The Frontier Partisans Muse took me by the hand last week and pulled me hard down the Bozeman Trail.
On June 6, I headed out to Buffalo, Wyoming, for a newspaper conference and training session. The owners of my newspaper do these professional development sessions regularly, and I always wish I could take more time in our locations — but deadlines always loom and I’m always pressed for time.
So I didn’t do much homework on Buffalo, figuring that outside of the drive up from Casper and a stay at the historic Occidental Hotel, it was going to be all business. This time, I was wrong. I arrived at the Occidental at 1:30 p.m., with nothing on the agenda till Thursday evening. Driving up through the vastness of the Powder River country, I figured Fort Phil Kearney had to be somewhere in the vicinity. Turns out that it was 15 miles up the road. Hot damn!
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By 2 p.m., I was standing in the hoofprints of Crazy Horse — on the site of the Fetterman Fight, where, on December 21, 1866, a force of decoys led by the young Tashunka Witko lured 79 soldiers and two civilians out of Fort Phil Kearney, over Lodge Trail Ridge and out on a long north-south finger of ridge some scholars call High Backbone — better known as Massacre Hill — where a force of more than a thousand Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors boiled up out of the gullies and draws flanking the ridge and rubbed out the soldiers to a man.
I spent a couple of hours walking the ground. Other than a stone cenotaph and a very low-key and well-done interpretive trail, the site is undeveloped, and though I was there on a bluebird spring day rather than a chilly winter’s day, it was not difficult to strip away the intervening years and picture how the 40-minute running fight developed.
I also visited the Fort Phil Kearny site, which has a small museum, staffed by a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic parks historian.
I am presently way down the trail in catching up on the current scholarship surrounding the Fetterman Fight, and will serve up a detailed post when I can do it justice. It’s past time I addressed Red Cloud’s War — an intense and bloody conflict, and the only time a native force actually forced the U.S. Government into significant concessions of territory.
I’m still absorbing the experience of standing on ground where Crazy Horse rode on his war pony, where Jim Bridger rode through the gates of a fort whose location he warned against, where the drama recounted in formative books like Will Henry’s No Survivors actually took place. For me, this site is far more significant than any spot where a president slept and no historic building, no matter how august looms as large in my historical imagination as a place like Fort Phil Kearny.
Every time I contemplated the fact that I know that Crazy Horse rode right here, frisson hit like a lightning bolt shot down my spine.
Jim Bridger rode here. The palisade is a re-creation — because the Sioux burned the original to the ground.
In one of those bits of synchronicity that strike surprisingly often here at Frontier Partisans, on the same day I was soaking in the Fetterman Battle Site, PBS Wyoming posted this doco on the Bozeman Trail. Check it out — it’ll provide background for our coming exploration of Red Cloud’s War and the Fetterman Fight.
John Bullard says
I went to FPK, the Fetterman Fight site, and the Wagon Box Fight last September on a trip to visit relatives in Wyoming. I had the “luck” to be there on a day where they had a big, unexpected snow-storm hit most of Wyoming-in September! Beautiful to see the sites covered in snow, although the Wagon Box site being up in the hills was covered in fog as well as snow, so I didn’t get too much of a feeling for the area. Well worth the trip for folks passing through the area, especially as the Fetterman site overlooks I-25.
JimC says
Ran out of time to hit the Wagon Box site. Must have been really something to see the Fetterman site under snow.
John Bullard says
Sure was. If you’re interested, I can send you some of my pics of FPK, Fetterman and the Wagon Box site in all their snow-covered glory. I imagine the snow on the ground during the fight probably wasn’t as heavy as this was, but who knows.
JimC says
I’d love to see them. Send to editor@nuggetnews.com.
Paul McNamee says
Looks like a lovely spot.
Always stunning when you can stand at a place and feel history bleeding through.
Gettysburg does that to me.
JimC says
Yes, Gettysburg is tremendously powerful.
deuce says
Two of my kin–brothers of my forefather–are buried at Gettysburg. However, almost nobody really gives a damn anymore:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-war-battlefields-lose-ground-as-tourist-draws-11558776600
Gettysburg visitors are down 85% from what they were 50yrs ago. This is what happens when over 30% of your population has ZERO skin in the game and I predict the trend will only accelerate in coming years.
Colonial Williamsburg’s tourist numbers are also falling and for the same reasons. They’re taking increasingly wacky measures to halt the downward trend.
Matthew says
That’s a shame.
Traven Torsvan says
“Now, some museums and historical sites are working to draw a broader audience—younger visitors as well as more minorities and women—by telling a more complete story about the great conflict. Once underplayed subjects, such as slavery’s role in causing the war, are getting more prominence, with new exhibits in Richmond, Va., Atlanta and elsewhere.”
Reminding visitors of the the actual cause of the civil war, how very wacky.
Greg Walker says
Jim – to stand where history unfolded and to know that history is a precious gift.
Especially in the “great wide open”.
Looking forward to your piece on Red Cloud!
JimC says
Indeed, it was an unexpected blessing.
Brian H. says
Great post! I just got back from Wyoming myself. Man, Wyoming in June after a wetter winter is fine country.
Chris says
Sioux Dawn, book one of Terry Johnston’s Plainsmen series, was a great book on the Fetterman Massacre albeit Historical Fiction. He really brought out the brutality of that fight and the events leading to that event. I need to make that trip and visit those sites !!!
JimC says
I have it on order. I read his mountain man books (most of em anyway) but not his later-period stuff. Looking forward to it.
Do make the trip. A profound experience.
Breaker Morant says
When we visited Fetterman in summer 2018, my daughter and I had a hard time picturing where the indians hid for the ambush.
Remembering that the horses would have been blowing out steam. The best we could come up with was that they were a couple of ridge lines away.
Yeah, I have a lot of pictures of the site and I am also waiting for the muse to strike on writing about it. Now you have lit the fire. Glad you got to see it. It is an awesome sight.
JimC says
That’s a lot of warriors and horses to keep hidden, for certain.
Fletcher A. Vredenburgh says
I’m jealous. For some reason, I found walking Little Big Horn more moving than even Gettysburg, a place my ancestors actually fought.
Breaker Morant says
“Hundred in the Hand” by Joseph Marshall is a Indian written novel of the Fetterman fiasco.
JimC says
Thanks. I’ll look for it.
Lona says
Wonderful!
VBell says
So, you’ve finally walked in Jim Bridger’s footprints.
JimC says
Yep.