American West: 1861-76

Lesson 5: Kit Carson and the Navajos, Roman Nose and Major Forsyth

More Indian Trouble Coming, 1868

Scouts Comstock and Grover had a dangerous assignment. It would be more difficult they realized when they learned that Captain Frederick Benteen had attacked and killed several Indians at the Saline River. Undeterred but cautious they reached Turkey Leg’s lodge. The Indian was surprised to see them, but made them welcome. Their welcome was short lived.

Captain Frederick Benteen

After runners arrived with the news of Benteen’s attack the scouts quickly left, knowing they were lucky to be alive. Two miles from Turkey Leg’s camp, Indians jumped them. Comstock was killed. Grover, though badly wounded, staggered to the railroad, flagged down a train, and later reached Fort Wallace. But the Indian attacks continued.

Brady tells us that “The Cheyennes swept through western Kansas like a devastating storm,” killing or capturing eighty-four settlers. The railroad also fell under attack as time after time gangs of builders were killed. But the Kansas Pacific had been warned, back in 1866, at Fort Ellsworth. The giant that had made the warning was the Cheyenne’s head chief, Roman Nose.

Roman Nose, “standing six feet three and magnificently proportioned,” as Brady quotes from Army Sacrifices by General Fry, delivered the following speech:

“This is the first time that I have ever shaken the white man’s hand in friendship. If the railway is continued I shall be his enemy forever.”

The railway was continued and on September 17, 1868, Lieutenant Frederick Beecher and Major George Forsyth, with their troop of scouts, would begin to have no doubt that Roman Nose, who believed he was immune to bullets and arrows, meant every word he said.

Roman Nose had received this power of protection from a medicine man who had seen a magical war bonnet in a vision, then constructed it for Roman Nose. It contained, among other items of nature, the skin of a kingfisher whose magic caused a bullet wound to close instantly. It also was adorned with a bat, which extended to Roman Nose protection during night battles, but it came with taboos.

Roman Nose must not shake anyone’s hand, nor eat food taken from a dish with a metal utensil. These taboos seemed simple enough and Roman Nose honored them. By the fall of 1868 he was still “living” proof that the magical bonnet worked. For there he stood, this 230-pounds of bronze glory, very much alive and ready to fight — that is, until he unwittingly ate food that had been taken from a pot with a metal fork.

This breaking of the taboo, imposed by the magical war bonnet, happened just before the historic battle that began on September 17, 1868, at Beecher’s Island, Colorado against 48 scouts under the command of Major George Forsyth and Lieutenant Frederick Beecher. It was a battle that, at first, Roman Nose could only sit on his pony and watch because he had broken a taboo. Should he enter the battle, he would die.

There were many medicine men among the Plains tribes. Here's an article that tells of one of the most famous.

A Ghost of a Dance By Melanie Storie http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/amer... The founder of the Ghost Dance was a Paiute mystic known as Wovoka or Jack Wilson. He was born in Western Nevada in 1856. The Ghost Dance swept across the western reservations in 1889-1890, and Indians embraced the new religion with a fervor.

Sources for this section are:

Brady, Cyrus Townshend. The Sioux Indian Wars, From the Powder River to the Little Big Horn. Indian Head Books, New York, 1992.

Capps, Benjamin. The Indians: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1973.

Wheeler, Keith. The Scouts: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1978.

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