The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  Yet in spite of everything the train traveled twenty-eight miles that day, rolling in to camp at Mud Springs where they found a group of log huts occupied by relief drivers for the Overland Mail. Off in the southwest the sky had turned a greenish gray, marked by jagged lightning flashes. No wood was available at Mud Springs, and details were ordered out to gather buffalo chips. By the time coffee fires were started, a thunderstorm was upon them. Mules and horses jerked at their fastenings; tents ballooned, ripped up stakes, and flattened upon their occupants. The storm carried more wind than water and soon blew over, leaving little damage in its wake.

  “Each day was much like another,” Lieutenant Bisbee remembered. “The march at earliest dawn, the same adventures with rattlesnakes, the inopportune thunderstorms, routine of evening guard-mount and sound slumber.”3

  On the 7th an early halt was made near Court House Rock to take advantage of the plentiful supply of water in Pumpkin Creek. Several of the younger officers and wives, led by the adventurous regimental adjutant, Lieutenant Frederick Phisterer,* spent the last hours of the day climbing that curiously shaped bluff with its vast domed top and cupola which always reminded eastern travelers of their courthouses back home.

  Most of the next day as they rolled westward through shimmering heat, they could see another famous landmark far ahead. When first sighted across the treeless plain it resembled the dead trunk of a gigantic tree, but as the train drew nearer, it took on the appearance of a chimney, tapering slightly to the top. That night they camped near this stratified clay mound known as Chimney Rock, and at dawn of the 9th were marching again, passing through Scotts Bluff down a gorge floored by drifting sands. The trail through Mitchell Pass narrowed in several places to the width of a single wagon.

  Scotts Bluff, the Gibraltar of the Plains, was the most magnificent piece of scenery yet encountered by the travelers, the highest point in Nebraska Territory, embellished with terraced formations, fanciful towers and castles carved by water and wind. Here the expedition met with its first serious accident, involving the precious steam sawmill brought from Fort McPherson. “An eight-yoke bull-team,” said William Murphy, “stampeded with two wagons loaded with parts and equipment for a sawmill, and ran down a steep hill to the North Platte. I do not believe any of the steers were alive when they got to the bottom of the hill. This sawmill was intended for Fort Phil Kearny and arrived a month or six weeks later. This of course delayed us some in building the fort.”4

  At Camp Mitchell, west of the bluff, Carrington detached a company of the 1st Battalion under Captain Robert P. Hughes, assigned to replace Volunteer troops from Ohio and Missouri who had been there for many months. That night the train camped along the river west of the small fort.

  Next day was a Sunday, and after holding morning religious services, the command rested. Mrs. Carrington recorded that Lieutenants Adair, Kirtland, D’Isay and the ebullient German, Frederick Phisterer, “helped to make something like true melody from the sweet Sabbath bell sent us by the Sabbath school of Rev. Mr. Dimock of Omaha before our departure from Kearney.”5

  Although Fort Laramie was only two days’ march from Camp Mitchell, so many wagons were showing signs of wear from the long journey and the added rough jolting through Mitchell Pass, that Carrington decided to devote Monday, June 11, to emergency repairs, axle greasing, and reshoeing of some horses and mules. He also conferred with Jim Bridger. The trail between Scotts Bluff and Laramie was subject to occasional raids from hostile bands, but Bridger was confident that Indians would not attack so formidable a train. He expected, however, that they might attempt to raid livestock herds after dark.

  Consequently, Carrington summoned his quartermaster, Lieutenant Fred Brown, and issued that day a special order:

  The troops and trains of this command will hereafter be camped and parked closely together, and in the following manner whenever the camping ground permits: All the trains will be parked, forming one closely locked square. If the wagons do not close together, the interval will be closed by means of ropes stretched from wagon to wagon, so that no animal may be able to escape. Headquarters will camp on one front of the square, the second battalion on the second, the mounted portion of the command on the third, and the quartermaster employees on the fourth front, and all outside of the square. In the fourth front a sufficiently large opening will be left to permit the public animals to be driven in in the evening, to stay there during the night. After sunset all animals must be within that square, and the quartermaster will be held responsible for the strict observance of this order. The second battalion will furnish the guard for its own and the fourth front; the mounted command will furnish the guard for its own and the front occupied by headquarters.6

  Early Tuesday morning the column moved out, and by day’s end was halfway to Fort Laramie. They camped on Cold Creek, a clear-water stream flowing into the North Platte. Sergeant John Barnes, a musician from Cincinnati, dropped a hook and line into the junction of creek and river and hooked a mountain pike. In a few minutes other soldiers joined him, making a seine from gunny sacks sewn together and weighted with mule shoes. Before sunset they had caught over a hundred fish. “Their hard white meat,” Margaret Carrington recorded, “was excellent.”7

  It is not on record what her husband thought of the fishing party or the flavor of the catch, but for the past few days the colonel had noted with disapproval the casual attitude of his troops on the march and in camp, their habits of straggling, of riding out to shoot at wild game along the way, of carelessness after nightfall. Although Bridger had assured him that an Indian attack on the whole column was most unlikely, the scout had warned that any roving war party would strike without hesitation at small groups of men isolated by only a few hundred yards from the train.

  With these thoughts in mind, Carrington decided to tighten security still further by issuing another special order. It was read that evening to all companies.

  I. Straggling for hunting or other purposes will at once be discontinued.

  II. Soldiers requiring rest or relief must avail themselves of the regular intervals of rest on the march, as established by battalion or detachment commanders.

  III. Orderlies will remain with the officers for whom they are detailed, except when sent with orders.

  IV. The mounted men attached to headquarters will march in front of headquarters train when not otherwise ordered, and all mounted men will carry their rifles by a uniform method and in readiness for use.

  V. The regimental band will accompany the headquarters train, and will not stray from it unless by special permission of the regimental adjutant.

  VI. No soldier will be permitted to visit ranches, or posts, or other sutlers than the one accompanying the command, or to leave the guard limits, except for wood and water, without permission of his battalion or detachment commander. Except in cases of trivial import, or such as only concern regimental headquarters or the mounted men of such, the permission above referred to must have the approval of the commanding officer of the Second Battalion Eighteenth U.S. Infantry.

  VII. Wagon-masters, their assistants, teamsters, and all employees or attachés, connected with or accompanying this command will conform to these instructions, and such as they receive, pursuant thereto, from Captain F. Phisterer, acting assistant adjutant-general, and Lieut. F. H. Brown, chief quartermaster.

  VIII. Order and silence after 9 o’clock P.M. will be observed by all within the command, whether soldiers or otherwise, and the chief quartermaster will so instruct wagon-masters and their assistants. The officer of the day, of the second battalion, will cause the arrest of all offenders against this paragraph.8

  The column moved out early on the 13th for the last day’s march to Fort Laramie, halting early in the afternoon by pre-arrangement about four miles east of the fort. Carrington wanted his camp close enough to Laramie to transact necessary military business, but far enough away to prevent any mingling of troops with the two thousand Indians who were there fo
r the treaty ceremonies.

  In accordance with his security orders, the train formed in a hollow square along the South Platte, and additional orders were read to the men:

  The pending treaty between the United States and the Sioux Indians at Fort Laramie renders it the duty of every soldier to treat all Indians with kindness. Every Indian who is wronged will visit his vengeance upon any white man he may meet. As soldiers are sent to preserve the peace of the border and prevent warfare, as much as to fight well if warfare becomes indispensable, it will be considered a very gross offense for a soldier to wrong or insult an Indian. … Soldiers will attend to their own duties as soldiers and all intercourse with Indian lodges or individuals while at Laramie, or on the march from Laramie westward, will be through headquarters. Indian visitors will be kindly and patiently received, their chiefs only being admitted within the line, and such chiefs will be courteously conducted to headquarters for the transaction of their business.9

  The ink was scarcely dry on this special order when Carrington received his first Indian visitor, a Brûlé chief. He was Standing Elk, a tall broad-faced man, with a single feather in his thick shoulder-length hair. The Brûlé was camped nearby, and his curiosity had been aroused by the arrival of the long military train.

  With Jack Stead as interpreter, Carrington went through the necessary formalities of greeting, first presenting Standing Elk with tobacco, then smoking a pipe with him. The chief’s first inquiry was blunt: “Where are you going?” Carrington replied frankly that he was taking his troops to the Powder River country to guard the Montana Road.

  “There is a treaty being made in Laramie with the Sioux that are in the country where you are going,” Standing Elk said. “The fighting men in that country have not come to Laramie and you will have to fight them.”

  Carrington replied that he hoped the presence of his troops would prevent a war rather than cause one. He said he was not going to the Powder River country to make war on the Sioux, but only to guard the road.

  “They will not sell their hunting grounds to the white man for a road,” Standing Elk declared. “They will not give you the road unless you whip them.” The chief was quick to add that he expected to sign the treaty and that Pegaleshka, who was called Spotted Tail by the white men, also would sign the treaty. The Brûlés wanted no war, he said. Those who talked of fighting were of the Miniconjou and Oglala bands, some of the Bad Faces led by Red Cloud.10

  With this sober warning of Standing Elk on his mind, Colonel Carrington rode into Fort Laramie early the next morning. He was accompanied by Major Van Voast and recruits for the 1st Battalion, assigned to replace Volunteers at the post.

  The fort lay between the Laramie and Platte rivers, a rectangle of thirty or forty log-and-adobe structures surrounding a parade ground bare of sod. A flag flapped from a staff near a corner of the rectangle, a spot of color against the somber landscape. Extending to right and left of the post along the riverbanks was a mile-long ribbon of Indian tepees, white cones topped by blackened lodgepoles, smoke of cooking fires drifting from smoke holes. Several hundred varicolored ponies were corralled here and there, finding scanty pasture in the sandy valley. Small groups of Indians, a few mounted, moved aimlessly in the open spaces.

  As Carrington’s party splashed over the Laramie River crossing, they could see strips of bright cloth flying from an Indian burial platform a few hundred yards off to the north. They rode on between horse corrals, passed a row of warehouses, and were on the edge of the parade. Carrington noted then that there was no stockade around Fort Laramie. No sentries challenged. Indians and civilians wandered about as freely as if they were on the streets of a frontier town rather than in a military post.

  At the southwest end of the parade a temporary platform with wooden benches had been erected for treaty negotiations. In the headquarters building beyond, Carrington and Van Voast met with the post commander, Colonel Henry E. Maynadier. The commandant was particularly pleased to greet Major Van Voast; three companies of the 1st Battalion had arrived some days earlier from Colorado Territory, and now that the major was there Maynadier would soon be free to relinquish command and arrange for the long-delayed discharges of his Civil War Volunteer troops.

  Along with other duties, Maynadier was serving as a member of the Peace Commission, and within the hour he was introducing Carrington to his associates, Thomas Wistar, E. B. Taylor, and Colonel Robert N. McLaren. A number of Brûlé and Oglala chiefs were also arriving for the day’s harangues, most of them tall, well-formed men wearing buffalo-skin or red blanket robes, fringed leggings and beaded moccasins. They stood with arms folded over their broad chests, the vermilion paint on their stolid faces glistening in the sunlight.

  “I was introduced to several chiefs,” Carrington recalled later. “Without exception, every chief to whom I was then introduced as the ‘White Chief going up to occupy Powder River, the Big Horn county, and the Yellowstone’ treated me coldly.”11

  Commissioner Taylor, acting as chairman, was an ambitious Indian Bureau superintendent, dedicated to making a success of the treaty negotiations. He assured Carrington that everything was going well, that at least seven-eighths of the Brûlés and Oglalas were represented by leaders who would sign. Pegaleshka, or Spotted Tail, the influential leader of the Brûlés, had capitulated completely. It was his daughter, Fleet Foot, who lay on the platform in the post cemetery; on her deathbed she had asked to be baptized as a Christian and laid to rest there. Spotted Tail bowed to her wishes. After her death he slew her four favorite ponies and tied their tails to the four posts of the platform. He said that since his daughter had been adopted by the white man’s Great Spirit he had no heart to fight the white man any more.

  Carrington was encouraged by Taylor’s remarks. He felt that if he could meet all the chiefs and some of the young warriors and talk with them face to face, he could convince them of his friendship. But such negotiations would require time, several days. Aware that Fort Laramie was in direct telegraphic communication with his headquarters at Omaha, he decided to request authority to remain at Fort Laramie until treaty negotiations were complete.

  On the following morning, still confident of contributing personally to a treaty that would guarantee peace in the Powder River country, Carrington rode to the fort in company with his quartermaster, Lieutenant Brown, and several others of his regimental and headquarters staff. Mrs. Carrington and some of the other officers’ wives, being eager to see the fort and visit the sutler’s store, followed in an ambulance. A few wagons filled with infantrymen rolled in the rear. Carrington hoped to load these wagons with ammunition from the fort’s magazine, and to mount the infantrymen on horses from the quartermaster’s corrals. But this was to be a day of disappointments, even of personal danger, for Henry Beebe Carrington.

  His first duty of the morning was to arrange for transfer of the ammunition. He had drawn up a requisition for 100,000 rounds which Omaha headquarters had assured him would be available. To his dismay, the post quartermaster informed him that Laramie would be placed in jeopardy if even a thousand rounds were removed. Carrington insisted on the thousand rounds.

  The promised horses also were nonexistent. “I could not even find horses to make an exchange of twelve at that post,” he testified later.

  The only significant acquisitions for his expedition were twenty-six wagons loaded with provisions. Mules were available, but the drivers would have to be furnished from his command, removing half a company of men from combat readiness in case of sudden attack en route. A hasty inspection of the boxes and barrels also revealed that much of the food was inedible. The pilot bread, or hardtack, was so stale it had turned dark, and was so hard it could not be bitten, could scarcely be broken with a metal tool. “The flour drawn at Laramie,” said Carrington, “was musty, caked, and very poor.”12 And nowhere on the post could be found utensils for baking it.

  Meanwhile, Margaret Carrington and her “little coterie of ladies” were enjoying the sight
s in and around Bullock &Ward’s sutler’s store. They saw cups of rice, sugar and coffee emptied into the looped-up skirts or blankets of the squaws, they stared at a tall warrior grimacing delightedly as he sucked a long stick of peppermint candy. “Bright shawls, red squaw cloth, brilliant calicoes, and flashy ribbons passed over the same counter with knives and tobacco, brass nails and glass beads … the debris of munched crackers lying loose under foot furnished both nutriment and employment for little bits of Indians too big to ride on mama’s back, and too little to reach the good things on counter or shelves.”13

  The wives were received courteously by the traders, W. G. Bullock and Seth Ward, both of whom had lived in the Platte country for years. They assured their visitors that they had nothing to fear from Indians around the fort. Ward had been a trapper, but now wore fine clothes and a soft hat of the latest eastern fashion. A huge diamond glittered in his shirt front, and a large gold watch chain hung over his vest.

  According to John Hunton, one of the clerks who “could talk Sioux, Cheyenne or English just as the case comes to hand,” the Laramie sutler’s store averaged one hundred dollars per day in cash trade, with additional credit sales. Because paper money was used to pay soldiers, greenbacks were standard medium of exchange, the wartime shinplasters—five, ten, twenty-five and fifty cent notes—being heavily discounted in that inflationary period.14

  While his wife was absorbed in all the sights, sounds, and smells of the sutler’s store, Colonel Carrington was meeting for the first time with some of the chiefs who had expressed opposition to opening the Montana Road. The chiefs, the commission members, and Carrington were seated around rough tables on the platform before post headquarters. On the parade in front of them, hundreds of warriors and squaws had gathered to watch and listen, some standing, some squatting, some sitting on extemporized benches under a blazing June sun.