Respite from War: Buffalo Soldiers at Vancouver Barracks, 1899-1900

Abstract

GREGORY PAYNTER SHINE Respite from War BuffaloSoldiersatVancouverBarracks, 1899-1900 ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 3, 1899, the steamer Undine arrived at thewharf inVancouver, Washington, following a short jaunt across the Columbia River from nearby Portland, Oregon. Although thiswas not an uncommon occurrence ? the sternwheeler traveled like clockwork between Portland and Vancouver twice each day ? a large crowd had gathered, including several officers fromVancouver Barracks, the local U.S. Army post. Among the Undine's usual consignment of passengers that evening were more than one hundred soldiers. Many eyes observed them closely as they disembarked, the crossed rifle insignia on their headgear familiar tomany of those assembled. The insignia indicated that the soldiers were members of the infantry,not the artillery or cavalry, but perhaps it was the number atop the solid brass insignia that caught the crowd's attention ? the "24" that glinted in the lightsof thewharf as the soldiers gathered theirbelongings ? and the color of the soldiers' skin. They were Buffalo Soldiers, African American soldiers from Company B of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment.1 The story of themen of Company B and their thirteen months atVancouver Barracks contributes to our understanding of black western military and urban history, to the broader story of Buffalo Soldiers in theAmerican West, and to the importance ofVancouver Barracks in the Buffalo Soldier diaspora.2 By the time of Company b's arrival at Vancouver Barracks, African Americans had carved out tenuous communities in Portland and Vancou ver. There is little question that African Americans had run into hostile attitudes in the Oregon Country, especially south of the Columbia River. As a result of racial attitudes and restrictions, several African American pioneers ? including Tumwater founder George Washington Bush and Centralia founder George Washington ? chose to live north of the river, OHQ vol. 107, no. 2 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society WmFW *- * X Edward Gibson, pictured hereas a trooper with theTenthCavalry early inhis career, retired at Vancouver Barracks as a sergeant in 1900 after more than thirty years in thearmy. When he retired,thearmy sfourAfricanAmerican regimentshad higher re-enlistment rates than white regiments. Shine,Buffalo Soldiers atVancouver Barracks 197 establishing a population base that led in part to official territorial status for Washington in 1853. By 1900, 2,514 blacks lived in Washington, ten of them inVancouver ? an increase of only seven since i860. Across the river, although Oregon's total black population grew smaller between 1890 and 1900, the number living inPortland increased by 26 percent to 775, primar ilybecause of the railroad and steamship connections to the region and national immigration trends.3 Company B was the first unit from one of the army's four African American regiments to serve as part of the garrison of soldiers atVancouver Barracks. Still,we seem to know more about the Undine ? the ferry that brought the soldiers toVancouver ? than the soldiers themselves. Company B represented the apex of a long and distinguished legacy of black military service in theUnited States. Although soldiers ofAfrican American ancestry fought inmost earlyU.S. conflicts, including theAmerican Revolution, the Civil War brought approximately 180,000 black men into theUnion Army. By war's end, one-third of them had lost their lives.4 Following thewar, the War Department established sixblack regiments, including two cavalry units (the Ninth andTenth) and fourinfantry units (theThirty-eighth, Thirty ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first). In 1869, the infantry regiments reorganized into two ? the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth.5 THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR motivated the U.S. Army to refocuson western conflictswith American Indians, which theydid in earnest, recording 943 engagements from 1865 to 1898. Contrary to the conventional nature of Civil War battles, themajority of these actions were smaller, guerilla warfare skirmishes involving cavalry regiments, including theNinth and theTenth. The black infantry units had a very different experience from the white units, performing mundane activities such as clearing sagebrush, escorting supply trains, stringing telegraph wire, and building roads. Labor for such work was needed throughout theWest, and the army further divided the Twenty-fourth Infantry in 1880, dispersing companies to various posts. By themid-i890s, after almost thirty years of frontier service in the remote Southwest, the regiment requested a...