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.)

The Phil Kearney Massacre, December 21, 1866

We had had a fine fall with cool nights and on this day the wood train left as usual about seven o'clock to go to the timber. As I remember, we mounted guard as usual at eight o'clock. I was in the orderly sergeant's office giving him the money for the milk when the orderly gave him the order to have Company A to go to the relief of the wood train. They "fell in" in front of our quarters which was the northwest men's quarters of the garrison. The main gate was at the north end of the stockade. The road ran by the west end of the quarters and passed by the adjutant's office and all officers' quarters to the government store-rooms and into the stock corral. The bastion of the stockade was at least two hundred feet from where the men fell in in front of the quarters. I see in Carrington's report that one of his alibies was that the guard at the bastion heard him tell Fetterman not to leave the wood train. I was standing right there and saw the men start on a double quick and go up over Sullivan's hill and I am certain that this report was wrong. As a matter of fact from the position of the troops the guard could not have heard this or any command given for he would have had to hear the command through the buildings. Another of his reports was that Major Powell was ordered to take the detail but as Captain Fetterman was the senior officer he stepped up and took charge. The facts of the case are that Captain Fetterman was the captain of Company A and it is ridiculous to think that Major Powell would think of taking command of Company A.

Fetterman was at the fort for only a short time, not over fifteen days from my recollection.

I did not see the mounted men go out. They never passed through the main fort but went out either the east or the west side of the stockade where the stock was kept. At the noon hour we could hear volleys plainly and they continued for a long period of time. About two or two-thirty Colonel Carrington ordered re-inforcements of about fifty-five men under Captain Tenyck to go out. They went at a double-quick or as fast as they could until they came to the crossing of the Big Piney. Cool nights had caused ice to form on the edges of the stream, but this stream was hard to cross at any time of the year. The men had to remove their shoes and stockings to get across. At that time Colonel Carrington's orderly, a man by the name of Sample, met the reinforcements and told Captain Tenyck that the men were all dead and that the Indians were all over the ground where the men had been. Some of the men said that this was Sample's second trip out with the information. I could not say as I saw him but the once for certain. In reply to this Captain Tenyck said that there were not enough Indians in the country to kill the men. He advanced along the road with a few men on each side on the ridges as skirmishers. When they got to the top of the divide which separates the Piney Creeks from the Peno Valley, where the men had been stationed they found that the Indians had withdrawn from where they had massacred the soldiers and seemed to be rehearsing the battle. They were shooting, shouting and charging up and down the hill over and over again. I suppose the hill must have been as a mile away from where the men were massacred. Our first thought was that the battle was still going on but a man from my company by the name of McLain who had been with the haying party and was familiar with the road said, "There are the men down there, all dead." Sure enough. There was at that time a large stone that had the appearance of having dropped from a great height and thereby split open, leaving a space between the pieces men could pass through which made good protection for a small body of men - I should say for about twenty-five or thirty. Around this rock was where the main body of the men lay. There were just a few down on the side of the ridge north of the rock not more than fifty feet from the main body. Along down the ridge farther north and east we found the bodies of Captain Brown, the two citizens Wheatly and Fisher and also a man of my company by the name of Beaber. They were scalped, striped and mutilated. They must have put up a hard fight as they were all armed with breechloading rifles and a lot of empty shells lay all around. The Indians had given Beaber an extra dose. It looked as though they had first stripped him and then filled his body with arrows as they were sticking out of him all over like porcupine quills. He had straight black hair and looked something like an Indian himself. He had passed through the Civil War as had three-fourths of the men that were killed. In some reports of the massacre it was stated that the men were ambushed, but looking over the ground anyone could see and can now see that they had a very good position for the arms that were used in those days. There was no stampede or ambush. In Carrington's book he stated that he sent two wagon loads of ammunition to them by the relief, but the fact was that he sent two empty wagons and an ambulance and possibly one box of ammunition of one thousand rounds, (certainly not more than that.) These conveyances were used in bringing in the dead and could have been sent by the colonel for no other purpose. His statement on the face of it is impossible of belief for in the first place he would not have sent two loads or 40,000 rounds for a party of one hundred men and in the second place there was not even one load, 20,000 rounds, in the three forts. After the massacre it was reported that there was in the fort an average of fifty rounds per man for the survivors and the men were undoubtedly killed after they ran out of ammunition. They started out with twenty rounds each and undoubtedly used some of this on their detail work before the massacre. On the ground around the rocks there were thousands of arrows, a lot of which were picked up by our men. We had known for a long time that we were short of ammunition.

It was customary, I understand, to have the guards have target practice when they came off guard, but our guns were loaded when we got into the Indian country and were kept so. We had no target practice of any kind. At the time of the massacre they tried to show that Captain Tenyck showed cowardice and took a roundabout way but this was not true. One thing was sure about Tenyck - there was no cowardice in his makeup. He could not have taken a roundabout way if he wanted to do so as his command was in plain sight of the fort.

There was an Indian riding around near where the bodies of the dead were lying. He halloed for the men to come down. Captain Tenyck told some of the men to go down and load the wagons and ambulances with the bodies. All of the bodies were stripped, scalped and mutilated with the exception of two were not scalped but the Indians had drawn a buffalo bag over their heads. We returned to camp without firing a shot. It was dark when the forty-five men under Captain Tenyck returned to the fort.

At the fort all was excitement. The magazine at the fort was a half dugout located on the parade grounds. The men worked all night there building a stockade all around it with green planks and putting water and provisions inside in case of a siege. The next afternoon Colonel Carrington with about fifty men went after the balance of the bodies. They dug a long trench and put two or three bodies into each box.

A day or two after the massacre the weather turned bitterly cold and the men were badly frozen trying to bury the dead. There was a heavy fall of snow which drifted the roads and ravines badly. The master of transportation had left some time in November and with him in his pockets went the money for our supply of wood and hay. It was reported that he went to Canada. We had to go seven miles for pine wood for the officers. The men got green cottonwood from the Piney bottoms and fed the tops to the mules. The poor mules ate holes through the logs in their stables, also each other's manes and tails. We had to go to Reno, sixty-five miles away for corn. The snow was very deep and it took several days to make the trip. The men suffered terribly as there was no shelter for men or mules and they were three or four nights out on the road. The mercury dropped to twenty-five and forty below zero and kept that way for about six weeks. Our shoes were made of cheap split leather and the shoddy clothes that were furnished at that time were not any protection. One thing in our favor was that after the first few days storm we have very little wind. Burlap bags were at a premium and saved our lives. We wrapped them about our shoes to keep from freezing for there were not overshoes or rubbers to be had at the fort. A few years later soldiers were furnished fur overcoats and overshoes.

Some time in January re-inforcements arrived, marching on foot from Fort Laramie. They had to shovel snow all the way. Their arrival made our condition, if anything, worse, for they had no provisions and no feed for the stock. Two companies of cavalry that came to the relief of the fort returned at once to Fort Laramie. They had brought some extra ammunition with them which we needed badly. Most of the men were badly frozen.

In the early spring we were issued some corn meal, ground at the fort. We were not as bad off as the men at Fort C. F. Smith. They were abandoned from the middle of November 1866, until March 1876, and corn was about all they had to eat. I am of the opinion that the officers thought that the men were all killed at the time of the massacre and no one was left. In one of Colonel Carrington's reports he speaks of the "great piles of slabs and firewood." The fact of it was that we didn't have a stick of wood three days after the massacre. The slabs from the mills were used in roofing the barracks and these were all covered with dirt except the officers quarters and all the buildings in the stockade. The cull slabs were used by the mills to keep up steam.

Two Men That Should Have Monuments But Forgotten

About the first of March two sergeants volunteered to go to Fort C. F. Smith and see what had become of the men there. The snow was very deep and they went on snow shoes. They finally returned bringing some Crow Indians with them and a lot of mail packed on dogs. The men at all three forts were out of tobacco and some of them seemed to miss that as much as their rations.

In the spring of 1867 General John E. Smith arrived with recruits. They had been snowed in all winter on the Platte River where Fort Fetterman was built later. After his arrival there was a great change at the fort. Men had up to this time worked at all kinds of work. They were all kinds of mechanics in the army and they had built the fort, driven teams, etc., but had had no drill or target practice. General Smith put all extra men working at extra pay at 35¢ per day. We had target practice for the first time. This was expensive as the government charged twenty-five cents per cartridge if they were short. We received a couple of orders from Omaha, Nebraska, department of the Platte, never to shoot at an Indian til he shot at you. It was undersigned by General Cooke. He wanted us to save ammunition I suppose.

The spring of 1867 also was the time the effects of the spoiled flour and bacon showed up. All of the men that were at the fort at the time it was established got the scurvy. Some lost their teeth and some the use of their legs. In the spring when the grass came up there were lots of wild onions and the scurvy gang was ordered out to eat them. The writer had to get out on his hands and knees for some time and then a general order came out not to let the men dig onions as some of them at Julesburg had been poisoned but we went out just the same. We thought we might just as well die at once as to die by inches. The government carried these men on their roll until their time was up. There were several of my company discharged at Omaha on the first of March, 1869. In this way they avoided the necessity of giving a pension as would have been compulsory if let out as they should have been. I remember one man they [ ] Tail" discharge because he got drunk a few days before his time to be discharged. I do not know what became of him as both of his legs were stiff as posts form the hips down. A lot of men who should have been discharged for disability were thus carried or gotten rid of by some other means and did not get the pension they were justly entitled to.

At Omaha Barracks, I saw another cruelty similar to the one I saw at Phil Kearney in 1866. A member of Company C had broken some of the rules, just what I do not know now if I ever did. His head was shaved and he was branded with a hot iron and drummed out of the army. At that time it was suicide to go a mile from the fort for the Indians watched the road constantly, but this did not seem to matter. The day arrived for carrying out the penalty had arrived so he was drummed out. About that time there was a bull train coming in and I suppose they picked him up. I had thought that this custom was just a way officers of Fort Phil Kearney had of punishment but by February or March of 1869 there had been four or five men drummed out of the Omaha Barracks. In each instance they men were branded with a hot iron, their heads were shaved, they were marched around the fort with a fife and drum playing Poor Old Soldier," and then drummed out. (The cruelty was not all practiced by the Indians.)

General Smith was a strict officer but he was just. Our rations were better and things went along much smoother. After the massacre the Indians did not show up again until some time in May, owing to the condition of their ponies, I suppose. They then commenced to attack the trains again but we had more men to guard them by that time. In the summer of 1866 a detail of about seven men was the limit. In the summer of 1867 it was about twenty men.