WHEN MAJOR ORMSBY

WAS KILLED

A REVIEW OF THE MOST IMPORTANT

ENGAGEMENT WITH INDIANS RECORDED

IN THE ANNALS OF NEVADA.

BY

DAVID E. W. WILLIAMSON.

INTRODUCTION

            The first important conflict of white men and Indians in all the territory that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas occurred on the Truckee river between the present site of the Indian agency and Wadsworth on May 12, 1860. No monument marks the retreat of that armed company of early residents when they fled that day, leaving forty-six of their number dead or dying. The river flows still between the steep banks, and in many places in the same channel, and remains of the old trail can be found above the cliffs to the east, but not even a stake points to the rough line where, burning with thirst in the heat of a late spring day, a band of undisciplined miners, prospectors, hotel-keepers, lawyers, clerks and adventurers ran for their lives mile after mile with death riding at their heels. The sagebrush grows on the hillsides now as it grew then, and many of the low trees that stand on the banks of the river must be the same today that sixty-four years ago hid the enemy, but to trace the advance and the route there is nothing to rely upon except the confused accounts of participants written years afterward. Distances given in narratives of those who were eyewitnesses do not agree with the descriptions of the ground, and there are no actual survivors on either side to call back the memories of the battle, save one old Indian who was a lad of twelve when the conflict occurred.

CHAPTER I.

FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES.

            The Pah-Utes of Western Nevada, then known as the Washoe Country, had been restless for over a year owing to the influx of increasing numbers of white men into the territory. In the crowd that found their way over the Sierra from the coast were scores who were arrogant and insolent to the natives, riding rough-shod over them on all occasions, seldom keeping faith with them and contemptuous in their treatment at all times. The Indians resented such conduct, and among them, unfortunately for peace, were leaders of different bands who were eager to foment trouble. From time to time, Bannocks and Shoshones, more reckless than the Pah-Utes, visited the tribes at Pyramid Lake to spur them on. It was the Bannocks that were accused of the murder of Peter Lassen, after whom Lassen County in California and Lassen Peak were named. He was a leader among the pioneers, a man of great energy and of great native ability. In March, 1859, while he was camping on the way to look at a mining prospect, he and his companion were killed in a canyon above Clapp Creek, twenty miles north of Black Rock, and no one was ever brought to justice for the crime. In the following eight months six other men were killed under conditions that clearly indicated Indians as the murderers, but on the surface the Pah-Utes appeared to be peaceably inclined and friendly to the whites. They were reported to be famishing and the early winter of 1859 had caught them unprepared for the cold but beyond a paragraph in a Virginia City paper that said they blamed the whites for the cold and the famine no one seems to have paid much attention to them. Then came

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another warning. A band of Pah-Utes laying claim to the Honey Lake valley had made a bargain with a party of settlers there early in 1858 and asserted that the pioneers had agreed to pay them $16,000 but refused to live up to the agreement. There was some ill-feeling on both sides, apparently, and then on January 13, 1860, a rancher named Dexter E. Demming was shot dead at his home in Willow Creek valley, just north of Honey Lake. His ranch was robbed.

            There was scarcely any regular, recognized government authority in the territory at the time. Mormon settlers in Carson River valley looked to Utah, many who had crossed the plains considered the Washoe country to be a kind of no-man's-land, others thought it part of California and still others thought it was open ground. The last element decided to set up a territorial government, and in June and July, 1859, efforts to that end had resulted in the election of Isaac Roop as governor, who was recognized by the men in the territory and in the Honey Lake country, which was supposed to be part of what is now Nevada. The killing of Demming aroused the people of Susanville and they sent a petition to Governor Roop for aid. He sent out a party under U. J. Tutt, who followed the trail from Demming's ranch, and reported to Roop on January 24 that he had traced the crime to a party of Pah-Utes. Demand for the surrender of the murderers was refused by Winnemucca, their principal chief, and Roop then called on General Clarke, commander of the Department of the Pacific of the United States Army, for a company of dragoons, or weapons and field pieces. These were not sent at the time but some months later a force of regular army men was stationed in the Honey Lake country, though how large this was does not

WHEN MAJOR ORMSBY WAS KILLED    7

appear from any record. Although Governor Roop in his letter to General Clarke declared that an Indian war was imminent, the miners and farmers do not appear to have been alarmed. Many prospecting parties were out in all directions and the ranchers took no special precautions to guard their property, although in the Honey Lake country commissioners appointed by Governor Roop declared that the Pah-Utes under Winnemucca were blackmailing the settlers by demanding several heads of beeves from time to time. Nor does there seem to have been the slightest alarm when it became known that the Indians were holding a great parley at their quarters at the foot of Pyramid Lake.

            Twenty years after the conference the Indian statement of what occurred there was obtained through the aid of William H. Wasson, Indian agent on the Pyramid reservation, and it is this that is published in Thompson and West's History of Nevada. It is the only account that pretends to give the story of the parley and of the Ormsby party from the Pah-Ute side, but it obviously was devised long after the event, and shows traces of trying to throw the responsibility on Old Winnemucca, which during his lifetime he always declined to assume. Speakers at the parley are said to have accused the whites of destroying the Indians' wild game and pine nuts, on which they depended for food, and of taking away their land, but this is merely what Old Winnemucca told the people two years later. The talk began in the latter part of April and was still in progress on May 7. Two chiefs from Honey Lake and one from Mason valley were for war at once, and a Shoshone who had married a Pah-Ute woman and was influential, was also hostile to the whites. Neither Old Winnemcca

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nor Young Winnemucca had spoken, but they were supposed to be for war, although they afterwards denied it, when, on the 7th of May, news was brought to Pyramid Lake of the killing of five men at the Williams station on the Carson river. No effort was made to meet the whites with offers of peace and reparation, and Young Winnemucca at once took command of the principal band of three hundred warriors. From such cautious admissions as could afterwards be obtained from the Pah-Utes it was this chief that organized the fighting and laid the plans to entrap and ambush the white men. Old Winnemucca is said to have been absent.

            The impression gained from some of the accounts preserved of this little war is that the killing of the five men at Williams station was an outgrowth of the parley in progress at Pyramid Lake. This is not what William Wright thought about it, however, and Wright, who under the name of Dan De Quille was one of the most brilliant writers on the Comstock, was in Virginia City at the time. His statement in "The Big Bonanza," published only fourteen years after the battle and when many of the participants in it were still alive who would have been quick to point out any inaccuracies, is that the Williams station affair was a matter of personal, private revenge. He says that in the absence of James O. Williams, owner of the station, two or three young men captured and shut up two PahUtes in a kind of cave near the station and kept them there several days. The women were the wives of Bannocks, says Wright, and one of the husbands traced them to the station, but was driven off by the men there. He was refused help by the Pah-Ute chiefs, but obtained thirty men from the Bannock tribe, and it was this party that attacked the Williams place.

            Williams station was on the Emigrant trail, about ten miles northeast of where a few months later Fort Churchill was constructed. The owner, with two brothers, Oscar and David, had come from Maine and prospered through trade with the passing parties on their way to California. He was away down the Carson river at the time of the attack, but the Indians killed his brothers by shooting them as they stood outside the building and they shot Samuel Sullivan as he was trying to get away. In the house were James Fleming and a man known as Dutch Phil, and they perished when the attacking party set fire to the structure, burning it to the ground. The Indians then drove down the valley, stealing W. H. Bloomfield's cattle on the way but leaving the property of C. M. Davis unmolested, because, as one of the party afterwards said, Davis had never done them any harm and had always treated them honestly. At this time they were on their way to Buckland's ranch, eight miles from Williams station, but as the sun was rising they changed their plans and made off toward Pyramid Lake, driving Bloomfield's cattle before them.

CHAPTER II.

EVENTS PRECEDING THE BATTLE.

            There are two versions of how the news of the slaughter at Williams station reached Virginia City. Dan De Quille in the volume he called "The Big Bonanza" says it was brought by a Pony Express rider and, as he was there at the time, he probably knew. The express had just been established and the first rider had come through from

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the Coast only a month and four days prior to the affair. Myron Angell, however, who as editor of the Thompson and West History may be presumed to have made a careful inquiry into the facts, says that J. O. Williams himself carried the news to the Comstock community after his return to the station the morning after the tragedy. In whatever way the men of Virginia City learned of it, they were quick to act and warnings were sent out to miners and prospectors in all directions, not only from Virginia City but also from Carson City, Dayton and Genoa. From all these places men went to Buckland's station, where they organized on the morning of the 9th of May into four squads, numbering in all one hundred and five men. Major William M. Ormsby, who was in charge of the Carson detachment, urged that a commander of the expedition be chosen, but his suggestion was not followed and the band went forward with Archie McDonald in command of the men from Virginia City, Captain R. G. Watkins over those from Silver City and Thomas F. Condon over those from Genoa. Myron Angell, Thomas Wren in his History, and Major Ingalls, who wrote the account in Sam P. Davis' History, have all followed the narrative of the march and the battle written by Captain Watkins, who was an old Filibustero and had lost a leg while fighting under Walker in Central America, so that it is Watkins who must be regarded as the historian of the expedition.

            The list of those who marched out from Buckland's on the morning of May 9, 1860, as given by Myron Angell in Thompson and West's History is taken from Watkins' account and is the only one that has been preserved. It shows that twenty of the one hundred and five were unknown to Watkins, as he accounts for only eighty-five names as follows :

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            GENOA RANGERS—Captain T. F. Condon, C. E. Kimball, Michael Tay, Robert Riley ("Big Texas"), M. Pular, Lee James, J. A. Thompson.

            CARSON CITY RANGERS—Major William M. Ormsby, F. Shinn, John L. Blackburn, James Gatewood, Chris Barnes, Frank Gilbert, William S. Spear, C. Marley, William Mason, John Holmes, Richard Watkins, Dr. William E. Eichelroth, Samuel Brown, James McIntyre, Dr. Anton W. Tjader, Eugene Angel, a man named Lake and nine United States soldiers.

            SILVER CITY GUARDS—Captain R. G. Watkins, Keene Albert Bloom, Charles Evans, James Shabell, James Lee, Anton Kaufman.

            VIRGINIA CITY—Company No. 1; Captain F. Johnston, F. J. Call, Hugh McLaughlin, _____ McTerney, Charles McLeod, John Fleming (a Greek), _____ Henderson (a Greek), Andreas Schnald (Italian), Marco Keuergerwaldt, O. C. Steel, John Gaventi George (a Greek). Company No. 2: Captain Archie McDonald, William Armington, Charles W. Allen, G. F. Brown, G. I. Baldwin, D. D. Cole, A. K. Elliott, Charles Forman, A. L. Granis, F. Gatehouse, F. Hawkins, Arch Haven, J. C. Hall, George Jones, R. Lawrence, Col. M. C. Vane, Henry Meredith, H. McIntosh, Pat McCourt, S. McNaughton, Henry Newton, John Noyce, A. I. Peck, Richard N. Snowden, M. and O. Spurr.

            COMPANY NOT KNOWN—J. F. Johnson, N. A. Chandler, G. Jonner, A. G. B. Hammond, James McCarthy, T. Kelley, J. Bowden, _____ Armstrong, _____ Galehousen.

            Both Myron Angell and William Wright agree that the volunteers on the expedition wholly undervalued the fighting qualities of the Indians against whom they were marching. They, in many instances, says Angell, started on the expedition with the watchword of "An Indian for

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breakfast and a pony to ride." Most of them thought there would be no serious difficulty in "running the Indians out of the country." While they were from four different communities there were in effect five independent bands, each with its own leader, and there was no general agreement among them. Ordinary precautions advised by men who had crossed the plains were probably taken, such as sending out scouts, but the Indians were all on the other side of the ridge in the Truckee valley and none could be seen anywhere on the march to Williams Station, where the expedition arrived on May 10th and halted for the night. After burying the bodies of Oscar and David Williams and Samuel Sullivan, which were found in the open, a council was held and a vote was taken on whether to continue the march. Not one voice was raised against it. The next morning, accordingly, they turned to the north and proceeded over the ridge into the Truckee valley, probably taking the route that starts from Carson plains about three miles west of Lahontan dam and follows a low pass through the hills. This would have brought them out at what is now Fernley and would furnish an easy ride to Wadsworth, on the site of which they camped on the night of May 11th.

            Indications of the temper of the Indians were discovered at Wadsworth, for there the band found five men who had been defending themselves against attack for several days after having been driven from some point down the Truckee river toward the lake, where they were hunting. These men said three of their original party of eight had been shot down by the Pah-Utes. But when the expedition resumed its march north along the Truckee on the morning of May 12th no signs of Indians were visible. The trail was well marked. It lay above the river all the

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way. The Truckee turns slightly west of north at Wadsworth and pursues a generally northerly course in a channel that is for the most part about the center of a gorge cut by the stream in such a way that the sides are marked by steep cliffs, perhaps fifty feet high. The trail was above this cliff on the eastern side of the river, at every point permitting an apparently clear view of the whole valley, but the men in the expedition did not know the enemy's methods. Probably every step they took in advance was observed from the surrounding heights by runners and immediately reported to Young Winnemucca and the Indians gathered in force at their village about where the Indian Agency buildings now stand. The white men rode along this trail, following its windings, for some fourteen miles without being molested and without seeing a single man of the Indians' force. Still following the old path, they drew away from the river about fourteen miles from Wadsworth and then rode along it as it swept around to the west. Here they came abruptly to a point where it suddenly drops from the high ground down into the meadows through which the course of the river was marked, then as now, by a dense growth of trees. All this ground at the present time has been cleared and is under cultivation but at the moment and for many years afterward it was covered by sagebrush, the bushes high enough to conceal a man lying prone. As the event proved, many Indians were hidden there, but the white men did not observe them and rode on down the trail into the plain. The Indians hoped to kill them all, as they afterward stated, so it is easy to see why the members of the expedition were not attacked at this time, when they had to ride in single file and could easily have been picked off one by one.

            Going over this route today, it is easy to recog-

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nize much of the country from the description given by Captain Watkins, but, in the time that elapsed before he wrote his account his recollection of the distances had become confused, hence the figures given in subsequent narrations based upon his statement are inaccurate.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIGHTING.

            No sign of the expected hostile force was seen by the expedition as its members rode along the trail after it reached the floor of the lower ground. It had been a cold winter with heavy snow and this had melted, causing the Truckee river to overflow its banks and to cover the broad, flat valley that opens out as the stream draws near to the lake. Below the bench land, which rims this area to the east, there was a stretch of ground densely covered with cottonwood trees and underbrush that now has all been cleared away but which at that time could not be penetrated by the untrained eye of the white men. This dry tract extended at different points out from the foot of the bench land from fifty to one hundred yards and beyond that was the flood water, which reached as far as a mile to the west. The volume of the Truckee river at that period even in summer was very great, as there were no irrigation ditches and no towns taking their water supply from it. It was a broad and deep stream. There was no bridge at any point from its source in Lake Tahoe to its mouth at Pyramid Lake and its depth at the point where it turns north at Wadsworth can be understood when it is known that a ferry was maintained there for years afterwards when that town came into existence. Between the rim of the valley then,

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here from eighteen to twenty feet high and almost perpendicular, and the deep water on the opposite side to the west, there was no opportunity to turn and the trail ran straight ahead for about a mile and a half to the site of the present store, just beyond the postoffice at the reservation headquarters of today.

            The whites rode along this trail knowing that they were approaching the main body of the Pah-Utes and, as there were old Indian fighters among them, they certainly proceeded with some caution. When they reached the site of the trader's store today, they first saw the Indians. Just beyond this point, if they had known it, were an unusual number of Pah-Utes gathered into three large camps but these were concealed from their view and all they saw was a group of twenty or twenty-five Indians and a few boys who were on top of a low mound or point of ground about twelve feet above their own level. This spot was an old gathering place for the Pah-Utes and had been so for generations. The top is flat and broad enough to accomodate six hundred or more Indians sitting on the ground as was their custom at a council and it is level enough for them still to use it for their dances if they followed the old tribal customs, but they have abandoned them. From this spot a view can be had of every point in the valley and at the same time the approaches from the higher land can be seen.

            Among these Indians there was a lad of twelve years of age and he still lives on the reservation, now a feeble old man. He is Johnny Calico and, though as a boy he could take small part in the fighting, he told the history of the day in the Pah-Ute tongue, when he was visited there on October 27, 1924, his son Fred, who speaks both Pah-Ute and English fluently, interpreting for him. His recollection of the whole affair is vivid

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and it was he who definitely located the spot mentioned in this account. This is his description :

            "The Pah-Utes were told that Captain Ormsby and many white men were coming to kill them all off because they had slaughtered cattle. The Pah-Utes blamed their hunger on the cattle because of eating all the grass seed on which they depended to make bread and leaving none to grow. So the white men came down the trail that runs by this place (his home on the reservation) and they rode along about a mile and a half from where the trail comes down off the high ground. The Pah-Utes were in three big camps alongside the foot of the bench around the point where the trader's store is today. They were warned that the white men were coming and many ran up on the high ground to see them. When the white men saw the Pah-Utes they stopped and the Indians then began to shoot at them with their bows and arrows and the shower of arrows was so thick and they came so quickly that the whites turned back. All this part of the land, which is now cleared of trees and brush, was then covered thickly with trees and, when the white men had been chased to a place below where the schoolhouse now stands, they turned off to these trees. But the Pah-Utes had run ahead, hidden behind these trees and, when the white men came near, the real fighting started, for the Pah-Utes let loose a cloud of arrows at them and the white men, who were all on horseback, fired off their guns. At the sound of the first gun, the Pah-Utes started back through the trees.

            "There was one white man here who was bucked off his horse, which ran away. The man ran behind a tree and two Indians tried to find him but as they caught sight of him he aimed his gun at them and fired. One Pah-Ute was hit in

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the toe and fell and then the others near by closed in on the white man. He did not fire again and the Indians shot him with their, bows and arrows, then rushed in and took his gun and stripped him of all his clothes. While this was going on, Chiquita Winnemucca, who was on foot, was running after the white men who were riding back up the trail. Two of them turned and gave chase to him, but two Indians who were hiding at the side of the trail shot at them, hitting one and he fell. He was one of the captains of the white men. The other rode off to where the other whites were, followed by the horse of the man who had been killed. When the white men came to where the trail goes up from the valley to the high ground, it is very steep and the Indians were behind them and all around. Another white man was killed as he rode up with the others and he fell over dead just as he reached the top of the trail. Here most of the Pah-Utes stopped and only four or five small parties of them went on after the whites.

            "In this chase at this time only one white man was killed. He was behind and one Pah-Ute chased him. This Indian was mounted on a horse. He rode up alongside of the white man, seized him and both rolled to the ground, where the white man died. His Indian antagonist took the white man's horse, but his own got away and it was on this Indian's own horse that another white man, a few moments later made his escape. There were two men who were riding one horse and the man in the saddle was seen to be telling the other to get off and pointing to the river as if there was a place by the stream where he could hide, so one got off the horse and the other rode ahead. But just then the horse that had escaped from the Indian and which had followed the whites came running back. The white man on foot grabbed

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him, jumped on his back and made off to safety. Beyond this there is a point on the trail where it is very narrow. It is where the mountain comes down. Here one white man was riding when the Indians behind shot his horse and it turned over. As the Indians came up to this white man, he held out two powder cans and his pistol to them and told them not to kill him. Chief Winnemucca was ahead and three men were coming up the trail behind and one of the men behind killed this white man. Then his body rolled down into the canyon. This was Captain Ormsby. The Indians turned back at this time and did not go any farther."

            Johnny Calico does not know how many white men were killed in the fighting, but an agent, sent by Myron Angell to Pyramid Lake reservation twenty years after the event, was taken along the trail by a guide who pointed out where forty-six in all had fallen. Of the Pah-Utes not one was killed and only three were wounded according to their own statements for years afterward and which is highly probable when one views the ground even today. Johnny Calico declares that there was no such regular line of battle as has been described by different writers since the day of the fighting, basing their accounts on Captain Watkins' narrative. There was no right wing and there was no left wing. His description shows that the Indians followed the usual method of endeavoring to surround the whites and ran through the trees with no sort of military alignment.

            Captain Watkins' account says thirty men under Ormsby rode up a dry wash to the top of the high ground when the Indians were first sighted, but they would not have had to do so as the slope there is gradual enough for them to have advanced at any point. His recollection had prob-

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ably become confused with the dry wash through which the main trail runs for a short distance before it turns at the low ground after coming down from the bench land, above. Had a part of the whites reached the top of the little mound on which the Indians were grouped when first seen, they would have observed the great camps just beyond and would have realized at once their own peril and how much they had misjudged the number and spirit of the Pah-Utes. In the main, considering their different points of view, the narrative of Captain Watkins and that of Johnny Calico agree. Watkins gives more detail. "When the whites turned to the trees," Watkins says, as quoted by Myron Angell in Thompson and West's History, "and when they were met by the Indian's fire, they retreated until they were reformed by the personal exertions of two or three men and then in regular order they rode back to the south, at one time turning to the river, which they found they could not cross." The man thrown from his horse and who shot an Indian before he himself was killed, as described by Johnny Calico, was Eugene Angel, following Watkins' account. The man whose horse ran away after he was hit and who was shot was probably William Headley, who, by his activity, was thought by the Indians to be an officer. The man killed at the top of the steep part of the trail was Richard Snowden, beyond a doubt, because his body was subsequently found there. Henry Meredith was killed just before the trail ascends, while still in the bottom land. He was a lawyer from California.

            The first shot in the fighting fired by a white man had been by A. K. Elliott, who had a rifle with telescope sights, but he missed his aim and he was among the men who fell during the race along the trail after reaching the high ground.

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            This point where the trail left the bottom land had been placed by Major Ormsby in charge of Captain Watkins and Captain Thomas F. Condon with their men, but the men deserted and Condon went back to tell Ormsby, who evidently was now in command of the expedition by common consent, judging from the Watkins' account. It was too late to make a stand there, however, and with the Indians on their heels the white men rode up the hill and along the trail. Ormsby intended to make a stand at the point where the mountain comes down close to the river and drops suddenly, where the trail passed along the top of the cliff, but only Watkins and Chris Barnes stood by him, while other white men, five in number, had been killed a few moments before. Ormsby was wounded in both arms and in the mouth but he told Watkins and Barnes to ride on and he followed. He was riding a white mule. Its saddle loosened and turned and he fell. In Angell's account in the Thompson and West History, he says that Ormsby then advanced to the Indians and told them not to kill him, that he would make peace with the whites, but that they shot him dead and that his body then "rolled over the ridge on which the trail ran and fell into a gulch," but Watkins knew nothing about this. It is at this point that Johnny Calico says the Indians turned back, but Captain Watkins says they killed an unknown boy and three men, Jones, McCarthy and McLeod, following the death of Ormsby. He also narrates that many were slain in the manner in which Chiquita Winnemucca rode up behind and seized his victim. He says Jones, McCarthy and McLeod rode out into the open country, were surrounded but managed for some time to keep the enemy at bay. When they fell the Indians danced a war dance around them. Myron Angell

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writes that the pursuit was kept up clear to Wadsworth.

            That is the fight that was misnamed The Battle of Pyramid Lake, for the lake was four miles away from the spot where the first shot was fired.

            There is no agreement on the spot where Major Ormsby's death occurred. The place described by Johnny Calico is probably that pointed out by the Pah-Utes to this day. It is easily recognized from the description. But it is not the spot that is spoken of by the white men who know the neighborhood. Some years after this fighting a Pitt River Indian of note was killed in Dead Ox Gulch, some miles south of the reservation and for a long time members of his tribe paid annual mourning visits to the gulch, where the stones mark his burying place. Several believe that this is where Major Ormsby was killed, but others show a little ridge and a small gully on the eastern side of the river, just opposite the mouth of Dead Ox canyon. Others, still, point to a spot marked by a whitish rocky rise farther down the river on the eastern side. The weight of the evidence would favor Johnny Calico's description, as the killing of Major Ormsby was an event long remembered among the Pah-Utes and one that would naturally be discussed among them in all its details. Ormsby's body was taken out by a packer of considerable prominence at the time, a man named Little, who took it to Carson City, and he was probably the only white man who ever could have pointed out the place where he found it.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT FOLLOWED THE DEFEAT.

            News of the defeat of the expedition reached

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Buckland's station on May 15th, brought in by some of the men who had escaped and it was quickly sent to Virginia City, Carson City, Genoa and other points. The facts, greatly exaggerated, were sent to California, too. In Nevada the women and children were placed in strong buildings and guards were posted against what was expected to be an onslaught by hordes of Indians at any moment. In a few days volunteers came over the mountains from California and Washoe organized a regiment of eight companies of infantry and six of cavalry, which were joined at Wadsworth on May 31st by a detachment of United States infantry and artillery under Colonel Jasper M. Stewart. Colonel "Jack" Hays, noted on the coast, was made commander on account of his experience as an Indian fighter and in his forces were such men as Charles S. Fairfax, then only recently speaker of the California assembly and whose right to the title of Baron Fairfax of Cameron in the peerage of Scotland was well known--his nephew now wears it in England ; Creed Haymond, afterwards chief counsel of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Companies; Major Daniel E. Hungerford, whose daughter afterwards married John W. Mackay; Joseph F. Triplett, subsequently prominent in Eastern Nevada affairs ; Benjamin. G. Lippincott, D. C. Ralston, J. B. Van Hagen and many others, including the ill-fated Captain E. T. Storey, for whom Storey county was named. Of the regulars, Dr. C. C. Keeney always retained his interest in Nevada. His widow, twenty-five years later, married William Alvord, who was for many years president of the Bank of California and a director on the Virginia & Truckee railroad and other Nevada interests.

            With such a well-disciplined force there could be only one outcome. On the morning of June 2,

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1860, a scouting party rode down into the bottom land about a mile to the south of where hostilities had begun between the Ormsby party and the Pah-Utes, and there the Indians, about three hundred strong and all mounted, rode forward against the new arrivals. The company of scouters retreated until they joined the main force, in the curiously cut up ground that lines the river valley. Here the whites made their stand, while the main body of Indians with Young Winnemucca—their war chief and a different man from Chiquita Winnemucca—in command. He stood on a high hill that stands out from the side of the mountain, like a promontory, and from that point gave his orders, which were obeyed without question by the Pah-Utes. Captains Storey and Van Hagen stormed their position and Captain Storey fell mortally wounded by a shot through the lungs. The Indians were driven back after hard fighting with a total loss admitted by themselves at four killed and seven wounded, while the white force lost four wounded, three of whom died of their wounds.

            In the meantime a force under Captain Condon had moved forward into the range to the east of Pyramid Lake, finding the Pah-Ute camp deserted. The main body on June 5th took this route, too, and in riding ahead William Allen was killed, but the Indians who shot him could not be found. Colonel Hays with the greater part of his own command returned to Virginia City on June 7th and the companies were then disbanded. The regulars under Colonel Stewart remained at a camp near Pyramid Lake for some time. That summer Fort Churchill was built and Warren Wasson, who was left in charge of the Indians by Major Dodge, the regular agent, brought them into their old ground in the following September.

WHEN MAJOR ORMSBY WAS KILLED    27

28 NEVADA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.

            History of Nevada by Myron Angell, published by Thompson and West, Oakland, Cal., 1881. Mr Angell draws for his narrative of the Indian fighting on two main sources, one the narrative of Captain R. G. Watkins and the other the journal of Warren Wasson, the originals of which are not available to the present writer.

            The Big Bonanza by Dan De Quille (William Wright), published by A. L. Bancroft & Co., San Francisco, 1877. Mr. Wright gives two chapters to this affair with the Indians. He is inclined to be flippant, but what he writes is first-hand information, as he was in Virginia City at the time. In the preface to the book Mark Twain testifies to Mr. Wright's reputation for accuracy.

            Inter Pocula by Hubert Howe Bancroft in his History of the Pacific States series. This and The Big Bonnaza are the book sources for the character of the early settlers, their manners, the number of desperadoes and their attitude toward the Indians.

            History of Nevada by Thomas Wren, Lewis Publishing Company, New York, 1904. In the main Mr. Wren follows the Thompson and West History by Myron Angell.

            History of Nevada by Samuel P. Davis. The chapters on this Indian incident in the history of the state are credited to Major G. S. Ingalls, veteran Indian agent, but they were evidently inserted in the matter furnished by Major Ingalls and are all taken from Myron Angell's account.

            The statement of Johnny Calico, now seventy-six years old, was obtained from him in person through the kindness of Lorenzo D. Creel, special supervisor of the Indian Service and formerly for several years superintendent of the agency at Pyramid Lake, who knew Calico well and persuaded him to talk through "Johnny's" son, Fred Calico, who lives at Fernley, Nevada, most of the time, and speaks both Pah-Ute and English with ease. The writer went over the ground on which the fighting took place, making the trip twice. The old trail is still plainly visible on the eastern side of the river, but has been carried away by erosion in several places. Mr. Creel located the places mentioned by Johnny Calico. Information of value was also obtained from Richard Cowles, State Senator, and from Mr. Golding, the trader at the agency.