Crook, George (1828-90) Union army officer, born near Taylorsville, Ohio. A prominent Union officer during the Civil War, Crook fought at Antietam (1862), Chickamauga (1863), and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign (1864); he rose to the rank of brigadier general and commanded the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac from February 1865 until the end of the war. Crook's finest military accomplishment was in 1883, when he led Apache scouts and U.S. troops into Mexico to search for the Chiricahuas, the tribe of Geronimo, who were raiding from their sanctuaries in the Sierra Madre. After one skirmish, Crook negotiated the Chiricahuas' peaceful return to the Arizona reservations. A fearsome Indian fighter, he also struggled repeatedly with the U.S. government to uphold its promises to the conquered tribes and urged civil rights and the franchise for Native Americans.
Gen. William T. Sherman called Crook the greatest American Indian fighter, and the Oglala chief Red Cloud said of Crook: “His words gave the people hope. He died. Their hope died again. Despair came again.”See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
