An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

"Indian Country" 139

badly by the soldiers. Our women sometimes come to the tents

outside the fort and make contracts with the soldiers to stay

with them for a night, and give them five dollars or something

else. But in the morning they take away what they gave them

and kick them off. This happens most every day. 12

At least a fourth of the incarcerated died of starvation. Not until
186 8 were the Navajos released and allowed to return to their home­
land in what is today the Four Corners area. This permission to re­
turn was not based on the deadly conditions of the camp, rather that
Congress determined that the incarceration was too expensive to
maintain.13 For these noble deeds, Carleton was appointed a major
general in the US Army in 1865. Now he led the Fourth Cavalry in
scorched-earth forays against Plains Indians.
These military campaigns against Indigenous nations constituted
foreign wars fought during the US Civil War, but the end of the
Civil War did not end them. They carried on unabated to the end of
the century, with added killing technology and more seasoned kill­
ers, including African American cavalry units. Demobilized officers
and soldiers often could not find jobs, and along with a new gen­
eration of young settlers-otherwise unemployed and often seeking
violent adventure-they joined the army of the West, some of the of­
ficers accepting lower ranks in order to get career army assignments.
Given that war was centered in the West and that military achieve­
ment had come to foster prestige, wealth, and political power, every
West Point graduate sought to further his career by volunteering
in the army. Some of their diaries echo those of combat troops in
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who later were troubled by the
atrocities they witnessed or committed. But most soldiers persevered
in their ambition to succeed.
Prominent Civil War generals led the army of the West, among
them Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan (to
whom is ascribed the statement "The only good Indian is a dead
Indian"), George Armstrong Custer, and Nelson A. Miles. The army
would make effective use after 186 5 of innovations made during the
Civil War. The rapid-fire Gatling gun, first used in battle in 1862,
would be employed during the rest of the century against Indigenous