A Travel Guide to the Plains Indian Wars

A TRAVEL GUIDE TO THE PLAINS INDIAN WARS BY STAN HOIG UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS 2006, 217 PAGES, $21.95

When we think of war within the U.S. it is the Civil War that comes to mind. The battles were legion--Shiloh, Antietiem, Gettysburg, etc. The casualties were in the hundreds of thousands and any other military actions paled before them. Still, the American West had an unenviable legacy of what might be termed war, although most encounters more resembled skirmishes, raids, and hit-and-run tactics. Yet, several stand out as massacres.

In 1862, the Santee Sioux in Minnesota rioted against the whites because of a delay in receiving their annuities, and murdered about 700 citizens, mostly around New Ulm. Gens. Henry Sibley and Alfred Sully pursued and captured many of the Indian miscreants. Two hundred were condemned to be hanged at Mankato, Minn., but that figure was reduced to 38--still the largest mass hanging in American history.

In 1866, at Ft. Phil Kearny, along the Bozeman Trail in Wyoming Territory, there was bad blood between the Oglala Sioux Chieftain, Red Cloud, and the military unit that built the fort to protect travelers going to the Montana gold fields. The problem was that it was located squarely in the hunting grounds of the Indians. On Dec. 21, 1866, woodcutters from the fort were attacked by Red Cloud's Indians. The post commander, Col. Henry Carrington, sent Lt. Col. William J. Fetterman and a detachment of men to relieve them, but specifically told Fetterman not to pursue the Indians. Fetterman disobeyed those orders and was ambushed, resulting in the death of 81 men.

The defeat of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, was the most spectacular battle, Custer and five companies being wiped out. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the Indians, though, as their doom now was sealed by white vengeance.

Many of the battle sites are still extant, although one has to search for them. Some have disappeared because of changes in a river's course, as is the case with Beecher Island near Wray, Wyo. In A Travel Guide of the Plains Indian Wars, Stan Hoig, author of The Sand Creek Massacre and the Battle of the Washita, helps travelers locate all those difficult-to-find site& He also lists cemeteries, museums, tours, records, and books that give more detail about the Indian wars.

This volume is divided into two parts. The first gives readers a thumbnail sketch of the battles and the second provides tours one can take. The coverage is limited to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. There is a generous inclusion of maps and illustrations. Discussion of some of the forts provides interesting reading. Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas, for instance, was the earliest of the western forts. Ft. Laramie, the two Ft. Unions (one in Montana and another in New Mexico), and Ft. Sill, were prominent. Few of these were stockaded.

The final days of Indian warfare were coming to a close with the scorched earth policy initiated by Kit Carson in his pursuit of the Navajos. They had nowhere to turn nor the means to subsist and were marched off the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. Many died along the way in what became known as "The Long Walk." Col. Raynald MacKenzie's defeat of combined bands of Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanches at Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle in 1884 and the subsequent surrender at Ft. Sill of Quannah Parker's own Comanches just about wound up the Plains Indians Wars. There yet remained only the Massacre of Wounded Knee, in the South Dakota Badlands, on Dec. 29, 1890. This book is a nagging but important reminder that, in its expansion, our country had a dark side.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning