ADDRESS BEFORE THE ORDER OF INDIAN WARS, ON "THE BATTLE OF THE ROSEBUD"

MARCH 2, 1917

Mr. Commander, companions and guests: I have been requested to describe to you my recollections this evening of the Battle of the Rosebud. General Godfrey last year gave you a description of the Battle of the Little Big Horn most excellently. I hope I can approach him in my efforts tonight.

I speak without notes from memory only, after a lapse of forty years, and will doubtless be incorrect in many things, but several officers of my regiment who engaged in the battle are present and may correct me, particularly Colonel Lemly, then a Lieutenant, who wrote a detailed account immediately after the battle which I have never seen; it would be interesting if he would read it so you may compare it with my recollection after forty years.

As the Battle of the Rosebud was so different, although second in importance in the Sioux war to the Battle of the Little Big Horn (in that it only occupied about four and a half hours), I am going to ask you to indulge me a few minutes to tell you some of the happenings which led up to this fight with the Sioux Indians.

First I want to say I have had a great deal of experience with wild animals and wild Indians, and so far as I know the buffalo were the only wild animals wholly nomadic, having no habitation or home, and their companions, the Sioux Indians, are the only humans that were entirely nomadic.

Coronado tells us of his great explorations through northern "New Spain," of the movement of the Indian cows, as the Spaniards called them, and their companions, the Indians, in his marches northward from the Pecos River (where the Indians had never before seen horses, they using dogs for their pack animals, and the Spaniards had never before seen buffalo and so called them cows), with the buffalo and Indians to the Platte River near what is now McPherson, Nebraska, so that to

understand our discussion, with the relations that the Army had to the Sioux, we ought to understand that they were confirmed nomads as much as the buffalo that furnished their supplies. I have seen the whole face of the earth covered with buffalo moving at from four to six miles an hour.

In 1857-58 I traveled twice back and forth through Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas to the Pecos River (the buffalo never went west or south of the Pecos River), and encountered the buffalo and Indians moving back and forth; the buffalo in such great numbers that I felt the earth tremble under their movement, and we were obliged to stop our vehicles and turn the animals' heads in the direction of the buffaloes' flight, firing our pistols to scare them away.

In 1865, after the surrender of Appomattox, my regiment, the 18th U. S. Infantry, was ordered from Fort Leavenworth to Fort McPherson, Nebr. The Union Pacific Railroad was just then being commenced from Omaha, and it was not known then what route we ought to take to the Pacific, so the government ordered Colonel Carrington (in my reference to officers to avoid confusion with higher brevet rank, I will use only their actual rank at the time) to open a road through the Northwestern Territory, and he proceeded to obey that order with his twenty-four company regiment, building the new forts of Fetterman, Reno, Phil. Kearny and C. F. Smith, a march of about fifteen hundred miles through the then State of Nebraska and Territories of Wyoming, Dakota and Montana.

Colonel Carrington established these posts with the greatest expense, carrying all kinds of necessary material, saw mills, hardware, and everything essential to building first-class posts.

This was done without the consent of the Indians, who then generally occupied the wild country. After the establishment of the posts the Indians immediately began to annoy and harass them, and finally after they had assaulted the forts several times, the largest, Phil. Kearny, was unsuccessfully attacked, and a detachment of over one hundred men under Captain Fetterman was sent out by Colonel Carrington to

attack the Indians, who, after their manner ambushed and surrounded them, and killed all the officers and men before any rescue could be made from the post.

Finally the Government became alarmed and withdrew the soldiers from these posts so suddenly that they were unable to take with them the valuable stores, munitions, furniture and supplies, leaving everything to be destroyed by the Indians. I was one of the captains of that regiment.

The Indians then demanded that all the troops be permanently withdrawn from their country, and a Commission was organized consisting of Generals Harney, Sherman, Terry and others, they formulating a treaty in 1868 by which they gave the Sioux in perpetuity all these lands, and agreed that they would never be dispossessed without the agreement of threefourths of the Indians.

Time passed on. I was transferred to the cavalry, and strangely enough in 1872, I was ordered back to the command of North Platte Station, a sub-post of Fort McPherson, where my regiment, under Carrington, was in '65.

The Union Pacific Railroad had then been completed, though the Indians and buffalo were making their annual pilgrimage across the road as before, to the north in the summer, and the south in the winter, accompanied by the nine confederated tribes of the Sioux-Brulés, Ogallalas, Minneconjous, Uncapapas, Two Kettle, San Arcs, Lower Brulés, Yanktons and Gantees, associated with them were also the Northern Cheyennes and Northern Arapahoes.

As the Indians were entirely dependent upon the buffalo for subsistence, the buffalo became the controlling factor in the change that then took place, by refusing to longer cross the road, and the buffalo took up their permanent abode north of the Platte River, the last of the buffalo passing in 1874.

There were different ideas as to what impelled the buffalo to come to this conclusion, but most probably the smoke and noise, and the terrible appearance of the engine, resembling huge monster animals, prevented the buffalo from attempting

to cross, and consequently they never returned south after their northern trip in "74. The Indians, of course, for obvious reasons, following permanently.

There can be no reasonable doubt but that the forebears of these Indians and these buffalo were the companions of Coronado in his wonderful exploration (for that day), from the Pecos to the Platte (over four hundred years ago) at the great forks near the present city of North Platte and these Indians were the adversaries we were to meet at Rosebud.

Here at North Platte, while the buffalo were hesitating to go north permanently, I often met and became well acquainted with Spotted Tail, Chief of the Brulés, the greatest and best Ichief I ever knew.

When hostilities with the Indians actually began, the Indian Department turned over its entire control to the War Department, which soon after for misbehavior, removed Red Cloud from the chieftainship of the Ogalalas, and Spotted Tail was ordered to and did succeed him as chief of all the Indians on the reservation, which extended south to the North Platte River, and military officers were ordered to expel all trespassers on any part of the Indian reservation.

Spotted Tail, with a great portion of his Indians, remained around North Platte until some time in 1873, when his agency was established on the headwaters of the White River, on a branch called Bear Creek, near the boundary between Nebraska and Dakota. Here he assembled all his tribe, some four thousand.

In the winter of 1874-5. General Crook directed me to follow Spotted Tail and build at his agency a five-company post, to be called Camp Sheridan (three cavalry and two infantry companies), in which Lieutenant Lemly assisted. This camp was built down the river a mile and a-half below the original one.

Like Carrington, we were furnished with everything necessary: soldier labor, saw, shingle and lath mills, hardware and some thirty skilled artisans, and as we were in a pine forest, many trees were felled, and the lumber from them placed in

the building on the same day. There were no contracts, no delays in construction, and it was probably the cheapest, most satisfactory, and most rapidly constructed post ever built by the Army.

Shortly before this Lieutenant Colonel Custer, with an expedition including engineers, mining experts, and geologists, had been ordered to make an exploration of the Black Hills. Custer returned, reporting gold in the hills, which excited the western people so they began to move in from all directions.

This again aroused the Indians, and it became apparent that there would be trouble. General Sheridan issued orders to myself and adjacent commanders to prevent the whites from violating the Indian non-intercourse law by arresting and destroying outfits for that purpose.

I, together with a co-operative detachment from Fort Randall, commanded by Captain Fergus Walker, on May 21st, destroyed by fire a wagon train with mining equipment destined for the Black Hills, under the command of one Major Gordon, at a point now known as Gordon City, returning the party, which numbered about seventy-five people, to Fort Randall, confining Gordon at Camp Sheridan.

The Indians at my agency, and I presume at the others, were constantly forming war parties to go out against these trespassing miners, and Spotted Tail, realizing the critical status, made a confidant of me, and frequently reported as near as he could the probable time and number of warriors that were leaving his agency, suggesting that I intercept them by sending out soldiers to head them off, which I often did.

As they were acting in violation of his orders, it was difficult for him and the other Sioux chiefs to know where they went, and for what purpose, but he did his very best to suppress the insurrection which was then before him.

The War Department has kindly furnished us with two large photographic maps, to which I call your attention. The first represents a portion of the States of Colorado and Nebraska, and the Territories of Wyoming, Dakota and Montana. On