Stricken men lay in heaps everywhere, and the charging troops were once more driving the Indians across the creek in front of the camp.

Van Cleve noticed that the dead officers and soldiers who were lying about the guns had all been scalped and that "the Indians had not been in a hurry, for their hair was all skinned off." Another of the packers who took part in the fight, one Thomas Irwin, was struck with the spectacle offered by the slaughtered artillerymen, and with grewsome homeliness compared the reeking heads to pumpkins in a December cornfield.
The Soldiers Lose Heart.
Panic Seizes the Army.
As the officers fell the soldiers, who at first stood up bravely enough, gradually grew disheartened.

No words can paint the hopelessness and horror such a struggle as that in which they were engaged.

They were hemmed in by foes who showed no mercy and whose blows they could in no way return.

If they charged they could not overtake the Indians; and the instant the charge stopped the Indians came back.