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Show MAJOR COBURN AND HIS SWIVEL. To the Editor: Sir: Your Park City correspondent, in his or her report of an incident in the life of the late John Ryan, and which appeared in The Interraoun-tain Interraoun-tain Catholic some time ago, was not-seized of all the facts in the case. Here are the particulars as I had them thirty years ago from the lamented Colonel Coburn. In 1865 Major Coburn was in . command of a small fort thrown up on a bluff of the Salmon river, Idaho. The Bannock Indians were then raiding through what is now Lemhi county and slaughtering indiscriminately. Major Coburn brought with him from Fort Hall, where he had been in command, an eighty-pound swivel gun, and was constantly regretting he could not use it when -following a marauding band of Chey-ennes Chey-ennes or Bannocks. By way of experiment, he stole out from the fort at about 3 o'clock in the morning, with a howitzer strapped tightly to the back of an army mule, and, accompanied by Ryan, then a Sargent. Sar-gent. The muzzle of the gun projected over the mule's tail. With this novel gun carriage the major and Ryan proceeded to a shoulder of the bluff projecting pro-jecting over the river, and under which a body of hostile Bannocks, led by the redoutable chief, Running Run-ning Wolf, were in hiding, waiting for dawn to attack at-tack the fort. The "n-: ;imv loaded nnd primed, the fuse inserted and the mule backed to the edge of the bluff. The major remarked that if the experiment proved a success, they would carry the swivel, when they again rode against the Indians, and blow them to blazes. He then stepped gaily forward and ap-lied ap-lied the match to the fuse. The curiosity of the mule was aroused. He jerked his head around to see what was .fizzing away there on his neck, and the next second his feet were all bunched together and making, with his body, forty revolutions a minute; at the same time the gun was threatening everything under the canopy of heaven within a radius of two miles with immediate death and annihilation. The major, with the agility of a wildcat, skinned up the "only available avail-able tree. Sergeant Ryan dropped flat to the ground and began to scoop out a hole to crawl into. Finally the explosion came, the ball crossing the Salmon and disappearing in a grove of cotton-woods cotton-woods a mile away. The recoil of the gun and the bucking of the terrified mule carried both over the bluff. The major slid down to the ground; Ryan rose to his knees, looked around him and asked what became of the mule. The major used some regimental language and started for the fort, followed fol-lowed by the sargeant. Soon after the discomfited two had reached the post and while confidentially and sadly discussing the morning's disaster, the chief of the Bannock band appeared with two of his warriors and, in mournful tones, exclaimed: "Injun go home! Make peace!" Questioned as to his reasons for asking peace, he replied: "Injun brave man, ver' brave, fight white man. Injun fire gun, use bow( arrow, use knife, Injun fight; but when white man fire off whole jackass and kill four Injun, Injun go home. Hell! Make peace. Injun no understand, no think right, no make fight like that." Coburn was breveted colonel after the peace, and Ryan, for bravery in the field, was made first lieutenant of his company, for it was understood at military headquarters that Coburn and his command com-mand had subdued the Bannocks and forced them j to sue for peace. , It was on the major's recommendation that Ryan was promoted. John Ryan was in his day a brave officer and a rattling good fellow, but he did not, as your correspondent states, win his promotion promo-tion in the engagement on the Peewee, when, in a hand-to-hand fight, he killed Bounding Elk, the Pawnee sub-chief. Coburn and Ryan kept their secret well, for not even the men of the post heard of the experiment. Ryan was the only man on sentry sen-try duty that morning, according to prearrange-ment prearrange-ment with Coburn, and left his beat at the request of his commanding officer. JAMES CONNOLLY, Logan, July 31. Retired Sergeant, U. S. A. - |
