The Wild Frontier

by William M. Osborn

  ATROCITIES, OF course, continued elsewhere. Charles Bent, a Dog Soldier leader and another of William Bent’s sons, was in Black Kettle’s village at the time of the Sand Creek Massacre. He and some other Cheyenne raided a station the following year, captured 2 men there, and in sight of their fellow workers staked one of the prisoners on the ground, cut out his tongue, built a fire on his stomach, and performed “other abominations.”123

  When settlers returned to Arizona after the Civil War, they confronted the Apache, who were a ferocious tribe. It was claimed that the Apache captured women, then literally tore their bodies apart. The settlers also reported that prisoners were hung head down over small fires, their uncontrolled jackknifing giving amusement to the Apache for hours while the prisoner’s brain slowly roasted until death.124

  In 1865, Lieutenant William Drew saw a soldier fall off a bluff during the Battle of Platte Bridge in Wyoming Territory:

  An Indian [Sioux] rode up to his body and commenced shooting arrows into it. After firing four or five arrows the Indian dismounted, took his tomahawk and commenced to hack him with it.125

  Soldier Hank Lord fired his rifle, hitting the Indian when his hatchet was in midair. The next day, a supply train guarded by troops was attacked. After the Indians had withdrawn, troops went to the scene. Drew said,

  A horrible sight met our gaze. Twenty-one of our dead soldiers were lying on the ground, stripped naked and mangled in every conceivable way. I noticed one poor fellow with a wagon tire across his bowels, and from appearances, it had been heated red-hot and then laid upon him while still alive.126

  A Chicago Journal reporter at the same scene wrote that “Lieutenant [Casper] Collins was horribly mutilated, his hands and feet cut off, heart taken out, scalped, and one hundred arrows in him.”127

  The Boxx, or Box, family was attacked by Kiowa Indians in Texas in 1865. Their home was destroyed, the father and the youngest daughter killed when she would not stop crying, the mother and 2 teenage daughters raped, and daughter Ida, age 7, tortured by being compelled to walk barefoot on live coals because she could not understand the commands of the Indian women. When rescued only 10 weeks later, Ida had almost forgotten the English language.128

  FORT PHIL KEARNY, in Wyoming, was the site of Fetterman’s Massacre in 1866. Colonel Henry Beebee Carrington was the commander of the fort, one of a series built to protect travelers on the Bozeman Trail. Captain William J. Fetterman, who was stationed there, had bragged that with only 80 soldiers he could defeat the entire Sioux nation. The Sioux had attacked a wagon train hauling wood. Colonel Carrington ordered Fetterman to relieve the besieged train, drive the Indians off, then return to the fort. He was not to pursue the Indians beyond Lodge Trail Ridge, which would be out of the range of the fort’s howitzers.129 Fetterman picked 49 experienced infantrymen. Lieutenant George W. Grummond followed with 27 cavalrymen, and 2 civilians and Captain Frederick H. Brown went along to observe. These 80 men left the fort in 2 groups, the infantrymen first, then the faster cavalrymen. The orders were repeated again to Fetterman and to Grummond at the gate. Disobeying orders, Fetterman led the group off the road, past Lodge Trail Ridge, and out of sight of the fort. Somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 Sioux led by Crazy Horse were waiting in ambush for them.

  Carrington heard heavy gunfire and sent 40 men to assist Fetterman. When they got to the ridge, they saw hundreds of warriors and 80 dead soldiers and civilians. Carrington was deemed partly responsible for the massacre and relieved of his command, but subsequent investigations exonerated him.130

  He prepared his official report 2 weeks later. He stated that he had found his soldiers’ bodies just at dark. They were naked and frozen with

  eyes torn out and laid on rocks; noses cut off; ears cut off; chins hewn off; teeth chopped out; joints of fingers, brains taken out and placed on rocks with other members of the body; entrails taken out and exposed; hands cut off; feet cut off; arms taken out from sockets; private parts severed and indecently placed on the person; eyes, ears, mouth, and arms penetrated with spear-heads, sticks, and arrows; ribs slashed to separation with knives; skulls severed in every form, from chin to crown; muscles of calves, thighs, stomach, breast, back, arms, and cheeks taken out. Punctures upon every sensitive part of the body, even to the soles of the feet and palms of the hand. All this only approximates the whole truth…. [One had] 105 arrows in his naked body.131

  Once more, an entire military force had been wiped out by the Sioux. The army demanded vengeance, but there was a peace treaty instead. The Fetterman defeat, together with constant Sioux guerrilla warfare, had closed the Bozeman Trail and worn down the government.132 The military capabilities of Red Cloud and his Sioux warriors resulted in the 1868 Second Fort Laramie Treaty, which provided that the Sioux would stop fighting and that a Sioux reservation would be established for the absolute and undisturbed use of the Sioux.133 After gold was discovered in the Black Hills (part of the reservation), the government tried to keep prospectors out for a time, but with little success. Finally, President Grant reportedly met with the army, and it was agreed that the government would no longer interfere with the prospectors.134

  MR. R. J. SMYTH was a teamster at Fort Phil Kearny. While making a trip to the hayfield outside the fort, he was accompanied by an artist from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. The artist insisted on getting off partway to make some sketches. Smyth advised him to stay with the outfit, but the artist insisted. On the way back he was found dead, a cross cut in his chest, indicating that the Indians thought him a coward, and his head completely skinned. Smyth speculated that the Cheyenne had killed the artist because they typically cut scalps into many pieces. Later, soldier Pate Smith got too far ahead of the outfit and the Crows claimed the Sioux caught him and skinned him alive.135

  The Marysville, Kansas, Enterprise reported in 1866 that Indians surrounded a home, and while the husband looked on, his wife, who had fled,

  was led from her tent and every remnant of clothing torn from her body. A child that she was holding to her breast was wrenched from her arms and she was knocked to the ground. In this nude condition the demons gathered round her and while some held her down by standing on her wrists and their claws clutched in her hair, others outraged her person. No less than thirty repeated the horrible deed!136

  In Texas, attacks by the Indians had not abated either. In 1867, Texas governor Throckmorton reported that since the end of the Civil War, the Indians there (mostly Comanche and Kiowa) had killed 162 settlers and captured 43. Twenty-nine of the captives had been returned. Rupert Norval Richardson said,

  Ordinarily the Indians would not give up a captive without the payment of a reward…. Some of the more responsible chiefs tried to stop this stealing of white women and children…. But some of the most prominent Comanche chiefs either participated in or condoned this practice of taking captives.137

  Cheyenne and Arapaho war parties also rode north into Kansas, killing 117 settlers and taking 7 women captive.138

  The same year, after a fight with soldiers near Fort C. F. Smith, the Sioux retired, leaving a dead warrior behind. The soldiers “scalped the dead Indian in the latest and most artistic western style, then beheaded him, placing his head on a high pole, leaving his carcass to his friends or the wolves.”139

  Eight months after Fetterman’s Massacre, there was another fight at the same place. The Sioux again attacked the woodcutters at Fort Phil Kearny. Earlier, Fetterman had had cumbersome muzzle-loaders, but at this second fight, called the Wagon Box Fight because the soldiers made a defensive formation behind a circle of wagons, the soldiers had more efficient breechloaders and survived. Surgeon Horton was appalled to learn that the soldiers had brought back the head of an Indian “for scientific study.” Horton sent it to Washington.140

  In the winter of 1867-68, the Cheyenne fought their old enemies, the Kaw and the Osage, and within a week after the Cheyenne got weapons from Wynkoop at Fort Lyon in August, they killed more than a dozen settlers, kid
napped some children, and forced hundreds of settlers to abandon their homes. In September there were more attacks. They continued into the fall.141

  In the spring of 1868, the southern Plains tribes raided in Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. Goodrich noted that they burned, raped, and murdered. “In one month alone, seventy-five settlers were slaughtered.”142

  IN NOVEMBER, Black Kettle tried to surrender for the last time at Fort Cobb. He talked with Major General William B. Hazen. He told Hazen that his camp of 180 lodges located on the Washita River wanted to make peace. Hazen informed him that he was not authorized to make peace. Exactly one week after Black Kettle’s talk with Hazen, Custer led the 700-man Seventh Cavalry to the peaceful Cheyenne camp and surrounded it. They charged at dawn. Major Joel Elliott led 15 soldiers along the riverbank, but was ambushed. He and all his men were killed, their naked bodies mutilated. But the soldiers killed 103 Indians. One of them was Black Kettle, who was buried in an unmarked grave so that soldiers would not find it, but his bones with his jewelry were recovered in 1934. The local newspaper put them on display in its window. The Battle of the Washita River was Custer’s only victory over the Indians.143 There were 4 white prisoners in Black Kettle’s camp when the cavalry attack began. The Indians killed 2 of them, one a woman, the other a small child. Andrist said they were killed by the women.144

  Custer, newspaper reporter DeBenneville Keim, and others went in search of Major Elliott and his men. Keim wrote,

  Within an area of not more than fifteen yards, lay sixteen human bodies … sixteen naked corpses frozen as solidly as stone. There was not a single body that did not exhibit evidences of fearful mutilation. They were all lying with their faces down, and in close proximity to each other. Bullet and arrow wounds covered the back of each; the throats of a number were cut, and several were beheaded.145

  A scout for the army, Lem Wilson, was looking for water. He stumbled on an Indian, who attacked with a knife. Wilson killed the Indian instead and went wild. “I took his knife and scalped him…. It was th’ happiest moment of my life…. I was like a wild man. I was wavin’ th’ bloody scalp in one hand and th’ Indian’s knife in th’ other. All th’ hatred I had for them cusses that had been tryin’ to kill me for years was turned loose inside of me and outside.”146

  Some settlers sought vengeance for family members killed by Indians. In 1868, a newspaper reporter interviewed George Porter, who had witnessed the rape and murder of his entire family. He followed Indians wherever he could find them for the purpose of killing them. He carried with him a canebrake about 12 inches long and made a notch on it whenever he killed. The canebrake had 108 notches on it at the time of the interview. Other relatives seeking vengeance left pieces of poisoned meat where Indians were likely to pass. In one instance, more than 20 Indians were poisoned.147

  Indians attacked a Montana trading post in 1869. Several warriors were killed. Their heads were cut off, their ears pickled in whiskey, and the flesh boiled from the skulls. Inscriptions such as “Let Harper’s Tell of My Virtues” were put on them (Harper’s Weekly was sympathetic to the Indians).148

  Shoshoni chief Washakie was born around 1798, and by the 1850s he led 1,000 disciplined warriors.149 In 1869, when Washakie was about 71 years old, he overheard some warriors complain that he was too old and should retire. He said nothing. The next day, he rode out of camp and wasn’t seen or heard from for 2 months. When he returned, he brought 7 scalps (probably Indian), which he had taken by himself. That no doubt ended the talk about retirement, and he continued to take an active part in wars against the Sioux. After his son was killed in a barroom brawl, he converted to Christianity.150 He died at age 101 or 102.151

  Scout J. E. Welch wrote an account of the Battle of Summit Springs in 1869 to his comrade, Colonel Henry O. Clark. They found the trail of Cheyenne chief Tall Bull, who was a leader of the ferocious Dog Soldier Society, whose warriors earlier had raided the Pawnee, killing 15 men and raping 5 women.152 The camp was charged.

  Welch saw a white woman run from the Indians. One fired and hit her, but she was only wounded and survived. About the same time, Welch saw another white woman seized by an Indian, who hacked her with a tomahawk. Several men rode toward the Indian and killed him. Welch dismounted to see if he could help the woman, but she was dead. She had been far along in pregnancy.

  Then Welch saw an Indian getting away by himself. Welch gave chase, the Indian turned, fired, and wounded Welch in the leg. Three arrows also were shot at him, the third splitting his left ear. Welch then shot the Indian through the head and scalped him. Welch later discovered that he was Chief Pretty Bear. The Pawnee scouts knew him and wanted his scalp, which Welch gave them. It was learned that the surviving white woman was German. She said both women had been “beaten and outraged in every conceivable manner.”153

  The Blackfeet had committed many crimes in Montana, so the army in 1870 under the command of Colonel E. M. Baker struck the Piegan camp of Heavy Runner and Red Horn. (The Piegans were a band of the Blackfeet.) The army was tracking several warriors who had killed a settler. There were 173 Blackfeet killed; 90 were women and 50 children. After the raid on the Piegans, General Sheridan estimated that at least 800 men, women, and children had been murdered by Indians since 1862. The New York Times countered that it was indefensible, needlessly barbaric and brutal, and a wholesale slaughter.154

  KIOWA LEADER Satanta liked to live the good life. He lived in a carpeted tipi and called guests to dinner by blowing on a French horn.155 Fanny Kelly heard the story that Satanta’s people in Texas had captured Mrs. Clara Blynn, her 2-year-old son, Willie, and others in a raid on the Arkansas River. The Indians refused to give the Blynns any food after a couple of days except for the little bit Mrs. Blynn could get from the women, who were jealous of her. The women in Satanta’s band believed that an Indian girl had become a spy because Satanta had murdered her best friend. The girl furnished food and carried a letter from Mrs. Blynn to the commanding general addressed to “Kind Friend,” pleading for help. Whenever Satanta was gone, the women would burn the Indian girl with sharp sticks and resinous splinters. Her face, breasts, and limbs were scarred in this way and her baby was held by the hair and punished with a stick in her presence. The army arrived at the camp. Mrs. Blynn cried, “Willie, Willie, saved at last!” but Satanta buried his tomahawk in her brain, grabbed Willie, dashed his head against a tree, killing him, and threw his body on his dying mother.156

  In north central Texas in 1871, 3 years after the Blynns were killed, Henry Warren, a government contractor, was at the head of his wagon train when the group was attacked by a raiding party of Indians, mostly Kiowa. The wagonmaster and 6 other men were killed. One of the men was tied to a wagon wheel and burned. At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Satanta boasted that he had led the attack. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Humanitarian groups (today they would be called Indian advocates) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs argued that the sentence was too harsh. The death sentence was revoked, he was imprisoned, and then paroled in 1873. The next year, General Sheridan ordered 74 militant Indians, including Satanta, to prison again. When Satanta was told he would never be released, he committed suicide by jumping from a prison hospital window.157

  Even Custer wrote that except for Satanta’s “restless barbarity” and “merciless forays” against the frontier, he was “a remarkable man—remarkable for his powers of oratory, his determined warfare against the advance of civilization, and his opposition to abandoning his accustomed way of life.”158

  THE ARMY had established several feeding stations where friendly Indians could find food and, they hoped, safety. One of these stations was at Camp Grant, north of Tucson. A band of Apache numbering 500 appeared there in 1871 and surrendered their weapons. Citizens of Tucson organized a vigilante group consisting of 7 white settlers, 48 Mexicans, and 92 Papago Indian mercenaries. The sleeping Apache were massacred.159 Helen Hunt Jackson said that 21 women and children were killed.160 This finally
ended the war against the Apache begun by General James H. Carleton in 1862, a war that had cost many settler and soldier lives.161

  In California, T. T. Waterman wrote that in 1871 some settlers with dogs chased a band of Indians into a cave because Indians had wounded a steer. On entering the cave, they found some small children. One of the men said he couldn’t kill the babies with his heavy .56-caliber Spencer rifle because “it tore them up too bad,” so he shot them with his .38-caliber revolver. About 30 were killed.162

  Texas forces had attacked Mexican Kickapoos. Because the 2 were at war, the Kickapoos raided for horses and cattle in Texas and sold them in Mexico. Texas asked the federal government for troops. They were sent in 1873 under the leadership of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. He learned when the men would be gone from the Kickapoo villages, raided them, burned them, and captured 40 women and children, who were held as hostages to try to get the group to go to the reservation in Oklahoma. About half of them did.163

  A wagonload of 17 Modoc prisoners was being transported in Oregon to Boyle’s camp in 1873. Some were women and children. They were unarmed and without an escort. A group of armed men thought to be Oregon volunteers attacked the wagon. Several of the Indians were killed before a squad of soldiers drove the volunteers away.164

  The Modocs and Klamaths ceded most of their territory in 1864 and retired to a reservation in Oregon. The Modocs were unhappy there and asked for a reservation in California. Their request was denied. A group of Modocs under Captain Jack nevertheless went to California and established a village there. The government sent troops to evict them. There was a fight at the village, and a soldier and an Indian were killed. Captain Jack and his group escaped to a lava field. Another group of Modocs under Hooker Jim had been away from the village when the soldiers arrived. That group carried out raids on ranchers, killing 15, then fled to the lava beds.165