"There could be nothing more appalling, heart rending or sickening to the human senses than the spectacle which was witnessed when our command reached the scene of the Salt Creek Prairie massacre. The poor victims were stripped, scalped and horribly mutilated; several were beheaded and their brains scooped out. Their fingers, toes ... had been cut off and stuck in their mouths, and their bodies, now lying in several inches of water and swollen ... Their bowels had been gashed with knives and carefully heaped upon each exposed abdomen had been placed a mass of live coals..."
That's how Robert G. Carter describes what he saw on Salt Creek Prairie, between Fort Belknap and Fort Griffin, in 1871. The bodies of seven victims of this Kiowa attack on Henry Warren's wagon train joined those of a county sheriff, a U. S. Army lieutenant, and Brit Johnson, among others, in graves on that dangerous stretch of prairie.
Scenes like these hardened Carter in a way that even the Civil War hadn't. It was a different kind of warfare altogether and it changed a man. He had to adapt if he intended to remain effective and alive.
The resulting man is best summed up by pioneer cattleman Frank Tankersley of San Angelo:
"The Indians have a day's start on him but he'll follow their trail to the jumpin' off place, and when he comes up with 'em and gets through with 'em, the ground will be tore up, the bushes bit off, and blood, hair, livers and lights will be scattered all around."
The horrid scene at Salt Creek Prairie also explains Capt. Carter's frustration with politicians and military brass far removed in Washington, D.C. who didn't understand conditions in Texas, but thought they knew better when and how to engage in this kind of fighting. In a rant for the ages, halfway through Carter's book, he tells the reader precisely how he feels about them.
"... a gang of cold blooded, unscrupulous plunderers and grafters remote from the scene of these border activities... Like death and taxes, we have them with us always, especially in time of wars. It is then the vultures abound. It is then we have the jelly-fish, spineless slackers, the pussy-foot pacifists, conscientious objectors, chicken-hearted shirkers, 'I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier' shriekers, and 'let George do it' fighters ... They have always been the curse of this Nation, the natural result as a rule of the 'Melting Pot' that does not melt, breeding a lot of mongrel curs and hybrids that should no longer be a part of our American life."
Jeez, Carter! Why don't you tell us how you really feel?
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