On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

General Crook had a conference with the head men of the Ogallallas and Brulés, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and told them in plain language what he expected them to do. The Government of the United States was feeding them, and was entitled to loyal behavior in return, instead of which many of our citizens had been killed and the trails of the murderers ran straight for the Red Cloud Agency; it was necessary for the chiefs to show their friendship by something more than empty words, and they would be held accountable for the good behavior of their young men. He did not wish to do harm to any one, but he had been sent out there to maintain order and he intended to do it, and if the Sioux did not see that it was to their interest to help they would soon regret their blindness. If all the Sioux would come in and start life as stock-raisers, the trouble would end at once, but so long as any remained out, the white men would insist upon war being made, and he should expect all the chiefs there present to aid in its prosecution.

There were now fifty-three companies of soldiers at Red Cloud, and they could figure for themselves just how long they could withstand such force. “Red Cloud” had been insolent to all officers placed over him, and his sympathies with the hostiles had been open and undisguised; therefore he had been deposed, and “Spotted Tail,” who had been friendly, was to be the head chief of all the Sioux.

The assignment of the troops belonging to the summer expedition to winter quarters, and the organization from new troops of the expedition, which was to start back and resume operations in the Big Horn and Yellowstone country, occupied several weeks to the exclusion of all other business, and it was late in October before the various commands began concentrating at Fort Fetterman for the winter’s work.

The wagon-train left at Powder River, or rather at Goose Creek, under Major Furey, had been ordered in by General Sheridan, and had reached Fort Laramie and been overhauled and refitted. It then returned to Fetterman to take part in the coming expedition. General Crook took a small party to the summit of the Laramie Peak, and killed and brought back sixty-four deer, four elk, four mountain sheep, and one cinnamon bear; during the same week he had a fishing party at work on the North Platte River, and caught sixty fine pike weighing one hundred and one pounds.

Of the resulting winter campaign I do not intend to say much, having in another volume described it completely and minutely; to that volume (“Mackenzie’s Last Fight with the Cheyennes—a Winter Campaign in Wyoming”) the curious reader is referred; but at the present time, as the country operated in was precisely the same as that gone over during the preceding winter and herein described—as the Indians in hostility were the same, with the same habits and peculiarities, I can condense this section to a recapitulation of the forces engaged, the fights fought, and the results thereof, as well as a notice of the invaluable services rendered by the Indian scouts, of whom Crook was now able to enlist all that he desired, the obstructive element—the Indian agent—having been displaced. Although this command met with severe weather, as its predecessor had done, yet it was so well provided and had such a competent force of Indian scouts that the work to be done by the soldiers was reduced to the zero point; had Crook’s efforts to enlist some of the Indians at Red Cloud Agency not been frustrated by the agent and others in the spring, the war with the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes would have been over by the 4th of July, instead of dragging its unsatisfactory length along until the second winter and entailing untold hardships and privations upon officers and men and swelling the death roll of the settlers.

The organization with which Crook entered upon his second winter campaign was superb in equipment; nothing was lacking that money could provide or previous experience suggest. There were eleven companies of cavalry, of which only one—“K,” of the Second (Egan’s)—had been engaged in previous movements, but all were under excellent discipline and had seen much service in other sections.

Besides Egan’s there were “H” and “K,” of the Third, “B,” “D,” “E,” “F,” “I,” and “M,” of the Fourth, and “H” and “L,” of the Fifth Cavalry. These were placed under the command of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, of the Fourth Cavalry.

Colonel R. I. Dodge, Twenty-third Infantry, commanded the infantry and artillery companies, the latter serving as foot troops; his force included Batteries “C,” “F,” “H,” and “K,” of the Fourth Artillery; Companies “A,” “B,” “C,” “F,” “I,” and “K,” of the Ninth Infantry; “D” and “G,” of the Fourteenth Infantry; and “C,” “G,” and “I,” of the Twenty-third Infantry.

General Crook’s personal staff was composed of myself as Acting Assistant Adjutant-General; Schuyler and Clarke, Aides-de-Camp; Randall, Chief of Scouts; Rockwell, of the Fifth Cavalry, as Commissary; Surgeon Joseph R. Gibson as Chief Medical Officer.

In the list of officers starting out with this expedition are to be found the names of Major G. A. Gordon, Fifth Cavalry, and Major E. F. Townsend, Ninth Infantry, and Captain C. V. Mauck, Fourth Cavalry, and Captain J. B. Campbell, Fourth Artillery, commanding battalions; Lieutenant Hayden Delaney, Ninth Infantry, commanding company of Indian scouts; and the following from the various regiments, arranged without regard to rank: Wessels and Hammond; Gerald Russell, Oscar Elting, and George A. Dodd, of the Third Cavalry; James Egan and James Allison, of the Second Cavalry; John M. Hamilton, E. W. Ward and E. P. Andrus, Alfred B. Taylor and H. W. Wheeler, of the Fifth Cavalry; J. H. Dorst, H. W. Lawton, C. Mauck, J. W. Martin, John Lee, C. M. Callahan, S. A. Mason, H. H. Bellas, Wirt Davis, F. L. Shoemaker, J. Wesley Rosenquest, W. C. Hemphill, J. A. McKinney, H. G. Otis, of the Fourth Cavalry; Cushing, Taylor, Bloom, Jones, Campbell, Cummins, Crozier, Frank G. Smith, Harry R. Anderson, Greenough, Howe, French, of the Fourth Artillery; Jordan, MacCaleb, Devin, Morris C. Foot, Pease, Baldwin, Rockefeller, Jesse M. Lee, Bowman, of the Ninth Infantry; Vanderslice, Austin, Krause, Hasson, Kimball, of the Fourteenth Infantry; Pollock, Hay, Claggett, Edward B. Pratt, Wheaton, William L. Clarke, Hoffman, Heyl, of the Twenty-third Infantry; and Surgeons Gibson, Price, Wood, Pettys, Owsley, and La Garde.