Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Man-Afraid wishes to give council?” Red Cloud inquired.

  “We waste time going to Laramie, sitting with the white men and their trained fools … this Spotted Tail. We must ready our villages for war.”

  “Tell us why you make ready for war.”

  “The white man has repeatedly tricked old Spotted Tail … in a succession of treaties. I would not feed my dog the paper the whiteman had the fort-loafers sign. But now the whiteman will trick you as well!” He pointed at many of the older chiefs in the center of the great, shaded circle. “You, who think it wise to go to Laramie to listen to the white man’s words! I say you have already been tricked by the white man!”

  “These are strong words, Man-Afraid.” Black Shield shifted uneasily.

  “Man-Afraid is right!” Curly rose beside his older friend, who stood alone against the chiefs. “We must not go to Laramie. It only shows the white man we can be swayed, shows him the Lakota can be bought.”

  “No, my young friend,” Red Cloud replied, drawing himself up with new resolve. “We will not be bought. No longer will we be fooled by empty promises. This time, the white man will be made the fool.”

  “How is this?” Red Leaf asked.

  The chief smiled, smoothing the vanes of a spotted eagle feather across one palm. “We will go. Lakota will hear what the white man wants to tell us at Laramie. Then we will say what is in our hearts.”

  “And we will take his gifts?”

  Red Cloud looked across the firepit at Black Shield. “Yes, we will take every gift the white man foolishly hands us.”

  “But he gives presents only for signing the treaty papers!” Red Leaf replied.

  They all watched the smile grow across Red Cloud’s wind-chiseled face. “That is where we play the white man’s cheating game better than the white man himself.” He raised one arm high in the air, the single eagle feather pointed at the smoke-hole and the heavens beyond. “No longer will the white man be the only one who can lie to get what he wants. We Lakota will take his gifts. Then we return to our hunting grounds to decide what path the Lakota will walk.”

  “We do not have to honor the white man’s treaty … because we know the white man will never honor his treaty with us!” Man-Afraid declared.

  “It is decided?” Red Cloud peered into the dark, brooding faces. “Good. Tell your camps we will march with the rising of tomorrow’s sun. To Laramie. The power of the life-giver will be warm in our faces and pride will swell our hearts. The white man will pay dearly for what he wants this time. Across fifteen summers the Lakota has learned how to deal with this creature who breaks every promise he makes us. The creature who steals back everything he ever gave us. Now, the Lakota deals with the white man and his soldier army in the only language he understands … and respects. The strength of our muscle. The might of our warriors.”

  * * *

  It surprised him how cold it could get after sundown in this country. When it had been so damned hot during the day.

  Private Sam Gibson pulled the wool blanket about his shoulders, shoveling his hip into the thick grass where he had made his bed.

  Camped out here among the sage beside Fort Reno, Sam had overheard the talk of some of those soldiers being relieved at the post, explaining that General Patrick Conner had originally named this fort on the Powder River in honor of himself, but that the War Department had seen to it the name was changed to Fort Reno. Army posts were named only after dead officers.

  Lord knows there’s enough dead officers after the war, he thought.

  Gibson couldn’t understand why any man would make a fuss over such a miserable collection of mud hovels anyway. After his own long winter of marching out from the east on foot, watching as his regiment was plagued with desertions … the sleeting snow … men losing feet and fingers to that endless cold. Their shoes falling apart … wrapping burlap around what was left of them. Leaving bloody trails coming west. Marching on numb, frozen feet. Marching—to where? To do what? Some claimed the 18th Infantry was coming out to fight Indians. And not a one of them had ever seen a damned Indian in his life.

  What did the army want with this country anyway? Hell. Wasn’t a thing out here in all this wilderness that had convinced him it was worth taking from the Indians to begin with. But then, it would take some impressing to do that. What with him being heir to a family fortune back in Chicago—growing up among all the lace and damask and the smell of money making money … but none of these men camped here within earshot of the Powder River knew of his secret past. No man knew why Private Gibson had abandoned that life of wealth and ease, escaping to join the Union Army in its fight against the insurrection of the Confederate States. No man would ever know why Enos C. Bidwell had enlisted under a false name so that he might quietly disappear among the hundreds of faceless soldiers marching under the battle banners of the 18th Infantry.

  Pvt. Samuel Gibson had promised himself that no man would ever know the secret that would follow him to his grave.

  Second Battalion, Eighteenth U.S. Infantry under Colonel Carrington will move immediately: two companies relieving the garrison at Reno Station; four companies establishing a new post on or near the Piney Fork of Powder River; two companies establishing a further outpost at or near the mouth of Rotten Grass Creek. Troops will proceed immediately so as to be able to move from Laramie on first grass. James Bridger will be employed as guide.

  With those orders, Col. Henry B. Carrington’s 2nd Battalion of the 18th had been given just under sixty days to prepare to march west from old Fort Kearney in Nebraska Territory. They were to occupy three faraway posts along the Montana Road which gold seekers used to scurry north to the goldfields. Over the next two months Carrington had fussed and clucked, Gibson recalled, just like the administrator he was, worrying because the 2nd Battalion could muster no more than 220 men, a mere fourth of its fighting strength. But by that shining Saturday morning, May 19, when the 18th Infantry had marched out of the old fort, past Kearney City and Dobe Town with its watering holes and teary-eyed whores, Carrington’s “Overland Circus” marched some seven hundred strong. Most of those foot-soldiers were new recruits, sweating alongside the battle-hardened veterans of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s bloody Georgia campaign. For the first time since that long and fearful war, Gibson once more felt a surge of pride in belonging to the 18th Infantry and its decorated hero, Capt. William J. Fetterman.

  With the scurrying rush of a chilly breeze, Gibson’s spine tingled in remembrance of a stirring sight. Parading in review beneath the eyes of no less than Sherman himself—a grand column of foot-soldiers marching beneath the silk banners that told of their hard-fought victories across the hard, bloody ground of the Confederacy. Ironically, this same grand regiment was the first now ordered to Indian country armed with the poorest of wartime hand-me-down weapons: muzzle-loading Springfield muskets. Only Carrington’s twenty-five-piece regimental band had been favored with the new rapid-fire Spencer carbines.

  Gibson smiled, listening as someone nearby began to snore musically. Carrington wouldn’t think of leaving his band behind, loving his German musicians like the breath of life itself.

  Behind the foot soldiers bound for Indian country had rumbled fifty wagons stuffed with tents and tools, rations and quartermaster stores. Along with Carrington’s onions and potatoes. Following those wagons driven by civilian teamsters rambled a thousand beeves. And behind them all rode a mounted rear guard.

  Because they had served him so bravely in Georgia, General Sherman himself had journeyed to Fort Kearney in Nebraska to see the soldiers of the 18th off for the Big Horn country. Gibson remembered how the sentimental old general’s eyes had misted when he gazed over the battered, battle-scarred veterans—the few who had chosen to stay on with the regiment for a journey into an unknown land. Sherman had even suggested that the officers bring their wives and children along, so certain was he in the safety of this assignment; certain, too, that the families would lighten much of
the loneliness of frontier duty. Just a week before the regiment had pulled out, Sherman himself had urged the officers’ wives to begin diaries wherein they could record their experiences marching into this new land. So it was that the women and children had come along on the army’s great adventure—riding in bouncing army ambulances, wooden-topped wagons which jolted and jarred their passengers west then north toward the ancient hunting lands of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.

  “Those ink-scratchings ain’t gonna help you much, Colonel.”

  Gibson recalled how he watched the wrinkled scout ease into the tent, dressed in store-bought clothes, looking more the farmer than a buckskinned frontiersman. The former trapper and mountain man who had spent forty-four years traversing the mountain West now stood slightly stooped with painful rheumatism. Above the old scout’s collar Gibson could see the swollen mound of goiter. With a week-old growth of gray stubble across his chin, Bridger strolled up to Carrington and his officers as they scoured the new maps the War Department had shipped out as the regiment prepared to leave Nebraska Territory.

  Carrington was a small, spare man who wore his hair long and his dark beard trimmed. His dark eyes bounced expressively on either side of his thin, aquiline nose. It was the look of a barrister he gave the aging scout. “True enough, Mr. Bridger.”

  “Call me Jim … won’t you, Colonel?”

  “Surely, Jim. The army doesn’t know very much about this new Mountain District I’m to command. These maps tell me nothing. They show few rivers. See here—appears someone guessed where the mountains would be found. A few of us have even read some tattered copies of Lewis and Clark’s journals to find any mention of the climate of the region. Afraid we’re pretty ignorant of what we’re going into.”

  “I got your map for you, Colonel.”

  “Perfect. May we look it over now?” Carrington asked.

  “Not quite, Colonel. It’s all up here.” Bridger tapped a gnarled finger against his leathery brow. “Better’n forty-four winters out here ’mong these mountains I been roaming now. You hired me to guide you—so now it’s your turn to listen.”

  Gibson had sat in rapt attention as the slightly-stooped, sinewy, six-foot-tall trapper had rambled through his dissertation on the country and its climate, the plant life and animals they would find in the new land.

  “Ain’t like nothing you’ve run across before,” Bridger reminded, his blue eyes searching the lot of them. “Out yonder, you run across trees taller’n any house you seen back East. And if you don’t watch your step, nearby you’ll bump into cactus with thorns the likes of your mama’s knitting needles that can cripple a horse damned fast. While you’re staring off at them mountains scrubbing the underside of the sky with your mouths hung open, you’ll be missing the prettiest flowers the good Lord could decorate any land with. Out there, where we’re heading—that’s a country with all the best … and all the meanest a piece of ground’s got to offer. That land’ll make a man outta you soldiers. Or, it can kill you just as easy.”

  Bridger went on in that simple way of his to warn Carrington’s officers about the Sioux and Cheyenne who would guard that faraway country with a jealous, fearsome pride.

  “Now, Jim—we’re all aware of your experience with the Indians out here. But we’re here to usher in a new era for this great land. I don’t expect to encounter any opposition because I plan on reaching Laramie in time to get to know the Indian leaders gathering in treaty council there.”

  “Oh, you’ll get a chance to meet ’em all right, Colonel. And you can skin me and nail my hide to the back of one of your wagons if what I tell you ain’t so. The Sioux and Cheyenne will stand square in your way. They ain’t about to give the army that road your men are sent to protect. Soon enough you’ll stare some real trouble in the eye.”

  Carrington straightened. For the first time more than concerned with a warning from a man of Bridger’s stature. The sensitive eyes beneath the colonel’s high forehead narrowed. “If trouble proves to be what I find, then I’ll overcome all obstacles by exercising patience, forbearance, and common sense.”

  “Common sense, Colonel?” Bridger scoffed. “That’s one thing in short supply in the army!” His iron-hardened look bounced over the officers gathered round the table. Those cold blue eyes narrowed on the colonel. “Howsomever, I got a feeling you’ll prove to be better than most, Carrington. How old you are?”

  “Forty-two. And I didn’t graduate from West Point. I’m a Yale man, ’forty-five. Yale law degree, ’forty-eight.”

  “You’re forty-two, eh? I got twenty winters on you, this past spring. Why can’t any of you realize that twenty year’s a damned lifetime out in this country? Every season a man finds hisself still wearing his hair, he can count hisself lucky he learned enough about red niggers to stay alive one more year. Injuns out here, boys—they eager to part you from your scalp … ’long with everything else you own.”

  Gibson remembered that Bridger had waited, letting the words sink in, his hard eyes watching a handful of the young officers gulp. One even ran his hand over his bald head.

  “Don’t worry none ’bout your topknot, son,” Bridger said to the officer. “What’s the name?”

  “Brown. Captain Frederick Brown. Regimental Quartermaster.”

  “You got nothing to worry about,” Bridger went on, gesturing toward Brown’s half-bald head. “Ain’t a warrior gonna want your scalp!”

  Most of them chuckled nervously, even Brown, who unconsciously ran a hand across his high forehead once more.

  “’Sides, Colonel—you got the best scouts money can buy,” Bridger continued. “Jack Stead over there as your interpreter. He’s had many a year with the Pawnee. Crow and Pawnee both know how fearsome the Sioux are. Fact is, I hear tell how the Sioux want Jack’s scalp pretty bad.”

  Next he turned and pointed his quirt toward the youngest scout standing on the outer fringe of officers. “That Henry Williams there, why—he’s learned about everything I can show him already. We both tried to teach General Connor a thing or two up on his Powder River expedition last year. ’Cept, Connor was all gurgle and no gumption. Figured he had knowed everything about Injuns already.” Bridger let that set. He knew these young officers had heard how Connor froze nearly all his army horses, putting his entire command afoot … how the officer had been repeatedly whipped by the Sioux … how Connor had come limping back to Laramie, beaten and humiliated.

  Carrington cleared his throat. “I’m sure I speak for every one of us here when I say we appreciate having men like you leading us into this Sioux country.”

  “Were it up to me—and it ain’t—I’d be leading you soldiers through Snake country.”

  “I understand you took the first emigrant train from Laramie all the way to Virginia City back in ’sixty-four … through Shoshone land.”

  “Damned right, Colonel. Up the west side of the Big Horns.”

  “That’s clearly the long way around,” Captain Brown said.

  “Right.” Bridger glared back at the balding officer.

  “And a good deal harder going, I hear,” Brown added.

  Bridger spit into the dirt at his feet. “Ain’t going to argue with you. My road’s a mite harder going than the one John Bozeman picked out.”

  “Bozeman laughs at your caution.” Brown felt bolder now. “Thinks you’re a little too cautious using that easy road of yours.”

  “Damned right I’m cautious—Bozeman’s road runs dead to center through the prime Sioux and Cheyenne hunting ground. Maybeso that’s why I still got my hair after forty-four winters in these parts. And everybody from Blackfoot and Sioux, Cheyenne down to Mormons wanting to boast of Big Throat’s scalp on their lodgepole.” He squinted at Brown. “But you got that right. I am a little cautious, son. I figure on lasting a few more winters.”

  “You’ll spend this winter with us.” Carrington tried out his soothing, lawyer’s tone. Along with that winning smile of his. “Up near the Big Horns, Jim.”


  Bridger finally tore his eyes from Brown.

  Gibson shuddered beneath his blankets, recalling the old scout’s terse words. “That’s right, Colonel. I’ll stay this winter with your soldiers … them women and kids.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ll damned sure do the best I can for you. But my medicine tells me some of you paper-collar officers won’t be around to see green-up come next spring. Mark my words, boys—afore hard freeze-up, there’ll be scalps flying from Sioux lodge-poles … or I ain’t Jim Bridger.”

  Chapter 2

  The breeze nudged the loose hair along his left cheek. Up here on the ridge where he always came to sit and think, Curly gazed down into the valley of the Tongue River, watching the brown-skinned lodges nippling against the gold sky of sunset, lazy puffs of smoke rising into the summer twilight.

  To think. And remember.

  A thousand lodges had gathered on the plains surrounding the soldiers’ Fort Laramie. Oglalla. Miniconjou. And Spotted Tail’s Brule.

  Old Pegaleshka. Once a brave and daring warrior with many honors, Spotted Tail had given himself to the white man the way a new bride gives herself to her husband on their wedding night. All because his young daughter had begged him to have her baptized with water in the white man way as she lay on her deathbed. A victim of the cruel winter of starvation the Sioux had suffered. She asked of her father to be buried in the white man’s cemetery at the fort. Obediently, her father had slain her four favored ponies, their tails to hang on her funeral scaffold. Sadly, Spotted Tail had told the soldiers he no longer had heart to fight the white man.

  Wheat Flour was her name. The whitest thing Spotted Tail’s people knew. Wheat Flour had told her father she ached to be like the white man. Eventually the weary chief grew certain his daughter’s spirit had been adopted by the white man’s god. No longer would he be one to make war against his daughter’s adopted people.