Beep Beep

--> On June 17 1866, after the Civil War, one thousand men and two hundred wagons with 700 beef cattle started out from Fort Laramie Nebraska to build Fort Philip Kearney on the Bozeman Trail in what is now Wyoming. On their way, they passed by Crazy Woman Creek, which was featured in Robert Redford's movie “Jeremiah Johnson.”

“From decoys to depredations, it had taken a mere forty minutes. Eighty one Americans lay dead.”* (The Fetterman Massacre)

* Or so reported the civilian from Colonel Carrington's burial detail, who claimed to have recovered Metzger’s corpse. Carrington himself is buried in Hyde Park / Boston.

Years later, Northern Cheyenne warriors gave Metzger's misshapen bugle to a Buffalo, Wyoming store owner with a much different story. You will have to read the book.

I am reading "The Heart of Everything That Is," the untold story of Red Cloud. This book is as good as any Nathaniel Philbrick book. WOW!

If I had not been to the Fort Kearney site, or the Wagon Box Fight, or the Fetterman Massacre site, I would load the car right now and drive west. We have been to Buffalo, Wyoming, which is east of 10 Sleeps, Wyoming.

Capt. William Judd Fetterman

 

Col. Henry Carrington

One of several delegations that Red Cloud led to Washington, DC between the 1870s and the 1890s.

Red Cloud and Crazy Horse and Young Man Afraid of His Horses and American Horse and their 2,000 braves eventually won, and the fort was abandoned. No photo was ever taken of Crazy Horse.

Another Indian at the Captain Fettermen Massacre was Two Moons, who became the model for the Native American face on the buffalo nickel.

Two Moons

Also Dull Knife, and High Back Bone.  American Horse was said to have killed Fetterman with a war club.

American Horse

After the “100 in the Hand,” as the Indians called it, Fetterman Massacre, Portugee Phillps volunteered to ride to Fort Laramie with the news, and to get reinforcements and bullets. Most of the good horses were killed at the massacre. Carrington lent Phillips his horse. Phillips rode in -35 degree weather for three days, for a total of 236 grueling, freezing miles. The folks at Fort Laramie were in the middle of a Christmas dance. It was, after all, Christmas Eve. The General received the note from Fort Phil Kearny with his white dancing gloves on. When the nearly-frozen-to-death Portugee Phillips went outside to tend to Carrington’s horse, he found it on the snow-covered ground, dead.

I go to the dump at least once a week and will be glad to take your FICTION books there.

File under ycmtsup: Boatswains Mate M.J. Metzker was my company commander in Boot Camp in Illinois.

R.F. Bacon CEW2                   

This is titled “Beep Beep” because one of us beeped at the pronghorns on the hills and made them run.