Wed. June 27, 1866…. Tongue River was crossed in the morning. We drove until about the middle of the afternoon, when the head teams came rushing back with the cry of "Indians."… A good many of the men were still out [hunting buffalo]. The two teams ahead had only women, and one little boy driving, and they were very badly frightened. Said that there were two hundred Indians down at the foot of the hill. This looked like hostility…. The Indians stood in line down at the foot of the hill. Instead of 200, there were about 80. They were armed with bows and arrows, and a few of them had guns, and some of them long spears…. They gave the Indians some bacon, flour, etc…. These Indians were Rappahoes.
Thurs. 28th…. The Indians led the way around for us to cross another bad stream, and rode along with us nearly all the forenoon trying to swap… one old chief made the captain of the train a present of a nice buffalo robe.
July 1st. Sabbath. We found plenty of Indians over on the other side [of Bighorn River]…. They all wanted to swap… One old squaw brought me a pair [of moccasins] and wanted a cup of sugar… Dell got a pair of plain ones for Chell. Mine only have a few pink, blue, and white beads.
At the time this train was crossing the Bighorn among the friendly Arapahoes, Colonel H. B. Carrington was encountering hostile Sioux on the trail between Fort Laramie and Fort Reno. He was coming up the new trail to build two new posts, one on Powder River, one on Bighorn River, to protect the trail, hoping in this way to keep the section peaceful. He had about 700 soldiers for the task.
There would be no peace. When the Sioux chiefs returned to their villages from Fort Laramie they called out the war parties and began new attacks, a raid on the Fort Reno horse herd and an attack on a wagon train at Crazy Woman Creek, where six people were killed.
On July 15 Carrington began building his first post, Fort Phil Kearney, between the forks of Big and Little Piney, away from water and miles from good timber logs or adequate firewood. He sent two companies on to the Bighorn crossing to build Fort C. F. Smith, a much smaller post.
The Sioux swarmed around Fort Phil Kearney like a violated nest of yellowjackets. They swooped down, wounding a man here, killing another there, stealing or killing cattle and horses, attacking wagon trains, and always escaping with loot. The post was on a constant alert, expecting attacks at any hour of the day or night.
December 21 dawned crisp and clear. A large party of wood cutters moved out to the west, with an armed guard for protection. Scarcely had they begun their work when the Sioux warriors attacked in force. Captain W. J. Fetterman was sent out at once with a relief force of fifty infantry, twenty-seven cavalry, and two junior officers, eighty men in all. He had strict orders to relieve the wood detail and escort it back to Fort Phil Kearney. Under no circumstances was he to chase the Indians across the ridge to the north. But Fetterman did chase the decoy group across the ridge, just as a cold northern storm blew in. A second relief force found eighty frozen bodies across the ridge where the ambush had been set.
The harassments continued for months. Then in late July Chief Red Cloud mustered two large forces, sending one against the haying crew at Fort C. F. Smith on August 1, the other against a wood detail on Big Piney on August 2. From behind a log barricade the haying crew and its guard, nineteen men in all, beat off the warriors with considerable losses.
On Big Piney, Major J. W. Powell had his men place wagon boxes on the ground in a tight rectangle before starting to work. When the Sioux charged, some of the men escaped to the post, but thirty-two of them took refuge in the wagon boxes and stood off about a thousand Sioux for a long time, inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking masses. The decisive factor in both these fights was the troops' new breechloading rifles, a weapon that came as a complete surprise to the Indians, and more deadly than any firearm they had ever faced.
Although Chief Red Cloud knew that his men had suffered defeat in both the hay-meadow fight and the wagon-box fight, he soon found that he had won the war. In the face of the continued Sioux opposition, government officials decided to abandon the new posts and turn the country back to the Indians. In the spring of 1868 they met with the chiefs and drew up a new treaty, which the Sioux willingly signed, for it gave them what they had been demanding for three years. In early summer as the troops marched out from the abandoned posts, the red men were waiting to put a torch to all the hated buildings. Their buffalo were safe again.
South of the Arkansas, Indian problems continued. After the Sand Creek massacre in 1864 and the resulting border war, the Cheyennes in 1865 had signed a treaty for a new reservation, but were induced to give it up in a new treaty negotiated at Medicine Lodge Creek in 1867. Chief Black Kettle, who had survived the Sand Creek attack, was again the leader of a large Cheyenne band, peaceful and settled on the Wichita according to the terms of the treaty.
Some of the officials gave the band a good deal of trouble, withholding the ammunition needed for hunting buffalo. This had been promised to them, but Black Kettle had to turn to an old friend, Indian agent Wyncoop, for help before he was allowed to buy the necessary ammunition. His band then went out on a successful fall hunt and set up a winter camp on the bank of the Washita to dry their meat, make their robes, and relax.
But Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer was on the prowl with his Seventh Cavalry. With the approval of General Philip Sheridan, Custer was hunting Indian villages to destroy, shooting or hanging all the Indian men he could capture, destroying the lodges, food, and camp gear, shooting the captured ponies, and bringing in the surviving women and children as captives.
Custer could be more certain of success in a surprise attack if he picked a peaceful village that was expecting no trouble. He approached Black Kettle's village in a snowstorm, then traveled the last few miles at night after the storm had stopped. His dawn attack came as a complete surprise to the Cheyennes. They lost over a hundred men killed, and a much larger number of women and children. Custer then burned the lodges, the winter stores, and shot 850 captured horses. For this attack Custer was known among all the Plains tribes as the ''squaw killer."
Up in Wyoming along Powder River all was serene as the winds scattered the ashes of the burned posts, the rains washed the ground clean, and weeds covered the ruins. Their victory over the army and a new treaty to their liking made the Sioux feel secure again. They settled back in their old pattern, relaxed and happy.
This idyllic interlude lasted only three years. Then surveyors with their strange instruments moved through Sioux country leaving little wooden stakes to mark their passage. The alarmed Indians protested to their agents, only to learn that the fine new treaty specifically provided for a railroad, which the government was sponsoring. The Northern Pacific, similar to the Union Pacific up the Platte, was to cross the Missouri at the Mandan villages, cut across Dakota into Montana, then follow the Yellowstone Valley west. The Indians were sure this new line would bring them new troubles and would damage their buffalo grounds.
In August 1872 war parties attempted to wipe out the surveying crews on the Yellowstone, only to be pushed back by a large force of cavalry. Then they assailed the new Fort Abraham Lincoln at the Missouri crossing, and were beaten off five times before they gave up. Skilled as they were as daring raiders on the open plains attacking wagon trains and small army units, the mounted warriors were helpless against soldiers with cannon behind strong walls. Even in the open, the Sioux were defeated again in 1873 on the Yellowstone, this time by Colonel Custer, the hated "woman killer."