George Crook

George Crook (born Sept. 23, 1829, near Dayton, Ohio, U.S.—died March 21, 1890, Chicago, Ill.) was an American army officer in the American Civil War and in the Indian conflicts of the West. General William Tecumseh Sherman called him the best of the Indian fighters and managers.

An Ohio farm boy, Crook attended West Point (1848–52), graduating near the bottom of his class. He first served in the Pacific Northwest, engaged in building forts and protecting settlers from Indians. In the Civil War he was in a number of actions in West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee-Georgia, most notably the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, the Chickamauga campaign, and the Shenandoah valley campaigns.

After the war he returned west, where he served as a lieutenant colonel in the Northwest and then, from 1871, served in Arizona against the Apaches, becoming a brigadier general in 1873. In 1875 he was placed in command of the Department of the Platte, taking a prominent part in the Sioux wars. In 1882 he was sent back to Arizona, where the following year he led an expedition into Mexico to round up Chiricahua Apaches under Geronimo (Geronimo escaped, but 500 of his tribe were returned to the San Carlos Reservation). In his final years, Crook headed the Department of the Platte and then the Division of the Missouri, headquartered in Chicago, when he achieved his highest rank, that of major general.

Although he spent much of his life as an “Indian fighter,” in his last years he campaigned for Indian rights and criticized various injustices done to the Apaches.