For the remainder of the century, the two cavalry and two infantry regiments comprised approximately 9 percent of the men who wore the Army uniform. During this period, they usually carried out their duties on the frontier, away from the centers of white population, supposedly because of political pressures to keep blacks from being stationed in Northern states.

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Some of the earliest African-American foot soldiers posted to the West served in Texas, the 24th Infantry gathering there at a time when the area was considered a’soldier’s paradise,’ with beautiful rivers and grassy plains that teemed with game. The black infantry units also served in Arizona, Colorado, the Dakotas, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico and Utah. As in the Lone Star State, they occupied and maintained outposts that sometimes were isolated and lonely, and participated in the full gamut of garrison and field duties. The men drilled often and sometimes even engaged in physical fitness exercises that were beginning to come into vogue in the late-Victorian era. They stood inspection, did their turn at guard mount and similar martial duties, and paraded. They also went to the target range. The soldiers were assigned many nonmilitary physical tasks known as fatigues–cutting ice (where possible), securing wood for lumber and fuel, working as teamsters or day laborers for the quartermaster, serving as janitors in the post exchange, and picking wild berries near the fort to supplement the issue ration. From time to time, the soldiers chased after military prisoners, chiefly deserters from white regiments, although they sometimes went in pursuit of black comrades. Field maneuvers increasingly became part of their routine, with emphasis being placed on war games.

When called upon, black infantrymen also responded to disturbances that sometimes flared up in the final days of war between the American Indians and the people who came to displace them. While the cavalry performed daring deeds recorded by newspaper reporters and artists, black infantry units faithfully played their part, too. Infantrymen, blacks and whites, were called ‘walk-a-heaps’ by some Indians because these soldiers had to travel on foot rather than on horseback like the cavalry.

That is not to say that the walk-a-heaps never took advantage of mounts available to them; they did, and when this happened they temporarily became mounted infantry. In Texas in the early 1870s, Captain F.M. Crandal and some of the rank and file from his Company A, 24th Infantry, were using mules and horses to pull wagons when a raiding party attacked them between Fort Stockton and Fort Davis. Another time an officer and his patrol were surprised and 200 of their mules were run off by Indians who could strike swiftly on horseback against the slower foot soldiers.

Years later, and far to the north, during the spring of 1890, Company H of the 25th responded to the killing of three prospectors near Montana’s Flathead Lake, and the subsequent shooting of one Kutenai and the lynching of two others, by moving into the area as a deterrent to further mayhem. Later in the year, black soldiers were called out as reinforcements during the Ghost Dance of 1890-91, with several companies gathering at Fort Keogh, Mont., as a ready reserve.

Besides forays against native peoples, African-American foot soldiers were sometimes even dispatched to quell strikes, such as those that broke out in the mines of Idaho during 1892. In 1894 came the threat posed by Coxey’s band of jobless anti-railroad men (known as Coxey’s Army), who were organized by social reformer Jacob Sachlee Coxey after the panic of 1893. Two companies of the 25th Infantry at Fort Missoula, Mont., set up a temporary camp near the railroad depot in Missoula while another company went out to guard trestles that might be targeted by dissidents for destruction. The soldiers had orders to ‘be prudent and cool in the discharge’ of their assignment to protect railway property and maintain peace. Despite that admonition, a minor incident occurred when some local civilians heckled two railroad employees who were continuing to work during the strike. A sentry from the 25th stepped in, and after one of the civilians reportedly ‘refused to budge’ despite twice being warned to move on, the sentry decided to prod him with a bayonet. The civilian withdrew. The sentry was to be served with a warrant for arrest on a charge of assault. According to one account, ‘there was some difficulty in serving the warrant and for a moment a ruction seemed imminent.’ Matters did not come to a head, however, and calm returned.

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