Events at the agency and the camp still did not go well. Indian leaders were quick to sense the divided opinions of various authorities and would complain to the Army officers about the agent’s handling of their affairs. When officers listened, the agent regarded it as interference on the part of the military. Many soldiers did not agree with the aims and methods of the Grant Peace Policy of agency administration under which various church groups nominated Indian Agents. As one officer put it, the efforts were to “civilize these people immediately whether they are willing or not. This may be good church theory but it is very impractical. These Indians had better by far be left alone at their agency than to be forced into hostilities by being forced to accept civilization and a religion they can’t understand and don’t want to understand.”[18] Another officer assessed the plans to convert the Sioux to peaceful farmers in the following way: “... it is not easy to see how they are to become farmers when they have no good farming land to work on....”[19]
Red Cloud Agency had many visitors, including Professor O. C. Marsh whose paleontological expedition into the nearby fossil area was furnished with a military escort. Professor Marsh was instrumental in focusing national attention on Red Cloud Agency. In the course of securing permission of the Indians to excavate fossils in their land Marsh became acquainted with Chief Red Cloud. He was given samples of particularly foul supplies which he was told were normal issue goods. The professor’s evidence of frauds at the agency was given wide publicity, and Red Cloud Agency became a political as well as a military hot-spot. A full scale investigation of agency affairs followed, and newspaper accounts of the hearings were full of possible frauds by the supply and freight contractors. Although Agent Saville was exonerated, he was removed from his post and replaced by J. S. Hastings.
Although war with the Sioux had been a latent possibility during some of the more serious difficulties at Red Cloud Agency, it had been avoided. While incidents at the agency failed to spark a general conflict, events not too far off were developing into a situation which led to war with the hostile Indians in 1876.
The Sidney Trail was developed to supply the agencies and the military posts; it also became a major route to the Black Hills following the discovery of gold there by the Custer Expedition in 1874. Men from Camps Robinson and Sheridan were called upon to check the illegal influx of miners into the Black Hills, an area guaranteed to the Indians by treaty. Although the soldiers frequently removed parties from the Hills there were far too few troops to cope with the situation. Soldiers from Camp Robinson took regular turns at the base camp near Harney Peak, and at the subpost on Hat Creek.
The Black Hills patrols from Camp Robinson produced one of the heroic marches of the period. On the day after Christmas, 1874, Capt. Guy V. Henry was ordered to take his troop of Third Cavalry, accompanied by Lieutenant Carpenter and fifteen men of the Ninth Infantry, to the Black Hills in search of gold miners. They failed to find the miners, but on their return the command was caught in a severe blizzard and would have perished but for Captain Henry’s leadership. Nearly all of the men were badly frozen and on their return to Camp Robinson in January 1875 the new additions brought the sick list to over 50 per cent of the garrison. As late as January 20 Mr. Raymond, the scout, was still in the hospital.
Some miners, like California Joe, served the Army as scouts and used the time thus spent in the Black Hills to prospect future claims. California Joe served as guide for the 1875 Jenney geological expedition escorted by Col. R. I. Dodge and eight companies of troops.
Indians were not the only persons contributing to the troubles at Red Cloud Agency which occupied the attention of the soldiers from Camp Robinson. Many horse thieves such as “Doc” Middleton’s gang hung out in the area and stole Indian mounts. The agency became “a mighty tough place” according to George Colhoff, an employee at the Yates Trading Company. It was a road agents’ rendezvous, with men like Black Doak, Fly Speck Billy, Lame Johnny, Paddy Simons, Tom Reed and Herman Leisner frequenting the agency between their attacks on the stagecoaches traveling the Sidney-Deadwood and Cheyenne-Deadwood trails.[20]
Excitement still prevailed at Red Cloud Agency during the winter of 1875-76 when the agent, Hastings, reported considerable trouble with whiskey runners. Some of the Army’s valuable scouts, Big Bat Pourier and Frank Grouard, were involved in fights at the agency as well. The camp Robinson mail carriers were killed by Indians on December 25, 1876, and in the spring (1876) Indians not only ran off the agency beef herd in broad daylight but killed Charles Clarke, the civilian mail driver, near the White River. Agency trader J. W. Dear recovered Clarke’s body and mentioned in a description of the affair that the Indians had also run off stock at his ranch and attacked the wagon train of the Yates Trading Company.
WAR WITH THE HOSTILE INDIANS
The attempt by the Allison commission to purchase the gold-rich Black Hills from the Sioux, in a treaty conference near Camp Robinson in September 1875, developed into another incident in the almost incredible series of near disasters which plagued dealings with the Indians at Red Cloud Agency.