Ashes of Heaven (37 page)

And surely not Crook! The underhanded, back-stabbing son of a bitch that he was. Sitting on his thumbs while Custer was butchered, then sitting on them some more while Custer's murderers slowly slipped away to the east. Crook wasn't interested in confronting the real power in the enemy. Instead the coward always sent in his underlings: like Reynolds on the Powder or Mackenzie on the Red Fork. The only time Crook fought was when caught flat-footed, with no other choice but to defend himself or get swallowed up, as he had done the morning Crazy Horse surprised him at coffee and cards on the Rosebud.

That one always made Nelson smile.

No, Crook wasn't a fighter. Crook was an administrator, a finagler, a bureaucrat, not much more than a goddamned delegator who left the real fighting up to others—whether those officers were up to the job or not. And now the man was finagling with Spotted Tail and Red Cloud down south, hurrying them north to meddle with Miles's Indians.

He has no business coming up here to convince them to go south,
Miles thought,
when I am the one who has labored long and hard all winter to convince the enemy they have no choice but to surrender under the harshest of terms!

So Sherman and Sheridan damn well better give me my own Department of the Yellowstone, along with the regiments of cavalry and foot I require, as well as the supplies the quartermaster is so niggardly about. If I had the men and the rations and the ammunition, I could end this war before summer.

The day after his return to the cantonment following his victory at Battle Butte,
*
Miles had shifted his political campaign into high gear.

Waiting for him at Tongue River was a notice from Division Commander Terry that Congressional cutbacks compelled Miles to release all but two of the cantonment's civilian scouts, as well as letting go all his packers, Indian guides, teamsters, and blacksmiths. In addition, Miles was ordered to send all his wagons downriver to Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone for the remainder of the winter.

It was enough to make a fighting man feel like a gelded bull.

He fired off an angry letter to Mary, then one to her uncle, William Tecumseh Sherman, as well. “Shame should fall on Terry for the outrageous way he has failed to support me. I do not believe he ever reads my reports or pays any attention to my requests. His directive, moreover, virtually compels me to abandon the campaign when my regiment is on the verge of total success!”

Then he implied that Terry was tinkering politically with the prosecution of the Sioux War. “There seems to be a determination that this war shall not be ended this winter, or that it shall not be ended by this command.”

Perhaps that summer soldier, Alfred Terry, desired nothing better than to journey west again come June to wrap up the conflict himself!

“If I have not earned a command, I never will,” Miles lambasted Sherman, “and if I have not given proof of my ability to bring my command into a successful encounter with Indians every time, I never will.”

Then he confided something vital to Mary's uncle, something Miles hadn't even expressed to his wife: the post he really coveted was Secretary of War.

For the meantime, Miles realized if he didn't have the manpower, or the supplies to keep him in the field for the rest of the winter, the time would still not be wasted. Instead of expeditions against the hostiles, the colonel had pressed his campaign with his superiors. Besides laboring to convince Sherman and Sheridan that he deserved the next brigadier generalcy that fell open, Miles began firing off a series of letters to Washington City influentials, seeking testimonials from both army and congressional power-brokers to advance his cause.

In his typically unvarnished, hard-nosed correspondence with both Sheridan in Chicago and Mary's uncle in Washington that spring, Miles wrote:

Despite bitter cold and rugged terrain, I have cleared this region of hostiles until forced by the
criminal neglect
of scheming bureaucrats to take winter quarters. Only a full department command will enable me to defeat these intractable foes and overcome those in both the army and in civilian quarters who would conspire against me. Among them, (Lieutenant Colonel Elwell S.) Otis (in command at the Glendive depot) and Major Benjamin Card (Quartermaster for the Department of the Dakota)—they are to blame for my predicament.

In addition, Miles leveled some of his sharpest criticism at Colonel William B. Hazen, commander at Fort Buford, accusing Hazen of stabbing him in the back and doing as little as possible to assure the success of his Fifth Infantry in their continuing winter campaigns.

Certainly you must understand that I do not relish the thought of going to plead my case in the national press, but if this situation is not improved and these wrongs are not righted, then I have but little choice.

I have fought and defeated larger and better armed bodies of hostile Indians than any other officer since the history of Indian warfare commenced, and at the same time have gained a more extended knowledge of our frontier country than any living man. Give me what I need and let's bring this war to its conclusion.

Miles went on to recommend the army establish supply camps for expeditionary forces in the country of the upper Tongue as well as the country of the Little Missouri, right where the last of the hostile bands were at that moment hunting and taking refuge. Furthermore, he declared three supply depots should be constructed at Fort Peck on the Missouri, the mouth of the Little Bighorn, and the mouth of the Musselshell. In addition he declared the army should install a telegraph wire west from Bismarck to Bozeman, a second line between the Yellowstone south to Fort Fetterman. Communication was the key element to tracking, pursuing, and defeating the hostiles.

Then Miles laid his best hand on the table. “If you will give me this command and one half the troops now in it, I will end this Sioux war once and forever in four months.”

With that bitter tone he took when backed into a corner, his hands tied, Miles asked both Sherman and Sheridan, if they did not approve his requests, to remove his regiment from Montana and return it to Fort Leavenworth.

Every officer in the frontier army knew full well the stakes in this war. The task of defeating the Sioux had to be wrapped up before the first of July, at which time Congress had mandated the army to reduce its manpower by 2,500 men. Miles had two months to finish the job no one else had the skill or the stomach to do.

That urgency wasn't lost on his superiors either.

While both Sherman and Sheridan were weary of Miles's shameless and incessant self-promotion, the two nonetheless were quick to recognize the talent, the energy, and the dogged determination Miles threw into every campaign. Back in Washington last winter, General Sherman read Crook's report on the disappointing end to his campaign when he failed to receive supplies on the Belle Fourche, and was therefore forced to turn back to Fetterman where he disbanded the expedition.
*
The commander of the army threw up his hands in exasperation at Crook's defensive sniping, grown impatient with Crook's unproductive campaigning. Sherman wired Sheridan that he thought one officer should be placed in charge of the entire Sioux campaign rather than having it fought by two conflicting departments.

“I think General Miles is in the best position and possessed of the most mental and physical vigor to exercise this command.” Perhaps Miles could get the whole thing cleaned up by June, Sherman concluded, lobbying for Sheridan's support.

But from Chicago the little general, who was an old, battle-scarred friend of Crook's, wired Sherman that he believed such a responsibility was too much to lay on Miles's shoulders.

“Spring will be the time to press our suit,” Sheridan wrote. “The Indian ponies will be weak from the long winter, and the Missouri and Yellowstone will be navigable for manpower and supplies. But to turn over the entire operation to Miles would be a mistake.

“Nonetheless, I firmly agree that we should expand his Department of the Yellowstone to include the Powder River country presently under Crook's nominal control. In doing so, we will need to give Miles two and one-half cavalry regiments, with two and one-half infantry regiments, along with the Pawnee scouts of the North brothers,
†
as well as authority to ignore all administrative boundaries when pursuing the hostiles.”

Sheridan went on to propose that Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie of the Fourth Cavalry be ordered to patrol along Miles's eastern flank, in the country of the Little Missouri and Belle Fourche rivers, preventing the hostile bands from fleeing in that direction.

“To assure the colonel will have a free hand in this aggressive cleanup of the last of these hostiles, General Alfred Terry will be assigned to stay in St. Paul to ensure Miles receives what supplies he needs. As well, Crook will stay in Omaha, no closer than Cheyenne City, to supply Mackenzie's column.”

As spring warmed the northern prairies and melted the deep snows, Sherman did all that he could to reassure his quick-tempered nephew-in-law that no conspiracy of any stripe was at work to hamper the circumstances of the Fifth Infantry. “The severe winter weather, which has tied everything down from St. Louis to Bismarck, from Chicago to St. Paul, along with the nation's recent focus on the disputed presidential election, has been the real cause of your dilemma.”

In that wire Sherman did agree with one of Miles's repeated proposals. “There ought to be but one Department over all that country, but I cannot at present accomplish so radical a change. I advise you not to tarry but to work hard this year, for whoever brings this Sioux war to a close will be in the fairest way to promotion.”

If Miles didn't already feel the spur goading him into action this spring, then surely he felt the jab of Sherman's rowels in his flank. So when Baldwin arrived with those grain and field rations, Miles realized Sherman himself had moved heaven and earth to get those supplies north the moment the rivers opened for steamboat traffic. Mary's uncle wanted him to succeed, wanted to reward him with that general's star. Miles believed Sherman had said nothing less in his latest correspondence from Washington.

He was sure Sherman understood that it was the Fifth Infantry's presence on the Yellowstone this past winter, that it was his regiment and their tenacious engagement of the enemy despite winter's terrible onslaught, that had thwarted the reunion of the warrior bands who had defeated Crook and Custer last summer. Despite the agonizing weather, and ignoring the objections of his superiors, the colonel had accomplished more since October than the rest of the army had managed to accomplish since March of 1876, when Reynolds bungled his attack against the enemy's village on Powder River.

And now all those months of fierce, unremitting struggle by his Fifth Infantry were beginning to bear fruit. Only recently word had come that Washington was relinquishing the manpower Miles had been demanding since last autumn. For this spring campaign his forces were bolstered by two more companies of the Twenty-second Infantry who were transferred up from Glendive Depot. In addition, four companies of the Second Cavalry had come downriver from their duty station at Fort Ellis near Bozeman City. But due to his own illness, their commander, Major Frank Brisbin, was forced to turn back to Ellis after reaching Tongue River on 23 April.

No matter, Miles already knew exactly what he would do with every weapon and every man sent him for this final mop-up.

And when the last of the hostiles were rounded up and herded back to their reservations, then he would see to it that two more posts were constructed in the disputed region so that there would never again be a resurgence of the hostile warrior bands. In fact, just before leaving the cantonment, Miles had learned that eleven companies of Custer's old regiment were headed his way from Fort Abraham Lincoln. Ordered to man posts in his new Yellowstone District, the Seventh Cavalry would be arriving by early summer to begin construction of the new forts, along with four more companies of the First Infantry who were at that moment marching west from Fort Sully in Dakota.

Additionally, six companies of the Eleventh Infantry, reassigned duty from the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock agencies, were coming west to construct a post at the mouth of the Little Bighorn, no more than fourteen miles from the site of Custer's battlefield, under the command of Colonel George P. Buell of Red River War fame. To maintain contact with that new post, Miles had ordered construction of not only a road between Tongue River and the Bighorn forts, but also a system of semaphore and heliograph stations that would allow communication across the hundred-mile distance in no more than fifteen minutes' time!

All of those reinforcements would soon bring Miles more than two thousand men in uniform to end the hostilities and pacify the region for settlement.

But for the moment, these four companies of cavalry and his trail-hardened doughboys were all he would need. At long last Miles had marshaled an impressive force to finish what others had so far bungled.

Somewhere up the valley of the Rosebud they were bound to find the Sioux camp Bruguier had spied upon.

No more than a handful of days from now, Nelson A. Miles knew this Great Sioux War would be nothing more than a memory.

Chapter 31

5 May 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

INDIANS.

After Sitting Bull Again.

CHICAGO, May 4.—The Seventh cavalry, with 1,100 members, has left Fort Lincoln and gone in search of Sitting Bull, who is supposed to be north or south of the Yellowstone, with some 500 warriors. The command will hunt him down and bring in the hostiles, when found, to the agencies.

Seamus had to admit that Miles wasn't the sort to hunker up for the winter.

From all that he had learned after reaching Tongue River, the colonel had done his best to keep his Fifth Infantry occupied—scouting for sign of hostile bands, cutting ice for the dugouts where perishables would be stored once warm weather crept north to the high plains, repairing their crude log huts and eventually starting construction on new, more permanent buildings, within a new military reservation the colonel had laid out to the west of the infant community of Miles City.