December 21, 1866 – “Fetterman Massacre” in Battle Between Native Americans and U.S. Army in Wyoming

The Fetterman Massacre was a significant battle during Red Cloud’s War on December 21, 1866, between soldiers of the U.S. Army based at Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, and the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians.

Red Cloud was born in 1821 into the Oglala tribe – one of seven Lakota tribes, known by non-Natives as the Sioux.

Photo of Red Cloud

Red Cloud’s people were warriors who had fought against other tribes to establish their homeland in the Black Hills. Then the whites came, in the beginning only to trade. But the traders were followed by throngs of whites headed west in search of gold. They in turn were followed by the U.S. Army, sent west to protect settlers crossing Lakota lands.

At first there were just occasional conflicts between the U.S. Government and the Native Americans, many of which arose over deceitful manipulation and broken promises by the U.S. Tensions rose in 1863, when John Bozeman blazed the Bozeman Trail, a new route for emigrants traveling to the Montana gold fields. Bozeman’s trail passed directly through hunting grounds that the government had promised to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

Bozeman Trail

Then in 1864, in what became known as the Sand Creek Massacre, the U.S. Army led a force of 700 against a sleeping Cheyenne village in Colorado, gunning down two hundred men, women, and children. Body parts of the dead Native Americans were brandished as souvenirs.

Sand Creek Massacre

Sand Creek served to unite the Plains Indians more than any other event. Many looked to Red Cloud as their war chief. He ordered a series of raids in an attempt to push out the whites once and for all. Whites were attacked all across the Great Plains, including those who were traveling the Bozeman Trail. The U.S. government built a series of protective forts along the trail; the largest was Fort Phil Kearney, erected in 1866 in north-central Wyoming.

Under the leadership of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, the Native Americans began to focus their attacks on Fort Phil Kearney. On December 6, 1866, Crazy Horse led a small detachment of soldiers into a fatal ambush by dismounting from his horse and fleeing as if he were defenseless. Struck by the foolish impulsiveness of the soldiers, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud reasoned that perhaps a much larger force could be lured into a similar deadly trap.

Chief Crazy Horse

On this day in history, December 21, 1866, some 2,000 Native warriors concealed themselves along the road just north of the fort. A small band made a diversionary attack on a party of woodcutters, and the fort commander ordered Captain William J. Fetterman to go to their aid. Although he had no experience fighting Indians, Fetterman expressed contempt about the Indian foes. An alleged boast has him averring that he could ride through the whole Sioux nation with just 80 men. This story may stem from the facts of what happened next. Fetterman and his 80 soldiers rode straight into the ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack during which some 40,000 arrows rained down on the the men; none survived. At the time, it was the worst military disaster ever suffered by the U.S. Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

Civil War veteran Capt. William J. Fetterman arrived at Fort Phil Kearny seven weeks before his death in December 1866. Wyoming State Archives.

While the battle was considered a victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne, Red Cloud knew that their triumphs would be few and far-between: they were outnumbered and outgunned. It would have been difficult to impossible for the Native Americans to prevail over the might and resources of the U.S. Army, led in the West by William Tecumseh Sherman, who stated that Indians were “the enemies of our race and of our civilization,” and vowing in 1866 that “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” To that end, Sherman even initiated a policy of killing off the buffalo to deprive Native Americans of food and clothing. Red Cloud saw it was time to surrender and accept rations from the U.S. Government, saying “We must think of the women and children and that it is very bad for them. So we must make peace.”

Red Cloud

A new treaty in 1868 granted the Black Hills to the Sioux (albeit inside a reservation), but of course, even that turned out to be temporary when whites discovered gold in the Black Hills. In 1876 U.S. Army General George Crook deposed Red Cloud and appointed a more conciliatory head chief and negotiator for the Lakota Sioux, and confiscated the Black Hills.

Red Cloud died in 1909 and is buried on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.