The Fatal Fetterman Fight

The Fetterman Fight, fought on a December morning 131 years ago, was the worst military blunder of the Western Indian wars prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. That William Judd Fetterman, the Army officer who led his men into the shocking fiasco of 1866, is not particularly well-known today may be attributed, in part, to his being overshadowed by George Armstrong Custer and the romanticized ‘Last Stand. Like Custer, Fetterman was a Civil War hero who went West and acted a bit too brashly against the Plains Indians, resulting in a military defeat that a good many people preferred to think of as a massacre. But just as the Battle of the Little Bighorn is not only Custer’s story, the Fetterman Fight is not only Fetterman’s story. A trail named Bozeman, a fort named Kearny, a defensive-minded Army officer named Carrington, a saber-wielding lieutenant named Grummond, a determined Oglala Sioux leader named Red Cloud and a clever Oglala Sioux warrior named Crazy Horse all have roles in the intriguing Fetterman story.

The Fetterman Fight occurred in Powder River country, on the lonely, monotonous plains of what would become northern Wyoming (at the time, it was part of Dakota Territory). Today, the grasses, tall and dry but still supple enough to bend, genuflect in waves moving from west to east across the prairie. Overhead, a blue bowl of sky holds only a distant sun. Certainly, there are landscapes more desolate–deep deserts, steep mountains or abrupt canyons. But few places seem more empty.

The emptiness is a misconception. The Indians knew better. The area around the Powder River and the other southern tributaries of the Yellowstone River contained desirable lands. Game abounded–deer, rabbits, buffalo, birds. Down by the creeks, berries and greens grew. Nature had opened her bountiful hand and strewed a multitude of blessings. The Crows, or Absarokas (children of the big-beaked bird), called this area their homeland. But it had been the home of the Snake (Shoshone) Indians until they were driven out by the Crows in the early 1800s, and since about midcentury, the Crows had been struggling with the Teton Sioux, who had moved in to escape encroaching white civilization. By 1866, the Teton Sioux–mostly Oglala, Minneconjou and Sans Arc–had taken the Powder River country away from the Crows and were the dominant force in the area.

For the white men, this land was not considered valuable in 1866, but not far to the west lay highly desirable land–the gold fields of Montana Territory. A federal government nearly bankrupt from the Civil War urgently needed gold to liquidate the interest accruing on the national debt. Men desperate to escape poverty were willing to risk all. To travel from the East to the gold fields, the shortest route was to take the Platte Road (the old Oregon Trail) to Fort Laramie (in present-day southeastern Wyoming) and then pick up the Bozeman Trail, which had been pioneered by John Bozeman in the spring of 1863. The Bozeman Trail, or Road, ran northwest on the east side of the Big Horn Mountains into Montana Territory and then mostly west to Virginia City. When gold seekers used the trail in 1864, Sioux leaders such as Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse and Red Cloud became upset, because the route passed right through their buffalo ranges. To a lesser degree, the trail also annoyed the Northern Cheyennes and the Arapahos, who were friends of the Sioux. And soon, these Indians had even more reason to be angry. In late August 1865, Brig. Gen. Patrick E. Connor began to build Camp Connor (later renamed Fort Reno, the site is 30 miles east of present-day Kaycee, Wyo.) on the Powder River to protect travelers on the Bozeman Trail. That outpost, however, would not be garrisoned until the next year. Indian attacks made travel on the trail extremely risky. Treaties were signed by various friendly northern Plains chiefs in the fall of 1865, but other chiefs were determined to keep the Bozeman Trail closed.