The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  On this same day, photographer Ridgway Glover wrote the editor of the Philadelphia Photographer that he was “waiting for the medical supply train to come up, to get some chemicals, being at present in a ‘stick’; but though unable to make negatives, I have been enjoying the climate and scenery, both being delightful.”18 Glover had made several views, the nature of which he did not disclose. He was not destined to live until the medical supplies arrived in October.

  As soon as General Hazen departed, work on the fort returned to normal. The weather had been good all month, the clear nights growing perceptibly cooler as August drew to a close. The Sioux held off attacks on the heavily guarded wood trains, but from the middle or latter part of August, as Carrington reported afterward, “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 Indian tribes about me. … I had at first little drill on parade, except at roll call, but I had willing, obedient soldiers. Drunkenness was rare; the post was orderly and quiet at all times. My men went from guard duty to hard work, and from hard work to guard duty without a murmur. Often they could not have two consecutive nights in bed, and were always subject to instant call.” 19

  Muster rolls of the fort for August 31 showed 345 officers and men present for duty, 43 absent.

  * Holladay operated the Overland Mail system through the West.

  †Tenyears later in 1876, Lieutenant Bradley was in command of the company of mounted scouts which discovered Custer’s dead at Little Big Horn. He was killed in action during the Nez Percé War of 1877.

  VI. September:

  DRYING GRASS MOON

  The foregoing furnishes an outline of the main hostile demonstrations in September resulting in loss of stock or life; but, as will appear from my official correspondence, there were other and almost constant hostile demonstrations of some kind requiring of the garrison that every detail sent out for whatever purpose should exercise constant watchfulness and be kept well in hand.1

  ON THE FIRST DAY of September snow fell on the Big Horns only four miles from Fort Phil Kearny. In the hayfields along Goose Creek and out toward Lake De Smet, the high grass had turned a golden yellow. Reacting to these signs of approaching autumn, Lieutenant Fred Brown kept his quartermaster crews working long hours. Great mounds of hay for stock were heaped in the quartermaster yard; billets and bark slabs for winter fuel were stacked high in an improvised woodyard.

  On the 4th a long-overdue freight train escorted by a detachment of the 2nd Cavalry arrived at the fort in four sections, fifty-three wagons in all, loaded with commissary and military stores brought overland from Nebraska by contractor A. Caldwell. The sacks and barrels of hams, beef, bacon, flour, coffee, sugar, hardtack and soap ensured adequate rations for weeks ahead, but Quartermaster Brown was deeply disappointed that not one bag of corn or oats was in the shipment. Horses and mules under his care were losing weight daily from their monotonous diet of hay.

  For lack of ready tents and storehouse space, unloading was delayed four days, and on the morning of the 8th, during a blinding storm of wind and rain, a corralled herd broke loose from contractor Caldwell’s train. The wagoners pursued, but a band of Sioux in the vicinity made off with twenty of the stampeded horses and mules. Later in the day—as if this easy booty had aroused their zeal for raiding—the Indians made a daring strike at one of the fort’s herds. Carrington’s alert pickets headed them off, however, and Lieutenants Brown and Adair gave the raiders a fast chase into the hills.

  On that same day the industrious Lieutenant Brown sat on a board of survey with Lieutenant Wands, “to examine and report upon the quality and condition of certain military stores and supplies arrived at this post.” As was usual in long overland shipments, there were shortages in Caldwell’s bills of lading. The hams and bacon had shrunk; soap and coffee were short; 210 sacks of flour and 238 boxes of P. Bread (pilot bread or hardtack) were missing.

  After hours of questioning drivers and members of the train’s cavalry escort, Brown and Wands finally adjusted matters satisfactorily. They were inclined to be lenient because Caldwell had been delayed four days for unloading and then had lost livestock to the Sioux. Meat shrinkages were blamed on “drying out in a dry season” and “oil and grease absorbed into sacks.” Sergeant William H. Brooks, in charge of the 2nd Cavalry detachment, presented a written receipt explaining shortages of soap and coffee: “On the road between Laramie and Fort Reno, the Sgt. in charge of the escort run short of provisions and got an order from Captain Shanks commanding a post on the road [Bridger’s Ferry] and on this order took from this train 17½ lbs. roasted coffee and 10 lbs. of soap.” The missing flour and P. Bread had been erroneously unloaded at Fort Reno “owing to changes in names of military posts in this District since this [Fort Phil Kearny] has been started.”2

  Two days later, the 10th, the Sioux returned with a band of Arapaho allies, eager for more horses. In the deceptive faint light of early dawn, they swept down the hills and cut out forty-two mules from a grazing herd belonging to A. C. Leighton, who had just brought up several wagons of supplies for the sutler’s store. Lieutenant Adair pursued for twenty miles, but caught no Indians, recovered no stock.* His horses, starving for grain, were no match for the fleet Indian ponies.

  While Adair was still out, the Indians, in a gesture almost of contempt for the soldiers’ ability to pursue, raided again—this time one of the fort’s herds only a mile from the stockade—and swept away thirty-three horses and seventy-eight mules. “They were pursued promptly,” Carrington reported, “but night and broken-down horses rendered pursuit hopeless.”3

  This was a most serious loss of riding and draft stock, and no doubt led the colonel to make an immediate decision concerning recruitment of a company of Indian scouts which had been authorized by General Cooke on August 11. Carrington would have liked Jim Bridger’s counsel on this matter. Back in June the scout had warned against re-enlisting Winnebagos for fear it would antagonize the Sioux. But the Sioux had already demonstrated their inflexible hostility, and Carrington decided he must act before Bridger returned from Fort C. F. Smith.

  “I have the honor,” he wrote General Cooke that evening, “to send by bearer, Mr. W. B. C. Smith, who desires to organize a band of Winnebago scouts, the following report, as he goes by stage and may anticipate a mail. He is a good man for the work, if it has not been earlier attempted. … I sent twenty-five of my best mounted men with Gen. Hazen—have no corn, and with all pains to keep up my stock can not pursue successfully until I have more cavalry … if the single company of Indians, which were sent down for muster out on my way here, had been with me I could have punished the Indians and regained much stock. …” 4

  The day ended sadly for the garrison of Fort Phil Kearny. Bandmaster Samuel Curry, who had been ill only a few days, died of an ailment diagnosed by Surgeon Horton as typhoid pneumonia. “The night he died,” Frank Fessenden recalled, “I well remember how the wolves howled and made the night hideous, and we could hear them scratch at the stockade posts.” Next morning the band under a new leader, Peter Damme, marched with muffled drums to the cemetery at the base of Pilot Hill. “When we buried the body we had to dig very deep, place heavy planks over the box, and then haul heavy stones and fill the grave to prevent the wolves from digging the body out.” Bandmaster Curry was the first occupant of the post’s rapidly growing graveyard to die of natural causes.5

  After a three-day respite, the Sioux and Arapaho unleashed a well-co-ordinated double thrust at the fort’s beef herd and upon a camp of about eighty civilian hay cutters along Goose Creek. The attacks came late in the day, and it was after midnight before a messenger brought the alarm to Fort Phil Kearny.

  John Bratt, a bullwhacker who arrived at the fort early in September, had hired out to the hay contractor, Leviticus Carter, for sixty dollars per month, and was present during the fighting at the hay camp. He reported:

  One after
noon the Indians had made several attacks on us. They killed three of our men and wounded some others, captured nearly all our mowing and rake teams and had us all corralled on a high hill where we spent the evening and greater part of the night in digging rifle pits and defending ourselves and the stock we had left.

  Mr. Carter was with us and paid our old stuttering blacksmith, Jose, five hundred dollars to go to the fort to get relief. … Mr. Carter knew Jose and he knew he would execute the order or die in the attempt. … We estimated that more than one thousand Indians had us surrounded, and judging from the many signal fires being built around us other Indians were being told to come and help finish us. … It must have been about nine o’clock in the evening when Jose mounted the best horse we had in camp and started for the fort. A few stars were out but the night was rather dark. Thin clouds of smoke from the prairie fire the Indians had started in the afternoon hung over our camp. … Jose, armed with two revolvers and a sharp butcher knife on his belt, had been gone some ten minutes … when to our surprise he came at breakneck speed into camp followed by a bunch of Indians, some of whom we tumbled off their horses before they escaped. Mr. Carter and others were soon at Jose’s side asking him what he proposed to do next when Jose answered, “I most believe I will try it another way,” and in less than ten minutes he disappeared in the darkness in an opposite direction. …

  Just about the peep of day we saw the Indians scattering to right and left of a large body of mounted men … with old Jose in the lead.”6

  It was Jose, the blacksmith, who taking a circuitous route had finally reached Fort Phil Kearny about one o’clock in the morning of the 13th and awakened Colonel Carrington. “Six mowing machines had been broken with hatchets, hay heaped upon them and fired,” Carrington reported later. “ I sent Lieutenant Adair with forty men to relieve them, in wagons. Six miles out, a small body of Indians rode toward the train; prompt deployment of the men sent them galloping to the hills. Lieutenant Adair reports from two hundred to three hundred Indians on the hills following his course.”7

  A most damaging blow in this double action was suffered by the fort’s beef herd which had been grazing nearby under a guard of a sergeant and ten men. The Indians shrewdly maneuvered a buffalo herd into the area, drove them among the cattle, and stampeded the combined animals. At least two hundred beef cattle, sorely needed for the post’s meat supply, were irrecoverably lost.

  That morning Carrington scarcely had time to promise contractor Carter a stronger military guard for his hay cutters and to offer assistance in the prompt repair of mowing machines, before the Indians struck again. They stampeded a convalescent herd of horses and mules just outside the stockade, wounding two privates on picket duty, one taking an arrow in his hip, the other a bullet in his side. Captain Ten Eyck and Lieutenants Brown, Bisbee and Wands led mounted parties out in various directions, but all returned without success, blaming failure to overtake the scattering raiders on the poor condition of their horses. After this night and day of staggering losses, Carrington decided he must tighten defensive measures against the hostiles, and issued a new special order:

  1. Owing to recent depredation of Indians near Fort Philip Kearny, Dak., the post commander [Ten Eyck] will issue such regulation and at once provide such additional escorts for wood trains, guard for stock and hay and the steam saw-mills as the chief quartermaster [Brown] may deem essential. He will also give

  2. Instructions, so that upon Indian alarm no troops leave the post without an officer or under the antecedent direction of an officer, and the garrison will be so organized that it may at all times be available and disposable for exterior duty or interior defense.

  3. One relief of the guard will promptly support any picket threatened at night, and the detail on posts should be visited hourly by a non-commissioned officer of the guard between the hours of posting successive reliefs.

  4. Stringent regulations are enjoined to prevent camp rumors and false reports, and any picket or soldier bringing reports of Indian sign or hostilities must be required to report to the post commander or officer of the day or to the nearest commissioned officer in cases of urgent import.

  5. Owing to the non-arrival of corn for the post and the present reduced condition of the public stock, the quartermaster is authorized, upon the approval of the post commander, to purchase sufficient corn for moderate issues, to last until a supply already due, shall arrive, but the issue will be governed by the condition of the stock, and will only be issued to horses unless the same in half ration shall be necessary for such mules as are daily in use and can not graze or be furnished with hay.

  6. Reports will be made of all Indian depredations, with the results, in order that a proper summary may be sent to department headquarters.

  7. Soldiers while on duty in the timber or elsewhere are forbidden to waste ammunition in hunting, every hour of their time being indispensable in preparing for their own comfort and the well-being of the garrison during the approaching winter.8

  The next day another casualty was added to the morning report. Private Allando Gilchrist, unreported for four days, was listed as “missing, presumed killed by Indians” when “a portion of his clothes were found bloody, without his body.”9

  Two days later, Sunday the 16th, a train of twelve wagons was sent out to the hay flats near Lake De Smet. A rifleman sat beside each driver, and six mounted infantrymen covered flanks, rear, and forward positions. After the wagons were loaded, Private Peter Johnson moved out on point position and carelessly allowed his horse to take him three or four hundred yards ahead of the slow-moving train. As Johnson approached a ravine, an Indian dashed suddenly between him and the wagons. “Johnson would have been all right had he returned to the hay detail,” said Private John Ryan, one of the guards, “but he must have become confused, as he started toward the fort with the evident intention of trying to outride the Indian. The savage, however, mounted on a fast pony, rapidly gained on him, when Johnson apparently lost his head completely, jumped off his horse, threw his gun away, and made for a washout east of the road. Being still armed with a six-shooter, he could have defended himself, but he did not, and the Indian had no trouble capturing him.”

  According to Ryan there was nothing the others could do to help Johnson. The hills surrounding them had suddenly become alive with Indians, and any attempt to leave the protection of the wagons might have sacrificed the entire party. Another problem was shortage of ammunition (Carrington still had received none since leaving Laramie). “The guards had but three rounds of ammunition to the man and the teamsters were practically unarmed.”10 After the hay train reached the fort and reported the incident, Lieutenant Brown led a large detachment out to the scene, but no trace was ever found of Peter Johnson’s body.

  On this same Sunday one of the fort’s civilians, Ridgway Glover, was also spending his last day on earth. “He had a camera outfit,” said Frank Fessenden, “and was taking views for his paper. While taking pictures he would go around alone on the mountains, and sometimes would not be seen for five or six days at a time. He made his headquarters with the woodchoppers. He had long yellow hair, and I had often told him that the Indians would delight to clip that hair for him some day. He said he was safe, as the Indians would take him for a Mormon.”

  For some reason on this Sunday, Glover decided to leave the timber camps and go to the fort. When the photographer was told that the wood train detail had been given a Sunday holiday, he announced that he intended to walk in alone. “The woodchoppers tried to get him to remain and wait for the wood train Monday. He left one cutting and said he would go to the other, which he did. The men at this cutting also warned him of the danger, and almost certain death, if he attempted to go on to the fort alone. He told these choppers that he would return to the other cutting—which he did not do, as he was on his way to the fort alone, when he met the certain fate which overtook every man caught alone away from the garrison. Glover had escaped so many times that he apparently thoug
ht he was Indian proof.”11

  They found his naked body next morning less than two miles from the stockade. He had been scalped, his back cleft with a hatchet. Lieutenant Bisbee, commanding the detail which discovered Glover, said he was “lying face down across the roadway, a sign that he had not been brave.”12 An ambulance was attached to Bisbee’s detail, the driver being the same Private Ryan who had witnessed the capture of Peter Johnson the previous day.

  “We were something over a mile from the fort,” Ryan recalled,13 “and I could look across the Big Piney to the north and the Little Piney to the south and see Indians who were watching our every movement, and I did not relish the idea of going back unsupported by the soldiers, and I asked the officer [Bisbee] if he did not think the body would be all right where it was for a while, and we could get it on our return. He was obdurate, however, and said, ‘Young man, if you don’t obey my orders it will go hard with you.’ I told him it would go hard with me also if the Indians caught me, but I had to go back just the same.”*

  The reason for Lieutenant Bisbee’s impatience was that he was in command of a follow-up party to a large mounted detachment under Lieutenant Brown, who as usual was pursuing Indians. Early that morning a large force of hostiles had appeared out of the valley at the junction of the Pineys, galloping upon what was left of the fort’s beef herd. The pickets being short of ammunition withheld fire until the raiders surprised them by using revolvers for the first time in an attack. Forty-eight head of cattle were cut loose, but this time Fred Brown was ready for immediate pursuit and was successful in recapturing all the stock. In his report of this action, Colonel Carrington said that he witnessed the swift attack and was fearful that all the pickets would be killed before a rescue party could reach them. “I loaded and fired a 12-pound field howitzer, having no one else experienced, bursting the first shell in the Indians’ midst. This drove them back to the creek. A second shell dismounted one Indian, and all crossed to the hills.”14