 

With regard to personnel, Professor Morton comments that 

“There were excellent officers and men in both the American and 

Canadian forces in thle west. Frontier conditions, hardship and danger 

weeded out misfits and chronic failures.” With the first sentence, I 

agree; there were some excellent officers and enlisted men. With the 

postulation that frontier conditions weeded out misfits and chronic 

failures, I would take exception. Not a few of the officers were misfits who had done ve:ry little that was commendable in the late war 

and who spent the post-war days at the bottom of a bottle, hoping 

that time would pass quickly and retirement would materialize before 

alcoholism won the battle. Among the troops were enough who represented the dregs of society to cause comment both from their officers 

and from the civilians with whom they sometimes came in contact. 

Not infrequently, in the case of both officers and men, they stayed on 

in the post-war army because military life was absolutely all they 

knew and they had no choice but to take what assignments were given them, some of the duties being in remote western posts which 

were professional graveyards. 

Professor Morton’s comparison of Canada’s political system with 

that of the United States, in which he suggests that the former gave 

support to the Mounted Police while the American Congress showed 

very little enthusiasm for the army because of a long tradition of antimilitarism, gives food for thought. I think the explanation too simplis52 
tic. A number of forces were at work in congressional minds and 

emotions. While some members felt pressures from constituents sympathetic to the natives and antagonistic to the army, there were congressmen who complained about the administration’s habit of making 

treaties right and left with Indians, after which it was expected that 

Congress would pay the bills. General Sherman touched upon the 

complexity of the question when he remarked that the army could 

settle a good many of the Indian difficulties easily, but “Congress 

wants the patronage of the Indian Bureau and the Bureau wants the 

appropriation without any of the trouble of the Indians themselves.”T 

Further complicating the relationship with the Indians was the 

treaty system. Although it was terminated in the early 1870s, that ancient method of dealing with the natives added a dimension to an already difficult problem, the heritage of which lingered long after its 

abandonment. Therefore, it is possible to say that while anti-militarism influenced the application of Indian policy-if, indeed, the Americans ever really had one-it was only one of many threads in an intricate mosaic of governmental response to a problem Americans inherited from the British at the time of independence. So far as the army 

was concerned, its role was, of necessity, a difficult one and, as in 

any matter being debated publicly, that role had both its supporters 

and its critics. Alfred B. Meacham, well-known for his work in the 

Indian Rights movement, argued that at least half of the Indians needed no military supervision and that the natives generally regarded the 

army as an oppressor. In contrast, General Stephen Joselyn, who 

spent a great part of his career in the west, contended that the army 

was the best friend the western Indians ever had and that, as a rule, 

they were aware of this.4 

In his conclusions Professor Morton says that while the Mounted 

Police deserved only incidental credit for avoiding Indian wars in 

Canada, it was the US Army that “demonstrated the invincibility of 

white weapons” in the west. Earlier he commented that American 

“Arms and equipment were sometimes obsolete and often inappropriate for western conditions.” Perhaps his reference to white weapons was intended to be taken in the larger sense, something more 

than arms and equipment. His contention that “It was easier to mediate the contact of white and Indian when the settlers came in a trickle, not an expected flood,” comes closer to explaining the fate of the 

3Athearn, p. 307. 

4Robert Winston Mardock, The Reformers and the American Indian (Columbia, MO., 

1971), p. 165; Stephen Perry Jocelyn 11, Mostly Alkali (1953), p. 150. 

53 
American Indians. It was the mass, the sheer numbers, of settlers, 

not victorious soldiery, that smothered tribal remnants. I agree with 

Robert Utley’s statement that “Although the army may be credited 

with precipitating the final collapse of most of the Indian tribes, other 

frontier set tlers-trappers , traders, miners, ranchers, farmers, railroad 

builders, and merchants-share largely in the process that led to the 

collapse. They. rather than the soldiers, deprived the Indians of the 

land and the sustenance that left them no alternative to collapse.”s 

In another of his conclusions, Professor Morton holds that both 

the Mounted Police and the soldiers were shabbily treated by their 

respective governments and that both lived at odds with the surrounding communities, white and Indian. It would take further documentation to make a convincing argument in either of these cases. It already has been conceded that western troops, along with other westerners, lived a hard life. That theirs was unrewarding work, in a monetary sense or in terms of gratitude or even understanding by the 

American public, is hard to deny, but that could be said of many governmental employees. If this was shabby treatment, the western army 

was shabbily treated. Professor Morton’s statement that “Many nations are in love with their army; fondness for a police force is so 

rare as almost to be a perversion” should be applied more closely to 

the American situation. Certainly the Americans have not been in 

love with their army during the course of the nation’s development. 

They had had brief romances with it during wartime, followed by periods of sharply diminished ardor between wars, coolness that was 

regarded by the army family as one bordering upon neglect. If, then, 

the military normally was not looked upon with affection, and often 

without respect, and it was saddled with the task of policing an obstreperous but romantically regarded minority, it is small wonder that 

this branch of government felt aggrieved. It might even have called its 

treatment shabby. 

That army men lived at odds with surrounding communities, both 

white and Indian, is a generalization to which some exceptions may 

be made. It is arguable, and someone is going to do it in an interesting book yet to be written, that the officers moved freely in civilian 

communities and that there were numerous exchanges in social events 

between town and fort. A study of life at Fort Lewis, Colorado, for 

example, would show that officers stationed there generally were well 

received at nearby Durango and that the townsmen participated frequently in entertainments sponsored by the military. 

Wtley, p. 143. 
Enlisted men had a far harder time, generally, and it may be 

argued more cogently that they, as army representatives, lived at 

odds with white communities. As a rule girls who had any regard for 

their reputations simply refused to associate with enlisted men, and 

the men usually found their entertainment in bars and brothels. Controversies with local authorities, who tried to preserve municipal order, were not unusual. However, so far as being at odds with the 

Indians, the enlisted men frequently had little to do with them, except 

to fight them, and upon other occasions they simply ignored the natives. There were exceptions here, too. Young Augustus Meyers, stationed at Fort Pierre, Dakota during the 1850s, frequently visited an 

Indian camp near the fort. He and his fellow troopers watched Indian 

games with interest and tried to teach the natives some American 

favorites, one of which was poker. The latter effort met with some 

discouragements because the Indians admired the jacks, which they 

dubbed “chiefs,” more than they did the kings, and they insisted that 

any card, even a deuce, could beat a queen, which they argued was a 

mere woman. Meyers, who never had seen a “wild Indian” before, 

thought the Yanktonnais Sioux he visited quite inoffensive.6 He never 

felt at odds with them. Nor did a great many white settlers, not a few 

of whom rarely, if ever, saw an Indian. 

6Robert G. Athearn, Forts of the Upper Missouri(Englewood Cliffs, 1%7), p. 45. 

55 
RICHARD A. PRESTON 

The objective in comparing the Canadian and American frontiers 

is fourfold: First we are to consider whether there was, in fact, any 

difference between American and Canadian attitudes to, and policies 

in, western expansion, particularly in law and order and the treatment 

of the aborigines. Secondly, if we accept that a difference did exist, 

we must decide what form it took. Thirdly, we must attempt to explain why there was a difference. Finally, we must assess its significance. My part in this effort is described as “the Canadian dimension,” which I take to mean the Canadian elements and factors that 

made for difference, and Canadian opinion of that difference. 

Professor Morton’s comparative study has already effectively 

established that there was a difference, and also what it was. However, as he informed us in the opening paragraph of his paper, he concentrated his attention more on the Canadian scene than the American. He therefore covered much of the Canadian dimension. He outlined its history with effective documentation; and he provided a 

penetrating and balanced analysis. 

What I propose to do, therefore, is to discuss some inferences 

that might be drawn from some of the things he said, carry some of 

his major suggestions rather further than he did, and question some 

minor points. 

Dr. Morton’s thesis may be shown fairly by restating some of his 

conclusions as he expressed them in the course of his paper. Early in 

it he discussed the Canadian belief that there were differences in 

ideology, namely that Canada had a policy in the west consciously 

different from American policy and that this was derived from differences in “law, policy, and political philosophy.” He told us that in 

Canada conservative political values permitted the use of law and 

authoritarianism to protect the Indians; whereas in the United States, 

the American version of liberty and democracy, and American suspicion of militarism, led in effect to wars of extermination (he did not 

use that phrase, but I think he meant it). 

In the middle of the paper, however, he qualified this interpretation somewhat. He incorporated there the explanation given by some 

American historians that settlement at a later time, the effect of dem- 
onstrated American military superiority, and comparative sparsity 

of settlement in Canada, were also important factors. Hence he concluded that, “Zf the Canadian and American west developed differently, the sources of divergence must be found in time, law, and society.” 

Finally towards the end of the paper he returned to his former 

thesis, accepting contemporary Canadian opinion that Americans had 

managed their Indian policy in accordance with the principles of social Darwinism, “the survival of the fittest,” a policy rarely advocated in Canada. 

Professor Morton’s conditional statement that “if the Canadian 

and American west developed differently” may not actually indicate 

that he personally has any doubt about the existence of a difference. 

Nevertheless, he does at times seem to think that any difference was 

not solely, or perhaps even mainly, the result of consciously different 

philosophies and policies. 

Finally, both at the beginning and the end of the paper he asserted that, even though native policies in both countries may have been 

different, the present plight of Canadian Indians is the same as that of 

American Indians, a state of poverty and neglect. 

Professor Morton was perhaps too equivocal, too judicial, too 

much of a good scholar. Therefore, I will restate what may be called 

“the Canadian dimension,” giving more prominence to what I believe 

are widely-held Canadian views. 

First let me state what the actual difference was. Prcfessor Morton tells us that the acquisition of Indian lands by Canada bore close 

resemblance to American methods because both practices were derived from pre-Revolutionary British practice; but that there was 

nothing in Canadian policy like the Dawes Act used in the United 

States to deprive Indians of their common ownership of reservations. 

Since Britain and the American colonies separated in part because of 

differences over methods of western expansion, it is not surprising 

that, despite some similarities in the making of treaties and land surrenders, subsequent policy came eventually to include significant differences. However, the most important difference, as all authorities 

agree, was in the violence of the confrontation between white man 

and red man. Here Morton contrasts Weigley’s estimate of 943 military engagements in the American west between 1866 and 1895 with a 

mere six or seven (all connected with the North West campaign of 

1885) in Canada. Another Canadian source tells us that between 1868 

and 1882 the Indians inflicted over a thousand casualties on the US 

Army; and that the cost of Indian wars to the United States was an 

57 
astonishing $202,994,506.1 Canada could never have afforded such a 

drain of men and money at that stage of its development. We can 

accept therefore that the most important difference between the 

American and Canadian frontiers was that there were costly wars on 

the one hand, and inexpensive peaceful administration on the other.* 

The first question which we have to ask is to what extent this 

more peaceful alternative was made possible for Canada because the 

settlement of the Canadian west had come later than the parallel 

movement in the United States. It is true that during the 1880s and 

1890s settlement in Canada was sparser than in the American west. 

But, although settlement was thin in Canada, it had already grown 

enough to make Manitoba into a province; and there were others than 

the metis settled further west in Saskatchewan. So perhaps sparseness is 

not the complete answer. Secondly, we must ask if a peaceful Canadian policy was possible because the Americans had already demonstrated white military superiority? In this regard we should note 

that Custer’s defeat in 1876 showed that Indian military inferiority 

was still not fully established at a date when Canadian policy was already in effect. Although the victory of the force of 4000 Sioux and 

Northern Cheyenne at Little Bighorn in 1876 over a weak US cavalry 

force was followed by Indian fear of American reprisals, there is little 

reason to argue that the native peoples (who were well aware of the 

significance of the so-called “Medicine Line” or border) extrapolated 

their fear of American might into an area where they knew it did not 

penetrate. Putting these arguments together, the theory that the Indians had learned to respect the white man’s strength and so were more 

easily handled in Canada, does not jibe with the argument that the 

Canadian west was sparsely settled, nor with the circumstance that 

into the 1890s Americans continued to find them hostile. 

Hence, if time was a cause of difference between frontiers north 

and south of the 49th parallel, it was for other reasons than sparse 

Canadian settlement and demonstrated white military superiority. 

Canada came into the game late, it is true, but if time had been the 

only factor or the chief factor, it would possibly have worked to provoke a violent Indian reaction in Canada rather than the reverse. 

A better case could be made for geography, rather than for the 

passage of time, as the basic cause of the difference between the 

ID. McEachern, A Journey over the Hains (Montreal, 1881). 

*G. M. Hogarth, “The Canadian Military Tradition in Western Canada, 1870-1900,” 

(R.M.C., M.A., 1973), referring to E. J. Chambers, The Royal Northwest Mounted Police: A Corps History(Montrea1, l%), p. 5, n. l. 

58 
frontiers. After all, the later settlement of Canada was in part a consequence of geographic factors. There are even more important fundamental differences in the topography of the two countries than the 

fact that most of Canada has much more severe winters than does 

most of the United States. In the United States the chief barrier to 

the settlement of the west was the Appalachians. In Canada it was 

the Laurentian Shield. The Appalachians were a formidable obstacle: 

but once they were crossed in the late eighteenth century Americans 

entered rich cultivable land-and into conflict with the Indians. Beginning with Fallen Timbers that conflict lasted until the 1890s. 

The Shield in Canada was also formidable-but because of its 

extent rather than its height. The Laurentian Shield extends from the 

Atlantic to the prairies in mid-continent. It was in fact crossed earlier 

than were the Appalachians, but by traders rather than by settlers. It 

was the Shield north of the Great Lakes that penned Canadian settlement in the St. Lawrence and Lakes valley until after the middle of 

the nineteenth century, a century later than the Americans broke out 

of their coastal plains and began to settle the Ohio and the Mississippi 

basins. During that century, the US Army pushed Indian tribes into 

the Indian territories and, then, when it was discovered that that Indian territories also were capable of white settlement, out of most of 

them. The US Army was thus earning Indian hostility and building up 

a pattern of policy while traders to the north (first the French and later those of Hudson Bay) were going peacefully through Indian country between forts that were trading rather than military posts. For the 

Bay Company, like the voyageurs in the west, did not occupy Indian 

lands in the way American settlers did. Geography, which delayed 

settlement in the north for a century, also conditioned the Indians to 

expect different treatment north of the Medicine Line and at the same 

time provided a different precedent for later Canadian policy. 

But geography and the time lag were not the fundamental causes 

of a difference. They were only the conditions that made a different 

policy in Canada possible. They did not initiate the difference. As Dr. 

Morton suggested, the fundamental reason for difference in western 

policy was a difference between the philosophy of the American republic and that which Canada inherited from Britain. It was in this 

connection that Dr. Morton spoke of social Darwinism on the one 

hand and of Conservatism on the other. He also referred to the fact 

that nineteenth century British imperialism was not merely an expression of economic cupidity or of missionary zeal but was aimed at extending authority in order to protect native peoples against exploitation by rapacious individuals, British and others. We tend to forget 

that the peoples and tribes with whom western imperialism came into 

59 
contact did not have the political or legal institutions to cope with an 

invasion of foreign intruders keen on developing (or depriving them 

of) their natural resources. Imperialism, particularly that exerted by 

Britain, was thus in a sense beneficient for them and not iiivariably 

evil as is often assumed in this anti-colonial age. 

The imperialist heritage tended to restrain in Canada impulses 

which, as in the United States, could have led to concepts of Manifest Destiny and to the use of force. For Canadian policy in the west 

was directed more towards controlling the whites than towards suppressing the Indians. The North West Mounted Police marched 

against the whiskey traders rather than against the Indians. It matters 

little that, as Morton pointed out, Macdonald took that step to forestall American penetration into Canada’s new western heritage; or 

that the reason he opted for police, rather than for cavalry on the 

American model, was because he knew that Canada could not afford 

an American-type policy. Nor should Dr. Morton have given so much 

attention to the fact that Macdonald endured “several years” of disorders before he acted. When you consider that Canada acquired the 

west only in 1869, was faced by a rebellion the next year, and had to 

send a second force to Manitoba a year later, it is not surprising that 

Macdonald did not get around to deal with problems further west until 1873 when the Manitoba problem had been settled. More important 

than all these things is the fact that Macdonald’s policy was a projection of the basic philosophy of British imperialism in Canada. 

Before we examine that philosophy and its significance let us 

examine another theory. Some have suggested that the chief difference between American and Canadian policy is that in the former 

case the government followed settlement with an assertion of power 

in the Indian country while in the latter it anticipated it. However, 

Macdonald’s slowness to react to reports of disturbances in the west 

seems to suggest that this difference in the sequence of expansion 

was less important. One might add also that, although it is true that 

American settlers often flooded into the west faster than government 

could cope with the effects, the American army regarded itself as responsible for opening up new territory in advance of settlement and 

for providing security for incoming settlers and for travellers to new 

territories acquired beyond the Indian country.3 Therefore the different sequence of authority and settlement does not seem to be the significant cause of difference of policy and action in the two countries. 

3Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States and the Indians, 1865-1891 

(New York, 1973), p. xiii. 

60 
What is significant, as Dr. Morton suggested, is the spirit in 

which authority was exerted and the methods that were employed. 

There is a fundamental difference between the use of force by police 

and its use by the military. While police may properly exert only ;IS 

much force as is necessary to overcome the force that may be 

brought against them, no such inhibition controls the military, except 

insofar as it is necessary to conserve manpower and material for other purposes, a principle of war known as economy of force. Tackling 

the Indian problem was not invariably and inevitably a military problem. An unstable people, frightened as well as ferocious, the native 

peoples were of uncertain disposition, sometimes hostile, at other 

times friendly. Indian problems were often more akin to criminality 

than to enemy action. What was needed was something much more 

subtle than military force, a force that could isolate offenders and 

bring them to justice without arousing the opposition of all their fellow tribesmen; that is a police force rather than a military force." 

The US Army had to resort to force because Congress had 

adopted the policy of Manifest Destiny. The American army therefore 

went to the west in the spirit and with the methods that it would have 

used against a foreign foe that threatened the United States. But 

Congress did not provide the means to carry that policy out adequately. The US cavalry in the west was almost always understrength, 

barely sufficient for the formidable task of fighting the belligerent 

Indian tribes arrayed against it. However the army was big enough to 

attempt to carry out US policy. Its method was conquest in order to 

maintain the peace. But as a conventional military force it was unable 

to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. As a result retribution fell on guilty and innocent alike. Furthermore the army did not 

possess the legal powers to forestall and prevent problems. It asserted 

deterrence only by threat of major retribution, not by tackling problems at their source. 

The different ways in which American troops and Canadian police were deployed demonstrates the differences in their approach to 

their task. The US cavalry was organized in companies and stationed 

in military-type forts built for defense. It is important to remember 

that the US Army was in the west to deal with Indian tribes and not 

with white malefactors. The North West Mounted Police was charged 

with controlling both. The Mounted Police were distributed throughout the west in small detachments, usually in undefended police 

posts. In addition to dealing with specific instances of criminality, 

4lbid., pp. 10, 55-56; Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the 

Indians, 1848-1865 (New York, 1%7), pp. 345-49. 

61 
they operated a system of small routine patrols of one or two men 

which extended police influence peacefully. Nothing more effectively 

illustrates the difference between the two policies. Furthermore in the 

early days the police in Canada were also magistrates. They possessed extraordinary power to both apprehend criminals and sentence 

them. The kind of authority possessed by the Canadian police would 

probably have been challenged in the American territories had it been 

exercised from Washington to the extent that it was exerted from 

Ottawa. It would have seemed excessively arbitrary. 

So we can sum up the difference.in the Canadian and American 

approaches to western problems by saying that in Canada it was possible to extend federal police power into the remote parts of the territories, while in the United States such an extension of power wogld 

have been unacceptable to the citizenry although they expected the 

federal government to use maximum force against the Indians. As Dr. 

Morton has said, in Canada the power of the state was exerted to 

protect all minorities, while in the United States fear of undue federal 

power on the one hand, and emphasis on the rights of the individual 

citizen and local democracy on the other, led to the decimation of 

Indians rather than to the protection of their rights and interests. 

This difference in policy flowed from two very different concepts 

of the nature and function of the state. In Canada, as in Britain, the 

maintenance of law and order was regarded as the first imperative. 

This required protection of the individual and of minorities. In the 

United States, as a result of the Revolution, American democracy put 

emphasis on individual rights and liberties first; and majority interests 

overrode those of minorities that were not fully part of the political 

community. The result was a peaceful Canadian west that contrasted 

markedly with a violent American frontier. This is, I believe, the 

“Canadian dimension” in this comparison of Canadian and American 

experience on the frontier. 

That this Canadian experience on the frontier was a direct result 

of the nature of the Canadian state is, I believe, widely accepted in 

Canada, at least among scholars and intellectuals.5 But Dr. Morton 

seems inclined to qualify it, not merely by suggesting that geography 

and time-lag were important contributing factors in bringing it about, 

but also by asserting that the difference was not as stark as my outline of the “Canadian dimension” has claimed. For instance, when he 

noted that American historians like Paul Sharp drew attention to the 

peculiar phenomenon that the Canadian frontier was much more 

5See Hugh A. Dernpsey, The Scarlet Force (Toronto, 1972). 

62 
peaceful than the American because of Canadian policies and attitudes,6 he declared these Americans “over-generous.” Although he 

may have simply been reciprocating politeness to his Academy hosts, 

it should also be noted that he found Canadian claims savouring toQ 

much of “self-congratulation.” As a political cynic he cannot accept 

the thesis that Canadian western policy was all good and American all 

bad. Others have also pointed to the unreality of this rosy presentation of a “Canadian dimension” by showing that it suggests the impossible, that Canadian development of the west was the work of 

“monks, eunuchs, and vestal virgins interested only in debating such 

ethereal issues as free trade, the Manitoba schools question, and discriminatory freight rates.”7 James Gray, who expressed this opinion 

in those words, declared that booze and brothels were just as widespread in western Canada as they were in western United States. 

Nevertheless Gray added that in Canada the west was almost “unbelievably law-abiding,” so much so that when rum-runners conflicted 

they moved to sue rather than to shoot.8 The black-white contrast 

may be too sharp, yet the difference is apparently something more 

than two close shades of grey. 

This concept of Canadian experience in the west as an extension 

of the Canadian view of the state has had considerable expression in 

scholarly study and debate in Canada. It may be less well-understood 

or accepted in American intellectual circles. But there is reason to 

believe that it is also either not known to ordinary Canadians, or in 

danger of being forgotten by them. Pierre Berton, in his Hollywood’s 

Canada, showed that the American film industry has almost completely ignored Canada as a subject except insofar as it portrays the Canadian west (usually called “The Great North Woods”). He goes on to 

show that the image of the Canadian west which the movies invariably offer is completely false. What in pictures (although not always so 

named) is clearly meant to be western Canada is actually a reproduction of the American west. It has mounties who are portrayed as 

elected sheriffs dressed in red tunics, saloons with typical American 

western bars with swinging doors in territories which throughout most 

of their history were dry, and shoot-outs in the American western 

style. As there is no native Canadian commercial film industry, this is 

the only portrayal of their own west that has been seen by most Ca6Paul F. Sharp, Whoop-Up Country: The Canadian-American West, 1865-1885, 2 vols. 

(Minneapolis, 1955). 

’James Gray, Red Lights OR the Prairies (Toronto, 1971), pp. 11-12. 

*hid., pp. 2-3, 5, 134-135. See also his Booze: The Impact of Whiskey on the Prairie 

West (Toronto, 1972). 

63 
nadians for a half century.9 It is not surprising then, that many Canadians do not appreciate that Canada has important fundamental differences from the United States, both in the west and generally-differences which a distinguished American scholar, John Dickey, recently 

said must at all costs be preserved by the retention of an independent 

Canada because it is in the best interests of the United States.10 

Nothing is more important for the survival of an independent 

Canada than that both Canadians and Americans should understand 

and appreciate the reality of what I have called the Canadian dimension. They should appreciate the nature of western settlement in Canada and its relation to the creation of Canada. But there are many 

who doubt that reality. For instance, even Professor Morton in several places speaks of it as a “myth” and as “mythology.” Myth is a 

traditional telling of historical events that explains the accepted selfimage of a people and their present characteristics: While scholars 

and intellectuals are inclined to emphasize that myth is part of the 

makeup of a people, and assume that it may be a retelling of the past 

which cannot be verified but may have a high degree of probability, 

popular usage puts stress on the fiction angle. Dictionary definitions 

indeed define myth as “ostensible historical events”; and some definitions suggest the possibility of fabrication. In other places and 

connections, about which I will speak in a moment, Professor Morton 

uses “myth” in that sense as something that is untrue. Furthermore, 

his general proposition, “north of the 49th parallel the contrast 

[between Canadian and American experience in the west] is one of 

those self-congratulatory myths which build nations together” seems 

to show that he is somewhat skeptical about the importance and reality of the Canadian dimension. (In one way his statement is in fact 

quite inaccurate or erroneous in the way he expressed it, contrasting 

between beliefs held north and south of the 49th parallel. For the socalled myth is held by most intellectual Canadians throughout the 

country and not merely in the west. And in eastern Canada, the vast 

majority, live south, and not north, of the 49th parallel.) 

Two other instances of Professor Morton’s usage of the word 

myth show that he does tend to use it to mean “fictitious.” One such 

use is in connection with the alleged reason for the red tunics of the 

police-because the Indians remembered red as the uniform of the 

Queen’s troops. His second use of myth to mean fictitious concerns 

9Pierre Berton, Hollywood’s Canada: The Americanization of our National Image (Toronto, 1975). 

loJohn S. Dickey, Canada and the American Presence (New York, 1975). 

64 
the theory that Macdonald adopted the idea of sending police because 

he thought the Americans might react against the appearance of Canadian troops in the west. 

Professor Morton tells us that in this latter case, the susceptibilities were Macdonald’s, not the Americans. He may be right in saying 

that that theory is untrue. But I am less sure that he is right that there 

was no deliberate adoption of red tunics because the Indians regarded 

scarlet as the uniform of British soldiers. He reminds us that the last 

British soldiers in red tunics in the west were the 300 men of the 6th 

Foot who were at Fort Carry from 1846 to 1848, 25 years earlier. He 

believed that the introduction of the scarlet was due only to the desires of Governor Morris and of Adjutant General Colonel Robertson 

Ross, the latter a noted devotee of military finery. He and I have 

argued this point before. I may add here that Ross stated in a report 

that he wanted to clothe the Militia in Winnipeg in red tunics in 1872 

for the same reason, namely that it would impress the Indians: and 

Dr. Morton has told me that he had found no evidence that orders for 

those tunics for the Militia ever went to Ottawa. However, I believe 

that this does not disprove the statement that the Indians regarded red 

as the dress of their friends, the Queen’s soldiers. What I think Dr. 

Morton has failed to understand is, that, among a people who do not 

communicate in writing or possess written records, oral tradition lasts 

a very long time. Thor Heyerdahl’s fascinating book on his investigations at Easter Island shows that oral tradition lasted there through 

many generations and that it preserved extraordinary details of remote events and circumstances.ll It seems to me that the preservation of the association of red tunics with friendly soldiers is not merely not surprising but actually very probable, especially when it is 

remembered that, even though the last British troops to leave Canada 

in 1870 were green-clad riflemen and blue-clad artillerymen, the last 

redcoats had left the east only two or three years earlier. And information about such things as the color of soldiers’ tunics travels easily 

in a primitive society both geographically and through generations. 

This question is raised here not merely to revive in public an old private dispute between us, so much as to show that Dr. Morton uses 

the word “myth” to mean untrue. If that is the sense in which he 

uses it in connection with the Canadian dimension in the west, I believe that it is misleading-perhaps even dangerous. 

I have dealt with the importance of this debate to the understanding of Canada and the Canadian question as a whole. It remains to 

consider one other point raised by Dr. Morton, namely the fact that 

”Thor Heyerdahl, Ako-Mu: The Secret of Easter Island (New York, 1974). 

65 
Canada’s Indians appear to have derived little advantage in the long 

run from the different policy pursued by Canada in the west. In some 

ways the policy was in fact not very different. Although there was no 

Dawes Act, Indians on Canadian reservations who receive annual 

bounty money and are guaranteed certain rights of communal possession, lose all those rights if they leave voluntarily. Furthermore, conditions on many Canadian reservations are as deplorable as in the 

Untied States. Finally there is the familiar intellectuals’ complaint 

about western society’s destruction of Indian culture without providing an alternative except assimilation, a complaint which Indian orators repeat with considerable heat. 

Indian grievances in Canada are expressed in Heather Robertson’s Reservations are for Indians12 and in Harold Cardinal’s The 

Unjust Society: the Tragedy of Canadian Zndians.13 The arguments in 

these books are similar to those of disadvantaged groups everywhere. 

So in Canada, today, supported by government funds, lawyers are 

searching old treaties to find evidence that Canadian Indians, like 

Alaskan Indians, ought to receive compensation for the loss of their 

tribal lands and for the nonfulfillment of treaties. 

Canada’s paternal protective policy thus appears in the long run 

to have brought no better fate to the Indians. Why this is so is a difficult question which raises problems of a. fundamental nature about 

the contacts between peoples of very different cultures and economic 

and political capacities. The question is raised here merely to suggest 

that the present grievances of Canadian Indians, whatever their 

cause, may be one factor that now helps to cast new doubt on whether there was, indeed, any really significant difference between the attitude and policies of Canadians and of Americans to the problems that 

arose from contact with North American aborigines in the course of 

western expansion. The Canadian dimension may be important for 

Canada and Canadians; but in view of the conditions of present day 

Indian society, it appears to mean little for the Indians. 

I2Heather Robertson, Reservations are for Indians (Toronto, 1970). 

I3Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canadian Indians (Edmonton, 

1971). 

66 
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION 

R. H. Roy, University of Victoria, commented on the importance 

of Hudson’s Bay Company in Canadian frontier history. The company was in Canada from 1670 through much of the 19th century and its 

charter gave it governmental rights including rights to wage war, 

make peace, sign treaties, and deal with the Indians. Roy noted that 

in order to be successful fur traders, the Hudson’s Bay Company had 

to maintain good relations with the Indians and establish law and OTder in western Canada. He concluded that the Hudson’s Bay Company “played a major role” in Canadian treatment of the Indians, indeed, in Canadian and American relationships with the Indians on 

both sides of the border. Desmond Morton replied that Hudson’s Bay 

Company was a very important factor in Canadian relations with the 

Indians. He suggested, however, that the importance of Hudson’s 

Bay Company traders was more in their intermarrying with the natives than in their maintaining the law. 

Robin Higham, Kansas State University, emphasized the need 

for more study of the impact of veterans all over the world on their 

getting out of the services and becoming colonists. 

Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish, USAF (Ret.), pointed out that 

many historians, particularly colonial historians, have contended that 

American attitudes were formed in the colonial period so strongly that 

they divided the United States ever since. Could the different attitudes of Canadians and Americans towards Indians have roots in different colonial experiences? Americans, ever increasing in number, 

fought Indians and supplanted them as white settlement moved west. 

Canadians, first French and then British, were few in number and 

forced to ally with the Indians to resist the Americans. Desmond 

Morton replied that there was something to the point made by General Parrish. The French and then the British did mobilize Indians to 

fight Americans. Indian chiefs like Tecumseh and Joseph Brandt are 

heroes in Canadian history, and while Canadians could be quite racist 

in their attitudes towards Indians, they nonetheless always felt that 

Indians, unlike some other groups, were capable of great things. Indians were, above all, a fighting race, and were admired as such. 

67 
Robert M. Utley, National Park Service, asked Professor Preston 

whether the Canadian experience would have been all that different if 

Canadian westward expansion had proceeded at the same rapidicy and 

intensity as the American westward movement. Preston repiied that 

more rapid Canadian development would have created a different 

Canada. There is plenty of evidence of racism and thoughts of manifest destiny in 19th century Canada, but Canadians were simply too 

few in number to transform such ideas into effective policy. Preston 

concluded that “if the population had been the same, if the geography 

had been the same, no doubt the policy would have been the same.” 

Reverend Francis Paul Prucha, S.J., Marquette University, reminded symposium participants that American humanitarian reformers in the post-Civil War period made continual reference to the Canadian Indian policy, that while modern scholars may have forgotten 

the Canadian experience in dealing with Indians, such was not the 

case in the late 19th century. 

Richard Preston suggested that overconfidence in one’s strength 

might be a source of danger in relations between competing societies. 

He pointed to the British experience in New Zealand as an example. 

In 1870 New Zealand settlers were at war with the Maoris because of 

the settlers’ practice of seizing Maori lands. After the British removed their garrisons from New Zealand settlers who had been bold 

and seemingly irreconcilable when backed by the power of the British 

Army became conciliatory and the war ended. 

68 
IMPACT OF THE MILITARY 

ON THE FRONTIER 

Martin Ridge, Professor of History at Indiana University and Editor of the ./ourm/ of 

American History, chaired the third session which addressed topics of particular interest 

to historians of the American west. Two papers were read during the session. The first, by 

Richard N. Ellis of the University of New Mexico, was entitled “The Political Role of the 

Military.” The second, by Jack D. Foner of Colby College, was entitled “The Socializing 

Role of the Military.” A third paper on the general topic of this session was delivered at 

the symposium banquet by Marshall Sprague, a noted Colorado historian. Sprague’s paper was entitled “The Military and the Colorado Frontier.” Commentary on the papers of 

Professors Ellis and Foner was presented by Roger 1,. Nichols of tbc University of Arizona. 

Richard Ellis concentrated his study on the political activities of the military in the 

New Mexico and California territories. He described the experiences of New Mexico and 

California under military governments and concluded that while the army occasionally 

generated political activity, as it did during the military administration of these territories, 

on the whole the military was relatively unimportant in frontier politics. He noted that 

Westerners understood that the army was an essential institution on the frontier, that they 

accepted it with little question,. “Only rarely was the army directly involved in frontier 

politics, and it was even less frequently a factor in politicizing the frontier population.” 

Jack Foner presented a brief survey of what he considered the “remarkably complex” interrelationship of the frontier and the army in the post-Civil War era. He noted 

“that the army was in the vanguard of western economic development,. . .that the army 

had a profound impact on the frontier.” But his principle concern was with the impact of 

the frontier on the army rather than the impact of the army on the frontier. He argued 

that in general the military did not appear to have been “particularly successful in adapting to frontier conditions.” An exception to this generalization was the experience of the 

army’s black troops who not only adapted well to the frontier, but saw it as an opportunity to improve their lot in society. Foner concluded his paper with a call for more study of 

“the relationship between military policy and western economic development, the genesis 

of the army’s policies toward labor, the impact of black troops on black life in this period, 

and the political pressures affecting military decision-making.’’ 

At the symposium banquet Marshall Sprague described what he considered to be the 

three most significant military episodes in Colorado frontier history. These were Zebulon 

Pike’s expedition in 1806-07 which helped define the southern boundaries of the Loujsiana 

Purchase and bring attention to what was to be the Colorado Territory, Gilpin and Chivington’s victory over Sibley’s Texans at Glorietta Pass in 1862 which saved the Colorado 

gold fields for the Union, and the Meeker massacre of 1879.which resulted in removal of 

most of the Ute Indians to reservations outside of Colorado and for practical purposes 

ended “Indian troubles” in the state. 

69 
-- I 

I - 

A page from the Kearny Code. With this code General. Stephen Watts 

Kearny established a military government in New Mexico. (Courtesy 

of the Museum of New Mexico) 

70 
THE POLITICAL ROLE OF THE 

MILITARY ON THE FRONTIER 

RICHARD N. ELLIS 

In the spring of 1976 the United States Senate conducted hearings on the nature of army actions at Wounded Knee Creek in South 

Dakota in 1890. The hearings received national attention as one senntor criticized the frontier army for its participation in the battle of 

Wounded Knee. The atmosphere created by the Viet Nam War and 

the anti-war movement had, during the preceding decade, generated 

criticism of the army that utilized past events such as the Sand Creek 

massacre and the battle of Wounded Knee to support modern antiarmy attitudes. Because of such recent political criticism of the frontier army, this is perhaps an appropriate time to assess the relation of 

the army and politics on the frontier. 

Until the 1890s the United States Army was primarily a frontier 

institution, and it might be expected that if the army was involved in 

politics or caused political controversy that it would be on the frontier. In general, however, the army was an unimportant issue and did 

not serve to politicize the frontier population. When the army did 

become politically important, it was most often because of chronic 

Indian problems in a particular area, or because it did something 

unique such as administering government in California and New Mexico. 

The conquest of California and New Mexico in 1846 provided 

unique tasks for military officers, for both were governed by occupation forces until legal acquisition in 1848 and continued under military 

rule until the Compromise of 1850. There previously had been brief 

periods of military government in Louisiana and Florida, but neither 

caused the dissatisfaction evident in California and New Mexico. 

Americans in California expected representative government and 

as early as 1846 two newspapers were espousing that demand. In 

71 
August the Alfa California urged “the immediate establishment of a 

well organi7ed government.” The first issue of the Californian carried 

an editorial entitled “Civil Government” and recommended a constitutional convention and the election of a delegate to Congress. The 

C~ilifornin Star also advocated civil government. 1 As months passed 

there were frequent complaints regarding the form of government and 

the continuation of Mexican laws and political institutions.2 

Americans demanded all the rights of American citizens and became more insistent after learning on August 6, 1848 of ratification of 

the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Although Colonel Richard Mason 

predicted that Congress would quickly create territorial government, 

some Californians, apparently sensing the impact of the slavery issue 

in Congress, were not so sure, and the question of government was 

under constant discussion. Some advocated the organization of a 

temporary civil government and argued that the military commander 

had the authority to take such action. The Californian urged that the 

people take action if Mason, the Colonel in charge, refused.3 

Popular discontent increased with the gold rush although Mason 

and his successor, Bennett Riley, agreed with the need for civil government. In an editorial entitled “Shall We Have a Civil Government?” 

the Criliforniri Star and Californian urged popular action in December 

1848.4 In December and January public meetings were held and a 

number of communities announced in favor of provisional government and recommended a general convention for that end. In February some 400 to 500 citizens of San Francisco met to create a legislative council for the town because of the ineffectiveness of local government.5 

Bennett Riley, who became military governor in April 1848, ap- 

‘Quoted in Joseph Ellison, “The Struggle for Civil Government in California, 1846- 

1850,” California Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1 (1931), p. 16. The history 

of military government in California is found in Theodore Grivas, Military Governments in California, 1846-l8-59 (Glendale, 1963). 

?Ellison, pp. 16-18, 23 

31bid., pp. 129-130. 

41m.. p. 138 

(See House Mi.sce//;ineoil.s Document 44. 3 I st Congress. 1st Session (Serial 581). Grace 

E. Tower, Sentiment in California for American Government and Admission into the 

Union (Los Angeles, 1927), pp. 39-44. Peter Burnett, a participant in the movement for 

civil government recalled, “We were of the opinion that we had the right to establish a 

de facto government , . _” Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer (New 

York. 1880). p. 294. 

72 
preciated the reasons for discontent with military rule and tried to 

reduce prejudice against military government by announcing that he 

was, in fact, civil governor. He also took steps toward the creation of 

popular government, and when it was learned that the last session of 

Congress had failed to act on the California issue, he proposed that 

the people of California develop a state constitution for congressional 

approval and on June 3, 1849 issued ;I call for ;I constitutional convcntion.6 

Californians met and voted unanimously that the new government 

should go into operation with ratification and without waiting for congressional approval. Riley doubted the legality of such action but explained to his superiors that unless he received orders to the contrary 

he would follow the wishes of the people and surrende! his civil powers to the new executive. “Whatever may be the legal objections to 

putting into operation a State government previous to its being acknowledged or approved by Congress,” he explained, “these objections must yield to the obvious necessities of the case; for the powers 

of the existing government are too limited, and its organization too 

imperfect, to provide for the wants of a country so peculiarly situated, and of a population which is augmented with such unprecedented 

rapidity. ”7 

Meanwhile in New Mexico the military also became involved in 

government, much to the distaste of the local population. Following 

the peaceful occupation of New Mexico, General Stephen Watts 

Kearny authorized the development of a body of laws that became 

known as the Kearny code. Kearny functioned as governor for it brief 

period before appointing Charles Bent to the ofice, whereupon Kearny departed for California. 

When President James Polk announced the existence of new governments in New Mexico and California in his annual message to 

Congress in December 1846, it raised a storm of controversy and 

caused the repudiation of the government created by Kearny . Nevertheless, the government continued to function with army officers serving as governor from October 1848 until New Mexico became a territory in 1850. 

Even before legal acquisition of New Mexico in the Treaty of 

6“California and New Mexico,” House Executive Document 17, 31 Congress, 1st Session (Serial 573), pp. 233, 748. See also Burnett, pp. 311-12, 322, 330-31. 

’“California and New Mexico,” pp. 819, 850-51. 

73 
Guadalupe Hidalgo citizens voiced their opposition to military government, and in December 1847 the legislature established by the Kearny 

code called a convention that met in Santa Fe in October 1848 and 

petitioned Congress to establish civil government.* In September of 

the following year a convention met in Santa Fe and sent a delegate 

to Congress with instructions to seek regular territorial status for New 

Mexico. The convention complained of the “paralyzing effects of a 

government undefined and .doubtful in its character,” but Colonel 

John Washington, who had assumed the position of “civil and military governor,” refused to recognize the actions of the convention 

and Congress refused to seat the New Mexico delegate.9 

New Mexicans, like their counterparts in California, demanded 

the rights and privileges of American citizens and opposed the continuation of military government, but while they were united in opposition to military governors, they were divided into two political factions-one favoring statehood and the other territorial status. The latter group included men who associated with the military government 

and undoubtedly received support from army commanders. In 

this instance the presence of military governors provided a divisive 

political issue.10 

By 1850, despite bitter political factionalism, opposition to military government was so great and political disputes so serious that 

Colonel John Munroe called a constitutional convention that met in 

May. A constitution was ratified by an overwhelming majority of 6771 

to 39, indicating that both factions were able to unite to terminate military rule. The legislature also adopted a resolution against what it 

called the “sinking, ineffective and abhorrent” military government.11 

In New Mexico, as in California, the presence of military governors, especially after the end of the Mexican War, made the army a 

political issue. Americans considered military government unacceptable and demanded normal political institutions. In New Mexico, in 

particular, they protested the influence of the army in political factionalism. It is also noteworthy that in both areas military governors 

took positive steps toward the creation of civil government. 

SRobert W. Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 1846-1912 (Albuquerque, 

9House Report No. 20.31st Congress, 2nd Session (serial 606), pp. 1-3 

IOLarson, pp. 29-32. 

]‘House Report No. 20, 31st Congress, 2nd Session (Serial 606), pp. 3, 6-7. 

1%8), pp. 14-15. 

74 
While these experiences with military government were not the 

only situations in which the army found itself in the center of political 

controversy, they were certainly the most notable. Except for the 

War of 1812, the Mexican War. the Civil War and the occupation of 

the south that followed, the primary task of the army was to protect 

white citizens on the frontier. This involved garrison duty in isolated 

posts, protecting routes of travel, and occasionally campaigning 

against Indians. The army also was active in exploration and road 

building. Despite the number of engagements with Indians there was 

never any question that the army, as small as it was, could ultimately 

crush any Indian resistance. There were complaints, usually about the 

inability of the army to prevent raids or to soundly defeat hostile 

groups, and army officers, especially in higher ranks, were sensitive 

to any criticism, but on the whole Westerners did not engage in organized and sustained attacks upon the army. The army and its relations 

with Indians did not serve as a major issue in politicizing the population or in dividing political parties or factions in frontier regions.!? 

There are exceptions to this generalization, and there were also 

instances in which the army became a topic of national and international discussion. Recurring proposals to transfer the Indian office 

back to the War Department caused considerable controversy. In debates on this issue, along with those on Indian policy and the role of 

the army in Indian affairs, Westerners tended to support the army 

while easterners were generally critical of the army’s treatment of 

Indians. 13 At the same time military campaigns against hostile Indians, particularly the Sioux and Apaches, generated diplomatic discussions about hot pursuit across international boundaries, but again 

these issues did not serve to politicize frontier citizens. 14 

Westerners did criticize the army for failing to control Indians 

120fficers frequently complained that they were attacked by both east and west. General John Pope is but one example. Richard Ellis, General Pope and US. Indian Policy 

(Albuquerque, 1970). pp. 134-35; House Executive Document 269, 41st Congress. 2nd 

Session (Serial 1426), p. 10. 

I3lndian policy was a major issue among Westerners and did politicize them. The Indian 

Office was constantly criticized by the western press, legislatures, and congressmen. 

Transfer was frequently debated in congress and by special interest groups. See Donald 

J. D’Elia, “The Argument Over Civilian or Military Indian Control, 1865-1880,” The 

Historian, vol. 24, no. 2 (1%2), pp. 207-225. An example of western support for transfer can be found in “Transfer of Indian Bureau.” House Report 240.44th Congtess, 1st 

Session (Serial 1708). pp. 5-6, 18-20. 

I4Albin C. Gluek, Jr., “The Sioux Uprising: A Problem in International relations,” 

Minnesota History, vol. 34 (1933), pp. 317-324; Clarence C. Clendenen, Blood on the 

Border: The Unired States Army and the Mexican lrregulars (New York, 1969), p. 100. 

75 
while at the same time demanding more troops and additional military 

posts, A recurrent proposal was that local troops should be raised to 

fight the Indians. Westerners argued that militiamen would be far 

more effective than regulars because they knew the country and were 

familiar with local Indians. “It is a conceded fact,” proclaimed the 

Santa Fe New Mexican in 1866, “that the New Mexican troops will 

accomplish twice the results. . . of any equal number of troops raised 

from any other portion of the Union.” Virtually every western state 

and territory made similar proposals time and again, although when 

local units did exist, they invariably proved to be ineffective.15 

The army did generate brief political debate when it was involved 

in something dramatic such as the defeat at the Little Big Horn, the 

massacre at Sand Creek in 1864, or the attack on a Piegan camp in 

Montana by Major Eugene Baker in 1870. It also received criticism 

when it opposed popular sentiment as it did in California and in the 

northwest where the army often protected Indians from attacks by 

frontiersmen. The army was subjected to political pressure when it 

was involved in long term hostilities in a particular area or when politicians chose to make the army an issue for political reasons. 

Excellent examples of continuous Indian hostilities, which also 

involved debates over Indian policy, are the Second Seminole War, 

relations with the Sioux in the 1860s, with Navajos in New Mexico 

Territory from 1846 to the 1860s, and with Apaches in Arizona from 

the creation of the territory in 1863 to the surrender of Geronimo in 

1886. The Second Seminole War, lasting from 1835 to 1842, became a 

political issue in Florida Territory and eventually became involved in 

the national debate on the institution of slavery. For a number of reasons, including the length of the conflict, it caused an anti-war movement somewhat similar to that of the 1%0s and 1970s.16 

The Sioux campaigns that followed the uprising in Minnesota in 

1862 were quite different. Demands for protection actually caused 

modifications in military strategy, but more importantly politicians in 

Dakota Territory became convinced that continued conflict retarded 

ISThe Santa Fe New Mexican (weekly), November 24. 1866. In 1870 the territorial legislature memorialized congress for local regiments. “Cavalry for New Mexico,” House 

Miscellaneous Document 95,41 st Congress. 2nd Session (Serial 1433). Annual Messages 

of Governor Richard McCormick, October 8. I866 and September 9, 1867, Department 

of State, Territorial Papers, Arizona. National Archives microcopy 342, roll I. 

I6John Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainsville, 1967), pp. 

76 

139-140, 266, 291-92, 297-98, 313-14. 
territorial growth. They in turn convinced Washington officials to seek 

a peace offensive despite army objections. 17 

In Arizona Territory the army was definitely a political issue. 

Arizona citizens continually petitioned Congress for better protection; 

governors personally lobbied with military commanders for more 

effective officers; political leaders sought the removal of unpopular 

officers; newspaper editors constantly debated the issue of the army. 

and Indian policy; public meetings were held to discuss the Indian 

problem; and in one instance a group of Tucson citizens actually massacred Apaches living under military protection at Camp Grant. The 

Apache problem, which involved the army, was clearly a long term 

issue in Arizona Territory, but it was not a divisive political issue.18 

Perhaps the best case study of the army and politics can be 

found in New Mexico Territory where the army and Indian policy 

were basic issues from the time of Kearny’s conquest in 1846 until 

1868. Kearny had promised protection from Indian raids, but he and 

his successors were unable to fulfill that promise. The period from 

1846 to 1863 was marked by a confusing sequence of raids, treaties, 

military campaigns, and disagreements between civil and military authorities.19 By 1860 combined efforts of the Indian office and the 

army to solve the “Navajo Problem” had failed, and according to one 

undoubtedly exaggerated report Navajos killed 300 people and made 

off with property valued at $1.5 million in 6 months.20 This led to 

charges of army inefficiency and a dispute between irate civilians and 

Colonel Thomas Fauntleroy, the departmental commander. At a 

public meeting in Santa Fe in August 1860 a resolution was adopted 

criticizing the army and calling for a regiment of volunteers. Later in 

the month at another mass meeting New Mexican citizens ignored 

Governor Abraham Rencher, voted to raise a regiment, selected officers, and actually sent some 500 men into the field.?! 

”Richard N. Ellis, “Political Pressures and Army Policies on the Northern Plains, 

1862-1865,” Minnesota History, vol. 42 (1970), pp. 43-53. 

‘*Annual messages of Governor McCormick, October 8, 1866, September 9, 1867, 

November 16, 1868, and McCormick to Seward, December 20, 1866, Department of 

State, Territorial Papers, Arizona, National Archives microcopy 342, roll 1. See also 

Jay J. Wagoner, Arizona Territory, 1863-1912: A Political History (Tucson, 1970). pp. 

103-5, 121-22, 124-132, 138, 141, 232. 

I9Frank McNitt, Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns, Slave Raids and Reprisals (Albuquerque, 1972), covers this subject in considerable detail. 

*Olbid., pp. 282-83, 366 

*ISanta Fe Gazette, November 10, 1860. 

77 
Following the interruption of Indian campaigning caused by the 

Confederate invasion of New Mexico, General James Carleton, a regular Army officer who had served previously in New Mexico, rounded 

up the bulk of the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches and moved them 

to a reservation at Bosque Redondo in the Pecos Valley. Governor 

Henry Connelly, and Santa Fe’s two newspapers, the Gazette and the 

New Mexican, praised Carleton and the Bosque Redondo experiment, 

but it was not long before Carleton and his Indian policy became one 

of the most important, perhaps the single most important, political 

issue in the territory.22 

Historians have suggested that the Bosque Redondo dispute developed because of honest differences of opinion, and for some that 

may indeed have been the case, but evidence also indicates that others made the Bosque Redondo an issue for political reasons.23 General Carleton, Indian Superintendent James Collins, and Governor Connelly were Democrats as were other territorial officials. The Territorial Secretary, William Arny, was a Republican and an energetic advocate of partisan politics. Arny had used political influence to advance 

from Indian agent to territorial secretary to acting governor when 

Governor Connelly was forced to take leave from his duties for medical reasons.24 Arny quickly launched a campaign for the removal of 

Democratic officeholders, especially the Indian Superintendent, whose 

job Arny sought for himself. After failing to gain the Indian superintendency, Arny became involved in a bitter fight with Chief Justice, 

Kirby Benedict, who had been appointed to the bench by President 

Franklin Pierce. Other Democrats, including territorial delegate Francisco Perea, were attacked by memorials and letters from Arny and 

his associates. Arny even went to Washington to carry on the political 

fight.25 

It was not long before Carleton, and with him the army and its 

Indian policy in New Mexico, were swept into the vortex of partisan 

22Annual message of Governor Henry Connelly, December 9, 1863, Department of 

State, Territorial Papers, New Mexico, National Archives, T-17, roll 2. Santa Fe New 

Mexican, January 9, 1864. The Santa Fe Gazette was allied to Carleton throughout this 

period. 

23William A. Keleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846-1868 (Santa Fe, 1952), pp. 104-7, 

NcNitt, pp. 389-392. 

24Lawrence R. Murphy, Frontier Crusader-William F. M. Arny (Tucson, 1972) is a 

good biography. 

25Benedict to Carleton, January 10, 1864: Perea to William Seward, February 20, 1864, 

Territorial Papers, New Mexico, T-17, roll 2. 

78 
politics. Martial law, which existed in the territory from August 1861 

to July 1865, provided an initial issue, as one Supreme Court Justice. 

a Wisconsin Republican, objected and also opposed the requirement 

for military passes to travel in the territory.26 Soon Carleton and his 

Indian policy were the subject-of attack as the New Mexican became 

the mouthpiece for Republicans and engaged in a bitter newspaper 

war with the Democratic Gazette. 

Arguments against Bosque Redondo were varied, but throughout 

ran a political theme. Carleton was described as a “wriggling political 

general” who was responsible for “sweet Carletonia” as the Bosque 

was labeled and who was noted for his “personal and official hostility” toward “federal civil officers.” He was, said the New Mexican, a 

“thimble-rigger politician,” a Democrat, a friend of Clement Vallandigham, a supporter of General McCleIlan in the presidential race of 

1864. “This Major Pomposo” was “a ‘regular’ copperhead,” “a powerful and unscrupulous enemy,” declared the editors.?’ At the same 

time Arny was writing Secretary of State William Seward of “the 

importance of having good reliable Republicans in office in the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico” and was asking for the removal 

of incumbent civil and military officials. Theodore Greiner, an Arny 

ally, also protested to Seward that the copperhead elements in New 

Mexico coalesced around the regular army while also attacking Governor Connelly as an enemy of Republicans.** 

In the 1865 territorial election Carleton and his Indian policy 

were basic issues. Republicans elected the territorial delegate and 

gained control of the legislature, but their efforts to secure the removal of Carleton failed, and it was not until July 1866 that Carleton was 

replaced .29 Although Republicans claimed credit for this, virtually 

every officer in the army was reassigned in 1865 or 1866 and with 

army reduction Carleton was assigned to a regiment in the regular 

army. The evidence indicates therefore that Carleton and his Indian 

Z6Keleher, pp. 400-408. Justice Joseph Knapp carried his fight to Washington but was 

told that the President had accepted his resignation. 

27The New Mexican had defended Carleton and the Bosque experiment. By September, 

as the election was approaching, it now opposed both and was allied with the Republicans. Santa Fe New Mexican (weekly), September 2, 1864: November 18, 1x64: December 2. 1864; December 16, 1864. 

Z*Arny to Seward, January 6, 1865; Greiner to Seward, September 11, 1865; Territorial 

Papers, New Mexico, T-17, roll 3. 

BGerald Thompson, The Army and the Navajo: The Bosque Redondo Reservation 

Experiment, 1863-1868 (Tucson, 1976), pp. 105-6. Unfortunately Thompson fails to deal 

with the political ramifications of the Bosque. Keleher, pp. 368-69. 

79 
policy became an issue for political reasons. Martial law and Carleton's control of Indian policy at the expense of the Indian Office 

provided suitable targets for political attack. It is of interest that in 

1868 after the departure of Carleton and Republican ascendency in 

the territory the New Mexican opposed the return of the Navajos to 

their homeland although it did continue to criticize the general.3" 

The New Mexico experience provides a good example of army 

involvement in politics, but that situation was rather unique. Except 

for events such as those noted above the army was only infrequently 

the subject of discussion in territorial or state legislatures. Moreover, 

frontier regions had limited influence at the national level, and the actions of Westerners in Congress demonstrates the nonpolitical role of 

the army in the west. 

If the army was an important political issue to frontiersmen, one 

might expect western congressmen and territorial delegates to seek 

assignments on the military affairs committees of the House and Senate, to propose legislation reflecting their interests, and to speak out 

on army appropriation bills and related legislation. However, in the 

last half of the nineteenth century such was not the case. In the first 

session of the 44th Congress there was not a single westerner on the 

Senate committee for military affairs while the only individuals on the 

eleven member house committee who could be considered Westerners 

were from Missouri and Minnesota. On the senate committee on public lands, however, seven of nine members were from states west of 

the Mississippi River. In the second session of the 49th Congress the 

Senate Military Affairs Committee had one westerner, but five of the 

seven members of the committee on mines and mining came from the 

west. The contrast is not so dramatic in other sessions, but throughout this period western congressmen demonstrated a greater interest 

in assignments to committees on public lands, mines and mining, and 

Indian affairs than they did in military affairs.31 

Westerners infrequently spoke about the army in Congress even 

during debates on army appropriations bills. If the Congressional 

Record provides any kind of a barometer of western thought, the 

main interest in the army was for construction of military roads and 

for river and harbor work on the Pacific Coast. Only on the question 

of the transfer of the Office of Indian Affairs back to the War Depart3nSanta Fe New Mexican (weekly), April 21, 1868. 

31 Congressional Record and Congressional Directory include committee assignment, 

introduction of bills and speeches. 
ment did Westerners really become vocnl, and western politicians 

were unified in support of that proposal. 

There is other evidence to suggest that the army was not a major 

political issue in the west. Even the involvement of military personnel 

in unusual and highly volatile incidents failed to generate much political controversy. In 1878 in New Mexico’s Lincoln County War soldiers from Fort Stanton under the command of Lieutenant Colonel 

Nathan Dudley assisted a posse representing one faction in the climactic battle in the town of Lincoln, but political lines in New Mexico were already drawn, and army involvement had minimal impact on 

political opinions in the territory.” 

Several years later the army had the unenviable task of enforcing 

presidential proclamations and keeping Boomers, who wished to open 

part of Indian Territory to settlement, out of that region. Military units 

patrolled the area, arrested intruders, and delivered them for trials, 

frequently arresting the same individuals a number of times over the 

course of several years. Boomers objected, but they protested more 

against the policy than against army enforcement of federal policy. 

There were loud boasts and talk of violence. C. C. Carpenter, ;I 

Boomer leader, announced while challenging an army officer to a 

fight, “If the administration attempts to ‘stamp out’ the invasion by 

military force, we shall appeal to the God of Battles and the United 

States Congress to protect us, the invaders, in our constitutional 

rights.”33 As the years passed, tensions increased with soldiers, mainly black troopers of the 9th Cavalry, who were subjected to racial 

slurs, but clashes were avoided. While the Boomer movement itself 

and the policy of the federal government were political issues, the 

work of Carl Rister and other scholars indicates that there was relatively little discussion of army involvement in these controversies. 

Another event in which troops participated that might have generated political debate was the Johnson County War in Wyoming in 

1892 when an invading army of gunmen employed by large cattlemen 

was besieged by local law officers and citizens. The governor and 

both Wyoming senators, who were associated with the cattlemen, 

managed to convince President Benjamin Harrison to dispatch troops 

to the scene. A unit from Fort McKinney prevented further blood32William Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers (Norman. 1967), p. 203; William Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County (Albuquerque, 1957), pp. 226-244. 

33Carl C. Rister, Land Hunger: David L. Payne and the Oklahoma Boomers (Norman, 

1942). 

81 
shed and delivered the invaders for trial, and while convictions were 

not forthcoming for a number of reasons, local citizens were not critical of the army.34 

The army had a mixed impact on frontier politics during the nineteenth century. At times it generated political activity, and certainly 

in California and New Mexico the governance issue politicized the 

local population. On other occasions, as in New Mexico during the 

mid 1860s, the army was singled out for political reasons. On the 

whole, however, it seems safe to suggest that the army was relatively 

unimportant in frontier politics although more thorough research in 

territorial and state records will be necessary to prove this contention. 

34Helena Huntington Smith, The War on Powder River (New York, 1966). pp. 223-2-5, 

2-75. The soldiers clearly were sympathetic to local residents of Johnson County. 

82 
This is not to say that the army was not a political issue in the 

nation as a whole. The army during the Mexican War was certainly 

emeshed in issues of national importance: the American people debated the role of the army in American life for the first century or more 

of its existence: military reconstruction in the south was an issue of 

vital national importance: the army became a natural target for eastern humanitarians who took up the cause of American Indians after 

the Civil War; and the use of soldiers to quell labor disturbances in 

the latter part of the nineteenth century antagonized a large segment 

of the population. But for the frontier the army was an essential institution. It may have been relatively ineffective and unable to adjust 

well to the nature of Indian warfare, but it was still relied upon for 

protection. It may have been small, but it was not so small that ultimately Indian hostility could not be brought to an end. It was an institution with which the frontier could live. Westerners felt free to criticize the army and frequently called for additional troops or military 

posts, but the complaints had little impact and the actions of westerners in Congress indicates that they accepted an army of limited size 

without great complaint. Only rarely was the army directly involved 

in frontier politics, and it was even less frequently a factor in politicizing the frontier population. 

83 
Black troopers of the Tenth Cavalry. (Courtesy of the Montana Historical Society) 

84 
THE SOCIALIZING ROLE OF THE MILITARY 

JACK D. FONER 

Few aspects of American history have been the subject of such 

persistent scrutiny by historians as the effect of the frontier on American life. Long before Frederick Jackson Turner expounded his famous 

“frontier thesis,” nineteenth century Americans were accepting without question the idea that westward expansion was the key to the social differences between American and European societies, and that 

the continued presence of free land provided a potential for mobility 

for Americans to advance from the status of wage-earners to that of 

independent proprietors-a possibility that simply did not exist in 

Europe. Since Turner, there have been a large number of both defenses and criticisms of his analysis of the frontier as a “safety-valve’’ 

for discontented eastern labor, as a nationalizing influence that created a homogeneous American character, and as the basis for American economic development. Despite the fact that some aspects of the 

frontier theory have been largely discredited-we know, for example, 

that few eastern workers moved to western farms-more recent 

works have again placed westward expansion at the center of such 

crucial episodes as the slavery controversy, the course of economic 

development, and the rise of American overseas expansion. 1 

Since the impact of the frontier is still very much a live issue 

among historians, it is appropriate that American military historians 

devote attention to the interrelationship of the army and the frontier 

in the post-Civil War era. This has not been done fully, and further 

research in this area is needed. It is possible, however, to sketch the 

state of our knowledge as of 1976. 

The army, of course, was by no means the most important institution in western life in the post-Civil War years. In his last report as 

‘Ray Allen Billington, Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher (New 

York, 1973); Jack D. Forbes, “Frontiers in American History and the Role of the Frontier Historian,’’ Ethnohistory, XV (1%8), pp. 203-235. 
commanding general of the army, General Sherman listed in order the 

railroads, the influx of white civilians, and the army as responsible for 

the changed situation on the frontier. From ;I fairly substantial authorized strength of slightly more than 57,000 officers and men in 1866. 

the army was repeatedly reduced during subsequent years, until it 

reached a low point of 27,000 in 1874. And despite urgent recommendations from its leading officers, this figure remained essentially unchanged until the Spanish-American War. In 1870, the Ill frontier 

posts had a combined total of 22,789 men-an average of 205 men per 

post.* 

Nonetheless, the frontier and the army interacted upon each other. This point is important because, too often, the relationship between the two is regarded as a “one-way street,” with only the frontier affecting the army, and not the other way around. Yet the very 

presence of the military altered conditions of life in the west. In fact, 

the main function of the army during this period consisted of enforcing federal Indian policy, protecting the lives and property of western 

settlers, guarding mail routes, railroads, and telegraph lines, assisting 

emigrants to western territories, and upholding federal law in several 

frontier areas. The frontier army also engaged in extensive roadbuilding activities, opened new roads, mapped vast areas of uncharted 

country, and pinpointed waterholes. It was, in other words, an active 

force in the settlement of the west.3 

The truth is that the army was in the vanguard of western economic development. It even performed the function of transporting 

much-needed labor to the frontier areas. Many enlisted men remained 

in the west after being discharged, “working at a variety of jobs from 

butcher to United States marshal.”4 Some did not even wait to be 

discharged before staking their claim. Officers bitterly attributed the 

high desertion rate to the fact that many recruits from the east enlisted only for the purpose of obtaining free transportation to the west, 

in order to secure higher-paying jobs in mining, railroading, and other 

2Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York, 1967), p. 267 

3Richard Guentzel, “The Department of the Platte and Western Settlement, 1866- 

1877,” Nebraska History, LVI (Fall, 1975), pp. 389-417; Edgar B. Wesley, “The Army 

and the Westward Movement,” Minnesota History, XV (December, 1934), p. 377. 

4Don Rickey, Jr., Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting 

the Indian Wars (Norman, 1963), p. 349; William D. Dobak, “Yellow Leg Journalists: 

Enlisted Men as Newspaper Reporters in the Sioux Campaign of 1876,” Journal of the 

West, XI11 (January, 1974), p. 95. 

. 

86 
activities.5 One Secretary of War was even quoted as remarking, 

“Let them desert, they build up the West.”6 This may account for 

the fact that there was little sentiment in the west against deserters; 

many were readily concealed and aided by the civilian population.7 

And those soldiers who remained in the army also demonstrated an 

interest in western opportunities. The Billings, Montana Post reported 

in 1884, for example, that “Private John Stanley, of the jth Infantry, 

stationed at Fort Custer, came over last week, and invested about 

$1500 in Billings lots. He has unbounded confidence in the future of 

Billings. . . .”X 

Also worthy of attention is the army’s role as a publicist for the 

west. Major James Brisbin was nicknamed “Grasshopper Jim” by the 

enlisted men because of his “great . . . interest in the agricultural potentialities of the district where he was stationed.”9 Brisbin was the 

author of The Beef Bonanza: Or, How to Get Rich on the Plains. 

Published in 1881, this work began with a paean of praise for western 

opportunities reminiscent of the rhetoric of the 1850s of Horace Greeley. (Brisbin, himself, came out of the free soil anti-slavery tradition.) 

He wrote: 

The mighty West!. . . where the poor professional young man, flying from the 

over-crowded East and the Tyranny of a rnonied aristocracy, finds honor and 

wealth; where the young politician, unopposed by rings and combinations, relying 

upon his own abilities, may rise to position and fame; where there are lands for the 

landless, money for the moneyless, briefs for lawyers, patients for doctors, and 

above all, labor and its reward for every poor man who is willing to work.. . . No 

industrious man can make a mistake in moving West, and if I had a son to advise, 

I should by all means say to him, ‘Go West as soon as you can!’. . .lo 

What is striking about this paragraph is how outdated it seems. 

“Go West, young man” may have been sound advice in 1850, but by 

1880, it should have been abundantly clear that the homestead ideal 

was dying fast. Indeed, the entire idea of the west as a refuge from 

eastern capitalism was no longer tenable. As Henry Nash Smith reminds us, “Eastern capital financed the railroads, eastern insurance 

companies bought the mortgages upon which so much of the develop5Jack D. Foner, The United States Soldier Between Two Wars: Army Life and Reforms, 18651898 (New York, 1970), pp. 6-7. 

6James Parker, The Old Army: Memories, 1872-1918 (Philadelphia, 1924), p. 122. 

’New York Times, December 25, 1883. 

8Rickey, Jr., Forty Miles, p. 56. 

9Edgar L. Stewart, Custer’s Luck (Norman, 1955), p. 103. See also Army and Navy 

Journal (ANJ), August 29, 1885. 

loJames S. Brisbin, The Beef Bonanza (Philadelphia, 1881), pp. 13-14. 
ment of farm lands was based, and many of the great cattle companies were owned in the East.”ll The future of western agriculture lay 

not in small homesteading, but rather in mechanized bonanza wheat 

farming. The irony is that through its policies of assisting the railroads and using troops to break strikes, such as at Coeur d’Alene, the 

army was, albeit unwittingly, helping to undermine the very vision of 

western society that Brisbin was so avidly propagating. 12 

It is clear then, that the army had a profound impact on the frontier. By the same token the circumstances of the frontier uniquely 

shaped the life and style of the army. Like many frontiersmen, officers were often rough, addicted to gambling, drink, and cursing. They 

were also energetic, individualistic, and determined. In June, 1873, 

Colonel Abner Ranford Doubleday wrote to Colonel Henry C. Merriam from Texas: 

Now speaking confidentially between overselves I hav’e seen Nixon eat pancakes with his fingers covering them with grease. and then he puts the blade of hi.; 

knife in his mouth.. . . Now the latter fact would be quite sufficient to exclude him 

from any table frequented by ladies and gentlemen in any of the cities of the 

Union. Then he and Shafter both use shocking English. They say ‘them thingh’ ’I 

done it’ and ’I seen it.’ eic. Still they both have many .;terling qualitic\.ll 

The younger officers assigned to the frontier regiments often 

found life on the plains uncommonly congenial. “The country was 

beautiful and full of game,” noted one historian, “while the element 

of danger, always present, added a charm for the younger officers and 

men.”l4 But others found the physical environment difficult to bear. 

“We had quite a severe journey in consequence of the great heat 

and sandy roads,” wrote Colonel Doubleday to Colonel Merriam. 

And he went on: 

My wife is utterly exhausted.. . . I am still suffering from the sting of some 

venomous reptile which stung me in the night. . . . Ann our servant woke up one 

night with a king snake twined around her neck trying to choke her to 

death. . , , The same one or one like it was killed in Crandall’s tent.15 

“Henry Nash Smith, Virgin l,and(New York, 1950), p. 214 

‘2James Marvin Cooper, “The Army and Civil Disorder: Federal Military Intervention 

in American Labor Disputes, 1877-1900.” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 

1971), pp. 294-301. 

I7A. Doubleday to H. C. Merriam, June 27, 1872, Henry C. Merriam Papers, Colby 

College, Waterville, Maine. 

I4Edward J. McClernand. “Service in Montana, 1870 and 1871.” Milirary Affairs. XV 

(Winter, 1951). p. 195. 

ISDoubleday to Merriam. September 21, 1872. Merriam Papers 
For others, the isolation, monotony, and boredom of confinement 

at small posts in the most disagreeable sectors of the frontier caused 

severe personal and emotional problems. Deprived of even the activities that occasionally enlivened garrison existence at the larger, more 

accessible posts, and required to repeat the same routine daily, the 

men quite understandably grew quarrelsome, and tensions sometimes 

reached the breaking point.16 In one extreme case, such an atmosphere culminated in “the trial by court-martial of every officer at a 

post of charges put each against the other.”l7 The Army and Navy 

Journal bemoaned the fact that officers were often limited for amusement to bad whiskey and to gambling for each other’s pay.18 

Officers and men had to rely on their own ingenuity if they wanted any entertainment and relaxation. Colonel H. B. Grierson, a former music teacher, organized a band for his unit. Upon discovering 

that no issue of instruments could be obtained, he and other officers 

contributed to a fund to purchase them, and each enlisted man 

chipped in fifty cents.19 During the winter months, minstrel shows 

and theatricals were popular, and they were sometimes presented to 

the citizens of nearby communities. One officer said that it was wonderful to discover the amount of talent that existed among “the boys 

in blue.”20 In time, literary societies were set up at a number of 

posts. Papers were read, debates were conducted, and funds were 

collected for books an3 other literature. Masonic lodges were also a 

popular outlet and allowed officers and men to meet on equal terms. 

Even though regulations made no provision for officers’ wives, 

they were to be found at almost every post. Their presence introduced “an element of grace, refinement and comfort to garrison 

life.”21 As one officer observed: “Army officers at remote stations 

16MMarion (Kansas) Record. July 21. 1893: ANJ. March 21. June 6. 1868; February 2, 

1878: June 7, 1884. 

’7.10urnal of the Military Service Institution, VIII (1887). p. 298. 

‘XANJ. July 20, 1872. See also New York Times, May 24, 1883. 

19Manfred S. Sand, “The Military Career of Benjamin Henry Grierson, 1866-1890,” 

(M.A. thesis, Northern Illinois University, 1961). 

2nANJ, January 2.5, 1868. See also May 21, August 27, October 22, November 12, 1870; 

Foner, The United States Soldier Between Two Wars, p. 24; Peggy Dicky Kirkus, 

“Fort David A. Russell,” Annals of Wyoming. IV (April, 1969), p. 91. 

21Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866- 

18YI (New York, 1973). pp. 87-89. 

89 
are apt to be domestic . . . and I have frequently heard ladie\ aswrt 

they made grand husbands.”zz 

In general, however, the military does not seem to have heen 

particularly successful in adapting to frontier conditions. at least if we 

are able to judge by the constant complaints from both enlisted men 

and officers about virtually every aspect of frontier military life. For 

it was not only the enlisted soldier who had problems. The officers. 

too, were profoundly discontented. Their deep-seated and fiindnmental complaints had the effect of seriously impairing morale.23 

Their monetary rewards, they insisted, were less than those 

earned by men in comparable civilian positions. The pay of army officers was increased during the Civil War, but as soon as the war ended, Congress reduced the salaries of all officers to their pre-war level. 

even though the cost of living had risen greatly during the intervening 

years. In 1870, Congress put an end to the system of commutation by 

providing a fixed salary for each commissioned grade in the army. 

The new pay scales granted company and field grade officers annual 

salaries ranging from $3,500 for a colonel to $1,400 for an infantry 

second lieutenant.24 These sums were insufficient to meet the many 

drains on the resources of an officer serving with the troops. Officers 

stationed on the frontier pointed to the cost of replacing clothing that 

wore out rapidly in the field and to the exorbitant prices for many 

necessary articles of food. If they wished to furnish their quarters 

with just the ordinary comforts, they could do so only at great expense, and since traveling expenses were paid for officers only, and 

not for their families, the cost of a change of station was simply staggering.25 “In this way,” wrote one officer, “money saved has to be 

spent and an officer is always kept poor.”26 

Those officers who managed to keep out of debt did so by denying themselves and their families many of the comforts of life. It is 

no wonder that some declared bitterly that Congress ought either to 

22Colonel Frank Wheaton to General 0. 0. Howard. March 1 I, 1879, 0. 0. Howard 

Papers, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. 

I’ANJ, February 22, May 23, 1868. 

2dJames B. Fry, Military Miscellanies (New York, 1889). p. 36; ANJ, September 7, 

1867; August 31, 1872; January 9, February 16, 1873. 

Z5ANJ, December 19, 1874; January 19, 1878; June 23, 1883. 

*‘ANJ, December 19, 1874. 

90 
pay them enough to support their families, or else simply forbid them 

to marry.27 

In addition to the new pay scale, the Act of 187Uprovided that 

officers must be furnished with quarters. Assignment of living quarters at an army post was governed by strict military protocol. The post 

commander occupied the best and largest house, and other officers 

were given a choice of available quarters in the order of rank. Lieutenants came last, and bachelor officers frequently had to share their 

quarters with each other. 

The regulation which allotted living quarters according to rank 

assigned one room and a kitchen to a second lieutenant and his family, with an additional room for each succeeding grade. It was not 

unusual to find second lieutenants with as much as I5 or even 20 

years’ service compelled to live with large families in such a limited 

allotment of space.28 The plight of a lieutenant’s wife was noted in a 

poetic lament sent to the Army and Navy Journal from Fort Sill, 

Oklahoma, which concluded: 

I know ‘Uncle Sam’ 

Must be an old bachelor, 

For he made no provision for an officer’s wife; 

And the very worst fate 

That I ever can wish him 

Is one room and kitchen 

The rest of his life.2Y 

In order for officers to retain an interest in their profession, they 

must have a reasonable opportunity for advancement in rank. But in 

the years following the Civil War, a stagnation in promotion developed that was unprecedented even for our army, until recently notorious for its slow rate of advancement. Officers who had served all 

through the war found themselves practically riveted to the lowest 

grades, serving longer as second lieutenants than it had previously 

taken to become a captain.30 The New York Times declared: “The 

proposition that men. . . should find themselves only lieutenants at the 

age of fifty-odd years seems preposterous.”3~ 

The situation was not lacking in irony. One officer estimated that 

2’ANJ. August 31, 1872. 

28ANJ, April 7, 1883; Kansas City Times, December 13, 1892. 

2yANJ, December 26, 1874. 

30ANJ, October 6, 1877; January 12. 187%: March 25. 1882; December 12. 1884 

3’New York Times, August 11, 1883. See also New York Tribune, June 3, 1878. 

91 
at the snail’s pace of advancement, a lieutenant who entered the army 

at 22 would be about 102 years of age when he became a colone1.32 

Another computed that a junior captain of the infantry had an average chance of becoming a major in about 124 years.33 And still another expressed the officers’ bitterness at the slowness of promotions in 

a poem which went in part: 

I have children married and daughters fair, 

For any young subaltern with money to spare. 

And I’m getting so blind that I can’t see a star. 

But I do see an old and a well-tarnished bar.34 

Aside from the unfair hardships that this stagnancy in promotions 

caused, the interests of military efficiency demanded a change. There 

were continual complaints that the army was overweighted with officers who were too old to perform their duties efficiently.35 In 1878, an 

officer warned the House Military Committee that an army led by 

aged company officers could never conduct vigorous warfare .36 And 

in 1884, an officer declared that few field officers were capable of 

withstanding the rigors of an active campaign for any length of time 

or even of mounting their horses without the aid of a camp stool, 

supplemented by a stalwart orderly.37 

Of course, the roots of these problems lay far beyond the challenges posed by the frontier. But there does seem to have been a significant east-west split within the army. It was a universal complaint 

that advancement by selection usually depended on social and family 

connections or political influence, while ability and long and difficult 

service generally counted for little.38 It was charged that generalships 

were regularly passed out for political and social reasons and that 

most transfers and promotions to the staff departments had their ori32ANJ, April 1, 1882. 

33ANJ, December 29, 1873. 

34Kansas City Times, April 4, 1892. 

35ANJ, November 6, 1880; December 27, 1884; New York Times, March 13, 1882; 

Emory Upton to William C. Church, August 18, 1879, Wlliam C. Church Papers, Library of Congress. 

3645th Congress, 2nd Session, House Misc. hcuments, No. 56, p. 146. 

37ANJ, August 30, 1884. 

38Kansas City Times, April 9, November 11, 1889; New York Times, August 4, 1878; 

March 3, 1890. 

92 
gin in. “pu11.”39 One officer asserted that the word of a senator or a 

member of Congress was more significant than the finest record compiled amidst the dangers and privations of the field.40 The New York 

Tribune agreed: 

Every incentive is offered to political wire-pulling. Honest and arduous service 

in the western posts is unrecognized and unrewarded. There is altogether too much 

politics in the administration of the Army.41 

Western officers constantly complained of favoritism within the 

army. Indeed, hardly an issue of the service journals appeared without some angry communication from line officers, protesting that in 

practically every feature of military life, staff officers possessed some 

unfair advantage over them.42 They pointed out that line officers were 

virtually doomed to endless service on the frontier, exposed to the 

privations of Indian warfare, pestilential disease, severe climate, and 

to all the drawbacks of life far from the cities. Staff officers, on the 

other hand, were characterized as having “soft snaps”-serving in 

Washington or other cities, with fine offices, regular hours, numerous 

clerks, none of the responsibilities involved in caring for troops, and 

with all the comforts and advantages of “civilized society.”43 “ There 

are two classes of officers, sir,” wrote one line officer, “the pack 

mules and the hangers-on of the ------ staff. We are the pack 

mules.”44 And the Omaha Bee, taking up the cudgels for the line 

39John Gibbon, “Needed Reforms in the Army,” North American Review, CLVI, p. 

215. See also William T. Sherman to Philip H. Sheridan, March 5, 1878; July 31, 1881, 

Philip H. Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress. 

40New York Times, September 26, 1874. See also Chicago Herald, August 17, 1885. 

41New York Tribune, November 18, 1893. See also New York Times, July I, 1889. 

4zThe two basic components of the army were the line and the staff. The line of the 

army-its fighting force-consisted of 40 regiments, including 25 of infantry, 10 cavalry, and five artillery. 

In the years after the Civil War, the term “staff’ referred primarily to those agencies charged with administering the army through the purchase and distribution of supplies, the payment of the troops, and the performance of other administrative duties. 

To carry these functions, the staff was divided into 10 administrative and technical bureaus, officially called departments or corps, each with a bureau chief and a number of 

subordinate officers, and all serving under the immediate supervision of the Secretary 

of War. R. Williams, “Army Organization in the United States,” The Galaxy, XXIV 

(November, 1877), pp. 591-602; “The Staff of the United States Army,” The Atlantic 

Monthly, XLI (March, 1878), pp. 379-380; Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 31-32. 

43ANJ, February 29, 1868; August 21, 1871; April 6, November 26, 1872; April 11, 

1874; March 9, 1878; Kansas City Times, June 2, 1890, February 25, 1892; Chicago Znter-Ocean, February 22, 1890; New York Sun, February 5, 1899; New York Times, 

January 31, 1867; January 18, February 18, 1879. 

“ANJ, November 15, 1873. 

93 
officers, presented their grievance in these vivid terms: 

No army in the world exacts the same hardship from its line officers as the 

United States. Instead of being on “soft service” duty the great majoricd young 

lieutenants and captains are forced to vegetate. . . in rickety frontier posts thousands of miles from their homes with the smallest possible hope of a transfer to 

civilization until they become old enough to retire. , . . There is mighty little “soft 

service” in the line on the frontier and a great deal of patient and poorly requited 

hard work.45 

Line officers complained that since they were of necessity far 

removed from the national capital, they could have but little voice in 

the shaping of legislation for the army. Staff officers, on the other 

hand, were present in great numbers in Washington, with the heads of 

bureaus always on the spot to take care of them. They were therefore 

able to guide all army legislation in order to serve their own interests. 

As a consequence, the army was considered over-burdened with the 

staff officers, even though much of their work was actually performed 

by line officers. Similarly, as a result of favorable legislation, the staff 

had contrived to obtain a preponderance of rank compared with the 

line.46 “It is pertinent to ask,” wrote on line officer in 1875, 

“why.. . while each Congress cuts off a portion of the fighting army, 

does it add to the rank of the staff corps?”47 And in the same year, 

Colonel W. P. Hazen wrote to Representative (later President) James 

A. Garfield, from Fort Buford, Dakota: 

You know how we have been cut off from nearly all hope of promotion. . . . The staff in the meantime having advantages of being at the seat of government has constantly gained rank for themselves by managing special legislation. . . . Can you conceive anything so unjust and so wrong in principle ,than adding these advantages to easy, favorable duty, away from the battle and putting 

them above those who go to war and fight the battles?. . 

Leading army officers repeatedly pointed out that the favored 

position of staff officers was the reason why officers of the line, with 

few exceptions, were constantly looking to staff positions as the highest object of their ambition.@ This was also the basis for “the disgraceful scrambles for soft details and dead men’s shoes” whenever 

~ 

450maha Bee, May 14, 1883. 

&Kansas City Times, June 4, 1890; February 19, 1894; New York Tribune, May 8, 

1875; ANJ, November 23, 1872; Utley, Frontier Regulars, p. 30. 

47ANJ, March 13, 1875. 

-W. P. Hazen to James A. Garfield, January 19, 1875, James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress. 

49ANJ, March 9, 1878; May I, 1880; New York Sun, March 5, 1893; New York Times, 

January 3, 1867; William T. Sherman to William C. Church, William T. Sherman Papers, Library of Congress. 

94 
vacancies occurred in the staff.50 One officer said that it was impossible to condone a system in which a captaincy in the staff departments 

was infinitely more desirable than a majority or even a lieutenant 

colonelcy in the line.51 

Thus, the life of the frontier officer was in many respects a bleak 

one. But it would be wrong to conclude that the frontier had no creative impact upon the army in this period. Ironically, the one group 

whose military experience seems to fit the Turner thesis better than 

any other is the black soldier. As the Reconstruction experiment was 

abandoned, the army offered a rare “safety valve” for black recruits. 

It also was a training ground for black leadership and a forum for the 

development of black racial and national self-consciousness. 

Blacks were added to the regular army for the first time when 

Congress established four black regiments in 1866 and 1869, two of 

cavalry and two of infantry, and in the years after the war, blacks 

constituted about 10 percent of the effective strength of the army. To 

the black recruit, enlistment in the army meant a steady income, 

food, clothing, and shelter, plus the chance for some basic schooling, 

and an “elevation of status.” Because their economic opportunities 

outside the service were so few, substantial numbers of the black 

regulars reenlisted. The Army and Navy Journal noted that there 

were “seldom any vacancies in the colored regiments,” in contrast 

with the white regiments. Regimental pride and morale in the black 

units were high; alcoholism, “the bane of most frontier regiments,” 

was virtually unknown among the black regulars, and their desertion 

rate was the lowest in the army. A number of black soldiers won 

Congressional Medals of Honor.52 

Throughout the period of the Indian wars, black regulars were 

stationed at posts located in the frontier regions, either in the southwest or in the northern Rockies. Few black people resided in the 

small towns that grew up near these posts, and the arrival of the 

black troops generally evoked less than enthusiastic reactions from 

the local residents. Newspapers frequently published derogatory 

qhicago Inter-Ocean, February 22, 1890. 

5*New York Times, February 4, 1884. See also May 4, 1890. 

j2For a history of these units see Jack D. Foner, Blacks and the military in American 

History (New York, 1974), Chapter 4; William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman, 1967); Arlen L. Fowler, 77~ Black lnfantry in the West, 1869-1891 (Westport, (3, 1971); Ulysses Lee, The Employment of 

Negro Troops (Washington, D.C., 1%), pp. 23-29. 

95 
statements about them. And when they were outside the fort gates 

during their leisure hours, or on other occasions, black soldiers were 

often the objects of hostility, prejudice, and harassment from the civilian population.53 

The presence of racial groups even lower on the frontier social 

ladder than blacks-Mexicans, Chinese, and especially Indianstended to temper somewhat this hostility. “In fact,” declared Frank 

Schubert, who has written extensively on this subject, “the Indian 

reservation may well have exerted a greater positive influence on 

black and white relations than American egalitarian rhetoric of the 

frontier itself .”54 

Certain economic and military factors also helped to neutralize 

the resentment among townsmen near posts garrisoned by black 

troops. Many merchants invited the business of black soldiers. Moreover, black troops helped to furnish the military protection that 

frontiersmen needed. One historian concludes: 

Racial conflict frequently marred relations between Negro soldiers and white 

civilians, but the need for military security and the purchasing power of the blacks 

convinced many Westerners of the folly of antagonizing the Negro soldiers and 

contributed to an uneasy racial truce in garrison communities.55 

At times it went beyond a mere “truce.” While the black 24th 

Infantry was stationed in New Mexico, its black chaplain, Allen Allensworth, was selected as director and manager of New Mexico’s 

education affairs in the National Education Association-the only 

black to occupy this position in the history of the Association. Allensworth was convinced that a soldier needed a basic education to perform efficiently in the service and to adapt himself to civilian life afterwards.56 He also sought to encourage black enlistment in the army, 

and frequently wrote to the black press, advising young blacks that 

the military offered opportunities not readily available elsewhere .57 

As he stated in the course of an interview: 

53Thomas D. Phillips, “The Black Regulars,’’ in Allen G. Bogue, Thomas D. Phillip 

and James E. Wright, The West of the American People (Itasca, IL, 1970), p. 140. 

”Frank Schubert, “Black Soldiers on the White Frontier: Some Factors Influencing 

His Relations,” Phylon, XXXII (1971), p. 415. 

55Phillips, “The Black Infantry,” p. 140. 

%Fowler, The Black Infantry in the West, p. 133; Charles Alexander, The Battles and 

Victories of Allen Allensworth (New York, 1914), p. 133, 343, 346-47. 

”St. Paul Appeal, July 26, 1890; Allen Allensworth, “Military Education in the United 

States,” National Education Association Journal of Proceedings and Addresses (New 

York, 1891), pp. 221-234. 

96 
I hold the army out to the colored man as an opportunity to save up sufficient 

capital to go into business. It is a good chance for our folks-a better chance than 

they have almost anywhere, much better than they have in the South.58 

Allensworth encouraged thrift and sobriety within the regiment, 

and many of the men kept bank books which they entrusted to him. 

There was a strong feeling of pride among the members of the 24th 

Infantry-a fact that became evident in 1896. In September of that 

year, the War Department announced the transfer of the 24th Infantry 

to Fort Douglas, Utah, removing the re‘giment from the frontier for 

the first time in 22 years.59 The Salt Lake City Tribune published an 

editorial entitled “An Unfortunate Change,” describing the serious 

apprehension prevalent among “the best people in the city” lest they 

be forced into “direct contact with drunken colored soldiers on the 

way from the city to Fort Douglas.”60 Private Thomas A. Ernest of 

Company E responded to this editorial in a letter to the newspaper: 

We object to being classed as lawless barbarians. We were men before we 

were soldiers, we are men now, and will continue to be men after we are through 

soldiering. We ask the people of Salt Lake City to treat us as such.61 

A year later, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the regiment’s arrival, the Tribune apologized for its misgivings, and observed that the black troops were “now appreciated at their worth, as 

citizens and soldiers above reproach.”6* 

The army did not provide black newspapers for post libraries and 

reading rooms. Consequently, black soldiers would subscribe to the 

different newspapers and circulate them among the troops as a way of 

maintaining contact with ‘the black community. The arrival of the 

Cleveland Gazette at Fort Elliott, Texas, in December, 1885, is reported by Sergeant Jacob C. Smith of the 24th Infantry in a letter to 

that paper: 

The night that the GAZETTE is due you should hear the men of my company 

crying: What is in the Gaz., Smith? Let me have her when you get through. And I 

-%an Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1899. See also Helena (Montana) Independent, August 27, 1904. 

S9New York Times, September 19, 18%. 

‘%ah Lake City Tribune, September 20, 18%. 

61Salt Lake City Tribune, October 22, 18%. See also Broad Axe (St. Paul), October 31, 

18%. 

62Salt Lake City Tribune, October 23, 1897. 

!n 
verily believe I could not comfortably exist myself without it. A happy New Year 

to you and staff, a larger paying circulation and long life to the Gazette.h3 

The circulation of black newspapers at frontier posts is paralleled 

in an interesting way in the widespread readership among Irish soldiers of the Irish World, published in New York City. Indeed, at 

many frontier posts Irish-American soldiers gathered contributions for 

Parnell's Land League in 1881, forwarding the money to Dublin, via 

the Irish World.64 

In addition to reading the black press, black soldiers succeeded in 

maintaining a strong link with the black comniunities, where they 

were held in high esteem. Lithographs of black soldiers in action hung 

in many black homes as "symbols of hope for a better day."ss 

This attitude of blacks toward black soldiers is in striking contrast to the way in which the white civilian public generally viewed 

white enlisted personnel. In May, 1878, Private David Barrow wrote 

to the New York Herald from the frontier that no one was thought of 

as poorly in that part of the country as a soldier.66 Enlisted men occasionally faced the generally hostile communities as a unified group. 

In March, 1890, for example, the citizens of Mobita, Texas-a town 

close to Fort Eliot-sold tickets to the men at the post for a grand 

ball to be held on St. Patrick's Day. However, when the soldiers presented themselves at the ballroom door, they were refused admittance. The indignant men returned to the post and held a meeting, 

where they unanimously passed a resolution to boycott the Mobita 

merchants. To add impact to their protest, they further resolved to 

63Cleveland Gazette, January 9, 1886. 

blThe Irish World, July 31, 1880; March 19, April 9, 23, September 3, 1881. 

65ANJ, January 27, 1877; Foner, Blacks and the military, p. 53; Rayford W. Logan, 

The Betrayal of the Negro (New York, 1954). p. 335. 

MNew York Herald, April 6, 1878. See also Foner, The United States Soldier Between 

mo wars, pp. 74-75,98-100. 
‘‘avoid all kinds of monetary transactions and association with any 

person or persons who claim to be citizens of Mobita.”67 

As this brief survey has demonstrated, the military experience on 

the frontier is remarkably complex. Certainly, further research in the 

areas I have covered, and in many others, is needed. In the course of 

such work, military historians will have to move beyond their traditional concerns to the social, economic, and political history of the 

entire American society in the post-Civil War era. Such subjects as 

the relationship between military policy and western economic development, the genesis of the army’s policies toward labor, the impact of 

black troops on black life in this period, and the political pressures 

affecting military decision-making-all must be accorded greater attention before a full understanding of the complex interrelationship of 

the military and the frontier-and the ways in which each changed the 

other-can be achieved. 

67Kansas City Times, March 26, 1890. See also ANJ, April 5, 1890. 
John M. Chivington, the hero of Glorieta Pass and the villain of Sand 

Creek. (Courtesy of Denver Public Library) 

100 
THE MILITARY AND THE COLORADO FRONTIER 

MARSHALL SPRAGUE 

Men in uniform have been a familiar sight in Colorado throughout most of the area’s history. They explored the area, fought with 

Indians, and garrisoned the plains and mountains. In this long history 

three military events stand out, three simple frontier affairs which 1 

blame for bringing about Colorado as we know it in 1976. These 

were: Zebulon Pike’s expedition in 1806-07; Gilpin and Chivington’s 

victory over Sibley’s Texans at Glorieta Pass in 1862; and the Meeker 

massacre in 1879. 

Pike’s expedition into Colorado came about as a result of the 

Louisiana Purchase in 1803. President Jefferson was an ardent pacifist, partly perhaps because he failed badly as Virginia’s military chief 

during the Revolution. Science was one of his passions. He saw to it 

that the Academy at West Point was primarily a scientific school 

when it was established in 1802. After the purchase of Louisiana, 

Jefferson’s pet army project was the Lewis and Clark expedition, 

which he probably considered more scientific than military. Lewis and 

Clark’s accomplishments have overshadowed those of Captain Zebulon Pike even though Pike explored twice as far as Lewis and Clark 

on his two treks in the same period. In 1805 he explored almost to the 

source of the Mississippi. In 1806 he explored almost to the source of 

the Arkansas. It is easy to thrill to the grandeur of heroes breaking a 

path to the Pacific. Pike’s feat is harder to glamorize, especially nowadays since he had no heroine along, no Sacajawea. Pike had to try to 

solve a riddle posed by La Salle in 1682 when the Frenchman put the 

southern boundary of what became the Louisiana Purchase along the 

most southerly river draining into the Mississippi from the west, 

which was the Red River. That boundary stream came into the Mississippi a couple of hundred miles downstream from the next big 

western tributary, the Arkansas. 

For centuries, fierce Indians, Apaches or Comanches, had barred 

passage up the Red River much above the present site of Shreveport, 

101 
but geographers agreed that the Red had to start at the Continental 

Divide in the Rockies, in the manner of the Platte, Missouri, and 

Arkansas. So Pike’s task was to discover what Jefferson had bought 

from Napoleon in the southwest by ascending the Arkansas to its 

source to avoid the Comanches on the Red, and then by moving 

south along the Continental Divide until he struck the boundary Red 

near its source. Oddly, Pike got his orders not from Jefferson, who 

was preoccupied with Lewis and Clark, but from General James 

Wilkinson, the commander of the US army, and the first governor of 

the Louisiana Territory. 

Wilkinson was perhaps the greatest four-flusher in military history. To achieve this distinction he took pay from the Spaniards to 

bring about the return of Louisiana to Spain even while he plotted 

with Senator John Brown of Kentucky and others to separate transAppalachia from the seaboard of the United States. Aaron Burr took 

over this Wilkinson design while Pike was heading west. The plot collapsed when Wilkinson saw that it would not work, and warned Jefferson about it. Burr went into exile. Wilkinson flourished on as a 

revered senior general of the army until 1814, when he ran out of the 

kind of skulduggery that had brought him fame and fortune. 

Captain Pike, aged 27, was a small, attractive, exceedingly sturdy 

officer in November of 1806 when he and his 15 campanions rowed up 

the Arkansas pass past Pike’s Peak and into the intervale above the 

site of the Canon, City penitentiary. He was Wilkinson’s protege and 

he must have known that the general was sending him to the Spanish 

borderlands to learn things of military value, not of value to the US 

Army but of value to the Army that Wilkinson and Burr would command when they set up their southwestern empire with the help of 

Senator Brown’s Kentuckians. Pike’s suspicions could have been 

aroused also by things he learned from his wife, Clarissa, a Louisville 

belle who happened to be the daughter of Senator Brown. Nevertheless, there is nothing but circumstantial evidence that Pike was a part 

of Wilkinson’s wild schemes. 

It was early in December of 1806 when Pike’s small party 

reached the impassable entrance to the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas 

(above the present site of the Colorado State Penitentiary), and 

veered a few miles north to strike Current Creek, which the men mistook for the Arkansas, above the Royal Gorge. They passed, the 

source of that stream, crossed South Park, and bent southerly over 

Trout Creek Pass to spend Christmas on a new river which logic told 

them had to be the Red. They descended it only to find it was really 

the Arkansas bringing them back to the Royal Gorge. Pike was un102 
daunted; and he trailed his men south along the Sangre de Cristo on 

foot, since the horses had been eaten, while Pike and his men were 

looking for the Red. They all hiked through January and nearly died of 

starvation and freezing as they made their way up Wet Mountain Valley and over Medano Pass to come upon an eerie sight, the Great Sand 

Dunes of San Luis Valley. 

Soon after crossing the Great Sand Dunes they were overjoyed 

to reach the Red River at last, or so they thought until Spanish soldiers arrived to tell them that they were camped deep in New Spain 

on the Rio Grande, not the Red. The Spaniards conducted them to 

Santa Fe, and then to Chihuahua where Pike was held until July, 1808, 

before being released and escorted north to the Louisiana border 

town of Natchitoches on Red River. And so, after all those miles of 

trouble, Pike found the Red at last, but not the part he wanted to 

find. 

Though Pike failed in his aims, he was in good company. In 1820, 

Major Stephen Long, of the Corps of Engineers, rode south past 

Pike’s Peak and across the Arkansas and found what he thought was 

the Red just over Raton Pass, only it turned out to be the Canadian. 

Captain Randolph Marcy had better luck in 1852 tracing the headwaters of the Red to a spring in eastern New Mexico 300 miles east of 

where the geographers had had it starting in the Rockies. The source 

of the Mississippi escaped discovery until 1832, when an army troop 

led by a civilian, Henry School-craft, traced the start to Lake Itasca. 

Pike’s journals were valuable to later army visitors in Colorado, 

including John Charles Fremont in the early 1840s, General Kearny in 

his conquest of New Mexico, and Captain John Gunnison, who explored over Cochetopa Pass during his Pacific Railway survey of 

1853. 

William Gilpin first came to Colorado in 1843 as part of Fremont’s expedition of that year. Fremont seldom met his match at selfglorification, but this Gilpin was his master, “one-upping” him daily 

with his tales of his exploits in the Seminole War, of how he advised 

President Jackson, and of how President Tyler was sending him to 

Oregon now to show the settlers how to form a government. Gilpin 

stressed that he was a West Pointer, whereas Fremont was a mere 

navy man, who owed his army commission to the political muscle of 

his father-in-law, Senator Benton, and to Van Buren’s Secretary of 

War, Joel Poinsett. To Fremont’s relief, Gilpin left his party after 

some weeks, to continue his remarkable career alone, in Oregon and 

elsewhere. That career, in Gilpin’s view, included organizing Oregon, 

103 
military adroitness in the Mexican wars, serving as Colonel Doniphan’s aide in capturing Chihuahua, and being sent by Lincoln to 

Denver in May, 1861, as the first territorial governor of Colorado. 

Through the last 1850s, Gilpin had passed his time orating on the 

virtues of Lincoln for president. His second theme had to do with the 

wonders of Colorado with its farmlands richer than the vale of Cashmere and its mountains laced with immense stores of gold and silver. 

After the election of 1860, President Lincoln rewarded Gilpin for his 

support by making him an honorary guard on the inaugural train. Gilpin had a way of holding people by their buttons, while haranguing 

them; and it is said that while on the ride to Washington, he got hold 

of Lincoln’s vest button and would not let go or stop talking until the 

President-elect promised him the Colorado governorship. That office 

gave Gilpin the power to raise volunteer troops to oppose any threat 

of the Confederacy to capture the territory and cut off California from 

the rest of the Union. 

A year after Gilpin took office in Denver, word came to him that the 

former Union general turned Confederate, Henry Sibley, and 3,000 

Texans had captured Santa Fe and were on their way to Colorado 

to seize its gold mines for Jefferson Davis to use as collateral for foreign war loans. The territory had no soldiers to speak of in its posts 

at Fort Lyon and at Fort Garland. Lincoln had withdrawn from the 

west most of the regular army for duty along the Mississippi. Gilpin, 

the one-time West Pointer, sprang into action, creating an army of his 

own, nicknamed “Gilpin’s Lambs.” It was composed of a motley 

horde of miners, bartenders, lawyers, preachers, con men, bankers, 

shoe clerks, pimps, actors, and mule skinners. To raise money to 

equip them from Denver stores, Gilpin issued drafts on the US treasury, bearing his signature. The colonel of this first regiment of 

Colorado volunteers, John P. Slough, was a Denver lawyer without 

military experience. The major, the Reverend John M. Chivington, 

was presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain District of the Methodist 

Episcopal Church. Such was the mob of “hoofers” who crossed Raton Pass on March 18, 1862, to save Colorado for the Union. 

Word came to them that Sibley’s Texans at Glorieta Pass planned 

to seize Fort Union, the big army supply center north of the New 

Mexican capital. To save time, Gilpin’s Lambs dropped most of their 

equipment and marched 92 miles on the double through a raging blizzard to reach Fort Union ahead of the enemy. For two weeks they practiced shooting there, and then marched toward the Texans inside Glorieta Pass. The show-down came two days later as Sibley’s tough Texans, frightening fellows in huge sombreros, moved confidently over 

104 
the pass, red Texas flags flying. At 10 A.M. Gilpin’s novice wmiors 

met the Texans head-on at Pigeon’s Ranch. 

For several hours a bloody battle raged in that narrow passage of 

the old Santa Fe trail. In late afternoon, neither side could take any 

more. Having suffered 50 dead and 66 wounded, Colonel Slough ordered Gilpin’s exhausted lambs to retreat east down the pass a few 

miles. It is likely that they would have been forced to accept defeat 

had it not been for the action of a small unit led by the Methodist Episcopal presiding elder. The Reverend Major Chivington was a vast 

bearded man, as oracular as Moses, weighing nearly 300 pounds. 

While the noisy Texans had marched east that morning over the pass, 

he had marched west with 430 men, but not on the Santa Fe Trail. 

His hidden route was through San Cristobal Canyon, just to the 

south, bringing his brigade to the top of the hill at Apache Canyon 

into the pass overlooking Sibley’s supply train of 73 heavily loaded 

wagons. 

The time was 1:30 P.M. For an hour Chivington made plans as he 

watched the 250 unsuspecting guards and teamsters, 1,OOO feet below 

him. Then he gave the order to charge and led his volunteers down 

the mountain, sliding, slipping, howling like Comanches. Within minutes they seized and spiked the sole enemy cannon, while the guards 

were killed or captured and the teamsters scattered. The next four hours 

were spent in an orgy of burning and smashing. Everything Sibley’s 

army needed to capture Denver went up in smoke. Half a million dollars worth of ammunition, saddles, subsistence, clothes, and baggage. 

Chivington had the 600 mules and horses corralled and shot in relays. 

At nightfall the job was done and the major led the weary force up the 

hill to rejoin the Slough contingent at daybreak at Pigeon’s Ranch. By 

then the Texans had learned of the disaster to their wagon train and 

they knew that without supplies and horses the Civil War was over as 

far as the southwest was concerned. There was nothing for them to 

do but bury their dead at Glorieta Pass, abandon their wounded in 

Santa Fe, and head for home with all possible speed before Union 

forces could be called to cut them off. 

Major Chivington returned to Denver, the hero of the hour, his 

head full of dreams of greater glory, political and military. No more 

preaching for him. He had found a more exciting career. But the man 

who had made it possible was no hero. Governor Gilpin was in disgrace. The city was in financial chaos because the US treasury had 

refused to honor the drafts totalling $375,000 which Gilpin had issued 

to Denver merchants. With a terrible and costly war on his hands, 

President Lincoln had no way of handling Gilpin’s debt. Reluctantly 

105 
he removed Gilpin from the governorship and put in his place an Illinois financier, John Evans, famed for fiscal responsibility. It was 

many years before Congress finally honored some of Gilpin’s drafts. 

Chivington went on to less heroic exploits. Late in November, 

1864 at Sand Creek, north of Lamar, he led a force of volunteers in a 

dawn attack on a village of Indians who supposed themselves to be 

under the protection of army officers at Fort Lyon. As the families ran from their teepees to surrender, some 200 men, women, and 

children were shot down by Chivington’s men, That massacre inspired thousands of plains Indians from Texas to Montana to resist 

further pressure on their lands by white Americans. The resistance 

was intensified by the westering of the railroads, leading to the destruction of the buffalo on which the civiKzation of the plains Indians 

was based. 

When troops were released from service after the Civil War, 

army posts were manned along the stage routes to Denver-Fort 

Sedgwick near Julesburg, Fort Morgan, Fort Collins, and Fort Reynolds near Pueblo. All of these guard posts were abandoned in a few 

years and the plains Indians of Colorado were removed to reservations in Oklahoma. Only one army post, Fort Garland, in the San 

Luis Valley, continued to keep an eye on 3,000 Ute Indians, a friendly tribe, the six bands of which were scattered throughout the Colorado Rockies. 

These Utes had never caused much trouble, mainly because the 

white settlers had no interest in the western slope lands that the Utes 

occupied, no interest, that is, until gold was discovered in a high, 

remote corner of the Ute reservation. It was in the San Juan Mountains, where Silverton is now. With that discovery in the early 1870s 

Coloradans became aware that ’ 16 million acres of the region’s most 

beautiful mountain lands, more than half of the mountain total, belonged to these Utes by treaty with the United States Senate in 1868. 

These “ignorant savages” were blocking all progress in Coloradomining progress, railroad progress, homestead progress, city-making 

progress, stage road progress-west of the Ute reservation line. That 

line ran along the 107th parallel from the New Mexico border for 240 

miles north through the present site of Pagosa Springs, Gunnison, 

Aspen, Gypsum, Glenwood Springs and up to 20-Mile Park in the 

Yampa River area. All those future townsites and all the country west 

of them to the Utah border were in the Ute reservation. 

The Utes had to go. But how could Colorado, celebrating its 

promotion to statehood in 1876, get rid of a peaceful tribe whose 

106 
members had been guaranteed their reservation forever by an act of 

the United States Senate? The answer to the question was in the making in 1878, when Colorado Senator Henry Teller paid a political debt 

by appointing a former New York newspaperman named Nathan 

Meeker to serve as the new Indian agent at the Ute post on White 

River, near the present lovely and serene western slope town of 

Meeker. 

Nathan Meeker was one of Colorado’s most fascinating characters-a tall, lean agnostic, whose mind was forever aboil with off-beat 

notions to improve the lot of mankind. His Colorado career began in 

1870 when he founded the town of Greeley, as a socialistic paradise. 

The place was so successful that his fellow socialists became wealthy, 

which soured them on socialism, and poor Meeker was out of a 

job. He went to the White River Agency full of dreams of saving that 

small band of Utes from the pain of losing their lands, which he knew 

was bound to come, by teaching them what fun they would have 

when they learned to live on small lots like white men, with all the 

delights of piling up wealth, dwelling in houses with privies, keeping 

up with the Joneses, playing poker at the Elks Club, attending ice 

cream socials, watering the lawn, learning to read and write, and all 

the rest. 

White River had to be reached by way of Rawlings, Wyoming. 

Meeker went there with his wife and an agency staff consisting of his 

pretty daughter, Josie, a young married couple, and several Greeley 

boys. For a year he worked at converting the Utes to his views, 

applying patience, reasoning, bribes in the form of federal handouts, 

humor, kindness, and sympathy. He made no progress whatsoever. 

The Utes insisted that roving far and wide, hunting, loafing, gambling, 

raising horses, were the kind of activities that made their lives worthwhile. When at last Meeker plowed up their horse pastures for a 

cornfield and told them that their herds of horses were economically 

unsound in the wonderful world which he was preparing for them to 

enjoy, they got so ugly that he sent word to the nearest army post, 

Fort Steele, near Rawlings, to protect him and his staff from bodily 

harm. 

Fort Steele was a dreary place, guarding the Union Pacific tracks 

in the Red Desert of Wyoming. Its deariness was accentuated by the 

temper of the times. The decade of the 1870s was the bottom of the 

army barrel of discontent. It was a period when big business was antimilitary, because soldiers did not sell and make things. It was a period of national remorse over the loss of half a million young men in 

the Civil War. That wave of humanitarianism expressed itself also in 

107 
sympathy for the Indians of the west, which hampered the efforts of 

the understaffed, unpopular, underpaid army, isolated in the wilds, to 

control Indian rampages. Such rampages rose chiefly from rash promises made to the Indians by Congress which had no intention of keeping its word. Fort Steele's commander, Major Thomas T. Thornburgh, 

was a handsome 6'4" West Pointer, class of '67. His wife, Lida, was 

a sister of a West Point classmate. The couple had two children at 

Fort Steele, Olivia and Bobby. When Thornburgh got his orders from 

General George Crook in Omaha to go to Meeker's defense, he was 

not pleased. Thornburgh liked the Utes and did not consider them 

dangerous. Meeker was always complaining to Thornburgh about 

something minor. 

Thornburgh's thoughts about Meeker were not complimentary 

when he kissed Lida, Olivia, and Bobby goodbye on September 22, 

1879, and rode south from Steele toward White River with four companies of cavalry. Some days later, a Ute sub-chief named Jack came 

to Thornburgh and asked him to stop his troops at the Milk Creek 

boundary of the reservation and come in alone to the agency to discuss matters with Meeker and the head chief Douglas. 

But on September 29 the troops did not stop at Milk Creek though 

Thornburgh saw Jack's armed Utes on the high ridge ahead and 

waved his hat at them. After some silent minutes a rifle pinged somewhere and then many shots were fired. One slug struck the major 

above the ear as he trotted briskly forward to see what was up. His 

long lithe frame toppled from his horse. Besides Thornburgh 11 soldiers died on that tragic Monday before the survivors, 42 of them 

wounded, barricaded themselves at Milk Creek behind dead horses 

and mules, and began the long wait for reinforcements. The siege was 

lifted and the Utes faded away on Thursday with the arrival of a single company of black troops from the 9th cavalry which had galloped 

through the night to Milk Creek from 20-Mile Park. 

On Sunday morning, October 5, Colonel Wesley Merritt arrived 

at the scene from Cheyenne, with four companies of cavalry, 150 infantrymen, and a wagonload of reporters from Denver. More troops 

came from Fort Snelling. Merritt pushed on to the White River agency, which the Utes had destroyed totally. Scattered on the paths were 

the mutilated bodies of the male employees of the agency, including 

Meeker, with a flour barrel stave rammed down his throat. It was 

learned later that Mrs. Meeker and the two younger agency women 

were held in the wilds as hostages by Douglas' men for 23 days before they were released unharmed. 

108 
Because of these tragic events, the white residents of Colorado 

found the excuse they needed to get rid of the Senate treaty of 

1868 that was blocking them from the wealth of 16 million acres on 

the western slope of their state. In 1881, the last of these northern 

bands of Utes were escorted by the army to new bleak homes in eastern Utah. The two remaining bands in the state had had no connection with the Meeker massacre and they live still on two small reservations of southwestern Colorado. 
COMMENTARY 

Roger L. Nichols of the University of Arizona critiqued the papers of both Richard 

Ellis and Jack Foner. Marshall Sprague’s paper was presented as the address at an evening 

banquet for symposium participants and was therefore not critiqued. 

ROGER L, NICHOLS 

The issue of the relationship of the military to the American frontier has been under consideration by historians for at least three or 

four decades. During that time both established historians and graduate students have beaten paths to historical societies and various research libraries. They have produced books, articles, and papers on 

topics as varied as army-Indian relations, the army and exploration, and 

the army as an agent of the government in national expansion. Moreover, numerous studies of individual military men as well as army 

activity in local and regional areas have been made. In general much 

good work has been done on these topics. 

It is safe to say that most scholars accept the generalization that 

the military-or the regular army-had a significant impact upon 

American territorial expansion and the extension of settlement into 

frontier regions. At least few have bothered to debate the point. This 

being the case, you can imagine my surprise at finding at least one 

paper, if not two, which tends to support my sometimes lonesome 

contention that rarely did the army have more than a slight impact in 

most frontier regions. Despite the continuing flood of studies which 

focus on the frontier army, both authors call for more research on 

their respective topics. Thus, at least by inference, they admit that 

existing work does not adequately support generalizations about the 

significance of the army on the frontier. 

Turning to the papers themselves it is clear that both authors 

employ similar approaches. While there seems no call for them to do 

so, both define the frontier as the west. Except for a brief, passing 

notice of Florida, at least half of the national frontier is simply 

110 
pushed aside. A second tactic, tied to regional limitations, is that of 

time. If a frontier existed prior to the Mexican War, one is hard 

pressed to locate it in either of these papers. Certainly time and space 

limitations imposed by the scholarly meeting format help explain the 

authors’ choices, yet one cannot help but wonder if it is really necessary to delete half of the frontier and half of the 19th century. 

The authors share still another approach. They equate the term 

military with the regular army. Certainly one would be hard pressed 

to support a claim that militia activities became a major political or 

social issue on most frontiers. Nevertheless it was mostly volunteer 

militiamen who campaigned against Black Hawk in Illinois and Wisconsin, who committed the atrocities at Sand Creek, and who helped 

defeat the Sioux in Minnesota during the 1862 war. Indeed, it was the 

frontiersman’s basic distrust of the government and of the regular 

army throughout much of the 19th century which helps explain why 

the army had such a modest impact. 

Another question which both authors must consider is that of 

how to approach the frontier army. Is it an institution, representing 

the government in the west, or should the local actions of individual 

officers and men be used as the criteria for measuring the army role in 

frontier society? Such questions are not easily answered. 

Having looked at both papers in general it is time to consider 

them individually. Professor Ellis’s paper examines the “Political 

Role of the Military.” In it he faces a dilemma because there was 

only limited political activity by the soldiers so he concentrates on the 

exceptions to his thesis that they really did not have all that much 

impact. For much of the era he discusses, the frontier population was 

thin and scattered. At the same time the troops themselves were 

spread across the country in relatively small and isolated garrisons. 

With few civilians and often fewer troops in many frontier areas it is 

unlikely that there would be much political interaction. 

For historians, a negative thesis is difficult to prove, and the results are more likely to be treated with a shrug or a “so what?” than 

any degree of enthusiasm. An obvious difficulty which Ellis faces is 

that to support his thesis of little army political impact, he needs to 

examine the political development of many states and territories in 

the west. Few military historians have dealt with frontier politics in 

much detail, so one must turn to the work of political historians. 

Despite citations to items dealing with Arizona, California, and New 

Mexico, he seems not to have carried out this task thoroughly. The 

works of Howard Lamar, Kenneth Owens, and Al Larson, just to cite 

111 
a few examples, do not appear to have been used. If such studies discussed few or no cases of army po!itical activity, then they could 

have been used in support of the thesis that the military really had little impact. 

Another problem which causes some difficulty is that of definition. Exactly what is a political action by the military? Unlike what 

has happened in some nations, the American army has never been a 

major power block within the political system. The military does not 

endorse candidates or parties, does not participate in political campaigns, does not threaten to overturn the results of elections, or to 

seize control of the government to ensure that its views are carried 

into action. Another question is what do the terms“‘involved in politics,” “political controversy,” and “politicize the frontier population,” mean? In studies of frontier political life such expressions 

might be considered as self-explanatory. In studies of military activity 

that is not necessarily so. Ellis has interpreted these terms narrowly, 

and concludes rightly that the army played an insignificant political 

role on the frontier. 

Had he not chosen to by-pass the earlier frontiers he would have 

had more exceptions to consider. There was, for example, Andrew 

Jackson’s hot pursuit into Florida in 1817. It not only resulted in ;I 

congressional investigation of his conduct and divisions within the 

cabinet and administration, but also a diplomatic crisis with Britain 

and Spain as well. Certainly the so-called Mormon War of the 1850’s 

stirred both debate in the east and action in the west. Such examples 

indicate the difficulty in deciding whether an issue is a frontier one or 

a national one. Without some clear-cut definition or focus one is left a 

little unsure. 

Obviously then, the fundamental question is should Ellis focus on 

his thesis that the military played an insignificant role, and how much 

effort should he expend discussing the exceptions to that general idea. 

From the paper it seems that he felt forced into the latter position, 

and that perhaps he would have preferred being able to show that the 

army indeed had more impact than it did. He is unwilling to venture 

beyond his evidence, however, and therefore limits himself to considering the two major examples of California and New Mexico. In his 

treatment of them we see that in California the army constituted more 

a local irritant than a major issue. But in New Mexico that was certainly not the case. There, because of the Navajo at the Bosque Redondo and Carleton’s supposed Democratic, pro-southern leanings, 

the army clearly became a partisan issue. Thus Ellis gives one clear 

example of direct political impact caused by the frontier army. Even 

112 
if he had included less clear-cut examples or added cases where an 

indirect impact could be shown, it is likely that he could not have 

reversed his thesis. In his conclusion, Ellis writes that “the army had 

a mixed impact on frontier politics during the nineteenth century.” 

Perhaps, but it seems likely that a stronger case could have been 

made by focusing on evidence of why the army lacked political clout, 

rather than concentrating on the exceptions to his thesis. 

In the second paper, Professor Foner discusses “The Socializing 

Role of the Military.” At first glance his task appears easier than that 

of Ellis, because the socializing role of the army is a broader topic 

than its political role. Yet the author did not take advantage of this. 

Rather, he chose to sidestep the thrust of this session and, at least in 

part, the title of his own paper. In addition to dealing with the socializing role of the army he enlarges the scope of the paper and considers the impact which the frontier had upon the army. He accepts as 

a given factor the idea that the army contributed to western development. After a short discussion of military economic, defense, transportation, and publicity efforts, he turns his attention to the other side 

of the issue. He claims that historians often overlook the dynamic 

inter-relationship between the frontier and the army. 

A,s did Professor Ellis, Professor Foner limits his frontier to the 

trans-Mississippi west. He limits himself even more, however, by 

compressing the time considered to the post-Civil War decades. But 

even more disturbing than the narrow time limit, is the lack of clear 

focus. Professor Foner neglects to say what the socializing role or 

process was. Therefore such duties as the protection of civilians, law 

enforcement, mapping, and road building are seen as a part of the 

process. At the same time the author does not say why this is true. Is 

socialization the process of civilizing a crude frontier population, the 

rough environment of the west, or both? 

After a discussion of routine army matters, we are told “that the 

army had a profound impact on the frontier.” Then Professor Foner 

shifts to the reverse-the impact of the frontier on the army. Among 

the problems soldiers encountered were low pay, inadequate housing, 

monotonous diet, alcoholism, desertion, and slowness of promotions. 

Although the author assumes that these difficulties resulted from frontier conditions, he provides little evidence to support that assertion. 

Throughout history armies limited to garrison duty have encountered 

similar problems. I would suggest that long enlistments, low pay, and 

boredom had little to do with the west. Similar conditions may well 

have existed in the mid-west, in the south, and even in the east, at 

113 
the same time. The officers’ complaints about their lack of opportunity and slow promotions existed throughout most of the 19th century. 

With the exception of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the 

Civil War, rapid promotion was almost beyond the realm of possibility. So it seems to me varied assignments and rapid promotion were 

the exception and not the rule. Rather than resulting from the frontier, such problems came in large part from the basically anti-military 

views held by many Americans and certainly by the Congress. The 

idea that a strong army was needed only in times of major crises held 

sway. In fact, the frontier provided more excuse for having an army 

than there would have been without it, and thus it may well have made 

conditions better not worse! 

The part of this paper which has the most possibility is that dealing with the experience of black soldiers in the arm’y. The author contends that the frontier army gave blacks steady “income, food, clothing and shelter, plus the chance for some basic schooling, and an 

’elevation of status’.’’ His material supports the generalization, but 

leaves one major question unanswered: To what extent was the frontier necessary for the army to provide these benefits for blacks? Perhaps to the extent that western society had fewer pople, there were 

likely to be fewer bigots there. Most recent studies of American racial 

attitudes, however, conclude that whites in all parts of the country 

disliked, feared, or even hated blacks. If that were true, then westerners were just as likely to despise them as anyone else, and the 

frontier army would provide no more opportunity for the “elevation 

of status” than an eastern army would have done at the same time. It 

is difficult to see how black soldiers could gain much status in society 

as a whole because thy served as enlisted men at the bottom of an 

essentially forgotten or despised institution. Still, soldiering does 

provide more opportunity than day labor in the east or tenant farming 

in the south. Except for the continuing need for troops caused by 

difficulties with the western Indians, which may have provided some 

social mobility for blacks, there is slight evidence to support the contention that the frontier had a significant impact on the army in racial 

matters. 

In fact the opposite case could be made. Despite several centuries of conflict and difficulties with the Indians, army attitudes and 

practices toward these people changed little. Most officers denounced 

soft-headed civilian humanitarians for mishandling Indian problems. 

Their view was that Indians were a military people and would understand a military solution. Defeat them soundly and then deal fairly 

and firmly with them and the issue would be settled. 

114 
In conclusion, these two papers have attempted to deal with 

broad and complex issues. Both have succeeded partially. Professor 

Ellis states that the army had little political impact on the frontier, 

and supports this by discussing exceptions to his thesis. To have explored the topic more convincingly he needed to have asked four 

questions: (1) What was the nature of frontier military institutions? (2) 

What were the probable circumstances under which military actions 

or polkies would cause political controversy? (3) How often did such 

circumstances arise? (4) To what extent did political controversy result from those circumstances? The answers to these questions would 

have allowed him to explain more satisfactorily why the army had 

only a minimal political impact on the frontier. 

Professor Foner was to have considered the social role of the 

army on the frontier, but shifted his discussion. In addition, he chose 

not to clarify what he meant by the socializing process. As a result, 

while his material seems related to his new focus, it left me with a 

sense of incompleteness or, more accurately, imprecision. Many of the 

claims made for the inter-relationship between the frontier and the 

army could be made for the army in non-frontier areas at the same 

time. To avoid these criticisms he might have considered a couple of 

questions also. (1) To what extent were social developments in frontier communities near army camps similar or different from frontier 

communities farther away from the troops? (2) In what ways were 

frontier army problems different from or similar to general military 

problems at the same time? Even if complete answers to these questions cannot be given, the effort would help to clarify parts of the issue. 

Both authors acknowledge a mass of scholarly literature on the 

general topic of the army on the frontier, yet both call for more work 

on the relationship between the army and the frontier. If they were 

correct, what we have is an immense body of knowledge which 

fails to answer obvious, general questions. If more research on the 

frontier is really needed, any new studies must ask different questions. Military historians need to utilize the work of polilical and social historians to a far greater extent than they have done so far. 

115 
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION 

Martin Ridge opened the discussion with an invitation to Richard 

Ellis and Jack Foner to respond to the critique of their papers. 

Ellis noted that he had narrowed intentionally the chronological 

and geographical scope of his paper because of length limitations and 

because his basic research had been in California and New Mexico. 

Foner explained that he had confined his study to the post-Civil 

War period because of his special interest in that phase of American 

history and in the socializing impact of the army on black troops who 

did not enter the regular army until after the Civil War when the desertion of white troops on the frontier created a need. He also explained that his concept of “elevated status” for blacks in the army 

was related largely to the image of black troops within the black 

community where they had considerable prestige. 

Lt Colonel John H. Napier, USAF (HQ Air University), pointed 

out that there was a great deal of interaction between politics and the 

military on the “earlier frontier” during the Colonial period of American history. It was as a frontier military officer that George Washington began the reputation which eventually led to the presidency. The 

list of political leaders who either began or boosted their public careers through military service on the frontier is long and impressive. 

It includes such notable figures as William Henry Harrison, Andrew 

Jackson, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett. 

Henry P. Walker noted that neither Ellis nor Foner had mentioned the great impact of nation-wide political struggles on the army. 

In one case an army appropriation act failed because of a conflict 

between Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives and 

Republicans who controlled the Senate. This Congressional impasse 

left the army without pay for more than six months, a situation which 

clearly affected the frontier since approximately three-fourtlk of the 

army was stationed in the west. 

116 
IV 

MILITARY LIFE ON 

THE FRONTIER 

The fourth session of the symposium was chaired by John K. Mahon of the University of Florida. Papers were read by Henry P. Walker of Tucson, Arizona, and by Sandra 

L. Myres of the University of Texas at Arlington. A commentary on the papers was delivered by James T. King of the University of Wisconsin. 

Henry Walker’s subject was “The Enlisted Soldier on the Frontier.” He described 

the training and discipline of soldiers on the western frontier following the Civil War and 

concluded that contrary to popular myth frontier soldiers were poorly trained and poorly 

led. Walker suggested that the inability of United States cavalrymen to ride and shoot 

contributed to the embarrassing number of military disasters on the frontier including the 

infamous Custer Massacre. 

Sandra Myres’ paper, entitled, “The Ladies of the Army-Views of Western Life,” 

is a survey of ten books written by army wives between 1858 and 1929. She points out 

that when these “ladies of the army” arrived on the frontier “they shared certain preconceived ideas and prejudices about the west, Indians, Mexicans and army life,” and that 

they were apparently more apt to write about the details of frontier life than their husbands who were preoccupied with their military duties. Myres concludes that “a careful 

analysis of their books can aid us in gaining a better understanding of Victorian views of 

the west, add greatly to our knowledge and understanding of life on the nineteenth century frontier and help dispel many myths of army life and the role of women which still exist in western literature.” 

117 
In these sketches of a “mounted” infantryman and of troopers of the 

Tenth Cavalry Frederick Remington captured some of the esence of 

the frontier enlisted man’s relationship with the horse. (Courtesy of 

Century Magazine (top) and Harper’s Weekly (bottom)). 

118 
THE ENLISTED SOLDIER 

ON THE FRONTIER 

HENRY P. WALKER 

LITTLE BIG HORN RIVER, MONTANA TERRITORY, 25 

JUNE 18767th REGIMENT UNITED STATES CAVALRY, 611 

STRONG; AMMUNITION EXPENDED, CARBINE 38,030 

ROUNDS; PISTOL 2,954 ROUNDS: 282 KIA, 46 WIA. THE OPPOSITION, A COMBINED SIOUX AND CHEYENNE FORCE, APPROXIMATELY 2,500 STRONG, ABOUT 60 KIA AND 100 WIA.1 

WHITE BIRD CANYON, IDAHO TERRITORY, 17 JUNE 

1877-TROOPS F AND H, 1st REGIMENT UNITED STATES 

ANS, ABOUT 60 WARRIORS, 2 WIA.2 

CAVALRY, 100 STRONG: 34 KIA, 4 WIA. NEZ PERCE INDIThis is certainly not the impression of the frontier army as portrayed in motion pictures directed by John Ford or pictures starring 

John Wayne. Why is there such a difference? Admittedly Lieutenant 

Colonel George Armstrong Custer, at the Little Big Horn, and Captain David Perry, at White Bird Canyon, committed egregious errors 

but more than once well-trained soldiers have compensated for the 

folly of their leaders. In neither of these cases did this happensomething was missing. 

What was missing was opportunity and encouragement for the 

'Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American 

Warriors (Garden City, New York, 1975), pp. 392, 409; Edgar I. Stewart, Custer's 

Luck (Norman, OK, 1953, p. 481, each man started out with one hundred rounds of 

carbine ammunition, p. 179; W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth (New York, 1953), pp. 

47, 54, 63; Kenneth M. Hammer, The Springfield Carbine on the Western Frontier 

(Crow Agency, Montana, 1%2), p. 4. Monthly Return, June 1876, 7th Cavalry, Returns 

from Regular Army Cavalry Regiments, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 

178Os-l917, [RAGO], Record Group 94, National Archives. 

'S. I-. A. Marshall. Crimson Prairie: The Wars Between the United States and the Plains 

Indians during the Winning of the West (New York. 1972). p. 188. 

119 
enlisted man to learn his trade. Simply stated, the soldier on the frontier, mounted or afoot, was almost untrained and sometimes incompetent. The reasons for this situation are not hard to make out-too 

much country to control, too many “housekeeping” duties, too little 

training in the soldier’s basic skills. 

Then as now the man behind the gun had to be trained and disciplined. Otherwise he might fail to perform his duties under extreme 

pressure. There is the famous case of the rifle found on the Gettysburg battlefield with a dozen charges of powder and ball-all because 

the soldier, in the heat of battle, forgot to put a cap on the nipple of 

his gun. 

Even with training and discipline, however, the soldier must not 

be asked to perform the impossible. From the beginning of the army’s 

frontier experience there were too few men to control too much. The 

“frontier” was elastic and as time went on it expanded faster than 

the army. In 1825, the so-called Permanent Indian Frontier was established. This was a line beyond which it was thought no white man 

could, or would, settle, and west of which the Indian could roam at 

will. To hold this line, a string of 10 military posts was established, 

reaching from Fort Jesup in Louisiana to Fort Snelling in Minnesota. 

All lay in the fertile valley of the Mississippi-Missouri river system., 

In the two decades between the formation of the Permanent Indian Frontier and the Mexican War, there were a number of expeditions westward from the forts. In 1829 Major Bennet Riley with four 

companies of the 6th Infantry-there were no mounted troops in the 

United States Army at the time-escorted the annual caravan of Santa Fe traders as far as the Arkansas River which was then part of the 

Mexican border. Five years later nine companies of the newly formed 

Regiment of Dragoons marched from Fort Gibson, in the eastern part 

of the present state of Oklahoma, to the country of the Kiowa and 

Comanche in the vicinity of present-day Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Another 

major expedition was the march by 250 men of the 1st Regiment of 

Dragoons and a battery of mountain howitzers to South Pass in central Wyoming. In all these cases, and numerous other marches, the 

troops returned to their home stations on the edge of civilization.4 

3Frederick J. Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (El Paso: 

Academic Reprints, 1960). p. 2; Henry P. Walker, The Wagonmasters: High Plains 

Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe Trail to I##O (Norman, OK, 1968), 

pp. 227-28. 

40tis E. Young, The First Military Escort on rhe Santa Fe Trail, 1829 (Glendale, CA, 

1952). passim; Willis B. Hughes, “The First Dragoons on the Western Frontier,” Arizona and the West, XI1 (Summer 1970). pp. 115-138. 

120 
The settlement of the Oregon question with Great Britain in 1846 

:tnd the treaty with Mexico two years later vastly increased the territory 

of the United States and the area of responsibility of the army. On 

the Pacific Coast, United States troops took up positions in the Presidio of San Francisco and the Presidio of Monterey in California in 

I847 and established Fort Steilacoom and Vancouver Barracks two 

years later. In New Mexico, Fort Marcy was built at Santa Fe in 1846 

and posts at Taos and Albuquerque were founded in the next year. 

With Oregon Territory opened for settlement, there was a great increase in traffic on the Overland Trail: and Fort Kearny was setup on 

the Platte River in central Nebraska, some 250 miles west of Fort 

Leavenworth, its supply base. The California Gold Rush, beginning in 

1848, saw the purchase of Fort Laramie from the American Fur 

Company. This was another 300 miles west. United States soldiers 

were now scattered over the whole of the trans-Mississippi west.5 

Not only was the army spread out, but it was spread very thin. 

The 10,317 officers and men authorized in 1848 were distributed from 

coast to coast in generally company-sized garrisons. So few soldiers, 

scattered in such small units, well out of supporting range of each other, would seem to call for the very best type of soldier-well trained 

and tightly disciplined. However, this was not the case.6 

General Winfield, Scott, in his annual report to the Secretary of 

War for 1XS8, said: “lncessant calls for reinforcements received from 

the frontiers compel us, habitually, to forward recruits without the 

instruction that should precede service in the field, and on joining 

their regiments, perhaps in the act of pursuing an enemy, it is long 

before the deficiency can be supplied.”7 

General Scott did not mention the fact that even when the troops 

were not “pursuing an enemy,” they could not get on with their training. There was too much else to do. Small though the garrisons were, 

they required a considerable number of buildings: barracks, officers’ 

quarters, warehouses, stables, and probably quarters for laundresses. 

In the trans-Mississippi west, labor was scarce and expensive, and as 

a result, the soldiers had to be responsible for the erection and 

maintenance of the buildings. Colonel Archibald McCall of the 

’Francis P. Prucha. A Guide to the Military Posts of the United States, 1789-189-5 

(Madison. WI, 1964). passim. 

6Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 

new ed., 2 vols. (Urbana, IL, 1965). 11, pp. 594-95. 

’Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1858, p. 762. 

121 
Inspector General’s Department reported that the officer commanding 

at Cebolleta, New Mexico, in October of 1850 was doing his best to 

maintain discipline but little attention could be paid to drill because of 

the urgent need for repairing their quarters. The colonel also noted 

that the garrison at Rayado, Companies G and I, 1st Dragoons, were 

not proficient in the prescribed drill “in consequence of the increased 

fatigue duty incident to the establishment of a new post.” 

Three years later Colonel Joseph K. F. Mansfield, also from the 

IG Department, reported that the status of discipline at Fort Massachusetts. Colorado, was good. The troops had received very little instruction in drill for the past year because of “the constant labor . . . in 

building the post.” Mansfield, in writing to General John Wool, commanding the Pacific Department, recommended the employment of 

civilian mechanics and laborers in the construction of military posts, 

thus releasing soldiers for drill. He also ‘decried the attempt by the 

War Department to reduce the cost of transportation of supplies by 

having the western posts operate farms for the production of cereal 

grains for the use of the men and long and short forage for the use of 

the animals.8 

It was little compensation to the enlisted men on extra duty that 

their monthly wage of six to eight dollars was augmented hy fifteen 

cents per diem and commutation of the whiskey ration. Over and over 

again the men complained that they had enlisted to fight lndinns. not to 

work ;IS “brevet architects” or common Iaborers.9 

While the army was building its own living ~~ quarters and other 

essential buildings, its mission was to protect settlers and travelers 

from hostile Indians. To fulfill this mission the one overarching requirement was the ability of the individual soldier to shoot effectively 

with his weapon, be it rifle, carbine, or pistol. The casualty figures 

from the Little Big Horn and White Bird Canyon indicate that the 

soldiers involved were anything but “Deadeye Dicks.” The generally 

low state of marksmanship displayed in these two engagements was 

of long standing. Colonel Mansfield in his I853 report said: 

My impressions are that the practice of firing at the target with hall and buck shot is 

RNew Mexico in 1850: A Military View, edited by Robert W. Frazer (Norman, OK, 

1968). pp. 124, 146, 158; Mansfield on the Condition of the Western Forts, 1953-.54, edited by Robert W. Frazer (Norman, OK, 1963). pp. 40, 69, 189. 

’Henry P. Walker, “The Reluctant Corporal: the Autobiography of William Bladen 

Jett,” Journal of Arizona History [JAH], XI1 (Spring 1971), pp. 1-50, (Summer 1971). 

pp. 112-44; Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 18.57 (Washington, 1858), p. 12. 

Testimony of Edward D. Townsend in “Reduction of the Military Establishment,” 

House Report 384,44 Congress, 1 session (Serial 1624), p: 39. 

122 
not sufficient. The mere discharge of the guard of the previous day at the target to 

get rid of the load is not sufficient practice, and there is not interest enough taken in 

it hy the men to produce any real improvement. It requires great use of the hall cartridge to make the soldier confident in what he can do with his musket , . , the soldier frequently flinches at the recoil. which practice alone can correct. 

In his letter of September 29, 1854, to General Wool, Mansfield said, 

"I am of opinion that the practice of firing by the soldiers at long distances to familiarize them with the use of the ball cartridge is by no 

means sufficient. . . ."I0 

The low state of weapons training prior to the Civil War cannot 

be blamed on lack of ammunition. Colonel Mansfield reported twelve 

to eighteen thousand rounds on hand in many of the west coast forts. 

At Benecia Arsenal, California, he condemned three barrels of rifle 

powder, one barrel of musket powder, 7,000 ball and buck cartridges 

for the musket, and 1,500 ball cartridges for the rifle, all because the 

powder had caked with time." 

Writing from Santa Fe in 1855, a civilian clerk for the army reported that the camp of a detachment of recruits, some 500 strong, on 

the march from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Santa Fe had been 

swept by a prairie fire. Many muskets discharged from the heat of the 

fire, actually killing one soldier and wounding others. After things had 

calmed down a bit, the charges were drawn from approximately 325 

weapons and it was found that 140 had been loaded with the ball first 

and then the powder. The officers in charge of the detachment expressed their unhappiness with the quality of the troops they were 

marching across the plains. In the detachment were 150 Dragoon recruits. described as "being mostly Americans." who might have put 

up a fight if attacked except for the fact that each man had a lead 

horse to worry about and did not have a weapon anyway.12 

Captain William J. Hardee's book, Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, prepared under the direction of the War Department, appeared in 

1855 and went through many editions for both the Union and Confederate armies. This drill manual led the individual soldier, step by step, 

I"Mansfie/d, pp. 67. 196 

llIhid.. pp. 152. 157. 169 

"John H. Moore. "Letter5 from a Santa Fe Army Clerk." New Mexico Historical Review. XI2 (April 1965). p. 143. 

123 
through the opetations of loading and pointing his ritk. hiit it did no1 

cover marksmanship training. 13 

In the introduction to A System of Target Practice for the Use of 

Troops When Armed with the Musket, Musket-rifle, Rifle or Carbine 

published in 1858, Captain Henry Heth, 10th Infantry, said: 

At this time, the typical enlisted man was foreign-born, chiefly German or Irish in origin. An additional complication in training was the 

fact that a number of men were recruited who could neither speak 

nor understand English.14 

Two years before the publication of his manual, Captain Heth 

had received a copy of the London Illustrated News from his friend, 

First Lieutenant Winfield Scott Hancock. In the magazine was an article by Lord Hardinge of the British Army which described, with illustrations, the school of rifle practice recently established in England. 

Heth tried out the system in his company and remarked that by keeping ;I record of each shot fired. he found that in ;I 4ix-week period the 

accuracy of his men improved by 300 percent. Many years later in 

writing his Memoirs, Heth, in the wisdom and conservatism of age, 

reduced the improvement to 75 percent. 

Based on this experience, the Captain prepared a pamphlet, with 

plates, that spelled out the details of his system. He was on the point 

of sending a copy to the Adjutant General when he received a circular from the General-in-Chief, Winfield Scott, directing all officers 

having independent command\ to forward. through channel\. "theit 

views as to the best method of obtaining greater accuracy of fire in 

the Army." The pamphlet was duly forwarded and, when he passed 

through Washington on leave, Captain Heth called on Secretary of 

War John B. Floyd, who prided himself on being a rifleman. The sec- 

'TWilliarn J. Hardee, Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics. . .(Philadelphia. 1861). 

I4Henry Heth, A System of Target Practice for the Use of Troops when Armed wirh 

Musket. Rifle-musket. Rifle. 01' Carbine (Philadelphia 1858). p. 9: M;in\h'eld. p. 70: Miw 

cus Cunliffe, Soldiers and Civilians: The Martial Sprit in America. 177s-1865 (Boston. 

1968), p. 119. 

124 
retary put Heth on special duty to prepare an official manual. With 

all the reports from the field, Heth went to work and submitted a final 

draft on February 8, 1858. 

Heth’s final system was essentially a translation of the French 

manual Instruction provisoire sur la Tir, a !’usage des bataillons de 

Pied [Light Infantry]. It pointed out that men who consistently fired 

inaccurately had no knowledge of ballistics or the principles of shooting. The complete system called for annual target practice with competition at company, regiment, and army levels. Records were to be 

kept at the company and reports forwarded to higher headquarters. 

The practice of unloading the guns of the old guard by firing at a target was continued. The range to be fired was prescribed: 100 yards 

from January through March and then by 100-yard increments for 

each subsequent quarter of the year. The manual suggested that 

“when practicable, the best shot will be credited with a tour of police 

or fatigue duty.”ls 

Unfortunately for the troopers at Little Big Horn and White Bird 

Canyon and numerous other engagements with hostile Indians, there 

was a great gap between theory and practice. Target practice varied 

widely and was controlled chiefly by the whim of the commander, the 

tradition of the various regiments, and the availability of ammunition. 

When General E. 0. C. Ord commanded the Department of California in 1869, he took steps to encourage improved marksmanship in his 

department. General Orders No. 42, Headquarters Department of California, San Francisco, June 30, 1869, directed weekly target practice 

and monthly reports detailing the number of shots per man, size of 

target, etc. The best shot was to be excused from a tour of guard or 

fatigue duty. The worst shot was to be presented, at company parade, 

“with a leather medal, colored green.” This order allowed the local 

commander a great deal of leeway in compliance. 16 

Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, in his book Cavalry Tactics, 

written on the eve of the Civil War, set forth a course of target firing, 

both mounted arld dismounted, at different ranges and at different 

gaits of the horse. He stated, “-there will be ;I record of target 

firing in every 3 months in every squadron.” However, there was no 

prescribed course of preparatory training. The cavalry’s chief weapon, the carbine, kicked like a mule, requiring much practice to avoid 

”Henry Heth, The Memoirs of Henry Herb, edited by James L. Morrison, Jr. (Westport, CT, 1974), pp. 135-42. 

16Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York, 1967), p. 231; 

General Orders No. 42, Headquarters Department of California, San Francisco, June 

30, 1869, RAGO, RG 94. 

125 
flinching. Cooke’s manual did not make clear how many rounds were 

to be fired by each man.17 

Most of the enlisted men who left recollections of their recruit 

training mention “drill” but make no mention of target practice as 

part of that training. Some rifle or pistol firing may have been encompassed in the word “drill,” or, as seems more likely considering the 

novelty of the experience, the omission from the recollections came 

about because there was no such practice. Even the most professional 

leaders did not carry training beyond the parade ground. Drill consisted of the maneuvers needed to move troops on the battlefield and to 

assure control during the confusion of close combat. 18 

Things were little, if any, better after the Civil War. In 1874 the 

War Department issued General Order No. 103 which said, in part, 

“The limited appropriation available for the supply of small-arm 

ammunition, renders it imperatively necessary that the utmost economy, consistent with the interests of the service, be practiced in its 

expenditure.” Officers conducting recruit training were authorized 

almost unlimited use of blank cartridges (which produced no kick) 

during the first year’s enlistment and 10 rounds of ball cartridge per 

month per man thereafter. A note, added to the order, said that allowance of 120 rounds per man per year for an army of 25,000 men 

would consume all the ammunition that could be manufactured with 

the appropriation of $75,000. Therefore any additional demands would 

have to be met from the small stock on hand. Guards would no longer 

unload their piece by shooting at a target. Instead they would withdraw the cartridge and return it to the cartridge box. In the following 

year, with the appropriation for the manufacture of metallic cartridges 

still $75,(!4)0, General Order No. 83 increased the ammunition irllowance to I5 round\ per man per month for target practice hut only for 

the cavalry service. 1’) 

Since the days of the long rifle and the turkey shoot, :I considerable body of Americans had taken an interest in rifle shooting as a 

sport. After the Civil War, Captain George W. Wingate, of the 22nd 

Regiment of the New York National Guard, prepared a Manual of 

Rifle Practice which was published in six installments in the Army 

and Navy Journal, late in 1870 and early I87 I. In the next year an 

”Philip St. G. Cooke, Cavalry Tactics. . .(Philadelphia, 1861), pp. 69, 115-16. 

18Weigley, History of the United States Army, p. 231. 

I9General Order No. 103, War Department, Adjutant General’s Office [WD-AGO], 

Washington, August 5, 1874 (Washington, 1875); General Order No. 83, WD-AGO, 

September 23, 1875 (Washington, 1876). 

126 
expanded version was published as a book which was quite generally 

adopted by the National Guard.20 

The regular army did not pay much attention to Wingate’s work. 

However, to arouse interest in better shooting, hunting was encouraged wherever practicable. Cartridges could be bought for hunting, if 

supplies allowed, at the rate of 2-1/2 cents for carbine ammunition 

and 3 cents for rifle ammunition. Obsolescent weapons could be retained for hunting purposes, as long as the ammunition was available. 

There can be little doubt that this was a help only to the men who 

could already shoot effectively.21 

The catastrophes of Little Big Horn and White Bird Canyon finally roused the War Department to undertake an effective program 

to improve the marksmanship of the army. On September 15, 1877, 

Brigadier General Stephen Vincent Benet, Chief of Ordnance, directed Colonel T. T. s. Laidley to prepare a system of target practice, 

with illustrative plates. A month later, General Benet explained to 

Secretary of War G. W. McCrary that the system then in use had 

been published in May of 1862 “when the metallic cartridge was in ’its 

infancy, and the breechloading rifle, depending on the cartridge for its 

success, still classified among the probabilities.”22 

The manual was very complete, starting with the construction 

and maintenance of the rifle and cartridge, and proceeding through 

dry-run aiming practice, firing positions, record keeping and the construction of ranges. OfFicers were recruited to fire some rounds each 

year to show that they were qualified to act as instructors. Colonel 

Laidley stated that, early in his training, the soldier should have it 

impressed upon him that one of his most important duties was to 

learn to shoot well, “that his own safety and that of his companions 

may depend upon his ability to deliver his fire with effect. . . .”23 

Laidley’s manual was adopted by General Order No. 86 of 1879 

as the officially approved system of instruction in the use of the rifle. 

The final paragraph of the order read: 

Until there .;hall he pi-ovided hy proper legislation a \ystem of rewards involving 

Ihe expenditure of money to encourage good marksmanship. Department Com20Arnericans and Their Guns, compiled James R. Trefethen and edited James E. 

Serven (Harrisburg. PA, 1967). pp. 31-32. 

?‘General Order No. 103, 1874; General Order No. 47, WD-AGO, June 9, 1876 

(Washington, 1877). 

22Theodore T. S. Laidley, Course of Instruction in Rifle Firing (Philadelphia, 1879), p. 

23fbid., pp. 14-16. 

___. 

111. 

127 
manders will grant such indulgence5 to the he\! marksinen in their ctimni;tntl~ ;I\ 

they may think proper.IJ 

It may be noted that this manual of rifle marksmanship was prepared 

by an Ordnance officer-not by an infantryman. 

The issuance of General Order 86 drew prompt reaction. In the 

following year, in General Order 36. there was published ;I letter from 

an unidentified correspondent who recommended the use of mind 

balls and greatly reduced propelling charges. in lieu of the standard 

load, for shooting gallery type practice. Targets were to be scaled 

down in proportion to the reduction in range. It was claimed that this 

system would iillow almost unlimited shooting at very little cost.25 

In 1880 army rifle teams, properly trained and armed with the 

new Springfield rifle, ran roughshod over the National Gu:ird teams at 

the Creedmore range on Long Island. Finally, in May of 1881 an 

army-wide marksmanship program was initiated by General Order 

No. 44. The competition was to be organized on three levels: department, division, and army. Firing was to be done at 220 yards, standing; 400 yards. kneeling; and 6O() yards, prone. At division level. the 

first prize was to he a gold medal of $500 valuation: the next three 

prizes were to be “marksman” rifles with the winner’s name duly 

inscribed on the butt. The next eight men were to receive silver medals valued at $5.00 each. Publicity was given to the program when the 

winners in the divisions of the Atlantic, Missouri, and Pacific were 

announced in General Order 83 of the same year. The Arizona mark.;- 

men did not enter the competition-the troops were busy shooting at 

moving targets whenever they could bring their weapons to hear on 

el iisi ve Apaches. 26 

As far as the mounted soldier was concerned, next in importance 

to the ability to handle his individual weapon effectively, was the ability to ride and care for his horse. Though there was more training of 

recruits in equitation than in marksmanship, it was very uneven in 

quantity, if not in quality. An anonymous dragoon recruit at Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania, in 1859, recalled that Reveille was at daybreak. Stables started fifteen minutes later and lasted for an hour, 

24General Order No. 86, WD-AGO, August 16, I879 (Washington, 1880) 

2sGeneral Order No. 36, WD-AGO. May 13, 1880 (Washington, 1881) 

26Trefethen. Americans and Their Guns, pp. 86-87; General Order No. 44, WD-AGO, 

May 10, 18x1; General Order No. 88, WD-AGO. December 13, 1881 (Washington, 

1882). 

128 
then came breakfast.6uard Mount was at 9 o’clock, followed by carbine drill on foot until 11:OO. Sabre exercise was from 12:OO to 1:OO. 

Dinner was at 2:OO P.M. followed by mounted drill until half an hour 

before sunset. Stables again for an hour and then supper. The evening 

was devoted to maintenance of uniform and equipment. Tattoo came 

at 9:OO P.M. and Lights Out 15 minutes later.27 

When Percival G. Lowe enlisted in the 2nd Dragoons in October 

of 1849, he was sent to the school for- recruits for the mounted service at Carlisle Barracks. As a boy he had had good horses and the 

reputation of being a reckless rider. Horses were kept at the school 

specifically for training recruits. Drill consisted of mounting bareback, 

then with saddles on which the stirrups were crossed over the pommel. and then going through the evolutions at a walk. In a few days, 

a syti;id of the morc advanced riders, still with stirrups crossed, drilled 

at a trot and then at a gentle gallop.28 

Ami F. Mulford enlisted in 1876 in the 7th Cavalry, then called 

“Custer’s Avengers.” He went through recruit training at Fort Leavenworth: hut it was not until he reached the camp of Company B, outside Fort Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota, that he was introduced to 

a horse. The first experience lasted about an hour and resulted in 

numerous saddle blisters. The horse was a veteran. As Mulford 

turned away after trying his mount to the picket line, the beast 

reached around and nipped him right on the sorest part of his anatomy.29 

When William Bladen Jett enlisted in 1881, the cavalry recruit 

school was at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. Jett remarked that 

“It %:I\ vcl’y ;Imil\ing to \ee \ome of the men. who hail never heen on :I horse hefore. le;itninp to ride. Onc day :I horx with ii tecruit on him. turned deliheriitely 

o11t of coltlmn xnd walked hack to the \t;ihle. His I-iiler had hi\ leg\ up like :I frog 

;inti W:I\ holding onto the rein\ with both hand\.“ 

On another occasion, while riding in the ring at a walk, trot, and gallop, a recruit fell off his horse and was trampled by some of the following horses. The officer in charge said, “Get up, you will never 

make a good soldier till you get killed two or three times.” The re27Anonymous. “Reminiscences of Some Incidents in the Career of an United States 

I)t.;ipoon hetween 1x19 :inJ 1x44.” Te\;i,s @iitr-ter/y, IX (Autumn 1966). pp. 7-20. 

2XPercival G. Lowe. Five Years a Dragoon (‘49 to ‘54) and Other Adveniures on the 

Greai P/ains. new ed. (Norman, OK, 1965). pp. 4-7. 

”Ami F. Mulford. fighting Indians in the 7th United States Cavalry: Custer‘s Favorite 

Regimenr. new ed. (Bellvue, NB, 1970). p. 28. 
cruit apparently did not enjoy the prospect of multiple deaths; he 

went over the hill during the night.30 

Possibly the most biting comment on the state of equitation in the 

frontier army came from Captain Charles B. Throckmorton, 4th Artillery, in 1878. Eight batteries of the 4th had been in the field. serving 

chiefly as infantry, against the Nez Perce. After observing some of 

the units of the 1st Cavalry, he said: 

’fhel-e did not ;ippear to he that confidencc I>ctwec~incii ;ind hoi \c\ tliiif \houkl 

exist to make ii perfecf cavalryniaii. hut the height of the IIICII‘\ ;inihittoii \eeriicd fo 

he, to he ahlc to stick to their hor\e\‘ hick from one c;iinp to ;inothc.i. m;iny ~ith 

difficulty keeping their \eat\ *hen ;I \harp trot *;I\ taken up. 

It is interesting to note that, writing some 30 years after the 

event, General 0. 0. Howard, when referring to Captain Perry’s 

troops of the 1st Cavalry as they marched out on the trail that was to 

lead to White Bird Canyon, wrote, “One never saw two finer troops 

of cavalry than those which set out for the front on the evening of 

the 15th of May.”31 

Poor horsemanship was more than a matter of stiff legs and sore 

buttocks. Ignorance or indifference on the part of the soldier could 

very soon ruin a horse, and a dismounted cavalryman could be a danger to himself and to his buddies. Private Jett recalled that “some 

men never seemed to learn how to ride with any ease either to 

themselves or the horse. Sitting back in the saddle and with toes 

pointed out they would wobble around in the saddle to their own discomforture and also to that of the horse, frequently making the 

horse’s back very sore.” One of his fellow troopers, whose horse 

developed a sore back on a long march, was made to walk for ten 

days carrying the saddle. He commented on another soldier who, 

while mounting, had to pull on the pommel and cantle of the saddle 

“wriggling and climbing very much as a man climbs the trunk of a 

tree. ”32 

Even training in such a daily and routine operation as Guard 

Mount seems to have been very erratic. An anonymous private of the 

’“Walker. “Reluctant Corporal,” JAH. XI1 (Spring 1971). p. 8 

3’01iver 0. Howard, My Life and Experiences Among our Hostile Indians. new ed. 

(New York, 1972), p. 280; Oliver 0. Howard to J. C. Kelton, Headquarters, Department of the Columbia, Portland, Oregon. January 19, 1876. in Report of the Army 

Equipment Board, WD-AGO. Letters Received, 1806-1889, RG 94. 

32Unpublished portion of autobiography of William Bladen Jett (“Reluctant Corporal”) 

in author’s files. 

130 
Regiment of Dragoons recalled that while he was at Carlisle Barracks 

for training he pulled guard duty about once a week, as he said, 

“More for instruction than use.” On the other hand, James Lamon, 

who enlisted in the 1st Cavalry (later redesignated 4th Cavalry) just 

before the Civil War, went through recruit training at Jefferson Barracks without any instruction in Guard Mount. It was not until he 

reached Fort Riley, Kansas, that his name came up on the roster for 

guard. Fortunately for him, he was well down the line at Guard 

Mount and was able, out of the corner of his eye, to observe the 

mote experienced men and get through the inspection of arms without 

a blunder.33 

Some training was carried out by the enlisted men without the 

help, or even knowledge of, their officers, and possibly the non-coms 

as well. Augustus Meyers, who enlisted in 1854, recalled that one soldier of filthy habits was taken to a creek and thoroughly scrubbed 

with sand and water until his skin was raw. Undoubtedly one such 

treatment was sufficient. Petty thieves were soundly thrashed, but not 

a single one of them complained to the officers.34 

The poorly trained recruit may not have been any great threat to 

hostile Indians, but at times he could be a distinct menace to his fellow soldiers. A sergeant of Company B, 3rd Infantry, writing during 

the Rogue River War of the early 1850s, reported that one night a 

corporal of the guard, while making his round of the sentries, was 

shot and killed by a recruit on sentry duty. He added, “This is the 

third corporal of the guard whom I have known shot by green sentinels. ”35 

Nervous overreaction by green troops under combat conditions is 

understandable to some extent, but there seems to have been no attention paid to field exercises simulating combat that would help to 

steady new men. The practice march and bivouac by a party of some 

15 recruits of the 6th Cavalry in 1879 seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. A lieutenant and 25 Apache scouts acted as 

hostiles to add realism to this training operation.36 

73Anonymous, “Reminiscences,” Texas Quarterly, IX, I; James Larson, Sergeant Larson, 4th Cavalry (San Antonio, TX, 1925). pp. 61, 66-70. 

34Augustus Meyers, Ten Years in the Ranks, U.S. Army (New York, 1914), p. 43. 

3sAnonymous, “Soldiering in Oregon,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, XI11 (September 18%). pp. 522-24. 

‘“Don Rickey. Jr., Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting 

The Indian Wars (Norman, OK. 1963). pp. 86-87. 

131 
It was not often that the army acquired a recruit like Englishborn Reginald Bradley. Born in 1867, he came to the United States in 

1888, worked for a while in Virginia, then as a cowboy in New Mexico. When his job ran out, he enlisted at Fort Bowie, Arizona, in C 

Troop of the 4th Cavalry. He said, “After only a few days of training, I began regular duty in the troop.” Reginald had learned to ride 

in England and, presumably, to shoot, as he bought a 41/40 Winchester and a Colt six-shooter before leaving home. He had had some military training at school and found it very easy to adapt to the American drill. As a result he was joshed about being a deserter from the 

British Army. Eventually he held certificates as Marksman and Sharpshooter for proficiency with the carbine.37 

Not until the late seventies were effective steps taken for improving the training of the man in the ranks. In 1878 First 1,ieutenant (13revet Lieutenant Colonel) Edmund V. Rice, 5th Infantry, testified before 

the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives in 

reference to a proposed reorganization of the army. He stated unequivocally that enlisted men should be drilled in the States before being 

sent to the frontier. After a recent increase of 150 recruits, the 5th had an 

average of SO men to a company. Of these only about half were for 

duty because of calls for guard, drivers, teamsters, and other post 

details. He went on to say that “when there is a small number of 

troops at a station it is impossible to send out anybody.” He added 

that “one-half of the posts of the army have no drills. The companies 

are so small that all the men are occupied in taking care of the post.” 

Training certainly was impossible under such conditions. The officers 

on the frontier cannot be faulted too heavily if their men were not the 

finest of soldiers. Altogether too often there was only one officer on a 

small post and he was Post Commander, Post Quartermaster, Post 

Commissary of Subsistence, as well as Commander of Troops.38 

By 1887, a new day was beginning to dawn. A young woman visiting at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in that year, wrote: “There is to be a 

cavalry and infantry drill every day now, much to the disgust of every37There were men in Bradley’s troop who were technically deserters from the British 

Army as they had left England during their period of seven years reserve time following a regular five-year enlistment. Reginald Bradley Collection, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Arizona. 

38Testimony of Edmund V. Rice in House Miscellaneous Document 56, 45 Congress, 2 

Session (Serial 1818). pp. 243-46. 

132 
one except the commanding officer. The former officer was an easy 

going sort of man and the folk are spoiled.”39 

Just as the army, at long last, was paying attention to the matter 

of improved shooting, another major development occurred which 

enabled the army to pay more attention to overall efficiency. The rapid expansion of the railroad net in the western territories and the increased density of population made it advisable to abandon many 

small posts. Beginning about 1884, the troops were concentrated in 

larger garrisons as quickly as permanent quarters could be built for 

them. This concentration resulted in improved economy of post operation and more time for training.40 

The irregularity of recruit training was directly traceable to the 

seasons of the year. As recruit detachments were usually dispatched 

as guards for wagon trains carrying supplies to the frontier depots, 

they had to wait until the spring grass was high enough to provide 

forage for the draft and saddle stock. Men who enlisted for one of 

the frontier regiments in the fall or winter usually spent 3 to 6 months 

in one of the recruit depots. Soldiers who joined up in the spring or 

early summer were sent out as soon as possible. It took the tragedies 

of Little Big Horn and White Bird Canyon to shock headquarters into 

establishing a program to improve army marksmanship. As the Indian 

wars tapered off, training programs were instituted. General Nelson 

Miles in Arizona sent companies of cavalry out with the mission of 

reaching another fort despite blocking efforts of other units. 

When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898, whatever the 

blunders in planning and lack of preparation, the enlisted soldier of 

the United States Army proved himself to be ready. While there was 

no need for mounted service, man for man, he was probably the 

world’s best military marksman “compared with the soldiers of any 

of the world’s standing armies.”4~ Thank Goodness! 

39Marion T. Brown: Letters from Fort Sill, 1886-1887, edited by C. Richard King (Austin, TX. 1970). p. 56. 

@Prucha, Guide to Military Posts, p. 34. 

4’Rickey, Forty Miles a Day, p. 105. 

133 
Elizabeth Custer (center wearing small black hat) and her famous husband enjoying an outing with friends. (Courtesy of Denver Public Library) 

134 
THE LADIES OF THE ARMY-VIEWS 

OF WESTERN LIFE 

SANDRA L. MYRES 

Americans generally, the easterners particularly, have traditionally shared an interest in and fascination for that vaguely defined region 

known as “the West.” As G. Edward White points out in his provocative work, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: 

Of the threc regions hrodly conceived iis subdividing the continental United 

States, the West has hiid the most dramatic impact upon the American 

imagination. . . and far more than . . . other regions. has tended to elicit imaginative 

response.. . . .I 

Concepts of the west and the frontier also have had a profound 

effect on American literature and letters. From the early years of the 

colonies to the present day there has been a consistently large production of articles, journals, essays, histories and novels exploring every aspect of western life and attempting to define, describe, explain 

and interpret the west and the frontier experience. In the pre-Civil 

War years, many major American authors (including Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Melville and Irving) dealt with western themes2 

while narratives of exploration and discovery, western journals, emigrant guides, and fiction and nonfiction works extolling the exploits of 

the mountainmen, fur-traders, frontier scouts and the first hardy pioneers poured from eastern presses and attracted reading audiences 

throughout the United States and Europe. 

Following the Civil War, the dime novels produced by Beadle 

and Adams’ “literary factory” attracted thousands of readers while 

the more sophisticated devoted themselves to the contemplation and 

IG. Edward White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience (New 

Haven, 1968). p. I. 

’These themes are discussed at length in Edwin Fussell, Frontier: American Literature 

and the American West (Princeton, 1965). 

135 
enjoyment of Theodore Roosevelt. Owen Wistcr. and Frederick Remington.3 Americans and Europeans alike followed the adventures of 

Ruffalo Bill. Calamity Jane. and Wyatt Eilrp and re:d with interest ant1 

curiosity in newspapers, weekly “gazettes” and monthly magazines 

vivid, if somewhat inaccurate accounts, complete with illustrations 

from “artists in the field,” of battles between soldiers. frontiersmcn. 

and Indians and life in raw and often violent western towns. 

Most observers and writers on or about the western scene were 

men, but as Jo Beth Jacobs has pointed out, “some of the most reliable and richly detailed journals,” were produced by women.4 Another 

author, male historian Merrill Mattes, has praised the “female journalists” as “superior observers and recorders .”5 Prominent among 

these “female journalists” were some of the most perceptive and 

unheralded observers of the western scene-the wives of the frontier 

army’s men in blue. Almost unnoticed among the more flamboyant 

and famous writers of the period, the army wives’ journals, diaries 

and letters provide one of the richest sources of information on life in 

the west during the last years of the American frontier. The army 

authoresses offer comments and insights into western life which, if 

not as exciting as the hordes of bloodthirsty savages, armed desperados, death defying heroes and delicate heroines of the popular press, 

nor as elegant in literary tone as the diaries and travel guides produced by European noblemen and gentlewomen and eastern tourists. 

still give a vivid and detailed view of western life. 

In retrospect, the literary production of the army wives is prodigious in relation to their numbers. The post-Civil War frontier army 

was never large, and the entire officer corps numbered no more than 

2,000 at any one time.6 Many of the officers were never stationed in 

the west, and many who were either did not marry or left their wives 

and families in the east. Yet, from the relatively small group of army 

wives who did accompany their husbands west, a surprising number 

3White.s The Eastern Establishment includes a discussion of the work of these three 

men and their influence on Eastern opinion. 

JJo Beth Jacobs. ”The Watering Male Through Victorian E:yc\.” paper prewnted at 

the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Western Histcry Association, October, 1973. 

Fort Worth, ‘Texas. 

Qwted in ibid. 

hThe army appropriation act of 1874 provided funds for an army of 2S.oMl enlisted men 

and approximately Z,OW officers. hut the companie\ were tisu;illy far below strength. 

This situation persisted until the end of the Indian wars. See Rohert M. Utley. Frontier 

Regulars. The United States Army and the Indian. 1866-1891 (New York. 19731, pp. 14- 

18. 

136 
of journals and reminiscences appeared in print in either article or 

book length form prior to 1920, and many more have been discovered 

and published since that time. 

I have chosen for discussion ten books written by army wives 

between 1858 and 1929. All were prepared for publication by the authoresses rather than by editors or professional historians and, with 

the exception of Alice Baldwin’s work, were pFinted by large eastern 

houses.’ In chronological order, these include books by Teresa Griffin 

Viele, Margaret S. Carrington, Elizabeth Custer, Lydia S. Lane, Mrs. 

Orsemus Boyd, Ellen Biddle, Martha Summerhayes, Frances Roe, 

Frances Carrington, and Alice Blackwood Baldwin.8 These ten women 

came from similar eastern, middle-class backgrounds, all spent several years at western posts and, again with the exception of Alice Baldwin, returned east following their years of frontier service. At the 

time they arrived on the frontier, they shared certain preconceived 

ideas and prejudices about the west, Indians, Mexicans, and army life: 

and their diaries and books reflect not only their interest in the west 

but, in some cases, new insights and viewpoints gained from their 

years of personal experience. 

Many of the ladies “joined the army” with dreams of leading a 

romantic, even heroic, life in the “Great West.” They had all sorts of 

misconceptions about the glamour and excitement of the military life, 

and most approached frontier service with a sense of adventure and a 

desire to see new places and explore new things. For example, after 

an exciting, fun-filled year in Germany with the family of General 

Weste, Martha Dunham returned to the States anxious to continue a 

“military existence.” “I concluded,” she wrote, “the only thing to 

do was to join the army myself.”9 She promptly married Second 

’Although other journals and reminiscences were published during the period, they 

appeared in western papers or magazines or were privately printed in limited editions. 

Since one of the purposes of this study is to assess the army women’s influence on 

eastern opinions of the west and the army, these ten books were selected on the basis 

of their date of publication and on the premise that they probably received fairly wide 

distribution in the east. Although Teresa Vielk’s book first appeared in 1858, a third 

edition was published in 1864, and I have thus included it on the bdsis that it was in 

circulation during the post-Civil War period. Alice Baldwin’s work, although published 

in the west, was intended for eastern distribution and, despite the title, includes a long 

section of personal reminiscences originally intended for separate publication under the 

title “Tales of the Old Army by an Old Army Girl.” 

8Many of these works appeared in several editions. See Appendix A for a list of the 

early editions and post-1930 reprints. 

9Martha Summerhayes, Vanished Arizona: RecolleCtions of the Army Life of a New 

England Woman (Glorieta, New Mexico, 1970), v. 20. 

137 
Lieutenant Jack Summerhayes and left for Fort Russell, Cheyenne. 

Wyoming Territory. Teresa Griffin was even more enamoured with 

the idea of “joining the army.” Of her marriage in 1850 to Lieutenant 

Egbert VielC, she recalled, “No recruit ever entered the service with 

more enthusiasm than I did or felt more eager to prove himself ;I soldier. Mars would have gloried in the wonderful female that my imagination loved to point, and to follow her heroic footsteps seemed 21 

high ambition. . . .”lo 

But such illusions were quickly shattered by the realities of 

dreary, windswept posts, inadequate medical and educational facilities 

and the monotony of daily existence. The women soon found that 

army regulations made no provision for wives, other than laundresses, and the army’s ‘‘benign neglect,” coupled with ,the many inconveniences of frontier life brought frequent complaints. 11 All the journalists commented on the difficulties of western travel, poor transportation and inadequate allowances for the frequent, and often untimely, changes of station and the inconvenience of disposing of household possessions at one post and acquiring new ones at the next. 

Another favorite theme was the lack of suitable quarters and furnishings and the army’s quaint custom of allowing senior officers to disposses families of lower rank from already established homes (what 

Merrill Mattes called the army’s game of “musical chairs”l2). In fact, 

sudden and unexpected changes of quarters were so common that a 

sort of folk literature developed about these incidents. A favorite story, repeated frequently by the ladies, was about a lieutenant’s wife 

who was moved from a three room “suite” to a single room to a hallway in only a few months. When a major moved on post and evicted 

the family from the hallway the lieutenant was purported to have resigned his commission in disgust.13 The ladies also make frequent 

mention of the monotony of army rations and the exorbitant prices 

extracted by post sutlers and local storekeepers for canned goods and 

loTeresa G. Viele, “Following the Drum”: A Glimpse of Frontier Life, edited by James 

Day (Austin, 1968), pp. 13-14. 

IIUndoubtedly the wives would have agreed with Elizabeth Custer who noted indignantly, “The book of army regulations enters into such minute detail in its instructions 

giving the number of hours that hean soup should boil, that it would be natural to suppose that a paragraph or two might be wasted on an officer’s wife.” Elizabeth Custer, 

“Boots and Saddles” or Life in Dakota with General Custer, edited by Jane R. Stewart 

(Norman, OK, 1961), p. xv. 

‘*Merrill J. Mattes, Indians, Infants and Infantry: Andrew and Elizabeth Burt on the 

Frontier (Denver, 1960), p. 8. 

I3There are several versions of this story. The one included here is from.Mrs. Orsemus 

Boyd, Cavalry Life in Tent and Field (New York, 1894). 

138 















APPENDIX B 

REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY OFFICERS’ WIVES 

Boyd, Mrs. Orseknus. Cavalry Life in Tent and Field. Dial, 17 (October 16, 1894), p. 234. 

Carrington, Francels. My Army Life and the Fort Phil Kearney Massacre. Dial, 49 (August 16, 1910), p. 94; Natipn, 91 (October 13, 

1910), p. 345; New York Times, August 6, 1910, p. 436. 

Carrington, Margaret. Ab-sa-ra-ka: Land of the Crow. Nation, 7 (December 3, 1868), p. 462. Also mentioned in Dial, 14 (February I, 

1893), p. 80. 

Custer, Elizabeth. Boots and Saddles. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 70 (April 1885), pp. 813-14; Nation, 40 (April 30, 1885), p. 369. 

. Following the Guidon. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 82 

(January 1891), pp. 316-18; Harper’s Magazine Supplement, 81 (August l890), p. 486; Nation, 51 (October 9, 1890), p. 296. 

. Tenting on the Plains. Nation, 46 (May 31, 1888), p. 455. 

Lane, Lydia. I Married a Soldier. Dial, 14 (February 1, 1893), pp. 80- 

82. (Reviewed by Capt. Charles King.) 

Roe, Frances. Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife. 

brary Association Booklist, 6 (November 1909), p 

(November 16, 1909), p. 390; Literary Digest, 39 

1909), p. 787; Nation, 89 (November 25, 1909), p. 5 

Times, December 25, 1909, p. 818. 

American Li83; Dial, 47 

November 6, 

8: New York 

Summerhayes, Martha. Vanished Arizona. American Library Association Booklist, 8 (October 1911), p. 85; Annals of the American 

Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 38 (November 191 I), p. 

949; Catholic World, 94 (October 191 I), p. 115; Engineering News, 

66 (September 14, 1911), supplement p. 24; Independent, 71 (September 7, 191 l), p. 548; Literary Digest, 43 (October 7, 191 I), p. 

582; New York Times, July 18, 1908, p. 400; New York Times, 

August 27, 191 1, p. 519. 

VielC, Teresa. Following the Drum. Mentioned in Dial, 14 (February 

I, 1893), p. 80. 

154 
COMMENTARY 

The critique of Sandra Myres’ and Henry Walker’s papers was delivered by James 

T. King, Professor of History and Director of the Area Research Center at the University 

of Wisconsin. 

JAMES T. KING 

The two papers we have just heard contribute substance to the 

historiography of the military frontier, and, in their respective areas, 

are of material assistance in scholarly efforts to counter the popular 

stereotype of the frontier army. That stereotype is firmly imbedded in 

the public imagination, both in this nation and abroad. The very term 

“military frontier” calls forth the image of grim-faced, well-discipI’ined and blue-clad troopers-usually cavalrymen-charging in line of 

battle to join a contest with an aboriginal foe. While scholars do their 

best to dispel the old stereotypes, the popular imagination seems to 

continue to insist, in the manner of Walter Cronkite or the Bi-Centennial Minute, that “That’s the way it was.” 

In the case of Dr. Walker’s paper, “The Enlisted Soldier on the 

Frontier,” we find a scholar insisting that the old impression is not 

the way it was. “Simply stated,” he has told us, “the soldier on the 

frontier, mounted or afoot, was almost untrained and sometimes incompetent,” and he went on to suggest, fully and accurately, the 

many reasons why this was true. One of the examples Dr. Walker cities is the use of “the labor of the troops”-as it was called-in 

building and maintaining posts in New Mexico and Colorado in the 

1850s. The situation during the post-war period, of course, was little 

better, and one of the many officers who condemned this practice was 

Captain John G. Bourke, aide-de-camp to General George Crook. 

“This ‘labor of the troops’ was a great thing,” Captain Bourke commented sardonically. “It made the poor wretch who enlisted under 

the vague notion that his admiring country needed his services to 

quell hostile Indians, suddenly find himself a brevet architect, carrying a hod and doing odd jobs of plastering and kalsomining.” Captain 

155 
Bourke believed that that practice not only contributed to the inability 

to provide proper training to the frontier soldier, but that it was also 

an important cause of the chronic desertion problem of the army in 

the west. “The soldier,” the captain wrote, “felt discontented because no mention had been made in the recruiting officer’s posters, or 

in the contract of enlistment, that he was to do such work, and he not 

unusually solved the problem by ‘skipping out’ the first payday that 

found him with enough money ahead to risk the venture.” Existing 

evidence clearly sustains both Bourke’s complaint and Dr. Walker’s 

conclusions, for it appears that the soldier on the frontier spent time 

mixing cement or hammering nails when he might better have been 

practicing the craft for which he had enlisted. 

A second shortcoming in the training of the frontier soldier, as 

Dr. Walker points out, was in marksmanship-in the soldier’s opportunities for target practice. Even in the 1880s, after the marksmanship 

program was initiated, there was still room for improvement. One of 

the most enthusiastic supporters of target practice was Major Andrew 

Burt, the husband of one of Professor Myres’ sources, Elizabeth 

Reynolds Burt. Yet it was only the sharpshooting skill of Major Burt 

himself which made possible the victory in 1884 of his Eighth Infantrymen over a group of civilians, and that by a score of 224 to 223. 

Troop C of the Second Cavalry lagged behind the civilians with a 

score of 215. 

It should be noted in this connection that if the frontier soldier 

was a poor marksman, his Indian adversaries were generally little better. In the same shooting contest Burt helped to win, a group of 

Paiutes ranked last. The northern plains tribes produced better marksmen than the Paiutes, as a rule, but even their accuracy was undistinguished. While fiscal constraints and other reasons limited target practice for the army, the Indians often found their sources of powder, 

balls and cartridges extremely uncertain, and they too would often 

inspect their careful hoards to find their ordnance supplies ruined by 

dampness or decomposition. Under such conditions few warriors 

cared to squander ammunition on such things as target practice. This 

situation on both sides of the military line helps to explain why, in so 

many instances, the army and their Indian opponents could spend a 

good portion of the day blasting away at each other and inflicting relatively few casualties. It also helps to explain why, until the end of the 

Indian wars, so many of the best military men among the Sioux and 

Cheyennes preferred to rely upon the bow and arrow, leaving the rifle 

as a supplementary weapon. 

Whatever the many reasons for what Dr. Walker terms the “in156 
competence” of the frontier soldier, that situation is rarely, if ever, 

recognized by popular assumption, conditioned as it has been by John 

Wayne ,spectaculars. While some scholars in the field of frontier history have failed to take it into account, others have not. No one, for 

example, has made more strongly a case for the consequences in a 

particular instance of the lack of trainingon the frontier enlisted man 

than has the late Dr. Thomas P. Marquis. In one of his last manuscripts-still unpublished and entitled “The Custer Soldier Suicidal 

Panic”-Dr. Marquis asserted that the lack of training of the newly 

enlisted Seventh Cavalrymen was the fundamental cause of the 

army’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Whatever the merits of Dr. Marquis’ case, it underscores the fact that the United States 

Army on the frontier was in a shockingly poor state of preparation 

for serious warfare. 

There were of course exceptions to the rule-or so, at least, a 

good deal of testimony indicates. The post trader at Fort Laramie in 

1876, John S. Collins, evaluated the enlisted men he had known in 

this way: “The soldiers during my stay,” he wrote, “were a rough, 

devil-may-care assortment from all states. Many of them were refugees from justice, some had been former penitentiary convicts, and 

nearly all were as tough a lot of men as could be sifted through the 

mesh. To them no service was a hardship, no order too strict to obey; 

scouting for Indians, sleeping without tents in the coldest weather, 

wading through mud knee deep, and frozen streams and snow. When 

the march was over for the day many of them were employed by 

officers to pitch tents, cook, make beds, carry wood and water and 

prepare meals, for an additional compensation of $2.00 to $5.00 per 

month over the regular pay of an enlisted man, of $13.00 per month.” 

It appears that a goodly number of frontier soldiers were willing to 

march with determination to the field of battle, whether or not they 

could hit anything with a bullet once they got there. 

Officers in the field attempted to solve the problem of training 

green troops as the opportunities to do so presented themselves. General Eugene A. Carr took advantage of months of garrison duty to 

whip his cavalry regiment into such good shape-at least by the 

standards of the 19th century US Army-that it became known as 

“The Dandy Fifth,” and of course the reputations of the black regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, are well known. General Nelson 

A. Miles, on his way to the 1876 summer campaign against the Sioux, 

and finding himself with many green recruits in his infantry command, 

used each landing of the river steamer as a training session. “At almost every stopping place,” he wrote his wife, “we have disembarked (in three minutes) and had battalion and scout drill, so that 

157 
this command at least will be in fine condition and quite strong.” But 

such efforts were stop-gap measures, and the comparisons sometimes 

made in the 19th century between Britian’s “thin red line” and America’s “thin blue line” were strained at best. 

Professor Myres’ paper counters stereotypes in a somewhat different way. In much popular fiction, whether written or film, the military frontier is pretty much womanless, except perhaps for an occ21- 

sional colonel’s daughter strategically introduced for romantic interest. Professor Myres’ study of the perspectives on western life of 

these “Ladies of the Army” emphasizes the fact that women were 

very much a part of the military frontier. Of the numerous perceptions Professor Myres has found in the works of these military wives, 

several standout in my own mind as themes I have found repeated 

consistently in my rather limited use of that literature. One is the mixture of awe and excitement they expressed as they adjusted to their 

new knvironment. The reaction of Mary Magwire Carr, wife of the 

General, perhaps is typical. “I had at last reached ‘the plains’,” she 

wrote of her arrival at Fort McPherson in Nebraska, “and understood 

what that comprehensive word meant. It was like the sea. As far as 

the eye could reach, vast stretches of vacant land, blank and nothing 

in sight. . . . There were no trees, but the air was clear and bracing, 

and there were still deer and antelope and prairie chickens to be hunted. . . . We would ride out on our horses and an ambulance would follow with the dogs to find the deer. Sometimes it was all hunting, and 

no finding, but it was a beautiful sight to see the deer at a distance 

even though the dogs could not overtake them.” As Professor Myres 

suggests, such evocative passages are rarely found in the works of 

the authors’ husbands, for when frontier officers wrote recollective 

pieces, and it is fairly rare that they did, they tended to be far more 

concerned with changes of station, military campaigns and other matters which related directly to their profession. 

A second consistent theme which has impressed me was the 

tendency of these “Ladies of the Army” to become captivated by life 

on the military frontier. Professor Myres cites Mrs. Roe’s dismay at 

being “cooped up in a noisy city.” That same reaction recurs constantly in the books and journals of these ladies who-reared as most 

of them were in the material comforts of eastern civilization-followed their husbands from the frozen wastes of a Dakota winter to 

the broiling sun of an Arizona summer. 

Just as important, Professor Myres’ paper reminds us that the 

military frontier was not just a line of soldiers. It was an entire socie158 
ty, and it was recognized as such by its members at the time. The 

popular image of the west leaves the impression that the military west 

was pretty much complete once it included rattling guns, snorting 

horses, dusty troopers and snapping guidons. Yet the soldier’s frontier also included wives, mothers and children as well as other nonmilitary personnel. No matter that school might depend upon the ability of one or another trooper to add or subtract or to parse a sentence 

or that church might await an itinerant exhorter-the institutions of a 

society were there and no one had a greater opportunity or inclination 

to report the character of that society than these “Ladies of the 

Army.” At this point I was going to offer up an invocation to the profession to create a social history, a wide-ranging social history of the 

frontier army, but in talking with Professor Coffman yesterday, I 

found out that he is doing just that. So somewhat belatedly, let me 

simply offer encouragement, and say that we will all be waiting to see 

it when-it comes out. When that work is done, I suspect it is the kind 

of investigation that Professor Myres has undertaken that will be of 

fundamental value to putting together a study of this nature. 

The people who bound this frontier society together, who gave it 

its character, its tone, were the commanders of these ill-trained men, 

and the husbands and fathers of these “Ladies of the Army,” the 

officer corps. These men were well-educated, particularly by 19th century standards, and with notable exceptions far better equipped for 

their work than were the enlisted men. Most were West Point graduates, and many of those who were not held college degrees or normal 

school diplomas. The officer corps was remarkable for its stability. 

Standing at the head of the army for virtually the entire period of the 

trans-Mississippi Indian wars were men who had begun their frontier 

service in the 1850s, who had earned laurels in the Civil War, and 

who spent a quarter of a century thereafter growing old together in 

the service of their country. 

Regimental and company commands as well were dominated for 

many years by veterans of the Civil War. Many of them carried back 

into the regular army brevet commissions which were much higher 

than their permanent rank. Before uniform regulations were changed, 

troops might be treated to a spectacle remembered by many enlisted 

men of the era-that of an officer perhaps wearing a brigadier’s stars, 

leading his men in review before his commander, who might have a 

major’s insignia on his shoulders. 

The stability of the officer corps, as well as its strict adherence to 

seniority, made promotion in the frontier army painfully slow. An 

officer’s file would ordinarily advance only through the attrition which 

159 
resulted from death or retirement, and service in grade was long 

enough that “the gray-haired lieutenant” became a stock figure in 

novels and stories about the military frontier. Under these conditions, 

such matters as brevet rank or mention in reports and orders took on 

an importance they might not otherwise have had, and there was considerable encouragement for the animosities, rivalries and resentments 

over real or fancied slights which marked so much of the life of the 

frontier army. 

The officer corps displayed a great dissimilarity of background 

and experience. The Seventh Cavalry, for example, which one newspaper praised, after the Custer debacle, as “the most American of 

regiments,” included among its officers, besides three West Pointers, 

a Frenchman, a Prussian, a former member of Congress, a mixedblood Indian, a former Papal Zouave, and a grandson of Alexander 

Hamilton. It was at least more “American” than the Fifth Cavalry, 

whose company commanders included three Irishmen, a Prussian, 

two Englishmen and a German. 

That hardship would be a feature of frontier service was taken 

for granted by these officers. Towards the end of his career, General 

Carr jotted down a quick sketch of his years in the army: “I have 

been nearly 40 years in service,” he wrote, “of which above 30 

[were] west of the Mississippi, and over 8 of these [years] without a 

roof [over my head] and some without a tent-37 to 40 fights (16 with 

Indians, 13 since the Wart2 sieges4 times wounded; through 4 

cholera epidemics-health injured 4 times by malarious climatesmarched 24,000 miles and over-and travelled 110,000 and more. . . .” 

But hardship was usually met with equanimity. During General 

Crooks’ famous “Starvation March” in the 1876 campaign, Carr, as 

he saw food supplies dwindling, began to discuss with wry humor the 

science of “Hippophagy”-that is, converting wiry cavalry horses 

into a delicacy for the mess. Finally, supplies ran out. “The deed is 

done!” he exclaimed at last, ‘‘I am a hippophagist!” He proclaimed 

cavalry horse to taste “better than Texas beef often does,” which 

perhaps reveals more about Texas beef than it does about filet of 

cavalry horse. But even a veteran campaigner like Carr could become 

discouraged. “The ration of hard bread last night was two crackers,” 

he wrote after about two months in the field. “Tonight none. I believe 

they have no bread except for the sick.. . . I miss my quinine very 

much as it helps to keep off headache and is a tonic against taking a 

cold. . . . This is the longest and hardest campaign I have ever been 

on yet. The others have been nearly as hard, and this I have been 

doing ever since I left West Point [25 years ago].” 

160 
But frontier service was not a matter of continuous compaigning. 

Much time was spent in garrison, which gave an officer time to indulge his hobbies and avocations. The officer corps included many 

men of genuine attainment in fields other than soldiering. Captain 

John G. Bourke, for example, carved for himself a permanent niche 

among American men of science through his studies in anthropology 

and ethnology. Major George Washington Patten’s poetry was a favorite among many Victorian Americans. General A. H. Terry spent 

much of his leisure time translating works into English from their 

original Creek. The list could go on for far more time than is available 

to us. Some aspiring military authors were doomed to frustration. 

Both Crook and Carr, for example, wrote recollections, which were 

unpublished in their lifetimes. Crook’s articles for a boy’s magazine 

were not accepted, while Carr’s massive work on cavalry tactics, 

which is still stored in the National Archives, is probably fated never 

to become an army handbook. 

There was an endless number of other avocations, including rock 

collecting, music, fossil-hunting, ornithology and taxidermy, to name 

just a few, but perhaps almost universal among officers was the sport 

of hunting. And most legendary among all the hunters of the army 

was General Crook. His interest in the sport had begun when he was 

a child; his brother Walter liked to recall the morning, when they 

were children, that they had heard ducks overhead, and young 

George dashed out with his gun, without bothering to put on his suspenders. A short while later Walter emerged from the house to find 

George, his pants around his ankles, firing happily away at the mallards. Crook’s interest in hunting continued in his mature years, and 

his “bags” of animals would send chills down the spines of almost 

any present-day ecologists. On one expedition, for example, Crook 

brought back 4 bear, 18 elk, 16 deer, 10 antelope, and an uncounted 

number of grouse and sage hens. Lest Crook be condemned for 

wastefulness, it should be noted that the game was turned over to the 

officers’ and enlisted mens’ mess, and that to the end of his life, 

Crook was a strong supporter of game laws to preserve wild animals 

of the west. 

Members of the officer corps perceived the purpose of their frontier service in various ways. Not all of them put down on paper just 

what their perceptions were, but of those who did, some saw themselves simply as a part of the cutting edge of the American frontieror, as George A. Custer put it, as a kind of advance guard of American civilization, “propelled and directed by Yankee ingenuity, [which 

had] adopted the motto: Westward the star of empire takes its way.” 

Major Eben Swift put the point even more baldly. “Civilization ap161 
proached the American Indians,” he wrote, “with a Bible in one hand 

and a paper treaty in the other, a bludgeon in her sleeve. and ;I barrel 

of whiskey in her wagon, not to mention the blight that goeth unto 

the third and fourth generation. The task of the soldier was to punish 

the Indian when he applied his crude ideas of justice or revenge. and 

to force him to obey when he could not be cajoled or scared.” Taken 

together, these statements suggest that the role of the army in the 

west was a combination of conquest and police duty, and of course 

both of these were facets of frontier service. These statements would 

go a certain way to support the 19th century observation that “There 

are two classes of people who are always eager to get up an Indian 

war-the army and our frontiersmen.” In fact, however, the conviction was widespread among frontier officers-particularly the higherranking ones-that war was something to bq avoided, if possible. 

rather than waged. In the course of avoiding war, it was necessary to 

understanding something of the situation of the prospective enemy. 

and the result of that understanding was quite often a degree of sympathy with the Indian cause which the popular mind identifies more 

with eastern humanitarianism than with the frontier military. Shortly 

before the affair at Wounded Knee, for example, Nelson Miles was 

railing at government policy towards the plains peoples. “We have 

taken away their land and the white people now have it,” he wrote. 

“The Indians have been half fed or half starved. Neither I nor any 

other official can assure the Indians that they will receive anything 

different in the future. They say, and very justly, that they are tired 

of broken promises. I do not think the government should disregard 

its promises and get the Indians into such a condition, and then order 

the military to prevent an Indian War.” The viewpoint of Miles’ archrival and personal enemy George Crook was not substantially different. Crook on one occasion held the Apaches up as an example: “The 

Apache knows his rights,” he wrote, “and is not afraid to maintain 

them. Were he a Greek or a Roman, we should read with pride and 

enthusiasm of his determination to die rather than suffer wrong; but 

looking at him as a native of our own soil and as the feeble barrier 

which stands between ourselves and the silver mines and gold measures supposed to exist on his Reservation, it is not always possible 

to do justice to his virtues or to consider his faults as identical with 

those of which we ourselves should be guilty under similar provocation.” 

Whether they considered themselves conquerors, mediators of 

peacemakers, if we were to ask those frontier officers why they exposed themselves to the hardships and dangers of the American west, 

why they took their “Ladies of the Army” and their families into the 

discomfort and isolation of distant posts and why they continued to 

162 
accept the burden of commanding ill-trained, sometimes incompetent 

troops, they would perhaps respond at first with many reasons. But 

when pressed, many might answer with the comment made by Captain Guy V. Henry as he lay terribly wounded on the Rosebud battlefield in 1876. The comment was reported in several versions, but one 

was particularly favored by frontier officers. As a comrade attempted 

to comfort him, it is said, Captain Henry turned to him and remarked, 

“It is nothing. For this we are soldiers.” 

1’63 
V 

THE SEVENTH MILITARY 

HISTORY SYMPOSIUM IN PERSPECTIVE 

The purpose of this session was to allow opportunity for a panel of prominent historians to comment on the proceedings as a whole. Reverend Francis Paul Prucha, S. .I., a 

prominent frontier and military historian from Marquette University, chaired the panel. 

He was joined by noted military historians Theodore Ropp of Duke University (presently 

Distinguished Visiting Professor of Military History at West Point) and Harry I,. Coles of 

Ohio State University. Each of these men delivered prepared comments and then opened 

the session for discussion. 

164 
COMMENTARY 

THEODORE ROPP 

Robert Utley’s paper was extremely well honed, the best statement of his case I have yet seen. I could not possibly disagree with 

anything except the paper’s major premise, which from the standpoint 

of the Hudson highlands in this bicentennial year I find truly difficult 

to accept. The problem as we see it is whether the white ensign will 

come upstream or the redcoats will come down stream, and I think 

that was the chief concern of the founding fathers. From the standpoint of the hindsight of what some historians have called our century 

of free security, the Thayers, the Mahans, the Uptons, are open to 

the familiar charge of preparing to fight the last war over again, but 

other than expressing my general disagreement with the thesis that 

our major military problem-even as visualized by our small 19th century service establishment-was the frontier, we must surely congratulate Dr. Utley for an exceptionally expert Harmon Lecture and Dr. 

Morton for an original contribution to compaiative history. 

Since my function is to provide an outside dimension, and not 

criticize the details of any paper, I hope that the next four authors 

will not resent my feeling that their excellent microcosmic works on 

the impact of the army and the military on the frontier in American 

life all run into problems of time and scale which are the main problem facing this whole symposium. We had two splendid papers on 

major problems in American military history and in comparative military history, and then we had four excellent monographs on relatively 

narrow subjects related to the relatively narrow focus of the whole 

symposium. Perhaps in those fields we need a study entitled Comparative Military Frontiersmanship. My comments here are not really 

directed to the authors, but to the theme of the symposium itself, the 

contention that “Throughout the course of American history the military in the west has exerted a strong influence on developing American institutions, attitudes, ideals, and culture.” My own reading of 

American military history, perhaps from the Highland Falls, West 

Point view, is that by comparison with French or German history, 

165 
West Point’s influence and the military influence in general on American history has been very marginal, and that one key to our military 

success has been precisely the fact that our regulars have succeeded 

in adapting themselves to civilian and even to anti-military institutions, attitudes, ideals and culture. 

In addition, much of our discussion has focused on the transMississippi west in the post-Civil war era. This may have been inevitable for this particular symposium in Colorado on its centennial, but a 

number of critics have called attention to the fact that this may have 

been the very era in which the American military-even in numbers 

in relation to its total population-was least influential in American 

life, by contrast with the vast forces of a still expanding cash crop 

agriculture, the growth of big business, industrialization, and the new 

wave of immigration. Public reaction to these problems of populism, 

progressivism, agrariarism, business conservatism, and even ethnicity 

to a large degree still shape American political and cultural life. There 

has been little mention of the fact that the frontier problem was most 

serious before 1815, when technological and numerical disparity between new and old Americans were least, and when the latter could 

still bring other Europeans to their aid. That the only good Indian was 

a dead one still had some military meaning, while a “civilized” or 

converted one was potentially an economic asset. By 1870, as Professor Morton points out, both American and Canadian societies could 

safely regard the Indians as wards, and a constabulary was a far more 

effective instrument of pacification. 

Though Professor Foner did not say so specifically, the army’s 

“role in the vanguard [of Far] western economic development” was 

probably less than it had been in the development of roads, ports, 

rivers, harbors, and of great coastal fortifications in the east. Here 

comparisons are exceptionally difficult, because the government also 

worked through very many other agencies, but one does get the feeling that the new historians may be correct about this particular period, that from the 1840s through the end of the century the military 

were merely hired guns for the railroad and mining companies, that 

the army engineers’ greatest contribution to development came later, 

and that in the west and the east the idea that the military were simply the tools of land speculators, railroads, cattlemen, and so on, had 

more validity than it would have had earlier or later. 

If one relates this to the idea that the army failed to develop a 

useful doctrine for pacification, think again. Time and circumstances 

are very important here. Problems are ,not military problems until 

they are officially declared so by military services. From 1860 until 

166 
1876, our army and our military generally were caught up in problems 

of what was then the greatest war in our history. From 1876 to 1890, 

when the army might have developed an Indian war doctrine, the 

Indians were mere remnants, while rapid changes in European military technology clearly demanded attention. During this period, as 

Huntington has pointed out, there was the “growth of a kind of scientific military community, . . . international in its scope, of which 

Americans and officers, naval and military, were fully a part.” The 

study of this community, and its attitude towards weapons, tactics, 

and so on, was a principal duty of United States armed forces in this 

period. 

For the late 19th century-a period in which Custer had fewer 

men than the number of historians at this conference-the influence 

of the military on American life seems to have been, as several papers have remarked, chiefly on the entertainment industry, turning out 

a product as standardized and industrialized as contemporary British 

Gunga Din, or French camel operas. How this affected American 

ideals about guns, machismo, racial supremacy, is a question which is 

not at all frivolous. 

I think the papers here indicated about all there is to be said 

about this particular problem at this particular time. The task of the 

historian from now on will be to relate this material to the course of 

American history and what I still regard as its great formative period 

of the late 80s and early 90s. 

167 
HARRY L. COLES 

To be one of the last speakers at the last session of a 2-day conference presents one with both an opportunity and a problem. The 

opportunity to have nearly the last word is very welcome to a naturally argumentative and contentious person like myself. It gives one the 

comfortable illusion of maybe having won in the tug of war of ideas. 

The problem is that after 2 days of discussion by scholars and military professionals, the subject has been nearly exhausted and it is 

very difficult to convince oneself that one really has something original and worthwhile to say. Since our time is limited I shall try to be 

brief even if I have little hope of being very different or profound. 

I will begin by speculating on why the planners of the symposium 

thought it desirable to have a wrap-up session and why they asked me 

to take part in it. I attended the first symposium, in 1%7, and have 

attended several since. In those years, when I have not been a participant, I have sometimes been asked by the editors of historical journals to review the published proceedings. Generally these reviews 

have been favorable. But as we all know, there is often a lapse of 2 

or 3 years between the time the conference takes place and the published review. Evidently Colonel Hurley and his colleagues became 

impatient with this dilatoriness. This year they wanted to have their 

bouquets promptly so they asked me to come out here and give an 

instant evaluation. 

Seriously, I have watched the development of these symposia 

over the years with mounting interest and admiration. The History 

Department of the Air Force Academy has extended such generous 

hospitality and has planned the programs so well, that these meetings 

have become a major event, both for professional military men and 

historians generally. I am confident that the Seventh Symposium will 

go down as one of the best in a distinguished series. But I was not 

asked to come out here and simply say “a job well done.” I think 

you want to know if I have any ideas about how a good job might 

have been even better. 

First, let me say how I think the planning of the conference 

might have been improved. My experience with conferences leads me 

168 
to believe that there are two main steps. First one tries to think of a 

good idea or theme that will have appeal and relevance throughout 

one’s constituency. Then you try to persuade people who have written on or about the chosen subject to do papers. One always tries to 

find the best available people to handle the topic. Having accomplished these two difficult tasks, there is a great temptation to let nature take its course, and hope for the best. 

In the case of the Seventh Symposium, the individual papers 

have been good. Each of the authors has taken his assignment seriously, has done his research conscientiously, and has presented his 

results with good organization and pleasing style. But what I am 

wondering is what they all add up to. The only thing that I can find is 

that they all relate somehow to soldiers on the 19th century frontier 

of the United States and Canada. In my judgment, this is too vague. 

If unity and coherence are to be achieved, a conference must have a 

general theme or topic and this topic must be broken down in its 

component parts and developed thematically or chronologically or 

with a combination of the two. I wonder, for example, why one man 

should be asked to read a paper on the socializing role of the military 

frontier and another on the enlisted soldier. These papers not only 

overlap each other, but have some of the same material to be found 

in Professor Coffman’s Harmon Lecture of last spring, and the paper 

Mr. Utley gave at the beginning of the symposium. Again, each of 

these papers is good, but instead of covering various aspects of a 

general theme, they overlap each other rather seriously. 

The implications of certain topics were not thought through. For 

example, in the third session, having planned a paper on the social 

role of the frontier, somebody evidently thought that the political 

aspect should also be covered. In order to cope with his vague assignment, Professor Ellis had to deal with several subjects yielding largely 

negative results. Nevertheless in the military government of New 

Mexico and California, the army had a direct and little appreciated 

political role. I think it might have been more enlightening had he entitled his paper, “The Role of the Army in Western State-Making,’’ 

and dealt in more detail with some of the few incidents in which the 

army had a clearly defined political role. 

Possibly I am being a bit too dogmatic and critical. But in general 

I think the symposium might have been improved by more rigorous 

planning and better articulated structure. 

Perspectives Suggested by the Papers Themselves 

But the title of this session is “perspectives,” and I should get 

169 
on to this question. In this regard I shall first try to point out-and 

point up-some of the perspectives suggested by the papers themselves and then provide some of my own observations. While all of 

the papers have provided us with some orientation and each has given 

us at least glimpses of the larger picture, I found Mr. Utley’s opening 

remarks and Professor Morton’s paper on the comparative history 

especially helpful. Professor Morton performed the difficult but necessary task of separating myth from reality. I have always been a 

staunch believer in comparative history, and his paper confirms and 

strengthens my convictions. By its very nature, comparative history 

forces the historian to interpret, to generalize, and to sift the essential 

from the trivial. In my opinion one of the main virtues of Professor 

Morton’s paper is to remind us that military institutions are a reflection of the society of which they are a part, and that differences between the frontier army and the mounted police derived from differences in the societies which they served. 

Mr. Utley’s trenchant remarks on the influence of the Civil War 

as applied in total war against the Indians I think bears out the central 

theme of Professor Morton’s paper. I thoroughly agree with Mr. 

Utley’s thesis that the Indian wars in the far west were merely an 

extension of the type of warfare that Sherman and Sheridan had practiced in the south. General Sherman has often been hailed as a prophet who saw what was coming and attempted to destroy the capacity 

of the enemy to make war. You know if you have read Liddell Hart’s 

biography of Sherman that he makes him the greatest general of World 

War I. It has always seemed to me that while there was something of 

the prophet in Sherman, he was not applying something new, but 

simply bringing into greater perfection the type of warfare that had 

been applied against the,Indians since colonial days. The contribution 

of the Civil War was to bring modern technology and organization to 

bear in accomplishing results more ruthlessly. 

Other Perspectives. 

Having noted some of the perspectives provided by, or at least 

suggested by, the papers themselves, I should like to pass on to 

comment on this symposium in relation to the broad sweep of American history. 

It has not been adequately explained that the frontier army was 

an all-purpose army, and that the soldier, like the frontiersman himself, was a jack-of-all-trades. Dr. Walker has pointed out the lack of 

expertise of the frontier soldier’s marksmanship and equitation. While 

it is valuable to be reminded of such inadequacies, I suggest that even 

if our soldiers had been expert in these arts, they would have had lit170 
tle opportunity to apply them. While certainly there was considerable 

Indian fighting, I suspect that if someone made a study of the hours 

spent in various tasks, he would find that the army spent most of its 

time in chasing squatters off the public domain, building roads and 

telegraphs, guarding railroad builders, building forts, carrying out explorations and just plain soldiering. At any rate, the essentially peacetime army had to have various ways of justifying its existence. Indian 

fighting was only one of many tasks. 

I am afraid that with all the emphasis this conference has given 

to Indian warfare, the subject may have gotten out of focus. By this 

time we should all know that plains Indians were mounted on swift 

ponies, they were excellent horsemen, they were deadly marksmenat least I had thought so until this time-and they had incredible bravery and endurance. But I agree with Professor Ellis’ statement that 

“there never was any question that the army, as small as it was, 

could ultimately crush any Indian resistance.” While as individuals 

the Indians possessed many qualities that made them formidable opponents, they were not organized, or were organized on a much too 

primitive basis to be able to accomplish much militarily. Dr. Athearn 

correctly pointed out that the Indians west of the Mississippi suffered 

more from the march of “progress’ than from the US Army. 

The Nineteenth Century in Perspective 

Now, my final point. This symposium has been concerned primarily with the military frontier of the United States in the 19th century, the period roughly from the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning of World War I. As nearly all of our papers have pointed out, it 

was in some way a constructive and heroic period, and in some ways 

a destructive and cruel period of our history. But in any case, it was 

colorful, even romantic, giving rise to much folklore and legend. 

Without discounting the importance of the 19th century, I think we 

ought nevertheless to ask how typical it was; how relevant to modern 

day concerns. 

By failing to give adequate attention to the colonial era, I am 

afraid that we distort our history. Despite the impressions conveyed 

by the bicentennial celebration, our history did not begin 200 years 

ago. It began nearly 400 years ago. While the American people were 

still a part of the British empire, Britain and France waged four major 

wars for empire and trade. These wars can be, and have been, called 

world wars because the two principal antagonists drew various nations into shifting coalitions and the scenes of hostilities extended 

beyond Europe to North America, India, and other parts of the 

world. Though each of these world wars was centered principally in 

171 
Europe, each had its American counterpart. The War of the Second 

Coalition against Louis XIV (1689-1697) is known in U.S. history ;I\ 

King Williams’ War, the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) is 

known in our history as Queen Anne’s War; the War of Austrian 

Succession (1744-1748) is known as King George’s War and the Seven 

Years’ War is known to our history as the French and Indian War. 

At the end of the fourth world war there began quarrel between 

the colonies and the mother country. The quarrel waged hot and cold. 

and the colonies accused England of many abuses and usurpations. 

but as the movement for independence gained momentum, freedom 

from world wars was discussed increasingly. The phrase “The war to 

end wars” we associate with the great war of 1914-18 and the idealism of Woodrow Wilson. But exactly the same idea was used by the 

advocates of American independence. 

It is ironical that the original American war to end all wars soon 

became a fifth world war. In time, the American Revolution involved 

not only Britain and their colonies, but France, Spain, the Netherlands, and a coalition of countries called the Armed Neutrality. And 

again the fighting took place, not only in North America but in Europe, the West Indies, and India. 

Having achieved their independence, the statesmen of the early 

republic tried valiantly to steer clear of European wars and to disentangle the United States from the European balance of power system. 

But their best efforts were unavailing. When the French Revolutionary War broke out, we fought the undeclared naval war, sometimes 

called the Quasi War with France. This then was the sixth world war 

which had touched the United States. After a brief respite, brought 

about by the peace of the Amiens, the Napoleonic Wars broke out 

again in 1803 and raged until 1815. This country has never had two 

presidents more resolutely opposed to war than Presidents Jefferson 

and Madison. Both exerted extraordinary abilities to avoid becoming 

involved, but again their best efforts were unavailing. The War of 

1812 was merely the American counterpart of the Napoleonic Wars 

and we may designate this as World War VII. 

1815 is a watershed in both American and European history and 

the scene shifts dramatically. A country that had participated in seven 

world wars is now vouchsafed a century of peace and there is not 

another World War until 1914. The story since then is familiar to all 

of us. But I suggest that the two world wars of the 20th century ought 

to be called World Wars VIIJ and IX. 

172 
I have gone through this exercise of renumbering our world wars 

(an idea suggested several years ago by Arthur M. Schlesinger) merely to try to get you to thinking in larger terms, and I hope better 

perspective. If we view our military history as a whole, we have nearly three centuries of worldwide conflict bisected by a century of 

peace. The nineteenth century was a long period free from outside 

perils in which the country could grow, expand territorially and economically. But a part of our past is often mistaken for the whole. The 

century of free security, as Professor Van Woodward has called it, 

was a classical period of isolation, unlike anything that had gone before or anything that came after. Seen in this light the period we have 

been talking about the last two days was a typical, an aberration. It 

has been suggested that if our military men had studied the Indian 

wars they would have been better prepared to fight in Vietnam. I am 

afraid I find this notion a bit far-fetched. All war experiences have 

something in common-problems of morale, supply, command, and 

leadership, for example. But not all experiences are equally relevant. 

I might suggest that the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902), or the 

intervention in Cuba (l906-O7), would have more relevance to Vietnam than Indian warfare. 

I would not leave you on a negative note. The 19th century helps 

to explain what we are today, and this symposium has added greatly 

to our understanding. I have merely tried to show that our past is a 

long one and we must always make the effort to see any part of that 

background in relation to the whole. 

173 
FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA 

Pre-Civil War Period 

I was struck-as were Professors Ropp and Coles-with the 

heavy emphasis on the post-Civil War period, the mere 25 years from 

1865 to 1890. It was almost as though the “army on the frontier” 

were equated with the “Indian fighting army” of the plains and mountains. Had the symposium speakers, I wondered, been captured by 

the romantic, popular-I was almost tempted to say Hollywoodconcept of the west? If we are to look at the truly significant military 

influence of the army on the frontier, should we not turn our attention 

instead, as Professor Ropp has suggested, to the earlier decades in 

American history? Should we not turn to the 75 years between the 

Revolution and the Civil War, a period when the frontier was proportionately more important in the total national picture, when the Indian 

nations still exercised large elements of sovereignty and for a considerable time could expect succor from foreign powers, and when the 

army’s role was not fighting Indians and protecting settlers but vindicating United States authority in the west, a role of paramount importance. 

Let me expand just a bit on this last point. The United States 

was granted the land up to the Mississippi at the end of the Revolutionary War, but it was necessary to exert authority if the territory 

was indeed to be American-exert authority against British-Indian 

encroachment in the northwest (with their living dream of an Indian 

buffer state between the Ohio and the Great Lakes) anp against Spanish pretensions in the south, to say nothing of the vague French 

schemes for recapturing the Mississippi Valley that so disturbed Alexander Hamilton in the late 1790s. 

And after 1803 there was the vast Louisiana Purchase, its boundaries unclear and its contents unknown, to be brought effectively 

under American control. We need to recall that Pike’s explorations 

and the Lewis and Clark expedition, were army enterprises. 

Equally worth remarking were the visionary plans of Secretary of 

War John C. Calhoun after the War of 1812 to establish American 

presence in the west. It was the frontier army that was the national 

174 
instrument in this great task-building a cordon of military posts 

along the Great Lakes and the western rivers, to make clear to the 

British and to the Indians that United States sovereignty in fact extended over the land it claimed. 

The army was the chief agent in the exuberant nationalism that 

marked the post-1815 years, a nationalism strikingly exhibited in Calhoun’s directions to General Thomas A. Smith in 1818, for establishing a military post at the mouth of the Yellowstone River on the upper reaches of the Missouri. Calhoun admitted that the remoteness of 

the post would make it unpleasant for the soldiers. But he wrote: “I 

am persuaded that the American soldier, actuated by the spirit of enterprise, will meet the privations which may be necessary with cheerfulness. Combined with the importance of the service, the glory of 

planting the American flag at a point so distant, on so noble a river, 

will not be unfelt. The world will behold in it the mighty growth of 

our republic, which but a few years since, was limited by the Alleghany; but now is ready to push its civilization and laws to the western 

confines of the continent.” 

Army Influence on Indians 

We have heard a good deal about army life in the west and about 

political and social influence of the military. The points, however, 

have been made primarily if not exclusively with regard to influence 

upon white society. Is it not time to expand this viewpoint and to ask 

what effect the army had on Indian society, with which it was so intimately concerned? There was great debate about this in the post-Civil 

War years. Army advocates in the great controversy over transfer of 

the Indian Bureau to the War Department that raged between 1865 

and 1880 maintained that military men could best handle the “Indian 

problem” and lead the Indians down the road to civilization. I would 

like to know what, if anything, different happened when army officers 

were in charge of Indian agencies-for example, when they were 

appointed to the agencies in the 1890s. 

On the other side, there was great fear among the Christian humanitarian reformers that army contact with the tribes would inevitably result in the demoralization and destruction of the Indians. Commissioner of Indian Affairs National G. Taylor expressed the view in 

extreme but not untypical terms in his report of 1868: It is “unhuman 

and unchristian. . . to destroy a whole race by such demoralization 

and disease as military government is sure to entail upon our tribes.” 

Military posts in the Indian country are subversive of domestic morals, and “most loathsome, lingering and fatal diseases” are spread 

broadcast. “If you wish to exterminate the race, pursue them with 

175 
ball and blade; if you please, massacre them wholesale. as we sometimes have done; or, to make it cheap, call them to 11 peaceful feast, 

and feed them on beef salted with wolft bane; but for humanity’s 

sake, save them from the lingering syphilitic poisons, so sure to be 

contracted about military posts.” 

Was this a fair charge? Or did the troops get syphilis from the 

Indians rather than vice versa? Or did it really matter whether rnilitary or civilian agents were in charge? Was there a more fundamental 

set of problems in Indian-white relations in the post-Civil War era 

which should be looked at instead, and which would help us to place 

military history in the proper perspective? 

Lack of Conceptualization 

There has been a wealth of information presented in this syrnposium and a great many worthwhile ideas. Our Canadian participant, to 

single out only one paper, presented a masterful example of comparative history. But at the risk of sounding ungracious, I would like to 

make one general and somewhat critical comment. 

After reading the perspectus of the symposium, which spoke of 

“original and innovative research on the military aspects of the American West,” I was a bit disappointed that there was not more boldness in conceptualization, more testing of hypotheses, more analysis 

and interpretation in the papers presented. I would have liked to see a 

greater number of provocative themes, in place of the emphasis on 

description of colorful items, the sort of thing which seems to have 

laid such a heavy hand upon American frontier history as a whole. 

Are there not ways in which the “new social history” could be 

brought into play? Would it not be possible to investigate a.n army 

post as a social community in the way that New England villages and 

western cattle towns have been explored and analyzed? Would it not 

be possible to apply new demographic techniques to a study of the 

army in the west? Could we not investigate more thoroughly the place 

of the army in the social and intellectual milieu of the times‘? Were 

frontier officers and men, fundamentally, much different in their outlook from the Christian humanitarians who clashed with them so bitterly over the means of reforming Indian policy? Were the army men 

one with the Westerners who supported them---or were they outsiders 

who could take an independent stand on vital questions? What in detail was the economic, social, and political contribution of the army to 

western development? We have been relying on broad generalizations 

about significance and influence until we begin to believe them out of 

sheer repetition. 

176 
I am reminded of a critical review of my book, Broadax and 

Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of 

the Northwest. Writing in Military Affairs, a reviewer noted that I 

had said “the army’s role in the development of the northwest cannot 

be easily overstated.” Nonsense, said the reviewer, not only can it be 

overstated, the author overstates it on every page! 

His strictures on my work, mutatis mutandis, are still worth listening to today: 

The quantitative aspects of the subject, so vit;il for seeing things with some degree 

of perspective and with some justness of proportion, are almost entirely ignored: 

how large the garrisons and how numerous the civilian population; how long and 

how many the roads built: how great the supplies procured and the markets provided in relation to the total volume of civilian trade; how much law enforcement by 

military and civilian agencies. respectively. Where more than two thousand square 

miles of frontier territory and scores of thousands of people are involved, it is not 

enough to assert that “for four and onehalf decades the army was 21 vital force in 

the area to the west of Lake Michigan.” It is necessary to supply data which adequately support and not simply illustrate the thesis. 

So let us not wrap up the symposium papers and put them away. 

Let us use them and the symposium discussions as jumping off places 

for a continuing and, we may hope, increasingly sophisticated and 

rigorous analysis of the American military on the frontier. 

177 
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION 

Burton Greenhous, Department of National Defence, Ottawa. 

Canada, pointed out the need for a broader comparative approach to 

the study of frontier history, and not one entirely focused on the 

North American experience. He agreed with the comments of Professor Preston in the discussion during the second session of the symposium that a comparison of American, Canadian, and the New Zealand 

experience could be very useful, adding that comparative studies 

might include the South African experiences and the British experience in India. Regarding this symposium’s comparison of American 

and Canadian frontiers, Greenhous noted that the American pattern 

of violence on the frontier in the northern trans-Mississippi west was 

set while the Indian was still assured a fairly adequate food supply 

from the buffalo, whereas when the frontier environment moved 

north to Canada the Canadian Indians were already suffering quite 

severely from the lack of an adequate food supply. In this respect the 

American army was engaged in two kinds of violence, the active violence of going out and shooting Indians and the passive violence of 

denying food to Canadian Indians by burning a swath across the 

northern border, thus stopping buffalo from moving north. He added 

that it is doubtful that Sitting Bull and his warriors having moved 

across the border would have been so susceptible to the blandishments of two or three mounted policemen if they had been assured an 

adequate food supply. Greenhous also pointed out the need to study 

the comparative density of Indian populations on the American and 

Canadian frontiers. He suggested that the density of Indian populations might have affected their tendency to react violently to white 

intrusion. 

Professor Cotfman, University of Wisconsin, suggested that the 

concentration of study on the trans-Mississippi, post-Civil War period 

is largely a result of the availability of sources. There is much more 

available in memoirs, diaries, and other literature, on the trans-Mississippi, post-Civil War frontier than is available on the earlier frontier. Coffman also pointed out that people are more interested in the 

later frontier because it seems closer-it occurred on the very edge of 
modernity. “When the Wright brothers were small boys and Henry 

Ford was already tinkering in a machinist shop people were still out 

fiddling around with the Indians almost like the Romans and Gauls.” 

World War I1 leaders were young officers in an army officered by men 

who had served in the Indian Wars. So the interest in the later frontier has not been solely dependent upon the myths created by John 

Ford movies. 

Henry P. Walker noted that in his research on the enlisted men 

on the frontier he had very little material dealing with the earlier period. Indeed, for the earlier period, he had found no reminiscences by 

enlisted men except for those of an Endishman who had served as a 

hospital steward during the Seminole War. Walker explained that this 

lack of sources in the earlier period was one of the main reasons why 

he had concentrated on the post-Civil War frontier. 

179 
PARTICIPANTS 

ROBERT G. ATHEAKN. 13orii Kremlin. 

Mont;in;i. August 19 14. 13,s.. 1936. M.A.. 

1938. and Ph.D.. 1947. Univcraity of Minnesota. Has taught iit University of Miiiwsota, 1945-47. and University of Colorado. 

1947 to present. Hiis guest lectured ;it 

University of Leeds. of liverpool. St. 

Andrews (Scotland) and of W;iles in 1960: 

at Conference of Hencliix 'I'cilchcra. lkm. 

Netherlands in 1961: ;it Universities of 

Florence. Bologna. ;ind Perugia . (Italy) in 

1961; at the University of Mont;in;i (Mi.;- 

soula). summer 1962: and ;it University of 

Maine (Orono). summer 1977. Served :is 

Line officer. United States Coast Guard. 

1943-45. Books: Thomas Francis Me;igher: 

An Irish Revolutionary in Amerki ( 1949): 

Wesrward the Briton ( 1953): Wil/im 7ecumseh Sherman and the Setrlemenr of rhe 

West (1956): Cenrennial Cokndo: Its Exciring Story (with Carl W. Uhbelohde) 

(19S9): High Country Empire: The High 

Plains and Rockies (1960); Rebel of the 

Rockies: The Denver and Rio Gr;rnde 

Western Railroad (1962): The American 

Heritage 1llustr;rted Hi.mry of the United 

Stares (1963): Forts of rhe Upper Missouri 

(1967); Union Pacific Country ( 197 I ): and 

America Moves West (with Robert E. Riegel) (1971. 5th ed.) 

180 
HARRY L. COLES. Born April 30, 1920. 

A.B., 1939, Ph.D., 1949, Vanderbilt University. Has taught at the Ohio State University since 1949, most recently serving as 

Chairman of the Department of History 

(1%7- 1973). Historian, Headquarters Army 

Air Forces, Washington, D.C. (1943-46). 

Historian, Office of the Chief of Military 

History, Department of the Army (1946- 

49). Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime 

History, The Naval War College. Visiting 

Professor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Books: Ohio Raises an 

Army in the Civil War (1%2); Total War 

and Cold War: Problems in Civilian Control of the Military (ed., 1%2); The Public 

Lands: Studies in the History of the Public 

Domain (contributor, 1%3); Soldiers Become Goverors: Studies in Military Government in World War II (1964); The War 

of 1812 (1965). 

RICHARD N. ELLIS. Born Brooklyn, 

New York, June 6, 1939. B.A., 1961, 

M.A., 1963, and Ph.D., 1%7, University 

of Colorado. Has taught at Murray State 

University, the University of Maryland, 

and the University of New Mexico. Directed Doris Duke American Indian History Project. Books: General Pope and U.S. 

Indian Policy (1970); New Mexico, Past 

and Present (ed., 1971); The Western 

American Indian (ed., 1972); New Mexico 

Historic Documents (ed., 1975); contributed chapters to The Changing Ways of 

Southwestern Indians (1973) and A Guide 

to the Sources of U.S. Military History 

(1975). 

181 
JACK D. FONER. Born New York City. 

December 14. 1910 B A,. 1932. City College of New York: M.A.. 1933 and Ph D . 1%8, Columbia University. Has taught at 

City College of New York. the New 

1 School and Colby College. Military \ervice, U S. Army, 1942-1945 Books: Modern European History (co-author, 1936): 

The United States Soldier Between Two 

Wars: Army Life and Reforms. 1865-1898 

(1970); and Blacks and the Military in 

American History (1974). 

JAMES T KING Born Hastings. Nebraska, April 22, 1933 A B , Hastings College. 

1955; A M , 1957, and Ph D , 1%2, University of Nebraska Has taught at the 

University of Nebraska and is presently 

Professor of History and Director of the 

Area Research Center at the University of 

Wisconsin, River Falls, Wisconsin He has 

served as a member of the Council of the 

Western History Association and is consultant to several university presses and 

historical associations. Books. War Eagle, 

A Life of General Eugene A. Car: (1%3): 

co-author, with Walker D. Wyman, of A 

Centennial History: The University of 

Wisconsin, River Falls, 1874-1975 (1975): 

and is presently completing a biography of 

General George Crook 

182 
JOHN K. MAHON. Born Ottumwa, Iowa, 

February 8, 1912. B.A., 1934, Swarthmore 

College; Ph.D., 1950, University of California, Los Angeles. Has taught at Colorado A & M College (now Colorado State 

University), 1950, at UCLA, 1950-51, and 

at the University of Florida since 1954. He 

has been Civilian Military Historian, Office 

ment of the Army, 1951-54, and also Acting Chief, Organizational History and 

Honors Branch, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 

1953-54. He served in the United States 

Army during the Second World War. Was 

inducted as private in 1942 and discharged 

as a captain, field artillery, in 1%. Books: 

History of the Organization of the United 

States Infantry, in Army Lineage Book 

(GPO, 1953); International Tensions and 

Security Organizations (manual published 

by Air University, 1957); The American 

Militia: Decade of Decision (1960); editor 

of Reminiscences of the Second Seminole 

War by John Bemrose (1966); History of 

the Second Seminole War (1968); The War 

of 1812(1972); and editor of Indians of the 

Lower South: Past and hesent, vol. V, 

Proceedings of the Gulf Coast History and 

Humanities Conference (1975). 

h 

L of the Chief of Military History, Depart- 
DESMOND PAUL MORTON. Born Calgary. Alberta, September 10. 1937. B.A.. 

1959, College Militaire Royal De St-Jean. 

Royal Military College of Canada; M.A.. 

1966, Oxford University; and Ph.D.. 1968 

University of London. Served in the Canadian Army, 1954-1964, retired with the 

rank of captain. Assistant Provincial Secretary, New Democratic Party of Ontario, 

1964-1968. Federal Council and Provincial 

Executive of the Ontario and National 

NDP, 1968-1972. Broadcasts daily news 

commentary on CHIC, Brompton. Has 

taught at University of Ottawa. 1968-69. at 

University of Toronto since 1969. Is presently Associate Dean for Humanities. 

Erindale College, for a three year turn, 

1975-1978. Books: Ministers and Generals: 

Politics and the Canadian Militia, 1867- 

1904 (1970); The Last War Drum: The 

Northwest Campaign of 1885 (1972); Mayor Howland: The Citizens’ Candidate 

(1973); The Canadian General: Sit William 

Otter (1974); and NDP: The Dream of 

Power (1974). Is also responsible for four 

videotape productions and three tape-slide 

productions on topics in Canadian military 

and labour history. 

SANDRA L. MYRES. Born Columbus, 

Ohio, May 17, 1933. B.A., 1957, Texas 

Tech; M.A., 1960, Texas Tech; and Ph.D., 

1967, Texas Christian University. Has 

taught at Schreiner Institute, Texas Christian University and University of Texas at 

Arlington and served as Executive Director, Texas Committee for the Humanities 

and Public Policy, 1973-76. Books: S. D. 

Myres: Saddlemaker (l%l); Force Without 

Fanfare: The Autobiography of K. M. Van 

Zandt (1968); The Ranch in Spanish Texas 

(1%9); Essays on the American West (contributor and co-editor, 1969); One Man, 

One Vote: Reapportionment vs. Gerrymandering (1970); Indian Tribes of Texas 

(contributor, 1971); Essays on U.S. Foreign Relations (co-editor, 1974); Forked 

Tongues and Broken Treaties (contributor, 

1975); and Cavalry Wife: The Diary of 

Eveline M. Alexander (1976). 

184 
ROGER L. NICHOLS. Born Racine, Wisconsin, June 13, 1933. B.S., 1956, Wisconsin State College-Lacrosse; M.S., 1959, 

and Ph.D. 1964, University of Wisconsin. 

Has taught at Wisconsin State UniversityOshkosh, University of Georgia, University of Maryland, and University of Arizona 

where he presently is professor of History. 

Books: General Henry Atkinson (1%5); 

The Missoun’ Expedition (ed., 1%9); The 

American Indian (co-editor, 1971); The 

Study of American History (contributor, 

1973); Sources of Military History (contributor, 1975). 

RAYMOND G. O’CONNOR. Born June 

6, 1915, St. Louis, Missouri. M.A., 1948, 

American University; Ph.D., 1957, Stanford University. Has taught at the University of California, Stanford University, 

University of Kansas, Temple University, 

and since 1969 the University of Miami. 

Has guest lectured at the University of 

Costa Rica, Stanford University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and 

Brown University. He also served as Ernest J. King professor, U.S. Naval War 

College (1967-68). U.S. Navy (1935-55). 

Books: Perilous Equilibrium (1%2); History of American Military Policy (ed. and 

co-author, 1%2); Readings in Twentieth 

Century American History (co-editor, 

1%3); American Defense Policy in 

Perspective (ed. and co-author, 1%5); 

Residential Powers in Foreign Affairs (coauthor, 1%6); The Japanese Navy in 

World War I1 (ed., 1969); Diplomacy for 

Victory: FDR and Unconditional Surrender (1971); and Force and Diplomacy: 

Essays Military and Diplomatic (1972). 

~ 

185 
RICHARD A. PRESTON. Born Middle+ 

brough, England, October 4. 1910. B.A.. 

1921, and M.A.. 1932. Leeds: Ph.D.. 1936. 

Yale. Has taught at the University of Toronto, University College (Cardiff), the 

Royal Military College of Canada, and at 

the University of British Columbia (summer school). Has lectured at the Canadian 

National Defence College, the Canadian 

Staff College. and the U.S. Naval War 

College. Royal Air Force, 1940-45. W. K. 

Boyd Professor of History at Duke University since 1965 and Director of Canadian 

Studies since 1973. Books: A Short History of Kingston as a Naval and Military 

Centre (co-author, 1950): Gorges of Plymouth Fort (19.53): Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and its Interrelationships 

with Western Society (co-author. 1956. 

1962, and 1970): Can We Disrlrm? (1957): 

Royal Fort Frontenac (co-author, 1958): 

Kingston Before the War of 1812 (1958): 

Canada in World Affairs, 1959-1%1 (1%): 

Canada and the “lmperial Defense“: A 

Study of the Origins of the British Commonwealth s Defense Organization, 1868- 

1919 (1967); Canada‘s RMC (1969): Contemporary Australia: Studies in History, 

Politics, and Economics (ed., 1969): Canadian Defence Policy and the Development 

of the Canadian Nation, 1867-1917 (1970); 

The Influence of the United States on 

Canadian Development: Eleven Case Studies (ed., 1972); For Friends at Home: A 

Scottish Emigrant’s Letters from Canada, 

California, and the Cariboo, 1844-64 (ed.. 

1974). 

186 
REVEREND FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA. 

Born River Falls, Wisconsin, January 4, 

1921. B.S., 1941, Rivers Ralls State Teachers College; M.A., 1947, University of 

Minnesota; Ph.D., 1950, Harvard. U.S. 

Army Air Force, 1942-1946. Entered Jesuit 

order, 1950; ordained to the priesthood, 

1957. Has taught at Marquette University 

since 1960; served as visiting professor at 

University of Oklahoma and Harvard 

Summer Session. Books: Broadax -and 

Bayonet (1953); Army Life on the Western 

Frontier (ed. 1958); American Indian Policy in the Formative Years (1%2); A Guide I to the Military Posts of the United States _. (1964); The Sword of the Republic (1%9); 

Indian Peace Medals (197 1); Americanizing 

the American Indian (ed. 1973); American 

Indian Policy in Crisis ( 1976). 

MARTIN RIDGE. Born Chicago, May 7, 

1923. B.E., 1944, Chicago Teachers College; M.A. 1949, and Ph.D., 1951, Northwestern University. Has taught at Westminister College, San Diego State University, University of California, Los Angeles, 

.c Northwestern University, and Indiana 

University. Editor of the Journal of American History since 1966. Books: Ignatius 

Donnelly: The Portrait of a Politician 

(1962); California Work and Workers 

(1%3); The American Adventure (co-author, 1964); America's Frontier Story (coauthor, 1%9); and Bibliography and the 

Historian (contributor, 1967). 

* 

187 
THEODORE ROPP. Born Hollywood. Illinois, May 22. 1911. A.B.. 1934. Oberlin: 

A. B., 1935. and Ph.D., 1937. Harvard. 

Has taught at Harvard and, since 1938. 

Duke University. Has served iis Ernest J. 

King Professor of Maritime History at the 

Naval War College and as Distinguished 

Visiting Professor of Military History at 

the Army War College and at the United 

States Military Academy at West Point. 

He is perennial President of the American 

Military Institute and former Chairman. 

Historical Evaluation and Research Organization. Books: War in the Modern World 

(1959: 2nd revised ed.. 1962): ;ind The 

Historical Development of Contemporary 

Strategy (1970). 

MARSHALL SPRAGUE. Born March 14. 

1909, Neward. Ohio. B.S.. 1930, Princeton 

University. Reporter for the Women’s 

Wear Daily, the North China Star. Tientsin, China, and the Paris edition of the 

New York Herald Tribune. Feature writer. 

book reviewer, The New York Times. Has 

written some 500 articles for various publications. Books: Money Mountain, The 

Story of Cripple Creek Gold (l9S3); Massacre. The Tragedy ;if White River (1957): 

Newport in the Rockies, The Life and 

Good Times of Colorado Springs (1961): 

The Great Gates, The Story of the Rocky 

Mountain Passes (1964); A Gallery of 

Dudes (1967); The Mountain States (TimeLife Books, 1%8); So Vast So Beautiful a 

Land, Louisiana and the Purchase (1974): 

One Hundred Years Plus, A Centennial 

Story of Colorado Springs (1972); and 

Colorado ( 1976). 

188 
--I -.___rr___ ROBERT M. UTLEY. Born Bauxite. 

Arkansas, October 31, 1929. B.S., 195 I, 

Purdue University; M.A., 1952. Indiana 

University; Hon. Doctor of Letters, Purdue, 1974 and University of New Mexico, 

1976. U.S. Army (private to captain), 

1952-56. Historian, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

Department of Defense, 1954-57. Served 

with National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, as historial aide at 

Custer Battlefield National Monument 

summers of 1947-52; Regional Historian, 

Southwest Region, Santa Fe, N. M., 1957- 

64; Chief Historian, Washington, 1964-72; 

Director, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. 1972-73; As5istant Director of NPS for Park Historic Preservation, 

1973 to present. One of founders of the 

Western History Association in 1961 and 

President, 1967-68. Books: Custer and the 

Great Controversy (1962); The Last Lkys 

of the Sioux Nation (1%3); Frontiersmen 

in Blue: The US. Army and the Indian, 

1848-1865 (I 967); Frontier Regulars: The 

US. Army and the Indian, 1866-91 (1973). 

HENRY P. WALKER, LTC, USAR-RET. 

Born Schenectady, New York, February 

8. 191 I. A.B. and 2nd Lt. USA. 1933. 

Harvard; M.A., 1935 (Mining Geology), 

Harvard. Active duty, 1940-1960. Foreign 

Service: Panama, Italy, Korea, Germany. 

M.A., 1961 (History), Texas Western College; Ph.D., 1965, University of Colorado. 

Assistant Editor, Arizona and the West 

and ocassional lecturer in Western American History, University of Arizona. Book: 

The Wagonmasters (1966). Articles on military subjects in: MofUana, Journal of Arizona History, Arizona and the West. and 

Military Review. 

189 

INDEX 

Aberdeen, Lady, 20 

Allensworth, Allen, 96 

American Indian Movement, 3 

American Navy’s role in the 

experience in Florida everglades, 40 

mosquito fleet,, 40 

seizure of Monterey, 42 

settling of Alaska, 48 

War of 1812, 38 

Appalachians, 59 

Arny, William, 78-79 

Assiniboines Indians, massacre 

Astor, John Jacob, expedition into 

Louisiana Purchase, 37 

of, 25 

Oregon, 45-46 

Baldwin, Alice Blackwood, 137, 

139, 142, 144, 146 

Bancroft, George, 43 

Bartlett, Washington A., 44 

Bear Flag Republic, 43 

Beardslee, Lester Anthony, 48 

Benedict, Kirby, 78 

Benet, Stephen Vincent, 127 

Bent, Charles, 73 

Benton, Thomas Hart, 46 

Bernard, Hewitt, 26 

Berton, Pierre, 63 

Biddle, Ellen, 137, 141, 147 

Biddle, James, 46 

Big Foot, 5 

Black Kettle, 5 

Blacks in frontier army, 13, 95-98, 

Boomers, 81 

Bosque Redondo experiment, 78- 

Bourke, John G., 155-56, 161 

Boyd, Mrs. Orsemus, 137, 141, 

114 

79, 112 

145, 147, 148 

Bradley, Reginald, 132 

Brisbin, James, 87 

British imperialism, 59-60 

Brown, John, 102 

Buffalo, disappearance of, 28, 30 

Burr, Aaron, 102 

Burt, Andrew, IS6 

Butler, W.F., 24 

Calhoun, John C., 6, 174-7s 

California gold rush, 44 

Canby, Edward R.S., 4 

Cardinal, Harold, 66 

Carleton, James, 5, 78-79 

Carpenter, C.C., 81 

Carr, Eugene A., 157, 160-61 

Carr, Mary Maguire, 158 

Carrington, Frances, 137, 142, 

Carrington, Margaret S., 137, 140, 

Cherokees, 5 

Cheyennes, 5 

Chivington, John M., 5, 105-6 

Civil War, 7, II, 21, 50, 83, 114, 

Clear Grit tradition, 33 

Collins, James, 78 

Collins, John S., 157 

Colonial Indian wars, 11 

Colorado gold rush, 106 

Colton, Walter, 44 

Connelly, Henry, 78 

Cooke, Philip St. George, 125 

Crook, George, 10, 155, 161-62 

Custer, Elizabeth, 137, 141, 145- 

Custer, George Armstrong, 3-4, 9, 

147-49 

142, 144, 147 

170 

47, 149 

161 

Dade party massacre, 40 

Darwinism, 34, 57, 59 

191 
Davin, Nicholas Flood, 33 

Dawes Act of 1887, 19, 57 

Denny, Cecil, 30 

Dickens, Francis, 31 

Dickey, John, 64 

Dime novels about the American 

West, 135-36 

Dorion, A.A., 26 

Doubleday, Abner Ranford, 88 

Dudley, Nathan, 81 

Dufferin, Lord, 25-26 

Dull Knife, 12 

Dupont, Samuel F., 44 

Hardinge, Lord, 124 

Harrison, Benjamin, 81 

Hazen, W.P., 94 

Henry, Guy V., 163 

Herchmer, L.W., 29, 31, 33 

Heth, Henry, 124-25 

Heyerdahl, Thor, 65 

Horseshoe Bend, battle of, 4 

Hudson’s Bay Company territoHuntington, Samuel P., 7 

Immigrants in the frontier army, 

ries in 1869, 21, 59 

13 

Elements of Military Art and Sci- Indian treaty 

Ewell, Richard A., 10 

53 

Indian voting rights, 34 

Indians in the frontier army, 13 ence, 9 

“Expansible army” plan, 6 scouts, 10 

Fallen Timbers, battle of, 4 

Farragut, David G., 45 

Fenian seizure of Pembina, 23-24 

Fish, Hamilton, 25 

Florida, invasion of, 1818, 39 

Foote, Mary Hallack, 148 

Ford, John, 5 

Forrest, French, 42 

“Fort Apache,” 5 

“Fort Whoop-up,” 25 

Fremont, John Charles, 43, 103 

Gallatin, Albert, 12 

Ghost Dance, 6 

Gilpin, William, 103-6 

Glass, Henry, 48 

Glorieta Pass, 101, 104-5 

Gray, James, 63 

Greiner, Theodore, 79 

Grierson, H.B., 89 

Gunnison, John, 103 

Halleck, Henry W., 9 

Hamilton, Alexander, 174 

Hancock, Winfield S., 9 

Hardee, William J., 123 

Jackson, Andrew, 4, 38-39, 112 

-Jacobs, Jo Beth, 136 

Jefferson, Thomas, 101 

Jett, William Bladen, 129 

Johnson County war in Wyoming, 

Jones, Thomas ap Catesby, 42-44 

Joselyn, Stephen, 53 

Joseph, Chief, 28, 142 

Kearny, Stephen Watts, 73-74, 

King, Charles, 3, 148 

King Philip’s War, 6, 11 

Laidley, T.T.S., 127-28 

Landerkin, George, 28 

Lane, Lydia S., 137, 141, 147-48 

Larson, James, 131 

Laurentian Shield, 59 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 34 

Lewis and Clark, 101, 174 

Lincoln County War, 81 

Liquor, prohibition of in Canada, 

Little Bighorn, battle of, 30, 58, 

81 

103 

32 

76, 119, 122, 125, 133, 157 

192 
Long, Stephen, 103 North American British federation 

Lowe, Percival G., 129 North West Mounted Police, 18. 

Macdonald, Sir John A., 20, 24- comp:lrisons between Mount25, 29, 34, 60, 65 ed Police and US CavalryMackenzie, Alexander, 26 men. 28, 61-62 

Macleod, R.C., 33 “March West.” 25 

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 38-39 scarlet tunics, 25-26, 64-65 

Mahan, Dennis Hart, 8 

Manifest Destiny, 41-42, 60-61 O’Donoghue, W.H., 23 

Canadian fears of, 20 Ord, E.O.C., 125 

Mansfield, Joseph K.F., 122-23 Oregon Question, 47 

Marcy, Randolph, 103 Organic Act of 1884, 48 

Marquis, Thomas P., 157 Pacific Squadron, 42, 47 

Mason, Richard, 72 Patten, George Washington, 161 

Mattes, Merrill, 136 Peacetime military, 52 

McCall, Archibald, 121 Perea, Francisco, 78 

Meacham, Alfred, B., 28, 53 Permanent Indian Frontier, 120 

Medicine Line, 28 Perry, Matthew C., 40 

Meeker Massacre, 101, 107-9 Phillips, Wendell, 3 

Merriam, Henry C., 88 Piegan camp, attack on, 76 

Mexican War, 7, 12, 83, 114 Pierce, Franklin, 78 

Meyers, Augustus, 55, 131 Pike, Zebulon, expedition of, 101- 

Middleton, Fred, 27, 31-32 

Miles, Nelson A., 4, 162 Polk, James Knox, 43 

Military Affairs committees, 80 Porter, David, 41 

Military government in California Porter, Peter B., 8 

Preble, George Henry, 40-41 

Militia tradition, 6, 12, I1 1 Professionalism in the army, 12 

Mills, David, 33 

Minority rights in Canada, 19-20 Red River, 21, 22, 101-3 

Monroe, James, 39 Red Sticks, 4 

Mormon War of 1850’s, 112 Remington, Frederic, 4, I1 

Morris, Alexander, 25, 65 Reservations, I I, 66 

Morris, W.S., 31 Rice, Edmund V., 132 

Movies and the west, 3, 5 Riel rebellion, 23, 31 

Mulford, Ami F., 129 Riley, Bennett, 72-73, 120 

Munroe, John, 74 Ringgold, Cadwalder, 45 

Rister, Carl, 81 

Navajo Indians, 5, 78, 80 Robertson, Heather, 66 

Neeser, Robert Wilden, 43 Roe, Frances, 137, 142, 145, 148, 

Negro Fort, destruction of, 39 

Nevins, Allan, 43 Rogers, John, 40 

New Zealand war with Maoris, 68 Rogue River war, 131 

Louisiana Purchase, 101, 174 of 1867, 20 

22, 23-29, 32, 34 

3, 174 

and New Mexico, 42-45, 71-74 

I58 

193 
Ross, Patrick Robertson, 24-25, 65 USS Jamestown, 48 

Sand Creek, massacre at, 5, 71, USS Ontario, 46 

76, 111 USS Peacock, 47 

Schreyvogel, Charles, 4 

Scott, Winfield, 5, 121 

Seminole Wars, 11, 40, 76 

Sharp, Paul, 62 

Sheridan, Philip, 3, 11, 51 

Sherman, William Tecumseh, 11, VielC, Teresa Griffin, 137-38, 140- 

Sibley, Henry, 104 Vietnam, 7 

Simpson, Sir George, 22 

Sitting Bull, 30, 33 

Sloat, John D., 43, 47 

Smith, Henry Nash, 87 

Smith, Thomas A., 175 

Steele, Sam, 31 56,47 

Stockton, Robert F., 43 

Summerhayes, Martha, 137-38, Watkin, Edward, 2* 

143-45, 147-48 

Swift, Eben, 161-62 

Taylor, National G., 175 

Terry, A.H., 161 

Thornburgh, Thomas, 108 

Throckmorton, Charles B., 130 White Bird Canyon, battle of, 

Total war, 11-12 

“Trail of Tears,” 5 White, Edward G., 135 

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 72- Wilkes, Charles, 42, 46 

74 Wilkinson, James, 102 

Turner thesis, 37, 85, 95 

Upton, Emory, 7 

USS Decatur, 47-48 

USS Essex, 41 

USS Massachusetts, 47 

USS Portsmouth, 43 

USS Shark, 47 

USS St. Louis, 42 

Vankoughnet, Lawrence, 30 

SO, 53, 86, 170 45, 147 

Walsh, James, 30 

War of 1812, 38, 114 

Washington, Indian War of 1855- 

Washita, 12 

Wayne, “Mad Anthony,” 4 

Wayne, John, 5 

Webb, Walter Precott, 37 

Weigley, Russell, 1 1 

West Point, 8, 101 

Wheaton, Lloyd, 23 

119, 122, 125, 127, 130, 133 

Wingate, George W., 126 

Wolseley, Garnet, 23 

Wounded Knee, battle of, 5 

Zogbaum, Rufus, 4 

194 

* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1985 0 - 479-051 Q.L. 2