Sunday, April 30, 2023

Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, July 16, 1867

[July 16, 1867.]

I have good Department Commanders, but the country is so large, and the Indians so scattered, that we cannot foresee where they will turn up. Not only real depredations are committed, but every fear, or apprehension, on whatever it may be founded, is published, and protection claimed and demanded. . .

You have doubtless heard much of the war. The fact is, this contact of the two races has caused universal hostility, and the Indians operate in small, scattered bands, avoiding the posts and well-guarded trains, and hitting little parties who are off their guard. I have a much heavier force on the plains, but they are so large that it is impossible to guard at all points, and the clamor for protection everywhere has prevented our being able to collect a large force to go into the country where we believe the Indians have hid their families; viz., up on the Yellowstone, and down on the Red River. I see it stated the Indian War is costing a million a week. This cannot be; for I have not employed anything but the regular troops or the regular appropriations, except from companies of Kansas volunteers, who know they can't get any pay at all till Congress appropriates.

I have sent full reports to Washington, and hope Congress now will act in one way or the other. A commission going out can meet only little squads of Indians. They are scattered from Minnesota to Texas, and if they make treaties they won't last twenty-four hours.

We must fight the Indians, and force them to collect in agreed-on limits far away from the continental roads. I do think this subject as important as Reconstruction.

Affectionately yours,
W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 290-1

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