For the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, a typical day started before dawn with breakfast of coffee, bacon, and dry bread. Wagons were repacked, bedding was secured and the train of wagons was soon on its way again, usually covering 15 miles or more by five in the afternoon.
At about that time, the wagons were circled for the evening. Men secured the animals and made repairs while women cooked a hot meal of tea and boiled rice with dried beef or codfish.
After dinner, folks with children did some schooling, while others sang a bit and maybe even danced around the campfire. Inevitably, someone would start to reminisce about the home they had left behind or reflect on the day's events, and pretty soon the storytelling would begin...
There were perils aplenty along the Oregon Trail. Nearly one in ten who set off on the journey did not survive. Many other would-be immigrants were forced to turn back.
The stories told around the campfire, especially after the young ones were abed, often concerned terrors both real and imagined. They told of thunderstorms with hailstones the size of a man's fist, about lightning that pounded the earth relentlessly and drove oxen into paroxysms of fear, of tornadoes and ferocious winds that carried hapless travelers to their deaths.
There were, of course, stories about Indian attacks and massacres, buffalo stampedes and flash floods and rattlesnake bites and failed river crossings. But the most deadly threat along the trail was cholera, the "unseen destroyer," which could take a hold of a person in good spirits one morning and have him in agony by noon and dead by evening.
Not surprisingly, it was often the stories about the supernatural, ghosts and apparitions and unexplained phenomena that scared folks the most, and which they asked to hear again and again...
The Utter-Van Orman Massacre, 1860
One of the worst fears of emigrants on the Oregon Trail was Indian attacks. While armed conflict between the Euro-Americans and the native tribes along the route was rare, a handful of encounters were especially violent and bloody, like the horrifying and gruesome story of the Utter-Van Orman Party.
The overland route along the Snake River in what is now southern Idaho may have been the most dangerous section of the Oregon Trail. Bands of aggressive Bannock warriors patrolled the area -- taunting, trading with, and sometimes attacking travelers who they considered trespassers on their land.
In 1860, the territorial commander at Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory had dispatched soldiers to escort emigrants along the Idaho portions of the Oregon Trail. There were no problems that summer and on September 1 the troops were ordered back to their stations. The commander, Col. George Wright, was told that the last of the year's emigrants had passed through the area.
Unknown to Wright, however, one last party of emigrants was still making the crossing. Four families -- the Utters, the Van Ormans, the Myers, and the Chases -- and some unrelated young men arrived at Fort Hall in what is now eastern Idaho in late August, determined to complete their journey to the Willamette Valley despite the impending risk of heavy snow in the mountain passes of the Blue Mountains. The commander at Fort Hall ordered troops to escort them to a place near present-day Twin Falls, but from that point forward the 17 men, four women, 23 children, and about 100 animals were on their own. Three days later a large band of Bannocks attacked.
At first the warriors surrounded the wagons and tried to stampede the settlers' cattle. To protect the livestock, the emigrants circled their wagons, corralling the animals. Then, according to accounts of the survivors, the Bannocks asked for food. The settlers gave them what they asked for and were allowed to proceed. But they were not very far down the trail when the warriors attacked, firing bullets and arrows.
The emigrant party circled their wagons again and a pitched battle began, lasting some 36 hours. Four of the emigrant males were killed in the fight and four others, discharged soldiers from Fort Hall, mounted horses and fled the scene. Their flight, according to military investigators, doomed the chances of the remaining emigrants. Hungry and thirsty and under a constant barrage from the Indians, the settlers abandoned their wagons and fled toward the river. Seven more were killed, and the 29 survivors -- including 18 small children -- escaped into the night while the Bannocks plundered the wagons and divided up the livestock.
A pair of brothers on horseback, Joseph and Jacob Reith, galloped west toward Fort Walla Walla for help. They caught up with the four ex-soldiers and joined them on their ride up the Malheur River in eastern Oregon. They lost their way, however, and three of the soldiers tried to orienteer their way across the Blue Mountains. The other three riders doubled back to the main route of the Oregon Trail. Of the three ex-soldiers who rode on into the Blues, two were killed in an attack by Indians near the headwaters of the John Day River; the lone survivor traveled on foot day and night for a week before finally reaching a settlement east of Fort Dalles. He arrived exhausted, mostly incoherent, and was initially believed to be the last of the Utter-Van Orman party.
When the Reith brothers and the fourth soldier, a deserter by the name of Charles Chaffee, reached the Oregon Trail they met up with two survivors from the main party of settlers who had gone ahead of the others in search of help. One was an 11-year-old boy and the other an "elderly" single man. They reported that the emigrants were in desperate shape, having traveled on foot for 10 days carrying the small children.
Chaffee killed and butchered his horse, sending the young boy back to the emigrants’ camp with as much of its meat as he could carry. The other two followed behind at a slower pace, but their energy gave out and they made camp to wait for the rest of the party.
The Reith brothers, meanwhile, rode on until they reached the Umatilla Indian Agency on October 2, more than three weeks after the initial attack. It took another two weeks for the U.S. Army to muster a company of 60 soldiers from Fort Walla Walla and travel to the Powder River Valley. To speed the rescue, troops under the command of Lt. Marcus Reno were sent on ahead, passing Flagstaff Hill and crossing into the Burnt River area. There they found Chaffee’s camp and the two nearly starved men. A few miles further, near the mouth of the Malheur River, fresh tracks of women and children were spotted along the banks of the river. Daylight was fading, but Reno and his troops pushed forward until they came upon a ghastly scene:
"Gleaming in the moonlight, dead, stripped and mutilated, lay the bodies of six persons," Reno recalled. Three of the bodies were of the Van Ormans and their eldest son, two were boys from the Utter family, and the sixth was a man named Samuel Gleason. The four youngest Van Orman children were missing and presumed captured. The dead were buried in a place called Meteor Crater, located between Huntington and Farewell Bend just east of Interstate 84. (Look for interpretive signs along Highway 30.)
Five days later, on October 24, a second search party found the remaining emigrants at their makeshift camp near the mouth of the Owyhee River (just south of present-day Nyssa, Oregon). Ten emigrants were still alive, described by one officer as "skeletons with life in them," having survived by cannibalizing the remains of five who had died.
Of the 44 emigrants who had set out from Fort Hall, 20 were killed by Indians, five died of starvation or illness, and four were taken prisoner. An uncle of the missing children, Alexis Van Orman, searched for two years and spent over $5,000 before locating and negotiating the release of 10-year-old Reuben Van Orman from Bannock Chief Bear Hunter in the Cache Valley of Utah. Reuben's three sisters had died earlier in their captivity, bringing the final death toll of the Utter-Van Orman incident to 28.
To learn more, read:
"The Utter Disaster on the Oregon Trail" (Snake Country Series, Vol. 2), by Donald Harold Shannon. Snake Country Publications.
"General George Wright: Guardian of the Pacific Coast," by Carl Paul Schlicke. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
"Left by the Indians," by Emeline L. Fuller. Ye Galleon Press, 1988.
"Indians And Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails," by Michael L. Tate. University of Oklahoma Press,
"Massacre On The Oregon Trail in the Year 1860: A Tale of Horror, Cannibalism & Three Remarkable Children," by Carl Schlicke, Ye Galleon Press, 1988.
They found twelve out of forty still
living, but naked and nearly starved to death. The
poor, emaciated wretches had eaten up all the dead,
save one! and upon that putrifying corpse they were
about to commence their horrid carnival. The dead had
been torn up out of the grave by their former
companions, starving and mad.
The living
were compelled to eat the dead to preserve their own
lives. It was a subject of much and anxious
consultation and even the prayer before the eating of
the dead was finally determined upon. This
determination was unanimous.
A few days after we camped we saw Indians
camped on Snake river some three miles from us. They
were fishing. They brought us salmon, for which we
exchanged some of our clothing and ammunition.--This
was the only way we could obtain it. At first they
would come thus and exchange us salmon every three or
four days. They called themselves Shoshones. We found
herbs, frogs, and muscles along the river which we
gathered or caught and ate.-- About two or three weeks
after we camped, Mr. Chase died, probably, as we
supposed, from over-eating salmon. Ten days after this
Elizabeth Trimble died from starvation; four or five
days afterwards, Susan Trimble, her sister, died; the
next day Daniel Chase died, and two days after him his
brother, Albert, all from the same cause. The living
were compelled to eat the dead to preserve their own
lives. It was a subject of much and anxious
consultation and even the prayer before the eating of
the dead was finally determined upon. This
determination was unanimous. The flesh of the dead was
carefully husbanded and sparingly eaten to make it go
as far as possible. Thus the bodies of four children
were disposed of. The body of Mr. Chase was exhumed
and the first meal from it cooked and about to be eaten
when relief came.
They were in a state of perfect
nudity, having been stripped by the savages
and left to perish. For ten days they had
subsisted on the bodies of the dead. When
discovered on the 27th of October near the
bank of a small stream, they were in a state
of extreme emanciation, their bones almost
protruding from their skin. On seeing their
deliverers the women and children fell on
their knees, and in the most pitious accents
implored food.--
found near a small stream the woman and
children naked, in a state of starvation, and greatly
emaciated, so much so that their bones almost protruded
through the skin.
Pacific Christian Advocate (Portland), November 13, 1860, in
Pioneer and Democrat (Olympia), November 23, 1860, p. 2, c. 3-5:
The Late Salmon Falls Massacre--Statement of Mr. Joseph
Myers, One of the Survivors.
At our request, Mr. Joseph Myers gave us an account of
the late shocking Snake river massacre and of the
subsequent travels and rescue of the survivors, which
we took down as follows:
There were fifty-four persons in the company. Col.
Howe sent an escort of twenty-two dragoons with our
company from Portneuf river, seven miles this side of
Fort Hall. The escort were furnished with only twelve
days rations and were to escort us six days and return,
which they did. We desired Col. Howe to give us an
escort farther, but he said there would be no trouble;
that the immigrants were in no danger if they would
keep the Indians away from their camp and not allow
them to come too near. [This seems to us almost like
irony--Ed.] He said there were troops on the road
beyond Salmon Falls. Col. Howe had furnished an escort
for the California train; but for what distance I do
not know. Col. Howe was generally disliked by the
immigrants.
After the escort left the company, two weeks transpired
before the attack. The attack was made between nine and
ten o'clock A. M. on the 8th of September.-- There were
Before we had fully done this and got our oxen secure,
three of our men were shot down viz: Lewis Lawson,
William Utley, and ______ Kishmal, a German.
We
defended ourselves as well as we could; the fighting
continuing through the day. During the day we saw
several of the Indians fall. It was believed that
twenty or more of them were killed the first day. The
Indians kept shooting at the train through the night,
mostly with arrows; occasionally with rifles. Their
random shots did not do much harm, except to wound and
irritate the cattle and horses, which were without
grass and water all the day and night. The fight was
renewed in the morning and continued nearly through the
entire day, as on the previous; one of our men, Judson
Cressey, being killed.-- About an hour before sundown,
the train agreed to leave four wagons and contents as
booty for the Indians and start on, hoping this would
satisfy them, and that while they were ravaging these
the company might escape with the remainder. This plan
was attempted without success. The Indians paid no
attention to the deserted prey, but swarmed about the
train like bees, attacking it with renewed activity.
The company drove on as fast as they could, but the
cattle were so ravenous after sage brush that they
could not be got along, and in the meantime, the firing
of arrows and rifle balls by the Indians was actively
continued. Before we started the last time from the
corral, four young men were detailed, mounted and
armed, to go in the van of the train and open the way
for the wagons. They were discharged soldiers from the
post at Portneuf. They were well armed with rifles and
revolvers, which with the horses, belonged to the
train. Instead of assisting the immigrants, they
immediately fled. Their names were Snyder, Murdoch,
Chambourg and Chaffee. Snyder, it is said, reported
two as killed by the Indians. He and Chaffey are
living. With these horsemen two left on foot, viz:
Jacob and Joseph Reith. These were the two men who
it is feared they are in
captivity to the most cruel and brutal
monsters that wear the human form, and are
enduring indignities and tortures from which
death would be a most welcome refuge.
brought word into the settlement of the conditions of
the immigrants, and Jacob Reith returned from Captain
Dent's command for their relief.
At about dusk we left our cattle and wagons, as we
found that we could do nothing with the Indians. After
driving out of the corral, my brother was shot down by
my side. The Indian who shot him was not more than ten
rods off, in the sage brush. I saw him as he was
drawing upon us and shot him, but not until he had
fatally wounded my brother. I saw the Indian roll over
dead. When we were finally leaving the wagons, I
helped Miss Utter out of the wagon and was setting her
down, when a rifle ball passed through my coat and two
shirts, grazed my body and killed her. She spoke some
after being shot; said that she had got her death blow;
that she was killed, &c.
Mr. Utter made signs of surrendering to the Indians;
proposing a treaty, and while doing so he was killed.
Mrs. Utter refused to leave her husband, and three of
her children remained with her. One of them, a boy of
five years, was immediately seen to fall. Mr Vannorman
and his family, Mr. Chase and his family, and myself
and mine left the wagons and cattle and hastened on on
foot. After we had left our wagons the Indians fell
back and we traveled on all night until about daylight.
The Indians had come and carried away our guns; two
from Mr. Vannorman; one from Mr. Chase, and one from
me. They also took Mr. Vannorman's blanket from him,
and they did it somewhat roughly.--At this time we had
already traded off some of our clothing for salmon.
After the Indians left, Mr. Vannorman said he was going
to take his family and leave; "For," said he, "if we do
not, the Indians will come tomorrow and strip and kill
us." He and his family left our camp that day about
noon. They traveled on to Burnt river, as it afterwards
appeared. When the command reached there they found
six of the bodies killed by the Indians. Four of the
children were not found. It is supposed they are now
captives among the Indians. [See pp. 16-24 for more
information on the fate of the Van Orman children.]
The six bodies found were those of Alexis Vannorman and
wife,--the latter was scalped,--their son Mark, Sam'l
Gleason, and Charles and Henry Utter. The last was
about twelve years old, the others were adults.
Besides Mr. Meyers' family, consisting of himself, wife
and five children--the oldest ten years and the
youngest one year old--Mrs. Chase and daughter and Miss
Trimble were rescued; also, between the camps, in a
very emaciated condition, Chaffey and Munson--twelve in
all.
we are incensed and shamed that
the stout-hearted men and women who voluntarily move
back the frontiers, are abandoned by Government to
butcheries, mutilation, or ravishment by savages. We
have before related a recent massacre of immigrants on
their way to Oregon. About the last of October an
expedition went from Walla Walla to collect the dead
and wounded.
They found twelve out of forty still
living, but naked and nearly starved to death. The
poor, emaciated wretches had eaten up all the dead,
save one! and upon that putrifying corpse they were
about to commence their horrid carnival. The dead had
been torn up out of the grave by their former
companions, starving and mad.
The cannibals were lying
down to their dread feast, surrounded by bones and
fragments of human flesh, and would never have risen
from that feast of death. Great God! are they
American men and women--the brave explorers of untraversed woods--the outguards of civilization and
religion, who are thus left to the mercy of savages and
to eat one another, while millions are dealt out with
prodical hands to lazy, loafing, lounging officials,
whose offices are almost sinecures, and whose bodies
and souls are not worth the scalp-lock torn from the
lionhearted subduer of the wilderness? Shame to the
country; curses for the driveling policy which will
talk of war with powerful civilized nations, but which
is unequal to the gigantic enterprise of building a
miserable stockade fort here and there along the
emigrant's road, to protect adventurous men from
scalping, and feeble but brave hearted women from
starvation and cannibalism
http://www.wshs.org/wshs/columbia/articles/0187-a2.htm
http://www.workingnet.com/thunderbear/248.html
There was a persistent rumor of a large wagon train on the Oregon Trail in Idaho in the 1850's that was overwhelmed by Shoshones and the entire complement of over 500 men, women, and children were slaughtered.
It didn't happen, but it was such a persistent tale that one of those unhistorical highway plaques was raised to "commemorate" the non-event.
There was even a movement in Idaho to establish a historic site for the non-event.
This attracted the notice of one of the Park Service's premier military historians Ed Bearss (pronounced "Bars" by those who have had the pleasure of meeting him.)
Bearss was immediately skeptical of the White wagon train massacre. First of all, it was militarily unlikely.
Hollywood to the contrary, American Indians could not normally overcome a wagon train, particularly a large train. A wagon train was a rolling fortress that could be quickly "laagered" for defence. The chance fora successful attack on a wagon train was slim to none. The sole exception seems to have been the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Southwest Utah, and that was with Mormon supervision and participation.
Secondly, 500 people was a lot of people in pre civil war America. There would have been some notice taken of the sudden disappearance of 500 friends and relatives who were not sending letters home from Oregon. Bearss found no such concern in the journals or newspapers of the time.
#2 A "Most Horrible Indian Massacre" in Almo, Idaho
Almo, Idaho, boasts the most deceitful historical marker in the United States, commemorating a "most horrible Indian massacre, 1861." It is also perhaps the most beautiful, carved into the shape of the state of Idaho. Only trouble is, the massacre never happened. Thus this marker teaches us that every historic site is a tale of two eras -- what it is about and when it went up. And this marker tells us something about 1938, when it went up, but nothing whatever about 1861, when nothing happened in Almo, so far as we can tell.
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=249
HOTLINE - April 4, 1994
An alleged massacre comes under fire
by Staff
As the story goes, Shoshone-Bannock warriors scalped and murdered nearly 300 men, women and children near Almo, Idaho, in 1861. Now, several historians call the massacre mere campfire folklore. Brigham Madsen, a retired University of Utah professor who recently researched the killing, says no newspapers or U.S. military records in 1861 mention the massacre, and no massive graves or local evidence exist. "It would have been the second largest Indian massacre in the 19th century, and wouldn’t have gone unnoticed," he points out. Madsen suspects the legend gained credence in the early 1930s, when newspaper editors wanted to attract tourists to the area. Shoshone chairman Keith Tinno wants an apology, and Madsen suggests that Almo residents change a plaque that commemorates the alleged massacre. But Almo locals want their 6-foot monument to stay. Della Mullinix, the 82-year-old president of the Idaho Pioneers group, says she’s willing to apologize to Tinno, but that changing the monument is out of the question. It’s part of the area’s history and culture, she says. For more information, call Brigham Madsen at 801/277-2954.
Almo, Idaho, monument
commemorates Indian massacre
of 296 whites that never happened
Yes, this is the place.
Or, if not, one much like it.
A low spot, near a stream
sheltered by willows
rapidly losing their leaves.
Here, they dug in,
sheltered themselves as they could,
tried to comfort the children.
(No, not the Van Ormans...)
Yes.
The story needs to be told,
these folks need to know,
otherwise their sacrifice was in vain,
and the lives of those children,
meaningless...
Just think of how far they'd come,
across the prairies and the desert.
Four months they had traveled,
with all their belongings
all their livestock
and five young children...
and then to be stripped,
in just a few weeks time,
of all they owned
their wagons, their animals,
even their clothing
and to be huddled like this
around a small fire
in the midst of the wilderness...
afraid, hungry, despairing...
holding out for a rescue
that might never come...
Their party left too late,
or traveled too slowly...
Someone offended Col. Howe at Fort Hall
and he limited their escort
to just six days...
After that,
they were on their own
across the Snake River wilderness...
At Fort Walla Walla,
no one knew they were coming.
Dozens of parties had made the crossing,
all without trouble.
No one knew there was one last train,
led by Elijah Utter,
at Salmon Falls and driving westward,
alone and without escort.
Three hundred emigrants...
And no one knew they were coming.
There had been no trouble,
and all was well,
until the Indians appeared.
Hundreds and hundreds of them,
whooping and yelling,
trying to stampede the cattle.
The emigrants circled their wagons,
corraling their animals,
and set about defending themslves.
The Indians fired on them
with arrows and rifles.
The emigrants fought back gallantly,
but were horribly outnumbered.
The screams of the dying and the wounded
filled the morning air,
growing louder and more agonizing
as the day wore into night
and back to day again.
The settlers battled bravely,
killing hundreds of the savages,
but their own casualties mounted
and their supplies dwindled.
The bodies of the dead were stacked
like cordwood along the perimeter,
shields of putrifying flesh to
protect the living.
But the heathen hordes would not be denied.
They rushed the wagons again and again,
shooting their arrows and raising their knives
against men, women and children alike.
None would be spared, it seemed,
when some four dozen survivors abandoned the wagons
and made a break for the river,
and the shelter of rocks and trees.
Only four horses remained,
and were swiftly mounted
by discharged soldiers in the party --
deserters, I am told --
who armed thems with rifles and pistols
and promised to clear the way ahead
and distract the savages,
while the others stole away.
Off they rode,
into the darkness
as fast as their mounts could carry them,
away from the fight and the cries
of the families they'd abandoned.
Ne'r a look back, had they,
and not an ounce of conscience
but for their own survival.
Brothers Joseph and Jacob Reith
helped the survivors --
just 30 by now, most of them children --
escape to the river.
While the savages plundered the wagons
and divided up the animals.
Their hideous war cries
echoed across the plain
and the burning wagons
lit up that terrible night.
The Reith brothers went ahead for help,
into the night,
down the trail toward Oregon,
while the others followed,
more slowly,
babes in their arms and on their backs.
Elijah Utter and his wife had been slaughtered
along with five of their 10 children.
All but four of the men were dead.
Just three families remained,
the Van Ormans, the Myers, the Chases,
of the dozens who had made the crossing.
They traveled by night,
hiding themselves by day,
making their way downriver some 60 or 70 miles,
until they were too weak to go any further.
The Van Ormans wanted to go on,
down the river,
but the Myers and the Chases were too weak.
Do not leave us, they implored.
And the Van Ormans stayed.
They built wigwams from the willows,
and lay by, day after day, waiting, hoping.
They ate the dogs that were with them,
gathered frogs and muscles from the river,
and dug for herbs and bulbs.
But it was not enough...
They were famished...
The Van Ormans wanted to move on,
down the river,
but the Myers and the Chases said they were too weak.
God will provide, they said.
All we need do is pray,
And the Van Ormans stayed.
Indians started coming to them.
The same ones who'd attacked their train?
They could not tell.
But they were desperate.
The Indians had salmon to trade
for the emigrants rifles and blankets,
and then their clothing.
Finally, they had nothing left to trade...
The Van Ormans wanted to move on,
down the river,
but the Myers and the Chases refused to travel,
and needed their help.
They kept to their wigwams, praying,
while the children gathered fuel for the fire
and scraped mosses from the rocks.
"God's mercy will provide," said Mr. Myers,
but the orphaned children
who helped keep him warm and fed
were the first to die.
The Van Ormans wanted to move on,
down the river,
but Mr. Chase had died --
from eating too much salmon, they said --
and Mrs. Chase was in no shape to travel,
and the Myers would go no further.
"God will provide," said Mrs. Myers.
"We pray to him for deliverance."
It was God's will that those children died,
and we will not question God's will.
Their death may be his way of helping us
preserve our lives.
No, said the Van Ormans.
We have prayed and our prayers were answered.
Just as Abraham did not question God's command
that he sacrifice his only son,
so we must not question God's sacrifice
of these babies
that we might have sustenance
and preserve our lives.
No, said the Van Ormans,
and they moved on, down the river.
Their rescue was nearly at hand,
though they could not have known,
as the Reich brothers made it to
the Umatilla Agency
and soldiers were mustered
to bring in the survivors
and punish the murderers.
A company of 60 soldiers
roder from Fort Walla Walla
over the Blues and through the
Powder River Valley
They crossed the divide into
the Burnt River drainage and then
along the banks of the Malheur River
they found tracks of women and children
in the soft sand.
On they pushed,
in the fading light of day,
eager to reach the survivors.
The sun went down,
the moon rose high, and then
in the moonlight
the soldiers approached the Van Ormans.
Gleaming white on the bank of the river,
stripped and mutilated
and riddled with arrows.
Mr. and Mrs. Van Orman lay dead,
along with their oldest son,
and two sons of Elijah Utter.
The tracks of their murderers
led off into the desert,
and with them,
the bare feet of four small children,
the last of the Van Orman family,
captives of the Indians.
The soldiers followed,
but the trail soon faded
and disappeared.
Those children are still captives,
we must assume,
or have died in their captivity,
which would be a batter fate
than the depravities and humiliations
of life among those savsages.
The rescue party moved on,
up the river,
until they caught wind of a horrible stench,
the smell of burning flesh,
and then, through a clearing
they saw a group of skeletons
thinly covered with white skin.
The last survivors of the Utter Party
rushed at the soliders as they arrived,
crying for food, food, food...
their eyes sunk deep in their heads and
gleaming with madness.
They rose at them from a pit,
the grave of poor Mr. Chase
long dead
but now exhumed from his rest
with one limb removed
... cooking on a spit.
Several of the soldiers,
veterans of many battles,
and no strangers to attrocities,
fell from their horses
with grief and sickness
at what they had seen.