440 Chapter 16 The Conquest of the West
back with him samples of the moldy flour and beef
that government agents were supplying to his people.
Appalled by what he saw on the reservation, Professor
Marsh took the rotten supplies directly to President
Grant and prepared a list of charges against the
agents. General Sherman, in overall command of the
Indian country, claimed in 1875, “We could settle
Indian troubles in an hour, but Congress wants the
patronage of the Indian bureau, and the bureau wants
the appropriations without any of the trouble of the
Indians themselves.” General Sheridan was no lover
of Indians. “The only good Indians I ever saw,” he
said in an oft-quoted remark, “were dead.” But he
understood why they behaved as they did. “We took
away their country and their means of support, broke
up their mode of living, their habits of life, intro-
duced disease and decay among them, and it was for
this and against this that they made war. Could any-
one expect less?”
In 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills
Indian reservation. By the next winter thousands of
miners had invaded the reserved area. Already
alarmed by the approach of crews building the
Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux once again went
on the warpath. Joining with nontreaty tribes to the
west, they concentrated in the region of the Bighorn
River, in southern Montana Territory.
The summer of 1876 saw three
columns of troops in the field against
them. The commander of one col-
umn, General Alfred H. Terry, sent
ahead a small detachment of the
Seventh Cavalry under Colonel
George A. Custer with orders to
locate the Indians’ camp and then
block their escape route into the inac-
cessible Bighorn Mountains. Custer
was vain and rash, and vanity and
rashness were grave handicaps when
fighting Indians. Grossly underesti-
mating the number of the Indians, he
decided to attack directly with his
tiny force of 264 men. At the Little
Bighorn late in June he found himself
surrounded by 2,500 Sioux under
Rain-in-the-Face, Crazy Horse, and
Sitting Bull. He and all his men died
on the field.
Because it was so one-sided,
“Custer’s Last Stand” was not a typi-
cal battle, although it may be taken as
symbolic of the Indian warfare of the
period in the sense that it was charac-
terized by bravery, foolhardiness, and
a tragic waste of life. The battle greatly heartened the
Indians, but it did not gain them their cause. That
autumn, short of rations and hard-pressed by over-
whelming numbers of soldiers, they surrendered and
returned to the reservation.
Secretary of the Interior’s Report on Indian
Affairsatwww.myhistorylab.com
Red Cloud’s Speechat
http://www.myhistorylab.comThe Destruction of Tribal Life
Thereafter, the fighting slackened. For this the build-
ing of transcontinental railroads and the destruction
of the buffalo were chiefly responsible. An estimated
13–15 million head had roamed the plains in the mid-
1860s. Then the slaughter began. Thousands were
butchered to feed the gangs of laborers engaged in
building the Union Pacific Railroad. Thousands more
fell before the guns of sportsmen. Buffalo hunting
became a fad, and a brisk demand developed for buf-
falo rugs and mounted buffalo heads. Railroads made
the Army a far more efficient force. Troops and sup-
plies could be moved swiftly when trouble with the
tribes erupted. The lines also contributed to the deci-
mation of the buffalo by running excursion trains forReadtheDocumentReadtheDocumentA mound of buffalo skulls. In 1870 an estimated 30 million buffalo roamed the plains; by 1900,
there were fewer than 1,000. During an eight-month period between 1867 and 1868, William F.
Cody (Buffalo Bill) killed 4,280 buffalo, which fed construction crews for the Union Pacific
railroad. Tourists also took up buffalo hunting, often shooting them from trains. The depletion
of the buffalo, which provided the Plains Indians with meat and hides, was a major source of
conflict with whites.