Valor Friday

I came across today’s subject by chance while working on another article. I thought his story was amazing and hope you do too.

One thing that you’ll see when studying American military history as I do is that award citations have become more verbose and detailed over time. What passed for an awards package seems to have increased exponentially. For example, compare William Othello Wilson’s Medal of Honor citation to literally any other MoH citation in the last hundred plus years.

Private William O. Wilson’s award citation is an abundantly succinct, brutally efficient description of individual heroism, if sparse on details or any alliteration whatsoever. His citation, in full, reads (punctuation original);

Bravery.

I won’t say I’m not eminently impressed that at one point in time an Army officer’s word was given such gravity that when he sent up word that one of his men was involved in “bravery” that it was heeded. Nowadays, any claim of bravery by a soldier in battle is vetted in much the same way the Vatican investigates a case for sainthood. It’s a process that takes painfully long years, requires at least two eyewitnesses, and will be looked at skeptically by at least a half dozen flag officers who each poke holes in any citation, believing the tales of heroics therein are far too fantastic to be believed.

So let’s explore just what passed for “bravery” in 1890 on the American Great Plains.

William Othello Wilson was born 16 September in the 1860s in Chewsville, Maryland. If you’ve never heard of the town, you’ll be forgiven. It’s still a small, very rural town in Washington County. The most recent census shows just about 300 people live in the town today in an area of .8 square miles. Wilson’s exact year of birth is disputed. Historians have noted that 1867 seems like a likely year of birth, but other sources list it as 1869.

Somehow Wilson made his way to Minnesota by 1889. He mustered into US Army service there in St Paul in 1889. His enlistment papers note he was 21 years, 4 months old and 5’7 ½” tall.

Minnesota in those days was still the frontier. For years, the Native Lakota (Sioux) peoples had been pushed further and further out of their territory by the white American settlers. The US Government, for its part, routinely violated the terms of the treaties they forced the Natives into. The combination of factors led to understandable resentment and outright war between the Natives and the settlers, who were protected by the US Army.

It was into what was known as the Ghost Dance War between the US Army and Lakotas that Wilson joined the Army. He was assigned to the 9th Cavalry Regiment, one of the segregated Buffalo Soldiers regiments. Officially listed as the “Negro Cavalry”, they had earned their nom de guerre from the Natives they were fighting against. Buffalo Soldier became synonymous with the black regiments on the Western Frontier.

The Ghost Dance War (itself part of the much larger Indian Campaigns of the 19th Century) was an Army response to a religious movement spreading through Lakota and other Native cultures at the time. In 1889, Wovoka, a Paiute Native religious leader, claimed to have received a message from God. He prophesied that performance of Ghost Dance rituals would return their ancestors’ ghosts to the world to live in harmony with all Native peoples. Adherents also believed that a series of apocalyptic natural disasters would soon bring the end to all white people while protecting the Natives.

This religious movement spread quickly, particularly in the area of the Minnesota plains and in the newly admitted states of North and South Dakota. This led to calls for more Army involvement in the region.

This war culminated on 28 December 1890. The 8th Cavalry had been ordered to disarm and then escort Lakota Chief Spotted Elk and about 350 of his people to Camp Cheyenne. Instead of surrendering his people as he had agreed to, Spotted Elk instead led his people on a march to the Pine Creek Reservation.

Elements of the 7th Cavalry Regiment discovered them on 28 December. Wanting to disarm them immediately, the officer in charge was dissuaded by his interpreter’s insistence that it would lead to violence. They instead led them to nearby Wounded Knee and disarm them the next day. Upon the arrival of the full 7th Cavalry, they surrounded the Natives (numbering about 230 men and 120 women and children) and set up four M1875 Hotchkiss mountain guns. Roughly 500 Army soldiers were involved in the incident.

At daybreak on the 29th, the Natives were ordered to disarm. It’s not entirely clear how the fighting started, but it would turn into what is now known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. By many accounts, one of the Ghost Dance faithful began doing the ghost dance, telling the Native warriors that their “ghost shirts” would be “bulletproof”.

There’s more than one source that relates a deaf Lakota named Black Coyote refused the order to disarm. Not knowing how to communicate with the deaf man, he was seized from behind by Union soldiers, causing his gun to go off. As this happened, the ghost dancing man threw some dust, signaling at least five young warriors to throw off their blankets and fire previously concealed firearms.

What commenced was a pitched battle between the trapped and partially disarmed Lakota and the cavalry troopers who were ready for a fight. Before the day would be done, virtually all of the Natives would be wiped out. Even women and children as they fled.

According to US Army Commanding General Nelson A. Miles, who personally toured the battlefield three days later, a “scuffle occurred between one deaf warrior who had [a] rifle in his hand and two soldiers. The rifle was discharged and a battle occurred, not only the warriors but the sick Chief Spotted Elk, and a large number of women and children who tried to escape by running and scattering over the prairie were hunted down and killed.”

That’s a succinct way of saying everyone was mowed down.

Word of the battle/massacre spread fast. By now a corporal, Wilson and his 9th Cavalry were scouting up a tributary of the Missouri River about 50 miles north of the Indian Agency at Pine Ridge. When the runner brought word of the massacre he also brought orders to return to the agency with all due speed.

The cavalrymen rode hard and through the night to return to the safety of their fort. In the early morning of 30 December, F, I, and K Troops arrived safely. Members of D Troop remained behind and were guarding the regiment’s supply wagons, which were slower.

They’d made it to Cheyenne Creek, only about two miles away from the agency, when they were surrounded by 50 Lakota warriors. The cavalry troopers protected themselves by circling their wagons, but one soldier was killed almost immediately.

When the Indian scouts refused to leave the safety of the wagon train to get a message to Pine Ridge, Corporal William Wilson volunteered for the suicide mission.

It could be inferred that Wilson was adept at riding horse by having risen to corporal in less than two years in the Army. It can be definitively stated that he was a superb rider because when he burst through the circled wagons he made it through the wall of warriors waiting for him.

As Wilson rode forward, the Natives gave chase. After a time, Wilson’s skill and swift horse let him outrun his pursuers. He made it to Pine Ridge with his vital message. The rest of the 9th Cavalry immediately rode out to aid their stranded comrades.

It was this valor in action that resulted in Wilson receiving the Medal of Honor for, as his understated citation reads, “Bravery.” A more detailed accounting was published a few months later;

December 30, 1890. Private (then Corporal) William O. Wilson, Troop I, 9th Cavalry: For gallantry in carrying a message for assistance through country occupied by the enemy, when the wagon train under escort of Captain Loud was attacked by hostile Sioux Indians, near the Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota.

While Wounded Knee would come to be considered the end of the Indian Wars, hostilities continued in the region for some time. Also on 30 December Company K of the 7th Cavalry had been sent 15 miles north of Pine Ridge onto the reservation to force Lakota to return to their respective areas. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t amenable to the 7th Cavalry’s demands. Company K would need to be rescued by the 9th Cavalry.

Through the rest of the winter and until March 1891, the 9th Cavalry remained at Pine Ridge Reservation as guards.

Just weeks before they were set to depart Pine Ridge, Wilson took an unauthorized absence to Nebraska. Accused of desertion, he was demoted to private. His defense had been he was under the influence of alcohol and the hard winter’s encampment had caused undue stress. He spent a week in the guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska. He was sprung from the stockade by members of his troop, who had ridden down in a blizzard to rescue him.

Desertion was very common in the Army at the time, and not generally prosecuted unless one actually returned to your unit. As with Wilson, upon return, you’d be demoted or lose privileges. On some operations during this time on the western frontier, desertion rates were as high as 40% of the men.

In 1893, while on another trip to Nebraska, this time to represent his regiment in a shooting competition, Wilson never returned. He kept his Springfield carbine and Colt sidearm, which the Army made no attempt to get back.

Wilson returned to Maryland, where he remained for the rest of his life. He married, had seven children, worked variously as an upholsterer, cook, carpenter, teacher, and calligrapher, and died in 1928 at age 61.

Wilson’s award, interesting to me as it was for its brevity, is also noteworthy for a couple of other reasons. Wilson is the only black soldier to have received the Medal of Honor after a charge of desertion (hence the award being given to “Private (then Corporal) William O Wilson”). He was also the last black soldier to receive the Medal of Honor for action on American soil.

In 2003, Wilson’s last surviving daughter, Anna V Jones (b.1912-d.2008), donated her father’s medal to the Maryland African American Museum.

Category: Army, Historical, Medal of Honor, Valor, We Remember