Buffalo Soldiers Fought, Served in the U.S. Army from 1866 to 1951
In 1866, Congress established 6 all-Black regiments after the Civil War
Buffalo Soldier troopers in formation, ready for inspection in Cuba.
United States Army African Americans served in the U.S. Military during the Civil War and continued to serve afterwards. Many of these soldiers went on to fight in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. Although the pay was low, only $13 a month, many African Americans enlisted because they could earn more and be treated with more dignity than they often received in civilian life. In 1866, Congress established six all-black regiments (consolidated to four shortly after) to help rebuild the country after the Civil War and to fight on the Western frontier during the “Indian Wars.”
It was from one of these regiments, the 10th Cavalry, that the nickname Buffalo Soldier was born. American Plains Indians who fought against these soldiers referred to the black cavalry troops as “buffalo soldiers” because of their dark, curly hair, which resembled a buffalo’s coat and because of their fierce nature of fighting. The nickname soon became synonymous with all African-American regiments formed in 1866.In addition to their military duties, the Buffalo Soldiers also served as some of the first care takers of the national parks. Between 1891 and 1913, the U.S. Army served as the official administrator of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. The soldiers were stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco during the winter months and then served in the Sierra during the summer months. While in the parks, soldier’s duties included fighting wildfire, curbing poaching of the park’s wildlife, ending illegal grazing of livestock on federal lands, and constructing roads, trail and other infrastructure.
In 1903, Captain Charles Young led a company of Buffalo Soldiers in Sequoia and General Grant (now Sequoia and King’s Canyon) National Parks. Young and his troops managed to complete more infrastructure improvements than those from the previous three years.
They completed a road to the Giant Forest and a road to the base of Moro Rock. Their work on these new roads now allowed the public to access the mountain-top forest for the first time.
The Buffalo Soldier regiments went on to serve the U.S. Army with distinction and honor for nearly the next five decades.
With the disbandment of the 27th Cavalry on December 12, 1951, the last of the storied Buffalo Soldiers regiments came to an end.
Sgt. Bowman talks about the meaning and origin of the phrase “buffalo soldier.
”This is Sergeant Bowman, Troop K, 9th Regiment of Cavalry. I’ve talked about quite a few different things and you’ve been listening and you’ve been listening good. But I never explained what a Buffalo Soldier actually is. I didn’t hear that word, that phrase, when I first enlisted. All I knew was I was a soldier in Troop K, 9th Regiment of Cavalry. It was during the Indian Wars that that name come about, the name Buffalo Soldier. You see these Plains Indians, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, or the Kiowa, all these Plains Indians had never seen or rarely saw a colored man. And when you’re fighting a colored man, you’re up close and he can see you and you can see him. Well, a colored man saw someone not all that different from him, you know, tribal people and the colored man come from tribal people. And that Indian, that Cheyenne, that Plains Indian, when he looked and saw that colored man, he saw his hair on his head and of course he was thinking about, I might want to remove that hair from his head. I might want to do that right now with that man in front of me who’s trying to take my land away from me. And the colored man is not thinking he’s stealing someone else’s land. He’s taking someone else’s land. He’s helping someone else that he don’t even know, remove a land from people who’ve been on it for so long. It’s–you can’t separate the land from those people. He ain’t thinking that. No one’s thinking that. They both are thinking, how do I survive the next second and not getting myself killed? Well, that Indian, that Plains Indian sees that the hair on these colored soldiers is just like the hair, that matted cushion between the horns of a buffalo. Now, think about that, the buffalo is sacred to the Plains Indian. Everything that Indian needs comes from the buffalo is more than just an animal. It’s more than just something with four hooves moving on some dusty plain. It’s a church. It’s a cathedral. It’s something sacred and yet at the same time it’s like walking into a store, when you walk up to buy some. Everything that you need is in that buffalo. Food is in that buffalo. Shelter is in that buffalo. It’s more than just an animal. It’s all those things, all wrapped up into something that’s 2,000 pounds of trouble. So, when you take away that buffalo, you’re taking away more than what you can actually see in front of you, hear in front of you, smell in front of you if you were in the presence of that animal. You’ve taken away someone’s culture, someone’s meaning about what life actually is. And no one ever explained that to me. I had no 2nd Lieutenant telling me what I was removing, when I removed the buffalo from this world, but that’s what I was taking away. So, for those people, those more than Plains People, for the Cheyenne, to actually look at a Buffalo Soldier and call him a Buffalo Soldier and the name became one and the same. That 9th Cavalry, the 10th Cavalry became Buffalo Soldiers and they gave us that name. The people, who are trying to take away the buffalo, kill the buffalo and kill the Plains Indians. Those people, they call them Buffalo Soldiers. Now, growing up in South Carolina, growing up in Spartanburg, I got a lot of names that were called to me. I’ve been called a nigger. I’ve been called worse than nigger. But to think that someone gave me and my men, my troop, my regiment a name that was based on something sacred to them, dear to those people, to their culture, I because can’t wrap my mind around that I have received a compliment from the people we are trying to kill, to remove, to exclude, to annihilate. That’s the word Lieutenant taught me annihilate, meaning ain’t nothing left. But you know what, you can’t very easily get rid of a culture to such degree there ain’t nothing left. There’s always something left behind and that something makes it really hard to sleep at night and to wake up without having a tear in your eyes thinking about what you’ve done, what you’re doing and what you’re going to do on the following day. Yeah. Yeah. I think about that. Every time I hear those words, Buffalo Soldier, I think about what they mean. I think about the past. I think about who I am and someone who is African and Indian, that’s right. Those people on the plains weren’t my people. They weren’t Cherokee, they weren’t Chalaque, they weren’t Seminole, but they were people not all that different from those I left behind in South Carolina, those I called family. Huh.