The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

Position of Reno on the Little Big Horn

From a photograph made by Mr. W. R. Bowlin, of Chicago, and reproduced by his permission

Still further to disquiet the Sioux, and to give countenance to the disgruntled warrior bands that resented the treaties already made, came the mismanagement of the Red Cloud agency. Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, was stopped by Red Cloud, while on a geological visit to the Black Hills, in November, 1874, and was refused admission to the Indian lands until he agreed to convey to Washington samples of decayed flour and inferior rations which the Indian agent was issuing to the Oglala Sioux. With some time at his disposal, Professor Marsh proceeded to study the new problem thus brought to his notice, and accumulated a mass of evidence which seemed to him to prove the existence of big plots to defraud the government, and mismanagement extending even to the Secretary of the Interior. He published his charges in pamphlet form, and wrote letters of protest to the President, in which he maintained that the Indian officials were trying harder to suppress his evidence than to correct the grievances of the Sioux. He managed to stir up so much interest in the East that the Board of Indian Commissioners finally appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the Red Cloud agency. The report of the committee in October, 1875, whitewashed many of the individuals attacked by Professor Marsh, and exonerated others of guilt at the expense of their intelligence, but revealed abuses in the Indian Office which might fully justify uneasiness among the Sioux.

To these tribes, already discontented because of their compression and sullen because of mismanagement, the entry of miners into the Black Hills country was the last straw. Probably a thousand miners were there prospecting in the summer of 1875, creating disturbances and exaggerating in the Indian mind the value of the reserve, so that an attempt by the Indian Bureau to negotiate a cession in the autumn came to nothing. The natural tendency of these forces was to drive the younger braves off the reserve, to seek comfort with the non-treaty bands that roamed at will and were scornful of those that lived in peace. Most important of the leaders of these bands was Sitting Bull.

In December the Indian Commissioner, despite the Sioux privilege to pursue the chase, ordered all the Sioux to return to their reserves before February 1, 1876, under penalty of being considered hostile. As yet the mutterings had not broken out in war, and the evidence does not show that conflict was inevitable. The tribes could not have got back on time had they wanted to; but their failure to return led the Indian Office to turn the Sioux over to the War Department. The army began by destroying a friendly village on the 17th of March, a fact attested not by an enemy of the army, but by General H. H. Sibley, of Minnesota, who himself had fought the Sioux with marked success in 1862.

With war now actually begun, three columns were sent into the field to arrest and restrain the hostile Sioux. Of the three commanders, Cook, Gibbon, and Custer, the last-named was the most romantic of fighters. He was already well known for his Cheyenne campaigns and his frontier book. Sherman had described him in 1867 as "young, very brave, even to rashness, a good trait for a cavalry officer," and as "ready and willing now to fight the Indians." La Barge, who had carried some of Custer's regiment on his steamer De Smet, in 1873, saw him as "an officer ... clad in buckskin trousers from the seams of which a large fringe was fluttering, red-topped boots, broad sombrero, large gauntlets, flowing hair, and mounted on a spirited animal." His showy vanity and his admitted courage had already got him into more than one difficulty; now on June 25, 1876, his whole column of five companies, excepting only his battle horse, Comanche, and a half-breed scout, was destroyed in a battle on the Little Big Horn. If Custer had lived, he might perhaps have been cleared of the charge of disobedience, as Fetterman might ten years before, but, as it turned out, there were many to lay his death to his own rashness. The war ended before 1876 was over, though Sitting Bull with a small band escaped to Canada, where he worried the Dominion Government for several years. "I know of no instance in history," wrote Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, "where a great nation has so shamelessly violated its solemn oath." The Sioux were crushed, their Black Hills were ceded, and the disappointed tribes settled down to another decade of quiescence.

In 1877 the interest which had made Sitting Bull a hero in the Centennial year was transferred to Chief Joseph, leader of the non-treaty Nez Percés, in the valley of the Snake. This tribe had been a friendly neighbor of the overland migrations since the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Living in the valleys of the Snake and its tributaries, it could easily have hindered the course of travel along the Oregon trail, but the disposition of its chiefs was always good. In 1855 it had begun to treat with the United States and had ceded considerable territory at the conference held by Governor Stevens with Chief Lawyer and Chief Joseph.

The exigencies of the Civil War, failure of Congress to fulfil treaty stipulations, and the discovery of gold along the Snake served to change the character of the Nez Percés. Lawyer's annuity of five hundred dollars, as Principal Chief, was at best not royal, and when its vouchers had to be cashed in greenbacks at from forty-five to fifty cents on the dollar, he complained of hardship. It was difficult to persuade the savage that a depreciated greenback was as good as money. Congress was slow with the annuities promised in 1855. In 1861, only one Indian in six could have a blanket, while the 4393 yards of calico issued allowed under two yards to each Indian. The Commissioner commented mildly upon this, to the effect that "Giving a blanket to one Indian works no satisfaction to the other five, who receive none." The gold boom, with the resulting rise of Lewiston, in the heart of the reserve, brought in so many lawless miners that the treaty of 1855 was soon out of date.

In 1863 a new treaty was held with Chief Lawyer and fifty other headmen, by which certain valleys were surrendered and the bounds of the Lapwai reserve agreed upon. Most of the Nez Percés accepted this, but Chief Joseph refused to sign and gathered about him a band of unreconciled, non-treaty braves who continued to hunt at will over the Wallowa Valley, which Lawyer and his followers had professed to cede. It was an interesting legal point as to the right of a non-treaty chief to claim to own lands ceded by the rest of his tribe. But Joseph, though discontented, was not dangerous, and there was little friction until settlers began to penetrate into his hunting-grounds. In 1873, President Grant created a Wallowa reserve for Joseph's Nez Percés, since they claimed this chiefly as their home. But when they showed no disposition to confine themselves to its limits, he revoked the order in 1875. The next year a commission, headed by the Secretary of the Interior, Zachary Chandler, was sent to persuade Joseph to settle down, but returned without success. Joseph stood upon his right to continue to occupy at pleasure the lands which had always belonged to the Nez Percés, and which he and his followers had never ceded. The commission recommended the segregation of the medicine-men and dreamers, especially Smohalla, who seemed to provide the inspiration for Joseph, and the military occupation of the Wallowa Valley in anticipation of an outbreak by the tribe against the incoming white settlers. These things were done in part, but in the spring of 1877, "it becoming evident to Agent Monteith that all negotiations for the peaceful removal of Joseph and his band, with other non-treaty Nez Percé Indians, to the Lapwai Indian reservation in Idaho must fail of a satisfactory adjustment," the Indian Office gave it up, and turned the affair over to General O. O. Howard and the War Department.