Sand Creek - Ned Wynkoop

[Banned]

Sure I do. Because Custer and Sheridan wanted to attack the Kiowas right after Black Kettle, and they had the right to do so (Satanta's blood baths were happening everyday in Texas ), but Hazen, backed by Sherman, didn't agree.

19th Kansas (not the 17th) was the regiment which found Miss Blinn. I have four witnesses and the actual officer who found the Blinns next to Black Kettle's death location.

[markland]

custerstands said:

Sure I do. Because Custer and Sheridan wanted to attack the Kiowas right after Black Kettle, and they had the right to do so (Satanta's blood baths were happening everyday in Texas ), but Hazen, backed by Sherman, didn't agree.

19th Kansas (not the 17th) was the regiment which found Miss Blinn. I have four witnesses and the actual officer who found the Blinns next to Black Kettle's death location.

As Black Kettle was shot while crossing the river, that seems rather dubious.

Billy

[yksin]

shatonska said:

is Washita by Greene a good book ?

Absolutely yes.

--Yksin

[yksin]

custerstands said:

19th Kansas (not the 17th) was the regiment which found Miss Blinn. I have four witnesses and the actual officer who found the Blinns next to Black Kettle's death location.

Per Jerome Greene, Washita, pp. 171-173: During the expedition that set out from Camp Supply to Fort Cobb on December 7, 1868, the 7th Cavalry & 19th Kansas camped on Dec. 10 on the north bank of the Washita about five miles downstream (& in an easterly direction) from the site of Black Kettle's destroyed village. The following morning (Dec. 11), Custer & Sheridan with an escort of men from the 7th Cavalry (& apparently from a reference on p. 172 also some men of the 19th Kansas) followed the Washita along its north bank to Black Kettle's camp, approaching it from the northeast (about the same approach Major Elliott's battalion had taken on the morning of the battle) and crossed the stream into Black Kettle's camp. They spent some time in the camp, then turned eastward (downstream) in the direction that Elliott and his men had ridden off & disappeared on the day of the battle, and found the bodies of Elliott & his men (about 2 miles from Black Kettle's camp, I believe). Then Custer & Sheridan proceeded downstream back to their own camp. A detachment of soldiers that had been with them went through the abandoned downriver camps of other Indians, and in one of those villages they found the bodies of Clara & Willie Blinn.

The entire account of the movements of the group that went upstream (westward) from their camp to Black Kettle's village, then downstream (eastward) to find the bodies of Elliott & his men, then further downstream (eastward) to find the bodies of Clara & Willie Blinn, makes it pretty clear that the Blinns' bodies were far removed from Black Kettle's camp.

One of the officers of the 19th Kansas was Colonel Horace Moore. Here's his account of the day's movements:

The next day, December 11, General Sheridan, with several officers of the Nineteenth and Seventh, visited the battle field to determine, if possible, the fate of Major Elliott and his men. It took but a few moments to discover the bodies on the bank of the tributary of the Washita, called Sergeant-major Creek (as the sergeant-major of the Seventh was one of the killed), on the south side of the battle field. They were lying in a circle, feet in center, and a pile of empty cartridge cases by the side of each man told how dearly he had sold his life. The bodies were stripped of clothing, except the knit undershirt, and the throat of every one of them had the appearance of having been cut. This was caused by the Indians having cut out the thyroid cartilege. None were scalped, and none of the bodies had been molested. The men all lay with their faces down and the back was shot full of arrows. Wagons were sent for and the dead buried that night in a grave dug on the north bank of the river, opposite the scene of battle.

On his way back to camp, Doctor Bailey, of Topeka, surgeon of the Nineteenth, discovered the body of a white woman and a little boy two years old. The woman had been shot in the forehead, and the child killed by striking his head against a tree. The mother had a piece of bread concealed in her bosom, as though she had attempted to escape from camp. The next morning the woman was laid on a blanket on her side and the boy on her arm and the men ordered to march by to see if possibly some one might identify her. It was Mrs. Blinn, captured by the Kiowas, October 6, with a train going from Lyon to Dodge. Her husband was killed at the same time. The body of the woman and child were taken along and finally buried in the government cemetery at Fort Arbuckle. On the 2d of November, a number of Mexican traders had been in Kiowa camp and she had taken the opportunity to send out a letter by them.

-- Horace L. Moore, "The Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry in the Washita Campaign," Chronicles of Oklahoma 2(4): 358-359 (December 1924). digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v002/v002p350.html

Moore is wrong about a two or three things: the bodies of Elliott & his men had been molested Richard Blinn was not killed during the October 6 attack on the wagon train where Clara & Willie were captured, and the letter that Clara Blinn wrote on November 7 wasn't carried out by Mexican traders, but rather by a man called "Cheyenne Jack" who was an employee of the Fort Cobb post trader William "Dutch Bill" Griffenstein. Cheyenne Jack brought Blinn's letter to Griffenstein, who passed it on to Gen. Hazen, who on about Dec. 25 or 26 authorized Griffenstein to negotiate with the Indians for the Blinns' release. (Based on his involvement with Griffenstein in the matter, Hazen stated later that the Blinns had been held by Arapahos.) As the attack on Black Kettle's camp happened on the 27th, there was no time for negotiation; the downstream Indians' reaction was to get out of there in fear that their camps, too, would be attacked, & it is apparently during that scramble to move that Clara & her little boy were killed. According to an undated newspaper account that Hardorff (''Washita Memories'') found in an archive file on Richard Blinn, they were killed by Arapaho women in Yellow Bear's camp when the little boy got in the way of them taking down the lodge, and that Clara was then killed when she refused to go without his remains. Not sure how accurate that account is, though, given that Clara was found with a piece of food as though she had been eating when she was abruptly killed.

At any rate, there's continuing disagreement about whether the Blinns were held captive by Kiowas, Arapahos, or Cheyennes, because contemporary accounts didn't agree on that point. But, as Greene writes:

ome postaction accounts confusingly promoted the belief that Clara Blinn and her child were present there at the time of the engagement. Nearly all of these insinuate that the Blinns' remains were found in or near Black Kettle's village. Contemporary accounts, however, place the discovery of their bodies downstream from the scene of Custer's attack, removed even from the area of Elliot's action, with most reporting that they were found in the vicinity of the former Kiowa village. (Greene, Washita, p. 185)

In an endnote to this, Greene writes:

This perception [that the Blinns were found in Black Kettle's camp during the engagement] seems to have been most common among the Kansas volunteers, perhaps because they were not present [at the actual engagement] and thus did not precisely comprehend the configuration of the Washita action. (Greene, Washita, p. 260 note 5).

-- Yksin

[harpskiddie]

As a matter of interest, does anyone know where the bodies of Elliott and the men killed with him were initially buried, i.e. is the "scene pf battle" the village location or where Elliott and men were found?

And does anyone know if the bodies were later recovered for burial elsewhere, and if so, where?

Gordie,
I don't mean to sound degradin', but with a face like that you got nothin' to laugh about...........

[yksin]

harpskiddie said:

As a matter of interest, does anyone know where the bodies of Elliott and the men killed with him were initially buried, i.e. is the "scene pf battle" the village location or where Elliott and men were found?

And does anyone know if the bodies were later recovered for burial elsewhere, and if so, where?

All of the men except Elliott himself were buried on a small knoll near the camp where the 7th Cavalry & the 19th Kansas were camped during their brief stop at the Washita. (p. 156 of Custer's 22 Dec 1868 report Elliott's body, and those of Clara & Willie Blinn, were taken with the expedition when it left, & were buried later at Fort Arbuckle. When Fort Arbuckle was decommissioned, Elliott (& I believe also the Blinns) were disinterred and taken to Fort Gibson, where they are now interred in Fort Gibson National Cemetery. Here's the location of Elliott's grave. (The database only gives burials of actual veterans, so the Blinns can't be searched through it.) I don't know if the other men in Elliott's command were later reburied or not, might be able to find out.

The bodies of Elliott & his men were initially found where they were killed, about two miles from Black Kettle's village. I'd say that both locations were scenes of the battle.

-- Yksin