1915, October 24 – November 17: (A Crumpled-Up Piece of Paper: Butler’s Reconnaissance, Fort Capois, and the Assault on Fort Rivière): Waller determined to g…

1915, October 24 – November 17: (A Crumpled-Up Piece of Paper: Butler’s Reconnaissance, Fort Capois, and the Assault on Fort Rivière): Waller determined to give the North his personal attention. To close the gateway of the border at Ouanaminthe, he paid off and demobilized the ragged Haitian garrison — the majority of whom at the pay table claimed rank of général de brigade and were so paid — and installed a Marine company, sealing the border. Then Waller stationed companies at Grande Rivière du Nord and Fort Liberté, forming a triangle of key towns garrisoned between the Cap and Santo Domingo, each a base for intensive patrolling throughout the Plaine-du-Nord and into the mountains. Major Butler was put in charge of a forty-man patrol with the mission of finding the Caco strongholds — his route traversed some of the most forbidding terrain in Haiti, much of it unvisited by any foreigner since the French, and Butler later and accurately used the eighteenth-century simile that Haiti looks like a crumpled-up piece of paper. On the afternoon of October 24, led by a Haitian guide, Butler came in sight of Fort Capois, seven miles south of St. Suzanne — a mountain peak towering 1,000 feet above them, its cone-shaped peak circled with rough stone walls and trenches. This was far more than forty men could handle, and Butler commenced a withdrawal on Grande Rivière, but after dark some 400 Cacos from Fort Capois and nearby Fort Dipitié closed in and all night the Marines were surrounded and under steady fire. Starting on November 1, the Marines began a westward sweep from the Dominican frontier toward the gorges of the Grande Rivière, reducing the main strongholds one by one — virtually all of them ancient French forts comprising part of du Rouvray’s Cordon of the West. By mid-November the final remaining Caco citadel was Fort Rivière, an old bastion fort with thick walls of brick and stone built during the French occupation on the peak of Montagne Noire, 4,000 feet above the sea. During the night of November 17, three Marine companies converged on Fort Rivière over three trails and began the all-night climb to the crest.