The Wild Frontier

by William M. Osborn

  CAESAR SAID, “In war, actions of great importance are [often] the result of trivial causes.”102 We have seen and shall see trivial happenings escalate into serious conflicts resulting in loss of life because neither side would stop the escalation. A similar statement of the rule is “It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one.”103

  Two classic examples of escalation happened in the 1850s. The first was in 1856, when 2 Cheyenne warriors hailed a mail coach near Fort Kearny in Nebraska. Their party, led by Little Spotted Crow and Little Gray Hair, had sent them to ask the driver for tobacco. The rattled driver saw them gesturing, lashed his mules, pulled his pistol, and started firing. The Cheyenne responded with a volley of arrows. One hit the driver in the arm. When the Cheyenne leaders heard about the incident, they whipped the 2 warriors, then the party returned to camp. The next day, soldiers from the fort attacked the camp in retaliation, killed 10, wounded 10, and destroyed all lodges and supplies. The outraged Cheyenne struck back, killing at least 12 settlers, and then returned to their winter camp. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ordered a chastising expedition against the Cheyenne. Eight companies were sent. More than 300 warriors met them. Two soldiers were killed and 9 wounded. Apparently, 9 Indians were killed. The soldiers then found a large Cheyenne village 15 miles away. They burned its 200 tipis and most of its supplies. At least 33 people were killed over a misunderstanding about some tobacco.104

  The second example of escalation occurred in 1859 when 2 Kiowa, subchiefs Satank and Pawnee, both slightly drunk, entered George Peacock’s store at Walnut Creek Station on the Arkansas River. They demanded goods, but the clerk told them to leave. Satank grabbed a sheep, slit its throat, and filled his mouth with blood. He went back into the store and spit the blood into the clerk’s face. There was a brief fight. Satank withdrew, but then climbed up and began tearing and throwing the sod roof. When he left, he promised to destroy the store. Soldiers called to investigate killed Pawnee the next day. Within 48 hours the Kiowas had attacked a mail stage and killed 4 prospectors.105 Six more settlers were killed by Comanches and Kiowas after the incident at Peacock’s store.106 Almost exactly a year later, Satank killed Peacock.107 Eleven people were killed because Satank refused to leave the store.

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  ARMY DISCIPLINE, which was very strict, played a part in this story. In 1795, a private deserted from Fort Defiance. The officers offered 2 Shawnee a reward of 10 dollars to bring him back alive and 20 dollars for his scalp. The next day, they brought the scalp to the fort.108 The Lewis and Clark Expedition, described by Jefferson as one to extend external commerce, was staffed for the most part by soldiers. Early in the expedition, Private John Collins was guarding the liquor just after midnight, tapped a barrel, became drunk, then offered Private Hugh Hall enough liquor to get him drunk as well. At the court-martial, Collins was given 100 lashes and Hall 50.109 Two weeks later, Private Alexander Willard fell asleep at his post. He was sentenced to 100 lashes for each of 4 days, but he could have received the death sentence.110 In the fall of 1804, Private John Newman, encouraged by another private, made statements that led to his court-martial on grounds that he had “uttered repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature.” He was found guilty and sentenced to 75 lashes and “discarded” from the party.111 The last court-martial in the Lewis and Clark Expedition was that of private Thomas Howard in December 1804. The party was at stockaded Fort Mandan. Howard got to the fort late and scaled the wall. An Indian saw this and scaled the wall as well. Lewis tried to convince the Indian he had done wrong, gave him some tobacco, and dismissed him. Howard was sentenced to 50 lashes, which were forgiven.112

  S. L. A. Marshall said that by 1860 army enlisted men were “too often criminals, toughs, drunkards, and fugitives.” The post-Civil War enlisted men knew nothing about Indian warfare.113 The Colorado militia that participated in the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 has been described by author Duane Schultz in his Month of the Freezing Moon: The Sand Creek Massacre, November, 1864 as

  chicken and watermelon stealing, casual AWOLs, late sleeping, trout fishing, bitching, drunken officers, saloon fights, and tumbles in the hay with country maidens much impressed by new blue cavalry uniforms. No one wanted to drill, guard duty was ignored, and none of the volunteers, apparently, obeyed any order unless the mood was on him and the tone of command suitably civil.114

  But there was no lack of courage in general on the part of the soldiers. Although given more freely in this war than in later wars, a total of 428 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded during the Indian wars, a number exceeded only by those earned in the Civil War and World War II. Here is a summary of the citations of 5 of the medal recipients:

  Glynn, Michael. Private, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Whetstone Mountains, Ariz., 13 July 1872. Citation: Drove off, single-handed, 8 hostile Indians, killing and wounding 5.

  Harrington, John. Private, Company H, 6th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Wichita River, Tex., 12 September 1874. Citation: While carrying dispatches, he was attacked by 125 hostile Indians whom he and his comrades fought throughout the day. He was severely wounded in the hip and unable to move. He continued to fight, defending an exposed dying man.

  Herron, Leander. Corporal, Company A, 3rd U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Fort Dodge, Kans., 2 September 1868. Citation: While detailed as mail courier from the fort, voluntarily went to the assistance of a party of 4 enlisted men, who were attacked by about 50 Indians at some distance from the fort, and remained with them until the party was relieved.

  Irwin, Bernard J., Dr. Assistant surgeon, U.S. Army. Place and date: Apache Pass, Ariz., 13-14 February 1861. Citation: Voluntarily took command of troops and attacked and defeated hostile Indians he met on the way. Surgeon Irwin volunteered to go to the rescue of Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, 7th Infantry, who with 60 men was trapped by Chiricahua Apaches under Cochise. Irwin and 14 men, not having horses, began the 100-mile march riding mules. After fighting and capturing Indians, recovering stolen horses and cattle, he reached Bascom’s column and helped break his siege.

  Jordan, George. Sergeant, Company K, 9th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Fort Tularosa, N. Mex., 14 May 1880. Citation: While commanding a detachment of 25 men at Fort Tularosa, repulsed a force of more than 100 Indians. At Carrizo Canyon, N. Mex., while commanding the right flank of a detachment of 19 men, on 12 August 1881, he stubbornly held his ground in an extremely exposed position and gallantly forced back a much superior number of the enemy, preventing them from surrounding the command.

  The settlers, as opposed to the militia or soldiers, usually had no military training. They knew how to use guns, however, in shooting deer, bear, fowl, or other animals to feed their families. That skill and their courage and great numbers were formidable factors. The army didn’t give them much help until late in the war. Meanwhile, said Denis William Brogan, “the early settlers long needed to acquire a craft equaling the craft of the savages and a savagery not much inferior.”115 As a group, they survived the Indian attacks, although many individuals did not.

  OVER THE years, there have been 2 different schools of thought on whether the settlers and soldiers had an overwhelming advantage in weaponry. In 1622 the Indians had bows and arrows and stone tomahawks. The settlers had muskets, one-shot muzzle-loading weapons that, although cumbersome, were arguably better than a bow and arrow. The musket was used for 50 years after the settlers arrived. But the guns were so heavy that they had to be supported in a forked rest. It took 2 minutes to load, and it misfired about 30 percent of the time.116 The first guns were so deficient that “their superiority over the bow and arrow was debatable.”117 According to Harold E. Driver, “As late as our own Revolutionary War, George Washington and other military leaders had considerable discussion on whether the bow and arrow should be a part of the armament of the thirteen colonies.”118

  In the 1600s, the Dutch, French, and English began selling guns to the eastern Indians. Some o
f them attacked their neighbors who did not have guns and drove them west. For example, in Minnesota the Ojib-way and Cree drove the Sioux out of the area.119 Of course, the guns were used against the settlers as well. In 1675 Benjamin Church of Rhode Island found that his forces were confronted by a salute of 50 or 60 guns from the Indians.120

  The settlers next got breech-loading rifles, then repeating rifles. But traders sold the latest repeating rifles to the Indians.121 There was a time after the Civil War when the army was using old single-shot Springfield rifles while the Indians were using repeating rifles furnished them under treaties for the ostensible purpose of hunting buffalo. The rifles, of course, worked just as well against soldiers or settlers.122

  The army rifles were very good—the seven-shot Spencer, with a range of about 1,750 yards; the single-shot Springfield, which was much more accurate and had a 3,500-yard range (almost 2 miles); and the Sharps.123 In 1874, the Comanche beseiged the fort at Adobe Walls, now in Texas. Sharpshooter Billy Dixon saw a Comanche sitting on his horse some distance away. He carefully fired his Sharps, and the Indian fell from the horse. The shot afterward was measured. It was found to have been 1,538 yards, or 0.88 miles.124

  The army also had Gatling guns and 12-pound howitzers. The Gatling gun was a 10-barrel crank-revolved weapon theoretically capable of firing 400 shots a minute. Its barrels frequently fouled, however. Although the 12-pounder was bulky, it could lob 2 shells a minute that killed anything they hit and raised a lot of dirt.125

  When the character of the Indians is contrasted with that of the settlers, it is not difficult to understand how confrontations and atrocities occurred.

  * Frenchman J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813) fought in two battles in the French and Indian War. He learned about America while a traveling salesman and a surveyor.

  CHAPTER 4

  Pre-Colonial Atrocities

  The word atrocity when used here indicates an act of intentional extreme cruelty against another person during this war. The killing of an opponent in battle is not an atrocity because this was war, and such killings were acceptable.

  Although there were many atrocities during the American-Indian War, they began long before then. The atrocities in the New World were not unique. They were committed by both Europeans and Indians long before Jamestown and Plymouth were settled.

  Reminiscent of Governor Wyatt calling the Indians to a peace conference at the colony and then trying to poison them, legend has it that before the birth of Christ, Roman cofounder Romulus invited the Sabine people surrounding Rome to a festival. The Romans then carried off the Sabine women by force and raped them. The Sabines, of course, then went to war with the Romans (as did the Indians with the Virginians).1 Roman law made use of torture. Emperors often ordered condemned persons burned at the stake, a practice followed by Indians but interestingly enough apparently never adopted by the settlers, even though they committed other kinds of atrocities.2

  Charlemagne of the Franks has been called “the civilizer.” He wanted to subjugate as many peoples as possible and force them to become Christians. He finally conquered the heathen Saxon tribes, but only after executing 4,500 of them at Verden in 782. Twelve years later, Pope Leo III crowned him emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.3

  The Spanish Inquisition began in 1231. Roman Catholics accused of heresy were tried in the Court of the Inquisition, which was established by Pope Gregory IX in that year.4 If the heretics confessed, they were reconciled with the Church after performing penance. If they did not confess, they could be tortured. The most common form of torture was the rack, which wrenched the limbs of the victim. If torture failed to make the victim confess, then he or she was turned over to civil authorities.5 In the Spanish region of Castile alone, thousands of people were burned to death.6 The total number of people tortured and killed is not known.7

  Heresy is the unacceptable deviation from Church doctrine. Witchcraft, on the other hand, is the claimed performance of a supernatural act. Saint Joan of Arc was tried for both and burned at the stake in 1431. She was found innocent 25 years later by Pope Calixtus III.8

  The sophisticated Aztec Indians of Mexico used military aggression to maintain their trading empire and to take “captives for human sacrifice, which served as a function of the state for keeping order.”9 Religion dominated the conduct of the Aztecs. Their war god, Huitzilopochti, demanded great tribute. Thousands of prisoners were slain at the top of his temple pyramids, their hearts subsequently torn out by the priests. Sometimes the hearts were still beating because they had been cut from the chests of living victims.

  Legend says that at the coronation of Montezuma II in 1502, more than 5,000 people were sacrificed.10 Sometimes the devout Aztec offered his or her own blood drawn from cuts in the tongue through which sticks and strings were sawed back and forth. Often the body of a sacrificed victim was eaten at a religious feast.11

  The capital of the Aztec empire was Tenochtitlán. There the heads of the victims were impaled on a towering skull rack in the main square. Captured warriors were given mock weapons, tied to a stone, then killed in mock combat by warriors with real weapons. Priests danced wrapped in the skins of their victims, which were dripping with blood. Captives were lashed up as targets and shot with arrows and darts so their blood would fertilize the earth. Children were sacrificed to Tlaloc, the rain god. Victims were burned alive to celebrate the harvest.12

  The paradox of the Aztecs was that they had “a complex, sophisticated culture with high intellectual pursuits and a refined sense of esthetics; yet here also was a ferocious culture that fed on the ritualistic death of others.”13

  In addition to the heresy atrocities, witchcraft atrocities were committed in both Europe and America. About 300,000 women were put to death for witchcraft by Christian churches between 1484 and 1782. All were innocent in the sense that they could not perform supernatural acts (although they may have claimed they could, often after torture).14 Tens of thousands were killed in Europe.15 The Reverend Cotton Mather in Salem, Massachusetts, aroused the citizenry against the witchcraft danger, and in 1692 20 were killed (19 burned at the stake and the other pressed to death) and 150 more sent to prison.16

  The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was the first to sail around Africa to India in 1497. Arab traders resented his presence and turned the Hindus against him. In 1502 and 1503 he made a second voyage there to avenge Indian violence against Portuguese sailors.17 He burned an Arab ship containing hundreds of men, women, and children, ignoring the pleas of mothers who held up their babies to beg for mercy. “At one settlement da Gama captured about eight hundred sailors from small craft, hanged them at the yardarms, cut off their hands and heads, loaded them in a vessel, and let it drift ashore.”18

  By the time his reign had ended in 1509, King Henry VIII of England had banished, beheaded, or disemboweled those who had offended him, even loyal friends. An errant cook was boiled in oil.19

  When the Spanish came to the New World, their cruelty continued. The first priest ordained in the New World, Bartolomé de las Casas, reported the conduct of the Spanish soldiers in the Caribbean islands. They would rip open the bellies of pregnant women, take out the fetus, and hew it to pieces. They would wager on who could with the greater dexterity cut a man in half. They would wager who could cut off his head with one blow. They would take children by the feet and dash their heads against the rocks. They would throw children into the water and call on them to swim. They would sometimes run a pregnant woman and her baby through at one thrust of the sword. They would erect a gallows for 13 people so low that the feet of the persons being hanged would touch the ground. As the 13 were being hanged, the soldiers would say they did it in honor of Jesus and the 12 Apostles. Then they would burn the 13 alive.20

  The first 2 Spanish ships to drop anchor in the 1520s off the Carolinas found a “gentle, kindly, hospitable” people whom they named the Chicoreans. The Spaniards invited scores of them aboard, offered them a view of the lower dec
ks, then locked them in and sold them as mine slaves in Santo Domingo. This was repeated by other slavers, so that by the end of the 1600s, the tribe was extinct. The same was true of inhabitants of many of the West Indian islands.21

  Pánfilo de Narváez, a Spanish roughneck soldier, pillaged in Mexico, then came to the area around Tampa Bay in 1529. An Indian chief and his family were lured into his camp, where he cut off the chief’s nose, then ordered the chief’s mother torn apart by dogs. His army of 400 was eventually destroyed by Indians, exhaustion, exposure, and disease. Only 4 soldiers survived, according to one author;22 another says 242 survived.23

  Perhaps one of the most depressing things about the Spanish in the New World was that under their encomienda system, a land grant included not only the land, but also the people on the land.24 The land and the slaves were packaged together.

  About 1541, near Albuquerque, Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado burned 100 or more men at the stake and took the bulk of the women and children as slaves.25

  An engraving from a 1594 edition of a book by Theodor De Bry entitled America appears in literature relating to Indian atrocities with some frequency.26 The foreground shows 2 Indians holding a bound Spanish soldier on the ground while a third pours molten gold down his throat. The background shows a human arm and leg being cooked on a fire while 2 Indians are bringing an additional arm and leg for roasting. In the right center, a nude Spaniard lies on the ground; one Indian is severing his right arm and another his left leg.

  In 1598, in what is now New Mexico, the Spanish commander, Juan de Oñate, ordered his second in command and his nephew, Vincente de Zaldivar, to wage war without quarter on the Pueblo Indian town of Acoma because the Indians there had killed 13 Spanish soldiers.27 After 2 days of fighting, the town was destroyed, 500 men and 300 women and children were killed in cold blood, and about 500 women and children and 80 men were taken alive. All people over 12 years of age were condemned to 20 years of slavery. Men over 21 had one foot cut off as an additional penalty, girls under 12 were turned over to the friars to be distributed wherever they chose, and the boys were given to Zaldivar.28 Two Hopi were captured. Their right hands were cut off, and then they were set free to let others know about what happened to those who revolted.29