Monday, August 25, 2014

Famous Last Words: Capt. William Fetterman


By Kathleen Rice Adams

“Give me eighty men and I’ll ride through the whole Sioux Nation.”

William J. Fetterman, Capt., U.S. Army
So said Capt. William J. Fetterman in late 1866 as he assumed command of a U.S. Army detail tasked with defending a woodcutting expedition against Indians in the Dakota Territory. A fellow officer had declined the command after mounting, and failing to sustain, a similar effort two days earlier.

Fetterman overestimated his abilities and severely underestimated his opponent.

Born in Connecticut in 1833, William Judd Fetterman was the son of a career army officer. At the age of 28, in May 1861, he enlisted in the Union Army and immediately received a lieutenant’s commission. Twice brevetted for gallant conduct with the First Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment, Fetterman finished the Civil War wearing the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel of volunteers.

After the war, Fetterman elected to remain with the regular army as a captain. Initially assigned to Fort Laramie with the Second Battalion of the 18th Infantry, by November 1866 he found himself dispatched to Fort Phil Kearny, near present-day Sheridan, Wyoming. Since the post’s establishment five months earlier, the local population of about 400 soldiers and 300 civilian settlers and prospectors reportedly had suffered 50 raids by small bands of Sioux and Arapaho. In response, the fort’s commander, Col. Henry B. Carrington, adopted a defensive posture.

Fetterman immediately joined a group of other junior officers in openly criticizing Carrington’s protocol. Although the 33-year-old captain lacked experience with the Indians, he didn’t hesitate to express contempt for the enemy. His distinguished war record lent credence to his argument: Since the Indian raiding parties consisted of only twenty to 100 mounted warriors, the army should run them to ground and teach them a lesson.

Red Cloud, ca. 1880
(photo by John K. Hillers, courtesy Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Fetterman’s voice and continuing raids eventually convinced the regimental commander at Fort Laramie to order Carrington to mount an offensive. Several minor scuffles, during which the soldiers proved largely ineffective due to disorganization and inexperience, merely bolstered the Indians’ confidence. Carrington himself had to be rescued after a force of about 100 Sioux surrounded him on a routine patrol. Even Fetterman admitted dealing with the “hostiles” demanded “the utmost caution.”

Jim Bridger, at the time a guide for Fort Phil Kearny, was less circumspect. He said the soldiers “don’t know anything about fighting Indians.”

On December 19, an army detail escorted a woodcutting party to a ridge only two miles from the fort before being turned back by an Indian attack. The next day, Fetterman and another captain proposed a full-fledged raid on a Lakota village about fifty miles distant. Carrington denied the request.

On the morning of December 21, with orders not to pursue “hostiles” beyond the two-mile point at which the previous patrol had met trouble, Fetterman, a force of 78 infantry and cavalry, and two civilian scouts escorted another expedition to cut lumber for firewood and building material. Within an hour of the group’s departure from the fort, the company encountered a small band of Oglala led by Crazy Horse. The Indians taunted the army patrol, which gave chase … beyond where they had been ordered not to go.

The great Sioux war leader Red Cloud and a force of about 2,300 Lakota, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne waited about one-half mile beyond the ridge. In less than 20 minutes, Fetterman and all 80 men under his command died. Most were scalped, beheaded, dismembered, disemboweled and/or emasculated.
The Indians suffered 63 casualties.

Among the Sioux and Cheyenne, the event is known as the Battle of the Hundred Slain or the Battle of 100 in the Hands. Whites know it better as the Fetterman Massacre, the U.S. Army’s worst defeat on the Great Plains until Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer made a similar mistake ten years later at Little Big Horn in Montana.

Fetterman and his men died here. The site
now is known as Massacre Hill. (public domain photo)
Whether Fetterman deliberately disobeyed Carrington’s orders or the commander massaged the truth in his report remains the subject of debate. Although officially absolved of blame in the disaster, Carrington spent the rest of his life a disgraced soldier. Fetterman, on the other hand, was honored as a hero: A fort constructed nearly 200 miles to the south was given his name seven months after his death. A monument dedicated in 1901 marks the spot where the officers and men fell.

18 comments:

  1. How many overestimated their abitilies and underestimated their enemy? Such is the story of the outward expansion of the country. Thank you for sharing these peice of history. Whether we ever learn from them..but I digress.

    I often wonder what went through the minds of the combatants in these situations. We will never truly know, but those speculations are the seeds of the stories we love about the West. Doris

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    1. I wholeheartedly agree, Doris. Stories like this are viewed through the lens of history, so who knows what actually went through anyone's mind at the time. Everything is grist for the fiction mill, though, isn't it? :-)

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  2. Kathleen,

    Absolutely a marvelously well written and researched piece! As ALWAYS---coming from you.

    If I may, I add this comment. The sublime arrogance of these officers, (my belief) came from the superior weapons the army had, and the indolent and genocidal thinking of the time, “the only good Indian is a dead one.” The US Government or the Army NEVER had the moral right to take the land or to kill. Just perhaps, the Lakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne were justified in their defense of their land?

    Charlie

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    1. I tend to agree with you on all counts, Charlie. The Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache, Comanche, Seminole, and every other tribal group chased from its ancestral lands at gunpoint did what nations do when invaded. American policy during the period eventually led to the country stretching "from sea to shining sea" and emerging as one of the world's superpowers, but at tremendous cost. Genocide serves no one, even the victors.

      I'm constantly amazed and saddened by the hubris the U.S. Army was all too willing to display during the Indian Wars.

      Thanks for your compliments on the piece, honey. That means a lot to me, coming from one of the most diligent researchers I know. :-)

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  3. ...and Custer said, "There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry." 0_o

    Apparently Fetterman and Custer drank from the same cup of blind arrogance.

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    1. Miz Kaye, I do believe you're onto somethin' there. ;-)

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  4. If you don't have confidence when you start out, you might as well not start.

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    1. Very true, Oscar. Generally speaking, confidence is a good thing...except when it's not. ;-)

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  5. An excellent post, as always, Kathleen. You did a great job with the research, and I always love your writing style! These are some amazing stories of arrogance and over-confidence. Just fascinating stuff.
    Cheryl

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    1. Thanks, Okie! Historical events like this fuel my writing. There's lots of evidence out there that truth really is stranger than fiction. :-D

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  6. Outstanding post, Kathleen. Eight seconds is a good timeframe for an inspiring "elevator" speech. Unfortunarely, Fetterman's remark was somewhat less than inspiring. I've always doubted whether his elevator reached the top floor anyway.

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    1. I've always wondered about Fetterman's elevator, too, Tom. I've also always wondered what it must have been like for the men under the command of some of the over-confident (read "arrogant") army officers during the period. Of the deserters, how many took an unauthorized leave of absence because they saw the folly in their commander's plan?

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  7. 80 versus 2,300. Ouch.

    What a story!

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  8. One of my favorite parts of the Fetterman story- as Crazy Horse is trying to lure the soldiers into the trap, he stops a couple of times and pretends to check his pony's hoof as though something is wrong, always just out of rifle range.

    Red Cloud's War is especially significant in that it is just about the only Indian war on the Plains in which, essentially, the Indians won. They had been protesting the Bozeman Trail and the flood of emigrants (mostly miners) passing through the Powder River country, contrary to previous treaties, and in the peace settlement the government ensured that no one could pass through or settle on that land without the Indians' approval, meaning the Indians got exactly what they were fighting for. That lasted for only a few years, though, until gold was discovered in the Black Hills and once more miners poured in. The army was obligated by treaty to keep the miners out, but the only way they could've done so would probably have been to kill several of them, so they stood by- resulting in the Sioux war that led to Custer following Fetterman's ill-planned example. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that those events were in violation of the treaty and therefore the Sioux Nation was entitled to just compensation, with over a century's worth of interest- estimated at around a billion dollars. But the Sioux Nation refused to accept the settlement, because to do so would be to relinquish the claim on their sacred Black Hills -they want their holy land back, not money. So the settlement is in a bank, still collecting interest.

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    1. Troy, thanks for chiming in! I'm always grateful when you share what you've learned. You've acquired so much knowledge and perspective about historical and contemporary issues, I don't think we could ever drag it all out of you no matter how hard we tried. :-D

      I don't know much about the Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne worldview, but the Apache didn't believe they owned the land -- the land owned them. Commandeering their sacred places was tantamount to stealing their souls. That European Americans possessed the temerity to consider American Indians less than human has always seemed to me an excellent example of inhumanity.

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  9. Ha, but no one ever has to try very hard to drag it out of me; my family is often tempted to try to push it back in every now and then!

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