The story of the Buffalo Soldiers isn’t what you might think it is — and one case in particular may really surprise you. Here is a little background, and the story of that Buffalo Soldier in particular.
Frederic Remington’s painting gives the commander’s name in the title, and shows Captain Dodge, a Caucasian, in the foreground. The troopers coming to the rescue are black men, though. That much of the story of the Buffalo Soldiers — the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments of the post-War Between the States US Army — is true. It’s also incomplete — more than 200,000 black soldiers served the Union in the war, and Congress created not just two cavalry but several infantry regiments when it reorganized the post-war Army:
Congress designated six post-Civil War regiments for black enlisted men in the reorganization act of July 28, 1866—the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry regiments (consolidated in 1869 into two infantry regiments, the 24th and 25th). The act marked the first inclusion of black men in the regular army. Soldiers of these regiments between the Civil War and World War I have come to be called "Buffalo Soldiers." Their officers were white, except for five men, West Point graduates Henry Flipper (1877), John Alexander (1887) and Charles Young (1889), and two former enlisted men, Benjamin O. Davis and John E. Green, commissioned at the turn of the twentieth century. Davis became the first black general officer.
Twenty three Buffalo Soldiers (yes, they were called that because the Native Americans thought their hair resembled that of American bison) received the Medal of Honor. They acted on behalf of the US Government in the Spanish American War and in a Filipino conflict. Their descendants — spiritual / military as well as literal — remain an active part of the US military today, at the forefront of every branch. In the 1990s Colin Powell dedicated a statue to the Buffalo Soldiers, and turned them into a pop-culture phenomenon:
On the other side, it is worth noting, black soldiers writing in pension requests and veterans’ newspapers showed no signs of a special regard for the Indians. They used the same dismissive epithets--”hostile tribes,” “naked savages,” and “redskins”—and the same racist caricatures employed by whites. Reminiscent of the use among whites of "blackface" to denigrate and stereotype African-Americans, a black private named Robinson went to a masquerade ball at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, in 1894, dressed as "an idiotic Indian squaw," according to a published report by a fellow soldier.
By the same token, it should not be too surprising to read of a black soldier calling a Plains Indian in 1890 "a voodoo nigger," repeating the voice of a white soldier who called the Plains Indians in 1873 "red niggers." his buffalo soldier only reflected the overall values of the culture in which he struggled for a place, hoping to ally himself with the dominant group. As historian William Gwaltney, a descendent of buffalo soldiers, said, "Buffalo Soldiers fought for recognition as citizens in a racist country and...American Indian people fought to hold on to their traditions, their land, and their lives." These were not compatible, harmonious goals that could provide the basis for interracial harmony.
No, the Indians and the Buffalo Soldiers didn’t view each other as kin, or even having a common enemy in the white-eyes. That part of the mythology doesn’t withstand scrutiny of the black units’ performance on thirty years’ worth of battlefields:
They fought in major wars against Indians, including conflicts against the Cheyenne in Kansas after the Civil War, the decade-long and brutal Apache war of the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the last major campaign on the Pine Ridge in South Dakota during 1890-1891. Depending on which of three overlapping listings of combat engagements you choose, in the years between 1866 and 1897 they fought in between 135 and 163 of 939 to 1,282 battles and skirmishes. A consolidated count, incorporating all the engagements mentioned at least once in the three lists yields 168 encounters in which black soldiers participated, out of a total of 1,296, or 13 percent of all engagements, just about proportional to their numerical presence in the Army.
The claim that the Army treated these regiments as a scrap heap for discarded and useless materiel and horses was shown to be false by William Dobak and Thomas Phillips in their book The Black Regulars. All Army units, white as well as black, received left-over Civil War equipment and mounts, from a Department of War that focused on cutting costs and reducing manpower.
On the popular level, General Colin Powell’s highly publicized dedication of the buffalo soldier statue at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the summer of 1992, made the buffalo soldier into a well-known, widely familiar cultural icon, adorning tee shirts, refrigerator magnets, phone cards, jigsaw puzzles, and coffee mugs.
Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?
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The buffalo soldiers were noted for their courage and discipline. Drunkenness, an especially widespread problem in the army, was rare among them; in a period when nearly a third of white army enlistees deserted, the black soldiers had the U.S. Army’s lowest desertion and court-martial rates. In nearly 30 years of frontier service buffalo soldiers took part in almost 200 major and minor engagements. From 1870 to 1890, 14 buffalo soldiers were awarded medals of honour, the army’s highest award for bravery. The 9th and 10th cavalries later distinguished themselves by their fighting in the Spanish-American War and in the 1916 Mexican campaign. One of the 10th Cavalry’s officers was John J. Pershing, whose nickname Black Jack reflected his advocacy of black troops.
At least one Buffalo Soldier who served with distinction was a woman:
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To celebrate Black History Month, Hueco Tanks is hosting a presentation on freed slave and Buffalo Soldier Cathay Williams. Williams served as a man with the 38th regiment of the US Black Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) for nearly two years after The Civil War.
Hueco Tanks has a presentation about her February 3, if anyone can get there.
Born in 1844 in Independence, Missouri, Williams was a slave as was her mother but her father was free. She would work as a house servant on the Johnson plantation near Jefferson City. By 1861, Union forces occupied Jefferson city in the beginnings of the American Civil War. Slaves were considered “contraband” (they were property remember) and at age 17, Williams was impressed into serving. She served the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment which was commanded by William Plummer Benton.
During her time with the 8th Indiana, Williams would have seen action on the battlefields and been introduced to uniformed Negro regiments. This may have inspired her to enlist once the war ended. Williams knew that women were prohibited from serving in the military, but having been transferred to Washington DC, she may have been told stories about women passing themselves off as men to fight and serve. Who knows what her true inspiration was? What we do know was that Williams enlisted in the United States Regular Army on 15 November 1866 at St. Louis, Missouri for a three year engagement, passing herself off as a man. Only two others are known to have been privy to the deception, her cousin and a friend, both of whom were fellow soldiers in her regiment.
Discovered after three years’ service during an illness, Ms. Williams was discharged. She was ruled ineligible for an Army pension.
Following her discharge she worked as a cook in New Mexico, and eventually made her way to Trinidad, Colorado — at the same time as such famous folk as Bat Masterson and Kit Carson were knowin to be in the area. She died in 1924 in Raton, New Mexico, where she ran a boarding house.