The War of 1864

by Eugeine Ware

  When the time came for voting, a great number of the soldiers, fully one-half, declined to vote one way or the other, and when the vote was taken it was twenty-six for Lincoln and fourteen for McClellan. This shows in what a dangerous condition, and how perilous a crisis, the nation was in. It is a great wonder and a great mystery that the Union was saved, as I look at it now; although I was in the middle of it all, I cannot understand it. It seemed that from year to year, in one great crisis after another, we were just merely able in each crisis to save it, and that was all; time after time it was saved almost by a scratch. The Union managed to just get through, and that was all. Lincoln thought for a while that he was beaten.

  At the time of which I speak, Price had raided up through Missouri as far as Kansas City, and we were dismally disappointed with the news. From time to time it seemed as if he were going to take Fort Leavenworth, turn the tide of war west of the Mississippi, and break the United States in two. However, Price was defeated, but scarcely anything more, and our side just did manage, and that is about all, to get him started back. I was feeling very despondent after our election, as I did up the returns, and handed them to Captain O'Brien to be forwarded to the Governor of Iowa.

  We unloaded the logs at headquarters, and Captain O'Brien thought I had better go over again to Ash Hollow, and get some more wood. In the mean time the Government had furnished us, through their quartermaster at Fort Kearney, a few more tents suitable for campaigning in winter, if we had to make a winter campaign. We pressed in some of the wagons that we had freighted down Lodgepole, and with our company wagons, all together making a train of ten wagons, I started for Ash Hollow.

  I may perhaps be permitted to go back, and say that on the entire road from Fort Laramie we had seen no Indians, and no Indian signs. Charley Elston said that the Indians had gone up into winter quarters, except the young bucks, who had gone off farther down the Platte. These young bucks were only in detached squads, and there was nothing for them to get on the Platte River west of Cottonwood; so that the Indian scare appeared to be over. I found that the ranches were being reoccupied. Gillett's ranch, about nine or ten miles west of Julesburg, had been filled up, and a large lot of cattle had been brought in. And the ranches east of Julesburg clear down to Cottonwood Springs had been filled up again. People had fortified the ranches, and the stages had started running regularly up the South Platte. The old stage-drivers said there was no difficulty, and although troops were stationed about every twenty-five miles along the road, there seemed to be no work for them to do except to escort the mail and the stages, and the caravans of teams which occasionally went by.

  Lieutenant Williams had gone on down the road. He told us the story of his adventures between Fort Kearney and Cottonwood Springs, coming up. He and an officer named Hancock were riding west in the stage, and there was a man sitting up on the box with the driver. It was a bright moonlight night. It was a four-horse stage. After they had got well out of Plum Creek coming west, and were out on the broad plains, all at once about a dozen shots came from the Indians, and they killed the two horses that were in the lead, and these two horses dropped in their tracks. This was part of the Indian plan, and then they commenced shooting into the stage. Williams and Hancock with Smith amp; Wesson carbines, and the other two with Sharpe rifles, got down flat on the ground and kept up a fire with the Indians, who besieged them all night. The two dead horses kept the stage from being run away with, and the Indians soon killed the other two. As the Indians skirmished around, the men lay on the ground or got in between the horses, and when morning came they had fired off a greater part of their ammunition, and had succeeded in getting two or three Indians, but were themselves unharmed. They were reinforced in the morning by a party who had been warned by someone who had heard the firing. This was hardly to be called a night attack, for there was a bright full moon.

  West of Cottonwood Springs everything seemed to be perfectly safe. The Cheyennes had met with some rough treatment down in Kansas, and along the Arkansas river, and had got over their war fever somewhat. But every once in a while some of the young bucks got out, and succeeded in capturing some emigrant wagons, or some frontier house, and killing somebody. It got to the point that everybody said that the only safety was to exterminate the Cheyenne Indians, but nothing had happened around our post to show an Indian present, nor had we seen any fire-arrows or smoke-signals for quite a while. And in my last trip from Fort Laramie, as stated, nothing of the kind was in view.

  On the 9th of November, 1864, we got all ready to go to Ash Hollow, and I determined to make the trip in the night, so as to get there after sunrise, deeming it the safer. The several days of rest my horse had got made him almost unmanageable. I mean my Hermitage horse, "Old Bill." He seemed to be determined to run, and he started off on his hind legs, pawing the air, going on the tips of his toes, and frisking so that I found that I was in danger of having a runaway horse, or one which would be uncontrollable in case of danger. So, in order to get him down to business, I got him down in the Pole Creek arroyo, where the sand was about up to his knees, and I ran him a mile up the creek as hard as he could go, and a mile back. That was a very severe test. I made him go his best. This took the wire edge off of him, and for the balance of the trip he went along like a good, sensible horse.

  We got to Ash Hollow, kept well on the lookout, worked hard most of the day, and filled our wagons, then went into camp, parking everything up as if for a fight. All at once, on the other side of the river, went up a smoke signal. We saw it answered up the river as far as a field-glass could spy. In the evening in the earliest dark a fire-arrow went up. I then concluded that trouble would begin in the morning; so we had the mules all hitched up, and the men all mounted, and we started up the road leading out of Ash Hollow, and finally got up on top of the plateau. The men were very tired, and I was very tired, for I had been at work as much as the men. I got them all together and told them that nobody could tell what there was behind us; that we could park upon the plateau, and go in by daylight, but that the Indians wouldn't tackle us by night, in all probability, and that we could go across to Julesburg three teams abreast, and in solid order, but that I was not going to make the order to march if they thought they were too tired or worn out to make it. They all spoke up that they were not very tired, and would be willing to make the trip. So, deploying out the men who were on horseback as scouts, and putting a white wagon-cover on the man who was to follow the trail and go in advance, so that we could keep line on him, we started across. About eleven o'clock a fire arrow went up far in front of us along the line of our probable trail, and a little after that an arrow went up behind us. Deeming it unwise to go any farther in the night, we parked our wagons, and waited for daylight. The starlight was very bright, and we could see considerably well. The wolves howled most fearfully, and as to some of it we could not tell whether the howling was wolves or Indians; so we got the log-wagons in such a position that we were within the circle of them, and we waited for daylight to come. The men dozed off alternately, and we each got two or three hours of sleep. As soon as it became dawn, we started on.

  During this trip I rode, for a while, with the soldier Cannon, of whom I have heretofore spoken. When Cannon had no whisky in him, he was a very reliable soldier. That is to say, he had had good experience, and was sensible. Riding along, he told me that he was with Captain Pope, afterwards Major-General Pope, of the Civil War, when Pope was marking out the "Staked Plains" of Texas. That was a route for a future road projected by the Government over the wild and unending plains of northwestern Texas. Where this road was laid out it was called the "Staked Plains," but went down on the map under the name "Llano Estacado." He said he heard Captain Pope ask a question of another officer, and he always wanted to hear the answer to it. He said Pope asked this officer as follows:

  "Supposing the Staked Plains are a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and on the first day of June a man gets up in the morning on horseback, and sta
rts out following his shadow from sunrise to sunset at a rate of four miles an hour, where would he be at night, and what would be the shape of his course?"

  This particular problem was very interesting. I had at that time a pocket diary showing the moon's phases, and the time of the rising and setting of the sun every day, for different latitudes. At first I could not grasp the puzzle, but before I got to Julesburg, I had it solved in an offhand way, and I told him the nature of the course. He would be at night twenty-eight and one-half miles north of the place where he started, and about a quarter of a mile east of it. This is not really accurate, but is as nearly so as a person could work it out on horseback with the aid of a pocket almanac.

  When I got back from Ash Hollow, I found the men had all got into the new adobe post quarters, with battened doors made from lumber hauled down from Denver, and with some square glass windows. The boys had about finished the stables. The stables were 140 feet long, and 30 feet wide. There was a ten-foot door at each end and on one side. The sod was put up eight feet high; eight feet from each side we put up two rows of upright poles on the inside, marking each double stall. We put light logs across each of these, then split posts on top of the logs close together. The boys had waded around in the Platte River and cleaned off all the willows up and down the islands and banks. These had been put down on top of the roof-rails, and then on the willows was spread some spoiled hay, and it was well tramped down; then the whole was leveled off with dirt. When the dirt was all leveled we plowed more sod, and tightly sodded the top of the whole stable. It was fire-proof, cold-proof, and bombproof. It was one of the best stables I ever saw, and by all means the cheapest, considering the quality, I ever saw.

  Confidence along the road seemed to he restored. There was always a surging impulse to go ahead and take chances. The East demanded an outlet West, and a reflex tide much weaker was always seeking the East. An open road between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean was a constant necessity. Although one Indian raid followed another, the tide flowed on between-times. And although the current was at times dammed up, it broke loose again with an increasing volume. No attention was seemingly paid to Indian hostilities; they were looked upon in the same light as a bad spell of weather: the hostilities would, like the weather, change from time to time, but no one made calculation about them or took them much into account. People relied on the Government and the soldiers and themselves, and their own good-fortune. Thus, when anybody wanted to cross the plains they just started and trusted to luck and their ability to go through. More than this, the great majority of the pilgrims and whackers rather enjoyed the prospect of having a little skirmish with the Indians, at some point, so as to have something to enliven the trip and something to tell when they got back to the "States." But it was all hard work for the soldiers along the line. Besides all this, the Civil War was loosening up whole blocks of society and giving them an impulse to the West. The war was on; in strong Union communities, if situated anywhere near the lines of the combatants or within the sphere of their influence, they made it hot for the secesh or for people who had relatives in the Confederate army. In places where Rebel sympathizers prevailed the Union men were hung, or driven out; hence in both such cases the minority party in groups sold out and moved away. The Union men went to the open lands of the North and the Northwest, and the secesh to the mountains, the West and the Pacific Coast, away from the theatre of possible strife, as if trying to forget it. These conditions, coupled with the growing demands of legitimate business, gave a constantly increasing impetus to the vast travel westward and eastward along the Platte River. This travel could finally be accommodated only by a railroad.

  The Indian policy of the government was necessarily crude. The Indians were powerful, quite free, and fond of devilment; yet between them there was not much coherence, owing to rivalries and feuds. They were divided into bands under the control and leadership of favorite chiefs, who often envied and hated each other. Hence it was that we could not mistreat any Indian without taking the chances of making trouble; thus, if an Indian would suddenly appear at our post we could not kill him or imprison him or treat him as an enemy, because the particular Indian had done nothing that we could prove as an overt act. As far as the Sioux were concerned we had to keep on the defensive, because some of the Sioux chiefs were trying their best to keep their bands and young men from acts of war. It was cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them, and the constant efforts of the commanding officers were to make treaties of peace; which resulted practically in our buying privileges and immunities from them. The demands of the Civil War which was straining the nation's resources added much to the difficulties of the occasion. So we were in an attitude all the time of about half war and half peace with the Indian tribes. We could not punish them adequately for what they did, nor could they drive us off from the Platte Valley. We let them alone if they kept out of our way, and they let us alone when the danger seemed too great. Of all the Indians in our territory, the Cheyennes seemed to have the least sense. They lacked judgment, and were entirely unreliable; the pioneers placed the Arapahoes next; for respecting treaty obligations, the pioneers placed the Brulл Sioux at the head of all the northwestern Indians.

  Chapter XXVII.

  November 10, 1864 – Jimmie Cannon – The Sobriety Drill – The Stagedriver's Arrow – The Wagon Train Fine – The Quality of the Emigration – Commissary Measurements – The Ration – Desiccated Vegetables – Prickly-pear Sauce – Denver and the Cheyennes – The Wood Train – The Englishman – The Bets – The Trial

  WITH the returning confidence of the public, and our orders to let no train go by except such as had one hundred armed men, and with the necessary continuous work upon the improvement of our fort and barracks, and on account of the necessity of keeping up our target practice, the men were quite busy. They had been free from annoyances, had been well fed and clothed, and whisky, except as we issued it sparingly to those doing extra duty, had disappeared from the camp. But with the return of trains and confidence, great numbers came down from Denver bound to the East, and the men began to get whisky again, and at times wild and violent occasions took place.

  On November 10th, Cannon, who had a large white horse that was very frisky, got intoxicated, and while he was endeavoring to show off how the horse would follow him around like a dog, the horse took it into his head to go off frantically across the plains, canter around in a circle, and come back to the post. I was out in front of what we called our parade-ground when the horse came up, and Cannon ran up to try to stop him. The horse playfully wheeled, and kicked up its heels at Cannon. And Cannon grabbing his revolver from the holster, took it by the barrel and threw it at the horse. The revolver struck the ground right in front of me, and went off, and a bullet went so close to my head that I felt a little irritated. I grabbed Cannon by the collar, called on the sergeant to bring a lariat-rope, and tied Cannon up to a piece of artillery which was near.

  About a dozen of the men suddenly appeared to be nearly as full of whisky as Cannon. I told the sergeant to immediately go to the barracks, get all their names, tell them all that they were detailed on a scout, and in fifteen minutes I had them all on horseback headed towards the hills, under command of a corporal, to get the whisky trotted out of them. I told the Corporal privately to take his men around, scare them a little bit if he could, and work them until they were all sober. This the Corporal did, and the trouble for that day was ended.

  The stage-drivers had got to be very confident and reckless, and got so that they would drive off, and run away from their escorts who were on horseback, and were all pretending not to fear anything. Many of them were new, and affected to despise the soldiers. Some of them had been in the Confederate service, and really did.

  On the evening of November 11th a stage-driver with a stage coming from Cottonwood Springs, drove up shortly after dusk. He came lashing his horses as if all of the imps were behind him, and well he might, because down a little way below t
he post, just as he was going along the plains where nothing appeared but clumps of cactus, an Indian rose quite near and shot an arrow at him. It was splendidly aimed. It went through his coat collar at the back of his neck, and the iron head of the arrow whipped around and hit him on the face, and he started his horses on a run. He said that all he saw was this one lone Indian. The Indian had refrained from firing a gun for fear of alarming the post. The stage-driver got off from the coach with the arrow in his coat collar, balanced about half-and-half on each side. Those in the stage coach did not know the full extent of the matter until the driver had driven quite a little distance, and seeing that he was not followed, the driver stopped and told the passengers, two of whom had seen the Indian, but were not aware of what had been done. The stage-driver was very proud of that arrow in his coat collar and wore it there for a long while.