When Sitting Bull's outlaw Sioux massacred General George Custer and five troops of the 7th Cavalry on the Little Big Horn, the U.S. rumbled with indignation. Amid all the furore the Army brass was struck by a wonderful idea—since it was almost impossible to catch mounted Sioux, why not take away their horses?
This scheme had obvious defects, the chief of which was that Sitting Bull and most of his followers had already ridden off to Canada. But the Army put it into operation with vast enthusiasm. In the fall and winter of 1876 cavalrymen seized 8,567 ponies from baffled,...
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