Hayfield Fight was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Montana, 1867.
On August 1, 1867, near Fort C. F. Smith, Montana, a clash unfolded as part of Red Cloud's War that pitted twenty-one U.S. Army soldiers and nine civilian hay cutters against several hundred Native Americans, primarily Cheyenne and Arapaho fighters joined by some Lakota Sioux. Equipped with the recently issued breechloading Springfield Model 1866 rifles, the small band of defenders, vastly outnumbered, managed to repel their attackers while inflicting losses upon them.
Though this encounter closely resembles the Wagon Box Fight in both its circumstances and the casualties suffered, an event that occurred just one day later near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, it has never attracted quite the same degree of historical scrutiny. Scholars examining both incidents point to the defenders' fortified positions and their advanced rifles as the key factors allowing them to withstand the much larger Powder River warrior forces arrayed against them. Although the Wagon Box Fight stands as the conflict's final major engagement, hostilities did not simply cease afterward; native raiders kept striking at travelers, soldiers, telegraph lines, and the Union Pacific Railway then under construction. Only the following year, through treaty, did the war finally reach its conclusion. According to historian Jerome Green, the Hayfield Fight served to highlight just how ineffective military policy had been in the region before the federal government temporarily withdrew from it.
On August 1, 1867, near Fort C. F. Smith, Montana, a clash unfolded as part of Red Cloud's War that pitted twenty-one U.S. Army soldiers and nine civilian hay cutters against several hundred Native Americans, primarily Cheyenne and Arapaho fighters joined by some Lakota Sioux. Equipped with the recently issued breechloading Springfield Model 1866 rifles, the small band of defenders, vastly outnumbered, managed to repel their attackers while inflicting losses upon them.
Though this encounter closely resembles the Wagon Box Fight in both its circumstances and the casualties suffered, an event that occurred just one day later near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, it has never attracted quite the same degree of historical scrutiny. Scholars examining both incidents point to the defenders' fortified positions and their advanced rifles as the key factors allowing them to withstand the much larger Powder River warrior forces arrayed against them. Although the Wagon Box Fight stands as the conflict's final major engagement, hostilities did not simply cease afterward; native raiders kept striking at travelers, soldiers, telegraph lines, and the Union Pacific Railway then under construction. Only the following year, through treaty, did the war finally reach its conclusion. According to historian Jerome Green, the Hayfield Fight served to highlight just how ineffective military policy had been in the region before the federal government temporarily withdrew from it.
The United States established Fort C.F. Smith in 1866 as one of three outposts meant to shield emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail, the route stretching from Fort Laramie in Wyoming toward Montana's gold fields. Standing roughly 200 miles from Fort Laramie, it held the distinction of being both the northernmost and the loneliest of the trio.
The trail cut directly through the Powder River Country, home to the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, and Crow. Three of these groups deeply resented the emigrants passing through and the unlawful stationing of government troops along the route. During what became known as Red Cloud's War, the Lakota and their allies struck back again and again, targeting soldiers, civilians, and fort-connected parties moving along the corridor. Their most striking success came on December 21, 1866, near Fort Kearney, when Lakota warriors ambushed William J. Fetterman and wiped out every one of the 80 men under his command. Until the Little Bighorn, no other Native American victory had inflicted such heavy losses on US troops.
Unlike the other tribes, the Crow generally sided with American forces, having themselves been pushed out of portions of their homeland by Lakota expansion during the 1850s and 1860s. Fort C.F. Smith itself rose within territory granted to the Crow under the 1851 treaty, and a number of Crow settled nearby seeking trade opportunities and protection. That first winter, spanning 1866 to 1867, proved brutal for the men stationed there, forcing them to survive on animal feed grain since resupply routes stayed blocked until spring arrived late.
By summer 1867 the raids against Fort Smith picked up again. In June alone, Lakota raiders made off with 40 mules and horses in a single strike, scattered the animals belonging to an army supply train, and kept pressuring the Crow settled near the post. Then on July 12, Crow scouts brought word that large numbers of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters were massing in the Rosebud Valley, some 50 miles to the east.
Reinforcements reached the fort on July 23 in the form of two infantry companies under Lt. Col. Luther P. Bradley, who was stepping in to take command. Bradley carried with him new breechloading Springfield Model 1866 rifles, meant to replace the troops' outdated muzzle-loaders. Where the old muskets managed only 3 rounds per minute, these new weapons fired 8 to 10, and soldiers could reload them without even rising from a prone position. Once these reinforcements settled in, the garrison numbered around 350 troops along with several civilian contractors, though soldiers were often pulled away to escort mining expeditions. Most civilians carried 7-shot Spencer repeaters for their own defense.
Among the fort's essential tasks was harvesting and drying grass into hay, needed to sustain livestock through the brutal winter months. Two and a half miles away, the garrison had constructed a fortified corral specifically to protect the civilians cutting hay. This structure measured 100 by 60 feet (about 30 by 18 meters), built atop large logs with a lattice framework rising above them, and defensive trenches dug into each corner. Inside stood tents and a line for tethering livestock, while three rifle pits sat just outside the enclosure.
Following their annual sun dance in late July 1867, Oglala Lakota bands led by Red Cloud, joined by other Powder River Sioux, converged with Northern Cheyenne forces along the Little Bighorn River. There they decided to strike both Fort C.F. Smith and Fort Phil Kearny. Roughly 1500 warriors assembled in this stretch of the Rosebud Valley, but disagreement over which fort to hit first led them to divide into two separate forces, several hundred warriors turning toward Fort C.F. Smith while a comparable number, Red Cloud among them, set out for Fort Phil Kearny.
At dawn on August 1, 1867, sentries stationed on a nearby rise spotted a substantial body of Indians moving toward the hayfield and shouted the alarm to those working below. The men scrambled toward the log corral for safety. Lieutenant Sigismund Sternberg of the 27th Infantry, along with his twenty soldiers and nine civilian workers, managed to reach the enclosure just in time. So swift was the Indian advance that the attackers seized the rifle pits surrounding the corral before the defenders could secure them, forcing soldiers and civilians alike to crouch behind the log walls for protection. When the troops unleashed their opening volley, the attackers charged forward, betting that reloading the old rifle-muskets would take the defenders half a minute or more. Instead the soldiers stunned them by firing a second round almost immediately, thanks to their newly issued breech-loading rifles that fired far quicker than expected. This unexpected volume of fire forced the Indians to pull back temporarily, buying the defenders precious time to strengthen their position, digging trenches and packing wagon boxes with earth as bullet shields. Sternberg fell dead from a gunshot wound during the fighting. Command passed to Sergeant James Horton, who himself soon suffered serious wounds, and leadership then fell to a civilian named D. A. Colvin, who took charge of organizing the corral's defense.
The attackers surged forward once more, this time descending from the bluffs to the east and south, and although the defenders drove them back again, the assault cost another soldier's life and left two more wounded. The Indians tried using fire arrows to ignite both the surrounding grass and the fort's lattice wall, but a shift in wind direction snuffed out the flames before they could spread. Throughout the remainder of the morning, both sides exchanged sporadic sniper fire. Despite the fighting's noise, which surely carried the distance to Fort Smith, no relief column emerged from the fort.
Around midday the Indians pulled back, allowing the soldiers to slip down to the river and refill their water barrel. Fighting resumed that afternoon, though by then the defenders had entrenched themselves solidly. The attackers found themselves short on ammunition, and their arrows proved largely ineffective against men sheltered behind the log barricades. Instead, they turned their fire on the corral's pack animals, killing two mules outright and severely wounding seventeen of the remaining twenty-two. Near one o'clock, a Lieutenant Palmer, who was escorting a wood-laden wagon train, happened to witness the battle from atop a hill and rushed word of it to Colonel Murray back at Fort Smith, describing an assault by roughly 800 Indians against the hayfield corral. Not long after, Private Charles Bradley managed to break free of the corral on horseback and rode hard for the fort to spread word of the ongoing attack. Murray assembled a response but held back the twenty mounted soldiers from investigating until four in the afternoon, and this detachment soon found itself under fire as well. Murray then dispatched a full company as reinforcement, equipped with a howitzer for additional firepower. By the time this relief force arrived at the corral around sundown, the bulk of the Indian force had already broken off the fight and withdrawn. The last of the soldiers made it back to Fort Smith by 8:30 that evening.
Travelers wishing to see where the Hayfield Fight took place can do so, since the ground lies on privately owned land to the northeast of Fort Smith and remains open to visitors. Access begins on Montana Highway 313, which meets Rte 12 within Fort Smith itself. From that junction, one should travel east along Highway 313 for a distance of 3.12 miles.
At that point the highway meets Co. Rd. 40A, sometimes called Warman Loop, a route heading north toward the Bighorn River's Three Mile fishing access. Turning north onto Co. Rd. 40A and continuing for 1.8 miles brings the traveler past the Bighorn Canal on its northern side. Here, Co. Rd. 40A crosses paths with NE Warman Loup, a branch veering off to the left that traces the canal's north bank. Nestled between these two roads sits a wedge-shaped tract of land. Roughly 124 feet into this triangular parcel stands the marker commemorating the Hayfield Fight, positioned just outside the entrance to Cottonwood Camp.
In his official account, Lt. Col. Luther Bradley made light of what had happened, and later historians largely followed his lead, leaving the Hayfield Fight as something of a footnote. Yet in scale and result it closely mirrors the Wagon Box Fight, fought just one day afterward near Fort Phil Kearny. Several of Bradley's own men faulted him for holding back reinforcements while their comrades remained pinned down in the hayfield.
Taken together, the two engagements seem to have dampened the Indians' appetite for mounting further large-scale assaults on the Bozeman Trail during the year that remained in Red Cloud's War. Even so, smaller raids along the Trail persisted, and throughout the Powder River Country the US military found itself still holding a defensive posture.
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