Colonel Carrington
was in command of four hundred men at Fort Phil Kearney, where they were
being tantalized by the Indians.
Chief Red Cloud, ranking chief of
the war council, sent about sixty warriors down near the fort to tantalize
the soldiers into leaving the fort and start to fighting.
At last
Colonel Carrington ordered Captain Fetterman and his company of ninety-two
men to go out and run the Indians back into the hills. The Indians kept
backing up toward the canon, about a mile from the fort. A scout, who was
in the company, thought the Indians had some plot ahead, and tried to warn
the captain, but Fetterman was very enthusiastic and anxious that the
colonel's orders should be carried out. The scout said he was not going to
be caught in any trap and went back to the fort. The soldiers followed the
Indians into the canon, and, as if by magic, sixteen hundred warriors
sprang up all around them, and in no time they were all scalped and
killed. Colonel Carrington and the remaining three hundred men staid in
the fort and heard the shots exchanged, but did not go to Fetterman's
relief.
A short time after this, Chief Red Cloud came, under a
flag of truce, into the fort and told Colonel Carrington about the trap
and fight in the canon, and said if the colonel had sent the other
soldiers out they would all have been killed. Undoubtedly they would have,
since the Indians outnumbered the soldiers.
Red Cloud also told of
the bravery of the little twelve year old drummer boy in Captain
Fetterman's company. While the fight was going on and men were falling all
around him, the boy stood on a large rock and drummed away until the last
man was killed.
The Indian spoke so highly of the boy and his
courage that Carrington asked him why he allowed the boy to be killed if
he so admired his bravery and courage. Red Cloud answered that he did not
intend to kill the boy, and as soon as he could he was going to save him,
but some of the warriors killed him just before the chief reached his side
to protect him.
Other US Forts
Some of the Pioneers of Colorado
Source: True History of some of the Pioneers of Colorado, by Miss
Luella Shaw, Press of Carson Harper Co, Denver, Colorado, 1909 |
Colorado Resources
Other Genealogy Resources
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