The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  The second order was to be a secret between Carrington and the officer of the day. “If in my absence, Indians in overwhelming numbers attack, put the women and children in the magazine with supplies of water, bread, crackers and other supplies that seem best, and, in the event of a last desperate struggle, destroy all together, rather than have any captured alive.”57

  To make certain that Powell could carry out this last order, Carrington opened the magazine (which was surrounded by a circular defense of upturned wagon beds), cut the Boorman fuses of spherical case shot, and laid a train of powder which would blow up everything at the touch of a match.

  Under a darkening winter sky, the eighty men marched out to the Bozeman Road and turned west. The cavalrymen moved briskly to the flanks. A few of the infantrymen rode in the mule-drawn wagons. As soon as the last man was through the gate, Carrington signaled for it to be closed and bolted, and then galloped forward to the head of the column.

  Jim Bridger, although suffering from arthritis, had volunteered as a scout, and he assisted in placing pickets along the ridges so that a surprise attack might be avoided. On every high point two men were posted, each pair in sight of two other guard positions so as to form a continuous signal link to the fort. The temperature held around zero; there was still no sign of hostiles.

  Among the boulders on high ground to the left of the road they found most of the remaining dead. “It was terrible work to load the frozen corpses into the wagons,” said Finn Burnett, one of the volunteer civilians in the party. “The ground was fairly sodden with blood, the smell of which frightened the mules until they were well-nigh unmanageable. A man was obliged to hold the head of every animal while other teamsters loaded the naked, mutilated remains like cordwood into the wagon-boxes.

  “When the first wagon had been half loaded, the mules began to lurch and kick, until they succeeded in throwing the men aside. Turning the wagon around they overturned it in their frenzy, and the bodies were dumped out before the animals could be recaptured and subdued. It was a terrible sight and a horrible job.”58

  John Guthrie, hard-bitten little cavalryman of the 2nd, described the same scene in his crude but vivid vernacular: “Some had crosses cut on their breasts, faces to the sky, some crosses on the back, faces to the ground, a mark cut that we could not find out. We walked on top of their internals and did not know it in the high grass. Picked them up, that is their internals, did not know the soldier they belonged to, so you see the cavalry man got an infantry man’s gutts and an infantry man got a cavalry man’s gutts.”59

  Carrington was shocked by what he saw, yet in his introspective way sought a reason for such evidences of savagery as the methodical removal of dorsal, thigh and calf muscles, of arms and limbs torn from sockets. Not until many years afterward, when he talked with a survivor of Red Cloud’s Oglalas, did he learn the answer—a variation of the white man’s myth of Tantalus. “The key to the mutilations were startling and impressive. Their idea of the spirit land is that it is a physical paradise; but we enter upon its mysteries just as in the condition we hold when we die. In the Indian paradise every physical taste or longing is promptly met. If he wants food, it is at hand; water springs up for ready use; ponies and game abound, blossoms, leaves, and fruit never fail; all is perennial and perpetual. But what is the Indian hell? It is the same in place and profusion of mercies, but the bad cannot partake. … With the muscles of the arms cut out, the victim could not pull a bowstring or trigger, with other muscles gone, he could not put foot in a stirrup or stoop to drink; so that, while every sense was in agony for relief from hunger or thirst, there could be no relief at all.”60

  According to Finn Burnett, only the body of the bugler, Adolph Metzger, was left untouched. “His heroism had aroused the admiration of the savages, they covered his corpse with a buffalo robe as a symbol of extreme respect.”61 John Guthrie, however, said that Metzger’s body was never found, and a few weeks after the fight the Helena (Montana) Herald reported an interview between fur trappers and a band of Crows who had heard from the Sioux a story of the last survivor, who may have been Metzger. “He stood up and fought hand to hand till overwhelmed by their closing upon him, and carrying him off a prisoner to their camp where he was finally tortured to death.”82

  After loading all bodies found on the high ground, Carrington ordered the wagons moved cautiously along the road toward Peno Creek. Over a distance of three-quarters of a mile they recovered six more dead, including Lieutenant Grummond and Sergeant Augustus Lang. The lieutenant’s head was almost severed from his body; his fingers had been chopped off, his naked body filled with arrows. Along this same stretch of road, they also found Jimmy Carrington’s calico pony, which had been hastily borrowed by Captain Brown. The pony was dead, its head badly cut up, and someone remarked that the Indians must have scalped it out of hatred for Captain Brown.

  A few hundred yards farther on, they found Wheatley, Fisher and “four or five of the old long-tried and experienced soldiers. A great number of empty cartridge shells were on the ground at this point.” In front of the bodies, the last to be recovered, was a ring of dead Indian ponies, and “sixty-five pools of dark and clotted blood” on the ground and grass.63 Wheatley had 105 arrows in his body and had been scalped.

  The cautious march out, and the tedious and painful search for the dead, which was made even more difficult by bitter cold, occupied most of the day. As they were turning back from Peno Creek they heard the fort’s sunset gun, and a black wintry darkness settled over the land before they sighted the gleam of a lantern on the flagstaff. It was a white light, signaling the reassuring news that Indians had not attacked the fort in their absence.

  “We hauled them all into the fort,” said John Guthrie, “and made the guard house at the fort a dead house.” 64

  The first act of the colonel when he returned was a sentimental gesture. He visited Frances Grummond, handed her a sealed envelope, then left her to a moment of private grief. “I opened the envelope,” she wrote afterward, “with eager but trembling hands. It contained a lock of my husband’s hair.”65 She suddenly remembered, then, another memento, an encased miniature portrait of herself which George Grummond had worn since their wedding, and she wondered sadly if some Indian warrior carried it in his possession as a trophy of the battle.

  Another who had to be consoled was the nineteen-year-old widow of James Wheatley.* Wagoner Finn Burnett described her as “a beautiful girl, a fine woman … a brave splendid little soldier.”66

  On the night of the 22nd, the blizzard which had been threatening for two days began in earnest, its fierce winds sweeping a blinding snow across the land and dropping temperatures to twenty below zero. Arm-length mittens, thigh-length leggings, buffalo boots, and a variety of fur hats were issued to the guards, and shifts were cut to one-half hour. At daylight of the 23rd the storm still raged, and snowdrifts crested the west flank of the stockade, packed so tightly that guards could walk from the parade directly over the upright posts. As a security measure, Carrington ordered a ten-foot trench cleared outside, but the biting winds refilled it almost as fast as men could dig.

  That day and Christmas Eve were devoted to the melancholy task of preparing the dead for burial. Bodies were cleaned, mutilated fragments put together, arrows drawn out or cut off. Because most of the dead were left naked by the Indians, their comrades volunteered uniforms to clothe them. While this work went on in the hospital, carpenters constructed coffins. And in spite of the weather, a grave-digging detail cleared snow from the burial ground and started digging a trench for interment.

  “One-half of the headquarters building, which was my temporary home,” wrote Frances Grummond, “was utilized by carpenters for making pine cases for the dead. I knew that my husband’s coffin was being made, and the sound of hammers and the grating of saws was torture to my sensitive nerves. … During the nights I would dream of Indians, of being captured and carried away by Red Cloud himself while frantically screaming for he
lp, and then awaken in terror only to spring from my bed involuntarily to listen if the nearby sentry would still voice the welcome cry, ‘All’s well.’ Sleeping draughts and the kind ministrations of Dr. Horton seemed rather to aggravate than reduce the nervous tension …”67

  On Christmas Day, the burial detail placed lines of pine cases by companies along officers’ row. Two enlisted men were sealed in each box; the three officers rated separate coffins. Cases were carefully numbered to identify the occupants.

  Carrington had hoped to bury the dead in solemn Christmas Day services, but the gravediggers, even though working in continuous half-hour shifts, were unable to complete excavation of the trench. Not until Wednesday, the 26th, five days after the battle, was burial completed, in a pit fifty feet long, seven feet deep, seven feet wide. “The severity of the weather,”68 a sergeant wrote two days later, “and probability of immediate attack upon the fort compelled us to bury our dead in trenches, without ceremony or military honors.”*

  On that same day—December 26—the War Department in Washington received the first telegraphic dispatches of the Fort Phil Kearny disaster. From General Cooke in Omaha: “On the 21st instant three officers and ninety men, cavalry and infantry, were massacred by Indians very near Fort Phil Kearny.”69 At 3:15 that afternoon direct from Fort Laramie, General Grant received Carrington’s dispatch pleading for reinforcements.

  To give this news to the outside world, John (Portugee) Phillips had forced his way through almost continuous blizzards, riding only at nights, rationing oats carefully to his horse, sometimes digging tufts of grass for it from under the snow. Late on Christmas morning he rode into Horseshoe Station, accompanied by William Bailey and George Dillon, and handed his dispatches to the telegraph operator, John Friend. Phillips had crossed 190 miles of snow that was in some places four or five feet deep.

  After Friend had tapped out a condensation of the messages, Phillips rebound his legs with sacks, wrapped himself in a buffalo coat, saddled up, and prepared to ride the forty remaining miles to Fort Laramie. He had promised Colonel Carrington he would deliver the dispatches to the commander at Laramie, and neither his companions nor the telegraph operator could dissuade him from completing his mission.

  After riding all afternoon across a dazzling-white land that blinded him, he welcomed the relief of nightfall even though more snow began falling and the temperature dropped far below zero. Between eleven o’clock and midnight he arrived at Fort Laramie. Icicles were hanging from his clothing; snow and ice matted his beard. From lighted windows of the main officers’ quarters, he could hear gay dance music.

  Phillips slid out of his saddle, staggering from exhaustion, and a minute later the officer of the guard, Lieutenant Herman Haas, was at his side, asking his name and what he wanted. Phillips was so weak he could barely reply that he wanted to see the commanding officer.

  Lieutenant David Gordon (who later became a brigadier-general) was stationed at Laramie with a company of the 2nd Cavalry. “It was on Christmas night, 11 P.M.,” Gordon later recorded, “when a full-dress garrison ball was progressing and everybody appeared superlatively happy, enjoying the dance, notwithstanding the snow was from ten to fifteen inches deep on the level and the thermometer indicated twenty-five degrees below zero, when a huge form dressed in buffalo overcoat, pants, gauntlets and cap, accompanied by an orderly, desired to see the commanding officer. The dress of the man, and at this hour looking for the commanding officer, made a deep impression upon the officers and others that happened to get a glimpse of him, and consequently, and naturally, too, excited their curiosity as to his mission in this strange garb, dropping into our full-dress garrison ball at this unseasonable hour.

  “As we were about to select partners for another dance word was passed into our ball-room that General Palmer desired to see me …”70 A few moments later, Lieutenant Gordon met Portugee Phillips face to face.

  During the preceding forty-eight hours, Laramie officers had been hearing rumors from Indians around the fort of a great battle which had supposedly taken place near Phil Kearny. At two o’clock that afternoon, General Innis N. Palmer, the new commanding officer, had received a garbled telegram from Horseshoe Station, reporting a massacre. Palmer had immediately forwarded the message to Omaha, but evidently he still considered the massacre a rumor until Phillips arrived with Carrington’s dispatches. Not until early in the morning of the 26th did Carrington’s full report go to Omaha, and Lieutenant Gordon afterward stated that Fort Laramie received “nothing authentic until the dispatch was handed the commanding officer by one Portuguese Phillips, who was employed by Colonel Carrington at Fort Phil Kearny.” *

  Thus the world outside Dakota Territory learned of the incident which would be known thereafter as the Fetterman Massacre.

  * Peno Creek, named for a French trapper, was later changed to Prairie Dog Creek.

  * Others in the fort reported hearing four volleys in succession, each time the sound seeming farther away—then a continuous and rapid fire with a fierceness indicating a pitched battle. “At the noon hour we could hear volleys plainly,” said Private William Murphy, “and they continued for a long period of time.”

  * Burnett said that Mrs. Wheatley remained at the fort until the following spring when her brother came for her and took her back to the family home in Ohio. William Murphy, however, stated that she later married a man by the name of Breckinridge and lived on a ranch about five miles from Fort Laramie.

  * These bodies with those of thirty-seven other soldiers buried at Fort Phil Kearny were exhumed in October 1888 and reburied in the National Cemetery at Custer Battlefield.

  * The horse used by John Phillips on his four-day, 236-mile ride died soon after arriving at Fort Laramie. Phillips himself collapsed from exhaustion and exposure, suffering for weeks from severe frostbite. Lieutenant Gordon said that Phillips was paid one thousand dollars for the ride, but official records indicate that the amount he received for quartermaster services at Fort Phil Kearny and for the ride totaled only about three hundred dollars. Thirty-three years later, in 1899, his widow received five thousand dollars in partial recognition of Phillips’ ride from Phil Kearny to Laramie.

  X. January:

  MOON OF STRONG COLD

  Upon being relieved I moved to Fort Casper with regimental headquarters, staff, and officers’ families, with mercury at 38° below zero (the second day), and having more than halt my escort of sixty men frosted the first sixty-five miles, requiring two amputations at Reno.1

  ON DECEMBER 27, THE DAY following the mass burials at Fort Phil Kearny, a small party of soldiers appeared unexpectedly on the snow-drifted road east of Little Piney. They were three officers and twenty-two enlisted men who upon reaching Fort Reno had learned of the Fetterman disaster, and instead of waiting at Reno for the weather to improve had pushed on through blizzards to Phil Kearny. Senior officer of the group was Captain George B. Dandy, who some weeks earlier had been assigned to replace Captain Brown. Accompanying him were Lieutenant Thomas J. Gregg, 2nd Cavalry, replacement for the late Lieutenant Bingham, and Lieutenant Alphonse Borsman.

  Borsman’s orders were for service with the 27th Infantry Regiment, which after weeks of rumors was now a fact—created from the 18th’s 2nd Battalion. The mail from Omaha informed Carrington that new headquarters for the 18th Infantry would be Fort Casper, where companies of the 1st Battalion would become cadres for new battalions of the 18th.

  This news was not unexpected. Following the arrival of Captain Fetterman in November, Carrington had assumed there would be a change eventually. But after Fetterman’s death, Carrington probably clung to a hope that he might be permitted to remain in command of the fort he had so painstakingly designed and constructed, and which had become so vital a part of his existence.

  He welcomed the arrival of Captain Dandy and the reinforcements, but he knew he needed ten times their number as well as replenishment of his arms and ammunition if he hoped to equal the power demonstrated by
the Indians on December 21. His enlisted men also knew this, and some indication of their morale at this time is revealed in a letter written by a sergeant on the night of December 28:

  It is now past tattoo; the night is cold; the men are sleeping in their clothes, and accouterments on. Indian signals have been seen, and we don’t know what hour the post may be attacked. Self and two soldiers are keeping watch so as to awake the men in case of alarm. At midnight I shall have Sgt. Clark and three others to relieve us. So you can imagine the state of affairs here.

  We are fighting a foe that is the devil. In your last you spoke about some newspapers which you had sent me. I did not get them. Please write soon, and pray God to hasten the day when I shall get out of this horrible place. Goodbye; this may be my last letter; should it reach you, don’t forget your friend …2

  By New Year’s Day, however, fears of an Indian attack had diminished. Valleys and trails were deep with snow, and Jim Bridger assured Carrington that even the most hostile of Indian bands would hesitate to go on the warpath under such conditions. It was Bridger’s opinion that most of the warriors were holed up in their villages on Tongue River.

  (Bridger’s surmise was good, as far as it went. Actually there had been no danger of attack upon the fort since the day of the Fetterman fight. As soon as the fight ended, the main body of warriors departed for Tongue River, leaving a few scouts behind to watch movements around the fort. Red Cloud and other chiefs expected retaliatory measures from the soldiers before winter ended, and in spite of bitter weather, the leaders decided to abandon their Tongue River stronghold. The Arapaho went to the Yellowstone, the Cheyennes into the Big Horns, the Sioux scattering down the valleys of the Powder and Tongue.)