This is a remarkable period in American military history. The year 1865 marks the conclusion of the Civil War, the subsequent emergence of traditional American opposition to a large standing army, and the beginning of a lengthy period of national uncertainty about the primary mission of the U.S. Army.

The year 1890 marks the official conclusion of the Indian Wars (defined by the iniquitous Battle of Wounded Knee), the ensuing redeployment of U.S. Army forces more uniformly across the country based on regional rather than local considerations, and the relegation of the cavalry to low-risk assignments such as escorting Indian children to school and supporting the management of the incipient national park system.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the five mounted regiments of the Regular Army comprised the 1st and 2nd Dragoons, 1st Mounted Rifles, and 1st and 2nd Cavalry. Congress had authorized these latter two units in 1855 for the purpose of protecting settlers as they advanced farther west and more often encroached on Indian lands.

The leadership of these five original regiments included 176 officers. When the time came to side with North or South, 104 of the most experienced cavalry officers chose to serve in the Confederate Army. This presented the Union Army with an initial deficit of skilled cavalry leadership, which resulted in battlefield superiority for the South during the early years of the conflict. But in the second half of the war (commencing in 1863), increasing Confederate shortages of men, horses, and equipment, and major improvements of Union Cavalry combined to shift the advantage to the North.

As one example of this shifting advantage, by 1865 the Union Army had raised 272 cavalry regiments while the South had raised only 137. Because of the successful use of large mounted forces capable of independent and decisive action, particularly the Union Army’s integration of cavalry with infantry and artillery into a combined striking force capable of sustained operations, it is clear that—in terms of effectiveness in conventional battle and stature within the U.S. Army—cavalry had reached its historical zenith during the American Civil War.

At the conclusion of the war, the Regular cavalry units of the Union Army were significantly depleted (as were the infantry and artillery units), creating an initial shortage of available military resources. Although the enlistment in the Regular Army by members of disbanded volunteer units had somewhat eased the shortage by 1866, Congress felt compelled to authorize four additional Regular cavalry regiments on July 28th: the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th (The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments consisted of Negro enlisted men and white officers).

At the same time, the authorized strength of the Regular Army was increased to 57,000 officers and men and the Army was formally organized into 10 regiments of cavalry, 45 of infantry, and 5 of artillery. This authorization also provided for the creation of a corps of up to 1,000 Indian Scouts.

Cavalry regiments were further organized into 3 squadrons with 4 companies each. A colonel commanded a cavalry regiment, and regimental staff included 7 officers, 6 enlisted men, one surgeon, and 2 assistant surgeons. Although not officially listed as part of the organizational structure, a civilian veterinarian typically accompanied a regiment in the field. Cavalry companies consisted of 4 officers, 15 noncommissioned officers, and 72 privates for a total authorization of up to 91 men.

Because of the subsequent growth of Congressional opposition to a large standing army, as well as national confusion about the role of the Army, the authorization of 1866 did not last. Congress reduced the number of infantry regiments from 45 to 25 in 1869. The following year, Congress reduced the enlisted force to 30,000 men. And in 1874, two years before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Congress again reduced the enlisted force to 25,000. Because this latter reduction did not change the number of authorized regiments, the true consequence was to shrink the typical strength of an individual cavalry company to 58 men.

Among the many problems facing the peacetime Army, including enforcing Reconstruction and suppressing labor strikes, the expanding westward migration and the increasingly common occurrence of deadly conflicts between settlers and Indians demanded the most significant response. By 1868 a large majority of the Army’s cavalry units were active in the west. Of the 120 authorized cavalry companies, 92 were stationed in 59 different outposts extending from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande and from Kansas to California.

Although the deployment of forces in this manner served the purposes of the times, the resulting fragmentation of individual cavalry regiments rendered any meaningful training for a potential foreign war impractical. Many infantry units were also relocated to the west (it was not uncommon to find both a cavalry company and an infantry company stationed at larger forts), but the mobility and speed of the cavalry proved far more effective against the accomplished mounted warriors of the Plains Indians. Even so, cavalry officers rarely modified the conventional tactics learned during the Civil War to accommodate the unconventional tactics of the Indians.

The U.S. Cavalry did not engage in a single battle with an organized military force during the entire period of 1866 to 1890. It is therefore astonishing, when viewed from the perspective of historical hindsight, that military doctrine and training during this same period generally evolved to prepare the cavalry for just such an unlikely event. The basic principle inherent in the doctrine was that cavalrymen must be trained as infantry and fully prepared to dismount and carry the battle to the enemy on foot.

This doctrine, a natural consequence of the Civil War experience, was formalized in 1873 when the U.S. Cavalry adopted the 1867 Infantry Tactics manual for drill. Originally prepared by Major General Emory Upton, the manual taught movement of infantry based on groupings of four. Although the infantry system did work for drill on horseback, it was never intended for this purpose.

The cavalry continued the use of this infantry system for drill until 1891 when the War Department promulgated individual drill regulations for cavalry, infantry, and artillery. It is therefore useful to our understanding of events to characterize the U.S. Cavalry during the years following the war as mounted infantry, and to appreciate that they faced a lethal foe some historians have described as the best light cavalry the world has ever known.

In June 1876 a coalition of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indian Tribes destroyed nearly half of the 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In all, five companies were lost.

In partial response to this tragedy, Congress authorized an increase to the cavalry forces serving in the West. In fact, the law decreased the overall size of the standing army by 5,000 men while adding 2,500 men to the cavalry units deployed against the Indians.

The authorization also increased the permissible strength of individual cavalry companies to 100 enlisted men, an allowance which remained in place until 1890. In practice few units successfully reached this limit, primarily because of sickness and desertion.

The end of Civil War produced large surpluses of uniforms, horses, saddles, weapons, and other military equipment. Because Union cavalrymen were generally armed with Spencer repeating carbines, the ten regiments of the peacetime cavalry were supplied with these relatively lightweight rifles until 1873, when replacement by single-shot Springfield rifles and carbines commenced.

Testing of the .45 Colt Revolver that used metal cartridges began in 1871. This pistol soon became standard cavalry issue, and was not replaced until 1894 when the…