What helped fedural troops in their battle against native americans?

Answer 1

There were many factors that led to the ultimate "civilising" of native peoples in the USA:

• Tribalism. There was never a unified native American resistance to white encroachment on their lands; each tribe or allied group of tribes dealt with this in their own disjointed way.
• Different tactics and views of warfare. Natives fought battles simply in order to gain individual prestige and war honours; any casualties were viewed as unacceptable and indications that the war leader's power was failing. Very rarely did they fight in a coordinated and planned way, accepting large numbers of casualties without running away. Crazy Horse was perhaps the first native leader to appreciate this fact, leading to his adopting completely different tactics and his many defeats of US troops.
• Leadership. The Army had a rigid command structure with orders being obeyed without question. Native leaders had no such power and warriors were free to do what they were told, or not, as they saw fit. Orders might be disobeyed if things were going badly or if hothead young warriors decided on a different course of action.
• Numbers. Native bands seldom grouped together in huge numbers like the camps at the Little Bighorn, simply because the hunting opportunities would not support so many people (and their horses would quickly graze away all the local grass) - not to mention the problem of sanitary arrangements for so many people in one place. The result was that most battles were against small numbers of warriors.
• Families. US troops did not take along wives and children on campaign, but the natives were constantly having to defend their families from attack. If the women and children were captured, warriors generally stopped fighting.
• Replacements and supply. Natives could not call up reserves or replacements for men wounded or killed; there was no supply system to provide food, ammunition and fresh horses. The Army generally had the benefit of all these support services.

Some people have claimed that the Army had superior weaponry, particularly after the invention of the revolver. The soldiers themselves reported that the enemy was always more accurate and more dangerous with their bows than any soldier with a hand gun, hence the need to save the last bullet to shoot themselves.