The Wild Frontier (51 page)

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Authors: William M. Osborn

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1857: The Assiniboine and Cree fought the Blackfeet and Sioux.
188

1857: Mdewakanton Sioux chief Little Crow led his warriors in battle against another division of Sioux, the Wahpekute.
189

1857: The Pimas had fought the Apache for generations.
190

1850s: The Maricopas and the Yumas fought the Mojaves and the Yumas.
191
The

Pimas and the Maricopas fought the Apache and the Yumas.
192
1860-64: During the Civil War, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw sided with the Confederacy. Their buildings were burned and their livestock taken by Kansas settlers “and their willing Indian helpers.”
193

1862: The Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoos, at the request of Union officers, invaded
the Wichita agency, which was being protected by the Tonkawa Indians.

The Tonka was were almost annihilated.
194
*
1864: Osage scouts helped the militia during the Sand Creek Massacre. After it was over, some of the scouts dangled Cheyenne scalps from their lances.
195

1865: The Kickapoos fought the Cherokee, the Creeks, and others.
196

1867: The Blackfeet defeated the Gros Ventres and the Crows.
197
1867-68: The Cheyenne did battle with their old enemies, the Kaw and the Osages.
198

1868: The Osages fought the Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes.
199

*
1868: The Osages scouted for the army, especially in leading Custer’s troops to Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village at Washita.
200
*
1869: General Eugene A. Carr led about 450 cavalry and 150 Pawnee scouts under Buffalo Bill against the Sioux and the Cheyenne. At the Battle of Summit Springs, 52 defending Cheyenne were killed.
201

The Pawnee were scouts not only at the Battle of Summit Springs, but also for other campaigns against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.
202
*
1869: The Shoshoni scouted for the army in campaigns against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute. They helped the army pursue Sioux chief Crazy Horse when he and his people were fleeing.
203
1860s: The Shawnee, the Delaware, and the Kickapoos fought the Tonkawas.
204
*
1870s: The Crows served as scouts for the army against the Sioux and the Nez Perce.
205

1871: Papago together with Mexicans and citizens of Tucson massacred Apaches.
206

*
1872: General Crook organized a number of mobile units to fight the Apache. Included were White Mountain Apache scouts, the only people who could track their fellow Apache.
207

1873: A Sioux war party intercepted a Pawnee hunting party. Pawnee chief Sky Chief and 149 other members of the tribe were killed.
208

1873: The Cheyenne under Tall Bull fought the Kaw.
209

1874: The Comanche fought the Tonkawas.
210

*
1876: A delegation of Cheyenne, Miniconjou, and Sans Arc chiefs came to talk peace with General Miles. The general’s Crow scouts attacked the peace party, killing 5 of them. Miles sent them the Crows’ ponies as an apology.
211

*
1876: At the Battle of the Rosebud, Crazy Horse and his Sioux and Cheyenne met the army of General George Crook. Crook had about 1,050 soldiers and approximately 266 Crow and Shoshoni scouts.
212
The Crow and Shoshoni scouts attacked the flanks of the Sioux.
213
The Crows helped track the Nez Perce, who were trying to flee to Canada.
214

*
1876: General Crook had 225 Shoshoni and 25 Ute scouts with him at the Battle of Slim Buttes when he attacked and destroyed the village of Sioux chief American Horse and killed the chief.
215

*
1877: When the Nez Perce were at war with the army, some of the warriors of Crazy Horse’s Sioux were recruited as army scouts and wore army uniforms.
216
The Sioux and Assiniboine fought for perhaps 100 or 200 years. The Sioux claimed they had taken more scalps from the Assiniboine than from any other tribe. It is not certain when their war began.
217

*
1877: General Howard had some Bannock scouts with him while fighting the Nez Perce. The Bannocks dug up Nez Perce dead to scalp and mutilate.
218

*
1877: At the Battle of Big Bear Paw, Colonel Nelson E. Miles had a number of Cheyenne warriors with him.
219
After that battle was over and while the defeated Nez Perce were trying to flee, some of them were killed by Assiniboine and by Hidatsa.
220

Before 1882: The Apache fought the Pueblos.
221

The literature refers to other intertribal wars, but the author has not found specific dates. Those fights include the following:

Chickasaw, Chocktaw, and Cherokee against the White Sticks.
222
Shoshoni against the Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Sioux.
223
Seneca against the Catawbas.
224

Chickasaw against the Muskohge, and the Shawano against the Muskohge.
225
Chickasaw against the Shawnee.
226

Blackfeet fought the Crows, Sioux, Shoshoni, Flatheads, and Kootenais.
227
Chippewa fought the Kickapoos.
228

Chippewa, Ottawas, Potawatomis, Sac, Fox, and Kickapoos defeated the Illinois.
229
Crows fought the Sioux and Blackfeet for horses, hunting grounds, and fame.
230
Navajo fought the Hopi.
231

Klamaths fought other northern California tribes.
232
Mojaves fought the Pimas and the Papagos.
233
Pequots and Narragansets attacked the Montauks.
234

Navajo and Apache fought the Pueblos for food, property, women, and slaves.
235

Pawnee fought Kiowa and Comanche.
236

Pequots fought Narragansets and Niantics for land.
237

Tonwankas fought Apache.
238

Caddo, Delaware, and Shawnee fought Tonwankas.
239
Pawnee and Blackfeet fought each other “time out of mind.”
240

  
APPENDIX B
  
Deaths Caused by Specific Indian Atrocities
Date
Number of deaths
*
Brief description of the atrocity
1511-12
3+

Dutch reported Indian eating wife and children

unknown
1

Tonkawas killed Comanche and made stew of him

unknown
1

Lipans cooked a Comanche

unknown
2+

New England Indians gnawed flesh from settlers

c.1625
1

Mohegan sachem ate Narraganset sachem

c.1630
1

Thumb of Father Jogues cut off

unknown
1

Indians made a hole in victim’s breast and sucked blood from it

1632
32

Delaware Indians massacred Dutch settlers

c.1637
6+

Indians in Massachusetts flayed settlers alive, cut off members and joints and broiled them, and ate flesh of others in their sight

1637
1

Indians roasted settler in Massachusetts to death

1637
2+

Indian tribes gave English the heads of Pequots

1638-84
4

During the Beaver Wars, Iroquois captured by Hurons and killed by torture. Iroquois chief Ononkwaya roasted, scalped, thrown into the fire, hands and feet amputated, and finally decapitated

1639
113

Hurons burned Iroquois to death

1643
80

Mohawk severed the heads of Wappinger Indians

1643
30

Mohawk tortured additional Wappingers to death for public amusement

1643
8+

Mohawk hacked babies to death, threw others in the water to drown, amputated hands and legs

1644
2

Susquehannock Indians tortured Maryland soldiers

1648
1

Iroquois hacked Father Daniel’s body apart and threw it in the fire

1655
2+

Armed Indians killed settlers in retaliation for killing of Indian pulling peaches off tree

1659
8

Esopus Indians burned Dutch soldiers alive

unknown
5

Cheyenne scalped workers; one survived

1675
8

Heads of settlers put on poles at King Philip’s village

unknown
1

Nipmucs captured a settler on a peace mission, be-headed him, and stuck his head on a pole in front of his horne

1675
4+

Massachusetts towns attacked by Indians; men and women settlers scalped, their skins flayed

1675
37

Captain Beers and his men were beheaded by Indians, who put their heads on poles

1675
12

Narraganset Indians murdered settlers at Lancaster, Massachusetts

1675
36

Indians killed settlers in dispute over an account

1676
1

Indians burned an Iroquois to death

1689
1

Indians in Maine cut off fingers and slashed chest of fur trader Major Richard Waldron

1690
60

French-Canadians and Indians attacked Schenectady, hacking men, women, and children to death

1692
100+

Abnakis and French massacred soldiers in Maine who had surrendered on condition of safe conduct

1697
1+

Abnakis smashed the baby of Hannah Duston against a tree

1703
49

Abnakis and Mohawk killed settlers in Connecticut

1721
4

Cherokee presented king of England with scalps

1729
1

Shawnee tortured by cutting off his thumbs, pulling out his nails, burning prisoner’s feet, legs, genitals, with red-hot gun barrels, stuck pine splinters into him and set them on fire, scalped him, and ran hot gun barrels up his rectum

c.1750
6+

Apache killed older women, took prisoners horne where women could shoot them with arrows and rifles, cut off arms and legs, scalped

1752
1

Indians ate Miami chief Memeskia

1754
3

Indians ate Captain Donahew and others

1754
17

Indians scalped Snider family, tomahawked and scalped Snider’s servant, scalped Adams family, raped Mrs. Adams, scalped a trader and ate him, scalped and disemboweled prisoners who had escaped, then burned them to death and buried another in a hole, scalped him, burned him to death, and cut off his head

1754
20+

Indians took 20 scalps

1755
75+

Mohawk brought scalps from Braddock’s defeat

1755
12

Prisoners burned to death by Mohawk

1755
1

Indian scalped Englishman

1755-59
95

Indians killed settlers, according to John M’Cullough memo

1756
1

An Indian woman who had fled to the settlers was stripped, tied to a post, and hot irons applied

1756
2

The Delaware tortured and killed Simon Girty’s stepfather and killed his mother

1757
3+

Indians put prisoner into kettle and forced others to eat him and compelled mothers to eat the flesh of their children

1757
2+

Indians scalped the dead and ate some of them

1757
3

Indians scalped Captain Spikeman, who was beheaded and his head put on a pole; another prisoner was stuck with pine needles, which were set afire; and a third had his intestines cut open and was forced to walk around a sapling until he died

1758
1+

Montcalm took Fort William Henry and promised soldiers safe conduct, but Indians killed or took prisoner as many as 1,500

1758
3

Delaware Indians killed Thomas Potter, then a small child who was scalped, then Samuel Hunter, who was also scalped, and Daniel M’Manimy, who was burned, then his scalp was put on a pole before his face and finally red-hot gun barrels and a bayonet were passed over his body

1758
c.267

Scottish soldiers beheaded and heads put on stakes

1758
2+

Shawnee burned settlers and put their burned heads, arms, and legs along shore of Ohio River

1763
2,000

Pontiac’s Rebellion resulted in many settler deaths

1763
8

Settlers murdered by Indians at Detroit

1763
12+

At Fort Michilimackinac, which was captured by Chippewa and Sac, a lieutenant was beheaded, the dead scalped and mangled, the dying tomahawked, some bodies ripped open and Indians drank their blood, 5 knifed to death by a Chippewa chief, and the fattest cooked and eaten

1763
1

Commander of the garrison at Venango tortured for 3 days by Iroquois, then roasted to death by the Seneca

1763
1

Chippewa chief Wasson scalped Captain Campbell

1763
1

Captain Dalyell was killed; Pontiac’s men cut out his heart, wiped it on prisoners’ faces, cut off his head, and mounted it on a pole

1763
1

Pontiac served French settlers body of a British soldier, then showed them his severed head

unknown
2+

Sioux scalped Mandans

c.1770
1

The Boggs baby was not permitted to nurse, was thrown into the road intermittently, was sometimes kicked, then murdered and scalped

c.1775
1

Indians seared prisoner’s body with heated gun barrels, scalped, hot coals applied to his skull, one end of his intestines tied around a tree around which he walked until they were all drawn out, his genitals cut off, and a hot gun barrel thrust into his heart

1777
2

A Wyandot and another Indian friendly to the British escorted American Jane MacCrea to a British post to meet her British fiance. The Indians tomahawked and scalped her. Her scalp and that taken from an American officer were taken to the Indian camp

1778
360

The Wyoming Valley Massacre took 360 settler lives at the hands of the Iroquois, and the British commander Butler claimed 227 scalps were taken

1778
110

British colonel Hamilton claimed he bought 110 scalps that year alone

1778
30+

Indians attacked Cherry Valley, New York, and some engaged in cannibalism

1778
5+

Major Moses Van Campen’s father and brother were scalped; he found an Indian village that had scalped 3 families

1779
2

Manheim twin sisters stuck with splinters dipped in turpentine and burned

1779
unknown

Mohawk struck town of Minisink, burning 12 houses

1779
2

Iroquois captured Oneida chief Hanyerry, hewed his body to pieces, and impaled his scalped head on a branch; at same time, Lieutenant Boyd was captured, his fingernails pulled out, nose and tongue cut off, eye gouged out, genitals cut off, and he was skinned alive and beheaded

1779
4+

Colonel Lochy and some of his men tortured by Mohawk

1779
18

Indians attacked town of Goshen and scalped all 17 hospital patients and their physician

c.1780
1

Sutler Potts was scalped, hung upside down on a sapling, then cut open so that his intestines hung down over his head

1781
9

Settlers burned at the stake by Wyandots

unknown
3

Kwakiutl Cannibal Society bit flesh from arms of those watching them dance, then ate a slave

1782
3

Indians scalped Mrs. Wallace, her infant, and John Carpenter near Raccoon Creek

1782
5

Delaware women and boys tomahawked prisoners

1782
1

Delaware tortured Colonel Crawford: Powder was shot into his body from feet to neck, his ears cut off, his body burned with sticks, burning coals thrown on him, he was scalped, a squaw put more coals on his back and head, and his body burned almost to ashes

1782
5

The Reverend Corly’s family was scalped by Indians

1782
7

Shawnee and Mingos killed captives by burning, the bodies of 3 given to the dogs

1783-90
c.l,500

Settlers killed in Little Turtle’s War in the Old North-west

1785
4

Scott family killed by Indians in Virginia

c.1785
1

This prisoner of the Indians was burned from all sides by women with torches; when he fell unconscious, he was scalped, dismembered, and all his extremities, including his genitals, cut off

1786
1

Grandfather of Abraham Lincoln killed by Indian in Kentucky

1788
3

Tecumseh and his men scalped at Drake Creek

1788
110

British colonel Hamilton bought these white scalps

1789
1

Medicine man Aiskawbawis ate his wife

1789
1

Indian showed Ironside the heart of a settler whom he had killed

1789
1

Charles Builderback, who had murdered Indians at Gnadenhutten, and his wife were captured; he was slowly emasculated and dismembered

1790
8

Johnston was captured, and others also captured scalped by Indians, then 6 more killed, 2 of whom were scalped by Indians

1790
3

Miamis killed prisoners

1790
1

William Flinn was burned at the stake and eaten by Miamis

1790
1

Abner Hunt was tied to a log, stretched out, a fire built around him, knife slits made in his body, and hot coals put in the slits

1791
24

Mingos captured boats on the Ohio River and killed passengers

1791
2

Daniel Greathouse, who allegedly murdered part of the family of Mingo chief Logan, and his wife were captured by Mingos, pieces of their intestines lashed to a sapling, and they were made to walk around it until they died

1791
1

Officer Richard Butler was captured by Shawnee, who killed and scalped him, then cut out his heart and divided it into 14 pieces so that each tribe in the battle could eat it

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