Saw this on a page I follow on Facebook, second paragraph starts talking about the damage a natives arrow did and how far it still penetrated after hitting the guy in the belt buckle first.
The Texas Quote of the Day is a good one, but a little grisly:
"The next event of interest happened in April, 1867. Some horses had been stolen from settlers east of us and a party of men, riding in hot haste to overtake the Indian marauders, came to our ranch where they were joined by my brothers, George and William, and Si Hough. They overtook the Indians at the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos, a distance of thirty-five or forty miles from the Stone Ranch. They were loitering here, taking their ease and shooting buffaloes, thinking they were out of the danger zone. They were taken by surprise and only one escaped to tell the tale. They were outnumbered, there being ten white men to seven Indians.
One of our men, John Anderson, was shot through the arm, receiving a flesh wound, and a minie ball passed through William's sleeve. Brother George was the only one seriously hurt. He was shot with an arrow that entered his body just above the navel. He was wearing a United States Army belt buckle which was about two inches wide by three long. This buckle, we think, may have saved his life, as the arrow hit the edge of the buckle, breaking the force of the shot to some extent or it would doubtless have gone through his body. These arrows had great force when shot from strong Indian bows. He pulled the shaft out, but the head was left in his body, where it stayed fifteen years. At first they thought it possibly might have dropped in the loose sand when the shaft was taken out and have been covered, bu that was not the case, as was proven in after years....
The arrow head either went into the muscles of the back at first, or in some manner gradually worked its way to the back. Years afterward there was a knot pushed out near his spine which he suspected was the arrow head coming to the surface, and he was right about it, for in 1882 he went to Kansas City and had it taken out. The following are excerpts from an account in the Kansas City Journal of July 18, 1882:
'Yesterday afternoon there was removed from the body of George T. Reynolds, a prominent cattleman of Fort Griffin, Texas, an arrow head, two inches long. Mr. Reynolds had carried this head sixteen years, three months and fifteen days.
'On Friday last the gentleman came to this city and registered at the St. James hotel. His coming was for the purpose of having a surgical operation performed....
'On his back opposite the place where the arrow entered his body, he could feel its head. At last he decided to have it cut out and came to Kansas City as mentioned. Scales of rust were removed from the arrow head when it was taken from his body. The point was blunt as if it had been eaten off with rust.'
"There was no anaesthetic used and before going into the operation he exacted the promise from the doctor that he would stop when asked. Two friends went into the operating room with him to see him through. One of them ran out as soon as the doctor started work. The other, "Shanghai" Pierce, a well known cattleman of South Texas, became so excited when he saw the deep incision that he yelled, "Stop, doctor, you are cutting that man to the hollow." At this my brother called a halt. The cut had missed the arrow head, and had gone down by the side of it. Brother raised himself to the sitting posture and bent forward. The steel arrow head slipped out into the incision."
----- Sallie Reynolds Mathews, "Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle"