My frontier historical novel, Bozeman Paymaster: A Tale of the Fetterman Massacre, will be issued by Five Star Publishing in June 2022. I will post a prelude each month before that date to provide historical facts that occur before the story in the book begins. This is the second prelude.
Henry B. Carrington
Colonel Henry B. Carrington, a Yale Law School graduate, received his commission as commanding officer of the 18th US Infantry in 1861. When the Civil War broke out, he was the adjutant general of Ohio under Governor Salmon P. Chase. It did not hurt Carrington’s career that he had a passing friendship with President Abraham Lincoln, who appointed Chase to be Secretary of the Treasury. For most of the war years, Carrington, who was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General in 1862, helped the governor of Indiana raise that state’s regiments for the Union’s war effort. During his earlier years, Carrington had been secretary to well-known author Washington Irving. Carrington clearly had influential friends in high places. Though he served throughout the duration of the war, Colonel Carrington did not fight in a single battle. The 18th US Infantry’s field commander was Lieutenant Colonel William Judd Fetterman.
Photo of Fort Kearny by Samuel C. Mills
Library of Congress, Public Domain
In March 1866, Colonel Carrington began assembling elements of the 18th US Infantry Regiment at Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory. The fort was named for General Stephen Watts Kearny, famous for the conquest of New Mexico and California during the Mexican-American War. The fort, located along the Oregon Trail in south-central Nebraska near the Platte River, served as a major assembly point for westward bound travelers.
The 18th US Infantry contained three battalions, but Carrington would man the new Bozeman Trail forts with only the Second Battalion (the 2/18). The First Battalion would be assigned to defend the Oregon Trail leading from Fort Laramie to Salt Lake City. The Third Battalion would man forts in Colorado Territory. Each battalion should contain 700 men. The 2/18 mustered a strength of only 220, many of whom were new recruits, all armed with obsolete, muzzle-loading, Springfield rifles. Carrington pleaded frequently that the 2/18 be equipped with newer weapons, but he was only successful in obtaining Spencer seven-shot carbines for his 25-member military band.
The December 2021 issue of Western Writers of America’s Roundup Magazine contains a book review I wrote about Bound by Steel & Stone: The Colorado-Kansas Railway and the Frontier of Enterprise in Colorado, 1890-1960, by J. Bradford Bowers. The author teaches history at Pueblo Community College in Pueblo, Colorado.
Vast herds of buffalo roamed the prairie land east of the Bighorn Mountains. Coupled with other game, fowl, and fish, this Absaroka area provided the perfect subsistence environment for the bands of Indians who fought among themselves to control access. Originally home to the Crows, the lure of plentiful buffalo proved too tempting for the Sioux who had been forced out of their traditional lands by the expansion of the white man. The newcomers pushed the Crows north into Montana, and the Powder River country became home to the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyennes, and Arapahos. When the white man traversed their new homeland more frequently as he rolled up the Bozeman Trail with his wagon trains, these tribes resisted.
The June 2021 issue of Western Writers of America’s Roundup Magazine contains a book review I wrote about Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad by Chris Enss. Ms. Enss is the current president of Western Writers of America. She has been writing about women in the Old West for more than 28 years. She has made the New York Times bestseller list three times. She is the recipient of numerous writing awards including WWA’s Spur Award and the Will Rogers Medallion Award.
There is a minor error in the first line of the book’s Introduction which is repeated on the back cover blurb. The rails laid at Promontory Summit (not Point, as written) were iron (not steel, as written). Several years after the driving of the golden spike, the Union Pacific replaced the original iron rails with steel rails to provide necessary support for heavier locomotives. The Promontory Summit loop around the north end of the Great Salt Lake was abandoned after the turn of the twentieth century when the UP built a causeway straight across the lake. During World War I, the steel rails on the discontinued 44-mile loop were salvaged as part of a nation-wide scrap metal drive to support the war effort. Since this minor error does not detract from Chris’s excellent book, I did not mention it in the review. It is something only a railroad aficionado would notice.
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