2005-03
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/28/2005
Autograph Letter Signed “Wm. Dute”, 4 pages, octavo, February 16, 1864, Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Sergeant William Dute, a Union cavalryman serving in New Mexico. Dute was wth Co. “M”, 1st New Mexico Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson. The regiment was actively engaged with hostile Indians throughout the Civil War. Written to an unknown recipient, he letter reads in part: “...The ‘Bloody First’ as it is termed out here , is yet alive and deeply engaged in the prosecution of the Navajo War which...is drawing toward a speedy close...A few small predatory bands may rather choose to remain int their country to continue a sort of guerrila warfare...This morning I was ordered by the Commandant to superintend the burying of an Indian child. He told me to bury it in a decent and respectable manner...when I found the deceased little savage stretched out on the top of its coffin in a suit of white with a little cross at its head and a candle burnignn on either side. Three or four Mexican women were sitting around the corpse...”. A few stains, else Fine condition.
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