![]() ![]() ![]() Despite his relative youth, the forty-three-year-old Pope was an old-school West Pointer and a topographical engineer-surveyor whose star had risen with several early successes on western fronts in the Civil War. The previous November, the day after the Sand Creek massacre, Grant summoned Major General John Pope to his Virginia headquarters to put such plans in motion. Grant, the Army’s commander in chief, had long planned such a moment. North of the Platte, it meant killing Red Cloud and Sitting Bull. South of the Arkansas, this meant eradicating the Kiowa and the Comanche, who were blocking movement along the Santa Fe Trail into New Mexico. “raw state militias patrolling the west with seasoned troops better capable of confronting the Indians of the Great Plains. ![]()
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