Thursday, August 10, 1876. First long distance telephone call. Crook and Terry combine.

Alexander Graham Bell placed a telephone call between two Ontario towns, fourteen miles distant.  It was the first long distance telephone call.

Long distance telephone calls were a big deal when I was growing up, and indeed were expensive and frankly a big deal. People waited for certain times of the day or night to make them, when the price was reduced.  I'm guessing in an average year we had or placed maybe one or two long distance calls.

I dimly recalled that still being the case when I was first practicing law, and it was.  Indeed, I recall we had to be careful about how we logged the time to recapture the cost.  The revenue from long distance calls peaked in 2000, but cell phones made inroads shortly thereafter and by 2004 most long distance pricing had ended and it continued to decline throughout that decade.

Crook and Terry joined forces at the Rosebud.

Last edition:

Tuesday, August 8, 1876. A long ride by Captain Jack. Terry resumes the march.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Alfred Terry, cavalry, Ft. Laramie Wyoming, George Crook, Great Sioux War, Montana, Personalities, Sioux, Wyoming, Wyoming (Ft. Laramie)

Saturday, August 5, 1876. Two Kentucky Soldiers.

Pvt. Thomas W. Stivers, 7th Cavalry, having completed almost five years of service, was discharged.

What's unusual about this?

Well, he's later be awarded the Medal of Honor for his service at Little Bighorn.

Voluntarily brought water to the wounded under fire.

And he was discharged in the field, at the mouth of the Rosebud.  He was from Kentucky, and returned home, somehow.

And he was dead by the time he was awarded the medal. 

He was from Kentucky, and went back there, where he died at age 26 the next year.

Oddly, he was almost the exact same age as William M. Harris who was also from Kentucky and also returned home, although I don't know when he was discharged.. He'd die at age 34 in 1885.

Harris also won the Medal of Honor for the battle.

Typical frontier soldiers life.  Five years, still a private, discharged in the field to make his way home.  HE seems to have never married, and was given a notable headstone.  Harris' was basically lost.

Last edition:

Friday, August 4, 1876,. Death of an American commander in Cuba.

Labels: 1860s, 1868, 1870s, 1876, 1878, 1890s, cavalry, Civil War, Cuba, George Crook, Great Sioux War, It was because of the Spanish American War, Personalities, Powder River Expedition, Spain, Spanish American War, Ten Years War

Friday, June 30, 1876. A rainy day.

The wounded from the Battle of the Little Big Horn reached the steamer Far West.  It was a rainy day.

The steamer departed at 1:40, continually hitting the banks of the river on the way downstream.

The Cheyenne who had been at Little Big Horn had moved down near where they had fought Crook on the Rosebud.  They were pursuing game.

Gibbon was left completely in charge of his command at 4:00 p.m. that day.  A roster was called of the 7th Cavalry to see who remained.

Frank Grouard, who was half polynesian, and who had been captured by, and had lived with, the Sioux as a young man, taking a Sioux wife.  In spite of that close association he later "escaped" and became a scout.  His biography is particularly odd and complicated and this barely touches on it.

Crook's troops remained in camp on Goose Creek on what was a rainy day there as well.  Scout Frank Grouard went sent scouting and returned finding nothing.  In fact, Sitting Bull's camp was moving straight for them.

Three miners strayed into the camp and told Crook that natives had told them of a large battle in which cavalrymen had been wiped out. Crook didn't believe them and began to organize a hunting party into the Bighorns in what would become one of the greatest hunting and fishing expeditions of all time.

Last entry:

June 29, 1876. Evacuating the wounded and turning east.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Alfred Terry, Battle of Little Big Horn, Canada, Equine Transportation, Great Sioux War, Indian Wars, John Gibbon, Marcus Reno, Myths, North West Mounted Police, Yellowstone Expedition

Friday, June 23, 1876. Camp on the Rosebud.

The 7th Cavalry's camp on this day in 1876: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtalplacido/53876295032/in/photostream/

President Grant created a reservation in California, the largest in that state.

Executive Order—Creating the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation

June 23, 1876

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 23, 1876.

It is hereby ordered that the south and west boundaries and that portion of the north boundary west of Trinity River surveyed, in 1875, by C. T. Bissel, and the courses and distances of the east boundary, and that portion of the north boundary east of Trinity River reported but not surveyed by him, viz: “Beginning at the southeast corner of the reservation at a post set in mound of rocks, marked ‘H. V. R., No. 3'; thence south 17½ degrees west, 905.15 chains, to southeast corner or reservation; thence south 72½ degrees west, 480 chains, to the mouth of Trinity River,” be, and hereby are, declared to be the exterior boundaries of Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, and the land embraced therein, an area of 89,572.43 acres, be, and hereby is, withdrawn from public sale, and set apart for Indian purposes, as one of the Indian reservations authorized to be set apart, in California, by act of Congress approved April 8, 1864. (13 Stats., p. 39.)

U. S. GRANT

Last edition:

Thursday, June 22, 1876. 7th Cavalry leaves the Yellowstone.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Alfred Terry, Battle of Little Big Horn, Big Horn Expedition, cavalry, George A. Custer, George Crook, Infantry, John Gibbon, Marcus Reno, Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone Expedition, Yellowtone River

Wednesday, June 21, 1876. Far West.

Brig Gen. Alfred Terry held a conference of war aboard the steamboat the Far West.  They determined to use a pincer strategy and divide their forces in order to locate and subdue the Sioux and Cheyenne in the field, with one column under Lt. Col. George A. Custer and another under Terry.

Custer was to go up Rosebud Creek to track a village known to be somewhere in the area.  It was not known that George Crook had just encountered the same native band, and had been turned back.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 18, 1876. Montenegrin-Ottoman War commences.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Herzegovina, Montenegrin–Ottoman War, Ottoman Empire, Serbia

Saturday, June 17, 1876. Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.: The Battle of the Rosebud was an important June 1876 battle that came, on June 17, just days prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Fo...

Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

The Battle of the Rosebud was an important June 1876 battle that came, on June 17, just days prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Fought by the same Native American combatants, who crossed from their Little Big Horn encampment to counter 993 cavalrymen and mule mounted infantrymen who had marched north from Ft. Fetterman, Wyoming, at the same time troops under Gen. Terry, including Custer's command, were proceeding west from Ft. Abraham Lincoln.  Crook's command included, like Terry's, Crow scouts, and he additionally was augmented soon after leaving Ft. Fetterman by Shoshoni combatants.

The battlefield today is nearly untouched.

Called the Battle Where the Sister Saved Her Brother, or the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, like Little Big Horn, it was a Sioux and Arapaho victory, although it did not turn into an outright disaster like Little Big Horn. Caught in a valley and attacked, rather than attacking into a valley like Custer, the Army took some ground and held its positions, and then withdrew.  Crook was effectively knocked out of action for the rest of the year and retreated into the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming.

Last edition:

Wednesday, June 14, 1876. The Grand Old Party convenes.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, 1876 Election, James G. Blaine, Republican Party, Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. Grant

Monday, June 5, 1876. Soldiers falling into camp.

Sitting Bull had a vision of "soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky" during a Sun Dance on Rosebud Creek, Montana.

Sweet, yellow bananas were introduced in the United States at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. They were foil wrapped and sold for .10.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 4, 1876. Fast train.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Railroads, Transportation, United States