Hayfield Fight

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=Hayfield Fight
partof=Red Cloud's War
date=August 1, 1867
place=near Fort C. F. Smith, Montana
result=U.S. victory
combatant1=United States
combatant2=Cheyenne and Sioux Indians
commander1=Sigismund Sternberg, Al Colvin
commander2=
strength1=21 soldiers, 6 civilians
strength2=500-800
casualties1=3 killed
4 wounded
casualties2=60-300 killed
300 wounded (various estimates)

The Hayfield Fight was an engagement of Red Cloud's War on August 1, 1867, between troops of the U.S. Army and Native Americans, mostly Cheyenne warriors.

Background

In July 1867, after their annual sun dance, bands of Oglala Lakota under Red Cloud and the other Powder River Sioux joined with Northern Cheyenne on the Little Bighorn River, where they resolved to destroy nearby Fort C.F. Smith and Fort Phil Kearny, against which they had been engaged for a year to prevent travel on the Bozeman Trail. Unable to resolve which to destroy first, the bands split into two large bodies, with approximately 500-800 moving against Fort C.F. Smith and the rest, including Red Cloud, headed to Fort Phil Kearny.

The battle

On August 1, 1867, Lt. Sigismund Sternberg of the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry with a force of 19 soldiers and 6 civilian haycutters defended themselves against attacks by 500 to 800 Cheyenne and Sioux warriors near Fort C. F. Smith along the Bozeman Trail, near the Bighorn River in Montana.

The defenders occupied a woven willow and log stockade, and survived repeated attacks from early morning until nearly sundown, when a relief force from the Fort used a howitzer to disperse the remaining Sioux, who had appeared by then to have given up the fight. Lt. Sternberg and a Sergeant Navin were killed, as was civilian J. C. Hollister. Sternberg refused to fight prone behind the makeshift works and was shot through the head.

One of the civilians, Al Colvin, a Civil War veteran, styled Captain Colvin, is credited with coordinating the defense after Sternberg and Navin were killed early in the fight. The soldiers' survival was attributed to the recent issue of Springfield Model 1866 .50-caliber breech-loading rifles (which had been supplied as a direct result of the Fetterman massacre, in which the U.S. infantry had been armed with muzzle-loaders), and to Colvin's most effective use of his 16-shot Henry rifle--a crack shot, he was reported to have fired over three hundred rounds at ranges often within 100 yards.

The next day, near Fort Phil Kearny, the larger force of Sioux was defeated in an almost identical fashion at the Wagon Box Fight.

ources

* The Bozeman Trail: Historical Accounts of the Blazing of the Overland Routes, Volume II, by By Grace Raymond Hebard, et al. digitized at http://books.google.com/books?id=Jc8BAAAAMAAJ - participant report.