The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-08-08
GEN MILES, FORMER CHIEF OF UNCLE SAM'S
 ARM $ TO-DAY.

Lie11t.-Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles hero of many battles and former head of Uncle sam $ lighting men, was born in Westminster Mass. Aug. 8, 1sss$ just three-q quarters of a century ago today The disting gdished warrior had only an academic education. but he has since achieved fame as writer and 1 has been given honorary degrees by Harvard and other universities. He lsbegan his career in the prosaic atlnos- phere of Boston store, where he was a clerk at a salary Of S 2 week. On the outbreak Of the war between the States the young clerk, true to the traditions Of the old colonial fam fly from which he sprang. lost no time l in en1isting in the army for the de-e feneeRof his flag. He was among the
 ATst to raise company of volunteers, land was commissioned a first neuten- ant in the Twenty second Massachu- setts Infantry The following year he was made colonel of the Sixty=hr rst New York Infantry. His gallantrys won rapid prornotien and at the ends l of the war he was q major general of9 lvoIunteers although only twenty-stx Iyears old He took part in all the terrible engagements that marked the
 campafgn of the army of the Potomacs Imp to the surrender of Lee at Appo-
 mattox. He was wounded three times fonce very seriously When the struggle was over, young
 Niles decided to continue his military career, and entered the regular army 1 of the United States as a colonel In
 1868 he married Mary Hoyt Sherman. daughter of Gen William T. Sherman. l A little later he was sent west and I took part in number of campaigns l against the hostile Redskins. notably those against the savage armies of Sit-s ting Bull. Crazy Horse Chief Joseph,
 Natchez and the bIoodthirsty Geroni-
 mo.
 In his recantlx n,zf,1ished n,enao{rs
 Gen Miles says of Geronimo and Nat Hchez.
 There has seldom appeared more
 ruthless mara1lder than Geronimo. He had the most deterTnined face and
 piercing eye that have eyer seen
 Fyatchez was the hereditary chief Of the Apaches "a tall slender young war rior, whose dignity and grace of move
 ment would become any prince. . Gen. Miles finds the real Americana lon the Pacific coast.
 The people of that part Of the coun-
 try, 7 he writes "are very little under stood. There we find the true Amerf-
 can enterprise and Independence. The
 mote region were resoIute body Of
 men and women, and the generation
 that has grown up there are well edu-s
 cated. intelligent and patriotic z Although he fought the Indians and
 reduced them to subjection to the great J
 Miles admits that the redskins have
 been the victims Of m any injustices at 1 the hands of the eonquering padefaces fOf his war against Chief Joseph and the Mex Perces, Gen. Miles says:
 Another cruel injustice was to be denacted. It would require a. volume
 to record the history of the Neg Per
 ces Indians. their loyalty to the gov fernment. their hospitality and kind lipess to the Lewis and Clark expedi-
 ton in 1894 and their truthful boast i that no white man had ever been kill- ed by a. Neg Perce. Long before 1877
 the government had, for certain con
 siderations, granted them reserva- |tion. They prized this little section of
 their native land more than all other Iearthly possessions. The solemn in function of Chief Joseph's father to him was never to give up the valley where This ashes were to rest. Yet the greed of the white race was too strong to
 permit the Neg Perces to retain the
 Wallowa, Valley. their most cherished I hone.'' So Miles was sent to force the Indians to submit, and in the end l he brought Chief Joseph to the white
 mans terms, and forced from him the solemn promise, From where the sun
 now stands, will fight no more |ll-e Fl, -1,i