When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the Union sent volunteer cavalry regiments made up of men who were not soldiers by trade to defend Western forts, including Fort Laramie. War in the East also meant that troops on the frontier were spread increasingly thin. Still, most of the men at the frontier forts wanted to see action. Lieutenant Caspar Collins, at Fort Laramie in 1862, wrote, ‘I never observed so many men so anxious to have a fight with Indians.’ On the other hand, an unidentified enlistee commented: ‘The soldiers did not hold hard feelings about Indians. I could always make friends with them, when they were treated right.’

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The government, though, often did not treat the Indians right, as when gold was discovered in present-day Montana in the early 1860s and John M. Bozeman established a trail right through the Lakotas’ best hunting grounds (shaving 350 miles off the more roundabout Oregon Trail route). The government not only ignored Bozeman’s flagrant violation of the 1851 treaty but also authorized the War Department to improve the trail and construct Forts Reno, Phil Kearney and C.F. Smith along it to secure the road and protect gold seekers.

The Plains Indians, of course, were none too pleased. Merrill J. Mattes, a former Fort Laramie historian, wrote that ‘the justifiable indignation at the white man’s invasion was a perpetual menace.’ Soldiers dispatched from Fort Laramie engaged in sporadic skirmishes with bands of Indians. Raids on stage stations and routes, as well as the telegraph lines, paralyzed travel in the region for weeks at a time. When hostilities erupted at Mud Springs, near present Bridgeport, Neb., in 1865, troops from Fort Laramie, commanded by Colonel William O. Collins, engaged the Indians in one of several indecisive battles.

One such skirmish, however, cost Fort Laramie commander Colonel Thomas O. Moonlight his military career. After a band of friendly Brulés who had not joined in the raids were taken under guard from Fort Laramie to be delivered to Fort Kearny, they killed their guards and escaped (see ‘Lakota Escape at Horse Creek’ in the June 1998 Wild West). Moonlight personally led a force on a 120-mile manhunt, never finding the fugitives. But when he ordered the men to turn their horses loose to graze, the Indians swooped down on the camp and, in broad daylight, made off with all the soldiers’ animals. In a fit of rage, Moonlight burned his troops’ saddles and equipment. Then they hiked back to Fort Laramie. Shortly afterward, Moonlight was mustered out of the Army.

The closest Fort Laramie ever came to being attacked was in 1864. A detachment had been out scouting for signs of Indians. Finding none, they returned to the fort and unsaddled their mounts on the parade ground. Right under the entire command’s noses, about 30 warriors raced through the fort, making off with the horses. There were plenty of embarrassed men but no injuries.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, the Army sent large numbers of troops to guard the Western frontier. By 1866, the trail to Montana gold carried the well-earned nickname of ‘the Bloody Bozeman,’ as a combined force of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors besieged the route. Word came to Fort Laramie on Christmas night of a fight that claimed the lives of 81 men, including Captain William J. Fetterman, who was well-known around the fort. Fetterman had headed a detachment of troops out from Fort Phil Kearny to guard and escort a wood train. Before reaching the woodcutters, however, he had disobeyed orders and taken off after a band of Indians. His party had been ambushed and wiped out (see ‘The Fatal Fetterman Fight’ in the December 1997 Wild West). Embarrassed by this defeat, the Army sought a diplomatic solution to the escalating violence. The result was the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, which the Senate ratified early the following year.

A bitter peace agreement for the Army, this treaty conceded victory to Red Cloud and his warriors by calling for the withdrawal of all soldiers and the abandonment and destruction of all forts along the Bozeman Trail. But it also stipulated that the Lakotas entirely relinquish their North Platte (Oregon Trail) territory, which included lands around Fort Laramie, and take up reservation living in the Dakotas.

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