Eugene Ware - The Indian War of 1864

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 starts 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.