by Dee Brown
In the sutler’s store, the usual evening crowd stayed late, talking, drinking, nibbling at cheese and crackers, half listening for a fusillade from the thicket along Big Piney. Jim Bridger was in the store, tilted back in a chair with one arm on the trading counter, his dingy, smoke-stained hat pulled down so that it half hid his weathered stubbly-bearded face. Squatting in a corner near Old Gabe was a Crow Indian who had come down with him from Fort C. F. Smith to serve as an interpreter. Almost every evening for hours at a time the Crow took this same position, speaking to no one, no one speaking to him. Bridger had neither offered nor been invited to participate in Fetterman’s ambush scheme. His rheumatism was bothering him, and since his return from the north he had been in a somber mood. “Bridger would walk about, constantly scanning the opposite hills that commanded a good view of the fort,” Frances Grummond wrote of him at this time, “as if he suspected Indians of having scouts behind every sage clump or fallen Cottonwood.” 9
After midnight the unofficial post watch diminished in numbers as most of them gave up and went to bed. Bright moonlight exposed the hobbled mules grazing quietly between the fort and the shadowed ambush. A few meteors streaked across the sky, wolves howled back in the hills, but not one Indian appeared on the Big Piney side of the fort.
They struck instead on the opposite side, stampeding a small herd of cattle belonging to James Wheatley, by daylight soon after Fetterman quit in disgust and led his sleepy-eyed men back into the fort. That should have been Lesson Number One for Fetterman (the Indians would give him the benefit of only two more lessons). But at this time in the short life of William J. Fetterman his cocksureness would not admit that anything could be learned from a savage Indian.
For several days after the unsuccessful decoy attempt, life in the fort fell into an even pattern of military routine. Fifty of the sixty-three recently arrived cavalrymen departed on escort duties, ten accompanying a mail carrier to Fort Casper, and forty forming a heavy guard for Paymaster Almstedt en route to Fort C. F. Smith.
On the 11th an incident involving two men of Company A further deepened the rift between Carrington and Fetterman. For reasons not clear, Sergeant Garrett attacked Private Thomas Burke, verbally and physically, in full view of several officers and their wives. When a guard was summoned to put the combatants under arrest, the commanding officer of Company A interceded, resorting to violent profanity himself as he endorsed the actions of his sergeant. The commanding officer of Company A was Captain Fetterman.
Carrington, who witnessed part of the incident, was horrified, especially because the fighting and profanity occurred on a Sunday morning and in sight and hearing of women who were on their way to church services. The colonel walked on with his wife to the building which was then being used for Sunday services, listened to Chaplain David White’s sermon and the music of a string band, and joined in the spirited singing of such familiar hymns as “Old Hundred,” “Gloria in Excelsis,” and “There Is a Light in the Window.”
After services he returned to his headquarters, summoned Adjutant Bisbee, and issued a sternly worded general order (No. 38) condemning “profane swearing, verbal abuse, kicks, and blows,” and declaring that such “perversion of authority … will be dealt with in the most decided manner.” While most of his order was directed toward noncommissioned officers, one paragraph was surely aimed at Fetterman:
Officers at this post will communicate and carefully enforce this order, seeking to inspire among non-commissioned officers, by precept and example, that calm and steady habit of command which will surely secure implicit obedience, and no less augment respect for authority requiring obedience.10
Although Lieutenant Bisbee’s name was signed to the order as post adjutant, Bisbee recognized the implied reprimand to his old friend, Fetterman, and lost no time in informing the latter that he thoroughly disapproved of it. In a few hours, the pro-Fetterman group was referring to General Order No. 38 as “Bully 38,” and not a few profane jokes about it were being privately passed around officers’ row. Those who now sided openly with Fetterman against Carrington included Captains Brown and Powell, Lieutenants Bisbee and Grummond, and one of the contract surgeons, C. M. Hines.
Ironically, the officer who had twice been demoted in authority, Captain Ten Eyck, was perhaps most loyal to Carrington. Ten Eyck’s nature was introspective as was Carrington’s. Although he had served in the field with the 18th Regiment during the war, Ten Eyck had been wounded and captured at Chickamauga, and was not bound to Fetterman by shared hardships in the long Georgia campaigns as were Brown, Powell and Bisbee.
For various reasons there was a great deal of discontent at this time among officers of the frontier army. Most of them had held brevet ranks in the Civil War much higher than their permanent ranks. It was not easy for a brevet lieutenant-colonel to resume the duties and pay of a mere lieutenant without expectations of immediate promotion, and by late 1866 it was evident that promotions would be very hard to come by in this vastly shrunken army. A letter from one of Carrington’s junior officers who signed himself “Dacotah” appeared in the Army and Navy Journal in November, decrying inadequate army pay. “There is not an officer in the Army but will testify that it is next to an impossibility to live like an officer and a gentleman on his pay. Pay of a second lieutenant amounts to $110.80 for a 31-day month, tax off. On this one must live, clothe ourselves and appear like gentlemen. When uniform suits cost $100, overcoats from $125 to $150, boots $17 … what is left to pay board bills and mess bills and where and how are we to obtain a cigar if we desire to smoke after our scanty meals?”11
At Fort Phil Kearny there was also a sharp differential in civilian pay and officers’ pay, which led to added dissatisfaction among the latter. Civilian guides received three times as much money as lieutenants, civilian clerks more than captains. Blacksmiths, carpenters and wagon masters were almost as well paid as second lieutenants and they had no problems of dress uniforms or burdens of extra military duties. As for teamsters and laborers, they were far better off economically than noncommissioned officers.
The blame for slow promotions, for inequitable pay, had to be placed somewhere, and naturally it fell upon the symbol of army authority nearest at hand, the colonel of the regiment, Henry B. Carrington.
As if to compound the dissociated position in which Carrington now found himself, a telegram arrived on November 12 from General Cooke, casually threatening him with a general court-martial. The message and one other were brought by a special express from Laramie, the lone courier risking his life to cross 236 miles of snowdrifts, with hostile war parties all along the route. The first telegram demanded copies of the post’s monthly and trimonthly returns since July. “If not immediately sent, with explanation, this matter must be brought before a general court-martial.”12 The second telegram was less ominous. It acknowledged previous receipt of the missing returns, and according to the courier, had been received at Fort Laramie after his departure, then had been rushed up to Bridger’s Ferry by another messenger who there overtook the first rider. Such was the state of communications between Fort Phil Kearny and Omaha headquarters in November.
During the week of the 12th, Carrington lost two of his best junior officers, Lieutenant John Adair resigning his commission to return to civilian life, and Lieutenant James Bradley transferring to the 3rd Battalion in Utah. Five enlisted men deserted that week to seek their fortunes in the Montana gold fields. The civilian master of transportation also left without notice. “In his pockets went the money for our supply of wood and hay,” Private Murphy noted. “It was reported that he went to Canada.”13 Another indication of a slackening of discipline within the garrison was a report on the 18th of pilfered stores and forage. An extra guard had to be placed over the quartermaster buildings and corn piles.
To add to these mounting internal troubles, the Indians began showing themselves in strength again, and on the 21st attacked a beef contractor’s train coming up from Reno. Company C under Capta
in Powell beat off the attack and no cattle were lost, but the men were unable to overtake and punish the raiders.
Next afternoon Captain Fetterman made his first visit to the pinery, accompanying the regular escort which was to return with the wagons. With Fetterman was his close friend, Lieutenant Bisbee, and as the two officers approached the timber of Piney Island ahead of the escort, they halted to water their horses. “Suddenly from behind a huge log fifty yards away,” Bisbee wrote later, “came yells and shots from ambushed redskins. Taking immediate shelter under the bank of the creek for better observation and to await reinforcements from the train guard in rear, we plainly discovered larger parties of Indians in the timber waiting our further approach. One lone ‘buck’ only came into the open, plainly a decoy tempting us to a trap. It was not accepted, but in temptation to see what the young brave was really made of I charged him. Zip, zip, came several shots from concealed Indians in the woods to which he escaped in great haste.”14
From this account it is clear that Bisbee had learned something of Indian fighting; he recognized a decoy trap when he saw one. Perhaps he passed a warning to Fetterman on that day, and restrained the overconfident captain from dashing on into the woods. But whether he did so or not, Fetterman must have received the lesson with skepticism, or soon forgot it.
Soon after the sounds of firing rang through the woods, a false alarm was somehow carried to the fort, spreading by word of mouth until the post bugler dashed up to Carrington’s headquarters with the startling news that Indians had attacked the wood train and “all were killed.” Frances Grummond and Mrs. Bisbee were both nearby and heard the announcement. “I recall as if yesterday, the blanched face of Mrs. Bisbee, knowing as she did that her husband was with the wood party.”15
Within a few minutes Carrington himself formed a relief party and dashed out the gate at a gallop. A mile or so from the fort he met Fetterman and Bisbee, both completely unaware of the false report of their deaths. They passed it off as a joke, and as they approached the fort and saw the flag at half-mast, began swapping banter as to which of their brother officers would receive promotions now that they were no longer among the living. To Carrington such talk was in extremely bad taste, and he called the officers up sharply. Carrington was not a humorless man, but he had seen too much of death since July to joke about it in November.
A mail arrived from Laramie on Sunday the 25th with another of those oddly unrealistic messages which were coming with increased frequency from General Cooke:
COLONEL: You are hereby instructed that so soon as the troops and stores are covered from the weather, to turn your earnest attention to the possibility of striking the hostile band of Indians by surprise in their winter camps, as intimated in telegram of September 27 ultimo from these headquarters.
An extraordinary effort in winter, when the Indian horses are unserviceable, it is believed, should be followed by more success than can be accomplished by very large expeditions in the summer, when the Indians can so easily scatter into deserts and mountain hiding places almost beyond pursuit.
Four companies of infantry will be available, besides some cavalry. You have a large arrear of murderous and insulting attacks by the savages upon emigrant trains and troops to settle, and you are ordered, if there prove to be any promise of success, to conduct or to send under another officer, such an expedition.16
By this late date Carrington had almost despaired of ever making General Cooke understand the realities of the situation at Fort Phil Kearny. But once again he wrote of arms shortages, of the demands upon his single cavalry company for almost constant escort service. He pointed out that the cavalry’s promised new carbines had not arrived; they were armed only with obsolete rifles and antiquated Starr carbines. The infantry companies required at least one hundred Springfields to replace broken and worn-out pieces. “I shall look for another company of cavalry soon,” he added, “as mentioned in previous telegram.” And then because there was nothing else he could do in the face of a direct order, he concluded: “I will, in person, command expeditions, when severe weather confines them [the Indians] to their villages, and make the winter one of active operations in different directions, as best affords chance of punishment.”17
Before that Sunday ended, the Indians gave Carrington a chance to strike a blow. They made a daring raid upon the beef herd, cutting out sixteen head of cattle. In a mood of extreme anger, the colonel took charge of the pursuit, ordering out every available mounted man. Lieutenant Bingham led off with his cavalry company, and Fetterman, Brown and Grummond commanded separate mounted detachments. None of them overtook a single Indian, but they recovered eight steers, and found five others slaughtered and partially butchered.
On the 27th, Lieutenant Bingham and a detachment of twenty-four cavalrymen departed for Fort C. F. Smith with dispatches and mail, and on the 29th a sergeant and ten men left for Fort Reno on a similar assignment. With these men and others absent, post returns for the last day of the month showed 427 officers and men, a gain of sixty-seven over October.
Another routine item which Carrington entered in his post records for November concerned the transfer of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Walton Wessells, Brevet Brigadier-General of Volunteers, from Omaha to Fort Reno to replace the ailing Captain Proctor. In a time when brigadier-generals of Volunteers were as numerous as regular army lieutenants, Carrington probably gave little thought to the rank of his new Reno commander. He could not anticipate that dark twenty-first day of December, in the Moon When the Deer Shed Their Horns, nor could he have believed that in another month Wessells would replace him as commander of Fort Phil Kearny.
* Beckwourth never returned from the Crow village, dying there during the autumn under mysterious circumstances; by poison, it was rumored.
IX. December:
MOON WHEN THE DEER SHED THEIR HORNS
Fort Phil Kearny was established amid hostilities. Fifty-one skirmishes have occurred. No disaster other than the usual incidents to border warfare occurred, until gross disobedience of orders sacrificed nearly eighty of the choice men of my command … Life was the forfeit. In the grave I bury disobedience.1
1.
ON DECEMBER 3, LIEUTENANT HORATIO Bingham set a new record for a round-trip escort to Fort C. F. Smith by returning to Phil Kearny seven days after departure. Later that same day, Lieutenant Wilbur F. Arnold arrived from Laramie with forty-three infantry recruits; most of these men were formed into a new unit designated as Company K. Although these infantrymen were “perfectly new recruits from the general depot,” they were given a warm welcome as well as immediate assistance in completing a new barracks for their use.2
On the same day in Washington, President Andrew Johnson was delivering a message to Congress. “The Army has been promptly paid,” he declared, “carefully provided with medical treatment, well sheltered and subsisted, and is to be furnished with breech-loading small arms … Treaties have been concluded with the Indians who … have unconditionally submitted to our authority and manifested an earnest desire for a renewal of friendly relations.”3
The President was many hundreds of miles from Fort Phil Kearny, of course, but had he been there on December 6, he might have been surprised at the “friendly relations” manifested by a large band of Sioux which attacked a wood train that day.
Around one o’clock in the afternoon, pickets on Pilot Hill began waving signal flags around their heads, repeating the warning five times in succession to indicate large parties were engaged in the attack. As soon as he was apprised of the action, Carrington climbed to his lookout tower and swept the horizon with his field glass. The wood train was four miles west of the fort, just south of Sullivant Hills. Off to the north along Lodge Trail Ridge, other Indians were flashing mirror signals. Several mounted warriors were within two miles of Big Piney, moving down the ridge toward the fort.
In keeping with his new policy of striking a blow at every opportunity, Carrington immediately ordered all serviceable horses saddl
ed. To Captain Fetterman he assigned Bingham’s cavalry company and one squad of mounted infantry, and ordered the captain to gallop straight west, relieve the wood train, and drive the Indians back across the Piney. At the same time Carrington with Lieutenant Grummond’s mounted squad would sweep around to the north between Sullivant Hills and Lodge Trail Ridge and endeavor to cut off the Indians’ retreat.
After five months of directing pursuit of the hostiles, Carrington could assume that “there was no outlet for the attacking force, except across Lodge Trail Ridge or between that ridge and Peno Head, about nine miles distant from the fort.”4 With Lieutenant Grummond at his side, the colonel led his twenty-four mounted men rapidly up the valley of the Piney, keeping to the south bank. The temperature was below freezing, with a cold wind off the Big Horns. As soon as the column came opposite the slope of Lodge Trail Ridge, he signaled for a crossing of the Piney. The mounted Indians previously sighted along the creek had disappeared, and only three were visible on the upper ridge.
Big Piney was sheeted with ice, but Carrington turned his horse into the creek, hoping its hoofs would break the crust. Instead the animal floundered, and Carrington slid from his saddle. He kicked disgustedly at the ice with his boots, breaking a passage for the others as he waded the nervous mount across in three feet of freezing water.
When all were across, he ordered march resumed up the eastern slope of Lodge Trail Ridge. They were now four miles from the post, and in a few minutes the Bozeman Road came into view off to the right. Four Indians, widely spaced, held their horses on the road while a war party attempted hurried concealment in a nearby ravine. Carrington saw all of them clearly, quickly counting thirty-two. “At the same time I saw on the hills across the creek over one hundred Indians descending to the creek, followed by … Fetterman’s command, which had properly carried out the original order on the left. Delivering a sharp fire at a small party in my way, who instantly fled, I pushed on at a gallop westward along the ridge.”5
