McNally’s first report as post commander, on May 31, was routine: “During time in which I have been in command no scouting parties as such have been sent out. I have sent out several parties to discover if possible a supply of wood for the use of this camp. … My efforts somewhat successful, but not entirely satisfactory. … I now have a party of fifty men … out for the purpose above mentioned, under charge of Lieutenant Charles A. Small, Co. A, Pawnee Scouts.”21
During May most of the action involving the 3rd Regiment was taking place far to the east of Julesburg, along the Platte Valley between Cottonwood and the Little Blue. As usual the coming of new grass heralded the beginnings of Cheyenne and Sioux raids from the North. A small war party struck a wagon train near Mulhally’s Ranche on May 5; on the morning of May 12 a larger party raided corrals at Smith’s Ranche near Midway.
In this latter attack, which lasted for some hours, detachments of Company D from Midway and Gilman’s Station experienced their first Indian fighting. They drove the enemy off after inflicting several casualties, but the company also suffered casualties: Private J. W. Hall severely wounded; Sergeant Reel and Privates Carr and O’Ney slightly wounded.22
In response to calls for a surgeon to attend these wounded, an ambulance and escort of 18 Nebraska cavalrymen and five mounted men of Company C, 3rd U.S. Volunteers, left Cottonwood at 3:00 P.M., May 12. Arriving at Gilman’s late in the day, the escort learned that another group of mounted men had crossed the Platte in pursuit of the Indians. After considering the matter, the lieutenant in command decided to join in the chase. Borrowing two pounds of bacon for each of his men from the station operator, the lieutenant then proceeded east along the road until Smith’s Ranche came into view. Bidding farewell to the surgeon and the ambulance, the escort party turned and galloped for the river, where it soon picked up the hoofmarks of the other pursuit detachment.
Thus, for the first time Galvanized Yankees were out scouting on the Plains for hostile Indians. At the river bank they halted 10 minutes to secure arms and ammunition; it was 6:00 P.M. when they plunged into the treacherous currents of the Platte. By the time they crossed the mile-wide stream, night had fallen. Four horses failed to make it across, one drowning, the other three with their riders being sent back when they began to falter. A fifth horse was too exhausted to go on; its rider and the cavalryman who had lost his mount by drowning made a dark camp on the river bank, hoping to swim their way back across to Smith’s Ranche at daylight.
The patrol was now reduced to 18 men—the five Galvanized Yankees still intact—and nearly all the ammunition was wet. Dry cartridges were pooled and redistributed, so that each man had 15 rounds. They rode on in the darkness, attempting to follow the trail of the troopers ahead of them, but by 11:00 P.M. they lost it, and made camp until dawn.
The night was very cold, and without fires the men shivered in their wet uniforms until light showed in the sky. After scattering in all directions, they picked up the trail again at 7:00 A.M., reformed and moved north in alternating walks and trots for 20 miles. By midmorning they were in a canyon, and scouts had to be sent up on the ridges.
Not being accustomed to long hours in the saddle or the exposure of the previous night, the five men of Company C were beginning to feel the effects of the hard march. They held on doggedly, but around noon one of them became too ill to go on. A man was assigned to return with him to Smith’s Ranche, and the remaining 16 riders resumed march North.
Early in the afternoon they came out the head of the canyon on a high prairie, and soon lost the trail. Forming a line front, they spread out at hundred-yard intervals and moved on across the empty undulating land, searching for horse tracks. After five miles, they gave up the pursuit. Their canteens were empty, their bacon was gone, they were short of ammunition, and being 40 miles north of the Platte were vulnerable to attack. Swinging back southward, they reached the Platte during the night, crossed the next morning, and rode on to headquarters at Cottonwood.
On their first scouting mission, this little group of Galvanized Yankees found no Indians, but they did win the respect of the veteran frontiersmen with whom they had shared and endured adversities. They had proved they were soldiers who could ride with the best, and that was enough to satisfy the hardy Nebraskans.
A few days later, May 18, on the road east of Fort Kearney, another group of 3rd U.S. Volunteers ran squarely into a prowling band of wild bucks, and this time not all escaped with their lives. These men had been convalescents of various companies left at Fort Leavenworth when the regiment moved out on the Plains in March. On May 10 they left Leavenworth en route West to join their companies. The highest ranking soldier among them was Sergeant Jefferson Fields of G Company. For some reason—army red tape or carelessness—no arms were issued to them before departure. Had they marched a few days earlier they probably would have needed no weapons before they reached Fort Kearney, but they happened to enter the valley of the Little Blue just about the time several bands of hostiles came raiding from the North.
Sergeant Fields’s detachment was accompanied by a six-mule wagon with a civilian teamster, and the men took turns riding and walking, testing their strength after long weeks of hospital confinement. They moved slowly up the Little Blue, and at 2:00 P.M. on May 18 they were two miles east of Elm Creek Station. That was where the Indians found them—15 bluecoats without a single rifle or revolver.
In later testimony, the number of Indians in the attacking party varied from 12 to 30; the one-sided fight happened so quickly that none of the Volunteers had time to make an accurate count. The Indians simply rode up, met no resistance, and decided to capture and plunder the loaded wagon.
In a matter of seconds, two soldiers were dead, six wounded. Some of the Indians carried U.S. Cavalry sabers, and they used them with savage effect. Washington Fulton, the civilian teamster who was one of the first to be wounded, told of how he watched helplessly while a soldier was struck with a saber, then knocked down, and scalped while still alive. “The Indian who had charge of the party attacking us wore buckskin leggings,” Fulton added. “His hair was long and had some kind of fur attached to his back hair. He was the only Indian who had long hair; he also had a revolver. Two of the attacking party had short hair ‘roached’ on top of their heads. … One of them, the Indian who scalped the soldier, had a large scar over his eye; whether right or left eye I cannot say.”
The scalped soldier was Private John W. Twyman of Company H, and he lived to tell about it. “I was attacked by one of them with a U.S. saber, who struck me three times, knocking me down. Then he returned to the party and another of them came to me and scalped me; then he hit me with his saber and left. They were dressed in buckskin clothing, so far as I could see, except the chief, or the one in charge, who was dressed in some kind of light robe or blanket thrown over his shoulders. … I think they did it in revenge for something, as they spoke of the whites breaking a treaty with them.”
Private Peter J. Flynn, Company A, was wounded in the face and back, and then held in temporary captivity by an Indian dressed in black velvet pants with two rows of brass buttons down the outer seams. “He also wore fancy beadwork moccasins and fancy beadwork cap, with a light-colored blanket thrown carelessly over him,” Flynn said. “He gave me an arrow, four crackers, and a canteen, and released me and told me to go.”
Sergeant Fields, who had suffered a deep arrow wound in his left shoulder, was helpless to do anything other than order his men to leave the vicinity of the wagon and start down the road. The Indians, he said, “followed us about one-quarter of a mile, and then motioned at us and told us to go, and then returned to the wagon and commenced plundering. They left the wagon standing in the road, and cut to pieces all the harness, and drove off the mules, six in number.”
Because they had been told in Leavenworth that they would pass through friendly Pawnee country, these badly mauled Southerners—who were still too new to the frontier to distinguish one tribesman from another—deci
ded among themselves that their attackers were a band of clever, deceitful Pawnees.
“The arrows they had were Sioux and Cheyenne,” Sergeant Fields testified, “but I am of the opinion they were Pawnees as they were so anxious that we should keep some of the Sioux arrows.” Peter Flynn also believed the attackers were Pawnees because the chief who captured him “seemed very anxious to impress upon my mind that he was a Cheyenne chief.” Private Twyman, likewise was convinced that his scalp was in possession of a Pawnee “for the reason they were so anxious to impress upon us they were Cheyennes.”
The teamster, Wash Fulton, would not commit himself. With pithy frontier irony he commented: “They said they were friendly Sioux.”23
The attack on Sergeant Fields’s party was no isolated incident. That same day Indians raided or attempted raids against almost every road ranche along the Little Blue. One of these parties had engaged an Overland stagecoach in a six-mile running fight. Because of a break in the telegraph line, news of the raids did not reach Fort Kearney, 35 miles away, until late the next day. The subdistrict commander, Colonel Robert R. Livingston, ordered two pursuit parties into the field—a company of Nebraska Cavalry under Captain Lee Gillette, and a company of Omaha Indian scouts under Captain Edwin W. Nash. Captain Gillette marched all night directly to Elm Creek Station. Captain Nash proceeded southward toward the Republican River country where it was believed the hostiles may have gone in search of buffalo.
Meanwhile in Leavenworth, General Dodge had learned of the attack on the U.S. Volunteers, and he immediately demanded an explanation from the post commander: “The men were without arms. They should not be sent out unarmed. Who sent them that way?”24
A reprimand for some obscure officer of the quartermaster no doubt followed this inquiry, but that was not the end of the incident on the Little Blue. On May 22, Lieutenant William H. Bartlett, commanding Company C from Post Cottonwood, sent an indignant report to Colonel McNally at Julesburg. “Among the killed,” Bartlett wrote,
was Private William J. Mers of this company, and among the wounded beside [Sergeant Fields] was Private Rinaldo Hedges, also of this company. … The wounded are at Fort Kearney. Fields … states that before leaving Fort Leavenworth he made application for arms, but none were furnished him. In my opinion, the officer who ordered him away from Fort Leavenworth, unarmed as he was, to make a march of nearly 300 miles through a country known for the most part to be infested by a savage and barbarous enemy, and unaccompanied by any armed force whatever, committed a grievous error, and should be held to account for so flagrant a breach of humanity, not to say neglect of duty; and I beg leave to call the attention of the commanding officer of the regiment to the facts in the case, and respectfully request that he take the matter in hand and adopt such measures as will tend to attach the blame where it belongs, so that the guilty as well as the innocent may share in the sufferings caused by some unworthy official dignitary’s mismanagement.25
McNally indorsed Bartlett’s report over to General Connor, who in turn forwarded it to Colonel Livingston at Fort Kearney. But instead of requesting Leavenworth headquarters to seek out and court-martial an army officer, Livingston chose to place all blame upon the Indians. On May 26, Captain Nash returned to Kearney with his Omaha Scouts, and reported that he had encountered a band of Pawnee buffalo hunters who had five mules in their possession. Two of the mules were bay-colored with shaved tails, the exact description of those cut loose from Sergeant Fields’s wagon. “The Pawnees seemed anxious to sell the two bay mules,” Nash reported, “saying they had recently found them.”
In his haste to affix blame and punishment upon Indians, Livingston informed General Connor that “evidence proves conclusively that the mules … were part of the team accompanying detachment 3rd U.S. Volunteers, attacked by Indians on the Little Blue. … The presence of the Pawnees on the road at the time of the attack, fixes the atrocious murder of our men on the Pawnees. … The trail found, the only one found, was a Pawnee trail.”26
Connor’s reaction was typical of that veteran Indian fighter’s ruthless methods. He ordered Livingston to send an expedition to the Pawnee reservation with instructions to demand “the members of the tribe guilty of the murder of our soldiers, and in case of refusal, to arrest five of the chiefs or principal men, bring them to Fort Kearney where you will hold them securely and report your action to these headquarters.”27
Before Livingston could make an investigation on the Pawnee reservation, Captain Gillette returned with information which virtually destroyed his commander’s theory that the Pawnees were guilty. By coincidence, Gillette had encountered General Connor at Big Sandy Station (Connor was personally escorting several high government officials across the Plains) and the general had ordered Gillette to march directly to the Pawnee reservation and make a search. Gillette found no army mules or anything else identifiable with the plundering of Sergeant Fields’s wagon. “From the evidence adduced, and my own observations,” Gillette informed Livingston on June 2, “I can find nothing that directly implicates the Pawnees.”28
Livingston, however, had already committed himself to General Connor, and he was determined to find some guilty Pawnees. With a considerable mounted force and the survivors of Sergeant Fields’s detachment—including the convalescent wounded—he marched to the Pawnee reservation early in June. There he assembled the chiefs in council. The Pawnee leaders were polite but indignant. Had not their people been at peace with the white men for many moons? Were not the best of their young warriors serving with the blue-coats under Captain Frank North? Livingston told them he had brought along the soldier survivors of the party which had been attacked on the Little Blue. He wanted every adult male in the Pawnee Nation paraded before them so that the guilty might be identified and punished.
There is no record of the emotions of the young Southerners as they watched the Pawnees submit to this indignity, but some might have wondered at the inconsistency of this army—their army now—which had freed the slaves, yet treated friendly Indians as though they were incorrigible. All day long the Pawnees shuffled past Sergeant Fields and his men, but not one Indian was identified as being guilty. The soldiers examined the livestock of the tribe; not one mule was recognized as belonging to their wagon.
Livingston at least now had the grace to admit to General Connor that he had been wrong. “I am satisfied from the frank, open manner in which the chiefs met me, and their cheerful alacrity to carry out any suggestions of mine tending to discover the culprits I was in search of that the Pawnees are guiltless of any participation in the murder of the men on Little Blue River.”29
The Pawnees, however, were a long time in forgiving this heavy-handed discredit to their loyalties. They wondered if they dared form an alliance with such soldiers against their traditional enemies, the Sioux and Cheyennes. How could they trust soldiers who knew so little they could not tell a friendly from a hostile, who were so lacking in faith they suspected friends of treachery until suspicions were disproved by degrading searches?
Before marching to the Pawnee reservation, Colonel Livingston should have taken a closer look at the sworn testimony of the unfortunate Private Twyman, who was so certain he had lost his scalp to a Pawnee. Twyman probably could not have distinguished a Pawnee from an Apache, but he had listened closely to the broken English of his assailants. “I think they did it in revenge for something,” he said, “as they spoke of the whites breaking a treaty with them.”
No treaty had been broken with the Pawnees. The cry of broken treaty came from the Cheyennes, who were burning for revenge because of Chivington’s November massacre of their women and children at Sand Creek. As the summer wore on this fact would become clear to all who encountered them. From the Little Blue westward to Platte Bridge, from Fort Dodge northward to Tongue River and beyond, Sand Creek would be the war cry of the Cheyennes and all their allies.
During Captain Gillette’s long pursuit march, he met a stagecoach on May 23 at Big Sandy Statio
n carrying his commanding general, Patrick Connor, as well as several other very important persons, including Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax, Albert D. Richardson of the Boston Journal, and the editor who was to describe the U.S. Volunteers as Galvanized Yankees, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican.
A detail of Gillette’s Nebraska cavalrymen escorted these travelers up the line until they reached stations guarded by Company B of the 3rd Regiment, so that U.S. Volunteers had the honor of bringing the coach into Fort Kearney. “We had, as all the stages now have,” wrote Bowles, “a guard of two to four cavalrymen … that constantly galloped by our side from station to station, with pistols at holsters and rifles slung in the saddles.” Connor evidently informed Bowles that these men were from the Rebel army. “They were all young but hardy looking men; and the colonel, who is of course from the federal army, testified heartily to their subordination and sympathy with their new service.”
The Massachusetts editor remarked on the rapid speed maintained by the line: “an average of six miles an hour, including all stops, sometimes making full ten miles an hour on the road. … Every ten or twelve miles we come to a station, sometimes in a village of log and turf cabins, but often solitary and alone, where we change horses; and every two or three stations, we change drivers, but except for meals, for which half an hour is allowed, our stops do not exceed five minutes each.”
This stagecoach escorted by successive details of Company B men was a Concord, as were all the other 109 in service that year on Ben Holladay’s Overland Stage Line. Proud New Hampshire workmanship had gone into the strong white-oak bodies braced with iron bands and slung upon stout leather braces. Wheels were extra heavy with thick tires, and the wide brake stick was supplemented by a sand box so that 2,000 pounds of rocketing coach could be brought to a quick stop.