bait and scalp

ambushed near the Bozeman Trail

On December 21 1866 a small band of Lakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne lured a force of about 80 United States soldiers away from the confines of Fort Phil Kearny, which was there to protect the Bozeman Trail, and into a trap. An estimated 1,000 American Indians won the resulting Fetterman Fight by killing the entire United States contingent. First reports apparently had the battle on December 22nd. Here’s one section of the coverage in The New-York Times of December 28, 1866:

THE INDIAN TROUBLES.
          ________
THE FORT PHILIP KEARNY MASSACRE.
          ________

…The Indian Troubles at Fort Philip Kearny – Slaughter of United States Troops – Eighty-seven Killed.

FORT LARAMIE, Thursday, Dec. 27.

The Indians are very troublesome, and the troops at Fort William Kearny have been almost in a state of siege for weeks past. On the 22d a number of Indians came near the post, and Brevet Lt.-Col. FELTMAN [Fetterman], Capt. J.H. BROWN and Lieut. GLUMMOND [Grummond], all of the Eighteenth Infantry, gathered hastily 39 men of Company C, Second Cavalry, and 45 men of the Eighteenth Infantry, and went after the Indians. The troops were gradually drawn on until at a point four miles from the fort, when they were surrounded and slaughtered. Not a man escaped to tell the story of disaster. The bodies were stripped of every article of clothing, scalped and mutilated. Thirty bodies were found in a space not larger than a good sized room. Nearly all the bodies were recovered and buried in the fort. …

William Judd Fetterman enlisted in the Union army on May 14, 1861 and seems to have served in the Eighteenth U.S. Infantry throughout the Civil War and beyond. The Fetterman Fight was part of Red Cloud’s War, which is considered an American Indian victory, albeit a short-lived one. Red Cloud was living on a reservation after the Treaty of Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

Red Cloud c1891.

Red Cloud c1905 December 26.