Recovery of the Dead
Old U.S. Highway 87 just north of I-90 Exit 44

Two separate parties went forth from Fort Phil Kearny to recover the dead. The first party was sent while there was still hope that some of Fetterman’s men might be alive. Captain Tenodor Ten Eyck and 76 men reached an observation point on Lodge Trail Ridge before the Indians left the battleground. Though seen and challenged by the exuberant victors, he refused to commit his command against such overwhelming odds. When the Indians withdrew, he ventured down the slope and recovered 49 bodies found in one group where the fight climaxed.

Next morning Colonel Carrington led a second party which found the remaining 32 bodies scattered along more than a mile of the Bozeman Road. Most of the bodies had been stripped, scalped and mutilated. The corpses of captains Fetterman and Brown had powder burns at their temples suggesting suicide. Three pools of blood—within ten feet of the body of Lieutenant George Grummond—evidence of Indian casualties—gave moot testimony to the frenzied fighting. James S. Wheatley and Isaac Fisher, two civilian volunteers, had wanted to test their new Henry repeating rifles. The hundred or more expended cartridges near their mutilated bodies showed how dearly they sold their lives.

The recovery parties found more than 60 separate pools of blood, suggesting removed Indian casualties. Indian spokesmen later acknowledged the loss of thirteen warriors.