“The Only Good Indian…”
(1862-1891)
In This Chapter
Indian roles in the Civil War
The Santee Sioux Uprising
The victory of Red Cloud
Futile campaigns, the War for the Black Hills, and Custer’s Last Stand
Defeat of the Nez Perce and Geronimo
Massacre at Wounded Knee
The West was a land of many dreams, but what we seem to remember most vividly are the nightmares. On the vast stage of prairie and mountain, the last act of a four-century tragedy was played out. The curtain had been raised by the crew of Christopher Columbus, who clashed with the people they called Indians on an island they called Hispaniola. From then on, warfare between Native Americans and European Americans was chronic and continual. When whites and Indians did not start wars between themselves, Indians became embroiled in wars between whites: the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and finally, the Civil War.
Read any standard history of the Civil War, and you will learn that this epic struggle was mainly an eastern conflict. In the West, battles were smaller and less frequent, yet often, they were uglier.
Blue, Gray—and Red
Union loyalists in the West feared that the Confederates would acquire Indian allies. The Confederacy recruited some members of some eastern tribes, and both the North and South recruited troops from among tribes that had been “removed” to Indian Territory: the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. But the more significant impact Indians had on the Civil War was to draw off some Union troops who otherwise would have been used against Confederates. Most important, the demands of the war meant that fewer troops occupied western posts, which provided Indians ample opportunity to raid settlers with relative impunity.
A Man Called Cochise
On the eve of the Civil War, Cochise (1812-74) emerged as leader of the Apaches. Feared throughout the Southwest by whites as well as other Indian tribes (Apache is a Hopi word for enemy), the Apaches had been fierce warriors and raiders for centuries. However, Cochise was actually inclined to like the American whites who settled in Arizona, and he even secured a contract with the Butterfield Overland Mail to supply fuel wood to the station at Apache Pass.
In 1861, Cochise was falsely accused of raiding a local rancher (a thoroughly disreputable drunk named John Ward), rustling his cattle, and abducting his son. Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom asked Cochise for a parley on February 4, 1861; Cochise came voluntarily, only to be taken captive with five others. The chief managed to escape by slitting a tent with his knife, and, enraged, he raided the Butterfield station, killing one employee and taking another prisoner. Cochise then ambushed a small wagon train and seized eight Mexicans and two Americans, He burned the Mexicans alive but offered to exchange the Americans for the Apache prisoners Bascom still held. When Bascom refused, Cochise murdered his remaining captives, and Bascom retaliated by summarily executing his hostages.
This scenario was the way of white-Indian war in the West: a crescendo of eye for eye, usually escalating into a full-scale war. In this case, war with the Apaches would consume the next quarter century.
Southwestern Terror
The entire Southwest was racked by violence. The outbreak of the Civil War stripped the U.S. Army’s western outposts of 313 officers—one-third of the entire officer corps—who resigned their commissions to fight on the side of the Confederacy. Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Robert Baylor exploited the Union’s weakened position to take possession of Arizona Territory for the Confederacy. Baylor was able to roll over the greatly diminished Union presence, but he didn’t count on the hostility of the Chiricahua and Mimbreno Apaches, who terrorized the region. Baylor hastily formed the Arizona Rangers in August 1861 and ordered them to “exterminate all hostile Indians.”
In the meantime, hoping to retain New Mexico, Union General Edward R.S. Canby negotiated a treaty with the Navajo, pledging to distribute rations to the Indians. At Fort Fauntleroy, designated site of the distribution, a friendly series of horse races was run between Navajos and a regiment of New Mexico volunteers. The featured event was a race between an army lieutenant and Chief Manuelito (ca. 1818-94). Heavy wagers were laid, and from the beginning, it was apparent that Manuelito—an expert horseman—was not in control of his mount. After he came in a poor second, Manuelito protested that his bridle had been slashed, and he demanded a rematch. The soldiers refused, a fight broke out, and the troops began firing indiscriminately. “The Navahos, squaws, and children ran in all directions and were shot and bayoneted,” according to a white civilian eyewitness who testified before Congress. Forty Indians were killed, and the Navajo retaliated. Through August and September, the already legendary Kit Carson, leading the First New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry, relentlessly counterattacked.
The result, by the end of 1863, was total defeat of the Navajo, who were exiled to a desolate reservation called the Bosque Redondo. Eventually, 8,000 Navajo jammed the reservation, under conditions so intolerable that, after the Civil War, in an all-too-rare act of humanity, a U.S. peace commission granted Navajo pleas to be returned to their homelands.
The Great Santee Sioux Massacre
While the Southwest erupted, storm clouds also gathered far to the north. Unlike the Navajo, the Santee Sioux of Minnesota seemed willing to accept “concentration” on a reservation. But as increasing numbers of German and Scandinavian immigrants moved into the region, the Santee found themselves confined to a narrow strip of land along the Minnesota River. Worse, provisions and annuity money guaranteed them by treaty were routinely withheld. In June 1862, Little Crow led the Santee to the Yellow Medicine Indian Agency to demand release of provisions and funds. When these items were not forthcoming by August, warriors broke into the agency warehouse but were temporarily repelled.
Desperate and hungry, the Santee appealed to a local trader, Andrew J. Myrick, on August 5-6. His heartless reply—”let them eat grass”—enraged the warriors, and on August 18, they ambushed Myrick in his store, killed him, and stuffed his mouth with grass. From this point on, raiding became general in and around the town of New Ulm. By the end of August, 2,000 Minnesotans were refugees, and the Sioux had killed between 350 and 800 others. Governor Alexander Ramsey telegraphed Abraham Lincoln, requesting an extension of a federal deadline for fulfilling his state’s military draft quota. The president replied: “Attend to the Indians. If the draft cannot proceed of course it will not proceed. Necessity knows no law.”
Through the balance of August and most of September, fighting in Minnesota was brutal. On September 26, 2,000 Santee hostiles surrendered to General Henry Hopkins Sibley, and the deadliest Indian uprising in the history of the West was at an end. In November, a military tribunal sentenced 303 warriors to hang. Doubting the justice of these proceedings, President Lincoln personally reviewed the convictions and reprieved all but 39. In the end, 38 were hanged (another Indian received a last-minute reprieve), but administrative error resulted in the hanging of two Indians who were not on Lincoln’s list. As for Chief Little Crow, he fled the final battle, was refused refuge in Canada, and was ambushed and killed in Minnesota on July 3, 1863, while picking raspberries with his 16-year-old son.