the eleventh ohio volunteer cavalry on the central plains 1862-1866

Journal of the Southwest

The Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry on the Central Plains 1862-1866Author(s): David P. RobrockSource: Arizona and the West, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), pp. 23-48Published by: Journal of the SouthwestStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40169047 .

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THE ELEVENTH OHIO VOLUNTEER CAVALRY ON THE CENTRAL PLAINS

1862-1866

by

DAVID P. ROBROCK*

On a cold and rainy night in late May of 1862, Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins rode into Fort Laramie, Wyoming, at the head of a column of blue-coated cavalrymen. Tall, dark-bearded, and with

piercing brown eyes, Collins was a fifty-two-year-old lawyer and former politician from Hillsboro, Ohio. His battalion was the nu- cleus of what would become the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. Recruited in rural southwestern Ohio, most of its members had enlisted to fight Confederates in the East. Instead, they had been sent west to guard travelers and the mails along the Oregon and Overland trails. For four years, the Ohio cavalrymen fought bore- dom, frostbite, and Indians on the Central Plains, finally heading east in the summer of 1866 for discharge in their home state. Far removed from the main theaters of the Civil War, the Eleventh Ohio had played a unique and little-known role on the Western frontier.1

William Collins had resigned his Ohio Senate seat at the out- break of the Civil War to accept a commission as colonel of volunteers. During the fall of 1861, he recruited nearly 400 men and

"The author is Special Collections Librarian at the University of Arizona Library, Tucson. He holds a master's degree in history from the University of Wyoming, Laramie.

William O. Collins to Catherine Collins, May 30, 31, 1862, in Agnes Wright Spring, Caspar Collins: The Life and Exploits of an Indian Fighter of the Sixties (Columbia U. Press, 1927), 114-15.

[23]



24 ARIZONA and the WEST

organized them into four companies of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer

Cavalry. In December, the War Department temporarily suspended the creation of new regiments and ordered that partially filled units be combined. Collins's four companies were redesignated the first battalion of Sixth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, and Collins was ap- pointed lieutenant colonel. In early February of 1862, Collins's battalion - the only fully mounted and equipped unit of the Sixth Ohio- was detached and sent to Benton Barracks at St. Louis, Missouri. From there it traveled by steamboat up the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, then overland - via Fort

Kearny, Nebraska - to Fort Laramie, where it arrived on the night ofMay30.2

Collins reported to Brigadier General James Craig, commanding the District of Nebraska. Craig's responsibilities were immense. His district stretched from the Missouri River in the east to the Conti- nental Divide, and encompassed present-day Nebraska and south- eastern Wyoming. Through this sprawling territory passed vital overland lines of communication - road, mail, and telegraph. The

Oregon Trail followed the Platte and Sweetwater rivers to South Pass and carried the bulk of the overland traffic from east to west. In 1 86 1 the government had shifted the overland mail route to the

Oregon Trail, enhancing the road's importance. Also that year, the Pacific Telegraph was built along the same route. Friction between whites and Indians increased as heavy traffic tempted the Indians to

plunder. Moreover, rumors of Mormon treachery and Confederate

provocateurs were rampant in the region. Prior to Collins's arrival, a mere sixty cavalrymen at Fort Laramie patrolled the vast western

part of Craig's district. The 348 men of the Ohio battalion, there- fore, represented a major addition to the cavalry force.3

Indian raids compounded Craig's problems. Between January and March of 1862, Bannock and Shoshoni warriors had run off 173

2Spring, Caspar Collins, 35-37. William Collins to Catherine Collins, May 23, 27, 30, 31, 1862, all in ibid., 105-15. Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (Reprint ed., New York, 1959), 1479-80. This work was first published in 1908. Official Roster of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion (12 vols., Akron, Ohio: Werner Printing & Lithographing Company, 1891), XI, 550-51; Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers (2 vols., Cincinnati, Ohio: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1868), I, 819.

3Post Returns, Fort Laramie, May 1862, Returns from U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916 [RMP], Microcopy 617, Roll 596, Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, Record Group 94, National Archives. James Craig to James G. Blunt, July 10, 1862, in "Testimony as to the Claim of Ben Holladay...," Senate Miscellaneous Document [SMD] 19, 46 Congress, 2 Session (Serial 1890), 55-56. The Official Atlas of the Civil War (New York, 1958), Plate CLXV.



The ELEVENTH OHIO VOLUNTEER CAVALRY 25

horses and mules from stage stations between Fort Bridger and Platte Bridge. In March, Indians easily captured sixty-five head of stock at stations along the Sweetwater River, and on April 17 a large party attacked two stagecoaches near Three Crossings Station. When Ben Holladay, the owner of the Overland Stage Company, threatened to cease operations, President Abraham Lincoln assured him that his coaches would have military protection. To make good on Lincoln's promise, General Craig ordered Colonel Collins to de-

ploy his Ohio cavalry along the most dangerous section of the Oregon Trail- the line running west from Platte Bridge to South Pass.4

On June 4, Collins headed west from Fort Laramie with a large detachment of Ohio cavalry, guided by mountain man Jim Bridger. As they proceeded, the Ohioans took their first look at the unex-

plored wilderness in which they were to campaign. Their route led

through broad, arid valleys covered with sagebrush and flanked by towering mountains. With an average elevation of 5,000 feet, it was a region of short summers and long snowy winters. Frosts occurred as early as August and as late as June. Except for the Oregon Trail, there were no developed roads in the area. The only white inhabi- tants between Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger lived at isolated stage and telegraph stations strung out along the trail. As maps of the

region were superficial, army officers depended upon mountain men and local Indians for information.5

When Collins reached Deer Creek Station, he found a large emigrant train awaiting an escort to South Pass. Detaching First Lieutenant Oliver S. Glenn and thirty men to protect the slow-

moving wagons, Collins continued west, with the train and escort

trailing behind. The column crossed the North Platte at Platte

Bridge and pushed on sixty miles across an alkaline prairie to the Sweetwater Valley. On June 29, Collins reached South Pass, only to learn that a large band of Indians had attacked the emigrant train

following in his rear. Glenn had driven off the warriors, but not before they had killed two civilians. Collins doubled back with 160 men to the scene, but arrived too late to intercept the raiders.6

4"Holladay Claim," SMD 19, 46 Cong., 2 Sess., 2-5, 55-58.

5Spring, Caspar Collins, 37, 39.

6Caspar Collins to Catherine Collins, June 30, 1862, in Spring, Caspar Collins, 119-20.




After examining the country, Collins deployed his cavalry along the 140-mile stage route between Platte Bridge and South Pass. Permanent garrisons of ten to twenty men were established at four "home" stations, located at forty-mile intervals. Known collectively as the Upper Posts, they included Upper Crossings (near South Pass), St. Mary's (Rocky Ridge), Three Crossings, and Sweetwater. Each had a house, where passengers and crew could obtain meals and

lodging, a barn for storing hay and supplies, and a corral. At these remote sites, Ohio troopers lived a lonely and dangerous existence. The Upper Posts were situated at the end of a long and precarious supply line which stretched almost 1 ,000 miles to Fort Leaven worth.

Wagons took twenty days to make the 300-mile trip from the depot at Fort Laramie to South Pass. As the stage company had erected the stations to meet their own needs, the troopers spent the summer

cutting and hauling lumber from the nearby hills to build barracks, kitchens, and stables.7

While Collins was deploying his Ohioans, Postmaster General

Montgomery Blair, at the urging of Ben Holladay, declared the North Platte-Sweetwater route too dangerous for mail coaches and ordered another line opened to the south. The new route would link

Julesburg and Fort Bridger, running along the South Platte River, across the Laramie Plains to Bridger's Pass, and thence along Bitter Creek. Shifting the mail to the new route - often referred to as the Overland Trail - doubled the miles of road the army was to protect in the District of Nebraska.8

In mid-July, Major John OTarrell, the second-ranking officer of the Ohio battalion, gathered up most of the Ohio cavalry remain-

ing at Fort Laramie and set out to establish a fort on the new overland route. OTarrell rode west along the Oregon Trail to Sweetwater Station, and from there escorted a large convoy of stage company employees, coaches, and horses southeast to the new trail.

7"Contract with the Overland Mail Company," Senate Executive Document [SED] 21, 46 Cong., 3 Sess. (Serial 1941), 7. Spring, Caspar Collins, 44. Life at the Upper Posts is described in William E. Unrau (ed.), Tending the Talking Wire: A Buck Soldier's View of Indian Country, 1863-1866 (U. of Utah Press, 1979), passim. 8 "Holladay Claim," SMD 19, 46 Cong., 2 Sess., 4, 51. Craig to Blunt, July 11, 1862, in War of the

Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies [OR] (128 vols., Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Series I, Volume XIII, 468-69. Unless otherwise noted, all cita- tions are to Series I.




On July 20, he camped at the northern base of Elk Mountain and

began construction of a post which he named Fort Halleck, in honor of the department commander, General Henry W. Halleck. When

completed, the fort would accommodate two companies and serve as the base for operations along the western portion of the Overland Trail. From Fort Halleck, O'Farrell's troopers would patrol 170 miles of road and guard twelve mail stations from Virginia Dale, Colorado, to Bridger's Pass, Wyoming. At the end of August, Col- onel Collins supervised the opening of a 108-mile link northeast from Halleck to Fort Laramie.9

In the fall of 1862, Collins assumed command of operations in the western part of Craig's military district - the area between

Julesburg and South Pass. To protect mail and passengers in this

sprawling domain, he sent two companies of his battalion (redesignated the First Ohio Independent Cavalry Battalion) to the Upper Posts on the Oregon Trail. One company took station at Fort Halleck and one remained at Fort Laramie. Collins also had at his disposal at Fort Laramie two undermanned companies of the Fourth U.S.

Cavalry and a company of Kansas infantry. In January of 1863, a Kansas cavalry company reinforced the garrison at Fort Halleck.10

Severe weather buffeted the Ohioans during their first winter on the Plains. For several consecutive nights the thermometer at Fort Laramie froze, as did a cup of whiskey which the incredulous Ohioans had left outside. The cold, however, offered no respite from field operations. On the night of November 24, the Ohioans suffered their first combat fatality when Shoshonis approached Upper Cross-

ings Station on a horse-stealing expedition. The squad from Com-

pany B had neglected to post sentries, and only the barking of dogs warned the soldiers of the Indians' presence. In the ensuing ex-

change of gunfire, Private Joseph Good was killed, as were three Indians. Reinforcements ordered to the station arrived too late to catch the raiders. On February 19, 1863, Ohio and Kansas cavalry from Fort Halleck skirmished with Indians who had sacked Pass

9Spring, Caspar Collins, 42-43, 142-43; Francis Paul Prucha, A Guide to the Military Posts of the United States, 1789-1895 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1964), 77.

10Craig to Blunt, August 30, 1862; "Abstract of Return of Department of the Missouri..., November 20, 1862," both in OR, XIII, 607 and 811, respectively.




Creek Station, west of the fort. The foray exhausted the army horses and reduced the number of serviceable mounts at the fort to less than twenty.11

As more Indian raids were reported, Collins on February 23 dispatched First Lieutenant Thomas P. Clarke and forty-three men of Company C to Fort Halleck. Collins and six men joined Clarke's detachment on the trail. On the twenty-eighth a blizzard overtook the Ohioans on the open prairie west of Rock Creek. Sending on his troopers to Halleck, Collins remained with those too numb to continue, encouraging them to limp on through the snow until a rescue party arrived from the fort. Two men died from exposure, and all of the stragglers suffered frostbite. Soldiers with the supply train survived by circling the wagons and waiting out the storm. They then abandoned the wagons and made their way into Halleck with the horses and mules.12

As spring approached, Indian war parties struck the Oregon Trail. On April 3, at Sweetwater Station, twenty-six men of Com-

pany B drove off an attack. One soldier was badly wounded in the skirmish and died three days later. Company A was transferred from the Overland Trail north to reinforce the posts along the Sweet- water, but a general Indian offensive failed to materialize.13

While the Ohio battalion passed a quiet summer, Collins returned to Ohio with a delegation of soldiers to recruit more troops. By July 31, four companies - E, F, G, and H - were mustered in at Camp Denison, and Collins's command was redesignated the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. It consisted of eight (rather than the standard twelve) companies, and totaled 814 officers and enlisted men. Whereas the original volunteers had enlisted out of a sense of patriotism, many of the new recruits had other motives. Some were Southern sympathizers in the Ohio Valley, for whom enlistment in the Eleventh Ohio was a way to avoid conscription and the unpleasant prospect of fighting for a cause they did not support, or against relatives in the Confederate army. Other enlistees looked

"Spring, Caspar Collins, 45-56. Asaph Allan to Craig, February 27, 1863, OR, XXII, part 1, 234.

"Spring, Caspar Collins, 46-48.

13William O. Collins to Frank Eno, April 4, 1863, enclosed in Eno to H. Z. Curtis, April 4, 1863, OR, XXII, pt. 2, 198. Collins references in OR are to William O. Collins. Official Roster, XI, 799.



Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins organized and commanded (1862-65) the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry.- Agnes Wright Spring, Caspar Collins (1927), opposite 18.

Fort Laramie, Wyoming, was headquarters for the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry. -William Unrau (ed.), Tending the Talking Wire (1979), opposite 57.



/';-=09 )(8* =-0/']




forward to adventure. "We were all young fellows, " one new recruit

recalled. "The West was new to us and we were anxious to get on the road to the wild and romantic regions about which so many stories had been told." While recruiting was in progress, eighty new enlistees participated in the Eleventh Ohio's only campaign in the East - the pursuit and capture of General John Hunt Morgan and 2,000 Confederate cavalrymen who raided through southern Ohio.

Ironically, a number of Morgan's men later enlisted in the Eleventh to avoid prison camp.14

On August 1, 1863, the four new companies of the Eleventh Ohio departed for the West. At Fort Leavenworth, the Ohio caval-

rymen briefly joined the fruitless pursuit of William C. Quan trill and his Confederate guerillas who had sacked Lawrence, Kansas. An officer and several enlisted men died of sunstroke during the grueling twenty-four-hour, 150-mile ride. Several weeks later at Fort Kearny, the first signs of discontent among Southern sympathizers appeared. Four soldiers of Company E plotted to desert, rob stagecoaches, and

join Quantrill's band. Private Benjamin Connor (alias Monroe) overheard their conversation and reported the incident to Captain Levi G. Marshall, the company commander, who ordered the men arrested. Disarmed and dismounted, the conspirators were forced to

complete the march on foot. Marshall's demonstration of authority quieted seditious talk, and on October 10 Jim Bridger guided the Ohio companies into Fort Laramie, where the Confederate sympathizers were court-martialed and sentenced to hard labor.15

Collins spent the remainder of the year at Fort Laramie, train-

ing the new recruits. He drew forty-eight men from various companies to man the four 12-pound howitzers he had procured in St. Louis, and organized a regimental band composed of three drummers and three fifers. As winter approached, he made new troop disposi- tions. The companies of regular cavalry and the Kansas volunteers had been withdrawn, so Collins had to depend on the Eleventh Ohio to patrol the roads from Julesburg to South Pass and Bridger's Pass.

"Spring, Caspar Collins, 50; Lewis F. Crawford, Rekindling Camp Fires: The Exploits of Ben Arnold (Connor) (Bismarck, North Dakota: Capital Book Company, 1926), 16-17; Dyer, Compendium, 1479; Reid, Ohio in the War, II, 1 1.

"Spring, Caspar Collins, 51; Crawford, Rekindling Camp Fires, 17-20, 28, 42-44, 62.



3O ARIZONA and the WEST

Six companies took station along the Oregon Trail, and two gar- risoned posts along the Overland Trail. Major Thomas L. Mackey, at Fort Halleck, supervised operations along the southern route.16

Severe storms isolated the Ohio detachments for much of the winter. The Upper Posts were snowbound for over five weeks, but Collins kept in touch by telegraph. Fort Halleck, on the other hand, was a source of concern, as the fort had no telegraph connection and was snowbound for weeks at a time. During December of 1863 and January of 1864, Collins made three attempts to resupply Halleck from Fort Laramie, but each train was forced back because of intense cold or impassable snowdrifts at Sybille Canyon. "Detachments everywhere snowed in," Collins reported to district

headquarters in January. "Men and stock suffer greatly/'17 With the approach of spring, senior officers predicted that

1864 would be a peaceful year on the Plains. The Cheyennes and

Arapahos had squared off against the Utes, and planned to do battle with the Crows and Kiowas as well. With the Indians fighting each other, Major General Samuel Curtis, commanding the Department of the Missouri, made plans to withdraw most troops from the Central Plains. Collins, however, urged caution. A gold discovery in southwest Montana had set off a rush of prospectors over the Oregon Trail. On April 25 he telegraphed Brigadier General Robert B. Mitchell, who had replaced Craig as district commander, that emi-

grants were "coming rapidly" and that "trouble with the Indians

may be expected." Deserters and secessionists also were flooding the territory. Nevertheless, Collins felt confident he could deal with the problems. "I have devoted the last two years to understanding this country and its peculiar service," he pointed out, "and may be supposed to know something of its necessities and my officers and men are equal to any duty here." Collins implied, however, that he needed reinforcements.18

16Spring, Caspar Collins, 57, 146.

17Collins to John Schofield, January 3, 1864; to John Chivington, January 4 and 5, 1864, all in OR, XXXIV, pt. 2, 14, 25 and 28, respectively. 18Collins to R. B. Mitchell, April 25, 1864, enclosed in Mitchell to John Williams, April 26, 1864, ibid., pt. 3, 304-305. George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes (Reprint ed., U. of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 137-40. This work was first published in 1915.




In response, General Mitchell expressed concern that fresh

troops sent to the Central Plains might desert to the goldfields at the first opportunity. If properly organized, the emigrants could defend themselves, and he instructed Collins to encourage travelers to join the larger trains passing Fort Laramie. Collins also could distribute his cannon among the outposts, thereby freeing Ohio cavalry for

patrol duty.19 Warm days brought hostile Indian activity in the Fort Laramie

area. Emigrant parties with livestock were tempting targets, and the Ohioans could do little to protect them. Pursuit was useless, Collins

complained, "for before [the emigrants] can give the troops notice the Indians are well out of reach/* On May 24 raiders killed a civilian and wounded another near the fort. Company H investigated but could find no sign of the attackers. Three weeks later, Indians

boldly skirmished with a detachment five miles from the post.20 Indian affairs deteriorated rapidly in July. On the thirteenth,

Agent John Loree of the Upper Platte Agency reported that Indians were planning a concerted attack on Fort Laramie and along the Platte River Road east of the post. Collins immediately advised settlers to gather near the fort for their own protection. On July 15, Company A rescued a party of seventy emigrants besieged by Indians near Flicklin on the present Wyoming-Nebraska border. On the

twenty- fourth, Company B attacked a small Indian camp along Rawhide Creek, north of Fort Laramie, and returned to the post with a scalp. Agent Loree complained to Collins that the Ohio soldiers had killed a friendly Sioux and warned that the incident would

produce a stir among peaceable Indians in the area. To prevent future mistakes, Collins during the winter of 1864 designated a site ten miles east of the fort as a refuge for friendly Indians.21

19John Pratt to Collins, May 7, 1864, OR, XXXIV, pt. 3, 503-504. Spring, Caspar Collins, 58.

20Collins to John Loree, July 3, 1864, enclosed in Loree to William M. Albin, July 13, 1864, in Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs [CIA], 1864 (Washington, D.C., 1865), 388. Myra E. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains: The Diary of Lewis Byram Hull, 1864-1866," Kansas Historical Quarterly [KHQ], VII (February 1938), 13-14.

21Loree to Albin, July 13, 1864; Circular, Fort Laramie, July 14, 1864, enclosed in Loree to Albin, September 30, 1864, all in CIA Report, 1864, 388 and 390-91, respectively. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains," KHQ, VII, 16-17. Remi Nadeau, Fort Laramie and the Sioux (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1967), 177.




In the meantime, the Eleventh Ohio launched its first major offensive. On July 12 a large Sioux party, estimated at over 200 warriors, attacked two wagons and eleven people of the Kelly- Larimer train at Little Box Elder Creek, west of Fort Laramie. The Indians killed four men and carried off Mrs. Fanny Kelly and her niece Mary, along with Mrs. Sarah Larimer and her eight-year-old son. Josiah Kelly, Fanny's husband, escaped and reached a large wagon train eight miles down the road. The next day the train reached the site of the raid, buried the dead, and continued on to Deer Creek Station. They reported the attack to Captain Levi M.

Rinehart, commanding Company G, who telegraphed to Fort Laramie for reinforcements. Collins dispatched Captain Marshall with Company E, detachments from Companies I and K, and two

pieces of artillery to pursue the Indians and rescue the captives. Totaling nearly 200 men, the column was the largest force of Eleventh Ohio Cavalry ever to take the field against Indians.22

Marshall's men reached La Bonte on the afternoon of the four- teenth. There they found some 100 wagons congregated for mutual

protection along the creek. Offered a military escort, the emigrants responded that they could take care of themselves and expressed contempt for the army's habit of requisitioning private property. Marshall, nevertheless, camped near the train and the next day moved westward with the party. The soldiers frequently saw Indians near the road, and eventually raiders attacked a freight train fol-

lowing a few miles in the rear of Marshall's column. The captain impressed horses from the emigrants and dispatched soldiers and civilians to the scene, but the Indians had gone.23

At noon on July 17, the caravan reached Little Box Elder Creek, where Marshall noted the fresh graves of those killed in the

Kelly-Larimer fight. That evening at Deer Creek, he talked with Mrs. Larimer, who had escaped from the Indian camp and, with

22Fanny Kelly, Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians (Hartford, Connecticut: Mutual Publishing Company, 1872), 19-36. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains," KHQ, VII, 16. See also Sarah L. Larimer, The Capture and Escape: Life Among the Sioux (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1870), passim. 23T. A. Larson (ed.), "Across the Plains in 1864 with George Foreman," Annals of Wyoming, XL (April 1968), 18-19.




her son, had hiked forty miles to the station. With information she provided on the size of the war party, Marshall decided to ride north, intercept the Indians, and rescue Mrs. Kelly. He ordered the civilians to provide volunteers, rations, and horses for the

expedition, but they refused, citing shortages of food and the great distance they had yet to travel.24

Marshall left Deer Creek Station on July 18 with 160 men and the next day reached Cheyenne Fork, forty miles to the northeast. As the cavalrymen made camp, a detachment stumbled upon a small band of Indians. In the ensuing skirmish, Second Lieutenant John Brown, Company E, was struck by an arrow. He died the next

day- the first officer of the Eleventh Ohio killed in action. Marshall

pursued the Indians for three days, during which he claimed to have inflicted forty casualties, but he failed to retrieve Fanny Kelly. Re-

turning to Deer Creek, the Ohioans skirmished with Indians near Platte Bridge on the twenty-sixth, and then began their return to Fort Laramie. The campaign almost ended in tragedy when the soldiers exchanged shots with a group of emigrants, each mistaking the other for Indians. Marshall's Ohio cavalry reached the fort on

July 29, having completed a 600-mile sweep through the Indian

country.25 At Fort Laramie, General Mitchell expressed great concern

over the deteriorating situation on the Central Plains. The Indians were on the warpath, he had reported, "through the entire District of Nebraska from South Pass to the Blue [River], a distance of 800 miles and more." Hostile parties had "laid waste the country, driven off stock, and murdered men, women and children in large num- bers." To contain this menace, Mitchell divided his jurisdiction into two sub-districts and placed Collins in charge of the Western Sub- District. Collins's command included over 400 miles of the Oregon Trail from Julesburg west to South Pass and 260 miles of the Over-

24lbid., 19-21. Larimer, Capture and Escape, 116-19.

"Larimer, Capture and Escape, 123-27; Kelly, Narrative, 129-30; J. W. Vaughn, Indian Fights: New Facts on Seven Encounters (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 7-9. See also "Sarah Larimer," House Report 2700, 49 Cong., 1 Sess. (Serial 2443), 2-3, in which Captain Jacob Shuman makes the unlikely claim that he, not Marshall, commanded the rescue column.



34 ARIZONA and die WEST

land Trail between Julesburg and Bridger's Pass in the south. To reinforce his eight Ohio companies, Collins retained two companies of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, which had accompanied Mitchell to Fort Laramie.26

Collins ordered the Iowans and several Ohio detachments to scout the area within a twenty-five-mile radius of Fort Laramie. Seeing no Indians, they returned to the fort and had just unsaddled their horses and turned them out to roll on the ground, when thirty mounted Indians suddenly galloped into the post and stampeded the herd. One hundred men quickly assembled, but it took an hour to obtain horses, supplies, and ammunition for the pursuit. In a two-

day foray, the soldiers covered nearly a hundred miles, but recovered

only a dozen worn-out horses the Indians had abandoned.27 To protect the Overland Trail east of Fort Halleck, Colonel

Collins ordered Captain William E. Evans and Companies B and F to move to La Porte, Colorado. On high ground east of La Porte, Evans established a post which was later named Fort Collins. The new post replaced Camp Collins, built by Kansas volunteers in the fall of 1862, and destroyed in a flood in June of 1864. Later, during the summer of 1864, Company C established a garrison at Fremont's Orchard, fifty miles east of La Porte.28

Collins also increased security east of Fort Laramie along the

Oregon Trail. In August, Captain Jacob S. Shuman stationed detachments from Company H at the Flicklin and Mud Springs stations, while the remainder of the company constructed a new fort twelve miles east of the present Wyoming-Nebraska border. Initially known as Camp Shuman, the post was renamed Fort Mitchell in honor of the district commander. Meanwhile, near La Bonte Sta- tion, west of Fort Laramie, Captain Marshall and Company E built a

26Mitchell to Samuel Curtis, July 27, August 15, 1864, both in OR, XLI, pt. 2, 429 and 722, respectively; General Orders 23, Headquarters District of Nebraska, July 28, 1864, ibid., 448-49. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains," KHQ, VII, 17. Spring, Caspar Collins, 59.

27Eugene F. Ware, The Indian War of 1864 (Reprint ed., New York, 1960), 207-208. This work was first published in 191 1.

28Agnes Wright Spring, "The Founding of Fort Collins, United States Military Post," Colorado Magazine, X (March 1933), 47-51. Spring states that the post at La Porte was unnamed prior to June of 1864. Nevertheless, "Organization of Troops of the Department of the Missouri. . . , November 20, 1862," OR, XIII, 811, lists a Camp Collins.




new post which they christened Camp Marshall. On August 16, General Mitchell reported to his superiors that he had extended the Eleventh Ohio as far as prudent and requested reinforcements.29

No new units were sent, but Collins added Companies I and K to the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry. In the late summer of 1864, he assembled a group of unassigned volunteers at Forts Laramie and Leaven worth. Sixty of these recruits were former Confederate soldiers who had been captured with Morgan in Ohio and had chosen frontier duty rather than a prison camp. En route west, this detachment had been drawn into a fruitless campaign against hostile Cheyennes in Kansas, and did not reach Fort Laramie until early October. These men were the last group of volunteers mustered into the Eleventh Ohio. With their arrival, the regiment reached its peak strength of ten companies with nearly 1,000 men.30

Despite Indian hostilities, life for the Eleventh Ohio generally consisted of monotonous routine, especially at the scattered stage stations. Rations were scanty, and the troops suffered from occasional outbreaks of scurvy. Recreation consisted mainly of reading and hunting. During the summer, the passing of emigrant trains

provided diversion, as well as occasional problems. When travelers

expressed contempt for the military, the troopers often retaliated. In the summer of 1864, Corporal Hervey Johnson, Company G, wrote from Deer Creek Station: "A man has just been brought up from a train and tied to a telegraph pole for saying the soldiers were all d- d rascals. How long he will be permitted to remain with us I am not able to say, perhaps all day." At other times, reaction to emigrants was more lighthearted. "A hundred men will pass in a day," Johnson reported, and "ask the same questions such as how far is it to grass? Any wood there? Is the road sandy?" Soldiers told the travelers

"anything we think of at the time - such as - you can cross there if

you want to. There is grass down in the Platte. Or, do you mean Bill Grass? He's dead."31

29Mitchell to Curtis, August 16, 1864, OR, XLI, pt. 2, 734. Ware, Indian War, 216-19.

30Post Returns, Fort Laramie, August 1864, RMP, M-617, Roll 596. H. E. Palmer, History of the Powder River Indian Expedition of 1865," Nebraska State Historical Society [NSHS] Transactions and Reports, 11(1887), 197-98.

31Unrau(ed.), Tending the Talking Wire, 147, 163.




After weeks of outpost duty, most soldiers looked forward to a few days at Fort Laramie. As the only permanent settlement in their

locality, the fort played an important part in the Ohioans' lives. On his first visit to the post, one recruit recalled that the place "seemed like a dream, so strange was all around me." He was fascinated by the Indians "in their blankets of gaudy colors" and by mountain men "in their buckskin suits with beaded shirts and decorated headgear." He listened with wonder to their stories of "exploits in mountain wilds, encounters with wolves and bears, and other thrilling incidents in their lives."32

At Fort Laramie, soldiers could legally obtain whiskey and enjoy some social life. Several dozen female dependents and employees resided there, and dances provided frequent opportunities for min-

gling. Sergeant Lewis Hull recorded a typical party in Company I's kitchen. "Considerable whiskey about," he noted. "Four women

present, nearly all drunk. Hewitt dressed up in women's clothes and went with Dr. Dryden. Dance broke up in an uproar." Occasionally, soldiers of the Eleventh Ohio married women at the fort. Sergeant Hull on October 20, 1864, recorded the wedding of "Sergt. Schnyder to cross-eyed Julia" and predicted "a cold winter as weddings are all the rage."33

Officers of the Eleventh Ohio fraternized with Indian women

living near the fort and at the various outposts. Fanny Kelly recalled that Captain Rinehart had an Indian "wife" while he commanded at Deer Creek Station. During her captivity, Mrs. Kelly saw several Indian children with fair complexions who were considered offspring of "fort marriages." One Indian woman she met spoke English and claimed to have lived with a captain at Fort Laramie until his wife arrived from the East. The woman had then returned with her

young son to the Powder River country. When Mrs. Kelly met the

boy, he was still dressed in military-style clothes obtained at the fort.

Captain Eugene F. Ware, of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, reported that two officers of the Eleventh Ohio had "purchased" Indian

32A. J. Shotwell reminiscence in Freeport Press (Ohio), May 3, 1916, quoted in J. Cecil Alter, James Bridget: Trapper, Frontiersman, Scout and Guide: A Historical Narrative (Columbus, Ohio: Long's College Book Company, 1951), 425.

33Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains, "

KHQ, VII, 22, 25.




wives while stationed at Fort Laramie, though neither union lasted long.34

Beginning in the fall of 1864, many Ohio veterans expressed discontent with their long service on the frontier. Those who enlisted in 1 86 1 for three years were nearing the end of their term and

objected to being retained indefinitely on duty. On October 13, dissatisfaction flared when elections were held at Fort Laramie for officers of Companies I and K. Several men holding non- commissioned ranks in the original four companies of the Eleventh Ohio felt their experience entitled them to promotion, but failed to win positions in the new companies. On November 2, a group of these non-commissioned officers petitioned Collins to send home men with expired enlistments. Despite hints of mutiny, Collins was unable to meet the demand. He desperately needed troops in his sub-district.35

The Eleventh Ohio was sorely tested during the winter of 1864. On November 28, Colonel John M. Chivington led Colorado volunteers in an attack on a large Indian camp at Sand Creek, Colorado. This infamous assault sparked a general uprising that spread across the Central Plains. By late January, Indian marauders were striking the overland trails. On the afternoon of February 4, word came to Fort Laramie that Indians had struck Mud Springs Station, 105 miles to the southeast. Collins immediately telegraphed Company H at Fort Mitchell to rush aid to the station, while he organized a

cavalry column to provide support.'36 Lieutenant William H. Ellsworth and thirty-six cavalrymen

rode out of Fort Mitchell that night and reached Mud Springs, forty-five miles to the east, the next morning. Ellsworth drove off the attackers and found nine soldiers and five civilians inside the station

buildings. The Indians had stolen eighteen head of stock and captured a large herd of cattle four miles distant. Collins and a twelve- man escort, riding night and day in intense cold weather, arrived at

34Kelly, Narrative, 128; Ware, Indian War, 213-14.

35Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains, "

KHQ, VII, 24-27.

36Post Returns, Fort Laramie, February 1865, RMP, M-617, Roll 596. Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 92. Spring, Caspar Collins, 61; Nadeau, Fort Laramie, 169-70.




Mud Springs shortly after midnight on the sixth. The remainder of his column - 120 men of the Eleventh Ohio and Company D, Seventh Iowa Cavalry - arrived that same morning.37

At mid-morning, Indians appeared on the low, rolling hills sur-

rounding the station and began lobbing arrows into the stockade. Several soldiers were wounded and some livestock were killed. When Collins sent his cavalry to clear the nearby hills, a battle of hide-and-seek developed. Finally, after several hours of indecisive

skirmishing, Collins launched a two-pronged attack. Sending one column forward on foot, he ordered a mounted detachment to

swing behind the Indians and catch them in a pincer. The soldiers moved rapidly, but the Indians suddenly broke contact and rode

away from the station. The colonel estimated the Indians' strength at between 500 and 1,000 and listed his casualties in the engagement at seven wounded.38

Collins early in the fight had telegraphed to Fort Laramie for a howitzer. The artillery arrived on the morning of February 7, and Collins headed east with the gun, supply wagons, and approximately 140 men for the junction of Rush Creek and North Platte River. Ten miles from Mud Springs Station, along Rush Creek, the column

passed a fresh campsite littered with hundreds of empty tin cans and the remains of one hundred cattle that had been slaughtered. Fol-

lowing the creek to its mouth, the troopers spotted the main body of Indians, numbering several thousand, crossing over to the north bank of the frozen North Platte.39

Collins quickly coralled his wagons and dug in for defense, as some 2,000 warriors swarmed back across the river. The ensuing battle resembled the Mud Springs engagement, with small groups of Indians and soldiers maneuvering for position among low hills and ravines. Collins attempted to employ the howitzer, but discovered that its shells were defective from long storage at Fort Laramie. Some projectiles failed to detonate on impact, while others exploded only a few feet beyond the cannon's mouth, showering the soldiers with metal fragments. A respite was gained when First Sergeant

37Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 92-93. Spring, Caspar Collins, 161-62.

38Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 93-94, 97. Spring, Caspar Collins, 62-63.

39Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 94. Spring, Caspar Collins, 63-65.




Robert F. Patton and a cavalry detachment succeeded in driving a large body of Indians from a hill dominating Collins's position. During the attack, Private William H. Hartshorn, Company C, was killed when his horse panicked and ran into the Indian lines. Toward evening, the Indians retired across the Platte.40

Collins's men spent a watchful night in their position. Next

morning, 400 warriors returned and exchanged shots with the soldiers, but by afternoon they recrossed the Platte and, gathering their families and herds, vanished in the direction of the Powder River

country in northeastern Wyoming. Believing that pursuit would be

"injudicious," Collins broke camp after noon and returned to Mud Springs.41

In the only campaign which he led personally, Collins had marched over 400 miles in ten days, in extremely cold weather, and often without tents or rations. He had lost two men killed in action and sixteen wounded, one of whom later died. Another ten men suffered from severe frostbite, making a total of twenty-eight casualties out of 175 soldiers engaged. The Indians, he reported, had lost between 100 and 150 warriors in the engagements at Mud Springs and Rush Creek. Collins praised his men for their "patience, endur- ance, cheerfulness, and courage" and added that their "readiness to

obey, and promptness and skill to execute [orders] could not be

surpassed."42 Back at Fort Laramie, the Eleventh Ohio was reorganized. On

March 7, 1865, Collins and the four companies of the First Battalion rode east for Omaha, where they were discharged from the service, their enlistments having expired. Fifty-two-year-old Thomas L.

Mackey replaced Collins as lieutenant colonel. Mackey reorganized the newly designated "Battalion, Eleventh Ohio." Forty-four men of the First Battalion had chosen to reenlist and were distributed

among the remaining six companies. Eighty- two men who had enlisted in the First Battalion after 1861 - and whose term of service had not yet expired - were organized as Company L, the last com-

pany to join the Eleventh Ohio's roster.43

40Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 94-95. Spring, Caspar Collins, 65-66.

41Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 96. Spring, Caspar Collins, 66.

42Collins to Pratt, February 15, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 96-97. Spring, Caspar Collins, 67.

43Reid, Ohio in the War, I, 175. Official Roster, XI, 577. Sprrhg, Caspar Collins, 68.




In 1865 the Ohio cavalry was fitted into a new command struc- ture. Under Colonel Mackey, it became one of several small units

guarding the overland routes. With the Civil War drawing to a close in the East, the War Department sent a number of veteran cavalry regiments west for duty along the overland routes between Omaha and Kansas City and Salt Lake City. The districts of Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska were combined to form the District of the Plains, under Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor, formerly commanding California volunteers in Utah. The upper portion (Oregon Trail) of Collins's old command was redesignated the North Sub-District and placed under Colonel Thomas Moonlight. The southern part (Overland Trail) was given to Brevet Brigadier General Guy V.

Henry. The Eleventh Ohio companies were thus divided among two commands.44

During the early spring, the Eleventh Ohio took to the field in small detachments. Company E engaged in a series of skirmishes west of Fort Laramie. On March 28 a party of Cheyennes and Sioux killed Private Patrick Holmes and ran off sixteen horses near Camp Marshall, and five days later raiders drove off the stock from a

government train bound for the Upper Posts. On the twenty-first, Private George J. Donovan, Company E, was killed in an engagement with an estimated 200 Arapahos who had stolen fifteen horses near La Prele Station. Seven Indians were killed in the encounter. Two days later, Cheyennes attacked a supply wagon from Deer Creek and captured the six-mule team. A small detachment of the Eleventh Ohio turned the tables on May 28, when soldiers con- cealed in wagons repulsed an attack upon a train traveling west from Fort Laramie.45

Company G probably was the most active unit of the Eleventh Ohio. Eighty men of this company were scattered among six posts along 170 miles of the Oregon Trail, running from Deer Creek to South Pass. Trouble began on February 13, when Captain Rinehart left Deer Creek with ten men to pursue Cheyennes who had raided a

"General Orders 4, Headquarters District of the Plains, April 8, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 2, 54- 55. 45<<

Report of Captain B. F. Rockafellow, Sixth Michigan Cavalry, concerning Indian depredations since February 1, 1865, between Fort Laramie [and] South Pass," typescript, Henry C. Bretney Collection, Wyoming Historical Department, Cheyenne. Official Roster, XI, 561-66. Unrau (ed.), Tending the Talking Wire, 233, 253.




prospector's camp. The soldiers intercepted the Indians near La Prele Creek, and in a brief skirmish Rinehart was killed. Two weeks later, Indians ran off part of the herd at Sweetwater Station. On March 8, near Poison Creek, four Indians accosted two soldiers

driving a wagon between Sweetwater Station and Platte Bridge. Claiming to be peaceful Arapahos, they approached in a friendly manner, then suddenly opened fire, killing one man. His companion held the Indians off with his Spencer carbine until nightfall, when he made his way back to Sweetwater.48

On May 26, the detachment at Sweetwater Station opened fire on three Indians who were attempting to run off the stock, killing one and wounding another. On the twenty-seventh, the five-man

garrison at St. Mary's Station foiled an attempt to capture the two

cavalry horses there. When the raiders ran off one horse, the soldiers shot the other to prevent its capture and then hid in a well. After sunset, they made their way to Upper Crossings. The next day, twenty- five warriors struck again at Sweetwater Station, capturing four horses and two mules.47

When Connor, on May 30, 1865, closed the Oregon Trail between Julesburg and Fort Bridger to civilian traffic, the marauders shifted their activities south to the Overland Trail. In early June, a

large band entered the Sage Creek area west of Fort Halleck, where

Company K of the Eleventh Ohio had spent a quiet winter. The

peaceful atmosphere disappeared on June 2, when reports came of raids along the Overland Trail to the west. Captain Jacob Hum-

freville, commanding at Fort Halleck, sent First Lieutenant James A. Brown and thirty-one men to clear the road. En route, Brown

passed three abandoned stage stations, eventually locating the per- sonnel and livestock huddled together at Sulphur Springs Station, eighty miles west of Fort Halleck. He ordered the stations re-

occupied and posted detachments at Washakie, Sulphur Springs, Bridgets Pass, Pine Grove, and Sage Creek.48

46Spring, Caspar Collins, 71-72. Caspar Collins to Catherine Collins, April 15, 1865, in ibid., 168-69. Unrau(ed.), Tending the Talking Wire, 225.

47H. C. Bretney to Thomas Moonlight, June , 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 294. Spring, Caspar Collins, 76.

48George F. Price to C. H. McNally, May 30, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 2, 690; J. A. Brown to J. L. Humfreville, June 14, 1865, ibid., pt. 1, 295. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains," KHQ, VII, 38. Spring, Caspar Collins, 77-78.




Brown returned to Fort Halleck on June 6, confident that secu-

rity had been reestablished along the Overland Trail. That notion, however, vanished two days later when ioo Indians attacked the small garrison at Sage Creek Station. After an hour, the defenders ran low on ammunition and attempted to escape on horseback to Pine Grove, the next station to the west. An eight-mile running fight ensued, in which two civilians and two soldiers were killed. Two soldiers reached Pine Grove unharmed, and one made it safely to Halleck. Alarmed by news of the attack, the garrisons at Pine Grove and Bridger's Pass withdrew west to Sulphur Springs.49

At Fort Halleck, Captain Humfreville organized a column and set out to reopen the road. He soon discovered that Indians had driven off the stage company stock between the fort and Duck Lake Station, 140 miles to the west. Indians boldly raided Humfreville's

camp at Sulphur Springs and got away with forty-seven cavalry horses and stage stock. Lacking horses to continue the expedition, the troopers hitched cavalry mounts to a stagecoach, collected mail that had accumulated at the station, and returned to Fort Halleck. There, Humfreville found detachments of Colorado, Kansas, and U.S. Volunteer (former Confederate) units - the vanguard of reinforcements sent west to keep the stages running along the Overland Trail. Humfreville's Company K, he learned, had been transferred north to the Oregon Trail, and in early July the cavalrymen packed their belongings and set out for Fort Laramie.50

Indian raids had continued along the Oregon Trail, even

though Connor had closed it to civilian traffic in May. On June 1 , Indians had tried unsuccessfully to lure the Sweetwater Station

garrison into an ambush, and then had vented their frustration by cutting down and carrying off a hundred yards of telegraph wire. Three weeks later, a private in Company E was killed in a skirmish near the station. Major activity, however, centered on Platte Bridge, to the east. Earlier, on the afternoon of June 3, ten Indians opened fire on the station from across the river. First Sergeant Samuel B. White, Company G, responded with howitzer fire, wounding two

ponies and forcing the Indians to withdraw.51

49Brown to Humfreville, June 14, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 295.

50C. H. Potter to Price, June 19, 1865, ibid., 328.

"Bretney to Moonlight, June , 1865; S. B. White to Moonlight, June 13, 1865, both in ibid., 294 and 296, respectively. Official Roster, XI, 562.



Eleventh Ohio Cavalry officers at Fort Laramie. Front Row: Captain Levi Rinehart (far left) and Lieutenant Caspar Collins (second from left). Top Row: Captain H. C. Bretney (fourth from left).- Remi Nadeau, Fort Laramie and the Sioux (1967), following 178.

Platte Bridge Station, from a drawing by Caspar Collins. - Spring, Caspar Collins, opposite 66.



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White immediately notified Lieutenant Colonel Preston B. Plumb, Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, commanding at the bridge, of the attack. Plumb collected twenty-one men - eleven from the Eleventh Ohio - and rode to the river. Spotting Indians, he crossed the North Platte River and pursued them for five miles across bluffs and ravines. When half of the detachment fell back because of jaded horses, sixty mounted warriors emerged from Dry Creek and

charged. Fortunately, twenty cavalrymen from Platte Bridge sud-

denly appeared on the horizon, causing the Indians to wheel about and ride north. In the meantime, several soldiers had started chasing a small group of Indians. They shot one warrior and, while attempting to capture his horse, they were surrounded by thirty braves. Two of their horses were shot out from under them, a Kansas private was slain, and an Ohio private was killed as he fled on foot. The Indians withdrew when the main body of cavalry rode onto the scene. The soldiers gathered up the bodies of the dead men and returned to Platte Bridge.52

The skirmish at Dry Creek was a prelude to one of the most

tragic incidents in the history of the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer

Cavalry. At two o'clock on the morning of July 26, Captain Henry C.

Bretney, Company G, arrived at Platte Bridge Station, and reported that Sergeant Amos Custard and twenty-five men of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry were escorting five empty wagons from Sweetwater to Platte Bridge. Custard was unaware that 1,000 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors were swarming into the area. Just after break- fast, Major Martin Anderson of the Eleventh Kansas, commanding at Platte Bridge, ordered Lieutenant Caspar Collins - the popular twenty-year-old son of the Ohio regiment's former commander -

with a detachment of Kansas cavalry, to escort Custard's train into the station.53

Anderson's order created an uproar. Ohio and Kansas volunteers had been at each other's throats for some time. The Kansans were tired of the war and anxious to go home, and they suspected that former Confederates among the Eleventh Ohio were fomenting

52P. B. Plumb to I. I. Taber, June 4, 1865, OR, XLVIII, pt. 1, 305-306. Spring, Caspar Collins, 77.

53J. W. Vaughn, The Battle of Platte Bridge (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 22-23, 41-52, 55-56; Spring, Caspar Collins, 81-82.




Indian troubles. On July 4, a Kansas company had refused to relieve Ohio soldiers at Fort Collins, and eight days later Captain Bretney and some of his Ohioans had drawn guns on Captain James E. Greer, Eleventh Kansas, and his men in a dispute over command at Platte Bridge. Bretney vehemently protested sending an Ohio officer to command Kansas troops on this dangerous mission.54

Anderson, however, overruled Bretney, and Collins started for Custard's train. On the far side of the river, Indians attacked the

twenty-five-man detachment, killing Collins and four soldiers and

wounding eight others. Later that morning, they struck the government train as it approached Platte Bridge. Twenty soldiers were

killed, including a Ohio private who was serving as a teamster. The Indians withdrew the next day.55

The battle of Platte River Bridge coincided with the opening of General Connor's long-awaited offensive against the Northern Plains tribes. His plan called for three columns- one from Omaha under Colonel Nelson B. Cole and two from Fort Laramie under Connor and Colonel Samuel B. Walker - to rendezvous on Rosebud Creek on September 1 , and then sweep the Powder River country in

present-day northeastern Wyoming. Connor had been planning the offensive for several months, but numerous problems had caused

delays. Restless volunteer units were clamoring to be mustered out, and in late July, at Fort Laramie, he had to call on soldiers of the Eleventh Ohio to help quell a mutiny in the Sixteenth Kansas

Cavalry. Connor now decided to launch his campaign with about half the troops he deemed necessary to crush the Indians. Neverthe- less, his Powder River Expedition - involving over 2,500 men - was the largest Indian campaign ever undertaken by volunteer soldiers in the United States.56

"Alfred J. Mokler, History of Natrona Country, Wyoming, 1888-1922 (Reprint ed., New York, 1966), 401-402. This work was first published in 1923. Vaughn, Battle of Platte Bridge, 18-19, 57-58; Spring, Caspar Collins, 84-85; Nadeau, Fort Laramie, 305-306.

"Vaughn, Battle of Platte Bridge, 58-70, 77-89, 99-104; Spring, Caspar Collins, 85-95.

56LeRoy R. Hafen 8c Ann W. Hafen (eds.), Powder River Campaigns and Sawyers Expedition of 1865 (Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1961), 22-26. "Capt. H. E. Palmer's Account of the Connor Expedition," in ibid., 108-109. This account is compiled from Palmer, "History of the Powder River Indian Expedition," NSHS Transactions and Reports, II, 201-29, and a slightly different version in C. G. Coutant, History of Wyoming from the Earliest Known Discoveries (Laramie, Wyoming: Chaplin, Spafford & Mathison, 1899), 506-32.




Connor's column of slightly over 1,000 soldiers, civilians, and Indian auxiliaries left Fort Laramie on July 28. Comprising more than a third of his effective fighting force were 1 30 men of Com-

panies E and K of the Eleventh Ohio under the command of Major Levi Marshall. Marshall had been promoted to command the regiment when Colonel Mackey went to Ohio on what would prove to be a

permanent leave. Connor followed the Oregon Trail to La Bonte Station, forded the Platte, and then turned north among the Boze- man Trail. On August 11, he camped near the Powder River and erected Fort Connor as a base of operations. While scouting in the area, Marshall and forty Ohioans killed two Indians and captured eleven head of stock.57

On August 22, the Ohio contingent accompanied Connor when he set out with 250 cavalry, two howitzers, and eighty Indian scouts for Rosebud Creek. At dusk on the twenty-seventh, while camped on the Tongue River, his scouts reported a large Indian village to the southwest. Connor ordered an all-night ride, and early the next

morning the troopers swept down on Black Bear's Arapaho camp, capturing 1,100 Indian ponies and scattering the Indians. The Ohioans helped burn the village and then fell in with the rear guard, accompanying the Indian scouts and the captured herd. For nearly ten hours, Arapaho warriors dogged the column, hoping to recapture their ponies.58

At daylight on August 29, the weary soldiers finally returned to their camp on the Tongue. They had ridden over 100 miles, fought a

major engagement, and sustained a long rearguard action. Captain Humfreville later commented that he had never seen troops endure "such hardships as we experienced during the forty hours of this march and battle. " Eleventh Ohio casualties included two men from

Company K wounded, one of whom was Private Ed Ward, a

twenty-year-old Confederate who had been captured with Morgan's men and had enlisted in the Eleventh Ohio under the alias John

57P. Edward Connor to J. W. Barnes, July 28, 1865; to G. M. Dodge, [July 30, 1865], both in Hafen & Hafen (eds.), Powder River Campaigns, 40-42 and 46-48, respectively. "Palmer Account," in ibid., 108-21. 58 "Palmer Account" ibid. , 121-36.




Johnson. Struck in the mouth by an arrow, Ward survived battlefield

amputation of his tongue and the long ride back to Fort Laramie.59 On August 30, Connor resumed his march north to Montana

and reached the Rosebud on September 1, where he expected to rendezvous with Cole and Walker. When there was no sign of the two columns, he dispatched Captain Frank North and twenty Pawnee scouts, together with Major Marshall and thirty men of

Company E of the Eleventh Ohio, to search along the Rosebud. With continuing bad weather, shortage of supplies, and large num- bers of Indians hanging on his flanks, Connor suddenly changed his plans and on September 2, he turned around and started back to the Tongue.60

Unknown to Connor, Cole and Walker had linked up north of the Black Hills as planned and had proceeded into Montana, where

they became lost. On September 13, Sergeant Charles L. Thomas, Company E, and five Pawnee scouts found Cole and Walker on the Rosebud, their men starving and livestock exhausted. Informed of the location of Fort Connor, the column marched south and rejoined the main expedition at the fort. For rescuing the lost commands, Sergeant Thomas received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the only soldier of the Eleventh Ohio to be so honored.61

Learning on September 12 that he had been relieved, Connor broke up the expedition. The Powder River campaign was the Eleventh Ohio's most grueling experience, involving over 1,200 miles of marching and nearly two months of continuous operations. The various companies of the Eleventh now returned to posts along the North Platte River, engaging in routine escort and scouting duties from Fort Casper (named after Caspar Collins) at Platte Bridge to Fort Mitchell. On September 27, 1865, the regiment suf-

59lbid., 131-32, 136. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains, "

KHQ, VII, 47. Jacob L. Hum- freville, Twenty Years Among Our Hostile Indians (New York: Hunter 8c Company, 1903), 357.

^"Palmer Account," in Hafen & Hafen (eds.), Powder River Campaigns, 138-89. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains," KHQ, VII, 48.

61"Col. Nelson Cole's Report of His Expedition," in Hafen & Hafen (eds.), Powder River Campaigns, 67-86; "Palmer Account," ibid., 143. Medal of Honor Recipients, 1863-1978 (Washington, D.C., 1979), 318.




fered its last combat fatality, when Indians killed Private William H. Lorance of Company L in a skirmish near Fort Laramie.62

The status of the Eleventh Ohio became a subject of debate

during the winter of 1865. In October, Governor Charles Anderson of Ohio wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stan ton, forwarding Major Marshall's request to muster out the regiment. Anderson reminded the secretary of his own requests and reiterated his objec- tions to "the detention of volunteers on a service not contemplated by themselves when they enlisted, nor authorized by the acts of

Congress." Mitchell and Anderson's pleas, however, fell on deaf ears until spring.63

Finally, in May of 1866, the long-awaited orders to muster out were received. Companies I and L of the Eleventh Ohio packed their

belongings and left Fort Casper for Fort Laramie, where they joined four other companies of the regiment. The Ohioans left Laramie on

June 1 5 and, joined by Company H at Fort Mitchell, continued on to Fort Leaven worth. The seven companies assembled there were the

largest formation of the Eleventh Ohio ever gathered together in one

place. Over 1,200 men had served with the regiment. Three officers and fourteen enlisted men had been killed in action, and one officer and sixty men had died from accidents, disease, and frostbite. Their

long tour of duty at last behind them, the veteran cavalrymen on July 14 turned in their horses and equipment and boarded a train for Columbus, Ohio. They were the last Ohio volunteer unit to be mustered out of Civil War service.64

The Eleventh Ohio Cavalry was a unique organization. Its activities illustrated the stop-gap measures that military leaders in

Washington, D.C., employed to counter the Indian threat to overland communications during the Civil War. Organized to fight Con- federates in the East, the regiment was sent west and spent its entire

62t4Palmer Account," in Hafen & Hafen (eds.), Powder River Campaigns, 148-52. Official Roster, XI, 579.

63Charles Anderson to Edwin M. Stanton, October 27, 1865, OR, Series III, Volume V, 161.

64Fort Casper, Post Returns, October 1865; Fort Laramie, Post Returns, May 1866, both in RMP, M-617, rolls 189 and 596, respectively. Official Roster, XI, 547, 798-800. Hull (ed.), "Soldiering on the High Plains,

" KHQ, VII, 53. Spring, Caspar Collins, 97-98.




existence guarding the Oregon and Overland trails across the Cen- tral Plains. The unit was gradually expanded to meet successive Indian crises. Whereas original enlistees had joined out of a sense of

patriotism and in search of adventure, subsequent recruits included Southern sympathizers and even Confederate veterans. Retained in the service long after their enlistments had expired, the Ohioans endured homesickness, the derision of civilian emigrants, and the distrust of veteran units from the Eastern theaters who were sent west at the end of the Civil War. Short of manpower and supplies, the Eleventh Ohio fought a lonely and frustrating war. But in so

doing, the regiment played an important role in guarding the frontier

during the nation's greatest ordeal.



the eleventh ohio volunteer cavalry on the central plains 1862-1866

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