Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri: Steamboats, Gold and Peace (Military) by Robison Ken

Author:Robison, Ken [Robison, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Yellowstone Kelly, legendary government scout. Author’s collection .

Captain Marsh later described their meeting with Yellowstone Kelly, who was dressed in a suit of fringed buckskin, with his feet encased in beaded moccasins. His face, darkly tanned by the sun and weather, was smooth-shaven except for a slender moustache. His features were lean and hard, with the muscular gauntness of a hunting animal that carries not an ounce of extra flesh. A mass of thick hair, straight and black, was swept back from his forehead and hanging below his shoulders. Across his arm he carried a long, breech-loading Springfield rifle, on the butt of which was carved the name he had bestowed upon this trusty guardian of his lonely life: “Old Sweetness.” The rifle’s barrel from muzzle to stock was covered with the skin of a great bull snake shrunk on so tightly that it resembled varnishing. This was the appearance that impressed Major Forsyth, and this was the guide he chose to pilot the expedition. This, too, was the man who became a keen friend of the military leader throughout the years that followed. 83

Kelly’s services that summer proved invaluable to Major Forsyth, who admitted frankly that the important work of mapping the region for military purposes could not have been accomplished had it not been for the knowledge of his guide concerning the Yellowstone basin.

Kelly had many other exciting adventures that were passed from mouth to mouth along the borderland, and far and wide he was known by the name of “Yellowstone” Kelly. In 1877, Colonel Nelson Miles chose Kelly as scout during his campaigns in southeastern Montana and early that year during the Wolf Mountain Campaign. The knowledge Kelly was able to provide to army leaders in the 1870s proved of great value during the campaigns against the Sioux. As a scout, he served successively General Alfred Terry, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and Colonel Nelson Miles.

Over the decades, Kelly roamed widely through the West, and in 1898, he joined Captain Edmund Forbes Glenn as guide on an Alaskan expedition. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Kelly accepted a commission as captain in the 7th Volunteer “Immunes” Infantry. The following year, he joined Company A of the 40th Volunteers for duty in the Philippines. He led troops in combat in southern Luzon and commanded a military post in Mindanao before leaving the army to serve as treasurer for a large Philippine province. In Surigao in 1903, he conducted a heroic defense of the town against insurgents, saving teachers and many civilian lives.

Returning from the Philippines, Kelly’s heroism was recognized when he received orders from the Interior Department to proceed in late 1903 to the troubled San Carlos Indian Agency, in southwestern Arizona, to assume charge of the sprawling agency for the Apache Indians. San Carlos had a bad reputation and was known as “God’s 40 acres of hell”; many felt that “the heat was terrible. The insects were terrible. The water was terrible.”

As he neared the end

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