Red Cloud’s War and the Fetterman Fight

In 1866 the United States Army established forts along the Bozeman Trail, which crossed the Powder River hunting grounds used by Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho communities. Red Cloud led a sustained campaign to close the road and remove the forts, while Crazy Horse and other warriors attacked travellers, supply parties and soldiers.

On 21 December 1866, a force commanded by Captain William J. Fetterman pursued a decoy party beyond the supporting range of Fort Phil Kearny. A larger Indigenous force surrounded and destroyed the detachment in the engagement known to the Lakota as the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand.

Continued resistance forced the United States to abandon the forts under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. This context supports fiction and history about Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Henry Carrington, the Bozeman Trail, Fort Phil Kearny and Indigenous military resistance in the Powder River country.