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Indian Fights & Fighters

THE LAST OF CUSTER
Drawing by E. L. Blumenschein

AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS SERIES

Indian Fights and Fighters
THE SOLDIER AND THE SIOUX

BY

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, LL.D.

Author of “Colonial,” “Border,” and “Revolutionary” Fights and Fighters

Illustrated with Original Drawings by Remington, Schreyvogel, Blumenschein, Crawford, Elwell, Deming, and Zogbaum

With Maps, Photographs, and Sketches from Life from Original Sources, many of which are now published for the first time

NEW YORK

THE McCLURE COMPANY

MCMVIII

Copyright, 1904, by

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Published, December, 1904, N

Second Impression.

Copyright, 1904, by The Pearson Publishing Company

To that most eminent and useful

CHURCHMAN AND CITIZEN

OZI WILLIAM WHITAKER, D.D., LL.D.

Bishop of Pennsylvania

Whom I admire as a CLERIC, respect as a MAN, and love as a FRIEND

I dedicate

This Story of the West

He served so well

PREFACE

The writing of history requires three operations: (I) The collection of facts; (II) The classification and arrangement of facts; (III) The presentation and discussion of facts. I have collected the facts related in this book from every source open to me. These sources may be divided into two groups: (1) Published and (2) unpublished, matter. The published matter includes (a) official records; (b) books, and (c) magazine or other ephemeral articles. The unpublished matter includes (a) letters and (b) verbal communications.

I have made use of all these sources of information in gathering the facts. A list of some of the printed authorities consulted follows this preface. In addition thereto, I beg to acknowledge written communications from the following American Army officers, all now on the retired list except Colonels Godfrey and Brainard and Captain Livermore:—Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles; Major-General Robert P. Hughes; Brigadier-Generals Henry B. Carrington, George A. Forsyth, Louis H. Carpenter, Anson Mills, Charles A. Woodruff and Theo. F. Rodenbough; Colonel Edward E. S. Godfrey, commanding the Ninth Cavalry; Colonel David L. Brainard, Commissary of Subsistence; Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel M. Horton; Captains Henry R. Lemly, Francis M. Gibson, Nathan S. Jarvis, George E. Albee and R. L. Livermore, Tenth Cavalry; and the following civilians: President E. Benjamin Andrews; Doctors T. E. Oertel and D. D. Thompson; Messrs. W. Kent Thomas, Sigmund Schlesinger, Edward Esmonde, Phineas Towne, W. R. E. Collins, Hugh M. Johnson, Herbert Myrick, R. J. Smyth, William E. Morris, Nicholas E. Boyd, Theo. W. Goldin and Arthur Chapman; Mrs. Guy V. Henry and Mrs. James Powell.

In addition to these letters I have gathered much information in conversation with officers and others, not only recently but during many years spent in the West, where I was a frequent guest at army posts, in frontier towns, and at some of the Indian reservations. I knew many of the participants in the stirring incidents and heard the fascinating stories from their own lips.

The chapters of the Fort Phil Kearney series have been read and corrected as to matters of fact by General Carrington and Colonel Horton; those referring to the defense of Beecher’s Island, by General Forsyth; those describing the relief of Forsyth and the fight on the Beaver, by General Carpenter; those relating to the Little Big Horn campaign, by General Woodruff and Colonel Godfrey, and the account of the affair at Slim Buttes and the death of American Horse, by General Mills. All of these gentlemen gave me interesting details, anecdotes, etc., besides answering all my inquiries. Several of them put their private papers at my disposal. To Colonel Godfrey I am especially indebted for much interesting matter on the Little Big Horn campaign, and to Captain Gibson for the use of his unprinted account of the Battle of the Washita. The Office of the Secretary of War has been most kind in answering questions and furnishing information not otherwise procurable. Mr. W. H. Holmes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, has decided all questions as to the proper spelling of Indian names,[^[1]] and has given me the Indian equivalents of the names of prominent chiefs, as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, etc.

Several of the papers following are original contributions especially prepared for this book. The authors of these papers are indicated hereafter. For all expressions of opinion, for all comments, notes and inferences, not specifically attributed to somebody else, I alone am responsible.

To all who have aided me to make this series authoritative and definitive, my most grateful thanks are hereby heartily expressed.

I trust that in thus striving to preserve the records of those stirring times I have done history and posterity a service. The majority of those who fought on the plains have passed away. Many of the surviving participants in the adventures described are growing old. In a short time it would have been impossible to have secured the information here presented unless some one else had gone about it as I have.

With intervals devoted to other duties, I have been over a year and a half engaged in this congenial task. I have written literally hundreds of letters, to learn, or to verify, a fact, an incident, or a conclusion. It is interesting to call attention to the fact that information has been freely and generously given to me from every source whence I have asked it save three, one of which is noted in the appendix.

The series of historical books of which this forms the fourth seems to have won a permanent place for itself. The number of copies which found a welcome last year was greater than the number of the year before, although there was no new volume issued last fall to call renewed attention to the series. These books are generally spoken of by the title of the first published, “American Fights and Fighters.” It has been deemed proper, therefore, to adopt that name, which is sufficiently explicit and descriptive, as the generic name of the series. Hereafter all the books that have appeared, and those that are yet to appear in this series, will bear that general name, with the addition of a distinctive subtitle in each instance. The covers of the earlier books, accordingly, have been changed to read as follows:

• 1. American Fights and Fighters, Colonial.
• 2. American Fights and Fighters, Revolutionary—1812.
• 3. American Fights and Fighters, Border.

As I have stated, it is my hope to continue this series of books until I have covered all the wars that have been fought upon the American Continent since Columbus’s day.

So far as the American people are concerned—save in the case of the Mexican War—their struggles have generally been to establish a broader, nobler conception of human freedom. I would not have any one gather from this that our dealings with the Indian invariably have been characterized by that honesty and honor which should be at the base of every national undertaking—far from it! In this book, without growing sentimental, I have endeavored to be fair to the Indians; as in previous books, I have tried to deal justly by any and every enemy.[^[2]] To be honest and to be fair—these things are of prime importance in writing history and in living life.

I am now at work on two other volumes, a book on “South American Fights and Fighters” and a second volume of “Indian Fights and Fighters.” In this proposed Indian book I shall take up the further struggles of the United States with the Indians of the Northwest, notably Chief Joseph’s splendid migration with his Nez-Percés, the dash of the Cheyennes for freedom, Captain Jack and the Modoc War, the Ute War, the last outbreak of the Sioux, and various other affairs in the Northwest. Thereafter I contemplate a third book dealing with Arizona and the Apache.

I take this opportunity of asking every individual, soldier or civilian, who participated in any of these campaigns or battles, who has any material bearing upon them, and who is willing to allow me to look over it, kindly to send it to me in care of the publishers of this book, as soon as possible, as I expect to issue the next volume of the series next fall. Any such material will be carefully preserved and returned by express in good order, and due credit—also a copy of the book!—will be given for any which may be of use to me in the next book, as in this one.

It is getting late, as I said, to write the history of some of these things, and I am actuated by an earnest desire to preserve the records before it is too late. Who will help me? Since I began writing history I have learned to disregard no authority, however humble, and to neglect no source of information, however obscure it may appear to a casual inspection. Therefore send me what you have or can prepare, and allow me to judge of its value.

American people are usually more familiar with the story of other peoples than with their own history. How often have I heard the charge made that there is nothing romantic or interesting in American history. I do not see how any one could read even the chapter headings of a book like this and say a thing like that. Where are there more splendid stories of dauntless heroism, of subtle strategy, of brilliant tactics, of fierce fighting, than are contained in these pages? I may have told them indifferently and may be the subject of just criticism therefor, but the stories at least are there. They speak for themselves. I could not spoil them if I tried. The facts ring like a trumpet-call to American manhood, be it white, or red, or black.

Cyrus Townsend Brady.

Brooklyn, N. Y.,

August 1, 1904.

[1]. Almost every author has a different way of spelling the names of the sub-tribes of the Siouan family.

[2]. For instance:—Every time a body of troops engages in a fight with Indians and the troops are outnumbered, or caught at a disadvantage, and the battle is continued until the troops are slaughtered, such an affair is popularly called a “massacre”; as “The Fetterman Massacre,” “The Custer Massacre.” I believe this to be an unwarranted use of the term. Fetterman and Custer attacked the Indians and fought desperately until they and their men were all killed. I call that a “battle” not a “massacre.” When an Indian war party raided a settlement or overwhelmed a train, or murdered children and women, that, I think, was a “massacre”; but these two instances were not. Consequently, I have carefully refrained from making use of that term in this book, except where it is justifiable. The reader may not agree with me in this position, but I would like to ask if any one ever heard of the “Massacre of Thermopylæ”? The Greeks fought there until all, save one, were killed. The results there were exactly those of the Fetterman affair and the battle of the Little Big Horn, but I have yet to read in history that the Persians “massacred” the Greeks in that famous pass. What is sauce for the Persians is sauce for the Red Men as well.

PREFACE

It will be noticed that this book differs from others of the American Fights and Fighters Series, and especially its immediate predecessor, “Indian Fights and Fighters,” in that I am not the author of all or most of it. In response to a request for contributions from participants in the Modoc and Nez Percé wars, numerous papers were submitted, all of such high value, not only from an historic but from a literary point of view as well, that I had not the presumption to rewrite them myself—not even the proverbial assurance of the historian would warrant that.

Therefore, I have contented myself with writing a general and comprehensive account of each of the two wars considered, leaving to the actors themselves the telling in full of the detailed story of the splendid achievements in which they were making history. I can affirm, therefore, that never before has there been included in a single volume such a remarkable and interesting collection of personal experiences in our Indian Wars as in this book.

And as I admire the doers of the deeds so, also, do I admire the tellers of the tales. Their modesty, their restraint, their habit of relating adventures which stir the blood and thrill the soul as a mere matter of course,—“all in the day’s work”—enkindles my enthusiasm. And how graphically these old soldiers wield their pens! What good story tellers they are!

And what different sorts and conditions of men are here represented! Major-generals and scouts, captains and sergeants, frontiersmen and troopers, soldiers and civilians, to say nothing of an Indian chief and a bishop, have all said their say in their own way. The reader will be glad, I know, that I have permitted these men, like Paul, to speak for themselves.

The whole book constitutes a trumpet call to American manhood, and honor, and courage, and that I believe to be true of the whole series.

The Army of the United States is sometimes slandered. A case in point is now in mind. The chief official of a city of no little prominence, who is also an author and a publicist of national repute, has recently put forth a bitter diatribe against our soldiers. Such a book as this refutes these unfounded accusations. The Army is not perfect—neither is the Church!—but not only man for man, but also as an organization it is the equal of any, and the superior of most, of the armies of the world! And I am sure that no one can get a much better training for the battle of life that he gets in the peace loving, hard working, honor seeking, duty following, never failing, hard fighting service of the United States—on sea or shore. I have been in both, worn the Army and also the Navy blue, and I know. We all deprecate the necessity for armies, but if we must have them, let us thank God for an army like that of our beloved country. I am glad to express this my deliberate and matured conviction, begot of much study, wide observation, and ripe experience.

Cyrus Townsend Brady.

Lake Winnipesaukee, Centre Harbor,

New Hampshire, July, 1907.

CONTENTS

❦

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

❦

DRAWINGS

PHOTOGRAPHS

MAPS AND PLANS

❦

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Part I
Protecting the Frontier

CHAPTER ONE
The Powder River Expedition

I. The Field and the Fighters

Since the United States began to be there never was such a post as Fort Philip Kearney, commonly called Fort Phil Kearney.[^[3]] From its establishment, in 1866, to its abandonment, some two years later, it was practically in a state of siege. I do not mean that it was beleaguered by the Indians in any formal, persistent investment, but it was so constantly and so closely observed by war parties, hidden in the adjacent woods and the mountain passes, that there was little safety outside its stockade for anything less than a company of infantry or a troop of cavalry; and not always, as we shall see, for those.

Rarely in the history of the Indian wars of the United States have the Indians, no matter how preponderant in force, conducted a regular siege, Pontiac’s investment of Detroit being almost unique in that particular. But they literally surrounded Fort Phil Kearney at all times. Nothing escaped their observation, and no opportunity to harass and to cut off detached parties of the garrison, to stampede the herds, or to attack the wagon trains, was allowed to pass by. Not a stick of timber could be cut, not an acre of grass mowed, except under heavy guard. Herds of beef cattle, the horses for the cavalry and mounted infantry, the mules for the supply wagons, could not graze, even under the walls of the fort, without protection. The country teemed with game. Hunting parties were absolutely forbidden. To take a stroll outside the stockade on a summer evening was to invite death, or worse if the stroller happened to be a woman. There was no certainty about the attacks, except an assurance that one was always due at any given moment. As old James Bridger, a veteran plainsman and fur trader, a scout whose fame is scarcely less than that of Kit Carson, and the confidential companion adviser of Carrington in 1866, was wont to say to him: “Whar you don’t see no Injuns thar they’re sartin to be thickest.”

Taking at random two average months in the two different years during which the post was maintained, one in the summer, another in the fall, I find that there were fifteen separate and distinct attacks in one and twenty in the other. In many of these, in most, in fact, one or more men were killed and a greater number wounded. Not a wagon train bound for Montana could pass up the Bozeman trail, which ran under the walls of the fort, and for the protection of which it had been established, without being attacked again and again. Only the most watchful prudence, the most skilful management, and the most determined valor, prevented the annihilation of successive parties of emigrants seeking the new and inviting land.

The war with the Indians was about the ownership of territory, as most of our Indian wars have been. Indeed, that statement is true of most of the wars of the world. The strong have ever sought to take from the weak. The westward-moving tide of civilization had at last pressed back from the Missouri and the Mississippi the Sioux and their allies, the Cheyennes, the largest and most famous of the several great groups of Indians who have disputed the advance of the white man since the days of Columbus, saving perhaps the Creeks and the Iroquois.

The vast expanse of territory west of the hundredth meridian, extending from the Red River to the British Columbia boundary line, was at the time practically devoid of white settlements, except at Denver and Salt Lake, until the Montana towns were reached in the northwest.[^[4]] It is a great sweep of land which comprises every variety of climate and soil. The huge Big Horn Mountains severed that immense domain. The Sweet Water Country and all east of the Wind River Range, including South Pass and the region west of the great bend of the North Platte, had its prairies and fertile valleys. Just north of the Big Horn Mountain Range, which took in the territory which formed the most direct route to Central Montana, and the occupation of which was the real objective of Carrington’s expedition in the spring of 1866, was the most precious section, controlled by tribes jealous of any intrusion by the whites.

All along the Yellowstone and its tributaries, in spite of the frequent “Mauvaises Terres,” or “bad lands,” of apparent volcanic origin, the whole country was threaded with clear streams from the Big Horn Range. The valleys of these were luxuriant in their natural products and their promise. Enormous herds of buffalo roamed the plains, affording the Indian nearly everything required for his support. The mountains abounded with bear, deer and other game in great variety. The many rivers which traversed the territory teemed with fish, the valleys which they watered were abundantly fertile for the growing of the few crops which the Indian found necessary for his support. The land was desirable naturally and attracted the attention of the settlers.

It cannot be gainsaid that the Indians enjoyed a quasi-legal title to this land. But if a comparatively small group of nomadic and savage tribes insists upon reserving a great body of land for a mere hunting ground, using as a game preserve that which, in a civilized region, would easily support a great agricultural and urban population of industrious citizens seeking relief from the crowded and confined conditions of older communities, what are you going to do about it? Experience has shown that in spite of treaties, purchases and other peaceful means of obtaining it, there is always bound to be a contest about that land. The rights of savagery have been compelled to yield to the demands of civilization, ethics to the contrary notwithstanding. And it will always be so, sad though it may seem to many.

The close of the Civil War threw many soldiers out of employment. After four years of active campaigning they could not settle down to the humdrum life of village and country again. With a natural spirit of restlessness they gathered their families, loaded their few household belongings into wagons, and in parties of varying sizes made their way westward. Railroads began to push iron feelers across the territory. Engineers and road builders, as well as emigrants, demanded the protection of the government. At first most of the settlers merely wished to pass through the country and settle in the fair lands upon the other side, but the fertility and beauty that met their eyes on every hand irresistibly invited settlement on the journey.

At that time there were four great routes of transcontinental travel in use: southward over the famous Santa Fé trail; westward over the Kansas trail to Denver; westward on the Oregon trail through Nebraska and Salt Lake City to California and Oregon; northwestward on the Bozeman trail through Wyoming to Montana. The Union Pacific road was building along the Oregon trail, the Kansas Pacific along the Kansas trail to Denver, while the great Santa Fé system was not yet dreamed of.

The railroads being in operation for short distances, the only method of transportation was in the huge Conestoga wagon, or prairie schooner which, with its canvas top raking upward fore and aft over a capacious wagon box, looked not unlike the hull of the boat from which it took its name. These wagons were drawn by four or six mules—sometimes by oxen, known as “bull teams”—and, stores there being none, carried everything that a settler was apt to need in the new land, including the indispensable wife and children.

I am concerned in this article only with the Bozeman or Montana trail.

Early in 1866 Government Commissioners at Fort Laramie, Nebraska, were negotiating a treaty with the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes to secure the right of way for emigrants through that territory which, by the Harney-Sanborne treaty, had been conceded to them in 1865. Red Cloud, an Oglala Sioux, the foremost of the young warriors, led the objectors to the treaty, even to the point of fighting, and opposed the more conservative chiefs who deprecated war as eventually fatal to all their territorial claims. During this council, to anticipate later events, Carrington, then approaching with troops, arrived in advance, dismounted, and was introduced to the members of the council. Red Cloud, noticing his shoulder straps, hotly denounced him as the “White Eagle” who had come to steal the road before the Indian said yes or no. In full view of the mass of Indians who occupied the parade ground he sprang from the platform under the shelter of pine boughs, struck his tepees and went on the war-path. A telegram by Carrington advising suspension of his march until the council came to some agreement was negatived, and although Sunday he pushed forward nine miles beyond the fort before sunset.

One stipulation upon which the United States insisted was the establishment of military posts to guard the trail, without which it was felt the treaty would amount to nothing. The Brulé Sioux, under the lead of Spotted Tail, Standing Elk and others, favored the concession, and ever after remained faithful to the whites. The older chiefs of other Sioux bands, in spite of Red Cloud’s defection and departure, remained in council for some days and, although sullen in manner and noisy in protests, finally accepted valuable gifts and indemnities and so far satisfied the Commission that they despatched special messengers to notify the District Commander that “satisfactory treaties had been made with the tribes represented at Laramie and that its route was safe.” Emigrant trains were also pushed forward with their assurance that an ample force of regulars had gone up the country to ensure their safety. The sequel will appear later.

II. General Carrington’s Romantic Expedition

Pursuant to the plan, Brigadier-General Henry B. Carrington, Colonel of the Eighteenth Regular Infantry, was ordered with the second battalion of his regiment, about to become the Twenty-seventh Regular Infantry, to establish, organize and take command of what was known as the Mountain District. The Mountain District at that time had but one post in it, Fort Reno, one hundred and sixty miles from Fort Laramie. Carrington was directed to march to Fort Reno, move it forty miles westward, garrison it, and then, with the balance of his command, establish another post on the Bozeman trail, between the Big Horn Mountains and the Powder River, so as to command that valley much frequented by Indians; and, lastly, to establish two other posts, one on the Big Horn, the other on the Yellowstone, for the further protection of the trail.

General Carrington was a graduate of Yale College. He had been a teacher, an engineer and scientist, a lawyer and man of affairs, a student of military matters as well as Adjutant-General of Ohio for several years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. At the beginning of that struggle he promptly moved one battery and several regiments of Ohio Militia into West Virginia to take part in the Battle of Phillipi before the State Volunteers could be mustered into the United States service. Without his solicitation, on May 14th, 1861, he had been appointed Colonel of the Eighteenth United States Infantry, promoted Brigadier-General November 29th, 1863, and had rendered valuable and important services during the war. He was a high-minded Christian gentleman, a soldier of large experience and proven courage, an administrator of vigor and capacity, and, as his subsequent career has shown, a man of fine literary talents.[^[5]] No better choice could have been made for the expedition.

After many delays, due principally to difficulties in securing transportation, a little army of seven hundred men, accompanied by four pieces of artillery, two hundred and twenty-six wagons, and a few ambulances containing the wives and children of several of the officers, set forth from old Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on the 19th of May, 1866. About two hundred of the men were veterans, the rest raw recruits. They were armed with old-fashioned Springfield, muzzle-loading muskets, save a few who had the new Spencer breech-loading carbine, a weapon of rather short trajectory, but a great improvement on the old army musket from the rapidity of fire which it permitted. A portion of the command was mounted from the discarded horses of a cavalry regiment going east to be mustered out. They were not trained horsemen, however, and at first were rather indifferent mounted infantrymen.

Among the soldiers were artificers and mechanics of every description. The government had provided appliances needed for building forts, including tools, doors, sash, glass, nails, stoves, steel, iron, mowers, reapers, scythes, and two steam sawmills. The officers were in the main a fine body of men, most of whom had learned their soldiering in the Civil War.

Copyright by D. F. Barry

GROUP OF FAMOUS WAR CHIEFS

It seems incredible to think that women should accompany such an expedition, but no grave anticipations of trouble with the Indians were felt by any persons in authority at that time. The Sioux and Cheyennes had consented to the opening of the road, and though they demurred to the forts, they had not absolutely refused the treaty when the government insisted upon it. The expedition was not conceived or planned for war. It was supposed to be a peaceable expedition. In fact, General Sherman, who visited Fort Kearney before the troops began to march, personally advised the ladies to accompany the expedition as very attractive in its object and wholly peaceful. Had the authorities known what was to happen, a force three times as great would scarcely have been thought adequate for the purpose. But even had there been a full knowledge of the dangers incurred, the army women would have gone with their husbands.

History records no greater instances of romantic devotion than those exhibited by the army wife. She stands peculiar among American women to-day in that particular. The army woman in a hostile country risked much more than the men. Her fate when captured was terrible beyond description—one long agony of horror and shame until death put an end to it. I have talked with army officers of large experience and have read what others have said, and the universal testimony is that no woman who was ever captured by the plains Indians west of the Missouri was spared. It was commonly agreed among the officers and men of regiments accompanied by women—and fully understood by the women as well—that in the last extremity the women were to be shot by their own friends, rather than to be allowed to fall into the hands of the savages; but no such apprehension attended this march.

The army woman’s knowledge of the peril in the usual border warfare was not an imaginary one, either. As we may read in letters and books written by army wives, it was brought home to them directly again and again. After every campaign poor, wretched women of stranded and robbed emigrant trains or devastated settlements were brought into the various camps, to whom these army women ministered with loving care, and from whom they heard frightful and sickening details that froze the blood; yet the army wife herself never faltered in her devotion, never failed in her willingness to follow wherever her husband was sent. And, save for the actual campaigning in the field, the army wife was everywhere—sometimes there, too.

In this particular expedition there were several little children, from some of whom I have gleaned details and happenings. One of these lads, while at Fort Kearney before the march, became so expert with the bow and arrow in target shooting with young Pawnee Indians near the fort, that he challenged General Sherman to shoot over the flagstaff. The youngster accomplished it by lying upon his back with feet braced against the bow, and the general squarely withdrew from the contest, declining to follow the boy’s ingenious artifice.

The march was necessarily a slow one and the distance great—some six hundred miles—so that it was not until the twenty-eighth of June they reached Fort Reno. There they were menaced by the Indians for the first time and every endeavor was made to stampede their herds. The officers and men were fast becoming undeceived as to the character of their expedition. To abandon Fort Reno, or to remove it, was not practicable. Carrington ordered it re-stockaded and put in thorough repair, garrisoned it from his command, and with the balance, something over five hundred, advanced farther into the unknown land on the 9th of July. On the 13th of July, 1866, he established his camp on the banks of the Big Piney Creek, an affluent of the Powder River, about four miles from the superb Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud Peak towering nine thousand feet into the heavens, close at hand. A few days later, on a little, flower-decked, grass-covered plateau, bare of trees, which fortunately happened to be just the size to contain the fort he proposed to erect, and which sloped abruptly away in every direction, forming a natural glacis, he began building the stockade.

III. The Outpost of Civilization

The plateau lay between two branches of the Piney. To the eastward of the smaller branch rose a high hill called Pilot Hill. West of it was another ridge which they named Sullivant Hills. Southwest of Sullivant Hills was a high ridge called Lodge Trail Ridge, the main branch of the Piney Creek flowing between them, so that the water supply was at the eastern or “Water Gate” of the fort. The Bozeman trail passed westward, under Pilot Hill in front of the fort, crossing the Big Piney as it neared Sullivant Hills, and then, circling around Lodge Trail Ridge for easier ascent, advanced northward, twice crossing Peno Creek and its branches, before that stream joined Goose Creek, a tributary to Tongue River, one of the chief forks of the Yellowstone. The first branch of the Peno was five miles from the fort, and the second twelve miles farther, where the garrison had to cut hay, but the branch nearer the fort was especially associated with the events of December 21st, as well as with the fight of the sixth of the same month.

The spot was delightful. Adjacent to the fort were broad stretches of fertile, brilliantly flowered, grassy, river and mountain creek valleys. The mountains and hills were covered with pines. Game there was in plenty; water was clear and abundant. Wood, while not immediately at hand, else the place would not have been practicable of defense without tremendous labor in clearing it, was conveniently adjacent.

General Carrington marked out the walls of the fort, after a survey of the surrounding country as far as Tongue River, set up his sawmills, one of them of forty horse-power, capable of cutting logs thirty inches in diameter, established a logging camp on Piney Island, seven miles distant, with no intervening hills to surmount, which made transportation easy, and began the erection of the fort. Picket posts were established upon Pilot and Sullivant Hills, which overlooked approaches both from the east and the road to the mountains. Three times Indians attempted to dislodge these pickets, once at night; but case-shot exploding over them, and each time causing loss of men or ponies, ended similar visitations.

The most careful watchfulness was necessary at all hours of the day and night. The wood trains to fetch logs to the sawmills went out heavily guarded. There was fighting all the time. Casualties among the men were by no means rare. At first it was difficult to keep men within the limits of the camp; but stragglers who failed to return, and some who had been cut off, scalped and left for dead, but who had crawled back to die, convinced every one of the wisdom of the commanding officer’s repeated orders and cautions.[^[7]]

To chronicle the constant succession of petty skirmishes would be wearisome; yet they often resulted in torture and loss of life on the part of the soldiers, although the Indians in most instances suffered the more severely. One single incident may be taken as illustrative of the life of the garrison.

One afternoon, early in October, the picket reported that the wood train was attacked to the west, and shortly after signalled the approach of a small party of soldiers from the east. Detachments were sent from the post in both directions. It proved to be not a reinforcement of troops or ammunition supplies, but two ambulances with two contract surgeons and an escort of eight men, besides Bailey, the guide, and Lieutenant Grummond, who had just been appointed to the Eighteenth Infantry, and his young bride. As they approached the main gate, accompanied by the mounted men who had been sent out to meet them, they were halted to give passage to an army wagon from the opposite direction. It was escorted by a guard from a wood train, and brought in the scalped, naked, dead body of one of their comrades, a strange welcome, indeed, to the young wife, who, upon leaving Laramie, had been assured of a beautiful ride through fertile valleys without danger, and sadder yet in its sequel two months later.

Meanwhile the work of erecting the fort was continued. It was a rectangle, six hundred by eight hundred feet, inclosed by a formidable stockade of heavy pine logs standing eight feet high, with a continuous banquette, and flaring loopholes at every fourth log. There were enfilading blockhouses on the diagonal corners, with portholes for the cannon, and quarters for officers and men, with other necessary buildings. The commanding officer’s quarters was a two-story building of framed lumber, surmounted by a watch-tower. The officers’ and men’s quarters were built of logs. The warehouses, four in number, eighty feet by twenty-four, were framed.

East of the fort proper was a corral of slightly less area, surrounded by a rough palisade of cottonwood logs, which inclosed the wood train, hay, and miscellaneous supplies. Everything—stockade, houses, stables, in all their details, blacksmith shops, teamsters’ quarters, and so on—was planned by Carrington himself.[^[8]]

The main fort inclosed a handsome parade ground, in the center of which arose the tall flagstaff planned and erected by a ship carpenter in the regiment. From it, on the 31st of October, with great ceremony and much rejoicing, the first garrison flag that ever floated over the land was unfurled. The work was by no means completed as it appears on the map, but it was inclosed, and there were enough buildings ready to house the actual garrison present, although the fort was planned for a thousand men, repeatedly promised but not furnished, while all the time both cavalry and the First Battalion of the Eighteenth were held within the peaceful limits of Fort Laramie’s control.

Early in August Captain Kinney, with two companions, had been sent ninety miles to the northward to establish the second post on the Big Horn, which was called Fort C. F. Smith, and was very much smaller and less important than Fort Phil Kearney. The third projected post was not established. There were not enough men to garrison the three already in the field, much less to build a fourth.

[3]. Although the general for whom this fort was named spelled his name Kearny, the name of the fort is written as above in all official documents I have examined.

[4]. The country is roughly comprehended by the boundary lines between which Mountain Standard, or 105th meridian, Time, prevails.

[5]. Among his literary works he is best known for his “Washington, the Soldier,” and his “Battles of the American Revolution,” which is the standard work of the kind. In a personal interview he told me he read some portion of the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew every day for years. Not many army officers can say that, and very few civilians, either.

[6]. Killed at Slim Buttes

[7]. Just when the alarms were most frequent a messenger came to the headquarters, announcing that a train en route from Fort Laramie, with special messengers from that post, was corralled by Indians, and demanded immediate help. An entire company of infantry in wagons, with a mountain howitzer and several rounds of grape-shot, was hastened to their relief. It proved to be a train with mail from the Laramie Commission announcing the consummation of a “satisfactory treaty of peace with all the Indians of the Northwest,” and assuring the District Commander of the fact. The messenger was brought in in safety, and peace lasted until his message was delivered. So much was gained—that the messenger did not lose his scalp en route.

[8]. General W. B. Hazen, upon inspection of this post’s stockade, pronounced it “the best he had ever seen, except one built by the Hudson Bay Company, in British America.”

CHAPTER TWO
The Tragedy of Fort Phil Kearney

I. How the Fighting Began

To summarize the first six months of fighting, from the first of August to the close of the year, the Indians killed one hundred and fifty-four persons, including soldiers and citizens, wounded twenty more, and captured nearly seven hundred animals—cattle, mules, and horses. There were fifty-one demonstrations in force in front of the fort, and they attacked every train that passed over the trail.

As the fort was still far from completion, the logging operations were continued until mid-winter. On every day the weather permitted, a heavily guarded train of wood-cutters was sent down to Piney Island, or to the heavier timber beyond, where a blockhouse protected the choppers. This train was frequently attacked. Eternal vigilance was the price of life. Scarcely a day passed without the lookout on Pilot Hill signalling Indians approaching, or the lookout on Sullivant Hills reporting that the wood train was corralled and attacked. On such occasions a strong detachment would be mounted and sent out to drive away the Indians and bring in the wood train—an operation which was invariably successful, although sometimes attended with loss.

Hostile demonstrations were met by prompt forays or pursuits, as circumstances permitted; and on one occasion the general pursued a band that ran off a herd nearly to Tongue River; but flashing mirrors betrayed Indian attempts to gain his rear, and a return was ordered, abandoning the stolen stock.

One expedition is characteristic of many. On the afternoon of December 6th the lookout on Sullivant Hills signalled that the wood train was attacked, and Captain (Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel) Fetterman, the senior captain present, was detailed with a squad of forty mounted men, including fifteen cavalrymen under Lieutenants Bingham and Grummond, with Sergeant Bowers of the infantry, a veteran of the Civil War, to relieve the wood train and drive the Indians toward the Peno Valley, while Carrington himself, with about a score of mounted infantrymen, would sweep around the north side of Lodge Trail Ridge and intercept them.

The Indians gave way before Fetterman’s advance, hoping to lure the troops into an ambush, but at a favorable spot they made a stand. The fighting there was so fierce that the cavalry, which by a singular circumstance was without its officers, gave way and retreated headlong across the valley toward the ridge. The mounted infantry stood its ground, and under Fetterman’s intrepid leadership was making a brave fight against overwhelming odds, the number of Indians present being estimated at more than three hundred. It would have gone hard with them, however, had not Carrington and the first six of his detachment suddenly swept around a small hill or divide and taken the Indians in reverse. The general had been forced to advance under fire, and meeting the fugitive cavalry, ordered them to fall in behind his own detachment. He was filled with anxiety as to the course of the fight on the other side of the ridge.

THE FORT PHIL KEARNEY FIGHTERS

For portrait of General Carrington, see illustration opposite page [174]

Carrington, in his official report,[^[10]] says: “But six men turned the point with me, one a young bugler of the Second Cavalry, who told me that Lieutenant Bingham had gone down the road around the hill to my right. This seemed impossible, as he belonged to Fetterman’s command. I sounded the recall on his report, but in vain. One of my men fell and his horse on him. The principal chief operating during the day attempted to secure his scalp, but dismounting, with one man to hold the horses and reserving fire, I succeeded in saving the man and holding the position until joined by Fetterman twenty minutes later. The cavalry that had abandoned him had not followed me, though the distance was short; but the Indians, circling round and yelling, nearly one hundred in number, with one saddle emptied by a single shot fired by myself, did not venture to close in.”

The rear detachment and Fetterman soon joined, and by the efforts of the combined parties the Indians were compelled to flight. It was a close call for all, but Lieutenants Grummond and Bingham were yet unaccounted for. Search was instantly made for these two officers and the infantry sergeant, who had become separated from their command while chasing some scattered Indians. One of the officers, Lieutenant Bingham, was dead. Lieutenant Grummond, after a hand-to-hand fight, was closely pressed by mounted Indians and was barely rescued. Sergeant Bowers had been fearfully wounded and scalped, although he was still alive, but died immediately.[^[11]] He had killed three Indians before he had been overborne. The cavalrymen, mostly recruits, were deeply ashamed of their defection, which was partly due to the incaution of their officers in leaving them to pursue a few Indians, and they were burning with a desire to retrieve their reputation, which they bravely did with their lives some two weeks later.

The casualties in the little command were two killed, five wounded. A messenger was sent to the fort for an ambulance, and the command retired in good order without further sight of the Indians. Lieutenant Bingham was not the first officer killed; for, five months before, Lieutenant Daniels, riding ahead of a small party of soldiers escorting several officers and the wife of Lieutenant Wands from Fort Laramie, had been killed in full view of the party. He had been horribly tortured with a stake before he died, and the savages put on his clothing and danced on the prairie just out of range, in front of the party, which was too small to do more than stand on the defensive. Lieutenant Grummond’s wife was in the fort during the fighting on the sixth of December, and her joy at her husband’s safe return can be imagined.

On the eighth of December President Andrew Johnson congratulated Congress that treaties had been made at Fort Laramie, and that all was peace in the Northwest!

On the 19th of December, in this peaceful territory, the wood train was again attacked in force. Carrington promptly sent out a detachment under Captain Powell with instructions to relieve the wood train, give it his support, and return with it, but not to pursue threatening Indians, for experience had shown that the Indians were constantly increasing in numbers and growing bolder with every attack. Powell efficiently performed his task. The Indians were driven off, and, although he was tempted to pursue them, he was too good a soldier to disobey orders, so he led his men back in safety to the fort.

By this time all warehouses were finished, and it was estimated that one large wood train would supply logs enough for the completion of the hospital, which alone needed attention.

Impressed by Powell’s report, Carrington himself accompanied the augmented train on the 20th, built a bridge across to Piney Island to facilitate quick hauling, and returned to the fort to make ready for one more trip only. No Indians appeared in sight on that date. Already several hundred large logs had been collected for winter’s firewood, besides the slabs saved at the sawmill.

It cannot be denied that there was much dissatisfaction among some of the officers at Carrington’s prudent policy. They had the popular idea that one white man, especially if he were a soldier, was good for a dozen Indians; and although fifteen hundred lodges of Indians were known to be encamped on the Powder River, and there were probably between five and six thousand braves in the vicinity, they were constantly suggesting expeditions of all sorts with their scanty force. Some of them, including Fetterman and Brown, “offered with eighty men to ride through the whole Sioux Nation!” While the mettle of the Sioux Nation had not yet been fairly tried by these men, Carrington was wise enough to perceive that such folly meant inevitable destruction, and his consent was sternly refused.

The total force available at the fort, including prisoners, teamsters, citizens and employees, was about three hundred and fifty—barely enough to hold the fort, should the Indians make an attack upon it. Besides which, details were constantly needed to carry despatches, to deliver the mail, to get supplies, to succor emigrant trains, and so on. The force was woefully inadequate, and the number of officers had been depleted by detachment and other causes until there were but six left.

Ammunition was running low. There were at one time only forty rounds per man available. Repeated requests and appeals, both by letter and telegram, for reinforcements and supplies, and especially for modern and serviceable weapons, had met with little consideration. The officials in the far East hugged their treaty, and refused to believe that a state of war existed; and, if it did exist, were disposed to censure the commanding officer for provoking it. In several instances presents given in the treaty at Fort Laramie were found on the persons of visiting Indians, and one captured Indian pony was heavily loaded with original packages of those presents.

Carrington had done nothing to provoke war, but had simply carried out General Sherman’s written instructions, sent him as late as August, to “avoid a general war, until the army could be reorganized and increased;” but he defended himself and command stoutly when attacked. Some of the officers, therefore, covertly sneering at the caution of the commander, were burning for an opportunity to distinguish themselves on this account, and had practically determined to make or take one at the first chance. Fetterman and Brown, unfortunately, were the chief of these malcontents.

II. The Annihilation of Fetterman’s Command

On the 21st of December, the ground being free from snow, the air clear and cold, the lookout on Sullivant Hills signalled about eleven o’clock in the morning that the wood train had been corralled, and was again attacked in force about a mile and a half from the fort. A relief party of forty-nine men from the Eighteenth Infantry, with twenty-seven troopers from the Second Cavalry, a detachment from which, nearly all recruits and chiefly armed with muskets as their carbines had not reached Laramie, had joined the post some months before, was at once ordered out.

The command was first given to Captain Powell, with Lieutenant Grummond in charge of the cavalry. Grummond had a wife in delicate health at the post, and he was cautioned by the officers to take care not to be led into a trap, although his experience on the 6th, when he had so narrowly escaped death, was, it would seem, the best warning he could have had. This body of men was the best armed party at the post, a few of those designated carrying the Spencer repeating carbines. Each company had been directed to keep forty rounds per man on hand for immediate use in any emergency, besides extra boxes always kept in company quarters. The men had been exercised in firing recently and some of the ammunition had been expended, although they still had an abundant supply for the purposes of the expedition. Carrington personally inspected the men before they left, and rejected those who were not amply provided.

The situation of the wood train was critical, and the party was assembled with the greatest despatch. Just as they were about to start, Captain Fetterman, who had had less experience in the country and in Indian fighting than the other officers, for he had joined the regiment some time after the fort had been built and expected assignment to command Fort C. F. Smith, begged for the command of the expedition, pleading his senior captaincy as justification for his request. Carrington reluctantly acceded to his plea, which indeed he could scarcely have refused, and placed him in charge, giving him strict and positive instructions to “relieve the wood train, drive back the Indians, but on no account to pursue the Indians beyond Lodge Trail Ridge,” and that so soon as he had performed this duty he was to return immediately to the fort.

Captain Fetterman, as has been said, had frequently expressed his contempt for the Indians, although his fight on December 6th had slightly modified his opinions. Carrington, knowing his views, was particular and specific in his orders. So necessary did he think the caution that he repeated it to Lieutenant Grummond, who, with the cavalry, followed the infantry out of the gate, the infantry, having less preparation to make, getting away first. These orders were delivered in a loud voice and were audible to many persons—women, officers, and men in the fort. The general went so far as to hasten to the gate after the cavalry had left the fort, and from the sentry platform or banquette overlooking it, called out after them again, emphatically directing them “on no account to pursue the Indians across Lodge Trail Ridge.”

The duty devolved upon Captain Fetterman was exactly that which Captain Powell had performed so satisfactorily a few days before. With Captain Fetterman went Captain Brown, with two citizens, frontiersmen and hunters, as volunteers. These two civilians, Wheatley and Fisher, were both armed with the new breech-loading rapid-fire Henry rifle, with which they were anxious to experiment on the hostiles. Wheatley left a wife and children in the fort.

Captain Frederick Brown, a veteran of the Civil War, had just been promoted, had received orders detaching him from the command, and was simply waiting a favorable opportunity to leave. He was a man of the most undaunted courage. His position as quartermaster had kept him on the watch for Indians all the time, and he announced on the day before the battle that he “must have one chance at the Indians before he left.” It is believed, however, that his impetuous counsel, due to his good luck in many a brush with assailing parties, which he had several times pursued almost alone, largely precipitated the final disaster.

The total force, therefore, including officers and citizens, under Fetterman’s command, was eighty-one—just the number with which he had agreed to ride through the whole Sioux Nation. No one in the command seems to have had the least idea that any force of Indians, however great, could overcome it.

Captain Fetterman, instead of leading his men direct to the wood train on the south side of Sullivant Hills, double-quicked toward the Peno Valley on to the north side. Perhaps he hoped that he could take the Indians in reverse and exterminate them between his own troops and the guard of the wood train—which all told comprised some ninety men—when he rounded the western end of the hills. This movement was noticed from the fort; but, as it involved no disobedience of orders, and as it might be considered a good tactical manœuver, no apprehension was felt on account of it.

The Indians surrounding the wood train were well served by their scouts, and when they found that Fetterman’s force was advancing on the other side of the hill, they immediately withdrew from the wood train, which presently broke corral and made its way to the Piney, some seven miles northwest of the fort, unmolested. As Fetterman’s troops disappeared down the valley, a number of Indians were observed along the Piney in front of the fort. A spherical case-shot from a howitzer in the fort exploded in their midst, and they vanished. The Indians were much afraid of the “gun that shoots twice,” as they called it.

At that time it was discovered that no doctor had gone with the relieving party, so Acting-Assistant Surgeon Hines, with an escort of four men, was sent out with orders to join Fetterman. The doctor hastened away, but returned soon after with the information that the wood train had gone on, and that when he attempted to cross the valley of the Peno to join Fetterman’s men he found it full of Indians, who were swarming about Lodge Trail Ridge, and that no sign of Fetterman was observed. Despite his orders, he must have gone over the ridge.

The alarm caused in the fort by this news was deepened by the sound of firing at twelve o’clock. Six shots in rapid succession were counted, and immediately after heavy firing was heard from over Lodge Trail Ridge, five miles away, which continued with such fierceness as to indicate a pitched battle. Carrington instantly despatched Captain Ten Eyck with the rest of the infantry, in all about fifty-four men, directing him to join Fetterman’s command, then return with them to the fort. The men went forward on the run. A little later forty additional men were sent after Ten Eyck. Carrington at once surmised that Fetterman had disobeyed orders, either wittingly or carried away by the ardor of the pursuit, and was now heavily engaged with the Indians on the far side of the ridge.

Counting Fetterman’s detachment, the guards of the wood train, and Ten Eyck’s detachments, the garrison of the fort was now reduced to a very small number. The place, with its considerable extent, might now be attacked at any time. Carrington at once released all prisoners from the guard-house, armed the quartermaster’s employees, the citizens, and mustered altogether a force of only one hundred and nineteen men to defend the post.[^[12]] Although every preparation for a desperate defense had been made, there were not enough men to man the walls.

The general and his remaining officers then repaired to the observatory tower, field glasses in hand, and in apprehension of what fearful catastrophe they scarcely allowed themselves to imagine. The women and children, especially those who had husbands and fathers with the first detachment, were almost crazed with terror.

Presently Sample, the general’s own orderly, who had been sent with Ten Eyck, was seen galloping furiously down the opposite hill. He had the best horse in the command (one of the general’s), and he covered the distance between Lodge Trail Ridge and the fort with amazing swiftness. He dashed up to headquarters with a message from Ten Eyck, stating that “the valley on the other side of the ridge is filled with Indians, who are threatening him. The firing has stopped. He sees no sign of Captain Fetterman’s command. He wants a howitzer sent out to him.”

The following note was sent to Captain Ten Eyck:

“Forty well-armed men, with three thousand rounds, ambulances, stores, etc., left before your courier came in. You must unite with Fetterman. Fire slowly, and keep men in hand. You would have saved two miles toward the scene of action if you had taken Lodge Trail Ridge. I order the wood train in, which will give fifty men to spare.”

No gun could be sent him. Since all the horses were already in the field, it would have required men to haul it. No more could be spared, and not a man with him could cut a fuse or handle the piece anyway. The guns were especially needed at the fort to protect women and children.

Late in the afternoon Ten Eyck’s party returned to the fort with terrible tidings of appalling disaster. In the wagons with his command were the bodies of forty-nine of Fetterman’s men; the remaining thirty-two were not at that time accounted for. Ten Eyck very properly stood upon the defensive on the hill and refused to go down into the valley in spite of the insults and shouts of the Indians, who numbered upward of two thousand warriors, until they finally withdrew. After waiting a sufficient time, he marched carefully and cautiously toward Peno Valley and to the bare lower ridge over which the road ran.

There he came across evidences of a great battle. On the end of the ridge, nearest the fort, in a space about six feet square, inclosed by some huge rocks, making a sort of a rough shelter, he found the bodies of the forty-nine men whom he had brought back. After their ammunition had been spent, they had been stripped, shot full of arrows, hacked to pieces, scalped, and mutilated in a horrible manner. There were no evidences of a very severe struggle right there. Few cartridge shells lay on the ground. Of these men, only four besides the two officers had been killed by bullets. The rest had been killed by arrows, hatchets, or spears. They had evidently been tortured to death.

Brown and Fetterman were found lying side by side, each with a bullet wound in the left temple. Their heads were burned and filled with powder around the wounds. Seeing that all was lost, they had evidently stood-face to face, and each had shot the other dead with his revolver. They had both sworn to die rather than be taken alive by the Indians, and in the last extremity they had carried out their vows. Lieutenant Grummond, who had so narrowly escaped on the 6th of December, was not yet accounted for, but there was little hope that he had escaped again.

III. Carrington’s Stern Resolution

The night was one of wild anxiety. Nearly one-fourth of the efficient force of the fort had been wiped out. Mirror signals were flashed from the hills during the day, and fires here and there in the night indicated that the savages had not left the vicinity. The guards were doubled, every man slept with his clothing on, his weapons close at hand. In every barrack a noncommissioned officer and two men kept watch throughout the night. Carrington and the remaining officers did not sleep at all. They fully expected the fort to be attacked. The state of the women and children can be imagined, although all gossip and rumor were expressly prohibited by the commander.

The next day was bitterly cold. The sky was overcast and lowering, with indications of a tremendous storm. The Indians were not accustomed to active operations under such conditions, and there was no sign of them about. Carrington determined to go out to ascertain the fate of his missing men. Although all the remaining officers assembled at his quarters advised him not to undertake it, lest the savages, flushed with victory, should attempt another attack, Carrington quietly excused his officers, told the adjutant to remain with him, and the bugle instantly disclosed his purpose in spite of dissenting protests. He rightly judged that the moral effect of the battle would be greatly enhanced, in the eyes of the Indians, if the bodies were not recovered. Besides, to set at rest all doubts it was necessary to determine the fate of the balance of his command. His own wife, as appears from her narrative,[^[13]] approved his action and nerved herself to meet the possible fate involved, while Mrs. Grummond was the chief protestant that, as her husband was undoubtedly dead, there should be no similar disaster invited by another expedition.

In the afternoon, with a heavily armed force of eighty men, Carrington went in person to the scene of battle. The following order was left with the officer of the day: “Fire the usual sunset gun, running a white lamp to masthead. If the Indians appear fire three guns from the twelve-pounder at minute intervals, and, later, substitute a red lantern for the white.” Pickets were left on two commanding ridges, as signal observers, as the command moved forward. The women and children were placed in the magazine, a building well adapted for defense, which had been stocked with water, crackers, etc., for an emergency, with an officer pledged not to allow the women to be taken alive, if the General did not return and the Indians overcame the stockade.

Passing the place where the greatest slaughter had occurred, the men marched cautiously along the trail. Bodies were strung along the road clear to the western end farthest from the fort. Here they found Lieutenant Grummond. There were evidences of a desperate struggle about his body. Behind a little pile of rock, making a natural fortification, were the two civilians who had been armed with the modern Henry rifle. By the side of one fifty shells were counted, and nearly as many by the side of the other brave frontiersman. Behind such cover as they could obtain nearby lay the bodies of the oldest and most experienced soldiers in Fetterman’s command.

In front of them they found no less than sixty great gouts of blood on the ground and grass, and a number of dead ponies, showing where the bullets of the defenders had reached their marks,[^[14]] and in every direction were signs of the fiercest kind of hand-to-hand fighting. Ghastly and mutilated remains, stripped naked, shot full of arrows—Wheatley with no less than one hundred and five in him, scalped, lay before them.

Brown rode to the death of both a little Indian “calico” pony which he had given to the general’s boys when they started from Fort Leavenworth, in November, 1865, and the body of the horse was found in the low ground at the west slope of the ridge, showing that the fight began there, before they could reach high ground.[^[15]] At ten o’clock at night, on the return, the white lamp at masthead told its welcome story of a garrison still intact.

Fetterman had disobeyed orders. Whether deliberately or not, cannot be told. He had relieved the wood train, and instead of returning to the post, had pursued the Indians over the ridge into Peno Valley, then along the trail, and into a cunningly contrived ambush. His men had evidently fought on the road until their ammunition gave out, and then had either been ordered to retreat to the fort, or had retreated of their own motion—probably the latter. All the dead cavalry horses’ heads were turned toward the fort, by the way. Fetterman and Brown, men of unquestioned courage, must have been swept along with their flying men. There may have been a little reserve on the rocks on which they hoped to rally their disorganized, panic-stricken troops, fleeing before a horde of yelling, blood-intoxicated warriors. I imagine them vainly protesting, imploring, begging their men to make a stand. I feel sure they fought until the last. But these are only surmises; what really happened, God alone knows.

The judgment of the veteran soldiers and the frontiersmen, who knew that to retreat was to be annihilated, had caused a few to hold their ground and fight until they were without ammunition; then with gun-stocks, swords, bayonets, whatever came to hand, they battled until they were cut down. Grummond had stayed with them, perhaps honorably sacrificing himself in a vain endeavor to cover the retreat of the rest of his command. The Indian loss was very heavy, but could not exactly be determined.

Copyright, 1902, by Charles Schreyvogel
LIEUTENANT GRUMMOND SACRIFICING HIMSELF TO COVER THE RETREAT
Drawing by Charles Schreyvogel

IV. The Reward of a Brave Soldier

Such was the melancholy fate of Fetterman and his men. The post was isolated, the weather frightful. A courier was at once despatched to Fort Laramie, but such means of communication was necessarily slow, and it was not until Christmas morning that the world was apprised of the fatal story. In spite of the reports that had been made and fatuously believed, that peace had obtained in that land, it was now known that war was everywhere prevalent. The shock of horror with which the terrible news was received was greater even than that attendant upon the story of the disastrous battle of the Little Big Horn, ten years later. People had got used to such things then; this news came like a bolt from the blue.

Although Carrington had conducted himself in every way as a brave, prudent, skilful, capable soldier, although his services merited reward, not censure, and demanded praise, not blame, the people and the authorities required a scapegoat. He was instantly relieved from command by General Cooke, upon a private telegram from Laramie, never published, before the receipt of his own official report, and was ordered to change his regimental headquarters to the little frontier post at Fort Caspar, where two companies of his first battalion, just become the new Eighteenth, were stationed, while four companies of the same battalion, under his lieutenant-colonel, were ordered to the relief of Fort Phil Kearney.

The weather had become severe and the snow was banked to the top of the stockade. The mercury was in the bulb. Guards were changed half-hourly. Men and women dressed in furs made from wolfskins taken from the hundreds of wolves which infested the outside butcher-field at night, and which were poisoned by the men for their fur. Upon the day fixed precisely for the march, as the new arrivals needed every roof during a snow-storm which soon became a blizzard, Carrington, his wife and children, his staff and their families, including Mrs. Grummond, escorting the remains of her husband to Tennessee, and the regimental band, with its women and children, began that February “change of headquarters.” They narrowly escaped freezing to death. More than one-half of the sixty-five in the party were frosted, and three amputations, with one death, were the immediate result of the foolish and cruel order.

It was not until some time after that a mixed commission of soldiers and civilians, which thoroughly investigated Carrington’s conduct, having before them all his books and records from the inception of the expedition until its tragic close, acquitted him of all blame of any sort, and awarded him due praise for his successful conduct of the whole campaign. His course was also the subject of inquiry before a purely military court, all of them his juniors in rank, which also reported favorably. General Sherman expressly stated that “Colonel Carrington’s report, to his personal knowledge, was fully sustained,” but by some unaccountable oversight or intent, the report was suppressed and never published, thereby doing lasting injustice to a brave and faithful soldier.

At the same time the government established the sub-post between Laramie and Fort Reno, so earnestly recommended by Carrington, in October, calling it Fort Fetterman, in honor of the unfortunate officer who fell in battle on the 21st of December.

Perhaps it ill becomes us to censure the dead, but the whole unfortunate affair arose from a direct disobedience of orders on the part of Fetterman and his men. They paid the penalty for their lapse with their lives; and so far, at least, they made what atonement they could. A year later opportunity was given the soldiers at Phil Kearney to exact a dreadful revenge from Red Cloud and his Sioux for the slaughter of their brave comrades.

[9]. Killed on Lodge Trail Ridge

[10]. Published by the United States Senate in 1887.

[11]. At the burial of Sergeant Bowers, Captain Brown, who had known him during the Civil War, pinned his Army of the Cumberland badge upon his breast, and this was found when the remains were reinterred in 1878.

[12]. Phil Kearney Garrison, at date of massacre, from “Post Returns”:—

Ninety rifles worn out by use on horseback. Citizen employees used their private arms.

Information furnished by General H. B. Carrington.

[13]. “Ab-sa-ra-ka, Land of Massacre,” by Mrs. Carrington, of which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to General Carrington as follows: “What an interesting record is that of Mrs. Carrington! I cannot read such a story of devotion and endurance in the midst of privations and danger, without feeling how little most of us know of what life can be when all the human energies are called out by great enterprises and emergencies.”

[14]. The Indians, where possible, remove the bodies of their slain. They did during this campaign, as few dead Indians ever came into possession of the troops.

[15]. Once, while loading the bodies in the wagons, a nervous sergeant mistook one of the pickets for Indians in the rear, and gave the alarm. His detail was sharply ordered by the general to “leave their ammunition and get back to the fort as best they could, if they were afraid; for no armed man would be allowed to leave until the last body was rescued.”

CHAPTER THREE
The Thirty-two Against the Three Thousand

I. The Improvised Corral on Piney Island

Red cloud, who had been one of the subchiefs of the Sioux, gained so much prestige by the defeat and slaughter of Fetterman’s men that he became at once the leading war chief of the nation.[^[16]] The angry braves, flushed with conquest and eager for blood, hastened to enroll themselves by thousands in his band.

Fort Phil Kearney had been in a state of siege before: it was more closely invested now than ever. Contrary to their usual avoidance of the war-path in cold weather, throughout the long and bitter winter there was no intermittence to the watchfulness of the Indians. The garrison was constantly in arms. Attacks of all sorts were made with increasing frequency. The letters from the soldiers which got through to the East adequately describe their sense of the dire peril which menaced them. “This may be my last letter” is a frequent phrase. Travel on the trail was abandoned. As soon as possible in the spring, reinforcements were hurried up and the fort was completed, but the same state of affairs continued right along without intermission.

With the advance of summer Red Cloud gathered his warriors and determined upon a direct attack upon the fort itself. He was tired of skirmishing, stampeding stock, cutting off stragglers, etc. He wanted war, real war, and he got it! If, or when, he captured the fort, he would advance upon the other two forts in succession and so clear the country, once and for all, of the detested invaders, whose soldierly qualities he seems to have held in contempt. For the campaign he proposed he assembled no fewer than three thousand warriors, the flower of the Sioux Nation. Probably half of them were armed with firearms, Winchester rifles, Spencer repeating carbines, or old army muskets, including those that had been captured from Fetterman’s party. Under cover of frequent skirmishes, which prevented much scouting on the part of the troops, Red Cloud gathered his warriors undiscovered and unmolested, and prepared to attack about the first of August, 1867.

The limits of the military reservation had been fixed at Washington—without adequate knowledge of the ground and in disregard of General Carrington’s request and protests—so as to exclude the timber land of Piney Island, from which the post had been built, and from which the nearest and most available wood supply must be obtained. The post had been completed, but immense supplies of wood would be required for fuel during the long and severe winter. This was to be cut and delivered at the fort by a civilian outfit which had entered upon a contract with the government for the purpose. One of the stipulations of the contract was that the woodmen should be guarded and protected by the soldiers.

Wood-cutting began on the 31st of July, 1867, and Captain and Brevet-Major James Powell, commanding “C” Company, of the twenty-seventh Infantry, which was formerly a battalion of the Eighteenth a part of the command which had built the fort, and to which Fetterman and his men had belonged, was detailed with his company to guard the contractor’s party. Captain Powell had enlisted in the army in 1848 as a private soldier. The Civil War had given him a commission in the regular service, and in its course he had been twice brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, once at Chickamauga and the second time during the Atlanta campaign, in which he had been desperately wounded. He had had some experience in Indian fighting before and since he came to the post, and had distinguished himself in several skirmishes, notably in the relief of the wood train, a few days before Fetterman’s rashness and disobedience precipitated the awful disaster.

Arriving at Piney Island, some seven miles from the post, Powell found that the contractor had divided his men into two parties. One had its headquarters on a bare, treeless, and comparatively level plain, perhaps one thousand yards across, which was surrounded by low hills backed by mountains farther away. This was an admirable place to graze the herds of mules required to haul the wagons. As will be seen, it could also be turned into a highly defensive position. The other camp was in the thick of the pine wood, about a mile away across the creek, at the foot of the mountain. This division of labor necessitated a division of force, which was a misfortune, but which could not be avoided.

Powell sent twelve men under a noncommissioned officer to guard the camp in the wood, and detailed thirteen men with another noncommissioned officer to escort the wood trains to and from the fort. With the remaining twenty-six men and his lieutenant, John C. Jenness, he established headquarters on the plain in the open.

The wagons used by the wood-cutters were furnished by the quartermaster’s department. In transporting the cordwood, the woodmen made use of the running gears only, the wagon bodies having been deposited in the clearing. In order to preserve their contents and to afford as much protection as possible to their occupants in case of Indian attacks, the quartermaster’s department was in the habit of lining the wagon beds with boiler iron; and, to give their occupants an opportunity to fight from concealment, loopholes were cut in the sides. Almost every authority who has written of the fight has concluded that the particular wagon beds in question were so lined. This is a mistaken though natural conclusion. In a letter to an old comrade who wrote an account of the subsequent action,[^[17]] Powell makes no mention of any iron lining, and it is certain that the wagons were not lined, but were just the ordinary wooden wagon beds.[^[18]]

There were fourteen of these wagon bodies. Powell arranged them in the form of a wide oval. At the highest point of the plain, which happened to be in the center, this corral was made. The wagon beds were deep, and afforded ample concealment for any one lying in them. I sometimes wonder why Powell did not stand these beds on their sides instead of their bottoms, making a higher and stouter inclosure, the bottoms being heavier than the sides; but it is clear that he did not. There were plenty of tools, including a number of augers, in the camp, and with these Powell’s men made a number of loopholes about a foot from the ground, in the outward sides of the wagons.

At the ends of the oval, where the configuration of the ground made it most vulnerable for attack, especially by mounted men, two wagons complete—that is, with bodies and running gears—were placed a short distance from the little corral. This would break the force of a charge, and the defenders could fire at the attacking party underneath the bodies and through the wheels. The spaces between the wagon bodies were filled with logs and sacks of grain, backed by everything available that would turn a bullet. The supplies for the soldiers and wood party were contained in this corral.

The Wagon-Box Corral on Piney Island

Instead of the old Springfield muzzle-loading musket, with which the troops mainly had been armed up to this time, Powell’s men were provided with the new Allen modification of the Springfield breech-loading rifle. He had enough rifles for his men and for all the civilian employees, and a large number of new Colt revolvers, with plenty of ammunition for all. The new rifle had never been used by the troops in combat with the Indians, and the latter were entirely ignorant of its tremendous range and power and the wonderful rapidity of fire which it permitted. They learned much about it in the next day or two, however. A quantity of clothing and blankets was issued to the troops at the fort on the first of August, and supplies for Powell’s men were sent down to him.

II. The Wild Charge of the Sioux

Having matured his plans, Red Cloud determined to begin his attack on Fort Phil Kearney by annihilating the little detachment guarding the train.[^[19]] Parties of Indians had been observed in the vicinity for several days, but no attack had been made since Powell’s arrival until the second of August, when, about nine o’clock in the morning,[^[20]] a party of some two hundred Indians endeavored to stampede the herd of mules. The herders, who were all armed, stood their ground and succeeded for the time being in beating back the attack. While they were hotly engaged with the dismounted force, sixty mounted Indians succeeded in getting into the herd and running it off. At the same time five hundred other Indians attacked the wood train at the other camp.

The affair was not quite a surprise, for the approach of the Indians had been detected and signalled from the corral on the island a few moments before. In the face of so overwhelming a force the soldiers and civilians at the wood train immediately retreated, abandoning the train and the camp. Here four of the lumbermen were killed. The retreat, however, was an orderly one, and they kept back the Indians by a well-directed fire.

Meanwhile the herders, seeing the stampede of the mules, made an effort to join the party retreating from the wood train. The Indians endeavored to intercept them and cut them off. Powell, however, with a portion of his force, leaving the post in command of Lieutenant Jenness, immediately dashed across the prairie and attacked the savages in the rear. They turned at once, abandoning the pursuit of the herders, and fell upon Powell, who in his turn retreated without loss to the corral. His prompt and bold sortie had saved the herders, for they were enabled to effect a junction with the retreating train men and their guards and the soldiers and civilians, and eventually gained the fort, although not without hard fighting and some loss. One thing that helped them to get away from the Indians was that the savages stopped to pillage the camp and burn it and the train. Another thing was the presence of Powell’s command, which they could not leave in the rear. After driving away the others and completing the destruction of the camp, they turned their attention to Powell’s corral.

Some of the clothing that had been received the day before had not been unpacked or distributed, so it was used to strengthen the weak places in the corral. Powell’s men lay down in the wagon beds before the loopholes; blankets were thrown over the tops of the beds to screen the defenders from observation and in the hope of perhaps saving them from the ill effects of the plunging arrow fire, and everything was got ready. Everybody had plenty of ammunition.

Some of the men who were not good shots were told off to do nothing but load rifles, of which there were so many that each man had two or three beside him, one man making use of no less than eight. Four civilians succeeded in joining the party in the corral—a welcome addition, indeed, bringing the total number up to thirty-two officers and men. Among this quartet was an old frontiersman who had spent most of his life hunting in the Indian country, and who had been in innumerable fights, renowned for his expertness in the use of the rifle—a dead-shot. This was the man to whom the eight guns were allotted. Powell, rifle in hand, stationed himself at one end of the corral; Jenness, similarly armed, was posted at the other, each officer watching one of the openings covered by the complete wagons, which were loaded with supplies so they could not be run off easily by hand.

While all these preparations were being rapidly made, although without confusion or alarm, the surrounding country was filling with a countless multitude of Indians. It was impossible at the time to estimate the number of them, although it was ascertained that more than three thousand warriors were present and engaged. Red Cloud himself was in command, and with him were the great chiefs of the great tribes of the Sioux, who were all represented—Unkpapas, Miniconjous, Oglalas, Brulés, and Sans Arcs, besides hundreds of Cheyennes.

So confident of success were they that, contrary to their ordinary practices, they had brought with them their women and children to assist in carrying back the plunder. These, massed out of range on the farthest hills, constituted an audience for the terrible drama about to be played in the amphitheater beneath them.

We can well imagine the thoughts of that little band of thirty-two, surrounded by a force that outnumbered them one hundred to one. Their minds must have gone back to that winter day, some seven months before, when twice their number had gone down to defeat and destruction under the attack of two-thirds of their present foemen. It is probable that not one of them ever expected to escape alive. The chances that they could successfully withstand an attack from so overwhelming a number of foes of such extraordinary bravery were of the smallest. But not a man flinched, not a man faltered. They looked to their weapons, settled themselves comfortably in the wagon beds, thought of Fetterman and their comrades, and prayed that the attack might begin and begin at once. There were no heroics, no speeches made. Powell quietly remarked that they had to fight for their lives now, which was patent to all; and he directed that no man, for any reason, should open fire until he gave the order.

Some little time was spent by the Indians in making preparations, and then a force of about five hundred Indians, magnificently mounted on the best war ponies and armed with rifles, carbines, or muskets, detached themselves from the main body and started toward the little corral lying like a black dot on the open plain. They intended to ride over the soldiers and end the battle with one swift blow. Slowly at first, but gradually increasing their pace until their ponies were on a dead run, they dashed gallantly toward the corral, while the main body of the savages, at some distance in their rear, prepared to take advantage of any opening that might be made in the defenses. It was a brilliant charge, splendidly delivered.

Such was the discipline of Powell’s men that not a shot was fired as the Indians, yelling and whooping madly, came rushing on. There was something terribly ominous about the absolute silence of that little fortification. The galloping men were within one hundred yards now, now fifty. At that instant Powell spoke to his men. The inclosure was sheeted with flame. Out of the smoke and fire a rain of bullets was poured upon the astonished savages. The firing was not as usual—one volley, then another, and then silence; but it was a steady, persistent, continued stream, which mowed them down in scores. The advance was thrown into confusion, checked but not halted, its impetus being too great; and then the force divided and swept around the corral, looking for a weak spot for a possible entrance. At the same moment a furious fire was poured into it by the warriors, whose position on their horses’ backs gave them sufficient elevation to enable them to fire over the wagon beds upon the garrison. Then they circled about the corral in a mad gallop, seeking some undefended point upon which to concentrate and break through, but in vain. The little inclosure was literally ringed in fire. Nothing could stand against it. So close were they that one bullet sometimes pierced two Indians.[^[21]]

CHARGE OF RED CLOUD ON THE CORRAL AT PINEY ISLAND
Drawing by R. Farrington Elwell

Having lost terribly, and having failed to make any impression whatever, the Indians broke and gave way. They rushed pell-mell from the spot in frantic confusion till they got out of range of the deadly storm that swept the plain. All around the corral lay dead and dying Indians, mingled with killed and wounded horses kicking and screaming with pain, the Indians stoically enduring all their sufferings and making no outcry. In front of the corral, where the first force of the charge had been spent, horses and men were stretched out as if they had been cut down by a gigantic mowing-machine. The defenders of the corral had suffered in their turn. Lieutenant Jenness, brave and earnest in defense, had exposed himself to give a necessary command and had received a bullet in his brain. One of the private soldiers had been killed and two severely wounded. The thirty-two had been reduced to twenty-eight. At that rate, since there were so few to suffer, the end appeared inevitable. The spirit of the little band, however, remained undaunted. Fortunately for them, the Indians had met with so terrible a repulse that all they thought of for the time being was to get out of range. The vicinity of the corral was thus at once abandoned.

III. Red Cloud’s Baptism of Fire

Red Cloud determined, after consultation with the other chiefs, upon another plan which gave greater promise of success. Seven hundred Indians, armed with rifles or muskets and followed by a number carrying bows and arrows, were told off to prepare themselves as a skirmishing party. Their preparations were simple, and consisted of denuding themselves of every vestige of clothing, including their war shirts and war bonnets. These men were directed to creep forward, taking advantage of every depression, ravine, or other cover, until they were within range of the corral, which they were to overwhelm by gun and arrow fire. Supporting them, and intended to constitute the main attack, were the whole remaining body of the Indians, numbering upward of two thousand warriors.

With the wonderful skill of which they were masters, the skirmishing party approached near to the corral and began to fire upon it. Here and there, when a savage incautiously exposed himself, he was shot by one of the defenders; but in the main the people of the corral kept silent under this terrible fusillade of bullets and arrows. The tops of the wagon sides were literally torn to pieces; the heavy blankets were filled with arrows which, falling from a distance, did no damage. The fire of the Indians was rapid and continuous. The bullets crashed into the wood just over the heads of the prostrate men, sounding like cracking thunder; yet not one man in the wagon beds was hurt. Arguing, perhaps from the silence in the corral, that the defenders had been overwhelmed and that the time for the grand attack had arrived, signal was given for the main body of the Indians to charge.

They were led by the nephew of Red Cloud, a superb young chieftain, who was ambitious of succeeding in due course to the leadership now held by his uncle. Chanting their fierce war songs, they came, on arranged in a great semicircle. Splendid, stalwart braves, the flower of the nation, they were magnificently arrayed in all the varied and highly-colored fighting panoply of the Sioux. Great war bonnets streamed from the heads of the chiefs, many of whom wore gorgeous war shirts; the painted bodies of others made dashes of rich color against the green grass of the clearing and the dark pines of the hills and mountains behind. Most of them carried on their left arms painted targets or shields of buffalo hide, stout enough to turn a musket shot unless fairly hit.

Under a fire of redoubled intensity from their skirmishers they broke into a charge. Again they advanced in the face of a terrible silence. Again at the appointed moment the order rang out. Again the fearful discharge swept them away in scores. Powell’s own rifle brought down the dauntless young chief in the lead. Others sprang to the fore when he fell and gallantly led on their men. Undaunted, they came on and on, in spite of a slaughter such as no living Indian had experienced or heard of. The Indians could account for the continuous fire only by supposing that the corral contained a greater number of defenders than its area would indicate it capable of receiving. So, in the hope that the infernal fire would slacken, they pressed home the attack until they were almost at the wagon beds. Back on the hills Red Cloud and the veteran chiefs, with the women and children, watched the progress of the battle with eager intensity and marked with painful apprehension the slaughter of their bold warriors.

The situation was terribly critical. If they came on a few feet farther the rifles would be useless, and the little party of twenty-eight would have to fight hand-to-hand without reloading. In that event the end would be certain; but just before the Indians reached the corral, they broke and gave way. So close had they come that some of the troopers in their excitement actually rose to their knees and threw the augers with which the loopholes had been made, and other missiles, in the faces of the Indians. Others, however, kept up the fire, which was indeed more than mortal humanity could stand.

What relief filled the minds of the defenders, when they saw the great force which had come on so gallantly reeling back over the plains in frantic desire to get to cover, can easily be imagined. Yet such was the courage, the desperation of these Indians, in spite of repulse after repulse and a slaughter awful to contemplate, that they made no less than six several and distinct charges in three hours upon that devoted band. After the first attack made by the men on horseback, not a single casualty occurred among the defenders of the corral. It was afternoon before the Sioux got enough.

The Indians could not account for this sustained and frightful fire which came from the little fort, except by attributing it to magic. “The white man must have made bad medicine,” they said afterwards, before they learned the secret of the long-range, breech-loading firearm, “to make the guns fire themselves without stopping.” Indeed, such had been the rapidity of the fire that many of the gun-barrels became so hot that they were rendered useless. To this day the Indians refer to that battle as “the bad medicine fight of the white man.”

The ground around the corral was ringed with Indian slain. They were piled up in heaps closer by, and scattered all over the grass farther away. Nothing is more disgraceful in the eyes of an Indian chieftain or his men than to permit the dead bodies of those killed in action to fall into the hands of the enemy. Red Cloud recognizing the complete frustration of his hopes of overwhelming Fort Phil Kearney and sweeping the invaders out of the land at that time, now only wished to get his dead away and retreat. In order to do so he threw forward his skirmishers again, who once more poured a heavy fire on the corral.

This seemed to Powell and his exhausted men the precursor of a final attack, which they feared would be the end of them. Indeed Powell, in his report, says that another attack would have been successful. From the heat and the frightful strain of the long period of steady fighting, the men were in a critical condition. The ammunition, inexhaustible as it had seemed, was running low; many of the rifles were useless. They still preserved, however, their calm, unbroken front to the foe, and made a slow, deliberate, careful reply to the firing that was poured upon them.

Red Cloud, however, had no thought of again attacking. He only wanted to get away. Under cover of his skirmishers he succeeded in carrying off most of the dead, the wounded who were able to crawl getting away themselves. A warrior, protecting himself as well as he could with the stout buffalo-hide shield he carried, would creep forward, attach the end of a long lariat to the foot of a dead man, and then rapidly retreating he would pull the body away. All the while the hills and mountains resounded with the death chants of the old men and women.

At the close of these operations a shell burst in the midst of the Indian skirmishers, and through the trees off to the left the weary defenders saw the blue uniforms of approaching soldiers, who a moment afterwards debouched in the open.

An astonishing sight met the eyes of the relief party. Clouds of Indians covered the plain. The little corral was still spitting fire and smoke into the encircling mass. They had got there in time then. Without hesitation the troops deployed and came forward on the run. Their cheers were met by welcoming shouts from Powell and his heroic comrades.

The herders, woodsmen, and guards who had escaped from their camp in the morning, had reached the fort at last with the news of Powell’s imminent danger. Major Smith, with one hundred men and a howitzer, was at once despatched to his support. No one dreamed that the force of Indians was so great, or perhaps more men would have been sent, although the number at the fort was still insufficient to permit of the detachment of a very large party. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon. The Indians, disheartened and dismayed by their fearful repulse, sullenly retreated before the advance of the charging soldiers. There was a splendid opportunity presented to them to wipe out Smith’s command with their overwhelming force, for they could have attacked him in the open; but they had had enough for that day, and the opportunity was not embraced.

Major Smith realized instantly that the proper thing for him to do, in the face of such great odds, was to get Powell’s men and return with all speed. Carrying the bodies of the dead and wounded, the little band of defenders joined the rescuers and returned to the fort, leaving the barren honors of the field to the Indians, Awho occupied it on the heels of the retiring soldiers.[^[22]]

IV. After the Battle. The Scout’s Story

Powell modestly estimated he had killed sixty-seven Indians and wounded one hundred and twenty. Most of his men declared the Indian loss to have been between three and four hundred, but it was not until a year after the battle that the real facts were ascertained from the Indians themselves. The loss in killed and wounded in the engagement, on the part of the Indians, was one thousand one hundred and thirty-seven. In other words, each of the defenders had accounted for at least thirty-six of the Indians. Amply, indeed, had the little band avenged the death of their comrades under Fetterman.

As Colonel Dodge justly says, the account reads like a story of Cortes.[^[23]] At first sight it appears to be incredible. In explanation of it, the following account, which Colonel Dodge has preserved of a subsequent conversation between the frontiersman to whom the eight guns were allotted and the department commander is of deep interest:—

“How many Indians were in the attack?” asked the General.

“Wall, Gin’r’ll, I can’t say fer sartin, but I think thar wur nigh onto three thousand uv ’em.”

“How many were killed and wounded?”

“Wall, Gin’r’ll, I can’t say fer sartin, but I think thar wur nigh onto a thousand uv ’em hit.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Wall, Gin’r’ll, I can’t say; but gi’me a dead rest, I kin hit a dollar at fifty yards every time, and I fired with a dead rest at more’n fifty of them varmints inside of fifty yards.”

“For Heaven’s sake, how many times did you fire?” exclaimed the astonished General.

“Wall, Gin’r’ll, I can’t say, but I kept eight guns pretty well het up for more’n three hours.”

On this occasion Powell received his third brevet for heroism and distinguished conduct on the field.

The next fall a new treaty was made with the Indians, and the post which had been the scene alike of heartbreaking disaster and defeat and of triumph unprecedented, was abandoned to them. The troops were withdrawn. The Indians at once burned it to the ground. It was never reoccupied, and to-day is remembered simply because of its association with the first and, with one exception, the most notable of our Indian defeats in the west, and with the most remarkable and overwhelming victory that was ever won by soldiers over their gallant red foemen on the same ground.

At this writing (September, 1903) the once mighty Red Cloud, now in his eighty-ninth year, is nearing his end, and already various claimants for the now practically empty honor of the Head-Chieftainship of the Sioux have arisen, the two most prominent candidates being young Red Cloud and the son of old Sitting Bull.

Note

Since the first publication of this article I have received the following letter, which, as it tends to confirm what seems incredible, the terrible Indian loss, I quote in full:

Dear Mr. Brady:

Although I am much nearer three score than fifty, I still enjoy historical romance and facts, and I have, I think, read most of your writings. I have just read your last article and it recalls a conversation with Red Cloud twenty years ago.

He was with my dear old friend, “Adirondack Murray” and, I think, J. Amory Knox and myself. He, Murray and Knox had been photographed in a group. In reminiscing in regard to the Piney Island battle, he said he went in with over three thousand braves and lost over half. Murray asked him if he meant over fifteen hundred had been killed then, and he said:

“I lost them. They never fought again.”

He knew Murray, Knox and myself wielded the pen sometimes but that we never used private talks. I tell you the above for your personal satisfaction. Sincerely,

W. R. E. Collins,

1438 Broad—Exchange, New York.

3–22-’04.

[16]. Mahapiya-luta, Red Cloud, was one of the most famous of the great Sioux Nation. He was a fierce and ruthless warrior, but withal a man of his word. After the abandonment of Fort Phil Kearney he participated in no important actions with the soldiers, although he was elected head chief of the Sioux. In the war of 1876 his camp was surprised by General Mackenzie before he had an opportunity to go on the war-path. His men were disarmed, and with him were detained in the reservation. It was a fortunate thing for the army.

Recently the old chief was asked to tell the story of his most thrilling adventure. It was a tale of one man against seven, and the old man’s dim eyes grew bright and his wrinkled face lighted up with a strange light as he told it. A well-known warrior was jealous of Red Cloud, and, together with six of his followers, waylaid the young brave in a lonely spot.

Two of them were armed with rifles, the rest carried only bows and arrows, while Red Cloud had a Winchester. At the first fire Red Cloud fell with a bullet in his thigh, but from where he lay he contrived to kill every one of his assailants.

The skill and courage he displayed on that occasion won for him many admiring followers, and as war after war with the whites broke out and he won fresh laurels his followers increased in numbers. He joined the various secret societies, passed through the terrible agony of the sun dance, and when, in 1866, the chiefs of the tribe signed a “peace paper,” he stood out for and declared war. The fighting men flocked to his standard, and when the awful massacre in which he played so conspicuous a part occurred, he was proclaimed Chief of all the Sioux.

All the prestige he lost at Piney Island he regained upon the abandonment of the forts by the government, a most impolitic and unfortunate move.

[17]. General Rodenbough, in “Sabre and Bayonet.”

[18]. This statement is corroborated by private letter from a veteran soldier in the United States Army, who is one of the few survivors of the battle. Surgeon Horton, who was at the post from its establishment until it was abandoned, also says that the wagon beds were of ordinary boards, without lining or other protection.

[19]. On the same day an attack was made in force on Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn.

[20]. Powell’s official report says nine, although a private letter written some time later makes the hour seven. It isn’t material, anyway: there was ample time for all the fighting both sides cared for before the day was ended.

[21]. “I know that my husband never expected to come out of that fight alive. He has told me that during the fight the Indians came up so close to the corral, that one shot would pass through the Indian in advance and kill or wound the one behind. My husband claimed the honor of killing Red Cloud’s nephew.”—Letter from Mrs. Annie Powell to me. Surgeon Horton states that the men told him on their return to the fort that the Indians were crowded so closely together that the conical bullets from their muskets killed four or five Indians in line behind one another. The Indians came up in solid masses on every side.

[22]. Dr. Horton writes me that when Powell’s men reached the post they were literally crazed with excitement and the nervous strain of the fight. The health of many of them was completely broken. Powell himself never fully recovered from the strain of that awful day, his wife informs me.

[23]. “Our Wild Indians,” by Colonel R. I. Dodge, U. S. A. Mrs. Powell, in a letter to me, also vouches for the anecdote quoted.

CHAPTER FOUR
Personal Reminiscences of Fort Phil Kearney and the Wagon-Box Fight

By Mr. R. J. Smyth.[^[24]]

“Cherokee, Ia., 6–27–1904.

As I was a member of the Carrington Powder River Expedition of 1866, I take the liberty of sending you a short sketch of happenings about Fort Phil Kearney. Being actively engaged with others for some two years in making the history of that place, I think that the account may be of interest.

I left Fort Leavenworth early in the spring of 1866. At Fort Kearney, Nebraska, we found Col. Carrington and a part of his command, consisting of several companies of the Eighteenth Regular Infantry. Early in April we received some recruits for said command, and in a short time started on what at that time was called the Carrington Powder River Expedition. We followed the overland trail (sometimes called the Salt Lake trail) up the south side of the South Platte River to Julesberg, crossed the river there, then crossed the divide to the North Platte. From here we went to Fort Laramie. From this point we marched west to Mussa ranch, crossed Horse Creek, and followed the Bozeman trail. This was a new road, and a short cut to Montana. After following this trail fifteen miles we struck the North Platte at Bridger’s Ferry. We crossed here in a ferryboat—a large flat boat attached to a large cable rope stretched across the river.

We followed the North Platte River up on the right side to a point opposite to the present site of Fort Fetterman. At this point we left the river and struck across the country, crossing Sand Creek and several other small creeks, among which I now remember the North, South, and Middle Cheyennes. They were then merely the dry beds of what would be quite large rivers at the time of the melting of the snow in the mountains. At a point twenty-two miles east of the Powder River we struck the head of the Dry Fork of the Powder River and followed it down to the river.

There on the west side we found Fort Reno, established by General Conner in ’65 and garrisoned by a few “galvanized soldiers.” The garrison had been greatly reduced by desertions during the winter, the soldiers making for Montana. “Galvanized soldiers” was a name given to captured Rebel soldiers who enlisted in the Union Army to do frontier duty in order to get out of prison, and incidentally to draw pay from Uncle Sam. We laid over here for a few days, and on the fourth of July the Indians stampeded the stock of Al. Leighton, the sutler. The colonel made a detail of soldiers and citizens to go out after the Indians and recover the stock if possible.

Courtesy of The Century Co.
“BOOTS AND SADDLES:” A START IN THE EARLY MORNING
Drawing by Frederic Remington

It was indeed a laughable sight to see the soldiers trying to ride mules that were not broken to ride—and the soldiers knew about as much about riding as the mules did. We followed the Indians to the Pumpkin Buttes and I am free to say for myself that I was very glad that we did not find them. Had we got in touch with them we would have had the smallest kind of a show to save our hair. The soldiers being mounted on green mules, and being armed with the old Springfield musket, and that strapped on their backs, a very few Indians could have stampeded the mules and, in fact, the soldiers as well.

We, the citizens, had made arrangements that if the Indians attacked us we would stick together and fight it out the best that we could. Jim Bridger, our guide, was with this party. He was an old timer in the mountains. I had two years experience in the mountains and plains prior to this time; the rest of the citizens were good men. We returned to the fort safely but did not recover any of the stock.

A day or two later we left the fort. The first day’s march was a very hard one, thirty-six miles to Crazy Woman’s Fork. This creek was a very fine one, clear, cool, and very rapid. The command was badly demoralized by this long, hot, and dry march, no water between that point and Fort Reno. The soldiers had been paid off a day or two before, many had been drunk, many more thoughtless, and did not provide for water in spite of orders. I saw five dollars paid for a canteen of water on this march. On our arrival at Crazy Woman’s Fort, the commanding officer detailed a guard to keep the soldiers from jumping into the creek and drinking too much water.

We laid over here two days, to repair wagons and bring in the stragglers. Had the Indians been on hand, they could have cleaned up many of the soldiers at this time. From this creek west to the Big Horn the country is very fine; plenty of wood, water, and grass; in fact, a paradise. We traveled west to the forks of the Pineys. The big and little Pineys fork near where we made our camp, sixty-five miles west of the Powder River.

On the twenty-fourth day of July we moved to the place where we established Fort Phil Kearney. The grasshoppers were so thick in the air that day that they nearly obscured the sun from sight.[^[25]] In fact, it did not look bigger than a silver dollar. The fort was built about as you have described it, and from the day that we established it until I left there, in November, ’67, the Indians were very much in evidence and plenty of fighting nearly all that time.

I was a teamster on this expedition, driving an ambulance team. Made several trips to Fort Laramie and to Fort C. F. Smith on the Big Horn. This latter Fort was established by Carrington a short time after the establishment of Fort Phil Kearney, and was a two-company post.

I was with the hay-making party down the Big Piney during a part of the summer of ’66. During one of our trips to the hay field, we were accompanied by a man who represented Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly as an artist. This man rode with me a part of the way. He intended to do some sketching near there but I advised him to stay with our outfit. However, he insisted on stopping by the way. On our return we found him dead, a cross cut on his breast, which indicated that they thought him a coward who would not fight. He wore long, black hair and his head had been completely skinned. Probably it was the work of a band of young Cheyenne bucks; they could cut the scalps into many pieces and thereby make a big show in camp. Was very sorry for this man; he appeared to be a perfect gentleman. His thought was, that if the Indians found him they would not hurt him, as he intended to show them his drawings, and also explain to them that he was not armed.

Later on the Indians got so thick that we had to abandon this hay-making business. The day that we broke camp we had a great deal of fighting with the Indians. I remember a soldier named Pate Smith who borrowed a revolver from me that day. This man was mounted. He rode too far ahead of the outfit, the Indians cut him off. Later we heard from the Crows that the Sioux caught him, skinned him alive. This man was an old volunteer soldier, but what show has a man with the old-fashioned Springfield musket? One shot and you are done.

I was at the Fort at the time of the Phil Kearney massacre and went down with the reinforcements to that sad scene. Our men were all down when we got there, and cut up in the most brutal manner, such as only a red brute would do. We buried them a little east of the fort. They fought a good fight, but were surprised and overpowered. As we approached the scene of action the country was black with Indians to the west.