Second Battle of Pyramid Lake | |||||||
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Part of Pyramid Lake War | |||||||
Truckee River Gorge, site of the battle | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United States | Paiute | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
John C. Hays Joseph Stewart | Numaga [1] [2] | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
544 volunteers [3] "Washoe Regiment" 207 Regulars [3] 6th U.S. Infantry 3rd U.S. Artillery | 300 Paiute warriors [4] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
3 killed [4] 5 wounded [4] | 25 killed [4] about 20 wounded [4] |
The Second Battle of Pyramid Lake (also known as the Battle of Truckee River) took place in response to the U.S. defeat at the First Battle of Pyramid Lake. A well-organized force of militia and regulars, under the capable leadership of famed Texas Ranger Col. John C. "Jack" Hays, defeated the Paiute warriors under Chief Numaga. This was the final engagement of the Pyramid Lake War of 1860.
On May 6, 1860, a band of Paiutes raided Williams Station along the Carson River, near present-day Silver Springs, Nevada, killing three white settlers at the station. In response, Major William Ormsby led a group of vigilantes from Carson City and Virginia City against the Paiutes near Pyramid Lake. The vigilante force was ingloriously defeated and Ormsby was killed. This defeat prompted local settlers to send a call for help to nearby California. [4]
Colonel John C. Hays responded to the call and traveled to Carson City to organize a regiment of 500 volunteers, whom he dubbed the "Washoe Regiment". Another 165 volunteers came from the nearby California communities of Placerville, Sacramento, Nevada City and Downieville. Hays then marched his regiment to Virginia City. [4]
The U.S. Army also responded to the call. Captain Joseph Stewart left Fort Alcatraz with 144 Regulars from the 3rd U.S. Artillery and 6th U.S. Infantry regiments. Stewart arrived in Carson City to await further developments. [4] In the meantime, Hays had marched out of Virginia City to Williams Station, where he skirmished with 150 Paiutes before the warriors pulled back to Pyramid Lake.
The Paiutes returned to their village at Pyramid Lake near the mouth of the Truckee River. They sent their women and children into the Black Rock Desert as a protective measure.
Colonel Hays retraced Ormsby's path along the Truckee River and encamped near present-day Wadsworth. There, Captain Stewart joined the volunteers with Colonel Hays in overall command.
On June 2, the battle began [5] when Hays sent out an advance party of two companies, while the main force moved eight miles downriver from their camp, much more cautiously than Ormsby had before. The advance party, moving toward the Paiute village, encountered the remains of Ormsby's command on the previous battlefield that remained unburied. [3] The Paiutes then made a rapid advance upon the soldiers in the shape of a wedge. The advance party made a hasty withdrawal.
Colonel Hays selected an ideal location to make a stand. It was a narrow canyon, about a mile wide, anchored to the west by steep mountains of the Virginia Range. To the east ran the Truckee River. Both geographical features prevented any flanking maneuver by the natives. A rocky butte lay in the center of the field. To the west of this butte, rain had cut lateral gullies into the sandy ground, providing natural breastworks, which either side could have used to make successive stands in the case he was forced to retreat. [3]
The Paiute charge had taken possession of the butte and now extended their own line from the river well into the rocks of the mountains to the west. The Paiutes had advanced so quickly that all geographical features advantageous to the fight were now in their hands. The soldiers were forced to deploy on level ground to the south. Captain Stewart deployed his regulars in a skirmish line to the west of the butte along the base of the mountains, while the volunteers formed to the east along the river.
Captain Edward Farris Storey and Captain J. B. Van Hagan, commanding two companies of volunteers from Virginia City and California, respectively, decided to make a charge against the butte even before Hays got the entire main force in place. Storey and Van Hagan succeeded in seizing the butte and for a short time were subjected to flanking fire as the natives began to surround them from the river bank and mountain slopes. This forward position was relieved as Hays advanced the main body forward. Stewart drove the warriors from the mountain slopes while Hays and the volunteers steadily advanced along the river. Eventually, the two sides maintained a continuous line of battle opposing each other roughly a mile long. [3]
The battle continued for some time, with neither side gaining a clear advantage. After fighting for nearly three hours, the Paiutes finally retreated up the canyon toward the lake. [4]
On June 4, Captain Stewart took up pursuit of the natives coming upon the abandoned village at the mouth of the Truckee River. Colonel Hays followed Stewart northward in pursuit. On June 5, Hays sent a group of scouts through a canyon northeast of Pyramid Lake. These scouts were ambushed and Private William Allen was killed. He was the last casualty of the war.
Shortly after Allen's death, Colonel Hays returned with the Washoe Regiment to Carson City, where he disbanded the regiment. Major Ormsby's body was temporarily interred where it lay near Pyramid Lake, but was later moved to a cemetery in Carson City. Captain Storey, who was mortally wounded in the battle, was buried in Virginia City. Both Ormsby and Storey had Nevada counties named after them.
Captain Stewart stayed in the Pyramid Lake area for a few more weeks, but the Paiutes never returned. [4] His soldiers eventually built several earthen forts around the lake. Stewart abandoned these forts in favor of a larger fort along the Carson River. Stewart began construction in 1861 and named the post Fort Churchill.
The battle site is located within the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. Except for Nevada State Route 447 and a former railroad, the landscape is relatively the same as it was in 1860. [6] Nevada Historical Marker #148 is located near the intersection of S.R. 447 and Chicken Road on what would have been the north end of the battlefield. The marker, titled "The Two Battles of Pyramid Lake", describes both battles. [7]
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a Northern Paiute author, activist (lecturer) and educator. Her maiden name is Winnemucca.
Ormsby County was a county in Nevada Territory from 1861 to 1864 and in the State of Nevada from 1864 until 1969. It contained Carson City, the county seat, and later, the state capital, founded two years earlier.
Pyramid Lake is the geographic sink of the basin of the Truckee River, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Reno, Nevada, United States.
The Northern Paiute people are a Numic tribe that has traditionally lived in the Great Basin region of the United States in what is now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeast Oregon. The Northern Paiutes' pre-contact lifestyle was well adapted to the harsh desert environment in which they lived. Each tribe or band occupied a specific territory, generally centered on a lake or wetland that supplied fish and waterfowl. Communal hunt drives, which often involved neighboring bands, would take rabbits and pronghorn from surrounding areas. Individuals and families appear to have moved freely among the bands.
The Truckee River is a river in the U.S. states of California and Nevada. The river flows northeasterly and is 121 miles (195 km) long. The Truckee is the sole outlet of Lake Tahoe and drains part of the high Sierra Nevada, emptying into Pyramid Lake in the Great Basin. Its waters are an important source of irrigation along its valley and adjacent valleys.
The Carson River is a northwestern Nevada river that empties into the Carson Sink, an endorheic basin. The main stem of the river is 131 miles (211 km) long although the addition of the East Fork makes the total length 205 miles (330 km), traversing five counties: Alpine County in California and Douglas, Storey, Lyon, and Churchill Counties in Nevada, as well as the Consolidated Municipality of Carson City, Nevada. The river is named for Kit Carson, who guided John C. Frémont's expedition westward up the Carson Valley and across Carson Pass in winter, 1844. The river made the National Priorities List (NPL) on October 30, 1990 as the Carson River Mercury Superfund site (CRMS) due to investigations that showed trace amounts of mercury in the wildlife and watershed sediments.
The Snake War (1864–1868) was an irregular war fought by the United States of America against the "Snake Indians," the settlers' term for Northern Paiute, Bannock and Western Shoshone bands who lived along the Snake River. Fighting took place in the states of Oregon, Nevada, and California, and in Idaho Territory. Total casualties from both sides of the conflict numbered 1,762 dead, wounded, or captured.
The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation is a United States reservation in northwestern Nevada, approximately 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Reno, in Washoe, Storey, and Lyon counties.
The Paiute War, also known as the Pyramid Lake War, Washoe Indian War and the Pah Ute War, was an armed conflict between Northern Paiutes allied with the Shoshone and the Bannock against settlers from the United States, supported by military forces. It took place in May 1860 in the vicinity of Pyramid Lake in the Utah Territory, now in the northwest corner of present-day Nevada. The war was preceded by a series of increasingly violent incidents, culminating in two pitched battles in which 79 Whites and 25 Indigenous people were killed. Smaller raids and skirmishes continued until a cease-fire was agreed to in August 1860; there was no treaty.
Fort Churchill State Historic Park is a state park of Nevada, United States, preserving the remains of a United States Army fort and a waystation on the Pony Express and Central Overland Routes dating back to the 1860s. The site is one end of the historic Fort Churchill and Sand Springs Toll Road. The park is in Lyon County south of the town of Silver Springs, on U.S. Route 95 Alternate, eight miles (13 km) south of U.S. Route 50. Fort Churchill was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. A 1994 park addition forms a corridor along the Carson River.
Joseph Stewart was an officer in the United States Army notable for serving as commander of Fort Alcatraz, Fort Churchill and the Department of Alaska. His name is occasionally seen as Jasper Stewart.
The 1st Nevada Cavalry Battalion, or the Nevada Territory Cavalry Volunteers, was a unit raised for the Union army during the American Civil War. It remained in the west, garrisoning frontier posts, protecting emigrant routes, and engaged in scouting duties. The unit was disbanded in July 1866.
During the American Civil War in the early 1860s, the District of Utah was a subordinate district of the U.S. Army's Department of the Pacific. The district was composed of territorial areas that later became parts of the modern U.S. states of Idaho, Nevada, and Utah.
The Battle of Williams Station was a minor skirmish during the Pyramid Lake War of 1860. The fight took place following the defeat of Major William Ormsby at the First Battle of Pyramid Lake as U.S. Volunteers entered the war.
William Matthew Ormsby was an early settler of Nevada who was instrumental in the establishment of Carson City and the Nevada Territory. Major Ormsby was killed leading a Militia force against Paiute Indians in what was called the Pyramid Lake War.
The Williams Station massacre was an incident that ignited the Pyramid Lake War of 1860.
Numaga was a Paiute leader during the Paiute War of 1860 that centered on Pyramid Lake in what is now Nevada in the United States. The war was caused by an influx of miners and ranchers after silver was discovered in the Comstock Lode near to Carson City. The newcomers assaulted the Paiutes and destroyed their foods supplies. When the Paiutes responded, the U.S. Army used force to suppress them. Both before and after the war, Numaga was a strong advocate of peace and did much to reduce the violence on both sides. He died of tuberculosis, a "white man's disease", in 1871.
The Battle of Mud Lake/Mud Lake Massacre, also known as the "Skirmish at Mud Lake", occurred on 14 March 1865 during the Snake War in northwest Nevada Territory, at present-day Winnemucca Lake, Nevada, during the closing months of the concurrent American Civil War.
Alanson "Lance" Walker Nightingill was a county sheriff and the first Nevada State Controller.