Custer and Fort Morgan

General George Custer was in the Colorado/Kansas area in 1867. There is no evidence that he was ever at Fort Morgan, but he would have been in the area with the 7th U. S. Cavalry chasing Cheyenne as part of what was known as the Hancock Expedition (after General Winfield Hancock). As part of the Hancock Expedition, troops from the 7th U.S. Calvary were stationed at Fort Morgan under the command of Captain Michael Sheridan (brother of General Philip Sheridan).

By the middle of 1867, the people of Colorado were frustrated with the military’s inability to control the Indians. In April of 1867, General Hancock and the newly formed 7th U. S. Cavalry marched to meet with Cheyenne and Sioux chiefs camped near Fort Larned, Kansas on the Smoky Hill Route.

When the chiefs delayed the meeting and then secretly abandoned the village, possibly fearing a reprise of the Sand Creek Massacre, General Hancock ordered the village destroyed and over the next months, Custer and the 7th U. S. Cavalry chased the Indians across the plains. While Custer was south along the Republican River, the Indians were raiding along the South Platte, but just as troops arrived at the South Platte, the Indian raids shifted again to the south:

Gen. Augur had reached Fort Laramie from Fort Morgan, all well. The Indians seem to have left the Platte Valley, some going north and west, and others going south. The latter are undoubtedly those who made the raid on the Smoky Hill route and Kansas Pacific railroad on Saturday last. Outrages on the Arkansas, in the vicinity of Fort Dodge, and along the Santa Fe route, are reported, and it is not impossible that the theatre of war may be changed from the Platte and Smoky Hill to the Arkansas and the country south of it.

Custer’s troops zigzagged back and forth across the eastern plains chasing Indians, unable to stop the Indians from attacking the settlers and the communication infrastructure in the plains. The press took the military to task. A correspondent from the New York Tribune was particularly critical of the military and described the problems along the South Platte River route. From Salt Lake City, he wrote:

As yet we have no mail communication from the East since the interruption of travel by the Indians west of the North Platte, and judging from the telegraphic reports, it may be a month before there can be anything like regular mails, again from the terminus of the pacific Railroads…. 

If Gen. Sherman, with nearly 10,000 troops in the departments of Angar, and Hancock and fully 2,000 of them mounted, could not, in 60 days after reaching the Smoky Hill and Platte, protect any 50 miles of either of these routes, how long must it require, under the same military direction, to protect 300 miles from Platte City to Denver, 400 miles from terminus of the Union Pacific to Denver, some 800 miles of the direct line of the railroad from Platte City west to the mountains…. There is no excuse for the failure of the military commanders to protect the overland route….

    

Henry Morton Stanley a journalist who would start his journey to Africa in search of David Livingstone by rafting down the South Platte River past Fort Morgan in 1866 , described the situation for the Missouri-Democrat in June of 1867:

Between Bishop’s Ranche and Junction Cut Off [Fort Morgan], eighty miles from Denver, there are no less than ninety-three graves; twenty-seven of which contain the bodies of settlers killed within the last six weeks. Dead bodies have been seen floating down the Platte, and still men say there is nothing in it…. 

Persons have been known to travel fifty times between Denver and Kearney without being attacked, but those who betrayed carelessness have invariably been killed. The Indians undistinguishable from the earth they lie on, continue to watch patiently from behind the hills, or from the sage brush that screens them from view. As soon as they perceive a chance to get scalps or plunder they dart down, and the deed is done. 

Three modes of settling this Indian war and of keeping the great thoroughfares clear present themselves to our mind. The first is by allowing volunteer cavalry from the territories to be sent under competent commanders against the Indians. The second is extermination. And the third is one which we wish most ardently would be carried out – vis., set apart a sufficient territory, drive all the tribes within its limits, surround it with garrisons that none may leave it, and into which no white may enter without a special pass. Then, and not till then, may we hope for peace or a solution of the Indian question.

Stanley noted the series of forts along the route, including Fort Morgan, but was not complimentary of the military’s efforts to protect the settlers:

Since the commencement of this Indian war we have scarcely heard of a single instance where a soldier has shot an Indian, or even secured a prisoner…. 

[The forts] are garrisoned by infantry. Two of the principal forts have a small detachment of cavalry, and these few horsemen are expected to protect the wide plains from the incursions of the savages. In peaceful times these forts are most valuable to emigrant trains and travelers who are driven to cross the uninhabited plains of the west, but in war time they are worthless as regards any protection derived from them. They are serviceable as depots where cavalry can obtain supplies during operations against hostile tribes. It is a universal complaint that, managed as they are, they afford no security to the overland waggon [sic] trains. By the time intelligence is transmitted to the commanders of posts the attacking party have risen up unexpectedly in some other distant quarter, so that even the dullest must perceive that they offer but little security to moving emigrants….  

All these soldiers stationed at the above posts [list includes Fort Morgan] do not appear to be able to preserve the peace or to afford protection to the emigrant….

The Battle of Summit Springs (near Sterling) in 1869 marked the end of the Cheyenne and Arapaho in northeastern Colorado. Most of the area around Fort Morgan was cleared of Indians before the tribes were relocated onto reservations in Oklahoma. Conflicts continued between the Sioux and whites culminating in the defeat of Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, but by 1881, Sitting Bull’s Sioux surrendered and joined the rest of their tribe on reservations in the Dakotas.

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Sources:

1. Photo source: Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, US Army, 1865 http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpbh.03216/
2. Jordan, David M., Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier's Life (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).
3. “The Indian War,” New York Tribune, 26 June, 1867, p. 1.
4. “The Indian War,” New York Tribune, 10 July 10, 1867, p. 2.
5. Durgard, Martin, Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
6. Stanley, Henry M., My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1895).