Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Our men stood the strain well, held their fire until the bullets would count. In fact, shooting into such a mass of Indians as charged on us the first time, it would be nearly impossible for many bullets to go astray. In all my experience in fighting Indians prior to this time, I never saw them stand punishment so well as they did at this time; they certainly brought all their sand with them. In charging on our little corral they rode up very close to the wagon boxes, and here is where they failed. Had they pushed home on the first charge, the fight would not have lasted ten minutes after they got over the corral.

Many dead and wounded Indians lay within a few feet of the wagon boxes. The wounded Indians did not live long after the charge was over. They would watch and try to get a bullet in on some of our men. We had to kill them for self-protection. Anyway, it was evening up the Fetterman deal. They never showed mercy to a wounded white man, and should not expect any different treatment. I had a canteen of water when the fight commenced, and used most of it to cool my guns.

You state that all of our loss occurred at time of the first charge. This is an error, as the man in my box was shot after he had been fighting nearly an hour. I think that his name was Boyle. Up to the time that he was shot he certainly filled the bill and did his duty, dying with his face to the foe as a soldier should.

I do not try to estimate the number of the Indians, but, as my partner said, “The woods were full of them.” This was the largest gathering of Indians that I ever saw, and the hardest fighting lot that I ever encountered.

When the reinforcements came in sight we took on a new lease of life, and when they dropped a shell over the Indians we knew that the fight was won. Indians will not stand artillery fire. They call it the “wagon gun.” The reinforcements came just in time. One hour more of such fighting would have exhausted our men and ammunition.

As to the Indians carrying off all their dead and wounded, here you are again mistaken, as many of our men carried away with them scalps, etc., taken from the bodies of the dead Indians near the corral.[^[27]] The Indians certainly hauled off all their dead and wounded that they could, but did not expose themselves very much in order to get the dead ones near the corral.

On arrival of reinforcements we immediately retreated to the fort. Captain Powell was the right man to command under such trying circumstances. No better or braver man ever held a lieutenant’s commission than Jenness. As to the Indian loss, I think you have overestimated it. We thought that we had killed and wounded some more than four hundred. However, you may be right in your estimates. We had the opportunity to clean up that number, and we certainly did our best to do so.

After the massacre of ’66 (Dec.) we received reinforcements, as I now remember, four companies of infantry and two companies, L and M, of the 2d Cav. This large additional force, stationed at a four-company fort, and only provisioned for four companies, caused a great deal of suffering during the winter, resulting in much sickness and many deaths from scurvy. Nearly all of us were suffering from this disease. I have never fully recovered from the effect of it.

Colonel Carrington was severely censured by the War Department and many others for the Fort Phil Kearney massacre, and, I think, unjustly. Had Col. Fetterman and Capt. Brown and the other officers in command obeyed his orders, the massacre would not have occurred, not, at least, at this time.

Fetterman and Brown were dare-devil fighters, always anxious for a fight, and took this opportunity to get into one. Capt. Brown, on his “calico” pony, was a familiar figure around this fort—the boys called him “Baldy.” The Indians were very anxious to kill Brown; he was a thorn in their sides. While we to some extent lay the blame of the massacre on Brown and Fetterman, to be honest, we were nearly all partly to blame. We were always harping at the colonel to send a large force out and fight the Indians, but he always insisted on a conservative course. We all thought up to that time that one hundred good men could walk through the entire Sioux Nation. This massacre demonstrated that in a fight in the open the Sioux should not have over five to one of us.