While Crook and his men were hammering away in one portion of the field, Miles was doing splendid service in the other. The original intention had been to place under his command some fifteen hundred men, but the force he really received amounted only to about five hundred. With these he was not expected to do more than maintain his position, and acquire such information as he could in preparing for the spring and summer campaign of the following year. That was not, from his point of view, a satisfactory program. Veteran Indian fighters in the Northwest informed him that it would be useless to try to reach the Indians in the winter; but Miles was not that kind of a soldier. If the Indians could live in tepees in that season, he saw no reason why white soldiers should not move against them in spite of the weather. He had one of the finest regiments of infantry in the service—the Fifth. Based upon the report of courts-martial, discipline, etc., no regiment surpassed or even equaled its record. Miles himself proved to be the most successful commander against Indians that the war produced, and his success was not due to what envious people called good luck. It was well merited and thoroughly earned. The government, upon the representations of Sheridan and Sherman, which were based upon Miles’ previous successful fighting with the Southwestern Indians, allowed the young colonel everything he asked for. If his troops were not completely equipped for the work in which their commander designed to employ them, it would be his fault. With wise forethought, he provided the soldiers as if for an arctic expedition. They cut up blankets for underwear. They were furnished with fur boots and the heaviest kind of leggings and overshoes. Every man had a buffalo overcoat and a woolen or fur mask to go over his face under his fur cap. Their hands were protected by fur gloves. It was well for them that they were thus provided, for the winter of 1876–7 was one of the most severe that had ever visited that section of the country. The mercury frequently froze in the thermometer, and on one occasion a temperature of sixty degrees below zero was recorded by the spirit thermometer.