University of California Berkeley THE STORY OF THE WEST SERIES EDITED BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER Story of the ftlest Series. EDITED BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK. Each, illustrated, tamo, cloth, $1.50. Cbe Story of the Railroad. By CY WARM AN, author of " The Express Messenger," etc. " Far more interesting than the average novel. . . . Makes us feel and hear the rush of modern civilization. It gives us also the human side of the picture the struggles of the frontiersman and his family, the dismay and cruel wrath of the retreating savage, the heroism ot the ad- vance guard of the railway builders, and the cutthroat struggles ot com- peting lines. He does not deal greatly with statistics, but the figures he uses help make up the stunning effect of gigantic enterprise. There is not a dull page in the book. " New York Evening Post. Cbe Story of tbe Cowboy. By E. HOUGH. Illustrated by William L. Wells and C. M. Russell. ' Nothing fresher or finer has been written in many a day. . . . An admirable work." Chicago Evening Post. Cbe Story of tbe mine. Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada. By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN. " The author has written a book not alone full of information, but re- plete with the true romance of the American mine." New York 'Jitnes. Cbe Story of tbe Indian. By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, author of " Pawnee Hero Stories," " Blackfoot Lodge Tales," etc. " In every way worthy of an author who as an authority upon the Western Indians is second to none. A book full of color, abounding in observation, and remarkable in sustained interest, it is at the same time characterized by a grace of style which is rarely to be looked for in such a work, and which adds not a little to the charm of it." London Daily Chronicle. Cbe Story of tbe Soldier. By Brevet Brigadier-General GEORGE A. FORSYTH, U.S.A. (retired). Illustrated by R. F. Zogbaum. IN PREPARATION. The Story of the Trapper. By GILBERT PARKER. The Story of the Explorer. By RIPLKY HITCHCOCK. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. ' "/"OO 9 A, (4 * T yo Surrender of American Horse. (See page 339.) THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER BY BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE A. FORSYTH, U. S. A. (RETIRED) ILLUSTRATED BY R. F. ZOGBAUM The regular in 1861 NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. EDITOR'S PEEFACE. OP the actors in the heroic age of our West, the figure of the soldier may he emphasized, I think, as representing not simply fortitude and heroism, since these have been the commonplaces of his life, nor glory, since this has been practically denied him by his fellow-citizens; but as the man embodying better than any other pioneer type the conserving influence of law and order and the actual progress earned in the early days by the forces which make for civiliza- tion. The popular tradition of the soldier as a con- queror of " glory-crowned heights " has nothing in common with the unrecognised career of the American regular soldier in the West. Coronado and other Span- ish warriors who marched northward seeking gold and sovereignty might well be termed conquistador es, with all the glory which attaches to the phrase. The career of the American regular soldier may almost be sum- marized as that of the settler's advance guard. Pass- ing over for a moment the inception of his work and v i THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. the character of his services in the eastern half of our country, there is a peculiar fitness in emphasizing the classical Lewis and Clarke expedition of 1803-'06. Here were two officers of the regular army with a hand- ful of men penetrating an unknown empire, not in search of gold or military laurels, but simply to gather for a civil government geographical and scientific in- formation which would be of value to its citizens. This is the simple story of a large, perhaps the largest part of the soldier's work in the West. Buried in weighty volumes containing reports of reconnoissances and sur- veys made in behalf of the transcontinental railroads are stories of the soldier's work in the West which would offer to his fellow-citizen, the civilian, an un- known page of history. It has all been in the day's work, the moil and toil of the regular's frontier life, whether this has con- sisted of exploration, the protection of surveying par- ties, the guardianship of wagon trains, the building of forts and maintenance of garrisons in remote wilds, the rescue of endangered settlers, or a defence or a punitive expedition against a larger force of maraud- ing savages in the icy blizzards of the North or on the sun-scorched plains of the South-land. The orders have come from the authorities at Washington, and have passed onward and downward through depart- ment commanders to be unflinchingly executed by those whom they reached, whatever this execution EDITOR'S PREFACE. v ii might cost in life or hardship, or in the jangling criti- cism of local politicians or distant sentimentalists. The frontier work of the English soldier, whatever its penalties may be, has brought prompt promotions, the Victoria cross, recognition and honours in varied forms. The frontier work of the American soldier with his record of over a century of heroism and sacrifice, has been viewed with suspicion and prejudice, and its re- ward has been simply the consciousness of duty done. Certain reasons for the injustice which has been done the American regular soldier are indicated by General Forsyth in his sketch of the inception and the earlier work of the soldier, which furnishes a perspective and also a background, and renders this volume practically a concise history of the regular army of the United States. Of such a book, our public, always generous and fair-minded, if given an adequate knowledge of the facts, has been grievously in need. For the time be- ing the regular soldier, 'whether he is protecting a frontier settlement or doing his work at San Juan or El Caney, may be lost sight of in the flush of enthu- siasm over a citizen soldiery, but a calmer, more dis- criminating judgment shows that training and disci- pline count in war as elsewhere, and the man who knows his trade is more effective than the novice. It is a truism so obvious that it is soon lost sight of, but we saw it illustrated in the civil war by the training Vlll THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. which developed armies of men practically regulars in the four years between Bull Eun and Appomattox, and again in the Philippines, where training and experience moulded the splendid material of which the first army of volunteers was composed into a sea- soned and effective military instrument. It seems an absurdity to argue for training, discipline, and ex- pert knowledge, and yet an inherited prejudice has led many of us to forget that the regular is simply the average American citizen plus a training which makes him an effective servant of a popular govern- ment.* Since the regular is so little known and so often misconstrued, the author of this book has acted wisely in tracing his history from the beginning of our Gov- * The adjutant general's office has furnished the following table, showing the strength of the regular army and the percent- age relations of the army to the population for each decade from 1790 to 1900 : Strength of the Army. YEAR. Officers. Men. Total. Population of United States. Per cent. 1790. 57 1,210 1,273 3,929,214 3-100 of 1 1800. 318 4,118 4,436 5,308,483 8-100 of 1 1810. 774 9,147 9,921 7,239,881 14-100 of 1 1820. 712 8,230 8,292 9,633,822 9-100 of 1 1830. 627 5,324 5,951 12.866.020 5-100 of 1 1840. 733 9,837 10,570 17,069,453 6-100 of 1 1850. 948 9,815 10.763 23,191,876 5-100 of 1 18(50. 1,108 15,259 16,367 31.443.321 5-100 of 1 1870. 2,541 34,534 37,075 38,558.371 10-100 of 1 1880. 2,152 24,357 26,509 50,155,783 5-100 of 1 1890. 2,168 24,921 27,089 62.622,250 4-100 of 1 1900. 2,500 65,000 67,500 75,000,000 9-100 of 1 EDITOR'S PREFACE. i x eminent. This history in its succinct form possesses a peculiar value as a whole, and the large portion of the narrative which is devoted to the work of the sol- dier in the West, in accordance with the plan of this series, offers glimpses of endurance, of heroism, and romantic daring whose epic quality leads us to wonder why the American regular has had no Kipling to sing his deeds, and why we, citizens of no mean country, have lent an ear to tales of alien victories over Zulus, or Afridis, or dervishes, while we have been deaf to the deeds of American regulars, often more perilous and more daring, yet almost unnoticed and practically unrewarded. Within two years we have lost a group of regu- lar officers whose long careers would illuminate the pages of any military history. Lawton, whose forty years of active service included the eventful days of the civil war, a long experience of every form of serv- ice on the old frontier, and the chief campaign of the Spanish war, has fallen with his face to the enemy in the Philippines. Henry, that gallant cavalryman whose terrible wounds are a part of the story of the soldier in the West, has passed away with Egbert, and with Liscum and Eeilly, who have crowned their long and faithful service with the offer of their lives in dis- tant China. Other survivors of the civil war and of the race of Indian fighters have gone before, like Crook, whose record of fearless justice and unswerving 1* x THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. truthfulness suggests the difference which might have been had officers of the regular army been intrusted with the management of our Indian wars. The soldiers of the epic age of our West are rapidly passing away, and it is full time that their story should be told. It is a tale of thrilling interest, a moving and brilliant chapter of a history too little known, and it is set forth in the graphic pages of this volume by a regular soldier who has earned the right to speak by actual experience, by honourable wounds, and by that superb stand against overwhelming numbers which has made the affair of the Arickaree famous in the annals of the soldier in the West. AUTHOR'S PEEFACE. To tell effectively the Story of the Soldier in the Story of the West Series, to which it belongs, has obliged the writer to outline practically the whole his- tory of the regular soldier of the United States army. In his own opinion he has only blazed the way for further research and better literary results along the same line. Our regular is an interesting study from the fact that the average representative of both rank and file is an honourable, fairly able, and upright man and a splendid citizen, and at the same time is com- pletely outside of, and detached from all party and po- litical affiliations and with almost no prospect of even- tual financial reward. He accepts the badge of " serv- ice " in a spirit that makes it a mark of distinction, and does his whole duty at all times and under all circum- stances unhesitatingly and without complaint, and the experience of this last one hundred and twenty years has shown the General Government that the regular xi x ii THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. army of the United States is under any and all cir- cumstances to be absolutely depended upon.* Within the limits of this book it has not been possible to go into any extended detail of the work of the regular, or of his merits as a soldier and a man, but if the reader succeeds in obtaining a fairly correct idea of the soldier of the United States army as he actually is the writer will be satisfied. He desires also to record here his thanks and obligations to the writers of certain manuscript furnished him by the editor of this series of books, Mr. Eipley Hitchcock, by whom he was authorized to use it as he saw fit, and parts of which he has, with certain emendations and alterations, incorporated in this volume. G. A. F. WASHINGTON, September, 1900. * In, our civil war the enlisted men of the army almost with- out exception stood by the Government. Instances of desertion and disaffection were so rare that probably one half of one per cent of the forces would much more than cover them all. To the credit of the Southern officers of the army who resigned upon the secession of their several States and afterward entered the Confederate service, so far as is known, no one of them attempted to induce the enlisted men to take service against the United States. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY 1 II. HOW AND WHY THE REGULAR ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES CAME INTO BEING AND THE SOURCES FROM WHICH ITS OFFICERS ARE COMMISSIONED ... 16 III. THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONTIER ARMY EXPLORERS THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE WAR WITH MEXICO . 38 IV. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRON- TIER FROM 1846 TO 1860 58 V. CHARACTERISTICS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERI- CAN SOLDIER HIS SURROUNDINGS, PERQUISITES, AND PAY 82 VI. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW, AND THEIR SOLDIER OCCUPANTS . . 102 VII. ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK ON THE ROAD . 146 VIII. THE INDIAN TROUBLES OF THE WESTERN FRONTIER IN 1866 AND 1867 168 IX. THE Sioux CAMPAIGN OF 1868 AND 1869 . . .199 X. A WINTER'S FIGHT IN THE Sioux CAMPAIGN OF 1868 AND 1869 233 XI. THE CLOSE OF THE Sioux CAMPAIGN OF 1868-'69 AND THE PUNISHMENT OF THE PlEGANS .... 249 XII. ARIZONA AND THE APACHE 261 XIII. THE MODOC WAR IN OREGON 286 XIV. THE Sioux CAMPAIGN OF 1876 308 XV. THE CLOSE OF THE Sioux CAMPAIGN AND THE NEZ PERCES' WONDERFUL FLIGHT 330 XVI. THE ARMY OFFICER, THE PEOPLE, AND THE SOLDIER . 363 INDEX 379 xiii LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. PAGE SURRENDER OP AMERICAN HORSE . . Frontispiece THE DEFEAT OF ST. CLAIR THE REGULARS COVERING THE RETREAT 29 THE MARCH OF COOKE'S COMMAND 62 THE WAGON TRAIN . . . . . . . .147 THE ATTACK ON BLACK KETTLE'S CAMP . . . .243 ARRIVAL OF TERRY'S COLUMN ON THE CUSTER BATTLE- FIELD 327 xv THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. CHAPTER I. THE INCEPTION OF THE AKMY. BOTH the officer and the enlisted man of the regu- lar army of the United States of to-day are a somewhat peculiar and unique development, growing out of, and finally evolved from a condition of affairs that had its beginning in even the first weak colonies established upon this continent by the English and Dutch early in the seventeenth century. It is the story of what this soldier is and what he has accomplished in that portion of our country west of the Missouri River that I purpose to tell; but in order to do so understandingly I must carry my reader back nearly three hundred years, to enable me to lead up to the reason why the story of the regular soldier in our national annals is the record of the one citizen of the republic comparatively unknown, least appre- ciated, persistently misunderstood, and, for political effect, frequently misrepresented and occasionally even recklessly maligned in our national legislative halls, and yet whose record as a citizen, a soldier, and a patriot has been, and is, almost stainless. i 2 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. While the majority of the earliest pioneers for North American shores who of their own volition deliberately left England in 1606 and Holland in 1614 to found colonies and establish homes in the New World were undoubtedly adventurers, still they had within their number certain strong men, both mentally and physic- ally, with fixed opinions as to religion and govern- ments, with also, it may be, Utopian ideas of what the future held in store for them in the virgin forests of America. But outside of and beyond their day dreams in this direction they were willing to brave the dangers of the sea, endure the discomforts of the pioneer, and assume the risks and hardships of frontiersmen that they and their descendants might be a people freed from Old World traditions, customs, and complications, and not bound down by antiquated codes and subject to existing conditions that compelled them to obey the behests of a monarchical or imperial government, which might at any time demand their lives and property to enable it to take part in a war that practically had only to do with the personal interests of the reigning sover- eign or his house, and the outcome of which, whether it was a successful or disastrous campaign, was of no direct concern or benefit to the nation collectively or to the individual subject, but which might, and frequently did drench the land in blood, impoverish its inhab- itants, and bring upon them nameless horrors, penury, and untold misery. During the succeeding one hundred and fifty years after the English and Dutch took root in our soil a fit- ful, but nevertheless a slowly increasing tide of emigra- tion set unsteadily in from England and Holland, bear- ing upon its bosom to our shores an ever-widening THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. 3 stream of strong, active, and determined men, whose bitter experience had taught them to dread the misuse of standing armies and to abhor the brutal excesses of a hireling soldiery. And well it might do so; for from 1607, when the English planted their first colony at Jamestown, to 1765, when the British Parliament by passing the Stamp Act deliberately alienated their American colonies, history gives us an account of ninety-seven different wars, sieges, and massacres with all their attendant horrors between and among the various European and Asiatic powers, in less than in one tenth of which national wars were the inhabitants of the various countries so devastated at all vitally interested, and which wars had been waged either to strengthen or perpetuate certain dynasties, to aggrandize various religious sects, or else solely to pander to the conscienceless ambition of individual religious, political, or military leaders thirsting for fame, place, and power. To the American colonist, who during this century and a half of gradual growth and hard-working pros- perity had developed an individuality of sturdy inde- pendence solely upon and along lines of business and personal interests, with only a comparatively slight trend toward the necessity of his need for the existence of any general government whatever, and who knew from history, tradition, and the personal narratives of his ancestors, many of whom in their own individual experience had known the wretched conditions imposed upon even the noncombatants in these Europeans wars, the idea of a dissolute and paid soldiery, that might be, and frequently had been sold and bought by different monarchs and used in their family interests against 4 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. even their own people, was simply abhorrent, and finally the occupation of Boston by a brigade of British regu- lars, of whom history says " they led brawling, riotous lives and made the quiet streets hideous by night with their drunken shouts, while scores of loose women who had followed the regiment across the ocean came to scandalize the town/' was to the Puritan New Eng- lander almost unbearable. Moreover, the British regu- lar was in bad repute among the colonists long be- fore the arrival in Boston of General Gage's troops, for in 1755, shortly before the disastrous expedition against Fort Duquesne under General Braddock was about to enter the wilderness, Benjamin Franklin ven- tured to warn General Braddock as to the great danger his command might be subjected to by the Indian method of fighting, especially as regarded ambuscades, and (I quote from Franklin's account of the interview) " General Braddock scouted the idea of any possibility of defeat. He (Braddock) smiled at my ignorance and replied: ' These savages may be a formidable enemy to your raw militia, but upon the King's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible that they should make any impression.' ''' Franklin then proceeds to give some account of the manner in which the regulars were entrapped and shot down by the French and Indians, and ends by saying: " The general (Braddock), being wounded, was brought off with difficulty; his secretary, Mr. Shirley, was killed by his side; and out of eighty-six officers, sixty-three were killed or wounded, and seven hundred and fourteen men killed out of eleven hun- dred. These eleven hundred had been picked men from the whole army; the rest had been left behind with Colonel Dunbar, who was to follow with the heavier THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. 5 part of the stores, provisions, and baggage. The flyers, being pursued, arrived at Dunbar's camp, and the panic they brought with them instantly seized him and all his people; and, though he had now above one thousand men and the enemy who had beaten Braddock did not at most exceed four hundred Indians and French to- gether, instead of proceeding and endeavouring to re- cover some of the lost honour, he ordered all the stores and ammunition to be destroyed, that he might have more horses to assist his flight toward the settlements. He was there met with requests from the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania that he would post his troops on the frontier, so as to afford some pro- tection to the inhabitants, but he continued his hasty march through all the country, not thinking himself safe till he arrived at Philadelphia, where the inhab- itants could protect him. This whole transaction gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded." When his British Majesty's (George III) regulars fired upon the unarmed citizens of Boston on the 5th of March, 1770, the culminating point of detestation for regulars by the colonists was already attained, and the stirring oration of Dr. Joseph Warren, spoken at a memorial meeting of the fellow-townsmen of the dead victims of misrule (held on the first anniversary of the occurrence in the Old South Church of Boston), on 'the baleful influence of standing armies in time of peace," was not needed to accentuate a prejudice against the regular soldier that was already so deeply engraved on the public heart that to-day, after more than a century of almost unparalleled gallantry in the field 6 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. and a steady and unwavering devotion to the best in- terests of the people and the republic, such as has never been surpassed, if equalled, by any body of regular troops in the history of the world, the regular army of the United States is still regarded as an object of sus- picion and mistrust by very many of our best citizens. It is in the hope of in some degree disabusing the public mind of this inherited prejudice, and to give it a true idea of, as a matter of fact, perhaps the most de- voted patriot and the best and most obedient citizen of the republic, that I have undertaken to tell the story of the regular soldier in the West. To do this intelligently, however, and to enable the reader to thoroughly grasp the underlying sentiment that controls the personnel of the regular army as a whole, both officers and men, it will be necessary that I briefly outline the conditions that led up to the crea- tion and organization of the United States army and its permanent establishment against, and despite of the pronounced ideas of some of the leading and ablest of the early statesmen of our country. I intend therefore briefly to mention the work of the regular army on the frontier during the years immediately succeeding the Revolutionary War as well as in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Furthermore, I shall touch also on its heavy percentage of loss in our civil war, to- gether with a somewhat detailed account of its work on the Pacific slope, in the far Southwest, and on the great plains beyond the Mississippi on our northern and west- ern borders, which in the interests of a better civiliza- tion it finally wrested from the control of the various savage Indian tribes who held it most tenaciously, even desperately, against the rising tide of Anglo-Saxon THE INCEPTION OP THE ARMY. 7 occupation almost to the close of the nineteenth century. Five years after the Boston massacre, where King George's regulars had fired upon the unarmed citizens of Boston, these same troops tried it again upon the colonists at Lexington; but long before sunset of April 19, 1775, they had learned that it was one thing to fire upon an unarmed body of citizens, but decidedly an- other thing to fire upon the armed minute men of Massachusetts. In the veins of these men ran the same blood that had enabled the dauntless barons of England to face royalty and wring the Magna Charta from King John at Eunnymede, and that day they proved them- selves gallant sons of worthy sires, for the whole coun- try side rose together in defence of their rights, and every man who owned a firearm hurried to the fray. Their daily life had made them good rifle shots, but they had little knowledge of discipline or drill hardly a military organization worthy of the name; were prac- tically without leaders, and had scarcely more than the cohesion that mutual danger and self-defence grants to desperate and determined men; but all day long they assailed and attacked the British column from every available point. It was a motley band, this partially organized crowd of " minute men." Men of all ages, creeds, professions, and trades lawyers, doctors, farmers, tradesmen, mechanics, high and low, rich and poor, the gray-haired grandsire, the stalwart father, and the beardless son all were there, and none of them faltered nor failed. Neither was it any holi- day work that they had to do, for the record shows that King George's soldiers were well handled and finely disciplined, and fought bravely and gallantly, but from 8 THE STOKY OF THE SOLDIER. behind every fence and tree, bush, stump, hillock, and wayside rock the minute men poured in a deadly fire on the retreating regulars, who, to their credit be it said, held well together and were at length succoured in their dire extremity by a force sent out from Boston to meet them, and which arrived none too soon to save the whole column from annihilation or capture at the hands of the exasperated colonists. That day's work made possible the federation of the colonies, opened the way for the Declaration of Independence, and fore- shadowed the birth of the republic. These minute men were volunteers. They had gallantly attacked, bravely repulsed, and persistently followed up the British regu- lars, and from that day at Lexington until to-day, as in the old colonial days, the volunteer is, and always has been, the idol of the people. And yet? The uprising of the Massachusetts minute men at Concord was almost immediately followed by the in- vestment and siege of the British troops in Boston by the militia of the North American colonies under the command of various colonial general officers, who for the time being acknowledged the authority of Major- General Artemas Ward, of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. But the time had come when there must be a supreme head of this hastily organized colonial militia, and in the Journals of (the Continental) Congress of June 15, 1775, I find the following: " Resolved, That a general be appointed to command all the Continental forces raised or to be raised for the defence of American liberty. That five hundred dollars per month be allowed for the pay and expenses of the general. The Congress then proceeded to the choice THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. 9 of a general by ballot, and George Washington, Esq., was unanimously elected. Adjourned till to-morrow at eight o-clock." They could well afford to adjourn after that piece of work. They never surpassed it but once in the whole history of the Continental Congress, and that was a little more than a year later, on July 4, 1776. Of all men in North America, George Wash- ington was without exception the ablest soldier in the colonies, and by temperament, physical and mental vigour, methodical habits, experience in organizing vol- unteers and militia and field service on the frontier not only the one best fitted to cope with the responsi- bilities thrust upon him by his new command, but probably the only man then living who could have conducted the Revolutionary War to a successful termi- nation. A frontier surveyor at eighteen, adjutant general of one of the frontier districts of the colony of Vir- ginia with the rank of major at nineteen, lieutenant colonel of the Virginia troops in the war with the French in 1754 at the age of twenty-two, and aide-de- camp to General Braddock in the disastrous campaign of 1755, he was almost the only prominent officer who came out of that blundering and bloody repulse with credit to himself, honour to his colony, and with an un- impaired reputation as an able and brilliant officer and a capable soldier. Appointed by the legislature of Vir- ginia commander in chief of all the forces of the colony in 1755, he devoted three years of his life to recruiting, organizing, drilling, and equipping troops for its defence, and in 1758 he led them against the French and In- dians in a most successful campaign along the north- 10 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. western frontier. Resigning from the army on the con- clusion of peace, he married, and then for sixteen years led an almost ideal life as a country gentleman on his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia, being both a local magistrate and much of the time a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia. Commissioned by the Continental Congress, General George Washington thus became practically the first regularly commissioned offi- cer appointed over the troops of this country; in fact, he was the first " regular " in our service, and, in the light of history, it is not too much to say that the regular army of the United States had its first incep- tion in his mind, and that it was owing to his wise counsels, earnest recommendations, and persistent ur- ging that Congress eventually consented to the creation of an army that in its organization represented the nation and was controlled only by the President, acting within certain well-defined constitutional limitations. On his assumption of command at Boston in 1775 he found a herculean task awaiting him in organizing, drilling, and properly disciplining the colonial militia, and I think it best to give a few extracts from his letters to let the reader see how very like his experience with both militia and volunteers was to that of our own day. Washington to Colonel William Woodford, Cambridge, November 10, 1775. " The best general advice I can give is to be strict in your discipline; that is, to require nothing unreason- able of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit without par- tiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them in THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. H order to prevent frivolous ones. Discourage vice in every shape." Washington to the President of the Continental Congress, dated Cambridge, February 9, 1776. "To expect, then, the same service from raw and undisciplined recruits as from veteran soldiers is to ex- pect what never did, and perhaps never will happen. Men who are familiarized with danger meet it with- out shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is." Washington to Richard Henry Lee, dated Camp at Cambridge, August 29, 1775. " But it is among the most difficult tasks I ever undertook in my life to induce these people to believe that there is, or can be, danger till the bayonet is pushed at their breasts; not that it proceeds from any uncommon prowess, but rather from an unaccountable stupidity in the lower class of these people, which, be- lieve me, prevails but too generally among the officers of the Massachusetts part of the army, who are nearly of the same kidney with the privates, and adds not a little to my difficulties, as there is no such thing as getting of officers of this stamp to exert themselves in carrying orders into execution (to curry favour with the men by whom they were chosen and on whose smiles possibly they may think they may again rely seems to be one of the principal objects of their atten- tion)." Washington to the President of Congress, dated Colonel Morris's, on the Heights of Haerlem, September 24, 1776. Extract. "When men are irritated and their passions in- flamed they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms; but after the first emotions are over, to expect among such 12 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. people as compose the bulk of an army that they are influenced by any other principles than those of interest is to look for what never did, and I fear what never will happen. ... It becomes evident to me, then, that, as this contest is not likely to be the work of a day, as the war must be carried on systematically, and to do it you must have good officers, there are, in my judgment, no other possible means to obtain them but by estab- lishing your army upon a permanent footing and giv- ing your officers good pay. . . . They ought to have such allowances as will enable them to live and support the character of gentlemen. . . . Something is due to the man who puts his life in your hands, hazards his health, and forsakes the sweets of domestic enjoyments. . . . With respect to the men, nothing but a good bounty can obtain them upon a permanent establish- ment. ... To place dependence upon militia is as- suredly resting upon a broken staff. Unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by want of confidence in themselves when opposed to troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge and superior in arms, makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadows. . . . To bring men to a proper degree of subordination is not the work of a day, a month, or even a year. . . . The jealousy of a standing army and the evils to be appre- hended from one are remQte, and, in my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded." Letter written to Mr. Bannister, dated Valley Forge, April 21, 1778. " Men may speculate as they will; they may talk of patriotism; they may draw a few examples from an- cient story of great achievements performed by its in- THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. 13 fluence; but whoever builds upon them as a sufficient basis for conducting a long and bloody war will find himself deceived in the end. We must take the passions of men as Nature has given them, and those principles as a guide which are generally the rule of action. I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriot- ism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest; but I will venture to assert that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by some prospect of interest or some reward. For a time it may of itself push men to action, to bear much, to encounter diffi- culties, but it will not endure unassisted by interest." . Before the war of the Eevolution was well into its second year the necessity for educated and properly drilled and disciplined military officers became so ap- parent that, on the 20th of September, 1776, the Con- tinental Congress appointed a committee from among its members to visit army headquarters, then near the city of New York, to confer with the general officers of the colonial forces regarding some way by which such a corps of officers could be had. In their report to the Congress the committee state that: " Some of the troops were badly officered. . . . The articles of war and general orders were frequently transgressed. . . . Some officers, instead of suppressing disorderly behaviour, encouraged the soldiers by their examples to plunder and commit other offences, or endeavoured to screen them from just punishment by partial trials." Congress therefore " Resolved, That the Board of War be directed to prepare a Continental Laboratory and a Military Academy and provide the same with proper officers," and on October 1, 1776, it was further "Re- 14 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. solved, That a committee of five be appointed to bring in a plan of ' A Military Academy at the Army/ '"' And such a committee was duly appointed; but so great was the stress of events that no action was taken by the committee, and the colonial forces had only the prac- tical school of war in which to educate their officers a fearfully bitter and expensive school, involving a great unnecessary and lamentable loss of human life and a vast and unnecessary waste of Government treas- ure. It is an established fact in our country that offi- cers can be educated and soldiers developed in a long and bloody war, but it is hardly probable that the in- telligent citizens of the United States will be willing to again unnecessarily sacrifice their sons in this way. It is only when we dip deeply into the personal corre- spondence of Washington during the disheartening days of the American Kevolution that it is possible to realize the weight of the burden he bore so brave-heartedly and so unflinchingly for nearly seven long, weary years. Assailed by would-be rivals both within and without the army, decried by cabals in the Continental Con- gress, criticised and sneered at by certain "unappreci- ated" officers, misjudged by some of those whom he looked upon as friends and unstintedly abused by his enemies, it was nothing but his persistent and uncom- plaining devotion to duty, his daily life of rigid dis- cipline, his capacity for hard and sustained work, his attention to detail, his acknowledged ability in mak- ing the best use of the troops under his command and always getting the most out of them, as well as a certain marvellous military intuition that invariably led him to instantly seize upon and take advantage of every error made by the enemy, together with his splendid THE INCEPTION OF THE ARMY. 15 personality and his unswerving integrity, that finally enabled him to triumph over disaster and wring vic- tory from defeat.* In the power, plenitude, and strength of our great republic we seem to have forgot- ten the agonizing birth throes that nearly drained the best life blood of the colonies that brought it forth, and are apt to overlook the fact that the lusty young giant of the New World that to-day dominates the West- ern Hemisphere was once the weakling of the nations. NOTE. The United States army has been increased and diminished by act of Congress, as occasion seemed to warrant and justify, many times. In 1788, on a prospect of trouble with France, it aggregated 5,000 men, and was then reduced to 3,000. In the war with England in 1812 it rose to nearly 30,000, and then fell by congressional enactment to 9,000. In the war with Mexico it rose to 27,000, and then was gradually reduced to 10,000. In the civil war (1861 and 1865) it rose to 32,000, and at the close of the war was established on a peace basis at 55,000 ; but four years later was again reduced by congressional enact- ment to 27,500, and later to 25,000. The war with Spain (1898 and 1899) has increased it by two regiments of artillery. The twenty-five regiments of infantry have been reorganized as three battalion regiments. All the regiments of cavalry, artillery, and infantry have been recruited to their maximum, making an aggre- gate, including the hospital corps, of nearly 66,000 officers and enlisted men. * During the war of the Revolution the tremendous weight of the individual personality of General Washington for good became so thoroughly ingrained upon the officers of the colonial forces, some of whom were eventually commissioned in the United States army, that on its organization by some of these same officers Washington's ideas became the foundation of its official and social life, and remain so to this day. CHAPTER II. HOW AND WHY THE KEGULAE ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES CAME INTO BEING AND THE SOURCES FROM WHICH ITS OFFICERS ARE COMMISSIONED. THE close of the war of the Revolution found the colonial militia and the Continental troops anxious for immediate discharge from service, and as the idea of a standing army was most unpopular with the people, the whole army was promptly disbanded with as little delay as possible, and it was found extremely difficult to re- tain enough men, even temporarily, in the Continental service to garrison a few forts and to care for the arms, accoutrements, and ammunition belonging to the sev- eral States as well as the Continental Government. In fact, soldiering in time of peace by an able-bodied man was looked upon by the masses of that day with disfa- vour, if not with contempt, and thought to be slightly disgraceful, and the word " soldiering " was freely ap- plied to any body of indolent labourers who shirked work and did as little as they possibly could during the specified hours of employment. That the great body of soldiers who had served jn the army during the Revolu- tionary War had become veterans, and were practically regulars as far as regards drill, discipline, and field ex- perience, there can be no doubt, but these men would 16 THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 17 not remain in the army and could not be induced to re- enlist, for they all had before them in those colonial days a career that offered far more in every way than life in the army.* Moreover, most of them had entered the service from motives of pure patriotism only, and now that the various colonies had become States and secured their independence they looked upon their work in the army as accomplished, as in fact it was, and they were anxious to resume their former occupations, get out from under the irksome military control, drill, and discipline of army life, and become free and independ- ent citizens once more. The exigencies of the country compelled the Continental Government to retain in service a few officers and several hundred enlisted men, but such force was never recognised by the Conti- nental Congress as a standing army, and in fact ex- isted only on sufferance and purely as a matter of actual necessity, and any efforts looking to its per- manency were always promptly negatived by the major- ity of the congressional delegates. An examination of the Journals of the Continental Congress will show that the idea of a permanent military force in time of peace was thoroughly unpopular, and on May 26, 1784, the following preamble and resolutions were adopted: " Whereas, Different opinions exist in Congress re- specting their authority to make requisitions in the several States for land forces in times of peace; for a small number of land forces for a short period must * The pay of the enlisted men of the United States army in 1785 was as follows : Sergeant, $6 per month ; corporal, $5 ; musician, $5 ; private, $4. The original term of enlistment was for three years, but in 1802 it was changed to five years. 18 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. admit an unlimited power to extend their requisitions, both with respect to numbers and time of service, and must preclude the States from a right of deliberating, and leave them only an executive authority on the sub- ject; "And whereas, Congress being authorized to make foreign and domestic loans and issue bills of credit if permitted to raise land forces, as aforesaid in time of peace, will be furnished with such coercive measures as must be very alarming to the several States; " And whereas, Standing armies in time of peace are inconsistent with the principles of republican govern- ments, dangerous to the liberties of a free people, and generally converted into destructive engines for estab- lishing despotism; (t And whereas, The United States, being remote from nations that have peace establishments, may avoid the heavy expenses thereof by providing a small number of troops for garrisoning their posts and guarding their magazines and by being always in a state of defence on the plan of the confederation, which provides that every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia sufficiently armed and accoutred, and shall provide and have constantly ready for use in public stores a due number of field pieces and tents and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition, and camp equipage; " And whereas, In so doubtful as it respects the au- thority of Congress and of such high importance to the Union, it is expedient that the delegates should take the sense of their constituents on the subjects; it is the duty of Congress in the interim to suspend the exer- cise of the powers aforesaid for that purpose; "It is therefore resolved, That recommendations in lieu of requisitions shall be sent to the several States for raising the troops which may be immediately neces- THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 19 sary for garrisoning the Western posts and guarding the magazines of the United States, unless Congress should think it expedient to employ the Continental troops now at West Point in the service aforesaid; " Resolved, That the commanding officer be and he is hereby directed to discharge the troops now in the service of the United States, except twenty-five pri- vates to guard the stores at Fort Pitt and fifty-five to guard the stores at West Point and other magazines, with a proportionable number of officers, no officer to remain in service above the rank of captain." Thus it will be seen that the land forces of the United States in 1784 had been reduced to eighty en- listed men, with no commissioned officer above the rank of captain. Scarcely formidable enough to "be very alarming to the several States." Notwithstanding the recommendation so courteously, not to say timidly, made by the Congress, the several States did not re- spond with troops, thereby quietly ignoring all con- gressional action in the matter. The truth was that the Continental Congress had been shorn of nearly all its power by the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1778, which required the assent of nine of the thirteen States to make valid its most important acts. In the then nebulous state o the General Government and the self-assertive, not to say defiant, attitude assumed by some of the States toward the Continental Congress as well as toward each other (for the jealousies and rival- ries between the thirteen States that composed the original confederation kept constantly cropping up, and frequently upon even the most trivial grounds), it would not have been possible for the Continental Congress to have created a standing army, even if the majority of 20 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. its members would have assented to such a proposition, which, however, it is reasonably safe to say that they could not have been induced to do. Still, the necessity for troops was so imperative owing to Indian troubles, and the States were so slow in fact, so unwilling to furnish militia for frontier service, that even the Conti- nental Congress was at last obliged to take action, and on June 3, 1784, after considerable hesitation, they au- thorized the enrolment and equipping of a small regi- ment of infantry; and again on October 20, 1786, the exigencies of the frontier service compelled them to raise and equip a battalion of artillery; but such action, notwithstanding its evident necessity, was unpopular with the people, and the status of the said troops was generally regarded as only that of a temporary body. In fact, now that the war of the Eevolution was over the Continental Congress could only have maintained troops on that well-acknowledged footing. An inquiry by a committee of Congress into the size and condition of the army elicited the information that on October 2, 1788, the Continental troops numbered five hundred and ninety-five men, commanded by Brigadier-General Harmer. But the Continental Congress, after making a most glorious historical record for itself, had really finished its work and survived its usefulness, and ac- cordingly had gradually sunk into a semi-lethargic state with few to do it reverence, and notwithstanding it had proved itself able to successfully cope with and direct the colonies during the stormy scenes of the war of the Revolution, the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1778 had really shorn it of all inherent power, and now that any apprehension regarding the outcome of the war was over left it without sufficient authorized THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 21 strength to enforce its demands and legally rule the young, growing, and ambitious States. The adoption of the Constitution of the United States and the elec- tion of the new members of Congress under it, and the inauguration of the President in 1789, however, settled once and forever the question of a nationality as far as the United States of America is concerned, and from that day to this we have been acknowledged as, and have always ably maintained ourselves one of the nations of the earth. About this time, however 1790 and 1791 there came a rude awakening as to the reliance that could safely be placed upon the comparatively untrained militia from the various States. A call had been made upon the States for militia to aid our few regulars in punishing the Indians in that portion of the then Northwestern territory known as the Miami Valley, and which is now a part of the State of Ohio. Abetted by Sir John Johnson, a former British Indian agent, and encouraged by the English authorities in Canada, some of the Western tribes of Indians demanded that the Ohio Eiver should be the boundary line between the Indian tribes and the United States settlements. Be- fusing to consider any arguments against their de- cision, the hostile Indians infested the west bank of the stream and waylaid the boat loads of emigrants descending it, slaughtering them mercilessly, and fur- thermore they invaded the State of Kentucky, at- tacked the outlying settlements, and killed all t'heir inhabitants, sparing neither age nor sex. During the Revolutionary War these savages had been the allies of the Canadian British and had been well armed by them, which firearms they still retained, and, further- 22 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. more, the Canadian authorities saw that they were well supplied with ammunition. In the fall of 1790 an expedition, under command of Brigadier-General Harmer of the regular army, con- sisting of three hundred and twenty regulars and two quotas of militia from the States of Pennsylvania and Kentucky, aggregating a little more than fourteen hun- dred men, marched against the Indian village known as Chillicothe on the Maumee Eiver, but not the present town of Chillicothe on the Scioto. The village was burned, the cornfields destroyed, and a detachment of one hundred and fifty of the Kentucky militia, under Colonel Hardin, of Kentucky, together with thirty regulars was sent in pursuit. This detachment was am- bushed by the Indians, and the militia at once gave way in a panic without making anything of a fight, hardly firing a gun; but the few regulars stood bravely up to their work until nearly all were killed. Colonel Hardin rejoined General Harmer with his shattered command, and the latter, after falling back a day's march, halted, and upon Colonel Hardin's earnestly requesting him to allow himself and his militia an opportunity to retrieve their misfortune, he ordered him back with four hun- dred militia and sixty regulars to, if possible, surprise the Indians at the head of the Maumee Eiver. It is said that the unauthorized discharge of a gun gave the Indians warning of the approach of their foes, so that the attempted surprise was a failure. Colonel Hardin having stationed the regulars at the ford of the Maumee to protect the crossing, pushed forward with the militia to attack the Indians. They seemed to give way, and began to retreat on the first onset. His men, unheeding his positive orders, pushed forward recklessly and rap- THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 23 idly and left the regulars alone at the ford. They were suddenly attacked in great force by a large body of Indians who had lain in ambush, and before the militia could comprehend what was the matter and fall back to their assistance, which, to their credit, be it said, they gallantly did, despite the splendid con- duct of the regulars, they were almost literally cut to pieces while holding the ford. After a desperate strug- gle the whites were defeated and fell back, leaving fifty of the sixty regulars and over one hundred of the militia dead on the field. Harmer fell back to Fort Washington, " strangely enough claiming a victory" (Hildreth's History of the United States). A court of inquiry acquitted Gen- eral Harmer, but he resigned from the army. Of this affair Schouler, in his History of the United States, says: " Thus ended a fruitless campaign which did the regular troops far more honour than the mili- tia levies or they who commanded the expedition/' Disastrous as this campaign was, however, it was to be succeeded by one almost infinitely worse. Realizing that if the Government proposed to establish its hold- ings west of the Ohio the savages must be compelled to respect its authority, Congress at once authorized the organization and equipment of a strong military force to occupy and to hold the Maumee country by building a series of strongly fortified frontier posts within it, and permanently garrisoning them for the protection of the emigrants. Accordingly, orders were given Major-General Arthur St. Clair of the army, who at that time was the Governor of the Northwestern territory, to carry out these instructions. It was at that particular time, however, not an easy matter to 24 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. accomplish, and, although St. Glair was an old officer, a man of experience, patriotic, of undoubted courage, and a good counsellor, he found it uphill work to as- semble his command. He had been, too, in some respects singularly unfor- tunate in military affairs, notwithstanding that he had held high command at various times during the Revo- lution. He was an accomplished gentleman and gen- erally regarded as a capable officer; but in addition to the fact that he was already well on in years, he was unfortunately a victim of gout, and at times suffered excruciatingly from it. Eecruiting was slow, good men were not to be had, and the army contractors nearly all failed to furnish the equipment and supplies needed and contracted for. The summer slowly waned ere he was approximately ready, and it was not until late in September that General St. Clair moved out from his encampment for the Great Miami, where he built a stockaded fort, which was called Fort Hamilton. His command numbered twenty-three hundred regulars, which included some artillery, a small body of cavalry, and two or three regiments of infantry, together with several small regiments of militia, aggregating some- thing more than fourteen hundred men, so that his entire force was about thirty-seven hundred fighting men. Leaving a garrison at Fort Hamilton, he slowly pushed on to a point south of what is now Greenville, Ohio, where he built another stockaded post and called it Fort Jefferson. Leaving another garrison here, he started again for the Maumee country. It was now the 24th of October, the roads were bad, his trans- portation poor, and the command marched less than THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 25 seven miles a day on an average. The regulars were composed of more than half recent recruits, and the militia was, it is said, made up principally of substi- tutes, who grew to be almost totally ungovernable. There had been scarcely any opportunity for drill, and discipline was almost at an end, especially among the militia. The commissariat was a partial failure; food was scarce, clothing was scanty, even the regulars mur- mured, and on October 27th part of the militia claimed that their term of service had expired and loudly de- manded their discharge. The whole command was dis- pirited and straggled badly, some of the men left the column to shoot game in direct violation of orders, and desertions were of nightly occurrence, especially among the militia, at one time sixty of them deserting in a body. Fearing that these men might seize his train of supplies then on the way to the front, St. Glair detached three hundred of the First Kegiment of regulars (his best troops) to go back and protect it, thereby weaken- ing his force to that extent. He now had only about fourteen hundred effective men left, and on the night of November 3d he encamped on what he thought to be a tributary of the Miami Eiver, but which proved to be a branch of the upper Wabash. There was a slight snow on the ground, and the troops went into camp in comparatively good order and took up a position well suited to defence. It was, however, a force greatly weakened for want of proper food, and many of the men were shaking with chills and fever. As for the commanding general, for days past he had had to be lifted on and off his horse, and so severely did he suffer from gout that part of the way he had to be carried on a litter. 26 . THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. It is said that Captain Slough (or Hough) of the militia, whose duty it was to scout for Indians, saw so many creeping through the forest in the late dusk of this evening that he fell back to the militia camp at once and personally reported the fact to General Butler, who was the next ranking officer to the com- manding general, and in command of the militia. Gen- eral Butler thanked him and told him to go into camp, but it is claimed that Butler did not send this informa- tion to headquarters, and furthermore it is alleged that certain orders given by General St. Glair to Colonel Oldham of the militia were not carried out. The night passed quietly and uneventfully. Before dawn all the troops were awakened and up, fully armed and stand- ing in ranks at daylight, but everything was quiet- Scarcely had they been dismissed, broken ranks, and reached their tents, however, when a heavy musketry fire was heard in the direction of the militia camp, and almost before the nearest regulars could form in line, the militia, dashing wildly across a little creek that separated them from the camp of the regulars, were driven pellmell and in wild disorder through the line of the regulars, badly breaking it, as they sought to es- cape from their savage foes, who were right on their heels and shooting them down with practically no resist- ance on their part. In a moment the regulars partially reformed their broken line and poured in a volley that checked the mad rush of the savages and enabled the troops just in their rear to form and advance to their aid, while a few of the stampeded militia soon rallied and bravely took part in the battle. The attack was made by not less than one thousand (and probably near- ly two thousand) well-armed Indians, led by Thayenda- THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 27 nega (and not by Little Turtle, a chief of the Miamis, as was generally supposed for some years), known to the Canadians as Joseph Brant. It is claimed that he was a half-breed Mohawk, and it is said that he was a natural son of Sir William Johnson* but this statement was never satisfactorily verified, and is probably untrue. No matter what his ancestry and whether a full-breed or half-breed Indian he was a great warrior, a strong friend of the English, and was sufficiently well educated to have held the position of secretary to Sir Guy John- son when he was general superintendent of the Ca- nadian Indians. So sudden was the attack that there was little time for formation; in fact, the Indians had penetrated to the edge of the camps on the first onset, and the fighting for a few moments was a general melee. Soon, however, the artillery opened fire from the centre of each camp, both regular and militia, and the savages were for a short time compelled to partially give way. After the first onslaught the regular troops behaved very well, and some few of the militia equally so. A formation was made to protect the guns and a line of battle formed against the savages, while the officers, both regular and militia, fought like heroes, almost without exception. They were here, there, and every- where where the fighting was heaviest, cheering on their men and holding them up to their work by both precept and example, but their distinctive uniform told heavily against them, and they were shot down merci- lessly by the Indian riflemen, who coolly picked them off from the vantage of the woodside cover without in any way exposing themselves. Soon the galling fire of the unseen foe became unbearable and a bayonet charge to clear the wood in their immediate front was 28 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. ordered. This was most gallantly executed, and the Indians fled at the advance, but the moment the troops fell back to the artillery the Indians pursued them and once more took up their former position, and, lying concealed behind the trees and in the underbrush and long grass, kept up a deadly fire against the ex- posed troops, who had little chance of hitting them as they lay prone on the earth under cover. Twice again did the troops clear their front by a bayonet charge, but it was of no avail. The pursued savages only flitted from tree to tree, from grassy hummock to hummock, to return again and again to the attack as soon as the troops fell back to protect their artillery and hold their camp. St. Glair personally behaved with the greatest coolness and courage. He was twice placed upon two different horses, which were both shot under him while he rode up and down his lines, his white hair waving in the wind as he directed and encouraged his troops. His clothes were cut in a number of places by bullets, and when his second horse was killed and another could not be had, he was placed on his litter in the rear of his lines (for his gout was so bad that he could not stand) and directed the fight as he sat upright on it. For more than three hours this unequal contest against a practically unseen foe went on until finally it became evident that the outcome of attempting to hold their position and save their artillery meant simple annihila- tion. General Butler was already mortally wounded, and more than half the commissioned officers of the command were dead or wounded when orders were given to retreat. Colonel Darke of the regulars was directed to gain the trail by a bayonet charge, which he suc- cessfully accomplished, and held his position, while, as The defeat of St. Clair the regulars covering the retreat. THE ARMY'S EARLY YEARS. 29 McMaster (who quotes from a letter of Captain Bunting) writes, " the militia, pale with fear, rushed wildly along it as he covered the retreat. Nothing could stay them; every man dropped his musket, pulled off his heavy boots, threw away his hat and coat, and, deaf to the cries of the weak and wounded, ran with all his might. So great was their speed that the twenty-nine miles it had taken ten days to march were passed over during the short sunlight of a November day. Before six that night the army was once more at Fort Jefferson." The savages pursued the retreating troops only four miles, and then returned to kill and scalp the wounded. All the camp equipage, artillery, and supplies were lost. Every artillery horse had been shot down, and General St. Clair at the last moment was put upon an old ema- ciated army team horse that could not be spurred to move out of a walk. Out of eighty-six commissioned officers and fourteen hundred enlisted men who took part in the action, thirty-nine commissioned officers were killed and twenty-two wounded, and six hundred enlisted men killed and two hundred and fourteen wounded. It is needless to say that for the citizens of the republic it was for the time being an object lesson as to the necessity of a reasonably strong, well-drilled, and carefully disciplined regular army. The first legal recognition of any body of troops by the United States Government as a portion of a fixed or standing army in time of peace was accomplished by an act of Congress, September 29, 1789, when the regi- ment of infantry authorized and raised by the Con- tinental Congress on June 3, 1784, and which was still in service, was designated as " the regiment of infantry in the service of the United States." This regiment 30 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. was for years the First United States Infantry, and in fact until May 17, 1815, was the nucleus from which has slowly, haltingly, and hesitatingly been developed the regular army of the United States. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the fact that from 1789 to 1815 the United States Government, by congressional enact- ments from time to time as occasion seemed to warrant, kept a legally organized army in existence, increasing or diminishing it according to the military necessities of the country, its strength ranging at various times from three thousand to nearly thirty thousand men. It was not until March 3, 1815, that an act of Congress plainly and distinctly authorized a permanent military establishment on a peace basis. It provided for two major generals, four brigadiers, and such proportions of artillery, infantry, and riflemen as the President might deem proper, and retained the corps of engi- neers as then already established, and from thencefor- ward our Government has not been without a duly au- thorized standing army. In 1793 General Washington, then President of the United States, in his annual message to Congress, asks the question as to whether a material feature in the improvement of the system of military defence "ought not to be to afford an opportunity for the study of those branches of the art (military) which can scarcely ever be obtained by practice alone," but Mr. Jefferson, who was Secretary of State, opposed the idea of a military academy as unauthorized by the Constitution. However, the other members of the Cabinet (Hamilton, Knox, and Eandolph) thought otherwise, so the President left the matter to the de- cision of Congress without directly recommending its THE WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY. 31 authorization; but in 1796 he most earnestly recom- mended its establishment in his annual message "for cogent reasons," which he states at length and on the grounds that, " however pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it ought never to be without an adequate stock of military knowledge. . . . The art of war is ex- tensive and complicated; it demands much previous study, and the possession of it in its most improved and perfect state is always of great moment to the security of a nation." It was not, however, till 1802 that a military academy was authorized by Congress and established at West Point, N. Y. Its first body of students con- sisted of forty cadets appointed and attached to the artillery, and ten cadets appointed and attached to the battalion of engineers. From this time forward this military school steadily developed, and has never retrograded in the slightest degree until now (for the purposes for which it is intended) the West Point Military Academy, is in the opinion of the writer, who is not a graduate of the academy, but who has seen and examined many of the European military schools, the best military school in the world for the practical education of an officer of the line. Its numbers have been increased by act of Congress to one appointment from each congressional district in the United States, and the President is authorized to appoint " at large " ten cadets each year, which are usually, but not neces- sarily and only as a matter of courtesy and favour, given to the sons of deceased and living army and navy officers. Cadets must be between seventeen and twenty-two years of age, unmarried, at least five feet three inches 32 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. in height, free from any infirmity which may render them unfit for military service, and " suitable prepa- ration, good natural capacity, an aptitude for study, industrious habits, perseverance, an obedient and order- ly disposition, and a correct moral deportment are essential qualifications." They must be well versed in reading, in writing (in- cluding orthography), in arithmetic, and have a knowl- edge of the elements of English grammar, of descriptive geography (particularly of our own country), and of the history of the United States. Admission to the corps of cadets is in June, and from the day of his entrance until the day of his graduation, four years from the date of his admission, the cadet is a soldier student. He is immediately inducted into the school of the sol- dier, and his " setting up " begins within a few hours of his arrival at the academy. The discipline is necessarily very strict and almost Spartanlike in its severity, and it is impossible that, unless he is an unusually brilliant lad, a student can pass the required examinations in January and June without close application and hard and persistent study. The cadet corps forms a battalion of infantry of four companies, which is drilled with wonderful precision and an attention to detail in dress, arms, equipment, discipline, guard duty, and guard mounting that leaves nothing to be desired. This battalion goes into camp near Fort Clinton, facing on the parade ground at the academy, after the close of the annual June examina- tion, and the men only return to barracks on the 1st of September, when the routine studies are resumed. The company officers, adjutant, and non-commissioned officers of the battalion are taken from among the THE WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY. 33 most distinguished of the cadets.* The curriculum of the academy, in addition to strictly military knowledge, includes everything else that it is requisite that an offi- cer of the army should be informed upon. A cadet of average ability can not successfully pass his examina- tions without spending from twelve to fourteen hours daily in study and drill during his entire course of in- struction. The pay of a cadet is now five hundred and forty dollars per year, and is sufficient, with proper economy, for his support. No cadet is permitted to receive money from his parents or from any person whomsoever. At the end of his four years' academic course the young cadet is graduated, given his diploma, and is commissioned a second lieutenant in the army. As he steps back into line after receiving his diploma amid the plaudits of the cadet battalion, let us take a good look at him. His age will be from twenty-one to twenty-five years. He is slightly formed as a general thing, but sinewy to a degree, and is a trained athlete with a military bearing, and has a complexion that be- * During his four years' course at the Military Academy a cadet's routine duties include severe and painstaking drill as an enlisted man in the three arms of the service infantry, cavalry, and artillery under able line officers of the army, who have been especially selected for their capacity to impart instruction in that direction. He is required to learn every essential detail of a private soldier's life in each arm of the service, and is also practically versed in military bridge building, field fortifications, and guard and post duty. His academic studies are under able and brilliant military professors, who, by authority of law, hold high assimilated rank in the army and are most competent in the especial line of their profession which it is their duty to teach. During each day's work and study he is under the most rigid military supervision, which is rarely relaxed, save on special occasions, and even then he is held strictly within bounds. 34: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. tokens the very acme of health, the outcome of four years of plain substantial living, combined with daily military drill, good hours, and scarcely any possible opportunity for dissipation. He is a fine swordsman, a good dancer, a bold rider, a good shot, perfectly drilled in the manual of arms, an excellent gunner, and can drill a battery of artillery, a troop of cavalry, or a com- pany of infantry with a precision that betokens a knowl- edge of its every detail. He is generally an able mathematician, thoroughly posted in military history, a good grammarian, well up in civil and military law and in the history of his coun- try and the Constitution of the United States. Has a fine knowledge of geography, is an excellent civil and military engineer, has a good general idea of chem- istry, mineralogy, and geology, is well posted in ord- nance and gunnery, and fairly well up in the French and Spanish languages, and is an average draughtsman with a good knowledge of drawing, and he knows considerable of natural and experimental philosophy. In truth, he is a generally all-around well-informed man, and espe- cially so in all that appertains to his profession. For four years able and devoted professors and thoroughly competent tactical instructors selected from among the line officers of the army have spared neither time nor labour in his intellectual, moral, social, and physical development. He has been taught by precept and ex- ample that he must be considerate, courteous, and gen- tlemanly in demeanour, truthful, honest, upright, and candid in all things, accurate in his statements, con- scientious in the performance of every duty, and ever and always loyal to the land of his birth and the Gov- ernment that has so generously educated him. Hence- OFFICERS FROM OTHER SOURCES. 35 forth his career is his own. Everything that could be done to lay deep and broad the foundation of a noble and upright character has been done for him in his four years' course at the United States Military Acad- emy, and if hereafter he fails to be a credit to his Alma Mater and reach the high standard of a soldier and a gentleman it will be only his own fault. To the lasting credit of the Military Academy be it said that its grad- uates rarely, very rarely, fail to do its teachings honour and reflect credit, distinction, and even fame upon the institution. In addition to the graduates of the Military Acad- emy, officers of the army are commissioned from two other sources that is, from civil life and by promotion from among the enlisted men of the army. Appoint- ments of civilians in time of peace are rare, but never- theless such appointments are occasionally made. The person so appointed must pass a rigid physical and a good intellectual examination, and ordinarily be under thirty years of age. As soon as commissioned he will be sent to join his regiment and assigned to duty under some able captain, who generally gives a great deal of his time for the first six months to instructing his new subordinate. After serving two years with his regi- ment he is sent for a two years' course to the School of Application, a post-graduate school for officers of cavalry and infantry located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; or if he should have been assigned to the artillery he will be sent to the Artillery School, at Fortress Monroe, Vir- ginia, for a two years' course at that institution. Graduates of the Military Academy after serving from two to five years with their regiments are also sent for two years' instruction to these post-graduate schools. 36 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. When an enlisted man is recommended for exami- nation for promotion to the rank of a commissioned officer he becomes at once a marked man, for the fact that he is so recommended establishes beyond question that he has shown himself of superior worth and ability and is a thoroughly good soldier. He is generally a non-commissioned officer of several years' service, of unexceptionable character, and must be a well-edu- cated man to pass the examining board. He must also be indorsed and recommended by his company, troop, or battery commander, his post commander, and the commanding officer of his regiment. If ordered before an examining board by the War Department on such recommendation, and if he is successful in passing his examination, which is certainly searching and severe, he is commissioned and appointed to some regiment other than the one in which he has been serving as an enlisted man. After two years' service with his regi- ment he is sent to the post-graduate school at Fort Leavenworth for a two years' course of study, and ex- perience has demonstrated that such appointments gen- erally make fine officers. The Army Register for 1898 contained the names of more than one hundred and sixty officers appointed from the ranks solely for merit, among them some of the ablest officers in our army, a few of whom during the last thirty-five years have deservedly attained high and distinguished rank. In time of war, and especially if the army is in- creased to meet such an emergency, many second lieu- tenants are appointed from civil life, and generally sent at once to the field. Most of them have some military knowledge obtained by service in some crack regiment of the State national guard or at State military schools OFFICERS FROM OTHER SOURCES. 37 or colleges which have a detailed officer of the army for the especial military instruction of the students, or from private academies which are conducted on a mili- tary basis modelled to some extent upon the Military Academy at West Point. If the regular army is increased by act of Congress at the close of a war, then the appointment of officers in the new regiments are very largely made up from among officers of volunteers who have shown fine natu- ral military ability and rendered great and most dis- tinguished services on the field of battle. Many of the ranking officers of the regular army of to-day are from among this class, who most gallantly won their spurs and the recognition of the War Department by the superb handling of their troops in action and their own magnificent and conspicuous courage in the fore- front of battle, notably the present commanding gen- eral of the army, Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles. NOTE. Among the ranking officers of the army who have deservedly attained high rank and who were appointed in the regular army from the volunteers are the following : Major-Gen- erals J. R. Brooke and E. S. Otis, Brigadier-Generals James F. Wade and H. C. Merriam in the line. The adjutant general of the army, Major-General H. C. Corbin, entered the service as a second lieutenant of volunteers in 1862. Colonel Schwan, of the adjutant general's department, is a promotion from the ranks of the regular army. He is now, as brigadier general of volunteers, commanding a brigade in the Philippines. Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur McArthur, of the adjutant general's department, entered the service in 1862 as a first lieutenant of volunteers. He is now commanding our army in the Philippines as a major general of volunteers. CHAPTER III. THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONTIER ARMY EXPLORERS THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE WAR WITH MEXICO. ARMY life on the frontier in the early days of the republic was especially hard, from the fact that our country, just emerging from a long and bloody war, was not only poor financially and comparatively weak nu- merically, but was really placed under the ban by her frontier neighbours, the English, the Spanish, and even the French Canadians, who as a general thing were loyal sons of the monarchies of Europe, and could not readily accept the startling fact that the North Ameri- can colonies of Great Britain had developed into inde- pendent States and turned a rebellion against consti- tuted authority into a successful revolution, thereby establishing a government which did not recognise the divine right of kings nor believe that certain estab- lished classes of society were entitled to especial recog- nition or consideration from the fact that they hap- pened to be born of titled or distinguished ancestors. The result was that whenever the republic sought to maintain its borders intact and to deny certain claims boldly set up by the French and English trappers and traders it was almost constantly in hot water. More- over, the subjects of Great Britain, France, and Spain 38 THE OLD FRONTIER. 39 on our northern and southern borders who had estab- lished well-fortified and profitable fur-trading posts and held them under the flag of their respective nations were most unwilling to admit the authority of the United States and haul down their flags and take their departure when duly warned as trespassers. The result was a desultory border war for a number of years, finally culminating in an Indian war that lasted from 1790 to 1794, which really arose from the fact that the Indians were encouraged and set on by the trappers and traders before mentioned. During these years gar- rison life on the borders was of such a transitory nature that it meant only the temporary housing or hutting of the troops in roughly constructed log barracks for, at most, a few winters in any one location. These bar- racks were built by the labour of the troops, who also erected the officers' quarters, which in most cases were of one room only, though the quarters of the command- ing officer occasionally consisted of two rooms divided by a hall, which was generally used in warm weather as an office and dining room. The troops consisted of riflemen only, so that there was no occasion for stables, and the post was generally stockaded, and consequently built very compactly. In those days the officers did not have their families with them in fact, such a thing could not be thought of. The frontier meant constant liability to attack from the Indians, and there was no adequate protection nor convenience for women and children. It was a rough, hard life, and one of almost con- stant danger, but, to their credit be it said, the officers generally maintained strict discipline. They kept their troops in fine order and well drilled, and the little log 40 THE STOEY OF THE SOLDIER. frontier posts, with no one to look on, mounted guard and held daily dress parades with as much form, cere- mony, and precision as though they were mounting guard under the eye of the President. It is this atten- tion to detail and devotion to daily duty, this refusal to yield under even the most adverse circumstances, that is one of the very best characteristics of the American officer, and it has come down to us unimpaired through three generations. The fact that the great cities of Pittsburg, Cincin- nati, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago were within the present century only small hamlets grouped around a little frontier army post for protection seems almost incredible, yet such is the fact, not only with these cities, but many others of only a little less importance. As the country settled up around these posts they were enlarged and beautified. Many of the new settlers who came from the Atlantic coast to the then frontier were of the best class of our citizens, highly cultured, finely educated, and the officers soon brought out their wives and families, and then army life became delight- ful. The warmest friendships were formed between the citizens and soldiers, and many of the young officers found lovely and accomplished brides in these new frontier towns. But alas for the bright and happy days! The emigrant pushed by these growing towns, and soon, too soon, the posts were abandoned and the troops marched away to frontier work and sterner duty on the ever changing and steadily advancing border line. The Louisiana purchase from France in 1803 for the sum of something more than twelve million dol- lars was, in its far-reaching results, the most im- THE OLD FRONTIER. 41 portant of any of the acts of President Jefferson's ad- ministration. It includes within its limits the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Mon- tana, Washington, Oregon, the greater part of Wyo- ming and Colorado, and part of Indian Territory and Oklahoma. At the time of its purchase very much of the country within its limits was an unknown and unexplored territory, and the President (Mr. Jefferson) was especially anxious that a fairly accurate knowledge of it should he obtained at the earliest practicable mo- ment, particularly of the Indian tribes that inhabited it, the sources of the great rivers that drained it, the ranges of mountains that bisected it, and its possibilities for future development as an agricultural country. Ac- cordingly, at his suggestion, Congress made an appro- priation of twenty-five hundred dollars toward an outfit for an exploring party, and Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant (afterward General) William Clark of the United States army were designated to lead it. Two more capable or conscientious explorers it would have been difficult to find. Leaving St. Louis May 14, 1804, they started up the Missouri Eiver with a party composed of fourteen enlisted men of the army, nine selected and duly enrolled civilians from Kentucky, two French boatmen, an Indian interpreter, and Captain Clark's coloured servant, who were all engaged for the entire time it might require to complete the explora- tion, together with a corporal and six enlisted men of the army and nine boatmen who were engaged to ac- company the party to their first winter camp, which it was expected would be with the Mandan Indians. They had three boats, one a large covered barge fifty-five feet 4:2 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. in length, but the other two were open boats of six oars each and were well weighted with supplies and presents for the chiefs of the various Indian tribes along their route, with whom they were authorized to treat and whose friendship our Government was anxious to culti- vate. From the day of their departure during all of their travels, which took them to the head waters of the Missouri Kiver, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, they kept copious and minute daily journals of their travels, adventures, and treaties with the various Indian tribes, together with maps of their routes, observations of the latitude and longitude at all important points, habits, manners, and customs of the Indians, resources of the country, and, in fact, everything of interest that could help one to form an accurate idea of the land and its in- habitants, resources, and vast extent. The party was absent nearly two years and a half, reaching the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River, November 14, 1805, near where they passed the winter of 1805-' 6 at a place they named Fort Clatsop, and where they were nearly starved before setting out on the return journey, March 23, 1806, during which they had to depend principally upon hunting for their subsist- ence, with horse and dog meat as a part of their diet. They travelled up the Columbia, crossed the Bitter Root Mountains, explored the Marias and part of the Yellowstone Rivers, and descended the Missouri River to St. Louis, arriving there on the 23d of September, just six months from the day they left Fort Clatsop. The record of their journey is as fascinating to the student of to-day as it was to the public when first pub- lished more than ninety years ago, and not the least ARMY EXPLORERS. 43 of its merits is the fact that it is a plain, clearly ex- pressed, and truthful statement of what they saw and did without the slightest exaggeration in any respect whatever. Next in importance (judging from results) as an army explorer is Lieutenant Pike (afterward General) Zebulon M. Pike of the United States army. Lieuten- ant Pike made two very interesting and very dangerous explorations in the years 1805-1806 and 1807. The first one from St. Louis, August 9, 1805, with one ser- geant, two corporals, and seventeen privates of the United States army in a keel boat seventy feet long, carrying provisions for four months for the party. His instructions in a general way were the same as those given to Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark, only that his objective point was the source of the Mississippi River. He was authorized to make treaties with the various Indian tribes living along the banks of the river, purchase from the Sioux Indians land for Gov- ernment occupation for a military post at the mouth of the St. Croix River, and generally establish, so far as he could, the supremacy of the United States Govern- ment over the authority of all other civilized or Euro- pean occupants. All this he accomplished with most consummate tact and judgment, reaching Leech Lake, which was then the supposed source of the Mississippi River, on February 1st. He then retraced his course, arriving safely at St. Louis after an absence of nearly nine months. His journal, maps, and meteorological observations are very full and of great and absorbing in- terest. I quote two or three pages of his journal, which commend themselves as peculiarly interesting in that they show in what way the French and English traders 4A THE STORY OF THE SOLDIEK. impressed the Indians as to the character of the new governors of the soil (i. e., Americans). Lieutenant Pike writes in his journal, September 1, 1805: "Dined with Mr. D., who informed me that the Sioux and Sauteurs were as warmly engaged in opposi- tion as ever; that not long since the former killed fif- teen Sauteurs, who on the 10th of August, in return, killed ten Sioux, at the entrance of the St. Peter's (Min- nesota River); and that a war party, composed of Sacs, Reynards, and Paunts (Winnebagoes), of two hundred warriors, had embarked on an expedition against the Sauteurs, but that they had heard that the chief, hav- ing had an unfavourable dream, persuaded the party to return, and that I would meet them on my voyage." Fighting came naturally to the whole Sioux nation, We certainly did not teach them the art. On Septem- ber 3d he writes as follows : "In the course of the day we landed to shoot pigeons. The moment a gun was fired some Indians, who were on the shore above us, ran down and put off in their pirogues with great precipitation; upon which Mr. Blondeau informed me that all the women and children were frightened at the very name of an Ameri- can boat, and that the men held us in great respect, conceiving us very quarrelsome, much for war, and also very brave. This information I used as prudence sug- gested." The English and French traders evidently gave us a good send off with the savages. Again on September 3d he writes: " They kept at a great distance, until spoken to by Mr. B., when they informed him that their party had ARMY EXPLORERS. 45 proceeded up as high as Lake Pepin without effecting anything. It is surprising what a dread the Indians in this quarter have of the Americans. I have often seen them go round islands to avoid meeting my boat. It appears to me evident that the traders have taken great pains to impress upon the minds of the savages the idea of our being a very vindictive, ferocious, and warlike people. This impression was perhaps made with no good intention; but when they find that our conduct toward them is guided by magnanimity and justice, instead of operating in an injurious manner, it will have the effect to make them reverence at the same time they fear us. Distance twenty-five miles." The following is such a delicious bit of naivete I can not help quoting it. Fancy killing four bears in one morning and only incidentally mentioning it! " October 17th. It continued to snow. I walked out in the morning and killed four bears, and my hunter three deer. Felled our trees for canoes and commenced working on them." He started on his second trip July 15, 1806, up the Missouri River and through what is now Kansas and Colorado to Pike's Peak. Thence along the head waters of the Arkansas to what he thought the head waters of the Colorado, but unfortunately he made a serious error and established himself and his command of twenty men on the upper Rio Grande del Norte, and was quietly taken in by the Spanish troops, whose ter- ritory (new Spain) he had entered. He was sent with several of his men to the headquarters of the (Spanish) commanding general at Presidio Rio Grande and thence taken by the Spaniards to Natchitoches, on the Red River, in Louisiana, arriving there on July 1, 1807. His 46 THE STOEY OP THE SOLDIER. journal throughout all his trip, including the time he was a quasi prisoner with the Spanish, is full and in- teresting, and contains much that is well worth reading. Aside from the interesting journals of our earliest explorers among army men, which are now in print, there are in the archives of the War Department numer- ous unpublished reports of both officers and enlisted men of the army who have, from time to time since the war of independence, done good in that direction by exploring and mapping the new and comparatively unknown country far beyond the utmost ripples of the advancing tide of civilization, and especially has this been the case in certain sections of the southwest by the engineer corps of the army. All of these reports, however, with their surveys, maps, and other data, have been carefully gone over and closely scanned by the engineer corps and utilized to their fullest extent in preparing the military maps issued by authority of the War Department, and, later on, all this information has been incorporated by the various map-publishing houses of our country in their new issues. If the risks run, the hardships endured, and the adventures experienced by the various large and small exploring and mapping parties had been carefully recorded and could be put in print to-day, the narrative would rival the most ex- citing novel and read more like romance than history. One particularly brilliant piece of work was that of the exploring party sent out from the military post of Fort Ellis, Montana, in our own day under Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane, of the Second United States Cav- alry. Lieutenant Doane set out from Fort Ellis, Aug- ust 21, 1870, with a detachment of Company F of his own regiment, consisting of one sergeant and four pri- ARMY EXPLORERS. 47 vates, with instructions to join and escort General H. D. Washburne, the surveyor general of Montana, and party to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone and return. It must be borne in mind that before this time there had been several exploring parties through the Yellowstone country, and some most excellent and elaborate reports had been made upon certain portions of this compara- tively unknown region. It remained, however, for Lieu- tenant Doane and Surveyor-General Washburne to find the wonderland that old trappers said was occasionally alluded to with bated breath and superstitious shudders by old Indians who had been driven by their enemies into this upper Yellowstone country, which they all seemed to dread. I quote from Lieutenant Doane's journal, August 29th: " Through the mountain gap formed by the canon and on the interior slopes some twenty miles distant an object now appeared which drew a simultaneous ex- pression of wonder from every one in the party. A column of steam, rising from the dense woods to the height of several hundred feet, became distinctly vis- ible. We had all heard fabulous stories of this region, and were somewhat sceptical of appearances. At first it was pronounced a fire in the woods, but presently some one noticed that the vapour rose in regular puffs, as if expelled with a great force. Then conviction was forced upon us. It was, indeed, a great column of steam, puffing away on the lofty mountain side, escap- ing with a roaring sound audible at a long distance, even through the heavy forest. A hearty cheer rang out at this discovery, and we pressed onward with re- newed enthusiasm." This was the first recorded glimpse ever had by civ- ilized men of the wonderful geysers of the Yellowstone, 48 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. which to-day are, in some things, among the most attractive and admired natural curiosities in the world. The War of 1812 with Great Britain and that of 1846 with Mexico can not consistently he ignored in our story of the regular soldier, in that those two periods did much to develop the army and to help form the standard for bravery and devotion to the Government that the regular army has always maintained in times of stress and peril. The War of 1812 was, to say the best for our side, only a drawn game. In the outcome we did not lose territory and eventually held our own on land and something more on sea, but the treaty of Ghent gave us no guar- antee that England would forego the right of search for British sailors in our vessels. She has never at- tempted it since this war, but all the same she never en- tered into an agreement not to do so, and if she should again attempt it (not that she is at all likely to) we could not put our finger on any treaty clause to show that she was violating an agreement. And yet this often repeated right of search, together with the impressment of those who claimed to be our seamen under it, was the actual cause of the war between the two nations. It was against this boldly claimed and frequently exer- cised right of search and impressment, a right which we emphatically denied, that during the War of 1812 our nation was contending, and while the final result was that the alleged right of search has not again been attempted nor insisted upon by the English, neverthe- less the admission that Great Britain was in the wrong and the agreement not to again attempt such a thing was never wrung from the British Government. To THE WAR OF 1812. 49 quote one of our historians, " The year of 1812 brought nothing but disaster to the land forces of the United States/' and the careful student of that campaign will have to admit that the author summed up the result of that year's work (so for as the army was concerned) briefly, concisely, and truly. The reverses that our arms sustained in the war with Great Britain, 1812 to 1814, growing out of our need of properly drilled and disciplined troops, is a chapter of the early history of our country that the popular writers of that day have so carefully glossed over, that the average American citizen has no accurate idea of how much the people on our northern border suffered, nor how often our flag was trailed in the dust, owing not infrequently to the incompetence of our officers as well as the fact that our militia and volunteers were not only poorly equipped, but for the first eighteen months of the war knew so little of drill and discipline that they could not stand against the better organized and well- drilled English regulars whom they were obliged to face, notwithstanding the fact that they were, as was shown later on in the war, both brave in person and fertile in resource, and to be safely relied upon to hold their own against equal numbers after they had been properly trained and disciplined. But long before this latter state of things had been reached we had many a defeat to our discredit and had needlessly sacrificed many valuable lives to enable us to build up our army, and attain a proficiency in military affairs that with proper foresight could have easily been had with no loss of life and comparatively little expenditure of treasure. The surrender of our General Hull to the British 50 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. General Brock at Detroit was an act of senile inca- pacity, not to say of downright cowardice, on the part of the American general for which it is impossible to find an excuse. Hull surrendered a fortified position, thirty-three pieces of artillery, and twenty-six hundred men with their arms and equipments to a force of little more than thirteen hundred men composed of about seven hundred British regulars and six hundred Indian allies; on the second demand for his surrender by the British general, and this, too, without firing a shot, on the threat of the British commander that if resistance was offered he would authorize his In- dian allies to " massacre the inhabitants of the town of Detroit as well as all of Hull's forces." The bat- tle of Queenstown on the Niagara Eiver frontier was probably lost because the New York State militia would not leave their State and cross the river into Canada to aid their compatriots on the opposite bank, who in plain sight and sound were gallantly and bravely fighting a force greatly their superiors in drill, disci- pline, and numbers. The American General Wilkin- son's expedition against Montreal in 1813, numbering with General Hampton's command over twelve thou- sand men, was a complete fiasco. Both he and General Hampton were completely outgeneralled by an inferior force of the enemy, and fell back to the New York frontier without accomplishing anything. The capture and burning of the Capitol at Washington by the Brit- ish General Ross at the head of four thousand English soldiers and sailors, when, as a carefully compiled re- port of a congressional committee shows, the Ameri- can General Winder had six thousand men, principally militia, with which to defend the city, is simply incom- THE WAR OF 1812. 51 prehensible. Whole volumes have been written to ex- plain how it happened, but the fact remains to our lasting discredit that it did happen with a loss to us, at Bladensburg, of twenty-six killed and fifty-one wounded, or not quite one and three tenths per cent of our troops, while the official report of General Eoss shows his loss to have been only fifty-six killed and eighty-five Avounded. On the Niagara frontier during the early winter of 1813 and 1814 the British forces crossed the river into the State of New York and harried and burned that whole section of country, including Buf- falo, Niagara Falls (then called Manchester), Tuscarora, Lewiston, and Youngstown. . Of course, later on, these things were somewhat evened up, but all the same it was gruesome work for those of our people who lived on the Canadian frontier. In the Southwest, though, things were different. General Andrew Jackson, while at Mobile in the month of December, 1814, became convinced that the British Government had determined to send an ex- pedition to capture the city of New Orleans, and without the least hesitation started across the wil- derness on horseback for that place. Arriving there on December 2d, he threw himself with resistless force and tireless energy into putting the city in shape for defence. He called out the Louisiana militia, ap- pealed to the free negroes for help, accepted the services of the freebooter Lafitte and his men, assigning them to duty as artillerists, released and enrolled con- victs whose term of detention was near its expiration, ordered Colonel Coffee with two thousand men to hurry to join him from Mobile, proceeded to fortify the city, and declared martial law. December 10th the British 52 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. fleet entered Lake Borgne, defeating and capturing the American gunboats, and on December 23d twenty-four hundred British troops landed on the bank of the Mis- sissippi River, nine miles below New Orleans. With- out a moment's hesitation General Jackson went down to meet them with a force of twenty-one hundred poorly armed and ill-equipped men. He came up to and boldly attacked them just at nightfall, and a bloody, hand-to- hand action ensued which, strange to say, was fought out by moonlight. After three hours' fighting our troops fell back. Our loss was twenty-four killed, one hundred and fif- teen wounded, and seventy-four missing. The British loss (official) was forty-seven killed, one hundred and sixty-seven wounded, and sixty-four missing. Heavy re-enforcements of the British troops under General Sir Edward Pakenham and General Samuel Gibbs both able and accomplished officers arrived on the field within a day or two. Pakenham brought up some heavy ordnance and a furnace in which to heat his shot, and drove away two of our gunboats, the Louisiana and Carolina, which were annoying his forces. The Carolina was set on fire and abandoned, and when the fire reached her magazine she blew up. After consid- erable sparring between the opposing forces the British general resolved on a regular siege and brought up thirty guns, and during the night mounted them in bastions built of hogsheads of sugar, opening on the fortifications of our forces at daylight. The sugar hogs- heads were very vulnerable to our artillery, however, and soon crumbled away. Jackson also found the cotton bales with which he had filled in his own field fortifica- tions easily set on fire, so he at once proceeded to con- THE WAR OF 1812. 53 struct a second line of earthworks a mile and a half in his rear. In the artillery action between the two forti- fications the enemy's works were almost destroyed, and they lost seventy men killed. Our works were hadly shattered also, and our loss was thirty-four killed. The ensuing week Jackson was re-enforced by three thousand Kentucky and Louisiana militia, but they had scarcely a firelock among them. The British were re-enforced by two regiments under General John Lam- bert. General Pakenham ordered a general attack on January 8th. His heaviest column, three thousand strong, led by General Gibbs, attacked our extreme left. It was supported by one thousand Highlanders under General Keane. The other column attacked our right. It was a splendid assault and gallantly delivered, for at that time there were no better troops in the world than those under Pakenham, who had formed part of the Duke of Wellington's army in the Peninsula, but lying quietly and coolly behind our breastworks were nearly two thousand Kentucky and Tennessee riflemen, serv- ing immediately under the eye of General Andrew Jack- son and General Coffee. The British column as it came gallantly on was simply mowed down. That is all there is to say of the fight. The Highlanders went into the battle nine hundred strong; they came out with one hundred and forty. The action was over in twenty-five minutes. General Pakenham was killed, General Gibbs mortally wounded, General Keane severely wounded. Colonel Dale, of the Highlanders, fell at the head of his regiment. Seven hundred of the enemy were killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hun- dred were made prisoners. Our losses were four killed and thirteen wounded. In the whole campaign we lost 54: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. three hundred and thirty-three. The British forces under Colonel Thornton, on the western bank of the river, carried the American works against our militia, and he was in full pursuit when the news of the defeat of the British army compelled him to fall hack. He lost one hundred killed and wounded; our loss was six killed. The 9th was spent under an armistice to hury the dead and care for the wounded. General Lambert withdrew the remnant of the British forces to his ship- ping and abandoned the siege. When one considers what General Andrew Jackson accomplished at New Orleans with less than one quarter the resources that General Winder had at his command in Washington one marvels at the difference between men. The treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Ghent, December 14, 1814; the battle of New Orleans was fought January 8, 1815. As far as the final results of the war were concerned it did us no good whatever. It was only another instance of the "irony of fate/' During this war the regulars of our army, small as were their numbers, did good work everywhere. The list of killed and wounded, though, is the only record. The militia and volunteers got most of the credit splendid men some of them were, too but they had ever and always the advantage of loving friends and " a local habitation and a name/' The war with Mexico, occurring as it did in 1846, was most fortunate for us in one thing at least: Those of the younger officers of the regular army who had seen much active service in 1812 and 1815 were just at the ripe age of between fifty and sixty when the cam- paign opened, and as they had seen a great deal of frontier service during the intervening twenty odd THE WAR WITH MEXICO. 55 years they were especially well fitted to take the field, and as nearly all of the divisions and brigades were placed under the command of officers of the regular army very few mistakes were made. In fact, few his- torical campaigns are so free from errors or blunders as this one. The two leaders on our side, General Zach- ary Taylor and General Winfield Scott, were both offi- cers of the regular army, fine soldiers, and very able men, of large experience and sound judgment. From the opening action of the war, on the left bank of the Eio Grande, April 25, 1846, until its close, by the cap- ture of the city of Mexico on September 14, 1847, in- cluding within those dates two sieges, eight battles, and a number of minor engagements, we were only worsted in two or three small affairs, and our advance, once it had begun, was rarely checked for any great length of time. Both Generals Taylor and Scott handled their troops with signal ability, and the splendid schooling of West Point as exhibited in the conduct of the junior officers found its recognition in the unstinted praise of both the regular and volunteer officers who at that time held high rank and command in our armies. Out of one hundred and twenty-five officers killed in this cam- paign, seventy-nine were regulars and forty-nine vol- unteers, and out of three hundred and twenty-five offi- cers wounded, more than half were of the regular army. Naturally enough the volunteers were highly lauded and greatly praised by the citizens of the vari- ous States from which they volunteered, and they were fully entitled to all the honours they were given, for, with very few exceptions, they behaved splendidly and won well-deserved plaudits; but it was not until the rec- ord was made up at the close of the war that the regular 56 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. army came in for its deserved share of recognition, and this was natural enough, too, owing to the fact that the regular army has comparatively no local ties, from the very nature of the service, as its men are recruited at large from the whole country and its officers are ap- pointed to the Military Academy (on an average) once in every three years from each congressional district. The cadet then remains a student at the academy four years, with only one vacation in which to visit his home during that period of instruction, and afterward being sent out to the frontier, he soon loses touch with his boyhood companions, and, with the exception of his immediate family, is practically forgotten. The volun- teer (or each company in a volunteer regiment) is gen- erally recruited from some one county or township, and the local interest and pride in them is intense. Every movement of the regiment to which they belong is closely watched by the whole home community, every bit of information regarding them is eagerly caught up, discussed, repeated, and eventually published in the local newspaper. Not infrequently the county or vil- lage newspaper will have at least one correspondent in their local company who writes constantly, sending de- tailed accounts of the campaign and all sorts of per- sonal information regarding the officers and privates of the regiment. Then, too, the duties, experiences, and discipline being new and of interest to the writer, he tells his story graphically and well; and if he is in a strange country all the better, as he can give his first impressions, which rarely fail to be of interest to the home people. But this is not the case with the regulars. The men have been recruited from the East, West, North, and South. Soldiers by profession, they have REGULARS AND VOLUNTEERS. 5? no precise locality that is interested in them. Accus- tomed to the routine of drill, discipline, and guard duty and to taking care of themselves, camp life is no novelty whatever. Certainly if one of them wrote a letter home the last thing in the world that would occur to him would be that there was anything interesting to an outsider in the round of his daily life. After a sharp action or battle he will discuss the details with the men of his squad perhaps with the members of his com- pany for a day or two then it is history, and he stores it up in his memory to amplify on some winter's night in barracks if he lives to get there. He sometimes wonders if he will get back to the barracks! Well, if he does, it will be a good story. If he does not In glancing over some of the histories of the Mexi- can War I find nearly all of them, generally on the last page, pay tribute to the regulars. I quote from one of them: " The proportion of loss among the different arms of service the old and new regulars and volunteers is an interesting object of inquiry. The reader by run- ning his eye over the columns will readily ascertain any fact of this sort he may wish to know. The general re- sult is that much the heaviest proportional loss fell on the regulars of the old regiments. One great reason of this is that they were more continually and actively employed in the whole series of engagements in Mex- ico than any other class of troops." CHAPTER IV. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AEMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER FROM 1846 TO I860. SCARCELY had General Taylor invaded Mexico on the lower Rio Grande when our regular troops then stationed on our Western frontier were at once thrown forward toward the town of Santa Fe, in Mexico, with an ulterior idea of reaching California and the Pacific coast, if possible, by an overland march across an almost unknown country. Colonel Kearny of the First United States Dragoons set out from Fort Leaven- worth, Kansas, with about seventeen hundred men, con- sisting of a regiment of cavalry, six troops of dragoons, two light batteries, and two companies of infantry. It was promised that a regiment or two of volunteers should soon follow him. He was a soldier of pluck, dash, and energy, and the paucity of his force for the subjugation of what was then northwestern Mexico, occupied and garrisoned by Mexican troops, seems never to have given him a moment's doubt or caused him the slightest hesitation. He pushed on by forced marches to Santa Fe, then the leading city of that part of the country, capturing the little towns en route, boldly seizing the country in the name of the Government of the United States, 58 THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 59 swearing in the alcaldes (willy nilly) as officials of this new American Territorial government, as he unhesitat- ingly proclaimed it to be, and reached Santa Fe on August 18th, the garrison fleeing at his approach. He was now eight hundred miles from his base, his line of communication was utterly unprotected, and he had no supplies, nor money to purchase any. The Mexicans, though half stunned by the suddenness of the change he had wrought and inert in their usually placid way, were, as a matter of fact, surly and dissatisfied, and, as the outcome eventually developed, not at all in love with the new order of things and quite willing to aid any one with pluck enough to try conclusions with the Americans. Our troops were already on less than half rations (they received but nine ounces of ground wheat per day and no sugar nor coffee), and already scurvy had attacked the command. Neither was there any money with which to pay the men. The outlook was certainly not encouraging, nor particularly brilliant; but no one complained, hesitated, or looked back. On September 5th Governor (Colonel) Kearny is- sued his proclamation to hold the department with its original boundaries (on both sides of the Rio Grande del Norte) as a part of the United States, and under the name of the Territory of New Mexico. But Colonel Kearny was even then looking for new worlds to con- quer, and already had his eye on California and the Pacific coast a good thousand miles away, without the shadow of a wagon road leading to it, and not even a well-defined trail to travel over, and the way barred by rugged mountains, arid deserts, and savage and warlike Indians, with a hostile Mexican population probably 60 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIEK. by this time well prepared to meet him at the end of his proposed journey. It took more than this, however, to daunt the bold dragoon, so on September 26th he rode away from Santa Fe with " three hundred wilder- ness worn dragoons, in shabby and patched clothing, who had long been on short allowance of food/ 7 boldly heading for the far-off waters of the blue Pacific. On October 6th the command met the famous scout Kit Carson, with fifteen men en route from California with an express mail for Washington, with the startling and glorious news that Commodore Stockton and Captain Fremont had revolutionized and seized California for the United States. Colonel Kearny sent forward the mail, and then, taking Carson with him, Kearny, with only two small troops of dragoons, left the rest of his command there, under command of Major Sumner, who was ordered to remain in the Territory of New Mexico, while he pushed on as rapidly as possible for California. Just as Colonel Kearny left his main command for his hurried march to California he ordered Lieu- tenant-Colonel P. St. George Cooke to go back to Santa Fe and take command of a new volunteer organization, " the Mormon battalion," soon to arrive, and to open a wagon road to California. On their arrival at Santa Fe Colonel Cooke assumed command. Let us see what sort of a volunteer regiment this was. It was enlisted too much by families; some were too old, some feeble, some too young; it was embarrassed by many women; it was undisciplined; it was much worn by travelling on foot; their clothing was very scant; there was no money to pay them or clothing to issue; their mules were utterly broken down; the quartermaster's THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 61 department was without funds and its credit bad, and, moreover, mules were scarce. Those procured were very inferior and were deteriorating every hour for lack of forage and grazing; so every preparation must be pushed. There could scarcely have been a worse outlook, but Colonel Cooke was probably as good a man as could have been found for the command. Pa- tient, painstaking, an incessant worker, plucky and persevering, he took this battalion, after the women and older men had been weeded out, through to California. His journal is fascinating in its simplicity, pathetic in its casual mention of the most trying hard- ships. I quote: "January 14th. Besides being nearly starved our mules have had no water since yesterday morning. . . . January 16th. I found the march to be nineteen miles. . . . Without water for near three days for the working animals, camping two nights in succes- sion without water, . . . the battalion nfade in forty- eight hours four marches eighteen, eight, eleven, and nineteen miles. A great many of my men are wholly without shoes and use every expedient, such as rawhide moccasins and sandals and even wrapping their feet in pieces of woolen and cotton cloth. . . . January 19th. I came to the canon and found it much worse than I had been led to expect . . . the worst was the narrow pass. Setting the example myself, there was much work done in it before the wagons came. The rock was hewn with axes to increase the opening. It was found too narrow by a foot of solid rock, and it was seven miles to the first water. I had a wagon taken to pieces and carried through. The sun was only an hour high. Meanwhile we still hewed and hammered at the moun- tain side. The work on the pass was perseveringly con- 62 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. tinued, and the last two wagons were pulled through by the mules with the loads undisturbed.' How well the two following remarks speak for discipline! Janu- ary 20th. The battalion during the march was exercised on a prairie waiting for the wagons to come up. . . . January 21st. I descended rapidly to the lower slopes, and there drilled my battalion again while the baggage closed up/' There they were, tired, worn, ragged, barefoot, and half starved, and two thousand miles from home, but discipline and training told, as it always does tell in the end, and the plucky little Mormon battalion was ready to give a good account of itself if the Spanish Californians had attacked it, as there was some expectation they might do. I quote herewith verbatim part of the congratulatory order issued by Col- onel Cooke to his battalion: "HEADQUARTERS MORMON BATTALION, "MISSION OF SAN DIEGO, January 30, 1847. "ORDERS No. 1. " The lieutenant colonel commanding congratulates the battalion on their safe arrival on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and the conclusion of their march of over two thousand miles. History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry. Half of it has been through a wilderness where nothing but savages and wild beasts are found or deserts where, for want of water, there is no living creature. There, with almost hopeless labour, we have dug deep wells, which the future traveller will enjoy. Without a guide who had traversed them we have ventured into trackless table- lands where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pick and axe in hand we have worked our way over mountains which seemed to defy aught save the wild goat and hewed a passage through a The march of Cooke's command. THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 63 chasm of living rock more narrow than our wagons. To bring these first wagons to the Pacific we have pre- served the strength of our mules hy herding them over large tracts, which you have laboriously guarded with- out loss. The garrison of four presidios of Sonora con- centrated within the walls of Tucson gave us no pause. We drove them out with artillery, but our intercourse with the citizens was unmarked by a single act of injus- tice. Thus, marching half naked and half fed, and living upon wild animals, we have discovered and made a road of great value to our country." These men certainly deserved all the praise their commander gave them. The close of the war with Mex- ico gave the United States, in conformity with provi- sions of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, an immense section of country, which has since been divided into the States of California, Utah, Nevada, a portion of Colo- rado, and a large part of the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, and in addition thereto the treaty also abrogated the claim of Mexico to the State of Texas, which had been admitted into the Union in 1845. The discovery of gold in California in 1847 did more to Americanize it within two years than all the other splendid natural advantages and resources of the country would have accomplished in a generation of ordinary emigration. From an almost unknown Span- ish grazing country on the far-off West Pacific coast, California sprung into existence as one of the States of the Union within less than three years after the close of the Mexican War. Already farseeing men of the Pacific coast began to prognosticate the brilliant future in store for the coun- try, and the British Lion, ever alert where land is to 64 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. be obtained by seizure, sought to place its paw on a part of the coast of Oregon that within its trend in- cluded landlocked bays that in the years to come might develop into ports of prominence. The excitement that followed the discovery of gold in California set many of the enlisted men of the regular army half crazy. Desertions for the mines were so numerous that in more that one instance company officers found themselves without troops. It was impossible to prevent the men from getting away. It was for the time being a mania, and had to run its course. Odd tales are told of some of the cavalry officers in San Francisco and Sacra- ento, Cal., being compelled for a few months to utilize their private horses as cart horses, driving themselves to earn a subsistence until Government supplies and funds should come out by vessels sailing around Cape Horn, and once more a normal condition of affairs was slowly able to reassert itself. It took only a few years, however, for military affairs to straighten out. California and Oregon were dotted with army posts to protect the rushing tide of gold hunters coming overland from the States and keep in order the roving bands of Indians who threatened the early settlers in northern California and Oregon. During the ten years following the close of the Mexican War the rapid settlement of California and Oregon by the Americans developed much acrimony between the English residents of Oregon, especially among the em- ployees of the Hudson Bay Fur Company and our own people, owing to the fact that, as usual, the English claimed everything in sight on that coast that was as yet unoccupied by Americans, and much of the terri- tory that they claimed was based solely on an assump- THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 65 tion of authority. There was one episode, however, on the northwestern Pacific coast well worth recalling: San Juan Island, on the coast of Washington, is about fifteen miles long by seven or eight broad, and is well timbered and watered and fairly fertile. The great Hudson Bay Fur Company asserted a proprietary right to it and held that it was within the jurisdiction of Great Britain. At the same time a few American farmers and small merchants, twenty-five in all, who had " squatted " on it, claimed that it belonged to the United States. It will be seen that here was a fruit- ful source of contention, and matters did not progress smoothly on San Juan. Disagreements arose over the most trifling things, and trouble followed. The Hudson Bay people were arrogant and the Americans were re- sentful. One spring morning in 1859 Mr. L. E. Cutter found a pig belonging to the Hudson Bay Company rooting in his cornfield and shot it. Afterward he went to the local agent and offered to pay him the value of the animal. His offer was refused, and the superin- tendent, a Mr. Dallas, at Victoria, on Vancouver Is- land, at once repaired to San Juan and threatened to arrest Cutter and take him to Victoria for trial by British law. Cutter promptly seized his rifle and told Mr. Dallas that if he took one step toward arresting him he would shoot him. Mr. Dallas returned to Vic- toria. The citizens of the United States resident on the island forwarded to the commander of the depart- ment of the Columbia at Fort Vancouver, Oregon, a communication in which, after reciting all their griev- ances, Mr. Dallas's threat included, they called on their Government for protection. The department com- mander, Brigadier-General W. S. Harney, a famous 66 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. fighter and typical officer of " the old army," likewise a man of action, was the very one to have received such a document. The high-handed action of the British authorities on Vancouver Island fired his patriotism, and, without waiting to consult with his superiors, he ordered a company of infantry to proceed to San Juan Island and establish a camp there in order, first, to protect the inhabitants from the depredations of the northern Indians, who had been troubling them. Sec- ond, "to afford adequate protection to the American citizens in their rights as such. Third, to resist all at- tempts at interference by means of force or intimida- tion in the controversies of the above-mentioned par- ties by the British authorities residing on Vancouver Island." Thus it came about that on July 27, 1859, Company D, Ninth Infantry, Captain George E. Pickett in com- mand, landed on San Juan Island amid the cheers of the American portion of the population. The gallant captain, with a soldierly disdain for the -finesse of diplomacy, at once issued a proclamation placing the island under the jurisdiction of the United States; and then, in obedience to his instructions, proceeded to select a good defensive position "with a view to the establishment of a force of five or six companies for a long stay." The news of the company's arrival on San Juan was carried to the authorities at Victoria as fast as it was in the power of man to do so, and a great stir it caused there. The city seethed with excitement. Every one, from Governor Douglas down, declared that this occupation of territory in direct violation of treaty rights and while the title was still in dispute was a THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 67 most unheard-of proceeding. The dignity of her Majesty's Government was outraged by this Yankee presumption, which could not be tolerated. The island must be vacated at once. All this and much more to the same effect was to be heard everywhere in the little colonial capital. The Vancouver Island Government at its disposal a force strong enough to sweep the United States soldiers into the Canal de Haro without seriously exerting itself. If those deluded soldiers attempted any resistance they must bear the conse- quence of their action. They would not be permitted to defy the British power. On this last point the colonial governor was emphatic. Captain Pickett, how- ever, continued to unload his stores from the steamer Massachusetts, which had transported him to the island, and to get his camp in order. On the 30th of July his orderly told him that a ship was in sight, at the same time handing him a letter. He stepped out of his tent and saw the Tribune, a thirty-one-gun frigate from the naval station at Es- quimalt, bearing down upon the island. This was a serious matter. What was intended? Were the Victori- ans about to carry out their threats and attempt to drive him away? He had his one six-pounder gun run by hand to where it commanded the island's single wharf, and had every one of his sixty-six men keep near their arms and ready for instant action. On came the frig- ate, her sails white in the sunlight, with the water parting in sparkling rolls before her prow. The muzzles of her guns showed black and threatening along her sides, and her deck was dark with men. The group on shore (for by comparison they were only a group) quietly watched her manoeuvres as they stood there 68 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. uncertain what was to take place. Would a white cloud suddenly belch forth from that black side and bursting shell fall among them, or did the frigate come in peace ? But let her come as she would, they were determined to stand by the flag floating from its staff. When the ship was off the camp she anchored broadside on, and evidently deemed her presence sufficient, for she con- tented herself with lying grim and silent at her berth. When it was evident that no immediate trouble was to be apprehended Pickett read his letter. It was from the Hudson Bay Company's agent. It informed him that San Juan belonged to the company, and di- rected him to leave it immediately, threatening in the event of his refusal to do so to appeal to the civil authorities at Victoria. The captain replied that he had been placed where he was by virtue of an order from his Government, and that he would remain until he was recalled by the same authority; that he did not acknowledge the right of the Hudson Bay Company to dictate his course of action. This done, he wrote a report of what had happened to his superior, and ended it with a request for a supply of window sashes and doors, which were needed to make his men com- fortable during the autumn and winter. Apparently he did not anticipate shortening his stay. On August 3d the group on San Juan were watching again this time, the manoeuvres of two more of her Majesty's ships the Satellite, twenty-one guns, and the Plumper, ten guns as they came to an anchorage near the Tribune. The plucky captain probably watched from his battery of the one six-pounder already men- tioned and two mountain howitzers, and afterward saw that they were so trained as to sweep the squadron ly- THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 69 ing at anchor opposite them. His adversaries, now feeling that they were in a position to open communi- cations, invited him through Captain Hornby, the senior British naval officer present, to visit the Tribune for a conference on the San Juan matter. Pickett, not disposed to run any risks by leaving the island, de- clined the invitation, but invited the three naval cap- tains to a conference in his camp. His invitation was accepted. Military men are not inclined to beat about the bush when they know what they want. Two propo- sitions were made by the British officers, but both were refused by the American. The first one was that the United States troops be withdrawn. The second was that troops of both nations jointly occupy the island. To his refusal of the second Pickett added the declaration that until he could communicate with his Government and receive its instructions in the matter he would oppose with force any attempt of the British to land troops on the island. Seeing no way of arranging their differences, the four captains parted with many assurances of respect and esteem on both sides. The incidents of the day had not ended for the American captain, however. Later on the Hudson Bay Company's agent made good his threat to appeal to the civil authorities, and sum- moned Pickett to appear before a Victoria magistrate. The captain's remarks on receipt of the summons are not in the official correspondence. San Juan had now been occupied for a week, and there was no sign of giving way on the part of the United States soldiers. Likewise there was no abate- ment of the excitement on Vancouver Island. The feel- ing against the Americans continued at the boiling C 70 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. point, and the provincial parliament expressed the de- sire of the whole people when it urged the executive to take action to drive the audacious Yankees off of the is- land at the point of the bayonet. One fiery legislator went so far as to demand that a force large enough not only to overpower " the invaders, but to wipe the last one from the face of the earth," be sent to San Juan without delay. The Americans knew all that went on at Victoria, but they never faltered. Pickett, cool and determined, let the storm rage; he had nothing to do with it. It was his business to remain where he was and protect the Americans, and he would do it. It may be that the British authorities never in- tended to go beyond threats and bluster, and the United States troops had one great advantage they were on the defensive. The first shot fired would be a declara- tion of war, and the side doing so would be the ag- gressor. A captain of infantry with sixty-six men and three very small guns throwing down the gauntlet to a force of over a thousand men, backed by three ships and sixty-two guns, is rather a preposterous spectacle; but at the time there was nothing humorous about the situation for the little party on the island. Not know- ing when the threatened blow might fall, they were in constant apprehension of it. Presently two more ships of war joined the three already menacing the camp. And these five ships, carrying one hundred and sixty-seven guns and twenty-one hundred and forty men, six hundred of whom were marines and engineer troops, " employed every means in their power short of opening fire to intimidate this company of infantry " and failed. THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 71 There was no lack of life and movement at this time about the hitherto deadly quiet place. Letters and orders were received and forwarded. There was no United States man-of-war available for service in those waters, but now and then the Shubrick, a small vessel with Captain Alden, United States navy, in command, came and went, usually carrying despatches. The United States boundary commissioner, one A. Camp- bell, appeared on the scene, but could make nothing out of the matter, so he disappeared and wrote letters about it. Away at Fort Vancouver, General Harney, believing himself in the right and fearless of conse- quences, sustained Pickett through thick and thin. Fierce but not very dignified communications passed between the general and Colonial Governor Douglas. Ee-enforcements were ordered to get off as soon as possible. There was some slight intercourse between the camp and the ships. The officers met, though it is doubtful if any of the bluejackets were allowed on shore. One day Captain Hornby said to Pickett that he could easily land an overpowering force and drive him off the island. "Very well," replied Pickett, "whether you land fifty men or five thousand, my course will be the same. I shall open fire, and, if com- pelled, take to the woods fighting." Before the second week ended that is, on August 10th the re-enforcements, consisting of four com- panies of infantry, Lieutenant-Colonel Silas Casey, Ninth Infantry, commanding, and eight thirty-two- pounder guns, arrived at the island. They reached it in the morning, but a dense fog on land and sea pre- vented their getting up to the wharf off which the men-of-war lay. Consequently they landed on the 72 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. beach a short distance from it, and the first intimation the British had of their proximity was the sight of their tents in camp. On the 14th three more companies arrived, and the likelihood of a conflict had passed. With the ar- rival of Colonel Casey the undaunted Pickett's reign of thirteen days was over. The end of the affair was a joint occupation of the island by both nations, each keeping one company of soldiers there. If the " diplo- mats " (?) of the United States Government of a gen- eration ago had only had the farseeing eye of Lord Ashburton, there would have been no war, and every port on the northern Pacific coast might have been one of our own cities; but, alas! the outcome was the old, old story, for the British Lion put his paw on the land and kept it there. From 1848 to 1860 the Indians of the Pacific coast, as well as those of Texas and of the great plains, were more or less hostile; and as the whites steadily pushed their settlements into what they natu- rally regarded as their own country, there were many frontier combats. It is useless, or comparatively so, at this late day to try and fix the blame where it belongs. In some cases it was undoubtedly the fault of the savages, in many others the whites were the aggressors, but in most of the bloody massacres by the Indians and the almost equally brutal and savage re- prisals by the whites the awful punishment inflicted fell upon the innocent on both sides rather than upon the guilty. There is no possible excuse for the Indian outbreak and massacre of the missionaries and their families at the Chemakane mission at Waiilatpu, Oregon, in 1847, but the action of Captain Ben Wright, THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. f3 of the Oregon volunteers, in 1852 was scarcely less rep- rehensible, although the Indians he killed were part of a band who had massacred a party of thirty-three emigrants a few months before. Forty-eight of these Indians were induced to come to Wright's camp, have a feast and make a treaty. After the feast they sat down to talk, and while the talk was going on Wright suddenly opened fire from his revolver, killing two of the principal Indians. At this prearranged signal his men began firing, and killed thirty-six more of them. Four years later the Eogue Eiver Indians suddenly rose and massacred this same Captain Wright and twenty-three others at their agency. In 1853 a gen- eral uprising of the Indians took place in the Kogue Eiver Valley, in Oregon, and many innocent settlers and their families were killed, their growing crops de- stroyed, and their houses burned. These uprisings were finally put down by the regular army and the Oregon volunteers, but again in 1855 there were attacks on the settlers by the hostile Indians, and unfortu- nately reprisals on the friendly ones. At the Waggoner massacre eighteen people were suddenly attacked and killed by the hostile Indians, six being women; and " thenceforward a sanguinary war was waged between whites and Indians." In 1855 a party of volunteers surrounded a camp of Indians " whom they knew to be friendly and unarmed," and killed nineteen of them, and the extermination of all neighboring Indians be- came the openly avowed policy of the settlers. Need- less to say, this policy eventually led to many ter- rible massacres upon unoffending settlers, and caused border wars in which friendly Indians and white noncombatants frequently lost their lives, and the 74: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. settlement and growth of the country was greatly re- tarded. The Texan border for many long years was the scene of savage combats between the settlers and the Indians, and our Northwestern frontier, from 1845 to the outbreak of our great civil war in 1860, was to a greater or less extent a series of Indian up- risings and their temporary suppression by the United States troops. Treaties were made and fre- quently shamelessly violated by both the white set- tlers and the Indians when it seemed to their interest to do so. It could not well be otherwise, as our people were constantly advancing our border line and the In- dians were being steadily forced back. Many of the white and half-breed Indian traders were men of great cupidity and practically no conscience whatever. In open defiance of law they sold the Indians whisky, fire- arms, and ammunition, and a half -drunken Indian with a gun in his hand only needs a good opportunity to become little less than a fiend incarnate if an unarmed settler or his helpless womankind falls in his way. That the Indian has been wronged, and deeply wronged, by bad white men is true, but it must always be borne in mind that, cruel as the aphorism is, " the survival of the fittest" is a truism that can not be ignored nor gainsaid, and barbarism must necessarily give way be- fore advancing civilization. Again, frontiersmen as- a usual thing, while brave and not generally cruel, are rough, hard-headed, hard-handed, virile men of aggres- sive personality and great physical strength, with blunt manners and ordinarily of but little, if any, liter- ary culture or education, who are ever fighting their way forward and forcing farther back warlike tribes of THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 75 savages in the outcoming interests of a better human- ity. It would certainly be more humane to accomplish the result in some other way, but thus far our people have not succeeded in doing so, more's the pity. One of the most unsatisfactory military campaigns, considered from the standpoint of a soldier, ever en- tered upon by our Government was what is now known as the Utah expedition of 1857, and it is outlined by the writer only that the reader may get a glimpse of how army movements that have frequently entailed great suffering on the part of the regular troops while cam- paigning on the Western frontier are always taken as a matter of course, without complaint and in the line of duty, with simply the bare " "Well done " of the War De- partment as the sole meed of merit. The expedition was organized to compel the Mormons who were the occu- pants of the Territory of Utah to recognise, respect, and obey the United States Government, which authority they had from time to time deliberately and unhesi- tatingly flouted and defied, and also to give Govern- ment protection to small and weak parties of mining prospectors who might .be engaged in hunting for pre- cious metals within the borders of the Territory of Utah, as well as to all parties of emigrants from the East on their way through to California, Oregon, and Washington Territories while passing through the said Territory of Utah, and some of whom it was alleged (and with truth) had been attacked and ruthlessly butchered by certain of the mountain tribes of Indians, aided, abetted, and assisted by Mormons disguised as Indians. It was generally believed that if this bloody work was not directly authorized by the apostles of the Mormon Church, the leaders of that organization all 76 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. knew of it and took no steps to ferret out and punish the perpetrators. This campaign was not a move that met the hearty approval of the political party then in power, but in this instance public sentiment was so strong that it rose above party lines and compelled the Government to act. Accordingly, an expedition was fitted out with the avowed object of punishing these people and left our western border at Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1857. It was splendidly equipped by the War De- partment and started with immense trains of sup- plies containing nearly everything that could be thought of that the command was likely to need dur- ing the campaign. The force designated for the ex- pedition was two regiments of infantry, the Fifth and Tenth, the Second Dragoons, and two batteries of light artillery, which it was thought would prove amply strong for the purposes supposedly intended by our Government. The free-state troubles, which were rife at the time in the then new State of Kansas, tempo- rarily held the Second Dragoons there, and so the ex- pedition started from Fort Leavenworth without its cavalry. General Harney, who was the officer upon whom the command would ordinarily have devolved, could not well be spared in the condition of things that then obtained, so General P. F. Smith was selected, but he suddenly fell ill and died just as the command was ready to start. Accordingly, the command devolved upon its senior officer, Colonel Alexander, of the infan- try. He seems to have had no adequate instructions as to what was expected of him, and only knew that his destination was Salt Lake City, Utah. On entering the Territory of Utah he was met by a letter from its THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 77 governor, Brigham Young, forbidding his farther march, but offering him the privilege of staying in camp for the winter on Green Kiver if he would give up his arms and ammunition to the Territorial quartermaster general, one Lewis Eobinson. Of course he did not comply with the insolent demand, but halted at Ham's Fork and went into camp. It was already the end of September and winter would soon be upon him, and he was nearly out of forage. The Mormons were hostile and would not sell him anything, and he unfortunately had no cavalry with which to forage on the country, and furthermore, while he was a good officer with a fine record, he seems not to have had a strong enough per- sonality to dominate the situation. In the mean- time the Mormon Lieutenant-General D. H. Wells had issued orders to the Mormon militia " to annoy the troops in every possible way, stampede their animals, set fire to their trains, burn the whole country before them and on their flanks, and to leave no grass any- where for their animals; also to keep them from sleep- ing by night surprises." One of his large supply trains which was a day's march behind him and without a guard was seized and burned by the Mormons at Simp- son's Hollow, and two more were captured and burned on the Sweetwater, and a large number of the ox teams were driven off. On the 10th of October Colonel Alexander de- cided to move to Salt Lake Valley by way of Soda Springs, a distance of three hundred miles. The grass had been burned along this very route according to General Wells's orders, in anticipation of this move- ment. The cattle were already nearly starved and soon became exhausted, and before a week had passed 78 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. three miles a day was all that the trains could possibly make. In fact, things were in a most desperate plight, when Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, the newly ap- pointed commander of the expedition, was heard from. He had started out with the delayed cavalry column, and had full instructions, was a most splendid soldier, and a man of energy, action, and decision. It was now so late in the season that there was but one thing to do. Colonel Alexander's force was ordered back to meet Colonel Johnston at a certain given point, and began to retrace its steps, but it could only crawl, for the country was covered with snow and the animals abso- lutely starving. On November 3d they reached the rendezvous and met Colonel Johnston, who joined them with a small re-enforcement of cavalry and some supply trains. The command then started for Fort Bridger, where it had been decided to winter. It was only thirty- five miles distant, but it took them fifteen days to make the march. The snow was very deep, the weafher bit- terly cold, and many of the men were badly frostbitten. In Colonel Philip St. George Cooke's regiment of cav- alry fifty-seven head of horses and mules perished of cold at a single encampment on the Sweetwater. In the camp at Black Fork on the 6th of November five hundred animals were frozen to death in one night; fifteen oxen were found frozen stiff in one bunch where they had lain down close together for mutual warmth. Two miles a day through the snowdrifts was all the train could make. On their arrival at old Fort Bridger they found nothing but the smoke-blackened walls of the post, for the Mormons had burned it as soon as they learned that the troops were en route for that place. However, neither the officers nor the troops THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 79 despaired; they were not men of that calibre. Tents were temporarily set up within the naked walls, and every one set about bettering their condition, and each well man did his utmost. The few oxen they had left, being too weak to haul wagons, were butchered for beef, and the men themselves hauled the wagons through the snow to the hills six miles distant, chopped down the trees for firewood, and then hauled the loaded wagons back to camp. One of the burned-out store- houses, the walls of which were still standing, was roofed over and used for storage. Sibley tents and dugouts soon dotted the old parade ground, the cav- alry established a camp on Henry's Fork, and the dragoons with their horses sought such shelter as they could find among the willows and cottonwoods border- ing the stream. Very soon another camp was made on Black's Fork, two miles above Fort Bridger, where General Johnston established his headquarters for the winter, naming the place Camp Scott, which fortu- nately was partially sheltered by the high bluffs which stood back a few hundred yards from the hank of the stream. Clumps of cottonwood were also within reach- ing distance, so that the men soon hutted themselves, and then routine camp life at once began, and guard mount, inspection, and parade kept the troops in their usual state of discipline. If ever a command exhibited its splendid train- ing this one did when doing duty uncomplainingly while plodding along two miles a day in the deep snow with the thermometer ranging from ten to forty- four degrees below zero. There was little if any com- plaint, the troops were generally seasoned men of the regular army, and the few new recruits took their 80 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. tone from the old soldiers. When a man could go no farther on the march he was put in one of the wagons, and what little the surgeons could do was done for him. Those of the sick who lived to get through to Fort Bridger generally recovered. The newly ap- pointed civil governor of Utah, Governor Gumming, eventually came out from the States and established himself at Fort Bridger, and General Johnston during the winter sent out two expeditions, one to New Mexico and the other to Oregon. Both encountered terrible snowstorms and intensely cold weather, but got through and obtained all the supplies and animals they wished. As spring approached Governor Brigham Young decided that he could not successfully fight the Government, and announced that he would receive and acknowledge the authority of the newly appointed governor, and so Governor Gumming went to Salt Lake City and was duly inaugurated. On the approach of our troops, some weeks later, the Mormons generally left Salt Lake City with their families and household goods and started South. In about three months, how- ever, most of them returned, and found, to their aston- ishment, that their homes and property had not been molested in the slightest degree. For burning our wagon trains, destroying our supplies, burning Fort Bridger, and stealing over a thousand head of Govern- ment cattle, thereby indirectly compassing the death of many of our men, nothing whatever was done to this people, who in the spring were in the hollow of our hand, to do with as the Government saw fit, and through the action of the newly appointed governor of Utah it saw fit not to do anything. And so for the time being the Mormons went scot free, notwithstand- THE ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER. 81 ing the murder of our miners and emigrants and the losses inflicted on our army. Still, the eventual outcome of the expedition was not altogether fruitless, for the presence of our troops at Fort Douglas (an army post located near Salt Lake City) re-established the authority of our Government, gave safety to the gentile inhabitants of the Ter- ritory, and protected the passing emigrants. Final- ly, the presence of the troops enabled the United States district courts to put in motion a series of legal processes that, despite every possible obstacle thrown in its way by the Mormons, eventually ferreted out, brought to light, and secured the conviction of the Mormon leader in the awful Mountain Meadow mas- sacre, where the Mormons, aided by their Indian allies, surrounded and attacked an emigrant train of one hundred and thirty-five persons, on its way from Arkansas to California, and when they realized that they could not capture it without great loss of life (for the emigrants corralled their wagons, and for four days made a stout resistance and stood off the attacking forces), the Mormons sent in a flag of truce, offering, " if the emigrants would lay down their arms, to protect them." Believing that they ^would keep their word, the emigrants surrendered. In h^ilf an hour the massacre of the unarmed emigrants began, and with the exception of seventeen young children, too young to ever be able to testify in court against them, the Mor- mons and Indians killed every emigrant with the train. Twenty, years later the leader in this fiendish work, Major John D. Lee, a bishop in the Mormon Church, was legally executed on the very spot on which his vic- tims perished. CHAPTER V. CHARACTERISTICS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERI- CAN SOLDIER HIS SURROUNDINGS, PERQUISITES, AND PAY. THERE is one element in the character of the Amer- ican-born soldier that, so far as I know, is not to be found in so great a degree in any other soldier in the world. I allude to his marked individuality and splen- did self-reliance under any and all circumstances, and it is developed from three sources: First, he serves his country voluntarily and of his own free will, as in order to enter the army he must seek the service, for in ordi- nary times military service does not seek him", and he is only accepted and enlisted when he fulfils certain well- defined mental and physical requirements. Then, again, he realizes that he is the political equal of any other citizen of the republic, which is a firm foundation on which to base his personal poise of a decent self-respect. And third, it grows out of the fact that the Govern- ment he is fighting for is his very own. He feels that he is an integral part of the nation and belongs to it, as the soldiers of other nations feel that they belong to their own country; but just here arises the difference between him and the soldiers of most other govern- ments, for the nation belongs also to him individually, 82 DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 83 as it can not to them, as there is no reigning family or dynasty between him and the head of the country. He does not owe allegiance to any sovereign or reigning house, but directly to the nation collectively, one of whose citizens he is. There is a vast difference between being a citizen and a subject, for if the soldier is a na- tive of the country there is no position in the nation, however exalted, to which he may not legally aspire. If he has been born a foreigner, on becoming a citizen of the republic and a soldier in its army he is barred from but one office within the gift of the people, and it is the ever inherent knowledge of this fact that un- consciously pervades and thrills him, and holds him to his work on many a hard-fouglit field, when standing almost alone, with his comrades lying dead around him, he refuses to give way and retreat long after he has lost touch of his fellow-soldiers from the gaps that death has made in their ranks. And so he fights on hopefully, if desperately, for he knows and keenly feels that if defeat comes the disaster first comes directly home to him, and through him to the nation, who are his very own people, whose uniform he wears and whose flag and good faith they have a right to look to and expect him to defend and maintain on the field of battle to his last gasp, for you may rest assured that the pure patriotism and unswerving devotion of the regular soldier to his country in her hour of need will not fail the nation when the sacrifice of his life will carry its flag forward to victory. Demagogues may, for political reasons, assail and belittle and decry the regular forces of the United States, but if they have made the subject a study they well know in their inmost hearts that by all odds, bar 84: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. none, the regular soldier of the United States army, both officer and enlisted man, is the most absolutely law-abiding, the most thoroughly devoted, and ever and always the most stanchly loyal citizen of the republic. To him the life of the nation means more than it can to the average civilian, for if occasion arises he has to sac- rifice his life in its defence, and once he is a soldier by profession he has soon lost touch with localities and townships; State and county lines are to him only the limits of demarcation on the map that stand for the more convenient control of the provincial citizen. He is as much at home in South Carolina as Massachusetts, as eager for the welfare of Texas as of Maine, as proud of the record of Virginia as of New York, and as de- sirous for the material prosperity of the South as of the West. His ambition and his hopes are all for the nation and the happiness and best development of all of its people and every foot of its territory. The average American lad who develops into a re- cruit always knows something of firearms, and whether he has been brought up in the city or country, or whether he is rich or poor, it is safe to presume that he has been bird shooting more or less during his boyhood. Firearms are so easily obtainable in our country, there being no Government license required as to possession, no game laws to forbid the shooting of game in season, and no Government license or permit required to au- thorize hunting, as there is in most of the civilized Euro- pean countries. It is therefore only requisite for any one to borrow, hire, or own a gun and provide himself with the necessary ammunition to roam the fields at will throughout the country and shoot at his own discre- tion. Consequently, many of the free public school boys DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 85 in our villages and the farming country save their pen- nies to buy ammunition, borrow or hire a shotgun, and put in an occasional Saturday holiday during the game season in the fields among the marshes or along the rivers or shores of the lakes in their vicinity, and tramp for hours, popping away now and then at any stray bird, game or otherwise, that comes in their way. It does not, as a general thing, do the birds much harm, and really does the boys much good; as they come home tired and dirty, with wonderful appetites and big stories of the birds that fell in the river, or lake, or just out of bounds among the reeds, which they could not find, and go to bed happy and content, and sleep soundly in the serene satisfaction that they have had a day's sport and will have something great to tell their fellow-schoolmates on Monday morning. It is this gen- eral knowledge of firearms, picked up in this desultory way, that makes it easier for the average American re- cruit to learn and quicker to appreciate the nice points of rifle shooting than the ordinary foreign-born recruit, who has not had the same advantages in youth. An- other thing is evident to the close observer, and that is the inherent turn for mechanism that Americans have. As soon as a gun is given to an American recruit he will avail himself of the earliest possible opportunity to take it apart and examine it in detail to the smallest screw, and then reassemble it, rarely making the slight- est error in doing so at the first attempt. Not so the foreign-born recruit, however. His gun will generally remain as given to him until, in the course of time, he is taught to take it apart and reassemble it under the guidance of a noncommissioned officer. Instruction in rifle practice in our army has of late 7 86 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. years been carried to the greatest possible proficiency, and the average soldier of a year's standing is fairly safe to be a thoroughly good shot if he has the slightest natural tendency toward a fondness for firearms, as most native-born soldiers in our army certainly do have, and so thoroughly has target practice in our army been looked after and so carefully have the men been trained at point-blank, middle-distance, and long-range, and taught to fire standing, kneeling, and lying down, both by volley and individually, that the writer does not hesitate to say that the men of the United States army two years ago before the regiments were en- larged and recruited up to the new standard were as a class by long odds the best riflemen in the world and infinitely superior to the Boers, who have recently been so lauded for their good shooting. The man who enlists in our army may in the begin- ning enter the service for various reasons. He may be a mechanic tired of routine life, a farmer with a taste for life on the frontier, a student tired of his books, a young business man who has not made a suc- cess of his first venture, an emigrant who can not find work, or possibly owing to the simple reason that he wishes to become a soldier, or for any one of a hundred and one reasons with which we have nothing to do. If, however, he is a fairly young and active man and comes up to the physical standard set by our medical corps, he is generally accepted, duly clothed in uni- form at the recruiting station, and sent to some one of the army recruiting depots, where he is put "into the awk- ward squad and gets a few weeks of preliminary drill and something of an insight into routine army life, until an order is received from the office of the adju- DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 87 tant general of the army directing that a certain de- tachment of recruits be forwarded to some frontier post for assignment to the regiment on duty there. He is then sent, together with numerous other recruits, under charge of an old noncommissioned officer, to his des- tination. On his arrival at his post he is assigned by the commanding officer to one of the companies on duty, is duly taken upon the company roster and en- tered on the company books, has a cot in the barracks assigned to him by the first sergeant, is placed in the squad of a noncommissioned officer, and his military life and education begins. He now for the first time finds himself at home in the barracks of his own regiment, and soon realizes that he is already being unconsciously looked over and an estimate of his mental and physical calibre quietly formed by all the men of his company or troop. Dur- ing the first few days he is in barracks he is apt to over- hear many an adverse comment regarding himself, and for a month or so has to undergo a certain amount of guying and sarcasm from the two or three chronic growl- ers and grumblers that infest nearly all military compa- nies, and he may, and probably will, find a few foul- mouthed and profane men in the company whose conver- sation in barracks grates upon him; but as he can not get rid of them he must learn to endure them. The fact that practically he is never alone is soon borne in upon him, and it is one of the actual hardships of an enlisted man which it is most difficult for him to finally accept and eventually become accustomed to. His bed is placed with say twenty or thirty others in the main room of the barracks, all standing about three or four feet from each other with an alleyway eight or ten 88 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. feet wide at the foot of them. His locker stands at the foot of his bed, and his bed, his chair, his locker, clothes, and arms are his own particular pos- sessions. Everything else is in common with others. He can, however, go to the company reading room, where he will find newspapers and a few magazines, and nearly all companies in our service have a good library. This room is a boon to many a new and half -homesick man, for loud conversation is not permitted and ha- bitual swearers and foul-mouthed story-tellers fight shy of it. About two or perhaps three months' daily drill and instruction will have advanced him so that he will be detailed as a supernumerary of the guard. This will soon be followed by his being detailed for guard, and when he comes off guard for the first time he is already recognised as a young soldier, with much to learn of course, but still he is away beyond the raw-recruit stage, and he soon realizes that fact. If he is an American, another one of the hardest things for him to learn after his entrance to the army is to sink his individ- uality and quietly accept the fact that no matter what he thinks about an order, he must unquestioningly, unhesitatingly, and promptly obey it. If a country lad or a mechanic he has probably been accustomed to debating and even arguing as to the good sense of the instructions regarding his own work. His first re- mark in this direction after enlisting in the army is curtly cut short by the corporal or sergeant over him, and he is sharply told to " obey, not argue." It is a really difficult thing for an American recruit to accept the fact that he is only a cog in a vast machine, but as the days go by gradually his naturally keen perceptive faculties enable him to grasp the absolute necessity of DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 89 such a state of affairs, and when he once fully realizes this before he is well into his second year's service, he is generally content to accept the situation and live strict- ly up to its requirements. At last he is a cog in the machine, but what a manly, splendid, trained, plucky, thinking cog he is, now that he has learned that it is his duty to give unquestioning obedience to lawful au- thority! And at length he begins to thoroughly com- prehend the reason for the absolute necessity of military discipline. Few people who have not given the subject much thought realize in any considerable degree what daily drill, steady discipline, and insistent and persistent work will in the course of time accomplish in the case of even the dullest recruit. Army regulations provide that " all persons in the military service must obey strictly and execute promptly the lawful orders of their superiors," and the recruit who has enlisted in the United States army is soon taught that the order of the youngest corporal in his company is just as em- phatic and as much to be observed and as promptly to be obeyed as that of the captain of his company or the colonel of his regiment. The facts that the young cor- poral who is in charge of his squad wears the chevrons of a noncommissioned officer, that his appointment to that grade by his company commander has been ap- proved by the colonel of the regiment, and a noncom- missioned officer's warrant duly issued him also estab- lish another fact, which is that the corporal has learned to appreciate and apply two other army regu- lations: First, that " military authority will be exer- cised with firmness, kindness, and justice," and second, " superiors are forbidden to injure those under their 90 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. authority by tyrannical or capricious conduct or by abusive language "; otherwise he would not have been appointed a corporal. It is this lawfully relegated au- thority from the regimental commander to the junior corporal that enables the colonel to enforce the neces- sary discipline to render his command a perfect fighting machine, and when the men of his regiment, by years of hard work in the school of the soldier, have been well set up individually and perfectly drilled in the manual of arms and squad, company, and battalion drill, and have graduated as marksmen or sharpshoot- ers at the rifle butts, as well as learned how to take the road and march well together with a swinging route step, and how to best care for themselves on the march and in camp, the end in view has been fairly well at- tained, and there need be no fear but that such a regi- ment will prove itself a fighting machine of the very first class and amply repay all the time, work, and trou- ble it has taken to bring it up to the required standard. But to attain this end each individual enlisted man has had to be steadily looked after and followed up for many months until he has become a soldier, and to have become a soldier implies much. Let us see what it is that make a good soldier. He must be an intelligent man, honest, clean in person, neat in attire, respectful and courteous in manner, prompt in obedience, healthy, active, strong, temperate and sober, and a fairly good field cook, so that he can prepare his own food or assist the company cook should occasion demand it. His arms and equipment must be kept exquisitely clean, and he is generally well set up in person. He is also quite an athlete, and thoroughly well drilled in the manual of arms as well as in company drill, and he must have made DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 91 such scores on the rifle range as entitle him to be classed a marksman, or perhaps even he has won the medal of a sharpshooter. Furthermore, by constant and reiter- ated instruction, example, inspection, reproof, and en- couragement, he has become so thoroughly ingrained with a sense of his individual responsibility that when on post, picket, or camp guard he can be relied upon in case of attack to hold his post to the last extremity-^ only yielding it with his life or when shot down and incapable of further resistance. When a private soldier is equal to all these requirements he is in the best sense of the word " a regular." The earliest recruits of our regular army after the war of the Revolution were generally natives of our country; though a few of them were born in England and Germany, still the majority of them were Americans, and frontier life was an at- tractive one to those who cared to enter the service, in that it had in it strong elements of adventure heavily spiced with danger, and men who were fascinated with life in the woods or on the trail naturally drifted into it. They were in no general sense educated men; in truth, the surroundings of those days did not afford poor men the opportunity for even a limited education, and the old army records exhibit the fact that some of them were too illiterate to sign their names. Nevertheless they were good soldiers, and outside of books knew much of woodcraft and Indian signs, and sensed danger with an almost unerring accuracy and were rarely caught napping by their wily savage foes. Let us take a look at the soldier of thirty years ago, and in this chapter soldier means the enlisted man. He was a cosmopolite, at least as regards nationality; for in no other army were members of so many coun- 92 THE- STORY OF THE SOLDIER. tries together as in that of the United States. In a single post, even in a single company, the nations of the civilized world were represented. An Italian stood shoulder to shoulder with a Scandinavian; an Irishman and a Russian were "bunkies," while an Englishman would discuss with a German the merits of a Chilian comrade; occasionally there was a son of Israel; and always, general belief to the contrary, a very large per- centage of Americans. Not only all nationalities, but also all occupations and stations in life were repre- sented. In any hundred men one would find craftsmen of all kinds clerks, tillers of the soil, roughs, etc. A bookkeeper and a farm boy, a dentist and a blacksmith, a young gentleman of position trying to gain a commis- sion and a salesman ruined by drink, an ivory carver and a Bowery tough were all in a detachment that one December morning in 1865 escorted a wagon train along the South Pass road. But the last thirty years has brought a change in one respect, and that is, that while, taken as a class, the enlisted men of the regular army of to-day are not one whit more brave or devoted to their country than the soldiers of the army in years gone by, they are nevertheless men of greater general intelligence and, in a certain sense, men of better tone than those who have preceded them. Perhaps this is owing to the fact that the education of the public schools has given greater opportunity to the masses, and the further fact that the use of intoxicants in both civil and military life has greatly diminished within the last forty years. Whisky as a ration in the army has entirely disappeared, and is no longer a portion of the army supplies in the commissariat. Then, again, the standard for recruits has been steadily raised for many DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 93 years past. The army recruiting officer of to-day would unhesitatingly refuse to enlist a man regarding whom forty years ago there would have been no question whatever. He must be thoroughly sound, sober, intelli- gent, of good character, and, unless a man of wonder- fully fine physique, the fact that he could not read or write would probably be a bar to his being enrolled, notwithstanding the fact that there are fairly good schools at most of the army posts where enlisted men can easily obtain the rudiments of an English educa- tion. Many of the privates in our army are men of really good education, not infrequently college gradu- ates, who have enlisted in the hope of winning a com- mission or solely from a love of military life. The short term of service (three years) which is now the law has attracted a class of men who would not " take on " when the term was five, seven, and nine years. The enlisted man with whom we will have to do, however, was, as I have said, of a somewhat differ- ent class, and his surroundings and his duties, too, were a bit more arduous and dangerous during life on the frontier for the past fifty years than they are at pres- ent, but no matter whether enlisted as a private or commissioned as an officer a man must have certain essential characteristics in his being who is enamoured of a soldier's career and willing to stake his life and cast in his lot, for good or evil, for weal or woe, with the defenders of his country. The qualifications of a soldier are courage, good health, implicit obedience, application, patience, and persistence. These qualifications will make any man a good average soldier. If to these you add natural mili- tary ability, or, if you please, genius, enthusiasm, quick 94 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. intelligence, untiring energy, an even temper, inflexible integrity, constant study, and a very temperate life, you will have all the elements of a great soldier, but great soldiers, like poets, are " born, not made/' The pay of the enlisted man in the army of the United States in our day is better and the clothing allowance, as well as the ration, much more liberal and abundant than that of any other army in the world. The pay of a private in the cavalry, infantry, and artillery regiments is as follows: For the first and second year of enlist- ment, $13 per month; for the third year, $14; for the fourth year, $15; for the fifth year, $16; and thereafter, while in continuous service, $18 per month for the next five years, with an additional $1 per month for each subsequent period of five years' continuous service. The pay of corporal ranges in the same ratio from $15 to $20 per month, according to length of service, and that of duty sergeant from $18 to $23 per month. First sergeants are paid from $25 to $30 per month, according to length of service. During service in time of war Congress has authorized an increase of twenty per cent additional to the pay of all enlisted men on active serv- ice during the continuance of hostilities. After twen- ty-five years' continuous service with record for good character throughout the term, if he so elects, an en- listed man can apply to be placed upon the retired list of the army with two thirds pay and commuted allow- ances, which gives him for the rest of his life from $25 to $28 per month, according to the grade on which he was retired. The clothing allowance in our army is relatively as liberal as the pay, and, unless the soldier is recklessly careless of his clothes, more than sufficient for his comfort and his need. Each article of this cloth- DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 95 ing has its money value, and is as follows: For the first year's allowance, $66.97; second year, $29.70; third year, $38.32; total for the three years, $134.99. As each enlisted man enters the service he is permitted to draw what is absolutely necessary at the recruiting rendezvous, but does not get a full outfit until he joins his regiment. An accurate account is kept of all cloth- ing issued him in the company clothing book, and he is obliged to receipt for every article issued him on the page of the book allotted his account, and his receipt has to be witnessed by the officer or noncommissioned officer who issues the clothing. At the end of each year of his enlistment the account is carefully made up. If he has overdrawn his allowance he has to pay the money value of what he has overdrawn that is, it is charged against his pay and deducted by the paymaster when he is next paid. If, on the contrary, there is a balance due him, it is placed to his credit, and at the expiration of his term of service is paid him in his final settlement with the Government.* In quarters, and as far as possible in the field, the daily meat ration of * The total allowance of clothing for a private in the army for his first enlistment of three years is: One overcoat, two uniform dress coats, three woollen blouses, three canvas fatigue blouses, seven pairs uniform trousers, seven pairs kersey trousers, three pairs canvas fatigue trousers, three pairs overalls, seven dark blue woollen shirts, nine undershirts, nine pairs drawers, thirty- six linen collars, twelve pairs cotton and twelve pairs woollen socks, nine pairs shoes for the infantry and two pairs boots and five pairs shoes for the cavalry, four fatigue caps, three campaign hats, two helmets, two pairs woollen blankets, twenty-four pairs white gloves, three pairs suspenders. In addition to the above, the cavalry have furnished them two pairs leather gauntlets and two stable frocks. 96 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. the soldier consists of a pound and a quarter of fresh beef or mutton, or three quarters of a pound of fresh pork or bacon, or one pound and six ounces of salt beef. When it is possible to furnish fish, the daily ration is fourteen ounces of dried fish, or eighteen ounces of pickled or fresh fish. The bread ration is one pound and two ounces of soft bread or one pound of hard bread (hard biscuit), or in lieu thereof one pound and two ounces of flour, or one pound and four ounces of cornmeal. For vegetables, there is an ample allowance of beans or dried peas, or rice or hom- iny, or fresh potatoes or onions. In winter canned tomatoes, cabbage, beets, etc., are also furnished. The allowance of roasted coffee is one ounce and seven twenty-fifths of an ounce, and of tea eight twenty- fifths of an ounce ample to make each day three pints of strong coffee or the same amount of strong tea, and " soldier's coffee " in our army has passed into a proverb as exemplifying the best coffee that can be, or, in fact, is made. So liberal is the ration that when in barracks, where rations are issued in bulk and cooked economical- ly, it is simply impossible for the enlisted men of any company to consume its authorized allowance, and all savings, or, in other words, all rations not used, are re- purchased by the post commissary at the first cost to the Government, or, if a better price can be had from outsiders, sold to citizens, and the sum so obtained taken up and credited to the company fund, which is, under the administration of the company commander, after being duly audited by the post or regimental coun- cil, expended in purchasing luxuries, such as fruit, but- ter, milk, eggs, etc., to give greater variety to the com- pany mess or for the benefit of the men in the way of DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 97 table furniture of a more aesthetic type than that fur- nished hy the quartermaster's department. In the cavalry arm of the service, while the troops hereafter referred to were serving in barracks on the Southwestern frontier, the writer has known of a cer- tain particular troop of cavalry whose company fund had been very carefully looked after, who were enabled from the savings on rations and from their share of the canteen fund to supply themselves with a very complete table set of fine white china, which had their company letter placed over crossed sabres burned into each piece, forming a dainty monogram, with which decorated china their table was set out in a way that was as pleasant to look at as it was rare to see, and these men made none the less good soldiers in time of stress from the fact that when in post they were regarded as something of " swells " in barracks.* There is another source of food supply that in all well-regulated garrisons on the frontier adds greatly to the comfort of the enlisted men. I allude to the post and company gardens. These are generally under the supervision of the post adju- tant or the regimental commissary. They are located at some accessible point near the post, and each company commander details one man as company gardener, who is relieved from post guard duty while acting in that capacity. From the post fund seeds of all kinds that will mature in that locality are purchased, and in due season peas, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, beets, cucumbers, cabbages, radishes, and melons are produced in abundance. Occasionally post gardens * The troop of the late Major-General Henry W. Lawton, at that time a captain in the Fourth Cavalry, stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory. 98 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. have an oversupply of fresh vegetables, which are sold and the proceeds added to the company fund. As a matter of course, when troops are on active cam- paign it may be under certain adverse circumstances simply impossible that the men should at all times re- ceive the full ration, or even half rations, and there are times in the life of the soldier that he has to suffer hunger and sometimes thirst, which is far worse than hunger, and is compelled to march until he falls abso- lutely exhausted by the wayside, only to be forced to his feet as soon as a few moments' rest has partially re- cuperated his worn-out energies and he is again com- pelled to push forward until he once more falls, only to be again commanded, entreated, urged, cursed, and even driven forward with blows by his officers, who themselves, staggering with exhaustion, do not dare give way for an instant, as they know full well the ter- rible need of re-enforcements to a beleaguered outpost, a lonely ranchman, or on a raging battlefield, where the opportune arrival of even a single regiment may be the turning weight that gives courage to despair and wrings victory from defeat; for no matter how exhausted your regular may be when he reaches the battlefield, by all the manhood in him he is safe to fight desperately for the victory of his country's arms, and if need be die gloriously for the honour of her flag. When in barracks on the frontier most, if not all, of the companies mess by themselves. Each company has a regularly enlisted cook, who, according to the size of the company, has from one to three assistants, who are detailed from the men of the company in turn every two weeks to help in cooking. This serves a good purpose, as in time it teaches all the men how to DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 99 cook, a very necessary thing on active service. Three meals are served each day breakfast at 7 A. M., dinner at 12.30, and supper at 6 p. M. It is part of the duty of some one of the commissioned officers of each com- pany to inspect the kitchen, the cooking, and the food of that company each day, and the adjutant or the commanding officer of the post is liable to drop into the kitchen of any or all the companies at any time. In fact, both of them do so frequently, and woe betide the cook whose kitchen, dining tables, tableware, and culinary utensils are not clean and neat and whose food is not well and palatably prepared. Tableware consisting of an ample allowance of neat white iron- stone china is furnished each company when in bar- racks by the quartermaster's department. Each indi- vidual enlisted man is supplied with dinner and soup plates, a bowl, cup and saucer, drinking tumbler, and silver-plated knife and fork, tablespoons and teaspoons. The table furniture consists of meat platters, gravy boats, vegetable dishes, sugar bowls, water pitchers, pickle dishes, salt cellars, syrup jugs, pepper boxes, etc. In fact, the outfit furnished for the men's tables as well as the cooking utensils for kitchen service is not only sufficient, but most liberal. No other government in the world cares for the comfort and well-being of its enlisted men in the matter of an abundance of good food and neat table service as does our own. Meals are served in the company dining rooms on neat pine or deal tables, which are carefully scrubbed several times each week until they become of astonishing whiteness and look exquisitely clean and neat. The men sit down to them on benches placed at the side and gener- ally a corporal occupies the head of each table. The 100 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. senior noncommissioned officers ordinarily eat in the large dining room, but at a separate table, and not in- frequently, at their individual expense, their own table is set out with tablecloth and napkins. There is not the slightest difficulty in an enlisted man in our army saving money from his pay if he is inclined to do so, and most of them also have a balance due them on their clothing allowance at the end of their term of service, and the fact that they can save something in this direc- tion is a great incentive to neatness and good care of their clothing while in barracks or on the march. It also teaches them to mend and look out for any stitches that give way or buttons that come off and makes them just so much better and smarter looking soldiers. There is one other advantage which the enlisted men of the army have, and that is, by an especial act of Congress, they are permitted to deposit their savings at the pay table with the pay department of the army, and a pass book is given them containing the individual receipt of each army paymaster with whom they de- posit. This money can not be withdrawn until their term of enlistment expires and they are discharged from the army, and their deposit draws interest at the rate of four per cent per annum. It is the earnest desire of every troop, company, and battery commander in the army to have every man of his command a de- positor with the pay department, for if he can once in- duce a man to open a deposit account, no matter how inefficient or how good he has heretofore been, he be- comes a better soldier in the course of time. He spends less at the outside saloons or in the canteen, keeps out of mischief that a court-martial may not impose a fine, is careful of his clothes, and as he can not draw his de- DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. 101 posit until his discharge is safe not to be a deserter. In the light of bettering his condition and getting a start in life a young, unmarried labouring man without a trade can hardly do so well in any other capacity. He can easily save ten dollars per month of his pay, and by decent economy as much as $25 or $30 on his clothing allowance during his term of three years' service. This would give him at the expiration of his first enlistment of three years the following: $10 per month for thirty- six months, $360; saving on clothing, say $25; interest on saving deposit with the Government, $21; travel pay and allowance on discharge, $25 say $415. Dur- ing this time the soldier has had over $110 to spend on himself outside of what he has saved, which, consid- ering the fact that he is clothed, housed, and fed at the expense of the Government, and if sick well cared for in the post hospital, with no loss of time or expense to himself for medical attendance, is, or should be, ample. Say that he enlisted at eighteen and leaves the service at twenty-one, he is the possessor of a capital of over $400 possibly, if he has been a good soldier and made a corporal, $450. He has been well set up physically. Has had, too, if he has so desired, the advantage of a fairly good school, has been taught to be neat in per- son, prompt and obedient in the execution of orders, courteous and respectful in demeanour, and careful and considerate of speech, and if he lives to be an old man will unconsciously bear himself in a quiet, dignified, and self-possessed way that will be of distinct advan- tage to the end of his life. If there is any other way in which the average young labouring man without a trade can surely do as well for himself in the same time the writer does not know of it. 8 CHAPTER VI. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW, AND THEIR SOLDIER OCCUPANTS. STRETCHING far away until it meets the horizon at some distant point, or merges into blue hazy mountains at others, is a monotonously level plain sparsely cov- ered with dingy grass and low bushy greasewood. On the bank of a stream, which is outlined by a line of trees or high bushes and set wifhin a stockade, you can perceive a cluster of wooden houses inclosing a plot of ground, which on approaching and entering you will find to be as neatly kept as circumstances will permit. It is an old-time average frontier fort, built by the labour of the troops. The officers' line of quarters is on one side of the parade ground, as the inclosed space is named. It consists of a row of small cottages containing from three to four rooms. On the opposite side are the enlisted men's barracks, several long, low, one-storied, solid-looking log buildings with porches in front, and behind them are the mess houses, sim- ilar in design, but smaller. In the centre of the parade ground a somewhat imposing structure is known as the post commander's house. On the third side is the neat little administration building contain- 102 FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 103 ing the various administrative offices, flanked by ware- houses in which are stored quartermaster and subsist- ence stores. On the fourth is the sombre-looking guardhouse, small but strong. On an open space be- tween the guardhouse and the end of the officers' row an old field piece or two, rotting with rust and dust, point at the horizon. A little distance off on the plateau, standing by itself, is the hospital; and likewise apart, in an unob- trusive manner, is the trader's or sutler's store, which, until the establishment of the canteen a few years ago, was the soldier's lounging place. Down under the bank near to the water's edge the cavalry and quartermaster's stables stand in a row, and not far from them are the wagon sheds and the various shops where the manual labour of the garrison is performed. Somewhere be- tween the stream and the bluff is a group of two- roomed cabins, commonly eked out by tents. They are the quarters of the married enlisted men. In regions where hostile Indians are formidable the fort was gen- erally partly or completely inclosed by a log stockade. In the North, army posts were usually built of logs, in the South of adobes, which are sun-dried bricks. From the head of a staff, rising straight and white from the parade, was a garrison flag proclaiming to all the pres- ence of the soldier. Picture the foregoing and you will have an idea, faint perhaps, of what the average old frontier fort was like forty or fifty years ago. The soldier, it may be said, took possession of the West beyond the Missouri Eiver when early in the nineteenth century he began to establish posts there for a permanent stay. Before then he had explored and 104: THE STOEY OP THE SOLDIER. surveyed its vague wastes, with no ultimate intention, however, of making them his home; and had escorted caravans on their way to and from Mexico over the Santa Fe trail, thankful, no doubt, that he was only an escort, and prophesying, after the fashion of that day, that the land now teeming with varied industries would never boast a white population. But the trend of advancing civilization was west- ward, and the mysterious region beyond the Eocky Mountains ever attracted the restless, and eventually the discovery of gold caused a stampede toward the setting sun. New conditions arose, Fort Leavenworth, on the bank of the Missouri, and the few other forts in the South and West were no longer equal to the de- mands upon them, and in the Northwest the thousands who were struggling along the Oregon trail had to be protected from both the Indian and the white ma- rauder. For this purpose Congress decreed the estab- lishment of a line of posts. Fort Kearney, at Grand Island, on the Platte Eiver, about three hundred miles northwest of Fort Leavenworth, led the way in 1847. Fort Laramie, located in Wyoming and purchased from a fur company, was the second, a year later. Fort Bridger was soon selected as the third station on the route, and at the time of the Mormon expedition became an important point. Fort Hall, in Idaho, was the fourth, and the chain stretched across half a continent. In 1851, under the torrid sun of Arizona, Major Heint- zelman built Fort Yuma on the site of the old Spanish mission on the Gila Eiver, in order to protect gold seekers and emigrants from Mexico and the South from Indians. From these humble beginnings grew the great system of posts, hundreds in number by 1874, FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 105 which covered the West and took an important part in its settlement. A military necessity for the soldier's presence at a certain point arose, and orders were issued for a post to be built. A command was marched out, say on to the wide plain far from every one else, and halted be- side a stream. It had been told to " build a post," and a post was built. All the labour of constructing it was done by the command, and with the few supplies pro- curable wonders were accomplished. There was no time to wait for the slow processes of acts of Congress and appropriation bills. And so small frontier forts were created in this manner all over the West. These posts were badly needed, and needed at once, for many purposes. There were settlements to be pro- tected until they were able to take care of themselves, roads to be opened, and travellers to be guarded. Indi- ans were to be held in check and compelled to remain on their reserves, and depots maintained at favourable points. So these stations were constructed by the sol- diers on wind-swept plains, in lonely mountain passes, on desolate hillsides, in groves on the banks of swift- flowing rivers, and in sunny valleys at the foot of snow- clad mountain peaks. For the time being, and until the necessity for their existence had passed away, they were the soldier's home. From them he went out to the labours and the dangers of the field; he brought his bride to them; his children were born in them; and often he was bur- ied in the cemetery just outside of them. A thousand memories cluster about the oldest of these frontier forts, and the life there is looked back to by many a white-haired man on the retired list of the army " with 106 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. a feeling of sadness and longing that is hardly akin to pain/' It was a life of many deprivations, but also of many simple pleasures, and it bred men who gave a good account of themselves on both sides when our great civil war came. At the depots of military supplies and in the large posts on the railway lines of travel affairs were con- ducted as they generally are at all military stations. The routine went on day after day, and the only evi- dence of the frontier was the distance from the homes " back East/*' It was different in the posts on the Indi- an reservations, or at lonely points far out on the plains, or in the mountains beyond all the usual routes of travel and outside of the abodes of civilization. They were garrisoned by from one to four companies, usually by two companies, and life in them- was one long sea- son of watching and waiting. Either the hard hand of monotony weighed heavily or an ever present danger and the need of unceasing vigilance kept every sense alert. The necessity that created many of them has ceased to exist. Old Fort Kearney, Fort Bridger, Fort Hall, and Fort Laramie of the West and South were aban- doned years ago. Out of ninety-three army posts and cantonments that were occupied by the army along the Southwestern, the Northwestern, and California and Oregon frontier in 1868 but forty are garrisoned to- day, and some of these are only temporarily held by a sergeant's guard. Of the others, they are mostly ruins where towns do not flourish on their sites, and in some cases the ploughshare has obliterated every vestige of them. If they can yet be distinguished, one finds near at hand pathetic little graveyards with their rows of FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 107 mounds. The headboards marked with a name and the date and the cause of death, which once stood at the top of each gravte, have gone the way of the crumbling bodies below. Perhaps a man whose heroic death, if known, would have made his memory famous, moulders here, and if one remembering him should seek his grave, it would be found unmarked, if found at all. These cemeteries tell their own story. There was one at a post, long since abandoned, where the epitaph " Killed by Indians " was on all but three of over one hundred headboards. The commandant of this post died one May morn- ing, and the next afternoon his funeral cortege moved out across the bare prairie to the burying ground, five hundred yards from the stockade. Dark clouds pressed heavily on the black hills in front, relieved only now and again by a few sickly rays of sunlight, which served to heighten the darkness of the scene. The wind as it swept by carried with it the smoke from the grasslands to the west, fired by the " hostiles " a day or two before. Raindrops fell at intervals as the procession moved at common time. All the garrison except the post guard was there, mourning the dead officer. The open grave reached, the young adjutant read the burial service, and the coffin was lowered into the grave. But mean- while sharp eyes kept a lookout to see that no surprise was sprung, and that the Indians did not avail them- selves of the ravines and breaks in the river bank to creep up, deliver their fire, and get away before harm could reach them. Every rifle had its bullet, for signal smoke was curling up from the high butte at the rear, as well as the low hills in front. All the while dark specks could be seen moving about in the distance, 108 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. and occasionally a little white signal cloud would show against the gray sky. When the companies reformed to return the dark specks swiftly changed into objects, and after the little clouds appeared dull reports were heard. The specks were Indian scouts watching the whites and signalling to their friends. Before the stockade was reached a large body of warriors, in alj the glory of battle array, rode out upon the plain from the river bottom and made as if they would attack the soldiers, who with the promptness of eager desire sud- denly halted without orders to allow them to come on. They did not dare to venture within range, however, but contented themselves with hurling defiant signs at their enemies and riding away. The next morning at dawn the sentry on post nearest the graveyard saw what he thought were animals of .some kind moving about the fence surrounding it, and called for the cor- poral of the guard to report the fact to him, but when the corporal came it was light enough to see that the animals were savages tearing down the pickets to get inside of the inclosure. In a few minutes a band of mounted men from the fort bore down upon them and scattered them before they had time to carry out their purpose, whatever it was. Thus did the living at times have to fight for the dead. Of course there was a lighter side to the old fron- tier garrison life, in which alarms and funeral corteges had no part. Soldiers the world over have faced life gaily. Theirs would be a dull lot indeed if they per- mitted its dangerous possibilities to lie upon it like a shadow. On the frontier they made the most of their opportunities, which, to be sure, were not great. There were dances, dinner and card parties, private theat- FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 109 ricals, and anything else that ingenuity could devise to banish tedium and relieve monotony. Social inter- course, on account of their isolation and peculiar experi- ences, was without formality; companionship begot friendship and affection. To have lived a season to- gether in a frontier post weaves a bond that is never loosened. The heart did not dry up in the thin air of the plains. Help and sympathy were always ready when needed. Hospitality was a virtue that exercise never tired; it was practised in a way that gave to the wanderers from the haunts of civilization a new mean- ing to the word. The door was always open, whether it was an entrance to a house or a cabin, and once in- side of it only the choicest it could produce was good enough for the unexpected guest. Although a great deal of monotony existed in fron- tier life, yet at unexpected times in unexpected places there would occur an excitement that added zest to all undertakings, no matter how commonplace in the be- ginning, and it was the chief charm of an existence that will end before the coming century is fairly begun. As it is, not much of it remains except its legends. Oh, the tales those old abandoned forts could tell if they might only step forth from the past and take on shape and substance tales of love, tales of war, tales of the hunt, of red men and of white men, tales of danger and of death, of peace and of life! They know them all. Ro- mance, chivalry, and heroism once lived within the walls that are now shapeless mounds, above which the sunflowers bloom in riotous luxuriance. To-day, however, the name fort as applied to the army stations still in existence on the frontier is dis- tinctly a misnomer, which has obtained from co- 110 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. lonial days, and even much later, when our troops, just after the Revolution, were contending against the French and Spanish colonists, who with their Indian allies not only would not abandon the land we had wrested from the English, but sought to enlarge their boundaries at the expense of our territory, and we were compelled to fortify all border stations by erecting forts in the shape of blockhouses or stockades. In those days the forests were generally thick, as clear- ings and openings were rare, and a cantonment estab- lished in the timber that was likely to be occupied for any length of time would probably have been ap- proached, crept up to, and most likely attacked under cover of the woods, through its dense undergrowth, be- fore the soldiers stationed there were fully aware of the presence of the enemy. Such conditions do not obtain, however, on the Western plains, and the civilian who for the first time visits a frontier fort is usually surprised at what he sees and apt to be somewhat disappointed in his expecta- tions. Instead of bastioned walls, deep ditches, and grassy ramparts, from which frown deep-throated can- non, he sees before him, as he leisurely approaches, what at first sight appears to be a small village set well out in the plain or possibly at its edge near an outlying moun- tain generally embowered in shade trees, with a tall flag- staff in its centre, from which floats the flag of his coun- try. As he reaches the spot he will probably encounter an armed sentry, quietly pacing up and down before an open-gated roadway, but who, if he is a reputable- looking person, says nothing and offers no objection to his entering the fenced inclosure. The roadway has on one side of it a planked sidewalk, and following this FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. he soon finds himself in the interior of the fort, or, strictly speaking, he is taking his first view of a frontier army post, for in most cases it has not the sign of a fortification in its vicinity. Looking around him, he realizes that he is within a well-fenced, large, and ordi- narily level parallelogram. Before him stretches a neatly kept roadway which is edged by a board sidewalk, upon which he is standing. Fronting this road, but set well back from it and neatly fenced in from the road and from each other, is a long line of detached two- storied houses, each with a deep porch covering its front and with a flight of two or three steps leading up its centre to the front door. On the opposite side of the road from these houses, which are the officers' quarters, is the parade ground, a large, well-grassed, and generally splendidly kept greensward. About the middle of the line of officers' quarters and opposite the flagstaff, which is set back a hundred feet or thereabout within the parade ground, is a larger and rather more imposing house than the others, which to the initiated signifies that it is the residence of the commanding officer. At the foot of the flagstaff is a neat band stand, and a few yards away is ordinarily a twelve-pounder field piece, usually one of the old Napoleon brass guns, now out of date, but still available for use as a morn- ing and evening gun, and as a general thing it is about the only piece of heavy ordnance at the average frontier post. The officers' quarters all front the parade ground, and opposite them and at the other side of the gar- rison, also facing the parade ground and several hun- dred yards away, are the company barracks, usually two stories in height, about two hundred feet in length, 112 THE STOEY OF THE SOLDIER. and with a wide porch covering the front, occupied by the enlisted men, which quarters are aligned and equidistant from each other upon a road that runs directly in front of them. Sometimes a small officelike building divides two of the barrack buildings about the centre of the line, which is known as the adminis- tration building or adjutant's office, and is the business office of the commanding officer, and not far distant is the solid-looking guardhouse. Ordinarily one end of the garrison is occupied by a large two-storied building surrounded by wide porches well fenced in, and in the midst of shade trees, which is the post hospital. Usu- ally the side of the post that is toward the main trav- elled road, through which supplies are brought, is unguarded during the daytime, and the gate is always kept open. Back of the barracks are the quartermaster's and commissary storehouses, the post bakery, and the blacksmith and wagon shops, and to the rear of them, generally along the bank of the stream that flows through the post, for most army posts are estab- lished on a stream of running water, are located the long piles of cord wood, the sheds, the cavalry stables, and the quartermaster's corral. While here and there in sheltered nooks back of, or on one side of, the bar- racks are small houses occupied as quarters by the mar- ried noncommissioned officers and privates of the regi- ment on duty at the post, a few of whom may generally be found in each company. For, notwithstanding the fact that married men are not desired as recruits, nev- ertheless enlisted men are permitted to marry now and then, and despite the fact that laundresses are not officially recognised by army regulations and are no FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 113 longer carried on the strength of the company nor en- titled to rations, nevertheless they do exist, and in a semiofficial way, in a certain sense, are recognised as acceptable adjuncts to a garrison in post, and are of no little service outside of the strict letter of the law, for these women actually are the laundresses for the troops, do the men's laundry work neatly, and at most reason- able rates, are most dependable in cases of epidemic sickness, and almost without exception are kind-hearted, honest, upright, and most thoroughly reputable and respectable women in all the relations of life. The parade ground as well as the fences, officers' quarters, men's barracks, storehouses, stables, quarter- master's shops, and outlying buildings, and all the roads and paths are as neat as it is possible to make them. As a usual thing, the officers' quarters and barracks are painted white, and the windows of the officers' quarters shaded by green blinds, and all the fences, sheds, shops, and stables are neatly whitewashed. Nothing more thoroughly exemplifies the old saying "a place for everything and everything in its place " than an army post, and the one thing that more than any other idea first impresses a visiting civilian is the exquisite neat- ness that prevails everywhere. If the post is one of a few years' standing, it is safe to say that the dooryards and porches of the officers' quarters, and frequently the barracks of the enlisted men, will be embowered in vines and flowers. It is a rare exception when the wives of military men at frontier posts are not fond of trees and flowers, and do not spend a few moments each day during the summer season in personally caring for them, with the result that garrisons frequently present a very homelike and restful appearance. 114: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. While in former years some of the old barracks at posts on the frontier were too small, poorly constructed, illy ventilated, frequently overcrowded, generally cold in winter, hot in summer, and despite all possible attempts at cleanliness the inmates at times were "badly bug bitten and bedevilled/' to-day, in almost every fairly modern frontier station now occupied by our troops, especially in all recently built army posts, the barracks are models in their way, and every possible attention has been paid to comfort, health, and sanitation in their construction. Each man is pro- vided with a neat iron bedstead, a good mattress, pillow, sheets, pillow cases, and blankets, a bag for soiled linen, a neat box for his clothes, and has a reasonable amount of space in which to dress, as well as hundreds of cubic feet of air space in which to breathe, and each dormi- tory is provided with neat and comfortable chairs, and is well lighted, heated, and properly ventilated. The wash rooms are generally furnished with running water in abundance and with plenty of neat tin basins and an abundance of soap. Each man has his own tow- els, and, if practicable, there are in each set of barracks one or more bathrooms, so that there is no reasonable excuse for any man not being thoroughly clean, and to his credit, be it said, the American soldier is almost invariably neat and clean in person both inside and out. In fact, he could not long remain otherwise, for inspec- tion in our army means not only clean arms, equipment, and uniform, but underclothing, socks, and skin as well, so that if a man should succeed in passing muster with the sergeant of his squad, and the first sergeant as well (which, by the bye, in ordinary times would be almost an impossibility), the weekly company inspection by the FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 115 company commander would bring him up with a round turn, and if unclean in person or underclothing he would be apt to come to grief very quickly. As a general thing, our new barracks are of two stories, the upper room being the dormitory, while the first story is used for noncommissioned officers' rooms, the company library or reading room, and the company dining room, as well as the kitchen, pantry, etc. Let us imagine ourselves looking in at one of the ordinary frontier posts, say in the far West or in the far South- west. It is generally made up of infantry and cavalry, artillery service on the frontier being rare. So, if you please, we will take the headquarters of some cavalry regiment, with say eight troops of cavalry, the regi- mental band, and four companies of infantry as the garrison, which will very fairly represent some one of our best frontier posts during the past ten or fifteen years. Now the routine duties of a military post go far toward the making of a good soldier, and as a matter of fact they are much more arduous and wearing than the casual observer who strolls into garrison and idly watches the evening dress parade is apt to consider them. That the music is good, the whole command ex- quisitely neat and smart in appearance, the manual of arms delivered with snap, energy, and clocklike pre- cision, the company wheelings the very perfection of steadiness and almost automatically correct, and the march past executed in perfect time and step, with cor- rect company distance and splendid alignment, is, where the United States regulars are concerned, always expected as a matter of course, and yet there are only three other nations in the world who begin to do the 116 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. thing approximately well. As a matter of fact, all this is in the day's work, but it takes a good average day's work to lead up to it, therefore suppose we search out what an average day's work at a frontier post consists in. It begins at 4.30 A. M., when the sergeant of the guard wakes up the cooks and kitchen police at the various sets of barracks along the men's line. At 5.45 A. M. the first call for the trumpeters is sounded by the orderly trumpeter, who is detailed each succeeding day from among the regimental trumpeters, and is for this tour of duty especially under the instruction of the post adjutant and the officer of the day. At 6 A. M. the first call for reveille by all the trum- peters takes place, and is followed by reveille at 6.10 A. M., at the first note of which the garrison flag is raised and flung to the breeze by the sergeant of the guard. The trumpeters are usually formed at the foot of the flagstaff on this occasion, and the post adjutant stands near them to receive the company reports after roll call. As the last notes of reveille die away all of the enlisted men of the post not on guard duty or es- pecially excused may be seen standing in two lines faced to the right in front of the middle of each set of their respective barracks. While all the post guard not on duty at this time is drawn up in the same manner in front of the guardhouse, together with all the pris- oners confined in the guardhouse who are under the immediate charge of one of the sergeants of the guard, the first sergeant of each company first fronts, then dresses the line, and proceeds to call the roll. At its conclusion he turns, faces the commissioned officer who is attending the roll call, salutes, and makes his report that the company is present or accounted for, or, if oth- FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. H7 erwise, as the case may be. The officer acknowledges this salute, and the sergeant then turns again and faces the company to the right and dismisses it to bar- racks. The officer in turn now proceeds toward the post adjutant, halts at a proper distance, salutes, and reports. On the acknowledgment of his report he goes back to his quarters. The post adjutant may or may not make a report to the commanding officer at this time, according to the instructions he may have received, but, generally speak- ing, unless something unusual has occurred during the night, he does not do so, but goes back to his quarters. Mess call (breakfast) is sounded at 6.30, the intervening time between reveille and mess call being devoted by the enlisted men to scrubbing themselves, shaking out and folding up their bedding, and tidying up their bar- racks. After breakfast, at 7.10, comes stable call, and the men of the cavalry go to stables, clean them up, give the horses a slight dusting only, and take them to water the stable guard having already fed them immediate- ly at the first note of reveille. If there is to be mounted drill during the morning the horses are taken back to the stables; otherwise, they are sent out under a mounted guard to graze at some selected spot within the reservation and within trumpet call from post headquarters. A few years since at each one of the cavalry stables (if the post was in an Indian country) could be seen tied near each stable door two or three horses saddled and bridled with a loaded car- bine in the carbine socket of each saddle, so that if a sneaking war party of Sioux or Cheyenne should at- tempt to cut out the herd the stable guard could mount 118 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. and dash on a dead run to the herder's assistance at the first warning note of some one of the company buglers, who was always detailed as a member of the herd guard for this especial purpose. At 7.30 sick call is sounded, and all men who are ailing in any one of the companies are sent by order of the first sergeant of each company to the post hospital under charge of one of its noncommissioned officers. Here they are examined by the surgeon and treated according to the degree of their ailments. If the symptoms are serious, the men are placed in hospital; if otherwise, they are given medicine, sent back to their quarters, and excused from guard duty, or if there is only a very slight trouble that will easily yield to treatment they are given the necessary medi- cine and ordered to report to the first sergeant for light duty. Of course now and then some inefficient soldier is a malingerer, but the army surgeons soon detect such cases, and an unusually bitter dose of medicine, taken on the spot in the presence of the surgeon, together with a sharp order to report at once for duty, usually prevents a recurrence of the experiment by the out- witted shirk. Fatigue call is at 7.30, and the men detailed from each company for fatigue that is, cleaning up the post, including the parade ground, roads, sidewalks, rear of quarters and barracks, etc. assemble at the guardhouse, and then, together with the prisoners, all under charge of two good noncommissioned officers, proceed to put the post in order for the day. They usually have a couple of carts or an army wagon in which to place the debris, and policing as sweeping and cleaning up the post is called in army parlance FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. H9 is looked upon as one of the most undesirable duties a soldier has to perform, but all the same it has to be done, and well done, too, unless the detail wishes to fall foul of the post adjutant or the officer of the day. A dirty post is not tolerated in the United States army. ^1 propos of which, the writer heard an amusing story of a well-known captain of the Fifth United States In- fantry who has since joined the silent majority. He was present, together with other visitors, at a Sunday morning inspection of a certain crack regiment in one of the well-known cities of Continental Europe. After the troops had been passed in review the visitors were invited to inspect the barracks, and especially the kitchens. A number of American ladies were of the party, to whom the captain had just been presented. It was, naturally enough, a new and unusual sight to the ladies, and they were very enthusiastic. One of them turned to the captain, saying: " Captain Blank, what neatness everywhere! Why can not our soldiers keep their barracks and kitchens like this?" "Like this!" was the startled answer. "I should hope not. Have you ever been at a Sunday morning inspec- tion at one of our posts? " " Why, no," was the hesi- tating reply; " I have never even seen an army post in our own country. Do we do as well? " " Madam," replied the straightforward and half-indignant cap- tain, " the regiment to which I have the honour to belong is serving on the far Western frontier. Should I find my barracks and kitchen and kitchen uten- sils in as dirty a condition as these are, on any Sunday morning inspection, my first sergeant would be disrated and my cook and the kitchen police sent to the guardhouse." 120 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. At eight o'clock the first call for guard mount- ing is sounded. The details from the various com- panies, always made on the preceding day, are formed in front of their respective barracks and carefully inspected by the first sergeant of the company as well as the senior noncommissioned officer of the same company who happens to be on the detail. At 8.10 comes the second call, and the details are marched to the place of assembly by the first sergeant of each company, where, under the direction of the adjutant, each detail is formed on the left of the one that pre- ceded it. When all the guard has reported, the ser- geant major dresses the ranks, verifies the details, has the guard count fours, divides it into platoons, and reports the detail as correct to the adjutant, and then takes his proper post. And now begins the routine work of the new day, for guard mounting is practically the most important of all the average daily regimental details, and under a good and militarily smart adjutant it is a matter of close inspection and much ceremony, so while the regimental band plays he proceeds to in- spect the guard. And what an inspection it is! Every gun is taken in hand and carefully examined, both inside and out, every screw is looked to, every breech block opened and closed, and a sharp eye kept for the slightest particle of dust that may have found its way to any part of the weapon inside or out, and as a final test the adjutant passes his white glove up and down the outside of the barrel and along the butt, and then pokes one finger of it into the muzzle, glances carefully over the glove, and if it is still of immaculate whiteness he returns the gun without comment and FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 121 passes to the next soldier. When the arms are in- spected, he goes carefully tip and down the line inspect- ing the accoutrements, ammunition, and clothing. Every piece of brass must be neatly polished, every belt buckle and strap as clean as possible, every shoe well blacked, and all clothing clean and carefully brushed. Having satisfied himself as to the general condition of his guard, he glances over it again to pick out the neat- est and smartest soldier for the commanding officer's or- derly for the day. On more than one occasion this duty is something of a puzzle to a conscientious adjutant, for there are generally in each company, troop, or bat- tery serving at the same post one or two men whose ambition it is to always take orderly, and the exquisite appearance and soldierly bearing of these privates is something astonishing. The perfect fit of their uni- form, the absolute cleanliness of their clothing and person, their neatly brushed shoes, clean shaven faces, closely cut hair, polished buckles and belt plates, and perfectly immaculate arms and equipments make them living models for the new recruits. Sometimes the adjutant can not easily decide be- tween them, and he has to tell two or three, or some- times even four men, if he is mounting a very large guard, to fall out. -He then forms them in squad, and is perhaps able to designate the most perfect by close individual comparison, but occasionally there will be two or more where there is no perceptible choice. So the adjutant steps back and gives the command: At- tention! Shoulder arms! and then begins a drill at the manual of arms well worth seeing, for each man is sure to be a splendidly drilled soldier and does his very best. In two or three minutes, however, some one of the men 122 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. is either slightly too slow, or too quick, or deflects his piece, or commits (to an outsider) some almost imper- ceptible error, and is told to drop out, and generally the decision is soon reached, but there have been occasions of this sort when the contest was decided by drawing lots, it being impossible for the adjutant to satisfacto- rily decide between two of his guard. The advantage of being the orderly for the commanding officer consists in the fact that the soldier so selected is for the day the messenger for the commanding officer, does not stand guard, and thereby gets an unbroken night's rest, nor does he have to sleep at the guardhouse with the rest of the guard, but occupies his own bed in barracks, and furthermore the fact that he is so selected gives him a certain prestige as an intelligent, neat, natty, and well-drilled soldier, and, what is better than all, if he wishes a pass and a day's leave on the next day he is almost certain to get it. Having duly selected the com- manding officer's orderly and finished his inspection, and the noncommissioned officers having taken their proper post, and the old and new officers of the day assumed their places in front, the adjutant puts his guard at parade rest and orders the music to beat off. The band marches down the line to the left, back to the right, and assumes its position on the right of the line. The adjutant then brings the guard to a carry arms, forms it in close order, orders it to present arms, and then turns and salutes the new officer of the day with the hackneyed but ever military words, " Sir, the guard is formed." With great punctiliousness the officer of the day most dignifiedly acknowledges the salute and either orders the adjutant to march the guard in review, al- FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 123 ways saluting it as it passes, or else, in case of inclement weather, orders it marched directly to its post. What it is that makes guard mount so absolutely fascinating to both the oldest officer and soldier as well as to the raw recruit of soldierly instincts it is hard to say, but that it is so, the frequent attendance of both officers and enlisted men in ordinary times when nothing but routine work is going on in garrison fully confirms. Presuming that my reader is a civilian, we will fol- low the new guard for a few moments and see what becomes of it. Its post is the guardhouse, where all the old guard who are not on post (the guard mounted on the pre- ceding day) is already formed, together with all the prisoners who are confined in the guardhouse, who are formed on the left of the old guard. As the new guard passes in front of the old guard the officers salute. The new guard now forms on the right of the old guard, and on being aligned on it both guards present arms. The old and new officers of the day having duly saluted each other, the old officer of the day delivers the standing orders of the post and both officers pro- ceed to post headquarters, where, on reporting to the commanding officer of the post, the old officer is re- lieved and the new officer of the day given any instruc- tions other than routine orders that may be necessary. In the meantime the two senior noncommissioned offi- cers of both the old and new guard have called the roll of the prisoners, verified their presence, and re- ceipted in the guard book for both them and all imple- ments, such as shovels, rakes, brooms, and whatever it is necessary for the prisoners to use in policing (or cleaning) the post. The first detail of the new guard 124 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. now relieves the last detail of the old, and the old guard is dismissed and marched to barracks. Guard duty is always hard, inasmuch as it breaks the hours of rest. Army surgeons have given it as their opinion that the principal reason why an enlisted man of thirty or forty years' service is as a general thing more of a broken man than an officer of the same length of service arises from the fact that the officer does not, save on comparatively rare occasions, have his rest broken anywhere near as often as the average enlisted man. Still guard duty is one of the most important things either an officer or enlisted man has to learn, and the keenly trained acuteness of an enlisted man on guard has more than once prevented a surprise and saved a post or detachment, both in civilized and sav- age warfare. Guard mounting over, the adjutant proceeds to the administration building, which is the office of the com- manding officer as well as his own. If the day's mail has arrived he finds the commanding officer already through with his own official mail and awaiting the adjutant's arrival, that the adjutant may open that portion of the regimental mail addressed to him as adjutant. These letters are carefully scanned, and if there is anything outside of the usual routine matters he takes the colonel's orders thereon. The regimental records for the preceding day are brought in by the sergeant major, and all official letters, which have been carefully copied in the letter book, are signed by the colonel or the adjutant, as the case may be. The daily morning report is gone over carefully by both the colonel and the adjutant. All necessary orders are issued, letters written, and details made. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 125 The countersign (or password) for the next day is selected, and most likely the regimental quartermaster and commissary are both sent for and given orders, or perhaps taken into consultation. Then comes adjutant's call, and all the first ser- geants of the various companies report to the sergeant major for the next day's details. If there is no regi- mental drill the colonel will quietly walk around the post, with an eye to everything going, and then go to his quarters; otherwise he will mount his horse and attend drill. In the meantime the adjutant has to look over and examine reports of all kinds boards of survey, garri- son court-martial records, inspection reports, regimental and company rosters; inspect the regimental band; and dispose of many other items in the day's work. From 5.30 A. M. to 11 P. M. the post bugler is kept on the alert, and perhaps the quickest way to show the routine work of a large post would be to copy the list of service call of one at which the writer formerly served. Here it is: Bugler to awaken cooks at 5 A. M. First call for reveille, 5.45. Eeveille, 5.55. Assembly, 6. Mess call (breakfast), 6.15. Stable call, 7. Sick call, 7.05. Fa- tigue call, 8. Drill call (boots and saddles), 8.05. As- sembly, 8.10. Kecall from fatigue, 11.45. First ser- geant call, 11.50. Mess call (dinner), 12 M. Fatigue call. 1 P. M. Drill call, 2. Eecall from drill, 3. Eecall from fatigue, 4.30. Stable call, 4.40. Assembly, 5.25. Dress parade, 5.40. Mess call (supper), 6.30. Tattoo, 9. Call to quarters, 10.40. Taps, 11. Dress parade ends the working day, and looking back at the service on the frontier, it was, during the 126 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. summer months, a pretty sight. The vine-covered porches of the officers' quarters would be bright with the gay dresses of the officers' wives and daughters, and frequently the board sidewalk opposite the flagstaff would be lined with visitors watching the parade, and on the conclusion of the ceremony the young children would come running and -shouting to meet their re- spective fathers and carry them into dinner, and so sometimes with a youngster mounted on each shoulder a good-natured, laughing, and happy father, in his full- dress uniform, would stroll up the board sidewalk to his quarters and his dinner. It must not be supposed that the list of calls was always the same. On certain days, Saturday especially, part of the day was devoted to thoroughly policing the post by nearly the whole command, and the afternoon set aside for the men to put themselves in shape for the regular Sunday morning inspection; but Sunday inspec- tion has now been superseded by a Saturday inspection, and on Sunday the least possible amount of military work is done. During certain months a great deal of time is de- voted to target practice, and both officers and men spend hours a day at the rifle range, with the result that our army contains the best rifle shots to be found anywhere, and its average is far and away beyond that of the troops of any other army in the world. The spirit of cohesion is always strong in companies and troops, and the members of one seldom seek asso- ciates outside of it. Two regiments in the same com- mand are often comparative strangers to each other, the cavalry going its way, the infantry its way. Not because there are unkindly feelings between them, but FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 127 because each is sufficient to itself. With the members of his own company or troop the enlisted man plays his games of cards in its quarters or skylarks on its parade. The barrack room, in which the men are quartered, is their most important room; the others, such as the orderly room, the storeroom, and the library, are mere- ly adjuncts to it. Room orderlies keep it as clean as a Dutch housewife's kitchen, and highly polished lamps suspended from ceiling or rafter shed a cheerful light at night. This room, then, becomes the centre of the soldier's life in garrison. Here he is seen at his ease, free from official oversight, with his belts off, so to speak. However, the glance of authority still reaches him, for in the barrack room he is always under some sergeant's eye; hence his standing with his company commander depends to a certain extent upon his good conduct there. His aptitude for special kinds of duty is determined there; also his qualifications for promo- tion other than his efficiency on drill, on guard, etc. The "youngster" learns many things in and about a barrack room which are not in the drill book or the regulations, but which go to make him the resolute, resourceful soldier he in time becomes. He listens to simple tales of sacrifice or heroism told without vaunt- ing, which arouse in him a spirit of emulation and de- sire. He sees a ready acceptance and a cheerful execu- tion of all duties, no matter how hard or disagreeable, and he is taught thereby to do likewise when his turn comes. Conversation takes a wide range on the bar- rack porch or around the stove inside, and the neophyte hears and sees a good many things that he would be better without knowing. However, that lowering dis- 128 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. content with existing conditions which tells of ill treatment, neglect, and injustice, and which leads to revolt and mutiny, so prevalent in other countries, is never heard there. There is never the slightest fear about the way the United States soldier will act upon any given occasion. When he is despatched on duty others are not sent after him to shoot him down if he falters, nor is he ever truckled to in times of disorder, and he has never been called upon to bring his guns to bear upon his comrades. The barrack is the barom- eter of the post. When all goes well it is gay and lively, jests fly to and fro to the sound of laughter, the com- pany wit sends his shafts in all directions, while his practical jokes and antics keep the room in a roar. But when quiet reigns there and the men pass each other without remark, when there are no games to the fore and the wit is sarcastic, then there is something amiss; either duty is hard, fatigue onerous, or rations are scant, and discontent is abroad. Sometimes, in uneventful days, the monotony of bar- rack life slowly breeds discontent, no matter how com- fortably housed nor how well fed the troops may be. If the summer practice marches are not near at hand a shrewd commanding officer will find some field duty for all the men who can be safely spared from garrison. He will make details of companies or smaller detach- ments that will take them many miles away. If prac- ticable, over rough mountains, by unused trails, or along unexplored mountain streams. The result is that in two or three weeks the men return to the post bronzed by the sun, covered with dust, and as hard as nails, perfectly content and glad to get back to the comforts of barrack life once more. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 129 Deserters from the army at frontier posts are not uncommon, but they are generally men who have en- listed with the deliberate intention of deserting as soon as they reached that portion of the West or South or the Pacific coast that they were unable to pay their way to. They take the chances as to arrest, and enlist under an assumed name, giving a false residence, nativity, and age. Of late years, how- ever, the recruiting officers are particularly careful whom they enlist, and generally refuse men who can not show a good record as a citizen, and as a result the yearly average of desertions in the army is rapidly decreasing. Hunting at frontier posts is very popular, and it is encouraged on account of the knowledge of the coun- try gained by the men and the experience in taking care of themselves which it gives. Parties are formed, a wagon and mules are furnished by the quartermas- ter, and away they go afield or into the mountains for a week, a fortnight, and sometimes a month. The hunt- ers rarely return without game, which is distributed to the entire command as widely as the amount brought in will permit, and it is always a welcome change in a rather monotonous diet. Athletic games of all sorts are frequently indulged in by the enlisted men, and always encouraged to the utmost by all of the officers. Nearly every company or troop in the army has its boxing gloves, baseball club, ropes for the tug of war, sets of parallel bars, and a good shotgun or two for those who wish to go bird shooting. If located in the vicinity of trout streams, the first sergeant's room generally contains an ample supply of fishing tackle that belongs to the company 130 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. for the use of such members of it as may be disciples of quaint old Izaak Walton. Life passed smoothly and quietly enough in times of order at all the many stations on the frontier, whether under the burning sun of Arizona one day or amid the arctic cold of Dakota the next. It did not matter much what went on outside, for inside life was always the same. Whether danger lurked just beyond the sally port or Peace was monarch of all the routine was strictly kept up, and it is important to appreciate it, as it formed a large part of the soldier's existence. It was not all campaigning and field work, the ever pres- ent risk and the wild clash of arms, although there was plenty of that, too, but it was in these posts in quiet seasons that the Western soldier was formed a strong, brave man of many resources and vast endurance, loyal to his country and his officers, willing to follow not only where they led, but to stay with them to the end, no matter how hopeless the end looked. The veteran of " the old army " was always the library's steadiest patron. He was often found there, or else stretched at full length on his bunk, intent upon a book relating to that part of the civil war in which he was an actor. Regardless of the noise and movement all around him, he lived over again that glorious time, one year of which to him was worth a lifetime of this period of peace. If one listened to these old fellows talking to the youngsters, or questioned them, he found that they had a knowledge of that great conflict wide enough and minute enough to humble many a one who plumed himself upon his information. They had not lived beyond it and were completely en- veloped in its memories. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 131 They are mostly gone now, more's the pity. There were one or two in almost every troop and company a few years ago, sturdy old fellows wearing four to six service chevrons on their arms. They had taken life as it came: Mexico, the plains, the war between the States, and then the plains again. They had looked on them all and were proud of themselves and their rec- ords, as they had a right to be. "How long have you been a noncommissioned offi- cer? " a lieutenant of two-and-twenty demanded reprov- ingly of his sergeant of the guard, whom he thought needed a little instruction in his duties. " Twenty-four years the 17th of last month, sir/' was the answer. Stiff and artificial in their movements, faithful in the highest degree, wedded to old times and old things, contemptuous and distrustful of innovations, these old fellows were disdainful of the young men, who were always taking " rises " out of them and the methods they were taught. It is even to be feared they were inclined to look down on the alert young gentlemen whose first commissions needed the salt of usage. They were well cared for and looked out for by their officers, who liked and respected them. On account of their records they had special rights and privileges which they understood perfectly were no more than their due, and, if the undiluted truth must be told, they occasion- ally presumed upon them. It was a fine sight to see one of these old men on muster or monthly inspection. Erect and soldierly, with his red face glistening, his white hair cut close, his arms and accoutrements shining, not a wrinkle in his neat-fitting uniform, nor a speck of dust about him, 132 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. his corps badge, and it may be a medal, on his breast, he stood in the ranks among the others like an oak tree in a grove of cottonwood saplings. Then the gray- haired colonel with whom he had served in " the long ago," and whom as a general he had followed into more than one " close corner " during the great war, would come down the line and stop in front of him. " Well, Blank, how are you getting along? " asks the colonel. Blank's hand in salute slaps against his rifle sharply enough to make the bands rattle, while his chin rises two inches. " Fairly well, sir," he answers. " They use you pretty well, do they? " "I can't complain. The hash, mornings, has got a sight f more potatoes than meat in it.' ' ; The honour of the cloth forbids an unqualified approval of treat- ment. "Well this is different from Camp Floyd in '57, isn't it?" the colonel continues. " Yes, sir. There was soldiering in those days." Sometimes it was the general in whose corps he had served, now a department commander, who caught sight of the badge as he went along the line and stopped to question him. In either case the 4 old fellow's eye would brighten, his chest swell out, and a poker would be limp compared with him, and his contempt for those not so honoured would become painfully intense, and apt to be expressed, sad to say, more or less incoherently to- ward nightfall. The soldier in the West, even in the fifties, was not entirely beyond the influences of the fairer sex. The group of laundresses' cabins were known as " Soapsuds FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 133 Row," in delicate allusion to the vocation of the wives of the married men, three or four in each company, who occupied them. These laundresses and the women servants of the officers* families, when there were such, furnished the female element in the enlisted bachelors' social circle. They were good, honest, industrious wives, usually well on in years, minutely familiar with their rights (for in those days they were practically on the muster roll of the company), which they dared to maintain with acrimonious volubility, as became the martially inclined, and they were ever ready for a fight, yet they were kind at heart if rough in manner, always ready to assist in times of distress. Often and often the officers' wives would have found a hard life harder if they had not been at hand, and they were ever ready with a help that can not be paid for with money. More than one army officer whose birthplace was some remote frontier fort was taken care of in life's earliest hour by a good-hearted old soul who at other times was some- thing of a thorn in the father's side. They had children of their own, plenty of them, and it was no rare sight to see the mother doing her share of the company washing, with a big soldier con- tentedly taking care of the children, sitting by the kitchen stove, or helping to hang out the clothes. When there happened to be a well-favoured young woman in the family, what a belle she was, and how the offers of marriage rained on her, from the self-con- scious dandy sergeant major down to a cook's police, and how she commonly selected the worthless but showy fel- low! The laundresses and women servants were the hon- oured guests at the dances, theatricals, and other enter- tainments given by the men, and the former responded 10 134: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. with merrymaking in their own quarters, where the space was small but the enjoyment huge. The women servants attended these affairs with a lover apiece, for let it be known that no woman, old or young, beautiful or homely, has ever yet entered a garrison without hav- ing a wooer at her feet if her stay was reasonably long. The enlisted man of the United States army, whether he be white or black, is not one bit of a boy, as the good people at home are wont to designate the volunteer, but, on the contrary, he is a very level-headed manly man. From the moment he joins his regiment as a new recruit he is taught that he is a man, and a man's full duty as a soldier is expected of him, and nothing less will be tolerated. No matter what his individual ideas may have been prior to enlisting in the army, two years' service generally renders him a strong, well-trained, self-reliant, vigorous, virile man. He may not be, and frequently is not, in a general sense a well- educated man, nay, more, occasionally he is not even intellectually strong, but when a crisis arises the care- ful training he has received, together with the ideas he has almost unconsciously imbibed in his daily life of routine garrison duty, will surely enable him to do his whole duty on the field of battle even under the most desperate circumstances. As he increases in years and in length of service he is apt to become quiet and reserved in manner, though not at all taciturn, and is almost invariably pleasant in his intercourse with all his fellow-soldiers, but while he says very little at any time, he usually exhibits a broad tolerance for the high spirits of the younger men, and especially for the new recruits. His bearing is courteous and his manners good, and he is apt to be a bit shy, but he can be FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 135 safely depended upon to do his best under all circum- stances and at all times. It was a source of no little satisfaction to his officers to know that the sisters of charity and the gentlewomen hospital nurses in the late Spanish war, without exception, pronounced the regular soldiers to be the least troublesome and the most con- siderate and polite of all the wounded and sick soldiers whom they had to wait upon and nurse. His manners have certainly undergone one admirable change. I allude to the old custom or habit of swearing. Now swearing was a common enough thing in the army of thirty-five years ago, but to-day it is as rare among regular soldiers as it used to be common, and so also of drinking alcoholic liquors to excess, especially on pay day. Both of these former habits of the army have steadily become less in each succeeding year since 1870, so that the enlisted men who swear or habitually drink alcoholic liquors form only a very small percent- age of our regular regiments. The disuse of liquor among enlisted men was greatly accelerated by the steady development of rifle practice in the army. After the system was thoroughly organized it became the am- bition of many of the older men to become marksmen or sharpshooters. This they soon realized that they could not do if they continued to habitually use strong liquors, and so most of the remaining whisky drinkers in the army gradually abandoned the habit, so that our target practice not only gave us the best shots of any army in the world, but it helped to reform most of the few habitual hard drinkers then remaining in our service. The post canteen of to-day, which seems to have so much excited the ire of some of the most uncompro- 136 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. mising of the advocates of teetotalism, is an outgrowth of the experience of the English army in India. All men need an outlet in the way of comradeship and society, and if they can not get it in a good and legiti- mate way, they will seek it in a bad and illegitimate direction. Some place must be had for social inter- course, and some enjoyment must be obtainable in the way of a slight stimulant to good fellowship. This the post canteen affords the enlisted man, and it is so regu- lated and looked after that it offers the maximum of simple and legitimate enjoyment at the minimum of cost, and is entirely debarred from everything that in any way tends to degrade or lower the status of a good, respectable man. It is, in fact, the enlisted man's club, and out of it he gets, in the opinion of the writer, nothing but good. The principle upon which it is es- tablished is very simple, and is this: An officer of the post where one is to be established is detailed to take charge of it beside and in addition to his other duties. A vacant building at the post as suitable as may be that happens to be unoccupied at the time and can be spared is turned over to him for this purpose. The post commander authorizes him, un- der Article XXXIX of Army Eegulations in regard to Post Exchanges, to sell beer and light wines to the en- listed men to the exclusion of any outsiders now that post traders or sutlers are no longer recognised by law. He has the building put in order, at no cost to the Gov- ernment, by the enlisted men, purchases entirely on credit from the leading brewers all the beer he requires, procures in the same way beer glasses (always the largest to be found in the market), and hires a bar- tender, who is always a civilian, and opens the canteen. FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 137 The men are each given credit (so many tickets at five cents each) to the amount of one dollar a week no more during the month. At the first monthly payment thereafter this amount is collected from the men at the pay table. This is the beginning. In six or eight months the canteen possesses what is practically a good store, well stocked with the kind of goods that the men may desire to buy a billiard table, a restaurant, and any other thing that the men may desire, such as check- erboards, dominoes, chess, and card tables (the men are not allowed to play for money or stakes of any sort). They are now the possessors of a neat, roomy, and pleas- ant place where they can get a good glass of beer at low cost, a good pipe, good tobacco, all kinds of min- eral waters, soda water, and good and substantial lunches at about half the price ordinarily charged at saloons and eating houses. In order to test this the writer recently inspected, by permission of the post commander, the post canteen at Fort Myer, Virginia. Four troops of the Third United States Cavalry gar- rison the post. Within a year the post canteen was started without a dollar of capital in just the manner above described. It now consists of an officers' room, a large room for the enlisted men, a large half-inclosed veranda, a perfectly appointed bar, a large restaurant, where one can obtain anything furnished by any ordi- nary restaurant, a well-stocked store well patronized by both officers as well as the enlisted men, and is in inde- pendent circumstances, having paid its way from the start. In May its sales were frqm beer $1,226.05, from the restaurant $1,185.60, from the store $812.96, mak- ing a total of $3,224.61. It employs seven civilians, whose pay roll amounts to $266.57 monthly. The net 138 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. profit for the month of May, which is divided between the post fund and the company fund of the four troops of cavalry, was $645.89. "How much wine do you sell?" was asked of the head clerk, who, by the bye, holds a certificate of the civil-service examining board. "Practically none/' was the reply; "a little light wine to the officers for an extra occasion, when they are entertaining guests." " Do you have any drunken men at the post?" "I have only seen one man under the influence of liquor in the last three months." As the writer passed through the rooms, out of say ten or more men who were quietly sitting and chatting at the tables, three were drinking beer and the others were being served from the restaurant. The fact is that the post canteen is the old-time sutler's store, shorn of all its bad features, with the profits going to better the condi- tion of the enlisted man by giving him certain luxuries at his table and helping pay for good reading matter in the company library, instead of going to swell the private fortune of perhaps some unscrupulous post trader, whose only interest was to sell poor whisky and inferior goods at high prices. The writer does not wish to convey the idea that all post traders and sutlers of old were bad men. In fact, some of them were very fine men and most honourable traders; but others were not. Just here the writer proposes to digress for a few moments to say a kindly word of warning to the advo- cates of temperance, or rather teetotalism, who are once again, with the best intentions in the world, seek- ing, unconsciously to themselves, a second time to in- flict a great injury upon the enlisted men of the army, especially those upon the frontier, and to again demor- FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 139 alize it more than any one but an officer of practical experience can tell them. During the administration of President Hayes, ow- ing to the persistent efforts of the teetotal party, an order was issued by the War Department forbidding the sale of alcoholic liquors at the sutler's or trader's store at all army posts. It was promptly complied with, as a matter of course, a'nd the post trader had to, and in all instances did, confine himself to the sale of malt liquors. Now, as a general thing, for the last twenty years beer has been what the average private in the army preferred to drink when he could get it, and it is by all odds his favourite drink to-day, as it is that of the privates in the English, Prussian, Austrian^ and Bavarian armies. Therefore, the order mentioned was thought by many of the army officers to be a good one, and met their hearty approval for the first few months after it went into operation, but long before the first year had passed they had to meet a new condition of things arising out of the enforcement of the said order that put a few unlooked-for gray hairs in the head of more than one conscientious frontier post commander. Now, as I have heretofore written, the enlisted man of the United States army is, as a class, the most thoroughly law-abiding of all the men of any profession in the whole country, and there is little trouble in enforcing any lawful military order issued by the War Department. Still he is anything but a fool, and in this case ninety per cent of the men promptly set this order down as neither military nor, in their opinion, lawful. In the first place, the soldier is not a child nor an insane person; consequently there was no good reason 140 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. why he should be placed in that category. Old soldiers could remember when whisky was a part of the Govern- ment ration. Of course, if the authorities saw fit to dis- pense with it in the commissariat he had no fault to find, but for the authorities to say how he should spend the money he had honestly earned was quite another thing. Whisky was not a poison, and quite a large part of the Government revenue came from its manu- facture. It was used largely by many thousand good citizens, and if he chose to buy it, pay for it with his own money, and drink it in moderation, what legal right had the War Department to interfere with him? In his opinion, the order was neither right, a military necessity, nor lawful. The men who so argued were as a class temperate that is, they now and then took a glass of beer when it was sold at a -price within their means, and rarely, but very rarely, a drink of whisky. In other words, it could not be truly said of them that they were what is denominated drinking men. Within three months from the enforcement of said order just outside of the post reservations (and beyond the jurisdiction of the post commander) all over the whole country little shacks or shanties began to make their appearance. These shacks soon became known as " hog ranches," and at first consisted of a lean-to (a long room), one man, two or three tin cups, and one or two four-gallon jugs of vile whisky. Within three months they were enlarged to two or more rooms, held a bar that had behind it whisky by the barrel, and in the room outside of the bar were two or three card tables, and possibly a faro layout. Within the next three months there were two or FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. three bedrooms built on to the ranch and two or three of the most wretched and lowest class of abandoned women (for none other could be induced to come out to such surroundings) could be seen standing in the doorway or heard singing and shouting at the bar. It was the development of the order forbidding the sale of whisky to enlisted men. As a class, the men did not wish whisky they pre- ferred beer; but they determined that they would not be deprived of their legal right to purchase whisky with their own money if they wished to do so. Now they had within reach whisky, cards, faro, women, and the vilest frontier company. The writer was ordered to take command of Fort Cummings, New Mexico, when this was the state of affairs. It was probably the most undesirable post at that time in the whole country. The garrison consisted of three troops of cavalry (one colored) and two com- panies of infantry. The soldiers were in tents, the offi- cers generally had a room each in an old formerly abandoned adobe building, although some of them occu- pied tents. It was located on the great runway of the Apaches, who generally came up North through Cook's Canon just beyond the post. The place had been abandoned by the army no less than three consecutive times, and yet it had been always found necessary to reoccupy it. The officers were thoroughly capable men, and the troops as a general thing exceedingly good soldiers. The weekly inspection of the post hospital, however, de- veloped the fact that a certain heavy percentage of the men were suffering from infectious diseases. Inquiry 142 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. established another fact, and that was that, on the out- skirts of the reservation and outside of and beyond military jurisdiction, within a radius of from three to six miles of the post, were a number of " hog ranches " of the vilest sort. Between taps (10 p. M.) and reveille (4.30 A. M.) the men would steal out of camp, run the post guard in the dark, visit these places, and return before day- light. As a matter of course, they were heavy-eyed, stupid, and not up to their work the next day, but this could have been borne if the result had not been that in the course of time they were on the sick list, and possibly infected for life, to say nothing of having to be discharged the service as incapable of further duty in the army. My surgeon was one of the oldest acting assistant surgeons of the army, a most capable man and a man of sound sense, whom I had known for many years. After a conversation with him on the subject, I sent for my post trader, Mr. Carpenter, and told him I wished him to send to Kentucky for some good whisky for sale to the men. " But the Secretary of War will cancel my appointment as post trader! " was his reply. " Send," was my response. " I will stand between you and harm. I wish to try an experiment." In due time three barrels of whisky arrived from Louisville, Ky. It was analyzed by the surgeon and pronounced pure. " What can you sell it for? " was asked of the post trader. " Two drinks for twenty-five cents, single drinks fifteen cents." " Very well, place it on sale." Which accordingly was done. I had during the first ten days to punish two men for drunkenness; that was all. In six weeks one of the " hog ranches " disappeared, in three months two others pulled up FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 143 stakes and left. Inside of five months the last one, the one over at the railway station, from which the women had departed weeks before, was for sale with no bidders. " Mr. Carpenter," said the surgeon one day at monthly inspection, "how much whisky do the men buy?" "Mighty little," was the reply; "they drink beer. The miners are about my only whisky customers. Why, blank it, soldiers don't really care for whisky when they can get it! They prefer beer." It is a prevalent idea among many civilians that the army officer, like the soldier, is armed, clothed, housed, and fed at the expense of the Government, and it comes as a surprise to some of the unthinking ones to ascertain that just exactly the contrary is the fact. The pay of the officer of the army is fairly good, and were he, as some people think, furnished with his living outside of it, it would be very liberal; but, unfor- tunately for the officer, such is not the fact. An officer is entitled to the quarters in which he resides in gar- rison free of rent, but he has to furnish, heat, and light them at his own expense, as well as purchase his own food and pay for his servants, his uniform, sword, and side arms out of his own pocket. If he is an officer of cavalry, light artillery, or one of the general staff he has also to buy his own horses, saddles, bridles, and horse clothing. If his horses are killed in action he can recover their cost, if it is not beyond the fair average price paid for troopers' horses. If they die of disease, however, he must stand the loss himself. So that hold- ing a commission in the army is not the rapid road to wealth some people seem to think. Outside of his pay the only perquisite he has is the occupation of his quar- 144 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. ters rent free when serving in garrison and forage for his horses. As for the army officers of to-day, a large percentage never use alcoholic stimulants at all, and those who do so usually confine their drinking to strictly social occa- sions, such as dinners and army reunions, or when meeting some old friend whom they have not seen for a long time. In fact, habitual drinking or gambling as a general thing among army officers no longer exists. You will not infrequently find both whisky and sherry on the sideboard in an officer's quarters, but unless some especial occasion warrants using it, it remains untouched for weeks at a time. Most of our officers on the fron- tier are habitual smokers, but very few smoke to excess. With many of them a brierwood pipe is used instead of a cigar, as it is easily carried on a march, is quite as good a smoke, and costs less, while the cigarette has com- paratively little standing. If an officer is married and has a growing family and is dependent for their wel- fare and good support upon his pay alone he has to be most economical in his habits to keep out of debt. The education of his children as they grow up, which re- quires their absence from his post at some good school or college in the East, is a heavy drain upon his limited resources, and both he and his wife strain every nerve and deny themselves many a luxury to accomplish that end, and do it most cheerfully and uncomplainingly, too. Life in garrison among the officers and their fami- lies is very similar to life among all well-bred people of moderate means. In proportion to his income the aver- age officer is most liberal, but if he has no financial re- sources outside of his pay he is compelled to calculate FRONTIER FORTS, OLD AND NEW. 145 his expenses carefully, especially if he is a married man. As a class, the officers are men of brain, and most of them are close students of their profession. The aver- age officer is studious, patient, sober, conscientious, tol- erant, and upright, and his sense of duty is almost ab- normally developed. As a general thing he believes that no other government, ancient or modern, combines as much that is in itself good, and for the best interests of all its people, as does that of the United States. CHAPTER VII. ESCOKT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK ON THE ROAD. THE advance of civilization into any portion of our territory that had hitherto been exclusively occupied by wild Indians was in most cases made over and along the original Indian trail, which experience had shown to be, as a usual thing, the shortest available route across country between navigable rivers and the Great Lakes. First came the wily fur trapper, who followed in single file the tread of the aborigine. The trapper learned the lay of the land, but he never widened the trail. Then came an exploring party of white adven- turers or mayhap treasure seekers in the guise of miners, who were apt to widen it slightly, as they gen- erally rode or walked abreast of one another for com- pany's sake. Later on followed two or three adven- turous frontiersmen with a wagon or two who moved carefully and cautiously over it and widened it still more, but here and there they were compelled to leave it and make wide detours to get around belts of thick timber or to find safe fords across the intersecting streams and to avoid deep ravines and swampy bottom lands, and then, in time, came a marching column of soldiers, with heavy wagon trains well fitted out with 146 The wagon train. ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. axe, pick, shovel, and spade, who held steadily the direct line of the trail and did not turn aside for any ordinary obstacle. They moved slowly but surely, filling up quagmires, corduroying swamps, bridging the ravines and smaller streams, cutting down the steep approaches to the bot- tom lands and to the river fords, chopping down the forest trees standing in the path, and opened a free highway for those who should follow. When they had reached their destination the trail had developed into a road, which usually remained an open one for all time to come, and it was recognised as civilization's first seal of a permanent occupation of an unsettled country by newcomers. From the earliest settlement of our coun- try this was practically the gradual way in which it was opened up to occupation. In the course of time when the Indians grew troublesome and attacked the solitary wagon of the new settler and his family who followed on after the soldiers, seeking for new and cheap lands somewhere in the vicinity of the frontier army posts, then the settlers armed themselves and travelled in trains organized for self-defence, and later, if experi- ence established the fact that these precautions were not sufficient for their protection, emigrant trains were carefully organized within the settlements and sent out into the new country guarded by soldiers. It was not looked upon as a desirable duty, but never- theless in early days it helped to develop many a good soldier. This same method of guarding commercial supply trains and looking after emigrants was quietly kept up for scores of years in fact, from almost the foundation of our Government until it finally culminated in guard- 148 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. ing the surveyors and builders of the Pacific Eailroad from 1865 to 1870. It had many a hardship and many a forgotten and almost unrecorded hard fight to mark its lapse of years, and even at this late day there is little doubt but one could find plenty of material for popular romance should he search carefully and delve deep enough into the older manuscripts filed carefully away among the records of the War Department. A development of this early duty eventuated in sol- diers being used to guard the Santa Fe trail, which is worth at least a passing notice. Overland trade bje- tween the United States and northern Mexico was a gradual development which primarily was the outcome of the curiosity of a fur trapper, one James Pursley, who, listening to the stories of some Indians whom he had in his employ about the wealth' of certain northern Mexican towns, journeyed on horseback from the Platte River to Santa Fe in 1805, and liked the place and peo- ple so well that he took up his residence there. About the same time a merchant of Kaskaskia, 111., named Morrison sent a man named La Lande with a stock of goods to Santa Fe by pack train as a venture. He (La Lande) also reached Santa Fe, sold his goods, forgot to remit the proceeds to Morrison, and also became a permanent resident of Santa Fe. It was not, however, until the return of Captain Pike from his Southern ex- ploring expedition in 1808 with his glowing account of Santa Fe that trade between the Southwest and northern Mexico began to take on sufficient importance to attract the attention of some of the Southwestern traders and merchants. Several small caravans com- posed of pack horses and mules were started across the plains and reached Santa Fe and the venture paid very ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 149 well, but in 1812 a large and most elaborate caravan was seized by the Mexican authorities, all of the goods confiscated, and the owners imprisoned for nearly nine years, or until a revolution gained them their liberty. In 1821 one Glenn, of Ohio, set out with a trading party, and in due time reached Santa Fe in safety. He did so well that on his return his reports fired the ambi- tion of nearly all the Indian traders on the Southwest- ern frontier, and the next spring saw extensive prepara- tions under way for Santa Fe by many of the most venturesome of the frontier merchants. For the first eighteen years of this trade everything in the shape of goods was, as a matter of course, packed upon horses and mules, and the trail was across the plains over mountains and through deep canons by the most direct route to the point of destination. In 1824 a company of traders from Missouri started out with twenty-five stout, well-loaded road wagons, and after many inter- esting and exciting incidents reached Santa Fe in safety, thus demonstrating the fact that an open and practical roadway for wagons existed from the Missouri River to Santa Fe, a thing which up to this time would have been scouted and jeered at by any of the old pack- ers on the Santa Fe trail. Naturally enough, as a great part of this new route passed through Indian country, in the course of time trouble developed with the Indians. It probably grew up from faults upon both sides. The Indians demanded toll in the shape of presents from the large and well-armed trains, and took what they wished from the weaker ones. Again the records show that the white men on more than one occasion were overbearing and insolent to the squaws and unjust 11 150 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. in their dealings with the Indians. At any rate a state of war eventually ensued, and the Santa Fe trail be- came a dangerous one, and the trains were liable to attack from the Lipans, Comanches, and Arapahoes at almost any point between the Missouri and the Ar- kansas Eivers. In 1826 a caravan composed of twelve men with but four rifles between them, who with their wagons were encamped on the Cimarron Eiver, were visited by a party of Indians who professed friendship. Perceiving their comparatively defenceless condition, they went away, but soon returned with thirty dis- mounted Indians, each with a lasso. The chief de- manded a horse for each of these men, and as resistance was out of the question they were told to each catch one of the caravan's herd. This they did, and then de- manded a second mount. The men had to acquiesce in this new robbery, and then the band dashed into their herd of over five hundred horses, mules, and asses and drove them all off, leaving the traders completely stranded. In 1828 two young men named Monroe and McNees, having fallen asleep on the bank of a little stream within sight of their caravan, were discovered by prowling Indians and shot to death with their own guns that lay by their side. From this time forward trouble constantly ensued, so that in the spring of 1829 the United States Govern- ment gave both cavalry and infantry escorts from In- dependence, Mo., the point from which these caravans started, to as far as Choteau Island on the Arkansas ."River that is, through the Comanche country. This Western overland trade to Mexico reached its climax in 1843, when the caravan consisted of nearly ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 151 three hundred wagons carrying merchandise valued at nearly half a million dollars. About that time, however, supplies began to come into northern Mexico from Vera Cruz on the Mexican coast, and heavy duties laid and enforced by the Mexi- cans left no adequate margin of profit for the overland traders, so that it steadily decreased until after the Mexican War, when it revived again for a few years; but in time the Santa Fe Railway absorbed it all, and to-day the great Santa Fe trail is simply a matter of half-forgotten story. Escort duty was always distasteful, and of all escort duty that with a " bull " or " ox train " was the worst. Man was subordinated to the beast, because the distance made, the time of starting, the length of the stops, the situation of camps, everything connected with trav- elling, depended upon grass, the animal's sole food. If a fine grazing place was reached a halt was called and the stock turned out with a blissful indifference to everything else, even to water. The stock did not require it, and the men must be satisfied with the water kept in little kegs which were fastened to the wagons. These kegs were supposed to be freshly filled at the streams upon which the command had last encamped, though this important detail might possibly have been forgotten. It was kept only for cooking and drinking, lavation not being the " bull whackers' " strong point. Oh, the tedium of it all! The starting twice a day in the small hours of both meridians; the diurnal journey of from seven to twelve miles in a trip of one or two hundred miles and return. The train, number- ing from twenty to fifty wagons, rolled out in the matu- tinal twilight to an accompaniment of cracking whips, 152 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. of yells and teamsters' oaths, the officer commanding the escort, bored and sleepy, riding a few yards ahead of the leading wagon, the escort scattered about where it could do the most good in the event of sudden need. At the end of the first mile up gallops a wagon master. " Leftenant," he says, " Hunk Hansen has shed a tire, and we'll have to put it back." Everything stops, for it will not do to separate the train. The tire is put on and a fresh start made. Half an hour later a wagon master is at the escort commander's side again. " That idiot Doby Dave," he exclaims, " never told me he had a split yoke before we left camp, and now it comes apart, blast him! and I've got to go through the wagons or band the yoke." " Which can you do more quickly," asks the lieutenant patiently. " Band her." " Do it, then." Another halt, another half hour or hour lost, and so it goes through the day, day after day, in rain and shine, always in heat, for freighting is possible only when the grass is green. And there is ever a steady strain of responsibility on the officer. He well knows that he is followed and watched, and should he be caught napping he will surely have to pay the pen- alty, for the stock is a prize that the Indians will risk much to secure. They know his route, the length of time he will be on the road, and his destination, and he must act accordingly. The men, naturally enough, be- come weary of the slow progress, the short halts, and the nightly hard guard duty. They do not care to affili- ate with the teamsters, and get tired of each other, and, in fact, it is a dreary business all around. As the train is groaning and creaking its slow way over a bit of roll- ing country a cry of " Indians, Indians! " suddenly conies from the flankers, and a band of Indians dash ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 153 rapidly forward out of a hollow toward the wagons, yell- ing and firing as they advance. The soldiers spring quickly to their stations and promptly return the fire, and the drivers instantly begin to form a park hy turn- ing their teams. So the Indians, seeing that the at- tempted stampede is a failure, fire a parting volley and disappear. They had hoped to surprise the train and run off some of the cattle. A day or two later an at- tempt will be made to wile away the herd while it is grazing, but the guard will be on the alert, and, expect- ing such an effort, will frustrate it. However, the Indi- ans were not always unsuccessful; wagon trains were bereft by them of every animal they possessed, and the mortified losers compelled to wait ingloriously for relief to arrive from some adjacent post or else go after it on foot. Another unpopular duty was escorting Government and contractors' mule trains. It was similar in many ways to escorting ox trains, but free from the tedious- ness incident to the slow daily progress. The mule trains travelled from twenty to thirty miles a day with- out a break. The escorts were larger and the work harder on account of the greatly increased responsibil- ity. A herd of horses or mules was to the Indian free- booters of the plains what the gold-laden galleons of Spain were to Howard and his cutthroats on the Pa- cific. From the moment a mule train entered a hos- tile Indian country until it left it there raged a contest of wits between the officer in charge and the wiliest, shrewdest, most cunning horse thieves that ever the sun shone on. The Indians, more eager than when on the track of an ox train, were untiring in the pur- suit of their prey. The careful commandant had his 154 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. escort posted before daybreak, the most dangerous time of all, in readiness for whatever might happen; and afterward, during the preparations for the early start, he exercised great care and vigilance against sur- prise from any quarter. Getting away from camp was the first and almost the greatest of the day's anxieties. The train moved with advance and rear guards, while the rest of the escort were distributed along the sides of the wagons. This formation was regularly main- tained while the train was on the road except when crossing wide open reaches. It did not prevent the making of sudden dashes by the Indians, but it kept them as a rule from being successful. Camp reached, the animals were watered and turned out to graze. A number of mounted "mule skinners," as the drivers were called, went with them as herders, and always all the soldiers except the cooks were sent out with the herd also. A good commanding officer took no unne- cessary risks. After dinner the camp was at rest. Toward sunset guard mounting caused a flurry of excitement, and shortly afterward retreat ended the day. By the time the evening was fairly under way back in the East, " at home," the camp was asleep. Such work as this was easy enough. There was no great hardship about it; rather the contrary. One would be difficult to please if he could not find enjoy- ment in travelling with a column of soldiers. But there were marches of all sorts. It is one thing to cross a country leisurely, knowing that every night's rest will be comfortable; it is another to struggle through the deadly cold of midwinter with a rampant blizzard driv- ing the snow in one's face, knowing that when the ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 155 entire journey is ended a bit of canvas will be the only shelter for the remainder of the intensely cold weather till spring comes. A column going to the relief of others in dire straits or making forced marches in a pressing emer- gency travels in much the usual manner, except that there is no camping from noon to daybreak, but a con- stant pressing onward, stopping only for food and when necessity compels a halt to keep the command from giving out. But the highways of Western commerce no longer resound with the crack, loud as a pistol shot, of the " bull whacker's " lash. In far-off corners of the land a few relics of his former greatness lumber on the back dirt roads, but their glory has departed; a little longer and they will disappear entirely before the utilitarian railway. In the same manner there is now and then a stage running in benighted regions beyond the locomo- tive's reach, but both must soon be sought for by the curious. Yet within a lifetime's span all the roads be- yond the Missouri were covered with these huge clumsy, but strongly built wagons, and the supplies of all kinds were transported in them. One met them everywhere proceeding tortoise fashion, with the tortoise certainty of arriving at last. They plied between the towns in the settled districts and they carried freight to the re- motest army outposts, and when doing the latter they were always escorted by soldiers. From 1865 to 1870 on the great plains the railroad construction parties at the end of the tracks of the Pacific Eailroad, which was steadily pushed forward from day to day, were not infrequently attacked by war parties of the Sioux and Cheyennes, who, having 156 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. concealed themselves in some near-by arroyo or swale in the apparently flat plain, would seem to start out of the earth, swoop suddenly down upon the foremost labourers, kill and scalp one or two of them, and dash away on their fleet ponies almost before the men in their immediate vicinity could grasp their arms or were fully aware that they were being attacked. This led to the employment of our infantry as a guard, and as some of our officers and men were equally as good as the Indians at ambuscades, the enemy now and then paid dearly for his temerity, losing some of his best warriors in these assaults, with no adequate return in casualties upon our side. Little could be done except by keeping close watch to avert these attacks, and gradually the workmen grew to accept them as some- thing that had to be grimly and patiently borne. Now and then after the Indians had not shown themselves for days the railroad men would grow care- less, or perhaps the word reckless would best express their actions. On one occasion, while the Kansas Pa- cific road was in course of construction in the vicinity of the Smoky Hill Eiver in Colorado, five or six of the teamsters during nooning hour on a hot midsummer day, despite positive orders to the contrary, strayed over toward the river bank, a good quarter of a mile away, and dropped down in the shade of a solitary cottonwood tree that grew there. In a few moments a well-mount- ed war party of eight or ten Cheyennes, who were lying concealed in the river bottom just under a cut bank on this side of the river, suddenly dashed out and made for them. But one of the party had any arms, and he had only a revolver. In a moment the Indians were upon them, and the men, running for their lives, started ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 157 toward the railroad, while the soldiers, grasping their rifles, ran to their rescue, opening fire on the Indians as they ran. Two of the teamsters were shot down and scalped, but the man with the revolver kept his head, and by threatening the nearest warriors caused them to sheer off as they closed on him, and the soldiers getting within range soon made it so hot for them that they fled. One of the men, however, a long-legged Mis- sourian teamster, had been headed off on his way to the track by an enterprising warrior, who sought to run him down and transfix him with a spear after he had failed to hit him with a rifle shot. This teamster hap- pened to have had a new leather-thonged bull whip is- sued to him that day, and, having some misgivings as to whether he would find it in his wagon on his return from his dinner, had, fortunately for himself, taken it with him when he and his companions sought their noon siesta under the cottonwood tree. Eunning for dear life, he unconsciously held the whip in his hand, and just as the Indian was upon him, and about to transfix him by hurling his spear, he glanced over his shoulder and almost instinctively made a backward cut with his whip at the Indian's pony, the lash strik- ing the animal full in the face. The horse swerved so suddenly as to derange the warrior's aim, and, though he hurled the missile, the spear missed its mark, and as the pony dashed close by him our teamster saw his only chance. Grasping the tail of the now frightened and fleeing animal, he began a hail of strokes on the bare back of the Indian that only one who has seen the way in which a Western bull whacker can handle a blacksnake whip can fully appreciate. Every stroke drew blood, 158 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. and the teamster rained down the lashes unsparingly and savagely. In vain did the Indian cower to his pony's back and dig his heels into his sides and lash the animal desper- ately with his quirt, for the teamster held on like grim death as he ran and plied his strokes swiftly and un- erringly, and it was not until he was exhausted with running and stumbled over a hillock that the Indian's pony broke loose and with a parting cut of the team- ster's whip across his hind legs tore madly away toward his companions, where the other mounted warriors, fearing the aim of the soldiers and not daring to come to his rider's rescue, were galloping wildly around just out of rifle range, whooping, laughing, and yelling with delight at the absurd plight of the discomfited warrior, who, it is safe to say, from henceforth until he had managed to rehabilitate himself by some daring deed of blood, would be dubbed and held only a squaw in the Indian's camp. As for our long-legged Missouri teamster, he was the hero of the hour, and, considering the circumstances, he well deserved to be. Orders to march differ materially. Sometimes am- ple time is given for preparation, as, for instance, when commands are notified months in advance that they will be required for certain purposes. Occasionally a horseman dashes up to the quarters of the command- ing officer of a remote post with a letter from depart- ment headquarters ordering a part of the garrison into the field at once on account of an Indian outbreak or raid. In such a case the troops will be en route within an hour or two. They may be absent for any length of time, from a week to six months, and they may not return at all to the post they leave, but take station ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 159 elsewhere when the emergency that called them out is past. That, however, is an incident of service of which no account is taken at the time except by the lonely women who are left behind. At stations on the frontier a command of no matter what size is expected to be always ready to take up arms at a moment's notice. Each troop and company has a field equipment, which is kept complete and serviceable. It is often inspected and frequently overhauled, and all missing parts and those unfit for immediate use are at once replaced. When an order comes all that is necessary is to draw rations, load the wagons, and be off. If time is allowed the barrack is dismantled and the dress uniforms, furniture, and mess ware are packed in the large cases kept on hand for the purpose. Other- wise the noncommissioned officer and the one or two privates detailed to remain behind in charge of the property do the packing after the men have gone. It is relatively the same with the officers. They all have their field equipage in perfect order and in good condi- tion for instant use, and when an order to take the field comes the blankets, valise, and mess chest are quickly piled on the board walk before the officers' quar- ters all ready for the quartermaster sergeant to pack with the other baggage. There are occasional drills in preparing for the field. A captain, sitting at his breakfast table, receives an order to fit his company, as soon as practicable, for a thirty days' tour of detached service. It is the first intimation he has received, and he at once sends direc- tions to the first sergeant. A lively movement ensues in the quarters, although everything proceeds sys- tematically; there is no useless excitement nor loss of 160 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. time through aimless haste. Each man has long be- forehand had his share of the work allotted to him, and in what would seem to civilians an incredibly short time wagons are packed and the company is paraded, ready to march out, and everything awaits the post commander's inspection. Practice of this sort enables wonders in the way of quick movements to be per- formed when an imperative order for urgent service is received. There are few more attractive sights than a camp asleep far out on the lonely plains. The lines and rows of tents gleam like spectres in the shadowy moonlight, relieved only by the glimmer of a lantern in the guard tent; or where, at the end of a company street, a dying cook fire, flashing up in a last effort, throws a yellow glare on the tents near it and perhaps upon a wakeful man or two hovering over the embers. The only sound that breaks the profound stillness is the soft tread of an alert sentry pacing the inside beat, the rattle of a halter chain as a mule in the wagon park searches for grain in his feed box, or a cavalry horse on the picket line impatiently paws the ground, while the scarcely to be distinguished forms of the sentinels slowly march- ing back and forth on the borders of the limits of the camp are the only evidences of life and motion in sight. As one looks on the scene and feels its influence it is hard to believe that lying there in the soft moonlight, as if carved in silver and marble, is nothing but the commonplace camp of the afternoon, and that before dawn it will awake, throw off the midnight spell, and once more take on again its ordinary commonplace aspect. It is still dark, and the sentry on Post No. 3, wishing ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 161 for morning, looks eagerly toward the east, where as yet he sees no sign of daybreak, but even as he looks the flap of the guard tent behind him rises and falls, the orderly trumpeter steps forth, and an instant later the notes of the first call for reveille ring clearly out and cut the startled air. In a moment muffled sounds are heard all over camp, and the tents on the company streets be- come faintly luminous, followed quickly by those on the officers' line. Spots of deeper darkness appear, dart to and fro, and then congregate in front of the tents for roll call. Here and there low gruff tones are heard and a lantern bobs about in each street. Oaths come volleying up from the corral, where the teamsters are already feeding and grooming their mules. Ten min- utes pass, and the trumpets blare out the reveille and the work of the day has begun. The company cooks, who have been quietly at work for some time, now serve breakfast to the men, who stand waiting with tin plates in their hands. That over, packing begins. Everything is being loaded on the company wagons, which have driven up, except the tents, which have not yet been taken down, and a few belated rolls of bed- ding. About the time this is completed the trumpets sound the " general," and down go the tents simultane- ously, having been struck by the waiting camp guard, whether their occupants are ready to leave them or not. If they are not, they crawl from under the overthrown canvas in a fine state of rage with a voluble flow of indignant language. But no notice is taken of that; most likely it is unheeded in the rush to fold the tents and put them on the wagons before the assembly sounds. Not much time is given for the final prepara- tions, and very soon after the general the assembly 162 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. "goes," and the battalion is formed and the march begins, just as broad bands of light athwart the east- ern sky give the earliest indications of the coming sun- rise. When they can be fairly distinguished through the early morning mists the commanding officer and staff, riding at the head of the column, have a weird and ghostly look, and the long line behind them appears gray and indistinct. If the country is a hostile one the column moves with both advance and rear guards, as well as with flankers, the latter well out on each side of the main body, watching eagerly for the slight- est evidence of the foe's proximity. Marching on the plains does not mean passing from one camp ground to another over a road at so many miles an hour. More than likely a command must de- pend on a guide to show it the way and make its road as it goes along. "When leaving camp in the morning no one can tell what work the day may develop. Deep ravines may have to be made fit with pick and spade for the passage of the wagons, streams bridged, or a ford with a quicksand bottom hardened. If it is spring- time swampy places may have to be corduroyed; these things cause delays of hours, even of days, and the ex- penditure of much labour. Accidents happen to the wagon train, always a care and an impediment; parts of it frequently have to be dragged up a steep hill or lowered by guy ropes down one. These and many other vexations come in the day's journey, but are always surmounted. It is at such times that the ingenuity and resource of the soldier in the West are displayed in their versatility. No matter how great the obstacle to fur- ther progress may be there is always some one at hand, ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 163 officer or man, ready and able to overcome it. It is not too much to say that no exigency of service on the plains has arisen that has not been dealt with and suc- cessfully met. Guides, generally old-time fur trappers, being human, sometimes, though rarely, miss the way, and of all trials that is the greatest. The having to double on one's self takes the heart out of the com- mand, and while all other mishaps are faced cheer- fully, this one always causes bitterness and anger. Even the length of a day's march can not be deter- mined beforehand. On the plains water puts in such infrequent appearances that it regulates all travel, and a day's march is commonly from water to water, and that may be anywhere from eight to eight-and-twenty miles. But instead of lingering over the laborious and vexatious side of field work, it will be pleasanter to learn something about how a march is conducted when there are no hostile Indians hovering around. During the first hour, or until the sun is well up, the command plods along slowly, the men's legs are not limbered up, and sleep still hovers about their eyelids; but gradually a hum of talk and laughter rises, and in time every one strikes his regular pace, the company officers get to- gether at the head of their organizations, and the dis- tance between the column and the wagon train which followed it out of camp increases. During the ten-min- ute halts in each hour the men skylark and everything is cheerful and merry. Later, as the total of miles trav- elled grows large, the hum and buzz dies down; during the halts the men lie on their backs instead of sky- larking; and when the march is resumed it takes a min- ute or two to fall into the regular gait, and the head 164: THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. of the wagon train, out of sight a little while ago, is seen to draw steadily nearer. The battalion slowly drags itself to the top of a rise as the head of the col- umn gains it, and the music boys see on the plain far ahead a dark line, which they know to be bushes or trees, and it shows the next camp ground, for they mark the location of water. A thrill runs through the com- mand. The talk begins again, the feet grow lighter, and the last two or three miles are dashed off at a rat- tling pace. Camp is reached, and it is about twelve o'clock. The cavalry, which left the last camp half an hour after the infantry, has, by passing it on the way, arrived an hour earlier, and is already com- fortably settled for the night. As the company wagons come within two or three miles of the night's camp ground sundry privates, who have been riding on them all day, dart down on any dead branches or sticks they see in the road or on its border and toss them into the feed box. If it happens to be in a sparsely wooded district, the competition is eager, and several claimants for the same piece frequently dispute as to its rightful ownership, even going so far as to have a free fight. These men are the company cooks anxious to insure the starting of their fires immediately after reaching camp without having to wait for the fuel that the wood party will bring in after the tents are pitched. Before the wagons have been backed into position for unloading at the bottom of the company streets these same wood pickers are hauling and pushing about them, each searching in the wagons for a spade or shovel in order to cut a fire trench. One is soon found, and the fires are blazing merrily under the filled camp kettles ere the canvas walls are raised. It is well for them ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 165 that the cooks do move quickly, for long marches and keen air, purified on mountain tops, give good appe- tites. No sooner are the canvas walls raised, a matter of a very few moments, than sharp inquiries as to the condition of supper pour rapidly in, followed by indig- nant remonstrances if the answers are not satisfactory, but fortunately they usually are so, and in a surpris- ingly short time the men, each with his tin plate and cup, receives his evening meal. It is not an elaborate one, the bill of fare being the same as for breakfast namely, coffee, bacon, and hard bread. Each one after he is served goes where he pleases and eats his meal in the manner that suits him best. In old days variety could not be maintained when storage space was small and frequent replenishing impossible, so only the staple articles were carried in the company mess kits. Pota- toes and onions, if obtainable, were taken; but, al- though used most sparingly, they did not last long. A stoppage of a day or so permitted bean soup, beans, dried apples or peaches, biscuits, and fresh bread to grace the board. Generally, however, the fare while en route was about that given above. Game used to be abundant, and there were hunters always ready to take advantage of any opportunities, and consequently it was not a rarity. Nowadays prepared and tinned foods have greatly enlarged and improved the travelling ration. The officers' messes were of course more elaborate, as they furnished their own supplies, and they had din- ing tents and table furniture, and maintained, as far as practicable, the customs of the garrison, although until the advent of the multitude of tinned things many times the fare had to be almost identical with that of the enlisted men. 12 166 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. The number and style of tents carried depended on the nature of the duty to be performed and the amount of wagon transportation. When the latter was lim- ited or the need for haste urgent each man carried half of a shelter tent. Two halves buttoned together and held upright by twigs cut from near-by trees made a covering for two men to sleep under, and looked some- thing like this: yj \ . Ordinarily the enlisted men were supplied with common or A tents ( / \ \ ), so called from their resemblance to the capital letter. On a pinch four were assigned to one; commonly, how- ever, two were told off. When A tents were carried the officers used wall tents ( /\ A.), one officer in a tent. At other times they used the A tents. There was also the Sibley tent, fashioned on the lines of an Indian tepee. It is the largest of all field tents, ac- commodating fifteen to twenty men. There were many occasions when no tents were issued and every one bivouacked with a rolled-up overcoat or a saddle for a pillow and a blanket or two for cover, while the star-studded sky made a gorgeous if cool canopy in lieu of the ordinary bit of white canvas. Sometimes at night, when the weather was clear and not overcold, the men would lie wide awake upon their backs for hours at a stretch, looking straight up at the wonderful beauty of the heavens, talking to each other in low tones, and enjoying to their hearts' con- tent the awe-inspiring sight of a starlight night far out on the plains, where the air is so pure that the stars seem to shine with a lustre unknown to those of moun- ESCORT DUTY AND ROUTINE WORK. 167 tains and cities, and to swing lower in the blue vault of heaven than anywhere else. It is such hours as these that help to lend the name- less fascination to a soldier's life on the plains that never entirely leaves him and often stirs his blood even years after he has left the service and is a gray-haired man with a growing family around him that safely anchors him to civil life. CHAPTEE VIII. THE INDIAN TROUBLES OF THE WESTERN FRONTIER IN 1866 AND 1867. SCARCELY had the echoes of the guns at Appomat- tox Courthouse died away when the demands of the West for protection from the warlike Indians on the great plains forced themselves upon the attention of Congress, and the urgent needs of the Western fron- tier, which had necessarily been neglected during the civil war, became once again one of the absorbing ques- tions of the hour. The massacre of the whites in upper Minnesota and Dakota by the Sioux in 1862, in which scores of unoffending settlers were ruthlessly slaugh- tered, their wives and daughters first outraged then killed, or else with their little children carried into a captivity worse than death, while their houses were given to the flames and their growing crops destroyed, was to many of our people who believed that the Indian troubles were a thing of the past a new and startling revelation. These Indians were generally regarded as well on the way toward civilization. Missions had been es- tablished among them, and some of them had appar- ently abandoned the lodge and tepee for fairly well- constructed houses, adopted the clothing of the whites, 168 INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 169 and had ceased to be generally looked upon as wild or blanket Indians. Yet many of these same semi civilized savages aided the wild tribes and helped them massacre six hundred and forty-four people before the Minne- sota volunteers under General Sibley finally overcame and put down the uprising. At the close of our civil war the entire line of the advanced frontier settlements on our Northern, Southern, and Western borders had been slowly driven in and back upon the well-settled and populous communities by the various tribes who had learned the use of firearms, abandoned the bow and arrow, save for use in hunting game, and through the cupidity of the fur traders supplied themselves with rifles and ammunition of the most modern invention. The fact that our Government had been compelled to withdraw the regular army and abandon some of its frontier posts during the Southern campaign of 1861 and 1865 seemed to the Indians an evidence of weak- ness of which the savages were quick to avail them- selves, and when the army was sent to reoccupy the old frontier line and re-establish and protect the set- tlers on it, their wrath was intense, and nearly all of the wild tribes soon became allied against the whites. In the year 1865 the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific Kailroads were being steadily pushed onward through the West toward the Central Pacific Eailroad, which was being built east from California, all three roads having been subsidized by the United States Gov- ernment, which was anxious on both financial and polit- ical grounds to connect the Atlantic and Pacific States by rail. These roads ran directly through the hunting grounds of the Indians, and almost without exception every wild tribe within our borders was bitterly opposed 170 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. to their construction. In many ways the Indian in- tuitively recognises danger, even when he is not ahle to intellectually grasp the reason why, and in this espe- cial case his premonitions were more than warranted hy the eventual outcome. The construction of these rail- roads was the entering wedge that finally split up the tribal alliances, destroyed the wild game, and forced the several tribes to abandon the great plains in order to seek sustenance at the hands of the Government on reservations especially allotted and set aside for them. The thousands of labourers that were employed in building these two iron tracks saw the possibilities that these railroads afforded this undeveloped West in the way of transportation to Eastern markets, and accord- ingly took up Government or railway land and became settlers, and numerous small villages sprang into ex- istence along both of the lines of railroad. An army of travellers rushed through to and from California as soon as the connection was made with the Union Pa- cific to San Francisco, and the never-ending stream of immigrants took advantage of it to enter and occupy the country immediately .adjacent to the two lines of railroad, and each and all helped to swell the rising tide of settlers who sought to seize upon the virgin soil, and in their own interest, or, as they said, " in the interest of civilization and humanity," to occupy and possess it. In those days it was full of wild game, and the Indians could roam at will with a full commissariat always within reach. Deer, antelope, bear, and buffalo were ever within a few hours' range, but with the ad- vent of the railroads came the settler and the white pot hunter, who killed all game remorselessly and with INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. criminal recklessness. In a few years some one discov- ered that buffalo hide made splendid sole, harness, and especially belt leather for machinery. Heretofore buf- falo had only been killed for food or for their fur and their hides, which were tanned by the Indians for buf- falo robes, that were used as sleigh robes by our people, and twenty thousand annually were more than could be sold, but now every idle loafer in the towns, every impecunious farmer on the plains who had a gun and a wagon, set out to work this unexpected bonanza at their doors. The buffalo fell by thousands, their hides were stripped from the carcasses, which were left to rot where they lay, and each little railway station soon had its buyer of hides for the Eastern and foreign tanneries. Two men could easily load a wagon with forty or fifty hides in three or four days' work. They sold these for from $1.75 to $2.25 each, and the slaughter continued until the buffalo were swept forever from the plains. One railway station in southern Kansas shipped nearly two hundred thousand hides to the Eastern markets in less than eighteen consecutive months. Within six years from the time it became generally known that buffalo hide would make good leather the vast herds of buffalo that for years had blackened the Northern plains in summer and the Southern savannas in winter had ceased to exist. Five years later their bones were gathered and shipped East by the thousands of tons to be ground into phosphates. The destruction of the buffalo was the outcome of cheap transportation by rail to the East, and their extinction deprived the Indians of their principal source of supplies and rendered an extended cam- paign by large bands of the savages almost an im- 172 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. possibility, but between the years 1865 and 1879, when this was finally accomplished, our Northwest- ern border was the scene of many a hard-fought field and witnessed the death of scores of hardy frontiersmen and hundreds of brave and gallant sol- diers. In the year 1865 nearly all of that portion of the Northwest beyond the States of Kansas on the south and Minnesota on the north, as far west as to, and in- cluding, the Eocky Mountains up to the Pacific slope, was occupied by roving bands of various Indians, known as Sioux, Northern and Southern Cheyennes, Crows, Chippewas, Poncas, Assiniboines, Flatheads, Piegans, Gros Ventres, Bannocks, Snakes or Shoshones, Utes, Arapahoes, Pawnees, Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, Omahas, Kickapoos, Miamis, Poncas, Otoes, Kiowas, and Comanches. Of these tribes, the Sioux, Northern Cheyennes, Southern Cheyennes, Piegans, Assiniboines, Arapa- hoes, Kiowas, and Comanches were the most nu- merous, least civilized, and by all odds the wildest and most fierce and warlike of all the Indians of the great plains, and, notwithstanding that for years past they had been on bad terms and almost constantly at war with the Crows, Bannocks, Snakes or Shoshones, and other small tribes, in every council looking to an alliance by and between all the plains tribes against the whites these Sioux and Cheyennes, by force of numbers, able leaders, and set purpose, com- pletely dominated and controlled all the other tribes, overbore their arguments and objections to a general war against the advancing line of settlers on the fron- tier, and finally in the spring these tribes became allied under the leadership of a Sioux chief, Red Cloud, a INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 173 very able and astute Indian leader,* and positively re- fused to agree to, or sign a treaty urged upon them at a council held at Fort Laramie between United States commissioners and certain representative chiefs, which gave the United States Government the right of way for a railroad through what they claimed as their coun- try, and accordingly they withdrew in anger from the council. Some of the minor Indian chiefs afterward signed this treaty, but they were not powerful enough to control even their own tribes, and as soon as the In- dians saw that the Government intended to protect the builders of a railroad within the limits of the dis- puted territory all, or nearly all the wild Indians in the Northwest began a series of raids upon the people of the exposed frontier, with the avowed determination of driving them back and compelling the Government to abandon all the country between the one hundred and fourth meridian and the Big Horn Mountains and the North Platte and Yellowstone Eivers, and to give them in perpetuity this immense stretch of country of between two and three hundred thousand square miles, * Red Cloud was not an hereditary chief of the Sioux. He rose from the ranks by his great personal bravery in the field and his sheer ability in council as a political leader. The writer regards him as a far more able and astute politician than Sitting Bull, who, as a matter of fact, was nothing else but an Indian politician, and not at all a prominent warrior. In truth, on more than one occasion Sitting Bull was accused by leading Sioux warriors of being a personal laggard when the fighting was des- perate, while Red Cloud, as a warrior, was regarded as a close second to Roman Nose, the ablest Cheyenne warrior of modern times. Red Cloud was still living two years ago, but was said to be much broken by age in both mind and body. 174 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. for a hunting ground for themselves and their heirs forever; thus damming up the advancing waves of An- glo-Saxon civilization and allowing seventy thousand wild Indians to control and occupy a region which held within its borders ample room for the happy homes of millions of the landless citizens of our republic. That these Indians had a good natural claim, and even beyond that a quasi-legal one to a portion of this territory was indisputable. They were the aboriginal occupants, and two years later, after a series of bloody encounters between these tribes and the United States troops, Congress weakly and inconsiderately allowed it- self, under pressure from many good and philanthropic citizens, who could not and did not appreciate the true situation, to hastily confirm a treaty weakly entered into by certain duly and legally appointed United States commissioners and the leading chiefs of the allied Indi- an tribes, conveying to the Indians nearly all of this territory part to be used in the establishment of In- dian agencies and model farms and schools in the in- terests of the civilization of the said Indians, and part to be kept as an exclusive hunting ground for the wild tribes, within which limits no white man was to be per- mitted to enter save by special permission of the Indi- ans themselves. Had this treaty received due consideration it would never have been confirmed, for Congress would have foreseen that it was not possible to enforce its pro- visions, as the country ceded was infinitely too large to be held against settlement by our own people. Another terrible blunder in ceding this country by treaty was made in abandoning and dismantling the military posts of Fort Eeno, Fort Phil Kearny, INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 175 and Fort C. F. Smith on the east side of the Big Horn Mountains, for it confirmed the Sioux in their idea that they were stronger than the Government, and that the soldiers feared them; consequently they grew arrogant, defied the Government, and opened war on our frontiersmen. It was a colossal blunder on the part of Congress, and dearly we had to pay for it. Two years prior to the confirmation of this treaty our troops had been sent to occupy the Big Horn coun- try in direct defiance of the threats of the Sioux and the Northern and Southern Cheyennes, and Fort Phil Kearny, a stockaded quadrangle of log huts, was estab- lished by the second battalion of the Eighteenth In- fantry under command of Colonel Carrington. Up to the advent of these troops no permanent occupation of this portion of our Western territory had been at- tempted by the Government, but the continued and repeated raids of the Sioux and Cheyennes upon the outlying settlements, their attacks upon overland emi- grant trains along the Bozeman road in Montana and on the railway surveying parties as well as their fre- quent ambuscades and murder of mining prospectors had so incensed the inhabitants of the Northern border that the military authorities were compelled to act de- cisively, and they wisely decided to occupy the Sioux country by a series of army posts that would eventually so hem in the savages that it would be too dangerous for their raiding parties to venture east of them on the war path. These posts were built by the labour of the troops themselves, and a hard and dangerous experience they found it to be. Marching into this compara- tively unknown and almost unoccupied country Colo- 176 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. nel Carrington was informed by the Sioux on July 14, 1866, that he must abandon any idea of its per- manent occupation, and leave it immediately. The next day, July 15th, he located the new post, after- ward named Fort Phil Kearny, on the banks of Big Piney Creek. It stood on a little plateau about sixty feet above the surrounding bottom lands, and was six- teen hundred feet in length, but only eight hundred feet square of it was stockaded. It was situated not far from the Big Horn Mountains and almost within the shadow of Cloud Peak, whose white-capped cone glittered in the summer sun thousands of feet above it. Strategically it sat at the gateway of the beautiful val- ley of Tongue River, and was a perpetual menace to the war parties of the Sioux should they attempt a far- away raid on the eastern settlements, for when first established it was quite three hundred miles from the nearest mining camp and nearly five hundred from Julesburg, the then rushing and riotous town that marked the temporary terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. After staking out the limits of the post, Colonel Carrington pitched the tents of his command, numbering about six hundred men, and without more ado proceeded to organize fatigue parties for the con- struction of the fort. Large details were made to cut and bring in timber from a pinery located in the hills nearly seven miles distant. Sawmills were set up and at work as soon as the first logs were available. Other details squared the timber for the stockade and set it up; others were employed building the barracks, the officers' huts, the storehouses, stables, and corral; while still others were set at work cutting and putting up hay for the quartermaster's mules and the horses of the INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. cavalry that it was vainly hoped would arrive during the coming winter. To accomplish what they had be- fore them was no easy task and meant incessant labour for every officer and man from daylight until dark. At such times laggards are not tolerated, and every member of the garrison must bend all his energies to the end in view, but in this case it meant infinitely more than protection from the icy blasts of a rigorous winter, for it would be the salvation of the command, which at the time numbered less than six hundred men, and which both officers and men well knew would not be able to withstand the assault of the Sioux and Cheyennes in the open once the united tribes should be rallied to their extermination. Occupying the Sioux country by detached posts was a bold move, and in some respects a dangerous one, but it was the true solu- tion of the difficulty, had the army been left alone to carry it out as was originally intended. To build this post, however, was no ordinary task. The Sioux were fairly wild over the occupation of their especial country, and the attempt to establish what they at once saw was to be a permanent post almost in the middle of it filled them with ungovernable rage, and they determined at all hazards to drive out this com- mand. From the very first fatigue party that escorted the wood train to the pineries in the outlying hills, seven miles distant, early in July, to bring in timber, to the final one, that brought out the last load of logs in the following year, the troops that guarded the trains had to be ready to fight their way both in and out of the post, for, as I have before said, the Sioux in a council held at Fort Laramie in the spring of this same year (1866) had absolutely refused the right of 178 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. way through their country and went back to their vil- lages angry and determined on war in case it was at- tempted. These troops had marched from old Fort Kearny to Fort Reno, at the crossing of Powder River, a distance of more than six hundred miles through Sioux country, without seeing a hostile Indian, but every step of their way had been watched by Sioux spies and scouts, every man in the battalion counted, every wagon and mule numbered, and each night's camp carefully located and examined a few hours after their departure on each succeeding day. The whole Sioux nation as well as the Northern and Southern Cheyennes already knew of their advance, and now that there was no longer any possible doubt of the de- termination of the Government to occupy their coun- try and protect the railroads and settlers they began open hostilities and attacked and annoyed the com- mand unceasingly, and lay in ambush at every avail- able place along the wagon road to and from the piner- ies, and it was safe to say that at some point going or coming from the post the strong escort sent out to pro- tect the wagons would have its work cut out for it, to successfully drive off the savages who swarmed out of coulees or dashed up through the woods to effect their capture. In the pineries small blockhouses were built for defence, and soldiers chopped down the trees with their rifles always within reaching distance, while an ample guard posted well out among the trees kept watch and ward over them against the assaults of the Indians; but despite all precautions every now and then both at the pineries and along the road our INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 179 men were picked off by the bullets of the Sioux, and added one more mound to the thickening ranks of fresh- ly rounded graves that were fast filling the little post graveyard at the foot of Pilot Hill. Not that our troops failed to give the Indians as good as they sent, for many a Sioux warrior found his way to the happy hunting ground in these attacks, and the desperate red men grew more and more wary of attacking both the trains and the men at the pinery as the long sum- mer days wore slowly into fall, and the fall days stead- ily shortened in the face of winter, as the tall trees in the pinery fell thickly beneath the sturdy strokes of the armed soldier choppers, and the loaded trains passed safely, if slowly, through the woods and over the hills to and from the post under convoy of their plucky guard, and all the troops in garrison toiled early and late on the barracks save when repelling an Indian attack or when sent suddenly out to succour some quar- termaster's supply train from Fort Laramie, which the guard had been obliged to corral for defence, and then send in to the fort for additional help to get through. It was absolutely necessary that they should com- plete their barracks and stockade the post before the winter's snow .should descend upon them, and every offi- cer and man knew it, and they worked and fought alter- nately without complaint and an energy born of desper- ation. In vain did the commanding officer ask for addi- tional troops, stating the bare truth, when he said that his little force of six hundred men was doing the work of a brigade, for every soldier in this department had all that he could do elsewhere, and re-enforcements could not then be had. On the 31st of October the troops were fairly under 180 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. cover, and although the post was far from comple- tion the last log was placed in the stockade, a flagstaff erected, a garrison flag flung to the breeze, and a na- tional salute told the hordes of exasperated Sioux that looked down on the post from the side of Cloud Peak that Fort Phil Kearny was an established fact and had been erected in defiance of their threats and despite their repeated attacks. Now began one of the most remarkable experiences had by any of our troops in an Indian country since the foundation of our Government; for almost from the day of its completion until it was finally evacuated two years later in compliance with the provisions of the illy considered and blundering treaty made between the Sioux and our Government this post was constantly in- vested if not in a state of actual siege by the enemy. Time and again the Indians swarmed up and around it, only to be driven back once more, and nearly every sup- ply train that reached it from the East had to fight its way through. Twice the Indians succeeded in captur- ing the post herd, which was grazing under guard al- most within rifle shot of the stockade, and once they succeeded in stampeding and running off every horse in the troop of one of the best cavalry captains in the army, who was guarding a supply train on its return from this post and had incautiously allowed his men to unsaddle and graze their tired horses within a few yards of the road, the result being that greatly to their cha- grin the escort made the rest of the journey as infantry. On the 6th of December the wood train was attacked two miles from the post and went into corral for de- fence. Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel W. J. Fetterman, a particularly active and dashing officer with a fine war INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 181 record, was ordered to its relief with a detachment of cavalry and mounted infantry, numbering about forty men, with orders to relieve the wood party and, if pos- sible, drive the Indians across Lodge Trail Ridge, while Colonel Carrington, with twenty-five mounted infantry, crossed Big Piney Creek, hoping to outflank this war party near Peno Creek. Fetterman relieved the wood train and drove the Indians four miles, when, evidently having been re-enforced, they turned and attacked his command. It is said that the cavalry suddenly gave way, leaving Fetterman with Captain Brown and Lieu- tenant Wands with only fourteen men to face a war party of Sioux of five times their strength. They stood the Indians off, however, until the arrival of Colonel Carrington's force, when the Sioux retreated, but in this affair Lieutenant Bingham and Sergeant Bowers were both killed. It has since been ascertained from the Indians themselves that Red Cloud, the supreme chief of the Sioux, was now commanding in person the allied Sioux, Cheyennes, and other tribes, who it seems were lying in the mountains within striking distance of the fort, and was present at this encounter, although not in immediate command of the attacking war party. A little more than two weeks after this episode that is, on the 21st of December it became necessary to send out to the pinery for more lumber, as there was much unfinished work on the post buildings, so the train, numbering ninety men, with its escort and drivers, who were all armed, started on its seven-mile journey. About eleven o'clock the lookout on Sullivant's Hill sig- nalled, "Many Indians on wood road, train corralled and fighting." 13 182 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. In a few moments eighty men were detailed to go to the rescue. Colonel Fetterman asked for the com- mand, and as he was the senior officer present, notwith- standing it was not his turn for detail, it was, as a mat- ter of courtesy, given him. He was accompanied by Captain F. H. Brown, the regimental quartermaster, who was an enthusiastic Indian fighter, and who promptly volunteered to accompany the rescuing party. Lieutenant Grummond was another volunteer, and was placed in charge of the cavalry portion of the de- tail, which was hurriedly made up from the different companies on duty at the post. Two frontiersmen, Fisher and Wheatly, who happened to be in the post, and who were armed with the then newly invented Henry repeating rifle, also volunteered their services, which Colonel Fetterman accepted. About fifty of the soldiers were armed with Spencer repeating carbines, the rest with Springfield muzzle-loading rifles. Great expedition had been used in making up the detail, but while it was forming quite a number of Indi- ans could be seen careering on horseback over the near- est hills, while a small body of twenty or more were seen at the crossing of Big Piney Creek on the Montana road. A few well-directed shells sent closely in among them scattered them with a wild rush in all directions, and they quickly disappeared. Leaving the post, Colonel Fetterman marched his command rapidly upon the Montana road, crossed Big Piney Creek, and moved a little to the southwest of Lodge Trail Eidge, evidently with intention of cut- ting off the Indians, who had corralled and were hold- ing the train just south of Sullivant's Hill, which is south of and parallel to Lodge Trail Eidge, but on the INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 183 other side of the Big Piney. As Fetterman's com- mand reached the foothills leading to the crest Indians appeared on his front and flank; so forming his men as skirmishers he moved steadily up the hill to the ridge, the Indians keeping out of range and slowly retir- ing before him. He reached the crest a little before twelve o'clock and occupied it with his skirmish line. About this time the picket on Sullivant's Hill sig- nalled that the Indians had left the wood train and it had broken corral and was moving toward the pinery. After a short halt on the crest of Lodge Trail Ridge Colonel Fetterman and his command in line of skirmishers were seen to advance, cross the apex of the ridge, and disappear down its farther side. In a few moments dropping shots were heard, and then a scattering fire, which soon after grew more and more rapid, until it suddenly developed into a steady roar of musketry, telling to the anxious listeners at the fort the tale of desperate and savage fighting over beyond the ridge, presumably somewhere in Peno Creek Valley. Assistant-Surgeon Hines with one man galloped full speed to the wood train, with instructions, if it were possible, to join Colonel Fetterman, for most assuredly his services as surgeon must be badly needed. He found the train undisturbed, and then started across the coun- try to Peno Creek, hoping to reach Colonel Fetter- man's command that way, but found Lodge Trail Eidge occupied by the Indians. He dashed back to the fort and reported the situation, and Captain Ten Eyck with seventy-six men, all the men who could be safely spared from the post, were hurriedly mounted on every cav- alry horse or quartermaster's mule that could be found, and started back with him for Lodge Trail Ridge. 184: THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. The relief party left the road and galloped across the country straight to the ridge and ascended it. The volume of firing had gradually become less and less in sound, and now nothing but an occasional dropping shot could be heard, and before they reached the crest the firing had almost entirely died away. Just as they mounted the summit of the ridge they heard a few scattering shots well over in the valley beyond, and then no more. It was now nearly one o'clock, there was an inch or two of snow on the hills, and they could see here and there from the footprints where Colonel Fetterman's command had advanced down the ridge; but while their anxious eyes searched the valley in vain for a trace of the soldiers, they saw it was filled with hundreds of savage warriors, both mounted and dismounted, who galloped wildly up and down or else stood in their tracks and brandished their weapons, leaping and shouting in wild frenzy, taunting and curs- ing them, and daring them to come down and fight them. Although he had altogether nearly eighty good men and true, Captain Ten Eyck recognised the fact that his force was no match for these well-armed hordes, but he held his ground and sent back to the fort for a howitzer. In a few moments, however, the Indians seemed to suspect something, and began to withdraw. They probably feared a flank attack from the train guard, and they well knew, too, that this second force from the fort would not make the terrible mistake of Colonel Fetterman's command in not carrying plenty of ammunition. In line of battle and moving cautiously, fearing an ambuscade, the relief party slowly descended into the valley to Peno Creek, and, crossing it, advanced INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 185 to a little ridge about half a mile distant from Lodge Trail Ridge, and at a point around which they had seen large numbers of the Indians massed. Just as they reached the top of Lodge Trail Ridge they came upon a sickening sight. Here, within a space of less than fifty feet square, lay the bodies of Colonel Fetterman, Cap- tain Brown, and sixty-five enlisted men. Each body was stripped naked, hacked, and scalped, the skulls beaten in with war clubs, and the bodies gashed with knives almost beyond recognition, with other ghastly mutilations that the civilized pen hesitates to record. There was no indication of a great struggle just at this especial point; nothing gave evidence of a pro- tracted defence. Four or five empty cartridge shells lay on the ground, but there were no great number of empty shells to show that here they had made a deter- mined stand; on the contrary, everything went to em- phasize the fact that just at this spot the savages, apparently for the first time, realized that nearly every man in the whole command was entirely out of ammu- nition and practically defenceless, and so, instantly sur- rounding them, the now frenzied warriors, both horse and foot, suddenly hurled themselves in a dense mass upon the retreating troops, riding them down, shoot- ing, spearing, and clubbing them to death. The short December day was now beginning to wane, and although Lieutenant Grummond and a num- ber of the enlisted men of Colonel Fetterman's force were still unaccounted for, Captain Ten Eyck thought it unadvisable to make a farther advance at that time. An orderly was despatched to the fort, two wagons were at once sent back with him, and shortly after dark Cap- tain Ten Eyck with his command came slowly into the 186 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. post, escorting the bodies of forty-nine dead men (all that could be placed upon the wagons) who had left the fort blithe and strong at eleven o'clock in the morn- ing of that dreary December day. The next morning the bodies of Lieutenant Grum- mond and ten or twelve of the missing enlisted men were found at a point near the Montana road, about a quarter of a mile in advance of where the main por- tion of the command had been found the previous day, but here there were evidences of a most desperate fight. In every direction dead ponies and great gouts of blood in the snow told where the Sioux had paid dearly for their victory, and the ground around where the men lay was strewed with empty cartridge shells. Fisher and Wheatly, the two frontiersmen, had ensconced them- selves in a little pile of rocks close by where the soldiers lay, and sixty separate gouts of blood and ten dead In- dian ponies a few hundred feet from their position, as well as more than fifty empty cartridge shells that lay close to their dead bodies, told that they had made their lives a costly bargain to their foes. In this action, which it is a misnomer to desig- nate as a massacre, for the Indians do not take prison- ers, or, if they do, it is only to kill them by torture, our loss was three officers, seventy-nine enlisted men, and two citizens. A careful inquiry developed the fact that when this command hurriedly left the fort it had considerably less than an average of fifty rounds of cartridges to the man. Five years after this action it was ascertained that the Indians engaged in this affair numbered over two thousand warriors, being made up of the following bands of Sioux, Minnecon- jous, Upper Brule, Ogallalla, Sans Arcs, and Blackfeet, INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 187 as well as the Northern Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. It was undoubtedly their intention to lure the whole command outside of the stockade and get between them and the fort and attack and, if possible, capture or burn it. However, the next summer, another day came to Fort Phil Kearny, and it came about in this wise: Captain James Powell, brevet major in the army, " had been ordered to take station at Piney Island, five miles from the post of Fort Phil Kearny, to protect the wood contractor in cutting and hauling fuel to the post." His command consisted of one company of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, numbering fifty-one enlisted men, together with his lieutenant and himself. Now, if on some rainy day when you are prowling discontentedly about your club and have nothing better to do, you will look up the Army Kegister for 1900 and turn to page 274, under the list of Ke tired from Active Service (unlimited list), you will find recorded under the grade of captain, near the bottom of the page, the following name: " Powell, James, September 9, 1864; brevet lieutenant colonel, August 2, 1867; wounds in line of duty (action), August 3, 1861." And then oppo- site this name, under the heading Service in the Army, "in permanent establishment," you may read as follows: " Private, Company H, Second In- fantry, February 11, 1848; discharged, August 15, 1848; private, Company I, Second Dragoons, March 26, 1851; discharged, March 26, 1856; private, cor- poral, sergeant, and first sergeant, Company I, First Cavalry, November 17 to August 6, 1861; second lieu- tenant, Eighteenth Infantry, May 14, 1861; accepted, August 6, 1861; first lieutenant, October 24, 1861; cap- 188 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. tain, September 9, 1864; transferred to Twenty-seventh Infantry, September 21, 1866; retired, January 8, 1868." You will also see noted in the next two columns, " Born in Maryland," " Appointed from the army," and if you cared to go and see personally or to write to the adjutant general of the army for further information regarding this old retired officer, he would inform you that he had been brevetted captain in 1863 for gallant and meritorious services during the Atlanta campaign where he was badly wounded at the battle of Jonesboro, Ga., and brevetted major, September 1, 1864, for gallant services at the battle of Chickamauga, these two brevets in addition to his brevet of lieutenant colonel for gal- lant conduct in a fight with Indians at Fort Phil Kear- ny, August 2, 1867. It is the story of the way in which this soldier, promoted from the ranks, won his last brevet, which I heard years ago from the lips of one of the men who took part in it, together with what I have since been able to glean from official reports and the narratives of well-known writers upon stirring events in border life on the Northwestern frontier that I now essay to tell. . In his official report of the action Major Powell says: "I found the train divided; one part encamped on a plateau, and, with one exception, the position was well selected for defence, and the best security that the country afforded for stock;. . . . the other part was en- camped about one mile distant," etc. Twelve men were detailed to protect the working parties of both trains and thirteen men to act as escort to the trains in and out of the post. It was a difficult problem to guard these two trains and protect both camps with the small force at his disposal, so the major wisely determined INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 189 in case of attack to defend the plateau only, and made his dispositions accordingly. He had rifles not only for the equipment of his own company, but enough addi- tional to arm and equip every one of the contractor's workmen (civilian employees) and any quantity of fixed ammunition, the awful blunder of the past year having made it certain that no armed force would ever again leave Fort Phil Kearny lacking anything in that re- spect, and then, again, as the Sioux soon learned by bitter experience, it was one thing to attack a force par- tially armed with muzzle loaders and insufficient ammu- nition and quite another thing to fall foul of the new Allen alteration of the old Springfield rifle, one of the safest and best single breech-loading guns (if not the very best) ever issued any troops, especially when the troops using them had fixed ammunition in reserve by the thousand cartridges, lying in open boxes within easy reaching distance of every man engaged in action. For the better protection of the men comprising the guard to their trains in the Indian country the quar- termaster's department of the army had lined some of their wagon bodies with boiler iron, and loopholed them as well (thereby rendering them bullet proof against rifle shots).* This forethought now came into splendid play, for, as the boxes were not needed for the work in hand, Major Powell utilized them by tak- ing them off of the running gear, placing them on the * Wagon bodies of boiler iron sufficiently thick to withstand a rifle bullet had been furnished by the quartermaster's department to some of the most exposed frontier posts. I can not assert pos- itively that the sixteen wagon bodies forming Major Powell's defensive work were of iron, but the disposition made of them by him and the statement that they were "loopholed " are suffi- 190 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. ground, and building a corral out of sixteen of them by arranging the wagon bodies, as near as he could do so, in a circle and filling up the interstices between them with logs or anything else available that could stop a bullet. On the side especially exposed to attack by mounted men he put two such wagon beds on wheels, just outside those upon the ground, thus enabling those within the corral to fire under them at a mounted foe and preventing them from riding close up and getting a plunging fire on the occupants of the wagon bodies that were placed on the ground. All the extra rifles were laid handy within this little extemporized for- tification, and the extra boxes of ammunition laid within easy reach. An unceasing watch was kept up by his small re- serve at this corral, and full and explicit instructions were given every enlisted man and every one of the contractor's employees in case of attack to fall back at once and concentrate at this point without further or- ders. "At nine o'clock on the morning of August 2, 1867, two hundred dismounted Indians attacked the herders in charge of the mule herd, but it was scarcely a surprise, for the guard at the corral was on the alert, and gave the alarm and also signalled the wood train, which was at the other camp across the valley at the foot of the mountain." The herders repulsed the first attack and prevented a stampede, but sixty mounted Indians immediately afterward dashed into the herd, cient evidence that they were so. Indeed, the few casualties can be accounted for under no other hypothesis, the thin sides of an ordinary wooden wagon bed offering to a bullet scarcely more resistance than paper. From Our Wild Indians, by Colonel R. I. Dodge, page 481. INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 191 driving the herd guard back toward the other camp, and at the same moment five hundred more Indians appeared between the two camps and attacked the wood train and the choppers at the other camp. The train guard and the wood choppers were compelled to aban- don the train and take to the woods fighting, retreat- ing up the side of the mountain opposite the fortified corral, and then the Indians captured and fired the train. In the meantime Major Powell's command, consist- ing of himself, one lieutenant, twenty-six enlisted men, and four citizens (thirty-two in all) had concentrated at the corral and were straining every nerve in hastily add- ing whatever they could to render their refuge stronger and more safe against the attack which they knew was about to be made in overwhelming numbers. The pre- ceding day a wagon load of clothing and blankets had been brought to the camp for issue to the troops, but had not been unloaded. This clothing, still in baled packages, was utilized to stop up all open cracks in the corral, while the baled blankets were opened and placed over the wagon bodies to conceal their occupants. Boxes of extra ammunition were cut open and placed in all the wagon bodies. Eevolvers, axes, and hatchets were laid close at hand, pails of water were hastily put inside the corral within reach of all the occupants, and every- thing that could be thought of by experienced men and brave and competent soldiers was done to enable them to make a desperate and determined fight for their lives. If they had to die, well and good it was a sol- dier's fate but they would die fighting, and fighting, too, to the last gasp. In the meantime the herders, having been cut off 192 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. from the corral by the Indians, were making an at- tempt to join the train guard, who with the wood choppers had taken up a position among the rocks on the side of the mountain. This the Indians tried to prevent by cutting the herders off, but Major Powell, perceiving their peril, made a sudden dash from the corral with a part of his little command and attacked these Indians in the rear, killing a num- ber of them. This unexpected sortie compelled them to turn and defend themselves, which afforded the herders the desired opportunity, and they safely effected a junction, and 'they, together with the train guard and the wood choppers, slowly fell back fighting to the fort, having three soldiers and three citizens killed be- fore reaching it. On returning to the corral Major Powell rapidly but carefully made his disposition for the expected attack, which he knew was soon to burst with savage fury upon his little command. Each man was assigned his place in the wagon beds and given his especial loophole out of which he was to fire. In several cases where the men were not particularly good shots they were ordered to load and pass up the rifles to those who were, so that a steady fire could be kept up during a close attack and no time be lost in reloading, and just here the extra rifles and thousands of rounds of reserve ammunition were of the greatest possible service, for three or even four loaded rifles were laid by the side of the best rifle shots, and during the whole action kept constantly reloaded for their use. Major Powell and his little command had ample evidence that the surrounding hills were fairly swarm- ing with Indian warriors, and as each man peered out from his loophole he knew that he had not long to wait INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 193 for the shock of battle, and then while the hillsides and valleys rang with the exultant war whoops of more than two thousand onlooking savages under the great war chief Eed Cloud about five hundred mounted Cheyennes and Arapahoes with their rifles in their hands suddenly dashed out of the woods less than half a mile away and in a dense mass made straight for the corral. On they came, shouting their war cry with a reckless confidence as to the result born of their own inherent strength, together with their absolute knowl- edge of the weakness of their enemies. They have quickly covered nearly half the distance, but the corral is absolutely silent and shows no sign of life. Fifty yards farther, and it suddenly seems ablaze, and the next instant the sharp crack of thirty rifles sets the echoes ringing far up the mountain side. On dash the warriors, though death shrieks now mingle with their war cry and warriors and hordes go down together; still the onrushing mass never hesitates nor halts in its mad whirl and recklessly sweeps over the fallen warriors as it dashes onward in a vain endeavour to hurl its weight on the little fire-vomiting corral, for so rapid and de- structive is its fire that before they are within ten yards of it the horses recoil. In vain do the warriors sweep out and surround it. From every segment of the circle rifles send forth death-dealing bullets, and not for an instant does the fire slacken or cease. The desperate warriors dash up as closely as they can urge their fright- ened ponies and surround the corral and pour in a gall- ing fire from the backs of their horses, but it seems to have no effect. Their savage war cry is answered only by the steady and unceasing crack of rifles from the corral, and it is gradually borne in upon them that as 194: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. it is impossible to force their horses farther into the withering circle of fire, it is death to stay, so with a wild cry of baffled rage they suddenly turn and gallop madly back to the woods, while the soldiers send well- aimed bullets after them that dot the open with fallen men and horses until they are out of range. But, alas! the defenders of the corral had not escaped unscathed. The gallant Lieutenant Jenness and two of the soldiers had been killed, but there was no time then to mourn their death; rather, if anything, a savage determina- tion to avenge, it. So every man sprang to work to strengthen the weak points of defence which the at- tack had developed and which were at once built up with the unused clothing, chains, ox yokes, stones, and anything else readily obtainable. Eed Cloud and his warriors were not only terribly exasperated at this repulse, but they were sorely puz- zled. To them it was incomprehensible, but they had yet many lessons to learn of the killing qualities of the (then) new breech-loading Springfield rifle. An attack by the whole force of Indians on foot was now determined upon, so, quickly stripping themselves of everything except their arms and ammunition, about six or seven hundred of the Indians armed with Winchester, Spencer, and other repeating rifles as well as muzzle loaders, stole well out in the woods and sur- rounded the corral, and then from every direction crawled up through the ravines and grass just outside of range of their unseen foes and lay quietly awaiting orders. At a given signal they stealthily advanced within long range and suddenly opened a terrific concen- tric fire on the corral. But the iron boiler plate placed in the wagon beds by the quartermaster's department INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 195 was put there to turn bullets, and turn bullets it did, and not one found its way through the plates, though hundreds struck them, so the little fortified corral lay grim and silent and expectant. All at once the adjacent hills seemed covered by In- dians, and more than two thousand warriors with a wild war chant, under the leadership of Ked Cloud's nephew (a gallant young warrior who aspired to be his uncle's successor) began a steady advance in a vast semicircle prepared to rush in and overwhelm the defenders of the corral as soon as their own skirmishers should draw their fire and silence it. The Indian skirmishers now redoubled their fire, and then, shouting their war cry, rushed bravely forward, but the instant they came within short range every portion of the little corral was once more belching rifle shots, and the men behind the guns seemed to actually pour bullets into the advancing hordes, and not for a single instant during the assault did the fire slacken or become less in volume. In vain did the now desperate and enraged Indian braves try time after time to swarm up to and anni- hilate their invisible foe concealed in the little work. Once in a desperate and united rush they actually came within a few feet of the corral, but at the very crucial moment, when it seemed that they were about to over- whelm it, the aim of its defenders became so true and deadly and the slaughter so appalling that almost as one man they suddenly broke and fled out of range, wildly demoralized and panic-stricken. For three long hours, with greater or less intensity as the different subchiefs led the various assaults, was this desperate contest waged by these Indians against their still unseen foe, until at length it became whispered about among 196 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. the chiefs with bated breath that there was some- thing uncanny behind the wagon beds and the con- cealed whites were making " big medicine " against them, and finally, worn out by their repeated charges, shattered, demoralized, and beaten, the baffled savages turned and fled in consternation to the hills well beyond range of the deadly rifles of the besieged soldiers. Red Cloud and some of the older chiefs, who had been watching this fight from the hills, could not comprehend how it was possible that such a continu- ous and destructive fire could come from the few men which the little corral was able to hold, and they, too, finally came to the conclusion that the white men had " medicine guns " that could fire continuously. Accordingly, Red Cloud gave orders to secure the dead and carry back the wounded, and once more the Indi- ans opened fire upon the corral that this might be suc- cessfully accomplished. There is nothing so disheart- ening to the Indian warrior as being compelled to aban- don his dead on the field of battle, and he will run great risks to avoid leaving them. In this case it was espe- cially difficult to get off such of the dead as had fallen close to the corral, but by crawling up through the lit- tle inequalities of the ground, thereby getting as near the dead bodies of their comrades as they could with- out being discovered, and then crouching beneath their buffalo-hide shields and rushing quickly forward and fastening around the leg of the dead warrior a slip noose placed at the end of half a dozen horsehair lari- ats tied together, and dropping prone on the ground and crawling back, while the Indians out of range drew the body back to them, they managed to get possession INDIAN TROUBLES OF WESTERN FRONTIER. 197 of a large number of their dead with comparatively few casualties. While the Indians were doing this the sound of a field piece near at hand and the bursting of a shell among the savages told the little band in the corral that succour was at hand. Answering the loud re- port of the field piece with a ringing cheer to let their friends know that they were still in the land of the living, they laid low until the arrival of Major Smith with one hundred men with a mountain howitzer from the fort assured them of safety. Lieutenant Jenness and two enlisted men killed and two wounded was the extent of the casualties among the little band of heroes. Major Powell modestly put the Indian loss at sixty killed and twice that number wounded, but every man of his force said that he had not stated a quarter of their casualties. He also gave it as his opinion that but for the arrival of Major Smith the Indians would have renewed the attack and eventually annihilated his command; but a few months later the truth leaked out. Red Cloud was thoroughly whipped, and was only threatening the corral to recover his dead. There was no thought on his part of a further attack. His whole force was demoralized and stampeded, and on the arrival of Major Smith he fell back as rapidly as possible and retreated as fast as carrying his dead and wounded would permit him. And well he might be glad to get away, for a wounded Sioux chief who visited the post of Colonel R. I. Dodge at North Platte late in the fall of 1867 told him that the number of Indians in the fight was over three thousand, and a prominent medicine man of the Sioux told him (the Sioux chief) that " the total loss in killed and wounded 14 198 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. of Indians of all tribes and bands " at that fight was eleven hundred and thirty-seven. The Sioux had paid dearly for the dead of the previous December. The next spring this post, as well as two others, was aban- doned in pursuance of the provisions of a treaty of peace entered into with the Sioux and Cheyennes, who burned them to the ground as soon as the troops had left them. Another chapter will show how well they kept it. CHAPTER IX. THE SIOUX CAMPAIGN OF 1868 AND 1869. So many criticisms have been passed on the army's Indian campaigns on the Western plains since the civil war by really good and philanthropic people, un- fortunately with no adequate knowledge of the facts that brought it about, that it may be well to give my readers a few extracts from the official reports of two of our best-known generals to disabuse their minds of the idea that the army incited them, but before I do so I wish to quote for their benefit the opinion of these Indians by the late Colonel Richard I. Dodge, who was by far the ablest writer and best-informed man in re- gard to their mode of life, habits, and character who has lived in recent times. He spent the best portion of his life on the great plains, frequently living among them, for he was a mighty hunter and loved wild life, and he made these people a painstaking study. He has written of their good and bad qualities without a shadow of partiality, and ever and always with a desire to do them justice, and he sums up tersely and accurately the reason why an Indian develops into what he actual- ly becomes in the following words: "Eastern people, . . . misled by the traveller's tales of enthusiastic missionaries or the more inter- 199 200 THE STORY OP THE SOLDIER. ested statements of [Indian] agents and professional humanitarians, and indulging in a philanthropy safe because distant and sincere because ignorant, are ready to believe all impossible good and nothing bad of the noble savage, . . . while the Western man who has lost his horses, had his house burned, or his wife vio- lated or murdered finds a whole lifetime of hatred and revenge too little to devote to his side of the question. " The conception of Indian character is almost im- possible to a man who has passed the greater portion of his life surrounded by the influences of a cultivated, refined, and moral society. . . . The truth is simply too shocking, and the revolted mind takes refuge in dis- belief as the less painful horn of the dilemma. As a first step toward an understanding of his character we must get at his standpoint of morality. As a child he is not brought up. . . . From the dawn of intelligence his own will is his law. There is no right and no wrong to him. . . . No dread of punishment restrains him from any act that boyish fun or fury may prompt. No lessons inculcating the beauty and sure reward of good- ness or the hideousness and certain pnishment of vice are ever wasted on him. The men by whom he is sur- rounded, and to whom he looks as models for his future life, are great and renowned just in proportion to their ferocity, to the scalps they have taken, or the thefts they have committed. His earliest boyish memory is probably a dance of rejoicing over the scalps of stran- gers, all of whom he is taught to regard as enemies. The lessons of his mother awaken only a desire to take his place as soon as possible in fight and foray. The in- struction of his father is only such as is calculated to fit him best to act a prominent part in the chase, in theft, and in murder. . . . Virtue, morality, generosity, honour, are words not only absolutely without signifi- THE SIOUX CAMPAIGN OF 1868-'69. 201 cance to him, but are not accurately translatable into any Indian language on the plains." * That people of this peculiar training should break treaties at will was only to be expected, especially when they deemed themselves the stronger party, as they certainly did after the abandonment by the Gov- ernment of the posts of Forts Phil Kearny, Reno, and C. F. Smith at their imperative demand. The Indian accedes to a demand only from one consideration fear. Nothing else will move him; and the fact that we had given up these posts on their threat of war at once set- tled the question in their minds of the strength of the relative forces. The condition of affairs on the border that grew out of this act upon the part of the Govern- ment is perhaps best shown in the following extracts from the annual reports of Generals Sherman and Sheridan submitted to the Secretary of War in 1868: "REPORT OF LIEUTENANT-GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN. " HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI, " ST. Louis, MISSOURI, November 1, 1868. " GENERAL: The military division of the Missouri is still composed of the departments of Missouri, Platte, and Dakota, embracing substantially the country west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, in- cluding New Mexico, Utah, and Montana. " These departments are commanded by Generals Sheridan, Augur, and Terry. " You will observe that while the country generally has been at peace, the people on the plains and the troops of my command have been constantly at war, en- * The Plains of the Great West, by Richard Irving Dodge, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pages 255-257. 202 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. during all its dangers and hardships, with none of its honours or rewards. " It has always been most difficult to discover the exact truth concerning the cause of a rupture with any Indians. They never give notice beforehand of a war- like intention, and the first notice comes after their rifles and lances have done much bloody work. All intercourse then necessarily ceases, and the original cause soon becomes buried in after events. The pres- ent Indian war in General Sheridan's department is no exception, and, as near as I can gather it, the truth is about this: "Last year, in the several councils held at North Platte and Fort Laramie by the peace commission with fragmentary bands of Sioux, the Indians asserted that they were then, and had been always, anxious to live at peace with their white neighbours, provided we kept faith with them. They claimed that the building of the Powder River road, and the establishment of mili- tary posts along it, drove away the game from the only hunting grounds they had left after our occupation of Montana and Nebraska; that this road had been built in the face of their protest and in violation of some old treaty which guaranteed them that country forever. That road and the posts along it had been constructed in 1865 and 1866, for the benefit of the people of Mon- tana, but had almost ceased to be of any practical use to them by reason of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, whose terminus west of the Black Hills made it easier for the wagons to travel by an older and better road west of the mountains. " For this reason^ and because the farther extension of this railroad, under rapid progress, would each year make the Powder River road less and less used, the com- mission yielded to the earnest entreaty of the Sioux, THE SIOUX CAMPAIGN OF 1868-'69. 203 and recommended the abandonment for the time of this road. On the second day of last March, General Grant gave the necessary orders for breaking up the posts Forts Eeno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith; but it was well toward August before the stores and mate- rial could all be hauled away. As we had reason to apprehend, some of the Sioux, attributing our action to fear, followed up our withdrawal by raids to the line of the Pacific road, and to the south of it into Colo- rado. Others of them doubtless reached the camps of the Arapahoes on Beaver Creek and the Cheyenne camps on Pawnee Fork, near Fort Larned, and told them what had occurred, and made them believe that by war, or threats of war, they too could compel us to abandon the Smoky Hill line, which passes through the very heart of the buffalo region, the best hunting grounds of America. " About this time viz., August 3d or 4th a party of Indians, composed of two hundred Cheyennes, four Arapahoes, and twenty Sioux, are known to have start- ed from their camp on Pawnee Fork on a war expedi- tion, nominally to fight the Pawnees. On the 10th they appeared on the Saline north of Fort Harker, where the settlers received them kindly; they were given food and coffee, but, pretending to be offended because it was in ' tin cups/ they threw it back in the faces of the women and began at once to break up furniture and set fire to the houses. They seized the women and ravished them, perpetrating atrocities which could only have been the result of premeditated crime. Here they killed two men. Thence they crossed over to the settlements on the Solomon, where they continued to destroy houses and property, to ravish all females, and killed thirteen men. Going on to the Eepublican, they killed two more men and committed other acts of similar brutal atrocity. As soon as intelligence of this could be car- 204: THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. ried to Fort Barker troops were sent in pursuit, who succeeded in driving them away, rescuing some captive children, and killing but few Indians, by reason of their fast ponies and familiarity with the country. " I recite these facts with some precision, because they are proved beyond dispute, and up to the very mo- ment of their departure from Pawnee Fork no Indian alleges any but the kindest treatment on the part of the agents of the General Government, of our soldiers, or of the frontier people. " On the 4th of September Governor Hunt tele- graphed fne from Denver: * Just returned. Fearful con- dition of things here. Nine persons murdered by Indi- ans yesterday within a radius of sixty miles/ etc. And on the 24th of September, Acting-Governor Hall again telegraphed from Denver: ' The Indians have again at- tacked our settlements in strong force, obtaining pos- session of the country to within twelve miles of Denver. They are more bold, fierce, and desperate in their as- saults than ever before. It is impossible to drive them out and protect the families at the same time, for they are better a>rmed, mounted, disciplined, and better offi- cered than our men. Each hour brings intelligence of fresh barbarities, and more extensive robberies/ etc. " On the 4th of September Governor Crawford, of Kansas, telegraphed from Topeka: ' Have just received a despatch from Hays, stating that Indians attacked, captured, and burned a train at Pawnee Fork, killed, scalped, and burned sixteen men; also attacked another train at Cimarron crossing, which was defended until ammunition was exhausted, when the men abandoned the train, saving what stock they could. Similar at- tacks are of almost daily occurrence. These things must cease. I can not disregard constant and persistent ap- THE SIOUX CAMPAIGN OF 1868-'69. 205 peals for help. I can not sit idly by and see our people butchered, but as a last resort will be obliged to call upon the State forces to take the field and end these outrages.' "All this time General Sheridan in person was labouring with every soldier of his command to give all possible protection to the scattered people in that wide range of country from Kansas to Colorado and New Mexico. But the very necessity of guarding interests so widely scattered made it impossible to spare enough troops to go in search of the Indians in their remote camps. " This double process of peace within their reser- vations and war without must soon bring this matter to a conclusion. " With great respect, your obedient servant, "W. T. SHERMAN, "Lieutenant General. " Brevet Major-General E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant General, Washington, D. C." " HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, "!N THE FIELD, FORT HAYS, September 26, 1868. " GENERAL: In reply to your letter of September 17, 1868, asking for a report of the facts touching the be- ginning of the present Indian troubles, I have the hon- our to respectfully submit the following: " Early in the spring, after assuming command of the Department of the Missouri, I visited the line of military posts on the Arkansas. About Fort Dodge, Kansas, I found many Indians there encamped, em- bracing Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahoes, and Chey- ennes. They asked me to have an interview with them, 206 THE STORY OF THE SOLDIER. which I declined, stating to them that I was simply visiting the military posts to learn their condition and that of the soldiers, and that I was not authorized to talk with them. " From all I could learn at Dodge there appeared to be outspoken dissatisfaction on the part of all these Indians to removing to the reservations assigned to them by the treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek of the previous fall. I learned from officers and others that all the tribes considered the treaty of no importance, save to get the annuities promised them in it, and that they did not intend to move to their reservations.