The Bismarck Tribune

Was Soldier Here in '76 When Citizens Walked Streets on Watch for Indians

George W. Wilson, who was a soldier in Bismarck in 1876, was a visitor in Bismarck Tuesday.

Mr. Wilson, who will be 80 years old next Christmas, said he served as a member of the Fifth U. S. Infantry under General Nelson A. Miles in 1876 in the campaigns following the battle of the Little Big Horn in which General George A. Custer and members of his command were killed.

The aged veteran enlisted at Indianapolis, Ind., on July 7, 1876, and late that same month arrived in Bismarck by train along with other recruits which were sent here as replacements for the Fifth Infantry.

When the soldiers reached here, Wilson said, Bismarck citizens were patrolling the streets in fear of attack by Indians. The fear caused by news of the Custer battle was strong in them, he said, and the arrival of even green, untrained troops was welcomed.

The main body of the Fifth Infantry came up the river by boat from forts along the lower part of the stream. Wilson said, and shortly after it arrived he left on a campaign to the mouth of the Rosebud, undertaken as a reprisal against the Indians who killed Custer and his command.

Wilson, an itinerant salesman of religious literature, recently visited the scene of the Custer battlefield and other points which he first saw as a soldier, he said, and now is on his way back to his home at Ionia, Michigan. While in the west, he said, he visited friends and relatives in Sweetwater county, Montana.