Native horsemen could not simply wait for a single volley and then overwhelm men struggling to reload.
The fight demonstrated that the Army had learned something.
The following day near Fort Phil Kearny, an even more famous encounter reinforced the lesson.
The Wagon Box Fight looked like revenge for Fetterman, but it was not strategic victory
On August 2, 1867, soldiers and civilians associated with a woodcutting party took defensive positions behind wagon boxes near Fort Phil Kearny.
Hundreds of Native warriors attacked them.
The defenders carried new breech-loading Springfields.
WyoHistory estimates that the weapons could be fired many times faster than the muzzle-loaders used by Fetterman's infantry. The soldiers also possessed thousands of cartridges and a compact defensive position. (WyoHistory)
The attacks failed to destroy them.
Native casualties were significant, although later estimates vary widely and some older numbers are almost certainly exaggerated.
The important tactical result was unmistakable.
A frontal mounted attack against concentrated breech-loading rifle fire could be extremely costly.
The battle became known as the Wagon Box Fight.
To the Army, it demonstrated that technology and disciplined defensive fire could reverse the conditions of the Fetterman disaster.
Yet something strange followed.
The Army won the immediate fight.
It still lost the road.
Tactical success did not solve the strategic problem
This is the part of Red Cloud's War that is easiest to misunderstand.
If American soldiers could now defend themselves more effectively, why did Washington agree to abandon the forts only a year later?
The answer lies in the difference between winning a firefight and accomplishing a national objective.
The objective was not merely to keep several dozen soldiers alive behind wagon boxes.
The objective was to maintain a reliable route through the Powder River country.
That required far more than better rifles.
The Army needed regular freight movement.
It needed safe woodcutting.
It needed communications.
It needed enough animals.
It needed enough soldiers to escort vulnerable work parties.
It needed contractors willing to travel.
It needed civilians to believe the road was worth using.
Native resistance kept attacking those requirements.
The National Park Service notes that ordinary emigrant use of the Bozeman Trail had already fallen sharply before the fort system was completed. Continued fighting turned the road increasingly into a military supply route that existed largely to support the forts protecting the road. (Dịch vụ Công viên Quốc gia Hoa Kỳ)
That is strategically dangerous.
A road intended to create expansion was consuming resources merely to keep itself open.
The forts became part of the problem they were supposed to solve.
Washington had other priorities
The United States had just emerged from the Civil War.
The regular Army shrank rapidly after 1865.
Large numbers of troops were needed elsewhere, including in the former Confederate states during Reconstruction and along many different western routes.
Army historical writing notes that the postwar force was dramatically smaller than the wartime Union Army. (Quân đội Mỹ)
At the same time, another transportation revolution was changing the importance of the Bozeman Trail.
The transcontinental railroad was moving west.
Rail transportation would soon offer routes toward the West that reduced the strategic importance of defending one dangerous wagon road through the Powder River basin.
WyoHistory's account of the Wagon Box Fight notes that by 1868 the railroad was nearing completion and offered an alternative route toward the Montana gold fields. (WyoHistory)
This does not mean Red Cloud's resistance was irrelevant because the road later became less valuable.
The opposite is closer to the evidence.
Persistent Native military pressure increased the cost of holding a route whose economic value was simultaneously being reduced by changing transportation.
Those two forces worked together.
The United States could continue an expensive war over the Bozeman Trail.
Or it could negotiate, close the trail, and concentrate resources elsewhere.
By late 1867, peace looked increasingly attractive.
Congress created the Indian Peace Commission
The broader frontier wars of the 1860s had created concern far beyond the Powder River country.
A congressional investigation known as the Doolittle Commission examined conditions among Native nations and the conduct of federal officials. The findings included serious criticism of corruption and mismanagement.
In 1867, Congress created the Indian Peace Commission to negotiate settlements and reduce warfare on the Plains.
National Park Service material describes the commission as part of a shift toward negotiation after repeated conflict and growing concern over the cost and consequences of military campaigns. (Dịch vụ Công viên Quốc gia Hoa Kỳ)
The commission faced an immediate problem in the north.
Red Cloud and other leaders were not desperate for an agreement.
They had kept the Bozeman Trail under pressure.
The forts were isolated.
The road was barely functioning as an emigrant route.
The Army's improved rifles had made some attacks more costly, but they had not removed Native control over the surrounding country.
The negotiating position was therefore unusual.
The United States wanted peace badly enough to consider abandoning territory it had already occupied.
Red Cloud's condition was clear
Peace commissioners came west in 1867.