From Civil War to Brutal Conflicts
By Geoffry Monteith
Henry W. Mortimer
1846-July 31, 1890
Henry W. Mortimer, born in Westminster, Maryland around 1846, was a veteran of storied units from the Civil War and multiple engagements around the Great Plains.[1] During the Civil War, Mortimer served in the Union Regular Army as a part of the General Mounted Service.[2] In contrast to the state volunteer forces, which comprised the vast majority of the Union Army, the Regular Army comprised professional soldiers who held full rank and directly served the federal government.[3] The United States Cavalry underwent dramatic changes during the Civil War as the original five regiments – the First and Second Dragoons, the First Mounted Riflemen, and the First and Second Cavalry – were all reorganized into the First through Fifth regiments of United States Cavalry, respectively, with a sixth regiment forming later in 1861.[4]
Unlike the heavily offensive roles of their Napoleonic and nineteenth-century European counterparts, American cavalry during the Civil War saw use as light forces acting as scouts, screening troops, and raiders.[5]After the end of the war, regular cavalry regiments remained intact, and many were sent to the frontier as conflict increased between Native Americans and settlers moving west.
A series of quick, brutal engagements throughout the American west, the term Indian Wars collectively refers to smaller engagements between Native Americans and United States Government forces – typically cavalry forces. Massive American migration during the period of westward expansion brought primarily white settlers into close conflict with Native Americans throughout the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and the southwest.[6] After the conclusion of the Civil War, the U.S. Army constructed numerous forts and organized multiple military expeditions in order to protect settlement.[7] Guerrilla conflict became the norm, and multiple massacres and other atrocities came from every participant during the period.[8] In 1877, Mortimer reenlisted with the Sixth US Cavalry Regiment.[9] In this same year, the Sixth had a number of major engagements with Native Americans along the southwestern Arizona Territory border.[10] Renewed hostilities with the Chiricahua Tribes led to a chase through the Arizona and Mexican deserts before finally engaging the natives and halting their raids into United States territory.[11] Notable for enigmatic leaders such as Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, and Geronimo, the Chiricahua-Apache Wars saw periods of conflict beginning in the early 1860s.[12] Coloradas, a Mimbreno Apache leader known for engaging with both the American and Mexican governments, as well as a characteristic red shirt (hence the moniker), led many of the early struggles, until he surrendered to United States troops in 1862.[13] In an unfortunately all-too-common incident for the era, guards killed Coloradas while he, allegedly, tried to escape.[14] What is certain, however, is how, the following day, his head was removed, its skin boiled away, and the bare skull shipped to the Smithsonian.[15] These acts of barbarity surely contributed to length and ferociousness of the conflict. In late 1877, Mortimer and the Sixth Cavalry regiment met and defeated a band of about fifty Chiricahua warriors, seizing a herd, stolen goods, and approximately $1200 in Mexican Silver.[16] Multiple Army Post Reports show Private Mortimer with the regiment at Camp Thomas, now northeast of Tucson, where officers stopped to receive telegraphed orders.[17]
![Fort Thomas, Arizona [30]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5cdee20d61310c0001c2cbbe/1584900484940-6CRT64S0CMY1DTCDQZYS/image-asset.jpeg)
Fort Thomas, Arizona [30]
After he was mustered out of service in 1878, Mortimer reenlisted with the Fifth US Cavalry, where he would stay for the remainder of his service. The Fifth, known for chasing down the Sioux after the Battle of Little BigHorn in 1876, had its stationing around Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska from the late 1870s through the 1880s.[18] The first major engagement Mortimer would have seen came in 1879 with the Utes of western Colorado.[19] The Utes, initially, maintained an unusually amicable relationship with the United States government.[20] Ute leaders maintained regular communication with Federal officials, with notable leaders such as Ouray touring the eastern United States on multiple occasions, and tribal warriors created a legacy of U.S. military service with such notable collaborations as assisting Union forces against Confederate troops in New Mexico.[21] This relationship led to the Utes receiving comparatively liberal treaty terms, including a reservation stretching across New Mexico and Colorado’s western slope.[22] However, beginning in the mid-1870s, complications with Colorado’s admittance to the Union, as well a mounting desire for reservation lands, led to the degradation of the once stable relationship.[23] Discontented over relations with the local Indian agency in Colorado, the Utes rose up and attacked the local agency, massacring most of the population – including the local official who had a wooden spike driven down his throat, and was then drug across the front of his house via a chain on his neck.[24] Authorities sent the Fifth Cavalry to the region to quell the uprising, and occasional skirmishes ensued until the Federal government ended the Ute War.[25] This proved to the last major action against Native Americans for the regiment, which moved back to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.[26]
Beginning in late 1889, Army Post Reports from Fort Sill, Indian Territory, show Private Mortimer coming down with an affliction in his chest that greatly hampered in breathing.[27] Reports of incessant coughing led to hospitalization for the last six months of his career.[28] On July 31, 1890 Private Mortimer reportedly died of asthma at the military hospital in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.[29] He now rests in the Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.
Footnotes ↓
[1] “U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 21, 2019), entry for Henry Mortimer, 1889.
[2] “U.S. Civil War Soldiers, 1861-1865,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 25, 2019), entry for Henry W. Mortimer, General Mounted Service.
[3] “Introduction to Civil War Cavalry,” Ohio State University, (accessed July 26, 2019), https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/Regimental/cavalry.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Winning the West: The Army in the Indian Wars, 1865-1890,” US Army Department of Military History, (accessed July 25, 2019), https://history.army.mil/books/AMH/AMH-14.htm.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 24, 2019), entry for Henry Mortimer, 1877.
[10] Cpt. William H. Carter, “The Sixth Regiment of Cavalry,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, (accessed July 26, 2019), https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-6CV.htm.
[11] Ibid.
[12] “The Apache Wars Part I: Chochise,” National Parks Servive, (accessed July 31, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/chir/learn/historyculture/apache-wars-cochise.htm.
[13] “Mangas Coloradas,” Native Partnership, (accessed July 31, 2019), http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PWNA_Native_Biography_mangascoloradas&printer_friendly=1.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Cpt. William H. Carter, “The Sixth Regiment of Cavalry,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, (accessed July 26, 2019), https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-6CV.htm.
[17] “U.S., Returns from Military Posts, 1806-1916,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 25, 2019), entry for Henry W. Mortimer, January & February 1878.
[18] Fst.Lieut. Eben Swift, “The Fifth Regiment of Cavalry,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, (accessed July 26, 2019), https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-5CV.htm.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the Land (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 210-220.
[21] Ibid, 190-220.
[22] Ibid, 220-224.
[23] Ibid, 222-224.
[24] Fst.Lieut. Eben Swift, “The Fifth Regiment of Cavalry,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, (accessed July 26, 2019), https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-5CV.htm.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] “U.S., Returns from Military Posts, 1806-1916,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 25, 2019), entry for Henry W. Mortimer, November & December 1889.
[28] Ibid.
[29] “U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, 1798-1914,” database, ancestry.com, (accessed July 25, 2019), entry for Henry Mortimer, 1889. The record actually lists his death on the 1st of August, but his grave and burial records show the 31st of July.
[30] Fort Thomas Arizona, photograph, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth60099/m1/1/: accessed March 22, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library.
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