The Native American Experience
“The crowning office, without which you would regard your work as scarcely begun, is now to be performed, and to its fulfillment I assign soldiers; neither discharging the duty myself, nor delegating it to some brother officer; but some veteran soldier of good desert shall share with a sergeant from each of their companies, and the worthy man whose work rises high above us, the honor of raising our new and beautiful garrison flag to the top of the handsomest flag-staff in America.
“It is the first full garrison flag that has floated between the Platte and Montana. …
“With music and the roar of cannon we shall greet its unfoldings.
“This day shall be a holiday, and a fresh starting point for future endeavor.
“And yet all is not said that I wish to say! While we exalt the national standard, and rejoice in its glory and its power, let us not forget the true source of that glory and power. …
“Let me, then, ask all, with uncovered heads and grateful hearts, to pause in our act of consecration, while the chaplain shall invoke God’s own blessing upon that act; so that while this banner rises heavenward, and so shall rise with each recurring sun, all hearts shall rise to the throne of the Infinite, and for this day, its duties and its pleasures, we shall become better men and better soldiers of the great Republic.” 15
At a signal from Adjutant Adair, Private William Daley and a group of sergeants and enlisted men assembled around the flagstaff. While Daley carefully gathered the halyards, Chaplain White offered a brief prayer. Immediately following his loud “Amen!” a succession of commands rang clear in the autumn air: “Attention!” “Present, arms!” “Play!” “Hoist!” “Fire!”
Frances Grummond recorded that emotion-filled scene. “With the simultaneous snap of presented arms in salute, the ‘long roll’ of the combined drum-corps was followed by the full band playing ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ the guns opened fire, and the magnificent flag with its ‘thirty-six-foot fly’ and its ‘twenty-foot hoist’ slowly rose to masthead and was broken out in one glorious flame of red, white, and blue!
“The very shadow of the immense flag, as it floated at full length in the breeze, seemed to answer back our waving handkerchiefs; and while cheers were not permitted to break the dignified exultation of the occasion, we did involuntarily clap our hands, and our beating hearts did respond to the vibrations of the guns, whose echoes among the hills seemed to magnify their number as if a battle were raging all about us. Then, every officer on the alert, at the order, ‘pass in review’ … column was formed, the review received, and with the order ‘parade dismissed’ each company marched to its quarters, the band playing ‘Hail Columbia’ until the troops disappeared.”18
It was a great day for Fort Phil Kearny, all officers and men not on guard duty free to loaf away the afternoon under a warm October sun, to view for the first time with casual ease the fruits of their fifteen weeks of labor.
Around the browning turf of the parade a score of buildings cast their shadows—two 84 x 24-foot quartermaster warehouses, four company quarters, 60 x 25 feet; a sutler’s store; adjutant’s quarters; laundry; a bachelor officers quarters, 44 x 52 feet; a row of completed and partially completed cabins for married officers. Most of the buildings were faced with half logs, bark sides to the weather. Some were roofed with shingles, others with four-inch poles set close together and covered with corn sacks, grass, and six inches of earth.
Colonel Carrington’s headquarters, topped by a lookout tower, faced north along a twelve-foot-wide graveled walk which curved around the flagpole and bandstand and crossed a similar walk running east and west. Under construction in the southeast quadrant of the parade was a 16 x 16-foot magazine of 14-inch timbers, sunk eight feet below ground, waterproofed and ventilated. Bordering the entire parade was a twenty-foot-wide graded street, and at diagonal corners of the stockade were two massive blockhouses of 18-inch logs. Gates were twelve feet wide of heavy planking, with small wickets in the right halves just large enough for one man to pass in a stooping position.
To the east of the parade cluster, and separated by a solid strip of stockade, lay the quartermaster’s yard, six hundred feet long, two hundred feet wide, its ten-foot cottonwood palisade enclosing quarters for civilian employees, a blacksmith and wagon shop, carpenters’, saddlers’, and armorers’ shops, stabling for mules and horses, a woodyard and a hay yard.
According to quartermaster records, more than twelve thousand logs had been cut, hauled and sawed to bring this fort into being, and considering the difficulties under which the work had been accomplished, the men had a right to take pride in the results.
For Henry B. Carrington this fort was the realization of a life’s dream, and in summing up the official record of events for his first month as post commander, he noted with gratification that “work at the fort has progressed satisfactorily during the month, the weather being exceedingly favorable. Storehouses, officers quarters and substantial and commodious quarters for the troops, stabling for the public animals are all in a manner completed.”17
He was also pleased by the number of civilians who had passed safely over the Montana Road since it had come under his responsibility—979 men, 32 women, and 26 children. Yet it was some relief to know that the emigration season was ending and that there would probably be only a few more trains to worry over before another spring and summer rolled around.
On that last day of October the garrison’s strength was 360 officers and men, a gain of nineteen during the month. Two enlisted men of the 2nd Cavalry were listed on the muster rolls, casuals from escort duties, but neither of the two full companies promised in August had yet reported.
At three o’clock in the afternoon of the holiday, Indians made their first close appearance in three weeks. They had come up from camps along Tongue River, their curiosity aroused by the massed firing of howitzers during the flag-raising ceremony. They splashed across Big Piney and galloped around the bend of Sullivant Hills so quickly they almost passed the west gate before pickets sounded an alarm. “Others appeared upon the hills, and flashing mirrors were constantly passing signals for nearly an hour,” said Margaret Carrington. “They had at least the satisfaction of seeing the stars and stripes, and thus getting new hints as to the proposed length of our visit.”18 As a precautionary measure, extra ammunition was dispatched to each company quarters, howitzer details were called to stations, and a few men were added to the guard. By sundown, however, the inquisitive visitors from Tongue River had vanished back into their hills.
In the evening the Carringtons entertained officers and wives with a levee in their new quarters. It was a full-dress affair, with music, dancing, and party games. In proper military fashion, the merrymaking ended promptly at midnight, the guests strolling to their neighboring quarters under a star-filled autumn sky. Frances Grummond, who had temporarily forgotten her almost constant forebodings, was cheered by the calls of the sentries on the banquette: “Twelve o’clock and all’s well.” It was the first hour of November, the Deer Rutting Moon.
* Sarah E. Carmichael, who published her own works “for private circulation.”
VIII. November:
DEER RUTTING MOON
Because the country was broken, because most of the officers had not been with me in reconnaissances and had recently arrived at post entirely unused to Indian warfare, because I knew the Indians to be in large numbers, I would not authorize them to make hazardous adventures. … I did (as I believed) fail to have the confidence of some officers. Few came from Omaha or Laramie without prejudice, believing I was not doing enough fighting.1
LATE ON NOVEMBER 1, THE last Montana-bound civilian train of the season was camped outside the fort. This party had met with little Indian resistance on the journey up from Laramie, and some of the men had grown careless enough to sit around campfires after dark, playing cards by the light of the flames. About nine o’clock on this evening a band of Indians crept close upon them in the surrounding darkness, and without warnin
g fired upon the card players. Three men were wounded, one fatally, in the first fusillade. A few moments later signal fires appeared on hills around the fort, and Indians could be seen dancing around them.
“Colonel Carrington concluded to try his mountain howitzer on the Indian dancers,” teamster John Bratt later recorded. “After a few shots, the gunners got range on some of the Indian fires, and many fires were extinguished and some dancers’ lives went out with them.”2 The colonel also dispatched a skirmish party, but no trace of the night attackers was found.
Two days later one of the two cavalry companies assigned to Phil Kearny in August finally arrived from Laramie—sixty-three men of Company C under command of Lieutenant Horatio S. Bingham, a young Minnesotan with Civil War experience. For Bingham and twenty-seven of his men, this would be their last post assignment. The lieutenant had less than a month to live, and Company C would suffer the heaviest loss of any of the five companies represented in the detachment which marched out with Fetterman on December 21. They were armed with obsolete Enfield rifles and Starr carbines.
Accompanying Bingham’s cavalrymen from Fort Laramie was the man who would lead so many of them to their deaths—Captain William J. Fetterman. While Carrington as nominal commander of the 18th Regiment had remained in Ohio and Indiana through most of the Civil War, Fetterman had been winning honors in combat. In the spring of 1862, Fetterman commanded Company A of the 2nd Battalion during the siege of Corinth; later that year he was cited for gallantry at Stone’s River after thirty-six hours of continuous fighting. As commander of the 2nd Battalion he fought throughout most of Sherman’s Georgia campaign of 1864—Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, Jonesboro, the siege of Atlanta. Official dispatches were filled with numerous commendatory references: “Captain Fetterman’s command marched to my assistance with great promptness … conspicuous for gallantry and bravery … displayed great gallantry and spirit … the conduct of Captain Fetterman in throwing up a salient and maintaining his positions against repeated attempts to dislodge him by the enemy, is worthy of particular notice. …”3 By the end of the campaign he was breveted lieutenant-colonel and assigned to brigade staff.
Brilliant as his record was, Fetterman knew nothing of Indian warfare, and was boastfully contemptuous of the savages’ ability to withstand attacks from trained soldiers of the United States Army. Because he had held rank longer than Ten Eyck, Fetterman superseded him as commander of the 2nd Battalion—his old outfit which he had led in the bitterest fighting in Georgia. Ten Eyck thus was dropped another notch in authority; the former post and battalion commander was left with only Company H.
Captain James W. Powell and Major Henry Almstedt, the paymaster, also arrived with this party. Powell was assigned to C Company, which Lieutenant Adair had been commanding in addition to his duties as regimental adjutant.
In the mailbag from Laramie was a scolding telegram from General Cooke, complaining about delays in receiving communications from Fort Phil Kearny, and suggesting that Carrington send mails more frequently. There was also a formal query from The Adjutant General in Washington wanting to know the location of the fort. To this Adjutant Adair replied politely that Phil Kearny was in Dakota Territory, sixty-five miles northwest of Fort Reno.
With restrained impatience, Carrington answered Cooke’s complaint by pointing out that he had sent three mails in October, as required by orders. “My mail just received,” he added, “was twelve days, on account of snow, bad roads, and weather, and this on return trip alone. It must not be overlooked that our snows, which leave the hills bare, fill the intermediate ravines, valleys, and gulches so that no one can travel. While we had no snow at this post, owing to its position, there were four feet within a mile of it … I believe that the general commanding would prefer to lose a mail occasionally, with the assurance that in an emergency I will advise him at all risk, rather than embarrass me in any skirmish or temporary encounter which calls for use of my present force.”4
Jim Bridger returned during that first week in November, reporting on his talks with the Crows around Fort C. F. Smith and along Clark’s Fork. Old Gabe was confident the Crows would not join the Sioux and Arapaho as allies, but he had heard many disturbing rumors of war plans and of the great strength the hostiles were amassing along Tongue River. The Crow chiefs reported that it took half a day to ride through all villages of war parties there. Sissetons, Bad Faces, Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Arapaho, and some Gros Ventres and Cheyennes were together, and there was big talk of destroying the two new forts in their hunting grounds. Yellow-Face, a Crow warrior, declared that he had passed hostile camps in close array along a forty-mile stretch of the Tongue Valley.
Some of the Crows told Bridger of an interview with Red Cloud. “We want you to aid us in destroying the whites,” Red Cloud had said, and then boasted that he would cut off the soldiers’ supplies when bad weather came, and would starve them out of the forts during the winter and kill them all.5
Bridger also had conferred some weeks earlier with Jim Beckwourth, who had been living in one of the Crow villages.* Beckwourth told Bridger he had enlisted 250 young Crows who were willing to join the soldiers and go on the warpath against the hostiles. When Bridger mentioned this, Carrington informed the scout that he had authority to enlist only fifty Indian auxiliaries, and had already sent a man (W. B. C. Smith) to Omaha to arrange for enlistment of Winnebagos or Pawnees. After pondering the matter, Bridger allowed that if Pawnees or Winnebagos could be brought from Omaha with rifles, it would be better than enlisting Crows nearer at hand but who possessed only bows and arrows.
When he reported to Omaha on Bridger’s findings, Carrington expressed no alarm over Red Cloud’s threat to starve the soldiers out of the forts. “He does not comprehend the idea of a year’s supplies, nor that we are now prepared to not only pass the winter, but next spring and summer, even if he takes the offensive.” This was careless boasting on the colonel’s part; supplies on hand were adequate for full rations only into midwinter.
In this same letter, Carrington repeated his deep disillusionment with the Laramie treaty. “I had not the slightest confidence in the result of the proposed treaty, and so wrote you. And in fact the whole result of the negotiations there [Laramie] was a mere temporary suspension of hostile acts, if it even amounted to that … I look for this month to determine their purpose, and hope yet to be able to strike a blow which they will feel more than the last, and not risk a single post on the line in the attempt.”6
His comment, I hope yet to be able to strike a blow, may have been a subconscious reply to pressures which had been exerted upon him during the past two days by his ambitious new captain, William J. Fetterman. Since the hour of his arrival at Fort Phil Kearny, Fetterman had given Carrington no peace.
The two men were almost exact opposites in temperament, Fetterman being a man of action, a fighter pure and simple, descended from generations of professional soldiers. Before leaving his eastern assignment to journey to Phil Kearny, he had been informed that in an impending reorganization of the Army he probably would supersede Carrington as commander of the post. (In a move to increase the size of the frontier army, the War Department was planning to use the 18th Infantry’s 2nd Battalion as nucleus for a new 27th Infantry Regiment. The 1st Battalion was to be enlarged to regiment strength, retaining the original 18th regimental number.)
Fetterman was eager to further his advancement, and from the first day of his arrival was openly critical of Carrington’s cautious policy toward the hostiles. His old comrades of Civil War days, Fred Brown and William Bisbee, quickly sided with Fetterman. Young George Grummond was another supporter of his proposal to attack instead of defend, and a few days after Fetterman’s arrival, officers and men were quoting some of the captain’s reckless boasts: “A single company of regulars could whip a thousand Indians.” “A full regiment could whip the entire array of hostile tribes.” “With eighty men I could ride through the Sioux nation.”7
This was th
e beginning of a schism between Carrington and his officers which would grow deeper and more dangerous with each passing week until the tragedy of late December.
On the second day after reporting for duty, Fetterman came to Carrington with a plan for tricking the Indians into a night ambush. He had talked it over previously with Brown and Grummond, and both had approved. The plan was to conceal a heavily armed detachment in a cottonwood thicket along Big Piney opposite the fort, hobble some mules between the thicket and the fort as live bait, and thus decoy the Indians into position for a cross-fire attack.
Carrington considered it a risky business, but granted permission after advising Fetterman to exercise the greatest caution in exposing men needlessly in any such action as a massed charge out of concealment. The Sioux, he warned, did not fight in the same manner as Fetterman’s recent opponents, the soldiers of the Confederacy.
Fetterman laid his trap after dark, setting out the hobbled mules and placing his detachment carefully in the thicket. “The entire garrison,” Frances Grummond wrote, “was keenfully watchful of this experiment.”8 She was worrying about her husband, George, who was out in the cottonwood thicket waiting for Indians while she waited for his safe return. Unable to sleep, she wandered about their three-room pine-log cabin. She had hung pieces of sheeting over the living room windows for shades, covered the unglazed kitchen windows with old newspapers, and carpeted her living room with gunny sacks sewn together. Crude as the cabin was, it seemed like a palace after six weeks of housekeeping in a tent, a warm dry haven in which to give birth to her expected child.
Elsewhere in the fort others also stayed up late, waiting for the Indians to dart into Fetterman’s trap. Some played cards (Authors was a favorite with the women and older children) and some brought out their musical instruments or sang; others read books or reread old newspapers from the last Laramie mail. Most of the women sewed, using patterns swapped back and forth, fashioning dresses and coats from calico, flannel and linsey-woolsey procured from the sutler’s store.