Frederick W. Benteen

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On November 24, Benteen wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to accept his offer of a captain’s commission in the 7th Cavalry. Later in life, Benteen told a correspondent that he refused a major’s commission in the 9th Cavalry, preferring to serve as a captain with a white regiment. He was ordered to report for duty at Fort Riley, Kansas. In January 1867, he departed for his new assignment with the 7th Cavalry, his regiment for the next 16 years. Ironically, he would one day leave the regiment for a promotion to major in the 9th Cavalry.

Upon arriving at Fort Riley, Captain Benteen found himself in the company of many old acquaintances. The commander of the 7th Cavalry, Colonel A.J. Smith, was an old friend of Benteen’s who witnessed some of his finest moments in the Civil War. Smith’s aide-de-camp, Captain Henry E. Noyes, held the same position for Wilson during the march to Atlanta. Both men knew and respected Benteen.

But it was the lieutenant colonel of the 7th Cavalry that made the first, lasting impression on Benteen. On January 30, 1867, Benteen made a customary courtesy call to the quarters of George Armstrong and Elizabeth Custer. While no one can be sure exactly what transpired during that visit, it is apparent that at some point, Custer made comments that greatly offended Benteen (many historians believe that the slight regarded the Civil War record of Benteen’s mentor, James H. Wilson, but no one can be absolutely sure). From that day on, their relationship consistently bordered on conflagrant.

By the end of July, the 7th Cavalry had dispersed appropriately to begin campaigning on the frontier. Of the nine companies remaining in Kansas, four companies were assigned to Fort Riley, two to Fort Harker, and one each to Fort Hays, Fort Dodge and Fort Wallace. The three remaining companies were assigned to posts in eastern Colorado, with two at Fort Lyon and one at Fort Morgan. The cavalry formed the roots of a strategic strike force for launching deep assaults into the frontier; in times of crisis, the companies would mass for an expedition into ‘hostile’ territory.

The Cheyenne Indians represented the greatest threat on the Kansas frontier in 1867. With the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, the old Santa Fe Trail brought hordes of settlers through the Cheyenne lands, upsetting the ecological balance on which the Native American people thrived. As with most tribes, the Cheyenne Nation viewed the encroachment as a threat to their very survival.

Benteen proved to be a skillful, if relentless, warrior on the plains. But he also showed a deeper respect for American Indians than did many of his fellow countrymen. Although he held the belief that the westward expansion of white culture was to blame for many of the problems on the frontier, he also saw the need for Indian culture to adapt to his own.

The spring of 1867 also brought great joy to the Benteen family. On March 27, Kate gave birth to a son, Frederick Wilson Benteen, in Atlanta. Kate Benteen named her new son in honor of his father’s mentor and friend, General James Henry Wilson. Meanwhile, the Senate finally approved awards of brevets to distinguished veterans of the Civil War; Benteen received brevets of major for Mine Creek and lieutenant colonel for Columbus. From that day forward, his contemporaries referred to him as ‘Colonel’ Benteen, despite his more junior rank.

That same month, the War Department authorized a show of force on the frontier in an effort to compel the recalcitrant natives to the government reservations. Major General Winfield Hancock, the department commander, began preparations to array his forces and march en masse on the tribal encampments in an exhibit of his ability to force the natives onto reservations, if necessary.

‘Hancock’s War,’ as it is often called, provided Benteen the first opportunity to exercise his talents as an irregular warrior since the early days of his service in Missouri. On April 14, 1867, Hancock ordered his troops to surround a large village of Cheyennes and Sioux north of Fort Dodge on the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas River. But in the darkness, the natives escaped and Hancock sent Custer’s 7th Cavalry in pursuit.

During the pursuit, Custer delayed the command to send Benteen and two companies after what he believed to be fleeing natives in the distance. The ‘natives’ proved to be nothing more than grazing wildlife — elk, deer, antelope and buffalo. A full day was lost. When Custer’s eight companies approached the Smoky Hill Road near Fort Hays on 19 April, they found stage stations burned, settlers butchered, and livestock run off. When Hancock received the news, he burned the abandoned village to the ground.

The incident sparked a controversy that spread across the frontier. It also sparked a war, leading to a plague of raids against settlers that endured well into the autumn months of that year, when the signing of the Medicine Lodge Treaty brought a temporary end to hostilities. In May, Hancock dispatched Custer and his command on an expedition to Nebraska that resulted in the latter’s court-martial and one-year dismissal from service. Benteen, serving on a separate court-martial at Fort Riley, was not present during the debacle that culminated in Custer’s arrest.

With the signing of the treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek, Hancock returned the 7th Cavalry to the dispersed frontier posts for the winter. Benteen arrived at Fort Harker, his first permanent duty station as a regular, on 10 November 1867. In February 1868, Kate and young Freddie joined Benteen in their new home. In March, Major General Philip H. Sheridan replaced Hancock as commander of the Department of the Missouri.

As spring came to the Kansas prairie in 1868, unrest on the reservations brought renewed anxiety to the settlers. In late July, Benteen (with fresh mounts obtained at the expense of Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s 10th Cavalry) led an expedition to provide security for Indian agents near Fort Larned, when raiders began to wreak havoc among the homesteads along the Saline River. Benteen led two companies back to Fort Harker to pursue the raiders.

Upon reaching Fort Harker, Benteen resumed the chase with a small force tailored to the pursuit. Early in the morning on August 13, Benteen caught the raiding party along the banks of Elk Horn Creek near Fort Zarah and charged his troops into a force of about fifty warriors atop a hill. To his surprise, Benteen discovered a force of more than 200 braves in the process of raiding a small ranch. The startled natives mistook Benteen’s audacious charge for a much larger force (instead of just 30 troopers) and scattered in panic.

Benteen pursued the young Cheyennes without rest until dark, engaging the raiders throughout the day without respite. The first undisputed victory of the 7th Cavalry brought Benteen a brevet to colonel (one of the last awarded before Congress halted the practice until 1890) and the adoration of the settlers of central Kansas.

On September 24, Sheridan wired for Custer to return to the 7th Cavalry. On October 10, restored to favor, Custer joined the regiment at an encampment on the Arkansas River south of Fort Dodge. Three days later, he dispatched Benteen and an orderly to make a hazardous return to Fort Harker to retrieve fresh horses and new recruits.

During the return march, Benteen spurred his troops ahead to overtake a Mexican wagon train loaded with guns and ammunition bound for the regiment. He reached the wagon train just as a native war party began to attack. Benteen and his young cavaliers drove the warriors off, saving the wagon train. Later, the trail of the raiding party would lead the 7th Cavalry to an enormous Cheyenne encampment on the Washita River in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

November brought the first winter snowstorms to Kansas and the beginning of Sheridan’s winter campaign. The 7th set out from Camp Supply on November 23, with over a foot of snow on the ground, bearing toward the Texas state line; Custer dispatched Benteen to escort the supply train. After four days march in continually falling snow, fitfully following the trail left by Benteen’s raiders, Custer finally found his prey nestled in the Washita River valley.

Just before dawn on November 27, Custer launched a four-pronged assault on the village. As the Cheyennes began to scatter in panic, Custer’s men pursued them with a vengeance. Unknown to Custer — who failed to perform a reconnaissance of the village — the encampment was but a portion of a much larger collection of winter camps, including other Cheyenne bands, as well as Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche. Custer soon found himself surrounded and, with the coming of nightfall, feigned a cavalry charge to facilitate his escape.

Custer marched his regiment proudly into Camp Supply on December 2 and submitted a single report to Sheridan concerning the events at Washita. In his report, Custer failed to commend anyone in his command, uncharacteristic for the time in an Army in which such commendations were the recognized practice. In a battle that represented the first spectacular victory of the frontier regulars in the post war era, his omission was notably unusual.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Indian Wars, Historical Figures, The Wild West, Wild West