Dee Brown | The Fetterman Massacre
Dee Brown | The Fetterman Massacre
Dee Brown's chronicle of the ill-fated Fort Phil Kearny, established to protect the Bozeman trail. Captain William J. Fetterman arrived at Fort Phil Kearny with extensive combat experience during the Civil War but he lacked experience fighting American Indians.
Fetterman disagreed with his commanding officer's "passive" strategy and boasted that given "80 men," he "would ride through the Sioux nation." The result was the U.S. Army's worst defeat on the Great Plains until the disaster on the Little Big Horn nearly ten years later.