American Rifle - Alexander Rose [83]
In the West soldiers rarely fought in such cramped environments. Instead they found themselves on the ceaseless plains confronting horse-borne Sioux who swept across the flats like fleets atop the ocean before vanishing. In the words of Colonel Philippe Régis de Trobriand, “The movement of Indian horsemen is lighter, swifter, and longer range than that of our cavalry, which means they always get away from us.” Only in the winter, when the Indians’ grass-fed ponies proved less hardy than the troopers’ grain-fed mounts, was it possible to keep pace.5
In the Southwest the sedentary desert-dwellers were less mobile but knew how to survive for months beyond the reach of soldiers who were rendered helpless by soaring temperatures and parched throats. In the mountains, natural fortresses all, tribesmen outraced their slower hunters through the contorted passes, across the roaring rivers, and between the ravines.
The army was pitted against an enemy, observed Captain Marcy,
who is here to-day and there to-morrow; . . . who is everywhere without being anywhere; who assembles at the moment of combat, and vanishes whenever fortune turns against him, who leaves his women and children far distant from the theatre of hostilities, and has neither towns or magazines to defend, nor lines of retreat to cover; who derives his commissariat from the country he operates in, and is not encumbered with baggage-wagons or pack-trains; who comes into action only when it suits his purposes; and never without the advantage of numbers or position.6
Owing to the more open, fluid geography of the West, pinpoint accuracy was now of far less importance than raw, sudden violence employed against army units or lumbering wagon convoys. Once masters of marksmanship, Indians suffered from a newfound reputation for being poor shots.7 The change had been forced upon them, not least by their lack of modern accurate firearms, and in their preference for swooping fast and close on horses they adapted their buffalo-hunting technique of riding among a stampeding, jostling herd and picking off beasts willy-nilly with bow and arrow. The confusion and swirling action that ensued resembled nothing less than combat at close quarters.
Unable to detect and destroy the enemy forces, the army focused on depriving the Indians of their means of sustenance. General William Sherman, whose march to the sea during the Civil War had taught him the importance of making “old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war,” ordered his men to slaughter the teeming buffalo herds roaming the Plains.8 The campaign’s strategic goal was to remove Indians in the central plains territory between the Platte and Arkansas rivers who were obstinately standing astride the routes used by settlers traveling westward. By liquidating the buffalo from the contested area while leaving the northern and southern herds unharmed, Indians would be compelled to seek refuge on reservations north of Nebraska and south of Kansas.9 With the center cleared, there would be nothing left to fight over. With a single stroke, then, both the Indians’ casus belli would vanish and the Union Pacific could build its railroad unhindered by raids.
It would not work out that way, of course: poachers hunted the northern and southern herds, riling tribes whose peace treaties had promised them exclusive rights to hunt.10 Settlers too—including those who had never hunted a buffalo in their lives—suffered from roving assaults on their lives and property. Even when they strictly adhered to the terms of the latest treaty, said one Indian superintendent named Murphy, local whites had been murdered, raped, and attacked by Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Originally sympathetic to the Indians’ plight, he now judged that the custom of