CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carr and Tall Bull at Summit Springs
I. A Brilliant Little Fight
General Eugene A. Carr, in command of the Fifth Cavalry, did some brilliant skirmishing and fighting in 1868–9 western Kansas and Colorado. His most notable exploit was the surprise of Tall Bull’s camp. Next to Black Kettle, Tall Bull was probably the most vicious and diabolical of the Indian raiders in these two states.
Carr, with five troops of the Fifth Cavalry and with W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) as chief guide, learning where Tall Bull’s camp was, marched one hundred and fifty miles in four days in pursuit of him. Halting when he believed he had reached the vicinity of the camp, he sent Buffalo Bill with some of his Pawnee Indian auxiliaries to find out exactly where the Indians were located.
Cody, having discovered the location of the village, returned to General Carr and advised him to take a wider detour, keeping his forces concealed among the hills, so that he could approach the Indians from the north, a direction from which they would not be expecting attack, and whence they might be the more easily surprised. The advice was followed, the command made its encircling march without detection, and formed up in line of troops, each troop two abreast, in the ravines about twelve hundred yards from the village.
They were between the Indians and the Platte River. The camp was located at Summit Springs, Colorado. Every preparation having been made, Carr ordered the bugler to sound the charge. The man was so excited that he was unable to produce a note. Twice Carr gave the command. Finally, Quartermaster Hayes snatched the bugle from the agitated musician and sounded the charge himself, and the whole regiment rushed out into the open.
The Indians made for their ponies and advanced to meet the charge. The rush of the soldiers was too threatening, however. After a hasty fire they broke and fled on their horses, the whole party, soldiers and Indian scouts, following after at full speed through the village. The attack was a complete success. Fifty-two Indians were killed, two hundred and seventy-four horses and one hundred and forty-five mules were captured. The soldiers had one man wounded, with no other casualties.
In the camp were found the bodies of two unfortunate white women, who had been captured. Swift as had been the dash of the soldiers, the Indians had taken time to brain one of the women with a war-club, while the second was shot in the breast and left for dead. She was given every possible attention by the soldiers, who took her back to Fort Sedgwick, and her life was eventually spared. Her sufferings and treatment had been beyond description. Fifteen hundred dollars in money—in gold, silver, and greenbacks—strange to say, had been found in the camp. This sum the soldiers, by permission of the general, donated to the poor woman, as an expression of their sympathy for her.
According to some accounts, Tall Bull, who was chief of the camp, and one of the head chiefs of the Sioux, was killed in this attack. Buffalo Bill tells another story.[[53]] The day after the fight the various companies of the Fifth Cavalry—which had remained in the camp all the ensuing day and night, at the insistence of the plucky commander, in spite of the pleas of some of the officers, who, fearing an attack in force, suggested retiring immediately—separated in order the more effectively to pursue the flying Indians. Several days after the surprise the detachment for which Cody was guide was attacked by several hundred Indians. The soldiers fought them off, killing a number. The chief of this party was believed by Cody to be Tall Bull.
Buffalo Bill crept through a ravine for several hundred feet, unobserved by the Indians, until he reached an opening whence he had the savages in range. Watching his opportunity as the Indians were careering wildly over the prairie, he drew a bead on the chief and shot him dead. Whether that was Tall Bull or not, one fact is clear—that he was killed either then or before, for he was certainly dead thereafter.