Connecticut western news., 1871-08-04
The Camp Grant Affair.

I- official report of the massacre at Camp Grant, Arizona, by Lieut.. R. B. Whit man, just received here by the Board of Indian Commissioners. It is dated Camp Grant, May IF, and addressed to Col. J. c. G. Lee, s,,Tuckson. Lieuten- ant Whitman, after describing the set clement of the Indians near the Camp, and praising them for their peaceable- ness and good behavior, proceeds as follows {: ,. .. .---........ f-........ ...4
 On the morning of April 20, was at breakfast at 7:S0, when dispatch was brought to me from Capt. Plum, com manding Camp Lowell, informing me that large party had left Tucson on the 18th, with the avowed purpose of killing all the Indians at this post I immedi- ately sent the two interpreters, mounted to the Indian camp with orders to tell the chef the exact state of things, and for them to bring their entire party in side the post. As had no cavalry, and but fifty infantry, nearly all recruits, and no other officer, I could not leave the gers returned in about an hour with the Indians. Their camp was burning, and
 
 ted bodies of their women and children. immediately mounted a party of about twenty soldiers and citizens and sent them with the post surgeon, with Q wag- on to bring in the wounded, if any could be found. The party returned late in the evening, having found no wounded, and without having been able 10 com municate with any of the survivors. Early the next morning took @ similar party with spades and shovels, and went out and buried the dead in and around the camp. I had offered the interpre- ters or any one who could do so the amount of $1OO to go to the mountains and communicate with them and con- vince them that no officer or soldier of the government of the United States had been concerned in the vile transac- tion, and failing in this, I thought the act of caring for their dead would be an evidence to them of our sympathy, at least, and the conjecture proved correct, for while at the work many of them came to the spot and indulged in their expressions of grief, too wild and terri ble to be described. That evening they came in from all directions. singly, and in small parties, so changed in forty eight hours as to be hardly recognizable, during which time they had neither eaten nor slept. '@. VI rt@
 Many of the men whose families had all been killed, when I spoke to them and expressed sympathy for them, were obliged to turn away. Unable to speak and too proud to show their grief. The women, whose children had been killed or stolen, were convulsed with grief, and looked to me appealingly,- as though I was their last hope on earth. Children who two days before had been full of fun and frolic, kept at distance, ex- pressing 8 wondering horror. did all I conld- I fed them and talked with them and listened patiently to their accounts. l sent horses into the mountains to bring in two badly wounded women, one shot through the left lung and one with an arm shattered these were attended to, and are doing well and will very likely recover.
 Their camp was surrounded and at tackled at day-break. So sudden and unexpected was it that no one was awake to give the alarm, and I found quite 8 number of men and women shot while asleep beside their bundles of hay they had collected to bring in on that morn ing The wounded, who were unable to get away, had their brains beaten out with clubs or stones, while some were shot full of arrows after they bad been mortally wounded by gunshot. The bodies were all stripped. Of the whole number buried one was an old man and one well grown boy. All the rest were women and children. Of the whole number killed and missing, about one hundred and twenty-five, eight only were men. It has been said that the men were not there. They were all there. On the 29th we counted 129 men, a small number being absent all of whom have since been in. have spent good deal of time with them since the affair, and have been astonshed at their continued unshaken faith in me, and their perfect ly clear understanding of their misfor- tune.