CROOK’S CLOSING YEARS—HE AVERTS A WAR WITH THE UTES—A MEMBER OF THE
COMMISSION WHICH SECURED A CESSION OF ELEVEN MILLIONS OF ACRES
FROM THE SIOUX—HIS INTEREST IN GAME LAWS—HIS DEATH—WHAT THE
APACHES DID—WHAT “RED CLOUD” SAID—HIS FUNERAL IN CHICAGO—BURIAL
IN OAKLAND, MARYLAND—RE-INTERMENT IN ARLINGTON CEMETERY,
VIRGINIA.
The last years of General Crook’s eventful career were spent in
Omaha, Nebraska, as Commanding General of the Department of the
Platte, and, after being promoted to the rank of Major-General by
President Cleveland, in Chicago, Illinois, as Commanding General of
the Military Division of the Missouri. During that time he averted
the hostilities with the Utes of Colorado, for which the cowboys of
the western section of that State were clamoring, and satisfied the
Indians that our people were not all unjust, rapacious, and
mendacious. As a member of the Sioux Commission to negotiate for the
cession of lands occupied by the Sioux in excess of their actual
needs, he—in conjunction with his associates: ex-Governor Charles
Foster, of Ohio, and Hon. William Warner, of Missouri—effected the
relinquishment of eleven millions of acres, an area equal to
one-third of the State of Pennsylvania.
The failure of Congress to ratify some of the provisions of this
conference and to make the appropriations needed to carry them into
effect, has been alleged among the numerous causes of the recent
Sioux outbreak. In this connection the words of the Sioux chief “Red
Cloud,” as spoken to the Catholic missionary—Father Craft—are worthy
of remembrance: “Then General Crook came; he, at least, had never
lied to us. His words gave the people hope. He died. Their hope died
again. Despair came again.” General Crook also exerted all the
influence he could bring to bear to induce a rectification of the
wrong inflicted upon the faithful Chiricahua Apaches, in confounding
them in the same punishment meted out to those who had followed
“Geronimo” back to the war-path. He manifested all through his life
the liveliest interest in the preservation of the larger game of the
Rocky Mountain country, and, if I mistake not, had some
instrumentality, through his old friend Judge Carey, of Cheyenne,
now United States Senator, in bringing about the game laws adopted
by the present State of Wyoming.
General Crook’s death occurred at the Grand Pacific Hotel, his
residence in Chicago, on the 21st of March, 1890; the cause of his
death, according to Surgeon McClellan, his attending physician, was
heart failure or some other form of heart disease; the real cause
was the wear and tear of a naturally powerful constitution, brought
on by the severe mental and physical strain of incessant work under
the most trying circumstances.
It would be unjust to select for insertion here any of the thousands
of telegrams, letters, resolutions of condolence, and other
expressions of profound sympathy received by Mrs. Crook from old
comrades and friends of her illustrious husband in all sections of
our country: besides the official tribute from the War Department,
there were eloquent manifestations from such associations as the
Alumni of the Military Academy, the Military Order of the Loyal
Legion, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Pioneers of
Arizona, the citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, Prescott, Arizona,
Chicago, Illinois, Dayton, Ohio, and other places in which he had
served during the thirty-eight years of his connection with the
regular army, and feeling expressions uttered in the United States
Senate by Manderson and Paddock of Nebraska, Gorman of Maryland, and
Mitchell of Oregon; and a kind tribute from the lips of Governor
James E. Boyd of Nebraska. When the news of Crook’s death reached
the Apache Reservation, the members of the tribe who had been his
scouts during so many years were stupefied: those near Camp Apache
sat down in a great circle, let down their hair, bent their heads
forward on their bosoms, and wept and wailed like children. Probably
no city in the country could better appreciate the importance of
Crook’s military work against the savages than Omaha, which through
the suppression of hostilities by General Crook had bounded from the
dimensions of a straggling town to those of a metropolis of 150,000
people. The resolutions adopted in convention represent the opinions
of a committee composed of the oldest citizens of that community—men
who knew and respected Crook in life and revered him in death. Among
these were to be seen the names of old settlers of the stamp of the
Wakeleys, Paxtons, Pritchetts, Doanes, Millers, Cowins, Clarkes,
Markels, Wymans, Horbachs, Hanscoms, Collins, Lakes, Millards,
Poppletons, Caldwells, Broatches, Mauls, Murphys, Rustins, Woods,
Davis, Laceys, Turners, Ogdens, Moores, Cushings, Kitchens,
Kimballs, Yates, Wallaces, Richardsons, McShanes, and Kountzes—men
perfectly familiar with all the intricacies of the problem which
Crook had to solve and the masterly manner in which he had solved
it.
As a mark of respect to the memory of his former friend and
commander, General John R. Brooke, commanding the Department of the
Platte, has protected and fed in honorable retirement the aged mule,
“Apache,” which for so many years had borne General Crook in all his
campaigns, from British America to Mexico.
Could old “Apache” but talk or write, he might relate adventures and
perils to which the happy and prosperous dwellers in the now
peaceful Great West would listen with joy and delight.
General Crook had not yet attained great age, being scarcely
sixty-one years old when the final summons came, but he had gained
more than a complement of laurels, and may therefore be said to have
died in the fulness of years. He was born at Dayton, Ohio, on the
23d day of September, 1829; graduated from the United States
Military Academy in the class of 1852; was immediately assigned to
the Fourth Infantry; was engaged without cessation in service
against hostile Indians, in the present States of Oregon and
Washington, until the outbreak of the Rebellion, and was once
wounded by an arrow which was never extracted. His first assignment
during the War of the Rebellion was to the colonelcy of the
Thirty-sixth Ohio, which he drilled to such a condition of
efficiency that the other regiments in the same division nick named
it the “Thirty-sixth Regulars.” Before the war ended he had risen to
the rank of brigadier and of major-general of volunteers, and was
wounded in the battle of Lewisburgh, West Virginia.
He commanded the Army of West Virginia, and later on was assigned to
the command of cavalry under Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan. His
services during the war were of the most gallant and important
nature, not at all inferior to his campaigns against the western
tribes, but it was of the latter only that this treatise was
intended to speak and to these it has been restricted.
The funeral services were held at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the
remains had lain in state. The Rev. Dr. MacPherson conducted the
services, assisted by Doctors Clinton Locke, Fallows, Thomas, and
Swing. The honorary pall-bearers were Colonel James F. Wade, Fifth
Cavalry, Colonel Thaddeus H. Stanton, Pay Department, John Collins,
Omaha, General W. Sooy Smith, Potter Palmer, ex-President R. B.
Hayes, Marshall Field, W. C. De Grannis, Wirt Dexter, Colonel J. B.
Sexton, Judge R. S. Tuthill, Mayor D. C. Cregier, John B. Drake,
General M. R. Morgan, General Robert Williams, P. E. Studebaker, J.
Frank Lawrence, George Dunlap, Judge W. Q. Gresham, John B. Carson,
General W. E. Strong, John M. Clark, W. Penn Nixon, H. J.
MacFarland, and C. D. Roys. The casket was escorted to the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad Depot by a brigade of the Illinois National Guard,
commanded by Brigadier-General Fitzsimmons and by the members of the
Illinois Club in a body.
The interment, which took place at Oakland, Maryland, March 24,
1891, was at first intended to be strictly private, but thousands of
people had gathered from the surrounding country, and each train
added to the throng which blocked the streets and lanes of the
little town.
Among those who stood about the bereaved wife, who had so devotedly
followed the fortunes of her illustrious husband, were her sister,
Mrs. Reed, Colonel Corbin, Colonel Heyl, Colonel Stanton, Major
Randall, Major Roberts, Lieutenant Kennon, Mr. John S. Collins, Mr.
and Mrs. W. J. Hancock, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, Andrew Peisen, who had
been the General’s faithful servant for a quarter of a century, and
Dr. E. H. Bartlett, who had been present at the wedding of General
and Mrs. Crook.
One of the General’s brothers—Walter Crook, of Dayton, Ohio—came on
with the funeral train from Chicago, but another brother was unable
to leave Chicago on account of a sudden fit of illness.
Three of the soldiers of the Confederacy who had formed part of the
detachment—of which Mrs. Crook’s own brother, James Daily, was
another—that had captured General Crook during the closing years of
the Civil War and sent him down to Libby prison, requested
permission to attend the funeral services as a mark of respect for
their late foe. While the Rev. Dr. Moffatt was reciting prayer, two
of them whispered their names, May and Johnson, but the third I
could not learn at the moment. I have since heard it was Ira Mason.
Among those who attended from Washington were General Samuel Breck,
Captain George S. Anderson, Captain Schofield, Hon. George W.
Dorsey, M. C. from Nebraska, Hon. Nathan Goff, ex-Secretary of the
Navy, and Hon. William McKinley, M. C. from Ohio, who during the
Civil War had served as one of General Crook’s confidential staff
officers, and who through life had been his earnest admirer and
stanch friend.
As the earth closed over the remains of a man whom I had known and
loved for many years, and of whose distinguished services I had
intimate personal knowledge, the thought flitted through my mind
that there lay an exemplification of the restless energy of the
American people. Ohio had given him birth, the banks of the Hudson
had heard his recitations as a cadet, Oregon, Washington,
California, and Nevada witnessed his first feats of arms, West
Virginia welcomed him as the intelligent and energetic leader of the
army which bore her name, and Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana,
both Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah owed him a debt
of gratitude for his operations against the hostile tribes which
infested their borders and rendered life and property insecure.
No man could attempt to write a fair description of General Crook’s
great services and his noble traits of character unless he set out
to prepare a sketch of the history of the progress of civilization
west of the Missouri. I have here done nothing but lay before the
reader an outline, and a very meagre outline, of all he had to
oppose, and all he achieved, feeling a natural distrust of my own
powers, and yet knowing of no one whose association with my great
chief had been so intimate during so many years as mine had been.
Crook’s modesty was so great, and his aversion to pomp and
circumstance so painfully prominent a feature of his character and
disposition, that much which has been here related would never be
known from other sources.
Shakespeare’s lines have been present in my mind:
“Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.”
------------------------------------
On the 11th of November, 1890, General Crook’s body was transferred
to Arlington Cemetery, Virginia, opposite Washington, those present
being Major-General Schofield, commanding the army, and his aide,
Lieutenant Andrews, Colonel H. C. Corbin, Lieutenant Kennon, Colonel
T. H. Stanton, Captain John G. Bourke, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, and Mr.
George H. Harries.
The escort consisted of two companies of cavalry, commanded by Major
Carpenter, Captain George S. Anderson, Captain Parker, and
Lieutenant Baird.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRIEF LIST OF BOOKS ON TRAVEL, EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE, PUBLISHED
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The author mentions a band of Utes call the ‘Timpanoags’. The
currently accepted name is ‘Timpanogos’, but we defer to the author
on the point.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original. The following issues should be noted, along with the
resolutions.
ix.16 THE GRAND CA[N/Ñ]ON—THE CATARACT CA[N/Ñ]ON Replaced.
43.18 the ranch of Archie Mac[ ]Intosh Removed.
121.34 the salient features of a [strategetical] _sic_
combination
165.25 the band of Utes called the [Timpanoags] _sic_
210.1 Crawford,[ford,]> Cushing, Removed.
335.24 and like the wind were away[.] Added.
441.19 without test[it]imony Removed.
a1.13 and that much good.[”] Added.
a1.46 perception of his meaning.[”] Added.
a2.39 ethnology, and philology.[”] Added.
a2.45 is rare and very inviting.[”] Added.
a3.37 [“]The work has been singularly well done. Added.
a3.47 has attracted wider attention.[”] Added.