The Buffalo Soldiers

The black troopers who fought on America's western frontier, including Arizona Territory, won unlikely glory by overcoming unimaginable hardship.

They were treated shabbily by the gov ernment that put them in the field, harassed by the settlers they were sent to protect, and ignored by historians who chronicled the taming of America.

Ironically, the greatest respect they received came from their battlefield enemies, the Plains Indians, who dubbed them the "Buffalo Soldiers" because their curly black hair resembled the mane of an animal the tribes held in nearly sacred regard.

The odds were tall against these men from the day in July, 1866, that Congress authorized the creation of six all-black regiments, a number later reduced to four.

The 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry consisted of drifters, farm ers, and freed slaves, most of them illiterate, who were willing to sign on for five years at $13 a month.

They were garrisoned at the most desolate posts, issued shoddy equipment, worn-out horses, and rations of black coffee and bad meat. Even so, no one who fought with them found the black units lacking under fire.

"Their record is studded with victories against heavy odds, often without the supervision of white officers that the Army bureaucracy believed was necessary," reported American Heritage Magazine in 1967.

The black cavalry found two fine commanders in Col. Edward Hatch, who organized the 9th Cavalry out of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Col. Benjamin Henry Grierson, who put together the 10th from his command at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The problems the commanders encountered early were great. At New Orleans, Hatch found that the men brought to him by recruiters were weak and unfit for military rigors. Twenty-three of them died of cholera the first year, and he could locate only one man able to read well enough to serve as sergeant major.

At Leavenworth the 10th suffered similar difficulties under Grierson, who would lead that storied unit for almost 25 years. He was an unlikely figure, a cavalryman who was nervous around horses because of a childhood accident that left his face badly scarred. His numerous eccentricities included carrying a mouth harp in his pocket, and during the Civil War, he had a habit of stopping at Southern plantation houses to entertain the inhabitants by playing the piano.

But Grierson's character also included a bullheaded loyalty to the black men he led.

HE WAS SHOT IN THE HIP, AND TOOK ELEVEN LANCE THRUSTS IN THE SHOULDERS, BUT REFUSED TO BE ROOTED OUT. THE RELIEF COLUMN FOUND HIM, STILL FORTED UP IN HIS PRAIRIE-DOG HOLE, SURROUNDED BY THE BODIES OF 13 CHEYENNE.' One of his first orders was to inform a recruiting officer that "the word 'colored' is not to be borne upon any paper relating to or connected with the regiment its only official designation being the Tenth Regiment of Cavalry U.S. Army."

The colonel also protested when Leavenworth's commander refused to allow black soldiers to appear beside the white units on the parade ground.

Grierson barely evaded a court-martial in that confrontation, but his action set a tone of pride that would accompany the 10th through its long service.

Soon after their formation, the 9th and 10th were ordered west, where they comprised 20 percent of America's Indian-fighting cavalry and boasted the lowest desertion rate.

The Buffalo Soldiers guarded stagecoaches and railroad crews, settled ranch feuds, strung telegraph wire, defended the U.S. border, and put down uprisings by hostile Indians.

The stories of their bravery and sacrifice from the Dakotas to Kansas, and down to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona could stand next to those of any Army unit.

American Heritage described an incident in 1867 involving the 10th's John G. Randall, a private traveling with two white civilians when the party was attacked by about 70 Cheyenne west of Fort Hays, Kansas. The two civilians were quickly killed, but Randall managed to burrow into the cutbank along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

"He was shot in the hip, and took eleven lance thrusts in the shoulders, but refused to be rooted out," the magazine reported. "The relief column found him, still forted up in his prairie-dog hole, surrounded by the bodies of 13 Cheyenne."

In 1877 a black company rode onto the Staked Plains of Texas in pursuit of a band of marauding Comanches.

But the troopers were soon lost on terrain so parched that "the urine of both horses and men was sweetened and drunk with relish," according to W.H. Leckie's book The Buffalo Soldiers.

Leckie also describes troopers butchering their dead horses to drink their blood and collapsing beneath scrub brush in the hope of finding shelter from the blistering sun.

Captain Nolan's lost patrol, as it came to be called, spent 86 hours on the Staked Plains without water, costing the lives of four troopers.

Three years later, the 9th and 10th combined to subdue the Mimbres Apache leader Victorio, who had crossed the New Mexico border to raid in west Texas. Sgt. John Buck recalled that in a single month in 1880 his troop rode 1, 242 miles.

Another soldier, Sgt. Shelvin Shropshire, described his experience in Texas this way: "We used to have a fight every day down on the Washita [River]. A feller on the flanks nevah knew what minute he was goin' to have a horse-race back to the command with anywhere from ten to five-hundred indians a close second."

But they fought much more than arrows and bullets. In Texas in 1875, Confederate sympathies still ran high, and troops in blue federal uniforms, particularly black men, were hardly welcome.

During their posting on the Rio Grande River, two troopers of the 9th were ambushed and killed by Mexican raiders, and their bodies horribly mutilated. Leckie writes that one of the killers was acquitted, and the other eight were simply permitted to go free.

Adding to the insult, Colonel Hatch and one of his lieutenants were then indicted for entering the shack containing their comrades' bodies. The charge was burglary for removing the effects of the two men.

Such harassment was constant and eventually led Secretary of War William Belknap to order the 9th out of Texas.

The experience of the black units in

THE BUFFALO SOLDIERS

Arizona was similar in many ways: hard, hot, and violent. The 10th arrived at Bowie Station in April, 1885, and its companies were soon dispersed to forts Apache, Grant, Thomas, and Verde. Less than three weeks after their arrival, still without sabers or pistols, which had yet to be issued, the troopers were ordered to join the Army's pursuit of Apache medicine man Geronimo, who fled his confinement at Fort Apache on May 17.

The 10th's role in this final episode of the Apache wars was secondary, and some have written that its hardest battles came against Arizona's elements.

Famed artist Frederic S. Remington rode with the Buffalo Soldiers in the Territory and wrote about the experience in the April, 1889, issue of Century magazine.

He described riding through mountains that lacked "footing for a lizard" and down to the driest of deserts "where clouds of dust choke you and settle over horse, soldier, and accouterments until all local color is lost, and black man and white man wear a common hue."

The regiment suffered exactly one death in the 16-month Geronimo campaign. That came in Mexico's Pinito Mountains, 30 miles south of the border.

The 10th's K Troop rode into a curtain of Apache rifle fire, which killed a Private Hollis and severely wounded a Corporal Scott.

Leckie described what happened next: "A vicious, short-range rifle duel developed and Scott lay exposed to enemy fire. Young Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke rose from behind a boulder, and ignoring a hail of bullets, raced to the trooper's side and carried him to safety."

Clarke, a white man who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, said: "I was scared to death. But the man called to me and you know, I couldn't leave him to be shot to death."

The rescue of Corporal Scott was depicted in a sketch by Remington that got widespread exposure in newspapers and magazines around the country.

Three black troopers also won the Medal of Honor for action in Arizona.

The 10th's Sgt. William McBryar, known as an excellent shot with a Spencer carbine, was cited for "coolness, bravery, and marksmanship" in a shoot-out with renegade Apaches on the Salt River in 1890.

A year later, a government pay wagon en route from Fort Grant to Fort Thomas was ambushed by bandits. The escort consisted of 11 troopers from the 24th Infantry, two of whom were cited for uncommon courage in their defense of the Army gold.

Sgt. Benjamin Brown emptied his revolver at the assailants, then snatched a gun from one of his men and continued firing. But he soon fell, shot through the arm and side. The other, Cpl. Isiah Mays, fought gallantly in spite of his wounds before crawling two miles to a ranch to sound the alarm.

But no matter how hard they fought, the black troopers' bravery was always subject to question. Remington attempted to answer the concern in his Century article: "They have fought many, many times. The old sergeant sitting near me, as calm of feature as a bronze statue, once deliberately walked over a Cheyenne Rifle-pit and killed his man. One little fellow near him once took charge of a lot of stampeded cavalryhorses when Apache bullets were flying loose and no one knew from what point to expect them next."

Duty in Territorial Arizona included stretches of crushing boredom, too. In Buffalo Soldiers in Apacheria, author Bob Palmquist captured this aspect of garrison life with quotes from the 1886 diary of trumpeter Joseph White: Sergeant Jackson of A troop "was Reduce to the rancks to the grade of a Private Soldier from the effects of a garrerson Coat Marshal." Private Frank "got drunk and [was] Placed in the guard house."

Fellow trumpeter Richards of B Troop was "confined [by the] officer of the Day [for] neglect of Duty."

After their Indian-fighting days, the four black outfits were sent to Cuba, where they participated in the most famous battle of the Spanish-American War, the 1898 charge up San Juan Hill.

Although Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders received much of the credit, a white soldier, whose father had served the Confederacy, wrote to the Washington Post that "if it had not been for the Negro cavalry, the Rough Riders would've been exterminated."

This view was echoed by Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, who fought with the 10th in Cuba and led them out of Arizona's Fort Huachuca in 1916 on a punitive expedition into Mexico against Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

Fort Huachuca's long association with the Buffalo Soldiers began in the 1890s and continued on and off through World War II. During one 34-year span, between 1913 and 1947, the post was all-black.

The men are properly remembered in a room at the Fort Huachuca Historical Museum, and a portion of State Route 90, called Buffalo Soldier Trail, was recently dedicated to them.

But the most moving sight at the fort is its windblown cemetery, where fallen members of the black units rest side by side with their white counterparts.

A walk among the headstones brings to mind the simple but elegant words of Frederic Remington, who described "troopers, sitting loosely in their saddles with the long stirrups of the United States Cavalry seat, forage-hats set well over the eyes, and carbines, slickers, canteens, saddle-pockets, and lariats rattling at their sides."

It's hard not to be moved thinking about these men whose glory was long-delayed and hard-won. But it is glory still.

Editor's Note:

To drive the Buffalo Soldier Trail, take Interstate 10 East to Benson, then State Route 90 south to Fort Huachuca. You can visit the Fort Huachuca Historical Museum weekdays 9 A.M.-4 P.M. and weekends 1-4 P.M. Admission is free. For more information, contact the museum at Department of the Army, US Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca, ATTN: ATZS-TDO-M, Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-6000; (602) 533-5736.