Force

Buffalo Soldiers

The African-American cavalry and infantry regiments of the post-Civil War frontier Army.

The Buffalo Soldiers were the African-American regulars of the post-Civil War Army — the 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry, established by Congress in 1866 as the nation's first Black peacetime regiments. The name, by tradition bestowed by Plains adversaries, was carried with pride; the 10th Cavalry eventually put the buffalo on its crest.

Their service was the working frontier: three decades of escort, patrol, telegraph and fort building, and campaign across the Southwest and Plains — the Apache wars against Victorio and Geronimo's bands, the Cheyenne and Comanche campaigns, and endless unglamorous order-keeping done with the Colt Single Action Army and Springfield carbine. Eighteen Buffalo Soldiers earned the Medal of Honor in the Indian Wars, achieved while the institution around them imposed worse horses, worse posts, and the era's full racism.

In 1898 the regiments fought in Cuba — the 10th charged beside Roosevelt's Rough Riders at San Juan Heights — and later served in the Philippines and on the Mexican border, where the 10th fought at Carrizal in 1916. Segregation outlasted their frontier fame, ending only after 1948. The 1992 Fort Leavenworth monument, championed by Colin Powell, fixed their place: professional soldiers who served a nation that served them poorly, and set records anyway.

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Colt Single Action Army

The Colt Single Action Army of 1873 — the Peacemaker — is the revolver of the American West. Adopted by the U.S. Army in .45 Colt and sold across the frontier in dozens of calibers and barrel lengths, it combined a simple, strong single-action lockwork with the new self-contained metallic cartridge. Soldiers, lawmen, cowboys, and outlaws alike carried it, and its silhouette became — and remains — the visual shorthand for an entire era of American history.