by Tim Slessor
In fact, there were now more than 400 tepees scattered across the grassy plain around the fort. One can picture the scene. Cooking smoke, drifting with the dust of the pony herds, smudges the stillness. Old men sit in the sunshine smoking their long pipes and swapping stories of their valor. The women pound new buffalo hides to soften them, and patch the worn footings of their tepees; later, they will take their children and wander off to have a look at the white man’s fort. The young men, the braves, are out in the open meadows, galloping their ponies, showing off to each other and, no doubt, preening themselves for the benefit of the girls who stand off to one side.
The tribal elders are gathered in the shadow of a tepee; they discuss the meeting they are about to have with the whites. They would still have been unsure of the meeting’s exact purpose, but, whatever it might be, they would have concern that they should not allow themselves to be divided. And they discuss the rumor that there is a regiment, some say 1,000 men, coming up the Platte valley. What for?
There are no records of the conversations that Colonel Maynadier would have had with Commissioners Taylor, Wistar and McLaren who had just arrived from the East. But one can surely assume that at some point they went through a list of the various tribal elders in order to work out, on the basis of vague intelligence, who would be the likely hawks and who the doves. One imagines too that they discussed the purpose of the infantry regiment that the Commissioners would have overtaken on their own journey up the Platte.
So what was that purpose? Quite simply, the regiment was to build and then garrison a fort in the middle of the Sioux’s favorite hunting ground, the Powder River country. The reason for this proposed incursion was equally simple...
Prompted by the mining lobby, the Government - anxious to replenish the nation’s near bankrupt coffers after the Civil War - had been looking at its maps. It wished to open a short-cut to the burgeoning gold mines that lay along the eastern margins of the northern Rockies (in today’s Montana). The existing route was far too long; it was also expensive. In shallow-draft steamers, it began on the Missouri at St. Joseph or Council Bluffs. But, frustratingly, the river looped far away to the north before eventually bending to the west. So, even with good piloting, the journey - against the current for over 1,500 miles - could take two or more months. The head of navigation, in the spring when the river was full, was Fort Benton. From there, the last 200 miles was by wagon. What was needed was an overland “road” that cut the corners and ran more or less straight cross-country.
The fact was that such a short-cut had already been pioneered. Just before the Civil War, a small party of prospectors had found a way across the terra incognita of the Powder River country. A few other brave souls had followed them, and the route was now referred to as the Bozeman Trail, after one of the original pathfinders. But without military protection it was a very risky journey and, consequently, little used. Now, with the end of the war, the government was keen to establish the trail as the “official” route for the Montana goldfields. Thus it hoped to encourage more miners to head for Montana, and so to refill more rapidly the national treasury.
Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Sioux, arch-enemy of Colonel Carrington
But there was a problem: the Sioux. As in Vietnam exactly a century later, and in Afghanistan more recently, there were two theories (amongst others) on how best to achieve “pacification”. Broadly, in the late 1860s there were those who advocated an aggressive tactic of “search and destroy”. But, given that this tactic had not, on the few occasions the army had tried it, been notably successful, official thinking was now more inclined to the less ambitious concept of the “defended enclave”. This meant the building of a fort, or forts, far out in the wilderness from which, once firmly established, roving patrols might assert what, today, we would see as a combination of muscular pacification with a policy of winning hearts and minds. (One can see reflections of both these approaches in present-day Afghanistan.) The second of these policies was recommended by the War Department to Congress in February 1865. “The permanent cure for the hostilities of the Northern Indians is to go into the heart of the buffalo country and hold forts until, the trouble is over...” In fact, “the hostilities of the Northern Indians” had been at a relatively low level during the Civil War - which was as well because, of course, military manpower at the time was concentrated on other targets.
When the Sioux leaders wrapped their blankets around their shoulders and walked up to the fort to take their places on those benches in front of the Colonel’s house, they were, as always, distrusting. Commissioner Taylor started proceedings. To make interpretation easy, he spoke in short sentences: “The Great Father in Washington is sad when his children make war... he does not want his children’s land... soldiers only come when the Indians make war... the Great Father has many soldiers... he has a great wish for a treaty with his red children... they would be wise to listen to the Great Father.”
No doubt the Indians listened impassively. Then the treaty itself was read out. After the legalistic and meaningless (as far as the audience was concerned) preliminaries, the Commissioner got round to what the treaty was really all about: a right of way through the Powder River country. Immediately the Indians bubbled with annoyance. Two chiefs, Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horses (his name was really “Men are afraid of his Horses) and Red Cloud began to argue with the Commissioners; they grew increasingly frustrated at the delays of interpretation. They pointed out that the tribes had “touched paper” before, but that it had not stopped the whites from killing the buffalo and driving off the game. Anyway, why did the Great Father always want more land?
Commissioner Taylor explained that the Great Father did not want more land; he merely wanted a safe right of way, and he promised that “travelers will not be allowed to disturb the game in the country through which they pass”. Taylor must have known that this was an impossible commitment. The Indians certainly knew it. With a good deal of bad temper the council broke up, to meet again the next day.
That same evening, 5 miles to the east, the 18th Infantry halted and formed its wagons into a large square within which it would camp for the next few days. The regiment had marched 350 miles from Fort Kearny; the men were looking forward to a rest. Presently, a small band of Sioux rode up; their leader was taken to the Colonel. An interpreter was summoned. Standing Elk came quickly to the point: where were all these soldiers going? Colonel Carrington, who was as honest as he was naive, replied that his regiment was on its way to guard a new road through the Powder River country.
According to Colonel Carrington, writing a year later, Standing Elk just looked at him and said, “There is a treaty being made just now with the people who hunt in the country where you say you are going. You will have to fight if you go there.” Doubtless, Carrington replied that he hoped fighting would not be necessary. But, as far as the Indians were concerned, the news would have spread as soon as Standing Elk got back to the tepees.
The Sioux were not fools. Already angered by the meeting earlier that day, they now became thoroughly antagonistic; the Commissioners were obviously forked-tongued double-dealers; while asking for a right of way, they were, in any case, planning to take it by force. The Commissioners, of course, would not have seen it that way; they would easily have persuaded themselves that they had come in good faith to negotiate. After all, once the Sioux agreed to the new road, soldiers would be needed to enforce the agreement against the inevitable hotheads who existed on both sides. But the truth was that, in the event of the Indians being unwilling to “touch paper”, there was no alternative plan. The forts would be built; the road would go through.
The Council gathered again on the parade ground the next morning, but the Indians, now knowing that the proceedings were a charade, came to vent their anger rather than to negotiate.
Colonel Carrington, who had ridden over to the fort to oversee the issue of some much-needed supplies be
fore he moved on, was formally introduced to the chiefs. A few acknowledged him. But Red Cloud and Man Afraid, both Oglala-Sioux (then, as now, according even to other Indians, let alone whites, the most stubborn of all the seven tribes that make up the Sioux nation), took the introduction as an added insult. The story goes that the two of them stood up and, shaking their rifles at the whites, one or other shouted, “I trust only in this and in the Great Spirit”. Then they turned their backs and, taking their followers with them, stalked angrily away. Within a few hours, Red Cloud and his people struck their tepees and were gone.
It would have been wholly in character for some of the younger braves among the Oglala-Sioux to take immediate vengeance on the Great Father’s agents - perhaps a raid on the tempting herds of cattle and horses which were part of the Army’s expedition. The fact that there was no such raid suggests a cooling influence. It almost certainly came from Red Cloud. Perhaps by instinct, perhaps by calculation, he seems to have realized that there was a much more important issue than any immediate retaliation against the whites’ double-cross. With a regiment poised to enter its homeland, his tribe’s very existence as a sovereign people was at stake. What lay ahead had to be a purposeful campaign.
He was right. But for a Sioux, particularly an Oglala, he must have been an unusual man. After all, his people were not much given to working out consequences, let alone strategies. The “long term” was not a concept that much concerned them; in their nomadic life they had little need for it. By custom and culture, they did not so much analyze a situation as react to it.
***
I apprehend no serious difficulty. Patience, forbearance and common sense in dealing with the Sioux and Cheyenne will do much with all who really desire peace.
A comment by Colonel Carrington in a dispatch shortly before he left Fort Laramie for the Powder River country on 18 June 1866
***
There was no way that over 700 soldiers and civilians, more than 200 wagons and a herd of at least a 1,000 cattle could move on from Fort Laramie without the now-alerted Sioux knowing their exact whereabouts. The summer dust would have been visible for miles. Nevertheless, the Sioux held back from mounting any attack; they seem to have realized, again almost certainly on Red Cloud’s advice, that it would be better to wait.
So, the 18th Infantry Regiment marched routinely towards the wilderness of the Powder River country. This was obviously not an expedition equipped for offensive campaigning: there were too many heavily loaded wagons, too many civilians, too many new recruits. This was a force whose purpose was to establish two forts from which, somehow, it was then hoped to protect the proposed trail to those Montana goldfields.
In the growing light of dawn, as he watched his men stamping out their breakfast fires, Colonel Carrington probably wished he had not been burdened with so many under-trained recruits - more than half of his total command - and only 12 officers to lead them. He certainly would have wished for a larger detachment of cavalrymen. But in other respects, he should have been reasonably content. His chief scout and advisor was Jim Bridger, an ex-mountain man and, as such, one of the most experienced westerners ever. The cattle, even allowing for reasonable losses, would keep the battalion in beef for the next twelve months; in those 200 wagons there was sack upon sack of flour, coffee, beans, molasses, salt and hard-tack - enough to sustain the command until it could be re-supplied the following spring. His quartermaster had boxes of vegetable seeds, and there were milk-cows, pigs and poultry. There were mowing machines to cut hay, a horse-driven sawmill, axes, saws, nails and augurs with which to construct the fort. There were carpenters, blacksmiths and wheelwrights; he had three doctors and a 25-man band, and even a dozen rocking chairs. Lastly, as if to confirm that this was a garrison force rather than one for combat, the officers had been officially encouraged to bring their wives and children, hence his own wife, Margaret, and their two children, Jim and Harry, for whom there was a schoolchest of books, chalks, slates and a globe. Colonel Carrington should have been a satisfied man for he liked to do a job with much more than mere efficiency. He was an experienced administrator, a by-the-book head-quarters officer who planned to build the finest fort west of the Missouri.
Five days after leaving Fort Laramie, the vanguard of the column splashed through a head-water stream of the Powder and rode up the low bluffs on the far side into the furthest outpost of the US Army. Most of the small garrison were “galvanized Yankees”, or ex-Confederate prisoners who had been released on condition that they served a term out West. They had been cooped up and forgotten for the last eight months; food had almost run out, scurvy was taking hold, and morale was low. They greeted the incoming column as long-overdue deliverers. They wanted nothing more than to get out and go home. Fort Connor had been hurriedly built, ill-supplied and under-garrisoned; it was in the middle of nowhere. Colonel Carrington and his men were welcome to it.
A day or two later, Carrington left a detachment of his own troops at the fort in order to give himself a halfway house on what would be his ever-lengthening line of communication back to Fort Laramie. On the day the column moved on, the afternoon temperature rose to over 1000F (380C). The dry heat on this and several preceding days had so shrunk the wooden wagon wheels that sometimes their iron tires were falling off. The mules and horses had become irritable and hard to handle. The men - those who were not somnambulant with heat exhaustion - became murderously bad-tempered.
***
By way of a back-country road, I have taken no more than an hour to drive the 70 miles that it took the battalion the next five days to cover. It was an early autumn day, when the sky was the bluest and the highest I had ever seen. But the glare seemed to reach back behind my eyes, and you’d be a fool to be out without dark glasses; even the occasional cowboy wears them. The only trees were a scatter of pines along the ridges and a line of cottonwoods strung along the almost dry watercourse. The grass was parched to a brittle brown, and one doubts if it had ever been green.
The upper basin of the Powder is still empty country. Occasionally the road runs past a clutch of “nodding donkeys” pumping oil from hundreds of feet below. But it seems entirely possible that nowadays there are fewer people living in these parts than there were Sioux and Cheyenne before Carrington’s arrival. As one drives on, one presumes that someone somewhere must own all this land, though for many miles there are no ranch-houses, just a straight ribbon of gravel or “blacktop” (tarmac) running away ahead. (In fact, most of this is Federal land.) Sometimes the distant road detaches itself from the ground in the quiver of a mirage. If you stop and switch off, the only sound is the rush of tires and the slipstream which go on singing in your ears.
Then you might notice on the distant westward horizon that there are some thin white wisps between the blue sky and the darker land. They are too steady to be a mirage; five minutes further on, these feathers seem too smooth to be clouds. You glance at the map and realize that the white must be snow lying along the extreme tops of the highest of the Big Horn Mountains, nearly 30 miles away. After another 15 or 20 minutes the air seems a little cooler; you are climbing slowly, there are trees in the middle distance, the grass is no longer brown. In those few miles it has gone from late-summer-dry to spring-like green. Mrs. Carrington wrote in her diary: “The transition is like the quick turn of a kaleidoscope.”
***
As their progress brought them into the shadow of the mountains, Carrington and his men would certainly have sensed a kinder countryside. Today, though the wolves, the buffaloes and most of the bears are gone, there are still antelope, deer and sage-hens in the foothills; the grass is lush; wild plums and berries grow in the valleys.
Just before noon on Friday 13 July, the column wound through some cottonwoods and out onto a meadow beside a stream they would call Piney Creek. Carrington ordered his men to make a tented camp. Here was what he had hoped to find: water, pasture and pine timb
er. “At last”, wrote his wife in her journal, “we have prospect of finding a home.”
The Colonel went to work immediately, surveying the country around for a site for his fort. By Sunday morning, after prayers and a hymn, he ordered some wagons to be driven a mile or so up the valley. There, on a broad shelf overlooking the Piney, the teamsters drove their wagons back and forth along the four sides of a rectangle to mark the perimeter of the fort. By the afternoon, a horse-powered sawmill had been set up, and the first timbers were being cut. It was his enthusiasm for the task rather than any fear of lurking Indians that drove Carrington with such speed and energy.
Today, one can walk across that same grassy shelf; there is a modest car park, a small museum (open in the summer months) and a short section of stockade - an exact facsimile of the original. The outline of the fort is marked with wooden palings. From contemporary records and the Colonel’s own drawings we know almost everything about the layout of the place that would be called Fort Kearny. The Colonel’s first priority was to build a perimeter stockade; so pine logs were cut and stood vertically side by side in a trench 3 feet deep. Then the earth was re-packed solidly around them. A narrow platform, 5 feet down from the top, ran around the inside of the wall; this was a walkway for riflemen who, if a direct attack ever came, could aim through slits cut along the top of the wall. The stockade (150 yards by 120 yards) made this one of the very few fully enclosed forts built in the West. Inside, Carrington planned barracks, quarters for married and single officers, a hospital, company offices, stores, latrines and an ammunition store. Within a few days, the Colonel was sufficiently pleased with progress that he could send a dispatch 700 miles (by courier and then telegraph) back to army headquarters in Omaha. “In thirty days this post can be held by a small force against any force.”