'Give Me Eighty Men': Shattering the Myth of the Fetterman Massacre

In 1866, near an isolated U.S. Army post in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, a well-organized coalition of Plains Indians executed an ambush that killed Captain William J. Fetterman and his entire detachment of eighty men. This spectacular victory for the Sioux and their allies would have gone down in history as the greatest defeat ever handed to the frontier army if George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry had not ridden into immortality at the Little Bighorn ten years later. Like "Custer's Last Stand," the so-called "Fetterman massacre" has been mythologized as one of the most famous events in the history and lore of the American West. The well-worn story of the ambush is built on variations of the infamous declaration attributed to Fetterman: "With eighty men I could ride through the entire Sioux nation." Citing the doomed officer's "reckless boasts," historians and popular authors have created an enduring-though erroneous-image of an arrogant buffoon so disdainful of the Plains Indians' military skills that he disobeyed his commander's orders and led his men to their deaths. This false characterization of Fetterman is derived from a flawed history shaped by Victorian-era gender roles and distorted by historians and authors as they embroidered the story into a national myth.

In the year after the Civil War ended, the federal government charged the U.S. Army with the task of protecting civilians traveling on the Bozeman Trail to the gold mines of Montana Territory.1 Grossly underestimating the determination of a loose coalition of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho bands, considered by most to be led by Red Cloud, and disregarding the failure to negotiate a treaty, the army sent Colonel Henry B. Carrington, a Yale-educated lawyer who had spent the Civil War leading recruitment and administrative operations, and two partially recruited battalions of the Eighteenth Infantry Regiment to guard the trail.2

In May 1866 the newly appointed commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, General William T. Sherman, arrived at the Eighteenth's winter quarters in Fort Kearny, Nebraska, to review and approve Carrington's mission. During his visit Sherman encouraged the regiment's officers to bring their wives and families with them to the new post. At a dinner hosted by Margaret Carrington, Sherman told the officers' wives to keep journals to record their adventures for posterity, assuring them "a pleasant garrison life in the newly opened country, where all would be healthful, with pleasant service and absolute peace."3 Margaret and her two young sons, as well as three other officers' families and the wives of a few of the enlisted men and civilian contractors, accompanied the troops west that June.

By July Colonel Carrington had established three posts on the trail, with the headquarters at Fort Phil Kearny about 150 miles north of Fort Laramie. Here soldiers quickly set about cutting wood and building a fort, while nearby Red Cloud organized a camp of some five hundred lodgesmore people than lived in Omaha at the time. Even as the fort took shape the Indians attacked army and emigrant trains, stole livestock, and killed careless travelers who straggled too far from large groups. The civilian contractors cutting lumber in a pine stand a few miles west of the fort were a prime target and required a military escort at all times. By the middle of December the "pleasant service" envisioned by Sherman had turned into a conflict in which nearly seventy soldiers and civilians had been killed in over fifty skirmishes, many within view of the post.4

The widely accepted interpretation of the Fetterman fight, which occurred on December 21, 1866, goes something like this: soldiers at Fort Phil Kearny did not respect Colonel Carrington because he had never served in combat during the Civil War. The battle-hardened veterans, particularly Fetterman himself, believed Carrington was far too cautious in his response to the near-daily Indian attacks. When Carrington tried to convince Fetterman and the other officers that the situation required a defensive posture, Fetterman boasted, "Give me 80 men and I can ride through the whole Sioux Nation." During the seven weeks he served at the fort, Fetterman grew increasingly insubordinate and desperate to prove his superiority in battle. On the day of the disaster, Fetterman insisted, "by his rank," on taking command of a detail going out to relieve a party of woodcutters under attack. Carrington reluctantly gave Fetterman the assignment, but he was so concerned about the officer's overzealousness that he gave explicit orders that under no circumstances was Fetterman to cross Lodge Trail Ridge. Blinded by arrogance, a lust for glory, and disdain for his commander, Fetterman disregarded Carrington's orders and was easily lured over the ridge by Crazy Horse and a group of decoys. The story reaches a satisfying dénouement as the wild-eyed Fetterman-his sword in the air, spurring his horse and yelling, "Charge!"-dashes over the ridge, whereupon hundreds of warriors quickly overpower the foolish officer and his soldiers. This version of the story concludes with Fetterman and fellow officer Captain Fred Brown putting their revolvers to each other's heads and pulling the triggers.