Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

On my way back to my hole I passed one where Doctor Mooers lay wounded, moaning piteously. I put a plum in his mouth, and I saw it between his teeth next morning. He died on the night of the 19th. All our wounded were very cheerful, and to look at Colonel Forsyth and talk to him as he lay there helpless, no outsider would have suspected that he was crippled. We used to gather round him in his pit and hold conversation, not like men in a desperate situation, but like neighbors talking over a common cause.

Colonel Forsyth was the right man in command of such a heterogeneous company. Like the least among us, he attended to his own horse when in camp, and many times have I seen him gather buffalo chips to supply the mess fuel. While he was our commander in practice he was our friend, and as such we respected him, followed and obeyed him.

On about the fifth day, as the Indians began leaving us, we began to walk about and look around. About fifteen or twenty feet from my pit I noticed a few of our men calling to the rest of us. I ran to the place, and there, against the edge of the island, I saw three dead Indians. Their friends evidently could not reach them to carry them off, which explained to us the persistent fighting in this direction. When I got there the Indians were being stripped of their equipments, scalps, etc. One of them was shot in the head and his hair was clotted with blood. I took hold of one of his braids and applied my knife to the skin above the ear to secure the scalp, but my hand coming in contact with the blood, I dropped the hair in disgust.

Old Jim Lane saw my hesitation, and taking up the braid, said to me: “My boy, does it make you sick?” Then inserting the point of the knife under the skin, he cut around, took up the other braid, and jerked the scalp from the head. I had been about three years in that country and four years in America, and life on the plains under such hardships as I had undergone hardens the sensibility, yet I was not quite ripe for such a cutting affray, even with a dead Indian.

After this we were not molested, but devoted our time to looking around for something to eat besides the rotten horse and mule meat, which we boiled several times in water and powder, not to get it soft, but to boil out the stench as much as possible. We found some cactus fruit, and killed a coyote, of which the brains and a rib were my portion. Aside from this we had nothing but horse and mule during the siege, which soon told on our bowels; but in spite of all this, I do not remember a despondent man in our crowd.

One morning, being the ninth since we were attacked, I was lying outside of my pit, having done some guard duty during the night; I was half dozing and dreaming of home and a good meal. I felt so homesick and so hungry when I heard some one call attention to something moving on the hill.

I was all attention at once. Soon I heard again “I think that’s Doctor Fitzgerald’s greyhound.” Whoever it might be, we would welcome. We would even have been pleased to have the Indians attack us again, in hopes of killing one of their horses for fresh meat; but it was soon evident that help was coming, and when I fully realized this fact, enfeebled as I was, I jumped up and joined in a lunatics’ dance that was in progress all around us. Those on the hill must have seen us, for there was a rush of horsemen down the hill toward us, followed by one or two ambulance wagons.

They were as eager to reach us as we were to greet them, and as I ran uphill I noticed a soldier on a white horse coming full tilt. The momentum carried him past me, but in passing I grabbed his saddle-bag and was taken off my feet, but it would have taken more than one horse to drag me from my hold. I suspected some eatables in there, and as soon as he could stop, without dismounting he assisted me to open that bag. With both hands I dived in, and with each hand I clutched some hardtack, but only one hand could reach my mouth; my other was in the grip of one of our men, who ravenously snatched the “tacks.” We ate, cried, laughed, and ate, all in a breath.

As soon as possible we put our dead in the ground. Those that died at one end of the island were cared for by those in that vicinity, and others in their vicinity, so that one part of the island was not aware of the location of the corpses of the other part; at least I did not know where the bodies lay of those killed on the eastern end of the island. So one time, as I walked around among the pits, I noticed something red and round sticking out of the sand, like a half-buried red berry. I kicked it, but by so doing it was not dislodged; I kicked again, but to no result. I then looked closer and discovered that it was the nose of a dead man. I called others to my assistance, and we fixed matters so that no desecration was possible again.

Our mortally wounded were made as comfortable as possible before they died. I assisted at such ministrations given to Lieutenant Beecher. We removed his boots, coat, etc., and, of course, these things were not replaced on the body after he was dead, but lay around unnoticed. My shoes were quite badly worn, especially after being used for digging in the sand, so when relief came and we were preparing to leave the island, I put on his shoes, which were just about my size, and wore them even after I got back to New York City, leaving my old shoes in their stead on the island.