Today I am going to talk about monuments to“Buffalo Soldiers,” black soldiers who served inthe American Regular Army between the

American Civil War of 1861-1865 and American entryinto World War I in 1917. Just over 11% of the Indian-fighting Army was black, and this was very important.In 1866, for the first time, the Regular Army, in recog-nition of their significant service during the Civil War,made a place for the black soldier. It was a segregatedplace in which it was almost impossible to become anofficer, but it was a place. Blacks had earlier served asvolunteer soldiers, but never as members of the RegularArmy. From 1866 on, there would always be black sol-diers in the United States Army.

They came to be called “Buffalo Soldiers,” appar-ently because some plains Indians saw a physical resem-blance between their brown skins and curly hair and thebuffalo. They fought in some of the major wars againstIndians, most notably in the brutal campaign againstthe Apaches Victorio and Nana in 1879-1881. Theyalso did what all soldiers did in the west—protectedwagon trains, the mail, and telegraph lines; mapped newand unfamiliar territory; and built roads. EighteenBuffalo Soldiers received the Medal of Honor, then theonly Army decoration for bravery and now its highest,but mainly they represented the involvement ofAfrican-Americans in this central drama of 19th-cen-tury American history, the expansion of the nationwestward and the dispossession of the NativeAmericans that accompanied it. Important because theywere mainstream participants in this national epic, theirstatues and commemorations are significant for whatthey show us about America today.

Students of history are accustomed to anomaly. Wedeal with human behavior so paradox, contradiction,

ambiguity, and perversity are familiar to us. Like otherparts of the human story, American history has its shareof irrationality and illogic, much of which is driven bythe racism that remains a problem in our society.

Consider this. The Civil War, the great sectionalconflict that tore the nation apart, was won by the Unionwith an army of about two million. Roughly 10% of thatarmy (between 180,000 and 200,000) was black. The vic-tory is marked by thousands of public memorials—stat-ues and sculptures in town squares, parks, and cemeter-ies.1 Yet during the great era of commemoration in thefifty years after the Civil War, just three of the manyhundreds that were erected showed any black militaryfigures, and two of those were obscure single figures sur-rounded by many white soldiers.2 Only the AugustusSaint Gaudens relief in Boston Common that celebratesthe heroism of Robert Gould Shaw, the colonel of theblack 54th Massachusetts Infantry, has black soldiers in ahighly visible, even prominent, position.The St. Gaudensmasterpiece, with its realistic black infantrymen, of vary-ing height and appearance, was unveiled in 1897.3

The statuary of the vanquished Confederacy mir-rored that of the victors. Both sides adopted the samemodel, a standing, uniformed, armed white commonsoldier, the symbolism of which is clear. We are lookingat free (standing), legitimate (uniformed), powerful(armed) men. We are also looking at “our boys,” volun-teer soldiers from towns all across the nation, whojoined locally recruited regiments such as the FirstMinnesota or the 19th Virginia and whose sacrifice iscelebrated in their home towns and counties.

The statue at the National Cemetery near theAntietam battlefield in Maryland, nicknamed “OldSimon,” was completed in 1874, shown at thePhiladelphia centennial exhibition in 1876-78, and sent

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Remembering the Buffalo Soldier:Memorials to Black Soldiers of the Indian-War Era

byFrank N. Schubert

to Antietam in 1880. Its dimensions are mind-boggling:made of 27 pieces of granite weighing 250 tons; the fig-ure alone is 21.5 feet tall, and weighs 29 tons, and thestructure, including the base, is 44 ft, 7 inches, tall. It isinscribed, “Not for themselves but for their country,September 17, 1862.”4

Erecting local monuments to white soldiers was abig business. The Muldoon Monument Co ofLouisville, Kentucky, boasted that it made 90% of allConfederate monuments, and the American BronzeFoundry Company, of staunchly Unionist Chicago,advertised “Confederate Statues in Bronze.” Generallyspeaking, statues were individually made, based on astandard model, which could be altered in small ways tosuit a client, and all of the firms that produced themmade Union and Confederate statues.5

Unlike the Civil War with its huge armies, theIndian wars of the next generation were fought by anarmy of about 25,000, one to two percent of the CivilWar force. The soldiers were regulars, enlisted for spe-cific terms of service, assigned to “U.S.” regiments, andrecruited nationwide. The “victory” of the small RegularArmy over the Indians, about which some Americansnow feel pangs of guilt, generated almost no statuaryshowing black or white soldiers in the century followingthe final Indian disaster at Wounded Knee, SouthDakota, in 1890.6

Virtually all of the markers and structures at morethan 110 forts and battlefields involved free standinghistorical markers or plaques on either pyramids ofstones or rectangular columns of rock.7 Since commem-orative statuary is an urban phenomenon, this is notsurprising: most of the battlefields are far from cities oreven major highways.8 Besides, the western battles werenot of the epic scale of the Civil War. Also, the soldierswere federal regulars, not local boys. Westerners neverdeveloped ties to the small Regular Army that battledthe Indians and protected them; so local incentive tocelebrate their efforts and lives was lacking. For all ofthese reasons, the monuments marking forts and battlesites and the roadside markers generally lack humanform and personification.9 Commemorative displaysrarely show individuals, and when they do they showtwo-dimensional silhouettes or line drawings of modestsize. A tradition of statuary like the one that came outof the Civil War never took hold.

But in 1977 came a new statue of a soldier. He wasblack, and his name was Emmett. The figure, designedby Rose Murray, showed a gritty trooper, maybe just infrom a grueling desert patrol or a hard pursuit of ban-dits. Like the statues commemorating the Vietnam warthat started to appear at the same time, he looked morerealistic than heroic. Also like Vietnam statuary, he

reflected a trend away from an all-white image of thearmed forces toward “a more pluralistic vision of nation-hood and the willingness to accord greater equality ofrecognition to African Americans and women.”10 Thistall, sturdy figure guards the front gate of FortHuachuca, Arizona. He is the first Buffalo Soldier stat-ue erected in the West.11

Since 1992, four more statues have appeared, all ofblacks, all at western forts. What does this mean?Clearly statuary does more than add visual interest tothe landscape, make work for designers and sculptors, orlure tourists. It is also more than a resting place forpigeons. As Andre Malraux noted, statuary says thingsabout a society and its culture. And here we are lookingspecifically at three things: (1) messages about the posi-tion of blacks in American society, (2) messages regard-ing the changing image of the Indian and the Indianwars, and (3) messages about how a society sees itself.

In the 1990s, the period of the dedication of thesestatues, Buffalo Soldiers became a part of the popularculture. Their images appeared on refrigerator magnets,tee-shirts, coffee mugs, and a postage stamp; and theybecame the subjects of romance novels, children’s books,plays, feature films, and popular songs. Memorial Dayceremonies celebrated their bravery, while re-enactorsdressed and paraded in frontier attire, imitating thesesoldiers. The Buffalo Soldier became a familiar, readilyrecognized cultural icon.

The rise of the Buffalo Soldier to this prominencebegan in the 1960s, the period of the civil rights revolu-tion. Many African Americans already knew about theirmilitary heritage, but only later did the nation at largebecome familiar with the Buffalo Soldiers. The processstarted in 1960, with John Ford’s “Sergeant Rutledge,” afilm of subtlety and insight about a black sergeantaccused of rape and murder.12 The Civil War centennialalso helped, joining with the civil rights movement toprovoke reconsideration of the Civil War and a newfocus on black soldiers. The ‘60s brought expandedinterest in black history in general, the establishment ofblack studies programs in universities, and an interest inBuffalo Soldiers.13 William Leckie’s book, The BuffaloSoldiers: a Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West,appeared in 1967. And a song, “The Buffalo Soldiers,”recorded by two rhythm-and-blues groups, theFlamingoes and the Persuasions, recalled the soldiers’heroics on the frontier and in the war against Spain in1898, and asked plaintively of the Buffalo Soldiers,“Will you survive in this new land?”14

In the 1990s monuments to Buffalo Soldiers wereerected in several places, most notably at FortLeavenworth, Kansas, where several black cavalry unitshad been organized in 1866 and 1867. There, on July 25,

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1992, General Colin Powell dedicated a larger-than-lifestatue of a mounted trooper by sculptor Eddie Dixon.Powell, a black four-star Army general, serving as chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the military advisorto the President of the United States. Deeply interestedin the history of black participation in “"the descendentof those Buffalo Soldiers…and all the black men andwomen who have served the nation in uniform.”15

When he spoke at the dedication in 1992, to anaudience in which black veterans of the segregated armyand uniformed buffalo-soldier reenactors were clearlyvisible, major television networks carried the ceremony.Powell reminded the nation of the tradition of blackmilitary service. “From the beginning of our nation,” hesaid, “African Americans answered the call to arms indefense of America whenever that call came.”Moreover, from the establishment of the regiments ofblack regulars after the Civil War, “African Americanswould henceforth always be in uniform, challenging theconscience of the nation, posing the question, ‘Howcould they be allowed to defend the cause of freedom,to defend the nation, if they, themselves, were to bedenied the benefits of being American?”’ He acknowl-edged that he, the highest ranking officer in the armedforces and in the eyes of many a hero of the 1991 waragainst Iraq, owed a debt to the black soldiers who hadgone before him, and he challenged young people not toforget the soldiers' sacrifice and their service.16 The wellpublicized ceremony, the declarations by both houses ofCongress that July 28, 1992 was “Buffalo SoldiersDay,”17 and the imposing permanent presence of thestatue itself unleashed what historian James Leikercalled “a veritable explosion of Buffalo Soldiers com-memorations including museum displays, documen-taries, newspaper and journal articles, and reenactmentsocieties.”18 The anonymity of the Buffalo Soldiers inthe United States ended in the summer of 1992.

Monuments appeared at other western posts whereblack soldiers had served. The figure at Fort Bayard,New Mexico, representing Medal of Honor recipientCorporal Clinton Greaves and designed by GregoryWhipple, was also dedicated in the summer of 1992.19

Another statue, Reynaldo Rivera’s “The Sentinel,” wasunveiled in July 1994 at Fort Selden near Las Cruces insouthern New Mexico.20 The newest of the group, ded-icated in 1999 at Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, Texas,showed a Corporal Ross of the 9th Cavalry, engaged ina running fight with three Mescalero Apache warriors.At least one other, at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base,Wyoming, the Fort D. A. Russell of the Indian war era,was partially designed and remains to be finished.21

The new statues, from Emmett to Corporal Ross,carried elements of archetypal Civil War statues, show-

ing standing (or mounted), uniformed, and armed com-mon soldiers—masculine, legitimate, powerful figures.22

Moreover, just as the large number of Civil War monu-ments gave American nationalism of the time the faceof the common white soldier, so the wave of buffalo-soldier statuary at the end of the twentieth centuryadded a face to the picture of the expansion of postcivil-War America, that of the common black soldier.

These statues documented the political strength ofblack America. The new wave of memorial sculptures,highlighting black military contributions, bespoke anew time. The new monuments expressed the signifi-cant position of African-Americans in the body politicand particularly in the military services at the end of the20th century. As Kirk Savage, historian of Civil Warmemorialization, noted, “Public monuments do notarise as if by natural law to celebrate the deserving; theyare built by people with sufficient power to marshal (orimpose) public consent for their erection.”23 The waveof public monuments marked much more than thearrival of the Buffalo Soldier in American culture; itsignaled the arrival of African-Americans at a new levelof political strength and influence.24

Public statuary provided only the most obvious ofthe many images of Buffalo Soldiers. Numerous artistsresponded to the growing demand for paintings andprints. For more than a century, the American west hadbeen a favorite topic of artists, and those who depictedBuffalo Soldiers followed in the footsteps of one of thebest known American painters of the end of the nine-teenth century, Frederic Remington.

Commemorative ceremonies, with their newspaperand television publicity, reflected the rising interest.These observances sometimes included dedication ofnew historical markers and plaques. Reminders of buf-falo-soldier contributions were installed in many places,including the United States Military Academy in 1996;Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1997; Camp Blanding,Florida, in 1998; and Hagerstown, Maryland, in 2000.Other commemorations focused on Medal of Honorrecipients, in Nevada, Tennessee, Maryland, Oregon,and Washington, D.C. In addition to programs thattypically included prayer, speakers, patriotic music, anduniformed reenactors, such observances left permanentreminders in Medal of Honor grave markers, historicalplaques, and streets named for buffalo-soldier heroes.

Before this wave of buffalo-soldier statuary andcommemoration, the Indian wars had a face, even if itwas rarely chiseled in the stone of public sculpture.25 Itwas a white face, framed by blonde usually longish hair,and it belonged to George Armstrong Custer, killed bythe Cheyenne and Sioux with 225 of his men at theLittle Big Horn River, in Montana, on June 26, 1876.

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Custer’s defeat happened just days before July 4, 1876,the one hundredth anniversary of American independ-ence, celebrated in Philadelphia with a huge exposition,showing the growing wealth, sophistication, and matu-rity of the nation. Imagine the shock of the news thatmore than two hundred soldiers of this rich sprawlingnation had been killed by people considered to be meresavages. The reports were devastating, and the countryneeded an uplifting myth. Poets, novelists, and painterspromptly fashioned one that turned George Custer intoa gallant martyr in the spread of civilization.26

Perhaps Custer will remain the personification ofthe Indian fighting army. He has been at the center ofthe American view of the frontier army for so long thathe will be very difficult to dislodge. His impact isreflected in a staggering volume of Custeriana, includ-ing nearly 2,000 paintings and illustrations and anamazing 46 films.27 Some consider Custer a martyr,who, depending on one's viewpoint, died for theadvancement of western civilization or for the sins ofthat civilization in its treatment of the Indians. Eitherway, he died for a cause, not just as a demonstration ofhis stupidity, lack of knowledge of the enemy, orimpetuosity.28 In Western Christian culture, martyrdomis a very powerful idea.

Today Custer’s position is weakening, at least a lit-tle. The Indians have been chipping away at his preem-inence at the Little Big Horn Battlefield since 1976, theyear of the centennial commemoration of his death,with a confrontational presence at the site itself. Theyachieved a major victory, when the battlefield park,known for many years as Custer National Monumentwas renamed the Little Big Horn National Monumentin 1991. Their argument against Custer emphasized hiscentrality as the symbol of the white view in which theconquest of the West represented the triumph of civi-lization over savagery.29 However, these passionateopponents of the Custer myth sustained his central role.The Indians never attacked him as an incompetentcommander, one who led his troops to their death out ofignorance, vanity, and stupidity. Such a position woulddiminish the achievements of their ancestors. As far asthe Indians are concerned, when they beat Custer, theyrubbed out the Army’s best.30 So Custer has gone fromthe great hero—The Boy General, Bravest of the Brave,Last of the Cavaliers, and so on—to “supreme whiteanti-hero.”31 And Indians, who for many years had littleimpact on public opinion, are now showing that they toohave political clout.

Still, Custer’s position as the archetype of the Indian-fighting army is weakening, partly because of Indianattacks on his legacy and the conquest he represented, butalso because the Buffalo Soldier is rising as a competing

model. The proliferation of statues, along with otherimages of the black regular, suggests that one day the faceof American nationalism during the Indian war periodmay turn out to be not Custer’s but that of the black com-mon soldier. After all, heroes do not have to endure for-ever, they can fade away, and there is no reason whyCuster’s fame should continue undiminished. DavidLowenthal wrote more than twenty-five years ago,“Memory not only conserves the past but adjusts recall tocurrent needs. Instead of remembering exactly what was,we make the past intelligible in the light of present cir-cumstances.”32 Sometimes, we improve the past to suitour current interests or needs, and one of the needs todayis for non-white heroes.33 Just as surely as the permanenceof Custer's stature is not guaranteed, there is no reasonwhy Custer should not be replaced by a collective entityas the archetypical frontier soldier, The Buffalo Soldier.34

But wait! As the face of this nationalism becomesthe face of Buffalo Soldiers fighting Indians, two ironiesemerge. First of all, the fact remains that nearly ninetypercent of the frontier army was in fact white. Second,the new image is of one non-white group fighting anddefeating another in service of white goals. This is notwhat the promoters of Buffalo Soldier heritage had inmind when they set out to build these new statues in theWest. Viewing the world from a “Rainbow Coalition”perspective, which assumes that all people of color sharevalues and interests and have been discriminated againstif not oppressed by whites, they are clearly troubled bythe problem. Those who promote the preeminence ofthe Buffalo Soldier have dealt with the issue of black-soldier relations with Indians by asserting a dual myth,that black soldiers contributed disproportionately to thewinning of the West, while developing an empathy andmutual respect with the Indians on the basis of theirshared non-whiteness.

The notion that black soldiers played exceptionallyprominent roles in the conquest is easy to test. We cancount combat engagements and compare the numbersto the size of the black presence in the Army. Threeslightly different compilations of skirmishes and battlesplace participation of black troopers at between 11.9percent and 13.8 percent. So the numbers suggest thatBuffalo Soldiers did not in fact carry a disproportionateburden of the fighting. This is not to say that their con-tribution was not significant or grindingly hard, but itwas not out of line with their numbers.35

The other part of the myth, that the soldiers and theIndians shared some sort of bond, has two foundations.One is the notion that the Indians called the soldiers“Buffalo Soldiers” as a sign of respect for their fightingabilities. The buffalo was special, even sacred to theplains tribes, this line of reasoning says. Therefore the

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Indians would not have called the troopers BuffaloSoldiers if they had not meant it respectfully. So thephrase must mean more than a reference to brown skinor nappy hair. The other foundation is modernRainbow-coalition wishful thinking that projects back-ward into the nineteenth century the feeling that non-whites share a common bond and a common oppressor.Essentially the myth rises from an obvious present prob-lem: rationalizing black participation in white conquest,while deflecting the guilt inherent in that role.

Unfortunately for the myth makers, their effortignores the reality of the buffalo-soldier reaction to theIndians, which reflected an unbridgeable cultural gap.This is worth elaboration: the soldiers came from amonotheistic English-speaking agrarian-industrial cul-ture; the Indians were semi-nomadic warrior-hunters,who spoke many languages, none of which wereEnglish, and whose religious practices--shamanism,supernatural visions, self-mutilation, and even humansacrifice—were unfamiliar, even repellent, to the sol-diers. The black soldiers’ reactions to the Indians mir-rored the prevailing white racism. Black soldiers usedthe same dismissive epithets— “hostile tribes,” “nakedsavages,” and “redskins”; they also indulged in the sameracist caricatures employed by whites. Reminiscent ofthe use among whites of “blackface” to denigrate andstereotype African-Americans, a black private namedRobinson went to a masquerade ball at Fort Bayard in1894 mockingly dressed as “an idiotic Indian squaw.”36

The response of black soldiers to Indians should beinterpreted with care. Black soldiers in the generationafter slavery longed for inclusion in the society at large.That society was certainly racist, and soldier use of big-oted terms and stereotypes may show no more thantheir acquiescence in the larger cultural order, a phe-nomenon that Joel Kovel calls “metaracism.”37 So, whena black soldier called a plains Indian in 1890 “a voodoonigger,”38 he not only repeated the voice of a white sol-dier who called the plains Indians in 1873 “red nig-gers.”39 He also reflected the overall values of the culturein which he struggled to make his place. By such usages,he hoped to ally himself with the dominant group.40

Both aspects of the mythical view, that the soldierswere the Army’s best and that they uniquely appreciatedthe Indians’ plight, were articulated in the 1997 film“Buffalo Soldiers,” directed by the well-known blackactor Danny Glover. This film, aired by Turner NetworkTelevision and meant to be taken seriously, as evidencedby the “Educator's Guide” that was released with it,41 por-trayed the Buffalo Soldiers as so able that they did some-thing no United States soldiers, black or white, ever man-aged to do, surprise and capture Victorio and his band ofWarm Springs Apaches. Then, with the Apaches under

their control, the troopers did something else that noUnited States soldiers, black or white, ever did. Aftersympathetic conversations over coffee, in which soldiersand warriors expressed their mutual understanding of theoppression each experienced at the hands of whites, thetroopers let the Apaches go. This fantasy insulted bothparties. The Apaches, who were expert trackers andscouts, never allowed themselves to be encircled byAmerican soldiers of any color. The Buffalo Soldiers, hadthey been adept enough and lucky enough to have baggedVictorio, would never have let him go. The story mighthave consoled some people but did not reflect reality.42

Native American advocates in the 1990s objectedstrongly to the attention given to the Buffalo Soldiers,especially the idea that their forebears and the soldiersshared a bond of respect or understanding. The issue ofa postage stamp commemorating Buffalo Soldiers in1994 catalyzed this dissent. United States Postal Servicepublicity materials asserted that the name “BuffaloSoldiers” had been “bestowed by Native Americans forthe courage displayed on the battlefield,”43 and that “thecombat prowess, bravery, and courage on the battlefieldof these black troopers inspired the Indians to call themBuffalo Soldiers.”44

The first salvo of dissent came from VernonBellecourt of the American Indian Movement. Writingin Indian Country Today, a reliable forum for objectionsto glorification of Buffalo Soldiers, Bellecourt deniedthat the name reflected any “endearment or respect.” Asfar as he was concerned, plains Indians only applied theterm Buffalo Soldier to “these marauding murderouscavalry units” because of “their dark skin and texture oftheir hair.”45 Such angry outbursts continued throughthe 1990s,46 as did demonstrations at museum exhibitson Buffalo Soldier history and other public observances.Just as the Leavenworth statue catalyzed public aware-ness of the Buffalo Soldier, so the stamp provoked sub-stantial Indian resentment of the favorable publicitygiven the troopers.47

So what do we conclude about the statues andBuffalo Soldier commemorations? Beyond the clear evi-dence of growing black political clout are issues of inter-action between multiple racial and ethnic groups. Raceis not acted out in the United States on a binary basis,between blacks and whites alone. Many others areinvolved, including Indians, Latinos, Asian Americans,and, as we have recently become sharply aware, ArabAmericans. Interaction takes place among and betweenthese groups as well as between them and whites. In thecase we are considering, the increasing media exposureand growing political power of the Indian rights move-ment that successfully promoted a negative view ofCuster has made it a burden for anyone, black or white,

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to symbolize the Indian fighter and represent whatmany now consider to have been an immoral extermina-tionist policy.48 If the man who symbolizes the Indianfighter in history must have been evil, having carried outan immoral policy, then the Buffalo Soldier, whether heovertakes Custer as the symbol or not, also becomes theimage of evil. To fend off this possibility, the myth of theBuffalo Soldier tries to co-opt the Indian challenge byasserting mutual respect.

While people confront these issues, the statues--atForts Huachuca, Leavenworth, Bayard, Selden, andBliss—remain, silent but permanent reminders of theblack presence in the Indian-fighting army, and it isintriguing to speculate about their future as symbols ofthe frontier force. Given that there is no context ofwhite-soldier statuary in the West to create perspective,is it possible that the face of the black soldier willbecome the dominant image of the Indian wars? Willthese conflicts some day be seen as struggles betweenblacks and Native Americans? Or will older images,such as the Custer paintings and films, offset this possi-bility, just as the recent appearance of Buffalo Soldierstatues has counterbalanced the traditional image of anall-white frontier army? As historians, maybe we shouldresist the desire to speculate about these possibilities andstick to what we know. And one thing we do know isthat the answer to the question in the song, the one thatasked “Buffalo Soldier, will you survive in this newland?” is clear now. The Buffalo Soldier is thoroughlyimbedded in American culture, and has become a partof American history, and the reply is a resounding “yes.”As to the rest, we—or our children—shall see.

Notes:

1 Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves:Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UniversityPress, 1997), p. 3.

2 Black troops were almost completely ignored inpublic statuary, and not just because they were black.With few exceptions blacks fought in units called“United States Colored Troops,” such as, for example,the 4th United States Colored Infantry and the 1stUnited States Colored Cavalry. So they owed their alle-giance more to the nation than to a particular locality,making local memorialization committees less likely toconsider celebrating their service. Savage, StandingSoldiers, Kneeling Slaves, pp. 184-185, 187, 207.

3 On the design of the Shaw memorial, see TheShaw Memorial: A Celebration of an AmericanMasterpiece (Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Eastern

National, 1997). Also see Savage, Standing Soldiers,Kneeling Slaves, pp. 198-204; Martin H. Blatt, ThomasJ. Brown & Donald Yacavone, eds., Hope & Glory:Essays on the Legacy of the 54th MassachusettsRegiment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,2001).

4 Ted Alexander, “Old Simon,” Blue & GrayMagazine 13 (October 1995), pp. 59-60.

5 Susan Cooke Soderberg, “Lest We Forget” AGuide to Civil War Monuments in Maryland,(Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Co., Inc.,1995), pp. xxiv-xxv.

6 Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’sLandscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin, TX:University of Texas Press, 1997), p. 322.

7 As far as I know, there is only one statue in theCivil War tradition, at Fort McPherson, Nebraska,where a standing, uniformed, armed soldier, very mucha smaller version of “Old Simon,” celebrated the role ofthe 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry in bringing white set-tlement to Lincoln County, Nebraska. Herbert M. Hart,Old Forts of the Northwest (Seattle: SuperiorPublishing Company, 1963), p. 75.

8 James M. Mayo, War Memorials as PoliticalLandscape: American Experience and Beyond. (NewYork: Praeger, 1988, p. 148).

9 There is no comprehensive compilation of imagesof Indian war commemoration. This summary is basedon personal travel and the following works: HerbertHart, Old Forts of the Northwest (Seattle: SuperiorPublishing Company, 1963); Hart, Old Forts of theSouthwest (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company,1964); Hart, Old Forts of the Far West (New York:Bonanza Books, 1965); Paul L. Hedren, Traveler'sGuide to the Great Sioux War (Helena: MontanaHistorical society Press, 1996); Steve Rajtar, Indian WarSites: A Guidebook to Battlefields, Monuments, andMemorials ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999); Soldierand Brave: Historic Places Associated with IndianAffairs and the Indian Wars in the Trans-MississippiWest (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1971).Also see Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape;Foote, Shadowed Ground; Andrew Hogarth, and KimVaughn. Battlefields, Monuments and Markers: A guideto Native American & United States ArmyEngagements from 1854-1890. Sydney, Australia:Andrew Hogarth Publishing, 1993. The FortMcPherson monument is shown in Hart, Old Forts ofthe Northwest, p. 75. Mayo notes two monuments thatbelong in neither the standard Indian War category orthe Civil War style, one to Rough Rider Bucky O'Neilland another to the Mormon Battalion (pp. 141, 158).Hedren also cites two with the faces of major frontier

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personages, an obelisk with Sitting Bull's visage at theHuncpapa chief 's grave and a bas relief of GeneralGeorge Crook conferring with the Apache chiefGeronimo (pp, 119, 120).

10 G. Kurt Piehler, Remembering War theAmerican Way (Washington: Smithsonian institutionPress, 1995), p. 7.

11 Frank N. Schubert, Black Valor: Buffalo Soldiersand the Medal of Honor, 1870-1898 (Wilmington,Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1997), p. 169.

12 In the year before the appearance of Ford’s film,Buffalo Soldiers appeared on television and in anotherfilm. In mid-November, 1959, a segment of NBC'sZane Grey Western series featured Sammy Davis, Jr., asa black corporal in command of a small unit ordered tobring an Indian chief to a treaty signing. “TheWonderful Country,” a movie that was described byLeonard Maltin as a “brooding Western involving[Robert] Mitchum running guns along Mexico-Texasline, romancing [ Julie] London...,” also had Leroy"Satchell" Page in a small role as a cavalry sergeant.“Major Dundee,” a 1965 Charlton Heston film includ-ed black soldiers, and was followed by a few others,including the deservedly obscure “Soul Soldier” from1970, Mario Van Peebles’ “The Posse,” in 1993, and the1997 Danny Glover effort, “Buffalo Solders.” TVGuide 7, No. 45 (November 7, 1959), p. A59; LeonardMaltin Movie and Video Guide, 1996 (New York:Signet Books, 1995) pp. 808-809, 1030, 1477; BuckO’Neil, with Steve Wulf and David Conrads, I WasRight On Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996),p. 214; Darius James, That's Blaxploitation: Roots ofthe Baadasssss ‘Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995), p. 43. On“Sergeant Rutledge,” see Scott Eyman, Print theLegend: the Life and Times of John Ford (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1999), p. 475.

13 Ludwig Lauerhass, “A Commemoration: TheShaw Memorial in American Culture,” The ShawMemorial: A Celebration of a Masterpiece(Conshohocken, PA: Eastern National, 1997), pp. 61-62.

14 D. Barnes, M. Smith, and M. Lewis, “TheBuffalo Soldiers,” c. 1969

15Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Powell and the BlackÉlite,” New Yorker, September 25, 1995, p. 64; NewYork Times, Sunday, May 15, 1994. On the connectionbetween Powell and the Buffalo Soldiers, also seeWalter Hill, “Exploring the Life and History of the‘Buffalo Soldiers,’ The Record 4 (March 1998), p. 12.

16 9th and 10th (Horse) Cavalry Association, TheBuffalo Soldier Monument Dedication (Topeka,Kansas: Mainline Printing, 1992); Anthony Williams,

“The Buffalo Soldier Monument,” Army 47 (February1997), pp. 61-63; Colin L. Powell with Joseph E.Persico, My American Journey (New York: RandomHouse, 1995), pp. 554-557. Powell's speech is quotedfrom Charlotte Raub, "Buffalo Soldiers—a ‘first’ inAmerican Military History,” INSCOM Journal 22( January-march 1999), p. 29.

17 U.S. Senate, 102d Congress, 2d session, JointResolution 92, January 3, 1992; U.S. House ofRepresentatives, 102d Congress, 1st Session, JointResolution 237, April 25, 1991.

18 James N. Leiker, “Black Soldiers at Fort Hays,Kansas, 1867-1869: A Study in Civilian and MilitaryViolence,” Great Plains Quarterly (17 (Winter 1997),p. 3.

19 Patricia Erickson, “Buffalo Soldier MonumentPlanned,” Public History News 12 (Fall 1991), p. 1;Sandra Griffin, “Silver City paying tribute to BuffaloSoldier,” New Mexico Magazine July 1992, p. 31.

20 “The Sentinel,” Albuquerque Journal, Sunday,July 24, 1994.

21 El Paso Times, Wednesday, June 17, 1998;Schubert, Black Valor, p. 169; Patrick McKenna,“Forgotten heroes: On the Trail of the BuffaloSoldier,”Airman, July 1995, pp. 38-43.

22 Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, p. 98.23 Kirk Savage, "The Politics of Memory: Black

Emancipation and the Civil War Monument,"Commemorations: the Politics of National Identity,John R. Gillis, ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1997), p. 135; Piehler, RememberingWar the American Way, pp. 7, 182.

24 Other manifestations of this political clout alsoconcerned historical interpretation. The ConsolidatedAppropriations Act of 1999, which provided fundingfor the national park system, required the Secretary ofthe Interior to encourage park managers of Civil Warbattle sites to “recognize and include in all of their pub-lic displays and multi-media educational presentationsthe unique role the institution of slavery played in caus-ing the Civil War and its role, if any, at the individualbattle sites.” The measure had been introduced byCongressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., Democrat of Chicago.Conference Report for H.R. 3194, CongressionalRecord 145, no. 163, part II (November 17, 1999), pp.H12367; “Interpretation said shifting at National bat-tlefield parks,” Headquarters Heliogram, no. 280(September-October 2000), p. 5.

25 In 1921 a small stone marker with a bas-reliefbust of Custer was unveiled at Custer Park, in Hardin,Montana, about 15 miles from the Little Big Horn bat-tlefield, before about 15,000 people, during the 45thanniversary commemoration. The historical marker at

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the Washita battlefield, where Custer surprised anddestroyed a peaceful Cheyenne village in 1868, has por-traits of Custer and the Cheyenne Dull Knife. Custeralso stands, saber in hand, on a monument in CusterCity, Colorado, and of course a headstone in the ceme-tery at the Little Big Horn Battlefield NationalMonument bears his name. Other Custer monumentsare at the United States Military Academy, West Point,New York, in Custer’s hometown of Monroe, Michigan,and in Detroit, Michigan. Also a statue at GettysburgNational Military Park commemorates the contributionof his Michigan Brigade of cavalry. Custer’s portrait ona bronze plaque adorns the base of the graniteGettysburg monument. Brian W. Dippie, Custer’s LastStand: the Anatomy of an American Myth (Lincoln:University Of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 92; Linenthal,Sacred Ground, p. 135, 138; Robert M. Utley, Custer:Cavalier in Buckskin (Norman: University of OklahomaPress, 2001), pp. 72, 163; Smithsonian institutionResearch Information System, "Inventories ofAmerican Painting and Sculpture,http://www.siris.si.edu/ webpac-bin/wgbroker, 31August 2001.

26 Dippie, Custer’s Last Stand, pp. 132-133.27 Paul Andrew Hutton, “From Little Big Horn to

Little Big Man: the Changing Image of a Western Heroin Popular Culture,” Hutton, ed., The Custer Reader(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992., p. p. 524;Bruce A. Rosenberg, “Custer: The Legend of theMartyred hero in America,” Hutton, The CusterReader, p. 525.

28 Hutton, “The Custer Myth,” Hutton, The CusterReader, p. 395.

29 Dippie, Custer’s Last Stand, p. 135; Linenthal,Changing Images of the Warrior Hero in America, pp.28-29.

30 See, for example, James Welch with Paul Stekler,Killing Custer: the Battle of the Little Big Horn and theFate of the Plains Indians (New York: W. W. Nortonand Company, 1994), pp. 61, 127, 170.

31 (Dippie, Custer’s Last Stand, pp. 4, 110)32 “Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and

Memory,” Geographical Review, 65 (1975):, quoted inFoote, Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes ofViolence and Tragedy, p. 5.

33 Lowenthal, Possessed By the Past, p. 142.34 Hutton, The Custer Myth, p. 395.35 Adjutant General’s Office, Chronological List of

Actions, &c., With Indians, From January 1, 1866, toJanuary, 1891; Francis E. Heitman, Historical Registerand Dictionary of the United States Army, from itsOrganization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903,vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office,

1903), pp. 426-449; George W. Webb, ChronologicalList of Engagements Between the Regular Army of theUnited States and Various Tribes of Hostile IndiansWhich Occurred During the years 1790 to 1898,Inclusive (St. Joseph, MO: National Indian WarVeterans, 1939).

36 Frank N. Schubert, Black Valor, pp. 128-129. Onthe social significance of the use of blackface, see DavidW. Blight, Race and Reunion: the Civil War inAmerican Memory (Cambridge, MA: The BelknapPress of Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 222-31,286.

37 Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistorty(London: Free Association Books, 1988), pp. 211-212.

38 Quoted in Edward A. Johnson, History of NegroSoldiers in the Spanish-American War (Raleigh, NC:Capital Printing Co., 1899), p. 34.

39 Quoted in Utley, Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin, p.92.

40 Kovel, White Racism, p. 216.41 Karen Needles, “Educator's Guide,” http://learn-

ing.turner.com/ Buffalo/index/html, December 1997.42 On “the strangeness of the past,” see Simon

Schama, “Clio at the Multiplex,” New Yorker ( January19, 1998), pp. 38-43.

43 “U.S. issues Buffalo Soldiers April 22,” StampCollector March 26, 1994, p. 3.

44 United States Postal Service, “AmericanCommemoratives: Buffalo Soldiers,” AmericanCommemorative Panel No. 436, 1994.

45 Vernon Bellecourt, “The glorification of BuffaloSoldiers raises racial divisions between blacks, Indians,”Indian Country Today, May 4, 1994.

46 See, for example, Cornel Pewewardy, "BuffaloSoldiers were federal hired guns,” Indian CountryToday, June 23-30, 1997.

47 Stamp Collector, June 4 and June 25, 1994; E-mail message, NATIVE-L <NATIVE-L@TAMVM1.TAMU.EDU>, subject: USPS $.50 [sic]stamps," June 8, 1995, copy in author’s files;Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 20, 1996; LosAngeles Times, February 6, 1997.

48 Hutton, The Custer Reader, p. 416.

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