by Jon E. Lewis
By the end of the day, 28 men and 105 women and children lay dead at Sand Creek. Among those who escaped was Black Kettle, his badly injured wife on his back.
When the soldiers returned to Denver the town went into a delirium of joy. “Colorado soldiers”, the Rocky Mountain News declared, “have again covered themselves with glory . . . the Colonel [Chivington] is a credit to Colorado and the West.” Cheyenne scalps were strung across the stage of the Denver Opera House during intermission, to standing applause.
On the Great Plains, the shock waves from Sand Creek rolled westwards. Already agitated by the Minnesota Sioux uprising, the tribes fell to anger and a desperate revenge. Plains Indians rarely fought in winter, but now they made an exception. In January 1865, a combined military expedition of Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, Oglala and Brulé Sioux – 1,600 picked warriors and one of the greatest cavalry forces the world had ever seen – whipped into Colorado. Fort Rankin suffered severe losses. The town of Julesburg was sacked twice, the outskirts of Denver threatened. Seventy-five miles of the South Platte Trail was wrecked. Ranches and stations were burnt, wagon trains captured and more people killed than Chivington had slain at Sand Creek.
The Sand Creek massacre caused outrage in the East, and bolstered the movement for Indian reform. A Military Investigation Commission condemned Chivington and his soldiers, but the colonel escaped punishment because he had left the army. (The most damaging witness, Captain Silas Soule, was murdered before the Commission finished its business, probably with Chivington’s connivance.) Congress approved the report, and added more testimony to it.
In July 1865, Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin went out to Denver to argue the case for a peaceful solution to the Indian problem. The choice, he told a capacity crowd at the Denver Opera House, was to put the Indians on adequate reservations where they might support themselves, or to exterminate them. The audience, Doolittle later wrote, gave “a shout almost loud enough to raise the roof of the Opera House – ‘Exterminate them! Exterminate them! Exterminate them!’”
Punishment
Three months before Senator Doolittle had the roof of the Denver Opera House raised on him, the Civil War had come to an end. On 9 April 1865, in the front parlour of Wilmer McLean’s farmhouse at Appomattox, Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. Now the North versus South conflict was over, Union officers turned their faces towards the land of the setting sun to unite the nation East and West.
Top of their agenda was “punishment” of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho, whose rampage through Colorado had been followed by a mass raid on the great overland trail on the Platte and North Platte. In July 1865 3,000 warriors had fallen on the Platte Bridge (now Casper, Wyoming), wiping out a train of dismounted cavalry.
The Army began a determined effort to defeat the Indians of the North Plains, sending General Patrick E. Connor and 3,000 troops to destroy the Indians in their Powder River camps. Connor instructed his junior officers not to “receive overtures of peace or submission” but “to kill every male Indian over 12 years of age.” Connor was a seasoned Indian fighter, having defeated the trail-harassing Shoshonis at Bear River (Idaho) in 1863, but he would not have his way in the Powder River country. All summer the Indians harried his columns, took his horses and vanished into the buttes before they could be engaged. Some of his detachments got hopelessly lost, the men died of scurvy and were lamed by cactus spines. Already exhausted by the Civil War, soldiers deserted by the drove.
General Connor was deprived of his command for failing to punish the elusive Indians. But before he left the northern plains he built a fort, Fort Reno, on a road which had recently been blazed to the goldfields of Montana by John M. Bozeman. The Bozeman Trail would be the subject of the next great fight between the Whites and the Cheyenne, Arapaho and their Sioux allies. A fight the Indians would win.
Red Cloud’s War
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it.
Red Cloud (Makhpiya-Luta), Oglala Sioux chief
Fort Phil Kearny was established amid hostilities. No disaster other than the usual incidents to border warfare occurred, until gross disobedience of orders sacrificed nearly eighty of the choice men of my command . . . In the grave I bury disobedience.
Colonel Henry B. Carrington, US Army
The Fort Laramie council held in June 1866 was a magnificent spectacle. To either side of the fort, set between the Laramie and Platte rivers in the heart of Sioux country, tipis stretched for a mile or more, smoke wisping out of their tops into the sunshine. Hundreds of ponies were corralled, knots of Indians came and went, and from a staff at the corner of the sod parade ground the Stars and Stripes flapped languidly in the breeze. On a temporary platform sat officials of the federal government and the leading chiefs of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and the Brulé, Miniconjou and Oglala sub-bands of the Teton Sioux. Prominent on the platform was the 44-year-old Oglala chief Red Cloud (Makhpiya-Luta), a warrior with 80 coups to his name. For three years “Bad Faces” led by Red Cloud had been attacking parties of Whites travelling the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields. The Trail ran through the heart of the Powder River country, the last unviolated buffalo range of the Sioux and their allies. The Laramie council had been called to bribe Red Cloud and the other warring bands into selling the road.
The talks began promisingly. In return for the safe passage of Whites on the Bozeman Trail, the government promised the Indians $75,000 a year and an assurance that their land would never be taken by force. Then Colonel Henry Beebe Carrington rolled into the fort at the head of a long column of wagons and men. When a chief asked where he was going, Carrington explained that he was to construct two more forts on the trail, both deep into Teton Sioux country. At this news, Red Cloud exploded with anger: “The Great Father sends us presents and wants us to sell him the road, but White chief goes with soldiers to steal the road before Indians say Yes or No! I will talk with you no more! I will go now, and I will fight you! As long as I live I will fight you for the last hunting grounds of my people!”
With that, Red Cloud stormed off the platform. Within days, the Army would realize the truth of Red Cloud’s words.
“Character of Indian Affairs Hostile”
On 22 June, Colonel Carrington and the 700-strong Eighteenth Infantry, plus assorted civilian woodchoppers and a number of wives and children, marched out of Fort Laramie for the Powder River country. On the 28th, Carrington reached Fort Reno on the Bozeman Trail. The next afternoon Indians ran off nearly all the fort’s horses and mules.
Security was tightened. The expedition went on, through a heat so profound that it caused the wheels of the wagons to shrink and fall apart. At Crazy Woman’s Creek nine men deserted for the Montana goldfields. A detail sent after them was stopped on the Trail by a band of Cheyenne who refused to let them pass.
Still Carrington pressed on. At the fork to the Little Piney he pitched camp and started to build Fort Phil Kearny. The scout Jim Bridger, accompanying the expedition, argued against it: the hills on all sides shut out any view, and the nearest wood was five miles away. He was overruled by the military.
While Fort Phil Kearny was being built, Carrington dispatched two companies north to build a smaller stockade, Fort C.F. Smith, on the Bighorn. With Fort Reno, Carrington then had three forts to guard the Bozeman Trail. But his men were spread terribly thin.
Red Cloud used a familiar Indian strategy. There were no full frontal attacks. There were ambushes, lightning raids, and constant sniping. A steady attrition of White men and morale.
Some of Red Cloud’s tactics, however, were dangerously novel. He even taught some of his warriors a few words of English and dressed them in captured blue uniforms, all the better to confuse the enemy when they pursued him.
By August, Carrington’s soldiers at Fort Phil Kearny were being scalped and wounded at the rate of one per day. When the photograp
her-correspondent Ridgeway Glover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper wandered away from the post he was found naked, his back cleaved open by a tomahawk (The naive, daydreaming Glover had survived a desperate ambush by 160 Sioux at Crazy Woman’s Creek only days before and thought he was “Indian-proof”.) But even soldiers inside the growing fort were not safe. One was shot as he sat in the latrine. The garrisons were too besieged to protect traffic. In his first five weeks in the Powder River country, Carrington reported that 33 travellers were killed on the Bozeman road.
Carrington was reduced to ever more desperate orders to tighten vigilance. After a sequence of attacks on his woodcutters, hay mowers and the driving off of the fort’s beef herd, Carrington issued a special order on 13 September (to the Indians, the month of the “Drying Grass Moon”):
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 defence.
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.
More Indian attacks brought more instructions from Carrington to tighten defensive measures. The Commander was in a dithering panic, reduced to ever more obsessional treatises on security. A special order of 21 September 1866 read:
The fastenings of all gates must be finished this day; the locks for large gates will be similar, and the district commander, post commander, officer of the day, and quartermaster will alone have keys. Keys for the wicket gates will be with the same officers.
Upon a general alarm or appearance of Indians in force or near the gates, the same will be closed, and no soldier or civilian will leave the fort without orders.
No large gate will be opened, except the quartermaster gate, unless it shall be necessary for wagons. Stock must invariably pass in and out of that gate.
The west or officers’ gate will not be opened without permission, even for wagons, unless for timber wagons or ambulances, or mounted men.
Upon a general alarm the employees in the sutlers’ department will form at the store and wait for orders and assignment to some part of the interior defence, but will not be expected to act without the fort unless voluntarily, and then after sanction is given, and under strict military control.
All soldiers, however detailed or attached, or in whatever capacity serving, will, upon a general alarm, take arms and be subject to immediate disposal with their companies or at the headquarters or department with which serving.
All horses of mounted men will be saddled at reveille.
It is also expressly enjoined that in no case shall there be needless running in haste upon an alarm. Shouting, tale-bearing, and gross perversion of facts by excited men does more mischief than Indians. And the duty of guards being to advise of danger, soldiers who have information must report to the proper officer, and not to comrades.
At the sounding of assembly the troops of the garrison not on daily duty will form in front of their respective quarters.
The general alarm referred to in foregoing paragraph will be indicated by the sound of the assembly, followed by three quick shots from the guard-house, which latter will be the distinction between the general alarm and the simple alarm for turning out the troops of the garrison.
This order will be placed upon a bulletin-board for early and general information.
Officers and non-commissioned officers are charged with its execution, and the soldiers of the 18th Infantry are especially called upon to vindicate and maintain, as they ever have, the record of their regiment.
This will require much hard work, much guard duty, and much patience, but they will have an honorable field to occupy in this country, and both Indian outrages and approaching winter stimulate them to work, and work with zeal and tireless industry.
Their colonel will with his officers share all, and no idling or indifference can, under these circumstances, have any quarters in the breast of a true soldier.
In addition to his instructions on fort security, Carrington kept up a steady stream of complaining missives to his superiors. A report to General Philip St George Cooke, Commander of the Department of the Platte, informed him:
Character of Indian affairs hostile. The treaty does not yet benefit this route [Some tribes did sign the 1866 Fort Laramie agreement] . . . My ammunition has not yet arrived; neither has my Leavenworth supply train . . . My infantry make poor riders . . . I am equal to any attack they [the Indians] 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 . . . I sent two officers out on recruiting service, under peremptory orders from Washington, leaving me crippled and obliged to trust too much to non-commissioned officers . . .
Carrington’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Cooke fully understood the impossibility of his Colonel’s position.
But if Cooke was deaf and Carrington a ditherer, the special responsibility for the disaster that was to ensue lay elsewhere.
Slaughter at Lodge Trail Ridge
In November 1866 a young infantry captain named William Judd Fetterman joined Carrington’s staff at Fort Phil Kearny. A dashing Civil War hero who had been breveted Lieutenant-Colonel, Fetterman had little respect for his cautious commanding officer, a former attorney who had served the conflict behind a desk as an administrator. Fetterman had even less regard for the Indians around the fort. “Give me a single company of regulars,” he bragged “and I can whip a thousand Indians. With eighty men I could ride through the Sioux nation.”
By December 1866, Red Cloud and the other senior chief of the Oglala Sioux, Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses (more accurately translated as “the mere sight of his horses inspires fear”), were ready to give Fetterman his opportunity to prove his boast. They were joined by Black Shield of the Miniconjou, Roman Nose and Medicine Man of the Cheyenne, and Little Chief and Sorrel Horse of the Arapaho. Around 2,000 warriors moved into the foothills around Fort Phil Kearny. For two weeks they tantalized the soldiers, riding on the skyline just out of rifle range, creeping around the fort at night howling like wolves, springing small attacks, but always keeping their main force hidden.
The soldiers’ nerves were stretched to breaking point.
Then on 20 December the Sioux and their allies camped on Prairie Dog Creek and began the cer
emonies which preceded battle. A hermaphrodite medicine man rode off over the hills and returned to tell of a vision in which he had caught a hundred soldiers in his hands. The warriors beat the ground with their hands in approval and selected the leaders for the next day’s battle. The task of leading the all-important decoy party fell to a young warrior named Crazy Horse.
At daybreak on 21 December, the Indians moved into position. The decoy rode towards Fort Phil Kearny, while the remainder prepared an ambush on either side of Lodge Trail Ridge. The Cheyenne and Arapaho took the west side, and some Sioux hid in the grass opposite. Still more Sioux remained mounted, hidden behind rocks.
Meanwhile, at the fort, Carrington had sent out the customary train of wagons to cut wood. The morning was beautiful, with the snow around the fort sparkling in the brilliant sunshine, but as though he had some premonition of danger, Carrington attached an extra guard to the train. About eleven o’clock look-outs on top of Pilot Hill started signalling frantically that the wood train was under attack.
Carrington ordered a relief party of cavalry and infantry to assemble. As it was about to move out under the command of Captain J. W. Powell, Fetterman stepped before Carrington and demanded permission to lead the relief instead of Powell. Fetterman pointed out that because of his brevet rank of Lieutenant-Colonel he technically outranked Powell. For a second Carrington hesitated, then gave Fetterman the command.
Knowing Fetterman’s rashness, Carrington warned him that the Indians were a cunning and desperate enemy. Then he gave him exact orders: “Support the wood train, relieve it and report to me. Do not engage or pursue the Indians at its expense. Under no circumstances pursue over Lodge Trail Ridge.”