Wagon Box Fight The Wagon Box Fight was an engagement on August 2 , 1867 , during Red Cloud ' s War , between 26 soldiers of the U . S . Army and six civilians and several hundred Lakota Sioux Indians in the vicinity of Fort Phil Kearny , Wyoming . The outnumbered soldiers held off the Indians with newly - issued breech - loading Springfield Model 1866 rifles . Background . In July 1867 , after their annual sun dance at camps on the Tongue and Rosebud rivers , Oglala Lakota warriors under Red Cloud , other bands of Lakota , Northern Cheyenne , and a few Arapaho resolved to attack the soldiers at nearby Fort C . F . Smith and Fort Phil Kearny . These would be the first major military actions by the Indians in 1867 , following up their successes in 1866 , including the Fetterman Fight . Unable to agree where to attack first , the Indians split into two large bodies , variously estimated at between 300 and 1 , 000 Cheyenne and Sioux , moving against Fort C . F . Smith and a similar number , mostly Sioux and possibly including Red Cloud , headed toward Fort Phil Kearny . In addition to guarding emigrants on the Bozeman Trail , major tasks occupying the 350 soldiers and 100 civilians at Fort Phil Kearny included gathering wood and timber from a pine forest about five miles from the Fort and cutting hay for livestock in prairie areas . These jobs were performed by civilian contractors , usually armed with Spencer repeating rifle s and accompanied and guarded by squads of soldiers . The hay cutters and wood gatherers had been a favorite target of the Indians since the establishment of Fort Kearny one year earlier . Dozens of small raids had been directed against them ; several dozen soldiers and civilians had been killed and hundreds of head of livestock had been stolen . The soldiers were on the defensive . Their capability to strike back at the Indians was severely limited by a shortage of horses and trained cavalrymen and their weapons , consisting of muzzle - loading Springfield Model 1861 muskets . However , soldiers had recently been issued breech - loading rifles that could fire about three times as fast as muzzle - loaders and could be more easily re - loaded from a prone position . The Indians were poorly armed , probably possessing only about 200 firearms and less than two bullets per gun . Bows and arrows were their basic weapon . Bows and arrows were deadly at short range and in a fight on horseback or on foot but were ineffective against a well entrenched or fortified enemy . To protect against Indian raids near the pine forest , the civilian contractors had constructed a corral made by removing 14 of the wooden boxes that rested on the chassis of wagons and placing them on the ground in an oval 60 – 70 feet ( 20 mts ) long and 25 – 30 feet ( 8 - 9 mts ) wide . Both soldiers and civilians in the wood - cutting details lived in tents outside the corral of wagon boxes . On July 31 , Captain James Powell and his command of 51 men departed the walls of Fort Kearny on a 30 day assignment to camp near the wagon boxes and guard the wood cutters . Until then , the summer had been quiet , with few hostile encounters with the Indians . The fight . On the morning of August 2 , Captain Powell ' s force was divided . Fourteen soldiers were detailed to escort the wood train to and from the fort ; 13 soldiers guarded the wood - cutting camp , about one mile from the wagon box corral . The Indian plan of attack on the woodcutters and soldiers was tried - and - true , similar to the plan that had been used to kill Fetterman and his 80 men the year before . A small group of Indians would entice the White soldiers to chase them and the soldiers would be led into an ambush by a larger number of hidden Indians . Crazy Horse was among the members or the decoy team . Discipline and patience , however , were not characteristics of Indian warriors . The plan broke down when a number of them attacked an outlying camp of four woodcutters and four soldiers , killing three of the soldiers , but the other soldier and the woodcutters escaped and warned the soldiers near the corral . The Indian army halted at the camp to loot and to capture a large number of horses and mules and this gave the soldiers taking refuge in the wagon box corral time to prepare for the attack . There were 26 soldiers and six civilians in the corral . The first attack of the Indians on the wagon box corral came on horseback from the southwest , but they encountered heavy fire from the soldiers using the new breech - loaders . The Indians withdrew , regrouped , and launched several additional attacks on foot . Indian snipers killed Powell ' s second - in - command , Lt . Jenness , and two soldiers . The battle continued from about 7 : 30 a . m . until 1 : 30 pm . The whites had plenty of ammunition and Indian arrows could not penetrate the thick sides of the wagon boxes . Fort Kearny learned of the fight from its observation station on Pilot Hill and about 11 : 30 a . m . 103 soldiers under the command of Major Benjamin Smith sallied out of the fort to relieve the soldiers in the wagon boxes . Smith took with him 10 wagons driven by armed civilians and a mountain howitzer . He proceeded carefully and when he neared the wagon box corral fired his cannon at the distant Indians . The Indians quickly dispersed and Smith advanced without opposition to the corral , collected the soldiers there , and returned quickly to Fort Kearny . Additional civilian survivors , who had hidden in the woods during the battle , made it back to the fort that night . Aftermath . The Wagon Box Fight is prominent in the folklore and literature of the Old West as an example of a small group of American soldiers holding off a much larger group of Indians . The new , faster - shooting rifles of the soldiers are cited as the reason for the survival of the soldiers in the wagon box corral against a superior number of attackers . Estimates of Indian casualties range from " an unlikely low of two to an absurd fifteen hundred . " Captain Powell estimated that his men killed 60 Indians , a " wildly exaggerated " estimate in the opinion of some historians . The Wagon Box Fight was the last major engagement of Red Cloud ' s War . Possibly the impact of the battle , and that of the similar Hayfield Fight a day earlier , was to discourage the Indians from attempting additional large scale attacks . " This was the large charge Crazy Horse ever led against whites occupying a strong defensive position . He had learned that Indians with bows and arrows could not overwhelm whites armed with breech - loaders inside a fortification . " For the remainder of 1867 , the Lakota and their allies concentrated on small - scale , hit - and - run attacks along the Bozeman Trail .