page_title: Battle of Platte Bridge
section_title: Battle of Red Buttes
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Platte Bridge / Battle of Red Buttes
caption_attribution_description: Scope and content: Original caption: View of the Red Buttes at what is now known as Bessemer Bend, a notable point of the old Oregon Trail where the Oregon Trail left the North Platte River for the Sweetwater. The approximate location of a massacre of 23 U.S. troopers in 1865, which occurred at the same time as the death of Caspar Collins at that bridge, for whom the town of Casper was named.
context_page_description: The Battle of Platte Bridge, also called the Battle of Platte Bridge Station, on July 26, 1865 was the culmination of a summer offensive by the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne Indians against the United States army. In May and June the Indians raided army outposts and stagecoach stations over a wide swath of Wyoming and Montana. In July, they assembled a large army, estimated by Cheyenne warrior George Bent to number 3,000 warriors, and descended upon Platte Bridge. The bridge, across the North Platte River near present-day Casper, Wyoming, was guarded by 120 soldiers. In an engagement near the bridge, and another against a wagon train guarded by 28 soldiers a few miles away, the Indians killed 29 soldiers while suffering at least eight dead.
context_section_description: Sgt. Amos J. Custard was in charge of five wagons and 25 men coming from the west toward Platte Bridge Station.  He was warned by a 30-man patrol of the 11th Ohio Cavalry that many Indians were in the area. The Ohioans had holed up behind a breastworks made of wagons.  Custard declined to take cover with the Ohioans, saying "We have been South, where fighting is done, and we know how to do it."  He and his men and wagons continued on to a point about five miles from and within sight of Platte Bridge Station where he heard the sounds of the station's cannon and the battle near the bridge.  Custard sent out Corporal James A. Shrader and four troopers to investigate.  They were cut off and pursued by a hundred Cheyenne led by the brother of Roman Nose, Left Hand, who was killed in the running fight. Eventually Shrader and two men made their way on foot into the station.
  At the wagon train, with large numbers of Indians closing in, Custard organized the wagons into a corral near the river bank and beat off a first, disorganized assault. Indian leaders, including Roman Nose, arrived and took charge.  Roman Nose and others rode their horses at top speed in a circle around the wagon train with the objective of depleting the soldier's ammunition.  That accomplished, the Indians advanced, most of them on foot, and overran the train, killing all 22 of the soldiers in the corral. One teamster escaped.
  U.S. army accounts state that the wagons were forced into a hollow where they held out for four hours, using fire from Spencer rifles to repel assaults until a large group closed on foot and overwhelmed the defenders, killing all. George Bent, a participant, said the fight lasted little more than half an hour.  He gave grudging admiration to the soldiers who briefly stood off 1,000 Indians.  Bent said eight Indians were killed in the battle and many wounded.  By contrast, in the fight with Collins, the Indians had suffered "practically no loss."
caption: The Battle of Red Buttes took place in the flat area near the North Platte River.  The Red Buttes are in the distance.
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