"Buffalo Soldiers"

The black frontiers heroes of the old west according to Lillian Schlissel:

During the Civil War , nearly 180,000 black troops fought with the Union army against the confederacy, and more than 33,000 gave their lives to end slavery.  After the war, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered General Phillip Sheridan and William Sherman to organize regiments of black cavalry. These were designated the Ninth  and Tenth Calvary, each containing about a thousand men under the command of white commissioned officers- Colonel Benjamin Grierson for the tenth.

Two black regiment of infantry were organized, the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. George Armstong Custer refused to command  black troops, but others accepted their task gladly. Black troops  who had been farmers, cooks, carpenters and blacksmiths came from all parts of the country. The Army paid them thirteen dollars a month plus rations and sent them to the most desolate and dangerous frontier outposts, where they serve under the harsest conditions with the oldest equipment.

They fought Indian tribes that few soldiers wished to encounter --- the Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa,Apache,Ute,and Sioux.  It was the Indians who gave the black troops the name buffalo soldiers  because their hair resembled the shaggy coat of the buffalo. The buffalo was sacred to the Indians, and the men of the Ninth and Tenth cavalry and Twenty -fourth and Twenty - fifth Infantry accepted the name as a  badge of honor, and the buffalo became a prominent part of their regiment crest.

Thirteen men of the Buffalo Soldiers won the  highest military award of the nation, the Congressional Medal of Honor.  When all - black regiments were disbanded after World War 11, almost one hundred years after they were organized, the Tenth Cavalry became the 510 th Tank battalion.   But memories of fronties days were strong , and the 510 th was redesinated  to the Tenth Cavalry in 1958 and stationed at Forth Knox, Kentucky.

A bronze statute in memory of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty -Fourth and the Twenty -fifth Infantry was dedicated in 1992 at Forth Leavenworth, Kansas, to commemorate the courage of the Buffalo Soldiers and mark their place in American military history.  The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry served in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Utah,and Montana.  In 1880's their orders were to escort stagecoaches and survey parties through Indian territory. Back scouts like Isaiah Dorman, who fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Frank Grouard, who led troops through Sioux Country, and Sam Bowman, who could follow a trail through Apache territory; at different times accompanied the Buffalo Soldiers.

These men gave every ounce of their energy and skill to carry the mail, protect the railroads, clear off outlaws, and make the country safe for settlers.  Hardest of all, Buffalo Soldiers were black men with orders to keep the peace between white men and red men.  It was a daunting task.  The Ninth Cavalry was stationed at Forth Stockton in western Texas.  Their quarters were austere-- soldiers usually rested on sacks filled with straw and tossed across metal slats on a bunk bed.   Their rations were poor and their horses were seldom  in top form.  But the  worst  of it all was that Stockton sat in the middle of the great Comanche war Trail, a road used  by the kiowa and the Comanche to the north and the Apache to the south.

The tribes warred with each other , with the Texans and with a branch of the kickapoo tribe  living in Mexico.  agaisnt all odds, the Tenth helped capture the outlaw Billy the Kid and the dangerous Geronimo.  People said the men of the Tenth were part buffalo and part scorpion.  John J. Pershing, who would rather lead the U.S.  Army forces in World War1, was a lieutenant when he took command of the Tenth Cavalry and earned the nickname Black Jack Pershing. He respected his troops and led them against the outlaw Pancho Villa in Mexico. During the Spanish- American war, Theodore Roosevelt, then under secretary  of the navy, recruited a regiment of cowboys he called the Rough riders.

When The Rough Riders reached the top of San Juan Hill in Cuba, they found to their surprise that the Buffalo soldiers were already there.  Like Their fellow soldiers in the cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers in the Twenty -Fourth and The Twenty -Fifth Infantry faced danger in the raw territories of Montana and Wyoming.  Their job was to protect the mail, guard stage coach travelers, and fight outlaws and Indians.  On one ocassion, the Twenty fourth was guardign an Army payroll in Arizona when it was ambushed by bandits. The paym,aster rcounted the fighting:  I was a soldier in Grants's old regiment, and during the entire Civil war it was justly prod of its record... but I never witnessed better courage or better fighing than shown by the colored soldiers on May 11, 1889.

Because of their valor displayed in this fight, the United States government awarded Sergent Benjamin Brown and Corporal Isaiah Mays, both of the Twenty -fourth and the Twenty -Fifth Infantry, the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Buffalo Soldiers helped to bring law and order to regions where rancher fought with farmers, where Indians tribes  warred with each other and  with settlers, and where bandits threatened to overrun  small  towns.   On rare occasions, settlers acknowledge their great debt to the black troops.  When the twenty-FIFfht was ordered to duty in the Spanish- American War, the people of Missoula ,Montana, postponed Easter church services so that they could line up along the towns main street a wave goodbye to black troops who had become their protection and friends.

Over the years, that strange name, Buffalo Soldiers, became a prized possession of those black troops  who had left aleagcy of courage ous service in the Military history.

Benny Faye Douglass