Custer’s Last Stand and the Fetterman Fight

 

On June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out.

This was not the first time that the U.S. military had suffered a calamitous defeat at the hands of the Plains Indians.  On December 21, 1866 Captain William J. Fetterman and eighty men under his command were similarly annihilated near Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.   There are some striking similarities between the two battles.

In June 1866, Colonel Henry B.  Carrington was ordered to build several forts along the Bozeman Trail to protect emigrants on their way to the Pacific coast. 

He established three forts along the trail, including his headquarters at Fort Phil Kearny, near present-day Buffalo, Wyoming some 90 miles south the Little Bighorn battlefield.

During the next few months, while Fort Phil Kearny was being built, Carrington suffered 50 attacks from Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors, losing more than 20 dead.

Although Carrington had served in the Civil War, providing valuable service in both intelligence and recruiting, he had never seen battle.  He went about fulfilling his mission cautiously.  Too cautiously in the view of some of his junior officers who urged him to take the offensive. 

Grumbling increased after November 3, when 63 men, including infantry Captain William Fetterman arrived to reinforce the fort.  Although he had no experience fighting Indians, Fetterman criticized Carrington's timidity and expressed contempt for the Indian foes. He boasted, "Give me 80 men and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.”  This comment is strangely reminiscent of George Armstrong Custer’s boast, “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”

Fetterman was a combat veteran of the Civil War and had been promoted to Brevet Lt-Colonel by the end of the war.  Many Civil War officers, including Custer, did not seem to realize that incurring high casualties was not an indication of good tactics. Frontal assaults and dashing charges were commonplace.

 The Plains Indians, on the other hand, rarely charged a stout defense. They hit the rear and flanks, probing for weaknesses and creating disorganization and panic by using mobility. They avoided heavy casualties whenever possible.

By December 1866, Colonel Carrington had been pressured into being more aggressive, despite the inadequacy of his troops.  Carrington’s guide, the famed Mountain Man Jim Bridger summed up the situation, "These soldiers don't know anything about fighting Indians." 

 Not much had changed by 1876 when Custer engaged the enemy at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The frontier army was still small, ill-trained and badly equipped by a miserly Congress. The quality of the troops was appalling. Historian James Donovan writes,  “Training in marksmanship, horsemanship, skirmishing, any practical lessons that Indian fighting might actually involve, was virtually nonexistent.  Formal military training of recruits consisted mostly of elementary drill aimed at making a grand appearance at dress parade.”

 On December 20,1866 Colonel Carrington turned down Captain Fetterman’s proposal to lead 50 men in a raid on a Lakota village on the Tongue River, about 50 miles away.  Not unlike Custer, Fetterman had overlooked the need for intelligence about an enemy he underestimated.  In fact, there were some 1,000 warriors about 10 miles north of Fort Phil Kearny, waiting to lure the army away from the cannons and stout defenses of the fort.

On December 21, 1866, a group of Indians, including Crazy Horse, a later hero of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, were chosen to lure the soldiers to their destruction.  Just as at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, a Lakota Sioux spiritual leader prophesied victory. The Lakota saw this as the good medicine that won the battle.

At about 10 am, on December 21, 1866, Colonel Carrington sent a party to gather timber for the construction of the fort.  Within an hour the timber party was under attack. Carrington ordered a relief party composed of 49 infantry and 27 cavalry troopers, and a few hangers on, to go to the rescue of the timber party.  Claiming seniority as a brevet lieutenant colonel, Fetterman asked for command of the relief party. Lieutenant George W. Grummond, a known critic of Carrington, led the cavalry.

 

Carrington’s orders were clear. "Under no circumstances" was the relief party to "pursue over the ridge that is Lodge Trail Ridge".  This differs significantly from the orders Custer received from his commander Brigadier General Alfred Terry which gave Custer great discretion in his actions.

 Unlike Custer, Captain Fetterman certainly disobeyed his orders.  In violation of his orders Fetterman followed Crazy Horse and the other Indian decoys over the Ridge.  Even worse, the command divided, just as Custer’s was to do at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  The cavalry under the command of Lt. George Grummond, left Fetterman and the infantry some one mile behind as they hotly pursued the decoys.

 At this point the Indians sprang the trap.  The Indians fought mostly with bows and arrows, spears, and war clubs. The Indians at the Little Bighorn were much better armed. In hand-to-hand fighting, Fetterman and 49 of his men were killed.

 Captain Fetterman and another officer are alleged to have committed suicide by shooting each other in the head to avoid capture.  This story parallels the allegation that Custer committed suicide to avoid capture.

 The cavalry fared no better than the infantry.  Lt. Grummond decapitated one warrior with his saber before being overwhelmed.  It took the Indians about twenty minutes to kill the infantry and another twenty minutes to annihilate the cavalry. (

 As at the Little Bighorn, the bodies of the slain soldiers were horribly mutilated after the battle.  There was one exception, bugler Adolph Metzger, probably the last trooper standing, who when all else failed, used his instrument as a club until it was battered shapeless.  The Indians covered Metzger’s unmutilated corpse with a buffalo hide in tribute to his bravery.

 Just as at the Little Bighorn, recriminations flew after the battle.  Initially, Colonel Carrington was blamed for the debacle, but he quickly changed the narrative, labelling Fetterman , an “overzealous” officer, in short an overly ambitious  “glory hound” who did not follow orders, the same allegations that would be made against Custer ten years later.

 Interestingly, although he was originally buried near Fort Phil Kearny, Captain Fetterman now rests at the Custer National Cemetery in Montana.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time