Documented Indian Train Attacks

There are many accounts but I only remember seeing illustrations of them - most from Leslie's Illustrated News.  It took so long to take an early photo I imagine an actual photo during an attack would be quite rare.

 

--Greg

I've seen movies and read of Iron Horses being attacked!
Ralph

There is a historically accurate account of Indians attacking a small roundhouse in Kansas in the1870s. It might have been Hoisington KS.  The workers inside fired up a 4-4-0 and then escaped on it after crashing through the doors.  There are also accounts of Indians attacking and killing track workers, but I don't have the specifics.


Kent in SD

In the Stephen Ambrose novel: Nothing Like It In the World, there are historic accounts of the engineering and track building crews being attacked by hostile Native Americans.

In one of my favourite train films, North West Frontier, there a lots of Indians attacking the train. 

If you haven't seen this film, it's a great train film. 

 

 

 

 

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Here is a sequence from UNION PACIFIC (1939), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, featuring Virginia & Truckee No. 11. Brace yourself for the wreck.

Also known as "Flame Over India."

 

Rusty

Th Steven Ambrose book on the Union Pacific documents an Indian attack on a passenger train, where all were killed, mutilated and burned alive, and a follow-up attack on the rescue train.

I wonder if there are documented early photos of actual Indian attacks on trains? 

 

No.  Nor are there any combat photos from other conflicts of that ere or sports action photos.  It simply was not practical due to the exposure time, bulk and fragility of the glass plate negatives and cameras of the 1860s and 70s.

 

While I think I have read of

telegraph lines and poles (burned) being torn down, and can imagine trestles burned and track torn up, I don't

remember reading of actual attacks on trains.

 

 

The Lakota Sioux lead by Sitting Bull made numerous attacks on Northern Pacific survey and construction parties in Dakota Territory in the early 1870s.  By 1873 the situation became so bad that the US Army sent an entire regiment under a distinguished civil war veteran commander into the area to protect the railroaders.  The Regiment was the 7th Cavalry and their commander was George Armstrong Custer.  The clashes between the forces of Sitting Bull and Custer between 1873 and 1876 are well documented.

 

Garry Owen!

 

Ambrose played fast and loose with his research on this book. I wouldn't rely on that book for anything you'd wanna quote.

Yeah, I read it and I'm glad I didn't buy it.

I have really enjoyed the is topic. My thanks esp to Nicole & Reading Fan for posting the 

movie links. I am going to try to get some of those movies to view.

 

I am of direct American Indian descent but my people being Cherokee never (to my 

knowledge) attempted to war on Railroads. We have our own language and alphabet did

you know?

 

Thanks again....ain't the internet wonderful!!!

Ambrose played fast and loose with his research on this book.

 

and you substantiate that with what facts?

Not of train interest, but I have always had an interest in languages (coudn't figure out then how to make money with the skill, so did not pursue it) , and read up

on the Cherokee alphabet and its developer when in high school.  That is the only

Native American language alphabet, developed by a Cherokee whose name I have forgotten. I wonder if it is taught in schools today, on the reservation in the Smokies, Oklahoma, or elsewhere?  I have seen, maybe drawings, and not photos, of train

passengers slaughtering buffalo from coach platforms, certainly a waste that would have contributed to attacks on trains.

Not to mention the fact that we stole their land and massacred their people, including women and children.

On a less serious note, when I was a child I rode a passenger train that was attacked by Indians. It was on the Tweetsie Railroad in Boone, NC.

http://tweetsie.com/

Aside from some legal attacks by the Senecas on the Erie, the first attack I am aware of was in the 1850s when a group of Indians attacked track workers on a portage railroad along the Columbia River.  The portage road used mules at the time.  The workers cut them loose and relied on the grade for propulsion.

 

It's not Indians but there were a number of attacks by revolutionaries on trains in the Mexican revolutions of the early 20th century. 

You can find a discussion here.