Under Major Henry’s leadership the Ninth Cavalry made several long forced marches at the height of the troubles and although they did not see action in the battle of Wounded Knee they did fight a skirmish a few days later when, in classic movie style, they arrived on the scene in time to save elements of another regiment which were surrounded and under attack. The Ghost Dance trouble was the last bloody chapter in the wars with the Sioux.
FORT ROBINSON SINCE 1890
After the Battle of Wounded Knee the Ghost Dance trouble ended, and garrison life at Fort Robinson settled back to training, garden tending, and policing the post, with few breaks in the routine.
In 1892 the Ninth Cavalry, accompanied by post scouts Little Bat Garnier, Woman’s Dress, Yankton Charlie, White Antelope, and Joe Mosseau, spent the months from June until October in the field at Camp Bettens, Wyoming.
In 1897 an interesting report on recent minor tactical maneuvers at Fort Robinson was submitted. It described the mounting of Lt. M. A. Batson and two enlisted men on high wheel Columbia bicycles and the results of a rugged test of their ability to keep pace with mounted troops in the field. The bicycle-mounted men had “great difficulty” in keeping up with cavalry in rough terrain but over rolling ground were able to outdistance the horsemen. However, the report concluded that day in and day out the bicycle men would not be able to perform as required. One of the Columbia wheels was wrecked during the test. Lt. Batson later used another of the bicycles to good effect while mapping parts of the military reservation. Despite its humorous aspect, this test foreshadowed the eventual replacement of cavalry by mechanized troops.[39]
The war with Spain brought orders on April 16, 1898 for the Ninth Cavalry to move to Chicamauga Park, Georgia; it later went to Cuba and then on to the Philippine Islands. In a flurry of activity Fort Robinson was stripped, not only of troops, but of artillery and other needed war material, and the garrison was reduced to a minimum.
After the war the Tenth, Eighth, and Twelfth Cavalry regiments, in that order, followed the Ninth as the Fort Robinson garrison. On December 16, 1900, Little Bat Garnier, the post scout who had served the Army so well since 1876, was shot and killed by a barkeeper in Crawford. He was buried in the post cemetery at Fort Robinson.[40]
In 1906 Fort Robinson was once again involved in Indian trouble. Col. J. A. Augur, regimental commander of the Tenth Cavalry, had to order troops from the garrison to take the field when three hundred Ute Indians fled their reservation in an effort to relocate themselves in the Big Horn country of Montana. The Fort Robinson troops intercepted the Ute and escorted them to Fort Meade, South Dakota.
During World War I activity at Fort Robinson was reduced. A Signal Corps Training Center was planned for the Fort, but the war ended before it could be established.
After the war, in 1919, the post became a Quartermaster Remount Depot. It eventually developed into the world’s largest remount station, with thousands of horses and mules. At the Remount Depot horses were received, conditioned, and issued to Army units and civilian breeders. Some breeding of horses was also carried on at the post as a breeder’s demonstration as well as to prove certain stallions. Many famous race horses were at the depot after their racing careers ended and the 1936 U. S. Olympic Equestrian team trained at the Fort Robinson Remount Depot.