The Contract Surgeon

The Sioux Indians of the nineteenth century were a loosely connected
group of nomadic horsemen made up of several subgroups speaking a
language with common roots. After acquiring the horse, the most
tenacious subgroup, the Lakota Sioux, pushed the less aggressive
inhabitants of the Great Plains south, west, and north. Within a
hundred years they ruled a great portion of the high plains, from the
Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. By nature the Lakota were a
combative people and, even before the United States took possession
of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, had made mortal enemies of nearly
all the other tribes on the plains.
From their first contact with representatives of the United
States the Lakota were defiant. With the exception of a few incidents
of petty thievery by West Coast tribes, Lewis and Clark had trouble
only with the Lakota, who blocked their progress along the Missouri
River and made war on Indian nations with whom the United States was
making alliances.
Between the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the opening of
Montana’s gold fields, the Lakota concentrated their energies on
keeping the Crows, Shoshones, Arikaras, Pawnees, and others in a
subservient position with regard to
the fertile buffalo hunting grounds of the northern plains. But once
the people of the United States began to move into
that same territory, the Lakota were forced to divert increasing
amounts of resources to stemming the flow of pioneers.
In the 1860s a chief of the Oglala band by the name of Red
Cloud rose to prominence and led the Lakota and their allies in a
successful waragainst the United States that stopped pioneer
emigration into Montana over the Bozeman trail. After two years of
war, Red Cloud, along with Spotted Tail of the Brules Sioux band,
signed the treaty of 1868 that excluded whites from their territory
and, after trips to Washington, settled in northwestern Nebraska on
reservations named for them. They became known as “friendlies, ”
living on the reservations and, in exchange for their passivity,
receiving their subsistence from the United States government. Red
Cloud and Spotted Tail had won their war and had been recognized as
supreme leaders of their people by the U.S. But the political
structure of the Lakota was very different from that of the United
States. A Lakota leader was only a leader when the people followed
him, and the fact that two chiefs had retired to reservations did not
mean that the Lakota would cease hostilities toward the United States
or any of the other nations on the northern plains.
The Lakota, under other chiefs, continued to wage war on
their neighbors, red and white. Two chiefs who emerged during the
1870s were Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas band and a charismatic young
warrior named Crazy Horse of the Oglalas.
What were known as the northern Sioux or the “hostiles”
fought the United States Army nearly to a standstill in the Great
Sioux War of 1876. But the superior resources of the United States
finally wore the Sioux down. In the winter of 1876 Sitting Bull
retreated into Canada, but Crazy Horse, with his defiant band of
starving Oglalas, remained hostile in the north until the spring of
1877. Crazy Horse became asymbol of resistance for the Sioux, and
though his position as chief was not hereditary, he ascended to that
position and was, at once, held in increasing esteem by some of his
people and loathed or envied by others.
On the United States side the war was executed by an array of
generals who had won their fame in the Civil War. At the head of the
army was General Sherman. Under him was Sheridan. And under Sheridan,
among others, were Generals Crook, Gibbon, Terry, and Custer.
Perhaps the most experienced of these generals, in both
Indian fighting and management, was Crook. He had served throughout
the West and recently secured the surrender of the Apaches in
Arizona. He was a fair man, respected by the Indians, but he was
rugged and a dogged adversary in battle. He was known for uncommonly
efficient supply trains and relentless winter campaigns and was
comfortable with long night marches and early-morning attacks. Among
his hand-picked officers for the campaigns of 1876 was a young
civilian surgeon, temporarily contracted to the U.S. Army, named
Valentine Trant McGillycuddy.
McGillycuddy would go on to become Indian agent at the Red
Cloud Agency (later known as the Pine Ridge Reservation) in the new
state of South Dakota. He would also be a signatory to South Dakota’s
constitution, the first president of the South Dakota School of
Mines, a businessman, the chief medical insurance inspector for the
state of Montana, one of the first licensed doctors in the new state
of California, and a volunteer to the natives of Alaska during the
influenza epidemic of 1919; he would finally retire as thehouse
surgeon for the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California.
Crook, who had his choice of any officers or surgeons for his
Sioux campaign, called the newly married McGillycuddy from
Washington. It was true that McGillycuddy, although still in his
twenties, had been with the geological survey teams that mapped most
of the country over which Crook planned to campaign, but Crook never
tapped that expertise. The two men were not old friends. Their paths
had crossed only a time or two. But Crook was known for being a
prophetic judge of character. He must have seen something that told
him the young surgeon could play a key role in the turbulent years
that were just beginning.
Copyright (c) 1999 by Dan O’Brien