Rest In Peace, Capt. Stuart

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Captain James Stuart's body had been missing for 155 years and no one in Southern Oregon knew for sure where it had gone.

From the moment an Indian arrow killed the captain while he was passing through the Rogue Valley in 1851, the "facts" of his story began to splinter and the real Stuart was nearly lost in the maze of his own legend. There was only one common thread to all versions of his story. Stuart died, was buried at Camp Stuart, then exhumed and reburied somewhere else.

"The first thing I ever read had said that he died near Central Point," said local historian Carol Harbison-Samuelson. "But the more I read, the more confused I got."

Capt. James Reeve Stuart was born to a prominent family in Beaufort, S.C., on July 12, 1825. His father was a newspaper editor with enough influence to get Stuart an appointment to the Military Academy at West Point.

In one of those ironic moments of history, Stuart, whose family would support the Confederacy in the coming war, became a close friend and roommate of the future commander of Union forces, George McClellan.

"Jimmie Stuart, my best and oldest friend," McClellan would later write in his Mexican War diary. It was in Mexico where the two men shared a tent as they fought their way to victory with the United States Army's Mounted Riflemen.

Since Stuart was a soldier who "volunteered for everything" with total disregard for his life, it was amazing that except for a minor wound that he managed to keep secret, he was uninjured in six major battles of the war.

"Lieutenant Stuart was the first man to mount every battery," his commanding officer said. "He was the first American to enter the city of Mexico."

With the war over, Stuart headed home to South Carolina for a brief leave and a hero's dinner in his honor. It was the last time he would see family and friends.

His regiment's long and weary march of 2,500 miles to Oregon began on May 10, 1849. Once they left the fur trading post in Laramie there wasn't another house on the trail until they reached the Columbia River in October.

There they constructed Fort Vancouver, prepared maps and patrolled the area. They had been sent to protect the immigrants from Indians, but there wasn't much fighting so in the spring of 1851, the troop was ordered home.

Under the command of Major Philip Kearny, Stuart and his friend Captain John Walker, rode south with a line of packhorses, wagons and about 80 soldiers and civilians.

The Oregonian newspaper published a report of their travels, dated June 20, 1851, written by a correspondent known only as "R.S.W."

When the regiment reached Douglas County, they met a frantic group of miners and settlers, who told Kearny about Indian attacks in the Rogue River Valley. They were afraid to act on their own and begged Kearny and his men for help.

Jesse Applegate, the man who had blazed the Applegate Trail and who lived nearby, offered to guide Kearny to an alternate trail, some 20 miles to the east. Once over the mountains on that trail, Kearny planned to surprise the Indians with an attack from the north.

He kept 67 troopers with him and sent his supply train with a minimal guard down the regular road through "the canyon," as the pass over the Umpqua Mountains was called.

In the middle of the night on June 16, Walker woke to the sounds of a terrified Stuart in the middle of a nightmare. As Walker would later tell Stuart's mother, "he dreamt that an Indian came into his tent and killed him with an arrow as he slept."

The next morning the soldiers crossed over the Umpqua Divide, reached the Rogue River near today's town of Trail, and then turned south.

In just a few miles, they surprised a small group of natives who took off running down the river. Walker detached his company and crossed the water in pursuit.

Stuart's company galloped down the right side of the river until they were just across from Indian Creek in today's Shady Cove Park. There they met a party of about 20 men and women. Some escaped into the bushes, but the troopers managed to kill at least 10.

As Stuart dismounted and walked toward a wounded Indian, he uncocked his pistol and tapped the injured man on the shoulder, motioning him to get up. The man grabbed his bow and released an arrow into Stuart's abdomen, the stone point piercing the Captain's kidney.

With two other soldiers wounded, the regiment hurriedly set up a hospital camp and waited an hour for their wagons to catch up.

Kearny and a small force pressed forward for another five miles in pursuit of the escaped Indians. Instead, as they watched from cover, at least 250 warriors were forming near Upper Table Rock.

Kearny retreated to the hospital camp and the next morning, with the arrow still in Stuart, crossed the river and headed south toward the 200-foot butte now known as Cemetery Hill in Phoenix. Nearby the soldiers set up a temporary army camp that they called Camp Stuart.

Captain Stuart lingered for thirty hours. When asked if he was suffering, Stuart answered, "I feel like I have a red hot piece of iron in my bowels."

He wondered aloud why he was dying now after all those successful battles in Mexico. Then he turned his face to the tent wall and tried to hide his agony. He was 24 days short of his 26th birthday.

George McClellan remembered his friend by writing in his diary.

"On the 18th June, 1851, at five in the afternoon died Jimmie Stuart, my best and oldest friend."

An article written by Welborn Beeson and rediscovered by Jan Wright, executive director of the Talent Historical Society, corroborates the account written by the Oregonian's correspondent, as do Major Kearny's official report and statements made by Jesse Applegate to a Jackson County historian.

Beeson, who came to Phoenix just two years after Stuart's death, was well acquainted with the locations and people involved.

Captain Walker buried his friend between two oaks on the east side of the road, across from the Colver House in today's Phoenix. Walker carved the letters "J.S." into one of the trees to mark the location. Beeson said that one of those oaks later served as a gatepost for Colver's pathway to Bear Creek.

Within a few weeks, the regiment was back on the road to the military post at Benicia, California. There, Kearny sent a letter to the quartermaster at Fort Vancouver, accompanied by a metal casket, asking that a party be sent to retrieve Stuart's body. It is likely that Walker accompanied the casket.

Thanks to Gerhard Spieler, a local historian living in Beaufort, S.C., and writer of a history column for the Beaufort Gazette newspaper for nearly 40 years, we finally learn the rest of the story.

The captain's family assumed that Stuart's burial in Oregon was the end of it all. Then a surprising letter from Captain Walker arrived. He said he had brought the body across the Isthmus of Panama and was requesting permission to rebury it with honors at West Point.

Stuart's mother refused. She remembered when her son was 12-years-old, dangerously ill and expected to die.

"When I am dead," he had said, "bury me by the side of my grandmother in the Beaufort churchyard."

"Captain Stuart's grave and monument are in St. Helena's Episcopal Churchyard, Beaufort, S.C.," said Spieler, "under a dark red obelisk."

He said that there is writing on three sides of the stone, "weathered and hard to read."

—¦ wounded in Battle with the Indians in Oregon while leading his men gallantly to Victory. "¦ He was a gifted, accomplished and noble Hearted gentleman."

Now, for the first time, the Captain's image has returned to the Valley and after all these years, we finally know where he has gone.

I'm so excited," said Carol Samuelson, "It's wonderful to finally know for sure."

Bill Miller is a freelance writer living in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@yahoo.com.

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