Twenty-three bodies, three wounded soldiers

The paragraph is short, and the numbers in it are the ones worth memorizing, because everything else people attach to this fight is attached from somewhere else. Bean and Vane, citing Casebier and the Kroebers, say Brevet Major L. A. Armistead, commandant at Fort Mojave, frustrated at the escape of the hostages and at the difficulty of getting the Mojave to engage, precipitated a battle between about fifty soldiers and hundreds of Mojave. It was, they write, the first pitched battle that had been fought. Armistead reported twenty-three Mojave bodies found on the field, and there were probably more. No soldiers were killed. Three were wounded.

That is the Army count, transmitted through two books this essay did not hold in hand, and then through a Park Service overview that was. "Probably more" is already an admission that twenty-three is a body count, not a complete list of the dead. A reader who turns it into "exactly twenty-three killed" has added a certainty the sentence refuses.

What the overview puts just before the volley

The same passage does not begin with a battle line. It begins with smaller violence, weeks after the hostages ran from Fort Yuma. Mojave stole stock from a mail station two miles south of the fort and attacked the station. They tore up melons the soldiers had planted. Soldiers shot a Mojave, one of three who were working in a garden. Then Armistead got the fight he had not been able to force. The order of those sentences matters. The overview is not describing a formal challenge accepted on a chosen field. It is describing stolen stock, ruined melons, a man shot in a garden, and then a battle the commandant was able to bring on.

This site's short history dates that battle August 4, 1859, and places it about twelve miles below the fort. It also says Mojave accounts recorded by Sherer remember it as an attack on people in their fields near Irataba's ranch, with a heavier toll that included women and children. Those sentences are on the history page, where they are tied to Sherer. They are not in the Bean and Vane paragraph that prints the twenty-three and the three. Casebier's page 98 and the Kroeber pages 27 to 31 were not opened separately for this essay. So this page will not repeat "August 4" or "twelve miles" or the heavier toll as if those pages had been checked again. It will say what the overview does say, and it will point at the short history for the rest. A reader who wants the field-and-children memory should know it is Sherer's, as this site has already reported it, and that it was not re-read in her book this week.

The rank, again, because the fight is where people get it wrong

The task of telling this story often promotes him. "Major Armistead's battle" is the phrase. The overview's phrase is "Brevet Major L. A. Armistead," and a sentence later "Major L. A. Armistead, commandant." The short history says Captain. He is the same officer who, in the spring, thought the post well sited and changed its name. Using the brevet in one chapter and the captaincy in another, without saying why, makes two men. There was one commandant. The permanent grade and the brevet title are both in the published record. The fight does not settle which title a clerk would have written on a morning report. It does settle that he was in command, that he reported the bodies, and that three of his men were wounded and none killed, by his account as Casebier and the Kroebers relay it.

The peace that was a policy, not a mood

Bean and Vane's next sentences are about politics, not about a handshake. Peace, they write, descended, and the isolation ended because supplies now came in on the road Beale and others had made, much of it the old Mojave trail. Hoffman had been wrong about freight: it could be carried. Government policy then reinforced Aratêve, the leader who favored peace because he recognized the power of the United States. An opposing faction of traditionalist "strong men" favored militant opposition. The overview cites Clifton Kroeber (1965) and Sherer (1966) for that split. It is the split that makes Irataba's later authority intelligible. He did not become "the" chief because Cairook died and a vacancy opened in a single office. Whipple had already counted five principal chiefs. Ives had already failed to meet two of them, including one named Sikahot who would not leave his own ground to visit a steamboat. After the fight, American officers chose which Mojave voice to amplify. That choice is in the overview. It is a choice, not a coronation the nation held on its own.

When the Civil War began, the fort was closed because the troops were needed elsewhere. The Mojave were asked to guard the buildings. Casebier, via Bean and Vane, is the citation, at his page 131. The overview then prints the reoccupation as May 1963, two companies of the 4th Infantry, California Volunteers. The year as printed is impossible. This site's short history says the California Volunteers came back in 1863. The Casebier page that would fix the month was not opened here. The fact this essay will stand on is the one that does not depend on the typo: the post was closed, and the people who had just been fought were asked to watch the empty buildings.

Fiction has to choose a field

March had already produced gunfire of another kind. Samuel Bishop's road party, camels included, met an estimated 1,500 Mojave, was shot at in a way the overview says was meant to miss, then was attacked, and shot two men, one of them fatally. That episode is in the same Bean and Vane chapter, and it belongs to the weeks before the post existed. Armistead's fight is the one the overview calls the first pitched battle: about fifty soldiers, hundreds of Mojave, bodies on a field, a report with a number. Treating every arrow that summer as the same event washes out the twenty-three. Treating the twenty-three as a formal engagement arranged in advance ignores the mail station, the torn-up melons, and the man shot in a garden, which the overview places immediately before the commandant got the battle he had not been able to force.

A novel has to put the fight somewhere. It has to decide whether women are in the scene, whether the first shot is at the garden or at a line of soldiers, whether Armistead is calm. When the Birds Go Silent makes those choices, and they are choices. The documented spine, as far as the overview carries it, is the mail station, the melons, the man shot among three in a garden, about fifty soldiers against hundreds, twenty-three bodies reported and probably more, three soldiers wounded, none killed. Dialogue on that field is the book. The count is Armistead's, and Homar's narrative, which the Kroebers published, is the place a Mojave memory of the same summer survives. This essay has not quoted Homar's sentences about the battle, because those pages of the 1973 book were not the ones in front of me. The overview's summary of them was.

Sources

These are the documents and studies this essay actually uses. Spellings of Mojave names follow the source being quoted.

• Bean and Vane (2002), Mojave chapter, citing Dennis G. Casebier, Fort Mojave: Outpost on the Desert (1975), p. 98, and Kroeber and Kroeber, A Mohave War Reminiscence (1973), pp. 27-31, for the fight; Casebier (1975), p. 131, for the Civil War closing; C. Kroeber (1965) and Sherer (1966) for the split between Irataba's faction and the traditionalist leaders. NPS history copy.
• This site's short history dates the fight August 4, 1859, places it about twelve miles below the fort, calls Armistead captain, and says Mojave accounts recorded by Sherer remember an attack on people in the fields, with a heavier toll that included women and children. Those details are identified below as the short history's, because they are not in the overview paragraph that carries the casualty count.

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