Life at Camp Douglas was by no means a continual round of easy-going enjoyments. Routine post duties became more onerous as many of the Californians and Nevadans, including the post commander, departed on long furloughs, leaving Lieutenant-Colonel Smith in command. Smith allowed no slackness. He held rigid inspections, sent the men out on wood-cutting details, and drilled them hard twice a day. That they soon mastered the requirements for “show” troops is indicated in a Vedette report of a Sunday dress parade held for local citizens: “The men of the 6th Infantry ‘done’ the manual of arms in a manner that pronounces them ‘none behind’ their comrades of the other battalions of this post.”15
On October 26, after ending his campaign in the Powder River country, General Connor returned to Camp Douglas to resume command. He was received as a conquering hero. The 6th U.S. Volunteers and the post band paraded. A grand banquet was held for him, with all officers and “a majority of the (so-called) Gentiles of Salt Lake City in attendance. … The pleasant social company proceeded at once to do justice to the viands with which the tables groaned, and after which corks flew, champagne flowed, and toasts and responses became the order of the hour.”16 In addition to numerous ovations for the general, toasts were offered to the Union Vedette, the “brave Irish soldiers of our armies,” and to the 6th U.S. Volunteers.
Saturday night, October 28, Camp Douglas Hall was elaborately decorated for a “sociale dance” in Connor’s honor. The camp theater’s stock company also scheduled a special performance of Othello. Connor, however, made only a brief appearance at the dance, avoided Shakespeare, and slipped away to Salt Lake to see the beautiful Julia Dean Hayne in Peg Woffington.
On the last day of the month, for the first time since their enlistment in the U.S. Army, the boys of the 6th were paid promptly and in full. In their affluent surroundings, they needed every dime received. All day, heavy snows fell on the nearby mountains, but the Galvanized Yankees felt no uneasiness over the approaching winter. They considered themselves lucky enough to feel sorry for those of their comrades who during the march across Wyoming had so foolishly deserted and missed out on all the pleasures and comforts of Camp Douglas, Utah.
2
During late autumn and early winter, the other seven companies of the 6th Regiment were engaged in much more rugged service in the hostile Indian country farther east. In November, Company B transferred from Camp Wardwell, Colorado, to Post Alkali, Nebraska, to patrol the dangerous run between Plum Creek and Julesburg. Companies C and E moved west from Fort Kearney to Plum Creek, Cottonwood, and Julesburg; then in December a detachment of E Company rushed back east to Columbus, Nebraska, to guard a pontoon bridge across Loup River. Company G remained at Fort Laramie. In September, H and I took over the heavily raided telegraph line west of Laramie, H being responsible for the section between Fort Caspar and Sweetwater, I the section between Laramie and Caspar. K remained at Cottonwood (Fort McPherson).”17
In January 1866, an expedition marched out of Fort McPherson to punish hostiles who had been cutting telegraph wires and raiding ranches. K Company was involved in the campaign, which was under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard H. Brown of the 12th Missouri Cavalry. One of the more interesting, although not always accurate, accounts of this comic-opera affair was recorded by John Nelson, who was serving as a civilian scout.
The greater portion of the troops, Nelson said, “were Southern prisoners,” who seemed to be more loyal to Colonel Brown than most of his Missourians. “The expedition was a hopeless one in many respects, and above all it ought never to have been sent out at that time of the year.” After an unproductive 85-mile march in bitter weather, the colonel announced one evening his intention of making a long detour via the Platte, instead of returning directly to Fort McPherson. This caused much dissatisfaction among officers and men. “It was not surprising, therefore, that at mess, the same night, after the Colonel had left, a resolution was passed by the officers that the order should not be carried out.”
According to Nelson, one of the lieutenants took drastic measures against his unpopular commander. The lieutenant buried a 10-pound shell in the sand under Colonel Brown’s bed, and laid a train of powder to where it could be ignited outside the tent. “But the fuse did not ignite, and the next morning the Colonel was just as frisky as ever.” He ordered tents struck, wagons loaded, and gave the command to march. “Much to the Colonel’s surprise, however, the troops refused to move. The artillery, who were Southerners, were ordered to fire upon the men; but the entire command was of one opinion, and the artillerists were told that if they fired a shot they would be seized and blown to pieces from the mouths of their own guns. They thought better of it, and caved in.”
The informal Colonel Brown yielded to the mutiny and started his column back directly for Fort McPherson. Along the way, Indians raided the livestock herd one night, but after a few minutes of fighting were driven off. “This was the only honor and glory that fell to Colonel Brown’s lot during the campaign,” Nelson reported. “We arrived at the fort the following day, and that evening I saw Colonel Brown receive a sound thrashing from a private soldier whom he had given permission to ‘lick’ him if he could. That seemed to wipe out all the grievances of the command, and the men received the Colonel back into their good graces again. This incident will show the military relations at that time existing between officers and men.”18
It is difficult to assess the reliability of John Nelson’s story. All or a part of K Company, 6th U.S. Volunteers, accompanied this expedition, but the records reveal nothing of any mutiny, nor do they indicate whether K Company troops were the artillerists named in the incident.
At Fort Laramie during these same weeks, the boys of Company G witnessed the unfolding of a poignant frontier episode involving a friendly Brule chief, Spotted Tail, his daughter Fleet Foot, and Colonel Maynadier of the 5th U.S. Volunteers.
After Colonel Maynadier established headquarters for the 5th at Laramie and then assumed command of the post in the autumn of 1865, he spent much of his time laying the groundwork for the Laramie peace council of 1866. Maynadier’s efforts to win the cooperation of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail met with little success, however, until March 1866, when word came down from Powder River that Spotted Tail’s beautiful daughter, Fleet Foot, was dying and that her father was bringing her to Fort Laramie to spend her last days.
The Galvanized Yankees had never heard of Fleet Foot, but they soon learned a good deal about her from a Virginia-born frontiersman, Charley Elston. Elston had lived with the Sioux for years, but in his old age came in to Laramie to spend the winters. He liked to loaf around the sutler’s store, talking with off-duty soldiers. Elston said:
Fleet Foot won’t many an Indian. Her father’s been offered two hundred ponies for her, but won’t sell her. She says she won’t marry anybody but a “capitan,” and that idea sort of pleases her father for more reasons than one. Among the Indians every officer, big or little, with shoulder-straps is a capitan. With her it’s a capitan or nobody. She always carries a knife, and is as strong as a mule. One day a Blackfoot soldier running with her father’s band tried to carry her off, but she fought and cut him almost to pieces—like to have killed him; tickled her father nearly to death. The young bucks seem to think a good deal of her, but are all afraid to tackle her. The squaws all know about her idea of marrying a capitan; they think her head is level, but don’t believe she will ever make it.
She tried to learn to read and speak English once of a captured boy, but the boy escaped before she got it. She carries around with her a little bit of a red book, with a gold cross printed on it, that General Harney gave her mother many years ago. She’s got it wrapped up in a parfleche. You ought to hear her talk when she is mad. She is a holy terror. She tells the Indians they are fools for not living in houses, and making peace with the whites.
One time she and Spotted Tail went in to Jack Morrow’s ranch and made a visit. She was treated in fine style, and ate a bushel of can
dy and sardines, but her father was insulted by some drunken fellow and went away boiling mad. When he got home to his tepee he said he never would go around any more where there were white men, except to kill them. She and her father got into a regular quarrel over it, and she pulled out her knife and began cutting herself across the arms and ribs, and in a minute she was bleeding in about forty places, and said that if he didn’t say different she was going to kill herself. Spotted Tail knocked her down cold as a wedge, and had her cuts fixed up by the squaws with pine pitch; and when she came to he promised her that she could go, whenever he did, to see the whites. And she went; you bet she went. She would dress just like a buck and carry a gun. White men would not know the difference. They can’t get her to tan buckskin, or gather buffalo cherries. No, sir.
In 1864, Fleet Foot saw Fort Laramie for the first time when Spotted Tail brought her with him for the peace council of that year. Captain Eugene Ware, 7th Iowa Cavalry, described her as being tall and well dressed, about 18 or 20 years old. “During the daytime she came to the sutler’s store and sat on a bench outside, near the door, watching as if she were living on the sights she saw. She was particularly fond of witnessing guard-mount in the morning and dress-parade in the evening. … Among ourselves we called her ‘the princess.’ She was looking, always looking, as if she were feeding upon what she saw.”19
When Maynadier learned in early March 1866 that Fleet Foot had died en route to Laramie, he immediately dispatched runners to meet the grieving Spotted Tail and inform him of the sincere sympathies of the fort’s commander, and offering to honor the chief’s daughter with a military funeral. In addition, Maynadier sent an ambulance with an escort of G Company, 6th U.S. Volunteers.
A few miles north of the fort, the Galvanized Yankees met Spotted Tail, his principal warriors, and a number of lamenting squaws. It was a cold sleety day, the landscape bleak, streams locked in ice, brown hills patched with snow. None of the Volunteers had ever seen Fleet Foot in life, yet they had been caught up in her legend, and being sentimental Southerners most of them were moved by the sight of the cortege. The dead girl had been wrapped in a deerskin, tightly thonged and creosoted with smoke; this crude pall was suspended between her favorite ponies, a pair of white mustangs.
Fleet Foot’s body was transferred to the ambulance, her white ponies fastened behind, and the procession continued toward Fort Laramie. When Spotted Tail reached the Platte, Colonel Maynadier turned the entire garrison out to met the Brule chief. He recorded:
After greeting him, I conducted him to the fort and to my headquarters. I then informed him that the Great Father offered peace to the Indians, and desired them to have it for their own benefit and welfare. That, in two or three months, commissioners would come to treat with them and settle everything on a permanent basis of peace and friendship. I sympathized deeply in his affliction, and felt honored by his confidence in committing to my care the remains of a child whom I knew he loved much. …
The chief exhibited deep emotions during my remarks, and tears fell from his eyes, a rare occurrence in an Indian, and for some time he could not speak. After taking my hand he commenced with the following eloquent oration: “This must be a dream for me to be in such a fine room and surrounded by such as you. Have I been asleep during the last four years of hardship and trial and am dreaming that all is to be well again, or is this real? … We think we have been much wronged and are entitled to compensation for the damage and distress caused by making so many roads through our country, and driving off and destroying the buffalo and game. My heart is very sad, and I cannot talk on business; I will wait and see the counsellors the Great Father will send.”
The scene was one of the most impressive I ever saw, and produced a marked effect upon all the Indians present, and satisfied some who had never before seemed to believe it, that an Indian had a human heart to work on and was not a wild animal.20
Maynadier ordered his soldiers to erect a scaffold and fashion a fine coffin. Fleet Foot’s white ponies were slain, and their heads and tails nailed to the scaffold so that “she could ride through the fair hunting grounds of the skies.”
As the sun sank next day, a military funeral procession marched to the post cemetery behind Fleet Foot’s red-blanketed coffin, which was mounted on an artillery caisson. A 12-pounder howitzer rolled behind the caisson, followed by G Company of the 6th U.S. Volunteers and other units at Laramie.
Officiating at the funeral was the former chaplain of the 2nd U.S. Volunteers, Reverend Alpha Wright, who had remained at Laramie as post chaplain after his regiment was mustered out in November 1865. Chaplain Wright consulted with Spotted Tail as to how he wanted services for his daughter conducted.
Spotted Tail gave Chaplain Wright the little book that General Harney had given her mother many years before. It was a small Episcopal prayer-book such as was used in the regular army. The mother could not read it but had kept it as a talisman. Chaplain Wright deposited it in the coffin.
Then Colonel Maynadier stepped forward and deposited a pair of white kid gauntlet cavalry gloves to keep her hands warm while she was making the journey. The soldiers formed a large hollow square within which the Indians formed a large ring around the coffin. Within the Indian ring and on the four sides of the coffin stood Colonel Maynadier, Major George O’Brien, Spotted Tail and the Chaplain. The Chaplain at the foot read the burial service, while Colonel Maynadier and Major O’Brien made responses. Spotted Tail stood silently at the head looking into the coffin, grieving. When the services closed, Major O’Brien placed a crisp one-dollar bill into the coffin so Fleet Foot might buy what she wanted on the journey. Each of the Indian women came up, one at a time and talked to Fleet Foot; some of them whispered to her long and earnestly as if they were by her sending some hopeful message to a lost child. Each one put some little remembrance in the coffin; one put a little looking-glass, another a string of colored beads, another a pine cone with some sort of an embroidery of sinew in it. Then the lid was fastened on and the women took the coffin and raised it and placed it on the scaffold.
The Indian men stood mutely and stolidly around looking on, and none of them moved a muscle or tendered any help. A fresh buffalo-skin was laid over the coffin and bound down to the sides of the scaffold with thongs. The scaffold was within the military square, and was also the twelve pound howitzer. The sky was leaden and stormy, and it began to sleet and grow dark. At the word of command the soldiers faced outward and discharged three volleys in rapid succession. They and their visitors then marched back to the post. The howitzer-squad remained, and built a large fire of pine wood, and fired the gun every half-hour all night, through the sleet, until daybreak21
3
During that winter at Camp Douglas, Utah, Companies A, D, and F continued their routine garrison duties. On November 6, Colonel Potter arrived from Denver to establish regimental headquarters. He was duly serenaded by the band, and a week later Connor named him post commander, the general thenceforth devoting his energies to administration of the District of Utah.
Late in November as the result of a shooting quarrel in a Salt Lake “whiskey resort,” good relations between the Galvanized Yankees and the Californians suffered a setback. A private of the 6th U.S. Volunteers fired a “fatal shot into the bowels” of a California infantryman. Colonel Potter sent California cavalrymen out in every direction to track down the murderer, but he was not apprehended. The Good Templars at Douglas seized upon the incident as an example of the evils of drinking. “Abstain from the beer or whiskey shop,” they warned. “We hope to receive a large access in membership from the 6th U.S. Volunteers. Our temperance roll is open, and we will be pleased to see them come forward and proclaim themselves enemies to King Alcohol.”22
On November 25, General Connor reviewed his troops, and announced that he was relieving all the Nevadans and two companies of Californians so that they might return to their respective states for mustering out. This left Camp Douglas with a majority of Galvan
ized Yankees.
Thanksgiving Day was December 7 that year, and the men celebrated quietly, with “Utah trout and Timpanogos turkey” as specialties of the holiday feast. In keeping with the 6th Regiment’s new responsibilities, Colonel Potter ordered no liquor served, a decision which he may have regretted a few days later.
On the night of December 19, fire broke out among whiskey barrels in the commissary warehouse. “The barrels exploded, scattering flame and destruction all around. The liquor flowed along the floors and becoming instantly ignited, the whole interior of the building, as if by magic, was a sheet of flame. … The camp was aroused and almost superhuman efforts exerted by Colonel Potter, the officers and men to save the stores and adjoining buildings.”23
Not a drop of whiskey was salvaged, leaving Camp Douglas as arid as a desert. Considerable quantities of grain, sugar, bacon, and flour were also destroyed or badly damaged. For more than two weeks throughout a dry and sober Christmas and New Year’s holiday, the fire smoldered, permeating the air with an aroma of scorched whiskey and grain. The editors of the Union Vedette hinted that Mormons had set the fire; the Mormons declared it was the will of Providence. The Good Templars made no public comment.
4
By winter’s end almost all state volunteer troops in the West were mustered out. During the hiatus between their departure and the arrival of regular army companies, the Galvanized Yankees were thinly spread between Camp Douglas and Fort Kearney.
Early in April, Company F of the 6th was ordered east from Camp Douglas to garrison Fort Bridger, where Lieutenant-Colonel W. W. Smith had assumed command in January. Virginians in the company found a compatriot there in the person of the post trader, William A. Carter. Judge Carter was tall, spare, flaxen-haired, with white flowing beard and moustache, “a high-toned, intelligent and hospitable Virginia gentleman, universally popular with all who associated with him.”24 He was a sort of Galvanized Yankee, himself, having spent the war years at Fort Bridger making a fortune by trading with Indians.