As the Civil War died down more resources and troops were available to clamp down on the numerous Indian tribes attacking American settlers in the Western frontier. The howitzers stationed at Fort Philip Kearney, Wyoming almost saw action on December 21, 1866, in one of the more famous battles of the Indian Wars era, the Fetterman Massacre. A wood train was under attack by the Sioux. A rescue party made up of 81 men of the 18th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry went out under Captain Fetterman to rescue the train. Fetterman, disdainful of the Sioux, was surrounded and cut off far from the fort. 94 additional men were sent out, under Captain Ten Eyck, to try and rescue Fetterman's command. He reported the far valley as being full of Indians, and requested a mountain howitzer to help rescue Fetterman. General Carrington could not send one because there were no horses left to move it. The howitzer was light enough that it could be rolled by hand, but there were not enough men to spare to be able to take one out to by hand, and none knew how to work it anyway.(1) The howitzer kept that Sioux from trying to overrun the fort, but it could do nothing to help Fetterman's command, which was completely wiped out.
At the same time that Fort Kearny was under constant attack, the Sioux and their allies also attacked nearby Fort C. F. Smith. The hay party was protected by an unimposing stockade-style fort, with brush and thin logs for the walls. The Indian warriors first attacked the hay detail that was 2½ miles north of the fort at 10:00 a.m. The Sioux went with the standard tactic of provoking a volley and then attempting to overwhelm the defenders before they could reload their muzzle-loading rifles. But they got a rude shock when they found that the twenty-man infantry guard was equipped with the new Springfield breechloader-rifle. The soldiers easily stopped several assaults and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. All the while only suffering three dead, the lieutenant commanding the detail, a private, and a civilian hay-contractor, and three wounded. The fort was unable to move to their aid until a wood detail to the south had returned in the early afternoon. At noon a mountain howitzer was run outside the walls, and after a few shots forced the Indians to pause, allowing the wood detail to return relatively easily to the fort. At 4:00 p.m. a platoon was sent to rescue the hay detail, which had been fighting continually for six hours. A large group of Indians blocked the platoon, and an additional two companies and the howitzer were sent to assist them. The enlarged rescue force was able to force its way through the warriors to relieve the hay detail. They brought back all the survivors and the bodies of the dead, and all the animals of the hay party. The mountain howitzer was used to its full advantage in this fight. The gun's lightness enabled it to be repositioned rapidly so that it was firing almost continually, and most Indians rarely attacked any group of soldiers that had artillery support.(2)
The howitzers of Fort Philip Kearny were used again on August 2, 1867. In what would come to be known as "The Wagon Box Fight," on August 2nd a wood detail was again surrounded by the Sioux. This detail hid inside the bodies of the wagons, which were detached from the axles and sitting on the ground. They held off several assaults, but were beginning to run low on ammunition. As the last assault that would have overran the defenders began reinforcements arrived. These included a mountain howitzer. Red Cloud had sustained heavy losses in the battle, and the fire of the cannon and the approach of fresh U. S. forces forced him to flee. The Sioux were forced to leave many of their dead and wounded on the field.(3) A howitzer was often stored in forts for just such an emergency as a detail under attack. It was light enough that one or two horses, or a detail of a few men, could move it over any terrain and it was simple to aim and fire for untrained personnel.
The 10th Cavalry had one with them as they went into combat on August 2, 1867, along the Saline River in Kansas. An Indian raiding party had attacked the Kansas Pacific Railroad, killing five or six men, and running off with one hundred or so horses and mules. A company of the 10th under Major Arms, with one howitzer was sent in pursuit. They were accompanied by Buffalo Bill Cody as its scout. A large group of Indians was discovered along the Saline River and an attack was launched by the Buffalo Soldiers. The howitzer was placed on a knoll with 20 men to guard it while the rest of the company advanced. Suddenly, the guards were seen racing towards the rest of the command with a large number of Indians in pursuit, while more celebrated around the captured howitzer. The Indians treated it like a powerful, magical totem which they had no idea how to use, and according to Buffalo Bill they made no attempt to leave with it or to use it against the soldiers. Arms quickly recaptured the piece, but not before the Indians destroyed its carriage, rendering it useless. The 10th was under attack from two directions by larger forces, so they had to abandon the barrel of the howitzer and retreat to Fort Hays. The howitzer was sent out by the army in this instance to scare the Indians by its very presence alone. Cody indicated that the 10th's men were not trained in how to work the piece and it was a waste of time to take it with them.(4) In the post-civil war era the army rarely trained any of its men to use the artillery pieces stored at the frontier forts. Unless a unit had trained artillerymen or an officer who forced the men to learn to use cannons they were rarely much use in an engagement with fast-moving Indian raiding parties.
A Wells Fargo freight train stopped at Fort Phil Kearny on October 29, 1867 and picked up an escort of 42 soldiers and a mountain howitzer. Three days later, only 32 miles from the fort, they were attacked by a party of Sioux. The Sioux reportedly wanted the howitzer to use in their battles with United States forces. The siege would last from November 2-5 at what would be called the Battle of Goose Creek. 300 Indians made repeated attacks on the Americans, but the howitzer's fire decimated their warriors and broke every assault. Eventually help arrived from the fort, with only 9 of the besieged being killed. Without the howitzer all of them probably would have died.(5)
An unattached howitzer was involved in lifting a siege at Beecher's Island, Kansas on September 22-23, 1868. A force of scouts under Lieutenant Forsyth was surrounded by 700 Cheyenne warriors, under the famous war chief Roman Nose, on an island in the middle of the Republic River in Kansas. 100 troopers of the 10th Cavalry were dispatched with two mountain howitzers to relieve the scouts. Detachments eventually reached the surrounded scouts, but the Indians had already left. The relief and their howitzers never fired a shot at the Cheyenne. However, the Cheyenne reportedly left because of the approaching reinforcements. The relief column brought along desperately needed medical assistance for the wounded scouts.(6) As a result of the fight at Beecher's Island, and other such raids by the Cheyenne, General Phil Sheridan decided to come down hard on several tribes by attacking their winter camps.
As a part of the campaign to crush the unpacified tribes, George Custer and the 7th Cavalry led one column south to find hostile Sioux, and Cheyenne. They attacked the Cheyenne at the Washita in November. A second column was dispatched from New Mexico. Brevet Major General George Getty led 563 men, including four troops of the 3rd U. S. Cavalry under Major Evans, two companies of the 37th Infantry and four mountain howitzers. They were to head east along the South Canadian River in northern Texas. A third column moved east from Colorado into the Indian Territory. They were pursuing Kiowa and Comanche bands that had not surrendered. Mostly they did not encounter any Indians until late December, 1868. On Christmas Day, Getty's column came upon a village of Comanche and a village of Kiowa at Soldier Spring on the North Fork of the Red River in southwestern Indian Territory. Evans began the battle by using the howitzers to shell the Comanche's village. The Comanche and Kiowas counterattacked and drove him back. Both sides fought throughout the day. In the end the Indians withdrew and the soldiers held the village. They burned a large number of shelters, but even more important to the Indians was the loss of most of their supplies. Several tons of buffalo meat alone were destroyed by the 3rd Cavalry. The battle did not end the resistance of these tribes, but it did hurt them greatly by taking the food and shelter that was intended to see them through the winter. This loss physically weakened them and forced many to stop resisting the rule of the Americans.(7)
Wheaton's 21st U. S. Infantry used howitzers in a protracted campaign against the Modoc Indians in northern California. The Modocs had turned a region called the Lava Beds into an impressive stronghold. They had taken a natural field of lava-made hills and then set up towers, breastworks, and bombproofs. Animals were even brought in to feed the tribe through any siege by the U. S. army. The Modocs were continually fighting with the Anglo residents of northern California and southern Oregon for control of the region. In late December, 1872, settlers and Indians battled near Tule Lake, with the Modocs retreating into the Lava Beds. The settlers called on the army for help. By the end of the year 225 regulars and 100 Oregon and California militia had assembled to clean out the Modocs. On January 17, 1873, the army advanced into the lava field with two mountain howitzers firing to cover their movement. They stopped firing because of fog making their fire more dangerous to their fellow soldiers than to the Indians. Eventually the soldiers were pinned down by the Modocs, and forced to retreat.
The Battle of the Stronghold ended with seven Regulars killed and nineteen wounded, and 2 militiamen killed and nine wounded. The army did not use the howitzers to their full advantage, leaving them behind when their ability to move where other guns could not would have allowed them a chance against the entrenched Indians. The Lava Beds had enabled 60 or so warriors to defeat almost 350 U. S. soldiers. A second attempt to defeat the Modocs occurred on April 15-17, 1873. Once again two forces moved into the lava field, while the howitzers and several mortars bombarded Indian positions. This combination of an infantry assault and artillery fire forced the Modocs to abandon the immediate area, leaving behind three dead men and eight women. They retreated farther into the fields, but eventually were forced completely out of the lava fields. The Modocs were not as difficult for the army to deal with once they had lost their fortress.(8)
Company D, 5th U. S. Infantry used a howitzer at McClellan Creek, Kansas in November, 1874. The family of an ex-Confederate soldier had been moving west since 1870. They had worked their way to Kansas by August, 1874. It had taken them four years to make it to Kansas, and when they were only a few days from their destination they were attacked by a party of 19 or so Indians. The father, mother, 14 year old son, and two girls were killed in the attack, and four other girls were taken captive. Lieutenant Frank Baldwin was dispatched to stop these raiders with Company D, 5th Infantry, Company D, 6th Cavalry, 12 Indian scouts and one mountain howitzer. Near McClellan Creek, Kansas he came across a group of one hundred or so Indians and their families. Baldwin moved forward to attack the Indians who had occupied a ravine. The howitzer was used to clear stretches of the ravine which would have allowed the Indians a tough defensive position, and a chance to attack the flanks and rear of the U. S. soldiers. The Indians retreated and stopped to fight. The howitzer was used two more times to break their lines and force them to flee. The warriors held out long enough to allow their families to escape, but they lost most of their supplies and tepees. The two youngest girls captured in August were found and freed. The older two girls were eventually returned to the army later in the winter at Fort Sill by these same Indians, who were forced onto the reservation by the loss of their shelters and supplies.(9)
One hundred and twenty five Nez Perce warriors and almost 700 others moved 1,300 miles as they fled from the control of the United States in the summer of 1877. General Oliver O. Howard pursued them with orders to force the Nez Perce onto a reservation. The Nez Perce stopped to rest in the Big Hole Valley, Montana in August. They did not notice the approach of 162 men of the 7th Infantry under Colonel John Gibbon. The men of the 7th drug a mountain howitzer with them through the thick forest as they approached the Indians' camp on August 8th. The men of the 7th, and 34 civilian volunteers, attacked the camp before dawn on the 9th. They soon held the south end of the camp, but the warriors assumed sniper positions and forced the soldiers to retreat. The soldiers were pinned down on Battle Mountain for 24 hours. The mountain howitzer was able to fire two rounds at the Nez Perce before it was captured and dismounted by them. The Indians kept a small contingent to force the soldiers to stay on the hillside, while the rest helped with the retreat southward. The Nez Perce had "won" the fight, but they lost 60-90 killed, of whom two-thirds were old people, women and children. The 7th lost 29 killed and 40 wounded in the Battle of the Big Hole, but they had destroyed the fighting ability of the Nez Perce. The resistance of the tribe would now be in their attempt to flee to Canada rather than in battles with U. S. soldiers.(10)
Oliver O. Howard continued his war against the Nez Perce and other rebellious tribes in the Bannack War of June-September 1878. With 900 men and nine mountain howitzers he pursued, skirmished on a few occasions with some small bands, and eventually forced them all onto reservations. The howitzer was still proving its worth in the late 1870s. It could keep up with the fast-moving columns through heavily wooded regions, and be there to give them a vital source of artillery support.
1. Brady, The Sioux Indian Wars, pp. 24-33.
2. John S. Gray, Custer's Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the Little Bighorn Reconstructed (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp. 68-71.
3. Brady, The Sioux Indian Wars, pp. 50-57
4. William Cody, The Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill. Available at the PBS Archives of the West at http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs670/w67bbauto/w67bb07.htm. 21 May 1998.
5. Kupke, The Indian and The Thunderwagon, p. 29.
6. Brady, The Sioux Indian Wars, pp. 96-108
7. Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1969), pp. 149-54.
8. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 200-10.
9. White Deer Land Museum, Brief Summary of the Battle of McClellan Creek, pp. 1-4. Found at http://www.pan-tex.net/usr/p/pampa-hist/red.htm. 11 February 1998.
10. The Big Hole National Battlefield web site. Found at http://www.halcyon.com/rdpayne/bhnb-battlefield.html. 11 February 1998.