Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill [Paperback]

Wilbur Sturtevant Nye (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1983

Fort Sill, located in the heart of the old Kiowa-Comanche Indian country in southwestern Oklahoma, is known to a modern generation as the Field Artillery School of the United States Army. To students of American frontier history, it is known as the focal point of one of the most interesting, dramatic, and sustained series of conflicts in the records of western warfare.

From 1833 until 1875, in a theater of action extending from Kansas to Mexico, the strife was almost uninterrupted. The U.S. Army, militia of Kansas, Texas Rangers, and white pioneers and traders on the one hand were arrayed against the fierce and heroic bands of the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowa-Apaches on the other.

The savage skirmishes with the southwestern Indians before the Civil War provided many army officers with a kind of training which was indispensable to them in that later, prolonged conflict. When hostilities ceased, men like Sherman, Sheridan, Dodge, Custer, and Grierson again resumed the harsh field of guerrilla warfare against their Indian foes, tough, hard, lusty, fighters, among whom the peace pipe had ceased to have more than a ceremonial significance.

With the inauguration of the so-called Quaker Peace Policy during President Grant’s first administration, the hands of the army were tied. The Fort Sill reservation became a place of refuge for the marauding hands which went forth unmolested to train in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico. The toll in human life reached such proportions that the government finally turned the southwestern Indians over to the army for discipline, and a permanent settlement of the bands was achieved by 1875.

From extensive research, conversations with both Indian and white eye witnesses, and his familiarity with Indian life and army affairs, Captain Nye has written an unforgettable account of these stirring time. The delineation of character and the reconstruction of colorful scenes, so often absent in historical writing, are to be found here in abundance. His Indians are made to live again: his scenes of post life could have been written only by an army man.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Captain W. S. Nye (more recently Major W. S. Nye, U.S.A) was born in Canton, Ohio. As a boy he moved with his parents to California and can remember when Hollywood was a barley field. Upon the entrance of the United States into the World War, he enlisted in the ambulance service. Soon, however, he received an appointment to West Point where he was graduated in 1920. Major Nye has seen service at Camp Knox, Kentucky; Camp Lewis, Washington; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and in Washington, D.C. He was stationed at Fort Sill in 1933, as a student in the advanced course of the Field Artillery School, when he began the researches in Indian history that led to the writing of Carbine and Lance.

A frequent contributor to the military journals and the author of many featured articles on western history, he is now editor of The Field Artillery Journal.

Product Details

• Paperback: 454 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (September 15, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806118563
• ISBN-13: 978-0806118567
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,216,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing and Intense, October 15, 2009

By 

Michael E. Fitzgerald (Kingwood, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Paperback)

This is the story of the Old Fort Sill, established by General Sheridan to guard against white raids into, and Indian raids out of, the Comanche and Kiowa Indian reservations. It is not a pleasant story.

In 1867 Indian depredations on the Southern Plains were unchecked and numerous Plains tribes, primarily the Comanche and the Kiowa, refused reservation life. With the approval of President Johnson, General Sherman ordered a three pronged attack on these tribes that resulted in Custer's thrashing the Kiowa on Washita Creek. Department Commander Phil Sheridan subsequently ordered the establishment of Ft. Sill on the Kiowa reservation to directly control the Kiowa. But direct control was not to be.

With President Grant's election in 1868, he transferred responsibility for Indian affairs from the Army to the Interior Department, enlisting the assistance of the Nation's religious groups to pacify the Indians. It proved to be a most well intentioned, colossal error. Except for the people who lived on the frontier, no one understood that with this policy the Plains Indians and the frontiersmen's fundamental nature guaranteed anarchy.

The Plains Indians, especially the Comanche, hated the Texans and had been warring with the Mexicans for well over 100 years. They saw both groups as fair game. Suddenly thrown into the mix of prey was the Army, the railroad and the Interior Department itself. With the transfer of control the Indians understood immediately what it subsequently took the US government six years to resolve. The reservation system provided free sanctuary, a base of operations within which the Indians could not be directly challenged by the Army and from which they could wreak devastation everywhere outside of the reservation. Better yet, when they tired of their raiding and returned to the reservation, they were fed, clothed, remounted and rearmed by the Interior Department.

With the United States government aiding and abetting Comanche, Kiowa and Arapaho military campaigns no wonder the Indians viewed everyone else with arrogance and derision. Amazingly, despite howls of protest by the Mexican government and everyone on the frontier, the Interior Department would pursue its "peace initiative" for years while the railroad and US Army columns were attacked, Texas was ravaged and raids into Mexico as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula resulted in a most amazing pattern of pillage and plunder, including a slave trade, with Texas and Mexican women and children often ransomed to the US government courtesy of the Interior Department. It truly was the Wild West.

But once the Indians began directly threatening Interior Department personnel, Interior made common cause with the Army and the mayhem ended. As Phil Sheridan had anticipated, Fort Sill became one of the key posts from which the ultimate subjugation of the Plains Indians occurred. We can be thankful that the author, Colonel Wilbur Nye, wrote this work in the 1930s while stationed at Fort Sill. In addition to having access to the post's archives and files he also had direct access to many of the Native Americans who were still alive. Thus, it is a compendium of the battles, fights and skirmishes (reported in a remarkably balanced manner) that were fought from roughly 1866 until 1873.

I knew the Oklahoma and Texas frontier was rough but I never realized how savage it was until I read this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can almost still hear the hoofbeats, January 21, 2006

By 

S. J. Snyder "De gustibus non disputandum" (Various, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Paperback)

I have some sentimental connection to this book, as my dad did went to Fort Sill for artillery training in the early 1950s.

While it's true this book tells the story of the southern Plains Indians Wars from an Army perspective, that's to be expected, as this story is about an Army fort and Army cavalry of the era.

That said, this is a great book to get a feel of that era on the saddle, especially if you combine it with something like "40 Miles a Day on Beans and Hay."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very informative, with an Army perspective, October 14, 2004

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Don Butler - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Paperback)

An excellent, very detailed history of the Southwestern Oklahoma frontier, the conflicts with the Comanches and Kiowas, and this important military post. As should be expected given Colonel Nye's background and the focus of the book, it is written from a military perspective. The book contains a wealth of information and is well worth reading by those interested in its subject matter. Other accounts of the wars and the reasons for the clash of cultures on the Southwestern Frontier after the Civil War may be found in Comanches: The Destruction of a People by Fehrenbach and The Buffalo War by Haley; or a later compilation by Nye of the tales told him by the Kiowas, entitled Bad Medicine and Good.