Thursday, November 17, 1774. First City Troop.

The First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry was formed.

A very famous National Guard unit, at one time it was mostly made up members of Philadelphia's social elite.  It is still in existence.

The troop was originally called Light Horse of the City of Philadelphia.

Last edition:

Monday, November 7, 1774. The Yorktown Tea Party

Labels: 1770s, 1774, American Revolution, Colonial North America, Intolerable Acts, Virginia, Virginia (Yorktown)

Sunday, November 1, 1874. The Battle of Sunset Pass

The small unit action The Battle of Sunset Pasas occured between the 5th Cavalry, with Apache scouts, and Tonto Apaches.

The engagement was caused by the Army attempting to recover stolen stock.  Under Lt. Charles King, the unit bivouacked for the night and was ambushed when King tried to recon up a hill, leading to the wounding of Lt. King.  He was rescued by a sergeant who carried him back to the camp, but his wounds forced his early retirement from the Army several years later.  He none the less went on to serve again during the Spanish American War, and became a noted author.

His rescuer, Sgt. Bernard Taylor, would win the Medal of Honor, but died shortly after receiving it the following year from pneumonia at age 31.

Last edition: 

Tuesday, October 27, 1874. Proclaiming Thanksgiving.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Thanksgiving, U.S. Grant

Saturday, September 12, 1874. Battle of Buffalo Wallow

Scouts William Dixon, Amos Chapman and soldiers Sergeant Z. T. Woodall, Co. I; Peter Rath, Co. A; John Harrington, Co. H.; George W. Smith, Co. M, 6th Cavalry fought some of the Kiowa and Comanche from the Lyman fight that encountered them on their way to rejoin their families on the Washita.

Billy Dixon.

The battle went on all day, with the soldiers and scouts taking refuge against the must larger native party in a buffalo wallow.  During the night, scout Billy Dixon went for help on foot which arrived the next day.   Two of the soldiers died in the encounter.   Their survival had a lot to do with effective marksmanship.

The troops Dixon brought for relief were engaged in a battle that day as well, at the Sweetwater Creek and Dry Force of the Washita River.  The encounter between the 8th Cavalry and the Native Americans was brief and two Native Americans were killed and six wounded.

Dixon would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in retrieving a wounded soldier during the fight, and going for help.  It'd later be revoked given as he was a civilian, but subsequently restored.  He'd go on to marry in the early 1890s and have seven children.  He made his home in those years near Adobe Walls, the site of his most famous battle.  He died in 1913.

Last edition:

Friday, September 11, 1874. The fate of the German family.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Cheyenne, Indian Wars, Kansas, Native Americans, Red River War

Monday, September 11, 1944. Communist usurpation in Poland.

Communist Pole Boleslaw Bierut became the usurper president of the Russian backed Polish provisional government.

 Scouting around in the small Belgian town of Battice, Belgium, on the way to Aachen (25km away) are L-R: T/Sgt. Frank F. Kitts, Chambersburg, Pa.; Pfc. Durward F. Oakly, Tocum, Ky.; Pfc. Leon Mooers, 174 Franklin Ave., Hartford, Conn., and Cpl. Tom. H. Graham, Scranton, S.C., all members of an infantry outfit. 11 September, 1944. Company B, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

The U.S. Army entered Germany in a patrol by the 2nd Platoon, Troop B, 85th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 5th Armored Division.  No Germans were encountered.

The US 1st Army took Malmedy.  The 7th Army took Digon and linked up iwth the 3d Army, uniting the forces of Overlord and Dragoon.

South Africans captured Pistoia, Italy.

The Octagon Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt started in Quebec.

Last edition:

Sunday, September 10, 1944. Reaching Germany, Freeing Luxembourg, Continuation War lost.

Labels: 1940, 1940s, 1944, Army, Belgium, boats and ships, Bougainville, Continuation War, Diplomacy, Finland, Luxembourg, Operation Paravane, Red Army, Royal Air Force, USSR, World War Two

Sunday, August 30, 1874. The return to The Girl I Left Behind me and the Battle of Red River.

The Black Hills Expedition returned to Ft. Abraham Lincoln after covering nearly 1,200 miles over lasting sixty days.

The Sixth Cavalry and Fifth Infantry under the command of Colonel Nelson A. Miles attacked a large group of Southern Cheyenne near the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River in Texas in what became the day long Battle of Red River..  Though armed with Gatling guns and a 10-pounder Parrott rifle, the Cheyenne were able to hold them the Army long enough to escape up Tule Canyon into the Staked Plains.

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 26, 1874. Lynching black suspects and violating the Second Amendment.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Crime, Ethnicities, law, National Rifle Association, Racism, Tennessee, Weapons

National Park Service Day.

 

Commorating the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, whereby the NPS relieved the United States Army, which was pretty busy with other things, of the duty of patrolling the parks (the Park Service campaign hat recalls the Army's M1911 campaign hat.

The Park Service and the parks themselves are one of the great things about the United States.  If you have nothing on the plate today, and have a park nearby, go check it out if you can, unless of course you live in Utah, in which case you can sit in side your hovel and imagine a future in your state in which all the lands have been sold to big money.

Related thread:

Today In Wyoming's History: August 25, 1916. National Park Service formed.

Labels: 1910s, 1916, Army, cavalry, Clothing, National Park Service, nature, Public Land, The Punitive Expedition, Yellowstone National Park

Thursday, July 23, 1874. Custer on Inyan Kara.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 23:1874  George Custer climbs Inyan Kara Mountain in the Black Hills of Wyoming and carves his name there.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 22, 1874. Custer at what would become Custer.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Black Hills, cavalry, George A. Custer, South Dakota (Custer), The Black Hills Expedition

Wednesday, July 22, 1874. Custer at what would become Custer.

The Black Hills Expedition set up camp at would later become Custer, South Dakota.

Last edition:  

Monday, July 20, 1874. Custer enters Wyoming.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Army, cavalry, Frontier Wyoming, George A. Custer, Montana, The Black Hills Expedition, The Frontier West, Wyoming

Monday, July 20, 1874. Custer enters Wyoming.

Obviously posed photograph of George adn Libby Custer in their Ft. Abraham Lincoln quarters in 1874.  Custer, wearing his dress uniform, still sports his famously long hair in this photograph.

The 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer crossed into Wyoming Territory from Montana Territory.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 12, 1874. The Lost Valley Fight.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Army, Germany, Indian Wars, Kiowa Tribe, Lost Valley Fight, Native Americans, Red River War, Texas, Texas Rangers, The written word

Saturday, July 4, 1874. The Bates Battle.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 4:1874  The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874

We were fortunately recently to be able to tour one of Wyoming's little known battlefields recently, thanks due to the local landowner who controls the road access letting us on.  We very much appreciate their generosity in letting us do so.

Our Jeep, which should have some clever nickname, but which does not.  Wrecked twice, and reassembled both times, it gets us where we want to go.  But we only go so far. We stopped after awhile and walked in.

The battlefield is the Bates Battlefield, which is on the National Registry of Historic landmarks, but which is little viewed. There's nothing there to tell you that you are at a battlefield. There are no markers or the like, like there is at Little Big Horn.  You have to have researched the area before you arrive, to know what happened on July 4, 1874, when the battle was fought.  And even at that, accounts are confusing.

Fortunately for the researcher, a really good write up of what is known was done when Historic Site status was applied for. Rather than try to rewrite what was put in that work, we're going to post it here.  So we start with the background.

And on to the confusion in the accounts, which we'd note is common even for the best known of Indian battles.  Indeed, maybe all of them.

The text goes on to note that the Arapaho raided into country that what was withing the recently established Shoshone Reservation, which we know as the Wind River Indian Reservation.  It also notes that this was because territories which the various tribes regarded as their own were fluid, and it suggest that a culture of raiding also played a potential part in that. In any event, the Shoshone found their reservation domains raided by other tribes.  Complaints from the Shoshone lead, respectively, to Camp Augur and Camp Brown being established, where are respectively near the modern towns of Lander and Ft. Washakie (which Camp Brown was renamed).

The immediate cause of the raid was the presence of Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, and Sioux parties in the area in June and July 1874 that had an apparent intent to raid onto the Reservation.  Ironically, the Arapaho, who were involved in this battle, had separated themselves from the Cheyenne and the Sioux and had no apparent intent to participate in any such raids. They thereafter placed themselves in the Nowood River area.  Indian bands were known to be in the area that summer, and they were outside of those areas designated to them by the treaties of 1868.

Given this, Cpt. Alfred E. Bates, at Camp Brown, had sent scouts, including Shoshone scouts, into the field that summer to attempt to locate the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands.  On June 29, Shoshone scouts reported at Camp Brown that they'd sited an Arapaho village.  We here pick back up from the text:

The expedition took to the field on July 1, 1874, and remarkably, it traveled at night.

A few days later, they found what they were looking for.

Let's take a look at some of what Bates was seeing:

This is the valley which was below the ridge that Bates was traveling up, the night he found the Arapaho village when he passed it by.  It's not clear to me if he backtracked all the way back past this point and came back up this valley, or if he came from another direction.  Based upon the description, I suspect he rode all the way back and came up from this direction, but from the high ground, not down here in the valley.

Here's the spot that Bates referenced as being the area where two ravines joined.  Not surprisingly, in this wet year, the spot is fairly wet.  But to add to that, this area features a spring, known today, and probably dating back to the events of this battle, as Dead Indian Springs.  The "gentle slope" from which Cpt. Bates made his survey, is in the background.

And here we look up that second ravine, with its current denizens in view.

And here we see the prominent bluff opposite of where Cpt. Bates reconnoitered.  It was prominent indeed.

Bates chose to attack down the slope of the hill he was on, described above, with thirty troopers and twenty Shoshones.  At the same time, Lt. Young, meanwhile, attached down the valley from above it on the watercourse, in an apparent effort to cut the village off and achieve a flanking movement.

The slope down which Bates and his detail attacked, and the draw down which Young attacked.

The draw down which Young attacked.

The slope down which Bates attacked is depicted above.

The fighting was fierce and the Arapaho were surprised.  They put up a good account, however, and were even able to at least partially get mounted.  Chief Black Coal was wounded in the fighting and lost several fingers when shot while mounted.  The Arapaho defended the draw and the attack, quite frankly, rapidly lost the element of surprise and became a close quarters melee.

The slope down which Bates attacked.

The valley down which Young attacked.

High ground opposite from the slope down which Bates attacked.

Fairly quickly, the Arapaho began to execute the very move that Bates feared, and they retrated across the draw and started to move up the high ground opposite the direction that Bates had attacked from.  Young's flanking movement had failed.

The high ground.

The opposing bluff.

The opposing bluff.

Bates then withdrew.

Bates' command suffered four dead and five or six wounded, including Lt. Young.  His estimates for Arapaho losses were 25 Arapaho dead, but as he abandoned the field of battle, that can't be really verified.  Estimates for total Arapaho casualties were 10 to 125.  They definitely sustained some losses and, as noted, Chief Black Coal was wounded in the battle.

Bates was upset with the results of the engagement and placed the blame largely on the Shoshone, whom he felt were too noisy in the assault in the Indian fashion.  He also felt that they had not carried out his flanking instructions properly, although it was noted that the Shoshone interpreter had a hard time translating Bates English as he spoke so rapidly.  Adding to his problems, moreover, the soldiers fired nearly all 80 of their carried .45-70 rifle cartridges during the engagement and were not able to resupply during the battle as the mules were unable to bring ammunition up.  This meant that even if they had not disengaged for other reasons, they were at the point where a lock of ammunition would have hampered any further efforts on their part in any event (and of course they would have been attacking uphill).

After the battle the Arapaho returned to the Red Cloud Agency. Seeing how things were going after Little Big Horn, they came onto the Wind River Reservation in 1877 for the winter on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and they remain there today.  They were hoping for their own reservation in Wyoming, but they never received it.  Black Coal went on the reservation with him, and portraits of him show him missing two fingers on his right hand.  His people soon served on the Reservation as its policemen.  He himself lived until 1893.

Alfred E. Bates, who had entered the Army as a private at the start of the Civil War at age 20.  Enlisting in the Michigan state forces, he soon attracted the attention of a politician who secured for him an enrollment at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 1865. He missed service in the Civil War but soon went on to service on the plains. His name appears on two Wyoming geographic localities.  He rose to the rank of Major General and became Paymaster of the Army, dying in 1909 of a stroke.

[b]1874  The 2nd Cavalry engaged Sioux/Cheyenne at Bad Water.[/b]

Last edition:

Friday, July 3, 1874. Writing to Ft. Abraham Lincoln.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Dakota Territory, Ft. Abraham Lincoln, George A. Custer, North Dakota, The Black Hills Expedition

Thursday, July 2, 1874. The Black Hills Expedition Departs

Today In Wyoming's History: July 2:  1874  7th Cavalry left Ft. Abraham Lincoln to scout the Black Hills.

The 7th Cavalry, with a number of native scouts, left Ft. Abraham Lincoln bound for the Black Hills in what is recalled as the Black Hills Expedition.

The expedition was economic in part, in that it was to look for gold in the Black Hills, and military in part, in that it was to look for suitable fort locations.  Its organization was as follows:

The table of organization for the 7th Cavalry for the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 was as follows.[15]

Field and staff officers:

Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, 7th Cavalry.

Lt. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, 4th Cavalry and acting aide

Major George A. Forsyth, 9th Cavalry commander

First Lieutenant James Calhoun, 7th Cavalry adjutant

First Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith, quartermaster

Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace, commander of Indian scouts

Cavalry companies

Company A - Captain Myles Moylan and Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum

Company B - First Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodgson

Company C - Captain Verling Hart and Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington

Company E - First Lieutenant Thomas M. McDougall

Company F - Captain George W. Yates

Company G - First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh

Company H - Captain Frederick W. Benteen and First Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson

Company K - Captain Owen Hale and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey

Company L - First Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer

Company M - Captain Thomas French and First Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey

Medical staff

Dr. John W. Williams, chief medical officer

Dr. S. J. Allen, Jr. assistant surgeon

Dr. A. C. Bergen, assistant surgeon

Engineering

Captain William Ludlow, chief engineer

W. H. Wood, civilian assistant

Mining detachment

Horatio Nelson Ross

William McKay

Scientist

George Bird Grinnell

Newton Horace Winchell

A. B. Donaldson

Luther North

Photographer

William H. Illingworth

Correspondents

William E. Curtis, Chicago Inter-Ocean

Samuel J. Barrows, New York Tribune

Sygurd Wiśniowski, New Ulm Herald

Nathan H. Knappen, Bismarck Tribune

Last edition:

Saturday, June 27, 1874. The Second Battle of Adobe Walls

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Buffalo Hunting, Comanche, hunting, Indian Wars, Market hunting, Red River War, Second Battle of Adobe Walls, Texas

Tuesday, April 15, 1924. Opening day.

Baseball didn't make the front page on this day in 1924.  The House passing the Japanese Exclusion Act did.

But it was opening day.

The silent one shook the hand of Bucky Harris.

Other athletic endeavors were going on as well.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 13, 1924. Greeks decline a king.

1920s, 1924, Aircraft, Alaska, First Around The World Flight, Greece, Monarchy, United States Air Force