The Wars after the War: Close Calls for Hancock and Custer

By Gould Hagler · Originally published October 2017 · p. 28

The second in a series on Union officers who served in the Indian Wars By Gould Hagler Nearly every American has heard of George Armstrong Custer, even if most know little about him except his so-called “Last Stand.” People knowledgeable about the Civil War know something of his record in that conflict as well, but I would imagine that few could summarize the events of his life between 1865 and 1876. While Winfield Scott Hancock does not share a place with Custer in American folklore, his Civil War record is well known to students of the war, even if his postwar career is not. The United States waged war against numerous Indian tribes before, during, and after the Civil War. The nature of these wars was profoundly different from the war against the conventional armies of the Confederacy. After the Union victory, Hancock and Custer both went west and played dubious roles in the 1867 war against the tribes of the Southern Plains. Finishing last in the West Point class of 1861, Custer fought from Manassas to Appomattox and rose to the rank of major general of volunteers. Famous for his reckless courage, eccentric

Maj. Gen. (as of Apr. 15, 1865) George Armstrong Custer. (Library of Congress) dress, and long blond hair, this unorthodox, glory-seeking young leader was a national hero. Following the war he would have reverted to his permanent rank of captain had his friend Sheridan not procured for him a lieutenant colonelcy in the new Seventh Cavalry. Hancock, senior to Custer by fourteen years, had a more solid record at the military academy than the impetuous Custer and thereafter enjoyed a reputation as a steady and reliable professional. He began the Civil War as a brigadier general and moved up to division and corps command.

He played a key role on all three days at Gettysburg, where he was severely wounded. With the rank of major general in the regular army, he commanded a military district during the early days of Reconstruction before going west to head the Department of the Missouri. This department included western Kansas, where expanding railroads, increasing numbers of settlers, and immigrants trekking further west all encroached on the hunting grounds of the plains Indians. Clashes were inevitable, especially as the tribes had never been granted the land promised by an earlier treaty, a large tract intended to keep the Indians apart from the whites moving west. Hancock’s mission was to stop the Indian raids with a show of force; however, his ignorance of Indians and his imperious and impatient manner provoked an escalation. When the leaders of various tribes did not promptly comply with Hancock’s demands about the time and place of a parley, what should have been a peaceful negotiation turned into a tense standoff. Near the Pawnee Fork villages, some 1,400 U.S. troops faced hundreds of warriors as the Indian women and children fled. It was at this standoff that Hancock unknowingly came within seconds of a sudden death at the hand of Roman Nose, a renowned Cheyenne warrior. As the general and the Indian chiefs conferred, the ever-aggressive Roman Nose reached out and gently brushed Hancock with his coup stick. An instant later Roman Nose would have slain the general, but a fast thinking Chief Bull Bear grabbed the warrior’s horse by the reins and quickly led the hot-heated brave away. It seems that Hancock, unacquainted with Indian ways, did not understand the gesture with the coup stick and did not know how close he came to having his skull crushed by Roman Nose’s war club. Hancock, livid that the Indians had evacuated the village, ordered Custer to lead the Seventh Cavalry in pursuit. Custer soon reported that the fleeing Pawnee Fork braves had raided a stage station and killed three whites. By the time Custer retracted his erroneous report, it was too late. Hancock had already ordered the villages burned. This destructive act infuriated the Southern Cheyenne and their Southern Oglala Sioux allies. War began in earnest and raged through the spring and summer, as the Indians attacked coaches, stage stations, and railroad work parties. At least a hundred settlers lost their lives. Custer and Hancock soon learned how woefully unprepared the cavalry was to fight the fast-moving Indian horsemen, who could strike where they wished and elude the cavalry with ease.

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock. (Library of Congress) Custer’s close call was of a different character than Hancock’s; it was not Custer’s life, but his military career, that nearly ended in 1867. The Seventh Cavalry was plagued with factionalism among the officers, a shortage of supplies, disease, desertion, and low morale made lower by Custer’s habit of meting out harsh punishments for minor infractions. What was worse, Custer put his desire to unite with his wife above his mission. At one point, Custer detached a squadron to Fort Wallace, where he supposed his wife to be, in order to escort her to be with him at Fort Hays. At another point, he disobeyed orders to re-supply at Fort Wallace and, instead, drove his command mercilessly to reach Fort Harker, from whence he could travel by rail to be with his wife at Fort Riley. Along the way, he callously refused to send a detachment to rescue missing soldiers. Upon reaching Harker, he boarded a train for Riley. When Colonel Andrew Smith, the commandant of Fort Harker, discovered what had taken place, he preferred charges against Custer. Custer was charged with leaving Fort Wallace without authority and with marching his men “on private business” when he was supposed to be chasing Indians. More seriously, he was accused of refusing to search for the missing men, ordering that deserters be shot without trial, and denying medical treatment to a wounded deserter. After a three-week trial, Custer was found guilty on all charges, though with regard to the most serious charges, it was determined that the deserters had fired first on their pursuers and the one wounded man was treated by the doctor after a brief delay. The sentence was a mere one-year suspension, in effect an unpaid vacation with his wife. If you wonder at the light penalty for these charges you are not alone; so did Sherman, who wrote that, “the levity of the sentence, considering the nature the offenses… is to be remarked on.” Despite the ineffective soldiering on the part of the U.S. forces, the war petered out in the fall when most warriors moved north to take part in an important ritual, the renewal of the Sacred Medicine Arrows. The government bought peace with gifts of food and promises of annuities and land. As always, this peace was short-lived. Fighting resumed within months. Hancock moved to higher commands in the both the west and the east and later entered politics. He won the Democratic nomination for president in 1880 and ran unsuccessfully against James Garfield. He died in 1886. Custer returned to duty in September 1868 and continued to lead the Seventh Cavalry until 1876, when…well, we all know what happened then. • •

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Sources:

Jeffry D. Wert, The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, 1996. Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, 2016. Patricia L. Faust, Editor, Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, 1991. “Hancock’s War,” https://www. nps.gov/fols/learn/historyculture/ hancocks-war.htm; “George Armstrong Custer Court-Martial: 1867,” http://www.encyclopedia. com/law/law-magazines/ george-armstrong-custer-courtmartial-1867. “Winfield Scott Hancock,” https://www.civilw a r. o rg / l e a r n / b i o g r a p h i e s / winfield-scott-hancock.

Gould Hagler is the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation (Mercer University Press, 2014). His new book on Alabama’s Confederate monuments is to be published by Indiana University Press.