William J. Fetterman

William Fetterman, born in 1833 in Cheshire, Connecticut, was the son of Army Lieutenant George Fetterman and Anna Maria Judd. George Fetterman graduated from West Point on 1 July 1827 and served in the Army Artillery. At the time of William's birth, Lieutenant Fetterman was assigned to Fort Trumbull, New London, Connecticut.

On April 26, 1835, William's mother Anna Judd Fetterman died. One year later, on May 31, 1836, after nine years of military service, William's father George Fetterman resigned his Army commission and returned to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he worked as a civil engineer and served in the Pennsylvania militia. George Fetterman died in Pittsburgh in 1844.[1]

Fetterman enlisted in the Union Army on May 14, 1861, in Delaware, and was promptly commissioned a first lieutenant. He served with the First Battalion of the US 18th Infantry Regiment throughout the war and was twice brevetted for gallant conduct, finishing the war as a lieutenant colonel of Volunteers.

After the war, he chose to remain in the Regular Army and was assigned as a captain in the Second Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment. In November 1866, the regiment was stationed at Fort Phil Kearny, tasked with protecting immigrants traveling to the gold fields of Montana Territory along the Bozeman Trail. Fetterman allegedly boasted that with 80 soldiers, he could "ride through the whole Sioux nation."[2]

William J. Fetterman's Headstone, Little Bighorn National Cemetery

On December 21, 1866, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux – which included Crazy Horse – under the leadership of Red Cloud attacked a wood train near the fort. Despite his unfamiliarity with frontier conditions and the methods of Indian fighting, Fetterman took command of a composite reaction force consisting of the former battalion quartermaster, Captain Frederick Brown, 2nd Lt. George Grummond, 49 enlisted troops of the 18th Infantry, 27 men of the 2nd Cavalry, and 2 civilian scouts, totaling 80 men. Ignoring his orders not to venture beyond Lodge Trail Ridge (out of sight and support distance from the fort), Fetterman pursued a small band of Sioux and was lured into an ambush. He found himself facing approximately 2,000 Indians. Within 20 minutes, Fetterman and his command had been wiped out.

The Fetterman Fight, as the encounter became known, was second in notoriety only to Custer's disastrous defeat in 1876. It led to the dismissal of Fetterman's commanding officer, Henry B. Carrington, who was initially blamed for the disaster, but was eventually exonerated.

Fetterman's grave is in the National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. He had never married and left no heirs.

Plaque at Fetterman Battle site

In 1867, the army designated a new outpost in the Dakota Territory as "Fort Fetterman" in honor of the slain officer.[3] There is also a Fetterman Street and Fetterman Drive in Laramie, Wyoming.[4]

The actor Robert Fuller played the role of Fetterman in the episode, "Massacre at Fort Phil Kearny", which aired on October 26, 1966, on NBC's anthology television series, Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. Others who appeared in the segment were Richard Egan and Phyllis Avery as Colonel Henry Carrington and his wife, Margaret Carrington, Robert Pine as Lieutenant Brown, and Carroll O'Connor as Captain Ten Eyck.[5]

• Brown, Dee, The Fetterman Massacre, University of Nebraska Press, 1971. ISBN 0-8032-5730-9.
• The short and controversial life of William Judd Fetterman, Annals of Wyoming by Wyoming State Historical Society, 1991.

• Fetterman battle on Friends of the Little Big Horn site
• Fetterman battlefield photos