Jerome A. Greene

Before the Little Bighorn, George Armstrong Custer’s most notable accomplishment in the Indian Wars was the “battle” of Washita, November 27, 1868. In a situation reminiscent of the Sand Creek Massacre, Custer’s troopers surrounded and attacked a winter camp of Southern Cheyennes, who had supposedly engaged in raids on white settlers.

Author Jerome Greene describes the battle as the outcome of the typical situation in conflict between Native Americans and Euroamerican settlers; show more neither side understood the other’s internal politics and leadership arrangements. The Cheyenne grouped into “clans” under a “chief”, but the “chief” was more of an “opinion leader” than someone who had absolute authority over his “clan”. Some “chiefs” and their “clans” were more inclined to peace with the whites than others, but that’s about as far as it went. Further, a significant number of Cheyenne had joined a military society, the “Dog Soldiers”. The Dog Soldiers opposed any kind of peace with the whites and no longer accepted any relationship with the “traditional” chiefs and clans. Some of the more perceptive whites were aware of the existence Cheyenne clan structure and the Dog Soldiers, but none grasped the entire arrangement. Similarly, the Cheyenne didn’t understand American military command structure and ranks, that a particular military leader might not have authority over another who ranked him or was in a different military district, and that all orders and policy eventually came from distant Washington, DC.

Thus Black Kettle and other “peace chiefs” met with Colonel William Hazen at Fort Cobb in Indian Territory and expressed their desire for peace. Unfortunately Hazen had to tell them that General Sheridan was in charge and they had to deal with him. The puzzled Cheyenne headed back to their winter camps along the Washita River. In the meantime, Custer and the 7th Cavalry were under orders from Sheridan and were converging on those same camps. Unfortunately for the Cheyenne, Custer’s tactics were pretty good; multiple columns coordinated an attack at dawn. The 7th Cavalry was equipped with repeating Spencer carbines – not yet replaced by single-shot Springfields – and descended on the lodges. Custer’s regulars were more disciplined than Chivington’s volunteers at Sand Creek, and generally refrained from shooting women and children; however (according to Custer’s later report) the Osage scouts accompanying his troops were not so restrained. The surprised Cheyenne quickly recovered and accounted for 20 soldiers at the cost of about 40 warriors (including some Lakota, Arapaho, and Comanche who were camped with the Cheyenne), 12 women, and six children. (Native American casualty accounts; Custer later claimed about 140 warriors killed, while Cheyenne oral histories have a much smaller number: twelve to fourteen). Most of the 7th cavalry troopers lost were in a detachment under Major Joel Elliot which got too separated from the main body while pursuing Cheyenne, surrounded, and killed (Custer was later criticized for “abandoning” Elliot). Custer took 53 women and children prisoners; these were eventually transferred to Fort Hays, Kansas; one child was born on the march. There were reports that Custer’s officers used many of the female prisoners on the march; some of these reports come from people who held some animosity toward Custer but more reliable witnesses and Cheyenne oral histories support the accusations.

This is an easy and informative read. Greene clearly explains the complicated politics of both whites and natives. There are good maps of the overall situation and of the battle, as far as it can be reconstructed. A plate section illustrates the participants and battle site with contemporary photographs and drawings, and there are extensive references. The site is now Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, managed by the National Park Service. show less

This is a 120 page monograph (not including appendices, bibliography, and index) drawing on a wealth of sources: official action reports from the US Army, memoirs, and reports by journalists present at the covered events.

General George Crook commanded one of three main army columns whose purpose was to force the Plains Indians onto reservations. It did not go well. On March 17, 1876, a portion of it attacked an Indian village in a five-hour long battle with indeterminate results. It turned show more out to be the village of a peaceful tribe – who promptly allied with the hostile tribes. On June 17, 1876, Crook led an assault on a group of Indians at Rosebud Creek. The Indians fought the army to a draw before withdrawing though Crook insisted it was a victory. His force was beat up enough that it stopped to rest and recuperate.

They were still nearby when, on July 12, 1876, news arrived of the campaign’s greatest defeat: the Battle of the Little Bighorn sixty miles to the north.

Crook got news of the battle relatively late and steps had already been taken by the army in response to Custer’s defeat. He received dispatches suggesting he wait for reinforcement, and those reinforcements and supplies streamed in from July 13th to August 3rd. Crook eventually ended up with a force of about 2,200 men which included 1,500 cavalry, 450 infantry, and various scouts and embedded journalists. Those scouts included William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, but he left shortly afterwards, convinced that Crook’s force was too large and unwieldly to make it likely to be able to catch and defeat any wandering Indian war parties.

On August 5th, the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition set out. Crook’s column accidentally encountered General Terry’s with its survivors of the Little Bighorn battle. The horses in Crook’s column were tired after several months in the field and poorly fed. Resupply came via steamboat on the Yellowstone River.

But it wasn’t much. Crook’s wagon train carrying supplies was still in Wyoming.

For the march ahead, rations would be minimal – 15 days’ worth for each man, and no tents would be taken. And, when Crook’s forces split up from Terry’s on August 26th, Crook wasn’t headed for Fort Abraham Lincoln (near present-day Bismarck, ND) for resupply. Instead, he would march to Custer City in the southern part of the Black Hills and meet his supply wagons there. That was further away than Fort Abraham Lincoln, but Crook wanted to protect the Black Hills from Indian attack.

What followed was Crook’s famous “starvation march”.

The weather turned unusually wet and cool, minor skirmishes occurred with Indians, sickness among men and horse increased, and morale fell as the column moved through what is now southwest North Dakota and into western South Dakota.

Half rations started on September 5th. The land the troops moved through had little wood for campfires, and the local water was frequently alkaline. When mules started to be shot that day for food, the men found the sound so demoralizing that Crook dropped the order, and the animals just keeled over from exhaustion on the march and died. When horses started to be shot for food, the men were very reluctant to eat them having understandably bonded with their mounts.

By September 7th, men and horse were collapsing, dropping out of a column that stretched 20 miles.

Crook stopped the column. He ordered Captain Anson Mills to take 150 men and the best horses and ride to Deadwood in the northern Black Hills, buy supplies there, and bring them back.

And it was that force that discovered an Indian village on September 8th.

In the pre-dawn darkness of September 9th, Mills attacked the village. He wasn’t able to pull off the complete surprise he hoped and a day long battle followed.

Greene covers the various controversies of that event. Why did Mills attack when Crook gave him orders that he was to avoid fighting and focus on reaching Deadwood? Even if he felt the village was a target of opportunity, Mills had a poor idea of how large the Indian force was. It was exactly the sort of tactical ignorance and aggression that led to Custer’s defeat – souvenirs from which Mills’ troops found in the Indian village.

The American casualties were small – two soldiers killed. Greene notes that, for all the shooting that day, casualties among the Indians were light too, perhaps only 18 dead out of a village of approximately 340. American Horse, a chief thought to have participated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, was wounded during the battle, surrendered, and died later of his wounds.

After Crook’s expedition reached the Black Hills, the attrition continued. Five soldiers died of typhoid fever and fourteen deserted to become prospectors.

After the battle, Crook sent a scout south to dispatch news of the victory via telegraph as quickly as possible.

While Crook could claim the first victory against the Indians after Custer’s defeat, most of the press and army were not impressed. It was generally not thought worth the suffering of the starvation march.

One man thought differently: First Lieutenant Von Luttwitz had been with Mills during the attack and was wounded severely enough that he had to leave the army. He had graduated from the Artillery and Engineer School of Berlin and served with the Austrian and Prussian Armies and in the American Civil War. He wrote Crook:

“Nobody can blame you that our campaign was not crowned with complete success. Our forces were too small. The area of country passed over by your command extending from the North Platte to the Yellowstone, and the Big Horn to the Little Missouri – an area more than twice the size of France. Eight hundred thousand Prussians could not successfully occupy France in 1870. How could two thousand men be expected to control twice as large a county?”

There are few books on the Battle of Slim Buttes, but you’re not settling on a sub-standard book here. This is a good treatment of events. Greene writes clearly, provides interesting and detailed anecdotes as well as sketching in the background of his main characters and the context of the 1876 Indian Campaign. He provides clear maps of Crook’s route and the battle site. (Mills tried to visit the site in 1914 but wasn’t able to find it, and it was eventually pinned down by found artifacts.) There are several photos of characters and places (though not an adequate one of the Slim Buttes themselves) from the narrative. However, as Greene notes, the photos of the starvation march were all staged when the expedition reached safety in Crook City.

Crook’s career as an Indian fighter would continue and culminate in accepting Geronimo’s surrender. Two other men on the expedition would find acclaim later. Acclaim and money in Mills’ case when he invented the Mills Woven Cartridge Belt system and sold it to various militaries. He did not, despite asking for it, get the Congressional Medal Honor for his actions at Slim Buttes though two soldiers under his command did. Second Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka would go on to fame as an explorer of Alaska, but he died young in 1892. show less

Another book picked up on the recent New Mexico trip. Historian Jerome Green and archaeologist Douglas Scott sidestep delicately around most of the political angst over the Sand Creek Massacre site and concentrate on figuring out exactly where it was. The location had long been assumed to be a prominent bend in the creek – apparently because that was a distinctive topographic feature and eastern Colorado is short of these. Green and Scott’s research showed the site (at least, to the show more satisfaction of the National Park Service) was somewhat upstream of this, along an otherwise undistinguished stretch of creek.


After the massacre, Chivington’s troops were ordered to burn and destroy as thoroughly as possible. The area had been combed for years by souvenir hunters and metal detectionists. What maps were available were drawn years after the event, from memory. One breakthrough came when a previously unknown military logbook turned up in the Chicago Public Library; the archaeological work had no such dramatic finds but a fairly scanty collection of artifacts; some bullets, some arrowheads, some shell fragments, a few odds and sods of military equipment, and bits and pieces of things that might have been used in a Cheyenne and Arapahoe encampment.


The evidence for the location of the teepee camp is pretty conclusive; the approach route and positions of the Colorado cavalry less so but still reasonably inferred. The authors have to be quite circumspect when dealing with the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, and note with as much respect as they can muster that native oral tradition and native spiritual experience put the battle site elsewhere than the NPS location. The spiritual experiences (voices, a “dome of light”, and “spirit animals” (badgers and eagles)) indicated the site was at the traditional location (the sharp bend); the oral histories were most useful (in my opinion; the authors have to stay politically correct) in illustrating the fallibility of oral histories, as the massacre site was said to be in Kit Carson (about 21 miles northwest), Fort Collins (200 miles northwest) and Estes Park (also about 200 miles northwest, and in the mountains).


This is not a popular history; it’s a report on archaeological and historical research. It has all the immediacy and vividness of a refrigerator repair manual. On the other hand, just as immediacy and vividness are not of much use if your refrigerator is broken, so the detail and careful analysis are just the thing if you want to see how this sort of research is done. show less

Last night I finished Finding Sand Creek, by Jerome Greene and Douglas Scott, published in 2004. This was a book about the National Park Service search to verify the location of the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. This is a fairly technical book. The subtitle is, "History, Archeology, and the 1864 Massacre Site." Congress directed the parks service to verify this site as a step towards creating a national historic site. I'm not sure who the audience for this book is. It doesn't seem to show more be the general reader, one who has an interest in the subject. I found it to be very dry and plodding. However, I suppose that the authors did what they set out to do, so for that reason I'll give it 3 stars instead of 2.

My disappointment with the book was with the first chapter where the authors told the story of the Sand Creek Massacre (it's been termed a "Massacre" ever since December of 1864). It seems to me that the authors had a conclusion and wrote backwards to meet that conclusion. There was no sense that their discussion was meant to be anything other than a presentation of the standard storyline that a person could get from watching the 1970 movie, Soldier Blue, the Hollywood production that came out same year that the My Lai Massacre occurred. I believe the truth of the story of Sand Creek is far more complex than the one-sided standard apologetic treatment presented here.

One place where I've found a different story of Sand Creek is in Irving Howbert's 1925 book, Memories of a Lifetime in the Pike's Peak Region. Howbert gives a 2-chapter discussion of Sand Creek, and his description of the events puts a completely different spin on what happened that day. I plan also plan to read a book by Gregory Michno, Battle at Sand Creek: The Military Perspective.

I'll say here that I don't ever expect the official standard story line to change: that the evil, stupid U.S. soldiers mindlessly butchered the kind, peaceful Native Americans. However, it's distrubing to me that Greene and Scott in this "History," which I'm sure is sold in every National Park gift shop, is so one-sided, when they had available to them hundreds of records, including first-hand accounts, that suggest to the fair-minded that there is another side to the story of Sand Creek. On second thought, I'm going to give the book 2 stars. show less