What had happened was not unusual on the army frontier of 1866. The 3rd Battalion had expected the 2nd Battalion to be well stocked with rations in their cozy quarters at Fort Kearney, and had carried only enough supplies for the march from Leavenworth. At the same time the 2nd Battalion had hopefully expected the 3rd Battalion to bring in fresh rations along with the recruits. The result, of course, was a temporary famine, with several hundred men camped around Fort Kearney waiting for an overdue supply train.
Supplies arrived on the 16th, and accompanying the train was an old hero to the men of the 18th Infantry, Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman, then in command of all western departments.
In contrast to the grim seriousness of his Civil War character, Sherman seemed quite relaxed during his brief visit. Margaret Carrington reported that he entered into the spirit and plans for the expedition with his “usual energy and skill.” Perhaps because he was conscious of having made so much recent history, he suggested to her and the other officers’ wives that they keep daily journals of experiences in the new country so that records might be available for posterity.6
At that time Sherman had had little experience with Plains Indians; he foresaw no dangers for the women and children of the party, but advised Carrington that he should avoid a contest of arms with the tribes if possible. He spent much of his visit relaxing in the spring sunshine around Fort Kearney. Carrington’s son, James, told afterward of a contest sponsored by Sherman between him and some of the Pawnee boys. Sherman wanted to see which of the youngsters could shoot an arrow the highest. “My bow was boy’s size,” Jimmy Carrington recalled, “but I won by lying on my back and putting both feet against the bow to pull it.”
Jimmy Carrington also remembered an exciting event which occurred soon after Sherman departed. “Our house burned down early in the morning, and I recall the terror of the scene, the mad scramble to save a few things, but especially the rapid popping of several big army revolvers that the fire set off.” 7 His mother mourned the loss of her best chairs and mattresses, all packed and ready for the overland journey, but the Carringtons accepted the losses philosophically—“an incident very possible in army life”—and moved their few salvaged goods into an army ambulance which would be their home during the long march west.8
On May 18 recruits were assigned to the respective companies of the 2nd Battalion. The Fort Kearney magazine was opened, and ammunition which could be spared was drawn out and loaded into wagons. It was a meager supply, but Carrington had been assured that the deficit would be made up at Fort Laramie. With high spirits he announced that the regiment would march out for Laramie early on the following morning.
Saturday May 19 was a sunny spring day, the wide sky blue from horizon to horizon. More than a thousand men and 226 mule-drawn wagons moved out to stirring music from the regimental band, and by noon the column was beyond the adobe huts of Kearney City and strung along the Platte, a cloud of dust floating in its wake.
For the first time since the war the 2nd Battalion was at full strength, about seven hundred men, the majority being recruits in new blue uniforms which were darkened with sweat under the warm sun. The dismounted men of both battalions marched in advance, the wagon trains next, most of them driven by civilian teamsters employed by the quartermaster. Following the wagons was the cattle herd of about a thousand animals, with the mounted men serving as a rear guard.
Women and children rode in ambulances, and by midafternoon a few recruits, sore-footed from unaccustomed marching, were permitted to join these passengers. Each officer was responsible for the movement of his family and household goods. “My personal allowance,” said Adjutant Bisbee, “embraced two six-mule teams, an ambulance, three saddle horses, cow, and chickens.” Before the end of the day the expedition moved fourteen miles up the Platte, and someone had dubbed the long train “Carrington’s Overland Circus.”9
In addition to Adjutant Bisbee and Quartermaster Fred Brown, the 2nd Battalion’s officers at that time included Captain Henry Haymond, battalion commander, Captains Nathaniel C. Kinney, Tenodor Ten Eyck, Joshua L. Proctor, and Thomas B. Burrowes, Lieutenants John I. Adair, Isaac D’Isay, Frederick Phisterer and Thaddeus Kirtland, the last being a cousin of Colonel Carrington. The battalion was well staffed with medical officers—Captain Samuel M. Horton, chief surgeon, and contract surgeons Mathews, McCleary and Buelon.
The second day out of Fort Kearney was a Sunday, and after a brief religious service, they marched twenty miles to Plum Creek. At dawn Monday the “Overland Circus” was moving west again, the weather still good, recruits marching more briskly now that soreness was gone from their muscles. “My brother and I,” James Carrington wrote afterward, “had been given a small Indian pony that we called ‘Calico’ and during the day we would take turns riding him, to get relief from the monotony and cramped quarters of the ambulance.* I can still remember passing prairie-dog villages where there were thousands of funny little rodents running around, or sitting up to bark at us and then ducking down into their holes. Never a day without a sight of leaping antelopes, an occasional sneaking coyote, big jack-rabbits, often herds of buffalo in the distance, and ever the monotonous expanse of sage-covered plain, blinding dust, the big skies stretching to the blue horizon, distant mountains, gorgeous sunsets, and in the heat of some days a shimmering mirage that looked like a great sea.”10
While his young sons, Jimmy and Harry, were racing their calico pony alongside the wagon train, Colonel Carrington was rapidly becoming acquainted with three important civilian members of his party. They were Jack Stead, Henry Williams, and James Bridger. Stead was employed as official interpreter for the expedition; he had lived many years with the Pawnees, participating in their wars with the Sioux, who hated Stead and reputedly had placed a high price on his scalp. Henry Williams and Jim Bridger had served as scouts with General Patrick Connor during the Powder River expedition the previous year.
No white man knew more of the geography of the Big Horn and Powder River country than did “Old Gabe” Bridger. For forty years he had trapped, explored, and scouted in the area which was soon to become Wyoming Territory. He was a member of the party which opened the Oregon Trail; in 1843 he had defied the Indians by building a trading post known as Fort Bridger. In 1866 Bridger was approaching the end of his career—he was sixty-two—but Carrington would have been the first to admit that the grizzled frontiersman was the least expendable member of his expedition. Bridger’s pay was ten dollars a day, more than Carrington received, and more than twice the income of a junior officer, but he was a walking encyclopedia of Indian lore readily available to any man who needed him.
Carrington probably met Bridger early in 1866 at Fort Kearney. According to the Kearney Herald, he was there during the winter, en route to Washington “to tell the authorities how to manage the Indians.” The Herald described him as being “fully six feet high, raw boned, blue eyes, auburn hair (now somewhat gray) is very active and communicative.”11 Lieutenant William Bisbee said he was “a plain farmer-like looking man dressed in the customary store clothes garments, low crowned soft felt hat, never affecting long hair or showy fringed buckskin suits, though he may on occasion have donned them as a convenience. His name of scout belied his calling in our expedition for we had no occasion to scout for Indians, they were always nearby.” 12
As the Overland Circus moved into hostile Indian country, Bridger and his assistant, Henry Williams, became more active, rising every morning before the bugler, preparing their own coffee, eating a few bites of pemmican, saddling their mounts. At reveille call, they would ride over to Carrington’s tent, engage in brief conversation with the colonel, then canter out in advance of the column. Around sunset they would come riding back and report to Carrington. They always bedded down a short distance from the military camp, and except for Carrington and one or two other officers, few members of the battalion spoke with them or even saw them during the march. Bridger had little respect for what he called “paper-co
llared soldiers,” inexperienced on the frontier.13
On May 24 the column marched into Fort McPherson—where less than a year later Carrington would be commanding under the shadow of an official inquiry. The fort was a dismal collection of shabby log-and-adobe quarters. Carrington had hoped to find additional rifle ammunition here, but there was none to spare. He ordered a detail to dismantle an idle steam sawmill which had been transferred to the expedition. The men loaded boiler and frame into spare wagons, and the train moved on, to camp for two days near O’Fallon’s Bluffs.
On the 29th they reached Beauvais Ranche near the Old California Crossing. Westward travelers usually crossed the Platte at this point, but Carrington had been advised to proceed to Fort Sedgwick before attempting to ford his heavy wagon train. Late in the afternoon he received a visitor, a Cheyenne named Old Little Dog, who complained that some soldiers had entered his lodge nearby and stolen his rifle.
Carrington assured the Cheyenne that his rifle would be returned, and then to please his guest, ordered the regimental band to present a concert. Old Little Dog obviously enjoyed the music, especially admiring the bell chimes, and when the performance was ended and his rifle was returned to him, he thanked his host, leaped upon the bare back of his pony and galloped away. Carrington watched the Cheyenne until he vanished in the dusk, wondering if he had made a proper beginning in his first meeting with a representative of one of the tribes with which he must deal in the Powder River country.
Next day the train rumbled on westward, reaching Fort Sedgwick outside Julesburg, Colorado Territory, near sundown. After eleven days of marching they had put only two hundred miles between them and Fort Kearney. Laramie still lay more than a week’s travel away, and the Powder River country was almost two hundred miles farther.
Carrington had allowed one day of his march schedule for fording the Platte at Julesburg. He was four days making the crossing. Melting snows upstream had flooded the river, and after conferring with his officers, he decided to float the wagons across on a large flatboat. He assigned the task of fitting out and caulking the boat to Captain Tenodor Ten Eyck, who had been a surveyor and lumberman before the war.
During the stay at Sedgwick, officers and men not on duty inspected the post. Few of them had ever before seen a fort constructed for defense against frontal Indian attack. A parapet and ditch guarded a rectangle of two-story adobes, each situated so that if one was attacked, the besiegers would be caught in a cross fire from the others. Another feature which impressed the visitors was a system of window barricades, pierced with loopholes and ready to be put into position at a moment’s warning. All this was very sobering to recruits who had heard and read about Indian warfare, but as yet had not even seen a hostile Indian.
Meanwhile Ten Eyck and a detail of two hundred men made quick work of the flatboat, dragged it to the bank of the Platte, and laboriously set about stringing a cable across the currents and shoals of that treacherous stream. A twenty-mule team was then hitched to the cable, but the animals could not move the boat out of the sandy riverbank. Ten Eyck ordered the mules replaced by oxen, and the flatboat reluctantly became buoyant. Planking was laid out and wagons and teams moved aboard. Adjutant Bisbee, his wife and young son made the first crossing in the ambulance assigned to them.
But the capricious Platte was already falling again. By morning of the second day, sand bars were shining where currents had run a few hours earlier. “On trying the scow,” Private William Murphy recorded, “we found it would not work owing to the quicksands and shallows. In places the water would be only two or three inches deep, while a few feet away there would be seven or eight feet of water.”14
Captain Charles Norris, commanding a 2nd Cavalry company stationed at Fort Sedgwick, came down to the riverbank to commiserate with Carrington and his officers. “You’ll have to push, cuss, and drive your train team by team across that mile of flat river,” Norris advised.15 Carrington ordered Ten Eyck to change his tactics, unload the wagons, replace them with false beds, and reload lightly. On Captain Norris’ suggestion, a sizable collection of light and heavy timbers for prying and shoving was also assembled.
Realizing that the actual crossing would be delayed another day, Carrington decided to lighten the tension of waiting by arranging an evening entertainment. Soldiers not assigned to river-crossing operations erected several hospital tents into a single pavilion, and set up rows of campstools and chairs from the unloaded baggage wagons. Major James Van Voast, en route to Laramie to assume command of the post and the 18th Regiment’s 1st Battalion, organized a program of music and comedy which he called the “Ironclad Minstrels.” Amateur soldier actors blacked their faces, poked fun at their frontier environment, and sang to the accompaniment of the band’s rollicking music which was complete with banjos and bones.
In a way, the evening’s jollity was also a farewell party for officers of the 3rd Battalion, whose companies would take different routes west from Julesburg to forts in Colorado Territory and beyond on the old Oregon Trail. As he shook hands with these officers in front of his tent after the performance, Carrington must have wondered how he was going to accomplish his administrative duties as colonel of a regiment strung out across half the West—from headquarters in an isolated fort far north in the Powder River country.
One of the minor incidents occurring during the regiment’s stay at Fort Sedgwick concerned a member of the band, Frank M. Fessenden. Although not yet twenty, Fessenden had brought his teen-age bride west with him, and all along the trail from Fort Kearney it had been obvious that young Mrs. Fessenden would soon become a mother. The Fessendens had been hopeful of reaching Fort Laramie, where the column would halt for a time, but the birth appeared so imminent at Fort Sedgwick that Surgeon Horton advised the expectant mother to travel no farther. “I was left behind the command with my wife,” Fessenden wrote later. “A daughter was born to us here at Fort Sedgwick. She was a great favorite with Captain Fetterman who wanted to name her Sedgwick.”18
Because of his youth and size—he stood only five feet, five inches high—Fessenden was a favorite of the regiment, a gray-eyed, brown-haired youngster from Twinsburg, Ohio, who upon enlistment noted his occupation as painter but soon ended up as a musician in the Army. When Carrington learned of the reason for Fessenden’s temporary detachment from the regiment, he ordered a promotion in rank, dated back to the first of the month.
On June 2 and 3, Carrington’s Overland Circus completed the formidable task of fording the Platte. “We finally crossed by having a long rope stretched from man to man,” said Private Murphy, “strapping our guns and equipment to our backs and holding to the rope. Some of the men were up to their arm pits in water and some traveled nearly dry shod. We were ordered not to stop for anything, for if we did we would get stuck in the quicksand.”17 A few mules drowned, and in spite of all precautions some stores were damaged. Water melted the sugar, caked the flour, and swept away an occasional stray knapsack. But the Platte was crossed.
* Calico was to become a casualty of the Fetterman Massacre.
III June:
MOON WHEN THE GREEN GRASS IS UP
On June 16, while encamped four miles east of Laramie, I was visited by Standing Elk, chief of the Brûlés (a band of the Sioux). He was thoroughly friendly—was entertained in my tent, and asked “Where I was going;” I told him; he answered me as follows: “There is a treaty being made at Laramie with the Sioux that are in the country where you are going. The fighting men in that country have not come to Laramie, and you will have to fight them. They will not give you the road unless you whip them.” 1
1.
EARLY ON THE MORNING of June 4, the last of Carrington’s wagons was across the Platte, and the train camped that night on Lodgepole Creek. Next day they made eighteen miles, halting at Louis Ranche.
Along the trails of the West, crude stage stops had sprung up during the years between the California gold rush and the Civil War, most of them known as road ranches. Like
many other wagon trains, Carrington’s Traveling Circus took advantage of such amenities as were available at these stops, and often camped in the vicinity of a ranche. Margaret Carrington described Louis Ranche as “quite a fort, and the out-houses and stables are advanced like bastions, so that enfilading fire can be had in all directions … a large yard surrounded by a stockade paling, with stabling, feed troughs, and hayricks, with here and there loopholes for the rifle … the wall of the upper stories and every angle of house or stable has its outlets for firing upon an approaching foe.” She noted a wide selection of merchandise offered for sale: nutmegs, peppermint, navy tobacco, clay pipes, salaratus, baking powder, bologna, ready-made clothing, rows of canned fruits, black snake whips, tin cups, camp kettles, frying pans, wine, gin and whiskey.2
Next morning, Colonel Carrington and his officers said their farewells to the last companies of the 3rd Battalion, who were taking a route through Lodgepole Canyon on the first leg of a long journey to Camp Douglas, Utah. With their departure the train was shortened considerably; only the 2nd Battalion and recruits for the 1st Battalion remained. Carrington ordered a faster marching pace, over a smooth, hard-packed trail, but by noon the sun was scorching, and hourly rest stops had to be lengthened. The only trailside well marked on the map proved to be dry, and orders were passed to the men to conserve water in their canteens.
By midafternoon the thermometer in Mrs. Carrington’s open ambulance indicated 101°, and a steadily rising wind tore at wagon covers. Clouds of gritty dust swirled across the treeless plain, driving into eyes, ears and noses. To add to the discomfort, swarms of buffalo gnats appeared out of nowhere, annoying the teams, stinging every exposed part of the human body. For protection, the men donned gloves and tied handkerchiefs over faces and necks. By late afternoon all vacant spaces in ambulances and wagons were filled with men suffering from lameness and heat exhaustion. Surgeon Horton and his assistants were kept busy trying to restore as many as possible to duty.