History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

As soon as the firing began, the plain, the ravines, hillsides, sand-drifts, and mountain tops seemed alive with Indians.

The battle was short and decisive. The Indians were severely punished. They lost 160 killed and had a great many wounded, while the whites had but two men killed and only three or four wounded. Captain E. F. Storey, from whom Storey county, Nevada, takes its name, was shot through the lungs, and died in camp in the evening. Captain Storey was taking aim at an Indian who was lying behind a rock at the time he received his death wound. The Indian was too quick for him and got the first shot. Storey’s men instantly riddled the fellow.

This expedition brought in the remains of Meredith and Major Ormsby. The bodies of many of the dead were found to have been horribly mutilated. About the place where the bodies of the volunteers were found, the ground, for the space of two hundred yards, was beaten as solid as a brickyard. Appearances indicated that the Indians had taken these men alive, and had held a big dance about them before killing them.

After this battle no more was seen of the Indians in a long time, and there has been no trouble with them since.

In September of that year, Winnemucca, chief of the tribe, visited Fort Churchill, (a fort that was built on the Carson River, near Williams’ Station, after the last battle at Pyramid Lake,) accompanied by several leading men of his tribe. The old fellow said that he not only desired at that time, but at all other times had desired, to live at peace with the whites. The late trouble had been brought about by a few Bannocks, a lot of Shoshones and Pitt River Indians, with some bad Piutes. The whites had, he said, charged in among his people without seeking an interview with him and he had defended himself to the best of his ability. He hoped that the peace would be permanent, and desired that the whites and Piutes should now become firm friends and allies.

After the trouble was all over the cause of it was ascertained. It was this.—In the absence of Williams, proprietor of the station where the massacre, as it was called, occurred, two or three men left in charge had seized upon two young Piute women and had treated them in the most outrageous manner, keeping them shut up in an outside cellar or cave for a day or two.

The husband of one of the women coming in search of his wife, heard her voice calling him from the place in which she was hidden. When he attempted to go to his wife’s assistance the men at the station beat him and drove him away, threatening to kill him if he did not leave at once.

It so happened that the women who had been outraged were of the branch of the Piute tribe living at Walker Lake who had married men of the Bannock tribe. The Indian who was driven away from the station hastened to Walker Lake and informed the chief man there of the outrage, asking him to send a band of braves to punish the men at the station. But the sub-chief at Walker Lake would send no men.

The wronged Indian then went to Old Winnemucca, who said he would send no men, that he wanted no trouble with the whites. His advice was that the whites be informed of the outrage, and requested to punish the men in their own way, in accordance with their laws.

Not satisfied with this, the Bannock went to young Winnemucca, the war chief. Here he was given the same advice that he had already received from the old chief. Thirsting for vengeance, the man then hastened to his own country and his own chief.