"Shooting Wagons" - Pea Ridge National Battlefield, Garfield, AR
Posted by: YoSam.
N 36° 27.231 W 094° 03.022
15S E 405876 N 4034801
In modern re arraignments I think this stop has been changed.
Waymark Code: WMN9NN
Location: Arkansas, United States
Date Posted: 01/26/2015
Views: 2
County of marker: Benton County
Location of marker: Military Rd., stop 5, Pea Ridge National Battlefield
Marker erected by: national Park Service
Marker text"
"SHOOTING WAGONS"
Nearby, the morning of March 7, 1862, Cherokees under General Albert Pike helped capture three Union "shooting wagons," as the Indians called cannons
"Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn had been appointed overall commander of the Trans-Mississippi District to quell a simmering conflict between competing generals Sterling Price of Missouri and Benjamin McCulloch of Texas. Van Dorn's Army of the West totaled approximately 16,000 men, which included 800 Indian troops, Price's contingents from the Missouri State Guard and other Missouri units transferring to Confederate service, and McCulloch's contingent of cavalry, infantry and artillery from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri" ~ Wikipedia
"Van Dorn called on Brig. Gen. Albert Pike, who commanded American Indian troops in the Indian Territory, to join him. Van Dorn ignored the fact that, by treaty, these troops were not to fight outside the territory. Just before the battle, Pike joined him with nearly nine hundred men of the First Cherokee Mounted Rifles and the Second Cherokee Mounted Rifles.
"American Indian troops helped Van Dorn's cavalry attack a Union battery and supporting Federal cavalrymen on Foster's Farm, near the village of Leetown, Arkansas, on March 7. They drove off a small column of the Third Iowa Cavalry, as the white troops captured the battery position. Pike had difficulty regaining control of his troops near the captured guns, as the swirl of battle shifted elsewhere. Some of the Cherokees killed wounded Union soldiers, and scalped at least eight of them, before order was restored." ~ Oklahoma Historical Society