The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  I tell all the white men that go on the road that if they hurt Indians or steal their ponies I will follow and catch them and punish them. I will not let white men do hurt to the Indians who wish peace.

  I wish the Indians would also find who stole mules and horses on Powder River and who stole mules and horses at Rock Creek two nights past.

  You may come and see me with two other chiefs and two of your big fighting men, when the sun is over head, after two sleeps.

  You may come and talk and no one shall hurt you, and when you wish to go you may go in peace and no one shall hurt you.

  I will tell all my chiefs and soldiers that you are my friends and they will obey.

  Your white friend

  HENRY B. CARRINGTON12

  At twilight, Joe Donaldson and Jack Stead rode out of camp, bearing this first, and last, written communication from Carrington to the Indians.

  Next day was Sunday, but it was not to be a day of rest. After brief religious services in the open, Carrington gave the order to lay out the new fort. During the night he had definitely decided to build the post on high ground between the two Pineys. Tongue River was not only too remote from pine timber, there was less grass and water, less advantage as to position. By running the stockade lengthwise of the site, water from Little Piney could easily be diverted and carried within the fort. Along both streams Carrington had noted an abundance of clay which would make a fine plaster for chinking and coating the buildings. And from the fort’s interior the 12-pounder howitzers could command all nearby slopes and hills.

  For years afterward—even into the twentieth century—Carrington was criticized for this choice of a fort site. It was said that soldiers within the fort could see nothing, but that their enemies could look down upon them and see everything. Actually the only restricted view was to the northeast, and this deficiency was overcome by placing a mounted picket on Pilot Hill, directly to the north across Big Piney. Private Murphy complained that “for some reason they picked out a location about seven miles from the timber and from five to eight miles from any hay bottom.”13 But Murphy, like the enlisted man of all armies, was a chronic grumbler, and if the fort had been in either a hay bottom or a forest, he would have continued to find fault. It is not on record that any of Carrington’s officers objected to the site, nor did Jim Bridger, who had wanted to go on to Tongue River—probably because the hunting was better there.

  During that Sunday morning, Carrington and Captain Ten Eyck staked out the future post’s dimensions, following plans which they had drawn at Fort Kearney in the early spring. (They borrowed liberally from treatises on fortifications by Dennis Hart Mahan, professor of engineering at West Point.) The fort proper was to be a 400-foot square, with sixteen hundred feet of stockade enclosing barracks, officers’ quarters, warehouses, administration buildings, sutler’s store, hospital, magazine, battery, bandstand, and parade. To the southeast a quartermaster’s yard 200 x 600 feet would extend to the waters of Little Piney. Here would be the stables, civilian teamsters’ quarters, mechanics’ sheds, woodyard and hay yard. The fort was planned to house one thousand men.

  Its log stockade would be eight feet high with a continuous banquette about three feet above the ground. A flaring loophole was provided for every fourth log, and at diagonal corners of the square, enfilading blockhouses were designed with portholes for cannon. Carrington and Ten Eyck also worked out a detailed scheme for hewing the stockade logs to two smooth touching surfaces so that spikes would not be needed, the only tools required for construction being broadaxes, augers and chisels.*

  They laid out the fort so that it fronted on the Bozeman Trail, with Big Piney and Pilot Hill just beyond. Little Piney was on the south, and to the west was an unnamed ridge which Carrington promptly called Sullivant Hills in honor of his wife’s maiden name. To the northwest was Lodge Trail Ridge and beyond that Peno Creek. Carrington eyed this landscape with the delight of a discoverer, and proudly wrote to General Cooke in Omaha that he had occupied the very heart of the Indians’ hunting grounds. “The mountains, five miles distant, are precipitous, but the gorges are full of pine, hemlock, balsam, fir, and spruce. This ridge is about 800 feet above the Piney bottoms, but behind, and stretching to the foot of the next or ‘snow-capped’ range is a sweep of prairie as rich in game as it is in grass and flowers. … In thirty days this post can be held by a small force against any force. …”14

  After stakes were driven on that busy Sunday morning, the colonel assembled a train of wagons and ordered them driven repeatedly around the 400-foot square of the fort proper, until streets were beaten out of the high grass. When this was done, he brought up hay mowers to trim the inner parade into a lawn. Tents were pitched in exact mathematical lines along streets where buildings would rise; the 12-pounder howitzers were placed on the parade; signs were posted forbidding pedestrians to cross the freshly mown grass. Headquarters, adjutant, and guard tents were erected, sentinels and pickets posted. By noon, the camp looked as permanent as a tent camp can look, with a military precision about it that would have pleased the strictest of professional drillmasters.

  The only diversion of the day was a grasshopper attack. The Carrington’s Negro servant, George, rushed to inform Mrs. Carrington that it was snowing for sure, right out of the bright July sky. Instead, she found her tent was being eaten by giant grasshoppers. “They came in clouds like the drifting smoke of a prairie fire. … In vain were turkeys and chickens let loose against the destroyers; the whole camp hummed with the rustle of their wings as they filed themselves on the blades of grass and became familiar generally. A kind wind from the mountains came along in the afternoon, and they left as suddenly as they arrived.”15

  During the afternoon every soldier not on guard duty was assigned to a work detail—ditching, chopping, hewing or hauling. J. B. Gregory, a civilian engineer attached to the quartermaster, took a group of men down to the Little Piney and started assembling the horse-powered sawmill. The steam mill which had crashed into the Platte back at Scotts Bluff still had not caught up with the expedition, but was expected to arrive soon with one of the supply trains from Nebraska.

  When sundown finally ended that first day of work on the new fort, three companies of weary men formed for hasty roll calls, fell out for supper, and rolled gratefully into blankets. The hard marches from Fort Kearney had toughened their muscles; now it seemed as if they would have to grow some new ones to build this fort fast enough to suit Colonel Carrington.

  If the Indians had been forgotten in all the day’s activities, the return of Jack Stead late that night was a reminder that they were still watching and waiting. Stead and the messenger, Joe Donaldson, had found Black Horse’s camp thirty miles away on Tongue River. The Cheyennes had moved away from French Pete’s camp, fearful of an attack from the soldiers. Stead informed Carrington that Black Horse accepted the colonel’s invitation to visit the soldiers’ camp. The Cheyennes would arrive “after two sleeps,” which now would be sometime the following day.

  During guard mount on the morning of July 16, the men were warned to be on the lookout for expected friendly Cheyennes. It was almost noon when the first few Indians appeared on the hills, waving white flags. Carrington sent Jack Stead out to assure them of a welcome, and about forty Cheyennes came riding in—eleven chiefs and subchiefs, several warriors, and a few squaws.

  Preparations had already been made for an elaborate reception on the parade. Carrington and his officers donned shoulder scales, epaulets, and dress hats, hastily unpacked from trunks, and as soon as the Indians crossed Big Piney, Bandmaster Samuel Curry led the regimental band out on the parade where the musicians began performing a series of evolutions to the accompaniment of their brassiest martial tunes.

  The Cheyennes also were dressed in their best—richly embroidered and beaded moccasins, fancy breechclouts, gay-feathered headdresses. Some wore large silver medallions, stamped with the heads of Presidents Jefferson, Madison or Jackson, over their nake
d chests. These trophies were highly prized, perhaps handed down from fathers who had visited Washington, or perhaps obtained in battle or trade. One tall chieftain carried a bright-colored umbrella over his head as his pony galloped briskly along.

  To impress his guests, Carrington exhibited one of the howitzers, then ordered it fired at a distant hill. The Indians were startled by the loud noise of this “shooting wagon,” were even more surprised when the spherical case shot exploded in the distance. “It shoots twice,” said Chief Black Horse solemnly. “White Chief shoot once. Then White Chief’s Great Spirit fires it once more, for his white children.”16

  A large hospital tent had been erected in front of Carrington’s headquarters, and here the guests were assembled for a parley. Jim Bridger was present of course, sitting cross-legged facing the Cheyennes, listening attentively, saying nothing, leaving the business of conversation to Jack Stead, Carrington, and the chiefs. Black Horse was the Cheyenne leader, and with him was Two Moons, who in the next decade would make his name that of a mighty warrior, and another who was destined to become the greatest of all Cheyenne chiefs—Dull Knife. Ten years later Dull Knife would lead his people against Custer, and later still would lead them in an exodus from Indian Territory, a heroic flight which excited the admiration of even the men who hunted him down.

  As the day was warm, the flies of both the hospital and headquarters tents were raised, and Mrs. Carrington, Mrs. Bisbee, and Mrs. Horton gathered in the latter to enjoy “a dress-circle view of the whole performance.” After pipes were passed, Jack Stead arose and moved to the center of the tent. Although of English blood, Stead’s hair and eyes were as dark as any of the Indians’, his skin tanned to swarthiness. As a youth he had run away to sea, and after surviving a shipwreck near the mouth of the Columbia, he crossed the Rockies, took an Indian wife, learned the languages of the Plains tribes, and became skilled in hunting and fighting. “He was fond of big stories and much whiskey,” said Margaret Carrington, “but a fair interpreter when mastered and held to duty.”17

  Now he was the first to break silence after the pipe smoking. “Black Horse wants talk,” he said.18

  The old chief rose and began the formalities of greeting. He and the other leaders present, he said, represented 176 Cheyenne lodges. They had recently quarreled with and broken away from another band of Cheyennes who wanted war. The other Cheyennes were willing to join the Sioux as allies to drive the white soldiers back to Powder River. But his own people wanted to make a strong treaty with the white men so that they might live out their lives in peace. “White man wants all,” Black Horse said. “He will have it all.”

  After Black Horse finished his first harangue, the other chiefs spoke, and it soon became dramatically clear to Carrington that every move he had made since leaving Fort Reno had been observed and reported to Indian encampments throughout the area. He also realized for the first time that Red Cloud was his implacable enemy.

  “They represented that on the day of my arrival,” he said later, “Sioux Indians were encamped near them, and told them, ‘I would be there that noon; that I had left half my white soldiers on the road at Crazy Woman’s Fork; that I had sent men out from Fort Reno to chase Indians who had stolen mules, but the white soldiers did not catch them; that they (the Sioux) had a sun dance which was not over, and were insisting that they (the Cheyennes) must unite with them and not let the white soldiers go farther west; that if I would go back to Powder River (Fort Reno), a fort of last year, the white soldiers might stay there, but should build no more forts.’ Responsive to my questions, they further stated ‘that the band of Sioux referred to was led by Red Cloud, and numbered five hundred warriors; that they (the Cheyennes) were weak and could not fight the Sioux, and that if I would give them provisions they would make a lasting peace, to go wherever I told them, away from the Sioux and away from this road.”19

  In all the speeches the name of Makhpia-sha, or Red Cloud, was repeated again and again; there seemed no doubt in the minds of the Cheyennes that this tall, handsome Oglala—then in his middle forties—was the real leader of the hostiles. To the soldiers of the Mountain District he would soon become the symbol, the personification, of the enemy.

  One piece of information concerning Red Cloud’s activities was especially disturbing to Carrington. Red Cloud’s warriors, said the Cheyennes, had gone toward Powder River to cut off further approach of travel. Being a theoretical military tactician, Carrington could understand the Sioux leader’s reasoning: cut off the main body, isolate it, attack. The colonel was grateful for the warning. He must be prepared to meet a force led by a chief who knew how to fight a war.

  The endless talk, slowed by translation, dragged on into late afternoon. But Carrington was patient. He knew that this was an opportunity to show his sincerity for peace; at the same time he was learning much which could be useful should hostilities become unavoidable. At one point he asked about the Crows. “This country is called Absaraka,” he said, “the home of the Crows. Why do the Sioux and Cheyennes claim land which belongs to the Crows?”

  “We stole the hunting grounds of the Crows because they were the best,” was the reply. “The white man is along the great waters, and we wanted more room. We fight the Crows because they will not take half and give us peace with the other half.”20

  Late in the day the arrival of Captain Haymond and his four companies from Crazy Woman’s Fork provided a welcome interruption to the parley. Carrington excused himself and went to meet Haymond, who reported that repairs had been adequate to bring all wagons through. The four companies, Carrington decided, would camp between the forks of the Pineys. He informed Haymond to prepare for ten days’ or two weeks’ delay, at least until more junior officers reported for duty with the 2nd Battalion. In the meantime, Haymond’s men could help with the building of this fort before moving north to erect others.

  When Carrington returned to the council tent, he found the Cheyennes had become restless, perhaps suspicious because of the arrival of so many more soldiers in camp. Black Horse motioned toward the sun. It was going over, he said, and the Cheyenne chiefs must return to their camp. If they stayed too long in white soldiers’ camp, the Sioux might attack in their absence. Then he made an unexpected offer: As soon as his young men returned from hunting he would give the Little White Chief one hundred warriors to go against the Sioux.

  Carrington concealed his surprise. “I have men enough to fight the Sioux,” he replied, “but if the Cheyennes keep good faith with the white men and have trouble with the Sioux, I will help them.” As a gesture of his own good faith, Carrington then asked Lieutenant Phisterer to write a special “paper” for Black Horse:

  TO MILITARY OFFICERS, SOLDIERS, AND EMIGRANTS:

  Black Horse, a Cheyenne chief, having come in and shaken hands and agreed to a lasting peace with the whites and all travelers on the road, it is my direction that he be treated kindly, and in no way molested in hunting while he remains at peace.

  When any Indian is seen who holds up this paper he must be treated kindly.

  HENRY B. CARRINGTON

  Colonel, 18th U.S. Infantry,

  Commanding Mountain District 21

  Jack Stead translated, the Cheyenne leader expressed his thanks, and the other chiefs pressed forward immediately, requesting similar papers. While Phisterer wrote out copies, presents were distributed—twenty pounds of tobacco for the party, and one day’s army rations for each visitor, including flour, bacon, sugar and coffee.

  By the time the Cheyennes rode away, the sun was down, and the evening’s guard mount was taking posts.

  At five o’clock next morning, July 17, Red Cloud’s war began. As reconstructed afterward, it was evident that several Indians had infiltrated Captain Haymond’s picket lines. One brave leaped upon the bare back of Wagon Master Hill’s bell mare and took off at a gallop, knowing from previous observation that the other animals would follow. “When the herd stampeded,” said Private Murphy, “they ran acro
ss the Piney and we could scarcely see them for the cloud of dust they raised.”22

  At the first alarm, Haymond and his orderly flung saddles on their horses. After ordering his mounted detachment to follow as quickly as possible, Haymond took off in pursuit, accompanied only by his orderly. The trail of the Indians was easy to follow at first, with 175 stampeded animals, mostly mules, stirring up dust. Haymond held to high ground so that he could keep the course of the raiders in view until his men came up. But because of the suddenness of the raid, and the excited condition of the corralled riding horses, his mounted unit was slow in getting away, the men riding out in little groups of twos and fours instead of in proper formation. Consequently the pursuing force was strung out between the Pineys and Peno Creek.

  This was exactly the opportunity the Sioux had been waiting for; small bands dropped back and began attacking the scattered pursuers. Haymond finally managed to rally his men, but when the Indians continued to press the attacks, he sent messengers galloping back to camp for reinforcements.

  Colonel Carrington meanwhile had been waiting with angry impatience for some word from Haymond. On receiving Haymond’s call for reinforcements, he dispatched fifty mounted men under Lieutenant Bisbee, and two companies of infantry. He also ordered work details in the fort to exchange tools for arms. Tarpaulins were removed from the howitzers, and the camp put in readiness for attack.

  Back in the field, Captain Haymond was beginning to disengage his forces when the first elements of the relief party arrived. With Lieutenant Bisbee’s fresh-mounted company, he resumed pursuit, later described by Bisbee as “a running fight for fifteen miles but the odds were against us and we lost the mules as Red Cloud had promised.”23

  They recovered only four animals, a poor exchange for their first casualties from Indian attack. Two men were dead, three wounded. “One man—John Donovan of my company,” reported Private Murphy, “was wounded twice, once with a poisoned arrow and another a bullet wound.”24