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| The Guardhouse at Fort Sheridan . . . Many people assert that Native Americans were imprisoned here in 1891. No such record exists. (JWB Photo) |
On December 29,1890 federal troops of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W.
Forsyth, rode into an encampment of Lakota Sioux near Wounded Knee Creek in
South Dakota. Accounts of what happened
on that morning differ, but by the end of the day 200 men, women, and children
of the Sioux nation were dead and another 47 wounded. Twenty-five United States cavalry troopers also died and 39 were
wounded.
By the end of
January various survivors of the encampment were rounded up and transported
to Fort Sheridan. A telegram from
General Nelson Miles, commander of United States troops in South Dakota, was
received on January 26, 1891, reading as follows: “I expect to reach Chicago some time
tomorrow night with Taming Bear, Short Bull, Two Strike, and others, thirty in
all. I desire that preparations be made
to remove them to Fort Sheridan immediately.”
Colonel Henry Clark
Corbin in Chicago, who would eventually become a Brigadier General and the
Adjutant General of the Army, received General Miles’s telegram and said, “Only
a small escort will be needed. They are
all unarmed and one man could take them.
They couldn’t do anything here.”
Even today it is
difficult to ferret out exactly what General Miles’s intentions were. The
Tribune speculated, “It is said the intention of Gen. Miles to enlist the
Indians in the regular army, subject them to the same discipline as other
recruits so as to have them ready for service against hostile Indians in Indian
war which may break out in the future . . . The question is whether rigid
discipline can be enforced on men who have led such wild lives on the
plains.” [Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1891]
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| Short Bull |
On this date in
1891, January 29, The Tribune printed an article with the headline Are Not Held
As Prisoners of War – The Indian Braves at Fort Sheridan Can Do About as They
Please. The piece began, “Short Bull,
the Brute, sat in his Sibley tepee at Fort Sheridan yesterday and chopped army
plug tobacco into fine-cut. He was in a
strange country, but genuine tobacco pleased him so much more than the red
willow bark that he had been forced to smoke when in the Bad Lands that he
looked as nearly contented as a savage who imagines he has a grievance
can.” [Chicago Tribune, January 29,
1891]
Sentinels walked
off their paces at the encampment in order to keep curiosity seekers at
bay. “Every village boy in Fort Sheridan
and about two hundred from Highland Park formed a cordon around the tepees of
the Indians, and the sentinel had more trouble in keeping the white man out
than in keeping the red man in.” The Tribune reported.
The paper took
particular pains to report that the 30 tribal members were not prisoners and
that “Every member of the guard that was mounted at Fort Sheridan yesterday
morning had strict orders to allow the Indians to do as they chose.”
“With blanket
additions the Brutes and Ogalalas at the fort will be happier than they have
been for years, for the simple reason that they are under army control and are
assured of good treatment and sixteen ounces to the pound in their rations,”
the report continued.
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| Kicking Bear |
The guests at the
garrison were still “painted and still [wore] feathers and blankets.” Chief among them were Kicking Bear and Short
Bull. Both men were followers of the
Northern Paiute religious leader, Wovoka, who had a prophetic vision in 1889
that all the Paiute dead would be resurrected and the white man removed if his
people would live righteously and undertake a series of five-day ceremonies,
known today as the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance would figure prominently in events that were yet to transpire.
Despite what the
paper wrote on this day in 1891 the Native Americans that were transported to
Fort Sheridan were certainly not free to walk to the train station and head for
the bars on Clark Street. But they
weren’t exactly prisoners, either. And this
is just the beginning of what would become a strange saga that spanned two
continents and several years.
I'll be reporting on those developments in the coming months.
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