The Dying Grass, page 142
in complete agreement with Sherman
or should I say in utter fulfillment of Sherman’s instructions? Who can say I didn’t see to everything?
I should have kept Toohhoolhoolzote under arrest. Those SATANic Dreamers always—
I wish I’d never come back! Better killed by Joseph’s Indians than
My GOD, forgive me! What am I thinking?
Dearest, what’s wrong? Did something in the newspaper upset you?
Pass the salt, please, Lizzie.
We ought to plant more flowers on Guy’s grave.
All right.
It’s nearly the anniversary.
So it is.
Only three more days until the twenty-second:
Born December 16, 1855 at Augusta, Maine.
Killed in action, October 22, 1899,
defending our interests in the Philippines; Thou leadest me to lie down in green pastures
for America, my America,
an ideal life, O my GOD,
my son.
That’s correct, Lizzie. Three more days. Shall it be a rosebush?
O yes, dearest, a red one, because he gave his blood—
Lizzie—
Then what’s troubling you? I know you take his loss so much to heart—
Not anymore. I’m certain that Guy’s
as sad as a sagebrush knoll at dawn and
in Heaven.
Well, Otis, what is it? Is it that horrid old Joseph again?
No, it’s
an item from the Congressional Record regarding a letter, blandly damaging, from the Secretary of the Interior: rent due and overdue to the Trustees of Howard University for buildings once employed as the Freedmen’s Hospital, because if you allow a one-armed Christian to pour our GOD-given dollars down a nigger rat-hole, then you deserve to get not only shot but also referred to the Committee of Appropriations, which is to say
the state that our Government’s fallen to.
You’re fretting over the negro question again, aren’t you?
If only Lincoln had lived!
LORD knows you’ve done your dead level best to help those poor creatures! Would you like to read Gracie’s letter now? She’s
in arrears to the Trustees of Howard University and
very, very happy with that Captain Gray, thank goodness,
and once upon a time there had been a fine fire in the furnace and little Gracie teething in the night.
Yes.
Are we in money trouble again?
I honestly don’t know, Lizzie.
So that’s why you’ve taken on all those speaking engagements.
Well, that’s right.
I thought your Medal of Honor would—
Never mind.
Sometimes you look so tired when you come home . . .
The soup is excellent, dear.
I know you like it. That’s why I . . . Are you still working out the warfare of the future?
No, dearest. I finished that one. But thank you for remembering—
You promised to read it to me.
Well, there’s a line I rather like. Where did I put it? Yes: The wars of the future, so far as our country is concerned, will, I think, in the main, be contests like that which the Salvation Army are trying to wage.
I think that’s lovely and much to the point.
Thanks, Lizzie.
I do hope they remunerate you well for it.
With GOD’s help—
And then perhaps we could all go to eat ice-cream and drink buttermilk at one of those “Wild West” exhibitions.
You’d like that, would you, darling?
With all the children—
Why not?
But are we in financial trouble again? I’d really prefer it if you told me.
You can leave those matters to me, dearest.
I know. And it’s not as if we can turn to General Sherman anymore—
That’s quite enough about Sherman. Excuse me now—
right behind my eyes is where it hurts
in America
and it pursues me
just as the reflections of white thunderheads follow at our shoulders as we ride down to the Big Hole River, I am telling you three times,
and then we ride and ride, all the way to Bear’s Paw,
and we ride year after year to save and perfect America, day and night, till death do us part. By day I first set out against Joseph and by night I ferried Stone’s brigade across the river to cover the building of my pontoon bridge to Columbia, which the Mayor duly surrendered on the following morning, and then we waited on General Sherman, who led his horse across the bridge first, followed straight after by me, of course; next by envious, emulous Logan, and after him the entirety of the Fifteenth Corps, while puffs of cotton blew like snowflakes up out of the burning bales, and that was when the tallest man in the crowd handed General Sherman a fair copy of the new ballad about his March to the Sea:
Still onward we pressed, till our banners
Swept out from Atlanta’s grim walls,
And the blood of the patriot dampened
The soil where the traitor-flag falls
on earth as it is in Heaven as it is in America, America, O America.
Whether he ever learns of Sherman’s letter to President-elect Garfield, calling him easily used and influenced, and concluding: As a business man I have not the faith in him our President has, I, William the Blind, cannot tell, but come 1891 we do find him loyally heading Sherman’s funeral procession. His eyes shine with tears.
Until his final fit of apoplexy he revises and explains. Over his head in a frame roosts a yellowing letter from an inspector of the Indian Office, dated the year after he whipped Chief Joseph:
Few men do as much toward the cause of Christian enlightenment, in the sum of the allotted years of life. If you were to come through this country now—the Indians from far and near would come to see you—and greet you as their best friend.
FURTHER HISTORY OF GENERAL MILES
(1878–1925)
I . . . have fought and defeated larger and better armed bodies of hostile Indians than any other officer since the history of Indian warfare commenced, and at the same time have gained a more extended knowledge of our frontier country than any living man.
COL. NELSON A. MILES TO GENERAL SHERMAN, 1877
1
Interestingly, Grant wrote to Sherman: I read one of your interesting letters to the Sec. of War with great interest. These interesting words were datelined hôtel Bristol. Paris. Nov. 17th/77. Grant continued: Miles has done good work since, which, with what he had done before, must rank him high with our young officers.
As part of his good work, Miles shot off another letter to General Sherman, proposing himself again for promotion to brigadier general. After all, his uncle-in-law was getting old, his glare now a wintry, half-stricken stare out of crow’s-feet and snowy bristles. He was almost GOD. Miles knew that in comparison he himself appeared both sleek and anxious; he was always lifting up his head to be proud, but somehow that only made him resemble a horse caught in the midst of drinking. General Sherman did not love him; hence Miles declined to call him Uncle Billy, even though his marriage gave him more cause to do so than our grinning enlisted men. Who ran Sherman anyway? Was it the President, the Congressmen out West or those shadowy loafers in Washington, D.C., who sit under summer awnings watching parades and horsemen pass by like Time itself? There was, to be sure, a Government, with undoubtedly beautiful and automatic policies—which, however, swayed with the tides of democracy. For instance, what were we supposed to do with our Indians? Sherman knew, and acted undeviatingly. But he was not President; he was constrained, since the Army was. Preferments and perks remained difficult to gather, no matter that Miles was the greatest Indian fighter on earth! If anyone could help him it was his darling little Mary, who practically alone, it seemed, touched her uncle’s heart. Why shouldn’t Miles finally attain to the rank which he deserved, especially now that he had saved Uh-Oh Howard’s bacon and fixed Crook’s Apache blunders? And wasn’t he literally versed in every chord to play? He’d known enough to be there with a band playing “Garryowen” when Custer rode in with the Seventh. Buffalo Bill, who would help him to bring about the death of Sitting Bull, considered him a man, every inch of him, and the best general I ever served under. Returning the favor, Miles gave him a fine chestnut horse which he rode on Nebraska’s first-ever “Cody Day.”
2
White Bird’s survival embarrassed the Government. Being, as General Sheridan termed him, a good, pushing officer, Miles proposed, through expeditious interpretation of the doctrine of hot pursuit, to raid the Sioux and Nez Perces across the Medicine Line, just as we do when we punish escaped Indians in Mexico. General Sherman countermanded him: Mexico was not the British Dominions, and Miles d——d well ought to realize that, d——n him!— To Miles it seemed but the matter of a few more years before both of these countries had been joined unto our United States. Why did Sherman always put the brakes on?
Miles had quite a head for politics. He planned to improve everything. For instance, he proposed that we honor our surrender agreement with the Nez Perces, because Joseph is by far the ablest Indian on the continent. Why did everyone smile when he said that? General Sherman preferred to keep Joseph in the Hot Place. But ignorant missionaries kept whipping up the Eastern press until Sherman was more or less spent, so he lost out, and the Government sent Joseph to Colville to die.
Miles had gone out of his way to visit Mr. Joe in the Indian Territory in 1881. It was a little sad to see how little the Nez Perces had made of themselves. A touch ungratefully, the Red Napoleon sought to hold him to his surrender promise. Miles prayed on it; he kept doing whatever he could.* He went over Sherman’s head to President Hayes, requesting the tribe’s return to the Idaho Territory—never mind that this act was bad for his career; Mary at least saw it his way—and even visited the notorious troublemaker Helen Hunt Jackson, whose speciality was making us feel sorry for our Indians.
Truth to tell, Miles probably did more for the reds than General Howard ever accomplished—which is peculiar, given the former’s more worldly nature. I can only say with Wilkinson: Judge not, lest ye be judged.— He aided the Pi-Utes, Pimas and Mohaves in reëstablishing themselves on a reservation more to their liking, and even supported reservation Cheyennes against ranchers and our own Government. When Major Forsyth of the Seventh Cavalry ignored his command not to approach the Minneconjous too closely, thus precipitating the Wounded Knee massacre, Miles reacted in fury and sorrow, convening a tribunal on his own initiative and seeking to prosecute Forsyth. Needless to say, the authorities agreed with General Sherman, now retired, who remarked: If Forsyth was relieved because some squaw was killed, that was a mistake, for squaws have been killed in every Indian war. And so in due course Forsyth became a general.
No one worried much about Indians by then. The new enemy was socialism.
3
The Wallowa Chieftain, whose editors had cogitated on both evils, explained the danger as follows: Poverty breeds socialism. But what breeds poverty? Indolence, stupidity, intemperance, want of prudence and foresight, lack of intelligent energy. In 1894 we will find Miles repeatedly demanding permission, which he cannot obtain, to fire upon the socialists and other foreign elements who are masterminding the Pullman strike in Chicago. If only Nelson Miles were in charge of everything! Then America would hum as straightforwardly as an Aetna Centennial sewing machine!
Interestingly, he wrote to General Sherman: In my opinion what is needed is for some friend in Washington to interest himself fortunately in my interest.
4
Bit by bit, even as Tongue River enlarged itself into Miles City, he won his heart’s desire. His renown grew as thick and glossy-furred as do buffalo hides at the end of the year. In 1878 we find him in charge of the Military Equipment Board, which recommended the reissue of canvas overcoats after the fashion of Howard’s enemy General Crook. Accordingly, the blue “Miles pattern” was approved by General Sherman and adopted in 1880. That year he made full general, presently taking over the Department of the Columbia formerly commanded by Old Prayer Book. Presiding over the court-martial of the black West Point cadet Johnson Whittaker, who was discovered tied and beaten in his room, and therefore must have faked it, Miles pronounced, as he was expected to do, the sentence of guilt for the presumptuous nigger, but he waived the year of hard labor. As you can see, there was something a trifle softhearted about Miles, perhaps because he was a Baptist. Was it this particular defect which annoyed his father-in-law? If so, that would have been unfair; Mary went so far as to be a Suffragette, and the old fellow never insulted her. All Miles could do was keep on plugging. Pushing diligently, like all of us Americans who seek our happiness ever ahead, he despatched explorers to Alaska, explaining to General Sherman why he could not entirely support the annexation of Canada: I think it too soon to occupy the Boundary line now, when we are ready for that the North Pole may be the boundary. In short, he had matured; he had learned moderation; so why should old men hold him back now? In time he managed to feud with Gibbon, Crook, Terry, Sheridan, and, of course Uh-Oh Howard—who beat him out in the contest to command the Department of the Atlantic! That particularly annoyed him, because, as you well know, he’d rescued Cut Arm a second time in ’78, halting the fleeing Bannocks exactly as he had the Nez Perces.
In these great times when history was as busy as is a buffalo robe black with vermin, Miles performed his part. Very cheerful, bluff and candid in appearance, with his moustache trimmed just so and his eyes smiling, he knew far better than Old Prayer Book how to give us all the look. Near the end of 1894, while he was breaking railroad strikes, Miles looked sharp: General Howard’s retirement allowed him to take over command of the Department of the East. A year later he assumed supreme command of the United States Army!
In 1900 he became lieutenant general. That was when he met Chief Joseph in New York, at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Mr. Joe’s bunch made a fine impression on the public, and Buffalo Bill remarked: I thought my Sioux Indians were very fine, and so they are, but alongside the Pacific coast Indians they look rather cheap.
5
He dragged his feet in the Spanish-American War, calling the Army unready, but eventually conquered Porto Rico.
Demanding to investigate war crimes committed by our Government in the Philippines, he won the hatred of President Roosevelt. In 1902 his report on torture by Americans was quashed.
In 1917, long retired, he volunteered his services against the Kaiser, but the War Department had business to attend to. On the street he was mistaken for some broken down barber.
He proudly hung onto the rifle and shawl which Joseph had on him at Bear’s Paw. Poor Mary had long since gone to her MAKER.
In 1925, eighty-five years old, he took his grandchildren to the circus. All rose to salute the flag. His heart stopped, and he crashed down dead.
FURTHER HISTORY OF LIEUTENANT WILKINSON
(1878–98)
I know that the chaplain in the regiment is the man whom all the men look up to for the cause of our common MASTER.
GENERAL O. O. HOWARD, 1864
As you can guess, he fought for his beloved general once more, in the Bannock War. His loyalty was solid-colored like the coat of a quarter horse. Wood was also present, but Wilkinson had finally, utterly and irrevocably lost interest in that officer. I once saw a photograph, caption by Major Moorhouse, of the general with his hand in his pocket, gazing fondly down at Wilkinson, who had just then asserted that in any event there can be little to fear in dying for the right cause, even while looking the oncoming bullet or arrow in the eye, so to speak—and bullets, at least, do have eyes; arrows are more contemptible in every way. Shall I now confess that the subject of this chapter sometimes smiled at Wood with much the same contempt? Wilkinson, who believed himself capable of apologizing to anyone, even the lowest heathen negro (in the sole event, of course, that apology was warranted), had recently decided on a new course: Never do any act which requires an apology—an extremely Christian policy, which, had he troubled to drag it into the sunglare of truth, might have required him to assess the general more poorly. But the general would soon be disassociated from Wilkinson’s biography.
Not long after Buffalo Horn had been rendered harmless, Wilkinson, who always came immediately to himself in the morning, spent the interval between “Reveille” and muster call in categorizing the characters in this book:
Mrs. Howard, whose cooking, if Wilkinson might be permitted to say so, surpassed any other woman’s, not least that of Wilkinson’s mother, who, poor soul, had performed to her utmost, but never really measured up,
the general himself, whose so-called scruples constituted an annoying miscalculation of an issue which, objectively considered, must be supremely unimportant to civilized man;
Grace, who, if Wilkinson were to be exact, did not appear to have inherited her father’s intelligence,
one-legged Sladen, so likeable and admirable for his cheerful, stoical continuance in Army life, and scornful of any earthly reward,
Chapman, whose presence Wilkinson had frequently experienced with repulsion, contempt, embarrassment, suspicion and a hint of rivalry,
not that Wilkinson held anything against earning an extra dollar or whatever per day, as Chapman purposed to do as an interpreter
(and he certainly knows his Indians);
nor would Wilkinson himself be averse to promotion, although he understood that to make that happen some higher-ranking officer must retire or die; such is the way of the world, O LORD;
meanwhile the amount accruing to his monthly credit, while modest, did indeed accrue, without deductions, which was a pleasant thought; perhaps he would buy Sallie something,
or should I say in utter fulfillment of Sherman’s instructions? Who can say I didn’t see to everything?
I should have kept Toohhoolhoolzote under arrest. Those SATANic Dreamers always—
I wish I’d never come back! Better killed by Joseph’s Indians than
My GOD, forgive me! What am I thinking?
Dearest, what’s wrong? Did something in the newspaper upset you?
Pass the salt, please, Lizzie.
We ought to plant more flowers on Guy’s grave.
All right.
It’s nearly the anniversary.
So it is.
Only three more days until the twenty-second:
Born December 16, 1855 at Augusta, Maine.
Killed in action, October 22, 1899,
defending our interests in the Philippines; Thou leadest me to lie down in green pastures
for America, my America,
an ideal life, O my GOD,
my son.
That’s correct, Lizzie. Three more days. Shall it be a rosebush?
O yes, dearest, a red one, because he gave his blood—
Lizzie—
Then what’s troubling you? I know you take his loss so much to heart—
Not anymore. I’m certain that Guy’s
as sad as a sagebrush knoll at dawn and
in Heaven.
Well, Otis, what is it? Is it that horrid old Joseph again?
No, it’s
an item from the Congressional Record regarding a letter, blandly damaging, from the Secretary of the Interior: rent due and overdue to the Trustees of Howard University for buildings once employed as the Freedmen’s Hospital, because if you allow a one-armed Christian to pour our GOD-given dollars down a nigger rat-hole, then you deserve to get not only shot but also referred to the Committee of Appropriations, which is to say
the state that our Government’s fallen to.
You’re fretting over the negro question again, aren’t you?
If only Lincoln had lived!
LORD knows you’ve done your dead level best to help those poor creatures! Would you like to read Gracie’s letter now? She’s
in arrears to the Trustees of Howard University and
very, very happy with that Captain Gray, thank goodness,
and once upon a time there had been a fine fire in the furnace and little Gracie teething in the night.
Yes.
Are we in money trouble again?
I honestly don’t know, Lizzie.
So that’s why you’ve taken on all those speaking engagements.
Well, that’s right.
I thought your Medal of Honor would—
Never mind.
Sometimes you look so tired when you come home . . .
The soup is excellent, dear.
I know you like it. That’s why I . . . Are you still working out the warfare of the future?
No, dearest. I finished that one. But thank you for remembering—
You promised to read it to me.
Well, there’s a line I rather like. Where did I put it? Yes: The wars of the future, so far as our country is concerned, will, I think, in the main, be contests like that which the Salvation Army are trying to wage.
I think that’s lovely and much to the point.
Thanks, Lizzie.
I do hope they remunerate you well for it.
With GOD’s help—
And then perhaps we could all go to eat ice-cream and drink buttermilk at one of those “Wild West” exhibitions.
You’d like that, would you, darling?
With all the children—
Why not?
But are we in financial trouble again? I’d really prefer it if you told me.
You can leave those matters to me, dearest.
I know. And it’s not as if we can turn to General Sherman anymore—
That’s quite enough about Sherman. Excuse me now—
right behind my eyes is where it hurts
in America
and it pursues me
just as the reflections of white thunderheads follow at our shoulders as we ride down to the Big Hole River, I am telling you three times,
and then we ride and ride, all the way to Bear’s Paw,
and we ride year after year to save and perfect America, day and night, till death do us part. By day I first set out against Joseph and by night I ferried Stone’s brigade across the river to cover the building of my pontoon bridge to Columbia, which the Mayor duly surrendered on the following morning, and then we waited on General Sherman, who led his horse across the bridge first, followed straight after by me, of course; next by envious, emulous Logan, and after him the entirety of the Fifteenth Corps, while puffs of cotton blew like snowflakes up out of the burning bales, and that was when the tallest man in the crowd handed General Sherman a fair copy of the new ballad about his March to the Sea:
Still onward we pressed, till our banners
Swept out from Atlanta’s grim walls,
And the blood of the patriot dampened
The soil where the traitor-flag falls
on earth as it is in Heaven as it is in America, America, O America.
Whether he ever learns of Sherman’s letter to President-elect Garfield, calling him easily used and influenced, and concluding: As a business man I have not the faith in him our President has, I, William the Blind, cannot tell, but come 1891 we do find him loyally heading Sherman’s funeral procession. His eyes shine with tears.
Until his final fit of apoplexy he revises and explains. Over his head in a frame roosts a yellowing letter from an inspector of the Indian Office, dated the year after he whipped Chief Joseph:
Few men do as much toward the cause of Christian enlightenment, in the sum of the allotted years of life. If you were to come through this country now—the Indians from far and near would come to see you—and greet you as their best friend.
FURTHER HISTORY OF GENERAL MILES
(1878–1925)
I . . . have fought and defeated larger and better armed bodies of hostile Indians than any other officer since the history of Indian warfare commenced, and at the same time have gained a more extended knowledge of our frontier country than any living man.
COL. NELSON A. MILES TO GENERAL SHERMAN, 1877
1
Interestingly, Grant wrote to Sherman: I read one of your interesting letters to the Sec. of War with great interest. These interesting words were datelined hôtel Bristol. Paris. Nov. 17th/77. Grant continued: Miles has done good work since, which, with what he had done before, must rank him high with our young officers.
As part of his good work, Miles shot off another letter to General Sherman, proposing himself again for promotion to brigadier general. After all, his uncle-in-law was getting old, his glare now a wintry, half-stricken stare out of crow’s-feet and snowy bristles. He was almost GOD. Miles knew that in comparison he himself appeared both sleek and anxious; he was always lifting up his head to be proud, but somehow that only made him resemble a horse caught in the midst of drinking. General Sherman did not love him; hence Miles declined to call him Uncle Billy, even though his marriage gave him more cause to do so than our grinning enlisted men. Who ran Sherman anyway? Was it the President, the Congressmen out West or those shadowy loafers in Washington, D.C., who sit under summer awnings watching parades and horsemen pass by like Time itself? There was, to be sure, a Government, with undoubtedly beautiful and automatic policies—which, however, swayed with the tides of democracy. For instance, what were we supposed to do with our Indians? Sherman knew, and acted undeviatingly. But he was not President; he was constrained, since the Army was. Preferments and perks remained difficult to gather, no matter that Miles was the greatest Indian fighter on earth! If anyone could help him it was his darling little Mary, who practically alone, it seemed, touched her uncle’s heart. Why shouldn’t Miles finally attain to the rank which he deserved, especially now that he had saved Uh-Oh Howard’s bacon and fixed Crook’s Apache blunders? And wasn’t he literally versed in every chord to play? He’d known enough to be there with a band playing “Garryowen” when Custer rode in with the Seventh. Buffalo Bill, who would help him to bring about the death of Sitting Bull, considered him a man, every inch of him, and the best general I ever served under. Returning the favor, Miles gave him a fine chestnut horse which he rode on Nebraska’s first-ever “Cody Day.”
2
White Bird’s survival embarrassed the Government. Being, as General Sheridan termed him, a good, pushing officer, Miles proposed, through expeditious interpretation of the doctrine of hot pursuit, to raid the Sioux and Nez Perces across the Medicine Line, just as we do when we punish escaped Indians in Mexico. General Sherman countermanded him: Mexico was not the British Dominions, and Miles d——d well ought to realize that, d——n him!— To Miles it seemed but the matter of a few more years before both of these countries had been joined unto our United States. Why did Sherman always put the brakes on?
Miles had quite a head for politics. He planned to improve everything. For instance, he proposed that we honor our surrender agreement with the Nez Perces, because Joseph is by far the ablest Indian on the continent. Why did everyone smile when he said that? General Sherman preferred to keep Joseph in the Hot Place. But ignorant missionaries kept whipping up the Eastern press until Sherman was more or less spent, so he lost out, and the Government sent Joseph to Colville to die.
Miles had gone out of his way to visit Mr. Joe in the Indian Territory in 1881. It was a little sad to see how little the Nez Perces had made of themselves. A touch ungratefully, the Red Napoleon sought to hold him to his surrender promise. Miles prayed on it; he kept doing whatever he could.* He went over Sherman’s head to President Hayes, requesting the tribe’s return to the Idaho Territory—never mind that this act was bad for his career; Mary at least saw it his way—and even visited the notorious troublemaker Helen Hunt Jackson, whose speciality was making us feel sorry for our Indians.
Truth to tell, Miles probably did more for the reds than General Howard ever accomplished—which is peculiar, given the former’s more worldly nature. I can only say with Wilkinson: Judge not, lest ye be judged.— He aided the Pi-Utes, Pimas and Mohaves in reëstablishing themselves on a reservation more to their liking, and even supported reservation Cheyennes against ranchers and our own Government. When Major Forsyth of the Seventh Cavalry ignored his command not to approach the Minneconjous too closely, thus precipitating the Wounded Knee massacre, Miles reacted in fury and sorrow, convening a tribunal on his own initiative and seeking to prosecute Forsyth. Needless to say, the authorities agreed with General Sherman, now retired, who remarked: If Forsyth was relieved because some squaw was killed, that was a mistake, for squaws have been killed in every Indian war. And so in due course Forsyth became a general.
No one worried much about Indians by then. The new enemy was socialism.
3
The Wallowa Chieftain, whose editors had cogitated on both evils, explained the danger as follows: Poverty breeds socialism. But what breeds poverty? Indolence, stupidity, intemperance, want of prudence and foresight, lack of intelligent energy. In 1894 we will find Miles repeatedly demanding permission, which he cannot obtain, to fire upon the socialists and other foreign elements who are masterminding the Pullman strike in Chicago. If only Nelson Miles were in charge of everything! Then America would hum as straightforwardly as an Aetna Centennial sewing machine!
Interestingly, he wrote to General Sherman: In my opinion what is needed is for some friend in Washington to interest himself fortunately in my interest.
4
Bit by bit, even as Tongue River enlarged itself into Miles City, he won his heart’s desire. His renown grew as thick and glossy-furred as do buffalo hides at the end of the year. In 1878 we find him in charge of the Military Equipment Board, which recommended the reissue of canvas overcoats after the fashion of Howard’s enemy General Crook. Accordingly, the blue “Miles pattern” was approved by General Sherman and adopted in 1880. That year he made full general, presently taking over the Department of the Columbia formerly commanded by Old Prayer Book. Presiding over the court-martial of the black West Point cadet Johnson Whittaker, who was discovered tied and beaten in his room, and therefore must have faked it, Miles pronounced, as he was expected to do, the sentence of guilt for the presumptuous nigger, but he waived the year of hard labor. As you can see, there was something a trifle softhearted about Miles, perhaps because he was a Baptist. Was it this particular defect which annoyed his father-in-law? If so, that would have been unfair; Mary went so far as to be a Suffragette, and the old fellow never insulted her. All Miles could do was keep on plugging. Pushing diligently, like all of us Americans who seek our happiness ever ahead, he despatched explorers to Alaska, explaining to General Sherman why he could not entirely support the annexation of Canada: I think it too soon to occupy the Boundary line now, when we are ready for that the North Pole may be the boundary. In short, he had matured; he had learned moderation; so why should old men hold him back now? In time he managed to feud with Gibbon, Crook, Terry, Sheridan, and, of course Uh-Oh Howard—who beat him out in the contest to command the Department of the Atlantic! That particularly annoyed him, because, as you well know, he’d rescued Cut Arm a second time in ’78, halting the fleeing Bannocks exactly as he had the Nez Perces.
In these great times when history was as busy as is a buffalo robe black with vermin, Miles performed his part. Very cheerful, bluff and candid in appearance, with his moustache trimmed just so and his eyes smiling, he knew far better than Old Prayer Book how to give us all the look. Near the end of 1894, while he was breaking railroad strikes, Miles looked sharp: General Howard’s retirement allowed him to take over command of the Department of the East. A year later he assumed supreme command of the United States Army!
In 1900 he became lieutenant general. That was when he met Chief Joseph in New York, at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Mr. Joe’s bunch made a fine impression on the public, and Buffalo Bill remarked: I thought my Sioux Indians were very fine, and so they are, but alongside the Pacific coast Indians they look rather cheap.
5
He dragged his feet in the Spanish-American War, calling the Army unready, but eventually conquered Porto Rico.
Demanding to investigate war crimes committed by our Government in the Philippines, he won the hatred of President Roosevelt. In 1902 his report on torture by Americans was quashed.
In 1917, long retired, he volunteered his services against the Kaiser, but the War Department had business to attend to. On the street he was mistaken for some broken down barber.
He proudly hung onto the rifle and shawl which Joseph had on him at Bear’s Paw. Poor Mary had long since gone to her MAKER.
In 1925, eighty-five years old, he took his grandchildren to the circus. All rose to salute the flag. His heart stopped, and he crashed down dead.
FURTHER HISTORY OF LIEUTENANT WILKINSON
(1878–98)
I know that the chaplain in the regiment is the man whom all the men look up to for the cause of our common MASTER.
GENERAL O. O. HOWARD, 1864
As you can guess, he fought for his beloved general once more, in the Bannock War. His loyalty was solid-colored like the coat of a quarter horse. Wood was also present, but Wilkinson had finally, utterly and irrevocably lost interest in that officer. I once saw a photograph, caption by Major Moorhouse, of the general with his hand in his pocket, gazing fondly down at Wilkinson, who had just then asserted that in any event there can be little to fear in dying for the right cause, even while looking the oncoming bullet or arrow in the eye, so to speak—and bullets, at least, do have eyes; arrows are more contemptible in every way. Shall I now confess that the subject of this chapter sometimes smiled at Wood with much the same contempt? Wilkinson, who believed himself capable of apologizing to anyone, even the lowest heathen negro (in the sole event, of course, that apology was warranted), had recently decided on a new course: Never do any act which requires an apology—an extremely Christian policy, which, had he troubled to drag it into the sunglare of truth, might have required him to assess the general more poorly. But the general would soon be disassociated from Wilkinson’s biography.
Not long after Buffalo Horn had been rendered harmless, Wilkinson, who always came immediately to himself in the morning, spent the interval between “Reveille” and muster call in categorizing the characters in this book:
Mrs. Howard, whose cooking, if Wilkinson might be permitted to say so, surpassed any other woman’s, not least that of Wilkinson’s mother, who, poor soul, had performed to her utmost, but never really measured up,
the general himself, whose so-called scruples constituted an annoying miscalculation of an issue which, objectively considered, must be supremely unimportant to civilized man;
Grace, who, if Wilkinson were to be exact, did not appear to have inherited her father’s intelligence,
one-legged Sladen, so likeable and admirable for his cheerful, stoical continuance in Army life, and scornful of any earthly reward,
Chapman, whose presence Wilkinson had frequently experienced with repulsion, contempt, embarrassment, suspicion and a hint of rivalry,
not that Wilkinson held anything against earning an extra dollar or whatever per day, as Chapman purposed to do as an interpreter
(and he certainly knows his Indians);
nor would Wilkinson himself be averse to promotion, although he understood that to make that happen some higher-ranking officer must retire or die; such is the way of the world, O LORD;
meanwhile the amount accruing to his monthly credit, while modest, did indeed accrue, without deductions, which was a pleasant thought; perhaps he would buy Sallie something,
