.
Battle of Powder River was 1st of 3 that Cavalry lost to the Indians
in Montana
By BRETT FRENCH
Gazette Outdoor Writer
MOORHEAD - There's a reason folks don't hear much about the battle
of Powder River near here.
"If you're in a battle and get whipped, you don't talk about it
much," says George Fulton, 59, a Moorhead-area rancher and 30-year
student of the fight.
On March 16, 1876, what was thought would be a one-sided fight
between the U.S. Cavalry and outnumbered Cheyenne and Sioux warriors
turned into a defeat and resulted in the expulsion of the officer
leading the charge, Col. Joseph J. Reynolds.
The loss was the first of three for the U.S. Army in southeastern
Montana that year, culminating in the defeat of Lt. Col. George
Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25,
1876.
Today, a pyramid made of cemented round river rock and four brass
plaques marks the Powder River battlefield, about 35 miles south of
Broadus. The plaques bear the names of the four soldiers killed
there. The monument, erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in
Gillette, Wyo., in the late 1940s, sits atop a bluff overlooking a
pastoral bend in the river shaded by cottonwood trees.
The battlefield is below the bluff on private land.
Reynolds' defeat at Powder River may have stirred up the Indians.
Most certainly it turned some Cheyenne against the army. The Indians
believed they were entitled to hunt between the Black Hills and the
Bighorn Mountains under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, as long as
they didn't harass white settlers crossing the plains.
But Gen. Phil T. Sheridan and the War Department wanted
the "hostile" Indian bands in Montana rounded up and returned to
their reservations. In 1876, Sheridan conceived a three-pronged
movement. Custer would come from the east, Gen. George Crook from
the south and Gen. Alfred Terry from the west along the Yellowstone
River.
Crook's force was sizable - almost 900 officers, enlisted men and
civilians. Accounts differ on what his orders were. Some say
Sheridan wanted to attack the Indians while they were still in their
winter camps. Others say Crook was only to scout the area, saving
his horses for the coming summer campaign.
Setting out on March 1, Crook's cavalry wound its way north from
Fort Fetterman along the Bozeman Trail. Along with Reynolds, who was
in charge of the Third Cavalry, they trudged through spring
blizzards, snow and drifts.
To ward off the subzero cold, one aide said the soldiers
were "shrouded from head to foot in huge wrappings of wool and fur."
Storms pummeled the men for four days. Indian braves tried to run
off the column's cattle at night. At Fort Reno, Crook decided to
leave the cattle and supply wagons behind.
According to Fred H. Werner's book, "The Soldiers Are Coming!", each
soldier was to have either one buffalo robe or two blankets. No
tents were taken. A pack train carried an extra 100 rounds of
ammunition per soldier, in addition to the 100 rounds each man
packed.
After unsuccessfully searching north for Indian encampments, scouts
finally found a village along the Powder River to the east. On March
16, after marching 20 miles, two Indians were seen at Otter Creek.
Crook ordered a 30-mile night march of 320 soldiers of the Second
and Third Cavalry out of fear that the retreating Indians would warn
the encampment. Traveling light, the soldiers had only a day's
ration of hard bread.
Crook ordered Reynolds to capture the ponies and supplies and chase
the Indians off. Crook stayed behind with the rest of the company to
protect the pack train and would meet Reynolds the following day at
the mouth of Lodgepole Creek.
The army expected to find 500 to 800 warriors under the leadership
of the Sioux chief Crazy Horse. But Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg, in
his biography by Thomas B. Maquis, said it was his band led by chief
Two Moon that was camped along the Powder River and that they were
only 40 lodges - maybe 60 warriors.
Warned of the soldiers' approach, the Indian camp sent out sentinels
that night. But the scouts missed the soldiers in the blizzard and
the darkness. At 7 a.m. on March 17, Reynolds launched his attack.
In two units the soldiers rode quietly up on the sleeping camp.
According to Wooden Leg, an old man going out to pray on a hilltop
first saw the soldiers and yelled an alarm.
"Women screamed. Children cried for their mothers. Old people
tottered and hobbled away to get out of reach of the bullets singing
among the lodges," Wooden Leg said.
Wooden Leg had a muzzle loader but no bullets. So he mounted a pony
and attacked with bow and arrows. Racing to his lodge for a shield
and medicine objects, he carried children away from the battle.
Reynolds quickly took the surprised camp and ordered the lodges
burned.
Fulton donated items he found at the battle site to the Powder River
County Museum in Broadus. The items include an Army belt buckle, a
shell casing and a key.
But as the soldiers looted and torched the camp, warriors returning
from a hunt took up positions in the trees and hills.
"When the warriors got back they ran the soldiers off," Fulton said.
Fulton said Reynolds' green troops fired an average of 60 rounds
apiece - over 1,900 rounds. Yet only one Indian was killed and one
injured. The Indians fired one round to every 100 of the soldiers,
Fulton said, but killed four soldiers and crippled six.
The four soldiers killed in the Indian counterattack were Pvts.
Peter Dowdy, Michael McCannon, L.E. Ayers and George Schneider.
Undoubtedly tired by the 50-plus miles of marching, fatigued by 36
hours without sleep after days of sleeping out in the cold with no
tents, the soldiers just wanted to rest, Fulton said. "They just
didn't want to mess with the Indians."
n his hearing, Reynolds complained that his orders weren't being
followed. Capt. Henry E. Noyes, who was charged with taking the
Indian ponies, stopped to make coffee afterward, only later going to
the aid of his comrades.
Pestered by the Indian snipers, Reynolds gave up trying to loot the
camp and ordered a retreat to the south at about 1:30 p.m. Left
behind were the four dead soldiers, fresh meat from the Indian camp
and some of the soldiers' buffalo coats.
"So precipitate was Reynolds' withdrawal, in fact, that the bodies
of several troopers who had been shot in the action were abandoned
to the malignity of the savages," wrote Cyrus Townsend Brady in his
1904 book "Indian Fights and Fighters."
To compound matters, Crook wasn't waiting at the mouth of Lodgepole
Creek when Reynolds arrived. That meant another cold night out with
limited or no rations. During the night, some of the Indians,
including Wooden Leg, returned to steal back their ponies.
Crook arrived the next day to find four men dead and abandoned on
the battlefield, six men wounded, 66 men frostbitten or disabled by
the cold and some of the Indian ponies already stolen. Disgusted, he
ordered the column back to their supply train at Fort Reno, about 90
miles away. Warriors followed, trying to steal more ponies, before
Crook ordered the horses killed.
The soldiers returned to Fort Fetterman, near present-day Douglas,
Wyo., on March 26, ending a 27-day round trip of 485 miles. Besides
the men killed and injured, Crook lost 60 horses and 32 mules.
Crook wasted no time filing charges against Reynolds.
Reynolds' career was essentially over after his defeat at the Powder
River. In January of 1877, a court of inquiry in Cheyenne, Wyo.,
suspended Reynolds from rank and pay for one year. His old
classmate, President Grant, stepped in, and Reynolds accepted
disability retirement in June 1877.
Fulton said Reynolds was an easy scapegoat in the Powder River
battle. He blames Crook for not supporting Reynolds.
"He could've been there and helped, but he didn't," Fulton
said. "Crook was careful to keep himself in shape."
Other authors who have studied the battle agree. Robert Utley,
in "Frontier Regulars," called the court's findings "cruelly
injust."
He went on to write, "No militarily sound explanation has been given
for (Crook's) division of his command before the battle of March
17."
Emboldened and unified by the Powder River battle, Indian tribes
joined forces along the Little Bighorn River.
Crook set out once again at the end of May to round up the gathering
Sioux and Cheyenne. His contingent included more than 1,000 cavalry
and infantrymen, 50-some officers and 262 Crow and Shoshone scouts.
On June 17, 1876, while his troops took a coffee break along Rosebud
Creek, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chief Crazy Horse
attacked. Caught off guard, Crook's men suffered 28 casualties,
another 56 were wounded.
Discouraged once again, Crook returned to present-day Sheridan,
Wyo., to await reinforcements. Since Crook didn't meet up with the
other army commanders - Custer, Terry and Col. John Gibbon - he
missed the battle at Little Bighorn.
Ever since, the Powder River battle has lived in the shadow of the
more disastrous Little Bighorn, though it was the first of three
decisive cavalry defeats.
"It was the first battle but it didn't amount to much," Fulton
said. "The fight wasn't much of a fight, but it made a lot of noise.
Welcome to Genealogy Trails History Group, Volunteers dedicated to free genealogy. Visit Montana Genealogy web site with all 56 counties. Check out Montana Resources and the Crow Reservation site.
This web site is up for adoption. Please contact Kim for additional information.Our goal at Genealogy Trails is to transcribe and post genealogical free source data for family researchers
All data on this website has a 2007 copyright by Genealogy Trails with full rights reserved for original submitters.
Send family data, text to JoAnn Scott, e-mail.
State site, National site
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Additional
web sites:
Sheridan WY. nearest large town