The Military in America by PETER KARSTEN

Author:PETER KARSTEN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE FREE PRESS
Published: 1986-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1 Sherman, Report of the Secretary of War, I (1876), 36. Robert G. Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1956), gives the most balanced picture of Sherman’s anger (pp. 9-101, 223, 301) set against his moments of pity for the enemy he had to fight (pp. 64, 67, 82-83, 321). General Sheridan’s compassion for the defeated Indian is very clear in his Report of the Secretary of War, I (1878), 38. See also Henry E. Fritz, The Movement for Indian Assimilation (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), pp. 127-28. Sheridan’s private papers show the same attitude, e.g., draft of letter to General Townsent (?) Dec. 1878 in Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress, Box 92. It is also significant that Sheridan approved of the viewpoint of his regiment’s war correspondent, De Benneville Randolph Keim, Sheridan’s Troopers on the Borders (New York: D. McKay, 1885). An endorsement from the General served as an introduction to these reports. Keim wrote that whites were generally at fault in the Indian conflicts and that contemporary civilization was “selfish and aggressive.” Neither judgment, however, took much away from his joy in these campaigns, pp. 294, 283. Sheridan’s ambivalence is also clear in his Personal Memoirs (New York: C. L. Webster, 1888), I, 88-89, 111.

2 Campaigning with Crook, 2nd ed. (1890; rpt. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1964), p. 33. King, the great-grandson of Rufus King, can be compared with another connoisseur of Indian lore, General Hugh Lenox Scott—the grandson of Charles Hodge. General Scott paused in his campaigns to rejoice in becoming a part of “primitive America,” studied Indian culture closely, and feared for native Americans faced with the “blighting power” of civilization. Some Memoirs of a Soldier (New York: Century, 1928), pp. 30-32, 156-57. It is perhaps appropriate that the descendants of these two antebellum conservatives should appreciate some alternative to the culture of modern America—at the same time they fought to defend the nation.

3 Custer also confessed he enjoyed the heroic escape of Indians he pursued and he predicted that as the Indian yielded to civilization, he would grow weak and die, pp. 201, 21. Custer’s admiration of the Indian seems to have been partly reciprocated. His body was no: mutilated on the battlefield—an honor in Sioux warfare.

4 Officers very often sought to understand and even excuse Indian “outrages” by pointing to white provocations. General John Pope stressed this point in his official reports, Report of the Secretary of War, I (1874), 30; ibid, I (1875), 76. See also, Colonel James B. Fry, Army Sacrifices (New York: Van Nostrand, 1879), p. 4.

5 Bourke’s attitude is particularly evident in The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona (New York: Scribner’s, 1884), p. 162; Scatalogic (sic) Rites of All Nations (Washington, D.C.: W. H. Loudermilk, 1891), pp. iv, 467. Bourke was not alone in combining serious anthropological work with the military life. Washington Matthews’ major research on the Sioux and Navaho was done as he served as a doctor with the Army in the West.

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