Philippine–American War Major General Hugh Lenox Scott (September 22, 1853 – April 30, 1934) was a United States Army officer.
He saw action in campaigns against the Sioux, Nez Perce, Cheyenne and other tribes of the Great Plains and became an expert in their languages and ways of life.
[8] About 1889, while stationed with the 7th Cavalry at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Scott made the acquaintance of an Indian scout named I-See-O (Plenty Fires) of the Kiowa tribe.
I-See-O enlisted in the Indian Scouts in 1889 and taught Scott Native American sign language and techniques of frontier warfare.
[9] In 1890–91, he was given the responsibility for suppressing the "Ghost Dance" religious movement that swept the Indian reservations and received official commendation for that work.
[8] In November 1897, he was attached to the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, where he began preparing a work on Indian sign languages.
[8] He was promoted to major in the Regular Army in February 1903 and served as military governor of the Sulu Archipelago, Philippines, in 1903–06 and also commanded troops there, taking part in various skirmishes, reorganized the civil government and institutions.
[1] In August 1906, he was named superintendent of the United States Military Academy, a post he held for four years with the temporary rank of colonel.
[8] He continued to act in a diplomatic role with Indians and Mexican border officials in the Southwest, settling problems with the Paiutes of Utah in March 1915 and recovering property "confiscated" by Pancho Villa in August.
United States Military Academy Cadet – class of 1876 General Scott appears as a character in The Friends of Pancho Villa (1996), a historical novel by James Carlos Blake.