Qualla: Fort Phil Kearny

Fort Phil Kearny: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Napa, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Lakota called it 'the hated post on the Little Piney.' To the U.S. Army, it was the largest and most important fortification on the Bozeman Trail. Construction began on Friday, July 13, 1866, an unlucky date for an unlucky post. Over the next two years, Fort Phil Kearny would witness some of the bloodiest fighting of the Indian Wars, including the annihilation of an entire command. When the soldiers finally marched away in 1868, Cheyenne warriors burned every building to the ground.

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Image: Napa | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Phil Kearny: Building in Hostile Country

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Napa, CC BY-SA 3.0. Colonel Henry B. Carrington led Companies A, C, E, and H of the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry into the Powder River Country in the summer of 1866. Their mission: build a fort to protect miners heading north from the Oregon Trail to the Montana gold fields. The site they chose sat ...

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Image: Napa | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Phil Kearny: The Fetterman Disaster

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On December 21, 1866, Captain William J. Fetterman led 80 soldiers out of the fort to relieve a wood train under attack. Fetterman had reportedly boasted that with 80 men he could ride through the entire Sioux nation. Warriors from a confederation of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Fort Phil Kearny: Wagon Boxes and Last Stands

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DA Poster 21-45, Public domain. The following summer brought the Wagon Box Fight. On August 2, 1867, warriors attacked soldiers and civilian woodcutters near a corral of wagon boxes about two miles from the fort. This time, the defenders held newly issued breech-loading Springfield rifles that allowed faster re...

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Image: DA Poster 21-45 | Public domain

Fort Phil Kearny: Treaty and Flames

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Naawada2016, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1868, the Union Pacific Railroad had pushed far enough west that emigrants could reach Montana through Idaho, bypassing the dangerous Bozeman Trail entirely. The Treaty of Fort Laramie that year ceded the Powder River Country to the Lakota. Red Cloud had won his war. Fort Phil...

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Image: Naawada2016 | CC BY-SA 4.0