Hysterical Journey To Historic Places

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AN INDIAN FOR BREAKFAST



Silver mining in the Comstock Lode at Virginia City was booming by 1859, but it came at a dear cost to the Paiutes living nearby. Traditional grazing lands were over run, trees that supplied pine nuts for their sustenance were cut down for lumber, wild game animals disappeared, Indian livestock was stolen, and personal abuses were suffered. Depredations were also visited upon the white community. By the spring of 1860 smoldering resentment led to a gathering of the tribes at Pyramid Lake for talk of war. During the war council two young Paiute girls fell into the clutches of ruthless white men and were being held captive at Williams Trading Post on the Carson River. It was a notorious hellhole. During the course of a horse trade gone bad the Williams Brothers set their dog on a Paiute man. When attacked by the dog the man yelped and cursed in his own language. The captive girls heard him and called out. The missing girls were recovered the next day, May 4, 1860. Four white men were killed, and the trading post burnt to the ground. News of the killings at Williams Station reached Virginia City on May 7 and in a panicked response the citizens of Virginia City, Carson City, Silver City, and Genoa quickly raised militia groups to quell the uprising. As their leader they selected William A. Ormsby, of Carson City, who was a veteran of the War with Mexico. It was truly a rag-tag outfit. They were poorly armed, poorly supplied, and poorly mounted. All they had in full measure were whiskey and bravado. On the morning of May 12 after suffering three days of a howling spring blizzard they set off on the attack from the Big Bend of the Truckee River hoping to have an Indian for breakfast. They had no battle plan and were in blissful ignorance of what they faced. They were cold, hungry and miserable. The trail down river was slippery and difficult and when they finally arrived at the village late in the afternoon their horses were played out. War Chief Numaga quickly suckered them into a brutal ambush. They managed to break out of it and fled back upriver in a running retreat. One hundred and five men rode into the attack and seventy-nine were killed. Twenty-three of the twenty-six survivors were wounded. The photo shows the meadow where the slaughter stopped as darkness fell. Ormsby died here.

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