Audio
"Buffalo Soldiers" at Chiricahua - Ann Huston - Season 2 Episode 2
Transcript
MUSIC INTRO
Matthew Guebard (MG): Hello and welcome to the National Park Service Southwest Archeology Podcast, brought to you by the Southern Arizona Office. My name's Matt Guebard.
Sharlot Hart (SH): And I'm Sharlot Hart
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MG: So in this episode we'll be continuing our discussion of Black Solider history, but we'll be focusing specifically on Chiricahua National Monument. And we'll be interviewing Ann Huston who's a former interpretive ranger from Chiricahua, now at Capitol Reef National Park. So, for those listeners who don't know much about Chiricahua, there is thousands of years of Ancestral Native American history, as well as more recent 19th Century history that includes homesteading, ranching, and the Apache War Period. So this interview is a follow up to our discussion with Mr. Joe Certaine, who is an historian and historical reenactor, who focuses on Buffalo Solider History, so if you like this interview with Ann, make sure you also check out that interview with Mr. Certaine.
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SH: So we're here today with Ann Huston. She was, until recently a Park Guide with Chiricahua National Monument, and now is a Park Guide with Capitol Reef National Park. That means that she's one of those front-line rangers, those awesome people that you get to meet when you go in to a park as a tourist. And Ann did a lot of research about the Buffalo Soliders who were encamped at Bonita Canyon in Chiricahua, so we're here today to take with her. Thanks for joining us Ann!
Ann Huston: Thanks for having me!
SH: Can you tell us about your background with the National Park Service?
AH: Sure! I've been with the National Park Service for about five years. Most of the parks where I've worked have been in the southwest, but I had one summer in Alaska at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway; and that's where I first really learned about the Buffalo Soldiers and their connection to various National Park Service sites. And we all -- all the rangers at Klondike Gold Rush, did programs on Company L which was a unit of the 24th infantry, and they were sent to Skagway to help keep the peace during the Klondike Gold Rush. So that was one of the untold stories that the park was working really hard to share with our visitors from all over the United States as well as the world. And when I moved to Chiricahua National Monument, I was really happy to see that there was a Buffalo Solider connection there as well. And i had a lot of opportunities to really dive into the story of all the men who were stationed in Bonita Canyon during 1885 and 86 - The Apache Campaign in southern Arizona.
SH: Wow, and I ...
AH: Indecipherable.
SH: Cool!
AH: [Laughs] Thanks!
SH: So we normally interview cultural resource specialists, um, and so your job is coming at the history of these encampments is a little bit different as a ranger and an interpreter. Um, an interpreter in the sense, not in a language, but kind of interpreting the resources at a site for the public who might not be able to see what's underground, essentially. So, that's really cool with your history of being at Klondike and then coming to Chiricahua. So, I guess, how did -- how did you go about doing your job at Chiricahua.
AH: That's a really good question. I guess the first thing that I had to do was, of course, learn alot more about the 10th Cavalry, because when I was at Klondike Gold Rush that was the 24th Infantry. So, generally, men patrolling on foot as opposed to on horseback. So, just learning a lot about the 10th Cavalry and what their role was in the west, as the United States continued to expand, and as people -- settlers came into conflict with people who were already living in that area. So, in Chiricahua National Monument, that was usually the Chiricahua Apache. So just, really, wrapping my head around this complex story of peoples who were in one area who had been living there for generations encountering other people who were new comers. And sort of, the difficulties and conflict that arose from that. And Chiricahua has an amazing tangible to the Buffalo Soldiers that we can talk about on a fairly regular basis. And that's the chimney at Faraway Ranch, the Ranch House. And I think we'll be talking more about that later on in the interview.
SH: Awesome. Well, so we also interviewed Joe Certaine, and he's a historical reenactor and descendant of Civil War soldiers. And he in his interview -- it was one of our longer interviews but he just had so many vignettes that exemplified how easy it was to go from Buffalo Solider to Black Outlaw. And that's kind of based on prejudices, you know, this trope in history books or in social histories of uh, Black People at this time, that they filled certain roles as far as you know, looking back. And so, um, if you weren't a Buffalo Solider, then you have to be an outlaw, because those are the two roles that are allowed for Black people to inhabit. Um, and that was based on prejudices of the day, and the real prejudices that these men had to face. So, I was wondering if you found stories from Bonita Canyon of evidence of prejudice or any other social mores of the time.
AH: Yes! Like the Henry Flipper connection, in the fire place.
MG: I don't actually remember the history, so you might -- maybe it wasn't a -- he was involved with a woman?
AH: Embezzling.
MG: Oh! He was embezzling!
AH: Well, he wasn't! He was wrongly accused of it.
MG: Okay.
AH: So, Henry Flipper was the very first black graduate of Westpoint. Up until that point, any black soldier, no matter how smart they were, or skilled they were, they capped out at First Sergeant, as an enlisted solider. But Henry Flipper was able to become a commanding officer and he still faced a lot of discrimination. While he was stationed at Fort Davis in Texas, he was wrongly accused of embezzling money. But basically, to cover up the facts that he had not embezzled any money, he lied. And for lying, he was court martialed and given a dishonorable discharge. And if he had been a white officer, most likely, he would not have had such a harsh punishment.
So, by the time our Buffalo Soldiers in the 10th Cavalry are stationed in Bonita Canyon in 1885 and 1886, Henry Flipper was no longer in the US Army. He worked as a land surveyor, in southern AZ, and he eventually became a mining engineer in Mexico and Venezuela, but he was never officially stationed in Bonita Canyon and we don't have any record that he was surveying in Bonita Canyon. So we have a stone in the Garfield Fireplace that has Henry Flippers name on it. So, who carved his name into stone?? If you look at it, it's in this perfect block print that looks like it could have been typed. And most likely it wasn't Henry Flipper - he probably wasn't there. But he probably was such a great role model for these soldiers and for their children to aspire to become commanding officers themselves, that someone out of admiration decided to carve his name into stone. Eventually --
SH: That's so cool!
AH: Yeah! It is SO cool.
MG: And then he was later, much later on after he died, was exonerated. Is that --Am I making that up?
AH: Yeah, yeah. First by the army, in like the 70s, and then President Bill Clinton gave him a presidential pardon.
MG: That's right.
AH: In 1999. [Laughs]. I don't know as many stories about Buffalo Soldiers and black outlaws, but one of the men who was stationed in Bonita Canyon, had a really long military career, and over that time, he was stationed a lot in the southwest. And in Texas, at Ft. Davis. And while he was in Texas, he was married to a woman who was from Mexico. We don't have her exact name, the court records and his military records from that time, sometimes have illegible handwriting. Try as hard as you can, it's hard to read that cursive. And so, he was married to this woman, and they were separated but they never had an official divorce. Which came in to play when he married his second wife, after his enlistments were over. And this was back in his home state of Missouri. And she was black, and he was black, and so that was fine, but there was a question of whether he was ever actually properly divorced from his first wife, who was Mexican. And some of the court documents said that because it was an interracial marriage at that time, it wasn't necessarily legal. So, there were a lot of hangups about his relationship with his first wife, and then you know, his second wife. They stayed married until she passed away. And John Casey's third wife was white! And if you think about this time period, he was living in Missouri, and interracial was illegal marriage was illegal in Missouri until 1967, thanks to the Supreme Court decision, Loving vs. Virginia. So, John Casey had to get married in Kansas, where it was legal for him to have an interracial marriage. So I think that his story really highlights some of the difficulties he had in his personal life, trying to live with the woman that he loved. So, I think that's one that probably would stand out in my mind.
SH: Wow, that's so fascinating that you can find all this information about soldiers' personal lives. Even from military documents.
AH: Yeah, a lot of what we know about some of the men in Troop H in particular in the 10th Cavalry, was first complied by this man, named Harold Sayer. And he was a historian who did a lot of work at Ft. Davis. And he wrote a book called "Warriors of Color," and he did a lot of the leg work on finding that research.
SH: Interesting. And so the same troops that were at Bonita Canyon and Fort Bowie were at Fort Davis as well?
AH: Yes. A lot of the men went through Fort Davis. It was one of the major forts as you headed out west. And so a lot of them, if they weren't permanently stationed there, were stationed for a few years the way John Casey was, they would have passed through there on their way to various outposts in Arizona and New Mexico and other places.
SH: So, Mr. Certaine also described African American Soldiers during the 1800s as uh, "In the shadows of American History." Do you feel like small encampments like the one in Bonita Canyon have any power to assuage that issue? You know, being so small you might think there's not enough there.
AH: Certainly. I think that it's really true that a lot of these Buffalo Soldier sites and stories are in the shadow in a lot of major events that have happened in the United States. A number of the men who were stationed in Bonita Canyon had really long military careers. Some of them fought for their own freedom during the Civil War, in the US Colored Troops. And some of them continued their military careers through the Spanish American War, and fought in Cuba. Some of them fought in the Philippines. So, I think it's pretty remarkable to think about men who were really able to travel the world and see the world, and get this broader perspective just because they had joined the army. So, that, you know, that really gives the men a wide range of places that we can connect them to. You know, all over the world, as well as all over the United States.
And if we zoom in on Chiricahua National Monument, and the Faraway Ranch House which is in the vicinity of where that temporary camp in Bonita Canyon was, we probably have one of our most fascinating connections tot he 10th Cavalry. And they made a stone monument to President Garfield, while they were stationed there, over the winter of 1885 and 1886. And we can make some educated guesses as to why they chose to honor President Garfield, but there is a giant stone, that says "In Memory of James A Garfield." And he had been recently assassinated in 1881. And prior to his presidency, he spent almost 20 years in congress, and was always an advocate for black rights during reconstruction era in the south. And then prior to that, he commanded black soldiers during the Civil War. So, we can make an educated guess as to why they chose to honor him, with this giant stone. And then around that giant center piece stone a lot of the men carved their names, and initials, Troop H, E or I, and the 10th Cavalry. So, we have this monument that they made in 1886. But by the early 1900s it was beginning to crumble down, and Neil Erikson who was an early pioneer in Bonita Canyon was an army man himself. He was a Swedish immigrant himself. And he really liked this monument, he probably saw it shortly after it was built, when he and his wife moved out to Bonita Canyon in 1888. And he always wanted to see the monument restored to it's former glory. But he was unable to really get anyone interested in preserving it. And the monument just continued to disintegrate, and people would take stones away as souvenirs, so it was in some ways in danger of being lost to history. Eventually, Neil's daughter Lilian, and her husband Ed Riggs decided that the best way to save the monument was to dismantle it and turn it into their fire place at Faraway Ranch. So, this is completely undoing a monument to President Garfield made by these Buffalo Soldiers with their hand-carved stones, but it was preserving it in a different form, as their fireplace. Which is pretty fascinating, re-purposing and sort of re-identifying this monument into something that they would use for decades to come to help heat their house. But, because all these stone are cemented into the fireplace they aren't in danger of wondering away or being taken as souvenirs. So, it is pretty unconventional, but we often talk about this as an act of conservation because we have this tangible connection to the Buffalo Soldiers, even though it's not in its original form anymore.
SH: Wow. That's amazing. And can visitors still see it today?
AH: Definitely! So, the grounds around Faraway Ranch are always open, so you can see the outside part of the fireplace and the guest dining room. And if you want to see that center stone that says "In memory of James A Garfield" you can go on a tour inside the ranch house with a ranger.
SH: That's great. You know, so often small sites like this are so ephemeral, and especially ephemeral camps by definition are ... but that's great that there's this lasting physical, tangible item that visitors can still see and get that connection.
AH: Yeah! And I'm always hoping that there will be some descendant of one of the Buffalo Soldiers, who's heard stories about this stone monument that his or her grandfather made so many years ago. And I just keep hoping that, you know, something will come out of the woodworks, and we'll be able to learn a little more about the lives of these men. Because with John Casey, everything we know is just based on court documents, and military records. So, we don't have any diaries, we don't have any letters to go off of, so until we have those documents and we can talk about them from the soldiers own point of view, anything that we say is incomplete and imbalanced.
SH: So, speaking of you know, these tangible objects, the camp in Bonita Canyon, was excavated by Marty Tagg, when he worked for the National Park Service. How do you connect the artifacts that he found, um, that you know, these physical objects that soldiers leave behind to the men being researched?
AH: Well, sometimes it's hard to know if any artifact can go with a specific man, but I would say that's not necessarily the case for the blacksmith. John Robinson was Troop H's blacksmith, and he probably used some of the horseshoes and horseshoe nails that have been found in Bonita Canyon. So, I really enjoy just thinking about those, you know, they're now artifacts, but at the time they were just useful objects that helped him do his job, helped him protect the army horse hooves. And you know, just imagining him shaping the horse shoes and nailing them into the hard walls of the hoof. And John Robinson has two stones in the Garfield Fireplace, as we call the Fireplace at Faraway Ranch. And his first stone says, you know, his name, John Robinson, and then it says "Blacksmith", so he's proud of his occupation. But his second stone is really impressive. It's carved in high relief, which takes a whole lot more skill than just engraving your name into a stone. So here, in high relief, you're sort of chiseling away everything that you don't want, so it's a lot easier to make mistakes or ruin what you're working on when you're doing it in high relief. And he chiseled out a horseshoe and a hammer as well as his initials. So, he was really skilled, you know, a skilled stone worker, and probably a skilled blacksmith! And we know that he's Canadian. We know that he enlisted in Detroit, Michigan. But that's all that we know. I could only find one enlistment record. And I ... tried to trace a lot of different paths, but right now that's all we know about him. And I just think from those few little facts, he seems like a pretty fascinating person.
SH: Seriously. That's, um, one of the reasons that I love archaeology. You can get these, you know, very simple things, that look like they're trash, right?
AH: [laughs] yeah.
SH: That someone left behind, and yet that can start to connect you with someone who lived 150 years ago.
AH: Yeah! And I like to think about what maybe they ate. One of the artifacts is a Royal Baking Powder tin. So, maybe someone was using that to bake bread in an outdoor oven. You know, because you need baking powder to help things rise, baking soda. And so, just imagining them making their bread. Of course, we usually buy our bread at the store, and if we make it from scratch, it's really easy to get the ingredients that we need. It's just a short drive to the grocery store. But for these men, that bread would, you know, take a lot more effort in a lot of ways to make sure that you had all the ingredients that you need, and you had the time to do it, and you had the fire and the oven at the right temperature. So, I love that little connection as well to the kitchen.
SH: Seriously! That's probably a lot better than the thin - or not thin, but dense - hard tack that they would have had 20 years earlier in the Civil War.
AH: Right. Definitely.
MG: One of the interesting things -- I've had the opportunity to actually look at the collection from Bonita Canyon, and also the collection from Fort Bowie, and they're really very similar, and that's not surprising of course, because a lot of it's you know, military issue things like uniforms and accouterments and like you mentioned, uh, food cans and things like that. Um, it makes me think, so for the listeners, Fort Bowie is about, less than 20 miles away from Bonita Canyon. Can you talk a little bit about the reasons that Buffalo Soldiers would have been in a temporary encampment, as opposed to being at Fort Bowie?
AH: Certainly. So, in the Chiriachua Mountains, there were lots and lots of temporary camps, during the Apache Campaign. So the US government was trying to capture all of the Chiricahua Apache, who in their eyes were causing a lot of trouble. And their military strategy to do that was to have soldiers stationed at every water hole along the US-Mexico border. So, even though Bonita Canyon is more or less 60 miles north of the border, they have springs, they have creeks there, so they have soldiers there. And it just happened that Bonita Canyon, the only soldiers in that temporary camp, were black soldiers in the 10th Cavalry. Other temporary camps had white soldiers and different cavalry and infantry units. So, there were lots of temporary camps, just scattered throughout the Chiricahua Mountains as the US Army tried to capture Chief Mangas, Chief Nana, and a whole bunch of other people, including Geronimo. And Geronimo ended up being captured, and taken to Fort Bowie. And so he was held there before he was transported by train, all the way to Florida. So, this was a big military push to capture all of the Chiricahua Apache.
MG: I've heard it described, for maybe lack of a better term, as sort of search and destroy missions. Where they would be, sort of chasing down these smaller groups of Apache combatants. From the stories that we heard from Mr. Certaine, and some of the things I've read, it sounds like, uh, that was a really hard lifestyle. That would have been really difficult to chase down these groups and live in some of these temporary encampments, far away from the fort.
AH: I think that that's really true. A lot of the men in Bonita Canyon were, I imagine, mostly bored, during their time. I mean, they're guarding the water hole, they're carrying mail, they were escorting civilians so that they could get from place to place safely, but a lot of them didn't actually see any action during that year that they were stationed in Bonita Canyon. But after Chief Naiche, who was Chief Cochise's son, and Geronimo surrendered, they were taken to Fort Bowie and there was one more major Chiricahua Apache Chief who hadn't been captured, and that was Chief Mangas. And some of the men in Troop H went with their commander, and were able to capture Chief Mangas, and his family. And this was a peaceful surrender, and it was partially negotiated by John Casey. Because you think about these different groups of people that we have interacting: the Buffalo Soldiers spoke English, the Chiricahua Apache had their dialect, and you know, there could be some possible translation errors. And John Casey, probably because he had been married to a woman from Mexico, spoke Spanish. So, he was able to translate Spanish from Mangas' mother, into you know, just English, and they were able to negotiate a peaceful surrender. So, he played an important role in translating, you know, Spanish because she was speaking Spanish to her son, who was speaking the Chiricahua dialect, and it was a safe surrender, no one was hurt. Of course, Chief Mangas and all of his family were then transported to Florida with all of the other Chiricahua Apache. So, they were no longer allowed to live in their homeland, but it sounds like that was a pretty impressive surrender to have...
SH: That's pretty amazing, you know, to have the last big surrender takes place in three different languages.
AH: Yes. And it was negotiated by Buffalo Soldiers. They did, of course, have a white captain. His name was Charles Cooper, and his daughter wrote a pretty impressive memoir about her time as a "child of the fighting 10th." Her name was Forrestine Cooper Hooker. And reading her memoir there are some references to Bonita Canyon, and some of the individual soldiers, who she sort of grew up with in a way.
SH: Wow.
MG: Hmm.
AH: Yeah.
SH: So that's fascinating. You have a child that was following them. Would she have stayed in the forts, rather than being at some of these advanced, or field encampments? You know, we were talking about baking soda, or baking powder, and you know, that seems very much like a luxury for these men who are out in the middle of nowhere guarding a waterhole.
AH: Yes! Normally she and her mother would have stayed at the fort, but I think that her father had been in the field for quite a while, and her mother wanted to go out and visit him. And so she brought her daughter along, and there's this story that Forrestine was trying to bring back a cow, that still had a calf, because they wanted a cow to milk, and she was having a hard time herding it though the canyon on her horse. And at one point her horse bolted and she was screaming and her hat fell off, and one of the soldiers thought that she was being attacked, and so he rushed to her rescue, and everyone got a big laugh out of it afterwards. But, I don't think that they were really supposed to be in that temporary camp, it was just, I think Captain Cooper's wife missed her husband.
SH: Excellent. So Buffalo Soldiers are connected with many National Park Service units throughout the American West and Southwest and Northwest as you've shown. They even, you know, after the Indian Wars close up, the Buffalo Soldiers who.. uh, then end up serving in leadership in National Parks. It's not just National parks about Buffalo Soldiers, or that encompass Buffalo Soldier sites or remains. It's um, park rangers who are at the Presidio of San Francisco, and Yellowstone and Sequoia/Kings Canyon. Um, yet, many people don't know that history, um, what can listeners do to become more educated on that history, and what can the park service do to better tell their story?
AH: That's a really great question. I would right now, one of the best places to go to learn more about Buffalo Soldiers and national park sites, is the Buffalo Soldier subject site on nps.gov. So that's ...
SH: We can put links for our listeners too, on the website.
AH: Oh perfect! Yes, that's perfect. So that's a great place to start. And highlight a lot of the different parks that have connections to Buffalo Soldiers. But I would say, one of the things that visitors can do, is ask a ranger if there are any untold stories in their park. Because there are so many more things that we can talk about as park rangers than just the main reason that the park is established. So, Chiricahua was established to protect the geology, but that's not the only story that we share. We talk about Faraway Ranch, and the Swedish immigrants, and about the Buffalo Soldiers. We talk about the plants and the animals, so there are lots of different stories that you can learn about in different national park sites. So, I would definitely encourage you to ask a ranger about any untold stories. And I think that the park service is really becoming more aware, and trying to share a lot of these diverse stories, and multiple perspectives, because the whole point of the park is to protect stories as well as the natural and cultural resources that we have. A lot of park sites have not just beautiful scenery, but really complicated stories that highlight why we are American. You have stories not just about Buffalo Soldiers, but about Civil Rights in the United States. The Selma to Montgomery national historic trail. You have Manzanar where Japanese and Japanese Americans were kept during WWII. You have StoneWall Inn that commemorates the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ rights in the United States. There are all sorts of complicated stories that are woven together into the fabric of who we are as Americans. And it's not just the beautiful places that the park service protects, it's this complicated that makes us who we are, and highlighting the connections that we have from the past to the present, and thinking about the way all of these stories are intertwined - the fact that John Casey couldn't get married in his home state. And if he had lived to be you know, if he had lived into the 1960s he eventually would have been able to get married there, in Missouri, after the Supreme Court decision. But, I mean, that's a long time to wait! And so, there are a lot of these stories that are just on going. And history doesn't really end, it just keeps on going, and I think that's something that the park service can continue to highlight. It's not just dead guys in the past. It's a lot of issues that we're continuing to grapple with today.
MG: One of the things that we've talked a lot about in some of our other episodes is relevancy and making sure that these places are relative to all of different groups of people that might come visit. So, telling a lot of different stories, from different perspectives is a great way to do that.
AH: Yeah! And i think that there are some really simple things, I mean, we're talking about soldiers. There are so many people who serve in our armed forced across the country and across the world. You know, we have a whole month dedicated to African American history, we have a month for women's history. We have all of these things that we value, and dedicate time to, and I do think that when we highlight those in our national park sites, it's a great way to connect the park to the people, and the people to the park.
SH: Well, thank you Ann. This is awesome. And I totally agree. I hope this episode has helped a little bit to highlight some of those as well. Thank you so much for joining us.
AH: Thank you for having me! This has been really fun.
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SH: So I love this interview with Ann. It's one of our shorter ones, but she really has a way of bringing forward complicated stories, and her quote about you know, complicated stories really reveal who we are. And that really is all about relevancy and why these sites, why all of our national park service units were set aside. And with talking with her, it seems like there are all of these little individual stories, and it's cool to learn about this person. But you know, Matt, your back and forth with Ann about Flipper, you know, you have this story about the first black cadet to graduate from WestPoint, and how it has these ripples into the stones that were carved at Chiricahua, and someone who probably revered him, since we don't have the data that he was there. And then how that continues out, uhm, all the way to modern history with President Clinton pardoning him. You know, this really is not just relevancy from the 19th Century, but relevant for today, and the society we're in, and the complicated stories we're all still trying to navigate.
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MG: In our next episode we'll continue to talk about complicated stories by discussing Children's Village at Manzanar with Karyl Matsumoto.
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Description
In this episode we continue the discussion of African American Buffalo Soldiers, specifically at Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona. Park Ranger/Interpreter Ann Huston shares stories of the men who lived in Bonita Canyon for over a year; stories that still resonate today. Check out www.nps.gov/subjects/buffalosoldiers/ and Chiricahua National Monument at https://www.nps.gov/chir
Duration
34 minutes, 56 seconds
Credit
NPS/Southern Arizona Office
Date Created
02/25/2020
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