Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bank
PBS star and auction house founder Wes Cowan reveals his favorite collectibles.
By: Wes Cowan 07/01/2008
The term of enlistment for Indian Scouts was six months. They received the same pay and allowances of regular white troops, and the government provided their quarters and rations. The scouts were commanded by white officers, were not subject to military drill and couldbe discharged by the Department Commanderat will. By the time Custer arrived at Fort Lincoln in Dakota Territory in the spring of 1873, Bloody Knife was a seasoned scout. He quickly became Custer’s favorite, in spite of his penchant for violence, often brought on by his fondness for spirituous liquors. He served with Custer on the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 and as one of the chief scouts on the Black Hills Expedition of 1874, and again on the Bighorn-Yellowstone Expedition of 1876. During the historic Battle of the Little Bighorn, Bloody Knife, along with the other Arikara and Crow scouts, had been instructed by Custer to drive off the herds of Indian ponies in the hostiles camp. When Reno’s command of 140 troopers struck the southern end of the main village, Bloody Knife was there.He was mounted and close to Reno when hit by one or more bullets, one striking him between the eyes. Like the Custer camp chair, the discharge paper has impeccable provenance. The businessman Welch acquired it on September 7, 1933, from F.B. Zahn of Fort Yates, South Dakota, for $5. Zahn, in turn, had acquired it from Mrs. Iron Horse, half-sister of Bloody Knife, for an undisclosed sum. The discharge paper was sold with Zahn’s original typed letter to Welch offering the discharge for sale, another typed transmittal letter from Zahn finalizing the sale and a newspaper clipping from the Bismarck, North Dakota, paper announcing Welch’s purchase. Carrying a pre-sale estimate of $10,000-15,000, when the hammer dropped on this incredible survivor, it sold for $43,700.
Photographer Alexander Gardner is not a household name. Civil War collectors certainly are familiar with his work as one of the “operators” for Mathew Brady. Gardner captured some of the most enduring images of the war, including haunting images of the dead at Gettysburg. He received precious little credit from Brady and left his employ before the end of the war, to open his own studio in Washington, D.C.After the war, Gardner received a commission from the Kansas-Pacific Railroad to photograph scenes along the line for a proposed southern trans-continental rail route. In 1868, he traveled West from St. Louis, photographing a variety of scenes in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. He produced a remarkable series of large 14-by-20-inch photographs and stereographs of frontier outposts and settlements. While working under the terms of his commission to the railroad, Gardner undoubtedly had commercial possibilities in mind. For whatever reason, the series did not capture the public imagination, and large quantities of the images from the excursion were never produced. Today, one most often encounters Gardner’s stereographs; his large-format images are incomparably rare.Arriving in Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, in April 1868, Gardner witnessed a council between U.S. Peace Commissioners and various Sioux bands, the Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow and Northern Arapaho. The resulting treaty guaranteed safe passage for white settlers traveling overland on the Oregon Trail in return for annual annuities to be paid to the Indians. The government also recognized the Indians’ rights to the Black Hills and other territory. This uneasy peace lasted only a few years as gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874. White miners poured in, and War on the Plains again broke out, culminating in Custer’s disastrous defeat on the Little Bighorn in June 1876.
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