Background
Rudolph Stauffer was born in Bern, Switzerland, on November 27, 1836.
Rudolph Stauffer was born in Bern, Switzerland, on November 27, 1836.
Charles King, while serving with the 5th United States. Cavalry in his youth, wrote of him in his memoirs as "grim old Stauffer, the first sergeant". He later emigrated to the United States and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. On June 24, 1855, he enlisted in the United States Army and was eventually assigned to Company K of the 2nd United States. Cavalry Regiment (which later became 5th United States Cavalry Regiment).
By the early 1870s, a "typical hard-bitten noncommissioned officer of the old cavalry", he had risen to the rank of first sergeant.
Stauffer was posted at Camp Hualpai in the Arizona Territory during the Apache Wars. On May 19, 1872, he led a small cavalry force, along with Editor Clark and Dan O"Leary, after an Apache raiding party which had stolen cattle from a ranch in Williamson Valley.
Stauffer and the cavalry troopers pursued the raiders eastward over a distance of 110 miles when, according to Lieutenant Colonel George Crook, a "terrible fight occurred". Two soldiers were wounded, four renegades were killed, and one head of cattle was recovered.
A month later, he was involved in another engagement with the Apaches when, on June 30, he and several other soldiers held off the hostile Indians from a butte near Camp Verde.
The location was later named "Stauffer"s Butte" in his honor. In November of that year, Stauffer was part of Lieutenant Colonel George Crook"s so-called "winter campaign" against renegades still active after the surrender of Cochise in late-1872. He was one of 12 cavalrymen, along with 10 Apache scouts, who guided Crook"s columns in the mountainous area of the Tonto Basin where Western Apache and Yavapai bands used as a base for raiding parties and had successfully eluded the United States. Army for a number of years.
After leaving the army on December 11, 1878, Stauffer retired to the Soldiers" Home in Washington, District of Columbia where he lived until his death on June 9, 1918, at the age of 81.
A lifelong bachelor, he has no known descendants.