The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  Falling back on the Bozeman Road, Haymond and Bisbee reluctantly turned about for camp. As the advance party rode down toward Peno Creek, they sighted the wagons of French Pete Gazzous’s temporary trading post. It was obvious that something was wrong. Covers had been ripped from wagons, and plunder strewn all around. They found six dead white men, all mutilated.

  “It was a terrible sight,” said Private John Ryan. “The poor victims had been mutilated in the most horrible manner and it gave us all a most convincing lesson on what our fate would be should we fall into the hands of the Indians.”25

  Louis Gazzous had been killed by his wife’s own tribesmen, and with him died his partner, Henry Arrison; the young teamster, Joe Donaldson; and three adventurers who had joined on for safe passage to Montana.

  Bisbee reported briefly that signs indicated French Pete’s “unlawful load of whiskey had led to his destruction, despite his squaw wife who was spared.” The men found her with the five Gazzous children hidden in some bushes nearby.26

  A few scattered beef cattle also were recovered; goods and stores not destroyed by the Indians were reloaded into wagons; the mutilated bodies were buried. Haymond’s party then returned to camp, the captain reporting to Carrington and presenting the Frenchman’s squaw for interrogation.

  The Gazzous woman talked freely. She told Carrington that the Cheyenne chiefs had stopped at her husband’s camp the previous evening after leaving the soldier camp, and they had talked and traded for some hours. During this time, Red Cloud and a party of Sioux came up from Peno Valley. Red Cloud asked Black Horse what the white soldiers had said to him. Was the Little White Chief, Carrington, going to return to Powder River? Black Horse replied that the Little White Chief was not going back, but was going on north to build more forts. Red Cloud then asked: What did the Little White Chief give them for presents? “All we wanted to eat,” Black Horse replied, and added that Carrington had promised presents for all the Indians in Tongue River valley whenever they went to Laramie and signed the treaty. “Let us take the white man’s hand and what he gives us, rather than fight him longer and lose all,” Black Horse had said.

  Red Cloud retorted angrily: “White man lies and steals. My lodges were many, but now they are few. The white man wants all. The white man must fight, and the Indian will die where his fathers died.”27

  At this point, the Sioux unslung their bows and whipped Black Horse, Dull Knife, and the other Cheyennes over their backs and faces. After the Sioux left, Black Horse told French Pete that he was going with his people up to the mountains, and he advised the trader to go back to the white soldiers’ camp or the Sioux would kill him.

  Carrington of course was disturbed by the Gazzous woman’s story. He thanked her for her co-operation, assured her that she and her children would be welcome to the protection of his camp, and then, as a lawyer might have been expected to do, he assigned an administrator, John Hugas—one of the civilian contractors in camp—to settle her husband’s estate. Her ultimate fate is obscure. According to the laconic Private Murphy, “she was at the fort about two months and left one night.”28

  As soon as Carrington finished his interrogation, he sent Haymond an order to move his four companies closer to the fort site. He also gave the captain a mild dressing down for not reporting to headquarters before going in pursuit of Indians that morning. Privately he excused Haymond for his hasty action; after all, the captain had commanded the 2nd Battalion through its hardest fighting in the Civil War and had been cited for gallantry. Indian warfare was new and strange; none of them had really believed the Sioux would dare attack so large a force. But now they knew. Two soldiers were dead; three wounded. So ended the first day of Red Cloud’s war.

  The following week was deceptively peaceful around the Pineys. Work on the stockade continued without interruption except for daily military routines of reveille, roll call, guard mount, retreat, tattoo, and lights out. Wagons were unloaded, goods stored under canvas. A mail courier arrived from Laramie, bringing official communications relieving Captain Haymond and Lieutenant Phisterer from field duty and reassigning them to recruiting service in the States. Although commissioned replacements were en route to the Mountain District, Carrington was dismayed over the prospect of losing any officers, especially when they were as experienced as Haymond and Phisterer.

  Food was also becoming a problem. Long hard hours in the open air gave the men voracious appetites which could not be satisfied by hardtack and half-spoiled meat. A few beef cattle from the herd brought overland were slain, but Carrington was determined to reserve most of this supply until winter. An occasional deer or antelope shot by men working in the timber also provided fresh meat, but there was never enough to fill demand. A few boxes of desiccated vegetables had been brought from Reno, and these were carefully rationed.

  One of the enlisted men, Alson Ostrander, recorded his sergeant’s description of the desiccated vegetables: “Somewhere back east there is a factory where they put ’em up. They take a heap of each kind of vegetable and slice ’em just as thin as possible and then they are thoroughly dried out. Then they mix them all together and put them under a tremendous hydraulic pressure until they are squeezed just like plug tobacco. They come in cakes about nine inches long, three inches wide, and nearly an inch thick. Then they are packed in air-tight caddies and when opened they look just like a big plug of tobacco, but when placed in boiling water, how they do swell! One of these plugs will make several gallons of good rich soup.”29

  At first the enlisted men used the same mess system as they had in the Civil War, four to eight men in each mess rotating duties of cooking, collecting fuel, and hauling water. To free more men for work details, however, informal company kitchens were encouraged, with regular cooks assigned. Private Murphy noted that “about July 20, Orderly-Sergeant Lang and I bought two fresh cows from an immigrant train. No one wanted to work in the kitchen, so I volunteered in order to be able to take care of the cows morning and evening. It was not known that I had any interest in the cows or it might have caused some trouble. We had a first class baker in the company who volunteered to do the baking. At that time the Government did not furnish cooks or bakers. They simply furnished the rations and the soldier could cook them himself or eat them raw if he saw fit. … We cooked soup, bacon and coffee and dished it out to the men in their cups and plates—we had no dining room. We boiled everything. I believe the bacon would have killed the men if it had not been thoroughly boiled … the bacon and flour I had seen at Reno was given to us. The flour had been hauled sixty-five miles and handled several times. The result was that the refuse left by the mice was well mixed with the flour and we found a number of dead mice in it also. As we could not get a sieve, we manufactured one out of burlap sack by pulling out some of the strings and nailed it on a wooden frame. We got most of the larger refuse out. The bacon where the fat had commenced to sluff off from the lean was yellow with age and bitter as quinine. Some of the worst we shaved off, but we could not spare too much. One reason why our rations were so scanty was that flour was worth $100 per sack and bacon, coffee and beans proportionately. The companies of those times had no quartermaster or commissary agents and two or three men would be detailed to go and get the rations. They were piled out in a heap and you could take them or leave them.”30

  By the weekend of the 22nd, a sufficient number of wagons had been unloaded and reconditioned to make up a return train to Reno to pick up stores left behind for lack of wagon space. Carrington gave the assignment to Captain Thomas Burrowes’ G Company, with an added detachment of mounted men, and Jim Bridger as scout.

  Sunday, the day of the wagon train’s departure, was marked by a return of Indian raiding, not in force but in small parties. The Sioux were unable to break through Carrington’s alert defenses, but succeeded in capturing four horses and four mules from a civilian train camped nearby.

  At one o’clock in the morning of July 24, Carrington was awakened by his orderly. A courier had
just arrived with an urgent message from Captain Burrowes. By the light of his tent lamp, the colonel read the penciled scrawl:

  COL. CARRINGTON:

  There is a train engaged 3 mi. from here. I can not send them any help. The Sioux are very numerous. Send a force at once.

  CLEAR FORK, 7:15 P.M. [JULY 23] T. B. BURROWES

  On the reverse of this paper was the appeal for help Burrowes had received the previous evening:

  COMMANDING OFFICER:

  SIR: We have received the papers from you through Black Horse, and we would inform you that about 3 miles from this watering place, Mr. Kirkendall’s train has been engaged all this afternoon. Troops should be sent immediately, as we are not in position to leave this bull outfit and they can not come in by no means.

  Yours,

  THOS. DILLON 31

  It was clear at once to Carrington that Red Cloud had not been merely boasting when he told Black Horse he would cut off further travel from Fort Reno. Three trains were under simultaneous attack—Burrowes’, Dillon’s and Kirkendall’s. And Black Horse and his Cheyennes were in the same area, complicating matters by presenting their letters of conduct signed by Carrington. The colonel wondered how many civilian wagon drivers, surrounded by Sioux, would stop to distinguish one tribesman from another.

  Without delay, Carrington aroused Captain Nathaniel Kinney and ordered him to march Company D with one of the mountain howitzers to Clear Fork and relieve Burrowes.

  What Carrington did not know on this dark night was that the main force of Sioux was engaged still farther south against a party of thirty-four, which included five long-overdue officer replacements for the 2nd Battalion. For twenty-four hours they had been the victims of an Indian surround, typical in most of its features of the classic surrounds which would become a part of the folklore of the West.

  Their story began at Fort Sedgwick, where Musician Frank Fessenden had been left with his wife back in May. After Carrington’s Traveling Circus moved on, the Fessendens became parents of the baby girl whom Captain Fetterman jestingly suggested should be named Sedgwick. Late in June they journeyed by army ambulance to Fort Laramie, and on July 13 left there with a small detachment under Lieutenant George Templeton en route to Fort Reno. In addition to Mrs. Fessenden, two other women were in the party, the wife of Lieutenant Alexander H. Wands, and her colored maid, Laura. The Wands also had a small child, a son named Bobby. In addition, three civilians accompanied the detachment, including the Philadelphia photographer, Ridgway Glover, and a former officer of Missouri Volunteers, Captain Marr.

  “Our first camp after leaving Fort Laramie,” Fessenden recorded, “a number of Indians came to our command. They appeared very friendly—so much so that it excited our curiosity. We soon discovered the reason. The squaws wanted to buy our baby, offering beads, furs and trinkets of all kinds in exchange. When we refused they acted very sullen, and told us plainly they would steal her if they got the chance.”32 For the remainder of the journey the Fessendens and the Wands guarded their children with special care.

  After the detachment crossed the Platte at Bridger’s Ferry, Ridgway Glover set up his camera and made a stereoscopic view of the river, but he was disappointed to find “very little scenery worth photographing.”33

  At Fort Reno they were joined by Chaplain David White and Assistant Surgeon C. M. Hines, who were under orders to report to Carrington. Captain Joshua Proctor, commanding at Reno, was reluctant to grant Templeton’s party permission to proceed to the Pineys. Templeton had ten enlisted men, four lieutenants (Alexander Wands, James H. Bradley, Napoleon H. Daniels, Prescott M. Skinner), Chaplain White, Surgeon Hines, nine wagon drivers, and three civilians—or only twenty-nine armed men, including himself.

  Proctor, however, recognized that all the officers and several of the men had long Civil War records, and he finally issued a permit to pass. Early in the morning of July 20, their five wagons and two ambulances rolled northward on the Bozeman Trail. As they had only four saddle horses, the officers took turns at riding.

  One of the enlisted men, S. S. Peters, afterward wrote an account of the latter part of the journey. The first night camp, he said, was excessively warm, and coyotes howled unceasingly so that sleep was almost impossible. “Lieutenant Daniels, an Indianan, was especially restless and came over to where I was on guard and walked the beat with me. He said that he had a presentiment that something was going to happen to him very soon and he did not know how to account for it. All efforts to discourage him from entertaining the gloomy phantasy were unavailing, and he seemed determined to dwell upon it, and remained with me until the signal for calling in the guard was given and preparations were ordered made for the start before daylight.”

  They marched to Dry Creek without incident, hoping to find water there. They found not water, but in the dry basin of a pool they discovered the dead body of a white man, filled with arrows, scalped, and mutilated. “The fragment of a gray shirt still hanging about the shoulders of the dead man indicated that he was in all probability a soldier. He was evidently a courier.”

  After a hasty burial, they resumed march. “The finding of the dead body … had a very depressing effect on the entire command, and with the ascending sun the heat became intense. Our water supply, which was meagre at the best, had now given completely out and the animals began showing signs of severe suffering.”34

  As they approached Crazy Woman Creek around nine o’clock in the morning they could see the first thin fringe of cottonwoods five miles away, and beyond on a slope several dark moving objects. Lieutenant Daniels put his field glass on the objects and pronounced them to be buffalo. He persuaded Lieutenant Templeton that it would be a good idea for them to ride ahead, cross the creek somewhere above the buffalo and turn the herd in toward the road. By the time the wagons reached the valley, the buffalo should be within shooting distance of the entire party. Daniels took the lead, galloping away with Templeton close behind.

  A few minutes later the train dropped down a hill toward the creek, and a belt of timber screened the two officers from view. Everyone was alert, readying rifles for the expected chase, forgetting thirst and heat in the excitement. For a hundred yards the trail ran through deep sand that slowed the pace of the mules; the drivers shouted, slapping their reins, eager to reach the creek.

  “The entire detachment was in this dry bed urging the teams through the sand, when to our complete astonishment a volley of arrows and rifle-shots were poured into us. The shots were accompanied with a chorus of savage yells, and the timber land and brush above and about us was fairly alive with Indians.”35

  Miraculously no one was hurt in this first violent attack, and because rifles were held ready for the expected buffalo, fire was returned almost instantly. Led by Lieutenant Bradley, a dozen men jumped from the wagons and charged up a slope ahead of the lead team, driving the Sioux back toward the creek. Wagons and ambulances were brought up out of the sandy bed to higher ground. The first wagon was swung crossways, the second and fourth moving to the left, the third and fifth to the right, and then the two ambulances were swung crosswise to close the square, with leader and swing mules being turned inside for protection.

  Even before this hasty corral was formed, the Sioux came whooping back, but another volley sent them scurrying. A moment later a riderless horse dashed out of the brush, its saddle twisted under, arrows sticking from neck and flanks. It was Lieutenant Daniels’ mount. The premonition of doom he had revealed to Private Peters had come true. “A second later, Lieutenant Templeton appeared, riding up out of the dry bed of the creek, hatless, two or three arrows in his horse’s withers and flanks, and an arrow in his own back. Templeton was bleeding profusely from a wound in the face, and his whole visage was one of extreme terror, and as soon as he reached the corral he reeled and partly fell from his horse. He was lifted from the saddle in a state of complete collapse.” Before he lost consciousness, Templeton uttered four words: “Daniels! My God, Indians!”36

>   The wounded lieutenant was laid in one of the wagons for protection. Surgeon Hines removed the arrow as quickly as possible, but he could not remain to dress the wound. He was needed back on the line with a rifle. The Sioux were closing in, and two mules were already so badly wounded they had to be cut loose.

  With Templeton out of action, Lieutenant Wands assumed command, and from his Civil War experience he realized that he was in an untenable position. The Sioux were sheltered by trees and brush and could pick off animals and soldiers one by one.

  A half mile to the south was a high treeless knoll. Once corralled and dug in there, they could hold out at least until dark. But a withdrawal to a new position would be extremely dangerous. After a quick conference it was decided to bunch the wagons, two in front, the ambulances with the women and children next, and the other three wagons following as cover. Bradley, with seven men, established a rear guard, and Wands and Skinner with twelve men covered the flanks and advance.

  As soon as the movement was begun, the Sioux guessed its purpose, and a party swarmed out of the creek bottom, attempting to reach the hill first.

  “The advance guard held their ground like heroes,” Private Peters recorded, “and fought every foot of the way. The teams were kept on the run and then came the charge of twelve men under Lieutenant Wands and Lieutenant Skinner up the hill for its possession. The Indians were poor shooters, and wounded only two men in the charge … then broke and ran from the hill. Captain Marr, who had a Henry rifle, a sixteen shooter, used it with wholesome effect on the running Indians, and stopped two of them permanently. They were gathered up, however, by a bunch of Indian horsemen and carried away. … In the meanwhile the rear guard was holding the Indians in check from the creek side, and the wagons and ambulances were safely brought to the hill. A corral was immediately made, with mules inside the corral. The ambulances were protected by the wagons. …”37