Winning the West: The Army in the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

Army In The Indian Wars - Page 3

While the Civil War was still in progress, gold was discovered in Montana and fortune seekers flocked to the area. Lines of communications to the fields around Virginia City lay along circuitous routes and pressure mounted for more direct access. The Army explored the possibilities and adopted a route, pioneered by John Bozeman, extending from Fort Laramie on the North Platte River and Oregon Trail, northwestward along the eastern base and around the northern shoulder of the Big Horn Mountains. Unfortunately, the trail cut through hunting grounds reserved to the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho by treaty in 1865.

Bozeman Trail Map, click to see larger version.

The Indians resisted white incursions and Major General Patrick E. Connor's Powder River Expedition failed to stop their depredations. In 1866 the government, under public pressure and officially attracted to the gold resources as a means of relieving the financial strains of the Civil War, opened new negotiations, but with indifferent results. A few friendly chiefs signed a new agreement at Fort Laramie, but others led by Red Cloud of the Sioux stalked out defiantly when Colonel Henry B. Carrington marched in with a battalion of the 18th Infantry, on his way to establish posts along the Bozeman Trail even before agreement with the Indians had been reached.

Although motivated by a sense of justice, treaty-making with the Indians more often than not constituted an exercise in futility for both parties. On the Indian side the tribes were loosely knit societies of individualists living a nomadic existence under leaders whose control and influence fluctuated with the fortunes of war. A treaty was no more binding than the degree of power, authority, and allegiance a leader might muster at any given time, Washington's understanding to the contrary. On the white side, although the authority of negotiating officials was unquestioned, the power to enforce treaty provisions on highly independent weltering whites was another thing, and as breach after breach provoked the red man to action the Army was invariably called in to protect the offending citizens and punish the Indians.

Colonel Carrington's battalion of about 700 men departed Fort Laramie in June 1866 for the Big Horn country. Despite Red Cloud's threat to oppose the move, several families, including the commanding officer's, accompanied the force. At Fort Reno on Powder River, some miles beyond the end of the telegraph, Carrington with a Regular company relieved two companies of the 5th U.S. Volunteers, former Confederate prisoners who became so-called galvanized Yankees when they agreed to frontier Indian service in exchange for their freedom. Farther northwestward, 225 miles from Fort Laramie, he selected a site on the Piney tributary of Powder River to construct his headquarters post -- Fort Phil Kearny. Five companies remained there while the remaining two were sent out to establish Fort C. F. Smith at the northern edge of the Big Horns.

Fort Phil Kearny became the focus of enemy attention and during its brief existence remained virtually in a state of siege. On December 21, 1866, the Indians attacked a wood train six miles from the fort.

Fort Phil Kearny, from a sketch by Bugler Antonio Nicoli, 2nd Cavalry,

1867, photo courtesy National Archives.

Captain Fetterman, who had been brevetted lieutenant colonel in Civil War actions and now boasted that with eighty men he could ride through the whole Sioux Nation, asked to lead a relief column. Indian decoys demonstrated invitingly before the rescue party, withdrawing gradually over Lodge Trail Ridge northwest of the post.Fetterman fell for the ruse and, against Carrington's orders, with eighty men at his back crossed the ridge. In a carefully executed ambush the Indians wiped out the entire force, including two civilians who had gone along to try out their new Henry repeating rifles, weapons far superior to the Springfield muzzle-loaders carried by the infantrymen and the Spencer carbines carried by the cavalrymen in the detail.

The Army was more successful in two other notable actions on the Bozeman Trail. In August 1867 the Indians launched separate but apparently coordinated attacks against a haying detail near Fort Smith and a wood detail outside Fort Kearny. In the Hayfield Fight 19 soldiers and 6 civilians, under Lieutenant Sigismund Sternberg, equipped with converted breech-loading Springfields and several repeating rifles, held off vastly superior odds with a loss of only 3 killed and 3 wounded. In the Wagon Box Fight, Captain James Powell, with 31 men similarly armed and stationed behind wagon boxes removed from their running gear, held off an investing force of several thousand Sioux and Cheyenne for a good four hours, withstanding mounted and dismounted attacks by several hundred warriors at various times with only 3 killed and 2 wounded.

It is risky to deal in statistics concerning Indian participation and casualties in western campaigns. Accounts vary widely, are founded on shaky evidence, and require some balancing and juggling merely to reach a general order of magnitude, much less an accurate assessment of the facts in a given situation. There is no doubt that the Sioux and Cheyennes suffered serious casualties in the Hayfield and Wagon Box fights. For the Army, however, these were defensive engagements and it lacked sufficient force in the Upper Plains to undertake offensive operations. At the same time there was sentiment in the East to treat with rather than chastise the Indians. The government withdrew the garrisons and abandoned the Montana road in July 1868.

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Native American Founding Fathers - It is too often forgotten that the first to settle America were the Native Americans. They, along with their chiefs and heroes should be commemorated just like like the colonists that formed our Constitution. Utilizing our great vintage photos, we have created a montage to recognize these great founders.