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CIVIL WAR --AMERICAN INDIANS. Willet PIERCE. Auto

Alexandria, Virginia: 9 March 1862 Letter on one 4to sheet of "Maj. Gen. Geo. B. McClellan" pictorial stationery, recto and verso, signed "Willet Pierce", (200 x 120 mm). Condition: folds, ink faded, spotting. an american-indian soldier prepares to make a "bloody rush" at the rebel army during the peninsula campaign. Willet Pierce was one of a dozen Seneca Indian soldiers to serve in Company K of the 57th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Before the bloody battles that spring, Pierce is optimistic: We are now prepared to march upon the Rebel armies, we are going to start first soon as the road dries up so the artilleries can cross the Potomac River and then we will all march together and make a bloody rush up Jefs. Davis company ... Our division is composed of two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. This will make a strong force upon the Rebel army. I am not coward but [a] brave Union soldier ... The 57th would face combat that spring and summer in several of the Civil War's bloodiest fights, including the Battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) which resulted in 11,000 casualties. Of the twelve Native-Americans in Company K, at least 9 were either killed, injured or classified as deserters by the end of the Peninsula Campaign. [With:] A fragment of an ALS, c. September 1862, on similar lined paper to above, signed "W. Pierce" in which Pierce describes one battle as the "perfect thunder of musketry & canonading" and then reports the death of general kearny at chantilly. [And:] An ALS from Pierce's widow, dated 1915, to Nathan Brickford, a defender of Civil War pensions. See: Hauptman, Laurence M., Between two fires: American Indians in the Civil War.

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