DEC 21: The Fetterman Massacre

An illustration of the 1866 Fetterman Massacre in central Wyoming. (Credit: Library of Congress)

On Dec. 21, 1866, Crazy Horse and a small party of Sioux warriors lured Lt. Colonel William Fetterman and 80 soldiers into a deadly ambush near Fort Phil Kearney at the eastern base of the Bighorn Mountains in present-day Wyoming. With a total of 81 fatalities, it was the army’s worst defeat in the West until the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876.

The Army’s mission was to protect travelers on the Bozeman Trail, which ran southwest to northwest from Fort Laramie in Wyoming to Virginia City in present-day Montana. The trail crossed through hunting grounds that the U.S Government had promised to the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahoe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

Following the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, where Colorado militiamen massacred more than 200 peaceful Cheyenne, Native tribes began exacting revenge by attacking whites all across the Plains, including emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail.

Under the leadership of chief Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, the latter discovered he could lead a small detachment of soldiers away from Ft. Phil Kearney by dismounting from his horse and fleeing as if he were defenseless. “Struck by the foolish impulsiveness of the soldiers,” editors of History.com wrote, “Crazy Horse and Red Cloud reasoned they could draw out a much larger force of soldiers into a deadly trap.”

On Dec. 21, about 2,000 Native warriors concealed themselves along the road just north of the fort. A small band staged a diversionary attack on a party of woodcutters from the fort, and commandant Colonel Henry Carrington ordered Fetterman to take a complement of 80 troopers and rush to their aid. The soldiers rode straight into an ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack where an estimated 40,000 arrows rained down on the hapless troopers. None of them survived.