Eugene Ware - The Indian War of 1864

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.

The ride of forty-three miles the day before had very much quieted down our horses; in the morning a storm came up, and the wind, blowing from the northeast, began to beat the snow into our faces. It was a very unpleasant day, and after a while it became positively distressing. Williams crept into the ambulance, and in its secure shelter ordered the driver to whip up, and then ordered me to keep up with the escort. The result was that we made fifty-three miles that day against the storm, and the men and horses were nearly used up.

At Mud Springs, on the evening of October 31, 1864, we found the Mormon train camped, together with eight wagons drawn by nineteen yoke of oxen belonging to Alexander Noble, who had come down a little while before with an escort, having hauled some stuff up to Fort Laramie. Noble's wagons were in bad condition, and so were his oxen. I pressed them all in; two of the Mormon wagons had to be loaded up with blankets and stuff which the train was carrying, and one of Noble's wagons was too weak to hold up a load of logs. It had snowed and hailed all day, the wind was blowing hard, skits of snow were coming all night, and the weather was growing colder. On the morning of November 1st we made a road and got the wagons and stock several miles up to where the trees were, and as we had plenty of help we cut the trees as long as the wagons could hold them, loaded them up as far as we dared, then put the wagon-boxes and all on top of the load of logs, tied down or chained them on, and let the wagons start down to Mud Springs. We cut only small, straight trees that were easily handled. No sign of Indians was seen anywhere. On November 2, 1864, we finished the loading of the wagons and sent them all, except a weak one, on down to Mud Springs. My squad of men was camped up on the north side of Lawrence's Fork, in a very nice little grove that stood about forty feet above the stream and formed a sort of shelf, above which, back of us, rose the high ragged edges of the plateau. It was a beautiful little camping-place, and was up three or four miles above Court House Rock. All this time it had been snowing. And as the snow fell upon the plateau the wind blew it down onto our camp, and it began to get deeper and deeper. We had run out of provisions and had borrowed some from the Mormon train, that really did not have much to spare; we had divided with the men on Noble's train because they had only enough to get them to Julesburg. The result was that we were short of provisions all around.

The snow kept falling and kept drifting all during the day of the 1st and 2nd, and all of the wagons had been loaded and got down to Mud Springs except one, and I determined that I would stay in camp over-night where I was, because there was plenty of wood for fires and we on horseback would overtake the train in the morning. Along in the evening of the 2nd the snow came furiously. We already had a couple of feet of it, and had dug paths around our little camp from the ground of shelter-tents to the fire. But during the night the snow fell so furiously that we got up and kept clearing the ground so as not to be entirely buried. The horse-feed and shovels were in the weak wagon then in camp with us. The snow fell on the plateau and the wind swept it all over onto the ravine, so that we were not contending with the snow that fell from above us, but with all the snow that fell upon the plateau for miles. The horses were tied to the trees, and they kept tramping the snow under them until they stood two or three feet above the ground. In the morning the snow around us was from ten to twenty feet deep. On the wind-swept plateau there was hardly any. Along about nine o'clock in the morning it cleared off cold. We dug out with shovels the places where the horses were standing and where our tents were and where our camp-fires were. We did not see any good way of getting out of camp. It was entirely a new experience for all of us, and we debated what to do. The snow all around us was deeper than a man on horseback was high. The worst of it was our shortage of provisions. While we were there undetermined what to do, Corporal Lippincott saw, up on the edge of the plateau, off about a mile, a black-tailed deer standing on a point and looking down into the valley; probably looking for water. It seemed to be absolutely necessary that we should get that deer. I had a fine target rifle, Smith amp; Wesson, caliber.44, which I always carried as if it were a carbine. There were several good shots in our party, but Corporal Lippincott was as good as any, and claimed the right to go after the deer because he had first seen it. The deer seemed to stand motionless for quite a while, and then it would disappear and then it would come up again to the edge of the rim of the plateau, The snow was rather hard and sleety, and Lippincott floundered through it slowly and patiently. We all stayed in camp and watched what his success would be. Up along the edge of the declivity of the plateau the snow was shallower, and Lippincott after going from the back part of our camp up towards the plateau floundered out of the deepest snow and got into snow that was about four feet deep. He then slowly progressed up until we saw him stop. The deer, if it was the same one, came up to the edge again, standing motionless for a few minutes, when, crack went the rifle, and the deer sprang tumbling over the crest and down into the snow below. This must have taken place about ten o'clock in the morning. We all started out to get the deer into camp, using shovels and lariat-ropes; we got the deer into camp along about four o'clock p. m. While out on this trip bringing in the deer, Sheldon, one of the men of the party, saw an antelope come up to the edge of the bluff between us and the camp, and while the antelope was looking with curiosity at the strange scene going on, Sheldon killed the antelope, and we succeeded in getting that also into camp. We built rousing pine-log fires and ate roasted deer and antelope, and we parched corn from the horsefeed. Roasted antelope hearts are fine.