American Indian Sharpshooters at the Battle of the Crater

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The Army of the Potomac moved south of the James River, and on June 17 Company K and the rest of the 1st Michigan were part of an attack by Brig. Gen. Orlando Willcox’s 3rd Division against a Confederate salient in front of the Shand house along the defenses around Petersburg, Va. The ferocious attack was poorly led. The sharpshooters soon found themselves in possession of some Rebel breastworks, but also isolated and surrounded.

Around 10 p.m., under the cover of an artillery barrage, remnants of five North Carolina regiments from Brig. Gen. Matthew Ransom’s Brigade swarmed over the defensive position of the severely depleted sharpshooters. After fighting that was often hand to hand, the Rebels forced the surrender of the defenders—who had covered the retreat of their comrades. Men of the 56th North Carolina confiscated many of the Indians’ prized rifles, with their uniquely carved stocks.

Company K had only two casualties in the action. Oliver Ar-pe-targe-zhik succumbed to his wounds in Washington, D.C., on July 9 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Lieutenant Garrett Graveraet also died of his wounds in Washington the next day. He is buried next to his father on Mackinac Island, deep beneath the soil of the land of the Great Hare, which was sacred to his family and his ancestors. But the 1st Michigan’s greatest loss from that day was not understood until after the war. More than 80 soldiers, including 14 from Company K, were captured and sent to Andersonville Prison; 37, including eight from Company K, never returned.

For the next month the men of Company K fell into the routine of siege warfare, picketing, sniping and digging. Mud, flies and stifling heat were their constant companions. Both sides engaged in regular sniping, and Lieutenant Bowley recalled that an inordinate number of casualties near his unit indicated a well-placed Confederate sharpshooter was at work. The Indians were called in to stop him.

“Nearly a mile away stood a high chimney,” Bowley recalled. “All day the Indians watched that chimney and never fired a shot. The sun had gone down and the twilight was deepening, when one of the Indians fired. A man was seen to fall from the chimney…he had incautiously exposed a portion of his body, and the Indian sharpshooter had instantly dropped him.” Bowley didn’t know it at the time, but his life and the lives of the men of Company K were soon to be inextricably linked below a Confederate redoubt called Elliott’s Salient in a place that would come to be known as the Crater.

To break the stalemate between the two armies in front of Petersburg, Burnside devised a plan to dig a tunnel 510 feet long under the Confederate defenses and detonate 8,000 pounds of gunpowder. Four brigades of his IX Corps, led by Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero’s “Colored Division,” were supposed to swarm into the abyss, sweep the dazed defenders aside and pour into the Confederate trenches. They were to move swiftly to occupy some high ground about 500 yards away known as Cemetery Hill and then roll into Petersburg.

Reluctantly, both Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade approved the plan—but insisted that the Colored Division not lead the attack, fearing that if it failed, Northern abolitionists would rail about needlessly sacrificing mostly untested black soldiers. Burnside had the commanders of his three white divisions draw straws, and Brig. Gen. James F. Ledlie, the most incompetent among them, got the short one. The 2nd Brigade from Willcox’s division, including the 1st Michigan, was to be the third unit in, and the Colored Division, with Bowley and the 30th USCT, would follow them.

The mine detonated about 90 minutes late. Bowley, roughly a quarter mile behind the front lines, vividly recalled, “From the earth there burst a red glare of flame, followed by the black smoke; with it came a terrible rumbling, that lengthened into a muffled roar. High into the air rose the cloud of smoke and dust, and with it great blocks of clay and many dark objects that might have been men or cannon. Back to earth the mess fell again, with another shock almost equal to the first.”

Tags: American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts

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