This failure put a stop to all expeditions till the latter part of February, by which time I had managed to lay in enough rations to feed the command for about thirty days; and the horses back at Arbuckle having picked up sufficiently for field service they were ordered to Sill, and this time I decided to send Custer out with his own and the Kansas regiment, with directions to insist on the immediate surrender of the Cheyennes, or give them a sound thrashing.
He was ordered to get everything ready by March 1, and then move to the mouth of Salt Creek, on the North Fork of the Red River, at which place I proposed to establish a new depot for feeding the command.
Trains could reach this point from Camp Supply more readily than from Arbuckle, and wishing to arrange this part of the programme in person, I decided to return at once to Supply, and afterward rejoin Custer at Salt Creek, on what, I felt sure, was to be the final expedition of the campaign. I made the three hundred and sixty miles from Sill to Supply in seven days, but much to my surprise there found a despatch from General Grant directing me to repair immediately to Washington. These orders precluded, of course, my rejoining the command; but at the appointed time it set out on the march, and within three weeks brought the campaign to a successful close.
In this last expedition, for the first few days Custer's route was by the same trail he had taken in January--that is to say, along the southern base of the Witchita Mountains--but this time there was more to encourage him than before, for, on getting a couple of marches beyond old Camp Radziminski, on all sides were fresh evidences of Indians, and every effort was bent to strike them.
>From day to day the signs grew hotter, and toward the latter part of March the game was found. The Indians being in a very forlorn condition, Custer might have destroyed most of the tribe, and certainly all their villages, but in order to save two white women whom, it was discovered, they held as captives, he contented himself with the renewal of the Cheyennes' agreement to come in to Camp Supply. In due time the entire tribe fulfilled its promise except one small band under "Tall Bull," but this party received a good drubbing from General Carr on the Republican early in May. After this fight all the Indians of the southern Plains settled down on their reservations, and I doubt whether the peace would ever again have been broken had they not in after years been driven to hostilities by most unjust treatment.
It was the 2d of March that I received at Camp Supply Grant's despatch directing me to report immediately in Washington. It had been my intention, as I have said, to join Custer on the North Fork of the Red River, but this new order required me to recast my plans, so, after arranging to keep the expedition supplied till the end of the campaign, I started for Washington, accompanied by three of my staff--Colonels McGonigle and Crosby, and Surgeon Asch, and Mr. DeB.
Randolph Keim, a representative of the press, who went through the whole campaign, and in 1870 published a graphic history of it. The day we left Supply we, had another dose of sleet and snow, but nevertheless we made good time, and by night-fall reached Bluff Creek. In twenty-four hours more we made Fort Dodge, and on the 6th of March arrived at Fort Hays. Just south of the Smoky Hill River, a little before we got to the post, a courier heading for Fort Dodge passed us at a rapid gait. Suspecting that he had despatches for me, I directed my outrider to overtake him and find out. The courier soon turned back, and riding up to my ambulance handed me a telegram notifying me that General Grant, on the day of his inauguration, March 4, 1869, had appointed me Lieutenant-General of the Army. When I reported in Washington, the President desired me to return to New Orleans and resume command of the Fifth Military District, but this was not at all to my liking, so I begged off, and was assigned to take charge of the Division of the Missouri, succeeding General Sherman, who had just been ordered to assume command of the Army.
