Figure 2.—Attack on General Marcy's train near Pawnee Fort, Kansas, September 23, 1867. The train was escorted by Company K, 5th U.S. Infantry, Brevet Major D. H. Brotherton commanding. (USNM 384185; Smithsonian photo 38986-A.)
In 1946 the heirs of Lt. Col. David H. Brotherton, U.S. Army, an Indian-fighting officer of many years experience on the frontier, donated to the United States National Museum a collection[4] comprising a number of Sioux Indian specimens, including a Model 1866 Winchester carbine said to have been surrendered in 1881 to Colonel Brotherton by the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, and ten water colors by a German-born private soldier, Hermann Stieffel of Company K, 5th U.S. Infantry. Nine of these paintings (the tenth being a view of Rattenberg in the Tyrol Alps) are photographically reproduced herein. They constitute an unusually graphic and colorful, if somewhat unartistic, series of documentaries on the West of the post-Civil-War Indian fighting period.
It can be surmised that Brotherton obtained the paintings from Stieffel, for from 1861 to 1879 he commanded the infantry company in which the latter spent the entire 24 years of his Army career. Brotherton's career itself is an interesting sidelight on the West of the period and an excellent if somewhat sad commentary on the promotion system in the Army during a period when the development of the West was so heavily dependent on the Army's curbing Indian depredations.
Brotherton was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy with the class of 1854 along with several officers who later distinguished themselves in the Confederate States Army, including George Washington Custis Lee, son of Robert E. Lee, John Pegram, J. E. B. Stuart, Stephen D. Lee, and William Dorsey Pender.[5] Assigned to the 5th Infantry, Brotherton by 1861 had risen to the rank of captain and had acquired considerable experience against the Comanches and Apaches in the Southwest, the Seminoles in Florida, and the Mormons in Utah. Electing to remain with his regiment at the outbreak of the Civil War rather than resign and enter a volunteer or militia unit where he easily might have risen to general rank as did so many of his contemporaries, he remained a captain in the Army until 1879 when a vacancy occurred and he was promoted to major. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1883 after 29 years of service, but only at the expense of transferring from his old regiment to the 7th Infantry, where there was a vacancy at that rank. He retired for disability in 1885 after 30 years of almost constant service in the field.
We know little of Stieffel the man. He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1826, and became a printer by trade, indicating a fair amount of education. He emigrated to this country at an unknown date and in December 1857 at New York City enlisted in the Army as a private of infantry. He was 31 years old at the time, and was described as being five feet five and one-half inches tall with blue eyes, sandy hair, and a fair complexion.[6] He remained a private for the entire time of his military service. After recruit training at a general depot, he was assigned to Company K, 5th Infantry, joining that unit late in August 1858 at Camp Floyd (later Fort Crittenden), Utah Territory, where the regiment was an element of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston's "Army of Utah" sent westward to police the recalcitrant Mormons.[7]
Stieffel's record shows nothing of note until December 1859 when he was court-martialed and fined.[8] This court-martial seemed to set the pace for him. Although the precise charge on which he was tried is not stated, in view of his later record it can be surmised that it was for drunkenness—a very common offense in the frontier army—for in October 1861 Stieffel owed a sutler $27.95, a heavy debt for a day when a private's net pay was less than $11.00 a month.[9] The debt remained unpaid through 1862 and even increasing an additional $15.00. During this period Stieffel also was in confinement on a number of occasions for crimes or misdemeanors unspecified.[10]
In 1860 the 5th Infantry was transferred from Utah southward to the Department of New Mexico. It was here in 1862 that Stieffel saw his first combat in Col. E. R. S. Canby's[11] Union force, which frustrated the wild Confederate attempt under Brig. Gen. H. H. Sibley to invade the present states of New Mexico and Arizona and conquer California.[12] Captain Brotherton, Private Stieffel, and the remainder of Company K fought in the sharp action at Valverde, New Mexico, on February 21, 1862, and evidently with some distinction as Brotherton was breveted major for gallantry as a result of his unit's performance.[13] Unfortunately for posterity, Stieffel did not record his impressions of this little-known sideshow of the Civil War.
Figure 3.—Satanta addressing the peace commissioners at Council Grove, Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. (USNM 384183; Smithsonian photo 38298.)