Frank Finkel: The Great Liar of the Little Bighorn?

 

      In 1920, sixty six year old Frank Finkel was a moderately wealthy farmer in Dayton, Washington, living a quiet life with his wife and children.  This changed in April 1920 when Finkel got into a public (perhaps beer enhanced) argument with one of his cronies who made some ill-chosen comments about George Armstrong Custer being ambushed by Indians.

 

      “You don’t know what you are talking about,” roared Finkel.

  

      “What makes you such an authority,” asked the neighbor.

 

       “I was there,” retorted Finkel.

    

     Was Finkel just an obnoxious know-it-all shooting off his mouth, a man making a grab for “stolen glory”, or the sole survivor of Custer’s Last Fight?  Within a week Finkel was telling his story at a Kiwanis Club meeting and the press was there.  A breathless article stated that Finkel:

“GAVE TO THE CLUB THE ACCOUNT OF HIS THRILLING ESCAPE AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT PREVENTED THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIS SURVIVAL FROM REACHING THE GOVERNMENT AT THE TIME.

CONGRESSMAN JOHN W. SUMMERS OF WALLA WALLA WAS A GUEST AT THE LUNCHEON AND HE WILL MAKE AN EFFORT TO GET GOVERNMENT RECOGNITION OF MR. FINKLE’S STORY.”

     Finkel claimed that, early in the battle, both he and his horse were shot, and the horse bolted. Days after the disaster, Finkel shot his dying horse in the head. Finkel wandered on and then discovered a shack in the middle of the uncharted territory. A man called Bill doctored him back to health. When Finkel returned to civilization he discovered that his own name appeared in the Bismarck Tribune as among the dead.  He said he reported to an Army officer to request a discharge, but gave up on the matter when the officer required him to provide two witnesses to vouch for his identity.  Now, officially dead, Finkel never returned to the Army.

     Historians who support Finkel's claim argue that several details in his account could only be known by someone who was at the Little Bighorn and that Frank Finkel was actually George August Finckle, a sergeant in Tom Custer's Company C.  Historians in the pro-Frank Finkel camp, such as John Koster, author of the book Custer Survivor, argue that George August Finckle was erroneously reported as killed in action.

     Maybe, but there seems to be a great deal of evidence running against Frank Finkel’s story.  Frank Finkel himself was adamant that he was a private and occasionally an acting corporal, but never a sergeant.  Did he perhaps forget a false name under which he enlisted? Those who dispute Finkel's claim argue that army records at the time do not indicate the existence of a Frank Finkel and that the fate of all the people who have been suggested as possible false names for Finkel are known.

     What about Frank Finkel’s encyclopedic knowledge of the battle and the local terrain?  By 1920 a great deal had been written about the battle, including a lengthy account written in 1892 for The Century Magazine by Lt. Edward Godfrey, who had survived the fight at Reno Hill. In 1892, Lieutenant Godfrey also told of finding a dead 7th Cavalry horse, at the place Frank Finkel claimed he had shot his wounded horse.  By 1912, there had even been a movie made about the battle called Custer’s Last Fight, which Frank Finkel and his wife saw at the Keylor Grand Theater in Walla Walla, Washington.

     What additional evidence is there that Frank Finkel was not George August Finckle, the sergeant in Tom Custer's Company C?  The sergeant’s body was identified, but is it possible that the identification was an error?  Although the bodies of the cavalrymen were bloated and badly mutilated, sergeant Finckle’s body was identified by three people who knew him, Sgt. Samuel Alcott, Sgt. Daniel Kanipe, and Lt. Edward Godfrey.  Sergeant George August Finckle was also the tallest enlisted man in the 7th Cavalry and one of the heaviest, making his identification that much easier.  Further research has demonstrated the sergeant’s handwriting was totally different from that of Frank Finkel.

     Frank Finkel died in 1930 at the age of seventy six, never having tried to profit from his lone survivor story.  We can only guess at his motives for telling the story.  Perhaps he had just become obsessed with the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined

Custer’s Last Stand: Were There Really Survivors?

 

     On June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out.  Over the course of the next seventy years, however, more than 120 men would come forward claiming to be the sole survivor of Custer’s Last Stand. 

     Custer’s widow received dozens of letters detailing the horrors of the battle and the writer’s lucky escape.  There were basically three types of stories: (1) the survivor disguised himself as an Indian, (2) the survivor hid inside a scooped out horse, (3) the survivor was saved by an Indian maiden who instantly fell in love with him.   Some of these so-called survivors, such as “Arizona Bill” Gardner became minor celebrities.

     Not everyone who rode out with Custer’s five companies died of course, simply because they never made it to the final fight.  Sergeant Daniel Kanipe was dispatched by Custer to hurry up the pack train, and trumpeter Giovanni Martini was sent with orders for Captain Benteen to “Come quick”.  There were others.  Privates Peter Thompson, James Watson, John Fitzgerald and John Brennan, claiming problems with their horses, could not keep up with Custer and finally limped back to Reno’s position.

     The Crow scouts were not in the fight.  Custer sent his Crow scouts away about an hour before the final battle.  The scout Curly was the first to report Custer’s annihilation. Curly did not claim he fought in the battle, but only that he witnessed it from a distance.  When accounts of “Custer's Last Stand” began to circulate in the press, however, legends grew that Curly had actively participated in the battle, but had managed to escape. 

     Historian, Albert Winkler, asserts that Private Gustave Korn was a genuine survivor of the battle: Several contemporary accounts note that Korn's wounded horse bolted in the early stages of the battle, while he was serving with  ' I '  company.  Winkler speculates that the horse took Korn on a mad ride through the Indian village, back toward Reno’s original position, and up the bluffs to safety, before dropping dead from loss of blood.  However improbable this may seem, Korn did end up joining Reno's companies making their stand on Reno Hill.  The Bismarck Tribune printed the first known newspaper account of Korn's story in 1884.

     There were other stories of bolting horses taking men away from the scene of battle.  Corporal John Foley of C Company was chased for miles by three Indians armed only with bows. The pursuers were out of arrows when Foley panicked and shot himself in the head.  Others might have initially gotten away, only to be ridden down and killed.  Loyal Crow Indians found six skeletons with 7th Cavalry equipment years later, far from the battlefield.

     The most controversial survivor claimant is Frank Finkel.   The story goes like this:  Finkel claimed that, early in the battle, both he and his horse were shot, and the horse bolted. Days after the disaster, Finkel shot his dying horse in the head. Finkel wandered on and then discovered a shack in the middle of the uncharted territory. A man called Bill doctored him back to health. When Finkel returned to civilization he discovered that his own name appeared in the Bismarck Tribune as among the dead.  Now, officially dead, he never returned to the Army.

Historians who support Finkel's claim argue that several details in his account could only be known by someone who was at the Little Bighorn.  Those who dispute Finkel's claim argue that records at the time do not indicate the existence of a Frank Finkel and that the fate of all the people who have been suggested as possible false names for Finkel are known.  This controversy, like many others inspired by the Battle of the Little Bighorn, rages on.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined

George Custer and the Death of Lieutenant Sturgis

 

On June 16, 1875, James “Jack” Sturgis graduated from West Point and was appointed a 2nd Lt, in the 7th Cavalry.  Jack Sturgis, at twenty-two, was the youngest officer in the regiment.  He was also the son of the 7^th cavalry’s commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Sturgis. 

Colonel Sturgis and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer had a sometimes-prickly relationship.  Colonel Sturgis found himself almost always on detached duty leaving Custer in command of the troops in the field most of the time.  Sturgis suspected that this was the preference of Custer’s mentor Lt. General Philip Sheridan and often felt slighted.

Lt. Jack Sturgis would have had little time to get to know Custer.  He arrived at his duty station at Fort Abraham Lincoln in October 1875.  In March 1876 Custer went East to testifying before Congress.  Custer would not return until May 1876 in time to lead the troops in the field in the campaign against the Sioux.

On June 25, 1876, on the day of Custer’s last fight, Lt. Sturgis was with Company E, one of the five companies under Custer’s direct command that day, all of which were destroyed.  According to archaeological evidence and Native American accounts, it appears that Company E conducted a disciplined retreat toward Last Stand Hill until overwhelmed. 

Jack Sturgis’s body was never officially identified.  His blood-soaked underwear was picked up by General Terry’s troops across the river in the remnants of a Lakota camp. Several decapitated corpses were found near the river, and one soldier later claimed he recognized Sturgis’s scorched head along with several others in a Lakota fire pit.

It is believed that the unidentified remains of Jack Sturgis were buried in a mass grave with the enlisted soldiers.  In 1877 his mother, Jerusha Sturgis, insisted on seeing the spot where her son died. A marker was placed in the vicinity of Last Stand Hill in deference to his visiting mother. A photograph in the U/S. Signal Corps archives shows a heap of stones beside a crudely labeled board.  This fictitious grave was dismantled after the grief-stricken woman’s departure.

Colonel Samuel Sturgis never forgave Custer for the death of his son and became one of Custer’s most vocal critics.  Sturgis wrote that Custer, “was a brave man, but also a very selfish man.  He was insanely ambitious of glory.”

He wrote that Custer was “tyrannical and had no regard for the soldiers under him.”  Sturgis accused Custer of making his attack, “recklessly, earlier by thirty-six hours than he should have done, and with men tired out from forced marches.”   Pro-Custer editors rushed to Custer’s defense, which prompted a further stinging attack by Sturgis.

In 1877, plans were being made for a memorial statue to honor Custer. Colonel Sturgis wrote, “If a monument is to be erected to General Custer for God’s sake let them hide it in some dark valley, or veil it, or put it anywhere the bleeding hearts of the widows, orphans, fathers and mothers of the men so uselessly sacrificed to Custer’s ambition can never be wrung at the sight.”  The statue was eventually placed at West Point.

The watch of Jack Sturgis was restored to his parents in 1878, having been traded by Sioux who had escaped to Canada.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Doctor: Dr. Henry R. Porter

 

Three doctors were attached to the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

George Edwin Lord, commissioned as a first lieutenant, was the only commissioned medical officer.  The other two, Dr. James Madison DeWolf and Dr. Henry R. Porter, were civilian surgeons under contract with the army.  Dr. Lord accompanied Custer and the headquarters battalion and was killed along with all of the men under Custer’s direct command. 

Dr. DeWolf was killed during Reno's retreat from the timber to Reno Hill. He successfully crossed the ford before being shot from his horse and scalped in full view of Reno’s retreating men.

Dr. Henry R. Porter was attached to Reno’s command and successfully escaped from the timber to Reno Hill.  For two days Dr. Porter cared for some thirty wounded men, improvising a field hospital which was under constant fire.  The majority of these thirty men survived. Porter had laudanum to ease pain, and used a carbolic-acid solution to sterilize wounds

Porter’s accounts of the battle were published in the New York Herald, in 1876, and the in Bismarck Tribune in 1878.

In an interview given in 1900, Dr, Porter recounted: “As soon as we could, several of the officers and myself went over to where Custer had fought…. We found Custer's body stark naked, as white and clean as a baby's. He was shot in the head and breast. The body of Captain Tom Custer, General Custer's brother, was horribly mutilated. He was disemboweled, and his head had been crushed in by a blow from a stone hammer used by the Indians. The only arrow wound I found was in his head. He had the Sioux mark of death, which was a cut from the hip to the knee, reaching to the bone. His heart was not cut out, as has been reported…. I cut a lock of hair from the head of each officer as he lay and gave it to their families on my return home…. After burying the dead, we took the wounded on litters ten or twelve miles to the (the steamer Far West), and I was detailed to go down to Fort Lincoln with them.” 

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Messenger: Battle of the Little Bighorn

 

Giovanni Martini was born in the winter of 1851-52 in southern Italy and abandoned at an orphanage on January 28, 1852.  He immigrated to the United States in 1873, working as a laborer in New York City.  One year later he enlisted in the United States Army under the name John Martin.

By 1876 Martini was attached to the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer.  On the morning of June 25, 1876, Martini was temporarily assigned to serve as one of Custer's three bugler-orderlies. On that day at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out.  Martini survived.  General Alfred Terry later said to him, “Well, you are a lucky man.”

As the attack unfolded and Custer first viewed the enormous size of the village he gave his orderly, Martini, a verbal message for Captain Benteen to bring his battalion forward with the pack train containing the reserve ammunition as quickly as possible. Adjutant Cooke stopped Martini and scribbled a written message to reinforce Custer's order to Benteen.  Cooke apparently felt Martini, who had a thick Italian accent, needed a written message to clarify Custer's order. Cooke's scribbled message read:

“Benteen, Come on.  Big village. Be quick. Bring packs.  P.S. Bring packs.”

Martini started back on the trail in search of Captain Benteen.  He met Boston Custer riding to join the command. Martini was later fired on by Indians who wounded his horse in the hip. 

Martini rode on and met Benteen.  According to Martini, Benteen asked: "Where is General Custer?" Martini said: "About 3 miles from here." Benteen said, "Is Custer being attacked or not?" and Martini said: "Yes, he is being attacked" and said no more. Benteen was later to testify that Martini told him that the Indians were skedaddling.  Martini told later chroniclers that he did not tell Benteen ... that the Indians were skedaddling.  Some say that Benteen prevaricated after the battle, others say that remembering many years after the battle an old and feeble Martini just got it wrong.  Yet, another mystery of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Martini and the remaining Seventh Cavalry companies not riding with Custer defended Reno Hill for 36 hours until rescued by General Terry’s column.

After the battle, Martini remained in the army, transferring to the artillery.  He served in the Spanish American War and retired as a sergeant on January 4, 1904.  He died on December 24, 1922 in New York City.  He married in 1879.  His eldest son was named George, in honor of George Armstrong Custer.

Custer’s final message to Captain Benteen to “Come quick, bring packs”, written down by Adjutant Cooke went missing for decades. 

 

In the 1920’s one of Custer’s early biographers, William Graham tried to locate the missing document, only to be told by Benteen’s son that all his father's papers had been destroyed when their house had burned down many years before.  This turned out to by incorrect. 

 

Captain Benteen had given the famous message to an army officer friend, Captain Price. The message finally came to rest in the hands of a New Jersey collector for fifty years, before being put up for auction.  By a happy circumstance Colonel Charles Francis Bates learned of the existence of the message and secured it for the museum at West Point, where it resides today.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer’s Last Stand and the Fetterman Fight

 

On June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out.

This was not the first time that the U.S. military had suffered a calamitous defeat at the hands of the Plains Indians.  On December 21, 1866 Captain William J. Fetterman and eighty men under his command were similarly annihilated near Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.   There are some striking similarities between the two battles.

In June 1866, Colonel Henry B.  Carrington was ordered to build several forts along the Bozeman Trail to protect emigrants on their way to the Pacific coast. 

He established three forts along the trail, including his headquarters at Fort Phil Kearny, near present-day Buffalo, Wyoming some 90 miles south the Little Bighorn battlefield.

During the next few months, while Fort Phil Kearny was being built, Carrington suffered 50 attacks from Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors, losing more than 20 dead.

Although Carrington had served in the Civil War, providing valuable service in both intelligence and recruiting, he had never seen battle.  He went about fulfilling his mission cautiously.  Too cautiously in the view of some of his junior officers who urged him to take the offensive. 

Grumbling increased after November 3, when 63 men, including infantry Captain William Fetterman arrived to reinforce the fort.  Although he had no experience fighting Indians, Fetterman criticized Carrington's timidity and expressed contempt for the Indian foes. He boasted, "Give me 80 men and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.”  This comment is strangely reminiscent of George Armstrong Custer’s boast, “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”

Fetterman was a combat veteran of the Civil War and had been promoted to Brevet Lt-Colonel by the end of the war.  Many Civil War officers, including Custer, did not seem to realize that incurring high casualties was not an indication of good tactics. Frontal assaults and dashing charges were commonplace.

 The Plains Indians, on the other hand, rarely charged a stout defense. They hit the rear and flanks, probing for weaknesses and creating disorganization and panic by using mobility. They avoided heavy casualties whenever possible.

By December 1866, Colonel Carrington had been pressured into being more aggressive, despite the inadequacy of his troops.  Carrington’s guide, the famed Mountain Man Jim Bridger summed up the situation, "These soldiers don't know anything about fighting Indians." 

 Not much had changed by 1876 when Custer engaged the enemy at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The frontier army was still small, ill-trained and badly equipped by a miserly Congress. The quality of the troops was appalling. Historian James Donovan writes,  “Training in marksmanship, horsemanship, skirmishing, any practical lessons that Indian fighting might actually involve, was virtually nonexistent.  Formal military training of recruits consisted mostly of elementary drill aimed at making a grand appearance at dress parade.”

 On December 20,1866 Colonel Carrington turned down Captain Fetterman’s proposal to lead 50 men in a raid on a Lakota village on the Tongue River, about 50 miles away.  Not unlike Custer, Fetterman had overlooked the need for intelligence about an enemy he underestimated.  In fact, there were some 1,000 warriors about 10 miles north of Fort Phil Kearny, waiting to lure the army away from the cannons and stout defenses of the fort.

On December 21, 1866, a group of Indians, including Crazy Horse, a later hero of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, were chosen to lure the soldiers to their destruction.  Just as at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, a Lakota Sioux spiritual leader prophesied victory. The Lakota saw this as the good medicine that won the battle.

At about 10 am, on December 21, 1866, Colonel Carrington sent a party to gather timber for the construction of the fort.  Within an hour the timber party was under attack. Carrington ordered a relief party composed of 49 infantry and 27 cavalry troopers, and a few hangers on, to go to the rescue of the timber party.  Claiming seniority as a brevet lieutenant colonel, Fetterman asked for command of the relief party. Lieutenant George W. Grummond, a known critic of Carrington, led the cavalry.

 

Carrington’s orders were clear. "Under no circumstances" was the relief party to "pursue over the ridge that is Lodge Trail Ridge".  This differs significantly from the orders Custer received from his commander Brigadier General Alfred Terry which gave Custer great discretion in his actions.

 Unlike Custer, Captain Fetterman certainly disobeyed his orders.  In violation of his orders Fetterman followed Crazy Horse and the other Indian decoys over the Ridge.  Even worse, the command divided, just as Custer’s was to do at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  The cavalry under the command of Lt. George Grummond, left Fetterman and the infantry some one mile behind as they hotly pursued the decoys.

 At this point the Indians sprang the trap.  The Indians fought mostly with bows and arrows, spears, and war clubs. The Indians at the Little Bighorn were much better armed. In hand-to-hand fighting, Fetterman and 49 of his men were killed.

 Captain Fetterman and another officer are alleged to have committed suicide by shooting each other in the head to avoid capture.  This story parallels the allegation that Custer committed suicide to avoid capture.

 The cavalry fared no better than the infantry.  Lt. Grummond decapitated one warrior with his saber before being overwhelmed.  It took the Indians about twenty minutes to kill the infantry and another twenty minutes to annihilate the cavalry. (

 As at the Little Bighorn, the bodies of the slain soldiers were horribly mutilated after the battle.  There was one exception, bugler Adolph Metzger, probably the last trooper standing, who when all else failed, used his instrument as a club until it was battered shapeless.  The Indians covered Metzger’s unmutilated corpse with a buffalo hide in tribute to his bravery.

 Just as at the Little Bighorn, recriminations flew after the battle.  Initially, Colonel Carrington was blamed for the debacle, but he quickly changed the narrative, labelling Fetterman , an “overzealous” officer, in short an overly ambitious  “glory hound” who did not follow orders, the same allegations that would be made against Custer ten years later.

 Interestingly, although he was originally buried near Fort Phil Kearny, Captain Fetterman now rests at the Custer National Cemetery in Montana.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Custer and the Gatling Guns

 

     Richard Jordan Gatling invented the Gatling gun in 1861.  The gun fired two hundred rounds a minute and had a range of better than one mile.  The weapons weighed about 225 pounds each, while the carriage and limber together weighed about 405 pounds.  The gun was not accepted by the American Army until 1866, a year after the Civil War, although twelve guns were personally purchased by enterprising Union officers and used during the siege of Petersburg.

     Three Model 1866 .50-caliber, six-barreled Gatling guns accompanied General Alfred Terry’s column in the 1876 campaign against the Sioux.  On June 10 General Terry dispatched Major Marcus Reno and six companies of the 7th Cavalry to determine if there were any Indians on the Powder or Tongue rivers. A Gatling gun and crew accompanied Reno’s column.

     Reno’s column passed over “very rough ground,” which required manhandling the Gatling gun across steep ravines.  On June 15, the gun overturned, injuring three men. The “almost impassable” terrain later forced Reno to temporarily abandon the gun on a high hill. Completing his mission, Reno reported to General Terry that he had discovered a large Indian trail that appeared to lead to the Little Bighorn.

     The intelligence gathered by Major Reno, influenced Terry’s decision to send Custer “in pursuit” on June 22.   “I offered Custer a battery of Gatling guns,” Terry later explained, “but he declined it, saying that it might embarrass him, and that he was strong enough without it.”

     Captain Edward Godfrey later testified, “Custer had declined the offer of the Gatling guns, for the reason that they might hamper our movements at a critical moment, and because of the difficult nature of the country.”

     Terry transferred the Gatling guns to Gibbon’s column as it marched west along the Yellowstone River to coordinate with the expected sweep of the 7th Cavalry from the south and east.  Terry accompanied Gibbon’s column.  A steep hill near the Bighorn River required lowering the guns by lariats. When Terry decided to push on, one officer recorded that “the battery especially had great difficulty keeping up.” Lost at least once in the dark, the guns were abandoned until morning.

     The experience of the Little Bighorn campaign confirmed doubts about the mobility and, therefore, effectiveness of the Gatling gun in Indian warfare.  In a report on August 20, 1878, Captain James W. Reilly, chief ordnance officer of the Military Division of the Missouri, stated: “Gatling guns are only an encumbrance. Indian warfare is entirely of skirmishers, to which the Gatling gun is not adapted. It possesses neither [the ability] to move rapidly nor the power and range of artillery.”

     Ironically, had Custer taken Gatling guns with him, his command would probably not have been wiped-out.  Not because of the additional firepower they would have provided, but because his march would have been so slowed that his attack would have occurred in coordination with the other units converging on the Sioux.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

The Battle of Adobe Walls vs. the Battle of the Little Bighorn

 Kit Carson

In 1864, at the height of the American Civil War, U.S. troops battled Native American warriors in the Texas panhandle.

The battle came about when General James Carleton, commander of the military District of New Mexico, decided to punish the plains tribes of the Kiowa and Comanche, who were attacking wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail.

Carleton selected Colonel Kit Carson a veteran Indian fighter to lead the expeditionary force. On November 10, 1864, Carson started out with 260 cavalry, 75 infantry and 72 Indian scouts plus two mountain howitzers. The mountain howitzer was designed to be lightweight and highly portable. Because of this, and its ease of disassembly, it did not require roads for transportation making it well suited to Indian fighting and mountain warfare.

The expedition proceeded down the Canadian River into the Texas Panhandle looking for hostiles.

Carson decided to march toward Adobe Walls, the ruins of an abandoned adobe trading post and saloon, located on the north side of the Canadian River. 

On November 24 the Indian scouts reported they had found the trail of a large Indian village. Carson left his infantry behind to guard his supply train and ordered a night march of cavalry and artillery.

Approximately two hours after daybreak on November 25, Carson's cavalry found and attacked a Kiowa village of 176 lodges. The chief Dohäsan and his people fled, spreading the alarm to nearby Comanche villages. 

Carson soon discovered that there were numerous villages in the area, including a large Comanche village. Carson saw large numbers of angry Indians pouring out like bees, ready to do battle.

Marching forward to Adobe Walls, four miles from the Kiowa village, Carson dug in. Carson’s command of 330 was now besieged by some 3,000 Indians.  It was only the supporting fire of the howitzers that allowed Carson to repel the repeated attacks over a period of eight hours.

As night closed in, Carson ordered a retreat. The soldiers found their supply train intact later that night. Some of his officers wished to renew the battle the next day but Carson, consulting only with his Indian scouts, ordered a retreat to New Mexico.

The United States Army declared the First Battle of Adobe Walls a victory. The Kiowa remembered it as the time when the Kiowa repelled Kit Carson. The battle left the Comanche and Kiowa unchallenged in their control of the Texas Panhandle for eight years. The First Battle at Adobe Walls would be the last time the Comanche and Kiowa forced American troops to retreat from a battlefield

Military experts believe that Carson's decision to retreat was wise and that he deserves credit for a good defense. As it was, Carson suffered six dead and 25 wounded.

He was outnumbered, and only his clever defensive tactics prevented his force from being overrun and killed as George Armstrong Custer and some 220 men under his immediate command were on June 25, 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 

The Virginia Gunpowder Plot of 1775

 

In May 1775, Royal Navy sailors, under the direction of the Governor, Lord Dunmore, arrived in Williamsburg with the intention of removing all of the gunpowder from the public magazine and transporting it to the British ship HMS Magdalen. Townspeople discovered what was happening and raised an alarm.  An incensed crowd gathered and faced the governor and his servants who were now armed with muskets.  Town officers demanded the return of the powder, claiming it was the property of the colony to which the royal governor had no right. Lord Dunmore said that he had learned of a planned slave uprising and was removing the powder for reasons of public safety. The Speaker of the House of Burgesses, Peyton Randolph calmed the situation, at least for the moment. 

Suspicions of the governor’s motives persisted.  On April 22, after a second angry crowd, fully capable of storming the Governor’s palace, was convinced to disperse by local leaders, Lord Dunmore angrily declared that if attacked he would, “…declare freedom to the slaves, and reduce the city of Williamsburg to ashes.” 

By April 29, militia men all over Virginia had learned about the battles in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord on April 19.  Hundreds of men mustered at Fredericksburg and decided to send a messenger to Williamsburg before marching on the capital.  Once again, Peyton Randolph sought to prevent violence and urged restraint.  The militiamen at Fredericksburg voted not to march.  But there were others who were more hot-headed.  On May 2, the Hanover County militia, led by Patrick Henry, voted to march on Williamsburg.  On May 3, Patrick Henry and the militia were fifteen miles from Williamsburg.  Lord Dunmore and his family departed for the governor’s hunting lodge, Porto Bello, and from there to HMS Fowey at anchor in the York River.

Moderates were still looking for ways to ease tensions.  Carter Braxton, a moderate member of the House of Burgesses came up with a solution.  Braxton negotiated a settlement with royal officials such that the colony would receive payment for the gunpowder.  On May 4, Patrick Henry received a full bill of exchange, signed by an intermediary (a wealthy planter), as payment for the powder.  A triumphant Patrick Henry then set off for Philadelphia to take his place as a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he presented the payment to the other Virginia delegates at the Congress.

On May 6, Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation charging that the money had been extorted and that “a certain Patrick Henry...and a number of deluded followers who had organized an independent company and put themselves in a posture of war be arrested as traitors.” 

Murder in Colonial Virginia

amazon.com/author/camills

"Lynch Law" in the American Revolution

 

Particularly unlucky were those Loyalist who actively took up arms or plotted against the Patriot cause. They suffered all of the pent up rage that accompanies civil war. The houses of such Loyalists were burned and their property seized. 

A particularly glaring example occurred in southwest Virginia in 1780. A Patriot spy uncovered a Loyalist plot to sabotage Virginia’s all important lead and saltpeter mines in the area and then march on Charlottesville to free British prisoners of war. Governor Thomas Jefferson ordered Judge Charles Lynch to arrest the ringleaders and send the guilty to Richmond for trial. Lynch arrested seventy five suspected Loyalists and brought them to his plantation called Green Level, some twenty five miles south of present day Lynchburg. Judge Lynch decided to administer his own version of summary frontier justice. A few of the accused were acquitted but many others were imprisoned for terms ranging from one to five years. The ringleaders were tied by their thumbs to the branches of a black walnut tree and given thirty-nine lashes with a cat o’nine tails whip. If the convicted Loyalist begged for mercy with the cry “Liberty forever,” he was cut down and forcibly impressed into American military service. In 1782 the Virginia General Assembly immunized Lynch from legal action that might have arisen because of his extra-legal methods of dealing with Loyalists. The General Assembly found that the measures taken by Judge Lynch were warranted given the emergency situation.

Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

The Virginia Navy in the American Revolution

 

Late in 1775, Colonel Patrick Henry, on his own initiative, commissioned James Barron to arm a vessel and pursue two suspicious ships.  In December, Virginia’s Committee of Safety was authorized to arm as many vessels as necessary to protect Virginia’s rivers.  The Committee of Safety immediately purchased five vessels including two small boats, a somewhat larger schooner and two large brigs.  Virginia also bought vessels to serve as state-owned traders sent on voyages to the West Indies and Europe to procure gunpowder and other war materiel.

Throughout the war, vessels were bought and built.  Particularly popular were row galleys, shallow draft vessels that could maneuver using both oars and sails.  These vessels were particularly well suited to coastal and river defense.

Manning the vessels proved difficult because the Navy had to compete with privateers for manpower. The Virginia Navy officially commissioned seventy-seven vessels during the war, while a hundred Virginia vessels sailed as privateers, attacking enemy shipping for personal profit. The Navy’s view on prize distribution became more liberal as the war progressed and the manpower crisis grew worse.  The percentage of a captured vessel’s value going to the crew that took the prize rose from one third for unarmed merchantman and one half for an armed vessel to one half for a merchantman and the entire value for a naval vessel.  By October 1780, Virginia promised crews the full value of any vessels they captured.

Nevertheless, the Virginia Navy always had more vessels than it could adequately crew. The Navy could never compete with privateers who from the first had the right to keep a hundred percent of the value of the prize and could devote their full energies to taking prizes. The initially stingy Navy was furthered hobbled by non-income producing official tasks such as convoy duty, transporting troops, and carrying messages, all tasks not likely to result in capturing rich prizes.

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