by: Joseph S. Kennedy,
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF

In April 1867, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a Civil War hero, commanded 1,400 soldiers facing a deserted Cheyenne-Sioux village of 250 lodges on Pawnee Fork in western Kansas.
    Although his announced purpose was to make peace with the American Indians of the northern plains, his 11 cavalry troops, seven infantry companies, and a battery of field artillery were aligned in battle formation.
    When he learned that both tribes had left the village, Hancock is reported to have said: "This looks like the commencement of war."
    Hancock was a long way from his home in Montgomery County and apparently in over his head. He immediately ordered the commander of his cavalry units, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, to pursue and engage the fleeing Cheyenne and Sioux, a move strongly opposed by Ned Wynkoop, a native of Philadelphia who was Indian agent for the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. The day before, Wynkoop had counseled Hancock against approaching the village with a large armed force.
    Several days later, and once again against the advice of Wynkoop, Hancock ordered the village burned to the ground.
    "Poor Hancock! One of the great leaders of the Union Army, he had marched across Kansas to coerce the Cheyenne into peace . . . and he couldn't even get them to stay around to talk," wrote David M. Jordan of Jenkintown in his 1988 book, Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier's Life.
    "He set forth to bully . . . the Plains tribes. Instead, he touched off a bloody and perhaps needless war, . . . " wrote historian Robert M. Utley in his 1973 book, Frontier Regulars.
    Overall, the security of the Great Plains, with its western migration trails and railroad-building routes, was the responsibility of Lt. Gen. William Sherman.
    After the end of the Civil War, clashes between whites and American Indians in the region increased. In late 1866, about 80 troops under the command of Capt. William Fetterman were annihilated by a force of Sioux warriors.
    Sherman - who, according to Utley, believed in a policy "of vindictive earnestness . . . even to their extermination" - decided with the backing of the federal government to send Hancock out to make it plain to the tribal chiefs that it was either going to be peace on the Army's terms or war.
    "Both Sherman [and] Hancock had little experience in dealing with the Plains tribes, and they had no real knowledge of [their] plight," Jordan said in a recent interview.
    The Plains tribes were nomadic peoples who were being forced onto limited reservations because of the influx of white settlements and the thinning of the bison herd upon which their culture was based.
    The government's policy of changing these people from hunters to farmers was largely in the hands of the white agents appointed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to both trade with and provide needed supplies to the tribes. As a group, the agents were generally a corrupt lot who stole from the people under their care. And the Army deeply resented these agents as interfering with their duty to police the prairies.
    Thus, when Hancock started out on his peace mission, he told his troops, "We go prepared for war. . . . No insolence will be tolerated," Utley wrote.
    When Hancock's column arrived about 30 miles from the village at Pawnee Fork, he ordered Wynkoop to send word for the chiefs to ride to the fort for a conference. Wynkoop was an exception to the rule, an Indian agent both honest and loyal to the tribes he served.
    When only two chiefs showed up for the meeting, Hancock resolved to march on Pawnee Fork.
    As a result of Hancock's action, Custer never caught up with either the Cheyenne or Sioux bands; the tribes continued to raid on the Plains; and a treaty between the tribes and the U.S. government failed to stop the conflict.
    In the aftermath, Sherman went on to become commanding general of the Army, Wynkoop resigned as Indian agent, and Custer was killed at Little Bighorn.
    Hancock became military governor of Louisiana and Texas. In 1880, he was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

Source:

Kennedy, Joseph S., "Trying to Force Peace Montco General Ignited War on Plains. Historians Say Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock's Effort to Bully American Indians Made a Bad Situation Worse," The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Sunday, 13 August 2000, Edition: C, North, Neighbors Montgomery, p. MC03