Vermont Marble
The metaphysical properties of white marble calm and ground, provide strength of self-control and mastery of thought, enhance powers of serenity, cleanse when used in
naturopathy & homeopathy for balancing. What could be more important than equilibrium when attacking, with two men, a force of eleven Indians, driving them from the hills, reconnoitering the country beyond? Or when an officer leads a company in a counter charge at Peach Tree Creek, Georgia, on 12 July of 1864, under a galling fire, fully armed with the pennant of a Georgia regiment & ahead of his own men, & singly enters the enemy’s line in order to save 2 commissioned officers, then rescues, years later, with 2 companies in the same war, two white girls by making a voluntary attack upon Indians
whose superior numbers & strong position would have warranted delay for reinforcements, while delay would have permitted the Indians to escape & kill their captives. No wonder we stand stones high over men who showed bravery in action, noted for conspicuous gallantry when breaking the Greenville Treaty! If you follow the hand-hewn slabs from that Vermont quarry, stuck upright like singular cards from a deck of the dead, you’ll pursue a curving line, come to soldiers who showed fearless exposure & dashing bravery in cutting off the Indians’ pony herd, thereby greatly crippling the hostiles. Caretakers of this theater for eternity, left with the greatest responsibility of keeping
restless souls from wandering after heroically ignoring Worcester v. Georgia, these stone guardians mark men who saved the life of a dismounted soldier in imminent danger of being cut off, by alone galloping quickly to his assistance under heavy fire & escorting him to a place of safety, the horse being twice shot in the action, all of them, soldier, Indians, & horse, victims of Manifest Destiny, ordered & conflicted, ordained & entitled, dehumanizing each other to preserve a way of life & see their own children grow up to meet men known for gallantry in action. School boys learn that one of these dead held the left of the line with a few others during the charge of a large body of Indians, after the right of the line had retreated, & by delivering a rapid fire, succeeded in checking the enemy until other troops came to the rescue, & that these men loved one another as well as their head officer who led them in their advance across a White River partly frozen, in a spirited movement to the effective assistance of Troop K, 6th U.S. Cavalry, while during the dark nights even the courageous lay awake with regret, drowned with whiskey memories of bloody aftermaths, balked at shooting what they knew were merely other men fighting for the same freedom but on opposite sides, warriors with no other place to go, with no continent of their own, their ranging buffalo destroyed as others gallantly charged hostile Indians with carbines to compel a party of braves to keep under cover of their breastworks, thus enabling the soldiers to recover one severely wounded. These bare marble souls separated from their mother soil & their father cliff, kidnapped from their surrounding hemlocks, stand watch over the men who, in a force of forty, rode all night to the relief of a command that was defeated & was besieged by an overwhelming force of Indians, yet reached the field at daylight, joined in the action & fought for three days. Whether expressing Gallantry in Action or Distinguished Gallantry in Action to friend or unknown person when killing Indians, or leading his command into battle when all were severely wounded, this one laid here, with a reconnoitering party of three men, was attacked by thirty-five Indians & several times exposed himself to draw fire from the enemy, giving his small party opportunity to reply with much effect. What does distinguished valor look like when chasing down hostile Indians, when all you want is freedom yourself, these grave markers a symbol of purity & immortality as, with most conspicuous gallantry, one charged with 3 men upon 6 Indians entrenched upon a hillside. Or as, in the face of a withering fire, he voluntarily & successfully conducted a party which recovered possession of an abandoned howitzer & two Gatling guns lying between the lines a few yards from the Indians. Some woman’s son voluntarily left fortified shelter & under heavy fire at close range made the rounds of the pits to instruct the guards, fought his way to the creek & back to bring water to the wounded. That man there showed distinguished bravery while in command of his troops in action against hostile Sioux Indians on the north bank of the White River, near the mouth of Little Grass Creek, South Dakota. Agent of Christ or gripped by food, uniforms, & future pension, another defeated a force of 300 Brule Sioux warriors, & turned the Sioux tribe, which was endeavoring to enter the Bad Lands, back into the Pine Ridge Agency. Near him, a man showed most distinguished gallantry in action with hostile Apaches, led by Geronimo & Natchez, & a few stones over, two ex-slaves, the only Black infantry to receive the Medal of Honor during the frontier Indian Wars, one of them walking & crawling two miles to a ranch for help during the Wham Paymaster Robbery, unable to save the silver & gold, serving in the Army until 1893, then working as a laborer in Arizona & New Mexico when, in 1922, he applied for a federal pension, but was denied & ended up at Arizona Territorial Insane Asylum, where he died three years later. We have standards here, politicians & their generals said about the stones. They must be white, even for former slaves, even for the Irish & the Scottish names, those ending in French trip thongs, the truncated German moniker come here from somewhere else to take what wasn’t theirs but belonged to a government whose seat from the air resembles a graveyard filled with mausoleums, the green lawn surrounded by Capital & museums, by monuments & fountains, a city of the dead around which living turn. These fallen distinguished themselves for coolness, bravery, marksmanship while in pursuit of hostile Apache Indians, these pale markers their reward, a captive soul inside each like a footman with a boot on their necks, keeping them in the grave, allowing them to gallantly attack a band of hostiles no longer & to cease conducting combat with excellent skill & efficient boldness as they sleep forever within spitting distance of frenzied combatants who gallantly fought &
held most valiantly their ground at critical moments & fired upon the advancing hostile Indians until becoming disabled by a shot. Across the field, five men once repelled a superior force, held their position against the Indians’ repeated efforts to recapture their heritage with their bows & arrows, broken rifles, small pox blankets, their sad top hats. Men in uniforms erected breastworks under fire, kept command supplied with water three consecutive nights while exposed to fire from ambushed Indians at close range, their comrades riding steeds, leading men into close range of the enemy, maintaining positions, vigorously prosecuting the fight until severely wounded. These custodians will never return to the quarry which has since filled with rain, drowned a teenager drinking beer there in the middle of the night one hundred years after one of these dead & buried carried dispatches to Fort Buford & another forced the enemy back after stubbornly holding his ground in an extremely exposed position, preventing the enemy’s superior numbers from surrounding his command. One of them now under his metamorphosed rock, made from compression, beneath his lump of compressed oceans, rescued a wounded soldier who lay under close & heavy fire during the assault on the Modoc stronghold after two soldiers without success attempted to make rescue & both were wounded in doing so, old rivals in love, friends, brothers in arms, fearlessly risking life, displaying great gallantry in rescuing & protecting, in rallying commands, leading in advance against fortified position, the man with the largest stone, Roosevelt’s dear friend, voluntarily carrying dispatches through regions infested with hostile & armed groups of Indians, making a journey of seventy miles in one night, walking over thirty miles
the next day without taking food or rest. While in close pursuit of Geronimo’s band, & constantly expecting more deadly encounters, he took command of a detachment of Infantry that had been left without an officer, the supervision of which he was assigned later at his own request, to eventually become Chief of the US Army.
The particular battle descriptions in this piece were taken from the Arlington Cemetery website and can be found under the heading “Indian Wars Medal of Honor Recipients.” The specific information can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/
Sandra Kolankiewicz is the author of the poetry collections Turning Inside Out and Lost in Transition, and also the novel When I Fell, with illustrations by Kathy Skerritt.