Give Me Eighty Men: Women and the Myth of the Fetterman Fight (review)

This slender volume presents an anatomy of an Indian Wars battle. In the process it accomplishes two things. First, it offers a detailed account of what happened before, during, and after the December 21, 1866, Fetterman Fight near Ft. Phil Kearny (in present day Wyoming). The object is to determine who bears primary responsibility for the catastrophic army defeat. Second, it analyzes the role that women played in shaping historical explanations of that defeat. Shannon Smith argues that the fort's commanding officer's two wives effectively defended their husband's reputation, in their memoirs, by shifting blame onto another officer. The latter not only died in the battle, but had no family to defend his name. For over a century the wives' version prevailed. This is a work, then, about military history and about how people, including women, have shaped the telling of it.

The Fetterman Fight pitted U.S. army troops against Lakota and Cheyenne men who objected to Bozeman Trail traffic through their hunting grounds. Conflicts were particularly hot around Fort Phil Kearny, built to afford protection to the trail but virtually under siege during its short life. The Fetterman Fight was a spectacular victory for the Native Americans and an army defeat of this magnitude demanded explanation. So army officials blamed Colonel Henry B. Carrington, the post's commander. But Smith concludes that "when searching for blame, it is unfair to point to the men in the field" (p. 198). Nevertheless, Carrington's superiors did not acknowledge their own responsibility, including refusal to provide Carrington with sufficient troops and supplies. These men were embroiled in their own political battles for control in the postwar quagmire of Washington politics and left troops without adequate support. A cover-up at the highest levels, then, made Carrington the scapegoat. Consequently, Carrington and his wives, in self defense, blamed Captain William Fetterman for the defeat.

It is the latter story that particularly interests Smith. That Margaret Carrington accompanied her husband to Fort Phil Kearny was something of a fluke. It certainly signaled the army's miscalculation of the level of Lakota and Cheyenne resistance to their presence at this post. Her presence proved historically significant, however. Not long after his superiors relieved Carrington of his duties there, Margaret applied her writing talents to a book about her western experiences and an explanation of the Fetterman disaster. She concluded that Fetterman was an arrogant hothead who supposedly boasted, "With eighty men I could ride through the Sioux Nation." It was his impetuous recklessness, she implied, which led to defeat. Her husband was blameless. Margaret died in 1870 and the following year Carrington remarried. His second wife, Frances Grummond, interestingly had also been at Fort Phil Kearny that fateful day when her husband died in the battle. Eventually, Frances published her own memoir, which featured a similar interpretation designed to restore Carrington's reputation and impugn Fetterman's.

Ever since, Smith argues, historians have accepted the womens' word. In part, officers were unwilling to break "the code of chivalry" and challenge the women publically. Historians did not conduct the painstaking, detailed research that Smith herself demonstrates here. So, an interpretation designed to defend a husband ends up unfairly stigmatizing Fetterman and shapes the story's telling for decades.

This idea is not completely new. Several historians have recognized the Carrington women's motives were self-serving. But what Smith accomplishes here is a more systematic application of gender analysis. She updates our understanding of this event by applying the fresh perspective offered by women's and gender scholarship. That Smith links this to a more traditional approach – that is, a scrupulously careful investigation of official documents – means readers who might not necessarily pick up a book on gender history, will see the value and importance of applying it to all avenues of scholarship even – perhaps...