The next day's Wagon Box Fight is…

The next day's Wagon Box Fight is very similar to the Hayfield Fight.

Twenty-six soldiers and six civilians are escorting a wood cutting detail near Fort Kearny.

The heavy wooden boxes of fourteen wagons had been placed on the ground in an oval corral near the main cutting site, and most of the soldiers and civilians take refuge there when hundreds of native warriors on horseback suddenly appear.

Armed with the new breech-loading rifles, the soldiers and civilians hold off the attackers for six hours before being rescued by a relief force from Fort Kearny.

Three men are killed and two wounded in the corral and four woodcutters are killed about a mile away.

The Wagon Box Fight is hailed at the time as the "greatest Indian battle in the world" with native casualties fancifully estimated at up to fifteen hundred.

Historian George E. Hyde says the natives had six killed and six wounded and did not regard the fight as a defeat, as they had captured a large number of mules and horses.

Many years later, Red Cloud will claim not to remember the Wagon Box Fight, although that seems unlikely, given the large number of native warriors engaged.