Battles & Massacres of the Indian Wars - Page 6

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Wyoming

Connor Battlefield - On August 28, 1865, the U.S. Cavalry under the command of General Patrick Connor attacked Chief Black Bear's Arapaho along the Tongue River outside present day Ranchester, Wyoming. The warriors made a stand while their families scattered. Connor's troopers destroyed the village, then were driven back by an Indian counterattack. Only the use of artillery saved the soldiers from disaster. This attack caused the Arapaho to join forces with the Sioux and Cheyenne. The battle site is located in the Ranchester City Park about five miles from Dayton, Wyoming.

Dull Knife Fight (1876) - At the Red Fork of the Powder River in the winter of 1876 the Army defeated Dull Knife and his Cheyennes, who had helped defeat Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn the previous summer.

Beginning the retaliatory campaigns, General George Crook marched from Fort Fetterman in present day Wyoming back into the Powder River country.

General Patrick Connor

During the years just preceding the Grattan Fight, despite the waves of settlers passing west over the trail, the northern Plains Indians had been relatively peaceful. In July and early August, 1854 about 600 lodges of Brule, Miniconjou, and Oglala Sioux, as well as those of a few Northern Cheyenne, dotted the North Platte River Valley for several miles east of Fort Laramie. This large concentration of Indians, which could easily have overwhelmed the fort's feeble garrison, was impatiently awaiting the delayed annuity issue to which they were entitled by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. On August 18, 1854 a Miniconjou Indian named High Forehead, visiting Conquering Bear's Brule camp, shot and ate a cow belonging to a Mormon emigrant.

That same day Conquering Bear visited Fort Laramie's commanding officer, Lieutenant Hugh B. Fleming, and offered to make amends. Rejecting these overtures, he decided to arrest High Forehead, an act in violation of existing treaties. The commander assigned the mission to John L. Grattan, a rash 24-year-old lieutenant fresh out of West Point, and gave him broad discretionary powers.

The next afternoon Grattan, an interpreter named Lucien Auguste, and 29 infantrymen set out with a wagon and two small artillery pieces. They stopped first at the Gratiot Houses fur trading post and then at James Bordeaux' trading post, 300 yards from the Brule camp and eight miles southeast of Fort Laramie. Over Grattan's protests, at both places the interpreter, who had become intoxicated, abused and threatened loitering Indians.

A series of conferences between Grattan and Conquering Bear and other chiefs culminated in front of High Forehead's lodge, where Grattan finally moved his troops despite the warnings of the alarmed Bordeaux. The chiefs made new offers to pay for the cow, pleaded with the unyielding Grattan to postpone action until the Indian agent arrived, and continued to urge the obstinate High Forehead to surrender. Conquering Bear explained that High Forehead was a guest in his village and was not subject to his authority. Aggravating matters was the arrival of some impetuous young Oglala warriors, who in defiance of Grattan's orders had hurried down from their village. Distrusting Auguste's translation of what was being said and seeking to avoid a clash, Conquering Bear tried but failed to obtain the translation services of Bordeaux. As the situation became more tense, the Brule women and children fled from the camp toward the river.

At some point a few shots were fired and an Indian fell, but the chiefs cautioned the warriors not to reciprocate. Convinced nevertheless of the need for an even greater show of force, Grattan ordered his men to fire a volley. Conquering Bear slumped to the ground mortally wounded. Arrows flew. Once Grattan fell, his command panicked and fought a running battle back along the Oregon-California Trail. Finally the mounted Indians, forcing the foot soldiers onto level ground, overwhelmed them. All died except for one mortally wounded man who managed to make it back to Fort Laramie.

The Indian chiefs, feeling that the Great White Father would realize that the soldiers had been partly at fault and would forgive the Indians for the battle but not an attack on Fort Laramie, restrained their warriors. Within a few days they did, however, ransack Gratiot Houses of its goods as a substitute for their annuities and then departed from the North Platte River Valley. Life at the fort slowly settled into the familiar routine, but the old security was gone.

The site, privately owned and used for ranch operations, is marked by a stone monument, on the north side of the road. Extensive modern alterations of the terrain for irrigation purposes prevent the identification of the exact positions of the participants in the fight. The site of the cairn, where the enlisted men are buried, is about 200 yards west of the probable site of the Bordeaux trading post, marked by ground debris. Grattan's body is interred at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. The likely site of Gratiot Houses, also debris covered, is located a few rods from the river about a quarter mile east of the headgates of the Gratiot Irrigation Ditch. The site is located in Goshen County, between an unimproved road and the North Platte River, about three miles west of Lingle.

A replica of Guinard's Bridge at Fort Caspar today,

 Kathy Weiser, September, 2009.

Battle of Platte Bridge Station (1865) - The predecessor of Fort Caspar (1865-67) was Platte Bridge Station, established in 1858 as one of a series of fortified stations on the Oregon-California Trail. Located on the south side of the North Platte River at a crossing point and emigrant campground, the Platte Bridge post protected wagon trains, mail stages, and the supply-communication lines of the Mormon Expedition to Utah (1857-58). Adjacent to the fort, at a place known as Mormon Ferry, emigrants crossed the river by ferry, operated by some Mormons in the years 1847-50 and thereafter by a private company. Regular troops abandoned the station in 1859, the same year a 1,000-foot toll bridge was completed across the river. This bridge supplemented one a few miles to the east, built in 1853.

In 1862, during the Civil War, to counter increased Indian hostilities along the Oregon-California Trail and to guard the telegraph lines, Volunteers reoccupied Platte Bridge Station. The Indian threat reached a peak in the summer of 1865, when 3,000 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho descended on the trail from the Powder River country. On July 26, on the north side of the North Platte River, they ambushed a detachment of Kansas Cavalry under Lieutenant Caspar W. Collins riding out from Platte Bridge Station to escort an eastward-bound Army wagon train, guarded by Sergeant Amos J. Custard and 24 men. The troops managed to fight their way back to the bridge, but Collins and four men lost their lives. The Indians then attacked the wagon train, killing Custard and 20 other soldiers. Through an error, the Army renamed Platte Bridge Station as Fort Casper, the spelling adopted by the city that grew up adjacent to it. Troops enlarged and rebuilt the fort in 1866, but the following year evacuated it and moved to Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Almost immediately the Indians burned the buildings and the bridge.

A replica of Fort Casper (now called Fort Caspar) at the southwestern edge of Casper marks the site of the original log fort. Constructed in the 1930's by the Works Progress Administration (WPA,) it is owned by the city and administered by the Fort Caspar Commission.

Sawyer Fight - On August 31, 1865, a expedition was surveying the route of the Bozeman Trail. The group, led by Colonel James Sawyer, was attacked by Arapaho Indians in retaliation for the attack on Black Bear's village (Connor Battle.) The party was besieged for thirteen days until the surveyors were rescued by General Conner's Powder River Expedition Force. The battlefield monument is alongside U.S. Hwy 14 about three miles from Dayton where the Bozeman Trail crosses the present highway.

Fort Phil Kearny today, photo by Gilles Coudert,

 July, 2007, courtesy Wikipedia

ALSO SEE:

Frontier Skirmishes between the Pioneers & the Indians

Indian Campaigns

Indian Fighters

Indian Wars of the Frontier West

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