Quarterly Magazine - May 2022 Vol 7 Issue 2

Everything Horses and Livestock ® Magazine

Everything Horses and Livestock ® Magazine

him for cavalry service saw negative tendencies quickly wane. He was neither a remarkable physical specimen nor an impressive beauty, unlike several of the mounts of the 7th’s acting commander, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. But “handsome is as handsome does” and at 900 pounds, a shade over 15 hands, of claybank dun color, he was a cavalry remount, like the thousands in Army history before him. He would have ample opportunities to prove his mettle. Before long, qualities would emerge which would establish his capacity as a cavalry horse, and beyond that, of a leader’s mount. The best mounts went to the leadership for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the influence of rank and position. Oftentimes, the officers were the mounted soldiers who would spend the least time with their horses in training, disposing of the many varied tasks that were part of garrison life on the frontier. It was imperative that their mounts be those of quality and substance, requiring the least attention and correction. It soon became apparent that despite his quite ordinary appearance, this gelding was an exceptional animal, destined for the head of the column. He was quiet, but reacted immediately when directed. He was unflappable, yet had an appreciation for urgency that he could seemingly sense from his rider. He may not have been

the fastest of the regimental mounts, but he was high in the order. Having an eye for horses and perceiving such qualities earlier, Captain Myles Keogh, the company commander of the 7th’s I company, purchased him for the considerable sum of $90 or so. Comanche did not take long to be inured to cavalry tasks, always displaying a kind, receptive demeanor. He performed admirably during the many mounted and dismounted drills, conducted with predictable regularity. With practice, he gained an insensitivity to the crack of the carbine or the revolver near his ears and adjusted to the saber scabbard as it rattled against his flank. On the infrequent instances of his unsoundness, a restiveness seen in horses used to hard work was the predictable outcome. He kept well on long campaigns and while traveling by rail as close to the 7th Cavalry’s business as was possible. Many such campaigns were initiated.

the planning for a campaign against the Sioux was in advanced stages. Incident to that campaign, the movement into the southern Montana Territory had a palpable urgency from previous ones. He preferred the head of the column as a contemporary champion racehorse prefers the lead, but willingly served the immediate wish of his master who moved front to rear with regularity. By this time, he had long proven himself in many skirmishes with the Indians, those most exceptional practitioners of horsemanship and mobile warfare. The smell of the red man or his village often had a significant effect on a horse. Some became wild with fear spinning away from the sensing with such violence as to risk unseating even the best rider, who in the US Cavalry service of the day tended to be fewer than more. Sometimes a reasonably green horse would bolt with such a panic that not even a strong man could control, and oftentimes into the very teeth of

Comanche – Forgotten Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley Veteran?

introduction to Army life and from where the evolutionary process from green mount to seasoned cavalry charger would begin. In the beginning he avoided men, as he moved away from the person inspecting him and his 40 contemporaries, prodded off the train at Fort Leavenworth. Just a short time earlier, he had been a wild horse running free in the vastness of the American west. Sent to transport him to central Kansas, Captain Tom Custer would be seen by him many more times over the next eight years, but at this moment, the horse wanted no part of him or any other soldier. How he came to have an Indian name in a period of hostilities with a number of Plains Indian tribes is somewhat left to conjecture. It might best be attributed to that smug quality inherent in soldiers, then as now, where the injection of a

little subtle humor or double entendre helped maintain a degree of levity in trying circumstances. Another story relates that after a particular early contact with warring Indians in southwestern Kansas, he suffered an arrow embedded in his flank. It is said as the metal arrow point was later removed, he screamed…like a Comanche. Like his namesake, he was initially mistrusting of soldiers having been a victim of rough, insensitive handling from the time of his capture, through his train ride to Saint Louis, on to Leavenworth and ultimately to near what is now Ellis, Kansas, the temporary cantonment of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Once there, as many before him, he could have made his displeasure known by laying back his ears, or by a shake of his unspectacular head. But the process of preparing

The annals of our history are filled with the names of those exceptional men and women whose exploits in the making of the nation have been so profound as to warrant special remembrance. Far fewer narratives have been written of animals in the service of man who sometimes displayed noble and uplifting qualities that were often human-like in their manifestation. One fitting example was a horse whose life revolved around the regimen that was the US Cavalry in the late 1800s. His name was Comanche. Neither beautiful nor exceptional at first examination, he began his military career little differently than many of his human counterparts, as a confused member of a larger group marked for Army service. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1868 would provide his

Into the south to address the injustices of the Ku Klux Clan, east to Kentucky to chase bootleggers for the government and ultimately to Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory where

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