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Blacks in Military History: The Buffalo Soldiers

By VVAW

The U. S. Army found itself in bad shape following the Civil War. Authorized a strength 54,641 officers and men, the actual strength was under 40,000 and most of them were in the defeated Confederacy as an Army of occupation. The barons of industry had another vital task for the Army to perform—the opening of the West with the millions upon millions of dollars to be made from land and from the railroads which would connect eastern manufacturing with western resources.

But, there was a critical barrier to the push westward; not just the natural difficulties of mountains, weather and distance which could be overcome, but the inhabitants of the area—the Indians—who fiercely resisted the invasion from the East. By the mid 1860's, the Indians had succeeded in pushing many of the ranchers, settlers and even the military back toward where they came from. So the call went out to recruit troops to fight the Indians.

The response was slight; most able-bodied men who could not afford to buy their way out of the military during the Civil War had had enough of fighting, and particularly fighting Indians, a job which was not only exhausting but dangerous. So the military, as it has in many instances before and after, turned to American minorities to find its forces. General Order #6, signed by Lt. Gen William Tecumseh Sherman went out on August 9th, 1866: "Commanders of military departments within this division in which colored troops are serving will proceed at once to enlist men for two regiments of colored regulars...one of cavalry, to be entitled the Tenth Regiment, United States Cavalry..."

Such was the beginning of the "Buffalo Regiment" which would exist through the North African campaign of World War II. This was far from the first time the military had turned to Black soldiers; some 180,000 Blacks had been recruited into the Union army during the Civil War and over 33,000 had died during that conflict, often fighting in the dirtiest and least-known battles of that war. The established policy of all-Black units with almost all white officers lasted through World War II and into the early days of the Korean War.

The 10th Cav certainly did not have an easy birth. It was hard to find officers who would command Black units: George Custer was one who turned down a commission to serve with a Black regiment and at least one General took a lower rank to be part of a white regiment. Finally, Colonel Benjamin Grierson, an ex-music teacher from a small town in Illinois who disliked horses, took the job of commanding the 10th Cav with the provision that he reserved the right to accept only "superior men."

It wasn't a problem to find volunteers: given the situation that ex-slaves faced in the South, the offer of $13 a month (considerable less than white soldiers were offered) as well as room, board, clothing and a horse was relatively attractive (the economic draft where minorities and other poor "volunteer" because there isn't much else to do is not something new). Finally, there was the problem of equipment. Horses, saddles and other trappings, weapons, and even food were things which had been refused by other frontier units. Many horses died on their way ot the 10th; saddles and bridles fell apart, and food was full of maggots. Finally, In August of 1867 the 10th Cav hobbled into Western Kansas to meet the Cheyenne Indians.

The 10th was not going up against an unknown enemy—the Cheyenne, known as the "Dog Soldiers," had earned a formidable reputation, so great that one American unit had refused to fire on them ( in fear of retaliation) and two other units had mutinied rather than face them. While neither then nor in the most recent U.S. military venture was the U.S. Army very effective against guerilla tactics such as those used by the Indians, the Plains Indians, and particularly the "Dog Soldiers" had more going for them.

Tribal lore, custom and tradition made it clear that the individual warrior was invincible. "Power" or "medicine" was part of being a warrior and the power was supernatural in origin. In some cases it worked—a Cheyenne warrior named Roman Nose by closely following taboos laid down by the local medicine man charged alone four times in front of 2000 U.S. soldiers who succeeded only in killing his horse. And such exploits were well publicized, not only in song and story but even in the markings worn by individual warriors (the U.S. military does the same thing today with ribbons and medals).

Each feather in the headdress represented a death or a blow against the enemy; horses were painted in the same way—a hoof print on the flank meant an enemy horse captured, a red handprint meant an enemy killed in hand-to-hand combat as did a handprint on a warrior's shirt or one painted over a warrior's mouth. And so did a face painted black.

When Pvt John Randall of the 10th Cav rode out as escort for several hunters trying to find buffalo meat to feed the line gang working on the railroad, the chances are that he knew none of this history. He did know that the horse he rode and the weapons he carried were far inferior to those of the hunters he was supposed to be protecting. When the Cheyenne attacked, the hunters got the hell out of the area back to the military base with the railroad crew. But Randall, musket in hand and mounted on a lame horse, could not move as fast. His horse was shot for under him, his musket was lost, and he was barely able to find shelter under a section of track. He fired his pistol at the charging Indians who drew back to attack one by one. Eleven of them scored hits with spears and, after a counter-attack by Randall's unit, 13 were left dead. Randall was a bloody mess, but survived—and the Indians knew they had not killed him. When they returned to their village, the songs and stories about the episode told of the Black man who had fought like a cornered buffalo, who had suffered wound after wound but had not died—also like the buffalo.

The story spread as far south and west as the Apache, Arapaho and Commanche—the story of the Black "white" man who fought like a cornered buffalo, and the 10th Cav not only became known as the "Buffalo Soldiers" but as the Black-faced soldiers who could not be beaten. And with shabby, cast-off equipment, inferior horses and weapons, the 10th Cav fought in the Indian wars from 1867 until 1890 and were in fact never beaten. Unlike the early days, officers now looked for assignments to the 10th, and General Pershing spoke so highly of his service with the Black regiment that he became known as "Black Jack" Pershing. The Buffalo Soldiers went on the rescue Teddy Roosevelt's "rough Rider" at San Juan Hill causing Roosevelt to comment, "I wish no better men besides me in battle than these colored troops showed themselves to be."

The buffalo was eventually adopted as part of the insignia of the 10th Cav which spent World War I along the Mexican border and World War II in North Africa. Of course Black history has never been, until recently, anything more than a very poor relative of "American" history, but next time you're watching a grade "B" movie, as the cavalry comes charging to the rescue, consider that the cavalry that's charging might well have been the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 10th Car.