Diary Entry for July 19, 1868

"Just as we are ready to pack the wagons, and move from [Fort] Reno, we have an alarm of Indians. Capt[ain] Shirley is talking with men at the time, and starts for his commander. I take position on the H.W. bashiers with my glass. The Indians, mounted, seem to come over every bluff, and from every ravine. They are pursued by the cavalry, without much regard to order, to the bluff. There it is found that they are numerous, and the cavalry retreat before them. I counted 40 Indians on horses, and the number was probably twice as many. The cavalry again made a stand some half a mile from the post, and the Indians by degrees again retire. Peach, one of our best men, is killed. His body is afterwards recovered, horribly mutilated. The head scalped and cut off, and arrows sticking in him. Another man is shot with an arrow through the flesh of the shoulder, and rides to the post with it sticking in him."

Clarke returned to Fort Fetterman on July 21st and his diary ends on July 23, 1868 with the single entry "Lying at the post today, making up the rolls." After the railroads completed its rail line through the area and the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty in May 1868 with the Sioux Indians, the U.S. Army abandoned Forts Reno, Phil Kearney and C. F. Smith along the Bozeman trail that summer.

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