Prairie Imperialists. Katharine Bjork

an assignment the following year as an interpreter for the army in its dealings with the Oglala chief Red Cloud, who had broken away without permission from his agency, taking the agency beef herd along with him. In reality, Scott’s assignment was to keep Red Cloud under observation and discover what had upset him and what his intentions were. Under these strained circumstances, Scott spent three days in Red Cloud’s lodge, essentially as a spy. Even though he was at best an imposed guest, Scott found Red Cloud to be “the picture of hospitality.” The two men passed the time conversing in sign language. Scott wrote about the incident in his memoirs: “Red Cloud was an excellent sign talker, but he made his gestures differently from any one I had ever seen before or since. While each was perfectly distinct, they were all made within the compass of a circle a foot in diameter, whereas they are usually made in the compass of a circle two and a half feet in diameter. We talked about everything under the sun, but he would not give me any clue to what made him so ill-humored, and to what was actuating his young men.”⁴² Scott learned much later that Red Cloud’s flight from the reservation had been triggered by the mobilization of army troops from Fort Laramie and several other points to rendezvous near Pine Ridge. Fearing that the troops were coming to arrest him, Red Cloud had fled with around five thousand of his community and they remained suspicious of and angry with the whites for the harassment and aggression they experienced.

      In the parlance of modern anthropology, Scott gained his knowledge of Indian language and culture through participant-observation. He was not alone in valuing the kind of knowledge to be gained by such methods, nor in pursuing it, but the science of ethnology, as it was called at the time, was in its infancy. It was more concerned with the study of kinship and theorizing the stages of human progress, such as those on display at the Centennial Exposition, and not so developed as it would become with respect to what we now recognize as the ethnographic method. Yet Scott and a handful of other officers were practicing it in the context of the army’s work with Indians on the frontier.⁴³

      Scott’s ethnographic techniques were not limited to the study of sign language; he extended his close and critical observation to the landscape and culture of Native North America more generally. Observations and analysis of the behaviors of animals, including other humans, were part of the repertoire of the scout, providing valuable tactical knowledge of the surroundings in which the complex strategies of assessing, anticipating, and pursuing the enemy were carried out. By learning to recognize the differences in the grazing habits and differing behaviors among herd animals such as horses, cattle, and buffaloes, for example, Scott was able to gain clues about the proximity and actions of other groups of people associated with the animals, such as the Crows. Scott felt that the cultivation of such techniques of reading the landscape separated him from soldiers on the frontier who never learned to read such signs. “Many were first-rate garrison soldiers, who knew their drill, took good care of their men, and who never made a mistake in their muster-rolls,” he wrote. “But [they] were blind on the prairie.”⁴⁴

      Scott proceeded on the idea that every action had a motive that could be discerned. As a hunter he had long studied the laws governing the actions of various animals. Scott believed that all animals were governed by “laws of their nature that compel each kind to do the same thing under the same circumstances.” Some of these he prided himself on learning through his own observation, for example, those governing the behavior of rabbits and ducks. The laws governing the movement of black bears, mountain sheep, and black-tailed deer he learned from watching the movements of Crows, Caddos, Sioux, and Cheyenne while hunting. He also believed there was a motive for human actions, which could be discerned. Indians, however, according to Scott, could not themselves articulate the reasons they hunted these animals in certain ways. The only way of learning these secrets lay in Scott’s close observation and analysis. “They cannot give one their reasons for doing certain things,” he wrote. “The only means of learning lies in close observation.” He expounded on this theory in his book. Indians were not always able to recognize the motives for their own actions, but he believed that he could ascertain them by posing questions and by observing and analyzing their behavior.⁴⁵ An example of this method at work is in Scott’s account of how he went about finding out what made a good buffalo-hunting horse in the Crows’ estimation. Scott’s inquiry into this topic, which was of existential importance to people who depended on the buffalo, began by close observation of the methods of hunting. Scott also asked questions, and in at least one case, provoked discussion among his informants so that he could learn from their exchange of ideas. In 1877, while traveling with the Crows, he instigated a debate among the chiefs in council as to who had the best buffalo horse. “After a week it was determined that Iron Bull Chief of the Montana Crows had him, and on the next run I borrowed him to find out what a really fine buffalo horse was like,” Scott wrote. After riding the best buffalo horse, Scott went on to borrow the second best and so on “until I had ridden twenty-five out of the cream of over 12,000 head—the great majority of which were pack horses and mares and colts.” From this experience, Scott noted some significant points about what made a good buffalo horse: “He did not have to be fought with like our [cavalry] horses. All he needed was to be pointed at the animal selected; then he would take one so close that one could put his hand on the buffalo’s back if one wished.”⁴⁶ In his memoirs, Scott reflected wryly that he must have been a “sore trial” to the native informants whom he badgered over the years, “boring away at a subject they were unable to elucidate” until he had found the motive, which Scott thought they were often unable to formulate themselves.⁴⁷

      In the beginning, Scott’s interest in ethnographic knowledge was instrumentalist. In particular, he applied himself to acquiring a mastery of sign language and other languages as a means of furthering his career in the army and securing more satisfying work for himself as well as winning respect and stature. However, Scott quickly became interested in learning all that he could about Indians. What began as a strategy to achieve advancement and autonomy developed into a profound lifelong interest in indigenous languages and customs.

      Figure 3. Hunting party on the Washita River in the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation. The group includes Hugh Lenox Scott (standing, third from left), Mary Scott (seated in front of him), Lieutenant Oscar Charles (seated on the ground next to Mary). Also pictured are General Nelson Miles and Frank Baldwin, who was then the Indian agent at Anadarko. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

      In 1889 Scott was assigned to Troop M of the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Sill in what was then Indian Territory. Scott’s tenure at Fort Sill coincided with a transformation of the role of Indians in the army. Although still referred to as scouts, after 1891 Native men were enlisted directly in the army. In each of the twenty-six regiments of Infantry and Cavalry serving west of the Mississippi except for the black units, one company or troop was reorganized as an all-Indian unit. Thus, Troop L of the Seventh Cavalry, a unit ironically wiped out at the Battle of Little Big Horn, was reconstituted at Fort Sill in 1891 as an Indian Scout troop. Initially, all officers were white, although later Indians served as noncommissioned officers. From June 1891 to May 1897, Troop L was composed of a majority of Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches. After 1894, some of the Apache prisoners who had been resettled from Florida and Alabama to Fort Sill also served in Troop L under Scott’s command.⁴⁸

      By the time he made the move to Oklahoma, Scott was widely recognized as an expert on sign language both within and outside the army. Scott was one of a number of frontier officers who kept up a correspondence with the Bureau of Ethnology after its founding in 1879 under the direction of John Wesley Powell. He also wrote to missionaries and corresponded with foreign experts on sign language, such as Ernest Thompson Seton, the British artist and author who founded the Woodland Indians to promote woodcraft and scouting among white boys. When Seton wrote his book Sign Language for Scouting, he sent a copy to Scott for his comments. “I hope you will scribble as freely as you feel disposed on the [manuscript],” Seton wrote to him. “Of course you know I attach the greatest importance to everything you say about sign language. You are admitted to be the greatest living authority on the sign language of the Indians.”⁴⁹ Perhaps the Englishman was engaging in some strategic flattery, but in fact, there were few nonnative signers who shared Scott’s interest,