Last month walking in a ravine near my house, I spotted a cartridge case on the ground, looked to be a 50-70 but there were no markings on the rim, also no visible primer. It looked like a big rimfire case. It was very well preserved in the dry Arizona climate. I did some research and it appears it is a Benet primed case, loaded by Frankford arsenal from 1869 to 1882. There is a crimp around the base of the case just above the rim, meant to hold the priming goodies down. Camp Verde nearby was a post that was on the General George Crook trail midway between Fort Whipple and Fort Apache. Soldiers constructed the trail in 1871 and pecked mile markers into prominent rocks along the trail. Picture showing V 13 is one of those markers found just off Highway 260. I guess it indicates 13 miles from Camp Verde. 4 years later the trail was improved into a road suitable for wagon use. So lots of Army activity around here during the wars with the Apache. I also found a small crude spear point not far away from the 50-70 case but I suspect it could have been laying there for many hundreds of years before, as the Sinagua tribe occupied the Verde Valley from approx 500 A.D. to 1300 or so, long before the Yavapai Apache moved in. There is a large Sinagua hilltop complex, Tuzigoot, about a mile from where I live. Exciting finds for an old history buff like me, the cartridge case, which I believe is copper, not brass, could be around 140 years old.( Almost as old as Sen. John McCain!) P.S. Sorry I thought I could include a pic of the mile marker rock but just remembered it was on my phone not my camera.

Great how finding that one empty cartridge has inspired your finding out about the history.
thanks for the post and the information.

Can you speculate as to was this a frontiersman, indian, or trooper cartridge? I don't remember hearing of US troopers being issued this round??

The first repeaters made by Gov. arsenal were civil war surplus Springfields converted to breechloaders using the Allin conversion. Starting in 1867, the arsenal produced " bar primed" 50-70's for about a year. I believe these had a pressed in primer like we use today. That year, troopers armed with the new rifles were escorting a detail and repelled a much larger force of Souix and Cheyenne. The warriors expected the troopers to have to reload their muzzle loaders after their first volley, and sent another wave in , not knowing the soldiers had new breech loaders. ( Wagon Box fight). Starting in March 1868, the arsenal started making cartridges with the Benet priming system, like the one I found. 5 years later, the arsenal quit converting old muskets and produced new rifles with the pivoting breech, the "Trapdoor" and a new cartridge to go with it, the 45-70. They continued to produce the Benet primed 50-70's up until 1882.
So with the new rifles and cartridges coming along only 5 years later, the converted rifles probably went into surplus quickly. In his book "Tough Trip Through Paradise, Andrew Garcia said the Indians weren't too interested in the repeaters with their weak rim fire ammo, they wanted the " needle guns" for their superior power for bison , elk, etc. Guess they were called needle guns because of the long barrels. I can see the rifles being used for decades after for hunting by someone wanting an inexpensive, effective " meat getter". But imagine users of the surplus rifles would be shooting commercial 50-70 ammo like Rem-UMC or W.R.A., not gov. ammo. I keep my ammo in good ammo cans with dessicant packs, it will be good for many years to come. But back in those days, doubt people bothered storing them as well. So I'm thinking it was a trooper that fired that case I found. Also possible that it was obtained by a warrior ambushing a soldier or a deserter trading or selling his ammo, but less likely. Don't flame me on the dates, etc. just writing this form memory, which is getting worse all the time!

I won't flame you on your dates but I do question your referring to a single shot rifle, without any magazine capacity, as a repeater or repeating firearm. A great many 50-70 cases have been found at the Little Big Horn battle site and it is generally believed these were fired by Indians because such rifles were given to reservation Indians prior to this.

In regards to your comments about ammunition storage, I think you must consider that the priming components for these cartridges was less stable than what we have today and they did have a shelf life. Regardless of how it was stored, misfires with older ammo was a problem. Secondly, I think that a large supply of this ammo was like made available to Indians, thru Agencies, and therefore would likely be available to almost anyone. I am not certain but I don't think there was any commercially made (non-military contract) ammo available for this caliber, Benet-primed, at the time you date it.

Although I don't collect these types of cartridges, I have had some and learned a little about them. You will notice that the firing pin struck your case in the center, not on the rim like you would expect to see in a modern .22 LR or the like. This cartridge is referred to as "inside primed", not a rimfire. The priming mixture is on the inside of the base of the cartridge, not necessarily in the rim.

It is a good find and you have done your research well. The hunt for information is one of the most interesting things about collecting.

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great history lesson guys. I suspect the needle gun reference was to a needle ignition system for using a needle to penetrat a paper cartridge to strike a primer on the inside the of the case (back of bullet).

The military always like to hold on to a $$$, so lots of civil war era guns and parts converted to those trap-door designs.

yes, I meant to say first breechloaders, not repeaters, made by a Gov. arsenal, just re read it and realized I typed the wrong word.
I'm sure the vast majority of fired 50-70 cases at Little Big Horn were fired by the Indians, but I remember reading that Custer carried a Rolling block, likely a 50-70, but might have been a 45-70. Certainly would have been easier to get more ammo from a fellow soldier, alive or dead if he had a 45-70, than have to carry a different caliber. But rank has it's privileges, like Patton carrying a Peacemaker and ivory gripped 1911.
When I found the case, it threw me off a little cause I had just always assumed that the first 50-70's were made with a reloadable primer. When I saw it was a 50-70 with a centerfire strike and smooth base, I knew it must be an earlier round, thus sparking my looking into it.
I also have always thought, ( I first read Tough Trip Through Paradise about 30 years ago) that the term " needle gun" referred to the ignition system, but in the case of the converted Springfield muskets, I read that the Indians called them needle guns because the long barrels reminded them of pointy needles. That makes more sense to me, as they wouldn't have been able to see the firing pin inside the breech block.

SANDOG, I thought I was the only person that read "A TOUGH TRIP THROUGH PARADISE". A very intersting read. I have read that the Sharpes model 1868 carbines in 50-70 Gov't was given by the US government to many wagon drivers, buffalo hunters, settlers, ect and ammunition was free at the fort if used for buffalo hunting and Indian killing. Apparently the US government wasnt to concerned about being politically correct in those days. I fired a factory round of 50-70 a few years back,that was made in the 1870's. It worked pefectly, lots of power.

"Trapdoor" Springfields (that term wasn't used on the frontier) were called "needle guns" because they had a long firing pin running through the block and somebody thought they worked like the original Prussian needle gun. As HarryS states, the original needle gun worked quite differently.

.50-70 cartidges are associated with Indians because when the first Springfield breechloaders of Model 1868 were made obsolete by the new .45-70 Model of 1873, many were given to our Indian allies. Like some of our current "allies," they didn't always turn out to be so reliable. Some sold their weapons to hostiles, some threw them away when confronted by hostiles, and some just plain became hostiles. But a lot of them did none of those things and used these guns for many years to defend themselves and hunt.

A very nice find! I have a cigar box full of that kind of stuff; wish it could talk.

The Wikipedia has a write-up of needle guns with illustrations, here. Interesting that the Dreyse version is effectively front (of powder column) ignition. Sending a firing pin through powder with enough energy to ignite the primer strikes me as asking for reliability issues, though.

These early cartridges mainly used mercury fulminate primers, AFAIK. Fulminate can, indeed, deteriorate in a year or two under adverse climatic conditions. When you read the old timers referring to getting supplies of "fresh ammunition", better reliability and not simply a replenishing of depleted supplies is the reason.

My dad had some of those .50-70 cartridges in his bullet collection that I saw when I was young, along with a rifle that fired them. I recall the rifle had no kind of bluing or other protective finish on the barrel. Unfortunately, dad traded those off at some point. The rifle's barrel had been cut down and a curiously flimsy sheet metal sight added, so it wasn't in original condition, so I think he may have let it go a little too cheaply.

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The first 50-70 rifles were converted Springfield muzzle loaders. Barrels were relined, and the Trapdoor mechanism was cut in at the rear of the barrel. A cheap way to convert obsolete muzzle loading military rifles (of which there were a huge number right after the Civil War) into breech loaders.
Springfield muskets made during the Civil War weren't blued - they were left white to speed production.

Jack,

I'd never heard that. AFAIK, it was milled to fit, then installed in a separate trapdoor action like this one, which is pretty much identical to the later .45-70 actions.

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"First contemplation of the problems of Interior Ballistics gives the impression that they should yield rather easily to relatively simple methods of analysis. Further study shows the subject to be of almost unbelievable complexity." Homer Powley

UncleNick, considering the time, (1865) a simple and cheap way to convert ML muskets to breech loaders was an obvious solution - and cheap was maybe the over riding factor, with an enormous debt run up by 4 years of war.
I suspect that it was soon discovered that rehabbing and
converting ML muskets of wartime production was more expensive than building new ones.
Springfield Model 1865 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack,

I think the only 1865 I've held was that one my dad still had when I was a kid, and I don't recall the details directly. The patent drawing in the Wikipedia appears to show the barrel has terminated about where they do in most modern rifles, at the breech end of the inserted cartridge, and that the separate receiver has been engaged to it, also as in modern guns, albeit by pinning rather than the more common modern use of barrel and receiver threads. So I think my objection is just to the semantics of the Wikipedia description, which seems to imply the barrel is somehow made into an integral receiver by milling, as opposed to being milled to allow the receiver to be fitted to it, which is how I read the drawing.

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"First contemplation of the problems of Interior Ballistics gives the impression that they should yield rather easily to relatively simple methods of analysis. Further study shows the subject to be of almost unbelievable complexity." Homer Powley