Because this awesome guy is on our family line:

Account of Arthur Green Carper’s Civil War and “Pony Express” Service

Taken from a letter written to Michael Cummings by Lloyd George Melgard, 17 December 1979

“Your great great grandmother, Francis Elmira Iona Carper, had a brother, Arthur Green Carper, b. 8 December 1851, d. 3 Nov. 1934 in Sayre, Oklahoma, who escaped the stockaded school of Notre Dame where his Mother, Mariah Cline Firestone Carper, had placed him to keep him from joining the Civil War volunteers. He bribed a negro washerwoman to carry him out on her head with the dirty laundry and he worked his way south to join the union forces as a drummer boy and saw much action. When the Civil War was over he was too scared of his Mother to return home so he joined the Pony Express and on one of his runs he decided to cross the Oklahoma Indian Territory to save time and was captured, stripped, tied to a stake, had slivers of wood stuck in his flesh by the Indian women and set afire. He showed no fear and such bravery that the Indian chief had the fire doused and had him brought to his tent where he was treated for burns all over his body and he was out of his head for weeks. He became the chief’s slave or personal servant and had to sleep at his feet each night. After many years,he began to think of his Mother and his family in South Whitley, Indiana, and he planned his escape. One night when all were asleep, he dragged the end of his lariet through the camp fire’s coals and loosening the tether rope for the horses, he got on the chief’s white horse which was the fastest and whirled his flaming lariet over the horses causing them to stampede and then he set out for the territory’s boundary. It took time for the Indians to take chase and they pursued him shooting him so full of bullets and arrows that he was able later in life to pass knitting needles through his arms and legs without feeling any pain. The next morning a doctor married to an Indian woman and living on the border came out of his home to find a white horse covered with blood and a man hanging under his belly. He brought him in and worked to save him and he was delerious for months. Finally he learned that he was from South Whitley, Indiana, so we wrote a newspaper there asking if anyone knew of a man of such a height, weight and facial features and his Mother read and realized that this must be he son so she hired two of the best doctors and set out in a stage coach for the Indian territory but the closer they got, the more frightened the doctors became and they both left her. She brought him home and it took a long time before he realized he was no longer an Indian with Indian ways. He married and returned to Oklahoma when it was opened and had a farm there”