George Crook

• 1. Introduction

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  George Crook was born on the 8th of September 1828 on a farm near Taylorsville, Ohio, and by the time he died in 1890, he had fought in two of the defining conflicts of 19th-century America. He led infantry charges through waist-deep creeks in Virginia, commanded cavalry chasing Paiute warriors across frozen Oregon winters, and sat down at a table in the Sierra Madre Mountains to negotiate with Geronimo. The Apache, who rarely gave honor to their enemies, had a name for him: Nantan Lupan. Chief Wolf.

  Crook's story raises unsettling questions. How did a man who ranked near the bottom of his West Point class become one of the most effective field commanders the Army produced? How did a general who spent decades fighting Native Americans end up defending their legal rights in federal court? And what does it mean that the Apache named him with respect while the U.S. Army eventually stripped him of his command? Those contradictions are what make Crook worth knowing.

• 2. Bottom of His Class

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  Congressman Robert Schenck nominated Crook to the United States Military Academy, and in 1852 Crook graduated near the bottom of his class. The Army assigned him to the 4th U.S. Infantry as a brevet second lieutenant, posting him to California and Oregon for nearly a decade.

  Those years shaped him in ways no classroom could. Crook spent his time in the West learning the languages of the Native peoples he was assigned to fight or protect, and he accompanied them on hunts, absorbing woodcraft and wilderness reading. An aide later compared him to Daniel Boone. By 1857 he commanded the Pitt River Expedition, and in one engagement he was severely wounded by an arrow. He also established a fort in northeast California that was eventually named in his honor.

  Promoted to first lieutenant in 1856 and captain in 1860, Crook was ordered east just as the country broke apart. He had developed something unusual: a genuine ability to understand terrain, track movement, and anticipate how an adversary would behave in wild country. Those skills were about to be tested on a completely different scale, and in a war he had not imagined.

• 3. Virginia and the Valley

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  On the 7th of September 1862, Crook was promoted to brigadier general, one day before his 34th birthday. He had by then already been wounded at Lewisburg and had fought at South Mountain and near Burnside's Bridge at Antietam. At Antietam he also began a friendship with Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23rd Ohio Infantry, a subordinate who would one day reach the White House.

  In the spring of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant ordered Crook and his Kanawha Division to strike the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the primary supply line linking Richmond to the southwest. Grant briefed the 35-year-old Crook personally. The mission was to march roughly 140 miles south from Charleston, West Virginia, destroy the railroad at Dublin, demolish the bridge over the New River, and then destroy the Confederate salt works at Saltville.

  On the 29th of April 1864, the division marched out. Hayes recorded in his diary: "All things point to early action." The force numbered about 6,500 men organized into three brigades, moving through mountain roads that spring rains had churned into mud, engineers building bridges across washouts as they went.

  The decisive moment came on the 9th of May at Cloyd's Mountain. Crook's men stormed down a steep wooded slope, crossed a meadow 400 yards wide under musket and artillery fire, then plunged waist-deep through a creek at the foot of the rebel position. Every officer dismounted and went forward on foot. Crook himself was wearing high riding boots, and when he stepped into the creek they filled with water and he bogged down. Soldiers grabbed their commander's arms and dragged him across. Hand-to-hand fighting erupted at the crude fortifications on the far side. The rebels broke. The Union suffered 688 casualties; the Confederates lost 538.

  With the railroad wrecked and the New River bridge spectacularly demolished, Crook turned north. He had intercepted an unconfirmed report that Lee had beaten Grant in the Wilderness, and with supplies running low, he marched his men back to the Union base at Meadow Bluff rather than risk being cut off.

  Later that year, on the 21st of October 1864, Crook was promoted to major general of volunteers after fighting at Opequon, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley. Then in February 1865, Confederate raiders captured him at Cumberland, Maryland. He spent a month as a prisoner of war in Richmond before being exchanged, returned to command, and was present at Appomattox Court House for the end of the war.

• 4. The Winter Tactic

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  After Appomattox, Crook reverted from his wartime brevet of major general all the way back to the permanent rank of major. Within days he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, assigned to the 23rd Infantry, and sent back to the Pacific Northwest.

  In December 1866 Crook arrived in Boise to take command in the Snake War, a conflict that had already dragged on for years. He quickly identified a pattern in how the Northern Paiute moved: they gathered food across fall, winter, and spring. A predecessor, George B. Currey, had suggested attacking in winter. Crook adopted the tactic and refined it. He had his cavalry approach Paiute camps on foot so as not to spook the quarry early, then remount just before the charge.

  He also made systematic use of Indian scouts, both to locate enemy camps and to fight alongside his soldiers. During the winter of 1867, scouts found a Paiute village near the eastern edge of Steens Mountain. Crook covered the escape routes, then ordered the charge while planning to observe from a distance. His horse got spooked and bolted straight into the village ahead of the entire command. Crook passed through the crossfire unharmed, though the account of his involuntary solo charge through an enemy camp did not exactly fit the dignified image of a general directing from the rear.

  The Snake War brought him nationwide recognition. He went on to defeat a mixed Paiute, Pit River, and Modoc band at the Battle of Infernal Caverns near Fall River Mills, California, and later prosecuted a successful campaign in Arizona's Tonto Basin that forced the Yavapai and Tonto Apache onto reservations. In 1873, Crook was appointed brigadier general in the regular army, a promotion that passed over and angered several full colonels who had been ahead of him in line.

• 5. The Rosebud and Its Consequences

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  On the 28th of May 1876, Crook assumed direct command of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition at Fort Fetterman. His column left two days later: 1,051 men, 15 companies of cavalry from the 2nd and 3rd regiments, five companies of infantry, 250 mules, and 106 wagons. On the 14th of June, 261 Shoshone and Crow allies joined the column.

  Three days later, on the morning of the 17th of June, Crook halted at 0800 to rest his men after a punishing march. He made no special defensive dispositions, even deep in hostile territory. At 0830, a scout ran into camp shouting "Lakota, Lakota!" Sioux and Cheyenne warriors attacked from the bluffs. The Crow and Shoshone scouts, badly outnumbered, fell back toward camp, buying Crook time to deploy. His soldiers' rapid fire drove the attackers off, but the fighting burned through most of the ammunition that was supposed to last the entire campaign.

  With casualties mounting and ammunition low, Crook retreated to Fort Fetterman. Historians have since debated whether his withdrawal contributed to the destruction of five companies of the 7th Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which followed eight days later.

  After the Little Bighorn, Congress authorized funds to reinforce the expedition. Crook pushed into the field again and linked up briefly with General Alfred Terry before embarking on what became known as the Horsemeat March, a grueling, poorly supplied campaign during which the men were reduced to eating their horses and mules. On the 9th of September 1876, a party sent to Deadwood came across the village of American Horse and attacked in the Battle of Slim Buttes. Crazy Horse led a counterattack the following day, but Crook's superior numbers repulsed it.

• 6. Standing Bear and a Different War

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  In 1879, while serving at Fort Omaha in North Omaha, Nebraska, Crook did something that his superiors almost certainly had not expected from a veteran Indian fighter. He testified on behalf of the Ponca tribe in the trial of Standing Bear v. Crook, speaking in favor of Native American rights in federal court. The judge ruled that Standing Bear held some of the rights of U.S. citizens.

  That same year, his residence at Fort Omaha was completed. It was eventually preserved as the General Crook House and is considered part of North Omaha today. He would return to Fort Omaha in his later years, and his portrait was painted there by artist Herbert A. Collins.

  Crook's willingness to testify for the people he had spent a career fighting was not an aberration. The same instinct surfaced again years later when Nelson A. Miles replaced him in Arizona and had the Chiricahua Apache scouts transported as prisoners to Florida alongside the warriors they had helped capture. Crook was reportedly furious. He sent numerous telegrams to Washington protesting the imprisonment of scouts who had faithfully served the Army. The scouts, along with most of Geronimo's band, spent the next 26 years in captivity before they were finally released.

• 7. Cañon de los Embudos

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  In March 1886, Crook received word that Geronimo would meet him at Cañon de los Embudos, in the Sierra Madre Mountains about 86 miles from Fort Bowie. The meeting lasted three days. While the two men negotiated, photographer C. S. Fly was making exposures on 8 by 10 inch glass negatives, about 15 in total. One photograph was taken at Geronimo's own request: Geronimo with two of his sons standing alongside. Fly's images are the only existing photographs of Geronimo's surrender. The pictures taken on the 25th and the 26th of March are the only known photographs of an American Indian taken while still at war with the United States.

  Geronimo was camped on the Mexican side of the border and agreed to Crook's surrender terms. That night, a soldier sold whiskey to some of the band and told them they would be killed as soon as they crossed into the United States. Geronimo and 25 followers slipped away in the dark. Their escape cost Crook his command. Miles replaced him in 1886 and eventually captured Geronimo and the remaining Chiricahua band.

  Crook returned to command the Department of the Platte. On the 21st of February 1890, he was elected the first president of the Illinois Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. One month later, on the 21st of March 1890, he died suddenly in Chicago while serving as commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. Oglala Lakota war chief Red Cloud, a man who had fought against him for years, offered what may be the most precise summary of what Crook had been: "He, at least, never lied to us. His words gave us hope."