Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars/10
After Sergeant Bowman's death, we continued our march without incident of note, although, as I have said, we were in hourly danger of attack or molestation from our red skin neighbors. When within two day's march of Fort Union, we reached the Point of Rocks, where a sad tragedy had been enacted not many months before. We watched the ominous spot with anxious eyes, as its outlines became clearer before us, and felt relieved when we had left it and its sorrowful associations far behind; for even the children of our party were familiar with the sad details of the savage barbarities which had been enacted there.
Some time before we reached it, a gentleman from Virginia, named White, was making his way to Santa Fe, where he had business matters awaiting him, carrying with him his young wife and little child. They had left Fort Leavenworth in company with a trader's train, with which they journeyed for protection until within two days of Fort Union. Their traveling companions were rough and undesirable associates, and the sojourn together had been so disagreeable from these causes that they decided to shorten it as far as possible, and just before reaching the Point of Rocks said good-bye to the rest of the party, and pushed on towards the fort. The place, as the name implies, is a rocky point which juts out from the neighboring mountain range, and served to conceal the Indians sheltered behind it, who awaited there the coming of their victims. From the time the train left the settlements it was in constantly under the espionage of its watchful enemies, and no detail which might afford them an opportunity for murder or robbery escaped their vigilant observation.
The Indians sprang upon the White's little party and killed him and the driver of the carriage, carrying Mrs. White and the baby off with them. The dead and mutilated bodies of the two men were found beside the empty vehicle by their late traveling companions, who sent couriers on the Post to give the alarm. A party of the dragoons, commanded by Captain Greer and guided by the famous Kit Carson, immediately went in pursuit of the marauders, who had fled to the mountains. It was two days before Greer could come up with them, for they had the advantage of thirty six hour's start. On the evening of the second day, just at dusk, as the command was winding along a rocky defile, Kit Carson suddenly halted them, saying he had heard a child crying. They stopped and listened, but no repetition of the sound met their ears, and they pushed on. Again he called a halt and listened, and again nothing could be heard.
Every moment was of value, and, deciding at last that it was the cry of a wildcat which had deceived them, they continued their rapid march, and finally surprised the Indians in their cap. Their fires were lighted, and they felt so secure from molestation that they had taken no precaution against it. At the first volley they fled, making no attempt at a stand against Greer's men. Mrs. White had been bound to a tree, whether for torture or greater security will never be known, but most probably for the latter reason. Just before Greer, who led the attack, reached her side, an Indian, flying before him, turned and, with cold blooded barbarity, transfixed her with an arrow. With such means as he could command, Captain Greer prepared a grave and laid her body in it, and then the command set out for its homeward march. There was no trace of the little child to be found in the camp, and they were forced to the conclusion that the Indians had carried it off in their retreat, although this was unlike their usual procedure.
They had left the scenes of their late encounter several hours march behind them, and had arrived at the wild mountain pass where they had tarried the night before to listen for the cry which had reached them, when suddenly Kit Carson reined in his horse and pointed down the rocky side of the defile along which the road wound. There among the boulders lay the dead body of the child. The savages, finding it troublesome, and doubtless annoyed by its cries from hunger and fatigue, had snatched it from the arms of the agonized mother and thrown it down the precipice beside them, leaving it there to perish from cold and starvation or to fall a victim to some prowling beast.
There were many heartbreaking scenes enacted in those days upon our frontiers, and no Indians were more often the participants in them than the Apaches and Comanches, with whom we had to deal. After a man has been brought face to face with them in many years of frontier service, he is inclined to agree unreservedly with General Sheridan's verdict regarding a "good Indian."
We reached Fort Union in good time and with all of our horses in fine condition. It was then the regimental headquarters, but only one troop of Mounted Rifles remained there, the others having been sent out upon an expedition against the Indians, who had been making threatening demonstrations. It was during this campaign that an incident occurred, which evidenced the coolness and courage of one of our young officers, whose name is recognized today wherever lovers of fine horses are found. I allude to General William H. Jackson, of Bellemead, or, as his old army friends still call him, "Red Jackson." At the time of which I write, he was a lieutenant in the Rifles, and was out after the Comanches, with his company. Of course, on a scout of this sort, all hunting and shooting was strictly forbidden. One day a grizzly came down from the mountains and crossed the route of the column. Jackson coolly rode out to encounter the animal, armed only with his sabre. His horse was blind in one eye, and, by keeping that side turned to the bear, Jackson was able to get close to him. At his approach, the grizzly, nothing loath, rose on his hind legs ready for a fight, and Jackson cleft his skull with his sword. It is doubtful if such an exploit was ever elsewhere attempted or accomplished.
We found Major Simpson, Captain [Wiliam] Morris, Dr. Baily, Lieutenant Julian May, and several other officers on duty at Fort Union when we reached there. I was regimental Adjutant, and we had the regimental band, but very little to occupy us beside the usual routine of a frontier cavalry post, which allowed us plenty of leisure for hunting and wolf chasing.
Captain Shoemaker was the officer in charge of the ordnance stores. He was a kindly gentleman, well known and respected in the army, and kept a fine pack of greyhounds. His dog Possum was a cross of a breed left with our regiment, by Sir George Gore, some years before. He was the tallest and longest dog I have ever seen, and of great fleetness and power. He always led a pack of ten greyhounds, which I was enabled to make up and keep in the Commissary's corral, under charge of Corporal Thompson, a bright young Virginian and an ardent hunter. Three times a week in the season we would have the pack out to kill a wolf. As the prairie sloped gently up to the edge of the Turkey Mountains, some five miles distant, we had a good course in full view of the garrison, and almost always caught the wolf before he could reach the timber. Otherwise we didn't get him, for the hounds would not run in cover, and the coyotes seemed to know this, and always made for it from the start. Possum, invariably in the lead, would thrust his long snout between the wolf's hind legs as he closed on him, and toss him over his back, where he would hold him until the rest of the pack came up, when he was soon killed. Sometimes the riders would be up in time to beat the dogs off and tie up the wolf, taking him home for another day's run. Occasionally we would get an antelope, and Possum always threw him in the same way. No animal is so fleet as the antelope, with a good start and a fair field before him. Like the hare, however, he is timid, and, when headed off or turned, becomes bewildered, loses his running, and is easily caught.
Thus it was that Toots one evening started an antelope, and was running him along the little valley of he creek that watered Fort Union, when I galloped to head him where he would come out upon the prairie, over which the ten greyhounds were spread out "breasting." These, seeing me running, all took up the run in the same direction, and as the antelope came out upon the plain he saw a circle of enemies closing around him, and hesitated, bewildered. Toots was close behind him, and, seizing him by the leg, swung on to him until I rolled off Black Jack, caught him by the horn, and killed him before any dog of the pack had reached him. Toots was a wonderful dog, occasionally too zealous, as when one day he killed a polecat in our kitchen, and we had to vacate the premises for a week, taking refuge with our good friends, Dr. Baily and his wife.
Not long after, Corporal Thompson and I took the dogs out after a wolf. We ran four miles, but he finally got into the brush of Turkey Mountains and escaped us. We were retiring slowly, the hounds trotting behind the corporal's horse, and Toots, as usual, ranging out on the prairie, when all at once I saw him come running in towards us, his ears thrown back in alarm, and behind him came wabbling in pursuit a polecat, with tail erect, ready for action. Toots had learned something about polecats in that momentous encounter in our kitchen, but the greyhounds had yet to be initiated into the mysteries of that animal, so when they lifted up their eyes and saw this one coming, they gathered about him and with one consent rent him asunder. Then began high jinks; such tumbling and whining and rubbing of noses and general gymnastics no ten dogs ever set up at the same time. The corporal and I nearly rolled off our horses with laughter, and Toots sat off beyond polecat range, laughing as if he would split his sides. Evidently, he enjoyed the joke more than any of us.
Toots was the only setter that ever lived to take hold of a buffalo. One morning, after Sergeant Bowman's death, I was riding at the head of the column, eagerly watching Lieutenant Tracy, who was running a cow with a six months old calf. The cow suddenly charged Tracy, whose horse stampeded and ran away with him for a mile or more before he could check or turn to him. The calf also stampeded and ran straight for me until it was within about fifteen yards, when I turned upon it and rolled it over. Toots sprang from the carriage where he was having a ride beside the driver, dashed past me, and swung to the calf while it was yet struggling upon the ground. Long afterward, near Fort Wise, I shot an antelope and broke his hind leg. Toots chased him with me for fully two miles, and caught and held him until I seized his horn and knifed him. Game was so plentiful then on the western frontier that there were few days in which we could not have good sport. My own experience in the field convinced me that there was no animal so wary, so enduring, and so dangerous as the wild bull of Texas. I except the grizzly bear always, who has not his equal for fierce and aggressive courage in all the catalogue of wild beasts.
One day at Fort Staunton a horse guard came galloping in and reported to Captain Claiborne of the Rifles, that an old she grizzly and two cubs were in the timber near the horse pasture. Claiborne, who was a great hunter and a fine shot, snatched his rifle, and, accompanied by a friend, hurried out to meet his savage game. They soon found them and rolled the she bear over, but the cubs, about the size of setter dogs, climbed up into some trees and went out on the limbs, where no one could get at them. Claiborne's object being not to kill but to capture them, it was decided to shoot the limbs, cutting them away with rifle balls until they would no longer bear the weight of the cubs. Being capital shots, this was soon accomplished, and they had the satisfaction of securing alive fine specimens by his novel plan for capturing grizzlies.
We passed one year at Fort Union, at the end of which the news of John Brown's capture of Harper's Ferry. Then the Indians cut off mail communication, and we heard no more for many weeks, when by a system of escorts between the Rifles and the First Cavalry our mail route was re-established, and a sergeant brought me a letter from Lieutenant Jeb Stuart, congratulating me upon my promotion to a captaincy in the Adjutant General's department, with orders to repair to Santa Fe, then the headquarters of the department of New Mexico. This was great satisfaction, as it was a position of high trust and importance, and carried with it assurance of a comfortable and permanent residence.
There were many officers stationed at Santa Fe, and the city, being the headquarters of the department, was much visited by officers from every part of it, and we all got on very cordially together until the quickening excitement of the approaching war separated us. Before the year was out we had to be upon our guard in our intercourse with each other; for, whereas we seemed to be in accord before the hostilities began, and nearly all were Southern in their sympathies, when the time came to prove the faith, there were but few who gave up the certain pay and emoluments of the established government of the United States for the uncertainty of the yet to be created. I remember that at our last Christmas dinner in Santa Fe, we carefully selected our guests according to their avowed intentions in the coming crisis.
At last the blow fell for which we had so apprehensively been watching. In these days of telegraph and rapid transmit, it is hard to realize the suspense and anxiety from which we suffered as the days dragged their slow lengths along from the arrival of one mail to the next. We could only expect news once a week, and not then if the Indians chose to interfere with its transmission, which they frequently did. As the mail day would approach, our impatience would increase with each hour of suspense, and I well recall the anxious group which gathered in our parlor one evening in May, 1861, to await its arrival and distribution. There was Loring, our colonel, who had fought through two wars, and was again to win distinction in another, and Lieutenant John Pegram, who in the coming struggle would rise to the rank of general, and die bravely for his home and people, and Grayson of Virginia, and several others, who with my wife and me awaited the ill concealed anxiety the coming of the orderly with the mail bag. The mail for all the department came to my office, and had to be assorted there, but at last we were able to seize the papers and turn to the telegrams. Usually it was our home letters, with news of our dear ones far away, which were opened first, but that night these were cast aside unnoticed, while we read of the fall of Fort Sumter. Even then it was some time before we could grasp the details. One after another we took the sheet and tried to read aloud its contents, and each voice, broken with emotion in the effort, refused to do its owner's bidding.
The die was cast. The great war which was to bring to us and our people ruin and desolation was upon us, and we must go to prevent it. It was in no light or unappreciative mood that we sat looking at each other in the silence which followed the reading of the telegrams; for we realized the greatness of the sacrifice expected of us, and it was with sad hearts that we turned our backs upon the friends and associations of a happy past, and faced the issues of a future which had little to offer us save the consciousness of duty loyally performed. At last I awoke once more to the excitement of the moment, and to a realization of the great crisis of which we alone were informed, and, seizing the papers, I ran out into the street and made my way to the officer's quarters, shouting aloud as I went that Fort Sumter had fallen, and war had begun!