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The Bitter Spring Expedition of 1860 was a U. S. Army expedition from Fort Tejon, by Company K, First Regiment of Dragoons, led by Major James Henry Carleton, to punish suspected Paiute raiders that had attacked travelers at Bitter Spring along the Los Angeles - Salt Lake Road, the winter trade route and wagon road between Utah and California.〔(William Gorenfeld and John Gorenfeld, Bvt. Major James Carleton at Bitter Spring 1860, Originally published in Wild West, June 19, 2001. From Saturday, January 15, 2005 musketoon.blogspot.com accessed September 17, 2014 )〕 In April 1860 Major James Henry Carleton was appointed commander of the Bitter Spring Expedition following the killing of a cattleman in January 1860, at Bitter Spring, reportedly by Paiutes and two months later of two unarmed teamsters by Native American men thought to be Paiute who had posed as friends before turning on them. Brevet General Newman S. Clarke, Carlton's superior, commanding the Department of California, in San Francisco, ordered him to "proceed to Bitter Springs and chastise the Indians you find in the vicinity." The General specifically instructed Carleton that "the punishment must fall on those dwelling nearest to the place of the murder or frequenting the water course in its vicinity." Carlton at the head of Company K, First Regiment of Dragoons left the fort in early April. After arriving and establishing his base at Camp Cady Carlton sent out patrols looking for hostiles. On April 22nd, on Carlton's orders, the bodies of two Native American men, earlier slain by a detachment of Dragoons on the Mojave River at the Fish Ponds, were taken to Bitter Spring. At Camp Bitter Springs the site of the earlier attack on the cattleman and the teamsters, the bodies were hung from an improvised scaffold. A few days after a May 2nd engagement at Old Dad Mountain, the heads cut off of the three natives killed there, were placed on display with those hung on the gibbet at Bitter Springs. On May 28th, following reports of the display in the San Francisco press and after General Clarke had read Carlton's dispatch telling of the display of severed heads at Bitter Spring, Clarke ordered Carleton to cease mutilating the dead and remove all evidence of the mutilation from public gaze. The post remained at the spring to guard travelers on the road, until abandoned in late June 1860 at the end of Carlton's expedition.〔 ==References== *( 1st Dragoons, Co. K, from mojavedesert.net accessed September 17, 2014 ) *( LANE'S CROSSING, Pioneer of the Mojave: The Life and Times of Aaron G. Lane, Page 5, from mojavehistory.com accessed September 17, 2014 ) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bitter Spring Expedition」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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