"Black Hills and Bloodshed: The U.S. Army and the Invasion of Lakota Land"

M O N T A N A T H E M A G A Z I N E O F W E S T E R N H I S T O R Y26

Black HillsBloodshed

The U.S. Army and the Invasion of Lakota Land, 1868–1876

by Catharine R. Franklin

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Historians have asserted that the U.S. Army in its oversight of the Black Hills of Dakota Territory in the 1870s did not enforce the treaty rights of the Lakota tribes by preventing the area from being overrun with gold prospectors.

In truth, army officers did so to varying degrees, subject to the demands of civilian officials, the public, and limitations of their legal standing. The mining stampede began in earnest when George A. Custer’s Black Hills

Expedition of 1874, which ostensibly explored the Black Hills for military purposes, verified rumors of gold discovery. Here, the expedition camp of August 2 spreads across the valley near the area

where gold was found and the present-day town of Custer.W. H. Illingworth, photographer, South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre

Since the 1870s, the Black Hills of South Dakota have fascinated journalists, yarn-spinners, and histo-rians of the American West. The irony of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s death less than two years after he had commanded an army expedition that con-firmed rumors of gold has been too powerful for most writers to resist: the story writes itself. The army’s unpublished manuscript correspondence tells a dif-ferent story, yet many people still read the region’s history backwards, seeing it from the vantage point of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.1 In this version of events, the army mounts an expedition to the Black Hills and verifies rumors of gold. The gold rush starts; the army fails to keep prospectors from t respassing on Indian land. After the government opens the area

to settlement, the Lakotas take revenge on Custer and his regiment. The idea persists; within the last fifteen years, a number of historians have supported the idea that the army did little to stop the invasion of Lakota land.2 In a recent work on the Black Hills, Jeffrey Ostler contends that the army made “lack-luster efforts to evict miners.” Elsewhere, he writes that “until 1874 the army tried to deter prospectors” and that its “pursuit of violators was halfhearted.”3 John Mack Faragher claims that “officers deliberately looked the other way.”4 Such ideas shape the ways we see territorial expansion as a whole and distort our understanding of the army in the West, for in writing about “the army,” these scholars seem to define it by its supposed uniformity.


Events in the Black Hills suggest something differ-ent. Many army officers in Dakota Territory remained dedicated to upholding Indian treaty rights despite the fact that their superiors in Chicago and St. Louis focused on national interests that trumped local concerns about native-white conflict. Regimental commanders, unsure of the limits of their individual power, tried to remain within the bounds of their authority as they understood it. One group of officers was unwilling to protect the Black Hills, another was unable. Careful study of the army’s correspondence reveals the “history of entanglements” in the Black Hills—a place where the army’s success was contin-gent and even limited.5

Scholars have done much to document the ambiguous nature of the army in the West; their work indicates that army officers did not subscribe to a monolithic set of ideas. While officers were agents of American empire, they did not agree about the means by which a white West would replace a native West. They answered to conflicting interests, supporting expansionist aims as often as they enforced treaties and the protection of limited Indian rights. While

few officers disagreed that Indians were an obstacle to settlement, they did more than fight Indians; they fed them, protected them, and even argued on their behalf.6 Subject to the demands of civilian officials and the public, they were hedged around by a host of logistical and bureaucratic boundaries that made them less effective.7

Historians have suggested that conflicting pressures kept military leaders from developing a consistent strategy for dealing with Indians and that army officers displayed a “spectrum of opinions” about native people. Thus, one army officer could write, “I have not much faith that any military force operating from the Missouri River, the Union Pacific Railroad, or the Northern Pacific Railroad, can with any certainty strike these guilty Indians, or bring them to terms [within] years.”8 Historians have examined the military establishment within the context of the Gilded Age, focusing on the army’s leadership, its contributions to western settlement, and its officers’ attitudes toward native peoples.9 These important studies deal with the army in general terms, but their aim is not to trace the ways in which army officers,

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie guaranteed Lakota ownership of the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. Posing, above, at Fort Laramie in 1870 are chiefs who participated in the treaty negotiations. Left to right are Spotted Tail

(Brulé), Roman Nose (Minneconjou), Young Man Afraid of His Horses (Oglala), Lone Horn (Minneconjou), Whistling Elk (Cheyenne), Pipe (Cheyenne), and Slow Bull (Oglala).

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particularly those serving in the field, responded to specific regional concerns over a period of months or years. While much scholarship has been done to deepen our understanding of the western army, the notion persists that the military’s operations “are so clearly, so obviously instances of a powerful state at work.”10 The example of the Black Hills is instructive in this regard, for it demonstrates that the army was at times less than omnipotent.

Long before the famed 1874 Black Hills Expedition, the imagined resources of that place lent a power ful impetus to the settlement of Dakota Territory. In December 1867, the territorial governor had outlined the connections between gold and the region’s future; if the federal government curtailed travel to the Black Hills, western residents would suffer a “stupendous wrong,” he said.11 The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, though, forbade anyone other than federal employees from going onto Lakota land. As a result, Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry, commanding the Depart-ment of Dakota, ordered his subordinates to stop

trespassers by force. Colonel David S. Stanley, com-manding the southeastern district of Dakota from Fort Sully, did not believe that trespassers could elude his troops. “A party could hardly collect . . . without my knowing it,” he wrote confidently.12 Calculating how many men trespassed on Lakota land before 1875 proves difficult; military reports often describe the apprehension of a “party” of would-be prospectors without noting their number. Regional newspapers and travel narratives provide no useful statistics.13 Nevertheless, the army’s objections to prospecting schemes were widely published in regional news-papers, and officers consistently blocked travel to the area throughout the early 1870s.14

The threatened invasion of the Black Hills endan-gered the uneasy peace between Indians and federal authorities, and army officers knew it.15 Scholars have observed that many of these men were keen observers of native people; officers in Dakota Territory were no exception.16 Stanley forecast trouble from worried Indians in the spring of 1868; he recognized that the landscape of native communities on the Upper Mis-souri River had shifted as the Lakota nation structured

This 1875 map shows the Great Sioux Reservation as provided by the 1868 treaty signed by Lakotas, but it omits the “unceded” territory and hunting grounds (articles 16 and 11 of the treaty) that stretched into Wyoming and Nebraska.

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itself in new ways. Most of the people in five of the seven Lakota bands were now moving their attention to the northwest, far away from rail lines and civilian traffic.17 Eventually, they estab-lished themselves in Montana near the Yellowstone and Bighorn rivers. Their southern relatives, the Oglalas and Brulés, faced similar challenges—dwindling buffalo herds and pressure to accommodate whites. These migra-tions—southward-moving Oglalas and Brulés, and northward-moving Hunkpapas, Minneconjous, Sans Arcs, Sihasapas, and Two Kettles—foreshad-owed the armed conflicts of 1876.18

Army officers observed Indians out of necessity, for peace in the West would not last if Indians left reservations. Captain DeWitt C. Poole, in charge at the Whetstone Agency, acknowledged Indians’ suspicion of the government:

“They recall the promises made . . . and ask, perti-nently, who can they believe now?” An agent, by virtue of his ability to dispense annuities, stepped

Captain DeWitt C. Poole (above, standing on right) described Indians’ suspicion of the government efforts: “They recall the promises made . . . and ask, pertinently, who can they believe now?” With Poole are (seated, left to right) Quick Bear (Brulé), Spotted Tail (Brulé), Swift Bear, and Yellow hand (Cheyenne). In back with Poole is Charles Gueru.

The men were members of a delegation to Washington, D.C., on June 18, 1870.

Colonel David S. Stanley (left, circa 1865), commander of the southeastern district of Dakota, did not believe trespassers could elude his troops. “A party could hardly collect . . . without my knowing it,” he said. Officers consis-tently blocked travel to the area throughout the early 1870s, but public-ity following the Custer expedition expanded the numbers of miners invad-ing the Black Hills beyond the military’s ability to stop them.

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into the role of an itancan, or “symbolic father” of a band. This privileged position relied on the support of extended kin and others whom the itancan could influence. If a leader failed to provide for his people, they would leave him; the loss of warriors’ confidence was especially damaging, because all members of a band depended on warriors who hunted and pro-tected the camps from enemies. Itancans could not rely on coercion. They remained leaders based on reputation alone.19

If Indian agents and army officers were fictive kin to agency Indians, then their position was an awkward one. Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur summarized Lakota warrior society with remarkable accuracy: “Any Chief or Headman, who becomes friendly with the whites, will cease to exert any influence. . . . A successful head soldier can at all times control the fighting men of the band, and through them the band itself. . . . [C]omplica-tions arising from this system are end-less, and very embarrassing in any effort to master the Indian question.”20 Agents and officers could coerce In dians by withholding food, but they had to be careful, lest they drive them away from reservations.

Complicating matters, frictions arose between Indians who lived at agencies and those who did not. Northern bands urged the Brulés to join them; at the same time, Captain Poole noted that white hus-bands of Lakota women and iyeska (“mixed-blood” relations) wanted to “gain possession” of the Black Hills.21 Intergenerational disagreement between Lakota men added to officers’ difficulties. Spotted Tail, the Brulé leader, told Poole that he would have trouble “restraining his young warriors and keep-ing them in his camp.”22 Young men had a powerful incentive to leave the agency and prove their worth; otherwise, they might never acquire the status of their elders and risked the ridicule of their peers.23 Such tensions led Red Cloud’s Oglala warriors to call the Brulés “old women who dared not fight the whites.”24 Nevertheless, reservation-dwelling Lakotas sought to “keep all the northern Sioux and also those of Red Cloud satisfied,” for many of them recognized that their fate rested with Anglo-Americans.25

Conciliation between factions was common, but not constant. “By violence and threats the wild keep the friendly Indians in constant terror,” wrote Stanley soon after Lakotas moved to Whetstone Agency in 1868.26 Young men let their horses graze on the corn that had been planted for those Indians who lived near the agency. Such behavior suggests that some northern warriors acted as akicitas, polic-ing southern relatives deemed disobedient.27 The next spring, Stanley noted that “a few young braves

belonging to the wild camps finally took a stand in favor of the Agent” and convinced the others to stop threatening agency Indians.28 His service in the Department of Dakota

had shown him that “hostile” Lakotas were not only willing to attack whites; they harassed and attacked agency Lakotas too.29

Clearly, Stanley echoed nineteenth-century ideas that defined Indians as “traditional, uncivilized . . . impoverished . . . static, part of nature and of the past”; the notion of “wild” and “friendly” Indians derived from the opposition of “savagery” and “civiliza-tion.”30 Yet Stanley defied conventional understand-ings of Indians when he insisted that the sincerity of agency Lakotas not be overlooked: “I have done all I could for these people. I have a real interest in them, I have witnessed their patience under starvation, their continued friendship under disappointment. . . . There are [Lakotas] who will starve before lifting a hand against the whites.”31 Stanley declared that in order to “avoid a collision” with them, the army had to send an officer “who will try to meet the Indians in an honest talk and not treat them as children or brutes.”32 (In contrast, one of his sub ordinates told a colleague, “You must remember that the Indian is an outright barbarian, and good manners cannot

Spotted Tail (left, 1877) told Poole that he would have trouble “restraining his young warriors and keeping them in his camp.” Young men had a powerful incentive to leave the agency and prove their worth. Friction between Indians who lived at agencies and those who did not also complicated the army’s job.

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be expected of him.”)33 Federal officials in the post-bellum era discounted and ignored Indians, but Stanley’s remarks suggest a tentative willingness to acknowledge their humanity.34

Genuine interest in native peoples—motivated by both humanitarian and practical reasons—informed some regimental officers’ willingness to protect the Black Hills.35 By autumn 1871, trespassers were ven-turing closer to Lakota land. Stanley fumed about the “selfish and unmerciful rascals” who flocked there. “The frontier papers scream over it,” he wrote, “and regardless of law [the 1868 treaty], call for thousands to come and spend their money.” If white encroach-ment continued, Stanley wrote several months later, the assimilation policy might “as well be given up.”36 But stemming the tide of trespassers was easier said

than done. Regiments were always short of troops and serviceable horses; the rough, hilly terrain of the Black Hills and severe winter weather compli-cated officers’ efforts too. In 1868, there were fewer than 1,700 troops distributed among seven forts in the region, and all of these forts were more than 150 miles from the Black Hills. Four years later, there were 2,820 troops at a dozen forts and Indian agencies; by 1874, owing in part the establishment of Fort Abraham Lincoln and two new Indian agencies, there were slightly more than 4,500 troops.37 This number seems relatively large, but the reports of army officers suggest that it was never enough. Lieu-tenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley, commander of the District of the Black Hills, wrote, “I cannot watch the country leading to the Hills from the south without

Genuine interest in native peoples—motivated by humanitarian and practical reasons—informed some regimental officers’ willingness to protect the Black Hills. Stanley defied convention when he insisted that the sincerity of agency Lakotas not be overlooked: “I have done all I could for these people. I have a real interest in them, I have witnessed their patience under starvation, their continued friendship under disappointment. . . . There are [Lakotas] who will

starve before lifting a hand against the whites.” Above is a Sioux village on Ponca Creek.

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additional cavalry.”38 Lieutenant Colonel Pinkney Lugenbeel, commanding Fort Randall on the Missouri River, pleaded for more recruits: “The Sioux Indians are very uneasy about the invasion of the country by lawless bands of whites and it may prove impossi-ble to restrain them from commit-ting outrages along the borders.”39

Regimental commanders who tried to draw attention to Indian anxieties often found their entreaties overlooked by supe-riors who cared little for native perspectives. General William T. Sherman, commanding the United States Army, and Lieuten-ant General Philip H. Sheridan, commanding the Military Division of the Missouri, realized that that the army would play a critical role in territorial expansion.40 Senior leaders, along with territorial and federal authorities, wished for the eventual abrogation of native treaty rights, but their support varied in intensity. Sherman was a pragmatist; he believed that the army was “not in a position to per-mit an invasion” of the Black Hills

and could not protect civilians “until public notice is given that the Indian title is extinguished.”41 Sherman never gave unstinting support to prospectors. In fact, he noted that one mining expedi-tion was “calculated to produce collision and conflict,” and as late as 1873, he declared, “The time is hardly yet for opening the Black Hills to settlement and gold explorers.”42

The opinion of General Alfred Terry, commander of the Depart-ment of Dakota, seems to have been informed by his background in law; he supported adherence to the treaty of 1868 as a matter of principle. At that time, he had told Colonel Stanley that he was concerned with the “violation of law,” for it was “especially impor-tant” that the Black Hills “territory should be preserved inviolate, as it is . . . a reservation for the Sioux.” The following year, while serving in the Reconstruction South, he wrote to Sherman, “I have endeavored to take no action which could not be justified by the letter of the law.”43

Brigadier General George Crook, commanding the Depart-ment of the Platte, was an ally to trespassers. “All they have in the world [is] invested in their outfit; they have no means to live outside of the claims they have made,” he wrote after meeting some miners.

In 1874, slightly more than 4,500 troops served the area, spread among eight forts and several Indian agencies. All of the forts were more than 150 miles from the Black Hills. In 1875, Lieutenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley (top right, 1879), com-mander of the District of the Black Hills, wrote, “I cannot watch the country leading to the Hills from the south without additional cavalry.”

Lieutenant Colonel Pinkney Lugenbeel (center right, 1863), commander of Fort Randall on the Missouri River, also pleaded for more recruits: “The Sioux Indians are very uneasy about the invasion of the country by lawless bands of whites and it may prove impossible to restrain them from committing outrages along the borders.”

Many senior military leaders, along with territorial and federal authorities, cared little for native perspectives and wished for the abrogation of treaty rights, but their support varied in intensity. Though he ordered them to leave, Brigadier General George Crook (left, circa 1875), commanding the Department of the Platte, was an ally to trespassers.

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He ordered them to leave the Black Hills, but he agreed with their assertion that Indians had violated the 1868 treaty hundreds of times. “Their side of this story should be heard, as the settlers who develop our mines and open the frontier to civilization are the nation’s wards no less than their more fortunate fel-lows, the Indians.” While Crook has been described as “honest, patient, and just” to Indians, his atti-tudes, like those of other army officers, defy simple categories.44

Equally complex were Sheridan’s motivations for ordering the 1874 Black Hills expedition. As early as 1873, he hoped to find a site for a garrison near the

Black Hills, close to the planned route of the Northern Pacific Railroad. When Lakota war parties attacked surveyors, Sheridan moved the Seventh Cavalry from the South (where it had performed Reconstruction duties) to the Department of Dakota.45 A new post would “secure a strong foothold in the heart of the Sioux country, and thereby exercise a controlling influence over these warlike people.”46 By May 1874, Sheridan told Sherman, “I would like to start Colonel Custer with a column of cavalry . . . to examine the Black Hills country . . . a knowledge of [which] might be of great value in case of Indian troubles.”47 Sheri-dan hoped that the “ultimate object” of the expedition

Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan’s motivations for ordering the 1874 Black Hills Expedition were complex. He hoped to find a site for a garrison close to the planned route of the Northern Pacific Railroad and to “secure a strong

foothold in the heart of the Sioux country, and thereby exercise a controlling influence over these warlike people.” Here, the expedition is pictured at Heart River, near its Fort Lincoln end point on August 30, 1874.

W. H. Illingworth, photographer, South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre


would be to strengthen the army’s position. “A good strong post in the Black hills will do much to take the hostile backbone out of [the] unruly savages.”48

Opponents of the expedition believed that it would be “like the falling of a spark before a keg of gunpowder.”49 Terry disagreed: “Plunder is not the object of the expedition.”50 Most historians remain skeptical; one scholar concludes that “the makeup of the column suggested that another, far more excit-ing goal was being considered.”51 But the presence of a geologist was hardly unusual given the scientific component of army exploration.52 Nor did the idea for a geologist originate with Sheridan; it was Custer who appealed to Terry less than a month before the reconnaissance began. “Is there no way by which the services of a geologist can be had with the expedi-tion[?]”53 Several weeks later, Custer wrote to his superiors from his headquarters in the field, describ-

ing the Black Hills in glowing terms.54 Assuming that his reports would “appear in any event in the public prints,” he openly admitted, “Gold has been found at several places.” By the time he returned to Fort Lincoln, word had reached major newspapers.55

Buoyed by Custer’s report in early September 1874, Sheridan told Sherman, “The expedition has accomplished all and more than I had expected from it.”56 This statement is perhaps the strongest circumstantial evidence of Sheridan’s interest in the gold excitement, for it shows that he “grasp[ed] the implications of a Black Hills bonanza.”57 Although Sheridan was fairly reticent about the Black Hills, he was an outspoken advocate of Montana’s mining potential. He told Sherman that the Yellowstone River was “especially national” in its importance “because it will develop a country having the valuable constituents of wood, water, and a great abundance

Members of the expedition found gold near Harney Peak (above, 1890). Custer wrote to his superiors from his headquarters in the field, describing the Black Hills in glowing terms. Assuming that his reports would “appear in any event in the public

prints,” he openly admitted, “Gold has been found at several places.” By the time he returned to Fort Lincoln, word had reached major newspapers.

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of gold.”58 Sheridan’s annual report also clarified that cryptic message of September. “The country of the Black Hills,” he wrote, “was found to be much better than was expected, with plenty of good timber and considerable good soil at high altitudes, and an abundant supply of good water and grass.” The appearance of gold near Harney’s Peak did little to excite him; he wrote that “the color of gold can be found almost anywhere [in the West], but often its quantity is confined to the few particles which make the color.” More promising were the Montana mines, about which Sheridan had been curious for some time. “I have for five or six years past believed there were extensive deposits of gold in the country west of the Black Hills,” he noted, citing the Powder, Tongue, Little Bighorn, and Rosebud rivers—the very country to which the northern Lakota bands had flocked in order to escape the whites.59

Several of Sheridan’s subordi-nates did not share his enthusiasm. In 1873, Colonel Stanley wrote, “I have sifted the reports of gold in the Black Hills pretty carefully, and have no white man’s evidence,” other than the report of the geologist Ferdi-nand V. Hayden, “that any gold has been found in them.”60 Colonel Lugenbeel scoffed at Custer’s report. White and mixed-blood residents of Spotted Tail Agency, he said, hunted in the Black Hills and never found evidence of mineral wealth.61 The follow-ing spring, Lugenbeel told a friend, “The Black Hills mica may be transformed into gold, but I doubt it.”

62 Members of the 1874 expedition were similarly unconvinced.63

Although Sheridan privately promised his “cor-dial support” for the eventual settlement of the Black Hills, he issued a stern order aimed at rooting out trespassers.64 Exuberant residents of Yankton, the territorial capital, had celebrated Custer’s findings. Local residents insisted that the federal government “knows what it is about, and would never be guilty of the absurdity of sending Custer’s army to explore

the mineral wealth of this territory, and then shut it up for the Sioux.”65 Now, much to their surprise, the army’s leaders seemed unmoved. On September 3, 1874, Sheridan ordered officers in the Department of Dakota to find the parties organizing at Sioux City and Yankton, “burn the wagon trains, destroy the outfit, and arrest the leaders.”66 He asked Terry to make these orders known throughout the department, explaining, “The gold fever was running so high here that I found it necessary to publish my instructions in the morning papers.”67

That publication, one historian concludes, meant that senior leaders “fanned the flames of gold fever” by promoting the Black Hills in national newspapers.68

On the contrary, the practice of print-ing all manner of military correspon-dence was widespread during and after the Civil War.69 Moreover, Sher-idan was not necessarily a friend of the frontiersman. His announcement caused great consternation among western residents, who believed that these orders were arbitrary and illegal. In Yankton, the members of the “Black Hills Pioneers” declared that as “free American citizens,” they were

allowed “to go when and where we please, without asking the consent of Genl. Sheridan or any other military chieftain.” Later, the same paper com-mented: “Sheridan in his zeal to perform his duty seems to have overlooked the laws of the United States. . . . ‘Little Phil’ will undoubtedly modify his

instructions when he finds that in this one instance he ‘leaped before he looked.’”70

Terry, in turn, thought there would be “little or no occasion for the application of force” if the orders were made public.71 Lugenbeel felt that Sheridan’s order had “effectually checked inroads into the Sioux Indian reservation for the present.”72 Officers believed that a promise to impose federal power, rather than the application of federal might, could break the resolve of trespassers in an instant.73 Yet, despite the severity of the order, most army officers had limited authority to enforce it. As had been

Local residents insisted that the federal government wouldn’t “explore the mineral wealth of this territory, and then shut it up for the Sioux.” But Sheridan (above, circa 1865) ordered officers in the Department

of Dakota to find the gold seekers organizing at Sioux City and Yankton and

“burn the wagon trains, destroy the outfit, and arrest the leaders.”

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the case during Reconstruction, officers were “left to their own devices to interpret and carry out the vaguely defined intents of both presidential and con-gressional policy in the South.”74 Guidance was just as ambiguous in the Black Hills. The bureaucratic boundaries created by military districts also led to uncertainty; the region surrounding the Black Hills fell under the jurisdiction of both the Department of Dakota and the Department of the Platte, which led even General Terry to ask whether he should to drive miners away.75

Nevertheless, some officers did not hesitate to challenge trespassers when they had the chance. In the spring of 1875, Captain Fergus Walker over-took nearly 150 well-armed men who outnumbered his troops. “Wishing to avoid bloodshed,” Walker allowed the men to remain in the area under a writ-ten pledge that they would not attempt to enter the Hills. Some of the trespassers fled, leading Walker to write to Captain Anson Mills for help. “Gobble up everybody you meet,” he told his colleague. “You can’t make a mistake.”76 Once in the hands of civil authorities, miners accused Walker of harassing them, burning their belongings, and standing idly by while his soldiers rifled through their pockets. Regional newspapers came to the miners’ defense, calling the incident an outrage and denouncing the army; one paper insisted that Walker and “his command should be drummed out of the [army] in disgrace, and then turned over to the Nebraska laws and dealt with severely.”77 Silas Garber, the governor of Nebraska, thought the current reading of the 1868 treaty “unwar-ranted and unjust.”78 A district court judge upheld the army’s legal right to evict trespassers but limited the length of arrests, thus rendering the army’s power less effective.79

Walker’s case sheds light on the precarious nature of the army’s interactions with civilians elsewhere in the 1870s and thus the marked inability of federal authorities to control Anglo-Americans who were determined to resist government mandates. Terry, Stanley, Custer, Lugenbeel, and other officers in Dakota Territory had served in the Reconstruction South, an experience that informed their ideas about civilians who broke the law. Before the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, army officers acting in law enforcement roles were concerned about their legal standing. Federal guidelines remained vague,

meaning that officers had to interpret their respon-sibilities in the absence of explicit orders. During his tenure as commander of the Third Military District (Georgia, Alabama, and Florida), Terry wrote to Sher-man that he could do little more than “giv[e] support to the civil authorities and to moving detachment[s] of troops.” Reconstruction “influenced the percep-tions and expectations of officers who served on riot duty” during the labor strikes of the late 1870s.80 The same held true for Dakota and adjacent territories, all places where local civil authority—much less federal authority—had yet to assert itself in full.

Officers had good reason to act with caution. In the South, they were assaulted and killed in the performance of their duties.81 Nor were officers in Dakota Territory immune to lawsuits or arrest. John Gordon, the leader of the mining party arrested by Walker, took matters into his own hands. In order to be released from custody, Gordon had to promise mil-itary authorities that he would not return to the Black Hills. The prospector arrived at the office of Major George D. Ruggles, assistant adjutant general of the Department of the Platte, with a man who claimed to be Gordon’s lawyer. In the midst of giving his parole, Gordon and his lawyer turned and fled; a scuffle with Ruggles and enlisted clerks ensued. Gordon con-vinced civil authorities to arrest the major and his subordinates and sued Ruggles for assault and battery and false imprisonment. Western newspapers called army officers bullies and tyrants, but representatives of federal power sometimes found themselves at the mercy of civil authorities.82

Illegal prospectors gave officers little cause for concern in the autumn of 1874. According to one officer, mining parties were utterly disorganized and did little more than “simply drift.”83 As the number of trespassers grew, though, most officers reacted quickly. When one of Terry’s subordinates tried to stop Lakota warriors from pursuing miners, the general remarked, “The Indians have a perfect right to drive out intruders upon their reservation. [The officer in question] seems to have converted his expedition from one intended to drive out these law-breakers into one for their protection.” 84 Colonel Lugenbeel wrote: “The squatters care nothing about law, orders, or Indian rights, and would undoubtedly resist any attempt on my part to drive them out.”85 In their search for trespassers, commanders often


relied on Lakota guides. “Being interested parties,” they had an incentive to find prospectors. Colonel Bradley, commanding the District of the Black Hills, recognized the Lakotas’ anger at intrusion into their lands; he told Terry, “The guides must be charged not to molest the miners themselves.”86 Lakotas often exercised great restraint in leaving miners alone.87 One of Colonel Lugenbeel’s subordinates noted that Lakotas on the Lower Brulé Reservation blocked a major route to the Black Hills, watching it “with great vigilance.”88 An emphasis on Indian rights did not motivate all the officers in the Department of Dakota, but it certainly informed the decisions made by a significant number of them.

While army officers struggled to oust miners from the Black Hills, forces elsewhere in the West lobbied Congress to open the area to settlement. The Dakota territorial legislature petitioned federal officials and introduced resolutions for opening the Black Hills; members of Congress, equally aggressive in their desire to snatch Indian land, followed suit.89 Despite such pressures, army officers in the field continued to pursue trespassers throughout 1874 and the spring of 1875. General Terry agreed with the federal authori-

ties’ determination to seize the Black Hills, but he remained adamant about the need to uphold the 1868 treaty until the current provisions were altered. “As soon as the spring opens a persistent effort will be made . . . to invade the Black Hills. . . . I need not dwell on the importance [of ] the enforcement of the law.”90 Custer doubted that miners would be expelled during the government’s negotiations for the Hills, but Terry corrected him, saying, “I don’t see how any sale of the hills country can take effect until the next session of Congress. Until the sale, if made, is ratified by Congress, the government must keep intruders out.”91 Willful ignorance of the law compounded the army’s problems; one officer noted, “Black Hills emi-grants are led by interested parties to believe that the army will not seriously interfere.”92

Sheridan’s subordinates were not alone in their confusion over how to keep prospectors out of the Hills; even Sheridan criticized the Department of the Interior, which was eager to send a geological explor-ing party there in the summer of 1875. He complained, “If the government expects me to keep the miners out of the [Black Hills], Prof. Jenney and his party should be ordered home.” Still, Sheridan grudgingly

In their search for trespassers, commanders often relied on Lakota guides. “Being interested parties,” they had an incentive to find prospectors. Colonel Bradley, recognizing the Lakotas’ anger at intrusion into their lands, told Terry,

“The guides must be charged not to molest the miners themselves.” Lakotas often exercised great restraint in leaving miners alone. The image above is titled “Lieutenant Kislingbury’s camp of Sioux scouts on Belle Fourche” in 1877.

Kislingbury was stationed at Fort Yates in the 1870s.

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implemented the law and made clear that he under-stood the dilemma created by the gold excitement. “I am somewhat in a quandary as to what should be done with [the intruders]. If they are brought out, they will spread the gold stories with an exaggeration which will fire up all the parties we are now holding in check. If they are allowed to remain an injustice will be done to those who want to get in[;] besides the treaty stipulations with the Indians will be violated.”93

Sheridan’s fixation on the Black Hills should not be seen as evidence that he gave unstinting support to hopeful frontier residents. Sheridan was bound by law to enforce the 1868 treaty, regardless of how vehe-mently he disagreed with it. For regular army officers, “subordination to the will of the president was their single most important commitment.”94 To imply that the army as an institution gave tacit approval to the invasion of the Black Hills perpetuates the fallacy of army autonomy. The military had a limited ability to influence national policy; it was but one branch of the federal government, subject to civilian control.95 It may be tempting to ascribe conspiratorial motives to the army’s leaders or to the Grant administration in advertising the Black Hills’ wealth, but a simpler explanation appears in letters written by two army officers. Major Nelson B. Sweitzer, commanding Fort Ellis, Montana, tied gold fever to the stagnant local economy. If whites trespassed on Indian land, it might “result in a Sioux war, which will give a market for grain, flour, beef, etc., and contracts for transporta-tion.”96 Colonel Lugenbeel observed, “The railroad and newspaper people, the merchants and hotel people, farmers and freight-ers of this frontier are all very busily engaged in fanning the flames of the gold excitement.” Frontier residents were “very much interested in finding a market for their otherwise unsalable goods and wares.”97 Army officers not only recognized the tangle of gov-ernment and commercial interests involved in western expansion—they were part of it as well.

What, then, accounts for the odd fact that army officers guarded the Northern Pacific Railroad—and thus hastened Anglo-American encroach-ment on native lands—at the same time

that they kept watch over Indian agencies and spoke of “Indian rights”? First, conflicting interests and duties often defined the postwar army; supporting the goals of territorial expansion while protecting reservation-bound Indians presented no real contradiction for army officers. (The Northern Pacific Railroad did not enter the Great Sioux Reservation and thus did not present an immediate conflict of interest.) There is ample evidence that officers, generally out of human-itarian concern, sometimes came to the defense of native peoples whom they were also required to con-trol.98 Second, army officers knew that the symbi-otic relationship between the railroads and the army played an indispensable role in the development of the West.99 Both S heridan and Sherman viewed the railroad as a “military necessity”—and one to which the military gave a sizeable amount of business—but they had little patience for those who treated the army like a private security force.100

Economic pressures from the economic depres-sion arising in the wake of the financial panic of 1873, as well as continued emigration to western lands, prompted federal authorities to rethink their approach to the Black Hills. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano wrote of the “determination of many persons throughout the country to explore the Black Hills in search of minerals.” More ominous was a concluding note: “It is also the intention of this Department to use every effort possible to extinguish the Indian title to the Black Hills.”101

In July, a congressional committee traveled to

Economic pressures created by the depression following the financial panic of 1873, as well as contin-ued emigration to western lands, prompted federal authorities to rethink their approach to the Black Hills. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano (left, circa 1865) wrote of the “determination of many persons throughout the country to explore the Black Hills in search of minerals,” concluding, “It is also the intention of this Department to use every effort possible to extinguish the Indian title to the Black Hills.”Li

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Spotted Tail and Red Cloud agencies. It had one purpose—to convince the Lakota people to sell the Black Hills. The committee’s minutes reveal that the Lakota community was divided. Surrendering that land would bring them closer to the uncertainty of economic dependence on the United States. Most of the Indians remained firmly opposed to the idea of selling the land. The commissioners worried about the Lakotas’ ability to sway the outcome of the coun-cil, so much so that they discussed withholding infor-mation from the Indians and using the Lakotas’ iyeska interpreters and white relatives against them.102 The Lakotas disagreed with the commissioners’ terms, and the commissioners returned to Washington empty-handed.

As a result of growing pressure to open the region, army officers were ordered to treat intruders leniently. By the spring of 1875, soldiers had been ordered to stop all intruders at the same time that orders from senior military leaders referred to “efforts . . . being made to arrange for the extinguishment of the Indian title.” If those efforts failed, the miners would be forc-ibly removed. 103 By the late summer of 1875, at least

twelve hundred miners had active claims in the Black Hills. Troops could not keep them out; as soon as patrols moved on, the miners returned. 104 In Octo-ber, regimental commanders learned that they could not detain prospectors for more than five days. This order made it impossible for army officers to restrain miners who sought repeatedly to enter the Great Sioux Reservation.105

While native people defended their land, whites had come to expect that access to that land was their right. On November 3, in a meeting with General Sheridan, the commissioner of Indian affairs, and the secretary of the interior, President Grant decided that the army’s efforts to arrest intruders “only increased their desire” to invade Lakota land. Before officers in the District of the Black Hills withdrew with their troops, they received a series of conflicting orders that reflected the government’s confused approach. The army’s duties ended without much fanfare, and the troops tramped through the snow to Fort Laramie and other posts.106

A mere six years before, Congress and the execu-tive branch had little interest in the threat posed by

While native people defended their land, whites had come to believe they had a right to that land. By 1889, miners Spriggs, Lamb, and Dillon of Rockerville, on the east side of the Black Hills, had become old-timers.

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trespassers; despite this inaction, many regimental officers made concerted efforts to implement poli-cies that enforced the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Sherman and Sheridan, on the other hand, regarded the treaty as an obstacle to the enterprise of terri-torial expansion. Their subordinates abandoned a previous stance in favor of obedience to orders and a fundamental belief in continued Anglo-American dominance of native peoples.

In subsequent months, the Department of the Interior made a series of impossible demands on the Lakota people that were meant to restrict their move-ments, their access to weapons, and their allies.107 In the spring of 1876, thousands of Brulés, Oglalas, and others left the agencies and headed north. A Lakota scout from Standing Rock said that all of the young men left with their strongest and fastest horses. More than eight hundred warriors headed for the Pow-der River country, joined by their families. By June, at least two thousand Indians had left Red Cloud Agency.108

The conflict that ensued wore on for more than five years. Most Lakotas returned to the agencies before the end of 1877; by that time, construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad faced more obstacles from a moribund economy than it did from Indian resistance. Meanwhile, settlers poured into the Black Hills, and in 1878 the army built Fort Meade, near present-day Sturgis, not far from the path Custer’s expedition had taken four years earlier. Pressure exerted by eastern capital and western developers had reversed federal policy toward the Lakotas and the Black Hills, and had rendered futile the struggle of army officers to enforce an earlier policy and keep the peace on the northern plains.

Catharine R. Franklin received a doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. A revision of her dissertation, “’The Army Stands Between’: The United States Army, Federal Indian Policy, and Native Sovereignty, 1862–1902,” is in publication with the University of Nebraska Press.

In October 1875, regimental commanders learned that they could not detain prospectors for more than five days, making it impossible for army officers to restrain miners who sought repeatedly to enter the Great Sioux Reservation. Pressure exerted by eastern capital and western developers had reversed federal policy toward the Lakotas and the Black Hills; it had also rendered futile the struggle of army officers to enforce an earlier policy and keep the peace

on the northern plains. Deadwood, pictured above in 1877, had become a bustling city a mere three years after the army’s duties ended.

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Black Hills and Bloodshed 1. According to Donald Jackson, “The Indians who jumped Custer in 1876 were not brooding because they were losing the Black Hills, but because they had lost, in their own generation, every-thing.” Custer’s Gold: The United States Cavalry Expedition of 1874 (New Haven, CT, 1966), 120. Brief accounts of the army in the Black Hills include Watson Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (Norman, OK, 1966); Michael Tate, The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (Norman, OK, 1999), 252–54; Robert Wooster, The United States Military and Indian Policy, 1865–1903 (New Haven, CT, 1988), 161; and Paul Hedren, ed., Ho! for the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War (Pierre, SD, 2012). 2. One exception is Watson Parker, “The Majors and the Miners: The Role of the U.S. Army in the Black Hills Gold Rush,” Journal of the West 11 (Jan. 1972): 99–113. 3. Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground (New York, 2010), 87; and The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (New York, 2004), 59, 61. Ostler relies on con-gressional reports and secondary sources. Utley and Hutton use the army’s unpub-lished manuscript correspondence, but sparingly. 4. Robert V. Hine and John M. Fara-gher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven, CT, 2000), 252. Faragher cites The Lance and Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (New York, 1993), in which Robert M. Utley writes, “The army had no stomach for keeping [miners] out and made only token efforts” (p. 127). 5. Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett, “On Borderlands,” Journal of American History 98 (Sept. 2011), 347. 6. Richard N. Ellis, “The Humani-tarian Generals,” Western Historical Quarterly 3 (Apr. 1972): 169–78. I suggest that “humanitarian” officers are more common. See also Tate, Settlement, 242–50; Sherry L. Smith, Officers’ Row (Tucson, AZ, 1990), 182; and Thomas C. Leonard, “Red, White and the Army Blue: Empathy and Anger in the Ameri-can West,” American Quarterly 26 (May 1974): 176–90. 7. Kevin Adams and Khal Schneider suggest that the military’s “coercive power” was limited, in part because the army’s culture “encouraged complacency, inefficiency, and lassitude” and that “to be a typical frontier unit was to be, by and large, remarkably ineffective.” , “ ‘Wash-ington is a Long Way Off’: The ‘Round Valley War’ and the Limits of Federal

Power on a California Indian Reserva-tion,” Pacific Historical Review 80 (Nov. 2011), 586; see also 561–62, 595. 8. David S. Stanley to AAG Dakota, Jan. 14, 1873 (887 AGO 1873), E 12, RG 94, NA. 9. See Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (New York, 1973); Paul A. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln, NE, 1985); Wooster, Military and Indian Policy; and Smith, Officers’ Row. 10. Karen R. Merrill, “In Search of the ‘Federal Presence’ in the American West,” Western Historical Quarterly 30 (Winter 1999), 455. Other analyses of state power in the nineteenth century are less con-clusive about the military. See Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State, The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cam-bridge, MA, 1982), 86; Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 381–82, 395. In A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in NineteenthCentury America (Cambridge, MA, 2009), Brian Balogh challenges the idea that government was “small, flat, and uniform”; he suggests that “[f ]or the most part . . . military personnel were literally out of sight” (pp. 8, 215). Gen. William T. Sherman noted the relative importance of the military: “I now regard the Indians as substantially eliminated from the prob-lem of the Army [which] has been a large factor in producing this result, but it is not the only one,” in ARSW, 1883, 48th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, serial 2182, 45–46. 11. George W. Kingsbury, History of Dakota Territory, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1915), 1:469. 12. David S. Stanley to Alfred H. Terry, May 19, 1868, E 334, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. 13. This sort of description is typical: “Parties have entered, and are entering the Black Hills.” Richard C. Drum to Sheridan, Oct. 13, 1874, E 2538, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. Trespassers generally traveled in small groups; see William E. Dough-erty to AAG Dakota, Sept. 11, 1874, Fort Hale LR, pt. 5, RG 393, NA. A Bozeman newspaper made the vague claim that “hundreds, and maybe thousands, will spend the coming winter in the Black Hills.” Sioux City (SD) Daily Journal, Sept. 16, 1874. The Black Hills and Big Horn Mining Association of Cheyenne received more than 2,000 applications for membership, yet only 130 men went on the proposed expedition. See Parker, Gold in the Black Hills, 22, n.105. 14. Yankton (SD) Union and Dakotaian , June 15, 1867, May 2, 9, 16, 1868;

Yankton (SD) Press, Apr. 3, 1872; Stanley to Terry, May 19, 1868E 334, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. 15. DeWitt C. Poole to John A. Bur-bank, Mar. 4, 1870, 41st Cong., 2d Sess., S. Ex. Doc. 89, serial 1406, 3. 16. Smith, Officers’ Row, 12, 173, 175; Tate, Settlement, 243. 17. Stanley to Terry, May 19, 1868, E 334, pt. 3, RG 393, NA; William Quinton to Mattson C. Sanbourne, May 19, 1871 (2119 AGO 1871), E 12, RG 94, NA. 18. Catherine Price, The Oglala People, 1841–1879: A Political History (Lincoln, NE, 1996), 86–88. 19. Tate, Settlement, 242–43; DeWitt C. Poole to John A. Burbank, in ARCIA, 1869 (Washington, D.C., 1870), 316; Price, Oglala People, 8–12. 20. Christopher C. Augur to Edward D. Townsend, May 28, 1870E 3722, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 21. Stanley to AAG Dakota, Feb. 12, 1870 (A-761); DeWitt C. Poole to John A. Burbank, Feb. 24, 1870 (D-967), Poole to Burbank, Apr. 28, 1870 (D-1204), UPA, E 79, RG 75, NA. As an alternative to “mixed blood,” the Oglala Lakota his-torian Jeffrey D. Means suggests iyeska (“talks white”). Author communication with Means, Mar. 5, 2012. For Lakotas who left reservations, see Kingsley Bray, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life (Norman, OK, 2006), 175. 22. Poole to Burbank, Apr. 28, 1870 (D-1204), UPA, E 79, RG 75, NA. 23. Price, Oglala People, 83, 102, 107; James R. Walker, Lakota Society, ed. Ray-mond J. DeMallie (Lincoln, NE, 1982), 27, 34; Means, “From Buffalo to Beeves: Cattle and the Political Economy of the Oglala Lakota, 1750–1920” (PhD diss., University of Oklahoma, 2007), 26, 50.

Mining camp in the Black Hills, 1877

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24. D. R. Risley to CIA, Apr. 18, 1872 (R-390), WA, E 79, RG 75, NA. 25. Risley to CIA, Mar. 5, 1872 (R-340), ibid. 26. Stanley to CIA, Aug. 17, 1869 (S-302), UPA, E 79, RG 75, NA. 27. Walker, Lakota Society, 29, 31. 28. Stanley to CIA, May 7, 1870 (S-760), UPA, E 79, RG 75, NA. 29. Ibid. For intratribal violence, see Bray, Crazy Horse, 128, 137, 175. 30. Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the LateNineteenthCentury Northwest Coast (Durham, NC, 2005), 7. 31. Stanley to CIA, May 7, 1870. 32. Stanley to Thomas Rosser, Dec. 10, 1871, E 334, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. Stanley’s remarks call into question the idea that “army people tended toward abstract or impersonal depictions of Indian men.” Smith, Officers’ Row, 106. 33. Hiram H. Ketchum to George W. Hill, Dec. 16, 1870, E 334, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 34. For perceptions of Indians, see Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York, 1978), 27–28; and Francis P. Prucha, The Great Father (Lincoln, NE, 1984), xxviii, 481, 501–29, 535. 35. Historians have tended to “dismiss . . . soldiers as bigots, cultural chauvinists, or racists” instead of acknowledging their humanitarian interests. Tate, Settlement, 259. 36. Stanley to AAG Middle District, Oct. 1, 1871; E 334, pt. 3, RG 393, NA; Stanley to CIA, Mar. 16, 1872, ibid. 37. Statistics are compiled from ARSW reports. The AGO in Washington, D.C., calculated the figures based on the latest post returns. Garrisons near the Black Hills included forts Randall, Sully, Rice, Stevenson, Laramie, McPherson, Fetter-man, Lincoln, and Sidney Barracks; the Indian agencies included Grand River, Crow Creek, Whetstone, Lower Brulé, Camp Robinson, and Camp Sheridan. 38. Bradley to AAG MDM, Mar. 24, 1875 (1447 MDM 1875), E 2547, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 39. Pinkney Lugenbeel to AAG Dakota, Apr. 24, 1875, E 703, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. 40. Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 5, 159–60; Tate, Settlement, 52, 79, 93, 213–14, 306, 316. For Sheridan’s and Sher-man’s views of Indians, see Hutton, Phil Sheridan, 97–100, 182–86; and Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 47–48, 55. 41. Kingsbury, History of Dakota Territory, 1:864. 42. STAT [Not clear]; Sherman to William W. Belknap, Mar. 1, 1873 (887 AGO 1873), E 12, RG 94, NA.

43. Yankton (SD) Union and Dakotaian, May 9, 1868; Terry to Sherman, Aug. 11, 1869, 3, proof sheet in Terry Family Papers, MS 482, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT (hereafter Terry Family Papers). Terry attended Yale Law School from 1848 to 1849 and served as the clerk of the New Haven Superior Court from 1854 to 1860. 44. ARSW, 1875, 44th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, serial 1674, 70; Crook to AAG Platte, Aug. 16, 1875, E 3722, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 45. Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 14, 1872, June 11, 1873. 46. ARSW, 1873, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, serial 1597, 42. 47. Sheridan to Sherman, May 1, 1874, E 2538, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 48. Sheridan to Headquarters of the Army, filed with Department of War to Department of Interior, Nov. 25, 1874 (W-1951), Red Cloud Agency, E 79, RG 75, NA; Sheridan to AAG, May 25, 1874 (2116 AGO 1874), f/w 1741 AGO 1874, ibid. 49. William H. Hare to Columbus Delano, May 29, 1874 (2275 AGO 1874), E 12, RG 94, NA. 50. Terry to Headquarters MDM, July 27, 1874 (2275 AGO 1874), ibid. 51. Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (New York, 2010), 4. Others have come to similar conclu-sions: according to Robert W. Larson, in Gall: Lakota War Chief (Norman, OK, 2007), “The pretext . . . was to recon-noiter [but] a more important reason . . . was to investigate the persistent rumors” (p. 93). “Personifying the second, unad-mitted objective [were the newspaper reporters].” Similar claims are made by Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier (Norman, OK, 1988), 135; and Utley, Frontier Regulars, 244. A more conservative response to the motivations behind the Black Hills expedition is Paul L. Hedren, Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War (Norman, OK, 1998), 11. 52. Tate, Settlement, 9–12. See also Sheridan to William W. Belknap, May 19, 1873 (1984 AGO 1873), E 12, RG 94, NA. 53. Custer to Terry, May 30, 1874 (2393 AGO 1874), E 12, RG 94, NA. 54. Custer to AAG Dakota, Aug. 2, 1874 (3304 AGO 1874), f/w 1741 AGO 1874, ibid. 55. Custer to AAG Dakota, Aug. 15, 1874 (3456 AGO 1874), ibid. The dis-patches were sent directly to papers by correspondents who accompanied the expedition. See Hutton, Phil Sheridan, 168–69; and Utley, Cavalier, 135. 56. Sheridan to Sherman, Sept. 1, 1874 (3545 AGO 1874), f/w 1741 AGO 1874, E

12, RG 94, NA. 57. Ostler, Plains Sioux, 60. 58. Sheridan to Sherman, July 13, 1874 (2738 AGO 1874), ibid. 59. Sheridan quotes all from ARSW, 1873, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 2, serial 1597, 24–25. 60. Stanley to AAG Dakota, Jan. 14, 1873 (887 AGO 1873), E 12, RG 94, NA; Yankton (SD) Union and Dakotaian, Oct. 20, 1866. 61. Lugenbeel, endorsement, Sept. 10, 1874 (4701 AGO 1874), f/w 1741 AGO 1874, E 12, RG 94, NA. 62. Lugenbeel to unknown [probably Joseph R. Smith], Apr. 5, 1875, Pinkney Lugenbeel Letters, Beinecke Library. During the expedition, Capt. William Ludlow of the Corps of Engineers had noted “much talk of gold” and “indus-trious search for it,” but his own report gave little evidence of it. Ludlow to AAG Dakota, n.d. (2756 AGO 1875), E 12, RG 94, NA. Lt. Col. Frederick D. Grant came to the same conclusion: “I don’t believe there was two dollars [of gold] all put together. . . . I don’t believe that any gold was found at all.” Grant to AAG MDM, Sept. 7, 1874 (4385 MDM 1874), MDM LR, E 2546, pt. 1, RG 393. 63. During the expedition, Capt. Wil-liam Ludlow of the Corps of Engineers had noted “much talk of gold” and “industrious search for it,” but his own report gave little evidence of it. Ludlow to AAG Dakota, n.d. (2756 AGO 1875), E 12, RG 94, NA. Lt. Col. Frederick D. Grant came to the same conclusion: “I don’t believe there was two dollars [of gold] all put together. . . . I don’t believe that any gold was found at all.” Grant to AAG MDM, Sept. 7, 1874 (4385 MDM 1874), MDM LR, E 2546, pt. 1, RG 393. 64. Philip H. Sheridan to Alfred H. Terry, Sept. 3, 1873, roll 1, Special Files, MDM, M1495, NA. 65. Yankton (SD) Press and Dakotaian, Sept. 3, 1874. 66. Sheridan to Terry, Sept. 3, 1874 (3572 AGO 1874), f/w 1741 AGO 1874, E 12, RG 94, NA; Benjamin R. Cowen to J. L. Pennington, Sept. 8, 1874, f/w 3572 AGO 1874, ibid. 67. Sheridan to Terry, Sept. 4, 1874 (3820 AGO 1874), ibid. 68. John D. McDermott, “The Military Problem and the Black Hills, 1874–1875,” Gold Rush: The Black Hills Story (Pierre, SD, 2001), 210. 69. Oliver Knight, Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents among the Indian Campaigners (Norman, OK, 1960), xv–xvii, 91. 70. Yankton (SD) Press and Dakotaian, Sept. 10, 1874, Mar. 25, 1875. 71. Terry to Sheridan, Sept. 3, 1874 (4113 MDM 1874), Special File, E 2547,

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pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 72. Lugenbeel to AAG Dakota, Sept. 23, 1874, E 713, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. 73. Cooper, Civil Disorder, 196; see also pp. 61, 129, 238. 74. Ibid., 83. See also Mark L. Bradley, Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina (Lexington, KY, 2009), 34, 45–46, 215, 221. 75. AAG Dakota to Nelson B. Sweitzer, Sept. 24, 1874, Dakota, LS, E 1167, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; Edward O. C. Ord to Rich-ard C. Drum, Dec. 22, 1874 (6257 MDM 1874), E 2547, pt. 1, ibid.; Terry to AAG MDM, Oct. 13, 1874 (4991 MDM 1874), ibid. 76. Mills to AAG Platte, May 23, 1875, E 3731, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 77. Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1875. 78. Silas Garber to Crook, May 29, 1875, NA RG 393, pt. 1, E 3731, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 79. Grant K. Anderson, “The Black Hills Exclusion Policy: Judicial Chal-lenges,” Nebraska History 58 (Spring 1977), 12–13; Sioux City (SD) Weekly Journal, May 23, 1875, June 10, 17, 1875; Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1875. 80. Terry to Sherman, Aug. 11, 1869; Cooper, Civil Disorder, 83. 81. William A. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 (Washington, D.C., 2011), 478–79. 82. New York Herald, Aug. 22, 24, 1875; Edwards Pierrepont to William R. Belknap, Nov. 12, 1875 (5840 AGO 1875), f/w 1356 AGO 1875, E 12, RG 94, NA. 83. Charles W. Foster to AAG MDM, Sept. 4, 1874 (4167 MDM 1874), E 2547, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 84. Terry to Offley, Dec. 23, 1874 (6283 MDM 1873), ibid. 85. Lugenbeel to AAG, Dec. 23, 1874, E 713, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. 86. Bradley to Terry, enclosed in Spe-cial Order No. 13, Terry to Sheridan, Dec. 31, 1874, E 66, pt. 3, RG 393, NA. The officer commanding Camp Sheridan was ordered to enlist fifty Brulé men “to detect parties of miners” as late as Mar. 1875. Special Order No. 3, James Regan to Anson Mills, E 3743, pt. 1, ibid. 87. While on patrol in the Black Hills, Aaron I. Comfort wrote that Lakota guides spoke to, but did not hurt, a party of twenty-one miners. See Aaron I. Com-fort, “Black Hills narratives,” Beinecke Library. 88. Lugenbeel to Headquarters Department of Dakota, Sept. 23, 1874 (4701 MDM 1874), E 2547, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 89. Sioux City (SD) Daily Journal, Dec. 8, 15, 20, 1874; Congressional Record, 43rd Cong., 2d sess., 1874, 3, pt. 1:17; ibid., 43rd Cong., 2d sess., 1875, 3, pt.

2:1568; ibid., 43rd Cong., 2d sess., 1875, 3, pt. 3:1936. 90. Terry to AAG, Mar. 9, 1875, E 2546, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 91. Terry to Custer, Apr. 7, 1875, E 1167, pt. 1, ibid. 92. Charles W. Foster to AAG MDM, Apr. 9, 1875 (1799 MDM 1875), E 2547, pt. 1, ibid. 93. Sheridan to Sherman, July 3, 1875 (3432 AGO 1875), E 12, RG 94, NA; Sheridan to Townsend, July 3, 1875 (3479 AGO 1875), ibid. 94. Cooper, Civil Disorder, 36. 95. Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 108–10, 137; Utley, Frontier Regulars, 15. 96. Nelson B. Sweitzer to AAG Dakota, Jan. 22, 1874 (708 AGO 1874), f/w Sher-man to William W. Belknap, Mar. 2, 1874, op. cit. For army officers’ blaming of civilians, see Smith, Officers’ Row, 120; Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 104. 97. Lugenbeel to AAG Dakota, Mar. 5, 1875 (1115 MDM 1875), E 2547, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 98. Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 173; Tate, Settlement, ch. 6, esp. 240, 256–59; Smith, Officers’ Row, 103–6, 132; see also n. 7. 99. Robert G. Angevine, The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in NineteenthCentury America (Stan-ford, CA, 2004), 129, 199. 100. Hutton, Phil Sheridan, 170, 172–73; see also Wooster, Military and Indian Policy, 123–24. For corporate influence in government, see Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York, 2011), 511–12. 101. Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 1875, ed. John Y. Simon, vol. 26 (Carbondale, IL, 2003), 84. 102. Commission Appointed to Treat with the Sioux Indians for the Relin-quishment of the Black Hills, “Minutes of the Preliminary Meetings, July–Aug. 1875,” 63–64, Beinecke Library. 103. AAG Platte to Edward O.C. Ord, Mar. 17, 1875, E 3722, pt. 1, RG 393, NA. 104. Crook to AAG Platte, Aug. 16, 1875, E 3731, pt. 1, ibid. 105. George D. Ruggles to Bradley, Oct. 13, 1875, E 66, pt. 3, RG 393, NA; Acting AAG Dakota to Lugenbeel, Oct. 17, 1875, E 713, ibid. 106. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 26:163; AAG Platte to Pollock, Oct. 20, 1875, E 67, pt. 3, RG 393, NA; Special Order 34, E 66, pt. 3, ibid.; AAG Platte to Pollock, Nov. 8, 1875, E 67, pt. 3, ibid. 107. John Q. Smith to Zachariah Chan-dler, Jan. 18, 1876, E 1175, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; Price, Oglala People, 153. 108. Marcus A. Reno to AAG DofDak, Apr. 27, 1876 (2371 AGO 1876), E 12, RG

94, NA; Sheridan to Townsend, May 31, 1876 (3051 AGO 1876), ibid.; Jordan to Edwin F. Townsend, June 2, 1876, E 3731; pt. 1, RG 393, NA; Bray, Crazy Horse, 203.

"Black Hills and Bloodshed: The U.S. Army and the Invasion of Lakota Land"

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