THE FORGOTTEN BATTALION

(Being a short chronicle of some of the hardships and conditions endured by Indian War Veterans in the Phil Kearney massacre of December 21, 1866, and the Wagon Box Fight of August 2, 1867, as chronicled by Comrade William Murphy, Commander Spokane Camp No. 16, National Indian War Veterans, Spokane, Washington.)

I will give my experiences from the time I left fort Leavenworth, Kansas, April 7, 1866. We marched to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, arriving there May 15, having marched every day, Sunday's included. We passed or were passed by all kinds of rigs going in both directions but mostly immigrants and bull trains. The immigrants were passing the finest kind of land for farming purposes but one could travel without seeing a settler's house anywhere after the second day out. Buffalo and antelope were plentiful.

On arriving at Fort Kearney we were issued two day's rations consisting chiefly of seven hardtacks. Each hardtack was about four inches square and three-eighths of an inch thick. The balance of the rations were in the same proportion. The explanation given us was that the quartermaster in charge of the stores of rations had run short. A hungry man could have eaten the entire two rations at one meal and asked for more.

On May 18th I was assigned to Company A, second battalion, 18th U. S. infantry. We left Fort Kearney the 19th and marched to Julesburg where we built a scow to ferry across the South Platte River, which was running bank full. On trying out the scow we found it would not work owing to the quick-sands and shallows. In places the water would be only two or three inches deep while a few feet away there would be seven or eight feet of water. Two of our men got caught in the quick-sands and were drowned. We finally crossed by having a ? rope stretched from man to man, strapping our guns and equipment to our backs and holding to the rope. Some of the men were up to their arm pits in water and some traveled nearly dry shod. We were ordered to not stop for anything for if we did we would get stuck in the quick-sand.

Nothing more of an exciting nature happened until we passed through Scott's Bluffs. There an eight-yoke bull-team stampeded with two wagons loaded with parts and equipment for a saw-mill and ran down a steep hill to the North Platte. I do not believe any of the steers were alive when they got to the bottom of he hill. This saw-mill was intended for Fort Phil Kearney and arrived a month or six weeks later. This of course delayed us some in building the Fort.

At this time at Fort Laramie army officers and Red Cloud and his chiefs held council but came to no agreement. The report that we men got was that Red Cloud had issued an ultimatum to the officers that he would kill every white man that crossed the North Platte. At that time there were IndiansSioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoescamping for a mile or two along the North Platte and Laramie Rivers and the government was feeding themat least to the point of giving them beef steers to kill. They ate them all but the hides, hoofs and horns without washing. At that time we were shown examples of their markmanship with the bow and arrow. The young boys could hit a button, pencil or any small article at about thirty yards.

After the council we left Fort Laramie, crossed the North Platte at Bridger's Ferry, and after that we had a picket line outside of the guards. We kept this up till we built the stockade at Fort Phil Kearney. The order of the day was in putting a guard to work building the stockade and our barracks then went on picket at night.

Every other trick had one night in.

We arrived at Fort Reno about the first of July and that afternoon while the stock were grazing near camp, with some of the mules being picketed, some hobbled and some being herded by a number of the men, a heavy hail storm came up with hail stones as large as pullet eggs. Evidently the mules and horses thought it was no fit country for them. We had had some trouble about an hour previously in getting them to ford the Powder River but they went back over it as though it were dry land. The animals that were picketed pulled their pins, the hobbled ones and even the stock the herders were riding stampeded. The herders finally stopped their horses two or three miles from where they started. A company of cavalry from Fort Reno with the herders trailed the herd all night and it was overtaken at Pumpkin Buttes, some forty-five miles from the fort. We got the stock back the next evening. If there had been a few Indians with their spears and buffalo robes they could have easily had a herd of six or seven hundred head of horses and mules and it is extremely doubtful if Fort Phil Kearney and Fort C. F. Smith would have been built had this happened.

I was detailed the next day to help load some wagons with provisions from the store-rooms at Reno. The ware-rooms were built of cottonwood logs, chinked and daubed with mud and having dirt roofs. Some of the daubing had dropped out and snow had drifted in. The dirt roofs also leaked and added to the dirty mess. (The soldiers made great improvements in that fort in the summers of 1866 and 1867.) We loaded up some sacks of bacon. I do not know how old it was but the fat had commenced to sluff off from the lean and it was three to five inches thick. There [ ] flour in the store-rooms and the mice had tunneled through it and the bacon evidently for some time. Third day of July was pay day and we received four months pay. There was some bootlegging but very little drunkenness in those days. One method I saw here for punishing drunkenness was on this day and one of the worst cases of cruelty I saw in the army. At the guard tent four stakes were driven into the ground and the drunken soldier was stretched at full length and tied to them. This was called the "Spread Eagle." The sun was beating down on him when I saw him and I thought he was dead. Flies were eating him up and were running in and out of his mouth, ears and nose. It was reported that he died but in the army one can hear all kinds of reports. I only saw that one case but heard they started the same thing at Fort Reno a month or two later and caused a riot or mutiny. The commander gave the soldier his discharge as a compromise.

Our next camp was "Crazy woman" and was reached after marching for twenty-eight miles on a very hot day with no water except what we carried. The water was found to be very bad after we reached the North Platte with the exception of one campI believe they called it Brown's Springs. Most of the water was impregnated with alkali which had a bad effect on lots of the men. Many of the soldiers had bad feet owing to being forced to wear woolen socks in the hot weather but no other kind was issued. Add to this the fact that there was only one ambulance available for sick soldiers as the women and children had all the others in use, and you have a picture of what it meant for a soldier to be sick.

After crossing "Crazy woman" we fond a wide bottom-land on the north side and the road entered a long ravine, coming out on top of the divide going towards Buffalo Wallow. This was a bad place and the Indians killed several people there during our stay in the country, stripping, mutilating and scalping the bodies. They may still be buried there as we dug holes along the side of the road and then dropped the bodies in, covering them with rocks when possible to keep the wolves and wolverines from digging them up. Sometimes an Indian would dig the body up and drag it down to the road.

The next bad place was Buffalo Wallow. Several were killed there immigrants, citizens and soldiers. We buried them as described above and at every camp ground from Fort C. F. Smith on there were one or more bodies. Buffalo Wallow and Crazy woman however, were the two worst places between Fort Reno and Fort C. F. Smith.

We arrived at the forks of the Big and Little Pineys the 13th or 14th of July. For some reason they picked out a location about seven miles from the timber and from five to eight miles from any hay bottom. A federal judge who had been a judge of one of the territories was with us. I believe he had something to do with the selection of the location of the fort as he and his partner had a bull train. There was a man who was surely "on to his job." He was a good diplomat. He made love to men, women and children and lived at the fort most of the time. His partner ran the teams.

About the middle of July Fort Phil Kearney was staked out. Up to the 17th of July we hadn't seen an Indian and had commenced to think the threat of Red Cloud at Fort Laramie was just a bluff, but the rest of that summer from July 17, 1866, and continually thereafter until July 14, 1868, he was on the job. There was hardly a day passed at Fort Phil Kearney up to December 21, 1866, (the date of the massacre), that we did not see Indians and the others at Fort Reno and Fort C. F. Smith had about the same experience. The usual order of the day was to make a forced march to the relief of some immigrant or freight train. In most cases the Indians had taken their toll and gone before we arrived. On July 17th the Indians killed an Indian trader at Peno Valley, about four miles north of Fort Phil Kearney. The Indians killed French Pete Gayzous and his five men, ransacked his wagons and stripped, scalped and mutilated the men. He was married to a Sioux squaw. She hid in the bushes until the soldiers rescued her. She was at the fort for about two months and left one night.

The same day the Indians ran off what we called our "dead herd." They were mules and horses that had sore necks, sore backs or were crippled. Some were crippled at the stampede a few days before. It took several men all day to drive them from one camping ground to another fifteen to twenty miles away. That day also three men were wounded and two killed. One man, John Donovan, of my company, was wounded twice, once with a poisoned arrow. One of the men received an arrow wound and another a bullet wound. When the herd stampeded they ran across the Pineys and we could scarcely see them for the cloud of dust they raised. The mounted men followed until nearly dark but only found four dead animals.

About July 20th, Orderly Sergeant Lang of my company and I bought two fresh cows from an immigrant train. No one wanted to work in the kitchen so I volunteered in order to be able to take care of the cows morning and evening. It was not known that I had any interest in the cows or it might have caused some trouble. We had a first class baker in the company who volunteered to do the baking and cooking. At that time the government did not furnish cooks or bakers. They simply furnished the rations and the soldier could cook them himself or eat them raw as he saw fit. They furnished no vegetables. We cooked soup, bacon and coffee and dished it out to the men in their cups and plateswe had no dining room. We boiled everything. I believe the bacon would have killed the men if it had not been thoroughly boiled. As it was it surely came near to it that winter. During the winter of 1866 and 1867 the bacon and flour I had seen at Fort Reno was given to us. The flour had been hauled sixty-five miles and handled several times. The result was that the refuse left by the mice was well mixed with the flour and we found a number of dead mice in it also. As we could not get a sieve we manufactured one out of a burlap sack by pulling out some of the strings and nailing it on a wooden frame. We got most of the larger refuse out. The bacon, where the fat had commenced to sluff off from the lean, was yellow with age and bitter as quinine. Some of the worst we shaved off but we could not spare too much. One reason why our rations were so scanty was that flour was $100.00 per sack and bacon, coffee and beans proportionately. The companies of those times had no quartermaster or commissary sergeants and two or three men would be detailed to go and get the rations. They were piled out in a heap and you could take them or leave them.

At this time the second battalion of the 18th infantry was divided up by leaving two companies at Fort Reno to relieve two volunteer companies. Four companies went sixty-five miles north of Fort Reno and built Fort Phil Kearney. Two companies went ninety miles farther north and built C. F. Smith on the bank of the Big Horn which left four companies at Fort Phil Kearney. I was among those left at this place. We started in building the Fort Phil Kearney stockade which was six hundred feet by eight hundred feet. The logs were set three feet in the ground and were hewed on two sides to a touching surface. We built quarters for the officers, warerooms, sutler's store, guard house, stockade for the mules and quarters for the men. There were approximately two hundred and fifty men at the fort but I could not vouch for the exact number. I was a member of Company A, of forty-eight men, Company K was the largest and had about sixty-five men if I remember correctly. Some time after we established the fort, Company C of the second U. S. cavalry arrived with some sixty men which made about three hundred men all told. Some reports stated that we had a mounted infantry but that was a mistake. There were about thirty men who were detailed out of the infantry company at the fort mounted.

On December 6, 1866, the wood train was attacked. In itself this was nothing unusual as it was an every day occurrence. Colonel Carrington with Company C of the second cavalry and some mounted men went to its relief. The Indians retreated and crossed the Pineys and Carrington followed them and was nearly trapped. This was two or three miles north of where the massacre occurred December 21st following. It was at this time that Lieutenant Bingham and Sergeant Bowers were killed. In Carrington's report he stated that Lieutenant Bingham had charge of the mounted men. Carrington himself had charge of the command. Bingham was on the skirmish line and was on the right flank with Sergeant Bowers and John Donovan. Carrington saw his danger and had the recall sounded. That left Lieutenant Bingham,

Sergeant Bowers and John Donovan cut off by the Indians. They dismounted for a short time but decided that their only chance was to run the gauntlet as their commander had retreated to a higher point. Lieutenant Bingham and Sergeant Bowers were pulled off their horses by the Indians. John Donovan was armed with a Colts army revolver and a single shot Star carbine using a copper cartridge, the same as a Spencer carbine. The revolver, he told me, was all that saved him when the Indians were on each side of him trying to pull him off his horse for just in the nick of time he shot one on each side. He was a bunkie of mine and a good man and was a Civil War veteran. We both belonged to the same companysecond battalion, 18th U. S. infantry He told me that Bingham was unarmed except for a cavalry sabre.            (To be continued)