Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1890-05-03
THE REGULAR CAVALRY.
The Mounted Troops on the Frontier and
Their services.

The Mounted Troops on the Frontier and
Their Services.
Captain Charles King in the New York World
We have ten regiments of cavalry, twelve
"troops" or companies to each regiment,
and, by law, sixty-six men to each troop.
ally very beautifully uniformed, mounted
and equipped, each regiment in the English
service especially, having distinctive
dress but we, as good citizens of \ model
republic, are taught from the very start
the abolition of distinction of almost every
kind. There Is only one way that you can
tell any of our regiments of horse one from
another when rs far away as across the
street. The faces of the men in two of
them are black. Close at hand the little
brass number on the forage cap will tell
you the regiment to which tho trooper be-
longs, or when in rank the large figure on
the beautiful silken guidon borne by each
troop. But If the ten regiments were TO be
paraded all together in some vat open
field, you could not say which is which,
except that whore those dusky faces were
seen there rode the Ninth and Tenth Kegi-
ments.
In the ten or twelve years that immedi-
ately followed our great civil war, the cav
airy was engaged in one long campaign
and there is no warfare that calls for such
vigilance and skill on the part of officers
and men as this. The Indians are wonder
fully scientific fighters and, after they got
breech- leaders or repeating rifles, 1t was
often desperate work to attack them.
sanity engaged, winter and summer. The
Seventh, so long commanded by brave
General Custer, fought the Kiowas, Of
Nothern Texas; the Cheyennes and Arapa-
hoes of the Indian territory, and finally
tho great confederation Of the DakOtas or
Sioux, along the river Yellowstone, losing
in battle after battle with the redskins no
less than eighteen officers and over three
hundred troopers killed. The Fourth
fought hard on many a field and lost
several gallant young lieutenarts. The
First, Second aud Third all mourn the loss
of cherished comrades shot down in fierce
encounters in the Rockies or Sierras. The
Fihh-the regiment that within year had
ridden over the continent from Yuma to
the Yellowstone, and fought by turns
Apache, Cheyenne, Sioux and Ute-has
buried its dead from the borders of Old
Mexico to the bluffs of the Little Missouri.
The Sixth and Eighth, the Ninth and Tenth
have all had many lively skirmish with
these nimble warriors, and all have freely
shed the blood of their best and bravest.
and the days of the decade from '67 TO III
will never be forgotten by the cavalrymen
who served then on our wide and beauti-
full frontier. Nor was that the last of the
fighting by any means, for the Utes In Colo
RADIO and the Chiricahuas of Southern
Arizona gave infinite trouble and many
hard tussle before they were brought to
terms.
The Indian problem is practically settled
now. Everywhere over the prairies, where
we secuted and fought when our boy read
ers of to-day were babies, the iron horse
goes snorting on his way. In 1876 no white
man could ride alone from the Platte to
Il, Anrt t.ix haxr Nv,lxr
on the reservations will an Indian face be
seen. And all that vast expanse of rich
and beautiful aud productive country was
opened to settler and emigrant by the little
army of United States regulars, horse and
foot, and not one of those fertile valleys is
by the graves of their fallen.
1t was duty full of vivid interest and
boys; it was a service that
kept us in the mountains or over the broad
prairies from the moment the grass began
to sprout in tho early spring until late in
the bitter cold Ofa Western winter. Some
times we had to send expeditions out in
the dead of winter, when the mercnry
stood at thirty degrees below, and many
poor fellow, officer and private alike, had
to suffer amputation of feet or fingers that
were frozen too badly to save. On the
other hand, in the Arizona deserts, men
died Of thirst and exhaustion fromex posure
to the rays of blazing sun. In 1876, when
chasing the Sioux after the tragic battle
in which Custer and 40 many of
the Seventh were killed, one big column
got entirely out of rations and would have
starved but for their poor, half-starved
horses. Think df living week on horse
meat or nothing at all. You never saw
such a set OF scarecrows in all your life as
we fellows were when we rode in to the
Black Hills after General Crooks great
that resulted in the dismember-
ment of the Sioux nation. Indeed, more
than half the command came feebly trudg-
ing in afoot, some towing worn old skele-
ton of horse behind them. some having
no horses to tow. They had been eaten on
the way