The Missouri Democrat prided itself on the variety of stories it published from across the Midwest for its St Louis readers. It was one of the first to carry profiles of leading personalities of the day – and the more flamboyant the characters, the better the Missouri Democrat’s editor liked them. Through detailed descriptions and lively reporting, correspondents were encouraged to transport readers from their comfortable St Louis living rooms into the heart of the story.
The hunt for news and memorable personalities directed Stanley towards tracks being laid by the new Union Pacific Railroad Company, an organisation created five years before to lay 1,006 miles of track westwards at the rate of 4 miles daily from Omaha to meet the Central Pacific’s track heading east from Sacramento. As the railroad pushed west through miles of prairie, land was assigned either side of the track every 70 miles to build movable cities, known as base camps, to accommodate the hundreds of engineers and labourers employed on the line. Scores of others also moved into the cities to help relieve railwaymen of their hard-earned wages – prostitutes and their pimps, liquor sellers, gamblers and gunmen. The cities became known as ‘Hell on Wheels’.
Now aged twenty-six, Stanley visited several base camps for the Missouri Democrat, including North Platte, Nebraska, which had been established by the railroad company eight months earlier. After stepping from one of Union Pacific’s platform cars he reported:
Every gambler in the Union seems to have steered his course for North Platte and every known game under the sun is played here. Every house is a saloon, and every saloon is a gambling den. Revolvers are in great requisition. Beardless youths imitate to the life the peculiar swagger of the devil-may-care bullwhacker and blackleg. . . . On account of the immense freighting done to Idaho, Montana, Utah, Dakota and Colorado, hundreds of bullwhackers walk about and turn the one-street into perfect Babel. Old gamblers who revelled in the glorious days of ‘flush times’ in the gold districts declare that this town outstrips them all yet.
In August 1867 he arrived at another ‘Hell on Wheels’ known as Julesburg and described it for his Missouri Democrat readers:
At night, new aspects are presented in this city of premature growth. Watchfires gleam over the sea-like expanse of ground outside the city, while inside, soldiers, herdsmen, teamsters, women, railroad men, are dancing, singing, or gambling. I verily believe that there are men here who would murder a fellow creature for five dollars. Nay, there are men who have already done it, and who stalk abroad in daylight unwhipped of justice. Not a day passes but a dead body is found somewhere in the vicinity with pockets rifled of their contents.
Stanley was always devising methods of earning extra cash to keep him afloat until his Missouri Democrat wages arrived – often weeks late due to the distance they had to travel and the difficulty of locating a ‘special correspondent’ always on the move between one frontier story and the next.
In between Union Pacific reporting assignments, Stanley found himself in Jefferson City, Missouri, where in February 1867 he came up with a plan to supplement his income by satisfying the public’s appetite for everything foreign. If it proved successful, he intended to take the idea on the road to wherever he might be reporting. His scheme was to hire halls where the public would pay an admission charge to hear a lecture by:
The American Traveller!
HENRY STANLEY,
who was cruelly robbed by the Turks on September 18, 1866, and stripped by overwhelming numbers, of his arms, passport, letter of credit, and over $4,000 in cash, will lecture on his travels and adventures in Turkey and Life in the Orient!!
There was space for the date, starting time and venue to be entered before the posters went on to tell the public various truths and lies:
Mr Stanley has served in the American navy, from January 1862, till the fall of Wilmington, at which he was present in January 1865. He then took a grand tour through the interior of Asia Minor, from which he has just returned. During his lecture he will appear in the costume of a Turkish naval officer. He will also show to the audience a Saracenic Coat of Mail; Needlework by a Turkish maiden; Turkish fez, and the elegant cap of a Greek pirate; a Turkish Chibouque; a piece of skull from the tomb of Sultan Bajozetr, commonly called the ‘Lightning’ or ‘Thunderer’, a whitestone from Mt. Olympus near the ancient city of Troy, of which Homer and Virgil sung, about 2,000 years ago. There will also be on exhibition, a firman, signed by the present Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Azziz. Also, a passport signed by our Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Mr Stanley will repeat the Moslem call to prayer, after the manner of Muezzin, in the sacred Arabic language used by 14,000,000 people. The lecturer will close the exercise of the evening by singing a Turkish song, à la Turque.
Stanley totally misread the public’s fascination for foreign travel because the lecture was a disaster, attracting only eight people, later described by one of Stanley’s journalist friends as ‘four deadheads and four who paid’. It would be several more years before Stanley would mount a platform and deliver another lecture – and then in very different circumstances.
Between March and November 1867, ‘special correspondent’ Stanley was given a choice assignment in the region’s western territories, one highly suited to his aggressive, energetic and ambitious nature. He was sent to join an expedition headed by Gettysburg battle hero, Major-General Winfield Scott Hancock, to drive warring Plains Indians – Kiowa, Comanche, Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne – from their ancestral hunting grounds to make way for white settlers, new townships, army forts, roads and railroad tracks. The Indians were on the warpath, there was bitter conflict between white men and red and the US government wanted an end to the problem.
Indians did not want white settlers on territory that had been theirs for centuries or white men to pass through their land. They protested that every time settlers entered sacred territory, blood was left behind. The Indians were invited to sit around a table and negotiate. They were given promises and presents and treated like children. White settlers claimed that Indians had attacked and burned overland mail stations, murdered their employees and captured their stock. Kansas settlers were killed in their homes and others intimidated by Indians. There was bitterness on both sides.
As Commander of the Department of Missouri, Hancock planned to march 450 miles deep into Kansas and Nebraska Indian country with a force of 1,500 men made up of eight troops of cavalry, seven companies of infantrymen, one battery of light artillery and a Missouri Democrat correspondent. The 7th Cavalry would be under the command of the army’s most celebrated, courageous, impulsive and vain officer, General George Armstrong Custer, who at the age of twenty-three was the Union army’s youngest general, famed for daring raids behind Confederate lines during the Civil War.
A letter to tribal agents announced Hancock’s intention to enter sacred lands ‘to convince Indians . . . that we are able to punish any of them who might molest travellers across the Plains, or who may commit other hostilities against the whites. We desire to avoid, if possible, any troubles with the Indians and to treat them with justice according to the requirements of our treaties with them. . . . I will be pleased to talk with any chiefs whom we may meet.’ Indian agents were instructed to send messengers to settlements, read out the letter and invite the Indians to send representatives to meet Hancock and his men at the Arkansas River.
At Hancock’s camp, Stanley was summoned to the General’s tent, where he found ‘a hale, hearty, and tall gentleman in the prime of life’. A dispatch to the Missouri Democrat ran:
Major-General W.S. Hancock left Fort Riley on March 28 with about fifteen hundred men, consisting partly of cavalry and partly of infantry. He proposes from what I can hear to proceed to Fort Larned. . . . On his arrival he will invite the chiefs of the different tribes of hostile Indians to a council, where, together, they will discuss terms of a peace agreeable to both parties. If they cannot agree he then proposes, by force of warfare, to bury the hatchet.
Stanley’s articles from the western territories were signed either ‘Stanley’ or ‘S’ in accordance with an 1863 ruling that correspondents attached to the Army of the Potomac identify themselves by name. Articles in the Missouri Democrat penned by other correspondents remained anonymous, making Stanley one of the earliest reporters to receive a prestigious byline next to his work. The credit also brought Stanley’s name to the attention of other editors, a fact on which he would capitalise at the end of 1867.
Stanley disagreed with Hancock’s policy as soon as he joined the troops. He could tell from his first meeting that the Major-General totally misunderstood Indian ways. Hancock had burned down a Cheyenne village for no other reason than that he wanted to be seen as superior to the Indians. War drums now beat out the message over the plains that more blood would be spilt.
Neither the army nor the Indians appeared in a glowing light in Stanley’s dispatches. He criticised the army’s inability to capture Indian war parties or persuade them to sit down and talk. He described Indians as ‘remorseless savages’. But he was intrigued by the reputation of an express rider Hancock had engaged to transport information from one part of the expedition to another. He was ‘widely known for courage, endurance and faithfulness’ and named James Butler Hickok – commonly called ‘Wild Bill’.
The reporter went in search of Wild Bill in Hancock’s camp, hoping to write a profile of this interesting character. His Missouri Democrat description was one of the first to bring Hickok’s name and fame to public attention and helped shape the image of a man who would later become one of the best known figures from America’s Wild West:
He [‘Wild Bill’] is one of the finest examples of that peculiar class known as frontiersman, ranger, hunter, and Indian scout. He is now thirty-eight years old, and since he was thirteen the prairie has been his home. He stands six feet one inch in his moccasins, and is as handsome a specimen of man as could be found. We were prepared, on hearing of ‘Wild Bill’s’ presence in the camp, to see a person who might prove to be a coarse and illiterate bully. We were agreeably disappointed however. He was dressed in fancy shirt and leathern leggings. He held himself straight, and had broad, compact shoulders, was large chested, with small waist, and well-formed muscular limbs. A fine, handsome face, free from blemish, a light moustache, a thin pointed nose, bluish-grey eyes, with a calm look, a magnificent forehead, hair parted from the centre of the forehead, and hanging down behind the ears in wavy, silken curls, made up the most picturesque figure. He is more inclined to be sociable than otherwise; is enthusiastic in his love for his country and Illinois, his native State; and is endowed with extraordinary power and agility, whose match in these respects it would be difficult to find.
Stanley asked his first question: ‘I say, Mr Hickok, are you willing to mention how many men you have killed, to your precise and certain knowledge?’ Hickok thought for a moment and said, ‘I assume you mean white men; after all, nobody counts Indians, or Mexicans and so forth. Well, I am perfectly willing to swear a solemn oath on the Bible tomorrow, that I have killed substantially over one hundred – and not one without good cause!’ In reality, Hickok is known to have killed fewer than ten men – some in suspicious circumstances – but he was so adept with his guns that only a fool would have disputed his claims.
When Hancock’s expedition arrived at Fort Larned on 7 April, news was waiting that tribal representatives would come for a meeting on 10 April. Eight inches of snow fell on the 9th. To save horses from dying in the intense cold, guards were instructed constantly to walk the animals around the parade ground. If they stopped, they would freeze to death.
No Indians arrived on the day appointed for the conference. Hancock sent word that he and his men would visit their settlements, but a message got through that the Indians had been delayed but were now on their way – they had come across a herd of buffalo and decided to stock up on supplies of meat and skins.
On the evening of 10 April, fifteen Cheyenne chiefs – ‘dog soldiers’ as Stanley disparagingly called them – arrived at the camp. A tent was erected for the chiefs, a campfire built and Hancock and his officers assembled there. The chiefs asked for time to collect their thoughts, and while they were doing that, asked for food to be brought.
They emerged in front of the fire, but proceedings were further delayed while the chiefs filled and smoked their pipes. They were then ready to ‘talk’. Hancock assured them that he had not come to make war and told them what he expected in future. He expressed disappointment that more chiefs had not come and informed them that he would set out next day to visit their territory.
The expedition ventured deep into Indian country and on the way encountered what Custer described in My Life on the Plains (1874) as ‘one of the finest and most imposing military displays, prepared according to the Indian art of war, which it has ever been my lot to behold. It was nothing more nor less than an Indian line of battle drawn directly across our line of march – as if to say, thus far and no further.’
All of this provided Stanley with wonderful copy for the Missouri Democrat. He observed several hundred mounted Indians in front, plus others stationed at the rear acting as reserves, wearing their brightest colours, heads covered in war bonnets, lances decorated with crimson pennants, bows strung and quivers full of barbed arrows. Each possessed hunting knives, tomahawks, rifles or revolvers – kindly supplied by the US Indian Department. Custer remarked that this displayed ‘the wonderful liberality of our Government, which not only is able to furnish its soldiers with the latest improved style of breech-loaders to defend it and themselves, but is equally able and willing to give the same pattern of arms to their common foe’.
Stanley rode close to Hancock and heard him give the order for the infantry, artillery and cavalry to form a line of battle, determined that although war was the last thing on his mind, they should at least be prepared for a fight. The order was given for the cavalry to draw sabres and ‘as the bright blades flashed from their scabbards into the morning sunlight, and the infantry brought their muskets to a carry, a most beautiful and wonderfully interesting sight was spread out before and around us, presenting a contrast which, to a military eye, could but be striking’. After moments of ‘painful suspense’ Hancock rode forward and enquired the object of the hostile display confronting his men, telling the chiefs that if war was their object, he was ready. The chiefs admitted they did not want a battle and Hancock announced that his men would move forward as planned and camp nearby.
In June, Stanley described an Indian’s scalping procedure to his readers, adding: ‘It is a horrible sight and the operation is one, we earnestly hope, will never be performed on our worthy self. While writing, we assure you that our scalp is intact, but how long it will remain so, we cannot as yet inform you. . . .’
Hancock’s effort to forge a peace was a failure; if anything, he made matters between the white and red man worse following the death of four Indians, two of whom had been sent by friendly tribes and killed by mistake. Before beginning the next part of his assignment, Stanley found time to send word to Lewis Noe:
I am with Hancock’s Command hunting Indians. . . . I am a Special Correspondent. Copies of my articles will be sent to you. When in Liverpool, I promised you any curiosities I could get as I always think of you and I have already succeeded in getting a bow and twenty arrows from a Comanche Chief . . . I will send anything else I get as soon as I reach St. Louis. You need not write to me, as we are moving into the interior of the territories and are on ‘the war path’. My deep respect for all and in the meantime, God bless you. Your brother, Henry.
The second part of Stanley’s frontier assignment required him to report on the proceedings of the Indian Peace Commission, headed by General William Tecumseh Sherman. This was the man responsible for the celebrated Civil War ‘march to the sea’ in which 62,000 Yankee troops had cut a wide swathe as they moved from Atlanta to Savannah, tearing up railroad tracks, burning farms and destroying supplies to reduce the Confederacy’s war-making potential. The red-haired officer was now in overall command of the army between Canada and Texas, the Mississippi and the Rockies and, having been ordered by Congress to go west and bring peace to the frontier, was in no mood to show leniency towards the Plains Indians.
Stanley joined peace commissioners visiting reservations, concluding treaties and handing out presents – including more rifles. The Indians listened, but still failed to understand why they should move from ancient lands to be herded on to tiny reservations. A pow-wow between commissioners and leading chiefs was held at the end of the Union Pacific tracks near Platte City, Nebraska in August 1867.
Stanley predicted that Sherman ‘will be the soul of the party. His views will probably have controlling weight. Cautious, calculating, with a dash of statesmanship in him, he is a valuable acquisition to the country at this time. He is perfectly aware of the responsibility attached to his present commission. He is aware that all the people wish peace, and the results of the conference will be looked for with unusual interest. We earnestly hope that peace may be secured although we have grave doubts that it would be a lasting one.’ The Indians were represented by chiefs who spoke of the problems brought by white settlers to tribal lands, the damage caused by the railroad, of their reliance on buffalo herds wandering across their territory, of how white men plundered their animals, and of their reluctance to leave ‘the old ways’ and their fear of the breaking up of their tribes.
Stanley reminded Missouri Democrat readers scathingly that for their part the American government had urged Indians to raise stock and herd sheep on their lands:
The country is admirably suited for it; the Indian temperament will rejoice in such a pursuit. . . . When the Navajos begged the government to send them $20,000 worth of sheep in lieu of blankets, promising they would ever after weave blankets for themselves, what did the excellent government of the United States do? Sent them blankets. Yet there was no remorse of conscience, no memory of the countless flocks and herds which the soldiers of the United States had taken from the Navajos; no such thing – only a sullen determination not to encourage the industry of a tribe which could make blankets before which the Eastern fabric is a rag, and the English whitney a dish cloth. For the same reason probably the government may be reluctant to place herds of sheep in the hands of these wronged children of the soil, but I hope to God there will be a higher sense of justice.
When Indians at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, signed the final treaty, Sherman asked newsmen reporting the occasion, including Stanley, to act as official witnesses to the event.
Hancock’s peace expeditions and the treaties brokered by Sherman were spectacular failures. Indian wars went on for a further twenty years during which other peace commissions tried – and failed – in their purpose. But the experience of witnessing and reporting stirring events as they unfolded on the American frontier and rubbing shoulders with America’s highest-ranking military officials allowed Stanley to produce penetrating, profound and often prophetic copy for the Missouri Democrat.
The Missouri Democrat’s editor permitted Stanley to syndicate his dispatches to other journals, providing the St Louis newspaper published them first. Stanley’s form of popular journalism found favour with the Chicago Republican, Cincinnati Commercial, New York Tribune and – most famously – the New York Herald.
City publications were hungry for frontier news and reporters based in those remote areas were as important to editors as foreign correspondents. Stories about western life were always sensational, appealing to readers in crowded cities, for whom America’s frontier was like a foreign country, populated by individuals living in a landscape different to their own who often looked, spoke and behaved in another way. Stories were written in a racy style, with plenty of gory detail and lots of colour, ingredients to be found in abundance in Stanley’s early dispatches from America’s vanishing frontier.