No group in black western history has been more revered or reviled than the buffalo solders, some twenty-five thousand men who served in four regiments, the Ninth and, Tenth cavalries and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth infantry regiments, between 1866 and 1917. Along with black cowboys, these troops were the first Afri­can American western historical figures to capture public attention in the 1960s, when the nation grew to accept black heroes. Yet Afri­can Americans had long derived considerable pride from the sol­diers' role as the "sable arm" of the U.S. government. Some African American soldiers consciously embraced that role. "We made the West," boasted Tenth Cavalry Private Henry McCombs; "[we]defeated the hostile tribes of Indians; and made the country safe to live in." William Leckie, the first biographer of the cavalry regiments,echoed that view, writing in 1967 that "the thriving cities and towns, the fertile fields, and the natural beauty [of the West] are monu­ments enough for any buffalo soldier." By the 1970s, however, histori­ans such as Jack Forbes began to probe the moral dilemma posed by their soldiering. Were they not instruments in the subjugation of native peoples for a society that went on to "erect thriving white cities,grow fertile white fields and leave no real monuments to the memory of brave, but denigrated-in-their-lifetime soldiers"?
































































































































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