American Rifle - Alexander Rose [84]
In December 1866 the army experienced the blunt, horrific force of a new-style Indian strike. The Civil War veteran Captain William Fetterman, 49 soldiers (armed with muzzle-loading Springfields), and 27 cavalrymen (with Spencers) left Fort Phil Kearny, an outpost at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains, to chase a band of Lakota Sioux, Northern Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne that had been harassing wood-gathering parties from the fort, whose presence they naturally resented on their domain. Before the captain left, James Bridger—the fort’s chief scout—said ominously, “Your men who fought down South, are crazy! They don’t know anything about fighting Indians.”13 He was laughed at. Setting off along the Bozeman Trail, Fetterman soon disappeared from sight of the fort as he ascended into the hills.
The band sought by Fetterman was actually just a decoy to lead him to a narrow ridge, where between 1,500 and 2,000 warriors had hidden themselves in the snow-covered ravines alongside it. The army column was quickly sliced into three groups that were too isolated to lend fire support to one another.
When the troops of the relief force arrived an hour or so later, they found only corpses, or rather parts of corpses, in this “grewsome graveyard.”14 Every man but one in Fetterman’s command had been stripped naked and mutilated—a ritualistic act of revenge that must have taken longer than the actual fighting. (The “lucky” exception was Adolph Metzger, the bugler. He had desperately killed several Indians by battering their heads with his instrument; as a mark of respect, a buffalo robe was laid over his undefiled corpse.)15 Fetterman had been killed by American Horse, an Oglala warrior who clubbed the captain to his knees and slashed his throat with a knife.16
The local commander, Colonel Henry B. Carrington, summarized the grisly scene for his superiors in Washington:
Eyes torn out and laid on the rocks; noses cut off; ears cut off; chins hewn off; teeth chopped out; joints of fingers; brains taken out and placed on rocks with other members of the body; entrails taken out and exposed; hands cut off; feet cut off; arms taken out of sockets; private parts severed and indecently placed on the persons; eyes, ears, mouth, and arms penetrated with spearheads, sticks, and arrows; ribs slashed to separation with knives; skulls severed in every form, from chin to crown; muscles of calves, thighs, stomach, breast, back, arms, and cheek taken out.17
What is striking about the colonel’s description is its focus on the damage wrought by spearheads, sticks, arrows, and knives. Skulls were severed, not exploded by metal projectiles; ribs were slashed, not broken by the force of a bullet’s impact; hands and feet were cut off, not holed by lead. Though some of the wealthier or more accomplished warriors were armed with both bladed and ballistic weapons, very few of the Indians at the Fetterman fight bore firearms, and the vast majority of those who did carried old muzzle-loaders. The fort’s assistant surgeon, who examined the corpses, believed just six men had died exclusively of bullet wounds.18
It was a common misapprehension on the frontier that Indians were not only firearmed but were better armed than the whites. Fetterman’s infantry may have carried Civil War–era .58 Springfield muzzle-loaders, but his cavalry had good Spencers. Two ill-starred civilians who went along on the jaunt had brought Henry repeaters. It was the overwhelming waves of braves that did for Fetterman, not his being outgunned.