Edgar M. Howell

“ Upon being attacked the train has pulled off the road, visible in the left foreground, and corralled. The horses remain hitched, witness to the suddenness of the attack. That the Indians did not venture overly close, as stated by Marcy, is indicated by the fact that Brotherton's men have not been forced to take cover behind the wagons. That the Indians appear closer than Marcy indicates is due to the artist's lack of perspective. They are firing muzzle-loading rifles, several men being in the act of ramming home charges. Stieffel is doubtless correct in this detail. ”

“ The Battle of Valverde was Stieffel's only experience in formal combat so far as the record shows. After the final withdrawal of Sibley's force into Texas whence it had come, the 5th Infantry turned its hand to policing the Indians and was almost constantly in the field during the period 1863-1866. [14] Stieffel, however, was seldom with his unit during this time. When not on one of his frequent stays in the stockade, he was on extra duty at the closest army hospital. ”

“ Then in September 1873, following a change of station for Company K from Harker to Fort Leavenworth, he went in desertion until the following May, being restored to duty upon his return, rather strangely, without trial but with loss of pay for the period of his absence. [18] The only possible explanation for this leniency in a period when court-martial sentences tended to severity could be that since extra-duty men had to be furnished, Stieffel was worth more to the company out of the stockade than in. With Indian unrest increasing every man counted. ”

“ Stieffel's two pictures of the meeting of the Government's peace commissioners with the Indians at the general tribal rendezvous on Big Medicine Lodge Creek in October 1867 (figs. 3, 4) are his most important from a historical standpoint, especially the one of Satanta, the Kiowa chief, addressing the meeting. [29]
Indian unrest during and immediately after the Civil War caused by the ever-increasing white migration to the West had grown to such proportions that in 1867 the Congress launched an all-out effort to establish a lasting peace on the frontier. ”

“ Although Stieffel could never be called talented, and certainly was untutored as an artist, his unusually canny eye for the colorful and graphic and his meticulous attention to detail have given us valuable pictorial documentaries on the West during the Indian wars.
The Author: Edgar M. Howell is curator of military history in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
The American West has never wanted for artists with a high sense of the documentary. ”

“ Stieffel's exact unofficial status in Company K over the years is difficult to account for. It is possible, though hardly probable, that Captain Brotherton had developed a friendship with the German, which might account for both his acquisition of the paintings and Stieffel's extra-duty tours. But such is doubtful. Brotherton was a hardened professional officer in an era when there was a far wider gap between officer and enlisted man than exists today. There is no evidence that Stieffel was a shirker. ”

“ Near the point where the affair occurred was a large train of wagons en route to New Mexico with valuable freight. The train had two hundred mules driven off by the Indians about twelve days ago, and it had been guarded by twenty-five men since, and it is probable that the Indians were there for the purpose of capturing the train as they had been firing into it previous to our arrival. [24]
Stieffel tells us much more in his painting. ”

“ Through the talented hands of men like George Catlin, Carl Bodmer and Alfred Jacob Miller, Frederick Remington, and the cowboy painter Charles M. Russell the trans-Mississippi regions have been pictured as have few other areas on earth. ”

“ The information on Brotherton's career has been culled from: Register of Graduates and Former Cadets United States Military Academy, 1802-1946, New York, The West Point Alumni Foundation, Inc., 1946; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, vol. 1; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, Boston, 1891-1930, vol. 3.
[6] Enlistment papers of Hermann Stieffel dated December 17, 1857, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives, Washington. ”

“ Gen. H. H. Sibley to invade the present states of New Mexico and Arizona and conquer California. [12] Captain Brotherton, Private Stieffel, and the remainder of Company K fought in the sharp action at Valverde, New Mexico, on February 21, 1862, and evidently [Pg 6] with some distinction as Brotherton was breveted major for gallantry as a result of his unit's performance. [13] Unfortunately for posterity, Stieffel did not record his impressions of this little-known sideshow of the Civil War.
Figure 3.—Satanta addressing the peace commissioners at Council Grove, Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. ”