Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the SiouxBrady, Cyrus Townsend
History
Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux
Brady, Cyrus Townsend
Dakota Indians -- Wars; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895
It was two o’clock. Our soldiers wanted to scalp the dead Indians, of
whom about ten were lying too near the corral for their friends to carry
off. We prevented this till, while we were going around the corral
rearranging, the soldiers got the chance to scalp them. Two were lying
wounded when two soldiers approached them; one drew his bow and sent an
arrow through the thighs of one of the men. The arrow passed through the
fleshy part of one thigh and entered the other and stopped against the
bone. It had to be cut in two to extract it. Years after, at Fort
Leavenworth, a first sergeant showed me an arrow-head with the point
marred, and said he was that man.
The other wounded Indian had a pistol, and shot the other soldier in the
calf of his leg. These were the only men we had hurt. It was then that
there was some talk of abandoning the wagons and going direct for the
railroad. With the wagons, we had, of course, to go by routes over which
wheeled vehicles could travel. I do not recall whether Captain Graham
advocated this, but there would have been no impropriety in his stating
his views to me. Any officer can talk to his commander, and I had been
giving orders from time to time directly to him and his men. We sat
there eating our lunch and talking with each other and the wounded
Indian who lay in front of us, when he made a motion with his hand back
toward me. I asked Grover what he meant. He said, “He wants you to go
away; says his heart is bad.” This pleased me very much. I had been
watching the Indians, who had fallen back to some rising ground nearly a
mile off. They were moving about, pow-wowing, and, I supposed, preparing
for a new attack. They seemed to be diminishing in numbers, but I
thought they were trying to get around to some place where they would
have a better chance at us. I really did not expect to get out of that
fix. If those Indians had had sufficient resolution, being seven to one,
they ought to have used us up. When the wounded Indian made this motion,
I took it to mean that he knew they were giving up. He could see them as
well as we could, and knew better what they were doing. I suppose that
those who remained were the friends of the dead, waiting for us to go.
I gave orders to reload the wagons and move out. Some of the Indians
followed us for several miles, but did not again attack.
Colonel Carpenter did not offer the command to me at the first attack in
the morning, nor did I decline it. I was exercising the command all the
time. One of the articles of war provides that “when troops join and do
duty together the highest in rank of the line of the army shall command
the whole, and give the orders needful for the service,” and I could not
have avoided the responsibility.
The foregoing narrative shows that I was not a “passive spectator,” nor
did I “refrain from advice or suggestion,” nor from giving orders as
required.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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