A Pre-Civil War Battle Almost Vanished from History. Scientists Found It Buried Underground.

4 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:Fought in 1855, the Battle of Hungry Hill was a clash between settlers and the local Takelma tribe that ended in the defeat of U.S. Army soldiers and volunteers.The settlers had clearly underestimated the power of the Takelma, who they outnumbered, and the embarrassed survivors later changed the story of the battle.Archaeologists finally found the site of the last battle using maps and old accounts, which also told of the the leadership and success of Takelma women on the battlefield.Oregon’s Sunny Valley seems idyllic. The misty Grave Creek Hills gently roll among meadows of wildflowers that nod in an occasional breeze, trails take hikers through forests that offer breathtaking views at the end, Grave Creek gurgles as it passes under a bridge lined in white picket fences.But many tourists in the valley are unaware of the fact that beneath this fairytale scenery lies a land that was once stained with blood.The Gold Rush of the 1850s drove hordes of pioneers west. Grave Creek was said to be glittering with nuggets of gold ore, and by 1855, tensions between settlers and the Indigenous peoples who had lived on the land for thousands of years ignited what would be recorded as the Rogue River Wars, and the Battle of Hungry Hill was said to be one of the most devastating. But as the years passed, both the battlefield and recollections of what happened between gold-seeking European settlers and the Takelma tribe were lost—until, more than a century and a half later, when the site of the clash was unburied.In 2012, Mark Tveskov—an archaeologist from the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology—led a research team who brought the nearly forgotten battle back into public awareness. They scoured not only the land, but also various archives to find military documentation describing what exactly happened on Hungry Hill. Whatever was previously known about this battle had been fragmented, possibly because the settlers who survived it were reluctant to admit defeat. Leading up to the Rogue River Wars, there were constant clashes between military officers, Takelma leaders, and local militias. Settlers could not agree on how to interact with the tribe whose land they were encroaching on.Efforts to reconstruct the Battle of Hungry Hill were going nowhere. Finally, Tveskov’s colleague Robert Kentta—a member of the Confederated Siletz Indian Tribes, which include the Takelma—discovered a New York Herald article from November 12, 1855, hardly two weeks after the battle. It allegedly included material that had been provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant August V. Kautz, including a report about the battle that he sent to his commanding officer.“It repeats, often with the same words as the New York Herald article, the details of the battle’s planning and execution,” Tveskov said in a 2017 study, “but unlike the newspaper article, Kautz’s letter includes candid editorializing that casts both his fellow U.S. Army officers as well as the volunteer officers and volunteers in a frank and often unflattering light.”The archaeological team was convinced that Kautz’s scathing account was authentic because of how closely its writing aligned with that report. He thought some of his fellow soldiers had underestimated technological advancements that should have given the settlers an advantage, but still managed to take down almost an entire band of combined military and militia forces. It also revealed how many citizen volunteers—who had been paid to fight local tribes before and may have used this as fuel to ignite a war—deserted after hearing the first shots fired, and that that the U.S. Army dragoons (mounted and armed soldiers) had left behind their mountain howitzer at Fort Lane. This might explain why later commentators tried to retell the events of Hungry Hill in a more favorable light.Primary documents recovered from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. (as well as other locations) led the team to a field between the Grave Creek Hills and near Hungry Hill—so called because troops had been running out of food provisions during that battle. The Bureau of Land Management agreed to allow archaeologists to survey an expanse of land on which the battle was thought to have been fought. Hand-drawn maps from Kautz himself and military scouts, which had been languishing in the archive of a library, ultimately led the to the site. There, the team unearthed .69 caliber lead musket balls (which U.S. Army historians confirmed were meant to be sued with Springfield musketoons manufactured in 1842) and a lead gunpowder tin stopper from the Army’s largest supplier of gunpowder at the time.Missing information was also unearthed through Native American oral histories and other accounts. Frances Johnson, Sally Lane, and a woman known as Queen Mary were all prominent Takelma figures, showing that the role of women in the battle had been underrated in stories told from the settlers’ point of view. Lane remained mounted on her horse behind a fortification while giving directions to the other warriors. The daughter of Chief Joseph Lane, she had purposely put herself in a position from which she could see both sides of the battlefield, and could be heard clearly from a distance. Queen Mary was her sister, Mary Lane, who was influential enough as to put a halt to another impending battle before it started, and also led Takelma forces in the Battle of Hungry Hill. What was almost lost from memory has come to life again.“The fact that their defeat was at the hands of a much smaller, well-coordinated force of Native Americans, and […] one of the leading architects of their defeat was a Native American woman, both the volunteers and the U.S Army officers likely would have preferred that the less said about the battle, the better,” said Tveskov. “It is only in their private letters and unpublished memoirs, some unexamined by scholars until recently, that candid reflections on the battle exist.”Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.