Julesburg, June 15, 1865.
(Received 9:50 p. m.)
Major-General Dodge:
I ordered the Indians who surrendered at Laramie to be sent to Kearney. Colonel Moonlight sent them without first dismounting them, under charge of two companies of Seventh Iowa Cavalry. They revolted sixty miles this side of Laramie, killing Captain Fouts, who was in command, and four soldiers, and wounding seven; also killed four of their own chiefs who refused to join them; fifteen Indians were killed; the Indians fled north with their ponies, women, and children, leaving all their camp equipage. Troops are in pursuit. Mail-stages have stopped west of Camp Collins. Everything appears to work unfavorably owing to failure of corn contractors and incompetency of some of my subordinates. I will overcome all obstacles, however, in a short time. Have you sent me cavalry yet? J. D. Doty, Governor of Utah, was buried at Camp Douglas Cemetery this morning. Died of heart disease.
P. E. Connor,
Brigadier-General.
During July, a band of the Arapahoes raided the South Platte River stage-line between Fort Collins and Fort Halleck, drove off most of the stock from the stations, and committed other depredations. Colonel Porter, who was in command of that district, concentrated his force and went after the Indians, and in a very few days restored the stage stations and gave the Indians sound whippings, which kept that line clear nearly all summer. The Indians that had done this work had gone into Fort Collins claiming to be friendly and wishing to make a treaty, and after being fed there for some time, left one night and committed the depredations before troops could stop them. From here they moved immediately north to join the hostile Indians north of the North Platte. I had received notice from Washington that the Interior Department had information that these Indians were peaceable and would not join in the campaigns; but, being on the ground, I knew better, because we were capturing them in nearly all of the attacks that they made. With them was a portion of one of the bands of the Sioux.
On July 27, ten miles west of the North Platte Bridge station, a Mormon train coming east was attacked by the Indians and Lieutenant Casper W. Collins, of the Eleventh Ohio, and twenty-five men of the Eleventh Kansas, went out to relieve it, when about one thousand Indians attacked him. While he saved the train he lost his own life, and twenty-five of his men were scalped and their bodies horribly mutilated; but while the Indians had heavy losses in the fight, they were able to divide up and scatter before any of the troops sent to attack them could reach them. I named the post at Platte Bridge Fort Casper, and it is now known as the town of Casper, on the North-Western railroad.
On August 16th a large band of Sioux Indians attacked a military station on the South Platte route. They were overtaken by the Pawnee Indian Battalion of our forces, who gave them a good whipping. They killed a large number and took their stock and scattered them. This was a band of Sioux Indians that had been lying on the North Platte and made this dash to the South Platte stage-line, thinking we had withdrawn the troops from it to the northern expedition. Very few of them ever got back to their tribes.
The battalion of Pawnees with General Conner had made a great capture of a band of Cheyennes who had been down on the Fort Halleck route. The latter had there captured a part of a company of a Michigan Regiment who were escorting a few wagons, the captives having been tied to the wagons and burned. By some means, General Conner got word of this, and knew the trail they would take to get back to the main command, and on this trail he placed Major North and his battalion of Pawnees. Major North, in describing to me what followed, said that when the Indians came back and discovered that they were surrounded, one, an old man, moved up towards him and placed his hand up to his mouth, telling him to come on; that they were ready to die; that they were full of white men up to that,—meaning up to his mouth. The Pawnees killed every one of this band and scalped them. On one of them was found a diary of one of the Michigan soldiers who had been killed, and one of the Cheyennes had used the book to give an account of their travels, their camps and fights, and what they had done on this raid. From this diary our guides could tell just exactly where the party had been, where they had camped, where they had captured the Michigan soldiers, and their route on their return. A half-breed had written in the book a defiance of the troops, telling what the Indians demanded. Among other things they demanded that before they would make peace we should give up all their prisoners; that we should abandon the country north of the Platte River, etc.
As soon as General Connor reached Powder River he established his post and named it Fort Connor. (It was afterward named Fort Reno by me.) Connor immediately pushed on to the Crazy Woman Mountain fork of Powder River and then to the east base of the Big Horn Mountains, following that to the Tongue River and down the Tongue until James Bridger, the chief scout and guide of the expedition, claimed to have seen the smoke a long distance away, of an Indian camp. No one else could see it, but, as a precaution, Connor sent out the Pawnee scouts, and on August 27th they discovered about 2,000 Indians camped on the Tongue River, near the mouth of Wolf Creek. It is a singular fact that in this vicinity General Crook fought his great battle on the Rosebud, the Custer massacre occurred, and it was not very far away that the Phil Kearney disaster occurred, when Lieutenant Fetterman and his whole command was slaughtered. General Connor immediately corralled the trains and took his available forces, about 250 men, and marched all night and struck this band at daylight, giving them a complete surprise. They were Arapahoes under Black Bear and Old David, with several other noted chiefs. The band was just breaking up their camp, but the Indian soldiers rallied and fought desperately. Captain H. E. Palmer, A. A. G., with General Connor, gives this description of the attack:
The word was passed back for the men to close up and follow the General and not to fire a shot until he fired in advance. General Conner then took the lead, riding his horse up the steep bank of the ravine and dashing out across the mesa as if there were no Indians just to his left. Every man followed as close as possible. At the first sight of the General the Indian ponies grazing on the table-land in front of us sent up a tremendous whinnying, and galloped down toward the Indian village. More than 1,000 dogs began to bark, and more than 700 Indians made the air ring with their fearful yelling. It appeared that the Indians were in the act of breaking camp. The most of their tepees were down and packed for the march. The ponies, more than 3,000, had been gathered in and most of the squaws and children were mounted, some of them having taken the line of march up the stream to the new camp. The General watched the movements of his men until he saw the last man emerge from the ravine, when he wheeled on the left into line. The whole line then fired a volley into the village without stopping their horses, and the bugles sounded a charge. Not a man but realized that the charge into the village without a moment's hesitation was our only salvation. We already saw that we were greatly outnumbered, and that only desperate fighting would save our scalps. We were in the village in the midst of a hand-to-hand fight with the warriors and squaws, for many of the squaws did as brave fighting as their savage lords. Unfortunately for the squaws and children, our men had no time to direct their aim, and bullets from both sides and murderous arrows filled the air. Women and children fell among the killed and wounded. The scene was indescribable. Each man seemed an army by himself. Near the sweathouse I emptied my revolver into the carcasses of three warriors. One of our men, a member of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, a fine-looking soldier with as handsome a face as I ever saw on a man, grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me about that I might assist him in drawing an arrow from his mouth. Having no surgeon of a higher grade than a hospital steward, it was decided that in order to get the arrow out of his mouth the tongue would have to be cut out, which was done. The Indians made a brave stand trying to save their families, and succeeded in getting away with a large majority of their women and children, leaving behind nearly all of their plunder.