Civil War General and Hero Philip Sheridan Describes the Black Hills Expedition - and the Search for Gold

Background

As much an anyone, General Philip Sheridan understood the strategic objective of the United States government in 1874. It was, unabashedly, continuous western expansion. His mission commanding the Military Division of the Missouri was simple, then: ensure that a corridor through the central Plains stayed open, so that settlers, miners, and entrepreneurs might safely move west. That the land traversed was peopled - and often by treaty, owned - by Native Americans, was just an obstacle to be overcome. Hence Sheridan writes here, in May of 1874, of a “serious fear of [Indian] trouble along about the middle of June,” even as he orders his troops ever farther west, into Sioux Territory:

I have been unable to get any directions from Washington about the troops...on White River. I have serious fear of trouble along about the middle of June. Would it not be best to hold on to Gardner's Company...Custer will start for a reconnaissance to the Bell Fourche & Black Hills about the 13th of June. There is nothing new...

George Armstrong Custer, who had been Sheridan’s ablest cavalry leader in the Civil War (and at 22, the youngest general in the Union Army), did indeed lead an expedition (to be known as the Black Hills Expedition) that summer to explore the Belle Fourche River and nearby Black Hills. Not untypically, Custer turned into it an extravaganza, what with more than a thousand men – including, besides military troops, friends, family, scientists, reporters, photographers, miners, and a band – but nonetheless, he had a mission to fulfill. He would scout a location for a fort; seek a route to the southwest; and would, unofficially and crucially, look for gold. He found the latter – and in so doing, set off a gold rush into the Black Hills that, by 1876, had sent 10,000 Americans on to Native American land. 

Their invasion (to be known as the Great Sioux War) would not go unchallenged by the Sioux; nor would the Army let them impede the relentless “progress” of Manifest Destiny. It would all come to a head, just two years later, in the climactic Battle of the Little Bighorn. Sheridan’s “serious fear of trouble” came true with a vengeance when Custer, out-numbered and badly failed by subordinate commanders, was killed there with his entire command by the Sioux. Their victory, however, only helped to seal their doom, faster. An outraged government sought to annex their lands and, one way or another, to vanquish the Native Americans from the Plains. Custer’s 1874 “reconnaissance” expedition, and his subsequent epic loss at the Little Bighorn had, ultimately, just the effect that Sheridan desired: the securing of the West for white settlement.

Physical Description

Autograph letter signed ("Sheridan"), as Commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, 7 pages, small quarto, Chicago, May 17, 1874. To General Edward Otho C. Ord.