Sale of captured Indian weapons by the Army

[jplower]

While searching an Internet antique gun dealer's site, I came across a statement by the dealer regarding one of his pieces.  He claimed that the Army had sold or auctioned off the guns turned in by Sitting Bull's band after their surrender in 1881.  My interest in this is due to a "rack number" or I.D. number stamped in Gothic characters on the upper right wrist of a 54 caliber, full stock percussion rifle.  This rifle has a stamp on the barrel of "J.P. Lower Phila".  In Dumont's book, he states that the government had listed several of Lower's rifles in the inventory of captured weapons.  Lower was a trader and gunsmith who moved from Philadelphia to Colorado in 1872, and had been doing business in the west since 1868.  Is there any credibility to the dealer's statement about a sale or auction of the captured weapons, and do you know if they were given I.D. numbers prior to the sale?


JP 

[noggy]

Question number two I have no clue about, but I assume it is pretty likely that some of the captured weaponry would have been sold/auctioned off to civilians and hunters. A lot of the weapons would have been older models of no use to the Army, whose soldiers anyway had standard issued weapons and couldn`t just use any gun (even though some carried personal weapons in addition.

[herosrest]

Nov 20, 2017 6:27:16 GMT -6 jplower said:

While searching an Internet antique gun dealer's site, I came across a statement by the dealer regarding one of his pieces.  He claimed that the Army had sold or auctioned off the guns turned in by Sitting Bull's band after their surrender in 1881.  My interest in this is due to a "rack number" or I.D. number stamped in Gothic characters on the upper right wrist of a 54 caliber, full stock percussion rifle.  This rifle has a stamp on the barrel of "J.P. Lower Phila".  In Dumont's book, he states that the government had listed several of Lower's rifles in the inventory of captured weapons.  Lower was a trader and gunsmith who moved from Philadelphia to Colorado in 1872, and had been doing business in the west since 1868.  Is there any credibility to the dealer's statement about a sale or auction of the captured weapons, and do you know if they were given I.D. numbers prior to the sale?


JP 

There was a long standing weapons trade of army surplus to the tribes. Whether it was illicit is a moot point since it was broadly a secret trade undertaken as need to know in modern parlance. Those who care to research it will find that govt. surplus weaponry and its trading, came into the responsibility of one............ William Worth Belknap (1829-1890), secretary of war in the administration of President Grant, who was charged with various unscrupulous activities. One charge was that he violated the neutrality of the United States in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War by selling arms and ammunition to the French. Belknap is one immense enigma as both hero and dastard. Seriously interesting guy. The 1877 river trading contracts supplying the army in Montana (Yellowstone) went to an Iowa business in ..... Keokuk.