The troops left Fort Kearny near present-day Kearney, Neb. The regimental commander was Connecticut-born Colonel Henry Bebee Carrington, and he would be sticking with the 2nd Battalion. Major General John Pope, commander of the Department of the Missouri, had ordered the year-old colonel to staff Fort Reno and to build two additional forts farther north.
One of the wives was Margaret Irvin Carrington, an educated woman passionately dedicated to life, justice and her husband, Henry. She kept a journal of her travels and travails in the West. Hardly the stuff of a simple military maneuver. A stop at Fort Laramie in mid-June brought the ladies an opportunity to shop but carried ominous portents for the future. The whites, as usual, brought food and other presents. Red Cloud—not actually a chief, but a head warrior who was highly influential in matters of war—and others did not.
The arrival of Carrington and company did not sit well with Red Cloud. The white men were asking for permission to use a road but had already brought soldiers to build forts along that road. Red Cloud and his Sioux delegation stormed off from the Fort Laramie negotiations; they vowed to fight any white man who used the Bozeman Trail.
Still, the commission returned to Washington, D. The government negotiators had grossly underestimated the determination of certain Sioux to save their hunting grounds. At Fort Laramie, some friendly Indians alerted Carrington to the possibility of trouble from hostile Indians in the Powder River country.
And the colonel soon learned of other problems. The ammunition, horses and wagon drivers that were supposed to be made available to him at Fort Laramie were missing. But Carrington remained cautiously optimistic. On June 16, he wrote to Brevet Major H. Litchfield, the acting assistant adjutant general of the Department of the Platte, that he anticipated no serious difficulty: Patience, forbearing, and common sense in dealing with the Sioux and Cheyennes will do much with all who really desire peace, but it is indispensable that ample supplies of ammunition come promptly.
The next day, Carrington and the 2nd Battalion marched out of Fort Laramie with wagons. First, he stopped off miles to the northwest at Fort Reno, leaving behind one of his eight companies to garrison it; he then proceeded to a spot that appealed to him some 60 miles farther up the Bozeman Trail.
Philip Kearny, who died in at the Battle of Chantilly Virginia. The fort would be stockaded and would sit on a natural plateau between Big and Little Piney creeks. The soldiers required only one morning to plot out the parade ground and building sites. Almost immediately, various Cheyennes began to visit; they said that Red Cloud was insisting they join forces with his Sioux to drive the white men away.
Openly hostile Indians, no doubt inspired by Red Cloud, also began to visit, with unpleasant consequences. Two men died in the first raid on July Attacks upon military and civilian targets in the region became commonplace.
Stock was lost. Timber parties, sent out in wagons to secure lumber for building the fort and wood for fuel and cooking, had to travel five or six miles to reach the pine trees in the Big Horn Mountains. These wood trains were often harassed by Indians. From Pilot Hill, a lookout post Carrington established just south of the fort site, men could watch the wagons move and signal when there was danger.
Alarms were constant; attacks upon the trains were frequent, and this kind of visitation continued during the whole season, Margaret Carrington wrote. The ladies all came to the conclusion, no less than the officers affirmed it, that the Laramie treaty was Wau-nee-chee , no good! Nevertheless, work on the fort progressed steadily, because there was no full-scale Indian attack.
The daily routine for the women confined within its high walls differed radically from their lives in the East. Only a few servants had come along, and many of them left for the more lucrative professions of baker and washerwoman for the troops. So the wives baked, cooked, cleaned, scrubbed and sewed clothing. Sometimes they found time during the day for croquet. Evening entertainment included readings, games, quadrilles and music.
Chapel came on Sunday. But there was never a sense of real peace. Every day brought its probabilities of some Indian adventures—every night had its special dangers which unanticipated might involve great loss, Margaret Carrington wrote. Her husband kept looking for the promised support. On July 30, he sent a long report to his boss, Brig. Philip St. George Cooke, who headed the Department of the Platte: My ammunition has not arrived; neither has my Leavenworth supply train—I am equal to any attack they may make, but have to build quarters and prepare for winter, escort trains, and guaranty the whole road.
Carrington was gaining a reputation as an alarmist, if not a coward. He had been a lawyer with business clients in Columbus, Ohio, before raising the 18th Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
A skilled administrator, he had held a series of staff jobs but had never fought with the regiment. After the war, he had continued to pursue a military career.
His strengths were design and engineering, ideal for constructing Fort Phil Kearny but not for training soldiers or commanding them in battle.
To the dismay of some of his officer corps, Carrington took a defensive position at Fort Phil Kearny, justified in his eyes by the shortage of troops and equipment. Did he flout the odds for the remote possibility of glory or simply to gain some small and fleeting gratification by antagonizing a commanding officer for whom he had little respect?
During the Civil War, certain officers sparked lasting controversy by disobeying orders when it became obvious, at least to them, that it was necessary in order to save a larger command or to seize upon a rapidly changing battle scenario.
The classic case is cavalryman J. And, of course, there remains the crowning controversy: Did Custer disobey Brig. Lookouts on Pilot Hill, who had a clear view of the woodcutters west of the fort, signaled the wood train was no longer under attack and was proceeding unimpeded toward the pineries.
Lieutenant W. It also demonstrates the belief Fetterman was taking the proper initiative. No one at Fort Phil Kearny on December 21, , realized so many warriors lay in ambush along the ridges above Peno Creek. Although Jim Bridger and other Army scouts had earlier reported lodges along the Tongue River, the majority of the Minneconjou Sioux and Northern Cheyennes had not arrived at the camps until a day or so before the fight. Moreover, lodges would not account for some 2, warriors, even if all of them had been waiting in ambush.
Never previously had the garrison at Fort Phil Kearny encountered more than or so Indians, a number that fewer than 80 soldiers had clashed with just 15 days earlier. Certainly Fetterman and Brown were familiar with Indian decoy maneuvers. Fetterman had demonstrated caution and discretion when twice tempted by decoy parties around the pineries in November.
But the impetuous Grummond, who could seemingly never resist the temptation to chase decoys, had very nearly forfeited his life doing so in the fight of December 6. That said, none of the officers present on the 21st expected to meet Indians in the hundreds when they pursued the decoys.
Perhaps 50 or so would cover the retreat, in turn luring the soldiers farther over the ridge, where they expected to encounter the strong main force—similar to the December 6 clash and certainly a manageable number for 81 men. Despite his unfamiliarity with frontier conditions and the methods of Indian fighting, Fetterman took command of a composite reaction force consisting of the former battalion quartermaster, Captain Frederick Brown, 2nd Lt.
George Grummond, 49 enlisted troops of the 18th Infantry, 27 men of the 2nd Cavalry , and 2 civilian scouts, ironically totaling 80 men. Ignoring his orders not to venture beyond Lodge Trail Ridge out of sight and support distance from the fort , Fetterman pursued a small band of Sioux and was lured into an ambush.
He found himself facing approximately 2, Indians. Within 20 minutes, Fetterman and his command had been wiped out. The Fetterman Massacre, as the encounter became known, was second in notoriety only to Custer 's disastrous defeat in It led to the dismissal of Fetterman's commanding officer, Henry B.
Carrington , who was initially blamed for the disaster, but was eventually exonerated. He had never married and left no heirs. Carrington, who was initially blamed for the disaster, but was eventually exonerated. In , the Army designated a new outpost in the Dakota Territory as "Fort Fetterman" in honor of the slain officer. Privacy Policy Disclaimer. William Judd Fetterman Captain, U. Army William Judd Fetterman was born in Honors In , the Army designated a new outpost in the Dakota Territory as "Fort Fetterman" in honor of the slain officer.
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