My wife's great-grandfather is known to have died a prisoner at Point Lookout, but he is one of the many, many who died there that are not listed on the records.
stand watie, I found the following that might interest you in a Feb 27, 1864 issue of The Daily Picayune newspaper from New Orleans. They were reporting something published in the Chicago Tribune of the 18th (I think they mean Feb 18th).
Among our prisoners are about 100 copperfaced, bareheaded and barefooted Indians from the smoky mountains of North Carolina. Such savage wretches should never be taken prisoners. They will be sent north with the rebel deserters.
The article doesn't say exactly where the Feds captured the Indians. The article has the title, "The War in East Tennessee" and indicates the information came from a letter from Knoxville. The last part of the paragraph I excerpted above mentioned the locations of Kingston, Crab Orchard, and Jacksboro. What I listed above is the only part that mentions the Indians.
frankly, i'm surprised that the "filth that came down from the north" bothered to send my relatives to Point Lookout for "proper disposition", but they did in at least those 5 cases!
at Point Lookout DEATH Camp the USUAL method of killing prisoners was evidently by DROWNING. persons in the sickened/wounded/half-starved condition of the POWs were EASY for two guards to drown and it was QUIET.
SHOOTING in the back of the head, with a pistol, was likely second in frequency of ways to kill a prisoner, but around a prison camp shots provoked "questions", especially if the shots were heard after dark.
BAYONETING was probably third in frequency of execution methods, but that method was also NOISY!
yesterday afternoon, i talked to a ranger at PL and he said every time it rains or floods that more bones are washed up to be visible on the surface;it is "just routine", according to the staffmember.
it WAS once my guess from comparing entrance/admittance records of POWs, deducting those transferred to another place of confinement,died of "natural causes & wounds" & those POWs released from PL that at least 14,000 POWs were murdered (the War Department called those persons "mysteriously disappearred"---does any reader believe that ANY prison warden would accept "mysteriously disappearred" as a LAWFUL disposition of ANY confined person at any confinement facility?).
based on my recent conversations with the staff of the PLPOWC museum and the rangers/maintaince personnel of the PL State Park & Historical Site, i now believe that number is FAR too low, given the routine nature of "summary execution" of racial/religious & ethnic minority CSA servicemembers, upon arrival or shortly thereafter,at the POW camp.
the ACTUAL number of those MURDERED will, imVho,NEVER be known with any certainty.
for TRUTH & REMEMBERENCE,sw