b'The Story of Crazy Horse he is, through the scant Native American records kept, known to have participated in and led subsequent raids throughout the region. With Fort Laramie in the cross-hairs of the Plains War, the reluctant Colonel Collins did his utmost to contain the violence closing in on him, his son, their 11th Ohio Regiment, and the "Galvanized Yankees," i.e., ex-Confederates serving alongside them, trying to keep supply wagons moving through the Platte River region unharmed - until the late spring and early summer of 1865 when the Sioux War finally descended upon Platte River - with dire consequences for the peace-loving Collins father and son.There was a bridge over the North Platte River in the vicinity of Fort Laramie that was crucial for the resupply of the Laramie garrison as it hosted an army post, a supply depot and a telegraph office. Colonel Collins was very aware of its importance and so was a certain Sioux warrior by the name of Crazy Horse. The Sioux and Cheyenne knew if they were able to seize and destroy the bridge Fort Laramie would become untenable, so accordingly they surreptitiously closed in on the bridge the morning of July 24, 1865, sending a body of Cheyenne warriors to harass the outposts while Crazy Horse and the main body of Sioux warriors struck hard from the north. The Sioux and Cheyenne briefly had the element of surprise on their side, but in a case of delicious irony, several soldiers manning a cannon detected movement in the hills overlooking the bridge and chose to lob a couple of shells in the direction of movement. The chiefs tried to restrain their men, but the warriors pushed right pass them, charging towards the bridge (the irony being that just two years earlier, a former army lieutenant who once befriended Crazy Horse but was now a brigadier of engineers, the one-time lieutenant named Governor Warren detected a similar movement of rebels at Gettysburg and ordered the lobbing a couple of shells at the woods surrounding Little Round Top - the woods teeming with Rebels under Longstreet about to charge what they too, thought was a relatively undefended position).All hell broke loose, but the soldiers, encouraged by Lieutenant Collins, managed to retreat to more secure lines on the other side of the bridge - however, just as the last of his men got safely across, Lieutenant Caspar Collins wasn\'t so lucky. While shouting to the mixed Sioux-Cheyenne warriors that he was a friend and didn\'t want to fight, his horse suddenly bolted across the bridge towards the Indian positions. Recognized, a few of the Sioux urged their fellow warriors not to fire, but it was too late. George Bent, (the half-breed son of the famed trader and founder (with his brothers) of the renown Bent\'s Fort, William Bent) who would bitterly renounce his white background after witnessing first-hand the Sand Creek massacre, was there, and would later retell the story of Lieutenant Collins sad demise. "I saw an officer (Lieutenant Collins) on a big bay horse rush past me through the dense clouds of dust and smoke. His horse was running away with him and broke straight through the Indians. The Lieutenant had an arrow sticking on his forehead and his face was streaming with blood. He dropped right in the midst of the warriors" (Sajna, p. 183, Ambrose, p. 162). 10% OFFStymied, the Sioux and Cheyenne turned around and saw a supply train approaching the bridge and turned on it instead. The teamsters and a company of men commanded by a Sergeant Amos Custard that had been sent out by Lieutenant Collins to escort them in died to a man, the wagon train destroyed. But Fort Laramie held, and aANY REGULAR PRICED ITEMpunitive force commanded by General Patrick Conner would pursue the Sioux and Cheyenne back up the Powder River, failing however to harm them, much less destroy the rampaging warriors. Excludes Tools & Equipment.And meanwhile, just to the north, the Bozeman Trail was aflame with Indian raids andMention Arizona Real Country Magazine.wagon team massacres spurred on by the great Oglala Chief Red Cloud. Something had to be done, and the post-Civil War department made the fateful decision to erect a new fort along the trail. Fort Phil Kearny was named for the one-armed Union general and war hero who died at the battle of Chantilly that was built and garrisoned right alongside the Bozeman as deterrence to the non-stop Sioux raids. The trouble was, the Army sent out a colonel just as humane as the Colonel Collins was, grieving for his son, and a subordinate just as reckless and deliberately ignorant of Indian ways as Grattan was.FETTERMAN AND THE LODGE TRAILEnter Colonel Henry Carrington - a lawyer and garrison officer who saw no action but prior to going West had smashed almost single-handedly a Confederate-Copperhead Spy Ring in the mid-west and his over-eager, cited veteran of the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman\'s March, Captain William J. Fetterman. Fetterman may have known how to fight Confederates, but he was so contemptuous and so woefully ignorant, unlike Lieutenants Warren and Collins, of Indian warfare (he openly boasted of taking "Red Cloud\'s Scalp") that it would to be his undoing and that of the over 80 men who followed him to his doom and theirs along the Lodge Trail Ridge.Carrington sought to make peace with Red Cloud and met with a number of Red Cloud\'s subordinates to discuss ways of accommodation while keeping the Bozeman secure for the travel of white settlers. He might have succeeded in his efforts in reaching the great Oglala chief if it hadn\'t been for Red Cloud\'s making good on his threat to close down the Bozeman and a subsequent ambush that claimed the life of one of his more capable, though unwise subordinates, Lieutenant Horatio Bingham. continued on page 57ArizonaRealCountry.com January 2023 55'