The War of 1864

by Eugeine Ware

  I had just drawn a heavy new woolen undershirt from the supplies that had arrived, and when I put the undershirt on it was very harsh and prickly, and I determined to take it off and have it well washed. Our laundress, "Linty," had rejoined us with Lieutenant Brewer from Cottonwood Springs. The Lieutenant had been down to take the boys' money home, as stated. I gave this shirt to Linty and told her to give it a good washing, and to wash the starch and stuff out of it. When it came time to start with Lieutenant Williams, the shirt was hanging up trying to dry, but it was still quite damp. It was almost damp enough that water could be wrung out of it, and the question with me was whether to wear the shirt or not. I concluded to take my chances with the damp shirt, so I put it on, and we started for Laramie, and I with the nine men went up Lodgepole, eighteen miles, and camped beside Lodgepole at a place where there was some ruined work indicating that somebody had started in to make a habitation. The report was that the stage company had begun to erect stables there, but had not completed them. At supper-time my shirt was still not dry, and we laid down and slept in the open air. During the night a strong wind came up from the northwest that was quite cold, and I slept in a shiver about all night. In the morning we went up Lodgepole to the crossing, seventeen miles farther, and started across Jules Stretch.

  All day long that head wind blew, increasing in violence until the air was filled with sand and pebbles. It seemed almost impossible to stem the wind. We started early in the morning. It was cold, and as we rode on our horses, we wrapped the capes of our overcoats around our faces, and only exposed one eye at a time, and most of the time we had our eyes shut, and leaned forward to give the horses the advantage of the wind. We could not see a hundred feet ahead of us. Two men kept the road, and we told them to keep a mile ahead of us, if possible, so that we might not run into any Indians. The Indians could not see us any better than we could see them. Every half-hour we stopped and gave our horses a rest. It was a snail's pace. We had on our horses five days of cooked rations, which consisted of boiled beef, raw and fried bacon, and hardbread. I never experienced a day of misery that impressed itself more upon my mind than that day. The horses could hardly be made to face the gale, and every once in a while would turn as a particularly swift wave came, and they would go milling around among themselves, and we had to straighten out the cavalcade and start again. The men in the ambulance, Rulo and Lynch, of Co. D, Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, suffered as much as we. The mules were continually leaving the track, and it was impossible for a person to hold his eyes unprotected against the wind, and the wind grew colder and colder. I made the following comment in my diary in regard to that wind: "Awful headwind; never suffered so much in my life from cold. Made fifty miles this day. Camped at Mud Springs."

  We did not get into Mud Springs until long after dark. I had got my woolen shirt dry by this time, but I had a cold that was about as severe as anything I ever had. I coughed and rolled and tossed all night, and only got to sleep at some time towards morning. The next morning everything was clear and pleasant. The wind had subsided, and the beautiful castellated landscape charmed me again as it had before. I never mentioned my feelings, and tried to pretend that I was all right, and I commenced the procession, and rode at its head all day. We made forty miles, and camped that night at Ficklin ranch. That night I was aching all over.The men themselves were all used up. I asked Lieutenant Williams to make a short march, but he had got to riding in the ambulance and dozing as he went along, and consequently was not tired. I regret to say that he marched us, or rather he insisted on our marching, and we rode on that day, October 20, 1864, fifty-six miles. I then told Lieutenant Williams what I thought about his way of doing things; that while he had the right to set the pace, and command the squad, that he ought to be cashiered, and I told him that my men should have a rest even if he had to go on alone. He got up in the morning bright and fresh, and ordered me to follow him. My men were complaining considerably, and I was feeling used up myself, and I told him that I was going to rest my men until noon. He told me that he was going to report me to the General for disobedience of orders, and I told him that I was going to report him to the General for not understanding his business. The result was that he started out on horseback and with the ambulance alone, and I let the men get all the sleep they wanted in the morning, and a good hearty breakfast, and let them rest their horses, and after dinner I rode them into Fort Laramie, a distance of ten miles from Bordeaux Ranch. When I got into Laramie I got good quarters for my men, saw them all well established, and they started in eating and sleeping, and getting rested. I went around to the doctor and he took my case. He began feeding me with quinine and whisky, and cured my cold, from which I fully recovered in a couple of days, although I was up and around all of the time. I put in most of my time at headquarters with Major Woods (afterwards of Ottumwa, Iowa), who was still commander of the post, and in the evening we all gathered at the sutler store. Williams told me that he would go back with me in less than a week.

  While at Fort Laramie I ran across my new friend Bridger, and in conversation with him there we talked a great deal about the country, and the Indians, and he told me over again his Buffalo Dam story, and his Diamond Mountain story, and I recognized the fact that he told them verbatim as he told them before. That is to say, that he had told each story so often that he had got it into language form, and told it literally alike. He had probably told them so often that he got to believing them himself.

  There were among the soldiers at Fort Laramie several very fine voices, and they had organized a glee club who were accompanied by musicians. And they were in the habit of going around and serenading various officers, and places, and among others the sutler store. There was an old ordnance sergeant at the post who was a sort of permanent detail. He was one of those who had been left over from the regular army, a perfect martinet, knew everything which there was to be known about the details of post service, and he looked after the ordnance and ordnance stores. I recognized a piece which I had heard sung two or three times before, and when I heard it this last time the old ordnance sergeant asked me if I knew what that was; when I told him, No, he said that it was the favorite piece of General Albert Sidney Johnston. He said that on the Salt Lake campaign, before the Civil War, Albert Sidney Johnston had a headquarters brass band, and that he used to ask them every night to play that piece of music. It was a rather nice piece, pleasant and easy to learn, and the refrain to it when sung, at least all I remember of the refrain, was:

  "Ever through life's campaign I'll be a soldier still."

  The ordnance sergeant used to describe Albert Sidney Johnston in very kind terms as a melancholy man of great genius and ability, apparently cramped by his jurisdiction and command, bigger than the flower-pot in which he was growing, devoted to duty, and, in matters outside of duty, very orderly and very kindly. He arrived at considerable distinction in the Confederate army, and had been killed in battle at the time when the sergeant had told me of this, his favorite piece of music. I had heard that piece of music down at Fort Kearney. I have never heard it since I left Fort Laramie.

  Chapter XXV.

  Jules Coffey and the Jacks – Snake Fight – Indian Fight – October 29, 1864 – Sam Dion – The Indian Baby – Camp Shuman – The "Simple Instance" – 53-mile Ride – The Snow-storm – The Mormon Train – The Black-tailed Dear – Sergeant Lippincott – Stephenson and the Wolf – Venison – Arrival at Lodgepole

  On this visit to Laramie was the last I ever heard or saw of Jules Coffey. As stated before, Jules had a great deal of superstition about holding jacks while playing cards. He thought they were his lucky card. Happening in the back room of the sutler store where an almost continuous game of poker was going on, I saw Jules betting ferociously upon a poker hand. He said he would never lay it down, but he finally did. It consisted of three jacks, and Jules was beaten. His superstition had, in the language of the place, "busted him."

  There were a couple of civilians in the employ of the
Government, or who had dropped in the post some time before, who were gathering snakes for the Smithsonian Institution. There was a great deal said about the great quantity of snakes that could be found around in the rocky ledges of that country. A great many stories were told about the Indians eating them, and about the scientific way of capturing them. It seems that the Indian women would go out and hunt for them, but had to be very careful in capturing the snake so that the snake would not bite itself, and poison its own meat. The Indian women with a long forked stick would try to pin the snake down close to its head so that it could not bite itself. The trappers said that a rattlesnake was good to eat, and worth catching, providing it did not bite itself. One evening one of these men in the snake business asked me to go around and look at some snakes he had in a box. He had got a musket-box which was made long, to hold a musket, but was not of very much interior capacity, and was heavily built. On one of these boxes they had fixed a heavy double glass top, and the snakes had been fastened in so that it wasn't expected that they could be fed or taken care of. The man said the snakes didn't need it. In this box were coiled, one at each end, two monstrous rattlesnakes, each one as long as the musket-box, and they were there motionless, looking at each other. The next day I was called to go and see the box again. The two snakes had coiled themselves around each other like strands of a rope from head to tail, except that the heads and necks were free. These were bent around looking at each other, and formed a picture not unlike the medical symbol of a caduceus. Just before I left Fort Laramie I was called again to look into the box. One of the snakes was dead, and the other was coiled loosely up in the end of the box, drooping as if hardly alive. The whole thing left me a most ghastly memory; one had strangled and killed the other.

  While at Laramie on this trip a beef was killed, and the Indian women came and carried off all of the entrails. There was one sight which attracted my attention: an old Indian woman with two or three children around her was feeding them the raw stuff. She took the smaller entrails, stripped out their contents and cut them up into mouthfuls, then punctured the gall-duct, and, dipping the point of the knife into it, put a drop of gall onto each mouthful as if it were Worcestershire sauce. It was raw, with a flavor of the bitter. The children seemed to enjoy it very much; it was Charlotte Russe for them. I was told that the Indians ate up all of the entrails of the beeves that were killed there at Laramie, at least during the time when there were many Indians at the squaw camp. I should have considered this revolting if it had not been for the happy, cheerful way in which the little Indians devoured this stuff, and shouted for more. And the old Indian woman seemed to be proud and happy to feed the little creatures so well.

  During my comments upon this in a talk with Bridger, he said: "It's all right. They like it, and it's all right. I have cleaned up that kind of stuff and eaten it myself, when I had to. The Injuns haven't got the same kind of tasting apparatus we have; their 'taster' is different from a white man's. Now, here is a band of Injuns that want to go off on a horse-stealing expedition, each one of them riding a spare pony. They whistle up their dogs, and start off. The dogs can keep up with the horses, and when they camp, the horses can eat grass, and the Injuns eat the dogs. That is the reason they don't have to have any commissary wagons. They don't have to have any corn for their horses, nor any bacon and hard-tack, and that is the reason that they can always run away from our people, and we never can chase them down on one of these raids, and catch them, unless we can travel like they do. They will swap horses every hour or so, and ride all the time. If they did not have women and children to look after, they would never be caught. But when you go to chasing them with their women and children, the women and children die off pretty fast, and after a while you come up with them; they are at your mercy."

  Bridger also said that the Indians believed that like parts of the animal nourished like parts of the man, hence they ate all there was of the animal. When any organ of an Indian was sick he would eat the corresponding organs of animals and game for a cure. He told many revolting stories concerning this belief.* [*NOTE: Since the foregoing was set in type an article has appeared concerning Bridger, in a Kansas City newspaper, which I will copy as an appendix hereto.]

  While at Fort Laramie Lieutenant Williams was constantly engaged in taking affidavits of enlisted men and citizens as to some facts concerning which I never found out. Williams was very secretive. Rumor had it that there had been some misconduct on the part of quartermasters and commissaries at the post, and that Williams, as Provost Marshal of the district, had made up his mind to investigate. He swore all of the witnesses, when he got through, never to divulge what they had testified to until called upon by the court; so it was not very easy to know what he was at, although Williams about a year afterward incidentally remarked that his trip up to Fort Laramie resulted in the cashiering of several officers. I had a very pleasant visit again with Colonel Collins of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, and he again expressed his wish to lose me out on the desert prairie with nothing but a little salt and see how I would get along. This was one of his favorite remarks.

  There came word at the post that an empty Mormon train with quite a lot of extra men, and seventeen wagons drawn by mules, was coming down, bound for Omaha, to load up with goods to be brought back in the spring. These Mormons traveled through the Indian country more safely than if they had been Indians themselves. I suggested that as the Mormon train was traveling light, they be impressed into service, and that I be permitted to load them near Court House Rock with pine timber for building purposes at Julesburg. This seemed to meet approval, and Colonel Collins took it up over the telegraph with General Mitchell, commanding at Fort Kearney, who approved the plan. The train came along; we equipped it with axes, a few picks and shovels to make roads with, a small supply of provisions, and passing through Fort Laramie it went on down the road. I expected to overtake them on the route, which I did at Mud Springs. Lieutenant Williams wanted to start October 29th in the afternoon, and so we went on down with him ten miles to Bordeaux Ranch and camped there, so as to get a good start the next morning. At Bordeaux Ranch I met with a frontiersman whom I had heard considerable of, and whom I had met once before, by the name of Sam Dion. He was one of the pioneer Frenchmen of the period, a jolly, royal, generous fellow who cared for nothing particularly, was happy everywhere, and whom the very fact of existence filled with exuberance and joy. He gave me a beautiful Indian-tanned beaver-skin, one of the largest and prettiest I ever had seen. A beaver-skin has two classes of hair. One is a coarse hair which sheds water, and the other is a fine hair which is intended for warmth. Dion had a way of taking a sharp razor, running it over a beaver-skin, and cutting out the coarse hair without at all injuring the fine hair, so that the skin which he gave me was as beautiful a piece of fur as I ever saw. I afterwards made it into a collar and cape for my big blue military overcoat, and wore it all through the service and long afterward. At Bordeaux we met Captain Shuman and First Sergeant George Marsh, going up to Fort Laramie for supplies with a small escort. I was glad to meet "Shad-blow" again, and we sat up talking over the invasion of Arkansas.

  There rode with us from Fort Laramie an officer of the Eleventh Ohio, whose name I will not here mention, as he afterwards rose to considerable distinction in civil life. He had been stationed at Fort Laramie, and had been ordered to Leavenworth. Coming on down to Bordeaux Ranch he every once in a while took a nip from his canteen, and said that he felt bad, and hated to go from Fort Laramie and hated to stay there; that he had received a very excellent detail from the general commanding the department, and was going away from Fort Laramie, never to see it again. He went on in a somewhat melancholy strain all the way down, and took but little observation of the scenery on the route. After we had got down to Bordeaux Ranch, and had supper, he took me one side and told me his story. He said: "I came away from Fort Laramie and I did not act right. I have got an Indian baby up in that squaw camp, and I have got to go back and tell the baby's
mother that I am never going to see her again, and it is going to raise Cain. I dreaded it, and I was too cowardly to go and tell her before I left. Now I will never see her again, nor will I ever see the baby again. I am going to get onto my horse and ride back there, and then I will be here in the morning ready to go on with you down the road." I told him that he was taking a good deal of a chance to be riding at night along that road, not knowing whom he would meet, and he said that he did not care; that he could get back there to Fort Laramie, kiss the baby good-by, and be on hand in the morning. He quickly saddled up, and off he went through the darkness as swift as his horse could carry him. The next morning when we were ready to start he turned up all right, and we went on down. I asked him if he had much trouble on the trip, and he said that he had a whole lot of it. He said it was a heart-breaking sort of thing, but that it was now over; that he had made up his mind to it, and he would never be back again, and that the whole thing was now ended. He kept taking nips from his canteen all day, but never became talkative or effusive, and although I was with him off and on for quite a while after that, he never again referred to the circumstance.

  We left Bordeaux ranch at six o'clock on the morning of October 30, 1864, and rode forty-three miles to Camp Shuman, now called "Camp Mitchell," near Scott's Bluffs, as before stated. Captain Shuman had named it after General Mitchell. We all slept on the dirt floor in the headquarters room at Camp Mitchell that night. Lieutenant Williams never drank anything. He was one of the few officers I ever saw who were total abstainers. He and I slept under the same blanket on the floor. The room was about fifteen feet square, and Lieutenant Boyd, who was the Second Lieutenant, slept on the floor near us. Captain Shuman, as stated, had gone to Fort Laramie. Lieutenant Ellsworth commanded the post, and Lieutenant Boyd the company. This was a technical arrangement. There must always be a post commander although there is only a company present at the post, so that Lieutenant Boyd commanded all the men at the post as "Company Commander," and Lieutenant Ellsworth commanded all the men at the post as "Post Commander." While we were lying on the floor Boyd every once in a while got up and went to the corner of the room. We ascertained in a little while that he was going into Captain Shuman's box of "St. Croix Rum Punch." After a while Boyd got gloriously drunk, all by his lone self. He never offered us anything, but just filled up. Finally he got us up and wanted to tell us a "simple instance." What he meant was "a simple incident," but he was so full that he could not get his words straight, and he would pull at us and at the blankets over us and have us listen to his "simple instance." His "simple instance" was how he and Captain Shuman had recently had a fight, and he had "knocked Captain Shuman just twenty feet." It was not an inch more or less. He had measured and it was just even twenty feet; and after he had told it all over and we had dropped off into a doze he would wake us up again to relate this "simple instance," and tell it all over again. By one o'clock in the morning Lieutenant Williams got a little bit tired of the "simple instance," and finally Boyd dropped off to sleep. The next morning Lieutenant Williams took some affidavits at the post, and among others the affidavit of Lieutenant Boyd about his "simple instance," and the result was that Boyd got dismissed from service for striking a superior officer and for drunkenness, and my old acquaintance "Shad-blow" got to be Second Lieutenant.