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By Root 495 0

Big Horn infamy—refused to lead the regiments. Other officers were less prejudiced and signed on, and so did black recruits in droves. The newly emancipated blacks arrived despite lower pay and rampant discrimination and racism. They were, for the most part, raw and untrained, but less than a year later the Ninth and Tenth Cavalries were on the trail west to begin their more-than-two-decade history of unbroken service. The Ninth served in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Utah, and Montana. The Tenth, based at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, was responsible for Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Buffalo Soldiers made up about 20 percent of the cavalry in the West and patrolled the Great Plains and in New Mexico and Arizona. Their duty in these outposts of the westward-moving country was to keep order, and that was a mighty task indeed, as they had to deal with Indian wars, border conflicts, and general lawlessness. The Native peoples counted them worthy adversaries and gave them the name Buffalo Soldiers for their tenacity and for the peltlike look of their curly hair.

Despite the soldiers’ renown and exemplary record, discrimination from whites followed them constantly and even showed up in their company mess halls. The Buffalo Soldiers were the U.S. Army’s stepchildren, and their commanders complained constantly about provisioning. Meals consisted of a monotonous pork diet and seldom deviated from the staples of coffee, bread, beans, molasses, corn-bread, and sweet potatoes. In the larders of the Buffalo Soldiers there were none of the staples common at other Western army posts. There was no canned pears, crackers, sugar, cheese, molasses, or sauerkraut. Post surgeon at Fort Concho, Texas, William Buchanan complained constantly to his superiors about the food, arguing that it was inferior to that offered at other posts: The bread was sour and the meat of poor quality. The canned peas provided were so old that they had deteriorated and the contents were poisoned by tin and solder. Buchanan was so incensed that he filed a written complaint with the post adjutant. The only rations to greet the soldiers returning to camp from the various battles and skirmishes of the Red River War were the same monotonous foods that might have fed an antebellum Alabama field hand: hog, hominy, and molasses. On some expeditions, the soldiers were gifted with good weather and could hunt and forage to supplement their substandard rations. Then, there might be venison or antelope ribs or wild turkey to break the routine, but generally, poor meals and poor horses and straw bed-sacks on bed irons in leaky barracks were the standard lot of the Buffalo Soldiers.

On occasions, though, when the commanders managed to obtain appropriate rations, there were festivities such as the one given by Commander Benjamin Grierson on Christmas 1876 for the entire garrison at Fort Concho. The regimental band played, and officers and men sat down to a meal of “sandwiches, turkey, buffalo tongue, olives, cheese, biscuits, sweet and sour pickles, candy, raisins, apples, and four kinds of cake—all washed down with gallons of coffee.” The experience of the Buffalo Soldiers was another side of the tale of the movement west—one in which the racism of the country marched west, shadowing the footsteps of the migrants with their bundled quilts and flimsy carpetbags containing their meager belongings.

Kansas was a favored destination for those seeking to put down roots and establish themselves outside the South. The 1862 Homestead Act applied to other Western states and territories, but for blacks, Kansas was a known quantity; it had been a haven for fugitive slaves during the Civil War, and the name of the state continued to resonate in the minds and hearts of African Americans. The Homestead Act allowed any U.S. citizen regardless of race or gender who had never fought against the U.S. government to file an application and claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. The homesteader had to live on the land and develop it. After five years, the homesteader