Lesson 7: Quakers, Red Cloud, Southern Plains War, and a New President
Grant becomes President in this lesson. Some Quakers talk to Grant about peace with the Indians. At Promontory, Utah, the junction of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads is celebrated. Tall Bull goes on the warpath and General Eugene Carr, with Buffalo Bill Cody, attacks his camp. Tall Bull is killed. Cochise, Quanah, and Geronimo declare war on the whites.
Introduction
The Indian War continued. The attack at Washita by Custer and his 7th Cavalry was only a beginning. A new policy was taking effect.
Now, no more treaties would be negotiated. No longer would the Indians that were regulated to a reservation according to the Medicine Lodge Treaty be allowed to hunt outside of their reservation. This last was an avoidable mistake, however, as annuities intended for the reservation Indians continued to be miss-appropriated, often not arriving at their destination to begin with, and when they did it was not unusual for the food to be uneatable. This deplorable situation, at times, seemed as though it could be a pre-planned situation to entice the Indians to leave the reservation to seek food.
And at last, as Grant declared, the Indian Bureau would be transferred to the War Department. Grant, making a statement to the press, did not mince words. Settlers and emigrants would be protected even if it meant the extermination of every Indian tribe.
American Horse and Red Cloud
On the southern Plains, the offensive of the previous winter had gone well. While Custer had led his cavalry across the frigid Plains, General Grant had become President Grant. And as the Indian War charged headlong from one bloody battle to the next, Red Cloud and Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse waltzed into Fort Laramie and signed the treaty they had long neglected to put their mark upon.
President Ulyssess S. Grant
But still, there were those fractions that thought the government should strive for peace with the Indians. On January 25, 1869, a delegation of Quakers urged President Grant to embrace a peace policy towards the Indians and to appoint men of religious conviction as agents. The President agreed.
Promontory, Utah, 1869
The year 1869 was significant also in that on May 10th a golden spike was hammered into place at Promontory, Utah, commemorating the junction of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads. The Iron Horse had invaded the Plains. This single act greatly changed the migration pattern of the buffalo herds that the Indians depended on for food, clothing, and shelter.
Railroads joined with golden spike
After his counsel with the Quakers, President Grant named eighteen Quakers to posts of superintendent and agents on the Plains. However, he did not change his mind about placing the Indian Bureau in the War Department and appointed 68 Army officers to similar posts elsewhere.
There were many who thought him wrong and that placing the Indian Bureau in the War Department would have considerable repercussions. They were allowed to consider that they’d told him so, when, on January 23, 1870, Major Edward M. Baker and his cavalry attacked a Piegan village on the Marias River in Montana. One hundred and seventy three Indians were slaughtered. Most of them were women and children and many were deathly ill with smallpox.
Primarily because of this latest military action, the bill for the transfer of the Indian Bureau to the War Department, that had had every prospect of passing, failed. But the Indian Wars on both the Central and Southern Plains continued.
Did you know that Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant engaged in a personal and political feud almost unparalleled in both the briefness of its duration and the violence of its animosity? You can read about it at:
PRESIDENTIAL FEUDS By John S. Cooper http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/pres...
