William Gentles

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William Gentles (c.1830–1878) was a

William Gentles was born in County Tyrone, Ireland. The exact date is not certain; records suggest various birth dates between 1828 and 1835. He may be the William Gentles born September 30, 1828, the son of Robert and Sarah Gentles.^[1] William Gentles immigrated to the United States in 1850, arriving in New York City where he worked as a laborer for several years.

Utah War

On April 2, 1856, Gentles went into the recruiting station in New York City and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was described in his enlistment record as 5 foot 8½ inches tall, with grey eyes, brown hair and a ruddy complexion. Private Gentles was assigned to Company K

Orders detailed Companies B and F, Fourteenth Infantry, at Fort Douglas to join Crook in the field. Traveling by train to Cheyenne, Private Gentles and his company marched north to Fort Fetterman, where in turn they departed on July 4, 1876, for General Crook's camp. Crook resumed the campaign trail in August, following various Indians trails but failing to find any sizable village as the traditionalists began to scatter. Exhausting its supplies, Crook's column made a desperate turn south to the Black Hills in what became famous as the Horsemeat March.

Crook closed his campaign that fall and Gentles's Company F 14th Infantry was assigned to duty at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Through the fall and winter the camp's garrison patrolled the Sidney-Deadwood Trail and engaged in normal post activities. During the spring of 1877 Camp Robinson's soldiers witnessed the surrender of large bands of Northern Cheyennes and Lakotas at the nearby Red Cloud Agency, culminating with the surrender of Crazy Horse on May 5, 1877.

Private Gentles's name appears in the post records but once, when in August 1877 he was tried by garrison court-martial and sentenced to twenty days in the post guardhouse.

The Death of Crazy Horse

On the late afternoon of September 5, 1877, Crazy Horse was brought to Camp Robinson. While attempting to place him in the guardhouse, he struggled and the famed Oglala war leader was fatally bayoneted. At the time, there was considerable confusion as to how Crazy Horse had been wounded but a member of the guard detail that evening, Private Edwin D. Wood, wrote plainly of seeing a soldier bayonet Crazy Horse. Nearly all later eyewitness accounts collected by various historians confirm that a soldier was responsible. The identity of that individual, however, remained unknown for decades. No official army records note the name.

In 1903, a former sergeant of the 14th Infantry, giving his name as William F. Kelly, told a Washington Post reporter what he had seen that evening at Camp Robinson. "It was an exciting moment, when no one knew just what to do," Kelly explained, recalling the struggle outside the guardhouse door between Crazy Horse and Little Big Man. "Suddenly, as the men surged forward in the direction of where I was standing, I saw Wm. Gentles, an old soldier and a veteran of the Mormon campaign of 1857, give Crazy Horse a thrust with his bayonet. The thrust was delivered with lightning-like rapidity, and in the next instant, he had his gun at carry, as though nothing had happened. Crazy Horse gave a deep groan, staggered forward and dropped his knife and fell." The article was widely reprinted in newspapers that year, including the Denver Post and Crawford Tribune.

Most writers have since accepted Sergeant Kelly's claim without question. Classic works on Crazy Horse by E. A. Brininstool, David Humphreys Miller, and Mari Sandoz repeated Gentles' name as the soldier directly complicit in the stabbing. Custer scholar John Carroll, in his introduction to Richard Hardorff's book on the genealogy of Crazy Horse, provided a brief biography of the man. Later day Crazy Horse biographers, Kingsley Bray and Thomas Powers, both acknowledge Gentles even while nagging issues associated with the identification plagued the story, as did the occasional surfacing of other names of individuals who may have been on the scene and wielded the bayonet.

The matter was investigated carefully in 1996 by historian Ephriam Dickson, who directly challenged the identification of Gentles as the soldier responsible, questioning but never resolving issues surrounding the identity of William F. Kelly, the man who put forward Gentles' name in 1903. Dickson concluded that enough uncertainty clouded Kelly's own identity that one should doubt, in turn, his naming Gentles as the man who stabbed the chief.

More recently, historian Paul L. Hedren, working closely with Dickson, investigated the case more carefully, and for the first time settled the questionable identity of William Kelly, which in turn settled the issues surrounding the identity of William Gentles. No longer is there any doubt that the soldier at the Camp Robinson guardhouse door, Private William Gentles, stabbed Crazy Horse. ^[3]

Death

Company F, 14th Infantry, departed Camp Robinson on November 4, 1877. Private William Gentles remained behind for several weeks, perhaps packing company baggage, but soon joined his company at Camp Douglas, Utah.

In May 1878, suffering from asthma, Private Gentles was admitted to the post hospital at Camp Douglas, where he died on May 20, 1878. Gentles was buried several days later in the post cemetery.

References