The following enlisted men of the 25th Infantry were commissioned for their bravery at El Caney:  First Sergeant Andrew J. Smith, First Sergeant Macon Russell, First Sergeant Wyatt Huffman and Sergeant Wm. McBryar.  Many more were recommended, but failed to receive commissions.  It is a strange incident that all the above-named men are native North Carolinians, but First Sergeant Huffman, who is from Tennessee.

The Negro played a most important part in the Spanish-American war.  He was the first to move from the west; first at Camp Thomas Chickamauga Park, Ga.; first in the jungle of Cuba; among the first killed in battle; first in the block-house at El Caney, and nearest to the enemy when he surrendered.

Frank W. Pullen, Jr.,

Ex-Sergeant-Major 25th U.S.  Infantry.

Enfield, N.C., March 23, 1899.

BUFFALO TROOPERS, THE NAME BY WHICH NEGRO SOLDIERS ARE KNOWN.

They Comprise Several of the Crack Regiments in Our Army-The Indians Stand in Abject Terror of them-Their Awful Yells Won a Battle with the Redskins.

“It is not necessary to revert to the Civil war to prove that American Negroes are faithful, devoted wearers of uniforms,” says a Washington man, who has seen service in both the army and the navy.  “There are at the present time four regiments of Negro soldiers in the regular army of the United States-two outfits of cavalry and two of infantry.  All four of these regiments have been under fire in important Indian campaigns, and there is yet to be recorded a single instance of a man in any of the four layouts showing the white feather, and the two cavalry regiments of Negroes have, on several occasions, found themselves in very serious situations.  While the fact is well known out on the frontier, I don’t remember ever having seen it mentioned back here that an American Indian has a deadly fear of an American Negro.  The most utterly reckless, dare-devil savage of the copper hue stands literally in awe of a Negro, and the blacker the Negro the more the Indian quails.  I can’t understand why this should be, for the Indians decline to give their reasons for fearing the black men, but the fact remains that even a very bad Indian will give the mildest-mannered Negro imaginable all the room he wants, and to spare, as any old regular army soldier who has frontiered will tell you.  The Indians, I fancy, attribute uncanny and eerie qualities to the blacks.”

“The cavalry troop to which I belonged soldiered alongside a couple of troops of the 9th Cavalry, a black regiment, up in the Sioux country eight or nine years ago.  We were performing chain guard, hemming-in duty, and it was our chief business to prevent the savages from straying from the reservation.  We weren’t under instructions to riddle them if they attempted to pass our guard posts, but were authorized to tickle them up to any reasonable extent, short