General Asher accepted this asinine decision with equanimity. If that’s how headquarters wanted to run the Indian war, that’s how it would be. Recovering the dispatch and tapping it with sour amusement, he said, “I’m riding out with six soldiers ... tonight.”
“Tonight!” Mercy exploded. “Who’ll be in command?”
“Colonel Skimmerhorn.”
“General, he’ll destroy everything.”
“And I’m putting you under house arrest, Mercy. You may not leave Denver till I return.”
Mercy was stunned. He could not ignore house arrest imposed by a general of the regular army, ,yet he saw disastrous consequences if Skimmerhorn were allowed to run wild. “General Asher,” he said quietly, “if you turn your troops over to Skimmerhorn, some frightful thing will happen that will damn your reputation forever. The good work you did at Vicksburg with the Vermonters ...”
“You’re under house arrest,” Asher said curtly, and that night, on horseback, accompanied by his guard, he scuttled to the east.
Things could not have worked out better for Colonel Skimmerhorn. He had anticipated that Major Mercy would slip off to warn the Indians, and now he was rid of him, permanently. He had also expected to be placed in command of all troops in the area, and this, too, had happened. But he could not have foreseen General Asher’s vacillation, siding one day with him, the next with Mercy, depending on who saw him last. That Asher was now recalled from the area and sent to a distant post could only be a sign that God approved his plan.
He, Skimmerhorn, now had the command, and he proposed exercising it.
On a cold November morning he assembled his troops, sixty-three regular army men under Lieutenant Abel Tanner, whom he gave a field promotion to captain, and eleven hundred and sixteen militiamen under the tactical command of civilian volunteers. Astride his horse, he addressed his troops in few words:
“Men of valor! This day we march against the infidel. We are engaged in a noble undertaking. God smiles down upon us as we march forth to rid this territory forever of the Indian menace. Forward.”
Those in the city who realized what was afoot gathered at the edge of town to cheer the heroes as they marched past, and no eleventh-century band of Crusaders setting forth to battle the Saracen could have been more enthusiastically acclaimed. After Skimmerhorn acknowledged the shouts of his well-wishers he sent small detachments ahead to arrest and hold incommunicado all farmers in areas they would be marching through.
They camped that night at Zendt’s Farm. Next day, during a heavy snowstorm, Colonel Skimmerhorn performed a military miracle, one that would have done justice to a West Point graduate: he moved his entire body of troops, with five cannon, a score of supply wagons and forty ammunition mules across open land to Rattlesnake Buttes and maneuvered them into position at nightfall without being detected.
It may have been that the Indians were so lacking in food that their men were not strong enough to stand guard that night, but at any rate, Skimmerhorn, under cover of darkness, brought his cannon onto the ridge between the two buttes and directed his gunners how to aim them so as to blanket the sleeping area below. The men loaded their Starr carbines so there would be no delays during the attack and spent their time imagining the booty they could grab when the attack started.
With sound generalship Skimmerhorn divided his command into three segments. The center, under his leadership, would wait till three rounds of cannon-fire had struck the tipis and would then move forth in a saber charge, cutting down those Indians who milled about in the confusion. The right flank, under Captain Tanner, whom he could trust, since he had fought Indians before, would circle to the east and come roaring in with a maximum charge to shoot down anyone who tried to escape in that direction. The left flank posed something of a problem, because there Captain Reed, a regular army officer, had to be given command, but Skimmerhorn was not sure he could be trusted.
“Captain Reed,” he said in hushed tones, “I want to remind you that your job will be to cover the left flank. I don’t want a single Indian slipping through your lines.”
“I understand, sir. Will they be heavily armed?”
“Armed? They’re Indians. Shoot ’em down.”
“What I meant was, will they be mounting an attack in my direction?”
“Captain Reed! When the cannons fire, there will be great confusion. From the center I expect to compound it. Inevitably in this confusion many of the Indians will rush your way. It’s your job to gun them down—all of them. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
At four in the morning Colonel Skimmerhorn summoned his officers to the ridge where the cannon waited. In solemn tones he told them, “Gentlemen, we are engaged in a great venture. Much is at stake. If we can win this victory, our glorious nation will be safe for generations yet to be born. Gentlemen, God rides with you. Courage.”
In the motley camp below them at that hour were 1483 Arapaho and Cheyenne, distributed as follows: chiefs 14, other braves of fighting age 389, mature women past the age of sixteen 427, children 653. They were supposed to have no guns, but they did have a few. They also had some four hundred bows, many not strung because deer sinews were growing scarce, and nearly two thousand arrows, a good many of which were not instantly accessible.
The camp mounted no guards that night, for none were needed. The Indians had moved into this cul-de-sac at the express command of the United States government, and here they were supposed to be fed and protected. At last they were at peace.
At half past four a young brave left his tipi to urinate, and according to custom he looked in four directions, seeing nothing. At five Chief Black Knee turned on his tattered buffalo robe, thought he heard a noise toward the buttes, but went back to sleep.
At five minutes after six, just as light was beginning to appear in the east, there was a shattering explosion from the ridge between the buttes, and five cannonballs ricocheted through the camp, killing four sleeping Indians and maiming seven.
The Indian who reacted to this surprise assault with greatest self-control was Lost Eagle. He was certain that some terrible mistake had been made—some mix-up of commands—and it was his responsibility to straighten things out. No American soldier would fire a cannon into an undefended ...
Crash! A second salvo tore through the camp. With trembling hands Lost Eagle rummaged through his parfleche until he found his blue officer’s uniform. Putting it on hastily, he hung about his neck his bronze Buchanan. From the honored spot above his bed he took down the American flag which President Lincoln had given him. He put on his high-crowned hat and left his tipi just as the third round of cannonballs ripped through the camp.
About him he saw men and women staggering from wounds and one girl with the right side of her body blown away. The tipis of two chiefs he relied upon were completely pulverized and the men were dead along with their women.
With great resolution he moved among his people, counseling them: “Wait! I will find out what’s happening.” Young men ran up to advise him that many troops were hiding behind the ridge, and in a way this news comforted him, for among them would be Major Mercy, who would know how to correct this awful mistake.
At this moment the central body of troops, under Colonel Skimmerhorn, swept down the slope leading from the buttes and charged headlong into the mass of tipis. Sabers flashed. Pistols fired. One man with a revolver fired six times at six different women, killing four of them. Horses ran over children, and soldiers with burning brands began to fire the tipis.
Amid all the confusion and the screams of terror, Lost Eagle stood before his tipi, waving the American flag and shouting in English, “Stop! This is a mistake!”
As he was standing thus, Colonel Skimmerhorn spotted him and judged that here was the focus of the rebellion. Spurring his horse, be galloped down upon the old man, swiping at him with his saber, but the blade caught in the flag and ripped it, missing the enemy.
The colonel swung his horse in
a wide arc and rushed again at the old chief, who kept shouting, “Colonel, wait!” The colonel was by no means an adept swordsman and this time he struck Lost Eagle’s tall hat, so he whipped out his revolver and would have ridden to within six inches of the blue uniform, so anxious was he not to miss, except that a cry rose on the right flank and an orderly shouted, “Colonel! Here comes Tanner!”
Down from the eastern bank roared Abel Tanner, followed by his tested Indian fighters. They swept through the camp, killing and slashing and burning. Young girls, babies in arms, old women too feeble to run, braves trying to defend themselves—Tanner’s men sabered them all.
Colonel Skimmerhorn, surveying the success so far, was smugly certain that this was going to be one of the memorable victories of the west, but from the corner of his eye he saw with horror that one part of his grand design was not functioning. “Where is Captain Reed?” he roared, and his orderlies took up the cry: “Where is Captain Reed?”
Skimmerhorn rushed up to Captain Tanner as the latter was setting fire to the last remaining tipis and bellowed, “Where is that bastard Reed?”
Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter.
Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience.
“It’s the signal to charge,” an orderly shouted. “Stand!”
“Captain, that was the third salvo. Colonel Skimmerhorn has already moved in.”
“Stand!”
He held his horse reined tight, tears of rage in his eyes. He knew that he was doing an unforgivable thing—he was disobeying an understood command in the face of the enemy—but he could not permit his men to participate in this dreadful massacre, not so long as they were his men.
“Goddamnit, Captain,” a sergeant shouted, “look at ’em! They’re escapin’.”
“Let them go, Sergeant,” he said.
“Look at ’em!” the sergeant screamed. They’re the ones we’re supposed to get.”
“Look at them,” Captain Reed said. “Do look at them, Sergeant.”
And they looked, and there were men who sat their horses at that moment who would all the rest of their lives give thanks that on this day they were under the command of Captain Reed and not Captain Tanner, for the Indians who slipped past them to safety in the hills were old, they were young, they were crippled, they were young men with their arms shot off by cannonballs—and among them all, there was not one gun, not one arrow. They escaped, the most pitiful remnant of an enemy ever faced by a contingent of the United States Army.
It is not pleasant to recite what Tanner’s men did that day, but it is necessary. The fighting continued for some time, since those few braves who did have weapons resisted with valor. It was not unusual for one Indian to charge a whole company, determined to kill as many whites as he could before he fell riddled with pistol shots. In its late moments, however, the battle consisted mainly of Skimmerhorn’s militiamen roaring across the prairie in pursuit of some solitary Indian who had slipped through the lines. These were run down and lanced with sabers and then scalped.
Three hundred and eighty-seven Indians were slain: 7 chiefs, 108 braves, 123 women and 149 children; all but sixteen were scalped, even the children, for the men sought trophies to prove their victory. All gloried in the order, “Take no prisoners.” A militiaman named Gropper rummaged through piles of dead, performing atrocious mutilation on the corpses, shouting as he did so, “That’ll teach ’em to kill white women.” Other militiamen, officers and men alike, unsheathed their knives and hacked away at corpses until regular soldiers made them stop.
Old men and women who tried to escape the flaming tipis were thrust back in, and four who volunteered to surrender were stabbed through the neck. The old wife of Chief Lost Eagle was shot eleven times, and survived; she lay quiet among a heap of dead, not even whimpering when one of Tanner’s men scalped her. She was blinded by the blood streaming across her face, but she lay there simulating a corpse, and in the night she made her way to the north, bleeding not only from the scalping but from her many wounds.
Lost Eagle, thinking his wife dead, continued waving his tattered flag. Bullets sped past him, and men with lances, and to all he shouted with diminishing vigor, “Wait! Wait! This is a mistake!” In the melee he wandered to the sector commanded by Captain Reed, and when the troops there saw the American uniform and the pitiful figure wearing it—an old man in a funny hat, with deep wrinkles down his face and glazed eyes that could not comprehend—they let him go.
Captain Tanner’s men perpetrated their worst offenses against the Indian children. Many, of course, had been left without elders in the first few minutes of fighting, and as they ran wildly about, soldiers speared them. Others survived briefly, but were shot as they tried to crawl away. Some did escape to the prairie, but they were soon run down by horses and scalped before they stopped breathing. Their bodies would lie unattended to be devoured by dogs and jackals.
Two of the children, a girl and a boy, by some miracle escaped death. They would be taken alive back to Denver and exhibited in vaudeville theaters, along with the scalps of their parents. Two other children were caught by Tanner’s men, and they, too, might have survived, except that as the soldiers held them, Colonel Skimmerhorn rode up and asked, “What are you doing with those children?” and the men said they’d captured them, and when Skimmerhorn snapped, “Nits grow into lice,” the men killed them.
On his victorious return from battle, Colonel Skimmerhorn halted his expedition at Zendt’s Farm long enough to compose the communiqué which subsequently flashed across America, making him a considerable hero at a time when other campaigns were going badly for the Union:
Rattlesnake Buttes, Colorado Territory,
November 30, 1864
Yesterday at 6:05 in the morning in heavy snow, troops under my command launched a gallant assault against a heavy concentration of Indian warriors who were massing for a general war against the white man. Taking the Indian army by surprise, elements of my force swept in from three sides and achieved a major victory over the savages. Our side killed nearly four hundred Indian warriors while suffering a loss of only seven men. All hands behaved with gallantry except for one deplorable performance which will be dealt with in a special report. Exceptional courage was displayed by Captain Abel Tanner, who engaged the savages under heavy fire and he is hereby commended.
Acts of heroism were too numerous to mention, but recommendations will be forthcoming at the proper time. As a result of this outstanding victory over a savage enemy, peace is assured in this Territory. The attack was doubly justified by our discovery of nineteen scalps of white men in possession of the savages.
Frank Skimmerhorn
Colonel Commanding
Colorado Militia
In his communiqué the Hero of Rattlesnake Buttes conveniently overlooked the fact that the real Indian enemies—Chief Broken Thumb, the Pasquinel brothers and their renegades—were still at large. Skimmerhorn had killed the women; the warriors would be heard from later, in terrible fashion.
News of his victory reached Denver the day after the massacre, and when he marched victoriously into the city he found throngs waiting to cheer the man who had saved Colorado from the red devils.
In the bri
ef years since the gold rush, Denver had become an attractive town of 3500, with doctors and real estate agents vying for office space with meat markets and bakeries, and citizens were relieved to know that they were safe from further Indian threats. The ladies of Denver, in silk and brocade, entertained Skimmerhorn in their homes, while three stores on Blake Street gained favorable publicity by extending him credit, which he used freely.
Meetings were held and he was awarded medals from grateful citizens. St. John’s convened a special thanksgiving service at which prayers were offered and at which the colonel spoke with becoming modesty. He told of how difficult the battle had been and of the extraordinary courage displayed by Captain Tanner and his men on the right flank.
As to the left flank, ugly rumors had begun to circulate through Denver that Captain Reed had behaved with less than heroism, and some even said he had been an outright coward. Captain Tanner told one newspaperman, “Far be it from me to question the courage of a fellow officer, but when the bullets started whizzing, he had skedaddled.”
The rumors magnified, and some of Reed’s own men began saying that he had been terrified at the sound of the cannon and had tears in his eyes. The issue was joined when Colonel Skimmerhorn filed official court-martial charges against his aide: “Refusing to obey a lawful command, cowardice in the face of the enemy, conduct unbecoming an officer.” When General Asher returned from Fort Leavenworth to find himself something of a hero for having appointed Colonel Skimmerhorn to a command position from which he could settle the Indian question “permanently,” he thought first that he would convene a full-scale public court-martial. This would be popular with the territory, which was idolizing Skimmerhorn, but later he decided that with the Union racked by war it would be better to allow Captain Reed to resign silently and bear his disgrace as best he could, and that was his order.