It was brutally cold in January 1870, when Maj. Eugene Baker left Fort Ellis, just outside Bozeman, leading four companies of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry hundreds of miles north to Fort Shaw, near Great Falls. His assignment was to carry out the War Department's plan to punish hostile Blackfeet Indians.
Baker was picked for the job by Lt. Gen. Phillip Sheridan, military commander for the plains, based in Chicago. Sheridan was known for his scorched-earth tactics in the Civil War and his famous saying, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”
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