Only after three years of training under the disciplined leadership of General ANTHONY WAYNE did the army, temporarily known as the “Legion” and expanded to some 3,000 strong. The “Legion,” in somewhat reduced form, was reorganized and formed the basis for the United States Army in 1796. Growing tensions with Britain and the Indians of the Old Northwest saw an increase in the army’s size as well as its frontier assignments leading up to the WAR OF 1812 (1812-14). Following that war, Congress immediately began reducing the army, and by 1821 its maximum strength had been cut to 6,183. Much of this tiny regular force patrolled the frontiers and built western roads. For administrative and organizational purposes, the nation was divided into eastern and western military divisions, each commanded by a major general. These divisions were in turn subdivided into numbered departments.
As Americans continued to push west in the 1830s, they found that both the terrain and the Native Americans they encountered had changed. Up to this point, their fights against Indians had been conducted largely on foot. But as the Spanish had found two centuries before, the prairies, plains, and deserts of the vast American West placed a greater emphasis on mobility. Many of the more powerful Indian societies of the region, such as the Lakota (see SIOUX [Dakota, Lakota, Nakota]), CHEYENNE, COMANCHE, and KIOWA, had seized on Spanish horses to become some of the finest light horsemen in the world. Although reluctant to pay the extra costs mounted units entailed, Congress in 1832 created what eventually became a regiment of dragoons. A second dragoon regiment was added four years later, and a regiment of mounted riflemen was created on the eve of the Mexican War. By this time the regular army stood at just under 9,000 men.
The regular army’s responsibilities increased dramatically during the 1840s with the acquisition of Texas and the territories of California, New Mexico, and Oregon. To help meet the new challenges, Congress had raised the army’s maximum authorized strength to 16,000 by 1855. Organizationally the regiment, commanded by a colonel, remained the army’s basic building block. The U. S. Army now numbered five mounted regiments, 10 infantry regiments, and four artillery regiments. Artillery regiments, which often served as infantry when on frontier duty, boasted 12 companies, each led by a captain. Infantry and cavalry regiments each had 10 companies. Although authorized to have nearly 90 men when on frontier assignment, inefficient recruitment practices, desertion, detached service, extra duty assignments, and sickness commonly left units with fewer than 50 men ready for duty. Only rarely, such as in the First SEMINOLE WAR (1818-19), Second SEMINOLE WAR (1835-42), and Third SEMINOLE WAR (1855-58), did army columns in the field number more than 200 men.
Volunteers and militia continued to supplement the nation’s regular army, especially in the case of the BLACK HAWK WAR (1832). But bitter rivalries made for an uneasy relationship. Critics charged that the regulars were poorly suited for warfare against the mounted Plains Indians, who usually avoided battles when the odds seemed poor. “How can they protect us against Indians,” argued Senator Sam Houston, “when the cavalry have not horses which can trot faster than active oxen, and the infantry dare not go out in any hostile manner for fear of being shot and scalped!” Defenders of the army, citing an 1857 War Department report estimating that the country could have saved $30 million over 20 years by replacing volunteers with regulars, countered by arguing that volunteer forces were too expensive. Others charged that the poorly disciplined volunteers actually started many conflicts with Indians. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, Brevet Major General JOHN E. WOOL reported, “I do not apprehend any further difficulties with the Indians in Oregon and Washington Territories . if the [volunteers] can be kept out of the field”.
With the outbreak of the CIVIL WAR (1861-65), many of the frontier regulars were transferred east to fight the Confederates. In the absence of the regulars, states and territories turned to volunteer and militia units to deal with the Indians. Thus, many of the major engagements against the Indians during the Civil War years-including the battles of WOOD LAKE (1862), BEAVER RIVER (1863), WHITESTONE HILL (1863), and SAND CREEK (1864), and the concluding phases of the NAVAJO WAR-were dominated by volunteer rather than regular units.
The Civil War also saw the regular army undergo its traditional expansion and contraction. Following the surrender of Confederate forces in 1865, congressional actions in 1866, 1869, 1870, and 1874 reduced the regular army to a maximum strength of just over 27,000 men, organized into 10 cavalry, 25 infantry, and five artillery regiments. Between 10 and 50 percent of these soldiers, however, were assigned duties in the South during Reconstruction, guarding federal arsenals or garrisoning coastal defenses and were thus unavailable for duty fighting Indians. In a marked break from the past, Congress decreed that four regiments in the reconstituted army be composed entirely of African-American enlisted personnel; these units became known as BUFFALO SOLDIERS.
One of the great reference books on the cavalry, covers between the wars and references the acutual regulations. A must for any historian.
About Randy Steffen
Born in 1917 on a ranch in Maverick County, Texas, Randy Steffen grew up around horses and gave riding lessons while attending Stanton Preparatory Academy, a prerequisite for his appointment to West Point.
Of Sioux-Cheyenne descent, he began his lifelong love affair with beautiful horses as rider and trainer, undoubtedly influencing his lifelong career as a western artist, author and researcher. After receiving an appointment to West Point he traded places with a cadet at Annapolis and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1940 before serving in Europe in World War II.
After the war, Steffen leased a ranch in Nevada, began training polo ponies and soon after launched his career of artwork featuring horses and historical research. He designed Western Horseman magazine’s headquarters in 1948, worked as managing editor for another horse-related publication, and later as stuntman and stand-in for western movies. He began writing and painting, focusing many of his works on the accoutrements of the western life – saddles, bits, military saddles, and horsemen uniforms dating from the Revolutionary War to World War II.
He left Cisco for California in the ‘50s, purchasing an 18-wheeler truck to transport his wife Betty, their children Bonnie Jo and Bucky, their household goods, automobile, his beloved palomino Tascosa, four additional horses, a Jeep, a grand piano, 12 sets of mounted longhorns plus the entire contents of Steffen’s sizeable studio, artifacts, and personal library.
Bonnie Jo Steffen Thompson recalls her father unloading everything in the truck at the California Inspection stop, as not even a seed of horse feed was allowed to cross state lines. In later years Randy and his wife moved back to Cisco and then purchased a ranch near Lingleville (between Cisco and Stephenville).
Steffen died in 1977, leaving behind a body of work ranging from thousands of articles on military and western history to dozens of books, and hundreds of paintings, drawings and sculptures featured in exhibits and publications in the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Australia.
A number of Steffen’s bronze sculptures can be seen at Schaefer Art Bronze in Arlington, Texas, owned by another Cisco friend and fellow hunter, Joe Schaefer.
Among Steffen’s best-known works are the four-volume series, The Horse Soldier, 1776-1943; numerous covers and illustrations for the Hackamore Reinsman and Quarter Horse Journal; and a multi-panel mural of the history of Cisco, currently hanging in Prosperity Bank in Cisco.
In 1976 he received the George Washington Award by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for his contributions to American history. At the time of his death he was governor of the Company of Military Historians.
“Bringing in the Manada”
When Randy Steffen’s painting, “Bringing in the Manada”, appeared on the 1952 cover of The Cattleman, the magazine ran a Comment by the Artist, detailing the inspiration for the painting. Excerpted from the article:
The sight of a band of good brood mares with their spindly-legged colts trotting in from pasture has always touched a soft spot in my heart. Many’s the time I’ve made spring and fall roundups of horses in South Texas, Nevada, California, and Arizona…and I’ve always hated to see each roundup end.
There’s nothing downright cuter than a bunch of little range colts…all legs, curiosity, and energy. Just like a bunch of little kids, they’ll venture away from their mamas, burn up a day’s supply of energy in a few minutes chasing each other and pretending to be boogered by strange looking rocks and clumps of grass or brush.
This painting was the result of a lot of thinking about those horse roundups I’ve been on…in open range country, of which there’s mighty little left in the West.
While the country I had in mind when I painted the background for this cover was the Edwards Plateau section of South Texas, where I rode when I was a kid, the action itself is so typical of the roundups we used to have in southern Nevada. A man could ride there for a week and never see a fence.
The cover painting shows two cowboys, well-mounted cowboys, bringing in a band of good Quarter mares and colts for fall inspection. This band has been on a remote pasture all summer, and the owner is anxious to look over the colts for sale prospects…
The cowboy riding point has just loped ahead a little ways, just far enough to make the manada feel comfortable with his presence. He’s motioning to the flanker on the bluff to stay back and not crowd ‘em, for the going’s rough there, and there are several small arroyos that spooked mares and colts could duck into.
These boys are of the modern school…they work their manadas as slow and easy as possible. The less fuss and excitement in bringing them in, the less dust and dilemma when they’re in the corrals.
Randy Steffen, The Cattleman, 1952
