Pawnee Scouts
At the time of Susanna Alderdice's capture, G Company of Custer's 7th Cavalry was crossing the Saline River about a mile to the east. Lieutenant Edward Law and 2nd Lt. Thomas March, who had been slightly wounded at the Battle of the Washita, were in command. About half the soldiers had crossed the river when panicked settlers appeared from the west and told of the murderous raiding.
Earlier, March had heard gunshots but had assumed they came from settlers out hunting. The fleeing settlers quickly informed him of his error, and the second lieutenant took 30 soldiers and several of the settlers to go after the raiders. After riding some five miles, March's command came upon a small party of Indians grazing their horses. Settler Jacob Schafer recognized a mare and a colt that belonged to Timothy Kine and four horses belonging to Frank Schermerhorn. The soldiers fired at the Indians but didn't hit anyone, and the chase continued. After darkness fell, March still led his men another 15 miles before calling it quits. They didn't return to their camp until after midnight.
The next day, May 31, settlers and soldiers discovered raid victims scattered along Spillman Creek and the Saline River. Tom Alderdice, returning from Salina, stopped off at the Schermerhorn ranch, where he learned about his son and two stepsons, as well as the capture of his wife and baby daughter. From there, he rode to William Hendrickson's house, where the bodies of his son Frank, age 2, and his stepson John, not yet 6, had been taken. Tom's agonizing cries as he viewed the little bodies would never be forgotten by young C.C. Hendrickson, William's son. At least Tom's other stepson, the gravely wounded Willis, was hanging on to life.
Frederic Remington, "Battle of Washita"
Despite his tragic homecoming, Tom Alderdice set out on his own on June 1 in search of his wife and baby daughter. Several miles to the north, not far from the Solomon River, he finally picked up the raiders' trail. He followed that for several more miles before he spotted several warriors coming and going from a creek unknown to him. He hid in a ravine and watched for a while, soon realizing that the Indians were going off on hunting and raiding parties. "I supposed a large camp above," he later wrote. He needed help, so he returned to the Saline River valley and then traveled to Fort Leavenworth, hoping the soldiers would join in his rescue mission.
While at Fort Leavenworth, Tom Alderdice was interviewed by the Leavenworth Times and Conservative. The newspaper account mistakenly said that Tom discovered his sons' bodies near his house, instead of first seeing them at the Hendrickson place. According to the paper, one dead boy had four bullets in his body and another had five arrows in his body. As for the wounded Willis, age 4, the newspaper reported that he was found with "five arrows in his body, one entering his back to the depth of five inches."
Another news story said that Tom Alderdice met with George Custer, who was at Fort Leavenworth to serve as a judge at a horse fair. Tom also met Custer's wife, Libbie, and she later wrote about the encounter in Following the Guidon:
The man was almost wild with grief over the capture of his wife by Indians, and the murder of his children....The man was as nearly a madman as can be. His eyes wild, frenzied, and sunken with grief, his voice weak with suffering, his tear-stained, haggard face -- all told a terrible tale of what he had been and was enduring. He wildly waved his arms as he paced the floor like some caged thing, and implored General Custer to use his influence to organize an expedition to secure the release of his wife. He turned to me with trembling tones, describing the return to his desolate cabin....The silence in the cabin told its awful tale, and he knew, without entering, that the mother of the little ones had met with the horrible fate which every woman in those days considered worse than death.
One of the standard features of Buffalo Bills programs was the recreation of the Battle of Summit Springs, since he was personally involved. It took place in 1869, in retaliation for an attack by Cheyenne Indians on settlers along the Solomon River in Nebraska. Buffalo Bill led the Fifth U.S. Cavalry to the camp of Cheyenne leader Tall Bull, and allegedly dispatched the chief personally; it was the kind of exploit that lent itself to a colorful spectacle once he turned to show business.
Tom Alderdice told about his own scouting activities and also provided a written description of Susanna to the officers at Fort Leavenworth, and a copy was then forwarded to Major Carr in the field. Tom described his wife as medium height, light complexion, with light brown hair and blue eyes. He also noted that Susanna "had a female child eight months old, with her, when captured." Tom returned to the Saline River valley, but soon ventured out again to the creek where he had discovered the Indians earlier. This time, as Major Carr would later report, Tom came upon the Dog Soldiers' abandoned camp and discovered a most horrible sight -- the lifeless form of his baby, Alice, strangled with a bowstring. His captured wife, Susanna, had been allowed to carry Alice for three days before the baby's incessant crying had prompted the Indians to silence her forever. Now, there was nothing left for Tom Alderdice to do but pray that Carr and his troopers would find Susanna and bring her home safely.
During these tumultuous times on the frontier, female settlers dreaded being captured by Indians. At the hands of their captors, as Mrs. Custer observed, they were liable to face a fate "worse than death." If a woman was rescued, the reassimilation into white society was never easy. Published accounts about Indian captivity were often mere whitewashes of the truth. Consider the account left by Veronica Ulbrich Megnin, written only for the government, regarding her captivity when she was just 13. Veronica was seized in 1867, not too far north of where Susanna Alderdice was captured two years later.
The Cheyenne Indians featured in the painting above are from left to right; Wolf, Roman Nose, White Horse, Tall Bull and Little Robe Pawnee Killer a Sioux, is the sixth mounted warrior from the left.
I remember vividly the hot summer day of 1867 when a band of Cheyenne Indians swept down upon our farm, captured me and my brother Peter. They whipped us with their rawhides and we cried bitterly for help. More dead than alive they took us away from home and three miles later they shot my brother off the horse and left him, where I pointed out the location four months later to my father....They compelled me to travel with them, we were traveling from one place to another, some of the band were on the go all the time. I did not get enough to eat, suffered from thirst, had to wash and do other work; sometimes they whipped me, sometimes they wanted or threatened to kill me. Soon one Indian, soon another belonging to the band forcibly violated my body, causing me immense pain and anguish thereby. This was almost a daily and nightly occurrence which would have killed me, if I had not been liberated almost exhausted.
Every woman knew that if captured, repeated rapes were likely to occur, but rapes were not mentioned in popular captivity narratives written by women who were later rescued. Like Veronica, Susanna Alderdice and Maria Weichel undoubtedly suffered horribly during their captivity, receiving little food or water and too much sun. The rapes would go on, night and day. To the end of her days, Susanna would surely remember the screams of her children as they were being killed. Susanna and Maria traveled hundreds of miles in captivity.
Additional Sources:
www.nps.gov
65.40.245.240/gallery
www.pfeife-tabak.de
www.ghosttowns.com
www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com
66.188.129.72:5980/History
memory.loc.gov
vintageart.com
kabel.netvisit.nl
www.historycooperative.org
