American West: 1861-76

Lesson 3: Massacres, Military Leaders, Indian Retaliations, & More Gold

General John Pope Takes Command

General John Pope

By 1865 President Lincoln was so involved in the struggle with the Confederacy that he had little time for what was happening on the Great Plains. This resulted in the generals nearly making U.S. Indian policy entirely a military policy. No one believed more that Indian policy should be directed by the military than General John Pope.

He had done such a superior job of directing the operations of Generals Sibley and Sully on the Plains that, in late 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant put him in charge of an enormous command. His territory of operations extended from the ninety-fifth meridian to the Rocky Mountains and from Texas to the British possessions.

Ulysses S. Grant

In the spring of 1865 Pope organized the biggest campaign against the Indians in the history of the Plains up to that time.

All Plains Indians were hostiles, according to Pope and his officers. Many were, and more so now because of Sand Creek. Since that time, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahos were causing such havoc along the overland route that anyone traveling put their lives at risk. Nearly every ranch and stage station on the South Platte had been burned. Twice, the town of Julesburg had been attacked. Miles of telegraph wire were destroyed and wagon trains were plundered.

Indian Attack Julesburg, 1864

Those tribes to the north had not been as destructive — that is until they were told of Sand Creek. However, some of them had run headlong into Sully on the upper Missouri the summer before and were still smarting. They were also irate by the increase of white traffic headed towards the mines in Montana. The major route for these miners to take was the Bozeman Trail that cut through the heart of the Sioux buffalo range.

Pope’s operations involved six thousand troops marching hundreds of miles against the Indians. The offensive was a failure. For such a large number of men moving through inhospitable territory, far from their bases, it consumed nearly all of their time in acquiring enough rations to feed this horde, leaving little time for fighting let alone locating the Indians.

What these military leaders should have realized, and evidently didn’t, was that there was no way to keep their movements secret. And no Indian in his right mind was going to stand around staring at this mob in blue as they marched down on them. The Indians wisely got far out of the way.

Pope and his leaders encountered other problems as well. Appomattox had ended the Civil War. The soldiers wanted to go home. Instead, they were forced to be out on the hot Plains searching for wild Indians that they couldn’t find. Desertion was at an all time high, sometimes involving whole units.

By the end of the season the generals had been beaten. Their worst enemy had not been the Indians — it had been their own poor planning and failure to understand the circumstances involved: the terrain, distance, weather, and the morale of their men.

Want to know more about U.S. Grant? Here's a great article on his life.

LESSONS LEARNED: U.S. GRANT By John S. Cooper http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/pres... Ulysses S. Grant is remembered as a great general in the Civil War, and later a less-than-great President. But the stories of his childhood can teach us much about the great things that he did later.

For a fuller understanding of this period of time and the situation please refer to chapter 3 of Robert M. Utley’s The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846-1890, the source for this section.

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