Fetterman Monument (Cont)Henry B. Carrington,...
Fetterman Monument (Cont)Henry B. Carrington,...
Fetterman Monument (Cont)Henry B. Carrington, colonel of the 18th U.S. Infantry, commanded the new post in the Dakota Territory. Under him was William Judd Fetterman, who led the eighty men wiped out on Lodge Trail Ridge by the was party of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahoe under Chief Red Cloud. A captain named Tenodor Ten Eyck commanded a rescue force which reached the scene only after Fetterman's party had been wiped out. The massacre took place only a year after the territory had been ceded to the Indians as an inviolable territory. But the treaty gave way to reality and reality was that gold had been discovered in Montana and the federal treasury was exhausted after the Civil War. The easiest trail to the gold country was the Bozenian road and Carrington was ordered to establish two posts to protect this trail. One of these became Fort Phil Kearny. Carrington had been a rear-echelon soldier in the Civil War, (Two of fIVE)