Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

122 страница из 156

Within three days news of the “massacre” reached Carson City and Virginia City. The person who had discovered the burnt bodies, a third Williams’s brother, anxiously proclaimed that at least 500 Indian warriors were on the warpath.⁶⁷ Sarcastically telling the white viewpoint, Sarah Winnemucca said, “The bloodthirsty savages had murdered two innocent, hardworking, industrious, kind-hearted settlers.”⁶⁸ “Doctor” Henry DeGroot, the Comstock romantic and correspondent, reported that the Virginia City citizens were in agreement that the Paiutes should be punished. Describing the armed force that would be sent against the Indians, he noted, however, a few men “… of ruffian proclivities, who believing that an Indian war would furnish them employment at public expense, and possibly afford opportunities for securing Pah Ute ponies at a cheap rate, did all that lay in their power to promote a scrimmage of this kind.”⁶⁹

So a militia of about 750 vigilantes composed of volunteers from Virginia City, Silver City, Carson City, and Genoa was quickly formed with Carson City’s most prominent citizen, Major William Ormsby, as their nominal leader, and the troops—rascals and professionals—marched toward Pyramid Lake by way of Williams Station and the Truckee River. Some of the volunteers, unorganized and poorly armed, stupidly followed a small party of Paiutes up a ravine. Once in the ravine a few hundred Paiutes appeared and, closing off any escape routes, proceeded to kill 76 of the 105 members of the vigilante army, including Major Ormsby.⁷⁰