Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming – Lost to the Indians
The saga surrounding Fort Phil Kearny, the site of the infamous Fetterman Massacre, and the dramatic Wagon Box Fight constitutes a pivotal, and ultimately tragic, chapter in the history of the American Indian Wars. For two years, from 1866 to 1868, the Sioux Nation, fueled by resentment and resistance against the intrusion upon their ancestral hunting grounds by prospectors traversing the Bozeman Trail en route to the goldfields of Montana, waged a relentless and fierce war. This period stands out as one of the few instances in the Indian Wars where the U.S. Army was compelled to relinquish control of a territory it had occupied, marking a significant victory for the Sioux. However, this triumph was a harbinger of the final, catastrophic conflicts between frontiersmen and Native Americans that would erupt on the northern Plains as westward expansion intensified in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The impetus for this conflict can be traced to the gold strikes of 1862 in the mountains of western Montana, discovered by prospectors from Idaho. These discoveries sparked a frenzied rush to the mining camps at Bannack and later, Virginia City. The following spring, John M. Bozeman and John M. Jacobs forged a new route, the Bozeman Trail, in an effort to shorten the journey to these burgeoning boomtowns.
This new trail extended northwards from the established Oregon-California Trail, skirting the eastern edge of the Bighorn Mountains before turning westward. It connected Forts Sedgwick in Colorado and Laramie in Wyoming, along with the Oregon-California Trail, to Virginia City. By circumventing the longer, more circuitous route through Salt Lake City, the Bozeman Trail quickly became the preferred passage for gold seekers. However, this route cut directly through the heart of the hunting grounds that the Sioux had recently seized from the Crow tribe. Taking advantage of the reduced presence of U.S. Regular Army troops due to the ongoing Civil War, the Sioux swiftly and forcefully asserted their claim to the land.
In 1865, at Fort Sully, South Dakota, the U.S. government attempted to negotiate treaties with select Sioux chiefs. In exchange for promises of annual payments, these chiefs agreed to withdraw from the immediate vicinity of the emigrant routes and to refrain from attacking travelers. However, the government commissioners had only engaged with minor leaders of bands residing along the Missouri River, individuals who held little real influence over the broader Sioux Nation. Prominent figures like Red Cloud, Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, and other powerful chiefs who controlled the vast Powder River and Bighorn country to the west, vehemently refused to recognize these agreements and vowed to resist any and all intrusions upon their lands. Their stance would set the stage for the events that would unfold at Fort Phil Kearny.
In the late spring and summer of 1866, a U.S. commission convened with these influential leaders at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, in an attempt to forge a lasting peace. However, tensions escalated when Colonel Henry B. Carrington and a contingent of 700 men from the 18th Infantry arrived at the fort. Upon learning that Carrington’s mission was to construct a series of forts along the Bozeman Trail, Red Cloud and the other chiefs immediately abandoned the negotiations, declaring war on all who dared to invade their territory. That summer and fall, Carrington proceeded with his orders, strengthening and garrisoning Fort Reno, and establishing Fort Phil Kearny and Fort C.F. Smith further north.
The construction of these forts marked a turning point in the conflict. Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne warriors effectively blockaded the Bozeman Trail. Between August 1st and December 31st of that year, they were responsible for the deaths of 154 people in the area surrounding Fort Phil Kearny, wounded an additional 20, and consistently attacked emigrant trains. The warriors also destroyed or captured more than 750 head of livestock. Even heavily armed and guarded supply trains were forced to fight their way through the gauntlet of hostile warriors. The forts themselves were subjected to constant harassment, and wagon trains transporting vital supplies of wood for fuel and construction were routinely ambushed.
The Sioux efforts were primarily focused on Carrington’s headquarters, Fort Phil Kearny, which was strategically located between the Big and Little Piney Forks of the Powder River. It sat atop a plateau that rose some 50 to 60 feet above the valley floor. As the largest of the three forts guarding the Bozeman Trail, Fort Phil Kearny was considered one of the best-fortified western outposts of its time. Construction commenced on July 13, 1866, and the fort eventually encompassed 42 log and frame buildings within a stockade that measured 600 by 800 feet. The stockade walls were constructed of heavy pine timber, stood 11 feet high, and featured blockhouses at each diagonal corner. To further bolster the defenses, a company of the 2nd Cavalry was added to Carrington’s infantry force.
Such robust defenses were deemed essential, as Red Cloud’s warnings were not idle threats. The fort’s establishment was met with an immediate and sustained siege. Carrington, burdened with the responsibility of caring for 21 women and children who had accompanied him from Fort Kearny, Nebraska, adopted a largely defensive posture. However, a faction of younger, more impulsive officers, who resented Carrington and resisted his attempts to enforce discipline, were openly critical of his cautious approach. Among these officers was Captain William J. Fetterman, who famously boasted that he and just 80 men could ride through the entire Sioux Nation.
On December 21, 1866, this simmering tension would boil over into tragedy. A small war party launched a typical raid on a wood train returning eastward from Piney Island to the fort. In response, Carrington dispatched Fetterman, accompanied by two other officers, 48 infantrymen, 28 cavalrymen, and two civilians – a total of 81 men. Despite being explicitly warned not to cross Lodge Trail Ridge, where they would lose sight of the fort, Fetterman allowed a small group of warriors to lure him northward, well beyond the ridge and into a meticulously planned ambush orchestrated by Red Cloud. Within a mere half-hour, at midday, hundreds of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors descended upon the outnumbered detachment, annihilating them to the last man. Relief columns dispatched from the fort were too late to intervene. The Fetterman Massacre represented the worst defeat suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of Plains Indians up to that point, a distinction it would share with later disasters such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
In the wake of the Fetterman Massacre, Carrington contracted civilians John “Portugee” Phillips and Daniel Dixon to carry a desperate message to Omaha headquarters, detailing the disaster and requesting reinforcements. Phillips embarked on a grueling 236-mile ride through a raging snowstorm to reach the telegraph station at Horseshoe Bend, near Fort Laramie, a feat now honored in Wyoming history. As a consequence of the Fetterman disaster, Carrington was relieved of his command in January 1867.
By the summer of that year, the Indians had effectively closed the Bozeman Trail to all but heavily guarded military convoys. However, the troops managed to secure two significant victories. The Sioux and Cheyenne had agreed to combine their forces and launch a coordinated assault to eradicate Forts Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith in Montana. One faction launched the Hayfield Fight, attacking a haying party near Fort C.F. Smith on August 1st, but suffered heavy casualties. The following day, the other group, comprised of an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Red Cloud, ambushed a detachment of 28 infantrymen guarding civilian woodcutters a few miles west of Fort Phil Kearny. While most of the civilians managed to reach the fort safely, four were trapped with the soldiers within a makeshift barricade formed by the overturned boxes of 14 wood-hauling wagons. The troops, armed with newly issued breech-loading Springfield rifles, inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking warriors. Six times in four hours, the Sioux and Cheyenne charged the wagon boxes, but each time they were repulsed. Reinforcements eventually arrived from the fort, equipped with a mountain howitzer, and quickly dispersed the remaining warriors. The Army reported only three dead and two wounded, while the Indians claimed their losses were at least 60 killed and 120 wounded. This engagement became known as the Wagon Box Fight.
While the Hayfield and Wagon Box Fights provided some measure of revenge for the Fetterman Massacre, they did not deter the ongoing hostilities. Raids and skirmishes continued with increasing frequency until the following year, when the U.S. government was compelled to negotiate a peace settlement with the Indians. In the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), in exchange for certain concessions from the Indian tribes, the government acceded to Red Cloud’s demands, agreeing to close the Bozeman Trail and abandon the three forts that protected it. As soon as the forts were evacuated in July and August, the Sioux, unknowingly celebrating the zenith of their power on the northern Plains, jubilantly burned them to the ground. The era of Fort Phil Kearny had come to an end.
Today, the landscape surrounding the sites of Fort Phil Kearny, the Fetterman Massacre, and the Wagon Box Fight remains largely unaltered, despite the presence of surrounding ranching operations. The most significant modern intrusion is the presence of highways. Nothing remains of the original fort itself. The site, located approximately one mile west of U.S. 87 and 2½ miles southeast of Story, Wyoming, is marked by a section of stockade wall, the only surviving element of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) reconstruction project from the 1930s, and a log cabin erected by the Boy Scouts. The State of Wyoming owns three acres of the estimated 25-acre site. About five miles to the north, along U.S. 87 and about 1½ miles northeast of Story, Wyoming, lies the spur ridge east of Peno Creek, and the route of the Bozeman Trail, along which Fetterman and his men retreated southward. At the southern end of the estimated 60 privately owned acres encompassing the battlefield, at the point where most of the bodies were recovered, stands a War Department monument on a small tract of Federal land on the east side of the highway. Another monument, situated on an upland prairie approximately 1½ miles southwest of Story, marks the location of the Wagon Box Fight, one acre of which is State-owned out of an estimated 40-acre total.
The State Historic Site now features an interpretive center with exhibits, videos, a bookstore, and self-guided tours of the fort site and surrounding areas. The fort tour guides visitors through the site, highlighting building locations, archaeological remains, and interpretive signs that pinpoint the surrounding historic landmarks. A Civilian Conservation Corp Cabin has been restored to depict the quarters of an Officer’s wife and a Non-Commissioned Officer’s Quarters. At both battlefield sites, visitors will find interpretive trails that provide both Native American and U.S. Army perspectives on the conflicts.
The site of Fort Phil Kearny and the Fetterman Massacre and Wagon Box Fight sites are located within a few miles of each other, just off I-90 in the vicinity of Story, Wyoming. The fort and Wagon Box sites are located on secondary roads, and the Fetterman Massacre site is on U.S. 87. Follow road markers.
Contact Information:
Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site
528 Wagon Box Road
Banner, Wyoming 82832
307-684-7629