The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  By that last week of September, Carrington had perfected the defenses of his fort to a point where the Indians respected its immediate power of retaliation, and no longer dared approach the stockade. Wagon trains, strongly guarded by escorts of seventy-five to one hundred men, were also seldom attacked. Two vulnerable points remained, however—Pilot Hill where mounted pickets rotated duty in fours, and the timber cuttings where the men, because of the nature of their work, were sometimes separated individually by several yards from their comrades.

  On the 27th, Red Cloud’s hostiles moved against both these weak positions. It was a sunny morning, with snow still lingering under the tall trees on Piney Island. The crack of axes and shouts of the cutters rang clear in the crisp air. Private Patrick Smith and two companions had worked their way upslope about half a mile from the nearest pine-log blockhouse; a dozen or more men were less than a hundred yards below them trimming fallen trunks in a partial clearing. Without warning nearly a hundred Indians dashed between the three men and the main party, and the latter immediately exchanged axes for rifles. Within a few minutes the cutters withdrew to the safety of their blockhouse. Shortly afterward two of the isolated men came in safely, after eluding the Indians by dashing into a thick part of the forest. They assumed that Private Smith was dead.

  Private Smith had been shot down by arrows and hastily scalped, the Indians leaving him to die. Recovering consciousness, he began crawling the half mile toward the blockhouse. He was too weak to withdraw the arrows deeply imbedded in his body, but managed to break off the shafts so that he could crawl unimpeded through the thickets.

  When he appeared, scalped and bleeding, before the blockhouse, his comrades lifted him into a bunk and sent an emergency detail hurrying to the fort for a surgeon.

  In the meantime the same band of Indians which scalped Private Smith had moved east from the cuttings, crossed Little Piney, and was making a dash toward Pilot Hill where four pickets were on duty.

  Margaret Carrington, who witnessed this incident, said “the sudden repeated shriek of the steamwhistle at the farther mill, and the equally hasty signal of the pickets, gave the alarm that Indians were again close by. We could all see fifteen Indians between the fort and the mountain, galloping … directly for Pilot Hill, with the plain purpose of capturing and scalping the picket under the very eyes of the garrison.”

  Lieutenants Brown and Adair by this time were out the gate and in hot pursuit with a party of twenty mounted men. “Private Rover (who is of a good Chicago family, and enlisted under the false name of Rover) was in charge of the picket.* He had been signally brave in several tight places before. On this occasion he dismounted his three men, turned his horses loose toward the fort with a good urgency, and slowly fell off the northern slope, with arms at a ‘ready’ to join the supporting party. The horses came down the steep grade toward the fort on a run, passing through the Indians, who dared not stop them and could only give them a few arrows as they passed.”27

  Lieutenant Brown, who seemed to consider Indian chasing a part of his regular quartermaster duties, pursued this band until almost dark. As he was on the point of breaking off pursuit, Brown saw the hostiles suddenly stop and parley with another party of Indians coming from the east. Brown ordered his men forward at a gallop; the hostiles scattered into the dusk, the other Indians remaining where they were. As Brown approached, he recognized the new arrivals as Cheyennes. Some were holding up the good-conduct passes signed by Carrington back in July.

  There were only nine of them, three chiefs, five warriors and a squaw. Two Moons was the spokesman. He said Black Horse was sick, that the old chief and the rest of the band were in the mountains. Two Moons’ party was en route to Fort Phil Kearny to ask the Little White Chief, Carrington, for permission to hunt in Tongue River valley.

  They were brought back to the fort, and after Carrington questioned them closely he granted permission to pass on to Tongue River. He also ordered the quartermaster to issue them rations of bacon and coffee, and told them they might camp for the night across Little Piney opposite the sawmills.

  By this time wagons from the pineries had come in, and the story of Private Smith spread rapidly through the fort. Nothing the Indians had done before had so aroused the anger of the men as the scalping of one of their comrades and leaving him to die. Stories of Smith’s blood-smeared face, the skin hanging in strips from his forehead, the broken arrows in his body, were recounted around all the mess fires that evening. The contract surgeon, Edwin Reid, marveled that the man was still alive; Reid had found it almost impossible to remove one arrow deep in Smith’s chest.

  From inside the fort the men could see the near campfires of the Cheyennes down by Little Piney. Those who had ridden with Brown and Adair that day were skeptical of the Cheyennes’ genuine friendliness. For all they knew, these Cheyennes might have been the ones who scalped Pat Smith and left him to die. If the Cheyennes were real friends of the soldiers, why had the hostile Sioux passed them by without harm?

  In the close confines of the 400-foot stockade, the men were restive, their bitterness deepening with the spreading rumors. Like General Sherman in his recent letter to Carrington, they were eager to “strike a blow” against any Indians; as the general had written, it seemed “impossible to tell the true from the false.”

  Chaplain David White, closer to the enlisted men than any of the officers, heard enough threats to worry him. Soon after tattoo was sounded, White called on Carrington and warned him that some of the men were talking openly of surrounding and killing the Cheyennes in their camp.

  Carrington summoned Captain Ten Eyck immediately, and suggested that the post commander throw a guard around the Cheyenne camp. The colonel as usual went along to see that everything was done properly, and when the two officers and the guard detail marched down toward the Indian campfire, they surprised a mob of some ninety soldiers spread out along the creek. “The troops,” Carrington said afterward, “armed themselves and climbed the stockade, or went through the wicket of the quartermaster’s gate.” Some of them had “cocked their pieces, and were ready to deliver fire, when their muskets were thrown up by two reliefs of the guard sent to quell the disturbance.”

  The mob broke in the darkness; some started running for the water gate. Ten Eyck cried an order to halt, but this only caused others to turn and run for fear of being recognized and punished. “I ordered them to halt twice,” Carrington said, “was disobeyed, but two shots from my revolver halted the men …”28 In the dim light of the Cheyenne camphres he recognized a few familiar faces. Among them were some of the best men in the garrison. He gave them a brief tongue-lashing, warned against any such demonstrations in the future, and ordered them back to their quarters.

  Next morning the colonel interviewed the Cheyennes again, hoping to learn something of the movements of the Sioux and Arapaho. They told him they had heard Red Cloud and Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses were operating from Tongue River valley and that Buffalo Tongue was directing harassment of trains around Reno and Powder River. They also had heard that Bob North, a white man with one thumb, a big medicine man to the Arapaho, had made an alliance with the Sioux in August. Their information tallied with what Jim Bridger had heard from the Crows, and although Carrington could not take the field for punitive action with the small force at his command, he at least was satisfied that he knew where his enemies were.

  Entries in post records indicate that the month of September ended routinely. Daniel Bradford, an unlucky Third Class Musician from Pittsburgh, reported his carbine and cartridge box missing, and was listed as owing the “U.S. for one Spencer carbine $30, and one cartridge box, $1.05. Total $31.05.”

  By the month’s end Indian raids had caused serious losses in the beef herd. Six hundred of the seven hundred head brought overland from Fort Kearney were gone, most of them to raiding Indians, and the post’s prospects for fresh meat during the winter were poor indeed.

  Three enlisted men and five civilians in governme
nt employ had been killed; one enlisted man had deserted. Officers and men present for duty totaled 341. One building 50 x 24 feet for commissary stores, one building 44 x 52 feet for officers’ quarters, and four buildings 84 x 24 feet for company quarters were approaching completion.

  And on the last day of the month, Train No. 33 crossed the ford of Little Piney, ending its long slow journey from Nebraska, loaded with tons of corn and oats for the starving horses and mules of the mounted infantry and wood trains.

  * Leighton put in a bill for his lost mules to the War Department, valuing them at $250 each. Twenty-four years later, 1890, he received a check for the loss.

  * One of the unsolved mysteries of Fort Phil Kearny is what happened to the photographs made there by Ridgway Glover. Twenty-two of his Laramie negatives were sent to Wenderoth, Taylor & Brown in Philadelphia. His Fort Phil Kearny negatives or prints, if ever discovered, would furnish the only photographic record ever made of scenes and personnel in and around that vanished Wyoming post.

  * Rover’s real name was Ephraim C. Bissell. Mrs. Carrington said that “a hasty indiscretion impelled him to the army.” He was killed three months later in the Fetterman Massacre.

  VII. October:

  HARVEST MOON

  On the 7th of October I issued an order assuming command of Fort Philip Kearny, to have more immediate personal command of the post, at which were my district headquarters … I took charge of the system of police and discipline of the post, entertaining the idea that the future policy might involve more formidable Indian aggression and require a more exact and careful watchfulness and defense.1

  AS OCTOBER CAME IN, frosty mornings and crusted ice on the edges of the Pineys warned of winter’s approach. Wagon trains were hurrying north to be clear of the road before the heavy snows fell. Inside the fort’s stockade the parade was being closed in by rows of buildings nearing completion.

  Two more freighting trains ended their sixty-day runs from Lone Tree, Nebraska, bringing in enough corn and oats to supply the post’s livestock’ into midwinter. As usual there were shortages in bills of lading, and Lieutenants Bisbee and Wands spent three days as a board of survey determining whether Train No. 33’s deficiencies of 4,195 pounds of corn from a shipment of 179,882 pounds, and 397 pounds of oats from a shipment of 20,199 pounds, were allowable. After taking testimony from three civilians, the young lieutenants reported that “Leviticus Carter, James Hill, and James Henning, who have for many years freighted grain over the plains for the Government and private parties, find that the deficiency is only a fair allowance arising from shrinkage and spilling from old and worn sacks and other causes incident to freighting, being only 2¼% of the total delivered.”2

  The survey board consequently exonerated contractor Herman Kountz from all blame and responsibility. After studying the deficiencies of subcontractor W. H. Berger’s Train No. 41 and F. M. Square’s Train No. 43, Bisbee and Wands reached the same conclusion. Perhaps they felt that any freighters who had the raw courage to risk lives, stock, and wagons hauling grain over the dangerous Montana Road to remote Fort Phil Kearny deserved approbation rather than penalties.

  Meanwhile disturbing news had come from Fort Reno. The aging commander, Captain Proctor, had placed Lieutenant Kirtland under arrest, blaming him for losses of the post’s mounts to raiding Sioux. On the 4th, Carrington dispatched an urgent communication to Omaha concerning this: “I wish to visit the other posts and inspect them, as soon as I can get a few mounted men … I fear Captain Proctor is too ill and nervous to command, but have no one to succeed him. He has lost nearly all his stock; has arrested his adjutant, Lieutenant Kirtland, without notifying me or furnishing me or the lieutenant with a copy of charges. He may have sent them up direct to you, as he follows no regulations in correspondence with these headquarters. If so, please return them for my action. Gen. Hazen told me that he found the same inefficiency. I hope to go there in a few days and judge for myself.”

  The colonel also felt that he should make some explanation of the recent uprising of his men against the visiting Cheyennes. “I had trouble to keep my men from killing the Cheyennes, they are so bitter against all Indians; I do not put full confidence in them yet, but those that came seemed faithful to their agreement of July. They are great beggars, and I give them very little, as they can find plenty of game, but they seem to fear the Sioux … I gave the three chiefs one day’s ration of flour, but refused any luxuries, and told them they must hunt for their living, and if they kept away from the road and trains I would keep peace with them.”3

  Next day he was confronted by an angry trio of freighters, the contractors who had delivered the grain from Nebraska. They complained that several of their teamsters had deserted and moved in with the fort’s civilian employees. Some had even been given employment by Captain Ten Eyck and Lieutenant Brown.

  Sympathizing with the plight of the contractors, whose wagons must be manned on the return journey, Carrington assured them the Army would co-operate. He issued an immediate order establishing the Mountain District’s policy, and notified Ten Eyck and Brown to discharge the deserting teamsters without delay.

  The attention of post commander is directed to the constant difficulties arising between owners of trains, or Government contractors, and their teamsters and employés.

  Men hire at the Missouri River ostensibly as teamsters, but really to obtain hereby the means of transportation to this new country. Hence it is frequently the case trains are partially deserted and much property exposed to loss by Indians, if the train returns short of men, or the owner is put to great expense by delay in supplying himself with teamsters.

  Whenever teamsters desert at any post and a fair examination that they so desert without fault of their employer, and in breach of their contract for the purpose of higher wages, such teamsters will not be hired by any quartermaster or other officer of this command, neither will they be harbored or permitted to remain within the limits of any post.4

  On the 6th, after more than a week of uneasy peace around the fort, a war party estimated at one hundred Indians ambushed a detachment of twenty enlisted men working at the pinery. In the initial attack one man was wounded and Privates John Wasser and Christian Oberly of A Company were killed. After the survivors fought their way to the nearest blockhouse, some of the Indians boldly rushed the loopholes, firing inside. The Indians finally were driven off, but when the timber cutters attempted to return to work, they were constantly harassed by bullets and arrows fired from woods concealment.

  As soon as Carrington learned of the situation, he took a mountain howitzer and a thirty-man detachment out to the pinery and shelled the woods and ravines. After clearing the area, he left the weapon and a gunnery detail on permanent duty, and from that day until late in December the Indians gave the timber cutters very little trouble.

  For some time Carrington had realized that his relations with post commander Ten Eyck were becoming awkward and strained. With daily emergencies arising, the colonel often acted without consulting Ten Eyck. It was not always easy to differentiate between matters which concerned the Mountain District alone or the post alone. Under the new security precautions, the District was virtually confined to the stockade and the pinery. The distant posts of Reno and C. F. Smith might as well have been on different continents insofar as Carrington’s immediate authority affected them, and as soon as winter halted timber cutting and further isolated the other posts, the Mountain District and Fort Phil Kearny would share the same boundaries.

  Aware that such a situation could cause serious command friction, Carrington issued an order on the 7th, assuming command of Fort Phil Kearny, “to have more immediate personal command of the post, at which were my district headquarters.” His first action was to reorganize the post’s defenses. “Every officer and soldier, every citizen, employé, and teamster, and every clerk in the sutler’s store had his loophole, or place at which to report at a general alarm by night or day.”5 He also reshuffled his o
fficers. Ten Eyck was now free to devote all his time to commanding the 2nd Battalion and to reassume command of his old company, H, which had been under temporary command of Lieutenant Wands.

  Wands in turn was assigned to duty with the regimental quartermaster, Fred Brown, who had received his captain’s commission and was awaiting transfer orders to Laramie. Lieutenant Bisbee became regimental adjutant, replacing John Adair who had announced he would resign his commission as soon as Lieutenant Bradley returned from escort duty with General Hazen. Carrington also acquired a new orderly, one of the bright young clerks in his office, Private Archibald Sample.

  The worst deficiency was serviceable horses. After a personal inspection of all mounts, he pronounced only forty in condition for Indian pursuit. Several were absent, of course, with mail escorts to Laramie and C. F. Smith.

  Any hopes he may have had of obtaining replacements from the Department of the Platte were dashed by the next communication he received from General Cooke: “Having one company of cavalry you can probably dispense with your ninety-four horses, after mounting all the cavalry. They could be used for cavalry at Laramie. The same as to any useless horses at C. F. Smith and Reno.”6 If Carrington ever used profanity he must have indulged himself freely at the moment of reading this telegram. In the first place he had no cavalry as yet; secondly, there were no longer ninety-four serviceable horses at Phil Kearny; thirdly, horses were so short at Reno and C. F. Smith that even three-legged ones would not have been considered expendable.

  It may seem incredible that Cooke, author of the classic Cavalry Tactics and a cavalryman of many years’ service, showed so little interest in or understanding of Carrington’s need for mounted men. In 1866, however, the general was still suffering bitter disappointment and emotional strain from the Civil War. He felt that his career had been blighted; he was grieving because his son, John Rogers Cooke of the defeated Confederate Army, had broken all relations with him, and because his daughter, Jeb Stuart’s widow, was also estranged from him and living in poverty in the ruins of Richmond.