General: I have this moment received your letter of January 22, about the sale of arms and ammunition to Indians by traders and agents. We, the military, are held responsible for the peace of the frontier, and it is an absurdity to attempt it if Indian agents and traders can legalize and encourage so dangerous a traffic. I regard the paper enclosed, addressed to Mr. D. A. Butterfield, and signed by Charles Bogy, W. R. Irwin, J. H. Leavenworth, and others, as an outrage upon our rights and supervision of the matter, and I now authorize you to disregard that paper, and at once stop the practice, keeping the issues and sales of arms and ammunition under the rigid control and supervision of the commanding officers of the posts and districts near which the Indians are.
If the Indian agents may, without limit, supply the Indians with arms, I would not expose our troops and trains to them at all, but would withdraw our soldiers, who already have a herculean task on their hands.
This order is made for this immediate time, but I will, with all expedition, send these papers with a copy of this, to General Grant, in the hope that he will lay it before the President, who alone can control both War and Indian Departments, under whom, at present, this mixed control of the Indian question now rests in law and practice.
Your obedient servant,
W. T. Sherman, Lieutenant-General Commanding.
General W. S. Hancock, commanding Department of the Missouri.
This was before the peace policy had become supreme, or the appointment of agents from the Society of Friends had been discovered as a supposed panacea for all our Indian difficulties.
General Sherman, as stated in his letter, forwarded all the papers relating to the arms question to the headquarters of the army. General Grant, then in command of the army, forwarded them to the Secretary of War, accompanied by the following letter, which clearly expresses the views he then held:
Headquarters Armies of The United States,
Washington, D. C., February 1, 1867.
Sir: The enclosed papers, just received from General Sherman, are respectfully forwarded, and your special attention invited. They show the urgent necessity for an immediate transfer of the Indian Bureau to the War Department, and the abolition of the civil agents and licensed traders. If the present practice is to be continued, I do not see that any course is left open to us but to withdraw our troops to the settlements and call upon Congress to provide means and troops to carry on formidable hostilities against the Indians, until all the Indians or all the whites on the great plains, and between the settlements on the Missouri and the Pacific slope, are exterminated. The course General Sherman has pursued in this matter, in disregarding the permits of Mr. Bogy and others, is just right. I will instruct him to enforce his order until it is countermanded by the President or yourself. I would also respectfully ask that this matter be placed before the President, and his disapproval of licensing the sale of arms to Indians asked. We have treaties with all tribes of Indians from time to time. If the rule is to be followed that all tribes with which we have treaties, and pay annuities, can procure such articles without stint or limit, it will not be long before the matter becomes perfectly understood by the Indians, and they avail themselves of it to equip themselves for war. They will get the arms either by making treaties themselves or through tribes who have such treaties.
I would respectfully recommend that copies of the enclosed communications be furnished to the Military Committee of each house of Congress.