page_title: Philip Sheridan
section_title: Indian Wars
hierarchical_section_title: Philip Sheridan / Indian Wars
caption_attribution_description: English: An unhappy-looking Native American, with a sign hanging around his neck saying &#8220;THIS IS THE NOBLE RED MAN.&#8221; stands on a bureau with an unhappy expression on his face. On either side of him are doors. The left door is labeled &#8220;INTERIOR DEPARTMENT&#8221; and in front of it stands U.S. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, hands in pocket, with a serious expression on his face. On the right is a door labeled &#8221;WAR DEPARTMENT&#8220; with an equally serious looking General Philip Sheridan standing in front of it and in back of it General William Tecumseh Sherman peers out from the left. Schurz and Sheridan eye each other resolutely. Français&#160;: Un amérindien malheureux, avec un écriteau accroché à lui disant "THIS IS THE NOBLE RED MAN", se tient debout sur un bureau qui lui aussi a une expression de tristesse sur lui. De chaque côté de lui se trouvent des portes. Au-dessus de celle de gauche est inscrit "INTERIOR DEPARTMENT" et devant celle-ci se tient le secrétaire à l'Intérieur Carl Schurz, avec une expression sérieuse sur son visage. Au-dessus de la porte de droite est inscrit "WAR DEPARTMENT", avec au-dessous Philip Sheridan, se tenant debout avec la même expression que ce dernier. Derrière ce dernier, on peut apercevoir William Tecumseh Sherman. Schurz et Sheridan s'observent réciproquement.
context_page_description: Philip Henry Sheridan was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East. In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces under General Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called "The Burning" by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched-earth tactics in the war. In 1865, his cavalry pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and was instrumental in forcing his surrender at Appomattox.
  Sheridan fought in later years in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains. Both as a soldier and private citizen, he was instrumental in the development and protection of Yellowstone National Park. In 1883, Sheridan was appointed general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, and in 1888 he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army during the term of President Grover Cleveland.
context_section_description: The protection of the Great Plains fell under the Department of the Missouri, an administrative area of over 1,000,000 mi.², encompassing all land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock was assigned to the department in 1866 but had mishandled his campaign, resulting in Sioux and Cheyenne raids that attacked mail coaches, burned the stations, and killed the employees. They also killed and kidnapped a considerable number of settlers on the frontier. Under pressure from the governors, General Grant turned to Sheridan. In September 1866, Sheridan arrived at the former Fort Martin Scott near Fredericksburg, Texas, where he spent three months subduing Indians in the Texas Hill Country.
  In August 1867, Grant appointed Sheridan to head the Department of the Missouri and pacify the Plains. His troops, even supplemented with state militia, were spread too thin to have any real effect. He conceived a strategy similar to the one he used in the Shenandoah Valley. In the Winter Campaign of 1868–69 (of which the Battle of Washita River was part) he attacked the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes in their winter quarters, taking their supplies and livestock and killing those who resisted, driving the rest back into their reservations.  When Sherman was promoted to General of the Army following Grant's election as President of the United States, Sheridan was appointed to command the Military Division of the Missouri, with all the Great Plains under his command. Professional hunters, trespassing on Indian land, killed over 4 million bison by 1874, and Sheridan applauded: "Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated". When the Texas legislature considered outlawing bison poaching on tribal lands, Sheridan personally testified against it, suggesting that the legislature should give each of the hunters a medal, engraved with a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other.
  Eventually the Indians returned to their designated reservations. Sheridan's department conducted the Red River War, the Ute War, and the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, which resulted in the death of a trusted subordinate, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. The Indian raids subsided during the 1870s and were almost over by the early 1880s, as Sheridan became the commanding general of the U.S. Army.
  Comanche Chief Tosawi reputedly told Sheridan in 1869, "Tosawi, good Indian," to which Sheridan supposedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown attributed the quote to Sheridan, stating that "Lieutenant Charles Nordstrom, who was present, remembered the words and passed them on, until in time they were honed into an American aphorism: The only good Indian is a dead Indian. Sheridan denied he had ever made the statement. Biographer Roy Morris Jr. states that, nevertheless, popular history credits Sheridan with saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." This variation "has been used by friends and enemies ever since to characterize and castigate his Indian-fighting career."
caption: A cartoon from Harper's Weekly of December 21, 1878, features Philip Sheridan and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz
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