Battle of the Hundred Slain
Inscription on the monument
| date | December 21, 1866 |
|---|---|
| place | Peno Creek about 4 miles north of Fort Phil Kearny , Wyoming , USA |
| output | Indian victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 1000-2000 warriors | 79 soldiers, 2 civilians |
| losses | |
|
approx. 200 killed or wounded |
81 fallen |
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As Fetterman Fight or Fetterman Fight , in English also Fetterman Fight (dt. Fetterman command post ), a battle of will Red Cloud War called, in which at December 21, 1866 Warrior of the Lakota , Arapaho and Cheyenne a department of the US Army under the direction of Captain William Judd Fetterman. It was the second complete victory of the Indians over a regular army unit of the United States in the 19th century after the Grattan massacre . The number of soldiers killed in the 19th century was only determined by theBattle of Little Bighorn , nine and a half years later, surpassed.
course
In November 1866, Captain Fetterman arrived at Fort Phil Kearny in what is now Johnson County, Wyoming , under the command of Colonel Carrington . Carrington concentrated the work of his soldiers on fortifying the forts along the Bozeman Trail , which many young officers did not like. Fetterman drilled ceaselessly with his men, waiting for an opportunity to defeat the Indians. On December 6th, Fetterman's friend, Lieutenant HS Bingham, was killed by the Indians . While Carrington was concerned about the carelessness of his officers, Fetterman was outraged by what he believed to be ineffective, ineffectual leadership of Colonel Carrington.
The Red Cloud War had been going on since the spring of that year, and the Indians had repeatedly attacked sections of the army. On December 21, Lakota warriors attacked a group of loggers near Fort Kearny. Fetterman was sent out to help the loggers. Colonel Carrington ordered Fetterman not to go over the Lodge Trail crest as it would be difficult to get help from the fort. Colonel Carrington also ordered that Lieutenant Grummond should reinforce Fetterman with a force. With Grummond's reinforcements, the army contingent consisted of 81 men, 79 soldiers and two civilians. A group of ten Indians under Crazy Horse , selected from the tribes involved , lured Fetterman over the ridge of the Lodge Trail Ridge into an ambush into the Peno Valley, where around 1,500 Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne under Little Wolf and High Backbone Fetterman's men were waiting. The infantrymen of the column were immediately overrun and killed by the Indians. However, several cavalrymen managed to flee to a rocky, icy hill and defend themselves for a while. Finally the hail of arrows became so dense that the Indians advancing from two sides were already partially shooting at each other.
Carrington heard the shots and sent a relief force under Captain Ten Eyck, but it was too late, the entire contingent of Fetterman had already been destroyed. Carrington was appalled by the mutilation of the dead and wrote an essay about it in which he suspected the deeds were due to a pagan custom. Little did he know that, among other things, the Indians had taken revenge for the Sand Creek massacre .
The Fetterman Skirmish was the only major army defeat at the time. Colonel Carrington was relieved of his command and defended his conduct until the end of his life. The shock of the Fetterman defeat led the government to reassess its Indian policy. The inadequately armed units in Fort Kearny were also given modern Springfield breech- loading rifles , with which the US soldiers carried out the Hayfield Fight and the Wagon Box Fight the following summer could decide in their favor.
Movie
Various events of the Red Cloud War such as the Fetterman Skirmish and the Wagenburg Skirmish are taken up - with historical inaccuracies - in the US western Tomahawk - Sioux uprising from 1951.
See also
Coordinates: 44 ° 34 ′ 16 " N , 106 ° 50 ′ 28" W.
literature
- Dee Brown : Bury my heart at the bend of the river. Knaur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-426-62804-X (page 127f, 139f).
- Dee Brown: The Fetterman Massacre . Open Road Media, University of Nebraska Press, 1971, ISBN 0803257309 ( excerpt from Google ).
- George E. Hyde: Red Cloud's folk: a history of the Oglala Sioux Indians . University of Oklahoma Press 1937, ISBN 0806115203 , pp. 146-149 ( excerpt from Google ).
- John H. Monnett: Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2010, ISBN 978-0826345042 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ George E. Hyde: Red Cloud's folk: a history of the Oglala Sioux Indians . Norman 1937, p. 146 . ( Excerpt from Google )
This article is based on the article Battle of the Hundred Slain ( Memento from July 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from the free encyclopedia Indianer Wiki ( Memento from March 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) and is under Creative Commons by-sa 3.0 . A list of the authors was available in the Indian Wiki ( Memento from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).