Early in December occurred an incident revealing the danger of annihilation which threatened Carrington's command. At one o'clock on the afternoon of the sixth a messenger reported to the garrison at Fort Philip Kearney that the wood train was attacked by Indians four miles away. Carrington immediately had every horse at the post mounted. For the main relief he sent out a column under Brevet Lieutenant-colonel Fetterman, who had just arrived at the fort, while he led in person a flanking party to cut off the Indians' retreat. The mercury was below zero. Carrington was thrown into the water of Peno Creek when his horse stumbled through breaking ice. Fetterman's party found the wood train in corral and standing off the attack with success. The savages retreated as the relief approached and were pursued for five miles, when they turned and offered battle. Just as the fighting began, most of the cavalry broke away from Fetterman, leaving him and some fourteen others surrounded by Indians and attacked on three sides. He held them off, however, until Carrington came in sight and the Indians fled. Why Lieutenant Bingham retreated with his cavalry and left Fetterman in such danger was never explained, for the Indians killed him and one of his non-commissioned officers, while several other privates were wounded. The Indians, once the fight was over, disappeared among the hills, and Carrington had no force with which to follow them. In reporting the battle that night he renewed his requests for men and officers. He had but six officers for the six companies at Fort Philip Kearney. He was totally unable to take the aggressive because of the defences which had constantly to be maintained.
In this fashion the fall advanced in the Powder River Valley. The forts were finished. The Indian hostilities increased. The little, overworked force of Carrington, chopping, building, guarding, and fighting, struggled to fulfil its orders. If one should criticise Carrington, the attack would be chiefly that he looked to defensive measures in the Indian war. He did indeed ask for troops, officers, and equipment, but his despatches and his own vindication show little evidence that he realized the need for large reënforcements for the specific purpose of a punitive campaign. More skilful Indian fighters knew that the Indians could and would keep up indefinitely this sort of filibustering against the forts, and that a vigorous move against their own villages was the surest means to secure peace. In Indian warfare, even more perhaps than in civilized, it is advantageous to destroy the enemy's base of supplies.
The wood train was again attacked on December 21. About eleven o'clock that morning the pickets reported the train "corralled and threatened by Indians on Sullivant Hills, a mile and a half from the fort." The usual relief party was at once organized and sent out under Fetterman, who claimed the right to command it by seniority, and who was not highest in the confidence of Colonel Carrington. He had but recently joined the command, was full of enthusiasm and desire to hunt Indians, and needed the admonition with which he left the fort: that he was "fighting brave and desperate enemies who sought to make up by cunning and deceit all the advantage which the white man gains by intelligence and better arms." He was ordered to support and bring in the wood train, this being all Carrington believed himself strong enough to do and keep on doing. Any one could have had a fight at any time, and Carrington was wise to issue the "peremptory and explicit" orders to avoid pursuit beyond the summit of Lodge Trail Ridge, as needless and unduly dangerous. Three times this order was given to Fetterman; and after that, "fearing still that the spirit of ambition might override prudence," says Carrington, "I crossed the parade and from a sentry platform halted the cavalry and again repeated my precise orders."
With these admonitions, Fetterman started for the relief, leading a party of eighty-one officers and men, picked and all well armed. He crossed the Lodge Trail Ridge as soon as he was out of sight of the fort and disappeared. No one of his command came back alive. The wood train, before twelve o'clock, broke corral and moved on in safety, while shots were heard beyond the ridge. For half an hour there was a constant volleying; then all was still. Meanwhile Carrington, nervous at the lack of news from Fetterman, had sent a second column, and two wagons to relieve him, under Captain Ten Eyck. The latter, moving along cautiously, with large bands of Sioux retreating before him, came finally upon forty-nine bodies, including that of Fetterman. The evidence of arrows, spears, and the position of bodies was that they had been surrounded, surprised, and overwhelmed in their defeat. The next day the rest of the bodies were reached and brought back. Naked, dismembered, slashed, visited with indescribable indignities, they were buried in two great graves; seventy-nine soldiers and two civilians.
The Fetterman massacre raised a storm in the East similar in volume to that following Sand Creek, two years before. Who was at fault, and why, were the questions indignantly asked. Judicious persons were well aware, wrote the Nation, that "our whole Indian policy is a system of mismanagement, and in many parts one of gigantic abuse." The military authorities tried to place the blame on Carrington, as plausible, energetic, and industrious, but unable to maintain discipline or inspire his officers with confidence. Unquestionably a part of this was true, yet the letter which made the charge admitted that often the Indians were better armed than the troops, and the critic himself, General Cooke, had ordered Carrington: "You can only defend yourself and trains, and emigrants, the best you can." The Indian Commissioner charged it on the bad disposition of the troops, always anxious to fight.
The issue broke over the number of Indians involved. Current reports from Fort Philip Kearney indicated from 3000 to 5000 hostile warriors, chiefly Sioux and led by Red Cloud of the Oglala tribe. The Commissioner pointed out that such a force must imply from 21,000 to 35,000 Indians in all—a number that could not possibly have been in the Powder River country. It is reasonable to believe that Fetterman was not overwhelmed by any multitude like this, but that his own rash disobedience led to ambush and defeat by a force well below 3000. Upon him fell the immediate responsibility; above him, the War Department was negligent in detailing so few men for so large a task; and ultimately there was the impossibility of expecting savage Sioux to give up their best hunting-grounds as a result of a treaty signed by others than themselves.
The fight at Fort Philip Kearney marked a point of transition in Indian warfare. Even here the Indians were mostly armed with bows and arrows, and were relying upon their superior numbers for victory. Yet a change in Indian armament was under way, which in a few years was to convert the Indian from a savage warrior into the "finest natural soldier in the world." He was being armed with rifles. As the game diminished the tribes found that the old methods of hunting were inadequate and began the pressure upon the Indian Department for better weapons. The department justified itself in issuing rifles and ammunition, on the ground that the laws of the United States expected the Indians to live chiefly upon game, which they could not now procure by the older means. Hence came the anomalous situation in which one department of the United States armed and equipped the tribes for warfare against another. If arms were cut down, the tribes were in danger of extinction; if they were issued, hostilities often resulted. After the Fetterman massacre the Indian Office asserted that the hostile Sioux were merely hungry, because the War Department had caused the issuing of guns to be stopped. It was all an unsolvable problem, with bad temper and suspicion on both sides.
A few months after the Fetterman affair Red Cloud tried again to wreck a wood train near Fort Philip Kearney. But this time the escort erected a barricade with the iron, bullet-proof bodies of a new variety of army wagon, and though deserted by most of his men, Major James Powell, with one other officer, twenty-six privates, and four citizens, lay behind their fortification and repelled charge after charge from some 800 Sioux and Cheyenne. With little loss to himself he inflicted upon the savages a lesson that lasted many years.
The Sioux and Cheyenne wars were links in the chain of Indian outbreaks that stretched across the path of the westward movement, the overland traffic and the continental railways. The Pacific railways had been chartered just as the overland telegraph had been opened to the Pacific coast. With this last, perhaps from reverence for the nearly supernatural, the Indians rarely meddled. But as the railway advanced, increasing compression and repression stirred the tribes to a series of hostilities. The first treaties which granted transit—meaning chiefly wagon transit—broke down. A new series of conferences and a new policy were the direct result of these wars.