Making a Difference

 Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War. In 1866, six all-black cavalry and infantry regiments were created after Congress passed the Army Organization Act. Their main tasks were to help control the Native Americans of the Plains, capture cattle rustlers and thieves and protect settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and railroad crews along the Western front. 

The buffalo soldiers included two regiments of all-black cavalry, the 9th and 10th cavalries, formed after Congress passed legislation in 1866 that allowed African Americans to enlist in the country’s regular peacetime military. The legislation also brought about the creation of four black infantry regiments, eventually consolidated into the 24th and 25th infantries, which often fought alongside the 9th and 10th cavalries. Many of the men in these regiments, commanded primarily by white officers, were among the approximately 180,000 African Americans who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. 

 For more than two decades in the late 19th century, the 9th and 10th cavalries engaged in military campaigns against hostile Native Americans on the Plains and across the Southwest. These buffalo soldiers also captured horse and cattle thieves, built roads and protected the U.S. mail, stagecoaches and wagon trains, all while contending with challenging terrain, inadequate supplies and discrimination. It’s unclear exactly how the buffalo soldiers got their nickname. Archivist Walter Hill of the National Archives has reported that, according to a member of the 10th Cavalry, in 1871 the Comanche bestowed the name of an animal they revered, the buffalo, on the men of the 10th Cavalry because they were impressed with their toughness in battle. (The moniker later came to be used for the 9th Cavalry as well.) Other sources theorize the name originated with the belief of some Native Americans that the soldiers’ dark, curly, black hair resembled that of a buffalo. Whatever the case, the soldiers viewed the nickname as one of respect, and the 10th Cavalry even used a figure of a buffalo in its coat of arms. 

These unsung heroes were commanded by such white officers as Benjamin Grierson, and sometimes by an African-American officer, such as Henry O. Flipper. These men took on jobs that no one else in the army wanted, and prevailed as a close-knit brotherhood of American soldiers throughout hazardous and unforgiving territories of the Wild West. 

In the 1950's, Buffalo Soldier regiments were disbanded when all military services were integrated.

In 1992, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell dedicated a memorial to the Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the birthplace of one of the regiments. It was a fitting tribute from a military that once hesitated to accept African Americans, but eventually learned to respect and depend upon them.