Guardians of the Smoky Hill Trail
Ron Sanders
View Artist's Full Collection and Bio
47.5" x 36" oil on canvas
$8,000
Buffalo Soldiers: "Guardians of the Smoky Hill Trail"
When gold was discovered in Denver in 1859, the race was on to find the quickest route from the Missouri River to Colorado. Ben Holladay controlled transport lines through Nebraska, route of the Pony Express, while Col. David A. Butterfield established a stage line, the Butterfield Overland Dispatch, from Atchison, Kansas, to Denver, Colorado, along the shorter Smoky Hill Route. Whoever could control express shipping to Denver and beyond would determine the route taken by the railroads when they came Westward. But the Plains Indians, offended by the white man's intrusion into buffalo hunting grounds along the Smoky Hill River, and led by Holladay's hired henchmen, attacked the stage lines repeatedly, until Butterfield was forced to sell the line to Ben Holladay in 1866. But later that same year, Wells Fargo & Co. made a deal to buyout all of Holladay's business, giving them control of all major stage express lines west of the Missouri, with major overland routes to the coast and numerous smaller direct lines linking cities, towns, and military outposts with the growing railroad across the plains.
The Union Pacific Railroad began construction following Holladay's route through Nebraska, while the Kansas Pacific followed Butterfield's route along the Smoky Hill Trail. The race was on to see who would reach Denver first and become the eastern half of the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1866 the long wagon trains that previously formed at Council Grove now formed at Junction City and moved westward over the Smoky Hill route. As the Kansas Pacific Railroad was built, the eastern terminus of the Smoky Hill Trail was the western terminus of the railroad.
The Pony Express Mail Service had ignited the romantic imagination of the country in its 19 months of operation before being displaced by the telegraph in 1861. Now railroads were displacing the overland stage lines. But as the rails proceeded westward, Plains Indians saw the growing threat to their hunting grounds in Kansas and began mounting attacks on stagecoaches, wagon trains, and railroad work crews.
With the end of the Civil War, General Grant had established two regiments of Negro cavalry, the 9th and 10th, and sent them westward. The 10th Cavalry joined forces in 1867 with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's newly formed 7th Cavalry to defend the frontier and the westward expansion of the railroads, and to guard the stagecoaches, wagon trains, and citizens of newly formed towns. Troops of the 10th Cavalry were stationed throughout the Kansas frontier at Forts Wallace, Arbuckle, Cobb, Larned, Dodge, and Hays.
That same year, a former Pony Express rider, stagecoach driver, soldier and frontier scout by the name of William Cody was working as a grader for the Kansas Pacific Railroad when the workers were in need of meat. He volunteered to join soldiers from Fort Hays on a buffalo hunt and proved his abilities to the soldiers so well that they gave him the nickname of "Buffalo Bill." In August, Captain George Armes hired the 21-year-old Cody as a scout, during which time Company F saw its first battle with the Indians.
From October 1867, when the railroad reached Hays City, until May 1868, when it reached Sheridan, KS, Cody worked as a buffalo hunter, supplying meat for the workers on the KPRR line. After which he returned to his employment as a scout and messenger for the cavalry throughout Kansas, earning $60.00 a month and "a splendid mule to ride," the sure-footed mules being preferred by scouts riding across the uneven plains. Cody rode the mule during government service so as to save his private horse from fatigue, having had a reputation for "riding down" horses and mules. But the military found it worth the price of keeping him stocked with fresh animals in exchange for his excellent services. He spent August of 1868 back in the employment of the 10th Cavalry, during which time the overworked troopers scouted more than one thousand miles along the Smoky Hill, Saline, and Solomon rivers searching for raiding parties of Kiowas, Comanchees, Southern Cheyennes, and Arapahoes while escorting stagecoaches and trains, and protecting railroad workers at the end of track.
After being assigned as Chief of Scouts for the incoming 5th Cavalry, Cody's replacement as scout for the 10th was his good friend, "Wild Bill" Hickok, who would become sheriff of Hays City in 1869 to "clean up the town and restore a peaceful way of life to (the city) where murder had been nightly occurrences."
The post-Civil-War-West was a land of expansion and hope, but also a lawless frontier: a land of thieves, murderers, fortune hunters, and marauding Indians. Settlers and miners endured hardships, stagecoach drivers risked life and limb to get through mountain and desert, rain, snow, and heat to deliver mail and news and to transport passengers, gold dust, and bullion, and now the railroad was coming to speed man and mail overland at unbelievable speed and luxury. And in the pivotal years of 1867 and '68 in this land of legends, the people were protected and prosperity moved on under the watchful eyes of the brave soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry, Guardians of the Smoky Hill Trail.
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In this August 1868 scene by Ron Sanders we see members of Captain Armes' Company F escorting a Wells Fargo Stage Coach as it leaves Hays City heading south to pick up the Smoky Hill Trail. The Kansas Pacific train has just left Hays and is heading westward on the horizon while the 10th Cavalry's scout, "Buffalo Bill" Cody, waves to the men as he returns to Fort Hays from delivering dispatches.
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