Colorado Simmers

The mining towns and ranches in Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming and Montana Territories were still growing during the Civil War days, with the added influx of those dodging the army.  The whites wanted land and freedom - a piece of the western bonanza.  They didn't much care about Indian rights, or the survival of buffalo, the Indian food source.

The result of the government's inability or unwillingness to stop the whites' disrespect was predictable.  Indians, hungry and fearful of losing what little land they had left would certainly fight to retain their heritage.  The older chiefs had begun to lose the influence they had to the younger braves, and the Civil War was the beginning of the last and bloodiest Indian war in the West.  It was a war of small battles, one after the other, that didn't end until the tribes had nothing left.

The Arapaho and Cheyenne had signed over most of their hunting grounds shortly before the Civil War, something that angered the young braves.  In 1863, a band of Cheyenne warriors raided several small Colorado settlements.  In 1864 a family was murdered on their Colorado ranch, with their bodies placed on display in Denver by whites. (??)  Indian raids closed down the main road to the east, leaving Denver isolated and scared.

Rumors flew of wild attacks planned by the Indians throughout the city.  Cries of vengeance grew.  Volunteer riffraff under Col. John Chivington were just waiting for a fight.  Chivington was actually a former minister, hero of Glorieta Pass (See previous post) and had a great taste for battle - especially against the heathen Indians.  When his superior, Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis declared, "I want no peace until the Indians suffer more," Chivington was more than happy to oblige. 

Next time...Sand Creek
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Today in Pioneer History: "On December 11, 1872, Buffalo Bill Cody, already appearing as a well-known figure of the Wild West in popular dime novels,  makes his first stage appearance in a Chicago-based production of "The Scouts of the Prairie".

Minnesota Sioux Uprising

During the Civil War, Minnesota seemed like the most remote place in the US.  Along the Minnesota River there lived about 6000 Santee, or eastern Sioux on a reservation 150 miles long and 10 miles wide.  Since the 1850s the Sioux, who had traded their ancestral lands and freedom of movement for a government annuity, didn't seem a threat to the white settlers.

Missionaries were congratulating themselves that the Indians were learning farming and Christianity - becoming civilized. Little Crow was even seen in church as the leader of his tribe.  But despite the outward sense of complacency, the Minnesota Sioux had nursed long grudges against the whites.  With  most of the white men away fighting the Civil War, the time had come to settle the score.

It was late summer - a time when most Sioux would be away on buffalo hunting grounds, but this year the government's money hadn't arrived yet and local merchants refused the Sioux credit to outfit them for the hunt.  Following a near starvation  year when the reservation's corn crop failed, refusal of credit without the promised money from the government, meant no buffalo hunt, no food.

A small group of Sioux began arguing among themselves, boasting that they were not afraid of whites, and to prove it they would kill them.  Four Sioux rode up to a farm and challenged the owner to a shooting match.  After the bullets were spent the Sioux attacked and killed three men and two women.  They returned to the reservation and told Little Crow what they had done.  An all-night council followed with most of those present believing there was no better time for war, but Little Crow wasn't so sure.  Finally at dawn on August 18, 1862, the chief agreed.  The young braves were more than ready.

Next time..."Let them eat grass"
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 30, 1886,  the Folies Bergère in Paris introduces an elaborate revue featuring women in sensational costumes. Once a hall for operettas, pantomime, political meetings, and vaudeville, the highly popular “Place aux Jeunes” established the Folies as the premier nightspot in Paris.

That's Far Enough!

Only Fort Union in the northeastern New Mexico territory stood between the Confederacy and their conquest of the West during the Civil War.  Colonel Edward Canby, the Union commander of the fort, sent troops to reoccupy Fort Craig which the government had abandoned.  Fort Craig was on the Rio Grande and also along the Confederate line of advance west.

Some 3000 troops under Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley defeated Union troops outside the fort and Union survivors fled to Fort Craig.  Sibley decided not to risk attacking Fort Craig because he saw it was well manned with cannons - many were just painted logs. Instead he pressed further west, leaving the Union troops to rebuild and regroup.  Sibley managed to occupy Albuquerque and Santa Fe before things began to change.

Fort Union was the key to Colorado and the Southwest.  In May 1861, William Gilpin, the first territorial governor of Colorado, began to organize a pro-Union regiment of volunteers called "Pike Peakers".  On the Confederate side were the "bummers", young secessionist minded men under the orders of a disreputable saloon keeper and gambler, one Charley Harrison.  The hostilities began in a bawdy house and ended in Harrison's saloon. 

With the "bummers" disposed of, the Pike Peakers, now 1300 strong, joined Colonel Canby's men from Fort Union and Fort Craig to meet General Sibley's men.  They clashed in March at Apache Canyon and Glorieta Pass around Fort Union. 

It was a Union Major and Methodist clergy, John Chivington, who led a raid on the South's supplies, destroying 73 wagons and bayoneting the entire herd of horses and mules.  Sibley, who had no supplies and no animals, began a retreat back into Texas.  The Confederate threat in the West was over, and a new threat was arising.

Next time - Southwest Indian Wars
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Today in Pioneer History: "On November 13, 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland. Stevenson authored Treasure Island and Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  

Civil War in the Far West

The Confederacy looked to occupying the Far West in 1861,  Texas was part of the South and a jumping off point to the rich mines of Colorado and Nevada, as well as the lands in California.  Pioneers could form a potential guerrilla army for the South - at least that was the plan.

The Southern feeling was strong in New Mexico Territory.  In 1861 a group of settlers from the village of Mesilla declared themselves (and all of southwestern New Mexico) to be Confederate States of America.  This included Arizona as they saw it.  In the minds of the Confederacy, if this sentiment could spread to the mountains, then sweep from there further west, they could have access to the much needed gold and silver to finance the war, plenty of room for slavery expansion, and an outlet to the Pacific Ocean.

First, however, the South had to gain complete control of Texas.  The General in charge was Major General David E Twiggs who evacuated federal outposts in Texas and brought Texas fully into Confederate control without a shot being fired. When the federal government began abandoned western outposts to strengthen the eastern war front, the Confederacy stepped in.  Confederate Colonel John Baylor raised a 250-man army of Texan volunteers, called The Texas Mounted Rifles in July 1861 and moved into New Mexico territory.  Approaching Fort Filmore the Confederate army met 500 Union soldiers.  The Union general panicked, however and ordered total evacuation while his troops filled their canteens with liquor and proceeded to drink.  When the Texans arrived the drunken soldiers were more than ready to surrender rather than fight. 

Score one for the South in the West.

Next time..The Battle of Fort Union
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 9, 1872, fire rips through Boston destroying hundreds of building and killing 14 people.  The fire started in a warehouse burning most of the wooden buildings from rooftop to rooftop.  The result was the city establishing an entirely new system of firefighting and prevention.  The Boston financial district was created as well.  

Quantrill's Raiders

Ohio-born schoolteacher William C. Quantrill, left the classroom in 1857 at the age of 20 for a career as a gambler and horse thief.  Getting his taste for violence in the Kansas-Missouri border war, Quantrill organized a pro-southern guerrilla band when the Civil War broke out.  After several small battles in Missouri, he was commissioned as a captain by the Confederacy.

In the summer of 1863, at the peak of his power and notoriety, Quantrill led 150 men into Lawrence, Kansas, a place known for abolitionists and hated by southern sympathizing Missourians.  Lawrence was the center of the pro-Union fighters known as "Red Legs."  Quantrill attacked in the early morning of August 21, killing at least 150 soldiers and destroying $1.5 million worth of property (in 1860s dollars).  Following the attack Union General Thomas Ewing ordered the forcible removal of all citizens from the border district, believing that they were aiding and abetting the enemy.

Quantrill's two lieutenants, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, who fastened Union scalps to his horse's bridle, and George Todd, were just a vicious as Quantrill himself.  Among his band of guerrillas were Frank and Jesse James, and Cole Younger who were just getting their first taste of lawlessness.

By wearing captured federal uniforms, Quantrill's band was able to surprise the enemy, as at Baxter Springs, Kansas where they killed 65 of the 100 federal soldiers there.   In early 1865, while on a mission through Kentucky to Washington, DC to assassinate President Lincoln, they were attacked by Union soldiers at Louisville, Kentucky on May 10th.  Quantrill was mortally wounded and his raids were over, at least with him as the leader.

Next time...The Civil War moves Far West
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 6, 1854, John Phillip Sousa is born, one of the most popular, prolific and important American composers of all time..."The March King" wrote "Stars and Stripes Forever", "The Liberty Bell" and "The Washington Post", among others.  He was raised in Washington DC during the Civil War and began musical education at the age of 6.  

The Civil War in the Midwest

The Old Northwest went to the polls in November 1860 enthusiastically voting for Abraham Lincoln.  The ties of commerce to the South were being broken with the coming of the railroads displacing the Mississippi River trade and anti-slavery views growing with the influx of Irish and German immigrants to the Midwest.

In Missouri, the state's pro-southern governor, Claiborne Jackson was backed by rural and small towns as a real threat to the Union.  In and around St. Louis, however, sentiment was overwhelmingly pro-Union.  Union Army captain, Nathaniel Lyon, was a stern abolitionist and had been assigned to defend the federal arsenal in St. Louis against an explosive situation that had developed between rival factions in February 1861. 

Lyon's pro-southern superior, General William S.  Harney, refused to act to defend St. Louis and by early May pro-southern militiamen were camped outside St. Louis.  The threat to the city had grown acute when General Harney was called away and Captain Lyon was left in charge.

On May 10th, Lyon marched on the rebels camped outside the city and took back St. Louis for the Union. Lyon then paraded the prisoners through the streets of St. Louis, enraging the city's secessionist minority.  Rioting and shooting followed the parade and by the end of the day 28 citizens were dead and scores injured.  However, St. Louis remained in Union hands.

Governor Jackson with his pro-southern sympathies, met with Lyon (now promoted to Brigadier General) and proposed that if Lyon would call off the troops, Jackson would declare Missouri a neutral state in the Civil War...

Next time...Lyon responds to Governor Jackson
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona."

The Western President

In Lincoln's inauguration address on March 4, 1861, he told the South, "you have an oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it'".  But southerners were not listening and when Lincoln sought to send supplies to federal troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston, guns boomed and the Civil War began.

Despite pressure from radical Republicans in Congress, Lincoln feared that an attack on slavery would cause the strategically important border states like Kentucky and Missouri to leave the Union.  Lincoln concluded that emancipation was necessary to win Negro support.  The final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 freed slaves only in areas still in rebellion, but it was a promise that changed the war into a war of freedom.

At Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered his famous speech to rally his countrymen to finish the work for men who had died there.  The bloody stalemate in Virginia brought war weariness to Lincoln.  Ulysses Grant's strategy of sending Sherman south to Atlanta and Sheridan across the Shenandoah Valley gave Lincoln his victory over not only the South in the Civil War, but also over the Democratic candidate General George McClellan in 1864.

At his final inauguration on March 4, 1865, Lincoln looked ahead to healing peace, asking people to act "with malice for none, with charity for all."  Sadly Lincoln didn't live to work such a peace.  He was assassinated just five day after Lee's surrender.  Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton who once called Lincoln the 'original gorilla', said at his funeral, "now he belongs to the ages".  Lincoln is one of the most loved Presidents in United States history.

Next time...Civil War in the Midwest
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 23, 1855, the Kansas Free State forces set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlaws slavery in the territory In opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas.