Valentine T. McGillycuddy: Army Surgeon, Agent to the Sioux
by Candy Moulton, Arthur H. Clark Co., Norman, Okla., 2011.
Until the appearance of this meticulous biography, Valentine McGillycuddy’s renown, when recognized at all, has rested on the fact that he was the physician in attendance at Fort Robinson, Nebraska Territory, in September 1877 when the Oglala leader Crazy Horse was bayoneted to death. Candy Moulton, author of Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé and a dozen other books of Western history, has discovered in this Wisconsin-born Irishman more than a colorful and controversial and yet oddly obscure figure. McGillycuddy—a “beanpole doctor with…steely blue eyes” and “a 6-footer with a 28- inch waist and weighing 125 pounds,” as Moulton memorably describes him— was among the most durable figures of the Plains Indian wars.
McGillycuddy (1849–1939) earned his medical degree in Detroit in 1869 and soon after served as surgeon with the U.S. Boundary Survey Commission in the Great Lakes area, with John Wesley Powell’s second Colorado River expedition of 1871–72 and with an expedition into the Black Hills of Dakota Territory. He later became a contract surgeon and was present with Brig. Gen. George Crook during the Battle of Rosebud Creek on June 17, 1876, and at the Battle of Slim Buttes the following September.
Moulton’s account of McGillycuddy’s tenure as assistant post surgeon at Fort Robinson, beginning at the end of 1875, is detailed and fascinating, as is her deep description of his controversial work as agent at the Red Cloud Agency, where he fell afoul of Lakota Chief Red Cloud. Moulton explains that McGillycuddy“fully embraced the principles being touted by the Office of Indian Affairs and the Interior Department,” principles that called for the quashing of tribal beliefs, abandonment of hunter-gatherer traditions, adoption of farming and breaking of the old chiefs’ power.
Following his resignation as an Indian agent, McGillycuddy served as mayor of Rapid City and delegate to the South Dakota State Constitutional Convention. In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre, he treated the injured and wounded at Pine Ridge and later ministered to influenza epidemic victims in San Francisco and victims of the city’s 1906 earthquake and fire. His long and eventful life included friendships with Martha Jane Canary (before and after she became “our old friend Calamity” Jane), George Armstrong Custer, James Butler Hickok and William Frederick Cody. Moulton has written the definitive book on this significant Westerner.
Originally published in the December 2010 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
