he became commander of the 5th U.S. Infantry Regiment, a position he held until 1880. Miles played a leading role in nearly all of the U.S. Army's campaigns against the American Indian tribes of the Great Plains, among whom he was known as "Bearcoat" (for his characteristic bearskin coat). In 1874–1875, he was a field commander in the force that defeated the Kiowa, Comanche, and the Southern Cheyenne along the Red River. Between 1876 and 1877, he participated in the campaign that scoured the Northern Plains after Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and forced the Lakota and their allies onto reservations. In the winter of 1877, he drove his troops on a forced march across eastern Montana to intercept the Nez Perce band led by Chief Joseph after the Nez Perce War. For the rest of his career, Miles would quarrel with General Oliver O. Howard over credit for Joseph's capture. While on the Yellowstone, he developed expertise with the heliograph for sending communications signals, establishing a line of heliographs connecting Fort Keogh and Fort Custer, Montana, in 1878. The heliographs were supplied by Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer of the Signal Corps. In December 1880, Miles was promoted to brigadier general in the Regular Army. He was then assigned to command the Department of the Columbia (1881–85) and the Department of Missouri (1885–86). In 1886, Miles replaced General George Crook as commander of forces fighting against Geronimo, a Chiricahua Apache leader, in the Department of Arizona. Crook had relied heavily on Apache scouts in his efforts to capture Geronimo. Instead, Miles relied on white troops, who eventually traveled without success as they tracked Geronimo through the tortuous Sierra Madre Mountains. Finally, First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, who had studied Apache ways, succeeded in negotiating a surrender, under the terms of which Geronimo and his followers agreed to spend two years on a Florida reservation. Geronimo agreed on these terms, being unaware of the real plot behind the negotiations (that there was no intent to let them go back to their native lands). The exile included even the Chiricahuas who had worked for the army, in violation of Miles' agreement with them. Miles denied Gatewood any credit for the negotiations and had him transferred to the Dakota Territory. During this campaign, Miles's special signals unit used the heliograph extensively, proving its