Wagon Box Fight

Monument at the scene of the fight

Date	August 2, 1867
Location	near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming Territory, Bozeman Trail, and modern-day Story and Banner
Result	Inconclusive

Belligerents

United States

Lakota Sioux

Commanders and leaders

James Powell

Red Cloud
Crazy Horse
Hump (High Backbone)

Strength

26 soldiers, 6 civilians

300-1,000

Casualties and losses

7 killed
2 wounded

6 killed
6 wounded

The Wagon Box Fight was an engagement on August 2, 1867, in the vicinity of Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, during Red Cloud's War. A party of 26 U.S. Army soldiers and 6 civilians were attacked by several hundred Lakota Sioux warriors. Although outnumbered, the soldiers were armed with newly supplied breech-loading Springfield Model 1866 rifles and Lever Action Henry rifles, and had a defensive wall of wagon boxes to protect them. They held off the attackers for hours with few casualties, although they lost a large number of horses and mules driven off by the raiders.

This was the last major engagement of the war, although Lakota and allied forces continued to raid European-American parties along the Bozeman Trail. The area has been designated as a Wyoming State Historic Site and is marked by a memorial and an historic plaque.

In July 1867, after their annual sun dance at camps on the Tongue and Rosebud rivers, Oglala Lakota warriors under Red Cloud, other bands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and a few Arapaho resolved to attack the soldiers at nearby Fort C.F. Smith and Fort Phil Kearny. These would be the first major military actions of 1867 against government forces in the area, following up the Native American successes in 1866, including the Fetterman Fight. Unable to agree where to attack first, the Sioux and Cheyenne force - variously estimated at between 300 and 1,000 men - split into two large bodies, moving against Fort C.F. Smith, and a similar number, mostly Sioux and possibly including Red Cloud, headed toward Fort Phil Kearny.

In addition to guarding emigrants on the Bozeman Trail, major tasks occupying the 350 soldiers and 100 civilians at Fort Phil Kearny included gathering wood and timber from a pine forest about five miles from the Fort and cutting hay for livestock in prairie areas. These jobs were performed by civilian contractors, usually armed with Spencer repeating rifles and accompanied and guarded by squads of soldiers. The hay cutters and wood gatherers had been a favorite target of the local Indian warriors since Fort Kearny was established one year earlier. The Indians had conducted dozens of small raids, killing several dozen soldiers and civilians, and driving off hundreds of head of livestock for their own use.

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Wikipedia