CHAPTER ONE

The Powder River Expedition

I. The Field and the Fighters

Since the United States began to be there never was such a post as Fort Philip Kearney, commonly called Fort Phil Kearney.[3] From its establishment, in 1866, to its abandonment, some two years later, it was practically in a state of siege. I do not mean that it was beleaguered by the Indians in any formal, persistent investment, but it was so constantly and so closely observed by war parties, hidden in the adjacent woods and the mountain passes, that there was little safety outside its stockade for anything less than a company of infantry or a troop of cavalry; and not always, as we shall see, for those.

Rarely in the history of the Indian wars of the United States have the Indians, no matter how preponderant in force, conducted a regular siege, Pontiac’s investment of Detroit being almost unique in that particular. But they literally surrounded Fort Phil Kearney at all times. Nothing escaped their observation, and no opportunity to harass and to cut off detached parties of the garrison, to stampede the herds, or to attack the wagon trains, was allowed to pass by. Not a stick of timber could be cut, not an acre of grass mowed, except under heavy guard. Herds of beef cattle, the horses for the cavalry and mounted infantry, the mules for the supply wagons, could not graze, even under the walls of the fort, without protection. The country teemed with game. Hunting parties were absolutely forbidden. To take a stroll outside the stockade on a summer evening was to invite death, or worse if the stroller happened to be a woman. There was no certainty about the attacks, except an assurance that one was always due at any given moment. As old James Bridger, a veteran plainsman and fur trader, a scout whose fame is scarcely less than that of Kit Carson, and the confidential companion adviser of Carrington in 1866, was wont to say to him: “Whar you don’t see no Injuns thar they’re sartin to be thickest.”

Taking at random two average months in the two different years during which the post was maintained, one in the summer, another in the fall, I find that there were fifteen separate and distinct attacks in one and twenty in the other. In many of these, in most, in fact, one or more men were killed and a greater number wounded. Not a wagon train bound for Montana could pass up the Bozeman trail, which ran under the walls of the fort, and for the protection of which it had been established, without being attacked again and again. Only the most watchful prudence, the most skilful management, and the most determined valor, prevented the annihilation of successive parties of emigrants seeking the new and inviting land.

The war with the Indians was about the ownership of territory, as most of our Indian wars have been. Indeed, that statement is true of most of the wars of the world. The strong have ever sought to take from the weak. The westward-moving tide of civilization had at last pressed back from the Missouri and the Mississippi the Sioux and their allies, the Cheyennes, the largest and most famous of the several great groups of Indians who have disputed the advance of the white man since the days of Columbus, saving perhaps the Creeks and the Iroquois.

The vast expanse of territory west of the hundredth meridian, extending from the Red River to the British Columbia boundary line, was at the time practically devoid of white settlements, except at Denver and Salt Lake, until the Montana towns were reached in the northwest.[4] It is a great sweep of land which comprises every variety of climate and soil. The huge Big Horn Mountains severed that immense domain. The Sweet Water Country and all east of the Wind River Range, including South Pass and the region west of the great bend of the North Platte, had its prairies and fertile valleys. Just north of the Big Horn Mountain Range, which took in the territory which formed the most direct route to Central Montana, and the occupation of which was the real objective of Carrington’s expedition in the spring of 1866, was the most precious section, controlled by tribes jealous of any intrusion by the whites.

All along the Yellowstone and its tributaries, in spite of the frequent “_Mauvaises Terres_,” or “bad lands,” of apparent volcanic origin, the whole country was threaded with clear streams from the Big Horn Range. The valleys of these were luxuriant in their natural products and their promise. Enormous herds of buffalo roamed the plains, affording the Indian nearly everything required for his support. The mountains abounded with bear, deer and other game in great variety. The many rivers which traversed the territory teemed with fish, the valleys which they watered were abundantly fertile for the growing of the few crops which the Indian found necessary for his support. The land was desirable naturally and attracted the attention of the settlers.

It cannot be gainsaid that the Indians enjoyed a quasi-legal title to this land. But if a comparatively small group of nomadic and savage tribes insists upon reserving a great body of land for a mere hunting ground, using as a game preserve that which, in a civilized region, would easily support a great agricultural and urban population of industrious citizens seeking relief from the crowded and confined conditions of older communities, what are you going to do about it? Experience has shown that in spite of treaties, purchases and other peaceful means of obtaining it, there is always bound to be a contest about that land. The rights of savagery have been compelled to yield to the demands of civilization, ethics to the contrary notwithstanding. And it will always be so, sad though it may seem to many.

The close of the Civil War threw many soldiers out of employment. After four years of active campaigning they could not settle down to the humdrum life of village and country again. With a natural spirit of restlessness they gathered their families, loaded their few household belongings into wagons, and in parties of varying sizes made their way westward. Railroads began to push iron feelers across the territory. Engineers and road builders, as well as emigrants, demanded the protection of the government. At first most of the settlers merely wished to pass through the country and settle in the fair lands upon the other side, but the fertility and beauty that met their eyes on every hand irresistibly invited settlement on the journey.

At that time there were four great routes of transcontinental travel in use: southward over the famous Santa Fé trail; westward over the Kansas trail to Denver; westward on the Oregon trail through Nebraska and Salt Lake City to California and Oregon; northwestward on the Bozeman trail through Wyoming to Montana. The Union Pacific road was building along the Oregon trail, the Kansas Pacific along the Kansas trail to Denver, while the great Santa Fé system was not yet dreamed of.

The railroads being in operation for short distances, the only method of transportation was in the huge Conestoga wagon, or prairie schooner which, with its canvas top raking upward fore and aft over a capacious wagon box, looked not unlike the hull of the boat from which it took its name. These wagons were drawn by four or six mules—sometimes by oxen, known as “bull teams”—and, stores there being none, carried everything that a settler was apt to need in the new land, including the indispensable wife and children.

I am concerned in this article only with the Bozeman or Montana trail.

Early in 1866 Government Commissioners at Fort Laramie, Nebraska, were negotiating a treaty with the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes to secure the right of way for emigrants through that territory which, by the Harney-Sanborne treaty, had been conceded to them in 1865. Red Cloud, an Oglala Sioux, the foremost of the young warriors, led the objectors to the treaty, even to the point of fighting, and opposed the more conservative chiefs who deprecated war as eventually fatal to all their territorial claims. During this council, to anticipate later events, Carrington, then approaching with troops, arrived in advance, dismounted, and was introduced to the members of the council. Red Cloud, noticing his shoulder straps, hotly denounced him as the “White Eagle” who had come to steal the road before the Indian said yes or no. In full view of the mass of Indians who occupied the parade ground he sprang from the platform under the shelter of pine boughs, struck his tepees and went on the war-path. A telegram by Carrington advising suspension of his march until the council came to some agreement was negatived, and although Sunday he pushed forward nine miles beyond the fort before sunset.

One stipulation upon which the United States insisted was the establishment of military posts to guard the trail, without which it was felt the treaty would amount to nothing. The Brulé Sioux, under the lead of Spotted Tail, Standing Elk and others, favored the concession, and ever after remained faithful to the whites. The older chiefs of other Sioux bands, in spite of Red Cloud’s defection and departure, remained in council for some days and, although sullen in manner and noisy in protests, finally accepted valuable gifts and indemnities and so far satisfied the Commission that they despatched special messengers to notify the District Commander that “satisfactory treaties had been made with the tribes represented at Laramie and that its route was safe.” Emigrant trains were also pushed forward with their assurance that an ample force of regulars had gone up the country to ensure their safety. The sequel will appear later.

II. General Carrington’s Romantic Expedition

Pursuant to the plan, Brigadier-General Henry B. Carrington, Colonel of the Eighteenth Regular Infantry, was ordered with the second battalion of his regiment, about to become the Twenty-seventh Regular Infantry, to establish, organize and take command of what was known as the Mountain District. The Mountain District at that time had but one post in it, Fort Reno, one hundred and sixty miles from Fort Laramie. Carrington was directed to march to Fort Reno, move it forty miles westward, garrison it, and then, with the balance of his command, establish another post on the Bozeman trail, between the Big Horn Mountains and the Powder River, so as to command that valley much frequented by Indians; and, lastly, to establish two other posts, one on the Big Horn, the other on the Yellowstone, for the further protection of the trail.

General Carrington was a graduate of Yale College. He had been a teacher, an engineer and scientist, a lawyer and man of affairs, a student of military matters as well as Adjutant-General of Ohio for several years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. At the beginning of that struggle he promptly moved one battery and several regiments of Ohio Militia into West Virginia to take part in the Battle of Phillipi before the State Volunteers could be mustered into the United States service. Without his solicitation, on May 14th, 1861, he had been appointed Colonel of the Eighteenth United States Infantry, promoted Brigadier-General November 29th, 1863, and had rendered valuable and important services during the war. He was a high-minded Christian gentleman, a soldier of large experience and proven courage, an administrator of vigor and capacity, and, as his subsequent career has shown, a man of fine literary talents.[5] No better choice could have been made for the expedition.

After many delays, due principally to difficulties in securing transportation, a little army of seven hundred men, accompanied by four pieces of artillery, two hundred and twenty-six wagons, and a few ambulances containing the wives and children of several of the officers, set forth from old Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on the 19th of May, 1866. About two hundred of the men were veterans, the rest raw recruits. They were armed with old-fashioned Springfield, muzzle-loading muskets, save a few who had the new Spencer breech-loading carbine, a weapon of rather short trajectory, but a great improvement on the old army musket from the rapidity of fire which it permitted. A portion of the command was mounted from the discarded horses of a cavalry regiment going east to be mustered out. They were not trained horsemen, however, and at first were rather indifferent mounted infantrymen.

Among the soldiers were artificers and mechanics of every description. The government had provided appliances needed for building forts, including tools, doors, sash, glass, nails, stoves, steel, iron, mowers, reapers, scythes, and two steam sawmills. The officers were in the main a fine body of men, most of whom had learned their soldiering in the Civil War.

CROW KING AMERICAN HORSE[6] RED CLOUD GALL

GROUP OF FAMOUS WAR CHIEFS

It seems incredible to think that women should accompany such an expedition, but no grave anticipations of trouble with the Indians were felt by any persons in authority at that time. The Sioux and Cheyennes had consented to the opening of the road, and though they demurred to the forts, they had not absolutely refused the treaty when the government insisted upon it. The expedition was not conceived or planned for war. It was supposed to be a peaceable expedition. In fact, General Sherman, who visited Fort Kearney before the troops began to march, personally advised the ladies to accompany the expedition as very attractive in its object and wholly peaceful. Had the authorities known what was to happen, a force three times as great would scarcely have been thought adequate for the purpose. But even had there been a full knowledge of the dangers incurred, the army women would have gone with their husbands.

History records no greater instances of romantic devotion than those exhibited by the army wife. She stands peculiar among American women to-day in that particular. The army woman in a hostile country risked much more than the men. Her fate when captured was terrible beyond description—one long agony of horror and shame until death put an end to it. I have talked with army officers of large experience and have read what others have said, and the universal testimony is that no woman who was ever captured by the plains Indians west of the Missouri was spared. It was commonly agreed among the officers and men of regiments accompanied by women—and fully understood by the women as well—that in the last extremity the women were to be shot by their own friends, rather than to be allowed to fall into the hands of the savages; but no such apprehension attended this march.

The army woman’s knowledge of the peril in the usual border warfare was not an imaginary one, either. As we may read in letters and books written by army wives, it was brought home to them directly again and again. After every campaign poor, wretched women of stranded and robbed emigrant trains or devastated settlements were brought into the various camps, to whom these army women ministered with loving care, and from whom they heard frightful and sickening details that froze the blood; yet the army wife herself never faltered in her devotion, never failed in her willingness to follow wherever her husband was sent. And, save for the actual campaigning in the field, the army wife was everywhere—sometimes there, too.

In this particular expedition there were several little children, from some of whom I have gleaned details and happenings. One of these lads, while at Fort Kearney before the march, became so expert with the bow and arrow in target shooting with young Pawnee Indians near the fort, that he challenged General Sherman to shoot over the flagstaff. The youngster accomplished it by lying upon his back with feet braced against the bow, and the general squarely withdrew from the contest, declining to follow the boy’s ingenious artifice.

The march was necessarily a slow one and the distance great—some six hundred miles—so that it was not until the twenty-eighth of June they reached Fort Reno. There they were menaced by the Indians for the first time and every endeavor was made to stampede their herds. The officers and men were fast becoming undeceived as to the character of their expedition. To abandon Fort Reno, or to remove it, was not practicable. Carrington ordered it re-stockaded and put in thorough repair, garrisoned it from his command, and with the balance, something over five hundred, advanced farther into the unknown land on the 9th of July. On the 13th of July, 1866, he established his camp on the banks of the Big Piney Creek, an affluent of the Powder River, about four miles from the superb Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud Peak towering nine thousand feet into the heavens, close at hand. A few days later, on a little, flower-decked, grass-covered plateau, bare of trees, which fortunately happened to be just the size to contain the fort he proposed to erect, and which sloped abruptly away in every direction, forming a natural glacis, he began building the stockade.

III. The Outpost of Civilization

The plateau lay between two branches of the Piney. To the eastward of the smaller branch rose a high hill called Pilot Hill. West of it was another ridge which they named Sullivant Hills. Southwest of Sullivant Hills was a high ridge called Lodge Trail Ridge, the main branch of the Piney Creek flowing between them, so that the water supply was at the eastern or “Water Gate” of the fort. The Bozeman trail passed westward, under Pilot Hill in front of the fort, crossing the Big Piney as it neared Sullivant Hills, and then, circling around Lodge Trail Ridge for easier ascent, advanced northward, twice crossing Peno Creek and its branches, before that stream joined Goose Creek, a tributary to Tongue River, one of the chief forks of the Yellowstone. The first branch of the Peno was five miles from the fort, and the second twelve miles farther, where the garrison had to cut hay, but the branch nearer the fort was especially associated with the events of December 21st, as well as with the fight of the sixth of the same month.

The spot was delightful. Adjacent to the fort were broad stretches of fertile, brilliantly flowered, grassy, river and mountain creek valleys. The mountains and hills were covered with pines. Game there was in plenty; water was clear and abundant. Wood, while not immediately at hand, else the place would not have been practicable of defense without tremendous labor in clearing it, was conveniently adjacent.

General Carrington marked out the walls of the fort, after a survey of the surrounding country as far as Tongue River, set up his sawmills, one of them of forty horse-power, capable of cutting logs thirty inches in diameter, established a logging camp on Piney Island, seven miles distant, with no intervening hills to surmount, which made transportation easy, and began the erection of the fort. Picket posts were established upon Pilot and Sullivant Hills, which overlooked approaches both from the east and the road to the mountains. Three times Indians attempted to dislodge these pickets, once at night; but case-shot exploding over them, and each time causing loss of men or ponies, ended similar visitations.

The most careful watchfulness was necessary at all hours of the day and night. The wood trains to fetch logs to the sawmills went out heavily guarded. There was fighting all the time. Casualties among the men were by no means rare. At first it was difficult to keep men within the limits of the camp; but stragglers who failed to return, and some who had been cut off, scalped and left for dead, but who had crawled back to die, convinced every one of the wisdom of the commanding officer’s repeated orders and cautions.[7]

To chronicle the constant succession of petty skirmishes would be wearisome; yet they often resulted in torture and loss of life on the part of the soldiers, although the Indians in most instances suffered the more severely. One single incident may be taken as illustrative of the life of the garrison.

One afternoon, early in October, the picket reported that the wood train was attacked to the west, and shortly after signalled the approach of a small party of soldiers from the east. Detachments were sent from the post in both directions. It proved to be not a reinforcement of troops or ammunition supplies, but two ambulances with two contract surgeons and an escort of eight men, besides Bailey, the guide, and Lieutenant Grummond, who had just been appointed to the Eighteenth Infantry, and his young bride. As they approached the main gate, accompanied by the mounted men who had been sent out to meet them, they were halted to give passage to an army wagon from the opposite direction. It was escorted by a guard from a wood train, and brought in the scalped, naked, dead body of one of their comrades, a strange welcome, indeed, to the young wife, who, upon leaving Laramie, had been assured of a beautiful ride through fertile valleys without danger, and sadder yet in its sequel two months later.

Meanwhile the work of erecting the fort was continued. It was a rectangle, six hundred by eight hundred feet, inclosed by a formidable stockade of heavy pine logs standing eight feet high, with a continuous banquette, and flaring loopholes at every fourth log. There were enfilading blockhouses on the diagonal corners, with portholes for the cannon, and quarters for officers and men, with other necessary buildings. The commanding officer’s quarters was a two-story building of framed lumber, surmounted by a watch-tower. The officers’ and men’s quarters were built of logs. The warehouses, four in number, eighty feet by twenty-four, were framed.

East of the fort proper was a corral of slightly less area, surrounded by a rough palisade of cottonwood logs, which inclosed the wood train, hay, and miscellaneous supplies. Everything—stockade, houses, stables, in all their details, blacksmith shops, teamsters’ quarters, and so on—was planned by Carrington himself.[8]

The main fort inclosed a handsome parade ground, in the center of which arose the tall flagstaff planned and erected by a ship carpenter in the regiment. From it, on the 31st of October, with great ceremony and much rejoicing, the first garrison flag that ever floated over the land was unfurled. The work was by no means completed as it appears on the map, but it was inclosed, and there were enough buildings ready to house the actual garrison present, although the fort was planned for a thousand men, repeatedly promised but not furnished, while all the time both cavalry and the First Battalion of the Eighteenth were held within the peaceful limits of Fort Laramie’s control.

Early in August Captain Kinney, with two companions, had been sent ninety miles to the northward to establish the second post on the Big Horn, which was called Fort C. F. Smith, and was very much smaller and less important than Fort Phil Kearney. The third projected post was not established. There were not enough men to garrison the three already in the field, much less to build a fourth.

Footnote 3:

Although the general for whom this fort was named spelled his name Kearny, the name of the fort is written as above in all official documents I have examined.

Footnote 4:

The country is roughly comprehended by the boundary lines between which Mountain Standard, or 105th meridian, Time, prevails.

Footnote 5:

Among his literary works he is best known for his “Washington, the Soldier,” and his “Battles of the American Revolution,” which is the standard work of the kind. In a personal interview he told me he read some portion of the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew every day for years. Not many army officers can say that, and very few civilians, either.

Footnote 6:

Killed at Slim Buttes

Footnote 7:

Just when the alarms were most frequent a messenger came to the headquarters, announcing that a train en route from Fort Laramie, with special messengers from that post, was corralled by Indians, and demanded immediate help. An entire company of infantry in wagons, with a mountain howitzer and several rounds of grape-shot, was hastened to their relief. It proved to be a train with mail from the Laramie Commission announcing the consummation of a “satisfactory treaty of peace with all the Indians of the Northwest,” and assuring the District Commander of the fact. The messenger was brought in in safety, and peace lasted until his message was delivered. So much was gained—that the messenger did not lose his scalp en route.

Footnote 8:

General W. B. Hazen, upon inspection of this post’s stockade, pronounced it “the best he had ever seen, except one built by the Hudson Bay Company, in British America.”