Nebraska Conflict between Native Americans and the Whites - Research Paper Example

FIGHTING THE NEBRASKA TERRITORY AND THE INDIAN WARS FROM 1854 TO 1867 The conflicts between the Whites and the Native Americans on the advancing frontiers of the United States make up a colorful chapter in this country’s history. As each new portion of white pioneers moved westward attempts of the Natives to secure their birthright resulted in another Indian War. As early as 1850s it was the turn of Nebraska to endure the conflict that would go on intermittently during the next twenty five years1. However many other American states have put much greater emphasis on their participation in the Indian wars, Nebraska could claim a similar period in its history – one that was as stirring and vivid as that of other American states. Involvement of Nebraska in Indian wars went on as long as the warfare period in the Great Plains region. By the 1850 there had not been any reason to believe that the region later known as Nebraska may be disturbed by any violence like Indian war2. This region that lies beyond the Missouri River was popularly assumed to the “Great American Desert”, unfit for being utilized by white men. Furthermore this region had been defined as the permanent Indian domain3. Yet the Mexican War had given USA its western coast, and then Americans discovered gold in California so thousands of white Americans rushed westward putting an end to the existence of permanent Indian frontier. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 provided for transformation of the Great Plains into another white men’s territory. As a result the first Nebraska Indian war began. The American Civil War (1861–1865) gave another impetus for the long-lasting Nebraska’s Indian conflict. Encouraged by the withdrawal of military to other areas the tribes of the plains began to put their pressure on the white settlements. The military frontier thus became a defensive line that relied rather on volunteers than on the regulars. It was intended to restrain the Natives until the Civil War was over. White Nebraskans had already heard of the horrible Sioux uprising of 1862 in Minnesota. It is no wonder that they mustered in to take part with other units in a campaign in Dakota Territory. Fearing that the Southerners might urge a similar unrest in the plains, the Union government enforced the garrison at Fort Kearny, and ordered Iowa Seventh Cavalry to set up Camp McKean which was renamed McPherson afterwards4. Present-day Nebraskans may be surprised at though of Confederate troops defending their state from Indians in the Platte Valley. Nevertheless former Confederates helped much to defend Nebraska frontier during two crucial years of Indian War. By 1864 it became clear that Nebraska needed some kind of help on its frontier because the available manpower grew increasingly less and less adequate. In summer of that year the Arapaho, Sioux and Cheyenne tribes broke telegraph communications, closed the Overland Route, and drove the whites in horror to the Plains. Col. John M. Chivington’s desperate attack on peaceful Natives at Sand Creek, Colorado, infuriated more hostile Indian tribes. 1865 promised to bring an exodus of the whites from already colonized territories. This notwithstanding frontier defenses was enforced by the regiments of the so-called Galvanized Yankees. Officially named “United States Volunteers”, these were the regiments composed of the former Confederate soldiers. These former Confederates were willing to fight Indians on the assurance that they would not be ordered to fight their country-fellow-men in the south In the aftermath of the Civil War the frontier of Nebraska gained its full development. With the release of the volunteers the regular units resumed the task of the defending the frontier and the regular soldier became Nebraska’s frontier society’s integral part. Dozens of new military posts were built; to the few outposts previously established in Nebraska were added such up-to-date installations as Fort Sidney and Camp Sargent at North Platte. Army campaigns against the Natives intensified increasingly until the power of Indians on the Plains was utterly destroyed. The third phase of Nebraska’s frontier’s history had begun. The significance of these activities is clear by the rapid social and economic growth of Nebraska as of that territory reached its statehood. There were really plenty of the reasons to worry. To be sure after the Civil War was over Nebraska did really escaped violence in scales usual for the times of trouble like that. After enduring conditions of hardly permanent state of siege the army at last consented to evacuate. Soon the campaigns resumed in Nebraska and lasted until the late 1870s. For example, in 1867 Lt. Col. G.A. Custer led his unit of the Seventh Cavalry from Fort Hays to Fort McPherson and then back to Republican Valley again. This unit skirmished with the Natives and encountered especially sharp conflict with Sioux on 24 June, 1867. Nevertheless the most significant to the history of Nebraska were the campaigns of 1868 and of 1869 in the Republican Valley5. Despite of al its efforts Congressional Commission failed to pacify the Plains and in 1868 once again Indian gangs were seen on the warpath. That year autumn Maj. Eugene Carr led his Cavalry regiment through Republican Valley on a scout raid that grew into a five-day lasting battle with Cheyennes and Sioux. Apparently Carr had driven the Natives – or at least a great number of them – southward where they Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan were waiting for them. A great part of those Ceyennes who had escaped that trap returned to the Republican valley joining gangs of Sioux in the valley which had served as a refuge for Indians for so long period of time. Nevertheless in the following summer the valley was wrested from the Natives by Carr’s expedition. This resulted from the most disastrous defeat Indians of the Great Plains had ever sustained before. However it was the last serious campaign in Nebraska there were many skirmishing, scouting and several other minor incidents. In 1876 Col. Wesley Merritt’s column attacked the Cheyennes at Warbonnet Creek, Nebraska where Yellow Hair was killed. Yet in 1878 a wandering gang of Cheyennes in attempt to return to their traditional places of abiding spread an Indian scare throughout the whole western part of Nebraska. Such incidents took place well into the end of 1870s. As the whites began to populate the valleys and prairies Nebraska’s involvement in the wars with the Natives was diminishing6. Frontier regiments by their cosmopolitan background resembled some foreign legion. For example, there was born in Ireland Capt. Thomas E. Maley, a veteran of 1850s Indian wars and the Civil War veteran. Prussian-born Capt. Gustavus E. Urban perished on duty in Nebraska in 1871 having served in both Plains War and Civil War. Another remarkable figure was Maj.William Bedford Royal. That man later had volunteered at the Mexican war and later was a newspaper correspondent in the goldmines of California. Eventually he became an officer in the glorious Fifth Cavalry regiment. When serving in Nebraska he was in command of Fort Sidney in the 1870s.7 And of course the list of heroes of Nebraska military frontier must not fail to include the chief of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment’s scouts, William F. Cody. Nevertheless his involvement in his various ghost-written “autobiographies’ and even in show business have led historians to doubt a great portion of the so-called “Cody legend”, the fact is that “Buffalo Bill’ was one of the best of the scouts and has obviously deserved the highest praise granted him by such commanders as Sheridan and Carr. When Carr met Cody in 1868 little was known about him. As Carr remembered himself when he saw Cody first he took him for the so-called drugstore cowboy, i.e. for a poser that tries to pretend to look like a cowboy. Yet Cody behaved in businesslike manner and offered to report to Maj. Royall Carr’s presence, as well as to have a horse sent for him. Evaluating Cody’s character and services, Carr wrote that “he is a natural gentleman in manners as well as in character…the typical frontier man”. Also it is worth top mention a unique unit of the history of the military frontier – the glorious Pawnee Scouts. That unit was recruited from the Pawnee Agency. George B.Grinnel, a historian and ethnologist is reported to have stated once said that the Northerners "were in the class with Bridger and Carson, and the value of their services in the work of opening and developing the western country can hardly be overestimated." The Pawnee Scouts had begun their service by the end of the Civil War, as the volunteers, then as the regular army scouts. Probably their best known service in Nebraska was the Republican River Expedition. By the end of the Campaign Carr asserted that the scouts proved to be of the greatest service to their country. The military who were serving on the Plains of Nebraska as well as their families used to find their country somehow strange and marvelous. When General Sherman was told that the Plains are a fine country that needs but enough water and a good society replied that the hell needs exactly the same8. Nevertheless the fact is that as military service at the Frontier went Nebraska was hardly the most desirable places to hold a station. It should not be omitted that even Sherman’s comment was a bit more favorable than the one of Sheridan abut Texas. Sheridan is said to have noted that had he owned both Texas and hell he would have rented Texas out and live in hell. The Fifth Cavalry regiment always welcomed a chance to return to its station at Nebraska. Contrary to the stereotypes created by the Hollywood the normal western post was not surrounded by high battlements or by nay log stockade. Most of the frontier forts rather resembled Fort McPherson with its buildings gathered into some kind of rectangle encircling a central parade ground. Fort McPherson had become an attractive and substantial post by 1869. Dwelling places of the officers were as stylish and comfortable as any throughout the military frontier. Any army wife was proud to possess the native Nebraskan red cedar woodworks This notwithstanding accommodations of the military in Nebraska varied throughout the country. Camp Mitchell was rather unenthusiastically descried by an army wife as compact and peculiar. Maybe the most attractive pf all these camps was Camp Ogallala, a tent post set near the railroad station. Captain Andrew S. Burt’s wife soon after her arrival to Ogallala was terrified to encounter two soldiers carrying a tent from which a line of loathsome rattlesnakes. Mrs. Burt added that the snake problem was solved by surrounding the tents with the hair-rope that the snakes allegedly did not dare trespass.9 Throughout entire course of American history there were many frontiers, including those of the farmer, miner and the cattleman. Yet the military frontier stands really out of the rest of them for its goal as well as for its extinction. Its main purpose was to put an end to the condition s that had made its existent necessary. By 1880s such conditions stopped to exist I Nebraska so the military frontier in the state exists no more either. These forts gradually were abandoned left to the elements. There would more traces of human activities in 1880s.10 At Wounded Knee, South Dakota. During the few months the life of the past remembered the previous years of the military frontier. This notwithstanding the military exodus went on. The scene was all the same throughout the country: the last salute was given, the last retreat was sounded, and the flag was drawn down the staff for the last time. Once again the garrisons marched into the prairies of Nebraska yet this time they would not meet the proud and glorious warrior of the plains; their meeting now was the rendezvous with history. Where the Pony Express had carried the mail there were neither telegraph lines not railroads. Where the blue-coated soldiers’ columns had been marching there were now cities, ranges and cornfields. The Indian wars in Nebraska were over. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, D. Alexandr. The Galvanized Yankees. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963 Custer, George A. My Life on the Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962 Oslon, James.C. History of Nebraska. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1955 King, James T. War Eagle: A Life of General Eugene A. Carr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963 The Nebraska Indian Wars Reader, 1865-1877. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. 1998 Read More