The Short, Tragic History Of Fort Phil Kearny

Howdy folks and welcome to the Great Plains of North Texas!

I wanted to share another fine painting by one of our most prolific Western artists, the great Z.S. Liang.

But like most of his paintings there is a story behind them based on a historical event and such is the case with this painting which I'll show you tomorrow but first the back story of the painting.

Fort Phil Kearny is built

This was a fort built in Wyoming to provide protection from Indian tribes, mostly the Lakota Sioux led by Chief Red Cloud. Here's the location:

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Although there wasn't much up there at the time, a gold rush in Montana had idiotic palefaces and prospectors pouring through Lakota territory which had been promised to them by the government with the assurance of no white's disturbing their lands.

Well, of course the whites never met a treaty they didn't like to break so here come the dumb White Eyes. Then they scream bloody murder when the Lakota protect their land by attacking the trespassers.

The Bozeman Trail that the trespassers were using became known as "The Bloody Bozeman." So up come the forts. One of them was Fort Phil Kearny.

The depressing legacy of Fort Phil Kearny

Like I said, it was supposed to provide protection but actually did little of that because Red Cloud ran a classic guerrilla warfare campaign: striking supply lines and small detachments and parties, picking off one or two or a few at a time.

Chief Red Cloud was a great tactician:

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The Commander of the fort, Colonel Carringtion, knew he was in the middle of the Lakota nation, was undermanned and only had the rifles of the Civil War which had ended the year before in 1865.

These were old muzzle loaders. Single shot and took a long time to load each round.

By the time 2 years had passed they had lost 150 men with nothing to show for it.

Enter The Legend(in his own mind)

When a brash new arrival was assigned to the fort, Capt Fetterman, he bragged about being able to ride through the entire Sioux nation with 80 men. He fought in the Civil War but had zero Indian fighting experience.

I don't know if the guy thought the Indians would line up in a straight line and charge him or what but what a fool!

He immediately began butting heads with the commander, Carrington, because he thought they should be aggressively seeking out and killing Indians.

He was joined in this philosophy by Lieutenant Grummond who was also itching for a fight.

Red Cloud was very good at setting up traps and decoys and the commander had alot of respect for him, Capt Fetterman, on the other hand, scoffed at the Indians.

One bitter cold, snowy day on Dec. 21st there was gun fire erupting a few miles from the fort.

It was the detachment which was out gathering wood. Colonel Carrington sent Capt Fetterman out with his 80 man force to rescue the wood gathering team who apparently were under attack.

Superman to the rescue!

Fetterman takes 49 infantry soldiers, mostly raw recruits who'd never seen any combat yet, and the gung-ho Lt. Grummond is to follow with 30 cavalry troops but it takes an hour or so to gather and get the horses ready.

That's okay, the Indians will wait.

Capt Fetterman reaches the wood cutters and the Indians scatter. The wood cutters head back to the fort and make it to safety just fine.

Oh, I forgot to tell you...Colonel Carrington gives Capt Fetterman STRICT orders to NOT pursue the Indians under any circumstances. He is to just rescue and escort the wood cutters back to the fort.

As they're running away, many of the Indians stop, turn around and give Capt. Fetterman gestures that insult and mock him.

We'll see what happens in tomorrow's post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas