Glen Field. Troops prepare to leave Fort Robinson, World War II.
More than 2,000 students and adults attended the first annual Fort Robinson School Field Day, April 26, 1974.
In August 1889 a Camp of Instruction was held at Fort Robinson. This event attracted a great deal of attention because it involved the assembly at the post of all troops in the Department of the Platte. The vast encampment was organized by General Brooke under the direction of General Crook, then commanding the Military Division of the Missouri. Training for the 102 officers and 2,155 enlisted men began on August 20 and lasted for one month. The fifty-eight participating companies came from eleven different posts in the Department and consisted of the Ninth Cavalry, the Fifth Artillery and the Second, Seventh, Eighth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Twenty-first Infantry regiments. The soldiers lived in a tent camp about a mile from the main post at Fort Robinson, their temporary quarters being named Camp George Crook.
The expansion of Fort Robinson proved to be timely, for 1890-91 brought new Indian troubles and field service for the garrison. Discouraged by reservation life and hoping to bring back their old nomadic ways by supernatural methods, the Sioux took up the Ghost Dance. Ghost Dancers wore cloth shirts which they believed gave them supernatural protection against bullets, and during the course of their dancing they fell in trances and had visions of the spirit world in which they often talked to long dead relatives. Indian agents and civilians nearby became concerned lest the Indian wars begin again.
In October 1890 the post commander Colonel Tilford informed the Indian agent at Pine Ridge, Dr. D. F. Royer, that if troops were needed they would be sent from Fort Robinson, but the Colonel suggested that the Indians should be allowed to dance as long as they harmed no one. A similar opinion was held by the post scout, Little Bat, who believed that the Ghost Dance would eventually die out if left alone.
By November Agent Royer was even more apprehensive about the Ghost Dance and came to Fort Robinson for a conference. In view of the mounting concern, the Ninth Cavalry was given orders to leave, by railroad, for Pine Ridge on November 19. While in the field in connection with the Ghost Dance troubles the Ninth Cavalry was under the command of Major Guy V. Henry, the same officer who, as a company commander in the Third Cavalry, had figured prominently in the history of Camp Robinson during the Indian War days.
Fort Robinson served as a stop en route for recruits sent to join their various regiments in the field at Pine Ridge. Carbines and other supplies were also forwarded from the post when needed.
The Ghost Dance troubles culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Casualties in this battle were quite heavy, both among the troopers of the Seventh Cavalry and the Indian men, women and children of Big Foot’s band. Fort Robinson’s post scout, Little Bat, acted as an interpreter and helped to disarm the Indians when the well known battle began.