Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 by Terry C. Johnston Page B

Powder, the Montana Road took the caravan into another country altogether. With each day the breeze blew sweeter. Cooler. The men stepped livelier as the column wound its way into the shadow of the Big Horns at last. Row upon row of forested ridges fanned like velvet-draped fingers into grass-covered hills stretching all the way to the foot of the mountains. A hundred-fifty-mile spine of mountains, erupting roughly northwest to southeast into this land of the Sioux.
    With cloud-draped peaks on their left, the command made the dusty crossing of the Crazy Woman Fork. With Red Cloud’s warning still ringing in his ears, Carrington sent his skirmishers farther out along the high ridges. Twenty-three more miles brought his soldiers to the crossing of Clear Creek, a swift, cold, and noisy flow which would eventually find the Powder on its northward race. Rock Creek came next as the land grew lusher still. Taller timber. Richer grass. But barely a mile past the crossing, Henry Williams had come riding back to the head of the column to present Bridger and Carrington with two small boards torn from a cracker box he had found along the trail. A message scrawled on the wood told of a civilian caravan attacked here just the week before. Sioux had driven off most of the oxen and some of the horses. The message said the civilians had pressed on.
    Carrington’s soldiers followed. Within a handful of miles the clear, blue waters of Lake DeSmet beckoned on their right. Named after a Jesuit priest who had traversed the West some thirty years before, the lake welcomed the weary marchers by offering thousands of ducks and geese.
    â€œAn amazing country,” Carrington had gushed as they skirted the lake.
    â€œI think you’re getting the idea now, Colonel. Beginning to figure out why the Sioux wanna hold onto this country.” His arm swept in a wide arc. “Why they’ll fight you for every mile of it. Warning what they’d do if you crossed the Crazy Woman.”
    Carrington nodded. “A soldier for every mile.”
    That afternoon they had dropped into the valley created by the two Piney forks of the Clear Fork of the Powder River. Here, halfway along the spine of the Big Horns, a headland juts toward the eastern plains, like a mighty thumb pointing the way. The Peno Head thrusts down amid granite cliffs and thick forests before it spends itself along the Montana Road in what Bridger said was known as Lodge Trail Ridge.
    â€œBeyond that ridge, you’ll find all the Sioux you’d ever want,” Bridger explained to Carrington and his staff as they looked across the valley of the Piney forks. “Camped down the Tongue. Up the Rosebud. Over on the Little Big Horn. Land fat with Sioux.”
    Lodge Trail Ridge slanted gently south into a high valley cut ages ago by Big Piney and Little Piney creeks. Carrington found the southern end of the valley protected by more of the great mountain range itself, while to the east rose another spur the colonel would call Pilot Hill. Through the narrow opening between his Pilot Hill and Lodge Trail Ridge rushed the clear, cold waters of the combined Piney creeks, tumbling for the Powder and the Yellowstone, on to the Missouri and the sea far, far from this Sioux land.
    Bridger led Carrington up the Bozeman Road where it skirted the western fringe of Pilot Hill. Here the valley spread itself before the colonel, like a woman would open her arms to embrace a lover, welcoming him into her warmth, into the fire of her most private, consuming passion.
    Here lay a land blessed with wild tulip and larkspur. Hills dappled with the delicate white blossoms of wild pea. Down in the shaded draws grew a profusion of wild raspberry, gooseberry and red currant. Between the two bubbling Pineys rose a low range of hills separating the creeks. At the western end of those hills lay a large pine island thick with great stands of timber. Carrington breathed deep, drawing at the cool air