During the winter of 1868-1869 Sheridan's army remained in the vicinity of Fort Cobb, gathering the remnants of the shattered tribes in upon their reservation. The Kiowa and Comanche were placed at last on the lands awarded them at the Medicine Lodge treaties, while the Arapaho and Cheyenne once more had their abiding-place changed in August, 1869, and were settled down along the upper waters of the Washita, around the valley of their late defeat.
The long controversy between the War and Interior departments over the management of the tribes entered upon a new stage with the inauguration of Grant in 1869. One of the earliest measures of his administration was a bill erecting a board of civilian Indian commissioners to advise the Indian Department and promote the civilization of the tribes. A generous grant of two millions accompanied the act. More care was used in the appointment of agents than had hitherto been taken, and the immediate results seemed good when the Commissioner wrote his annual report in December, 1869. But the worst of the troubles with the Indians of the plains was over, so that without special effort peace could now have been the result.
Twenty years before the great tribes of the plains made their last stand in front of the invading white man overland travel had begun; ten years before, Congress, under the inspiration of the prophetic Whitney and the leadership of more practical men, had provided for a survey of railroad routes along the trails; on the eve of the struggle the earliest continental railway had received its charter; and the struggle had temporarily ceased while Congress, in 1867, sent out its Peace Commission to prepare an open way. That the tribes must yield was as inevitable as it was that their yielding must be ungracious and destructive to them. Too weak to compel their enemy to respect their rights, and uncertain what their rights were, they were too low in intelligence to realize that the more they struggled, the worse would be their suffering. So they struggled on, during the years in which the iron band was put across the continent. Its completion and their subjection came in 1869.
After years of tedious debate the earliest of the Pacific railways was chartered in 1862. The withdrawal of southern claims had made possible an agreement upon a route, while the spirit of nationality engendered by the Civil War gave to the project its final impetus. Under the management of the Central Pacific of California, the Union Pacific, and two or three border railways, provision was made for a road from the Iowa border to California. Land grants and bond subsidies were for two years dangled before the capitalists of America in the vain attempt to entice them to construct it. Only after these were increased in 1864 did active organization begin, while at the end of 1865 but forty miles of the Union Pacific had been built.