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The Wagon Box Fight was an engagement on August 2, 1867, during Red Cloud's War, between 26 soldiers of the U.S. Army and six civilians and several hundred Lakota Sioux in the vicinity of Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming. The outnumbered soldiers held off the attackers with newly issued breech-loading Springfield Model 1866 rifles. ==Background== In July 1867, after their annual sun dance at camps on the Tongue and Rosebud rivers, Oglala Lakota warriors under Red Cloud, other bands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and a few Arapaho resolved to attack the soldiers at nearby Fort C.F. Smith and Fort Phil Kearny. These would be the first major military actions of 1867 against government forces in the area, following up the Native American successes in 1866, including the Fetterman Fight. Unable to agree where to attack first, the Sioux and Cheyenne force - variously estimated at between 300 and 1,000 men - split into two large bodies, moving against Fort C.F. Smith, and a similar number, mostly Sioux and possibly including Red Cloud, headed toward Fort Phil Kearny.〔Hyde, George E. ''Red Cloud's Folks'', Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937, p. 159; Olson, pp. 63-64〕 In addition to guarding emigrants on the Bozeman Trail, major tasks occupying the 350 soldiers and 100 White American civilians at Fort Phil Kearny included gathering wood and timber from a pine forest about five miles from the Fort and cutting hay for livestock in prairie areas. These jobs were performed by civilian contractors, usually armed with Spencer repeating rifles and accompanied and guarded by squads of soldiers. The hay cutters and wood gatherers had been a favorite target of the local people since the establishment of Fort Kearny one year earlier. Dozens of small raids had been directed against them; several dozen soldiers and civilians had been killed and hundreds of head of livestock had been taken.〔Price, Catherine ''The Oglala People, 1841-1879: A Political History'' Lincoln: U of NE, 1996, p. 64〕 The soldiers were on the defensive. Their capability to strike back at the indigenous population was severely limited by both a shortage of horses and trained cavalrymen, and their weapons, which consisted of muzzle-loading Springfield Model 1861 muskets. However, the soldiers had recently been issued breech-loading rifles that could fire about three times faster than muzzle-loaders and could be more easily re-loaded from a prone position.〔Brown, Dee ''The Fetterman Massacre'' Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962, p. 223〕 The native population were poorly armed, probably possessing only about 200 firearms and less than two bullets per gun.〔Ambrose, Stephen E. ''Crazy Horse and Custer'' New York: Anchor Books, 1996, p. 293〕 Bows and arrows were their basic weapon. Whilst bows were deadly at short range in a fight against a mobile opponent, whether on horseback or on foot, they were ineffective against a well entrenched or fortified enemy. To protect against raids near the pine forest, the civilian contractors had constructed a corral made by removing 14 of the wooden boxes that rested on the chassis of wagons and placing them on the ground in an oval 60-70 feet (20 mts) long and 25-30 feet (8-9 mts) wide. Both soldiers and civilians in the wood-cutting details lived in tents outside the corral of wagon boxes. On July 31, Captain James Powell and his command of 51 troops departed the walls of Fort Kearny on a 30 day assignment to camp near the wagon boxes and guard the wood cutters. Until then, the summer had been quiet, with few hostile encounters with the local population.〔Keenan, p. 1992, p. 9〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wagon Box Fight」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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