Wood-cutting began on the 31st of July, 1867, and Captain and Brevet-Major James Powell, commanding “C” Company, of the twenty-seventh Infantry, which was formerly a battalion of the Eighteenth a part of the command which had built the fort, and to which Fetterman and his men had belonged, was detailed with his company to guard the contractor’s party. Captain Powell had enlisted in the army in 1848 as a private soldier. The Civil War had given him a commission in the regular service, and in its course he had been twice brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, once at Chickamauga and the second time during the Atlanta campaign, in which he had been desperately wounded. He had had some experience in Indian fighting before and since he came to the post, and had distinguished himself in several skirmishes, notably in the relief of the wood train, a few days before Fetterman’s rashness and disobedience precipitated the awful disaster. Arriving at Piney Island, some seven miles from the post, Powell found that the contractor had divided his men into two parties. One had its headquarters on a bare, treeless, and comparatively level plain, perhaps one thousand yards across, which was surrounded by low hills backed by mountains farther away. This was an admirable place to graze the herds of mules required to haul the wagons. As will be seen, it could also be turned into a highly defensive position. The other camp was in the thick of the pine wood, about a mile away across the creek, at the foot of the mountain. This division of labor necessitated a division of force, which was a misfortune, but which could not be avoided. Powell sent twelve men under a noncommissioned officer to guard the camp in the wood, and detailed thirteen men with another noncommissioned officer to escort the wood trains to and from the fort. With the remaining twenty-six men and his lieutenant, John C. Jenness, he established headquarters on the plain in the open. The wagons used by the wood-cutters were furnished by the quartermaster’s department. In transporting the cordwood, the woodmen made use of the running gears only, the wagon bodies having been deposited in the clearing. In order to preserve their contents and to afford as much protection as possible to their occupants in case of Indian attacks, the quartermaster’s department was in the habit of lining the wagon beds with boiler iron; and, to give their occupants an opportunity to fight from concealment, loopholes were cut in the sides. Almost every authority who has written of the fight has concluded that the particular wagon beds in question were so lined. This is a mistaken though natural conclusion. In a letter to an old comrade who wrote an account of the subsequent action,[17] Powell makes no mention of any iron lining, and it is certain that the wagons were not lined, but were just the ordinary wooden wagon beds.[18]