52 ADVENTURES OF DR. ALLEN. 



well-defined gravel-beds. The grass is deep and luxuriant. 

 From here westward the country is mountainous. During 

 the day we saw antelopes and a white-tail deer, but they 

 were too far off for a shot. 



Our next camp was on Big Piny Creek, at old Fort 

 Phil Kearney. The fort had been burned to the ground 

 some time previously. Human skeletons, bleaching in the 

 sun, told us a sad story of a heartless massacre. The fort 

 was established in July, 1866. Forts Reno and Phil Kear- 

 ney and old Fort Smith on the Big Horn were built to pro- 

 tect the overland trail and the miners who thronged this 

 thoroughfare on their way to the gold fields of Montana. 

 Near Fort Kearney, Colonel Fetterman and eighty-four sol- 

 diers were massacred by Indians. They were in the line of 

 duty, covering the trail of wood-haulers, and guarding them 

 from danger. 



The massacre occurred on December twenty-first, 1866. 

 No one was left to tell the sad story except the woodchop- 

 pers, who heard the firing. It seems that there was a lack of 

 good scouts in this particular locality. About 1868, "Portu- 

 gee" Phillips was the scout to carry the first news of Phil 

 Kearney's massacre to the army officials at Fort Laramie, 

 and they thereupon buried the brave boys. We stopped and 

 made camp, to view the battlefield or rather the place of the 

 massacre. The soldiers were passing to the north, when, 

 ambushed by an overwhelming number of Sioux, they were 

 shot down from a ravine filled with chokecherry brush and 

 willows. As we passed the line of graves on the sharp 

 ridge, now near the main traveled road from Sheridan to 

 Buffalo, we were greatly impressed by the evidence of the 

 savagery of the children of the plains ; we were not less 

 impressed by the generosity and bravery of the soldiers who 

 had here laid down their lives to help blaze the trail for the 

 millions who will hereafter travel this road of civilization. 



