ON THE STAKED PLAINS.

ENERAL Sherman has called the twenty years of constant Indian warfare following the war of the Rebellion, "The Battle of Civilization." That battle, on this continent, of course, began earlier, but certain facts made that period an epoch by itself. A chief fact to be noted is that the Indians during that time were always well armed, often much better than the troops. At the battle of Bear Paw, for instance, the Indians used magazine rifles of the best pattern, while even now, nearly fourteen years afterward, the army still has to do without them. The field of "The Battle of Civilization" was the vast trans-Missouri region, and civilization did not, during that period, satisfy itself with a gradual advance of its line, as formerly, but became aggressive, pierced the Indian country with three trans-continental railways and so ultimately abolished the frontier. A very large portion of the army (including nearly all of the cavalry and infantry and a small portion of the artillery) was at one time or another occupied with the task and many heroic deeds were done, but the conspicuously successful leaders were few.

General Nelson A. Miles as colonel of the 5th Infantry led his first command against hostile Indians in 1874. In the summer of that year small bands of southern Cheyennes, Kiowas, Arapahoes and Comanches made several raids in the Indian Territory, Texas, southern Kansas and southeastern Colorado, but es

caped punishment by flying to their agencies. At last, on the 21st of July, the Department of the Interior gave the Secretary of War authority to punish these Indians wherever found, even to follow them upon their reservations. Under this authority General Miles was ordered into the field. He organized his command at Fort Dodge, Kansas, on the left bank of the Arkansas River. It consisted of eight troops of the 6th Cavalry, four companies of the 5th Infantry, and a section of artillery made up of details from cavalry and infantry. Later in the season four troops of the 8th Cavalry joined this command and some of the 6th Cavalry were withdrawn from the field.

In a summer of exceptional heat and drought even for that region, and through a section eaten bare by the invading army of grasshoppers whose flight was a "pillar of cloud by day" and whose encampment at night was as the devastation of fire, the command pressed rapidly southward from the Arkansas. Even prior to the inception of the movement, the scope of this Indian Territory Expedition, as it was called, differed from some of the notable Indian campaigns in the particular that General Miles waged Indian warfare according to the well-known principles of the art of war, so far as applicable. In too many cases expeditions against Indians had been like dogs fastened by a chain: within the length of the chain irresistible, beyond it powerless. The chain was its wagon train and supplies. A command with thirty days' supplies could inflict a terrible blow if only it could within thirty days come up with the Indians, deliver its blow, and get back to

from garrison, but well seasoned by drills and the gymnastic exercises that General Miles had instituted, marched patiently through heat and dust and "got there" every day. Indians . never fight a considerable force while they can fly from it, and none but those who have experienced the hardship of the long pursuit, with its hunger, and thirst, and sleeplessness, can understand the feeling of restfulness and grim satisfaction with which a command sees that the race is over and the fight about to

open.

August 30 was the day, and the "breaks" of the Red River, some thirteen miles from its bed, the place where the fight opened. Suddenly, from behind bluff and bush, as if they sprang from the bosom of the earth full armed, the hostiles came tearing down upon Baldwin's scouts and Indians, with the crack, crack, of their rifles, and the whoop of their war-cries. But Baldwin was the man for the place and Miles knew it; his sufficient discretion never had a touch of hesitancy or timidity, and he was fitly seconded by brave old "Fall Leaf" of the Delawares. Meantime Colonel Biddle, under the immediate command of General Miles, deployed his battalion of cavalry forward at the run; Colonel Compton, giving rein to his horses, swung his battalion out on the right; Lieutenant Pope's artillery, with infantry support, came rapidly up in the center, and there began a running fight over thirteen miles of sun-baked earth, glowing with a furnace heat, gashed in gullies and deep ravines by the flood-like rains which at times prevail there. Whenever the Indians made a stand the troops were hurled upon them, and the fight, which if it had opened timidly would have been a stoutly contested affair, soon became a rout and a chase. Col. Biddle threw forward Captain Chaffee with his troop as skirmishers, who there made his famous battle-field speech: "Forward! and if any man is killed I'll make him a corporal!" Down through the jagged ravines the troops pursued across a half-mile of sand where at times a river flows, up the right bank and into the valley of the Tule, a branch of the Red River, where a burning camp, abandoned utensils, and a trail leading up a precipitous cliff told of the hasty flight of the Indians. The long chase before the fight, the rapid pursuit after through the intolerable heat of sun and earth, and the absence of water made it necessary to call a halt. Men and animals were famishing - some men drank the blood of a buffalo, and all the water found in Red River was a small pool of saturated gypsum and alkali, rendered indescribably vile from having been for a long time a buffalo wallow. With infinite labor the command, after resting, followed the trail over VOL. XLII.- 46.

which Pope, by devoting the night to it, had dragged up his Gatlings, and so climbed out of the valley of the Tule and followed the Indian trail for miles out on the Llano. It became evident that no pursuit could be successful without supplies, and that before a train could be brought through the ravines and breaks of the valley to the table-land on the right bank of the Red River the Indians could get beyond pursuit. Hence a recall was sounded.

The train with escort, commanded by Major W. Lyman of the 5th Infantry, was sent back to Camp Supply to replenish, and, on its return, was attacked near the Washita River by a large force of Comanches and Kiowas who had come up in rear of General Miles's command, fresh from their reservation. Stimulated with the hope of capturing rations and ammunition the Indians for five days laid siege to the train, which was most heroically and successfully defended.

Intent on conquering a peace and not merely beating the Indians in one engagement, General Miles overcame the greatest obstacles in the few weeks of comparative inactivity that ensued. Of these obstacles it must suffice, here, to say they ought never to have existed, yet they would have wrecked the expedition but for the indomitable persistence of its commander. On November 8, a detachment under Lieutenant F. D. Baldwin surprised a large camp of hostiles near the head of McClellan Creek in the early morning, and at once attacked with such vigor as to compel the Indians to abandon the protection of the ravines and retreat to the open country. Time and again they rallied and renewed the defense, but were finally driven by the troops and scattered in utter rout, leaving in their flight two little captive white girls - Adelaide and Julia Germaine-aged five and seven years. Their parents, brother, and one sister were all murdered by the Indians in Kansas, where their two older sisters were captured in the summer previous. The surrender, which crowned the expedition with success, included the older sisters. General Miles became guardian for the four, and upon his recommendation Congress authorized the stoppage from the annuities of the Cheyennes of an amount for their support. In the center of the vast section, including the Pan Handle of Texas and the adjacent portions of the Indian Territory which had been wrested by Miles from the hostiles, was erected a military post named for the gallant Major Elliott of the Seventh Cavalry, who had lost his life November 27, 1868, in Custer's Battle of the Washita.

A CONFLICT WITH SITTING BULL. THOSE familiar with the frontier twenty or twenty-five years ago will readily recall the

estimation in which the numbers and prowess of the Sioux were held; also the prestige that they had after the Fort Phil Kearny massacre in 1866, and the abandonment by the Government, at their dictation, of the Powder River route and of several military posts. More than once, in derogation of laurels won in warfare against other Indians, it was said, "Wait till you meet the Sioux."

Simultaneous with the arrival at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, of the news of the Custer catastrophe on the Little Big Horn, Montana, came orders to General Miles and the 5th Infantry to proceed to the scene of hostilities to form a subordinate part of the large command already there. In the earlier service of the 7th Cavalry in Kansas most agreeable social relations had existed between many members of the two regiments, and the list of those slain on that fatal 25th of June, 1876, contained many names which were read with a pang of sorrow; and so, though the 5th marched gaily out of Fort Leavenworth, decked with bouquets, to the familiar strains of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," officers and men marched with sad hearts. The long journey up the Missouri and the Yellowstone was accomplished without noteworthy incidents. Summer drew to a close, and the objects of the campaign remained unattained. The two large commands then in the field were ordered to their stations early in the autumn, and General Miles was left on the Yellowstone with his own regiment (the 5th Infantry) and six companies of the 22d Infantry. The task assigned him was to build log huts for his troops and stores, bring forward the winter supplies, by wagon, from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and then the command was expected to hibernate, protecting themselves from attack and holding the ground for a basis of campaign in the following year. Two cantonments were built, one at the mouth of the Tongue River, and the other on the left bank of the Yellowstone, nearly opposite the present city of Glendive, but there was no hibernating, for the disposition of the commander did not favorit, and he was so isolated that action on his own judgment was necessary under the circumstances. Immediately on assuming command General Miles began, as in the Indian Territory Expedition, to plan for a systematic campaign.

The hostiles belonged on the large reservations far to the south and southeast of the Yellowstone, and the General took means of getting the earliest possible information of their absenting themselves therefrom. He became satisfied, early in October, that a very large number of the hostiles were in his vicinity, and this fact, added to a prolonged delay in the expected arrival at the cantonment on Tongue River of

a supply train coming up from the cantonment at Glendive, induced him to march out with the 5th Infantry and proceed down on the left bank of the Yellowstone. On the 18th of October he met the train under escort of a battalion. of the 22d Infantry commanded by LieutenantColonel E. S. Otis of that regiment. The train had been once obliged to return to Glendive by the strong force of Indians, its teamsters so demoralized that their places were filled by soldiers. When advancing the second time Otis received, October 16, the following note, left on a hilltop by an Indian runner:

Otis sent a firm reply by a scout and proceeded with the train surrounded by the Indians, who, for a considerable time, kept up firing but gradually fell to the rear. When General Miles learned the situation from Colonel Otis he started after Sitting Bull and overtook him near the head of Cedar Creek, a northern affluent of the Yellowstone. Sitting Bull sent a flag of truce to General Miles desiring to communicate, and General Miles met him with Chief Gall and several others between the lines. Sitting Bull shrewdly wished for an "old-fashioned peace" for the winter (when warfare is most difficult), with permission to hunt and trade for ammunition, on which conditions he agreed not to molest the troops. But General Miles's object was permanent peace and the security of the territory then and before dominated by the Sioux, and he told Sitting Bull plainly that peace could come only by absolute submission. When the interview closed the troops were moved with the intention of intercepting the Indians should they try to move northward, and on the 21st of October another similar interview between the lines occurred.

The Indians undoubtedly intended to emulate the act of bad faith by which General Canby lost his life at the hands of the Modocs, April 11, 1873. Several of their younger warriors, with affected carelessness, gradually moved forward in position to surround the party under the flag of truce. General Miles, observing this, moved back a step or two and told Sitting Bull very forcibly that those men were too young for the council, and that the "talk" would end just there unless they re

turned to their lines. One of them had slipped a carbine up under his buffalo robe. Another muttered to Sitting Bull, "Why don't you talk strong?" and he replied, "When I say that, I am going to shoot him." Meantime the troops were held in readiness to attack, had any act of bad faith been attempted; even the accidental discharge of a firearm would have precipitated an attack in which all between the lines would have fallen. It became evident, at last, that only force could settle the question, and General Miles said to Sitting Bull, "I will either drive you out of this country or you will me. I will take no advantage of you under flag of truce and give you fifteen minutes to get back to your lines; then, if my terms are not accepted, I will open fire." With an angry grunt the old Medicine Man turned and ran back to his lines; the whole country was alive with Indians, not less than a thousand warriors swarmed all about the command, which, in a slender line extended to protect front and flanks and rear, pushed vigorously forward and drove the Indians from the deep valleys at the source of Cedar Creek, compelling them to leave some of their dead on the field, which they never willingly do, and then pursued them so hotly for forty-two miles to the Yellowstone that they abandoned food, lodge poles, camp equipage, and ponies.

On October 27, more than four hundred lodges, about two thousand Indians, surrendered to General Miles, and five chiefs were taken as hostages for the execution by the Indians of their terms of surrender, i. e., to go to their various agencies. Sitting Bull and his immediate following, his family and connections by marriage, broke away from the main body during the pursuit and escaped northward, where he was later joined by Gall and other chiefs with some followers.

The estimated number of warriors in this engagement was one thousand. To General Miles and to the 5th Infantry, three hundred and ninety-eight rifles, is due the honor of this important victory, which had far-reaching consequences. Not since the battle of Little Big Horn had the followers of Sitting Bull been attacked by the troops in offensive battle. This was the first of a series of engagements in which the command of General Miles, or some detachment therefrom, vigorously assumed the offensive, and here began the successful battles and combats which resulted in breaking the power of the dreaded Sioux and bringing security and prosperity to a vast territory which is now penetrated by railways, occupied by hardy and prosperous settlers, dotted over with towns and cities, and already so developed and so permeated by the influences of our civiliza

tion that, in the form of new States, or portions thereof, it augments the glory and dignity of the nation.

Returning to the cantonment at Tongue River, General Miles organized a force — four hundred and thirty-four rifles-made up of the 5th and a portion of the 22d Infantry and pushed northward in pursuit of Sitting Bull, but the trail was obliterated by snow near the Big Dry, the broad bed of that which at times becomes a southern affluent of the Missouri. A winter of great severity, even for that region, opened early, and the command suffered intensely but kept the field and scoured the country along the Missouri River above and below old Fort Peck.

On December 7, a detachment of the command,- Companies G, H, and I, 5th Infantry one hundred officers and men, commanded by First Lieutenant F. D. Baldwin, 5th Infantry, overtook Sitting Bull's camp, one hundred and ninety lodges, and drove it across the Missouri, and on the 18th the same force surprised the camp near the head of Redwater, a southern affluent of the Missouri, and captured camp and contents with sixty animals, the Indians scattering out south of the Yellowstone.

As Sitting Bull did not for a considerable time thereafter enter as a factor into the campaign, it will be permitted to anticipate for a little and describe his subsequent movements. With a small following he shortly after moved northward and camped on the left bank of the Missouri; thence, near the end of the winter, poor and with scarcely any ammunition, he and his scanty following sought refuge north of the international boundary. As a war was raging of which he was an important factor — not so much from military prowess as from his position as a " Medicine Man" and an extreme and inveterate savage Indian, which made him the nucleus of all the disaffected and hostile Sioux - his band ought to have been either disarmed at the boundary or interned. General Miles made repeated and urgent appeals to the higher authorities that action to that end be taken, but unfortunately it was not taken.

Sitting Bull's position and character, as before indicated, and the freedom for a considerable time accorded him and his followers, north of the line, induced a large number of the hostile and disaffected to steal away to him, and so the Northwest Territory of the Dominion became the rendezvous and supply camp of a threatening force. But for the time Sitting Bull was eliminated from the problem of conquering a peace, and the closing months of 1876 saw the beginning of the end of the great Sioux war. The intense cold of a Montana winter did not chill the ardor nor lessen the