, 1900-06-23
DO|NCTHEFRONT|ER
A FIERCE INDIAN FIGHT LOST
SIGHT OF DURING THE
CIVIL WAR.
The Question of True Courage Rem
iniscence of an Episode in the Cam
paign Against Bear River Indians
Secession in the West-The Colonel
Didn't Know How to Fight Indians.

Uncle Sam Hoyt to a Washington
Post reporter the other day. This
business of standing up and letting the
bullets hit you because you DON'T know
any better is an error that the English
soldiers have made from the time of
Braddock down to the present day. !
was seventy-nine years old last month,
and the only time | was ever accused
of cowardiCe was in 1861, and the
charge was made by a nan who didn't
know how to fight Indians.
The United States was so taken up
with the conflict totwen the north and
south at that time that our little war
out on the frontier didn't attract any
attention. l don't believe l ever saw
there were enough killed to give it a
there were enough killed to give it q
place on the first page of anybody's
paper. But We were away from the
haunts of civilization. and there vas a
mightier struggle which took the eyes
of men away from a little brush with
redskins. But just the same, those
who were on the frontier in those days
won their right to be enrolled among
the defenders of the country as much
as those who wore the blue at Shiloh
and Gettysburg. The marches against
a hidden foe through an unknown
country, enduring hunger and thirst,
exposed to all the rigors of a mountain
climate, without the protection of a
shelter tent, these We're among the
things that the loyalist of the far west
had to undergo in those days.
81 was in California when the war
broke out. 1t was some time after
ward that we heard Of the firing
on Fort Sumter. California had a
small pre%ponderance Of Union men.
and they carried the day. Companies
we're organized, and l sent word to a
lot of my oldfrierds who had been with
me in the mining BUSINESS in 1S49 and
1850 hat l would pay their travelling
expenses and buy their outfits if they
would enlist in a company l was get
ting up. 1t wasn't long before l had
eighty as good men as ever ran their
" along a Henry rifle, and they were
all friends of mine, too. There wasn't
a man in the bunch that wouldn't have
given his life for mine, or mine for his
Co-,o 80 80 hnI hnor, on prpcnantin O
trips together. Others l had hired to
work claims in the placer diggings OF
the Sierras, and they knew that as
long as / had 81, so cents of it was
theirs.
AN old regular army man by the
name of Col. Conner was getting up
the regiment, and my company was
mustered in at Stockton. The regi-
ment had about half infantry and half
cavalry, but there was no objection
raised on that score, FOR what we
wanted was men who could fight. A
rumor had reached us out there that
the C~onfederates were going to try to
draw California and some Of the other
western states into secession. More
than that, it was reported that they
were going to come up on the ranges
to the Sierras and eastern Rockies, and
u off herds of cattle and horses. The
theater of the proposed operations was
said to be Utah, and gossip had it that
the Mormons were secretly in league
with them. OF course all the regulars
were withdrawn from the frontier to
fight in the east, and we had to take
their place.
"Our regiment started east in the
latter part of the summer of 1861 for
Salt Lake City, and we got there some
time in September, and went into
camp. The Mormons were friendly to
us on the surface, but we did not trust
them. The story of their outrages was
too frest in our minds for implicit con-
idence. Still, nothing occurred, and
we began to think that We would waste
our time by staying there. The men
were anxious for fighting. A good
many of them, in fact most of them
had seen service in the Mexican war,
and the rest of them had beer more or
less engaged in occasional fights with
the Indians. The colonel was afraid
that his reputation would suffer on the
ground that he was doing nothing,
when word reached us that the Bear
River Indians were out on the war
path.
THE Bear River Indians were a
mongrel lot of redskins, and the tribe
consisted of renegades from the Utes,
Piutes, Blackfeet and other tribes,
which we're even too respectable to
own them. They had swept down and
wiped out a Mormon village at the
head of the Great Salt Lake, and were
reported to be gathered about 500
among the canyons along Bear
river, which is the outlet for Bear lake
into the northern part Of Great Salt
Lake.
Il think it was some time in Deem
Der when the news reached us, and
Colonel Conor decided to start at
once. He feared that there might be
outbreak of the Mormons while we
were gone, so he left the greater. part
the regiment in the barracks at Salt
Lake City and took only about $50 men
him. had hetMeen forty and