Yellowstone Command: Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876–1877

by Jerome A. Greene

Shortly after Custer’s defeat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Colonel Nelson A. Miles and his Fifth Infantry launched several significant campaigns to destroy the Lakota–Northern Cheyenne coalition in the Yellowstone River basin. Miles’s expeditions involved relentless pursuit and attack throughout the winter months, culminating in the Lame Deer Fight of May 1877, the last major engagement of the Great Sioux War.

Yellowstone Command is the first detailed account of the harrowing 1876–1877 campaigns. Drawing from Indian testimonies and many previously untapped sources, Jerome A. Greene reconstructs the ambitious battles of Colonel Miles and his foot soldiers. This paperback edition of Yellowstone Command features a new preface by the author.

Genres: History, Military History, American History

352 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Schoppie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerome A. Greene is, by far, one of the best authors of books on the Plains Indian Wars, and his book "Yellowstone Command: Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War 1876-1877" stands as proof of this claim. This book was a pleasure to read, made even more so by the fact that my copy of the book was a gift to me by the author, from whom I completed a short class on the Plains Indian Wars in 2006.

Most of the attention given the Great Sioux War centers on George A. Custer and the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. While this is somewhat understandable given the nature of that battle, it can leave a false impression of U.S. Army loss in a strategic sense. Greene's book begins with Custer's defeat, and traces the course of the Great Sioux War in Montana through the actions of Colonel Nelson A. Miles. Colonel Miles is certainly not as recognized as Custer, Terry, or the other major participants in the conflict, but he was, perhaps, the most competent of the senior officers to take part in the war. As Greene demonstrates, it was largely through Miles' efforts that the Great Sioux War ended when and how it did. Leading a force mostly comprised of infantry, Miles and the officers and troops under his command achieved tactical and strategic victories over the Sioux and Cheyenne in almost unimaginable conditions. Often facing temperatures of 30 degrees or more below 0, Miles outfitted his command with buffalo coats and other necessary gear, and made it utterly impossible for the Sioux and Cheyenne to continue to occupy the territory now comprising eastern Montana.

While Greene confesses a particular focus on the U.S. Army, he also employs a good amount of Native-American source material and does an excellent job maintaining a balance in his perspectives. The author makes an almost undeniable case that Colonel Nelson A. Miles was the key commander in the Yellowstone country responsible for rescuing the U.S. Army from a deteriorating situation in Montana in 1876, and transforming a demoralized and blundering military effort into one of pride, confidence, efficiency, and success. Anyone who believes that infantry troops played only a passive role in 19th Century combat with Native-Americans will find their views transformed by Greene's research. In some ways, Miles' infantry accomplished feats that would have been difficult - at best - for cavalry, given the nature of terrain, supplies, and the weather.

Anyone interested in the Great Sioux War beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn should read Greene's "Yellowstone Command"!

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably detailed account of Miles' pivotal role in the Great Sioux War. The extensive notes alone are worthy of four stars.

[Bill Tyroler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Great Sioux War didn’t end, of course, with Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn. As one author memorably put it, Custer’s Last Stand was the Indians’ as well; their destruction was inevitable (James Donovan, “A Terrible Glory”). Maybe that’s why our fascination with Custer continues unabated, marking as he does the supplanting of one ancient culture with a new one. And, given this obsession with all things Custer, coupled with need to stress a singular military achievement by the Indians, it’s understandable that relatively little attention is paid to the subsequent campaign to end the war. Jerome A. Greene’s “Yellowstone Command” is a good place to start.

After Little Big Horn, the Sioux and their allies continued to muster perhaps several thousand non-agency warriors in the Yellowstone area, threatening havoc. Their defeat may have been a matter of time, but how long and at what cost always matter. George Crook, who had himself played a role weeks earlier in the Little Big Horn debacle, remained both in command and hesitant and ineffectual. Enter Nelson Miles, a bit of a self-promoter, but with good cause: tireless, dogged, tactically flexible and imaginative, his energetic pursuit of victory brought an end to the war with, somewhat surprisingly, relatively little loss of life. Miles’s key insight, Greene, suggests, was to remain in the field, both to impress the Indians with both the permanence of the U.S. presence and its resolve to make life for non-agency Indians impossible. Crook might fecklessly campaign and return to fort without accomplishing anything, but Miles’s men were always out there, reconnoitering, blocking, attacking. To the extent of his doggedness anyway, Miles seems cut from the same cloth as Ethan Edwards, in John Ford’s great “The Searchers”: “Injun will chase a thing till he thinks he's chased it enough. Then he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns there's such a thing as a critter that'll just keep comin' on. So we'll find 'em in the end, I promise you. We'll find 'em. Just as sure as a turnin' of the earth.” That movie, incidentally, was based on a real event — the kidnapping of a settler girl by Comanches in Texas — and to make the parallel more striking, Miles himself cut his teeth in the Red River War, in the process rescuing two kidnapped settler girls.

Miles, a critter that just kept comin’ on, almost certainly hastened war’s end. According to Greene, the final tally of the Great Sioux War, Feb. 1876 - December 1877 was 408 army dead and wounded (the great majority, of course, at Little Big Horn), and among the Indians, approximately 150 dead and 90 wounded (including noncombatants). Bad enough, it would only have been worse if it had dragged on longer. Sometimes, the only real choice is between bad and worse.

[Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history of the Great Sioux War takes up where the Custer massacre ended. It covers the Army’s efforts to avenge what happened to the Seventh Calvary and get the renegade Sioux onto reservations. This book provides a well written documentation of exactly how Colonel Miles accomplished those objectives. The obstacles facing the Army were large. The regions of operations were large and remote without proper roads and the waterways were subject to the whims of mother nature. Sometimes the water was too high, sometimes too low and sometimes frozen over. Many of the campaigns against the Sioux were conducted in brutally cold, wintery weather. Plus, Colonel Miles decided to use infantry instead of Calvary as his primary force which created a slow-moving force. But Miles understood that the Indians were quite immobile during the winter months as well. The winter weather negated their primary advantage which was mobility. During the summer months, the nomadic Sioux tribes were often able to avoid contact with the U.S. Army, not so during the winter.

[Davy Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just read his Arlington National Cemetary bio if you want a concise summary of what all he did ... which borders on the miraculous. Forrest Gump-like almost, but not hollywood. I ran out of time and couldn't find his crypt a few years ago. I did see Abner Doubledays grave though. His men called Doubleday ol 48 Hours.

My Moms maiden name was Miles and her paternal grandmother told me once when I was maybe 12-15 years old that we were related.
I blew it off unfortunately, sure wish I could ask questions now. I even read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee when I was in my 30's and didn't realize Bear Coat Miles may have been somewhat related.

My ancestor was Thomas Miles who fought in the Revolution but he was denied a pension later in life in Eastern Indiana where I was born and raised.
He was supposedly from the same part of Massachusetts as Nelson and I suspect he was an uncle to Nelson.. His grave does say Continental Army Massachusetts and he is in the Miles Cemetary that was on the large family farm in Indiana that was in the family until lost in the Great Depression. When I got in SAR down here in Texas I got in thru another guy from that same town because it was easier to do. That guy John Saxon was from the lower Hudson Valley and died in that town at age 100, during the Civil War. I had little to no idea who he was prior. There are 4 Rev War veterans on a plaque on one corner of the Blackford County Indiana Courthouse. My Moms Mom had an Antique Store about two blocks away but I never saw this until a few years ago. Funny what you can find with some research.

Since Thomas Miles war record was probably sketchy I think the ambitious Nelson sort of sanitized him out of his bio. Nelson even ran for Prez as a Democrat (same as my entire Miles clan) but wasn't even close. I went to the Historical Society in Westminster MA and found there were two different families of Miles there and they helped me to trace my Ancestor in Rev War records but he doesn't show up. Maybe he lied, maybe he was written out. N A Miles was the last Commanding General of the USA so I suspect that he had this power.

Of course he married Tecumseh Sherman's niece (also Ohio Senator Sherman's niece). Nelson wasn't West Point so that hindered him a little at times.