The first battle fought between the United States Army and Indians west of the Mississippi River was downplayed by authorities of the times and, even today, is seldom mentioned in the history books.
Yet, the Arikara Campaign of 1823—though claimed a victory by the army’s commanding officer, but which can be termed nothing more gracious than an outright defeat—was important.
The brief action and the antics surrounding the battle sent a clear message to Indian tribes throughout the Missouri River valley that the Great Father’s soldiers might not be as powerful as they had thought them to be.
Many of the tribes, armed with this information, recalled the questionable outcome of the fight as they continued their frequent forays in years to come among the fur trappers and traders on the Missouri River.
On March 10, 1823, General William Ashley left St. Louis with about ninety men aboard the keelboats, Yellow Stone Packet and The Rocky Mountains. Ashley was bound for the upper Missouri River to join forces with his partner, Major Andrew Henry, who had travelled upriver the previous year and wintered in a hastily constructed fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
In Search Of Horses
Henry’s party was short of horses due to some thieving Assiniboines, and Ashley was to buy as many animals as he could from the Indians along the Missouri and deliver them to the fort.
Ashley and his expedition arrived at the villages of the Arikara Indians on May 30, 1823. Sometimes called “Rees” by the trapping and trading fraternity, the Arikaras lived in two towns located about three or four hundred yards apart and perched on a bluff along the west bank of the Missouri River in present-day South Dakota.
Over the years, the tribe had maintained fickle relationships with traders and explorers. Both times that Lewis and Clark passed their villages—in 1804 on the outbound journey to the Pacific and in 1806 on the return trip to St. Louis—the Arikaras had been friendly.
By 1807, they had turned hostile to whites, and waylaid Ensign Nathaniel Pryor’s party while he attempted to return a Mandan chief to his homeland from St. Louis.
By 1809, when fur trader Manuel Lisa sent an expedition up the Missouri, the Rees, professing sorrow for what they had done to Pryor’s party, once more professed to be friendly.
And so it went, this on-again, off-again, hostility toward white traders, until 1822 when the Arikaras were peaceful to both the Ashley and Henry parties that had forged up the Missouri River at different times of the year.
Friend Or Foe
But now it was a year later, and as Ashley and his two boatloads of men and supplies neared the Arikara villages he had no way of determining whether the Indians would be friendly or not.
Leaving his boats in the middle of the Missouri out of harm’s way, Ashley went ashore in a skiff and was met by Little Soldier and Grey Eyes, two high-ranking chiefs of the Arikaras. After a brief parley, the Indians returned to their village, advising Ashley that they would hold a council, at which time it would be decided if the Americans would be treated as friend or foe.
Later that same day Grey Eyes returned to the beach and advised General Ashley that the elders of the tribe had voted to allow his party to pass in peace. Ashley, much relieved to hear the news, immediately pressed the chief for horses. Grey Eyes replied that Ashley’s men could camp on the beach, and that a few horses would be brought there the following morning.
Early the next day trading began. Ashley was still cautious, however, and left his boats in mid-stream, carrying his trading goods back and forth in a smaller craft. The Rees brought nineteen horses and more than two hundred buffalo robes for trading. Later in the evening, when one of the chiefs wanted to trade for guns and ammunition he was refused, and affairs took on a gloomy pall.
On the following day, a storm delayed the commencement of trading but as evening approached Ashley was invited to visit the lodge of The Bear, principal chief of one of the villages.
The general accepted and he and his interpreter, the half-Black mountain man Edward Rose, attended what began as a friendly meeting. As the evening wore on, however, Ashley was surprised to be told by Little Soldier that his camp would be attacked before his trading party left the villages.
To Heed The Warning, Or Not
General Ashley was confused. Should he heed Little Soldier’s words of warning and prepare his men for a possible attack? Or was Little Soldier’s tale just a ruse to excite and frighten the Americans into panicking, at which time the horses traded earlier could be recovered?
It didn’t take long to find out.
Just past midnight Edward Rose told Ashley that a trader who was spending the night in one of the villages had been murdered. Ashley alerted his men to arm themselves and stand by at the ready.
As dawn broke, the Rees in the lower village commenced firing upon the trappers and traders who were camped on the beach.
Many of the men in Ashley’s party took cover behind the horses that they had only recently acquired from the Rees. No matter, in a few minutes the Indians had shot most of the animals, and Ashley’s shore party was exposed to the blistering fire coming from the village.
In time, Ashley regained some semblance of order among his disheveled little army and the two boats dropped downstream out of danger.
When he counted casualties, Ashley learned that twenty-four men, approximately one-fourth of his total force, had either been killed or severely wounded. He quickly outlined a plan to the survivors to reinforce the boats and try to pass the Ree villages again, but many of his followers absolutely refused.
With no other alternative, the general sent the boatmen and the wounded back down river to the settlements, dispatched Jedediah Smith upstream to Major Henry’s fort for help, and loaded The Rocky Mountains with supplies and the men who had volunteered to stay.
Dropping down the Missouri as far as the mouth of the Cheyenne River, Ashley prepared for a long wait.
This was the situation on June 18, 1823, when the Yellow Stone Packet arrived at Fort Atkinson, some ten days downriver from Ashley’s encampment at the mouth of the Cheyenne River.
Colonel Henry Leavenworth, the commanding officer of the fort, and Benjamin O’Fallon, the Indian agent, reviewed Ashley’s dispatch with disbelief.
It’s An Outrage
After describing the details of the skirmish at the Arikara towns, General Ashley told his readers that, "I have thought proper to communicate this affair to you as early as opportunity offered, believing that you would feel disposed to make these people account to the government for the outrage committed."
Leavenworth was a veteran of the War of 1812 and had served conspicuously at the battles of Chippewa and Niagara Falls.
Because of the Ashley party's imminent danger, rather than spend precious time getting approval from authorities downriver for deployment of his troops, he assembled the commanding officers of Companies A, B, D, E, F, and G of the 6th Infantry Regiment and gave them orders to move upriver to the aid of General Ashley.
In the meantime, O’Fallon approached Joshua Pilcher, the head of General Ashley’s competition, the Missouri Fur Company, for assistance. Pilcher volunteered to accompany Leavenworth as a special agent of the Indian Department, while O’Fallon stayed behind at Fort Atkinson to keep an eye on the local Indian population.
As part of the deal, Pilcher volunteered as many of his own Missouri Fur employees as he could spare, looking at this opportunity as repayment to the Rees for their attack on one of his own company’s posts earlier in the year.
Aided By The Sioux
As preparations were made to rescue Ashley, several hundred Sioux warriors were recruited to ride ahead of the boats.
The plan was for the mounted Sioux, serving as shock troops, to arrive first at the Arikara villages. Once the battle was fully involved, the army would pull up and use artillery to decimate the Ree towns.
O’Fallon cautioned Pilcher, "Always bear in mind that it is not only an individual but the whole A’rickara nation that owes us blood and I am in hopes that no true American will tamely stand by and witness the reception or even recognize a white flag, so long as the brow of an A’rickara is decorated with the scalp of our people."
O’Fallon was so emotionally charged about the prospects of a quick and lasting American victory over the Arikaras that he persuaded about twenty of the forty-three deserters into going back upriver with the army to “revenge the death and bury the bones of your more than brave comrades."
On June 20, O’Fallon sent an express to General Ashley advising him that a contingent of the 6th United States Infantry and a large group of Missouri Fur Company employees would soon be on their way to his relief.
Two days later, Leavenworth and his regiment left Fort Atkinson aboard three keelboats carrying some of the men, the supplies, and two six-pounder cannons. Pilcher, along with sixty men, two boats, and the army’s 5½ inch howitzer left the fort later, but within five days had caught up with Leavenworth.
In the meantime, seven soldiers were drowned, and a large supply of muskets, bayonets, and salt pork was lost when one of the boats hit a snag in the river. Five days after that tragedy, the Yellow Stone Packet was nearly lost in a violent storm.
At Fort Recovery, a Missouri Fur Company post located a few miles above the mouth of the White River, the “Missouri Legion,” as Colonel Leavenworth now called the mixed army under his command, halted for rest and repair of the boats.
Meanwhile, Jedediah Smith had reached Major Andrew Henry’s post at the mouth of the Yellowstone and advised him of Ashley’s predicament. The major assembled his men and appointed twenty of them to stay behind to protect the fort. With the rest, Henry and Smith started down the Missouri in a small fleet of canoes and pirogues.
When Henry’s men passed the Ree villages going downstream, the Indians attempted to get them to stop and trade, but the experienced major passed them by and joined his partner sometime around the first week of July.
Will Anybody Help?
At this time Ashley had not yet received O’Fallon’s letter of June 20 promising relief and was not placing much stock in the army providing a rescue party. He thought he would be better served to procure horses and send several overland parties out for the fall trapping season. Perhaps he could at least salvage something of this economically ruinous situation that he found himself in.
Accordingly, the now combined Ashley and Henry forces dropped downstream to the mouth of the Teton River, hoping to find enough animals among the Sioux to get their new scheme underway. No horses were to be found.
Leaving Henry at the Teton, Ashley and a few men dropped even farther downstream, still hoping to run into some Sioux who wanted to trade. When he reached Fort Kiowa, O’Fallon’s letter was waiting for him and when he read it, he immediately rejoined Major Henry to share the good news with him.
Meanwhile, Colonel Leavenworth and Joshua Pilcher were still traveling upstream, gathering along the way as many Sioux warriors as they could for service against the Rees.
On July 30, Leavenworth’s army and the Ashley/Henry men met. The combined force now consisted of the Army’s 6th Infantry, the men of Pilcher’s Missouri Fur Company, about eighty Ashley/Henry trappers, and close to 750 mounted Sioux.
The Missouri Legion Advances
The Missouri Legion continued upstream until August 8, when they pitched camp fifteen miles below the two Arikara towns.
As dawn broke on August 9, the final advance upon the Ree villages began.
The boats were sent upriver carrying a few men in each, along with the artillery. However, the majority of the Missouri Legion, surrounded by the mounted Sioux, set out on foot toward their destination.
As time passed, the Sioux, anxious for a fight, galloped ahead of the infantry and trappers and engaged the Rees on a plain just outside their villages. It took nearly an hour for the whites to catch up, and when they did, the scene was a sight to behold.
James Clyman, one of Ashley’s men, later wrote that “the plain was covered with Indians which looked more like a swarm of bees than a battlefield, they going in all possible directions.”
About fifteen Rees were killed in the skirmish along with two of the attackers. The Rees retreated to the safety of their palisaded villages, while the Missouri Legion awaited the artillery, which did not arrive until it was too late in the day to mount an attack.
In the meantime, the Sioux victors had desecrated all of the Ree corpses and by nightfall the scene was “a lively picture of pandemonium,” according to Clyman.
The next morning Leavenworth sent two companies of soldiers and one of the six-pounders to the upper village. The remainder of the men and artillery poised themselves in front of the lower village, which was the one that had given Ashley’s party such grief on his way upstream.
The artillery commenced firing, but neither the howitzer nor the cannon did much damage to the thick palisaded walls and earth-covered lodges of the two villages. By three o’clock in the afternoon, most of the Sioux had deserted, having grown tired of the desultory fighting that to them was accomplishing nothing.
The Colonel Has A Dilemma
Leavenworth was now in a dilemma. He had prosecuted this campaign on his own authority, with no orders from headquarters. If he failed in his objective, or if several of his command were slaughtered, he knew what the consequences would be. Laboring with the alternatives, none of them very good, the colonel decided to mount a full attack on the lower village.
At about this time, Leavenworth observed some Sioux and Arikara warriors talking outside the palisades of one of the villages. As he and Pilcher advanced toward the Rees, one of them entreated the colonel to pity the villages.
The Indian told Leavenworth that the inhabitants desired peace, and that Grey Eyes, the man responsible for all the misunderstanding, was dead. Assuring the Ree that the Americans desired peace as well, Leavenworth dispatched the man with a message for the chiefs.
Joshua Pilcher was livid. Just weeks earlier, Leavenworth, had written, “We shall do our best to obtain a victory. The honor of the American arms must be supported at all events.” And now he was talking surrender terms with the same people who had slaughtered some of Pilcher’s own traders, not to mention all those Ashley men.
Leavenworth had different thoughts now, and his rationalization for making peace with the Rees was based on “the strange and unaccountable conduct of the Sioux, and even the great probability of their joining the Arikaras against us—and also considering the importance of saving our country the expense and trouble of a long Indian warfare, and the importance of securing the Indian trade.”
A few minutes later Little Soldier and several other Rees confronted Leavenworth, and the colonel met them with politeness.
A disgruntled Pilcher told Leavenworth later that, “the affectionate manner in which you embraced him [Little Soldier] done credit to the goodness of your heart; but it did not in my humble opinion, comport with the dignity of the Legion’s chief.”
The Rees Make Demands
Leavenworth’s demands from the Rees were simple—the return of all of Ashley’s property, the promise to behave in the future, and the delivery of five hostages. Treaty negotiations commenced and continued into the next day.
Edward Rose, Ashley’s interpreter, in the meantime, went inside one of the Ree villages and to his surprise found the place quite damaged from artillery fire. Some of Leavenworth’s officers also visited the towns and confirmed their poor condition.
Meanwhile, Colonel Leavenworth continued working on the treaty document which would guarantee the free navigation of the Missouri River and friendship to any Americans who might enter Arikara territory.
By the next day, none of Ashley’s property had been surrendered except three rifles, one horse, and eighteen buffalo robes. Little Soldier explained that these articles were all that remained of the goods taken from General Ashley. He also told Leavenworth that since the upper village had nothing to do with the affair anyway, its inhabitants refused to contribute anything toward the treaty resolution.
In view of these developments, Leavenworth held a quick meeting with Ashley, Henry, Pilcher, and the officers of the 6th Infantry during which it was decided to attack the lower village the next day.
Edward Rose told Leavenworth later in the day that he had learned both Arikara villages would be abandoned that night. Once again, Leavenworth changed his mind on how to end this ridiculous campaign.
His new strategy, as he told his officers, was to disregard the article in the treaty demanding the return of General Ashley’s goods since it was obvious that the Arikaras were unable to comply with it. And then the colonel dropped the bombshell. There would be no attack on the villages the next day.
True to Edward Rose’s predictions, the Rees did indeed abandon their villages that night. Leavenworth now personally inspected the towns and determined that “more than 50 of their people were killed, and a great number wounded.”
No Treaty, No Victory
Joshua Pilcher had a different view, however. His estimate of the Ree dead was not more than thirty, including women and children. Leavenworth sent soldiers out to search for the missing Rees to no avail.
The following day the magnificent “Missouri Legion” with no viable treaty in hand, no victory to claim, and no enemy to fight, left the Arikara villages and headed downstream for home.
The Arikara debacle proved to be disastrous for both the army and the fur men. Colonel Leavenworth’s Missouri Legion, a force well qualified to inflict severe damage upon the Rees, was organized to teach the Arikaras a lesson for all the trouble they had caused over the past few years along the Missouri.
Yet, when the opportunity arose to fulfill his self-imposed mission, Leavenworth vacillated and refused more than once to take any kind of punitive action.
Leavenworth explained the logic of his decision not to press an all-out attack on the Ree towns: “I felt that my situation was a disagreeable and unpleasant one. It appeared to me that my reputation and the honor and brilliancy of the expedition required that I should gratify my troops and make a charge; but I also thought that sound policy, and the interests of my country required that I should not….For my own part I felt confident that the Indians had been sufficiently humbled, fully to convince them of our ability to punish any injury which they might do us.”
Joshua Pilcher disagreed. In scathing remarks later dispatched to Leavenworth, he declared, "You came to restore peace and tranquility to the country & leave an impression which would insure [sic] its continuance, [but instead] your operations have been such as to produce the contrary effect, and to impress the different tribes with the greatest possible contempt for the American character."
And so, the great Arikara Campaign of 1823 ended. Life along the Missouri River continued much as it had before the U.S. Army moved with men and arms against its first red foe west of the Mississippi River.
The Rees would remain hostile to practically every future fur trading mission that passed their villages. Colonel Leavenworth would eventually leave Fort Atkinson, be brevetted to brigadier-general, and build the army post that was later named in his honor.
Joshua Pilcher would continue his activity in the fur trade and, in 1838, succeed William Clark as superintendent of Indian affairs. Andrew Henry would quit the fur trade the following year and retire to Washington County, Missouri.
William Ashley would go on to develop the “rendezvous” system among free trappers, only to sell his business in 1826 and later serve in the United States House of Representatives.
The others involved in the Ree fiasco—among them Jedediah Smith, Edward Rose, James Clyman, Thomas Fitzpatrick, William Sublette, Captain Bennet Riley, and William Vanderburgh—would all leave indelible marks in the lore of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, as well as United States army operations west of the Mississippi River.
James A. Crutchfield can be reached at TNcrutch@aol.com
