There are certain great battles which may at least receive
notice, although it would be impossible to mention more than a
few of the encounters of the great Indian wars on the
buffalo-range at about the time of the buffalo's disappearance.
The Fetterman Massacre in 1866, near Fort Phil Kearney, a post
located at the edge of the Big Horn Mountains, was a blow which
the Army never has forgotten. "In a place of fifty feet square
lay the bodies of Colonel Fetterman, Captain Brown, and
sixty-five enlisted men. Each man was stripped naked and hacked
and scalped, the skulls beaten in with war clubs and the bodies
gashed with knives almost beyond recognition, with other ghastly
mutilations that the civilized pen hesitates to record."
This tragedy brought the Indian problem before the country as
never before. The hand of the Western rancher and trader was
implacably against the tribesmen of the plains; the city-dweller
of the East, with hazy notions of the Indian character, was
disposed to urge lenient methods upon those responsible for
governmental policy. While the Sioux and Cheyenne wars dragged
on, Congress created, by act of July 20, 1867, a peace commission
of four civilians and three army officers to deal with the
hostile tribes.
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