The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  They dug a ring of rifle pits just outside the corral, and for the first time felt some sense of security. The scorching sun and lack of water seemed more unbearable than the constantly yelling Sioux, who now kept beyond rifle range.

  The photographer, Ridgway Glover, meanwhile had been awaiting a good time and place to set up his Roettger camera. The Indians, he said, “looked very wild and savage-like while galloping around us; and I desired to make some instantaneous views.”38 Lieutenant Wands, however, forbade Glover to do so. Under the circumstances, Wands doubtless felt that if Glover meant to shoot Indians he should do so with a rifle rather than a camera. Thus was lost one of the rarest opportunities to photograph an Indian attack, although the slow-speed camera shutter of that period probably would have caught only a series of blurs as the Indians swept past on their ponies.

  Not long after the establishment of the defensive position, a shower of arrows zipped in from the left without warning, wounding three men. One of the wounded was Chaplain White, more angered than injured. The arrows came again, seeming to fly out of the ground, but closer observation revealed their source as a narrow ravine, cutting its way down toward the creek. The Sioux had crept up this ditch unobserved until they were in arrow range.

  White and an enlisted man named Fuller volunteered to clear out the ravine. Running crouched forward, the two men charged the position. White was armed with an old-fashioned pepperbox seven-shooter pistol, Fuller with a rifle. They dropped out of sight, and a moment later the watchers on the hill heard what sounded like a volley of rapid fire. Several Sioux leaped from the ravine, the men in the rifle pits opening fire upon them. Shortly afterward White and Fuller reappeared. “Got two of the devils!” the chaplain shouted. “Ravine clear down as far as the creek.”39 All seven charges in his pepperbox had gone off at once, killing one Indian and frightening the others into flight.

  The afternoon wore on, the men in the pits suffering acutely from thirst. Every few minutes a party of mounted Sioux would circle the hill, yelling their eerie wolflike war cries. Occasionally two or three warriors would swing to the off sides of their ponies and make quick dashes close to the corral, firing with remarkable accuracy from under their ponies’ necks. By midafternoon, over half the men in the detachment were wounded, some seriously.

  In Frank Fessenden’s account of this ordeal he told of seeing a Sioux “stationed on a little hill directing the fight by signals with a flag.”40 The most disturbing sight of the afternoon, however, was the sudden appearance down by the creek of a man dressed in army blues. When the figure began a savage dance, they realized it was a Sioux warrior dressed in Lieutenant Daniels’ uniform.

  Near sundown the piteous moaning of the wounded men for water led Lieutenant Wands to risk a dash for the creek. A small detail collected empty canteens and water buckets, and crawled one by one over into the ravine held by Chaplain White and Private Fuller. Then a diversionary party moved out of the rifle pits to cover the water detail concealed in the ditch.

  Either the Sioux misunderstood the purpose of the action, or they could not resist the opportunity of rushing the weakened defenses of the corral. They ignored the diversionary party, and swarmed up to the rifle pits. With coolly spaced firing, however, the remaining riflemen—many of whom were already minor casualties—drove the chargers back. Before the Sioux could reform, the water detail was back, the first canteens being passed in to Mrs. Wands and Mrs. Fessenden, who were attending the severely wounded cases. “The two ladies,” said Private Peters, “were angels of mercy and tenderness and looked after the wounded most heroically and bravely.”

  Refreshed by water, some of the wounded returned to the pits just in time to help beat off two direct mounted charges. The Sioux—about 160 of them according to Fessenden—attacked fiercely, killing one sergeant and seriously wounding three more men. “Our condition was now becoming so desperate that a council of war was held. It was solemnly decided, that in case it came to the worst that we would mercifully kill all the wounded … and then ourselves.” Chaplain White, who had returned from the ravine for the conference, was reluctant to agree to this. He volunteered to try to cut his way out of the surround and ride back to Fort Reno for reinforcements. Private William Wallace immediately offered to join the chaplain in the attempt, and Wands and Marr offered their saddle horses.

  “They were properly mounted and furnished with a revolver each, and heroically rode out from the corral amid the prayers and God speeds of the little band. They succeeded in reaching the dry creek bed before they were apparently discovered by the Indians. As they rode out of the creek bed up toward the hill, a body of Indians were seen to hurriedly ride out from the forks of the two creeks up the hill toward the two couriers. The ride was a magnificent one. White and Wallace saw the Indians coming and put spurs to their horses and soon reached the crest of the hill far in advance of their pursuers. A moment or two later, pursued and pursuers were lost to view in the gathering twilight, for the sun was already going down beyond the Big Horn Mountains to the west of us.”41

  As the long summer twilight deepened, the air turned cooler. The Sioux made no more attacks, but seemed to be gathering along the creek for a council of war of their own. Just before dark the men in the pits saw a dust cloud off to the northwest, and with dejected spirits watched its rapid approach. They were certain it marked the trail of reinforcements for the Sioux.

  A few seconds later the Indians along the creek began dispersing, small groups moving away in different directions. Daylight was almost gone now, the mounted Indians vanishing into the dark smudge of cottonwoods.

  One of the riflemen cried out, pointing to a low ridge beyond the leftward ravine. A silhouette of an approaching horseman was black against the paling sky. Before the lone rider reached the ravine, Lieutenant Wands called an order to halt.

  The horseman reined up, shouting that he was a friend.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jim Bridger.”42

  And so it was. The men cheered Old Gabe as he let his horse pick its way around the ravine and up to the corral. He told them that Captain Burrowes and two companies of the 2nd Battalion were coming down the road a mile or so back. The action at Crazy Woman’s Fork was ended.

  Next morning they found Lieutenant Daniels’ body near the road. Frank Fessenden, a member of the search party, said it had been pierced by three bullets and “there were twenty-two arrows sticking in it.”43 Daniels’ scalp and fingers were gone, and he had been “barbarously tortured with a stake inserted from below.”44 The men also found a dead Sioux in a ditch nearby; in the Indian’s possessions were the lieutenant’s shirt and scalp.

  On the advice of Bridger and Captain Burrowes, Lieutenant Wands decided to turn back to Fort Reno with the wagon train. The return march had scarcely begun when they met a detachment of mounted infantry led by Lieutenant Kirtland from Reno. With the horsemen were Chaplain White and Private Wallace, safe but weary from their long night ride.

  In the last week of July, the Wands party returned with Burrowes’ wagon train to the Pineys, where the young officers at last reported for duty with the 2nd Battalion. Carrington welcomed them warmly, assigned them to companies, and they were soon engaged in the major work at hand—the building of the fort.

  Ridgway Glover was delighted with the fort and the scenery around it, although he was disappointed over a failure to obtain photographs of some visiting Cheyennes. “My collodion was too hot, and my bath too full of alcohol,” he wrote the editor of the Philadelphia Photographer, “to get any pictures of them, though I tried hard.” He added that the military camp was “hemmed in by yelling savages who are surprising and killing some one every day. I expect to get some good pictures here, and hope that before Christmas you will see how these mountains look in July.” 45

  Frank Fessenden reported to Bandmaster Samuel Curry and was assigned a double tent for his wife and child. In addition to morning and evening band duties, Fessenden assisted with const
ruction work. The stockade around the 400-foot square of the main fort was almost completed now, and foundations were being laid for quartermaster storehouses. “Colonel Carrington,” wrote Fessenden, “was a very busy man, and took great interest in the building of the fort. He was always out early in the morning and saw that everyone was in charge of their special departments, doing their duty.”46

  During the first ten days of construction, Carrington had been pondering over a name for his new fort. Officially it was Fort Reno, but he had already notified Omaha that he was retaining the original Fort Reno. Some of his junior officers suggested that it be called Fort Carrington, but he knew that recent Army policy disapproved use of names of living officers for forts. The problem was solved when Adjutant Phisterer opened the mail-bag brought back from Reno by Captain Burrowes. Among the dispatches was an order from the Department of the Platte:

  The 2nd Battalion, 18th U.S. Infantry, will take post as follows:

  Two companies at Fort Reno, on Powder River; four companies about 80 miles nearly north of Reno, on the new route to Virginia City, Montana. … This post will be known as Fort Philip Kearny.47

  And so on July 27, Carrington issued a general order proclaiming the new post as Fort Philip Kearny, in honor of the heroic one-armed general killed in action at Chantilly in 1862. To veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, however, General Kearny was Phil Kearny, and in popular usage the post would be Fort Phil Kearny.

  On July 29 a contract wagon train arrived with the long-overdue steam sawmill which had been badly damaged at Scotts Bluff when the eight-yoke bull team hauling it had stampeded down a steep hill into the North Platte. Carrington ordered Engineer Gregory to put the steam mill into operation immediately. He also notified Quartermaster Fred Brown to establish a timber cutters’ camp on Piney Island and to make preparations for daily log train movements from the cuttings to the fort.

  The steam sawmill was a Lane & Bodley, manufactured at Cincinnati, and was set up to slab large logs on two sides so that each would have a touching surface of at least four inches. It was equipped with a steam whistle which soon proved useful for sounding Indian alarms. (When the mill was renovated in 1940, the cast flange was found to have been mended in several places with strips of wrought iron; one of the bearings from the saw shaft had been crudely babbitted, and several holes had been cut through the frame with cold chisels. Some of these repairs may have been made after the accident at Scotts Bluff; others probably by J. B. Gregory. But in spite of its condition, the mill sawed thousands of feet of timber for construction of Fort Phil Kearny.)

  Piney Island, the source of timber six miles west of the fort, was not a real island but was a thick stand of tall pines surrounded by North and South Piney and Spring creeks.* Frank Fessenden, who was occasionally assigned to timber-cutting duties, said there were two separate loggers’ camps. “We built two blockhouses, one at each cutting, we having what was known as the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ cuttings. Detachments of men went out and cut timber each day. Every morning twenty wagons were sent out for this purpose. About half a mile before reaching the timber, the road forked at an angle of about 45 degrees, one road running to each cutting. Here we found trees that were 90 feet to first limb and straight as an arrow.”48

  Operation of logging and hauling work was Quartermaster Brown’s responsibility, and he used both military and civilian personnel. He must have been at constant odds with company, battalion and regimental adjutants in efforts to secure adequate details of men. To add to his burdens, wild grass in the nearby bottomlands was ripening for mowing, and he had to find additional men to operate mowing machines and rakes.

  During this busy period the weather was fine, the air dry and winy, temperatures sometimes reaching ninety during the afternoons but dropping to sixty after dark. Only six men reported on sick call during the month of July, and these were minor surgical cases, results of accidents.

  The clear nights were beautiful with a sky full of huge glittering stars, and sometimes a moon bathed the snow-clad Big Horns in a magical silver. By moonlight the limitless expanse of hills and mountains seemed empty, the silence broken by the deep roar of Big Piney. Late in the month, wolves began gathering after dark around the slaughter yard near Little Piney, howling and snarling over the offal there, ending the peaceful nights. For a time sentries were permitted to fire at the wolves, but the firing broke more sleep than the animals’ howls, and Carrington forbade the practice, ordering poison put out to kill them. The unseen but watchful Indians noted this change, and one night a Sioux warrior donned a wolfskin, crept near the stockade, and shot a sentry from the banquette. A man was dead; another lesson in frontier warfare had been learned.

  By the 29th of July, Carrington had completed interviewing leaders (Dillon and Kirkendall) of civilian trains which had been attacked by the Sioux at the same time Lieutenant Wands’ party was under siege at Crazy Woman’s Fork. The colonel was much disturbed by reported treacherous actions of the Sioux. In two instances the Indians had approached trains, expressing friendship, and then after shaking hands and accepting presents of tobacco, had shot their benefactors in the backs.

  There was no longer any doubt in Carrington’s mind that Red Cloud had opened aggressive operations in his rear, threatening communications with the outside world. At the same time, General Cooke in Omaha had already made clear that no reinforcements could be expected before autumn. The arrival of Alex Wands and the other three lieutenants had been a timely gain, but the post was still so short of officers that two lieutenants were alternating as officer-of-the-day.

  On the 29th, Carrington decided his situation was grave enough to warrant a direct appeal to The Adjutant General in Washington. After protesting the transfers of Captain Haymond and Lieutenant Phisterer to recruiting duties, he added: “I have to give sergeants important duties, having for a line of one hundred miles active Indian hostilities. Lieutenant Daniels, en route to join me with escort of fifteen men, was scalped and horribly mutilated. I have lost three men, killed and wounded, besides Lieutenant Daniels. I need officers and either Indian auxiliaries or men of my regiment to build my posts, prepare for winter, and clear out the Indians. I can resist all attacks and do much active fighting, but I have a long line to watch and cover. The Indians are aggressive to stop the new route.”49

  The next day he also composed a long report for General Cooke:

  Character of Indian affairs hostile. The treaty does not yet benefit this route. … My ammunition has not arrived; neither has my Leavenworth supply train. Working parties keep arms in constant readiness for use: and with this dispatch I send an escort to look for advices and guard emigrants and supplies.

  My infantry make poor riders, and, as I can only fight Indians successfully on foot, my horses suffer in pursuit and in fight.

  I am equal to any attack they may make, but have to build quarters and prepare for winter, escort trains, and guaranty the whole road from the Platte to Virginia City with eight companies of infantry. I have to economize ammunition, and yet, from Kearney out, I picked up all I could get. I send two officers on recruiting service, under peremptory orders from Washington, leaving me crippled and obliged to trust too much to non-commissioned officers … there is at Laramie and elsewhere a false security, which results in emigrant trains scattering between posts, and involving danger to themselves and others.

  … It is a critical period with the road, and many more outrages will injure it. Still, if emigrants will properly arm and keep together, having due warning, I have confidence in the route.

  … My eight companies of eighty effective men each, with quarters to build, and 560 of them new recruits … do not give me a fixed adequate command for the present emergency. My own supply trains are to be guarded, trains are to be escorted, a courier line is to be maintained. Whatever my own force I can not settle down and say I have not the men; I must do all this, however arduous. The work is my mission here and I must meet it. But … when I am
my own engineer, draughtsman, and visit my pickets and guards nightly, with scarcely a day or night without attempts to steal stock or surprise pickets, you will see that much is being done, while I ought to have all my officers and some cavalry or Indian auxiliaries at each post.50

  On the 31st, the harassed colonel wound up his paper work for the month of July by ordering F Company to join B Company at Reno—in compliance with Cooke’s order to retain that fort as a two-company post. At the same time he brought Fort Phil Kearny’s strength to four companies by transferring E and H to the permanent garrison. As Companies A and C were already assigned to Phil Kearny, this left D and G to make the march north to the Big Horn River to build the third post on the Montana Road.

  * This system was later adopted by the British for construction of log defenses in South Africa and India.

  * It is the present site of Story, Wyoming.

  V. August:

  MOON WHEN THE GEESE SHED THEIR FEATHERS

  From the middle or latter part of August, Indians appeared more frequently about Fort Philip Kearny, and from that time I assumed the condition of affairs to be decided, unequivocal hostility on the part of the Indian tribes about me. On the 29th August I made reports to the department commander of the condition of affairs.1

  AUGUST WAS TO BE a month of accelerated activities as Fort Phil Kearny’s stockade was completed and warehouses and quarters began to take form around the green close-clipped parade. From sunrise to sundown, every day including Sundays, there was a continuous humming of sawmills, pounding of hammers and ripping of handsaws, as the post grew log by log. Military routines were cut to a minimum; the men were transformed into blacksmiths, painters, harness makers, teamsters, wheelwrights, carpenters. In Quartermaster Brown’s storage tents, details began unpacking quantities of nails, doors, sash, glass, and stoves.