Captain Frederick Brown accompanied Fetterman ; the two were confident in their troops and anxious to go to battle with the Indians.

Captain Frederick Brown, until recently the post quartermaster and another of Carrington's critics, and two civilians, James Wheatley and Isaac Fisher, joined Fetterman, bringing the relief force up to 81 officers and men.

Further up the slope were Fetterman, Brown and the infantrymen, armed with nearly obsolete Civil War muzzle-loading muskets against Indians with equally obsolete weaponry.

Carrington's official report claimed that Fetterman and Brown shot each other to avoid capture, though Army autopsies recorded Fetterman's death wound as a knife slash.

Despite his unfamiliarity with frontier conditions and the methods of Indian fighting, Fetterman took command of a composite reaction force consisting of the former battalion quartermaster, Captain Frederick Brown, 2nd Lt. George Grummond, 49 enlisted troops of the 18th Infantry, 27 men of the 2nd Cavalry, and 2 civilian scouts, ironically totaling 80 men.

* Brown, Dee, The Fetterman Massacre, University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

In December 1866, the Native American allies attacked and defeated a United States unit in what the whites would call the Fetterman Massacre ( or the Battle of the Hundred Slain ); it was the event on the Plains to that point with the highest US fatalities.

The combined warrior forces of nearly 1, 000 killed all the US soldiers, in what became known at the time to the white population as the Fetterman Massacre.

The US government came to the conclusion after the Fetterman Fight that the forts along the Bozeman Trail were expensive to maintain ( both in terms of supplies and manpower ) and did not bring the intended security for travelers along the Road.

The Indians had few guns and little ammunition ; only 6 of the 81 soldiers who were later killed in the Fetterman Fight had gunshot wounds, and two of those may have shot themselves.

This battle was called the " Battle of the Hundred Slain " or the " Battle of the Hundred in the Hand " by the Indians and the " Fetterman Massacre " by the soldiers.

The Indian plan of attack on the woodcutters and soldiers was tried-and-true, similar to the plan that had been used to kill Fetterman and his 80 men the year before.

Fetterman allegedly boasted that with 80 soldiers, he could " ride through the Sioux Nation.

The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight ( with 81 men killed on the U. S. side ), was the worst military defeat suffered by the U. S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.

In 1871, Carrington married Frances Grummond, the widow of Lt. George W. Grummond who was killed in the Fetterman massacre.

Fetterman and his command of 80 men were killed in the Fetterman Fight.

He and his entire party were killed in the attack, later called the Fetterman Massacre.

Patrick Sullivan of the 4th was ambushed and murdered by outlaws on 4 March 1876 at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming and Maj. Thomas T. Thornburgh was killed in an Indian attack on 29 September 1879 at Milk River, Colorado-during the Meeker Massacre

" After the 1866 Fetterman Massacre, Sherman wrote Grant that " we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.

In November 1866, Captains William J. Fetterman and James Powell arrived at Fort Phil Kearny from the 18th Infantry's headquarters garrison at Fort Laramie to replace several officers recently relieved of duty.

* Sioux Dawn: The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 ( 1990 )

* Fetterman Massacre ( December 21, 1866 )

* 1866 Takes part in the Fetterman Fight

These would be the first major military actions by the Indians in 1867, following up their successes in 1866, including the Fetterman Fight.

In December 1866, a force of up to fifteen hundred Indians attacked a wood-cutting detail, then overwhelmed a reaction force of eighty troops under Captain William J. Fetterman.

William Judd Fetterman ( 1833 – December 21, 1866 ) was an officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War and the subsequent Red Cloud's War on the Great Plains.

( See Fetterman Fight )

Both an Army court of inquiry and the Secretary of the Interior investigated the Fetterman Fight.

After the Fetterman Fight, the Indians dispersed into smaller groups for the 1866-1867 winter and conflict subsided.

The appearance of the new Springfields was perhaps the biggest change in the conflict since the Fetterman Fight.

When the Lakota annihilated a detachment under William J. Fetterman at the Fetterman Fight the same year near Fort Phil Kearny, civilian travel along the trail ceased.

The area around the fort was the site of the Fetterman massacre and the Wagon Box Fight.

Fort Phil Kearny, including the nearby sites of the Fetterman massacre and the Wagon Box Fight, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

( See Fetterman Fight )

American Horse was a member of the decoy party of 14 warriors led by Crazy Horse during the Fetterman Fight.

In 1867, the troops were ordered to abandon Fort Caspar in favor of Fort Fetterman downstream on the North Platte along the Bozeman Trail.

Fetterman and his company were joined by Grummond at the crossing of the creek, deployed in skirmish line and marched over the Ridge in pursuit.

By that time, Fetterman and his entire 81-man detachment were dead.

Although army forces had been augmented along the Bozeman Trail and at Fort Laramie in the wake of the Fetterman disaster, resources were still insufficient to take the offensive against the Indians.

Seeing that they were surrounded, Grummond headed his cavalry back to Fetterman.

In 1908, Carrington and his second wife, Frances C. Carrington, were honored in Sheridan, Wyoming, and Carrington spoke at the Fetterman massacre site memorial.