Adventures and Tragedies on the Overland Trail by Randall Parrish

Adventures and Tragedies on the Overland Trail

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Military Guards for Coaches

This custom of guarding coaches by soldiers along the Overland was inaugurated during the Sioux uprising of 1863. George P. Belden, well known in those days as "The White Chief," thus describes the disagreeable duties:

"Troops were stationed in small squads at every station, about ten miles apart, and they rode from station to station on the top of all coaches, holding their guns ever ready for action. It was not pleasant; this sitting perched up on top of a coach, riding through dark ravines and tall grass, in which savages were ever lurking. Generally the first fire from the Indians killed one or two horses, and tumbled a soldier or two off the top of the coach.

Stagecoach.

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This setting oneself as a sort of target was a disagreeable and dangerous duty, but the soldiers performed it without murmuring. My squad had to ride up to Cottonwood, and down to the station below, where they waited for the next coach going the other way, and returned by it to their post at Oilman's. All the other stations were guarded in like manner, so it happened that every coach carried some soldiers."

Military Posts to Protect Settlements

A brief review of the operations of military scouting parties in the region about Julesburg, Colorado, which was the centre of hostilities on the Plains, and occasionally entirely cut off from communication, well illustrates the desperate nature of their duties. During 1863-65 the Sioux, Arapahos, and Cheyennes were all upon the warpath, and not a mile of prairie between the upper Missouri and the Arkansas was safe for a white traveler. As early as 1860 trouble began, after the beginning of emigration to Colorado and the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains. Bent's Fort was occupied by troops, and, in anticipation of coming events, several new posts were established throughout the Indian country, and occupied by small garrisons. The breaking out of the Civil War required the withdrawal of many of the regulars from the Plains, and the Indians, quick to perceive their opportunity, began wholesale depredations. In 1862 the Sioux made savage onslaught far east into Minnesota, and the general uprising among the tribes which followed extended to the Rocky Mountains, and even to the banks of the Columbia River. In numbers engaged it attained to the magnitude of war, but was carried on in guerilla fashion.

The greater portion of the Plains country was then without permanent inhabitants, scarcely anything breaking the desolation excepting the isolated stations along the Overland and Santa Fe Trails, with a few scattered settlements extending into the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. Though they occasionally attacked small bodies of troops, the savages directed their main efforts against the trains
of freight wagons, and the comparatively defenseless stage stations. The most important of these, situated in the very heart of this blood-stained territory, was Julesburg. This point was then the junction between the Overland main line and the newly established branch leading to Denver. It was also the headquarters of the telegraph on the Plains, which had been inaugurated in 1861.

Fort Sedgewick, Colorado, 1870, painting by Anton Schonborn

Julesburg must have contained at this period something over a hundred civilian inhabitants, most of them employees of the stage company. As protection for both lines the Government later erected Fort Sedgwick on the South Fork of the Platte. Julesburg was attacked on several occasions, and in February, 1864, was burned to the ground. About fifty-five miles of the telegraph line was entirely destroyed, and stage stations razed, and employees killed, for long distances east and west. About the same time, a force of over two thousand Indians made a determined attack upon a detachment of troops, under Lieutenant-colonel Collins at Rush Creek, eighty-five miles north of Julesburg. There followed a twenty-four-hour fight, from which the whites emerged with a loss of but three men killed, and eight wounded. Two months later Collins was again in battle at Mud Springs, but succeeded in driving off his assailants.

As soon as the Spring of 1865 began to freshen the grass, the Indian tribes were again upon the warpath. In four weeks they had killed and captured forty-five whites between Sage Creek and Virginia Dale, but a combination of military forces compelled the allied tribes to make professions of peace, and for a few months relieved the Trail of its horror. The full story of these years of soldierly endeavor and Indian treachery must be told in those chapters devoted to the work of the army, but it is easy to conceive the danger which night and day pursued those men who were then employed upon
the Overland. Never for a moment could they feel secure; every trip promised to be their last, and many a time the coach dashed up to a station only to find it in ruins and surrounded by dead. The tales of suffering, of desperate fighting, of marvelous endurance, cling yet to every mile from the Little Blue to Laramie. The dead of those awful years lie numberless and nameless in their unknown, scattered graves.

Added June, 2008

About the Author: Adventures and Tragedies on the Overland Trail was written by Randall Parrish as a chapter of his book, The Great Plains: The Romance of Western American Exploration, Warfare, and Settlement, 1527-1870; published by A.C. McClurg & Co. in Chicago, 1907. Parrish also wrote several other books including When Wilderness Was King, My Lady of the North, Historic Illinois, and others.

Wagon Train

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