If guns could talk....

HARRINGTON, JUNKIN, BRISBIN

Posted By: Joey Stark
Date: 5/27/2006 at 13:18:07

"Fairfield Ledger", Dec. 12, 1900, Pg. 3, Col. 5

A GUN WITH A HISTORY. A recent dispatch says: "After the Custer massacre, in 1876, the remains of all the officers engaged in the battle were found with the exception of Lieut. HARRINGTON, and it was not until last Saturday that the mystery was explained. An old Indian who took part in the fight against the whites died at Fort Yates Saturday and on his death bed told the tale. He said that Lieut. HARRISON was about the last of the survivors of the massacre, and that when his comrades were killed he made a wild dash and escaped to the open plain. Seven Indians followed him, and HARRINGTON finally shot himself to keep from falling into the hands of the Sioux.

The gun with which this brave but desperate officer killed himself is now in the museum of the Fairfield Free Public Library, a part of the Indian collection presented that institution by W.W. JUNKIN. It is a cavalry carbine, with which many officers in the Custer massacre armed themselves. Mr. JUNKIN secured it, when serving as an Indian inspector in 1889, from a Mexican who had married a Crow squaw and was living about six miles from the Custer battlefield. He found it, with the bones of a white man nearby, while clearing a bit of land for farming. Gen. BRISBIN said it was undoubtedly the gun carried by the missing Lieutenant. When found the gun had been exposed to the elements for several years and part of the stock had rotted away.

*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s) mentioned.