Hessian John
Indian Wars Surgeon
by
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When Ruby and I returned to Sheep Mountain from New York City in the late fall of 1874, I found three Arapaho bands preparing to winter on the east flank of Sheep Mountain and among willow thickets of the Little Laramie River north and east of Ruby’s ranch. Surveying her herd, we noted 12 cattle were missing. Old Billy Harrigan told us, “Two young braves I didn’t reconize come by last week with a young woman who asked fer He Who Knows and wantin’ ta trade hides n’ little nuggets fer beans n’ flour.” I asked Billy, “Did the woman mention Chief Red Sky?” He responded, “She said, ‘Him with spirits; Hungry Bear now chief of Inunas’.” I then asked, “Do you know where I can find the band?” He said, “Go up thet Crick named after ye onto the small meadow where I b’lieve they’re awaitin’ fer ye, Doc.” As Ruby and I rode along John’s Creek Trail on the east side of Sheep Mountain to find the band’s winter camp, I told her, My contacts with these tribes started hight here 25 years ago when I met Chief Red Sky’s Inuna Band of the Hitavwo Vee Cloud Men up on Sheep Mountain; other Arapaho clans were up on the high Snowies west of here. Much farther west I’d traded with friendly Bannocks at Fishing Falls beyond the precipitous cataracts on the Snake River in Idaho Territory. Many other tribes were less friendly then so we avoided them for fear of losing our horses or our lives. Nevertheless, my original contacts with Chief Red Sky had opened my broader associations with plains tribesmen and other mountain tribes across the West. I continued, In 1852, Lt. Sam Grant and I dealt with peaceful Cayuse, Chumash, Klamath, and Yakima tribes along the great Columbia River, and Umatilla salmon fisherman at the upriver Les Dalles cataract. Having learned bits of their languages and treating white-mans’ death-wind diseases that had devastated some tribes, I’d gradually become welcome among more clans. Finally after participating in the 1868 treaty meetings, I’d become known by many as Red Sky’s friend, He Who Knows. Ruby already knew I’d been a contract surgeon serving railroaders and their survey parties moving far ahead of track-laying works, where during ’67 and ’68, I’d encountered other Arapaho clans whose people welcomed me as blue-eyed man with strong medicine and noise-music in a box. I told her, “Only the Crow, Shoshoni, and Blackfoot clans kept their distance and avoided contact with me, especially when soldiers were present. Since the snow had already covered most of Sheep Mountain forcing the deer and elk below the snowline, I could smell roasting elk well before we approached the Arapaho camp. Soon after, three young warriors rode out to greet us, having already recognized my big horse they called Slow Elk. After eating warm slivers of undercooked roast with Chief Hungry Bear, we talked of early years on the mountain, of reservation problems, and of the lack of promised winter supplies that had driven them from the Wind River Reservation to former hunting grounds. Hungry Bear also told us of nearby Arapaho bands that had followed him to these hunting lands south of the railroad now forbidden to them by treaty. Finally, he said, Inunas no shoot your woman’s cows. Willow-bottom people find no elk. Very hungry. Will pay Ruby-woman with soft buffalo robes after winter. Go with 2nd-son Smart Calf to camp beyond big cow farm to meet Chiefs Strong Face and Elk Tooth. They know you and wish to be friends again. My brother High Horse is with wife-woman Snowbird at Strong Face’s camp in willow shelters where they eat fish from river. Go to help Rock Mountain and Elk Mountain bands. Return here often; Red Sky’s mountain––your mountain. After meeting the Rock and Elk Mountain chiefs and seeing many hungry clan members, Ruby agreed to provide three more steers and a milk cow for each band. I also told High Horse, “I’ll help you shoot Elk with my new rifle that I brought from the big sunrise city that shoots twice as far as any gun here at Sheep Mountain.” As Ruby and I started to leave, Snowbird and Chief’s woman, Rose Marie, presented her with a beaded buckskin dress, calling her in French, Ruby Bon Coeur (Ruby Good Heart).
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About the Book
The US Army’s fighting experience from the Civil War’s end in 1865 until the Western Frontier’s end in 1890 has come to be known as the Indian Wars period. Previous conflicts had been limited to skirmishes with native tribes as their people were pushed westward into yet unwanted territory. Following the 1849 gold rush, travel routes and settlement pockets had increased across the trans-Mississippi regions as ever-greater numbers of Euro-Americans quested for land (and gold), enlarging the conflict between incompatible ways of life. As settlers and adventurers besieged tribesmen, some chose guerrilla warfare, characterized by skirmishes, raids, massacres, battles, and campaigns of varying intensities that ranged over plains, mountains, and deserts of the vast American West. Because the army’s responsibilities involved great distances, limited resources, and extended operations (often impeded by governmental policies), its punitive actions suffered. From revolutionary times, the new United States held anti-standing-army sentiments believing that the “Indian problem” can be settled by nonmilitary means. Hence, the post–Civil War army dropped in half by the critical centennial year when the nation was shocked by the Little Big Horn catastrophe. In the previous ten years, a series of forts had been built and a command structure was organized for frontier defense around two western commands: the Division of the Missouri (containing Departments of Arkansas, Missouri, and the Platte) and the Division of the Pacific (containing Departments of California, Columbia, and the Gulf). Since the theater of war was largely uninhabited, its variations in climate and geographical features and its extreme distances were accentuated by army manpower limitations, logistical problems, and movement difficulties. In the postwar decades, few officers and soldiers had frontier and Indian-fighting experience against an unorthodox enemy. Those who had previous contacts approached their opponents with respect and were often helpful in promoting solutions to the Indian problem. Most memorable among the army’s nineteenth century leaders are the names of Sherman, Sheridan, Miles, Howard, Gibbon, Sully, Cooke, Canby, and Crook. Given the central role their soldiers made in dealing with the Indians, the US Army and a few of its notable leaders made major contributions to the consolidation of the American continent.
About the Author
Colonel Don Walbrecht (the eleventh pilot of the Mach-3 SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft) served thirty years as an air force officer, participating in advanced-aircraft development activities, leading Pentagon operational programming and budgeting matters, and holding transpacific and transatlantic staff and command positions. He earned three graduate degrees, including a PhD from the University of East Anglia in Norfolk, England, and completed three professional military courses at the Air University in Montgomery, Alabama. He currently serves as professor of aviation management for the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho where he supervises graduate-level military research projects. He is the author of three earlier books in this Hessian John series as well as a scientific-fiction poetic romaunt, On Silent Wing, and a doctoral dissertation, “The Diplomatic History of US Airpower in the United Kingdom.”