Fort Wallace June 26th 1867

Prairie Trails Journal

West of the Mississippi, there is a region where west-bound trails such as the Santa Fe Trail are crossed by north-bound trails such as the Western Cattle Trail. This area of the Great Plains stretches across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. The history of the Plains Indians, explorers, traders, cowboys, soldiers, and settlers in this region is an incredible saga.

Fort Wallace June 26th 1867

On the morning of Wednesday June 26th 1867, a party of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and Lakotas launched a raid on the horse herd at Pond Creek Stage Station near the newly established Fort Wallace, Kansas. Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry rushed to repulse the attack. The leader of the military force, Captain Albert Barnitz, claimed to have inflicted ‘severe’ losses upon the Indians. He also reported six soldiers killed and six wounded. One of the military losses was a young Englishman, Frederick Wyllyams, who had enlisted the previous year and who had attained the rank of Sergeant by the time that he was killed. A famous photograph was taken of Wyllyams’ body as propaganda to encourage a greater effort to police and settle the great plains. The story behind the photograph is however as intriguing as the event itself. The following article is reproduced from The Crow’s Nest, the biannual journal of the Custer Association of Great Britain (www.custer-association–gb.org.uk).

Frederick Wyllyams – The Photograph

It is often said that photographs do not lie. It is of course now well known that that statement is itself far from honest. History has shown us that ever since the birth of photography, the images produced have been manipulated and edited in order to misrepresent the picture that has been produced. In this context, how reliable is the image of Wyllyams’ corpse as a document of the skirmish in which he was killed? This question in fact demands further clarification, as there are two representations of Wyllyams’ body. The first to be published was not in fact Bell’s photograph, but an engraving published in Harper’s Weekly and reproduced in Bell’s account of his travels, New Tracks in North America. Indeed, Bell’s photograph was not reproduced in his book at all. Instead, the author, or perhaps his publisher, preferred the less graphic engraving. The article in Harper’s Weekly describes the engraving as being made “from sketches by Major A. R. Calhoun and Dr. Bell”.1

The description of Wyllyam’s body in the Harper’s Weekly article reported that:

“The body of Sergeant Frederick Wyllyams was also fearfully mutilated. His scalp was taken, two balls pierced his brain, and his right brow was cut open with a hatchet. His nose was severed and his throat gashed. The body was opened and the heart laid bare. The legs were cut to the bone, and the arms hacked with knives.”

Bell went into greater detail, saying:

“Sergeant Wylyams lay dead beside his horse; and as the fearful picture first met my gaze, I was horror-stricken. Horse and rider were stripped bare of trapping and clothes, while around them the trampled, blood-stained ground showed the desperation of the struggle.

“I shall minutely describe this horrid sight, not for the sake of creating a sensation, but because it is characteristic of a mode of warfare soon–thank God!–to be abolished; and because the mutilations have, as we shall presently see, most of them some meaning, apart from brutality and a desire to inspire fear.

“A portion of the sergeant’s scalp lay near him, but the greater part was gone; through his head a rifle-ball had passed, and a blow from the tomahawk had laid his brain open above his left eye; the nose was slit up, and his throat was cut from ear to ear; seven arrows were standing in different parts of his naked body; the breast was laid open, so as to expose the heart; and the arm, that had doubtless done its work against the red-skins, was hacked to the bone; his legs, from the hip to the knee, lay open with horrible gashes, and from the knee to the foot they had cut the flesh with their knives. Thus mutilated, Wylyams lay beside the mangled horse. In all, there were seven killed and five wounded.

“As I have said, almost all the different tribes on the plains had united their forces against us, and each of these tribes has a different sign by which it is known.

“The sign of the Cheyenne, or “Cut arm,” is made in peace by drawing the hand across the arm, to imitate cutting it with a knife; that of the Arapahoe, or “Smeller tribe,” by seizing the nose with the thumb and fore-finger; of the Sioux, or “Cut-throat,” by drawing the hand across the throat. The Comanche, or “Snake Indian,” waves his hand and arm, in imitation of the crawling of a snake; the Crow imitates with his hands the flapping of wings; the Pawnee, or “Wolf Indian,” places two fingers erect on each side of his head, to represent pointed ears; the Blackfoot touches the heel, and then the toe, of the right foot; and the Kiowa’s most usual sign is to imitate the act of drinking.

“If we now turn to the body of poor Sergeant Wylyams, we shall have no difficulty in recognising some meaning in the wounds. The muscles of the right arm, hacked to the bone, speak of the Cheyennes, or “Cut arms;” the nose slit denotes the “Smeller tribe,” or Arapahoes; and the throat cut bears witness that the Sioux were also present. There were, therefore, amongst the warriors Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Sioux. It was not till some time afterwards that I knew positively what these signs meant, and I have not yet discovered what tribe was indicated by the incisions down the thighs, and the laceration of the calves of the legs, in oblique parallel gashes. The arrows also varied in make and colour, according to the tribe; and it was evident, from the number of different devices, that warriors from several tribes had each purposely left one in the dead man’s body”.

The photograph of Wyllyams’ body shows the sergeant lying on a patch of grass with what appear to be five arrows protruding from his torso. His injuries are clearly shown in the photograph, as are his genitals which appear to have been the target of one of the arrows.

The etching is clearly based upon the same image, but shown from a slightly different angle so that Wyllyams right arm obscures his genitals. This was presumably a concession to Victorian sensibilities. The etching also shows six arrows sticking out of the victim. A closer examination of the photograph however reveals that a shadow on the right side of Wyllyams’ body might well be a sixth arrow viewed from a foreshortened angle.

On the face of it, the image is exactly what it purports to be. In Bell’s words, “a photograph of him, poor fellow, as he lay”. Bell tells us that Wyllyams “…lay dead beside his horse; …Horse and rider were stripped bare of trapping and clothes, while around them the trampled, blood-stained ground showed the desperation of the struggle”. The first thing that strikes the viewer of the photograph (and indeed the etching) however is that there is no horse shown in the picture. Further, there is no evidence of blood on the ground or trampled ground in the photograph. This leads the observer to question whether the photograph is in fact Wyllyams’ body. One possibility being that it could be an image of one of the other victims of the fight.

There are several potential answers to these questions. Firstly, it could be argued that the picture was taken from an angle which did not include the horse, even though it might have been lying nearby. Further, the photograph is not of first class quality; this might then explain why the blood stains and trampled earth cannot be seen. As for the suggestion that the photograph shows one of the other victims of the skirmish and not Wyllyams, this seems hardly credible in the light of the statements by not only Bell himself, but also the author of the Harper’s Weekly article, and Wyllyams’ commanding officer, Captain Albert Barnitz, all of who report that it was Wyllyams who was photographed by Bell. Perhaps the real answer can be found in Barnitz’s letter to his wife Jennie, written on 29th June 1867, three days after the fight.2

Barnitz’s letter to his wife contains a good description of the skirmish, including the death of Wyllyams. Wyllyams was clearly known to Jennie Barnitz as Barnitz includes the comment that he was “..the one who fixed the tin protection to our stove pipe. –and who was such a gentlemanly soldier…”. More importantly, it throws some light upon the circumstance in which Bell took his photograph when he says:

“He also photographed the body of Serg’t Wyllyams, after it was brought to the post, just to show our friends in Washington, the Indian Agents, what fiends we have to deal with!”

This little phrase seems to explain the queries highlighted above. The horse, the blood and the trampled ground are not shown in the photograph because it was taken at the post and not at the scene of the sergeant’s death. If this analysis is accurate, Bell did not brave the battlefield to photograph Wyllyams “as he lay”, but waited until the body was brought in to the post. Such an interpretation is consistent with not only Barnitz’s letter, but also some of the comments in Bell’s own account.

Prior to giving his description of Wyllyams’ corpse, Bell gives an outline of the fight. He states that at the outset of the skirmish, he and others rushed out of camp with their rifles towards a nearby ravine. On finding that there were no Indians in the ravine, they “…returned to breakfast, feeling it undesirable to go farther unprotected and alone”. He then tells of a two hour wait that was brought to an end by “…a horseman from the field of action, who came to get an ambulance for the dead and wounded”. At no time does he talk of travelling to the scene of the fight with his camera (although he does mention the sight of the sergeant lying by his horse; artistic licence?).

Assuming that the body was photographed at the post rather than on the battlefield, this raises further questions about exactly how this was actually done. It seems unlikely that the body would have been brought in with five or six arrows still sticking out of it (or without breaking the arrows). If so, were the arrows removed at the site of the killing and stuck back in the body at the fort for the benefit of the photographer?

Although not mentioned by Bell, Barnitz or the Harper’s Weekly article, it would also seem that the Indian warriors removed a portion of tattooed skin from Wyllyams’ chest after he was slain. This piece of skin was subsequently recovered from the Cheyennes and is now part of the Paul Dyck Collection. The tattoo comprises strong British military symbols and shows a lion and a unicorn separated by a pile of cannon balls. Behind the creatures are six flags, each apparently a version of the royal ensign. In the centre is a royal coat of arms surmounted by a crown and peeping out from either side of the flags is a cannon.A photograph of the tattoo was reproduced in Colin Taylor’s The Warriors of the Plains.3

It would seem therefore that the photograph of the slain sergeant was almost as misleading following its subject’s death as was Frederick Wyllyams himself during his lifetime.

Notes

1. Late Indian Outrages (Harper’s Weekly Magazine, 27th July 1866), William A Bell – New Tracks in North America (London, 1869. Reprint, Albuquerque, Horn & Wallace, 1965).

2. Robert M Utley – Life in Custer’s Cavalry (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

3. Colin F Taylor – The Warriors of the Plains (London, Hamlyn, 1975).