The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  Commissioner Taylor introduced Carrington and began a brief discourse upon the destination of the military train, and the purpose of the expedition. It was obvious from the beginning that the hostile chiefs already knew everything they wanted to know about the “Little White Chief.” No doubt they had heard from Standing Elk full details of his conversation with Carrington the first evening the soldiers had camped outside Fort Laramie. As Carrington now rose to speak, the muttering grew in intensity, the Indians moving restlessly in their seats. Carrington’s interpreter quietly suggested that it might be wise to allow the chiefs to speak first.

  Out of the long harangues which followed, it became clear that some of the chiefs considered the presence of Carrington and his soldiers proof that the United States Government was determined to occupy their hunting grounds even without consent by treaty. Two Oglala chiefs made no secret of their bitter opposition to construction of forts in the Powder River country—Red Cloud and Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses.*

  Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses declared that if the soldiers went any farther into Sioux country, his people would fight. “In two moons the command would not have a hoof left,” he boasted.15

  In spite of the efforts of Commissioner Taylor and his associates, the covert hostility had now become open. Toward the end of that day’s council, Red Cloud arose and made a dramatic speech. “Great Father sends us presents and wants new road,” he shouted. “But White Chief goes with soldiers, to steal road before Indian says yes or no.”16

  Most of the Brûlés remained silent, but an approving chorus of hun-huns indicated that Red Cloud had followers on the platform. When the meeting began to grow disorderly, Commissioner Taylor ended it abruptly.

  Margaret Carrington witnessed part of the affair while waiting in her ambulance beside post headquarters. “I could not hear what was said,” she recorded, “but there was evidently some trouble which caused a sudden adjournment of the conference for the afternoon. Henry soon left the platform, walking rapidly towards his horse, which an orderly was lightly holding by the rein near the ambulance, and at his left were two Indians, one of them Red Cloud, who had his right hand upon a large knife at his side, and looking at Grey Eagle [Carrington’s horse]. I thought the Indian was going to stab Henry in the back, and perhaps jump on Grey Eagle and ride off.”

  In her fright, Mrs. Carrington called her husband’s name. He caught her warning and her indicative gesture, and slacking his step so the Indians would come within range, he drew his revolver belt to the front, keeping his hand upon it, then slowed his step, looking sidewise at the Indians and allowing them to pass. Whatever Red Cloud’s original intention, he passed as stolidly as if Carrington were not even there, and walked with his companion across the parade and out of the fort.17

  Carrington was depressed by this show of cold hostility; he felt that his presence at the council had made matters worse instead of better. And before he left the fort for camp, another disappointment was added to his day of frustrations. He received a telegram from Omaha in reply to his request for permission to remain at Fort Laramie until the peace treaty was signed. Headquarters not only denied his request but ordered him to resume march for Fort Reno no later than June 17. This was the crowning blow. Now he would have only one day in which to make his peace with Red Cloud and the other hostile leaders.

  As Carrington prepared to start back to his camp, Colonel Maynadier attempted to reassure him concerning Red Cloud’s actions. “Indians always have those tantrums,” Maynadier said. “Red Cloud was no chief when he first came here, but as the old warriors said that he was at the head of the young men whom they call Bad Faces … the commission [appointed] him a chief as they did Spotted Tail … to make him our friend.”18

  After learning this, perhaps Carrington felt there was still a glimmer of hope that Red Cloud might yet be won over from war to peace. In the evening he talked with Jim Bridger about this and other matters, but Old Gabe was not sanguine about prospects. Instead the scout added one more burden to Carrington’s bad day. He had seen kegs of gunpowder on Indian ponies around the river camps, and some of them were going north away from the fort. Carrington thought of the miserly thousand rounds of ammunition so grudgingly issued him that day, and was puzzled that even Bridger could not tell him who was responsible for the kegs of powder in the Indians’ possession. After four years of Civil War experience, he was accustomed to military muddling, but now he was beginning to wonder if he was not taking his 2nd Battalion into a muddle more dangerous than he had bargained for.

  If he had hoped for a better day on June 16, he was quickly disillusioned. The first tidings of morning concerned Red Cloud and his followers. During the night they had dismantled their tepees, loaded their travois, and vanished. Their trail led north toward the Powder River country.

  When Carrington reached the fort, he found the peace commissioners arranging for a hasty conclusion to the council. Perhaps Commissioner Taylor feared that any further delay might be disastrous; other bands might follow Red Cloud’s example and depart without signing a treaty.

  As usual, the treaty signing was an elaborate ceremony. The chiefs were seated in a circle with the commissioners, and after long palavering, a fancifully carved redstone pipe was passed around, each Indian taking two or three slow puffs of smoke. They were all old men—Spotted Tail, Standing Elk, and the others—and it must have been clear to the knowledgeable white men present that these chiefs did not represent any of the belligerent young warriors in the north.

  After signatures were duly affixed and witnessed, the commissioners distributed presents, and in a few hours “the friendly camps were ablaze with mounted Indians decked in yellow, red, and other brilliantly colored cheap fabrics flying in the winds.”19

  Private William Murphy of Company A, who had come into Laramie with a duty detail, said the Indians were also given beef steers to kill. “They ate them all but the hides, hoofs, and horns without washing. … We were shown samples of marksmanship with the bow and arrow. The young boys could hit a button, pencil or any small article at about thirty yards.”20

  All afternoon the fort was a festive whirlpool of colors, sounds, and smells. “Indians filled every available space, dressed, half dressed and undressed,” said Lieutenant Bisbee, “all mingling with soldiers, teamsters, emigrants, speculators, half-breeds, squaw men, and interpreters … under the eaves of buildings, by doorsteps and porches were groups of Indians in assorted sizes, sexes and conditions, with the element of cleanliness just as critically wanting as usual among the aborigines.”21

  In his listing of human types frequenting the fort that day, Bisbee overlooked one bizarre newcomer who was engaged in an occupation then extremely novel to the frontier. He was Ridgway Glover, a photographer from Philadelphia, a well-to-do Quaker, with vague ambitions of recording the entire frontier in photographs. “I hope to make my talents for making negatives available to science,” Glover wrote the editor of the Philadelphia Photographer from Fort Laramie. “I had much difficulty in making pictures of the Indians at first. … Some of the Indians think they will die in three days, if they get their pictures taken. At the ferry today I pointed the instrument at one of that opinion. The poor fellow fell on the sand, and rolled himself in his blanket. The most of them know better though, and some I have made understand the light comes from the sun, strikes them, and then goes into the machine. I explained it to one yesterday, by means of his looking-glass, and showed him an image on the ground glass. When he caught the idea, he brightened up, and was willing to stand for me. I make them Ferrotypes, and put brass around them, and they think they are wash-ta-le-poka (their superlative for good).”

  Like all frontier photographers, Glover had his problems with wind, sand, and lack of clean water for washing negatives. “The water is muddy, and out of fifty negatives I have taken, I shall only publish prints from twenty-two. … The wind was blowing, and the sand flying. The negative is therefore not quite clean.” In spite of difficu
lties he obtained stereoscopic views of Indian camps around Fort Laramie, and single and group photographs of Indians.

  A blond-haired, energetic young man, Glover quickly became acquainted with Jim Bridger and Colonel Carrington, and when he learned of the proposed new forts on the Montana Road, immediately decided to visit the Powder River country. “I expect to travel, and trap this fall, and spend the winter in Virginia City, Montana, and to secure some winter Rocky Mountain scenery.” Carrington’s main column, however, was leaving too early to suit Glover’s plans. The photographer decided to wait and travel north later with another wagon train.22

  2.

  Among last-minute duties at Fort Laramie, Colonel Carrington dispatched two reports to Omaha, stating in the first that he was still short of ammunition, and that the supply of hard bread obtainable at Laramie would last only four days. “I find myself greatly in need of officers, but must await the arrival of new appointments, or until others are relieved from recruiting service. I move tomorrow.”

  After he had sent this off, he decided he should be more explicit concerning his need for ammunition:

  I respectfully urge that the supplies of ammunition en route from Leavenworth, per order, be forwarded forthwith. The entire supply of .58 caliber at Laramie being only 1,000 rounds renders many troops almost powerless in case of delay of supplies and remoteness from base. All the commissioners agree that I go to occupy a region which the Indians will only surrender for a great equivalent; even my arrival has started among them many absurd rumors, but I apprehend no serious difficulty. Patience, forbearance, and common sense in dealing with the Sioux and Cheyennes will do much with all who really desire peace, but it is indispensable that ample supplies of ammunition come promptly.23

  Carrington was still overconfident. But he had learned much during his three days at Fort Laramie.

  When E. B. Taylor came out that evening to bid the colonel and his wife farewell, the commissioner was frank enough to say that Carrington should not place too much confidence in the treaty signing insofar as it would affect the expedition. Neither Carrington nor his wife were surprised or dismayed at this confirmation of their own feelings. As Margaret Carrington put it, “the ladies kept up a good heart, and as they could not well go back, concluded to go on, but agreed to limit their riding on horseback to the vicinity of the train.”24

  Being a religious man, Henry Carrington disliked marching on Sunday, but at dawn of June 17, he put his column in motion, crossed Laramie River and headed northwest past the fort. Many of the Indians were also preparing to depart, leaving barren circles where their tepees had stood on the greening grass.

  As the wagons creaked past the cemetery, all could plainly see the scaffold where Spotted Tail’s daughter lay, the white tails of her ponies swaying in the morning breeze. Dwarf sunflowers, cactus and thistle blossoms brightened the slope, but off in the distance the hills were bare and bleak.

  After leaving the fort, the Montana Road followed the North Platte. On the left was a perpendicular bluff, and in places the trail was so narrow that wagon hubs scraped against yellow clay walls upon which earlier travelers had carved their initials.

  Carrington’s command now consisted only of the 2nd Battalion. His eight companies, with regimental headquarters staff and band, totaled about seven hundred men, “splendidly furnished with everything except arms, ammunition, and horses.”25 Almost five hundred of these soldiers were new recruits, and to train and lead them Carrington had only twelve officers, including himself.

  Whenever he gazed at the barren landscape across the Platte, Carrington was looking at the southern border of the Mountain District, a vast region of mountains and plains—unmapped, mysterious, ominous. Once they were across the river at Bridger’s Ferry, he would be responsible for the peace and security of this domain. He believed that his force was sufficient to erect new forts, to build barracks, warehouses and stables, to make preparations for winter, to protect emigrants from small parties of thieving Indians. Yet he knew, inexperienced though he was in Indian fighting, that his seven hundred men could never sustain an aggressive campaign against the powerful Sioux and Cheyennes if the Indians chose war instead of peace. With the help of God, and by trusting in human forbearance and reason, he hoped to avoid such a war.

  A few miles out of Laramie, Jim Bridger sighted the dust of a mounted party approaching from the west. The scout dropped back to notify Carrington; the train was halted and security precautions taken immediately. A few minutes later the horsemen came in peacefully, at a walk. They were Indians, Winnebagos, a thousand miles from their Wisconsin homeland.

  For the past year this company of Winnebagos had been serving as soldiers at Fort Reno; the commandant there had discharged them a few days previously. When they learned that Carrington was marching to occupy the Powder River country, several begged to be allowed to return with him. At first, Carrington was inclined to add these Indians to his command, but Bridger was shaking his head. The Winnebagos, Bridger said, were the best of scouts, but they had been deadly enemies of the Sioux for many years, and some of the chiefs at Laramie had expressly demanded as a condition of the treaty that the Winnebagos must leave the country. To keep any one of them on, Old Gabe explained, would be construed by the Sioux as a hostile act.26

  Carrington admitted he had not known of this. He thanked Bridger for his counsel and informed the Winnebagos diplomatically that he had no authority to employ them.

  The column moved on, passed Nine-Mile Ranche, and halted a mile and a half beyond at a campsite along the North Platte. Dissatisfied because the train had covered only thirteen miles the first day, Carrington had the men bugled out at 3 A.M. and kept the wagons moving briskly until noon. On Bridger’s advice, however, after a sixteen-mile march, he made an early halt on Little Bitter Cottonwood. A dangerous defile lay just ahead, the scout said, with no campsites in reach before sundown.

  On the 19th they pushed forward eighteen more miles, passing the last telegraph station, Horseshoe Creek. None could have imagined on this bright June day that only six months later the operator there would flash to the world the first news of the Fetterman Massacre.

  All afternoon the wagons rolled through a crooking gorge, with rock walls on either side rising to conical summits. Jim Bridger and his guides kept an alert watch for Indians, but there was no sign-of hostiles anywhere. During one rest stop Adjutant Phisterer and Surgeon Horton led a party of wives into a side canyon in search of colorful stones and to try the echo effect of pistol shots. Bridger rode up and quietly warned them: “There’s Indians enough lyin’ under wolfskins or skulkin’ on them cliffs, I warrant. They follow ye always. They’ve seen ye, every day, and when ye don’t see any of ’em about, is just the time to look for their devilment.”27

  The camp that evening would be the last before they reached the Platte and entered the Mountain District. Lieutenant Phisterer rode ahead with Bridger, selecting a velvety sward beside the river, with a backdrop of cedars. When Carrington saw the location, he was so pleased that he named it Camp Phisterer. The dashing German was one of his and Mrs. Carrington’s favorites. “He was most conspicuous in all that contributed to the pleasure or progress of the march,” she wrote in her journal.28

  Before noon of the 20th, the train reached Bridger’s Ferry. This was familiar ground to Jim Bridger, who had bought and improved the crossing ten years earlier. After collecting a small fortune in tolls, the scout had grown reckless, sold out, and moved on to less confining activities. A squaw man named Mills was the current proprietor, and he was much excited over an Indian raid upon his livestock which had occurred only twenty-four hours earlier.

  Because his wife was a Sioux, Mills previously had been immune from Indian depredations. After the raid he had sent some of his employees, also Indians, in pursuit; they had returned after recovering part of the stock. The raiders, they said, were Bad Faces of Red Cloud’s band.

  Jim Bridger advised Carrington that this was not a good s
ign. If Red Cloud’s followers had worked themselves up to raiding stock from a squaw man, they could be expected to stampede animals from the train at the first evidence of carelessness.

  As two days were required to ferry his wagons across the Platte, Carrington had considerable time to consult further with his guides. In addition to Bridger and Williams, he had acquired two others at Laramie: James J. Brannan and James P. Beckwourth. Brannan had served as scout with one of General Connor’s columns the previous year, and knew the Tongue River country above the Powder. Beckwourth, a mulatto, had several Crow wives, and was considered a minor chief in the tribe. He had been recommended to Carrington as a useful negotiator. From his Crow friends, Beckwourth could obtain intelligence concerning the activities of hostile Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands in the north.

  After discussions with his staff and guides, Carrington on June 21 drew up a new series of orders which he hoped would enhance security when march was resumed across the Mountain District to Fort Reno:

  The instructions heretofore given respecting the encampment of the command belonging to the Mountain District, Department Platte, derive special importance from the doubtful attitude of certain Indian tribes which lie in advance of the command and along and near its route. A careful and prompt conformity to orders will save the reorganization of a camp after it is once established. The following additional instructions are given:

  1. No mules will be unharnessed or turned loose until the wagon-masters shall be so instructed by the chief quartermaster [Lieutenant Brown].