The Ute Campaign Of 1879

The Ute Campaign of 1879 is a study of linkages. Major Russel D. Santala's work not only explores the threads of continuity between engagements and campaigns but also examines the relationship of government policy to one of the instruments of that policy-the Army. Ten years before the events of this study occurred, General William T. Sherman made note of this connection. In a commencement address to the West Point class of 1869, he compared the Army to the steam engine and warned that it is "held together by an organization and discipline demanding great knowledge and labor, moved into action by causes more powerful than steam, and so intimately connected with the whole fabric of government that ignorance and mismanagement would result in a catastrophe more fatal than could result from the explosion of any steam engine."This study chronicles the Army's role in the struggle between two cultures. At the same time, it serves to illuminate the problems of utilizing the military instrument in an environment of transitory national policy and competing national and local interests.

This study examines the role of the U.S. Army as an instrument of national power in the execution of U.S. government policy. The focus of the thesis is an investigation of the implementation of policy, in terms of the Ute Indian tribe of Colorado, and the events preceding and following the Ute uprising of 1879. The Army found itself in a dilemma with regard to its support of a national Indian strategy. It was not the primary executive agent for the implementation of policy but was called upon to both enforce national policy and police violators. This study traces the development of the U.S. Indian Policy and the evolution of army strategy in the west. The study culminates with an analysis of the events surrounding the outbreak of hostilities in 1879. This study addresses issues that faced the U.S. Army in an environment of unclear national policy and competing national and local interests. Reprint of the 1994 Combat Studies Institute monograph.

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Best known today as the author of The Plains of North American and Their Inhabitants (1877), Dodge recorded his observations and thoughts in volumes of journals, letters, and reports, as well as three popular published books. In this first biography of the soldier-author, Wayne R. Kime describes Dodge's early years, experiences as a writer, and forty-three-year career as an infantry officer in the U.s. Army, and sets his life in a rich historical context.

Over the course of his military career, George Crook developed empathy and admiration for American Indians both as foes and as allies. As Paul Magid has demonstrated in the previous two volumes of his groundbreaking biography, this experience prepared Crook well for his metamorphosis from Indian fighter to outspoken advocate of Indian rights. An Honest Enemy is the third and final volume of Magid’s account of George Crook’s life and involvement in the Indian wars. Using rarely tapped information, including Crook’s own diaries, the work documents in dramatic detail the general’s arduous and dangerous campaigns against the Chiricahua Apaches and their leader Geronimo, action that forms a backdrop to the transformation in the general’s role vis-à-vis Native Americans. In a story by turns harrowing and tragic, Magid details the plight of Indians who, in the aftermath of their defeat, were consigned to reservations too barren to sustain them, where they were subjected to impoverishment, indifference, and in many cases, outright corruption. With growing anger, Crook watched as many tribes faced death from starvation and disease and, unwilling to passively accept their fate, desperately sought to flee their reservations and return to their homelands. Charged with the grim task of returning the Indians to such conditions, Crook was forced to choose between fulfilling his duties as a soldier and his humanitarian values. Magid describes Crook’s struggle to reconcile these conflicting concerns while promoting policies he regarded as essential to the welfare of the Indians in the face of a hostile public, jealous fellow officers, and an unsympathetic government that regarded his efforts as quixotic and misguided. Here is a tale that readers will not soon forget.