The genesis for the publication of The Cheyenne Wars Atlas goes back to June 1992. It was then that the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) conducted the first Sioux Wars Staff Ride for Brigadier General William M. Steele, Deputy Commandant of the US Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC). The next year, CSI expanded the staff ride into a full elective course for the college and supported the course with the publication of the Atlas of the Sioux Wars (First edition, September 1992). The atlas, a work compiled by Dr. William Glenn Robertson, Dr. Jerold E. Brown, Major William M. Campsey, and Major Scott R. McMeen, represented a modest effort to rectify the omission of the Indian Wars in the West Point atlas series by examining the Army's campaigns against the Sioux Indians on the Northern Plains. In 2006, CSI published a second edition of the Atlas of the Sioux Wars with updated narratives and full color maps. That atlas has since served as an educational reference for hundreds of students of US Army campaigns against the Sioux during the conduct of dozens of Sioux Wars staff rides. The Sioux War Staff Ride proved very successful as both a college elective class and a unit staff ride. Then in 2006, CSI was faced with a challenge when CGSC restructured its curriculum for two courses each year. The summer startup class continued to conduct elective periods in the spring. This allowed those students to participate in the field study of the Sioux Wars Staff ride in late May/early June, one of the best times of the year to visit the rolling hills of the campaign area in Montana and Wyoming. However, the elective period for the winter startup class fell into late fall and early winter, a less than ideal time to bus across the Northern Great Plains. Nevertheless, CGSC students continued to ask for the opportunity to participate in an Indian Wars staff ride. Therefore, CSI began to explore options for another Indian Wars staff ride that would be more favorably executed in late fall and early winter. Popularity of the course was not the only motivation to develop a second Indian Wars staff ride. There is a firm commitment within CSI that the relevance of the Indian Wars to today's Army is even more evident than it was in 1992. Therefore, we wanted to ensure that both CGSC classes had the opportunity to participate in an Indian Wars staff ride. The Indian campaigns are replete with valuable lessons for the professional soldier. Today's soldiers find themselves, as did the frontier regulars of the 19th century, on an asymmetric battlefield with an enemy whose culture and fighting styles are vastly different from their own. A study of the Indian Wars offers the opportunity to compare, contrast, and discover the threads of continuity linking the Indian campaigns with the unconventional warfare of the 21st century. A serious study of the period also allows today's professionals to examine the importance of military commanders addressing cultural awareness as a key operational planning factor. Frontier Army commanders frequently failed to address cultural awareness as an important operational planning factor which lead, at times, to unforeseen consequences on the battlefield. In 2007, the Institute developed a staff ride that examined General Winfield Scott Hancock's 1867 expedition against the Cheyenne in Kansas (Part II of this atlas). The end result was an excellent staff ride concentrating on cultural awareness issues which frustrated the Army's attempt to compel peace through negotiation. However, the staff ride lacked the breadth and scope needed for a full college course. Thus, our interest turned toward Major General Philip H. Sheridan's 1868 winter campaign against the Cheyenne. In this campaign, Sheridan launched three converging columns into what is now western Oklahoma with orders to put into practice a technique of total war in which he targeted entire Indian villages for destruction. His strategy was that even if an advancing column did not find the hostile Indians, their advancing movement would help to drive the Indians into the other columns. His field commanders managed to surprise and overrun Indian villages in the war's two most significant engagements: the battles of Washita (November 1868) and Soldier Spring (December 1868). The destruction of these two villages was a major loss for the Southern Plains tribes; they could no longer count on the vastness of the territory or harsh winter conditions to protect them from the soldiers. The Southern Plains tribes acknowledged the futility of the struggle and eventually resigned themselves to life on the reservation, and a temporary (transient) peace settled upon the land for the space of four years. Sheridan's 1868 Winter War was well-suited to the staff ride's three-phase methodology: preliminary study phase, field study phase, and integration phase. The conflict was operationally and tactically complex: unfamiliar terrain, logistics, and cultural issues dramatically affected the engagements. Ample sources of both primary and secondary material are available to support a rigorous preliminary study. The ground targeted for the field study has retained good historical integrity and includes: Camp Supply, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's route to the Washita River, the Washita Battlefield, portions of Major Andrew Evans' approach march along the North Fork of the Red River, and the Soldier Spring Battlefield. The staff ride's third phase, the integration phase, was also easily facilitated by the scenario. The tactical and operational dilemmas faced by Sheridan's soldiers are similar to those faced by US soldiers fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan. The staff ride allows participating students to reflect with ease upon the similarities and to learn from the experiences of the 19th-century soldiers. Consequently, at least in part, we fulfill Robert Utley's admonition for our Army to reflect upon the "lessons thus learned." CSI-- The Past is Prologue!

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