Wagon Box Fight, 2 August 1867

The battle, stage by stage

1. 2 August 1867, dawn

   The wood camp and the corral

   A year after the Fetterman disaster, Fort Phil Kearny still depends on wood hauled from Piney Island, the pinery between the forks of Big Piney about five miles west. Contractors Gilmore & Porter cut it under escort; since 31 July the guard has been Captain James Powell's C Company, 27th Infantry, 51 men. (Powell is said to have been Colonel Carrington's first choice to lead the relief the day Fetterman, claiming seniority, took the command and was killed.) On an open plain about a mile from the woodcutters' camp stands a mule corral of fourteen ordinary wooden wagon boxes, taken off their running gear and set in an oval about 60–70 by 25–30 feet; ox yokes, grain sacks and kegs fill the gaps. The boxes are only knee- to waist-high, of inch-thick boards — the later story that they were iron-lined is a legend. The men have something new: Springfield Model 1866 'trapdoor' breechloaders, Allin conversions firing the .50-70 cartridge, about 700 of them brought up by the contractor J. R. Porter, with some 7,000 rounds at the corral. This morning Powell has 14 men out with the wood train and 13 guarding the camp; he, Lieutenant John Jenness and the rest are at the corral. A large Lakota and Cheyenne force, fresh from the Sun Dance, is close by.

2. About 7 AM

   The herd and the woodcutters

   The attack opens away from the corral. Decoys show themselves — Crazy Horse is said to have been among them — while some 200 warriors on foot rush the mule herd; a second wave drives it off. Others overrun the outlying camp and the woodcutters' camp and set it on fire: there, by the usual count, three soldiers and four civilian contractors are killed. The survivors run for the timber or the fort, and the wood train turns back. The warriors' pause to take the horses and mules gives the corral time to get ready. Two teamsters out deer hunting reportedly see the smoke and race to the corral, as do a few other civilians; about 32 men are now inside. Ammunition is broken out and, by one account, set out in upturned hats.

3. Morning

   The mounted charge

   Hundreds of mounted warriors sweep in, the first charge coming from the south-west. They expect the pause after a volley that muzzle-loaders gave them at the Fetterman Fight — time to close in while the soldiers reload. It never comes: the breechloaders keep firing, and the charge splits and veers around the corral. Sergeant Samuel Gibson, then about 18, later recalled the box tops being 'torn to slivers' by bullets. Several more mounted attacks follow and are driven off.

4. Late morning

   The attack on foot

   The warriors change tactics and come on foot from about 600 yards out, crawling up through the folds of ground behind a low rise north of the corral, while fire arrows set the hay and manure inside smouldering. Lieutenant Jenness warns his men to keep under cover, stands up himself and is shot through the head; Privates Henry Haggerty and Thomas Boyle are also killed, and two men are wounded. A large body of warriors watches from Sullivant's Ridge to the east 'like spectators'; Jenness had thought he saw Red Cloud there, but that was never confirmed, and Red Cloud later said he did not remember the fight.

5. About 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM

   The relief column

   The lookout on Pilot Hill signals the fight to the fort. Major Benjamin Smith marches out with 103 men, ten wagons and a mountain howitzer, moving cautiously along the wood road south of the Sullivant Hills. He opens fire at long range; the first shell reportedly falls short, but the warriors withdraw, carrying off their dead and wounded. Smith reaches the corral unopposed. Woodcutters and soldiers who had hidden in the timber come in later, some reaching the fort that night.

6. Afternoon

   Aftermath

   Smith collects the defenders and their dead and returns to the fort. Inside the corral 3 men were killed and 2 wounded; with those killed at the camps, Army losses were about six or seven soldiers and four civilians. Warrior losses are disputed and always have been: Powell reported 60 killed and 120 wounded; soldiers later spoke of hundreds; Red Cloud was quoted in 1885, and descendants in 1969, at over a thousand; historians working from Lakota and Cheyenne accounts (George Hyde, Stanley Vestal) put it at about six killed and six wounded — the full range runs from about 2 to 1,500. Sergeant Gibson returned in 1908 to help find and mark the site; the CCC built the rock monument there in 1936, its inscription reflecting the larger claims of its day. A year later, in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the government abandoned the Bozeman Trail forts.