Lieutenant Casper Collins: Fighting the Odds at Platte Bridge

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About the same time, a large group of Indians had gathered on the bluff northwest of Platte Bridge Station where Collins’ party had been attacked. Mitchell Lajeunesse, a half-blood scout who lived in a tepee near the station, ventured out. He discovered that the Indians were squabbling, much as the bluecoats had done. The Cheyenne warriors called the Sioux warriors cowards for not taking the bridge, and the Sioux accused the Cheyenne of ‘friendly fire’ when they came down the hill after the retreating soldiers. According to Lajeunesse, the Indians nearly came to the point of turning their weapons on each other.

Custard, meanwhile, was still headed eastward along the telegraph road, having broken camp and hitched up the mule teams at dawn on July 26. The wagon train crossed the alkali flats, rode along the ‘Rock Avenue’ past the ‘Devil’s Backbone’ formations and Emigrant Gap. Custard and his men were unaware of the tumult up ahead at Platte Bridge.

About 9 a.m., east of Red Buttes, he encountered a telegraph patrol of 30 men of the 11th Ohio. For several days, mounted warriors had blocked their way back. They hailed the wagon train with great joy and invited them to join forces with them behind the breastwork of wagons they had set across a small peninsula. According to one of the patrol, Custard said, ‘You Ohio fellows, decked out in buckskin and fringe, think you know too much about this Injun business. We have been South, where fighting is done, and we know how to do it.’ A string of profanity floated down to the Ohio men as they watched Custard and his wagons scale the dividing ridge.

About 11:30 a soldier from the station spotted the wagons hurtling up the last little ridge west of the fort. The Indians didn’t miss the wagons either. Sergeant Merwin and his crew fired the howitzer as a warning.

Custard detailed Corporal James Shrader to take four men and ride ahead to see what the firing was about. Indians who had been hidden by the bluffs sprang forward in the northeast, east and south. Cut off, the riders plunged into the river. Private Edwin Sumners, seeing 15 Indians approach, refused to go along and was last seen being pursued by several warriors. Shrader and Private James Ballau reached the south bank. Ballau’s horse was shot from under him. His last words were, ‘Jim, what shall we do? We shall all be killed!’

After a brief skirmish, Shrader and the two other advance riders abandoned their horses and took to the sagebrush and a deep ravine. They crept over several ridges. As they ran the gantlet toward the post, about 20 Indians tried to head them off. Soldiers at the fort called out for the trio to take to the gully while they covered them. A group went out to meet them, and all reached the stockade safely, probably only because the Indians turned their attention to Custard’s wagon train.

After the Indians had cut Shrader off from the wagon train, some of them began attacking the train about noon. Custard’s force, in more of a frantic stampede than an orderly maneuver, managed to corral the wagons into a hollow south of the road. As the whooping Indians charged the wagon corral from the east, the soldiers grabbed their carbines and repulsed them, inflicting many casualties. While the Indians retreated, the soldiers hurriedly formed barricades of bedding, bales and boxes. Most fired from under the wagons,but four men inside one wagon did deadly execution through slits cut in the canvas cover.

Still, the Indians surrounded them. For four hours, the soldiers fought on, doing all they could to hold off the enemy. Sergeant Pennock, watching from the fort, later penned in his diary: ‘All this we could plainly see from the station, but we could do nothing for them….We could see the Indians in swarms charge down on our boys when they would roll volley after volley into them.’ Lieutenant Walker stated that the Indians scattered ‘like a flock of birds shot into.’

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Tags: 19th Century, American Indian Wars, Historical Conflicts, Native American History, Wild West

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