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ONGRESShope of escaping the death trap. Remarkably, only two or three
of them had been killed, although many more had taken wounds.
Ormsby, inconspicuous since his ill-fated order to charge, led
a desperate attack upslope that managed to break through and
open the avenue to escape. As he did so, Indian projectiles hit
him in both arms and in the mouth. His mule also took a hit.
The human urge to survive dissolved any semblance of disci-
pline among the surviving whites, who spurred and whipped
their animals and galloped for their lives, driven like cattle
before the thundering hooves of the Indian ponies.
The chase stretched out for miles. Whites with weak, wounded,
tired or overloaded mounts fell behind to be dragged down
and killed. Many threw away their arms and begged for quarter.
“No use now—too late,” answered their pursuers before spitting
the white men on arrows, knives and spears. The others fled onto
the bench above the river that contoured around the nose of the
hills. As the rout stalled at each of three gulches, Paiute warriors
brought terror and death to the hindmost of those fleeing. South
of the terrace the rout backed up against an arroyo. There Orms-
by’s mule, gushing blood from its wounded flank, slipped its
saddle, dumping its rider to the ground. As Ormsby gained his
feet, he came face to face with an Indian whom he recognized.
“Don’t kill me!” he implored the warrior through a froth of
bloody foam. Before the Indian could answer, an arrow from
another’s bow put the grievously wounded white commander
out of his misery.
About 8 miles into the flight the mule carrying Baldwin and
the man who’d rescued him began to tire. Sliding from the back
of the animal, the teenager hid amid bushes as the Indians swept
past, then fled into the hills after nightfall. The Indians chased the
terror-stricken whites clear back to the Big Bend of the Truckee,
killing everyone they caught. Only nightfall saved the surviving
vigilantes from annihilation. Had the battle started two hours
earlier, there might not have been a single white survivor. Fortu-
nately for those escaping the Indian wrath, the moon didn’t rise
until past midnight.
Young Baldwin reached Virginia City on the second night after
the battle, much to the relief of his parents in Sacramento. He’d
been reported dead by the first of the “returned heroes,” as one
Sacramento Daily Union correspondent termed the bedraggled
few who managed to reach camp. Among them was the man
who had snatched Baldwin’s mule.
The last survivor reported back was Greek immigrant Dr. An-
ton W. Tjader. Impaled by three arrows before Indians killed
his running horse, he tumbled to the ground and feigned death.
The warriors galloped past. When sounds of the chase faded,
Tjader dragged himself to a stand of willows on the riverbank
and lay hidden for two days, terrified at the raucous cries of
celebratory Indians returning from the chase. Eventually, the
doctor slunk off into the darkness. He spent the next 72 hours
walking to Virginia City.
One newspaper reported 55 white deaths—23 known dead
and 22 missing—while another claimed Ormsby’s volunteers
left 67 dead behind. Later historians tallied as many as 76 white
fatalities. The most decisive defeat of a white force by Indians
had come at the 1791 Battle of the Wabash, aka “St. Clair’s De-
feat,” in which 632 of General Arthur St. Clair’s 1,000 U.S. troops
were killed by a confederacy of tribes during the Northwest Indi-
an War in what would become Ohio. The First Battle of Pyramid
Lake was the worst loss of white life in an Indian fight since 107
soldiers were killed during the 1835 Dade Massacre in central
Florida, escalating the Second Seminole War. No battle would
significantly exceed the Pyramid Lake toll until 268 men under
Lt. Col. George A. Custer were killed 16 years later at the Little
Bighorn in Montana Territory. The Indians at Pyramid Lake had
suffered but three wounded men and two slain horses during
the one-sided battle.The first survivors brought reports of the disaster into
Virginia City around sunrise the next morning. The story flew
over the telegraph wires to California—along with shrill appeals
for soldiers and militia troops to combat what the most agitated
inhabitants of the eastern slope feared was an Indian war of
extermination against the whites.
The news hit settlers along the Pacific Coast like a dropped
anvil. Californians could scarcely credit the idea that 100 rough-
and-ready white militiamen had been nearly annihilated by a
band of “digger Indians.” Huge crowds gathered outside the tele-
graph offices to read the dispatches. Rumors spread of up to
15,000 Paiute, Shoshone, Bannock and Pitt River Indians at
Pyramid Lake, determined on “clearing out Carson Valley.” (To
its credit, one Virginia City newspaper did accurately estimate
fewer than 400 warriors in the entire Paiute tribe.) With the gov-
ernor absent, California’s secretary of state sent two companiesStill Standing
Photographer Timothy O’Sullivan
took this shot of Nevada Paiutes
around 1870, a decade after
the two Battles of Pyramid Lake.