Enter Henry Ware Lawton

By the end of the Civil War Henry Ware Lawton had moved through the ranks from Private to Brevet Colonel although he had yet to attain the age of 22, unheard of for a non-academy graduate.  Along the way, he had earned a Congressional Medal of Honor.  At the end of the war he left the Army to attend Harvard Law School.  The Army at that point went through a great transformation period, downsizing from the massive Civil War force.  The young hero Lawton accepted a Second Lieutenant appointment in the new streamlined Army.  He was elevated to First Lieutenant and became Regimental Quartermaster for the 4^th Cavalry under Ranald S. Mackenzie in 1871 for the next ten years.

At the time Mackenzie attacked Dull Knife’s village in 1876, Henry Ware Lawton was quartermaster of the column, responsible for supplying the unit with whatever their needs might be.  A short while after the attack, the Sioux, Crazy Horse, surrendered his tribe to the Army at Fort Robinson in Nebraska Territory.  Dull Knife’s Cheyennes went with the Sioux.  The Southern Cheyennes had been beaten in battle previously and were on a reservation in Texas.  These Northern Cheyennes were told they must go live with their Southern brethren, and that Lawton would escort them there.

During the march from Nebraska to Texas the Cheyenne asked for weapons so they might hunt the occasional buffalo and antelope.  Lawton, who believed that a man’s word was to be trusted, issued the warriors thirty rifles and ammunition.  A total of 972 Cheyennes began the trip southward, and 937 arrived at Fort Reno, three weeks ahead of schedule.  The remainder had died along the journey.

The next month Lawton heard that the Cheyenne were being mistreated, so he spent a week among them watching their food distribution and listening to their complaints.  He then filed a report, through Mackenzie, which they pursued all the way to Washington.

Fort Sill, in Oklahoma, is near the city of Lawton, named for the former indian fighter that fought from its confines.