Centennial

by James A. Michener

  “What should I do?” Reed asked Major Mercy and his wife.

  “Fight to the last inch,” Lisette counseled.

  “We know Skimmerhorn’s a madman,” Mercy said, “but he’s a clever opponent and the people are in back of him.”

  “Fight!” Lisette pleaded. When Reed hesitated, she said, “If you allow them to throw you out of the army now, Vincent, you’ll be branded as a traitor. You’re finished.”

  It was she who planned the tactic whereby the nation first began to question what had really happened at Rattlesnake Buttes. She was tackling a formidable adversary, for in the months of December and January, Colonel Skimmerhorn moved through Colorado like a triumphant Roman consul, giving lectures on how to treat the Indian and conducting church services during which he would utter long prayers about how it was God who chastised those who, having once known His beneficence turned their faces against Him. In these talks he dealt generously with Captain Reed, explaining him as a young man who had served his country well as a paper-work officer under General Pope but who had cringed at the sound of real cannon, and it was that little condescension which was his undoing, for Lisette Mercy had met General Pope at one of her mother’s dinners in St. Louis, and she wrote to him and told him that his aide was being unjustly accused of cowardice—and slowly the Washington wheels began to grind.

  The major blow, however, was delivered by her own husband. In February he met a newspaper editor and told him that grave doubts had arisen about the affair at Rattlesnake Buttes—that Chief Lost Eagle had tried to surrender, that no arms of any kind had been found in the camp, and that men under Captain Tanner’s command had performed atrocities.

  The resulting story tore Colorado apart. Two members of Skimmerhorn’s militia horsewhipped the editor of the paper, and leaders throughout the territory rallied to Skimmerhorn’s defense. He became more popular than ever and won national acclaim by volunteering to raise a militia which would clean out the Indians in Utah.

  But nagging little things kept cropping up, and in March 1865 General Harvey Wade, a slight man who tolerated no nonsense, appeared in Denver with five assistants to assess the grave charges that were being made against the conduct of American troops. The city, having taken Colonel Skimmerhorn to its heart, was very cool toward the diminutive stranger whose investigation might diminish their hero. He treated them the same way.

  “This is an impartial inquiry into the general events that occurred at Rattlesnake Buttes last November,” he announced when the panel convened, “and in particular, into the conduct under fire of Captain Vincent Reed, against whom the gravest charges have been lodged.” At the Denver Hotel, under his skillful questioning, he began to penetrate the miasma engulfing this sorry affair. Within two days he satisfied himself and the board that General Laban Asher had been incompetent and morally supine. The Vermonter left the hearing room a man destroyed, and as he went, he paused to look at Major Mercy, who had predicted such a consequence.

  General Wade then proceeded to interrogate the Zendts. “You’re half-Indian?” he asked Lucinda, and when she acknowledged this, he directed the court to take that into account when weighing her testimony. The Zendts told -of how Colonel Skimmerhorn had placed their stockade under arrest to prevent them from warning the Indians ...

  “Hearsay, you are guessing at his motives,” General Wade snapped.

  Zendt showed the saber cut Skimmerhorn had inflicted on him, and Wade asked brusquely, “You admit you made a move toward him, don’t you?” and when Levi nodded, Wade snapped, “I’d cut you, too.” But when Levi repeated the insult Skimmerhorn had thrown at him, Wade made no comment.

  He summoned Maxwell Mercy and listened intently as the major outlined step by step the insanities of Colonel Skimmerhorn, but in the end he asked three damaging questions: “Are you half brother to the Pasquinels? Did you seek them out prior to the battle? Did you break house arrest to do so?” Mercy’s truthful answers to these questions damaged his credibility with the board, and he knew it.

  Then Wade tackled the matter of the battle itself, and here Captain Tanner proved a bulwark of support. He said he had served under many commanders, but none finer than Colonel Skimmerhorn. He detailed the battle plans and the colonel’s heroic behavior. He indicated sixteen of his men who would verify his testimony, and one after an other paraded to the witness stand to tell of Skimmerhorn’s bravery under fire.

  Next the city of Denver provided a score of witnesses to testify that if there had been confusion in the command, it lay with General Asher and never with Colonel Skimmerhorn, after which two clergymen volunteered the information that Skimmerhorn was a religious man who had preached in their churches, a man of the most stalwart integrity.

  The whole city was backing Skimmerhorn, and farmers from along the Platte were moving into town to give him support if he required it. Members of the militia, who considered themselves on trial as much as their colonel, rallied round, and there was a general feeling that the city might blow up if General Wade and his commission dared condemn Skimmerhorn.

  Zendt wanted to know why they couldn’t ask General Wade to put Captain Reed on the stand to tell the real truth, but Mercy pointed out that Wade would never allow Reed to testify against the colonel, because Reed himself was on trial as a coward, the gravest charge that could be brought against an officer. Only Lisette Mercy remained convinced that some way would be found to break down this preposterous façade.

  She was in a store buying some cloth when she heard a young girl who clerked there saying to a friend, “If they want the truth, they should ask Jimmy. He says it was horrible.”

  With considerable self-control Lisette refrained from asking any questions that would betray her interest. She ran home to tell her husband what she had heard. “We must find out who Jimmy is,” Mercy said, and Lucinda went back to the store and engaged the girl in conversation. She discovered that Jimmy was the girl’s brother, a young member of the militia, and that when telling his sister of what he had seen, he had vomited.

  They found Jimmy Clark at one of the barracks, and five minutes’ conversation satisfied them that here was a young man of conscience who was revolted almost to the point of losing his sanity by what he had seen at Rattlesnake Buttes, and they got word of his existence to General Wade.

  Jimmy Clark’s testimony shocked both the court and the nation. Quietly and with considerable patience General Wade led the nervous young man along, step by painful step, halting the interrogation whenever Jimmy wiped his eyes or tried to control his breath.

  “You saw men of your command use their sabers on girl children who were running away?”

  “Yessir, cut right through them.”

  “You saw men whose names you know discharge their revolvers in the faces of little boys?”

  “Yessir, four times.”

  “You told us of only two.”

  “The other time was when these men were holding two children, and Colonel Skimmerhorn rode up and said, ‘Nits grow into lice,’ and the men shot that pair too.”

  “Now, this next question is most important, Private Clark, and before you answer, I want you to remember that you are under oath.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did you see men of your command moving among the dead with knives in their hands?”

  “I did.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “Cutting off the breasts of women.”

  General Wade took a deep breath and asked solemnly, “You yourself saw soldiers cutting off the breasts of dead women?”

  “One of them wasn’t dead, sir.”

  Here Clark started to gag, but all he could do was heave, and General Wade directed a corporal to give him a drink of water.

  “Did you, with your own eyes, see men of your unit scalp dead Indians?”

  “Yessir, they brought the scalps to Denver and held an exhibition, along with the two children.” Seeing that General Wade was puzzled by this revelation, he explained, �
��In the theater.”

  “Theater!” Wade roared. “Sergeant Kennedy, were Indian prisoners exhibited in a public theater?”

  “Yessir,” an orderly announced. “At the Apollo Theater. Admission fifteen cents.”

  “Oh, my God,” the general exploded, and for that day the hearings were halted.

  Next morning when Jimmy Clark appeared to resume his testimony he was not easily recognizable. It was obvious that he had been beaten brutally. His lips were cut and his eyes blackened. One arm hung limp at his side. When he took the stand, General Wade asked, “Private Clark, do you wish to tell this court of inquiry what happened to you since we last saw you?”

  “I stumbled, sir.”

  “You stumbled?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Is that all you wish to tell us?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Stenographer, let the record show that this morning Private Clark appeared with his lips cut, his eyes blackened—both of them—with a heavy welt across his chin and with one arm hanging limp. He stumbled.”

  There was a spell of quietness in the courtroom, with only the sound of the scratching pen, and then General Wade spoke. “Only a few questions today. Did you, during the fight, have an opportunity to see the Indian chief known as Lost Eagle.”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Tell us under what circumstances.”

  “It was late in the battle, sir, and this old man came headin’ toward me, and at first I thought he was one of us because he had on an army uniform, but it was old style, and then I saw he was an Indian. He was carryin’ half a flag and around his neck he had a brass medal, about this big.”

  “How could you tell it was a medal?”

  “Because when he saw me he supposed I was going to shoot him, and he held out his hands like this, with the torn flag in one hand, and he said, ‘It’s a mistake.’ ”

  “Did you also see a Cheyenne chief called White Antelope?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Tell the court under what circumstances.”

  “Me and Ben Willard—he’s a half-breed guide—when we went into the center of the tipis we saw this old man, maybe seventy. You wouldn’t believe it. He just stood there with his arms folded while the soldiers shot at him, and he was singin’.”

  “Singing?”

  “Yessir, in a strong voice. I asked Ben Willard what he was singin’, and Ben listened and told me, ‘His death chant,’ and the old man chanted, ‘Only the earth and the mountains, nothin’ lives except the earth and the mountains.’ Then three soldiers came at him at once and gunned him down and one ripped off his pants and cut off his balls, and Ben Willard shouted, ‘What in hell are you doin’?” and the man said, ‘Tobacco pouch.’ ”

  This testimony produced another silence, after which General Wade coughed, as if he were about to launch into a crucial part of the testimony. “I understand that you overheard Captain Reed giving orders that day.”

  “Yessir, three times. I was servin’ with Captain Tanner, and when Reed didn’t charge, he grew furious. ‘Run over there and tell him to get goin’,’ Captain Tanner told me, and when I reached Reed’s command post I told him, ‘You’re supposed to charge,’ but he said, ‘Those Indians have no guns, or anything else.’ ”

  “Then what did he say?”

  “ ‘Stand.’ ”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yessir, and we stood.”

  “What happened the second time?”

  “About halfway through the fight Captain Tanner saw that some Indian women were escapin’ through a pass in the rocks, and he grabbed me and shouted, ‘Tell that damned coward Reed he’s supposed to stop them,’ and I ran across the battlefield and told Reed, ‘Captain Tanner says you’re supposed to stop them.’ And Reed told me, ‘Let them go through.’ ”

  “Did you do so?”

  “Yessir. And I did not want to serve with Captain Tanner any more, so I stayed with Reed, and at the end of the battle when we saw what the other soldiers were doin’ to the dead bodies, he asked me, ‘What’s the matter, Clark?’ and I told him, ‘I’m sick,’ and he said, ‘We should all be sick this day.’ ”

  General Wade coughed again and said in a low voice, “Now, Private Clark, this court would like to hear specifically why you were sick.”

  The young militiaman looked helplessly at the bank of officers and mumbled, “Well, like I said ...”

  “No, you haven’t said.”

  Clark appealed to the general. “I don’t know the words, sir. The proper words, that is.”

  Wade left his judge’s seat and whispered with Clark for a few minutes, then returned to his chair. To the other members of the court he explained, “I was telling him the words we use.” To Clark he said, “Now tell us why you were sick.”

  “Well, sir, there was this man with a very sharp knife, and he looked around until he found a dead Indian woman, and with his knife he cut away her private parts.

  There was a deathly hush in the room, then General Wade’s quiet voice asking, “And what did he do with them?”

  “Jammed them down over his saddle horn, sir.”

  “How often did he do this?”

  “He went to six different women.”

  “And you saw this with your own eyes?”

  “Yessir.”

  Such testimony seemed so improbable that the members of the court were stunned. Finally a young colonel asked, “Private Clark, do you appreciate the significance of the oath you took at the beginning of your testimony?”

  “I do. I’m a religious man.”

  “General Wade, can I have this man sworn again?”

  “He’s been sworn once.”

  “I’d feel easier, under the circumstances.”

  So Jimmy Clark was sworn again, and the young colonel asked, “Did you, yourself, in person, see Colonel Skimmerhorn ride up to soldiers who were holding an Indian girl and an Indian boy and command them to kill them?”

  “No, sir. He gave no command.”

  “In your previous testimony you said he did.”

  “No, sir, if you’ll excuse me, sir. What I said was that he rode up to the men and said, ‘Nits grow into lice,’ and it was after that the men killed them.”

  Jimmy Clark’s testimony created a sensation in Denver, but it was unsubstantiated, so General Wade summoned every man who had stood behind Captain Reed that day. The first thirty militiamen refused to testify, or testified in noncommittal ways, but then Wade got to a handful of regular army men, and with revulsion they not only verified what Clark had said but added hideous details of their own, and one man broke into tears, after which General Wade asked in a fatherly way, “Son, why didn’t you step forward like Private Clark and testify to these facts? Why did you make me drag you in here like a criminal and force the truth out of you?”

  The man looked dumbly at the general, shrugged his shoulders in a confusion that was obviously painful and said in a whisper, “I thought it was all an awful mistake.”

  The inquiry ended, and Captain Reed was sent back east to a cleaner war, carrying with him a letter of commendation for having behaved in accordance with the highest standards of his profession.

  General Wade and the court did not have the power to punish Skimmerhorn, who was not responsible to the United States Army, but they could issue a bitter rebuke to the self-appointed hero:

  Rarely in military history has there been a battle communiqué more mendacious and self-aggrandizing than the one issued by Colonel Skimmerhorn at Zendt’s Farm on the day after his attack upon an undefended Indian village whose occupants were unarmed and eager to surrender. Each phrase in that communiqué merits individual analysis, but four will suffice to show the quality of the whole. “A heavy concentration of Indian warriors” turns out to be 403 men of fighting age and 1,080 women and children. “Engaged savages under heavy fire” means that Colonel Skimmerhorn’s men were free to hack at will, since the enemy had few guns. The “exceptional courage o
f Captain Abel Tanner” means that he allowed men under his command to commit the most heinous atrocities which this court has ever heard of. “Peace is assured in this Territory” means that the prairies are now aflame and war is everywhere, brought on by this man’s intemperate action. Special comment must be made about the last sentence of the communiqué, for it is both perfidious and imprecise. The nineteen white scalps used to justify the attack turn out to have been one scalp, very old and possibly not from a white man, and it is unclear whether the savages referred to were the Indians or Colonel Skimmerhorn’s own men.