From Fighting Indian Warriors, by E. A. Brininstool, 1953

How This Most Famous Battalion of Indian Allies of the U. S. Army Was Organized,

as Related by Capt. Luther H. North to E. A. Brininstool, 1926

IN THE SUMMER of 1864, Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, who was then commander of the Department of the Missouri, which included Kansas and Nebraska Territories, while on his way to Fort Kearney (from which point he started with an expedition against the hostile Indians) stopped over at Columbus, Nebraska, and engaged a man named McFayden, and my brother, Major Frank North, to secure the services of seventy-five Pawnee Indians to accompany the expedition as guides and scouts.

The Indians furnished their own mounts and equipment, and were to have been paid $25 a month for their services. I believe they yet have it coming to them!

McFayden and my brother went along as interpreters, both being fluent in the Pawnee tongue. A few days after leaving Fort Kearney, Gen. Curtis left the expedition, and with one company of cavalry, two Pawnee Indians and my brother, started for Fort Riley, Kans.

Enroute he talked to my brother Frank in regard to enlisting a company of Pawnee Indians, and also suggested calling them "The Pawnee Scouts." When Frank arrived home from Fort Riley, the Pawnees had started on their fall hunt, and it was some time before he could secure enough men to fill out the company.

It was in January, 1865, that they were mustered into the service, and soon after were sent to Fort Kearney, where they received their equipment and horses, and were ordered to Julesburg, thence to Fort Laramie, where they joined the Powder River Expedition under Gen. P. E. Connor, on Powder River.

The scouts found the trail of a war party of Cheyennes which had been raiding emigrant trains on the North Platte. My brother, with forty men, followed them sixty miles. They crossed Powder River seventeen times that night; but one of the Scouts traveled on foot the whole distance, and never lost the trail once.

They overtook the Cheyennes just at daybreak, attacking and killing all of them (twenty-seven in number), and got back to camp that night.

A few days later they had another skirmish, in which they killed all but one Indian. Not long after this, my brother, with five men, found the Arapahoe village on Tongue River, and Frank sent one of the Scouts to General Connor with a message, while he watched the village. Connor arrived the next morning, and charged the village, killing quite a number of the Indians, and captured eleven hundred horses and destroyed all their tepees.

Not long after, a party of the Scouts, with Frank, found Colonel Cole and his command, and they were to have made a junction with General Connor on the Little Big Horn river, but had become lost. My brother found Cole's command in a starving condition, and most of them were afoot. Frank divided what rations he had among them, and guided them to Fort Reno (formerly Fort Connor). This ended the campaign of 1865, and the Scouts were sent home, where they were mustered out of service in the spring of 1866.

In the spring of 1867, my brother recruited four corn panes of Pawnee Scouts, comprising fifty men to a company, and that was the real beginning of the famous "Pawnee Battalion." Frank was major of this battalion, and I was captain of one of the companies.

My company and Captain Morse's company were sent to Ogalalla, Nebraska, which was at that time the end of track of the Union Pacific Railroad. We were to guard the track-layers. The Sioux whooped down the next morning, attacked the camp and ran off some of the mules. We started after them, killed two and recovered all the mules.

A short time after, General Sherman and General Augur started on an inspection tour of the forts of the Northwest. My brother, Captain Morse and myself, with two companies of our Pawnees and two or three companies of cavalry, accompanied them.

We went up the South Platte to old Fort Morgan. A great many of the soldiers were deserting, and taking horses and arms with them. Some of the men on guard deserted one night, and after that we furnished guards (for General Sher-man's tent) from our Pawnee Scouts.

From Fort Morgan we went north to Fort Laramie. Before reaching Laramie, we ran across a party of Arapahoes, who had made a raid near the fort. We gave chase, and after a run of ten miles, recovered the stock and killed a couple of the reds. We were then ordered back to the line of the railroad to guard a camp of graders at Granite Canyon, eighteen miles west of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

A short time after that, I was ordered back to the end of the track, which was then at a point about where the city of Sidney, Nebraska, is now located. The company under Capt. James Murie was sent to Plum Creek Station, where the Cheyennes, under old Chief Turkey Leg, had wrecked a train and killed all the crew.

A day or so after Murie arrived at that point, the Indians returned and my brother and Captain Murie, with forty men, crossed the river and attacked them, killing seventeen and capturing thirty-five head of stock, and one squaw and a boy.

Two or three weeks later, at a meeting of General Sherman, General Harney, General Augur and others representing the Government, together with Chief Spotted Tail and several others of the Sioux chiefs, and Turkey Leg for the Cheyennes, with my brother, all were in the tent where the council was being held, and Turkey Leg, who knew Frank, had the interpreter ask him if he had some prisoners.

On being told that he had a woman and a boy, Turkey Leg said the woman was his wife, and that he had some white prisoners which he would exchange for her. He sent out to his camp on Medicine Creek, and brought in two girls and three boys. My brother took the woman and the boy up from Plum Creek, and the exchange was made in the old railroad eating-house at North Platte, Nebraska.

In the fall I made another trip from the end of track, which was then at Pine Bluffs, to Fort Laramie, and back to Fort Kearney, where the three other companies had preceded me, and there we were all mustered out about the first of January.

Early in the spring of 1868, two more companies of Pawnee Scouts were enlisted. They were placed at different points along the railroad, twenty-five to a place, and small scouting parties of eight or ten were kept patrolling the railroad. Lieut. Billy Harvey, who was stationed at Wood River, ran across a war party north of that point one day, and after chasing them several miles, overtook and killed three of them.

My brother and Capt. Morse, with one company, were scouting on Muddy Creek with seven men, when they were surrounded by a large body of Sioux. They got into a washout, and fought their enemies off for six hours, killing fifteen Indians.

That year I did not serve with the scouts. They had one other battle that fall at Roscoe, just east of Ogalalla, where they drove off a band of Sioux who were trying to tear up the track.

They were mustered out in the fall, and in February, 1869, two other companies were enlisted. I was with them, and we went to Fort McPherson, where the horses of the Scouts had been wintering. As soon as we could get ready, I was started for the Republican River to join Major Noyes, who had already gone.

My brother returned to the Pawnee Reservation to enlist another company. When I got to the Republican I met Major Noyes, who was on his way back to the post. He had run out of rations. He had expected to find plenty of buffalo, but had not seen a single animal. I divided my rations with Noyes.

The following morning we started on the return trip in a snowstorm. Before we had gone five miles a raging blizzard developed, and it grew very cold. We faced it for 25 miles to Frenchman Creek. I did not know where Major Noyes was. The cavalry horses were in much better condition than our own mounts, and had traveled so much faster that their trail had blown full of snow, and we could not follow them.

When I thought we must be getting near to Frenchman Creek, one of my men rode up beside me, and said that he thought he could locate a canyon that had timber in it. As the snow was blowing fiercely, so that it was impossible to see ten feet ahead, I thought he was crazy, but ordered him to go ahead and lead on. He took the lead, and soon brought us to a canyon where we had good shelter.

Here the men cut some poles, and taking the covers off their wagons, soon built me a tepee, and in half an hour we had a good fire inside, and were as comfortable as was possible, with ears, noses and hands frozen.

The following morning was bright and clear, but very cold. When I got to the Frenchman Fork, I found Major Noyes in camp. There was no shelter where they had camped, and no wood available. The men were nearly all more or less frozen, and over fifty horses and some of the mules were frozen to death. The river was frozen over, and as my Scouts were the only ones not suffering severely, we had to chop a channel across. I then had them fasten ropes to the wagons, and put twenty men to each wagon. They walked on the ice on each side of the channel, and helped pull the wagons across.

We were three days in reaching Fort McPherson. The Scouts were sent to North Platte, and we remained in camp until April, and were then ordered back to McPherson. General Eugene A. Can, with the Fifth Cavalry, had come from the south, with Buffalo Bill Cody as guide and scout.

We left McPherson in June and went south to the Republican, and down it one or two days' march. One evening seven Indians dashed into camp, killed two men who were herding the mules, and stampeded them. The Scouts were camped just across the river. We caught our horses, jumped on them bareback, and were across the river before the Indians were out of sight.

As soon as the redskins saw that we were overtaking them, they abandoned the mules. We chased them for perhaps ten miles, killing two of the rascals; the others got away. We arrived back at camp about midnight.

The next day we went south. We scouted over as far as the Solomon River, followed it up one day, and then back to Prairie Dog Creek, where my brother met us with the third company of Scouts, and took command of the battalion. We then crossed to the Republican, and followed it up till near its headwaters.

While out with a scouting party, I discovered a Cheyenne camp. This was on the 7th of July. I reported to General Carr, who was twenty-five miles down the river. We took up the trail where I had seen the camp, and on the 11th over took them at Summit Springs, Colorado. We surprised the Indians in camp, and killed Tall Bull, the chief, and a lot of his warriors, captured four women, thirteen children, six hundred horses and a hundred and twenty mules. They had two white women in their camp as prisoners.

After going into Fort Sedgwick, where we drew rations and forage, we started south. The expedition was under the command of Colonel Royal. We found the trail of the Cheyennes, and followed down the Frenchman, then back north, crossed the Platte just west of Ogalalla, and on north into the sand hills of Nebraska. At the head of the Loup River we ran out of rations, and came back to Fort McPherson, where we were mustered out. That was in 1870. There were two companies of Scouts. My company was stationed at Plum Creek Station, about two or three miles east of the present city of Lexington.

In September, General Carr made a campaign to the Republican and took my company. We found one small war party, but after pursuing them several miles, we lost the trail. On the return to McPherson the Scouts were again mustered out.

Four years later the Pawnees were removed from their reservation in Nebraska to the Indian Territory, and in 1876, soon after the Custer fight, Gen. Sheridan sent Frank and myself down to recruit one hundred more of the Pawnee. We brought them by rail from Coffeyville, Kansas, to Sidney, Nebraska, where they were mustered into the service, and drew horses, arms and equipment.

We were then ordered to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, where we joined General MacKenzie. We made a night ride down to Chadron Creek, and captured Red Cloud and his band, and brought them to Fort Robinson. We took Red Cloud's horses (seven hundred and twenty head) to Fort Laramie, and turned them over to the quartermaster.

Then we went on the winter campaign with General Crook into the Powder River country. We were with MacKenzie when he fought the Cheyennes under Dull Knife, on a branch of the Powder River, in the Big Horn mountains. After this battle, we came with General Crook's command to Fort Laramie. We were ordered to Sidney, Nebraska, where we were mustered out of the service for the last time.

On all our campaigns it was the Pawnee Scouts who were always first to find Indian signs. They were always sent ahead to do the trailing. They located every war party and every Indian village which we captured, with the single exception of Dull Knife's village in the Big Horn mountains, which was located by the Arapahoe scouts.

While scouting south of the Republican River, with ten men, we were "jumped" by a war party of about one hundred and fifty hostiles. We were mounted, and I told the men we would run for the creek, about a mile distant, where we would dismount and put up a fight. We were armed with Spencer carbines, a seven-shot weapon.

When within half a mile of the creek, my horse jumped on some ice, slipped and fell. I struck on my head, and was knocked unconscious. The boys stopped and dismounted, while nine of them, with their horses, formed a ring around me, the remaining man picked me up. When I came to, the Indians were all around us, but the Pawnees met them, with such fierce resistance that they scattered and fell back to a safe distance. As soon as I could ride, we moved slowly to the creek, where we stood the hostiles off until night, when they gave it up, and rode away to the south.

In regard to that battle of Summit Springs, Frank's diary gives the number of troops engaged as two hundred of the Fifth Cavalry, with Gen. Carr in command, and forty of our Pawnee Scouts with Frank, Capt. Cushing and myself.

Soon after leaving camp the morning of July 11th, 1869, the trail we were following split up, one trail leading to the northeast, a second almost due north, and the third to the northwest. Gen. Carr divided his command into three columns, he taking command of the column that went northwest. He had about 200 cavalry and ten of our Pawnees with him.

Frank, Cushing and I, with 35 of our Scouts, followed the middle trail that went north. Col. Royal, with about 200 cavalrymen, and a few of our scouts, and Cody (Buffalo Bill) followed the trail to the northeast.

After separating, we traveled at as brisk a pace as the horses could stand, for about three hours, when we were overtaken by one of our Scouts who had gone with Gen. Carr, who said that they had discovered the Indian village, and that we were to join his command as soon as possible.

We followed him at a gallop for about seven miles, when we joined Carr's command. He had dismounted them behind a ridge of sand hills. He told Frank that he had sent a courier to Col. Royal, but as he had heard nothing from him, he said it would be best to attack the village at once, before the Indians had a chance to break camp and scatter into the sandhills.

He waited for perhaps ten minutes for our Indians to unsaddle horses. (They always went into battle bareback if possible.) Then the charge was sounded. The village was about three miles away, and was out of sight from us, but the Indian ponies were in sight on the hills near the village.

Our men, riding bareback, made much better time than the cavalry, and we were perhaps three hundred yards ahead of the troops. As we came over a low hill at the lower end of the village, the Indians met us there, and halted us for a few minutes; we only had forty men.

Then the cavalry came charging on, and turning to the left, galloped up the line of tepees to the Springs, about a half mile above, where they halted and began firing into the village. From this time on, we saw but little of the troops as we crossed the little stream, and went into the lower end of the village.

It was about 2 o'clock, and very hot. About the first tepee we came to was Tall Bull's, though of course none of us knew it at the time; The fighting here was pretty brisk, and as we came to the tepee, Capt. Cushing discovered a one-gallon keg of water near it. He dismounted and took a drink. Frank then asked him for the keg, and as he handed it to him (Frank was on his horse), a white woman crawled out of the tepee, and, screaming and crying, caught Frank around his knees.

This woman was a Mrs. Weichel, whom the Indians had captured in Kansas in the spring of 1869. She could not speak English, and was so terror-stricken that it was hard to pacify her. She was shot through the fleshy part of her breast by an Indian (probably Tall Bull) as she was in his lodge.

About this time, a saddled Indian horse trotted out in sight just above us, and as my own horse was pretty well exhausted, I ran to catch this stray animal. In passing over a low sandhill, I saw a woman lying on the ground, and on getting nearer, saw that she also was a white woman. It was Mrs. Alderdice, who had been captured at the same time with Mrs. Weichel, in Kansas. She had been tomahawked, and was dead.

After returning to where Frank and Cushing were, we left a guard with Mrs. Weichel, and continued across the lower end of the village. The Indians were running away as fast as they could catch horses, but quite a few warriors who hadn't caught horses, were falling back on foot, and twenty of them ran into a ravine or wash-out that extended back into the hills for nearly a quarter of a mile.

We saw one Indian on horseback enter the washout. He was riding a yellow gelding. When we were within a hundred yards of the mouth of this ravine, this yellow horse trotted out, and after staggering around, fell over and died.

When we rode up the hill that the ravine was in, Frank and I happened to be riding side by side. The ravine was nearer than we thought, and an Indian had climbed up the side where the dirt had washed down, making a sort of steps. He stuck his gun over the bank and took a shot at Frank, who dropped off his horse so suddenly that I thought he was hit. He landed on his feet, handed me his reins, and said, "Ride away, and he will stick his head up."

I turned and started away on a gallop, but had only made a few jumps when Frank fired. 1 rode back and asked "if he got him." He said, "Yes." Just then an Indian girl about 12 years old, and a squaw, climbed out of the ravine where the Indian had been hiding. They came to us, and signed to have mercy. Frank signed to them to go over where we had left Mrs. Weichel, and stay there until we came back, which they did.

Some of our boys had joined us, and we walked over to the ravine and saw the Indian whom Frank had shot. He was lying on his back, and was shot in the center of his forehead. We didn't go down into the ravine, but followed up the bank on foot. Up at the head of this blow-out the banks were perpendicular, and about fifteen feet high. There were 13 warriors there.

We would slip up as near the edge as possible, stick our guns over, blaze away and jump back, throw in another shell and repeat it. At about my second attempt I guess I was a little slow, and as I stuck my head over, an arrow met me. It hit me just in the eyebrow, cutting to the bone, and glancing off. It felt like I had been hit with a club, and turned me half way around, and I would have fallen over the bank if one of my boys had not caught me by the arm and dragged me back. It made me sick for a few minutes, but Frank bound it up with his handkerchief, after disposing of the Indians in the ravine, and I want to tell you right now, there wasn't a single white soldier there except Frank, Cushing and myself.

The white soldiers under Gen. Carr, Lieut. Mason, Lieut. Hayes (and I think two other officers) were taking care of the upper end of the Indian village, and they did a good job of it.

We all joined in the chase through the sand hills, and in the evening, about 6 o'clock, returned to the village, where we went into camp. Then came a terrific thunder-storm and after that came Royal's column, who had Buffalo Bill with them.

The next day we pulled out for Fort Sedgwick, but before we left the battlefield Lieut. Mason came to our camp. He had a beautiful eagle-feather head-dress, and the band that fitted around the forehead was decorated with two small buffalo horns. He asked Frank if this might not have been Tall Bull's war-bonnet. That was one of the stories that was started about the killing of Tall Bull. No one knew that he had been killed until we got to Fort Sedgwick. When Leon Pallada came to our camp I sent one of my men to bring the woman we had captured at the ravine. As she came toward the tent, Pallada said, "I know that woman; she is Tall Bull's wife." I then asked him to ask the woman who killed Tall Bull. She turned and pointed to Frank, and said that the Indian that Frank shot at in the ravine was Tall Bull; that he rode a yellow horse into the ravine, and told the woman that when the soldiers came, she should surrender to them; that he was going to die. Then he shot the yellow horse in the belly, and turned it loose. That was the horse we saw die.

That very day, Col. E. C. Judson (Ned Buntline) came to our camp with a proposal to write Frank up. Frank was just ready to start to Omaha with Gen. Augur. He laughed at Judson (who was pretty well filled with booze), and took him to Cody's camp and introduced them.

Judson lost no time in telegraphing the New York Herald (I think it was), about Cody shooting Tall Bull off his horse, and capturing the horse; but the only Indian that Cody ever shot off a horse was in his Wild West show!

One time I said to Frank, "Why don't you write the true story of the killing of Tall Bull?" and he replied, "What difference does it make who killed him? I am not in the show business."