A BAD SPOT FOR A FORT
—December 20, 1866—WELL IN MID JULY WE DID AT LAST haul up & end our march in this Valley but Mr. Bridger & a few of the others (the old hand scouts & Indian fighters in buckskin & the like) well they did not like at all this spot Carrington finally chose to build his fort.
At the time we did think this objection queer but we are just lowly Bills & not much are we in the way of strategising or tactical thinking. We are paid from the neck down is the saying & there is truth to it. But to look at this place in summer it does appear a grand fine spot for building. It is as pretty as a painted picture on the banks of a creek or river called the Little Piney which is a small branch of the Powder River that gives this Valley its name. There are miles of buffalo grass meadows about it which rise up to hills that become the mighty Big Horns which are said to be 15 odd miles away. As well there is ample forests of timber nearby for constructing this grand stockade we now call Ft. Phil Kearny & from where it sits there is a fair view some miles each way of the Bozeman Trail to be defended.
I am told this is the A–No. 1 reason for us being here. It is to build an outpost of civilisation in the wilderness so that we may protect them headed up the Bozeman for the gold fields of Montana. This is a strange thing of course because our arrival here in the Valley has spurred the Sioux & Cheyanne to take a sterner line altogether with the pilgrims. Where before it is said that they would leave the pilgrims pass through & even aid them betimes on their journeys or trade goods & game with them well now they harry & molest & collect pilgrim scalps. No man or beast on that trail is safe from Chief Red Cloud’s predations.
But we did not know or much fear the Indian then at all & our commander Col. Henry Carrington chose to build his Ft. in the very heart of the Sioux’s home in this Valley surrounded by its grassy sloping hills so that Mr. Lo may peer down upon our every action.
I tell you Sir the savage does know everything about us. He knows when we leave the Ft. & when we return to it. He knows how far we must travel for timber & how many men we need for to guard the wagons to carry it. This is the reason why this spot is no good at all for a Ft. It is only 5 miles to the timber we need for building & though we ran a road over the hills out to the stand of trees we call the Piney Island we must come down from the hilltop road in the end for a long flat stretch & this is where they descend upon us every day to harry our woodtrain so that every day we lose men & mules & horses & wagons.
So I say to you Sir as I sit here in this bitter hell of a freezing winter Guardhouse that this is a cursed spot to spite its beauty. Bridger & the scouts knew it well from the start & now Carrington The Carpenter must know it too but we have come too far for turning.
That very 1st evening we set up camp here in this Valley you would not believe it but on the grassy rise we now call Pilot Hill 2 or 3 Indians on horseback set up watching us as we did corral the wagons & picket the horses & roll out the canvas under which we would live until we raised up proper barracks of logs. Well them Indians just sat there watching us stake a claim to the fine long grass where their buffalo once grazed & they were like harbingers of death coming I tell you. Betimes I wonder now did we seem harbingers of something terrible for them too our band of wandering white faces like the first fat drops of rain to the fore of a coming storm.
But mostly I do think now that if Col. Carrington was a more bloody minded type of up & at them officer & had of loaded up the Mountain Howizter that 1st night & fired a hell of canister at them Indians on Pilot Hill well maybe Red Cloud & his Braves would imagine us to be a hot & terrible consort of soldiery & think to keep a safe distance from us. They maybe would of thought us not worth the loss of Indian blood for a mere patch of land or safe passage on a trail. But Carrington is not such a man & still has no notion of our true business here in the Valley at all & for this indecision the common soldier Bill does suffer greatly. Is it to protect the Bozeman Trail for travellers to the gold fields in Virginia City he wonders as he frets over his building plans? Establish a forceful presence in the territory we hear other officers say? Pacify the savages? Distract the Indians while the railroad is rammed through farther South? All this is thought by the soldiers but I wonder could even Carrington tell you the truth. He could not tell you is my best guess.
The one thing Carrington did know is that he was to build his great Ft. in the wilderness his City Of Logs as the Sioux call it & start this we did the very day after arriving. For to be fair to him a finer man for getting forts built you will not meet. He is a great man for the planning & building & constructing of things but he is just not a fighting man when a fighting man is what is needed for a War such as we do find ourselves in.
So we set to building our home in this Valley. Well I do not need to tell you it was fatigue details from the cock crow. It was clearing & levelling the ground & chambermaiding the horses & livestock & standing picket over them for though the Indians did nothing as yet their reputation for coveting beef cattle & horse flesh did well proceed them.
And we did scout some Tom & myself (which does be another fine advantage to being a horse soldier) even riding out with Jim Bridger once or twice. Though he is a reknowned man I will say that we saw him to be some fierce kind of a blowhard & canard spinner as we rode the valleys & forests at the foothills of the Big Horns at his side. Up & down the Tongue River we rode too searching for sign of Indian camps or war parties in our cabbage patch. We found none of this though later we would do when it was too late to be any good to us which did not much recommend Mr. Bridger as a scout. But Lord Save Us that fellow could talk the meat from a chicken bone he could. A blatherer I tell you though not a bad sort he was more clown than cat as is the saying but what he did tell rings true enough now so maybe he is less a fool than I thought him.
For he did regale us from horseback as we rode with tall tales that do not seem so tall now. He yarned of savages taking the scalps of men still alive them victims surviving to walk about the place with their skulls shining in the sun like billiard balls. Stories of men standing talking to you one moment & gagging on an arrow to the throat the next. Stories made for to scare a man into vigilance I see now but I did think them only nonsense then. Such is the way of soldiers everywhere I reckon. They learn nothing until blood is spilt.
And learn we did because of Carrington choosing such a rum spot for to build his City of Logs. For though in summer it may appear to be Eden itself it is a rum & cursed place I tell you Sir & I pray you will leave it as soon as your business here with me is done.
For the ground is now too hard for grave digging & the bodies be stacked like cord wood in the Q.M.’s cold cellar & soon that cellar will be full I reckon full up altogether with the bodies of men who did not see Mr. Lo coming with his hatchets bared & arrows strung & knives out for all of us who would choose to build a mighty Ft. in the heart of his Valley.