University of Virginia Library

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947

Remington, Frederic. "The Art of War and Newspaper Men." Harper's Weekly 34, 6 Dec. 1890: 947.

LESS than two weeks ago I passed over the trail from Rushville, Nebraska, to the Pine Ridge Agency behind Major-General Nelson A. Miles. To-night the moon is shining as it did then, but it will go down in the middle of the night, and I can see in my mind's eye the Second Infantry and the Ninth Troopers, with their trains of wagons, plodding along in the dark. The distance is twenty-eight miles, and at four o'clock in the morning they will arrive. When the Ogallalas view the pine-clad bluffs they will see in the immediate foreground a large number of Sibley tents, and, being warriors, they will know that each Sibley has eighteen men in it. They will be much surprised. They will hold little impromptu councils, and will probably seek for the motive of this concentration of troops. And some man will say: "Well, the soldiers are here, and if your people don't keep quiet— Well, you know what soldiers are for." The Ogallalas will understand why the soldiers are there without any further explanation. There may be and probably will be some white friend of the Indians who can tell them something they do not know. A little thing has happened since the Ogallalas laid their arms down, and that is that the bluecoats in the Second Infantry can put a bullet into the anatomy of an Ogallala at one thousand yards' range with almost absolute certainty if the light is fair and the wind not too strong.

I must not try to prophesy what the Ogallalas will do when they see the Sibleys, but I hope the friend will be there to tell them what a regular soldier and a Long Tom can do. The days when they could circle like hawks about a rabbit are gone. The modern United States soldier can pile a pony up in a heap before its rider can go one hundred yards. I realize that before this matter is printed the biggest Indian war since 1758 will be in progress, or that the display of military force will have accomplished its object, and the trouble gone.

The thing that is most remarkable about this concentration of troops is that the white people of the country read it in the evening papers, and with the first rays of to-morrow's sun the Ogallalas, the Cheyennes, and the Sitting Bull people will see it with their own eyes. Why did not the white people know it before? It must have occupied the military authorities for some days. The reason is this: not until late years could the Indians read English, but now the school-boys and squaw men can, and I have picked up copies of the New York and Chicago papers on the counters of an Indian trader's store, where a room was full of Indians, three or four of whom could probably read as well as most men. The cause of the secrecy is at once apparent. If an Omaha paper had printed a despatch saying that General Miles was suddenly to concentrate troops at Pine Ridge Agency in three days' time, that paper would be on the counter in a trader's store inside of a day and a half, and the Ogallalas, in all probability, would be scampering over the plains on the way to meet the northern Cheyennes and join issue with Uncle Sam's troops. Now they awake some fine morning and see the Sibleys, and if a turbulent disposition is displayed, the ringleaders are arrested, and the thing stopped. Hundreds of settlers' lives will be saved, thousands of dollars' worth of horses and cattle are left untouched, and the general government escapes the expenses of a war which would run into the millions. Meanwhile you and I read our papers, and find we are reading news which is fresh, only it might have been printed three days before.

In these days a military officer has to conduct his operations as secretly in Indian war as he would in a civilized case, all of which is very different from the days when expeditions were fitting out for months, and every man knew of it. The Interior Department, a few old medicine men, and the most desperate of the old war chiefs must divide the blame for the whole business.