Gustavus Cheyney Doane was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on May 20, 1840, and grew up in California. He graduated from the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara in 1861, and afterwards enlisted in the "California Hundred," a federal volunteer unit absorbed by the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry. Doane attained the rank of sergeant by 1864 when he resigned to accept a commission as lieutenant with the first regiment, Mississippi Marine Brigade. After the war Doane lived for a time in Yazoo City, Mississippi where he was appointed mayor by the Reconstruction authorities in 1867. In 1868 he applied for a commission with the army and was appointed second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. He served with the regiment for the next 24 years, attaining the rank of captain in 1884. During his postwar career Doane was stationed at a variety of frontier posts in Montana, California, and Arizona, including Fort Ellis, Fort Custer, Fort Assiniboine, Fort Keogh, Fort Maginnis, the Presidio, and Fort Bowie. He participated in the Sioux war of 1876, the Nez Perce War of 1877, and the Apache campaign of 1886. Doane gained a great deal of fame as an explorer, having led the first systematic exploration of present day Yellowstone National Park in 1870, a survey of the Judith Basin area in 1874, a trip down the Snake River in 1876-77, and the Howgate polar expedition in Greenland in 1880. Towards the end of his life, Doane attempted unsuccessfully to gain the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park and to influence widespread army acceptance for his invention, the Doane Centennial Tent. He married twice, to Amelia Link in 1866 and to Mary Lee Hunter in 1878. Gustavus Doane died on May 5, 1892.
GUSTAVUS CHEENY DOANE. Born in Galesburg, Ill., May 29, 1840; died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. The officer in command of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870. He was also the author of an official report that appeared as a congressional document, thus providing information recognized as reliable. Doane's parents moved to Oregon Territory by ox-wagon when he was 5 years old, and in 1849 they were lured south to the gold fields of California, so that the lad grew to manhood in the exciting atmosphere of the mushroom camps and towns of the Argonauts. It was that environment, and the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara, that shaped the man. In 1862, young Doane went east with the "California Hundred," determined to serve the Union cause. Enlisting in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry on October 30, he had advanced from private to sergeant by Mar. 23, 1864, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant of cavalry. He was honorably mustered out of service on Jan. 23, 1865. For a time after the war, Doane was involved in the military government of Mississippi, holding offices that included that of mayor of Yazoo City. He married a southern girl, Amelia Link, on July 25, 1866, but it was an unhappy union that ended 12 years later when she divorced him at Virginia City, Mont. Doane returned to military life July 5, 1868, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. His company arrived at Fort Ellis in May 1869 to become part of the garrison of that post established less than 2 years earlier for the protection of the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. And so, when a detail was needed to escort the Washburn party of 1870 into the Yellowstone wilderness, there was just the right officer available at the post that was the logical point of departure. The assignment was routine, "proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F, Second Cavalry, to escort the surveyor general of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return;" but Lieutenant Doane made a better-than-routine report upon his visit. That remarkably thorough description was the first official information on the Yellowstone region and its unusual features, and it was characterized by Dr. F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geologist, in these words: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark." Great interest was created by that report, and as a result, Doane was often referred to as "the man who invented wonderland." He was described as of splendid physique, standing 6 feet 2 inches, straight as an arrow, and swarthy, with black hair and a dark handlebar mustache. He was 200 pounds, "tall, dark and handsome," and endowed with a loud voice and an air of utter fearlessness. Add to that all the competence of a natural frontiersman, including superb horsemanship and deadly proficiency with a rifle, and there stands the man of whom a soldier once said, "We welcomed duty with the lieutenant." There is also praise of the finest type in the published memoir of Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, one of Doane's shavetails who made it all the way to chief of staff; he looked back over the years and said of that adventurous officer he had served under, "I modeled myself on him as a soldier." Being a restless, energetic, intelligent man with great powers of endurance, Doane was always busy. He was in demand to escort official parties through the Yellowstone region, "as he did the Barlow-Heap and Hayden Survey parties in 1871, and the grand excursion of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1875," and when not so employed he volunteered to lead scouting parties and developed a force of Crow Indian auxiliaries of considerable value during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877 (a war which was a disappointment to Doane because his orders kept him out of the real action). Late in 1876, Lieutenant Doane was sent on one of the most unusual and bizarre expeditions ever fielded by our army in the West. It was nothing less than a winter exploration of the Snake River from its Yellowstone headwaters to the junction with the mighty Columbia, "a task to be accomplished with a detail of six men and a homemade boat. It was his good fortune to lose the boat, "but not his men" in the Grand Canyon of Snake River, thus ending in an early disappointment a venture which could only have matured into tragedy. On Dec. 16, 1878, Doane married his second wife, Mary Hunter, daughter of the old pioneer who was the proprietor of Hunter's Hot Springs on the Yellowstone River at present Springdale, Mont. After a honeymoon in the "States," where Lieutenant Doane had a winter assignment, the couple returned to Montana and life at Fort Ellis. In 1880, Doane was involved in what promised to be the grandest adventure of his life, one that might have taken his life had he not refused to go through with it. He was ordered East to be considered for duty in the Arctic "as the commander of a party which was to implement the "Howgate Plan" for the study of Arctic weather and living conditions. For its part, the U.S. Army was to establish and maintain a station at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. Doane sailed north on the Proteus, a leaky and inadequate vessel that was unable to reach its destination (and almost failed to get back). The experience was enough for Doane and he declined the duty, letting it go to a young Signal Corps officer named A. W. Greely. A promotion to the rank of captain came to Doane Sept. 22, 1884, and his subsequent service was mainly on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. While doing monotonous duty at dusty outposts, he dreamed of explorations in Africa, and he made serious tries for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park in 1889 and 1891. But Doane's days were numbered. His health began to fail under the hard field duty required of him in Arizona, and he reluctantly asked for retirement. It was not allowed him because he had neither the age (64 years) or the service (40 years) required at that time, and all that could he done was to allow him 6 months leave. He returned to his home as Bozeman, Mont., but contracted pneumonia and died there. Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park, (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 293-95; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1 (Washington, 1903), p. 375, and various newspaper items from the Montana press.
Yellowstone mountain renamed
June 10, 2022
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — A government panel has renamed a Yellowstone National Park mountain that had been named for a U.S. Army officer who helped lead a massacre of Native Americans.
Mount Doane will now be called First Peoples Mountain after the unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the National Park Service announced Thursday.
The 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) peak in southeastern Yellowstone in Wyoming had been named for Lt. Gustavus Doane, who in 1870 helped lead an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in northern Montana
** History Facts show Lt Doane , who was 29 years of age, leading F Troup, 2nd Calvary , was at that time, answering to his superior officer, and was under the Command of Major (or ) Col Eugene Baker.
The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the man with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.
Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered a village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.
At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong group, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack.
( " The greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. Troops." – Lieutenant Gustavus Doane, commander of F Company) .
When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilization shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker's critics "namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists." Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department–President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Native agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.
GUSTAVUS CHEENY DOANE. Born in Galesburg, Ill., May 29, 1840; died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. The officer in command of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870. He was also the author of an official report that appeared as a congressional document, thus providing information recognized as reliable. Doane's parents moved to Oregon Territory by ox-wagon when he was 5 years old, and in 1849 they were lured south to the gold fields of California, so that the lad grew to manhood in the exciting atmosphere of the mushroom camps and towns of the Argonauts. It was that environment, and the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara, that shaped the man. In 1862, young Doane went east with the "California Hundred," determined to serve the Union cause. Enlisting in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry on October 30, he had advanced from private to sergeant by Mar. 23, 1864, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant of cavalry. He was honorably mustered out of service on Jan. 23, 1865. For a time after the war, Doane was involved in the military government of Mississippi, holding offices that included that of mayor of Yazoo City. He married a southern girl, Amelia Link, on July 25, 1866, but it was an unhappy union that ended 12 years later when she divorced him at Virginia City, Mont. Doane returned to military life July 5, 1868, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. His company arrived at Fort Ellis in May 1869 to become part of the garrison of that post established less than 2 years earlier for the protection of the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. And so, when a detail was needed to escort the Washburn party of 1870 into the Yellowstone wilderness, there was just the right officer available at the post that was the logical point of departure. The assignment was routine, "proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F, Second Cavalry, to escort the surveyor general of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return;" but Lieutenant Doane made a better-than-routine report upon his visit. That remarkably thorough description was the first official information on the Yellowstone region and its unusual features, and it was characterized by Dr. F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geologist, in these words: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark." Great interest was created by that report, and as a result, Doane was often referred to as "the man who invented wonderland." He was described as of splendid physique, standing 6 feet 2 inches, straight as an arrow, and swarthy, with black hair and a dark handlebar mustache. He was 200 pounds, "tall, dark and handsome," and endowed with a loud voice and an air of utter fearlessness. Add to that all the competence of a natural frontiersman, including superb horsemanship and deadly proficiency with a rifle, and there stands the man of whom a soldier once said, "We welcomed duty with the lieutenant." There is also praise of the finest type in the published memoir of Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, one of Doane's shavetails who made it all the way to chief of staff; he looked back over the years and said of that adventurous officer he had served under, "I modeled myself on him as a soldier." Being a restless, energetic, intelligent man with great powers of endurance, Doane was always busy. He was in demand to escort official parties through the Yellowstone region, "as he did the Barlow-Heap and Hayden Survey parties in 1871, and the grand excursion of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1875," and when not so employed he volunteered to lead scouting parties and developed a force of Crow Indian auxiliaries of considerable value during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877 (a war which was a disappointment to Doane because his orders kept him out of the real action). Late in 1876, Lieutenant Doane was sent on one of the most unusual and bizarre expeditions ever fielded by our army in the West. It was nothing less than a winter exploration of the Snake River from its Yellowstone headwaters to the junction with the mighty Columbia, "a task to be accomplished with a detail of six men and a homemade boat. It was his good fortune to lose the boat, "but not his men" in the Grand Canyon of Snake River, thus ending in an early disappointment a venture which could only have matured into tragedy. On Dec. 16, 1878, Doane married his second wife, Mary Hunter, daughter of the old pioneer who was the proprietor of Hunter's Hot Springs on the Yellowstone River at present Springdale, Mont. After a honeymoon in the "States," where Lieutenant Doane had a winter assignment, the couple returned to Montana and life at Fort Ellis. In 1880, Doane was involved in what promised to be the grandest adventure of his life, one that might have taken his life had he not refused to go through with it. He was ordered East to be considered for duty in the Arctic "as the commander of a party which was to implement the "Howgate Plan" for the study of Arctic weather and living conditions. For its part, the U.S. Army was to establish and maintain a station at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. Doane sailed north on the Proteus, a leaky and inadequate vessel that was unable to reach its destination (and almost failed to get back). The experience was enough for Doane and he declined the duty, letting it go to a young Signal Corps officer named A. W. Greely. A promotion to the rank of captain came to Doane Sept. 22, 1884, and his subsequent service was mainly on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. While doing monotonous duty at dusty outposts, he dreamed of explorations in Africa, and he made serious tries for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park in 1889 and 1891. But Doane's days were numbered. His health began to fail under the hard field duty required of him in Arizona, and he reluctantly asked for retirement. It was not allowed him because he had neither the age (64 years) or the service (40 years) required at that time, and all that could he done was to allow him 6 months leave. He returned to his home as Bozeman, Mont., but contracted pneumonia and died there. Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park, (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 293-95; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1 (Washington, 1903), p. 375, and various newspaper items from the Montana press.
Yellowstone mountain renamed
June 10, 2022
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — A government panel has renamed a Yellowstone National Park mountain that had been named for a U.S. Army officer who helped lead a massacre of Native Americans.
Mount Doane will now be called First Peoples Mountain after the unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the National Park Service announced Thursday.
The 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) peak in southeastern Yellowstone in Wyoming had been named for Lt. Gustavus Doane, who in 1870 helped lead an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in northern Montana
** History Facts show Lt Doane , who was 29 years of age, leading F Troup, 2nd Calvary , was at that time, answering to his superior officer, and was under the Command of Major (or ) Col Eugene Baker.
The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the man with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.
Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered a village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.
At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong group, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack.
( " The greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. Troops." – Lieutenant Gustavus Doane, commander of F Company) .
When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilization shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker's critics "namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists." Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department–President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Native agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.
Gustavus Cheyney Doane was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on May 20, 1840, and grew up in California. He graduated from the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara in 1861, and afterwards enlisted in the "California Hundred," a federal volunteer unit absorbed by the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry. Doane attained the rank of sergeant by 1864 when he resigned to accept a commission as lieutenant with the first regiment, Mississippi Marine Brigade. After the war Doane lived for a time in Yazoo City, Mississippi where he was appointed mayor by the Reconstruction authorities in 1867. In 1868 he applied for a commission with the army and was appointed second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. He served with the regiment for the next 24 years, attaining the rank of captain in 1884. During his postwar career Doane was stationed at a variety of frontier posts in Montana, California, and Arizona, including Fort Ellis, Fort Custer, Fort Assiniboine, Fort Keogh, Fort Maginnis, the Presidio, and Fort Bowie. He participated in the Sioux war of 1876, the Nez Perce War of 1877, and the Apache campaign of 1886. Doane gained a great deal of fame as an explorer, having led the first systematic exploration of present day Yellowstone National Park in 1870, a survey of the Judith Basin area in 1874, a trip down the Snake River in 1876-77, and the Howgate polar expedition in Greenland in 1880. Towards the end of his life, Doane attempted unsuccessfully to gain the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park and to influence widespread army acceptance for his invention, the Doane Centennial Tent. He married twice, to Amelia Link in 1866 and to Mary Lee Hunter in 1878. Gustavus Doane died on May 5, 1892.
GUSTAVUS CHEENY DOANE. Born in Galesburg, Ill., May 29, 1840; died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. The officer in command of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870. He was also the author of an official report that appeared as a congressional document, thus providing information recognized as reliable. Doane's parents moved to Oregon Territory by ox-wagon when he was 5 years old, and in 1849 they were lured south to the gold fields of California, so that the lad grew to manhood in the exciting atmosphere of the mushroom camps and towns of the Argonauts. It was that environment, and the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara, that shaped the man. In 1862, young Doane went east with the "California Hundred," determined to serve the Union cause. Enlisting in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry on October 30, he had advanced from private to sergeant by Mar. 23, 1864, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant of cavalry. He was honorably mustered out of service on Jan. 23, 1865. For a time after the war, Doane was involved in the military government of Mississippi, holding offices that included that of mayor of Yazoo City. He married a southern girl, Amelia Link, on July 25, 1866, but it was an unhappy union that ended 12 years later when she divorced him at Virginia City, Mont. Doane returned to military life July 5, 1868, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. His company arrived at Fort Ellis in May 1869 to become part of the garrison of that post established less than 2 years earlier for the protection of the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. And so, when a detail was needed to escort the Washburn party of 1870 into the Yellowstone wilderness, there was just the right officer available at the post that was the logical point of departure. The assignment was routine, "proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F, Second Cavalry, to escort the surveyor general of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return;" but Lieutenant Doane made a better-than-routine report upon his visit. That remarkably thorough description was the first official information on the Yellowstone region and its unusual features, and it was characterized by Dr. F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geologist, in these words: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark." Great interest was created by that report, and as a result, Doane was often referred to as "the man who invented wonderland." He was described as of splendid physique, standing 6 feet 2 inches, straight as an arrow, and swarthy, with black hair and a dark handlebar mustache. He was 200 pounds, "tall, dark and handsome," and endowed with a loud voice and an air of utter fearlessness. Add to that all the competence of a natural frontiersman, including superb horsemanship and deadly proficiency with a rifle, and there stands the man of whom a soldier once said, "We welcomed duty with the lieutenant." There is also praise of the finest type in the published memoir of Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, one of Doane's shavetails who made it all the way to chief of staff; he looked back over the years and said of that adventurous officer he had served under, "I modeled myself on him as a soldier." Being a restless, energetic, intelligent man with great powers of endurance, Doane was always busy. He was in demand to escort official parties through the Yellowstone region, "as he did the Barlow-Heap and Hayden Survey parties in 1871, and the grand excursion of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1875," and when not so employed he volunteered to lead scouting parties and developed a force of Crow Indian auxiliaries of considerable value during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877 (a war which was a disappointment to Doane because his orders kept him out of the real action). Late in 1876, Lieutenant Doane was sent on one of the most unusual and bizarre expeditions ever fielded by our army in the West. It was nothing less than a winter exploration of the Snake River from its Yellowstone headwaters to the junction with the mighty Columbia, "a task to be accomplished with a detail of six men and a homemade boat. It was his good fortune to lose the boat, "but not his men" in the Grand Canyon of Snake River, thus ending in an early disappointment a venture which could only have matured into tragedy. On Dec. 16, 1878, Doane married his second wife, Mary Hunter, daughter of the old pioneer who was the proprietor of Hunter's Hot Springs on the Yellowstone River at present Springdale, Mont. After a honeymoon in the "States," where Lieutenant Doane had a winter assignment, the couple returned to Montana and life at Fort Ellis. In 1880, Doane was involved in what promised to be the grandest adventure of his life, one that might have taken his life had he not refused to go through with it. He was ordered East to be considered for duty in the Arctic "as the commander of a party which was to implement the "Howgate Plan" for the study of Arctic weather and living conditions. For its part, the U.S. Army was to establish and maintain a station at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. Doane sailed north on the Proteus, a leaky and inadequate vessel that was unable to reach its destination (and almost failed to get back). The experience was enough for Doane and he declined the duty, letting it go to a young Signal Corps officer named A. W. Greely. A promotion to the rank of captain came to Doane Sept. 22, 1884, and his subsequent service was mainly on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. While doing monotonous duty at dusty outposts, he dreamed of explorations in Africa, and he made serious tries for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park in 1889 and 1891. But Doane's days were numbered. His health began to fail under the hard field duty required of him in Arizona, and he reluctantly asked for retirement. It was not allowed him because he had neither the age (64 years) or the service (40 years) required at that time, and all that could he done was to allow him 6 months leave. He returned to his home as Bozeman, Mont., but contracted pneumonia and died there. Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park, (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 293-95; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1 (Washington, 1903), p. 375, and various newspaper items from the Montana press.
Yellowstone mountain renamed
June 10, 2022
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — A government panel has renamed a Yellowstone National Park mountain that had been named for a U.S. Army officer who helped lead a massacre of Native Americans.
Mount Doane will now be called First Peoples Mountain after the unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the National Park Service announced Thursday.
The 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) peak in southeastern Yellowstone in Wyoming had been named for Lt. Gustavus Doane, who in 1870 helped lead an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in northern Montana
** History Facts show Lt Doane , who was 29 years of age, leading F Troup, 2nd Calvary , was at that time, answering to his superior officer, and was under the Command of Major (or ) Col Eugene Baker.
The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the man with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.
Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered a village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.
At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong group, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack.
( " The greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. Troops." – Lieutenant Gustavus Doane, commander of F Company) .
When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilization shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker's critics "namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists." Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department–President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Native agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.
GUSTAVUS CHEENY DOANE. Born in Galesburg, Ill., May 29, 1840; died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. The officer in command of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870. He was also the author of an official report that appeared as a congressional document, thus providing information recognized as reliable. Doane's parents moved to Oregon Territory by ox-wagon when he was 5 years old, and in 1849 they were lured south to the gold fields of California, so that the lad grew to manhood in the exciting atmosphere of the mushroom camps and towns of the Argonauts. It was that environment, and the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara, that shaped the man. In 1862, young Doane went east with the "California Hundred," determined to serve the Union cause. Enlisting in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry on October 30, he had advanced from private to sergeant by Mar. 23, 1864, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant of cavalry. He was honorably mustered out of service on Jan. 23, 1865. For a time after the war, Doane was involved in the military government of Mississippi, holding offices that included that of mayor of Yazoo City. He married a southern girl, Amelia Link, on July 25, 1866, but it was an unhappy union that ended 12 years later when she divorced him at Virginia City, Mont. Doane returned to military life July 5, 1868, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. His company arrived at Fort Ellis in May 1869 to become part of the garrison of that post established less than 2 years earlier for the protection of the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. And so, when a detail was needed to escort the Washburn party of 1870 into the Yellowstone wilderness, there was just the right officer available at the post that was the logical point of departure. The assignment was routine, "proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F, Second Cavalry, to escort the surveyor general of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return;" but Lieutenant Doane made a better-than-routine report upon his visit. That remarkably thorough description was the first official information on the Yellowstone region and its unusual features, and it was characterized by Dr. F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geologist, in these words: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark." Great interest was created by that report, and as a result, Doane was often referred to as "the man who invented wonderland." He was described as of splendid physique, standing 6 feet 2 inches, straight as an arrow, and swarthy, with black hair and a dark handlebar mustache. He was 200 pounds, "tall, dark and handsome," and endowed with a loud voice and an air of utter fearlessness. Add to that all the competence of a natural frontiersman, including superb horsemanship and deadly proficiency with a rifle, and there stands the man of whom a soldier once said, "We welcomed duty with the lieutenant." There is also praise of the finest type in the published memoir of Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, one of Doane's shavetails who made it all the way to chief of staff; he looked back over the years and said of that adventurous officer he had served under, "I modeled myself on him as a soldier." Being a restless, energetic, intelligent man with great powers of endurance, Doane was always busy. He was in demand to escort official parties through the Yellowstone region, "as he did the Barlow-Heap and Hayden Survey parties in 1871, and the grand excursion of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1875," and when not so employed he volunteered to lead scouting parties and developed a force of Crow Indian auxiliaries of considerable value during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877 (a war which was a disappointment to Doane because his orders kept him out of the real action). Late in 1876, Lieutenant Doane was sent on one of the most unusual and bizarre expeditions ever fielded by our army in the West. It was nothing less than a winter exploration of the Snake River from its Yellowstone headwaters to the junction with the mighty Columbia, "a task to be accomplished with a detail of six men and a homemade boat. It was his good fortune to lose the boat, "but not his men" in the Grand Canyon of Snake River, thus ending in an early disappointment a venture which could only have matured into tragedy. On Dec. 16, 1878, Doane married his second wife, Mary Hunter, daughter of the old pioneer who was the proprietor of Hunter's Hot Springs on the Yellowstone River at present Springdale, Mont. After a honeymoon in the "States," where Lieutenant Doane had a winter assignment, the couple returned to Montana and life at Fort Ellis. In 1880, Doane was involved in what promised to be the grandest adventure of his life, one that might have taken his life had he not refused to go through with it. He was ordered East to be considered for duty in the Arctic "as the commander of a party which was to implement the "Howgate Plan" for the study of Arctic weather and living conditions. For its part, the U.S. Army was to establish and maintain a station at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. Doane sailed north on the Proteus, a leaky and inadequate vessel that was unable to reach its destination (and almost failed to get back). The experience was enough for Doane and he declined the duty, letting it go to a young Signal Corps officer named A. W. Greely. A promotion to the rank of captain came to Doane Sept. 22, 1884, and his subsequent service was mainly on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. While doing monotonous duty at dusty outposts, he dreamed of explorations in Africa, and he made serious tries for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park in 1889 and 1891. But Doane's days were numbered. His health began to fail under the hard field duty required of him in Arizona, and he reluctantly asked for retirement. It was not allowed him because he had neither the age (64 years) or the service (40 years) required at that time, and all that could he done was to allow him 6 months leave. He returned to his home as Bozeman, Mont., but contracted pneumonia and died there. Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park, (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 293-95; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1 (Washington, 1903), p. 375, and various newspaper items from the Montana press.
Yellowstone mountain renamed
June 10, 2022
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — A government panel has renamed a Yellowstone National Park mountain that had been named for a U.S. Army officer who helped lead a massacre of Native Americans.
Mount Doane will now be called First Peoples Mountain after the unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the National Park Service announced Thursday.
The 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) peak in southeastern Yellowstone in Wyoming had been named for Lt. Gustavus Doane, who in 1870 helped lead an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in northern Montana
** History Facts show Lt Doane , who was 29 years of age, leading F Troup, 2nd Calvary , was at that time, answering to his superior officer, and was under the Command of Major (or ) Col Eugene Baker.
The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the man with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.
Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief's band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered a village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.
At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker's scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong group, but Baker reportedly replied, "That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them." Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack.
( " The greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. Troops." – Lieutenant Gustavus Doane, commander of F Company) .
When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged. One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying "civilization shudders at horrors like this." Baker's superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker's critics "namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists." Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department–President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Native agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.
Inscription
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