by 1864-1898 Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life;Campaigns in the West
The Indians, although no doubt apprised of the approach of the troops after the attack at Tule Canyon, were evidently not looking for a pitched battle so soon, otherwise they would have gathered their ponies and packed their tepees, all of which were left behind. Colonel Mackenzie ordered the tepees and everything of value to the Indians burned. This was done, after which the horses, numbering about 2, 200 in all, were rounded up and driven out of the canyon, when the main command started on the return trip to Tule Canyon. Everybody was tired and hungry, but the scouts, who had done extra hard duty the preceding forty-eight hours, were utterly worn out. So try as I would, I could not keep awake. Several times during the night as I slept in the saddle, I felt Colonel Mackenzie’s hand on my shoulder shaking me. “Wake up, sergeant,” he would say. “Wake up your men and look after your horses.” This I did, rousing the other weary scouts and rounding up the straggling ponies, only to fall asleep again immediately myself. The command reached Tule Canyon in the early morning, when the colonel ordered the captured horses shot. Some questioned the wisdom of this act, but it was the only thing to be done, as there were too many horses in this herd to be taken care of by the limited number of men in the command.
This Southern Plains warrior posed for a photographer after the conflicts between his tribe and the Army in the 1870s. The cavalryman, from the same period, typified those who routed the Kiowas, Comanches, and Southern Cheyennes at Palo Duro Canyon in 1874. Editor’s Collection.
The Battle of Punished Woman’s Fork, 1878 (By Albert Fensch, former hospital steward, Nineteenth U. S. Infantry. Fensch became National Adjutant General of the National Indian War Veterans and helped found the United Indian War Veterans. From an unidentified newspaper dated November 25, 1923)
Early in the month of September 1878, a body of Northern Cheyennes numbering about 300 men, women, and children under the leadership of Chief Dull Knife left their reservation in the then Indian Territory in an effort to return to their old hunting grounds in the Black Hills. They passed a few miles to the west of Dodge City, [Kansas, ] killing and scalping settlers of Ford County, destroying ranches and running off stock. Troops composed of a squadron of the Fourth United States Cavalry, from Camp Supply, ninety miles south of Dodge, commanded by Major Clarence Mauck, took up the pursuit. These troops were joined at Fort Dodge, a military post four miles from Dodge City, by Companies G and F, Nineteenth United States Infantry, commanded respectively by Captain James H. Bradford and Second Lieutenant Cornelius Gardener, all with Lieutenant Colonel William H. Lewis, Nineteenth Infantry, who had been designated to command the expeditionary forces, and pursuit of the Indians was taken up.
On September 27th, 1878, the command overtook the savages and a battle took place, which has been officially designated by the War Department as “The engagement at Punished Woman’s Fork.” Here Lieutenant Colonel Lewis, the commander, received a bullet wound in the thigh which severed the femoral artery—this while reconnoitering near the line of the enemy. The writer with two comrades ran to his assistance when he fell from his horse and at the same time the Indians made a rush to capture him. He was brought, under heavy fire from the enemy, to the shelter of a large boulder and a messenger sent to the rear for reinforcements and medical assistance. A young contract surgeon with two privates responded to the call under fire, a tourniquet was applied to the wounded leg and the commander sent to the rear. A few hours later, he was placed in an ambulance and started across the unbroken prairie to Fort Wallace, some forty miles away. On the road over the rough country the tourniquet became displaced and this brave and gallant officer bled to death, and was so found on the arrival of the ambulance at Wallace…. [Major Mauck renewed the pursuit of the elusive Cheyennes.] At the Wyoming [sic—Nebraska] border the pursuit was taken up by troops of the Third United States Cavalry under command of Captain (afterwards General) Henry W. Wessells, and the troops from Dodge and Supply took train at Cheyenne and returned to their stations.
Private Thomas A. Lewis, Company K, Twentieth Infantry, possibly at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, ca. 1881-85. Lewis wears a canvas cartridge belt first issued to soldiers in the mid-1870s. Editor’s collection
C. Mountain West
The Mountain West included the inter-mountain country embracing Idaho Territory and western Montana Territory, stretching south through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. These lands attracted an influx of white Americans interested in settlement and in extracting mineral wealth from the land. Despite treaties with the tribes, their exploitive presence and ill treatment of the Indian people around them eventually culminated in prolonged culture conflict, invariably causing death and destruction and resulting in the Indians’ loss of most of their lands. Notable army campaigns waged in the Mountain West included those against the non-treaty Nez Perces in 1877 (including battles at White Bird Canyon, Idaho, and Big Hole River, Montana), the Bannocks in 1878, and the Utes of Colorado in 1879. By the 1870s, many of the native tribes in this region had adapted their life ways to incorporate physical traits and some material characteristics of those people of the neighboring Great Plains, and to a great extent the modes of warfare were largely the same. In the following accounts, veteran soldiers describe incidents of fighting Nez Perce, Bannock, and Ute warriors in the above-mentioned campaigns.
The Fight at White Bird Canyon, 1877 (By Frank Fenn, Mount Idaho Volunteers. From Winners of the West, January 30, 1926)
In 1877 we were among the volunteers who accompanied the troops under Captain David Perry on that disastrous expedition that ended in the White Bird defeat. Then, in the early ‘80s, we lived on White Bird Creek for several years. In those days what by courtesy was called a road followed from the top of the hill straight down a gulch for nearly a half mile, the descent for considerable distance being at the rate of three feet to the rod. Later a grade was constructed to the eastward of the original road so as to cut out the worst part of the earlier way….
As the writer bowled along over the smooth highway surface many events of the earlier times were recalled to mind as familiar points were passed. For the first time he saw the beautiful shaft beside the highway erected to the memory of a soldier who fell on that spot the fatal day of the White Bird Fight. The soldier was an old gray-headed sergeant, one who had, no doubt, passed through many campaigns against hostile Indians. He was killed in as fair a duel as ever was fought. So far as the writer knows, there are but two living witnesses of that fatal affair, himself and Herman A. Faxon, who now lives at Tillamook, Oregon.
A rare photograph of troops afield near Kamiah, Idaho Territory, during the Nez Perce War of 1877. Courtesy of Douglas D. Scott
These two were among the volunteers that joined Perry’s command and were with their companion volunteers on the extreme left of the firing line when the White Bird Fight started. Faxon was wounded, shot through the thigh, while on the firing line. When, after Perry’s bugler was killed at the very beginning of the engagement, the troops began to fall back, the retrograde movement soon became a rout. The volunteers, because of their position in the line, were in the rear of the soldiers when the rout started. As was customary when the troops, cavalry, dismounted to take position in the line of battle, one soldier was left behind to hold the mounts of [himself and] three of his comrades. When the line broke and soldiers started back pell mell, the holders of the horses seemed to be animated chiefly with a desire to get to the front of the retreating men and, largely, they did so, thereby leaving their comrades afoot to shift for themselves. Thus it happened that a great many of the soldiers were left on foot to be overtaken easily by the Indians who were well mounted. The old sergeant referred to was one of the unfortunates thus abandoned.
It so fell out that the writer and Faxon were the last two of the volunteers in the line of the retreat and, because of this fact, were closest to the body of soldiers who were without mounts and nearest to the advancing Indians. Faxon and the writer were perhaps fifty yards, certainly not more than that, from the old s
ergeant when he and his antagonist, who had left his horse and was also on foot, began their duel. They were probably fifteen paces apart. The sergeant would fire and fall back a few steps, the Indian would fire and advance. Each combatant must have fired four or five shots before the sergeant was hit and fell. Thus ended the tragedy. It was not until Sunday that the writer knew where the memorial shaft had been erected, and he was not aware that it marked the spot where he can testify that a brave old soldier, fighting heroically, fell with his face to his foe. Possibly the fact that the dead soldier was a sergeant may aid somewhat in his identification by the War Department, so that his name may be given the place it deserves on the honor roll of those men who gave their lives fighting worthily that day in June, 1877….
Reminiscences of White Bird Canyon (By John P. Schorr, formerly sergeant, Troop F, First U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, March 15, 1926)
I was very much impressed with the article of Comrade Frank A. Fenn, a volunteer in the Nez Perce [War]…. I was one of the survivors of that battle [White Bird Canyon], on June 17, 1877, our first engagement with Chief Joseph’s band of redskins, who outnumbered us six to one.
We left the fort [Fort Lapwai] on June 15th and made forced marches, being in the saddle for forty-eight hours with only about two hours’ rest. On the 17th, about 3 a.m., we located the Indians, but before we could get in battle formation they fired on us from all directions and practically had us all hemmed in. It is still a mystery that any of us escaped, for out of ninety men from Troops F and H, First U. S. Cavalry, thirty-three comrades fell in less time than it takes to tell it. Among the first to fall was Trumpeter John Jones, Troop F. The brave old sergeant who fell with his face to his foe, fighting heroically, gray-headed and on his fourth enlistment, was Sergeant Patrick Gunn of Troop F. He was as fine a “non com” as anyone could wish for as a comrade. I know, for I was under his instructions as a young recruit, which served me later to further my own advancement. As far as I know, Sergeant Gunn was buried at Fort Lapwai, taken there by a fraternal organization, while the rest of the comrades were buried where they fell. First Lieutenant Edward R. Theller of the Twenty-first Infantry also fell, selling his life dearly. The Indians had the advantage over us for most of them carried magazine guns. Brave Sergeant Gunn, heroic Lieutenant Theller, and other comrades gave their lives fighting worthily that day, and they answered their last call by never flinching in the line of duty.
The Nez Perce War and the Battle of the Big Hole, 1877 (By Charles N. Loynes, formerly sergeant, Company I, Seventh U. S. Infantry. From Winners of the West, April, 1924; May, 1924; March, 1925)
Those were eventful days from’ 75 to’ 80 in the then Territory of Montana. Colonel John Gibbon at that time commanding the regiment, with headquarters and six companies stationed at Fort Shaw; other companies were at Fort Benton, Fort Ellis, and Camp Baker. On the 17th of March, 1876, with drums and bugles playing “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” we left Fort Shaw, the snow knee deep, and did not return until October. The Seventh was to be part of the force ordered to meet Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry for the Yellowstone expedition and attack the Sioux under Sitting Bull. In the month of June, two days after the Custer massacre, we were in the vicinity of the Little Bighorn country, when First Lieutenant James H. Bradley, who had charge of the mounted detachment [of the] Seventh Infantry, and was in advance, sent back word to the main column that Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and his command had been massacred. Of course, officers and men could not credit such a report, but soon found it to be true. The regiment immediately advanced and rescued Major Marcus A. Reno, who, with the remaining companies of the Seventh Cavalry, had made such a gallant stand against the savages, by using their dead horses and hardtack boxes for breastworks. During that summer the Seventh Infantry marched over twenty-one hundred miles.
After the expedition to the Yellowstone, the companies returned to their respective forts for the winter, and not until the following year, 1877, did they move again. At that period, the government intended to establish a post west of the Rocky Mountains in the Bitterroot Valley, near a small settlement called Missoula. For that purpose, two companies of the Seventh, Companies I and A, commanded respectively by Captains Charles C. Rawn and William Logan, were ordered there. On a beautiful June day we entered the then-struggling village of Missoula, composed at that time of a grist mill, about twenty log houses, and a camp of two or three hundred friendly Indians of the Pend d’Oreille tribe, under an old chief about eighty years of age by the name of Big Canoe. We soon crossed the Blackfoot and Hellgate rivers, which meet at that point, and after passing over a level stretch of prairie four miles across, we found ourselves under the shadow of the Bitterroot Mountains and near the river of the same name.
Many will remember that at that time Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, with cavalry, infantry, and a section of the Fourth Artillery, started on his long trip from Oregon to the Missouri River in pursuit of the Nez Perce Indians under the great Chief Joseph. Being advised of the approach of the Indians in our direction, we at once commenced to fortify our camp as best we could, by throwing up rifle pits, cutting away the brush that would shelter the Indians, and piling up the sacks of grain in such a position as to give protection to the wives and children of officers and the laundresses of the companies. About seven miles to the south of our camp was what is known as the Lo-Lo Pass, through which we expected the Nez Perces to come. A detachment from both companies was accompanied by a few friendly Indians and thirty or forty citizens, all under command of Captain Charles C. Rawn, and a better officer never lived. His entire force numbered about one hundred, while that of the Indians was about five hundred, and mostly armed with Winchester repeating rifles, while we had the Springfield single loader, caliber .45.
We soon arrived at the entrance to the pass, or canyon, and with our skirmish lines thrown out in front and on flank, we advanced to meet the Indians. Going forward about three miles, we were suddenly accosted by a number of shots coming in our direction from brush in front, evidently fired by the outposts of the hostiles. Our answer was a yell, and the friendly Indians with us giving their war-whoops, we pushed forward, the few Indians in front retreating back to their main body.
The canyon at this point was becoming less broad. On our sides were high stone precipices, some underbrush, and scattering Norway pines, and a small stream of water called the Lo-Lo [Creek]…. Men with axes were soon felling trees across the canyon in our rear; a tree would be dropped, then another, called a headlog, would be placed upon it, with a small limb in between, giving the required space to get the rifles through.
In the meantime, the shades of evening were coming on, a drizzling rain had set in, and the citizens who accompanied us, principally for the ponies they might capture, perceiving the large body of Indians we had to contend with, had already deserted, with the exception of about a dozen. Among those who remained was a man by the name of Andrews, as we remembered him, who ran the grist mill at Missoula, and a daring brave man he was, too. During the early evening his attention was attracted to a slight noise in front where he and some soldiers were posted, so getting over the works they advanced cautiously forward and soon covered four Indians with their rifles, and brought them in prisoners. They were conducted to the rear, their feet and hands tied, and a guard placed over them. Among the prisoners was one by name of John Hill, who had a good English education. Another was what is termed a squaw Indian, who had during the trip from Oregon killed a ranchman’s wife, and was consequently, when captured, enjoying the privileges of a brave. He afterwards escaped from the guard tent one dark rainy night, while guarded by a drummer boy.
Chief Joseph must get by us, for he knew General Howard’s command was coming up in his rear; in this, he might be successful, but only at a great loss to himself, so during the night we made preparations to receive him, believing he would try to force his way through on the following morning. Before the first streak of daylight every man
was on the alert, with rifles ready, to meet the expected attack. At last daylight came, and with it an occasional shot, just enough to keep our attention. We were beginning to get somewhat impatient, and were preparing to throw out a skirmish line to feel them, when, on a high rocky point to our right, were seen six or eight Indians working their Winchesters right into us. Volunteers were called for, and fourteen sprang forward—led by First Lieutenant Charles A. Coolidge…and started up the steep mountainside to drive them off. We had gotten quite well up when they vanished out of sight.
We soon discovered that during the night Joseph had moved his whole camp up the steep mountainside, had passed around us, and was then making rapid time to get to the Bitterroot Valley, and at the same time had left a number of his warriors to keep our attention and delay us as long as possible. When he arrived at the mouth of the Lo-Lo Pass, he turned to the right and went up the Bitterroot Valley, going in the direction of Corvallis and Phillipsburg toward the Big Hole Basin, where a week later, or on the 9th of August, we attacked him. Not having at the time force large enough to follow, we at once returned to camp near Missoula.
On August 3, Colonel Gibbon arrived at Missoula from Fort Shaw with Companies D, F, G, and K, and men from other companies attached. The day following, the above named companies, including A and I, left Missoula in pursuit of the Nez Perces. In addition to our command were a number of citizen volunteers, making the entire force about 182 men, including a four-pound howitzer. We followed over the roughest country imaginable. In places the trail was so steep that the mules were detached from the army wagons and with ropes were drawn up the steep sides. The scattered settlers were congregated in a square-built adobe fort for protection, and the men informed us that if necessary the women could use firearms as well as they. One night we encamped on a high point of the mountains, with no water or food. The next morning we descended to the valley below, where we got water for men and animals who by this time were nearly famished. Here the Indians had camped four or five days previous, many “wicky-ups” being in evidence. They are made by bending over the young willows, forming a circular arch, upon which are thrown buffalo hides or blankets for protection of the occupants.