Harney Re-Examined, Part II: William Harney's Treatment of Native Americans

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Second in San Juan Island National Historical Park's series on General William Harney, who commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific Northwest during the Pig War. Part I followed his early career up to 1834, when he fled his post in St. Louis to escape the legal consequences, and worse, of brutally killing Hannah, a young African American mother he held in slavery. This part follows his rise through the Seminole and Mexican-American Wars and his treatment of Native Americans.

The Seminole War

In 1837 Harney was given a command in the Seminole War, a campaign to drive Indigenous people from their Florida homelands. For several years his men mostly patrolled and manned outposts. Then the Seminole leader Chakaika ambushed his forces, and Harney set aside the accepted rules of war to take revenge. He promised freedom to an enslaved man who guided him; his troops disguised themselves as Native Americans; and while Harney watched from a treetop, his men crept into a Seminole camp and hanged eight men "to the top of a tall tree" as their wives and children were made to watch. Harney showed his approval by making "the island ring with his cheering." The St. Augustine Times praised him afterwards as "a man who knows his duty to country and is not afraid to perform it."

Fort Washita and a court-martial

Harney next commanded Fort Washita in Oklahoma, a post set up to keep the peace between the Chickasaw and Choctaw — forced from their homes on the Trail of Tears — and the Southwestern tribes on whose land they now lived. On July 5, 1844, when two enlisted men, J. H. O'Brien and Private Sylvanus Bean, refused to dig a latrine and insulted their officer, Harney grabbed O'Brien by the hair, threw him to the ground and beat him with his cane, sending him to the infirmary for a week. He had Bean shackled to a ball and chain and fitted with a spiked collar for 27 days of hard labour. Harney also owned a group of strong enslaved men whom he liked to goad into fistfights with soldiers known as brawlers.

Other officers complained that his "arbitrary and unmilitary conduct" undermined "good order and military discipline." At his court-martial on June 6, 1845, Harney called himself merely "naturally boisterous," a man who had "serv[ed] my country to the best of my abilities." He was convicted and sentenced to a four-month suspension. Winfield Scott, the Army's highest-ranking officer, set the sentence aside — because he thought it too light for Harney's "vicious habits," yet could find no way to dismiss him.

Mexico

In 1846, as the United States prepared to invade Mexico, Harney received a frontline command, then disobeyed direct orders by crossing the Rio Grande and attacking Mexican forces before the other troops had gathered. A second court-martial found him "guilty of disobeying direct orders," and again he went unpunished.

He was praised for his courage in battle. But during the occupation of Mexico City he caused an international incident. Two Americans had seized Marie Courtine, a French citizen accused of assaulting the Mexican wife of an American, and Harney told them: "There is my backyard, you can take them in and do with them what you please, I shall not interfere." The French ambassador complained directly to President James K. Polk, who reprimanded him.

"Exterminate all the men"

After the war, Harney and his soldiers forcibly drove Indigenous people off the newly conquered land. Pursuing Lipan and Caddo people in the winter of 1853, he ordered his troops to "exterminate all the men and make the women and children prisoners."

In 1855 the Brulé band of the Sioux defeated an Army detachment that had entered their village and opened fire when they refused to hand over a tribal leader. Harney was promoted to brigadier general and ordered to "operate against the hostile Indians" so that settlers moving west could build farms and ranches on Indigenous land. He meant "to attack any body of hostile Indians, which I...may chance to encounter," expecting that people cut off from their families "would be obliged to surrender themselves or incur the risk of starving."

Blue Water Creek

Lithograph of cavalry charging Native Americans in a rocky gorge

A lithograph of the Battle of Ash Hollow.

On September 2, 1855, Harney's troops reached the junction of Blue Water Creek and the North Platte River, where a village of 250 people stood. He marched his men through the night to surround it, and by 4:30 a.m. they were in position.

At daybreak the leaders Little Thunder, Spotted Tail and Iron Shell came out to seek peace, or at least time for the women and children to escape. Harney would not talk. Even when Little Thunder, the village elder, showed a white flag, Harney refused his hand, told him the "day of retribution" had come and that his people "must fight." As Little Thunder walked back, Harney sent his infantry forward while the cavalry cut off escape. Women and children hid in small caves in a rocky gorge as the soldiers fired on them. One soldier wrote that watching the wounded women and children die "was heart rending."

Harney was proud of it. Afterwards he was said to have declared: "I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." The New York Times wrote that "the lamentable butcheries of Indians by Harney's command on the Plains have excited the most painful feelings," and that "the so-called battle was simply a massacre," questioning whether those killed were the same people who had attacked emigrant trains, or whether the innocent could even be told from the guilty. The Sioux called him "The Butcher" and "The Big Chief who Swears."

Harney's name on the map

Americans honoured Harney by naming places after him, during his life and after.

Renamed: Harney Peak, South Dakota's highest mountain, became Black Elk Peak in 2016 after a campaign led by Native American historians; Harney Channel, between Orcas and Shaw Islands in San Juan County, Washington, now honours Henry Cayou, a Native American leader.
Still named for him: Harney County, Harney Lake, and Harney Street and Harney Park in Portland, Oregon; Harney Heights and Harney Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington, home of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site; the town of Harney, Nevada; Harney Street in Omaha; Lake Harney in Florida; and Harney Point and Harney River in Everglades National Park — many of them where he served.