Part 2

The landscape of the Wichita Mountains from Medicine Bluffs (fig. 5) on the present-day Fort Sill reservation is noteworthy as a terrain sketch to anyone who has served at that post. I have ridden over this country many times, and the undulating prairie, the meandering of Medicine Creek, the Bluffs themselves--over the highest of which (left centerground) the Apache Geronimo did _not_ ride his horse with the 7th Cavalry in full cry behind--Mount Hinds and lofty Mount Scott are remarkable in their accuracy when one considers that the painting must have been done from sketches made when Stieffel was on escort detail to the Indian Territory in 1869.[34]

The two views of Fort Harker, Kansas (figs. 6, 7), now Ellsworth, must have been painted during 1870 and 1871 while Stieffel was on extra duty as a hospital attendant there. From an artistic standpoint they are the poorest of his work. His detail, however, more than compensates for any deficiencies as a draftsman and gives us an excellent concept of the physical layout and daily routine of a small post in the Southern Plains. The two views are from the east and south, and complement one another nicely. Headquarters, officers' quarters, and barracks, all of typical clapboard construction, are readily discernible, as are the stables, the latter being the long unfenestrated buildings. Even the barrack privies, an outdoor bake oven alongside a mess hall, and earth-covered powder magazines can be easily identified. The long rows of cordwood for cooking and heating were to be seen on any post of the period. In the view from the east (fig. 6) may be seen a detail of cavalrymen with led horses moving out for animal exercise past the camp of a transient unit with its standard tentage and transport. The high white paling fence is difficult to place, being either an animal corral, in which case it would be much too high, or a forage yard, since no hay piles are visible elsewhere. Stieffel seems to have been considerably fascinated by the railroad (fig. 7) with its accompanying telegraph line running southwest of the fort, for again he paints in some detail, although this time with an almost childish conception. The "U.P.R.W.E.D." which he so carefully letters in identifies the line as the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division.[35] The naming of the engine "Osage" was as typical of the period as the naming of individual commercial aircraft is today.

The last three paintings (figs. 8-10) fall in the period of Stieffel's service at Fort Keogh in the Department of Dakota. The fort, named for Captain Miles Keogh (who died with Custer in the Little Big Horn massacre) and originally called Cantonment Tongue River, was located at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers near present-day Miles City, Montana.

The pictures of both the fort (fig. 8) and Miles City (fig. 9) are subject to check against extant photographs; they are amazing in their detail and accuracy. The over-all layout of the fort conforms, and such minute details as the gable windows and chimneys of the officers' quarters on the left of the parade ground and the two-story verandas on the enlisted barracks opposite are absolutely correct.[36] The familiar stables, corral, wood piles, and hay piles--the latter surrounded by a stone wall as protection against grass fire in the dry months--are readily discernible (fig. 8). The low stone buildings and corral in the right centerground probably are part of the original structures of Cantonment Tongue River. The small shacks to the left of them probably are the homes of the civilian hangers-on who founded Miles City in 1876 after being ejected from the post by Col. Nelson Miles, the commander of the 5th Infantry. The first site of Miles City can be seen in the upper right corner on the banks of the Tongue. The town was moved across the river in 1877. The mounted drill in the foreground is difficult to explain in a period when and in an area where the troops were almost constantly in the field under combat conditions. Perhaps it is mere window dressing by the artist. It is entirely possible, however, that Stieffel has pictured elements of his own regiment, which was mounted from 1877 until after the surrender of Sitting Bull in 1881. Being basically infantry they would be most in need of training in mounted tactics. Then again, these could be legitimate cavalry whose commander thought had wandered too far from regulation movements during the unorthodox winter warfare they had been waging against the Indians.

The view of Miles City (fig. 9) has little importance in a military sense, but it is a fine contemporary view of a frontier town of the period. It is probably the product of a spring afternoon Stieffel spent along the banks of the Tongue. It was painted before 1880--a wooden bridge had replaced the ferry by that year[37]--and probably as early as 1878, for the town grew rapidly and Stieffel pictures only two streets, Main and Park, running at right angles. The town is correctly placed in a grove of cottonwoods, and low to the river as evidenced by the almost annual flooding of the streets.[38] Structures which can be readily identified, reading from left to right on Main Street, are the Diamond D corral visible near the ferry landing; the town stockade which Stieffel has either misplaced or which was later moved; Major Bochardt's store, the white two-story building; Broadwater, Hubbel and Co., the brown two-story structure next right; the Cottage Saloon at the corner of Main and Park Streets, just to the right of the flag pole; and Morris Cahn's drygoods emporium on Park Street, in the right centerground, that can be identified by Cahn's name on the false front.[39]

A Note on Stieffel's Indians

In seven of his nine paintings Stieffel has executed his Indian subjects in colorful detail and with some care. Although he apparently did not know his subjects well enough to distinguish them by tribe, he does depict them in typical dress of the period. Many of them are wearing German silver ornaments of various designs about their necks, on strips of flannel attached to their hair pigtail-like, or as arm bands. At least four are wearing hair-pipe breast plates, a fact of interest to ethnologists,[40] and several wear the comical, Puritan style, tall black hats issued as annuity goods. The red and blue robes are of trades-good flannel, as probably are the leggings. Two wear buffalo robes with the skin side out and the hair side rolled over at the shoulder.[41] Two, in the Fort Keogh picture (fig. 8) and the Yellowstone River landscape (fig. 10), wear robes of the familiar, colorfully striped Hudson Bay blanketing material. Arms are conventional--bows, quivered arrows, and pipe tomahawks, with a scattering of firearms. In the Yellowstone River landscape one discrepancy should be pointed out--the canoe; the Northern Plains Indians seldom used water transport, and then generally only in the form of rafts.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: For George Catlin, Gustavus Sohon, and George Gibbs, see: John C. Ewers, "Gustavus Sohon's Portraits of Flathead and Pend d'Oreille Indians, 1854," _Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections_, vol. 110, no. 7, 1948; "George Catlin, Painter of Indians and the West," in _Annual Report of the ... Smithsonian Institution ... 1955_, 1956, pp. 483-528; Marvin C. Ross, _George Catlin, Episodes from Life Among the Indians and Last Rambles_, Norman, Okla., Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1959; Harold McCracken, _George Catlin and the Old Frontier_, New York, Dial Press, 1959; David I. Bushnell, Jr., "Drawings by George Gibbs in the Far Northwest, 1849-1851," _Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections_, vol. 97, no. 8, 1938.

For Alfred Jacob Miller, see: Bernard DeVoto, _Across the Wide Missouri_, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1947; Marvin C. Ross, editor, _The West of Alfred Jacob Miller_, Norman, Okla., Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1951.

For Frederick Remington and Charles Russell, see: Harold McCracken, _Frederick Remington, Artist of the Old West_, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1947, and _The Charles M. Russell Book; the Life and Work of the Cowboy Artist_, Garden City, Doubleday, 1957.]

[Footnote 2: See: Mark H. Brown and W. R. Felton, _The Frontier Years. L. A. Huffman, Photographer of the Plains_, New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1955; Martin F. Schmitt and Dee Brown, _Fighting Indians of the West_, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.]

[Footnote 3: An excellent group of these crude on-the-spot drawings and paintings is reproduced in Grace Raymond Hebard and E. A. Brininstool, _The Bozeman Trail_, 2 vols., Cleveland, The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922.]

[Footnote 4: No. 173740 in the U.S. National Museum.]

[Footnote 5: The information on Brotherton's career has been culled from: _Register of Graduates and Former Cadets United States Military Academy, 1802-1946_, New York, The West Point Alumni Foundation, Inc., 1946; Francis B. Heitman, _Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army_, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, vol. 1; George W. Cullum, _Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy_, Boston, 1891-1930, vol. 3.]

[Footnote 6: Enlistment papers of Hermann Stieffel dated December 17, 1857, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives, Washington.]

[Footnote 7: Theo F. Rodenbough and William L. Haskin, _The Army of the United States_, New York, Maynard, Merrill & Co., 1896, pp. 471-472; Remarks on Muster Roll, Company K, 5th Infantry (hereinafter cited as Muster Roll, Co. K), August 31, 1858, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives, Washington.]

[Footnote 8: Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), December 31, 1859.]

[Footnote 9: In 1861 a private's pay was $13.00 per month with $2.00 withheld until expiration of his enlistment and $.12-1/2 withheld for support of the U.S. Soldiers' Home at Washington. (_U.S. Army Regulations_, 1861.)]

[Footnote 10: Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), October 31, 1861; December 31, 1861; April 30, 1862; June 30, 1862; December 31, 1862; February 28, 1863; April 30, 1863; February 28, 1864; June 30, 1864.]

[Footnote 11: Canby was murdered by the Modoc Captain Jack in 1873 while engaged in a peace conference.]

[Footnote 12: For details of these operations, see: _The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies_, 130 vols., Washington, War Department, 1880-1901, ser. 1, vol. 9, pp. 487-522.]

[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, p. 1246.]

[Footnote 14: Rodenbough and Haskin, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), p. 472; Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), April 30, 1863; June 30, 1864; October 31, 1865.]

[Footnote 15: The first note of such duty is in Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), February 28, 1863.]

[Footnote 16: See Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), 1863-1882. The muster rolls were submitted bimonthly.]

[Footnote 17: _Ibid._, June 30, 1868; February 28, 1869; April 30, 1869.]

[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, December 31, 1869; September 30, 1873; June 30, 1874.]

[Footnote 19: Company K was almost at full strength at the time, mustering 58 enlisted men of the 60 authorized. _Ibid._, September 30, 1873; _Official Army Register for January 1874_, Washington, Adjutant General's Office, 1874, p. 260B.]

[Footnote 20: Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), August 31, 1876.]

[Footnote 21: Frederick Remington has pictured this surrender for us, but he was not an eye witness.]

[Footnote 22: Muster Roll, Co. K, _op. cit._ (footnote 7), August 31, 1878, to June 30, 1882; Certificate of Disability for Discharge, Private Hermann Stieffel, April 8, 1882, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives. The date of June 23, given on the Muster Roll, was apparently that on which the discharge received final approval in Washington.]

[Footnote 23: There is no record of Stieffel's ever having been a member of the Soldiers' Home, but the Home's records for the 1880's are very incomplete. However, his discharge gives his forwarding address as that institution, and there is definite record of the date of his death and interment there.]

[Footnote 24: Report of Brig. Gen. R. B. Marcy, September 24, 1867, document no. 1,000, AGO, Department of Missouri, vol. 4, 1867, Civil War Branch, National Archives.]

[Footnote 25: _Report of Chief of Ordnance, 1867_, Washington, War Department, 1868.]

[Footnote 26: George Bird Grinnell, _The Fighting Cheyenne_, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915, p. 235.]

[Footnote 27: Frazier and Robert Hunt, _I Fought With Custer: The Story of Sergeant Windolph_, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947, p. 92. For an excellent discussion of Indian armament at this period, see John E. Parsons and John S. DuMont, _Firearms in the Custer Battle_, Harrisburg, The Stackpole Company, 1953.]

[Footnote 28: Marcy's report, _op. cit._ (footnote 24).]

[Footnote 29: Jack Howland, artist for _Harper's Weekly_, also pictured Satanta speaking to the commissioners, and with more accuracy in that all the civilian commissioners are visible, but his pictures lack the color and drama of Stieffel's work. See: _Harper's Weekly_, November 16, 1867.]

[Footnote 30: The records of this treaty meeting are contained in the Office of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives. The final treaties are reproduced in _Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties_, vol. 2, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, pp. 754-764.]

[Footnote 31: There are several accounts of this. The best, in the opinion of the writer, is in James Mooney's "Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians," _17th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1898, pp. 181-186, 206-210.]

[Footnote 32: See photo taken at later date by Alexander Gardner, Still Picture Branch, National Archives.]

[Footnote 33: An interesting sidelight on Satanta: In the spring of 1867 he accepted a complete general officer's uniform from General Hancock at Fort Dodge and reciprocated shortly afterwards by attacking the post while decked out in his new dress.]

[Footnote 34: Detail and orientation check closely with map of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, sheet 6353 III NW, scale 1:25,000, Army Map Service.]

[Footnote 35: This was identified in Engineer Files, Cartographic Branch, National Archives.]

[Footnote 36: An over-all photographic view of the post is in Still Picture Branch, National Archives. For photos of the officers' quarters and barracks, see Brown and Felton, _op. cit._ (footnote 2), pp. 98, 128.]

[Footnote 37: See photo in Brown and Felton _op. cit._ (footnote 2), p 135.]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, pp. 137, 140.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, pp. 157, 163, and end paper map.]

[Footnote 40: Ewers, _op. cit._ (footnote 1), pp. 58-61, 1948.]

[Footnote 41: Lower right in the Council Grove scene and in the foreground of the Fort Keogh picture.]