Famous Wyoming Battle In The Red Indian Wars

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 7

Famous Wyoming Battle In The Red Indian Wars

HEROES OF THE

CODY (Wyoming). A Boston newspaper in November, 1863, sent a journalist to this state to cover the Indian wars. The luckless writer, Ridgeway Glover, in his pursuit of the facts wandered two miles from an army fort. Next day, soldiers found his l body naked and scalped, his back cleft with a tomahawk.

In August, 1970, it is quite safe for a journalist from Christchurch to travel the same path as his ill-fated colleague and pause over a battleground unknown to New Zealanders except for the highly coloured celluloid accounts.

In this Wyoming earth lies the dust of thousands of men, women and children who died horrible deaths in the Indian Wars. The memory of what most Americans wish had' never happened is preserved in a magnificent museum at Cody, a small town on the great plains of Wyoming named after William Cody, better known to the world as Buffalo Bill

The people of Wyoming cherish Cody’s memory but historians see him through very plain spectacles. The evidence they have dredged up suggests that he was as much given to killing Indians for the hell of it as anyone else and did his share of exterminating the mighty herds of buffalo that once fed off the vast prairies. Cody might never have become a figure of history had he not toured much of Europe and Britain with a circus which had among its entertainers the sharp-shooting Annie Oakley, who was a better shot than Cody himself. Invasion Begun The story which follows is an account of the most famous battle fought in Wyoming. It went on at a time when the Maoris were at war with the British and the comparisons between the Maori and the Red Indian as warriors are striking. Regrettably, the outcome of the wars involving the two native peoples also have marked similarities.

As more settlers crossed the Mississippi river into the rich farming lands west of the great lakes, large tracts of territory belonging to the Indians were declared open for homesteading. And although the Indians got “compensation” the agreements were not always honoured. The Indians began to remember the past For two centuries tribe after tribe had been forced westward and treaties had been made and broken by the Government with complete disregard of the Indians’ rights. But the leaders of the great plains tribes, notably the Sioux, no longer believed in the white man’s promises. They were brave men, the Sioux. They realised there must be an end to retreats if their way of life was to survive. They did not like the railroad spurs that were beginning to jut across the Mississippi, pointing significantly westward toward the rolling prairies. They hated the settlements that were rising rapidly along the lengthening trails and stage lines. They knew that in the rich lands of Minnesota a band of their own tribe had been forced into a narrow defenceless reserve along the Minnesota river. Sioux Inflamed When the white men began the civil war in 1861 the forts of the west were drained of experienced soldiers and the untrained volunteers who replaced them were ho match for the skilful native warriors. In August, 1862, a band of irresponsible braves killed five settlers near New Uhn, Minnesota. This began a

series of bloody encounters between the Indians and the pioneers. The Minnesotans organised a militia, captured 400 Indians, tried them and sentenced them to death. Their chief, Little White Crow, tried to fight back but was killed. His tanned scalp, skull and wrist bones were put on exhibition. That was enough to inflame the proud Sioux to greater passions of hatred for the white men.

It started 25 years of a bloody conflict which brought the Indian race to its knees and so blotted the history of the United States that Americans today remember with shame.

Things became so bad during the last days of the Civil War that Federal forces had to use Confederate prisoners to man the forts in the west. By 1864 the Arapahoes and the Cheyennes had joined the Sioux and began raiding the settlers camps in South Dakota and Nebraska. “I Will Fight” The strong Sioux tribes in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming had been left almost unmolested during this period but they watched the encroaching white men with wary eyes and were determined to resist any invasion of their hunting grounds. Red Cloud was one of the chiefs and he was a fighting man. In the summer of 1865 the Government sent in an expedition under the command of General Henry Carrington. With a regiment of regular infantry he had orders to quell the Powder River country either by force or negotiation. He arranged a meeting with the Sioux at Fort Laramie and after a long delay Red Cloud agreed to attend. But the proud Indian chief refused to be introduced to the military leaders. Half way through negotiations Red Cloud got up and faced Colonel Carrington. “You are the white eagle who has come to steal the road. The great father sends us presents and wants us to sell the road, but the white chief comes with soldiers to steal it before the Indian says yes or no. I will talk with you no more. I will go now and I will fight you. As long as I live I will fight you for the last hunting grounds of my people.” With these words Red Cloud turned and walked out of the council. Not many days would pass before the white men would know the meaning of what he had spoken. Commando Raids Red Cloud had an intelligence system that would have done the C.LA. credit. He knew the size of Carrington’s forces down to the last man and last round of ammunition. The force of 700 troops, including a 40-piece brass band, was dug -in at Powder River. Carrington’s officers held the Indians in the utmost contempt. They best showed

this by bringing along their wives and children, thinking they were going on a summer outing instead of trespassing on hostile bunting grounds. Red Cloud kept up the pressure on Carrington by ordering commando-like raids, brilliantly executed at night. Carrington thus lost most of his horses and his men became so demoralised that they began to desert.

Red Cloud made no mass attacks. He stuck to guerrilla tactics hoping to cut the ranks of the invaders to a point where they would be forced either to withdraw from the hunting grounds or to present so weak a front that the Sioux could destroy them In one final smashing attack.

All through summer soldiers and civilians were occasionally transfixed with arrows.

Red Cloud even went so far as to teach his braves a few words of English and to dress them in captured blue army uniforms to confuse the soldiers under close attack. Colonel Confused Carrington was as confused as Hitler with a war on two fronts. He issued orders to his men in one breath and

countermanded them in the next An average of a man a day was being scalped or wounded by Indian attacks on his fort. Red Cloud’s forces swelled, as other Indians began to realise that their hunting grounds were in danger.

Red Cloud then took personal command of his forces, leading them on even more daring raids. When they could not get at the soldiers they swooped on waggon trains, stampeded and captured horses and mules. They stole most of Carrington’s beef herd, shot the herders and sent soldiers limping and crawling back to the fort with arrows driven in their bodies. Carrington called for cavalry, realising that his infantry were no match for the Indians who have come to be regarded by some historians as the finest exponents of cavalry fighting in the history of human warfare. Captain’s Boast Then came Christmas 1865 and Carrington, in the midst of winter, permitted a big feast. At the same time there arrived at the fort Captain William J. Fetterman, a young man who had served with some distinction in the Civil War. Fetterman had unbounded contempt for the Indians, and boasted that “with 80 men I could ride through the Sioux nation.” Two other officers shared this reckless bravado. One of them, Captain Federick Brown, often expressed an intense desire to take Red Cloud’s scalp personally.

Red Cloud was more than ready to give Brown and the others the chance to make good their boasts and threats.

Soldiers In Trap

Late in December a large Sioux party encamped at Prairie Dog creek. The leaders for the intended battle were selected and a young man named Crazy Horse, who later became famous in his own right, was chosen to lead the decoy party. The Indians attacked a wood train and Fetterman prevailed on Carrington to let him lead out the cavalry. He had behind him 80 men—the number he needed to “ride through the Sioux.” Red Cloud and the other leaders watched from above and waited till the soldiers were near the wood train. Crazy Horse dashed out of the brush, leading his men in a zig-zag trail across a slope in front of Fetterman. The soldiers opened fire at once, but the Indians fearlessly braved the fire, whooping their blood-chilling yells and waving their blankets to frighten the white men’s horses. Then they retreated out of range, much to Fetterman’s fury. Behind the cavalry the foot soldiers began to climb a slope towards Red Cloud and his camouflaged warriors in the rocks and gullies. It was a perfect trap. Too late Fetterman realised his mistake, and as he turned to wave his men back, the Sioux surged up out of the earth to smother one flank. It was all over in a few minutes. At first the fighting

was hand-to-hand—clubs and rifle butts flailing and cracking down on unprotected skulls. Then the arrows began to fly like rain. The infantry were wiped out to a man, and then the Indians pressed the cavalry back against a snow covered hill. No Survivors It was so cold now that the blood froze as it flowed from the wounds. In a final charge the Indians killed the last man of Fetterman's company. The Indians picked up their dead and wounded and rode away.

When news of the massacre reached Carrington he called for a volunteer to ride to Fort Laramie to get reinforcements. A frontier miner, John Phillips, volunteered and his name is worth recording because his four-day ride through a blinding blizzard, past Indian encampments, with only a few pieces of food in bis pocket is an epic feat of endurance in Western history. “111-Considered” When reinforcements finally arrived Carrington was recalled. With his staff, wife, two small sons he crossed Wyoming by waggon train in a continuous blizzard with the temperature as low as 38 degrees below zero. “There never was a more ill-considered impulse of the American people than that which forced the army into the Powder River country to serve the behests of irresponsible speculative emigration, regardless of the rights of tribes rightfully in possession,” he wrote later. He died a broken man before the incriminating statement he made and recorded above was taken to its final conclusion.