CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS GUN?
Black powder artillery is definitely
a subject I know very little about, but I’ve developed an interest in this
field piece. It is known simply as the Big Horn Gun and is on display at the Gallatin History
Museum in Bozeman, MT.
Various authors have identified it as a “6-pounder”, a “12-pounder”, a “Napoleon”
and “Napoleonic” but from what little I could learn from researching it I’m
inclined to say it’s “None of the above.”
The barrel, muzzle and trunnions are
all completely devoid of any kind of identifying military, inspection or
maker’s marks. The smoothbore barrel is cast iron and listed as weighing 650 pounds.
I put dial calipers to the bore at the muzzle and came up with a measurement of
3.286-inches. The bore has no powder chamber and measures 43-1/2 inches long while
the overall barrel length with the cascabel is 51-1/4 inches. The carriage is a
reproduction built in 1994.
Walter Cooper was the Bozeman gun dealer and
gunsmith who twice refurbished the cannon in 1874 and again in 1881, and he believed
the barrel had been cast in 1770.
The media is up to its usual
accuracy standards (sub-Red Ryder MOA) when it comes to the history of this piece. A 1954 newspaper article
about the cannon claimed only, “…it is believed to have been used in the
Mexican War.” The same newspaper, in 1973, stated, “One fact that has been
established is that the Big Horn Gun was used in the Mexican War of 1846-48!”
By 1994, the latest article proudly proclaimed, “General Zachary Taylor used
the cannon in 1848 while fighting in the war with Mexico.”
From the bore diameter, I would think
the gun a 4-pounder; during its history there were plenty of occasions for bore
erosion. Call my a cynic, but I have my doubts that Old Rough & Ready Zach Taylor actually ran around Mexico using this as his personal shootin' iron. Assuming it actually was used in some capacity in the Mexican-American
War, I would imagine it more likely to have been captured from the Mexican Army. They used both iron and bronze 4-pounders, while the US Army's smallest field piece was the Model 1841 bronze 6-pounder.
From what little I could find out about Mexican artillery of the era, their heaviest siege
artillery was of English make but the field artillery was almost entirely
Spanish in origin and dated from the 1770’s.
Just for fun, here’s a brief synopsis
of the gun’s known, documented history. All sources mention the Mexican-American War; most speculate the gun made its way north over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe Trails after the war. One or two articles say it may have been used to protect construction crews on the Union Pacific Railroad in 1866-69.
In 1870 it was in Cheyenne, WY
and was taken along by a private enterprise group of gold prospectors calling
themselves the Big Horn Expedition. They were originally bound for the Black
Hills by way of the Big Horn Mountains,
but the US Army stopped them and ordered them not to proceed to the Black Hills as that area was still ceded to the Sioux by
treaty. (Army commands in the Dakota Territory were nowhere near as zealous in
keeping prospectors out of the Black Hills.)
Half of the expedition returned to Cheyenne
while the remainder turned west and prospected down the Big Horn and up the
Yellowstone Rivers until they reached Bozeman
and disbanded. Now universally called the Big Horn Gun, the cannon was
purchased by a group of Bozeman
businessmen for use in defending the town in case of a hostile Indian attack. Since
no such attack ever occurred, it was mostly used for parades, political rallies
and celebrating the 4th of July.
In February of 1874 another private
venture calling itself the Yellowstone Wagon Road & Prospecting Expedition
left Bozeman bound for what is now eastern Montana with the stated goals of
blazing a wagon route to the head of navigation on the Yellowstone River and,
of course, trying to find new gold strikes. Some believed their real purpose
was to stir up a full-blown war with the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne so
that the US government would
be forced to bring in the military to “pacify” the tribes, thus opening eastern
Montana up to
white settlement and development.
All told, the company consisted of
149 men all armed with breech-loading or repeating rifles, 22 wagons, 28 yoke
of oxen, over 200 horses and mules, and two pieces of artillery. The first was
a Model 1841 12-pounder bronze mountain howitzer that Montana Territorial
Governor B.F. Potts had badgered the US Army garrison at Fort Ellis
into “loaning” to the expedition. The other was the Big Horn Gun. Bozeman attorney William
D. Cameron, a Union artillery officer during the Civil War (possibly with the
10th New York Heavy Artillery), was appointed chief gunner. The
wagons carried four months’ worth of supplies, 40,000 rounds of extra small
arms ammunition, and 150 rounds for the two artillery pieces.
Standard Army-issue explosive shells and
spherical case shot were obtained for the 12-pounder. Varying by source, there
was either no ammunition whatsoever to be found for the Big Horn Gun or a
handful of “shells” were found in Virginia City and transported to Bozeman.
William Cameron happened to be
perusing the shelves in the general mercantile store in Bozeman and came across a stock of canned
oysters whose tins were about eight inches long and of a perfect diameter to
fit the bore of the Big Horn Gun. Cameron thought he could create some
effective home-made canister rounds with the cans. The store’s majority owner,
Lester S. Willson, was a former Union brevet brigadier general from New York, and
he gladly donated the entire stock of oysters to the expedition.
“The boys”, as the members of the
Yellowstone Wagon Road & Prospecting Expedition had come to be known,
greatly enjoyed emptying the cans since oysters were a luxury item few of them
could have afforded on their own. The empty tins were refilled with improvised
shrapnel in the form of blacksmith scraps, nails, bolts, and even old horseshoes,
chain links and broken tools cut up into small pieces, packed in sawdust. The
open ends of the oyster cans had been carefully cut in a zig-zag pattern to
form V-shaped tabs. The original can lids were replaced and crimped down with
these tabs. Cameron also scrounged up a bolt of flue flannel cloth which he had
sewn up into cylindrical bags sized to fit the Big Horn Gun’s bore and filled
with pre-measured powder charges.
When test-fired, Cameron’s
roll-your-own shrapnel, with its irregularly shaped bits and pieces, reportedly
made strange whistling and warbling sounds as it hurtled through the air.
Expedition member John “Jack” Bean later wrote, “Whenever this gun was fired
every piece taken a direction of its own hollering, ‘Where is yee—where is
yee—where is yee.’”
The expedition traveled approximately
600 miles along the Yellowstone, Rosebud and
Little Bighorn drainages over a period of three months from February to May of
1874. In early April, the Sioux discovered the interlopers and from that point
on the boys fought numerous small skirmishes and three full-blown battles with
the Lakota and some Northern Cheyenne.
Excellent rifle marksmanship, the two artillery pieces, and a great deal of
pure dumb luck allowed the expedition to return to Bozeman having suffered only
three casualties, two wounded and one dead.
Beginning during the night of April 3rd
and continuing through the morning of the 4th, the boys fended off
an attack by an estimated 600 Sioux warriors. One warrior rolled a sizeable
cottonwood log up to an abandoned rifle pit on the edge of camp, dug a small
firing port underneath it, and began slowly but accurately picking off the
expedition’s horses and mules in the central corral one by one with a
muzzle-loading rifle. Protected by the log and the foxhole, the boys were
unable to silence this sniper with their own rifle fire.
An account published in 1883 said: “…Cameron was called on to take a shot at him with the big
gun. He cut the fuse short on a shell and depressing the piece, fired. The
Indian had put a large piece of dry wood in front of him, from which cover he
had been firing in fancied security, and when the shell struck this it exploded
and the Indian must have been torn into fragments, for no more bullets came
from that place during the fight.”
Shortly afterwards: “When
morning broke the heaviest firing came from an ash grove about one hundred and
twenty-five yards distant. Cameron gave it two quick doses of canister and no
more shots were fired from there.”
Jack Bean recalled, “As we examined
the timber next morning we found it bullet holes from the top to the bottom.”
The
expedition returned to Bozeman
in early May of 1874 and the Big Horn Gun reverted to its role as Fourth of July
noise-maker. The following June, however, yet another private expedition of
Bozeman adventurers set out with four home-made wooden flat boats down the
Yellowstone River and they too brought along the Big Horn Gun. Swollen by snow
melt from the mountains, the river was roaring along with a 12 mph current, and
the unwieldy boat carrying the cannon capsized in a set of rapids. A shore
party of about two dozen mounted men had accompanied the boats. One of them was
none other than Walter Cooper, who led the efforts that managed to recover the
gun from the bottom of the river.
Near the mouth of the Big Horn River, the men built a stockaded trading post they
grandly called Fort
Pease, mounting the Big
Horn Gun atop one wall. A bit of a stalemate ensued. While the Sioux lacked the
firepower to destroy the fort outright, the white men could hardly step outside
of the stockade without being attacked. The area was still ceded to the tribes
by treaty, so a column of US Army troops from Fort Ellis was ordered to
evacuate the white men whether they wanted to go or not. The Big Horn Gun had
to be left behind; the Sioux wasted no time burning the abandoned fort to the
ground.
Six years later, in 1881, Walter
Cooper returned to the site and while poking through the ruins of the old fort
he found the Big Horn Gun’s barrel intact, rusting in the weeds. He managed to
get the gun freighted back to Bozeman
where he again restored it at his store, the Armory & Gun Shop. The cannon
was then placed on display near the front door with a placard that read:
“The
‘frontdoor’ is open
I
have come home to rest
My
voice will be heard again
When
the iron horse approaches.”
Indeed,
when the first passenger train of the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in Bozeman on March 21, 1883,
the Big Horn Gun was dusted off and fired several times in celebration from a
bald hill on the east edge of town.
Cooper
kept the Big Horn Gun for the rest of his life. His daughter Virginia Bunker
Barnett inherited it and eventually presented it to Gallatin County
in 1926. In 1936, it was placed on a concrete stand in front of the
newly-completed Gallatin County Courthouse. There it resided peacefully for
many years and everyone assumed the Big Horn Gun had long since fired its last
shot.
On
the morning of March 20, 1957, however, an explosion awoke residents, including
the sheriff, on the west side of Bozeman
at 12:38 AM. Upon investigation, it was found that vandals had loaded the old
cannon with black powder and a tin full of rocks and scrap metal and touched it
off. Shrapnel broke windows across the street in the high school and concussion
cracked or broke several windows behind it in the courthouse. Shortly
thereafter, the barrel of the Big Horn Gun was poured full of concrete to
prevent any recurrence of the dangerous prank.
In
1994, several interested local individuals took it upon themselves to restore
the Big Horn Gun to its former glory. The concrete was carefully drilled out of
the bore, but bits of it still remained stuck to the metal. Hydrochloric acid
was tried in an attempt to dissolve the remaining concrete, but it boiled over,
scarring the top of the barrel, which had to be sanded and polished and
re-browned. Western historian and author Don Weibert and his father Henry used
old hand tools originally belonging to Don’s grandfather and took the better
part of an entire winter to build a new carriage for the cannon. It features
hand-worked iron fittings, a blond laminated cottonwood stock and tow arm and
spoked, iron-rimmed white oak wagon wheels.
Restored to its former glory and bearing a
plaque in memory of the Weiberts, the Big Hole Gun now resides in the Gallatin
History Museum located at 317 West Main in Bozeman, Montana.
