CHAPTER TWO

The Tragedy of Fort Phil Kearney

I. How the Fighting Began

To summarize the first six months of fighting, from the first of August to the close of the year, the Indians killed one hundred and fifty-four persons, including soldiers and citizens, wounded twenty more, and captured nearly seven hundred animals—cattle, mules, and horses. There were fifty-one demonstrations in force in front of the fort, and they attacked every train that passed over the trail.

As the fort was still far from completion, the logging operations were continued until mid-winter. On every day the weather permitted, a heavily guarded train of wood-cutters was sent down to Piney Island, or to the heavier timber beyond, where a blockhouse protected the choppers. This train was frequently attacked. Eternal vigilance was the price of life. Scarcely a day passed without the lookout on Pilot Hill signalling Indians approaching, or the lookout on Sullivant Hills reporting that the wood train was corralled and attacked. On such occasions a strong detachment would be mounted and sent out to drive away the Indians and bring in the wood train—an operation which was invariably successful, although sometimes attended with loss.

Hostile demonstrations were met by prompt forays or pursuits, as circumstances permitted; and on one occasion the general pursued a band that ran off a herd nearly to Tongue River; but flashing mirrors betrayed Indian attempts to gain his rear, and a return was ordered, abandoning the stolen stock.

One expedition is characteristic of many. On the afternoon of December 6th the lookout on Sullivant Hills signalled that the wood train was attacked, and Captain (Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel) Fetterman, the senior captain present, was detailed with a squad of forty mounted men, including fifteen cavalrymen under Lieutenants Bingham and Grummond, with Sergeant Bowers of the infantry, a veteran of the Civil War, to relieve the wood train and drive the Indians toward the Peno Valley, while Carrington himself, with about a score of mounted infantrymen, would sweep around the north side of Lodge Trail Ridge and intercept them.

The Indians gave way before Fetterman’s advance, hoping to lure the troops into an ambush, but at a favorable spot they made a stand. The fighting there was so fierce that the cavalry, which by a singular circumstance was without its officers, gave way and retreated headlong across the valley toward the ridge. The mounted infantry stood its ground, and under Fetterman’s intrepid leadership was making a brave fight against overwhelming odds, the number of Indians present being estimated at more than three hundred. It would have gone hard with them, however, had not Carrington and the first six of his detachment suddenly swept around a small hill or divide and taken the Indians in reverse. The general had been forced to advance under fire, and meeting the fugitive cavalry, ordered them to fall in behind his own detachment. He was filled with anxiety as to the course of the fight on the other side of the ridge.

CAPT. W. J. FETTERMAN[9] CAPT. FREDK. H. BROWN[9] LIEUT. G. W. GRUMMOND[9] CAPT. JAMES POWELL

THE FORT PHIL KEARNEY FIGHTERS

_For portrait of General Carrington, see illustration opposite page 174_

Carrington, in his official report,[10] says: “But six men turned the point with me, one a young bugler of the Second Cavalry, who told me that Lieutenant Bingham had gone down the road around the hill to my right. This seemed impossible, as he belonged to Fetterman’s command. I sounded the recall on his report, but in vain. One of my men fell and his horse on him. The principal chief operating during the day attempted to secure his scalp, but dismounting, with one man to hold the horses and reserving fire, I succeeded in saving the man and holding the position until joined by Fetterman twenty minutes later. The cavalry that had abandoned him had not followed me, though the distance was short; but the Indians, circling round and yelling, nearly one hundred in number, with one saddle emptied by a single shot fired by myself, did not venture to close in.”

The rear detachment and Fetterman soon joined, and by the efforts of the combined parties the Indians were compelled to flight. It was a close call for all, but Lieutenants Grummond and Bingham were yet unaccounted for. Search was instantly made for these two officers and the infantry sergeant, who had become separated from their command while chasing some scattered Indians. One of the officers, Lieutenant Bingham, was dead. Lieutenant Grummond, after a hand-to-hand fight, was closely pressed by mounted Indians and was barely rescued. Sergeant Bowers had been fearfully wounded and scalped, although he was still alive, but died immediately.[11] He had killed three Indians before he had been overborne. The cavalrymen, mostly recruits, were deeply ashamed of their defection, which was partly due to the incaution of their officers in leaving them to pursue a few Indians, and they were burning with a desire to retrieve their reputation, which they bravely did with their lives some two weeks later.

The casualties in the little command were two killed, five wounded. A messenger was sent to the fort for an ambulance, and the command retired in good order without further sight of the Indians. Lieutenant Bingham was not the first officer killed; for, five months before, Lieutenant Daniels, riding ahead of a small party of soldiers escorting several officers and the wife of Lieutenant Wands from Fort Laramie, had been killed in full view of the party. He had been horribly tortured with a stake before he died, and the savages put on his clothing and danced on the prairie just out of range, in front of the party, which was too small to do more than stand on the defensive. Lieutenant Grummond’s wife was in the fort during the fighting on the sixth of December, and her joy at her husband’s safe return can be imagined.

On the eighth of December President Andrew Johnson congratulated Congress that treaties had been made at Fort Laramie, and that _all was peace in the Northwest_!

On the 19th of December, in this peaceful territory, the wood train was again attacked in force. Carrington promptly sent out a detachment under Captain Powell with instructions to relieve the wood train, give it his support, and return with it, but not to pursue threatening Indians, for experience had shown that the Indians were constantly increasing in numbers and growing bolder with every attack. Powell efficiently performed his task. The Indians were driven off, and, although he was tempted to pursue them, he was too good a soldier to disobey orders, so he led his men back in safety to the fort.

By this time all warehouses were finished, and it was estimated that one large wood train would supply logs enough for the completion of the hospital, which alone needed attention.

Impressed by Powell’s report, Carrington himself accompanied the augmented train on the 20th, built a bridge across to Piney Island to facilitate quick hauling, and returned to the fort to make ready for one more trip only. No Indians appeared in sight on that date. Already several hundred large logs had been collected for winter’s firewood, besides the slabs saved at the sawmill.

It cannot be denied that there was much dissatisfaction among some of the officers at Carrington’s prudent policy. They had the popular idea that one white man, especially if he were a soldier, was good for a dozen Indians; and although fifteen hundred lodges of Indians were known to be encamped on the Powder River, and there were probably between five and six thousand braves in the vicinity, they were constantly suggesting expeditions of all sorts with their scanty force. Some of them, including Fetterman and Brown, “offered with eighty men to ride through the whole Sioux Nation!” While the mettle of the Sioux Nation had not yet been fairly tried by these men, Carrington was wise enough to perceive that such folly meant inevitable destruction, and his consent was sternly refused.

The total force available at the fort, including prisoners, teamsters, citizens and employees, was about three hundred and fifty—barely enough to hold the fort, should the Indians make an attack upon it. Besides which, details were constantly needed to carry despatches, to deliver the mail, to get supplies, to succor emigrant trains, and so on. The force was woefully inadequate, and the number of officers had been depleted by detachment and other causes until there were but six left.

Ammunition was running low. There were at one time only forty rounds per man available. Repeated requests and appeals, both by letter and telegram, for reinforcements and supplies, and especially for modern and serviceable weapons, had met with little consideration. The officials in the far East hugged their treaty, and refused to believe that a state of war existed; and, if it did exist, were disposed to censure the commanding officer for provoking it. In several instances presents given in the treaty at Fort Laramie were found on the persons of visiting Indians, and one captured Indian pony was heavily loaded with original packages of those presents.

Carrington had done nothing to provoke war, but had simply carried out General Sherman’s written instructions, sent him as late as August, to “avoid a general war, until the army could be reorganized and increased;” but he defended himself and command stoutly when attacked. Some of the officers, therefore, covertly sneering at the caution of the commander, were burning for an opportunity to distinguish themselves on this account, and had practically determined to make or take one at the first chance. Fetterman and Brown, unfortunately, were the chief of these malcontents.

II. The Annihilation of Fetterman’s Command

On the 21st of December, the ground being free from snow, the air clear and cold, the lookout on Sullivant Hills signalled about eleven o’clock in the morning that the wood train had been corralled, and was again attacked in force about a mile and a half from the fort. A relief party of forty-nine men from the Eighteenth Infantry, with twenty-seven troopers from the Second Cavalry, a detachment from which, nearly all recruits and chiefly armed with muskets as their carbines had not reached Laramie, had joined the post some months before, was at once ordered out.

The command was first given to Captain Powell, with Lieutenant Grummond in charge of the cavalry. Grummond had a wife in delicate health at the post, and he was cautioned by the officers to take care not to be led into a trap, although his experience on the 6th, when he had so narrowly escaped death, was, it would seem, the best warning he could have had. This body of men was the best armed party at the post, a few of those designated carrying the Spencer repeating carbines. Each company had been directed to keep forty rounds per man on hand for immediate use in any emergency, besides extra boxes always kept in company quarters. The men had been exercised in firing recently and some of the ammunition had been expended, although they still had an abundant supply for the purposes of the expedition. Carrington personally inspected the men before they left, and rejected those who were not amply provided.

The situation of the wood train was critical, and the party was assembled with the greatest despatch. Just as they were about to start, Captain Fetterman, who had had less experience in the country and in Indian fighting than the other officers, for he had joined the regiment some time after the fort had been built and expected assignment to command Fort C. F. Smith, begged for the command of the expedition, pleading his senior captaincy as justification for his request. Carrington reluctantly acceded to his plea, which indeed he could scarcely have refused, and placed him in charge, giving him strict and positive instructions to “relieve the wood train, drive back the Indians, _but on no account to pursue the Indians beyond Lodge Trail Ridge_,” and that so soon as he had performed this duty he was to return immediately to the fort.

Captain Fetterman, as has been said, had frequently expressed his contempt for the Indians, although his fight on December 6th had slightly modified his opinions. Carrington, knowing his views, was particular and specific in his orders. So necessary did he think the caution that he repeated it to Lieutenant Grummond, who, with the cavalry, followed the infantry out of the gate, the infantry, having less preparation to make, getting away first. These orders were delivered in a loud voice and were audible to many persons—women, officers, and men in the fort. The general went so far as to hasten to the gate after the cavalry had left the fort, and from the sentry platform or banquette overlooking it, called out after them again, emphatically directing them “on no account to pursue the Indians across Lodge Trail Ridge.”

The duty devolved upon Captain Fetterman was exactly that which Captain Powell had performed so satisfactorily a few days before. With Captain Fetterman went Captain Brown, with two citizens, frontiersmen and hunters, as volunteers. These two civilians, Wheatley and Fisher, were both armed with the new breech-loading rapid-fire Henry rifle, with which they were anxious to experiment on the hostiles. Wheatley left a wife and children in the fort.

Captain Frederick Brown, a veteran of the Civil War, had just been promoted, had received orders detaching him from the command, and was simply waiting a favorable opportunity to leave. He was a man of the most undaunted courage. His position as quartermaster had kept him on the watch for Indians all the time, and he announced on the day before the battle that he “must have one chance at the Indians before he left.” It is believed, however, that his impetuous counsel, due to his good luck in many a brush with assailing parties, which he had several times pursued almost alone, largely precipitated the final disaster.

The total force, therefore, including officers and citizens, under Fetterman’s command, was eighty-one—just the number with which he had agreed to ride through the whole Sioux Nation. No one in the command seems to have had the least idea that any force of Indians, however great, could overcome it.

Captain Fetterman, instead of leading his men direct to the wood train on the south side of Sullivant Hills, double-quicked toward the Peno Valley on to the north side. Perhaps he hoped that he could take the Indians in reverse and exterminate them between his own troops and the guard of the wood train—which all told comprised some ninety men—when he rounded the western end of the hills. This movement was noticed from the fort; but, as it involved no disobedience of orders, and as it might be considered a good tactical manœuver, no apprehension was felt on account of it.

The Indians surrounding the wood train were well served by their scouts, and when they found that Fetterman’s force was advancing on the other side of the hill, they immediately withdrew from the wood train, which presently broke corral and made its way to the Piney, some seven miles northwest of the fort, unmolested. As Fetterman’s troops disappeared down the valley, a number of Indians were observed along the Piney in front of the fort. A spherical case-shot from a howitzer in the fort exploded in their midst, and they vanished. The Indians were much afraid of the “gun that shoots twice,” as they called it.

At that time it was discovered that no doctor had gone with the relieving party, so Acting-Assistant Surgeon Hines, with an escort of four men, was sent out with orders to join Fetterman. The doctor hastened away, but returned soon after with the information that the wood train had gone on, and that when he attempted to cross the valley of the Peno to join Fetterman’s men he found it full of Indians, who were swarming about Lodge Trail Ridge, and that no sign of Fetterman was observed. Despite his orders, he must have gone over the ridge.

The alarm caused in the fort by this news was deepened by the sound of firing at twelve o’clock. Six shots in rapid succession were counted, and immediately after heavy firing was heard from over Lodge Trail Ridge, five miles away, which continued with such fierceness as to indicate a pitched battle. Carrington instantly despatched Captain Ten Eyck with the rest of the infantry, in all about fifty-four men, directing him to join Fetterman’s command, then return with them to the fort. The men went forward on the run. A little later forty additional men were sent after Ten Eyck. Carrington at once surmised that Fetterman had disobeyed orders, either wittingly or carried away by the ardor of the pursuit, and was now heavily engaged with the Indians on the far side of the ridge.

Counting Fetterman’s detachment, the guards of the wood train, and Ten Eyck’s detachments, the garrison of the fort was now reduced to a very small number. The place, with its considerable extent, might now be attacked at any time. Carrington at once released all prisoners from the guard-house, armed the quartermaster’s employees, the citizens, and mustered altogether a force of only one hundred and nineteen men to defend the post.[12] Although every preparation for a desperate defense had been made, there were not enough men to man the walls.

The general and his remaining officers then repaired to the observatory tower, field glasses in hand, and in apprehension of what fearful catastrophe they scarcely allowed themselves to imagine. The women and children, especially those who had husbands and fathers with the first detachment, were almost crazed with terror.

Presently Sample, the general’s own orderly, who had been sent with Ten Eyck, was seen galloping furiously down the opposite hill. He had the best horse in the command (one of the general’s), and he covered the distance between Lodge Trail Ridge and the fort with amazing swiftness. He dashed up to headquarters with a message from Ten Eyck, stating that “the valley on the other side of the ridge is filled with Indians, who are threatening him. The firing has stopped. He sees no sign of Captain Fetterman’s command. He wants a howitzer sent out to him.”

The following note was sent to Captain Ten Eyck:

“Forty well-armed men, with three thousand rounds, ambulances, stores, etc., left before your courier came in. You must unite with Fetterman. Fire slowly, and keep men in hand. You would have saved two miles toward the scene of action if you had taken Lodge Trail Ridge. I order the wood train in, which will give fifty men to spare.”

No gun could be sent him. Since all the horses were already in the field, it would have required men to haul it. No more could be spared, and not a man with him could cut a fuse or handle the piece anyway. The guns were especially needed at the fort to protect women and children.

Late in the afternoon Ten Eyck’s party returned to the fort with terrible tidings of appalling disaster. In the wagons with his command were the bodies of forty-nine of Fetterman’s men; the remaining thirty-two were not at that time accounted for. Ten Eyck very properly stood upon the defensive on the hill and refused to go down into the valley in spite of the insults and shouts of the Indians, who numbered upward of two thousand warriors, until they finally withdrew. After waiting a sufficient time, he marched carefully and cautiously toward Peno Valley and to the bare lower ridge over which the road ran.

There he came across evidences of a great battle. On the end of the ridge, nearest the fort, in a space about six feet square, inclosed by some huge rocks, making a sort of a rough shelter, he found the bodies of the forty-nine men whom he had brought back. After their ammunition had been spent, they had been stripped, shot full of arrows, hacked to pieces, scalped, and mutilated in a horrible manner. There were no evidences of a very severe struggle right there. Few cartridge shells lay on the ground. Of these men, only four besides the two officers had been killed by bullets. The rest had been killed by arrows, hatchets, or spears. They had evidently been tortured to death.

Brown and Fetterman were found lying side by side, each with a bullet wound in the left temple. Their heads were burned and filled with powder around the wounds. Seeing that all was lost, they had evidently stood-face to face, and each had shot the other dead with his revolver. They had both sworn to die rather than be taken alive by the Indians, and in the last extremity they had carried out their vows. Lieutenant Grummond, who had so narrowly escaped on the 6th of December, was not yet accounted for, but there was little hope that he had escaped again.

III. Carrington’s Stern Resolution

The night was one of wild anxiety. Nearly one-fourth of the efficient force of the fort had been wiped out. Mirror signals were flashed from the hills during the day, and fires here and there in the night indicated that the savages had not left the vicinity. The guards were doubled, every man slept with his clothing on, his weapons close at hand. In every barrack a noncommissioned officer and two men kept watch throughout the night. Carrington and the remaining officers did not sleep at all. They fully expected the fort to be attacked. The state of the women and children can be imagined, although all gossip and rumor were expressly prohibited by the commander.

The next day was bitterly cold. The sky was overcast and lowering, with indications of a tremendous storm. The Indians were not accustomed to active operations under such conditions, and there was no sign of them about. Carrington determined to go out to ascertain the fate of his missing men. Although all the remaining officers assembled at his quarters advised him not to undertake it, lest the savages, flushed with victory, should attempt another attack, Carrington quietly excused his officers, told the adjutant to remain with him, and the bugle instantly disclosed his purpose in spite of dissenting protests. He rightly judged that the moral effect of the battle would be greatly enhanced, in the eyes of the Indians, if the bodies were not recovered. Besides, to set at rest all doubts it was necessary to determine the fate of the balance of his command. His own wife, as appears from her narrative,[13] approved his action and nerved herself to meet the possible fate involved, while Mrs. Grummond was the chief protestant that, as her husband was undoubtedly dead, there should be no similar disaster invited by another expedition.

In the afternoon, with a heavily armed force of eighty men, Carrington went in person to the scene of battle. The following order was left with the officer of the day: “Fire the usual sunset gun, running a white lamp to masthead. If the Indians appear fire three guns from the twelve-pounder at minute intervals, and, later, substitute a red lantern for the white.” Pickets were left on two commanding ridges, as signal observers, as the command moved forward. The women and children were placed in the magazine, a building well adapted for defense, which had been stocked with water, crackers, etc., for an emergency, with an officer pledged not to allow the women to be taken alive, if the General did not return and the Indians overcame the stockade.

Passing the place where the greatest slaughter had occurred, the men marched cautiously along the trail. Bodies were strung along the road clear to the western end farthest from the fort. Here they found Lieutenant Grummond. There were evidences of a desperate struggle about his body. Behind a little pile of rock, making a natural fortification, were the two civilians who had been armed with the modern Henry rifle. By the side of one fifty shells were counted, and nearly as many by the side of the other brave frontiersman. Behind such cover as they could obtain nearby lay the bodies of the oldest and most experienced soldiers in Fetterman’s command.

In front of them they found no less than sixty great gouts of blood on the ground and grass, and a number of dead ponies, showing where the bullets of the defenders had reached their marks,[14] and in every direction were signs of the fiercest kind of hand-to-hand fighting. Ghastly and mutilated remains, stripped naked, shot full of arrows—Wheatley with no less than one hundred and five in him, scalped, lay before them.

Brown rode to the death of both a little Indian “calico” pony which he had given to the general’s boys when they started from Fort Leavenworth, in November, 1865, and the body of the horse was found in the low ground at the west slope of the ridge, showing that the fight began there, before they could reach high ground.[15] At ten o’clock at night, on the return, the white lamp at masthead told its welcome story of a garrison still intact.

Fetterman had disobeyed orders. Whether deliberately or not, cannot be told. He had relieved the wood train, and instead of returning to the post, had pursued the Indians over the ridge into Peno Valley, then along the trail, and into a cunningly contrived ambush. His men had evidently fought on the road until their ammunition gave out, and then had either been ordered to retreat to the fort, or had retreated of their own motion—probably the latter. All the dead cavalry horses’ heads were turned toward the fort, by the way. Fetterman and Brown, men of unquestioned courage, must have been swept along with their flying men. There may have been a little reserve on the rocks on which they hoped to rally their disorganized, panic-stricken troops, fleeing before a horde of yelling, blood-intoxicated warriors. I imagine them vainly protesting, imploring, begging their men to make a stand. I feel sure they fought until the last. But these are only surmises; what really happened, God alone knows.

The judgment of the veteran soldiers and the frontiersmen, who knew that to retreat was to be annihilated, had caused a few to hold their ground and fight until they were without ammunition; then with gun-stocks, swords, bayonets, whatever came to hand, they battled until they were cut down. Grummond had stayed with them, perhaps honorably sacrificing himself in a vain endeavor to cover the retreat of the rest of his command. The Indian loss was very heavy, but could not exactly be determined.

IV. The Reward of a Brave Soldier

Such was the melancholy fate of Fetterman and his men. The post was isolated, the weather frightful. A courier was at once despatched to Fort Laramie, but such means of communication was necessarily slow, and it was not until Christmas morning that the world was apprised of the fatal story. In spite of the reports that had been made and fatuously believed, that peace had obtained in that land, it was now known that war was everywhere prevalent. The shock of horror with which the terrible news was received was greater even than that attendant upon the story of the disastrous battle of the Little Big Horn, ten years later. People had got used to such things then; this news came like a bolt from the blue.

Although Carrington had conducted himself in every way as a brave, prudent, skilful, capable soldier, although his services merited reward, not censure, and demanded praise, not blame, the people and the authorities required a scapegoat. He was instantly relieved from command by General Cooke, upon a private telegram from Laramie, never published, before the receipt of his own official report, and was ordered to change his regimental headquarters to the little frontier post at Fort Caspar, where two companies of his first battalion, just become the new Eighteenth, were stationed, while four companies of the same battalion, under his lieutenant-colonel, were ordered to the relief of Fort Phil Kearney.

The weather had become severe and the snow was banked to the top of the stockade. The mercury was in the bulb. Guards were changed half-hourly. Men and women dressed in furs made from wolfskins taken from the hundreds of wolves which infested the outside butcher-field at night, and which were poisoned by the men for their fur. Upon the day fixed precisely for the march, as the new arrivals needed every roof during a snow-storm which soon became a blizzard, Carrington, his wife and children, his staff and their families, including Mrs. Grummond, escorting the remains of her husband to Tennessee, and the regimental band, with its women and children, began that February “change of headquarters.” They narrowly escaped freezing to death. More than one-half of the sixty-five in the party were frosted, and three amputations, with one death, were the immediate result of the foolish and cruel order.

It was not until some time after that a mixed commission of soldiers and civilians, which thoroughly investigated Carrington’s conduct, having before them all his books and records from the inception of the expedition until its tragic close, acquitted him of all blame of any sort, and awarded him due praise for his successful conduct of the whole campaign. His course was also the subject of inquiry before a purely military court, all of them his juniors in rank, which also reported favorably. General Sherman expressly stated that “Colonel Carrington’s report, to his personal knowledge, was fully sustained,” but by some unaccountable oversight or intent, the report was suppressed and never published, thereby doing lasting injustice to a brave and faithful soldier.

At the same time the government established the sub-post between Laramie and Fort Reno, so earnestly recommended by Carrington, in October, calling it Fort Fetterman, in honor of the unfortunate officer who fell in battle on the 21st of December.

Perhaps it ill becomes us to censure the dead, but the whole unfortunate affair arose from a direct disobedience of orders on the part of Fetterman and his men. They paid the penalty for their lapse with their lives; and so far, at least, they made what atonement they could. A year later opportunity was given the soldiers at Phil Kearney to exact a dreadful revenge from Red Cloud and his Sioux for the slaughter of their brave comrades.

Footnote 9:

Killed on Lodge Trail Ridge

Footnote 10:

Published by the United States Senate in 1887.

Footnote 11:

At the burial of Sergeant Bowers, Captain Brown, who had known him during the Civil War, pinned his Army of the Cumberland badge upon his breast, and this was found when the remains were reinterred in 1878.

Footnote 12:

PHIL KEARNEY GARRISON, at date of massacre, from “Post Returns”:—

Wood Party, besides teamsters 55 men Fetterman’s Party (two citizens) 81 men Ten Eyck’s Party (relieving) 94 men Helpless in hospital 7 men Roll-call, of present, all told 119 men Total officers and men 356 men

Ninety rifles worn out by use on horseback. Citizen employees used their private arms.

Information furnished by General H. B. Carrington.

Footnote 13:

“AB-SA-RA-KA, Land of Massacre,” by Mrs. Carrington, of which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to General Carrington as follows: “What an interesting record is that of Mrs. Carrington! I cannot read such a story of devotion and endurance in the midst of privations and danger, without feeling how little most of us know of what life can be when all the human energies are called out by great enterprises and emergencies.”

Footnote 14:

The Indians, where possible, remove the bodies of their slain. They did during this campaign, as few dead Indians ever came into possession of the troops.

Footnote 15:

Once, while loading the bodies in the wagons, a nervous sergeant mistook one of the pickets for Indians in the rear, and gave the alarm. His detail was sharply ordered by the general to “leave their ammunition and get back to the fort as best they could, if they were afraid; for no armed man would be allowed to leave until the last body was rescued.”