The bodies had been treated in ways that reflected warriors’ customs around the treatment of enemies killed in battle.

This treatment, which American observers described in terms of horror and mutilation, was reported in newspapers in language that inflamed public opinion and was used to justify the demand for a more aggressive military response.

What the newspapers did not typically include was the context: that the treatment of enemies’ bodies was a practice that existed on both sides of this conflict, that American soldiers had been responsible for atrocities against Indigenous people that were at least as severe as anything done at the Fetterman site, and that the framing of Indigenous battlefield practices as uniquely barbaric served specific political purposes.

The Hayfield and Wagon Box Fights