The Fetterman Fight, sometimes called the Fetterman Massacre, is among the best-known events of the Indian wars. According to the version of the story accepted for well over a century, Captain William Judd Fetterman, 18th U.S. Infantry Regiment, was an arrogant fire-eater of an officer, contemptuous of the fighting abilities of the Plains Indians. As a Civil War combat veteran, he had no respect for Colonel Henry Beebee Carrington, the commanding officer at Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory (in present-day northern Wyoming). Carrington headed the 18th Infantry, but he had spent the Civil War years sitting behind a desk.
Fetterman’s arrogance, according to the accepted story, led to grand recklessness on December 21, 1866, when he disobeyed Carrington’s direct orders to relieve a woodcutting detail under attack west of the fort, bring it in safely to the pinery blockhouses and, above all else, refrain from crossing Lodge Trail Ridge in pursuit of the Indian attackers. Ignorantly and defiantly, Fetterman led his command from Fort Phil Kearny in pursuit of a decoy party of 10 Lakotas and Cheyennes over the forbidden ridge into an ambush of 1,500–2,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.
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