It was in this valorous dash that Thornburgh met his fate, thirteen of his bold followers also being killed, the gallant leader falling within four hundred yards of the wagons. The remainder of the command, then in retreat for the train corral, followed the path led by Thornburgh and his men. As Captain Payne's company was about to start, or had started, his saddle-girth broke and he got a fearful fall. One of his men dismounted and assisted him on his horse, the captain's horse having run away. F Company, Fifth, followed by the captain, he being badly bruised, reached the wagon-train to find it being packed, and Lieutenant Paddock wounded, and fighting the Indians. Lieutenants Lawson and Cherry fell back slowly with their companies dismounted and fighting all the way, every man doing his duty.
The stubborn resistance of Lieutenant Cherry in covering the retreat gave time for the troops at the train to form temporary breastworks of men's bundles, flour, sacks of corn, wagons, and dead horses. When the last detachment had reached the Paddock corral the soldiers fought intrenched, horses being shot down rapidly and the foe settling into position on all the high points about them. Captain Payne, who by Thornburgh's death came into command, drew up eight of the wagons and ranged them as a sort of a breastwork along the northern and eastern sides of an oval, at the same time cutting transverse trenches on the western and southern points of the oval, along the line of which the men posted themselves. Inside the oval eight more wagons were drawn up for the purpose of corralling the animals, and there was also a pit provided for sheltering the wounded. Behind the pits ran a path to the nearest bend of Milk River, which was used for obtaining water. The command held its position until 8:30 o'clock that night, when the Indians withdrew.
In the engagement there were twelve soldiers killed and forty-two wounded. Every officer in the command was shot with the exception of Lieutenant Cherry, of the Fifth Cavalry. The Indians killed from one hundred and fifty to two hundred mules belonging to the government. Surgeon Grimes was wounded but was able for duty. The troops had about six days' supplies.[57]
One of the greatest chiefs of the Ute Nation was Ouray. His character was marked by its keen perception, and ideas of right and wrong, according to a strictly Christian code. He was bold, and an uncompromising protector of the rights of his tribe, and equally as earnest in his endeavours to impress upon the minds of the Indians that the whites were their friends. He was renowned for his wisdom rather than for his bravery, which is the test of greatness among savages. He was brave, too, but that did not, in his own conception, complete the qualities which a leader should possess. His tribe during the period of his chieftainship had five battles with the Arapahoes and several with the Sioux and Cheyennes. It was a bloody war between the Indians of the plains and the mountains, between highlanders and lowlanders, and in these struggles Ouray became a renowned warrior.
During some of these battles with the Arapahoes, Ouray led as many as seven hundred warriors into the field. At one time he had but thirty braves with him, while the enemy numbered nearly eight hundred. The Arapahoes came upon the Utes one morning just about daylight, surprising them completely. Ouray rallied his small force, however, formed them into a square, and after retreating a short distance, fighting continuously for fourteen hours, succeeded in repulsing his foes.
The story of his life is an interesting one. He says that he was born in Taos Valley in New Mexico, near the Pueblo village of that name, in 1839. The band to which he belonged spent a great deal of its time in the Taos Valley, San Luis Park, and along the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In that region they were accustomed to meet the Apaches, who came from the south. It was a common thing for a tribe of Indians to marry out of their own. Ouray's father married an Apache woman, hence the epithet so often sneeringly applied to the chief, by those who did not like him, of “He's an Apache pappoose.”
His band became so accustomed to association with the Mexicans that some of them began to adopt the customs of that people, and when Ouray's father and mother decided to wed, they were married in the little adobe church on a hill in the village at the Red River Crossing. A priest performed the ceremony according to the Catholic ritual. When Ouray was born, he was taken to the same building and baptized into the Catholic faith.[58]
Ouray was not head chief at first; but his influence increased so fast with the other bands of the tribe, that, in the year of President Lincoln's death, he was declared head chief of the whole Ute Nation.
Ouray resided in a neatly built adobe house erected for him by the government; it was nicely carpeted and furnished in modern style. He owned a farm of three hundred acres, a real garden spot. Of these he cultivated a hundred, owned a large number of horses, cattle, and sheep, and rode in a carriage presented to him by Governor McCook of Colorado. He hired labourers from among the Mexicans and Indians. He was very much attached to the white man's manner of living, and received from the government a thousand dollars a year annuity. From first to last, Ouray had been friendly to the whites, and always an advocate of peace. The moment he heard of the attack on Thornburgh's command, he sent runners to the spot and ordered the Indians to cease at once; so powerful was he that hostilities ended immediately.
The Pi-Utes have a rather poetical conceit in accounting for the movements of the celestial bodies. Their theory is that the sun rules the heavens. He is a big chief; the moon is his squaw, and the stars are his children. The sun devours his children whenever he is able to catch them. They are constantly afraid of him as he is passing through the sky. He gets up very early in the morning; his children, the stars, fly out of sight, and go away into the blue; and they are not seen again until he goes to bed, which is deep down under the ground, in a great hole. When he goes to his hole, he creeps and crawls, and sleeps there all night. The hole is so little that he cannot turn around in it, so he is obliged, when he has had all the sleep he requires, to pass on through, and in the morning he is seen in the east again. When he comes out of his hole, he begins to hunt through the sky to catch and eat any of the stars he can find. All of the sun is not seen; his shape is like a snake or lizard. It is not his head that is seen, but his stomach, which is stuffed with stars he has devoured. His wife, the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband, to sleep also. She has great fear of him, and when he comes into the hole to sleep, she does not remain there long, if he be cross.