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• ISBN13: 9780826345035
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From the Editors

The Powder River country of what is now north central Wyoming was one of the most resource-rich regions of the northern plains in the nineteenth century. As U.S. mining interests and white settlement to the north in Montana Territory increased, conflict arose between the United States and the Lakota and Cheyenne nations. On December 21, 1866, the struggle climaxed when a well-organized force of Lakota, Northern Cheyennes, and Arapahos attacked and destroyed a detachment of forty-nine infantrymen and three officers of the 18th Infantry, twenty-seven troopers of the 2nd Cavalry, and two civilians under the command of Captain William Judd Fetterman near Fort Phil Kearny. The Battle of Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed or Hundred in the Hand, as the event is still called, was the worst defeat the U.S. Army had suffered in the Great Plains, only to be exceeded by the Battle of Little Big Horn a decade later.<p>Because none of the soldiers lived to tell what happened, the Fetterman fight has fostered a body of myth and speculation. In this study, John H. Monnett provides a groundbreaking examination of the conflicts that ensued in the Powder River Country during the nineteenth century and clarifies events and personalities that have become distorted in the annals of Western history. Monnett examines military interests as well as the geopolitical importance of the area and takes into account the environmental history of the conflict as it relates to hunting ranges, vital wood and water resources, and access to trade avenues.
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A Little-Known Fight - But Still Interesting
This vivid and readable history is a re-examination of the so-called Fetterman fight, near Fort Phil Kearney, in the Powder River country of what is now Wyoming in the year 1866. The basic facts are as uncontested as they were grim for the immediately post-Civil War US Army, and glorious for the warriors of the joint Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe who drew a large party of soldiers and cavalry into skillfully laid ambush, annihilating them to the last man. It was a bloody nose for the Army, which had established the fort to protect travel along the Bozeman Trail - and which now had proved that they couldn't even protect themselves. It would be the worse massacre of American soldiers in the Indian Wars until Little Big Horn, a decade later.

At least as interesting as the recitation of events, as reconstructed from archeological findings, old letters, memoirs and official reports, and the tales of the victorious survivors told to researchers decades later is the authors' examination of how certain myths and conventional wisdoms grew out of the tangled circumstances of the Fetterman fight: was Captain Fetterman a reckless and hot-blooded fool whose impulsive pursuit of a decoy led more than eighty men to their deaths? Was it really another officer who was actually responsible for leading them into a trap? How much of that legend grew from the fort commander's attempts to paint his own efforts in the best possible light? Colonel Henry Carrington was a political general, and an administrator with no combat experience in the war just concluded; his junior officers were. How much resentment and ill-feeling that must have caused in his isolated command, in the bitter winter of 1866? At the end of it all, he was the only one left living to tell his side of it, leading to ambiguities that have kept historians and enthusiasts happily occupied ever since.

A couple of ironies - the territory disputed was only lately come to be the possession of the various Lakota divisions. It had formerly been controlled by the Crows. And it has usually been stressed in this kind of history that it was destruction of the buffalo herds that drove the Plains tribes to the wall. Being deprived of hunting for food and for skins was an open threat to their way of life. But the author points out a more subtle threat - that of the insatiable demand for wood - both for construction and for fires as white settlement progressed. Thirty years of emigrant traffic and settlement along the various trails west had devastated groves of trees for miles alongside those trails. The subsequent devastation to the environment threatened the Plains tribes at least as much as the decimation of buffalo herds.

Celia Hayes
The Adelsverein Trilogy

Dee Brown's Book Remains the Definitive Work
Dee Brown's Book "Fort Phil Kearny: An American Saga" (later renamed "The Fetterman Massacre") for years has been regarded by many as the definitive work in the 1866-67 Tongue River campaign against the Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne. It remains the best work on the conflict. Mr. Monnett's book, in his efforts to create a new history of the battle, ignores completely facts documented by different individuals or gives them short-shrift... and often resorts to singly-sourced facts and little-publicized, widely-varying obscure Indian accounts of the battle.

His pronouncement that Carrington and Capt Brown did not commit mutual suicide is asserted...yet the corpses were found with identical powder burns in the left temple. James Wheatley and Issac Fisher, two civilian employees at the Fort, had volunteered to go out with Fetterman's relief group for the supposed attack on the wood train. They had 16 shot Henry rifles and were wisely positioned with the point squad. Mr Monnet seems unfamiliar with the standard Cavalry tactic of using a squad of 4 troopers as a unit. The Fetterman cavalry detachment with Lt. Grummond in command probably would have had such a squad riding "point". Wheatley and Fisher joined these men to "lead off'. Their bodies were found, according to different relief sources with 4 or 5 bodies of cavalrymen with them. These 6-7 men, operating in a sort of rifle pit constructed of dead Indian ponies, delivered a tremendous beating to the Indians, with between 60-70 pools of blood around the ring of these men when their bodies were discovered. In Mr. Bonnett's book, they were alone, in the lead.

A useless account that adds almost nothing to what is truly known about the campaign, other than some photographs of Carrington and Frances in their old age.

Ignore this one. Read Dee Brown's classic treatise instead.

Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed...
Well-written but dry and scholarly look at the Fetterman story. Research for this book must have been very deep.
If you are a student of Fort Phil Kearny and Powder River history then this is a must read.

Good alternative thinking on the Fetterman fight
This book is an excellent addition to the literature on the Fort Phil Kearny saga. Rather than rehash the Carrington version of events, Monnett looks a little deeper to other information about Fetterman, Grummond, and other key players. He also does a fair job of analyzing the field itself and what could be reconstructed about the battle from the location of soldier remains and the physical evidence, both contemporaneous and archaeological.

Although the complete truth will never be known, he makes a fairly convincing case that Fetterman has been unfairly maligned by history, and that Carrington never set the record straight as to do so would both injure the widow of the true culprit, Lt. George Grummond, and expose to some extent Carrington's deficiencies as post commander at Phil Kearny. Add to that the fact that Carrington later married the widow Grummond, and Fetterman bore the brunt of the blame for the massacre. As Monnett shows, he may not even have spoken those legendary and fateful words about riding through the entire Sioux nation with 80 men.

At this point in history, it seems unlikely that Fetterman will ever be "rehabilitated" - the event is both too obscure to most and too deeply ingrained to others. But Monnett's book makes a good start. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to go beyond Dee Brown in understanding the Fetterman Fight.

I liked it
As a long time student of custer's battle, I had no real experience with Fetterman's battle, only the version history gave me. I find the arguements common sense and generally well supported. I was amazed at all the resourses which exist for a book on this battle. I thouroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone.

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