How To Use This Site




How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

December 21

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

1620     The Mayflower voyagers went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Mass.  

1866  A force principally comprised of Sioux lures a force principally made up of post Civil War recruits, commanded by William Fetterman, into an ambush outside of Ft. Phil Kearny.  Fetterman was arrogant in regards to his opinions of his abilities and that of his green troops and insubordinate to some degree in regards to his weak commander, Col. Carrington.  In the resulting battle Fetterman's entire command, 82 (including two civilians) are killed in the largest post Civil War military disaster of the Indian Wars up until Little Big Horn a decade later.  The battle also results in a type of siege around Ft. Phil Kearny, just a few miles from the battlefield, where the command buttons up as a result of the disaster.

Coming just a year after the carnage of the Civil War, the defeat, which was recognized as a military disaster at the time, nonetheless did not have the huge public impact that Custer's defeat a decade later in Montana would.  Indeed, while recognized as a disaster at the time, the Sioux victory would be a significant battle in Red Cloud's War, the only Plains Indian War won by the Indians.  

Like Little Big Horn, the battle has been subjected to continual reinterpretation, and has been nearly from the onset.  As a recent article in the Annals of Wyoming (Spring 2012) reveals there were "eyewitness" accounts that were fiction from day one, and Col. Carrington started receiving criticism from the onset.  As it turns out, conventional accounts of the battle remain the most accurate, with Carrington urging Fetterman not to go beyond the nearby ridge-line, and Fetterman ignoring that order.  Fetterman's contempt for his Indian foe that day would prove disasterous.

1916   The Cheyenne State Leader for December 21, 1916: Mexican raid into Arizona threatened.
 

The terrible fire at the Inter-Ocean was still very much in the news, but we also learned that there was concern over a potential raid into Arizona by some Mexican bands.  Of course, the Wyoming Tribune had reported on this yesterday.

President Wilson's peacemaking efforts also hit the news.

1927  Ed Cantrell, Wyoming lawman, born in Bloomington Indiana.

1933 A bill to introduce a state income tax failed. Attribution.  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1938  Construction on Seminoe  Dam was completed, bu the resulting reservoir would not start being filled until the Spring.

1941  $5,077 collected in Sheridan Wyoming war relief drive. Attribution.  Wyoming State Historical Society.

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